The LittleBigPlanet Beta

LittleBIGBeta

Like every week, there was a lot going on last week. In my week though the biggest thing to happen was that I got a beta code for LittleBigPlanet (LBP), and I was ecstatic (I still am, actually). It was so difficult to get a code though that I felt like I had to punch a 12 year-old in the face to get one, but I got it fair and square. I'm sure that their distribution of these codes made perfect sense in theory, but it was terrible. They gave codes to various online video game magazines and LBP fan sites with the number of codes given in proportion to the site's overall popularity and/or importance. So it ended up being a mad rush for those sites (most contests were first come first serve) that crashed GamePro and the LBP news blog entirely, among others - a true life denial of service scenario. Ideally, they should've just distributed the codes themselves and/or given them to those who pre-ordered, but fortunately the LBP news blog later just gave them out to whoever tried to get them in their giveaway.

In case you don't know, you get to control Sackboy in the game. That's this guy:



He doesn't generally look that scary though, he's actually super cute. I wish I had screenshots and videos to show you, but It's just been hard for me to get anything that would do the game justice and between showing you crappy videos and not showing you anything at all, I prefer the latter. I'll leave the videos to Mm, but G4 did a great special as well. It's a platformer at its core and the basis of the game is that it kind of exists in our dreams and imaginations. Games have evolved so much into these full cinematic experiences that have deep stories (or attempt to have them), high budget graphics, and very advanced control schemes. What I love about LBP is that it aims for simplicity, a high sense of art direction, and just having fun. It reminds me of games from back in the day when the story didn't matter, it was all about the experience of the gameplay (not that I hate storylines, simplicity is just appealing). All you need to know is that you are a burlap sack person, which is really a blank canvas for you to customize into whatever you want: a bunny (my Sackboy right now), a pirate, an astronaut, a Victorian lord, etc. It's all about giving the user the ability to customize nearly everything with extreme ease and trying to put you in this fantastical world that's often all about just being happy. And this is just the beta, it's not even the full game yet. It's not really very stressful, either.

The beta only includes 3 levels (which kind of double as tutorials), what appears to be a full-featured level creator, and the ability to play the levels others have submitted online (you can submit yours as well, of course, which will be available at launch) on your own or co-operatively (on your PS3 or with others online). It looks like it only outputs in 720p (it's under 1 GB, so that's not too shabby, actually), but it looks in-freaking-credible. On my Samsung Series 7, I can be extremely discerning of video/sound quality and I was completely blown away. I sometimes sit closer just so that I can fully appreciate the level of detail they put into the graphics. The graphics may not be as big budget as Metal Gear Solid 4, but they impress me just as much and I find them more inspired than Devil May Cry 4, which arguably does technically have a better graphical engine. I don't see any artifacts or jaggies or anything like that. It's visually flawless, especially the ridiculous lighting engine. When you see a golf ball, it looks like a a golf ball, and when you put a sticker on it it looks as if it was printed on the ball like a logo - that's how fine tuned it is.

Ok, moving on to more important things: the controls. It's extremely simple: left stick to move around, x to jump, and R1 to grab. Yeah, that's it. Cool, huh? Now they have sensitivity adjustments, but that's essentially it. I keep citing how I played Dead Space at PAX and was really turned off by how many freaking buttons it required, so I love this. There are other fun things though: holding the back shoulder buttons give you control of your Sack person's arms, moving your controller around lets you control their head or torso, and the D-pad buttons let you control their emotions (happy, sad, scared, or angry). Oh, and square brings up your popit menu to use stickers (which can be stuck on anything, even you, and have no limit to their use) and customize your character and kill yourself (to go to the last checkpoint). It's used extensively in the level editor, too. The few levels that were available were definitely fun to play, but not very difficult since they're the very first levels in the real game. The art style was a joy to take in though and I loved the incentives of finding stickers and costume items and bonus levels - it's what keeps the game engaging since it doesn't seem to have an over arching cohesive storyline, though I believe that there are mini-stories throughout the game. Nerds love to collect stuff, but I think people do in general, as well. There was also a cute mini game where I had to jump over a king's tie as it spun around to collect points.

