Digital Home Still a Pipe Dream

Today was, in general, a bad day. It wasn't really all that bad, but it's the first day in a good while that wasn't packed with productivity, and I'm not looking forward to some stuff I have work on tomorrow morning. I think one of the co-ops is having a party on Friday though, so that'll be fun. According to the chief executive of Sonos, the digital home is still about ten years away. I partially agree with him: I'd say that it's more like 5-8 years away. Digital media is advancing rather quickly, but I think the the biggest problem is diffusion. How many people know how cool and possible it would be to stream music from their computer into their living room? Or buy a season of 24 from iTunes and watch it on your TV? Another issue is a lack of content. The iTunes video content is admittedly at a relatively low resolution since it's meant for the iPod and they want a relatively quick download, but I think that things will change soon enough, and we'll probably see more competition as well. There's also the issue of Pay-Per-View digital movies, which could offer better quality than normal Pay-Per-View, and possibly repeated viewings within a certain period of time. There's really a number of ways for the digital home to be built up in the years to come from some of the media consumers are already interested in, but I think that content providers are just as behind as consumers are. And among those who do know about this stuff, I'm guessing that another factor is cost. These things are inevitably going to get cheaper and better, so why blow money on it right now? I have faith in good things to come, but we're definitely more than a couple of years away from this stuff hitting the mainstream.

CNet has assembled a little table comparing the features of PayPal and Google Checkout, and it really highlights how different the two services are. I still believe that the latter is a competitor to PayPal, but I believe that they're targeting more small and mid-sized businesses than PayPal, which is great for peer-to-peer and all sizes of business. A question that's been raised to me a couple of times is what systems Leopard will support, and eWeek is positing that it will work on G4 and later, which sounds pretty likely to me, but maybe they'll draw the line at G5 to give their developers more elbow room with regards to the minimal hardware. They haven't made the transition to Intel boxes yet, so they can't restrict the user base too much, but Macs did take a majority of their revenue in the third quarter, which was their second best quarter ever. I'm just impressed that they sold 8.5 million iPods. ExtremeTech put up one of the best, and most concise, roundups of the current generation of top dogs in browsing (Firefox, Opera, IE). The selling point for Firefox over Opera for me is still the add-ons (it doesn't get much better than DownThemAll). Asus is delivering PS3s to Sony this month, which seems a bit early for a November release. Are these prototypes, or does Sony test and stow them away in a factory for 3 months? Lastly, Disney has decided to support Blu-ray in the next-generation DVD format. I thought that they would have support for both, but I guess I was wrong.



That is the Comic Con poster for Pan's Labyrinth, and it looks so cool that it definitely deserved its own little space in today's blog entry. It's one of the posters that you could just stare at for a while. Rope of Silicon put up ten new clips from Miami Vice, and they look pretty good to me. I think I may have to see this one to see if it's as good as it's hyped up to be. JoBlo interviewed Kevin Smith, and it's your pretty standard fare when it comes to Kevin Smith interviews: just a geek speaking his heart. I'm counting the days until Saturday when I watch Clerks 2. Lastly, Arrested Development, which it seems like everyone but me watches and hails, may be made into a movie. I feel bad for the show since no one wants to pick it up, so I hope this works out for them.

Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. How hot does it usually get in summer where you live?
Usually, it's in upper 80s to mid 90s. This summer though, it's in the lower to mid 100s! What a crazy heat wave!

2. What's your favorite ice cream treat (or other cold treat)?
Probably ice cream sandwiches. I never bought my food from school when I was little, but I would always save up some of my own dough for ice cream sandwiches at the snack bar.

3. What's your favorite cold beverage?
Beer! Second to that is water, third is lemonade, and fourth is boba (tapioca milk tea).

4. Cubed or crushed ice?
Cubed, but nothing against crushed ice.

5. Do you prefer swimming in a pool, lake, river or stream?
A pool, because they're usually clean! Lakes can be cold (and dirty), and rivers are even worse! I haven't tried a stream before though.