The level editor is nothing short of incredible. People are going to love this thing. I have to admit that it can be a bit daunting after you see the levels that other people have created since they're often quite clever, but they have some great, simple tutorials to get you familiar with the tools, and the fact that you can hover around makes it so much easier to create levels. It feels pretty much as intuitive as they could've made an editor with so many options. I feel like you can create anything you can imagine whether it be spaceship or a dinosaur or a horse or the theme to FFX (totally badass) or a conveyor belt or whatever you want. It really is a lot more expansive than I had ever imagined, and it gives you a lot of options to not only make it functionally extensive but as visually appealing as you want. I definitely underestimated it. You can even control the sounds that things make as they're destroyed, it's just really fun. The tutorials can sometimes be slow, but I actually really love their voiceover guy so it's not so bad. I still can't wrap my head around how perfect the physics engine is: it adds real physics to everything you create, and it's just as you would expect these things to function in this fantasy world. I would've loved a mode where you create levels based on challenges to get better acquainted with the editor, like a level editor mini-game I guess, but it's not anything sorely missed.

There are a few problems with the game, but they're pretty minor. I've experienced serious lag, but this is still a beta and I haven't played online co-operatively a whole lot for a few days so it may have gotten better. I sometimes end up jerking around my analog stick a lot in user-created levels because of slick surfaces, but I think that just means I suck at those levels. ;) I do see some collision detection issues and other weird issues in the tutorials, but they haven't been very often. I'm more worried about how finding levels is going to work after release: there are already so many levels and many where it's peoples first levels that really suck. There's nothing wrong with your first level sucking, but why put it online if it's not a polished product? Why not keep working on it? I wish there was a better way of navigating all the levels other than just the search box and tags, or flipping through pages of worlds, but it's not a problem that easily fixable. I've played some levels though where I was just blown away and it really did inspire me to want to create my own levels to try and match their brilliance. By the way, you can give away prizes in your levels that you create, like stickers or level editor parts, so the ability to play a bunch of levels and then use their created parts to add to your level editing toolkit gives the level editor even more possibilities. It's like the concept of code re-use in programming - you literally don't have to re-invent the wheel.

In conclusion, this is going to be a must-have game for the PS3. I don't see how you can go wrong with this game, I feel like it appeals to casual and hardcore gamers and that it has unlimited playability alone or with friends. It's one of the best, most polished games I've ever played, and this is only the beta. It follows a very important mantra in this industry: easy to get into, hard to master. Every truly great game is great because it's easy to learn but hard to be the best at, and with the level editor that truly means something for LBP. I recommend pre-ordering it if you have a PS3 - there are a couple of exclusive costumes out the first week (astronaut and an LBP shirt) that you can only get the first week, by the way.

The Ongoing Saga of Music Industry Stupidity

There were threats early last week that the Copyright Royalty Board would raise the royalty rates on digital music to nearly double (9 cents to 15 cents) for the artists, which would likely come out of the pockets of the proprietors of these digital music services since studios are so stingy, so iTunes threatened to shut down. I don't know if it was an empty threat or not, but it would definitely operate at a loss for Apple given their already razor thin profit margins. The Board did not end up increasing the rate, though they did set a rate for ringtones (at 24 cents). I wanted to bring this up because I'm kind of surprised that the government has this kind of power. Even though I think they ended up ruling for the best, it flies in the face of a free market, in my opinion. Even more disturbing is the prospect that music studios will do whatever it takes to bring up their short term profits, even if it means long term losses in grounds like digital distribution and Internet radio.

Speaking of the latter, Pandora also spoke out early last week begging fans of the service to write in to their Congressmen so that they wouldn't pass the ridiculous bill that would raise royalty rates for Internet radio to a stupid rate that no existing Internet radio service can possibly afford to pay now or in the forseeable future if they expect to stay in future. Terrestrial radio do not pay royalty fees right now since their playing the music already promotes it to an equal effect, but that's also been discussed in the past. Fortunately, Congress decided to extend the period of time for royalty negotiations with SoundExchange for Internet broadcasters to February 2009, but this doesn't guarantee anything.

It makes me so mad that this is an industry that is clearly in trouble and just pissing all over itself in trying to fix its problems by creating more of them. Pandora and Last.fm and others are better than terrestrial radio since they're often easier to listen to at work, they're more likely to get you listening to other artists that you'll actually like, and they make it painfully convenient to buy music. What the Hell do these music studios want?! The RIAA already has a black eye from their case against Jammie Thomas. I don't know how a group of executives get together in a board room and decide that they way to save their asses is to shut down the companies that have been breathing new life into their sales. I predict very bad things for music sales if there end up being royalty hikes, so continue to support Pandora and cross your fingers - they seem to be the front runners of this battle.

The G1 is Getting Closer

There's a lot of mixed opinions about the G1 among people in the know. For me, I'm not convinced that it'll be an amazing device, but I'm excited that Android can't be vaporware at this point and can only get bigger and better, even if the device it starts out on isn't likely to be a blockbuster. Motorola is already interested in Android. By the way: the naysayers harping on the lack of Exchange support seem to be forgetting the iPhone's release last summer - things didn't turn out too shabby for Apple. Gizmodo has a very positive spin on the situation in case you've fallen victim to a lot of the bad press. That article is mostly an exploration of what the success of this truly open mobile platform can mean (I know, you can't do tethering and a few other things, but these are minor details compared to the restrictions of other mobile platforms, including the iPhone's). It's going to pump more innovation in the smartphone market, and that's really important. Apple shouldn't get too comfortable - no one should. They should all be constantly innovating, and I hope that the G1, as lacking as it may be in certain areas, will help provide a boost. Just remember that it's not an iPhone replacement, it's something else altogether. If you really want a touch screen comparison though, Tech Radar compares the G1 to the iPhone and the Nokia Tube, but it's a bit long.

Back to the iPhone real quick: Apple has decided to drop its Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) for released applications, but this doesn't seem to be as exciting to me as it does to everyone else. I am pleased by it and it's a step in the right direction, but the fact that when you're developing an iPhone application that your lips have to stay sealed just doesn't make sense to me. Now that the SDK is out in the open, why seal any lips about it? Why not encourage further collaboration even among unreleased applications? At least this will allow the publication of books. I'll close this section with good news for Apple: Mac market share has grown to 8.2%, which has shrunk Microsoft's share to 90.3%. Bravo, Apple: you've really squeezed a lot out of this run of MacBooks and iMacs and MacBook Pros.

Quick Notes

I'm really tired, so it's time to wrap things up with a quick list of the other items I flagged but just don't have time to discuss in depth.

CNet has an article about net neutrality claiming that the solution to the ISPs' proclaimed problem of infrastructure costs of Internet connectivity is to charge consumers for tiers rather than having content providers foot the bill. I've said this before and I'll say it again: the ISPs are hoarding their money and could've easily upgraded their networks had they invested properly all these years. Tiering the Internet is dumb and people around the world who have to deal with it are not happy with it (anecdotal evidence, I have nothing to cite on that).

YouTube bumped its video upload limit to 1 GB, which is much better than 100 MB, especially with many point-and-shoot cameras' level of craptacular compression.

Did you know that Gmail has an activity monitor at the bottom? Check it out, it's super nifty.

PC World has a fun roundup of the 10 most mysterious cyber crimes.

Computer World has an even better roundup of famous tech myths. My perpetual favorite is Al Gore inventing the Internets.

And to wrap things up back to the start of this post: get some creative inspiration from these bus stop ads.

Whew, that was a long one! It'll probably be shorter next time. Have a great week, everyone!

Apple is Finally Evil

In case anyone cares, this is my 800th post. Unfortunately, I'm late with it! There's so much to talk about that I can't even get to all of it, but I guess that means that I'll be covered the real cream of the crop news though.

Note: In retrospeect, I think I should explain my title just a bit better. Apple never came out like Google did and said that it wasn't evil as part of how it explicitly branded itself. However, they always maintained the image that they were the good guy pitted against the monopolistic giant known as Microsoft. See the 1984 ad for proof of how early this image started. Their Mac vs. PC ads indirectly promotes this image with the hip, smug Mac being better than the stodgy, but omnipresent, PC. I don't pretend to believe that there is a single corporation that does not do bad things to increase shareholder value, but I feel like Apple is stabbing its own brand in the back, which doesn't upset me because I'm not a huge Mac geek, but I don't like the side effect.

Apple Pisses On Developers

Ok, the gloves are off. What the fuck, Apple? I know how they solve their problems now, they throw an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) at it. Keeping everything they do top secret: an NDA for each employee with terrible consequences informally implicit for breaking it. Keeping the problems with their iPhone SDK secret: have its users (i.e. the developers) sign NDAs. Choking back the bad press because of their biased, conveniently ambiguous, and insulting iPhone application approval process: slap an NDA on the reasons why they reject iPhone apps. In my last post, I mentioned that a guy who made a podcast application was rejected because it competed with iTunes, but since then another guy had his app rejected because his Gmail application "competed" with Mail! My source on the story has since censored that part because of the stupid NDA, but I don't care. Suck it, Apple, I didn't sign an NDA. Oh, and they're not at all consistent: there are applications in the app store that duplicate other things that Apple has on the iPhone more closely that those two apps.

Usually, I don't get this excited, I know. I've just about had it with this nonsense though. I hate seeing developers treated like crap like this. I am incredulous at how they so freely bitchslap the developers who freely devote time to making the iPhone better. To be honest, I think that their NDA is illegal. I honestly think someone should consider legal action. I'm saying this because of the double standard it imposes: you have to keep quiet about your own application and how you created it but they can talk about it as much as they want and even practically steal it! Are developers really so in love with their applications and iPhones that they're willing to keep developing apps for the iPhone? The sad truth is probably. It would take a large scale boycott to try to effect any change whatsoever, but that still probably wouldn't work. Apple is notoriously stubborn and iPhone users simply wouldn't care as much. What it would really take is an awesome Android phone. A true competitor to the iPhone with the rich platform that Android is. It's just sad that the only way for iPhone users, who pay quite a premium in their cell phone bills every month for their iPhone, to realize the phone's full potential is to jailbreak it (i.e. hack it to run any application developed for it, regardless of whether Apple has approved it). That's as if you have a 50" HD TV and a Blu-ray player and the studio behind your favorite movie has the movie but Sony won't sell it to you so you have to go pirate it instead of being allowed to legally buy it (or, to be more realistic, it's like having to pirate Spore so you can play it without dealing with DRM).

Just to even out the above rant against Apple I'll include one in this section in Apple's favor: they've done a great thing in their hard stance against selling songs that must be bought with an album rather than individually. Some artists are stupid and want to force consumers to buy their whole albums because they thing the songs fit together. These artists need to get over themselves and give the people who support them what they want. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to give your customers what they want in as saturated a market as music. That's like if Amazon told people they could only write positive reviews even though one of the main reasons they may use Amazon is for the mix of good and bad reviews. The main reason people use iTunes is that it's convenient, but in close second is the choice it gives them in buying individual songs when they don't care for the rest of the songs on an album. It's market forces at work. Telling them they can't do that partially defeats the purpose of using iTunes! It makes as much sense as when the government subsidizes local companies who are less efficient at making certain products than foreign competitors: if they were good at what they did they people would buy their stuff so the government is doing a disservice to the market and the people by undercutting a superior company. If artists sell albums because one song is good and the rest suck then they get an inflated ego, people get ripped off and will want to pirate, and it doesn't create the kind of competition that forces artists to record the best quality music they can possible create. Without the idea of competition you likely have an aristocracy or communism, and neither one would sound right for the music industry. These artists need to start whining and start earning their paychecks like many of their peers do.

T-Mobile G1

The HTC Dream has been renamed to the T-Mobile G1, but it is still the first Android phone to hit the market. Engadget has some pretty great close-ups of it, but it looks pretty unremarkable. For a phone that's likely intended to compete with the iPhone, it has much to learn. For example, it has a proprietary headphone jack! The memory leaves something to be desired (1 GB internal, expandable to 7 or 8 GB, I believe), too. I have to admit that the software itself looks pretty slick though. I hope that Android really is as solid as videos like these make it look. I don't think this will be the Android phone to buy, but I imagine that this time next year the G1 will be in better company.

The best news about it though is that it will include an Amazon MP3 application to download music directly to the device directly from Amazon! You can only buy songs over WiFi, mind you, but at least you can browse them and listen to samples where ever you have a signal. At the least, it'll help you note down songs you want to buy later. This is the first phone with a direct interface to Amazon MP3 like this, now all it needs is a normal audio jack and support for stereo bluetooth.

Before I move on I just want to quickly note that Mozilla is promising a mobile Firefox by 2010. I don't understand what platform it'll run on though. Will it be for Android? There's no way that Apple will allow it on iPhones with its stringent app store policies, and I can't imagine it would be better than the Webkit-based creation for Android that comes with the platform. Palm OS is probably a dying OS nowadays, but maybe it'll be for Blackberry and Windows Mobile?

Chrome Hangover

Let me stay on browsers for bit longer. There were reports after Chrome's release of its rapid growth, which still amounted to less than 1% market share of the browser market, though it was nothing to scoff at for a nascent browser. Now the reports show the opposite trend: it looks like people aren't using it as much anymore. Take this with a grain of salt because it's hard to gauge this sort of thing over such a short period of time for a browser with such a tiny piece of the pie, but I think it honestly does show at least a small degree of boredom with the browser. It's like when beanie babies were cool and everyone wanted one, except that "everyone" in this case are computer geeks. I personally stopped using chrome because it didn't make sense to use it for work purposes and it was really unstable on my home machine after waking up from sleep mode. Plus, except for select AJAX applications it really isn't faster than Firefox, but which is faster changes with each performance comparison you look at. I kind of feel like I'm not the only person who has experienced these problems, and I'm sure that enough people didn't see a reason to fully switch that they just stuck to their tried and true browser of choice (likely Firefox because IE users wouldn't be ones to dip their feet in the Chrome pool). We'll have to see if Chrome can really hold its own in such a competitive market.

Does Obama Really Support Net Neutrality?

EDIT: Thanks to Ian for pointing out the Obama fact sheet that still features the explanation of net neutrality on page 2. Either they were careless and didn't update that, too, or (more likely) they wanted to focus the short form on the website more on education and other issues.

I almost made this into a rant, but reconsidered and decided that I was overreacting. The issue at hand is that he (i.e. the people representing him who manage the site) changed some content on his website regarding his platform for science and technology to remove a good chunk about net neutrality (watch my video if you don't know what net neutrality is). I was at first upset, but realized that he didn't remove the sentence saying that he supports net neutrality, but rather the portion explaining what a tiered internet is and why net neutrality is important. Granted, this is still terrible and very likely on purpose given that Joe Biden has definitely not been one to support net neutrality, but I really hope and don't think that he now is all for the telcos.

This is a big issue for me though, and would cast doubt on who I vote for if it turns out that he has changed his stance. For one thing, I'd be severely disappointed in him, but for another I'd be scared for our future when two candidates both have the wrong stance on one of the most important, but least understood, issues facing this country. I know what you're going to say, don't we have a war and a mortgage crisis and the biggest bank failure ever right now? Yes, we do, and I do not at all want to downplay those issues, but rather I want to highlight the severity of not keeping the Internet neutral. It is one thing to not support legislation and another thing to give the telcos what they want. Aside from putting a lot of people out of jobs it will severely limit the American dream when it comes to the wild west that is now the Internet and put us farther behind in the world economy. When you look at the Internet, American companies are putting out better companies and products online than any other country, and that's important. It creates a very valuable portion of our economy for our long term growth when you think long and hard about it. It's something that we have a competitive advantage in and it's one of the few things that can be a reliably positive part of our economy if we let it. The dot com boom sucked, but it created some great, enduring companies and inspired the creation of many more in its aftermath.

The bottom line is that any candidate that does not support net neutrality does not support the forward progression of technology one of its most important pursuits. He wouldn't believe in people being able to purchase cheap computers like Netbooks that are dependent on online content and give consumers more disposable income and spread computers to more people to help them improve their lives and improve e-Commerce (which supports big companies like Amazon and average people through sites like Amazon and Etsy). Just please, think about this the next time you take a shower.

The Xbox 360 Debacle

This is kind of old news, but I just have to plug it: VentureBeat has an incredible article detailing the problems with the inception of the Xbox 360 that has led to the now infamous red ring of death problem (i.e. its high defect rate). If you bought a launch console then your odds were better than flipping a coin and getting heads that your console would break: 68%. It's a long but fascinating read, and what it boils down is that Microsoft made several compromises in creating the console in being the first to market. Was it worth it? We don't really know. We know that the $1 billion they had to pay to replace defective consoles was more than a couple of things, like the savings in creating their own GPU rather than buying it from someone else and in turn causing some issues. It's kind of a hidden scandal when you really think about it, but did it strategically give Microsoft a foothold that they would've been screwed without? After all, they were facing off a technologically superior console in the PS3, and its launch kind of flopped compared to the Xbox 360 launch. To date there are more Xbox 360s in households than PS3s, but which console is really better and who will go down in the books as getting second place compared to the Wii? I don't think we really know yet, but I imagine that it'll be the Xbox 360 (though I personally like the PS3 better for the Blu-ray player, LittleBigPlanet, and Metal Gear Solid 4). Of course, the Blu-ray market isn't looking too great. I'm happy with my Kill Bill on Blu-ray! I agree that the higher prices for Blu-ray movies aren't always warranted though.

Quick Last Notes

Ok, it's past 1 and I have to get up in like 6 hours, I have to wrap things up here:

Gizmodo has a funny list of great gadgets to have for shady hotel rooms. It's just fun to look at.

eBay is no longer going to accept any forms of payment except for PayPal, aside from big ticket items like cars. There has been a lot of doubt over the years cast over the security of PayPal, and it eBay's roots are in taking money order and checks. I think people really just aren't going to be happy with this level of control being taken away from them, ultimately, rather than the fact that it's PayPal that they have to use. So much for eBay being a big rival to Amazon! This is just one part of a laundry list of things not going well for them in the past few months.

Popular Science has a surprisingly terse article about how computers will get faster via electron spin, graphene sheets, and a better form of memory storage known as memristors. It's a neat read.

I finally got a LittleBigPlanet beta code so I'll likely be posting my thoughts on the game later this week. For your chance to win a code, you may want to tune into X-play tomorrow night. Until then, stay out of trouble everyone!

Apple Event Overload

Ike

I have to start out by sending my best to everyone back home dealing with the aftermath of Ike, including my brother and sister-in-law and other family members and Ronak. I hope live returns to normal sooner rather than later and that power is restored to everyone in Houston soon. I may hate the city of Houston itself, but not the people in it. No one deserves to go through a natural disaster like this and I felt really guilty enjoying the beautiful weather in Seattle on Friday. Still, Houston's weather will be much better than ours in a couple of months.

Apple's Special Event

Over half of the articles I tagged for today's post were regarding the press event that Apple had last Tuesday morning! Suffice to say, not a whole lot happened the rest of the week that topped the buzz surrounding this event. What's amusing is that there were no surprises! Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg and host of Diggnation, actually gets e-mails from insiders and people called B.S. on his predictions (which I didn't post here because I'm tired of posting Apple speculation), which were accurate. I figured they were accurate because he's not one to drag his name in the dirt.



Anyway, you can watch the whole event here, which I ended up not watching because I didn't care about it as much as past events. You can also read all the gritty details here. The above image depicts the biggest thing to come out of the event: the new iPod Nano. It has an oval shape, an accelerometer (so you can turn it sideways and the device is aware of it), and better battery life before. It's also cheaper: $150 for 8GB and just $50 more for double the capacity. I was actually pretty impressed with what you get for this price because even though it still can't play the radio or games at least it has a screen size that makes more sense and that genius playlist feature. Speaking of which: this is similar to what last.fm users may already be familiar with as a plug-in for their favorite music program. You pick a song and it will automatically generate a playlist for you with similar songs. It's part of the new iTunes 8, which also brings back NBC in standard definition and HD. Another announcement is that the 160 GB iPod classic is out in favor of a thinner 120 GB model for $250. I don't know why they don't keep both out there, maybe they feel like demand for it has peaked already?



The iPod Touch also got a new generation with a better speaker built-in, a better wi-fi antenna, a more tapered design, and integration with the Nike+iPod technology (so all you need is the transmitter in your shoe now). Oh, and they come at three price points: 8GB for $230, 16GB for $300, and 32GB for $400. By the way, these price points are all pretty brilliant. They're going to sell a lot of Nanos and 2G iPod Touches at these prices and they actually make sense (unlike the old iPod Touch's ridiculous price tag). They demoed some games for it and I'm not actually sure whether or not they mean to compete with the DS and PSP. It looks like they are when they're putting out great quality mobile versions of Need for Speed and Spore, but I won't believe it until I see an ad campaign. Also, if they were aiming for this then why not go all out and encourage more development of games for Macs? Still, I think this is a smart move. Games like Rock Band and Wii Sports are creating more casual gamers every day who would probably love to play games when they're bored away from home but don't want to carry around a DS. They could be minting money if they play their cards right (not that they're doing bad right now).

The least exciting announcement was some new in-ear headphones with a remote on the cord. Maybe audiophiles will be excited about it, but I don't know if Apple is such a reliable brand for headphones as opposed to Shure or Bang & Olufsen. They do sound like premium headphones though from the specs so I'm not at all discrediting their quality, just questioning their success. Then again, Apple could sell crap in a white box and fans would buy it because it's from Apple. Sorry to be harsh, but you know it's true. I don't hate Apple, just the cult.

Overall, I think it was strategically a great event for Apple. They put out some products sure to be a hit for the holiday season and the games honestly do look pretty cool. I think if mobile gaming has a future in it's the kind of stuff that they were demoing on Tuesday.

The Zune Matures

So I think up until this announcement, the Zune has kind of been a waste. The announcement, which feels more like an approved leak than an announcement, is regarding the updates to the Zune line. Apparently, there will be bigger capacities (120 GB and 16 GB for the hard drive line and the flash memory line, respectively) at price points identical to their iPod competitors and you'll be able to download music using WiFi directly from Zune Marketplace. The really cool part is the ability to tag songs that you like from the radio to download directly to your Zune! Sure, there are devices where you can record directly from the radio, but the quality isn't going to be that great because it's radio so this is actually cool. Also, their answer to the genius playlist thing is MixView (reminiscent of MusicPlasma, from days of yore) where you can also discover new artists based on a better smattering of the albums, artists, and songs involved. If you have Zune Pass, then it's basically like Pandora except that you can keep the songs you listen to and you can seek through them. Oh, you'll also see support for Audible books and a couple of games built in (Texas Hold Em and Hexic). I'm glad that the Zune is finally trying to be a worthwhile product, it's definitely a welcome change from its previous lackluster iterations that don't bring anything new to that table. I think that unlike the iPod line where the inspiration is always extreme simplicity and a limited number of honed features the mantra for the Zune seems to be a more artistic UI and as many interesting features as they can pack in there. Not to say that it's all of a sudden an iPod killer or anything, just that it looks like it will be a more formidable opponent now.

The New Gates-Seinfeld Ad

I'm sure you've seen the Shoe Circus ad that was a fiasco, but have you seen the new ad featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld?


Video: New Family

First of all, the latest TWiT actually did an interesting analysis of hypothetical meanings of things for the first ad where the Shoe Circus store represents PCs where it's a good value and reliable even though it's not as flashy or expensive as Macs. Still, the ad wasn't funny and didn't make sense. This new one makes perfect sense to me and makes sense of what this campaign is about: the Windows brand image. It's about getting people to talk about Windows more positively now instead of repeating rants they heard about Vista from early reports. It's about putting a friendly face on the brand instead of the stodgy, business-like one forced on it by the Mac vs. PC ads. It's about promoting PCs without jumping in your face (like so many ridiculous Mac vs. PC ads) and evangelizing boring features or why its better than the competition. The ad ends with a message that Gates (through Windows) has already connected so many people and how they're going to go out and connect more people. It's really about focusing on real people rather than the stereotypes that the Apple campaign focuses on.

I think it's rather brilliant. I actually laughed out loud during this ad, which I rarely do. I loved the combination of geek humor with Seinfeld humor. They couldn't possibly come out and counter the Apple ads or else they'd be acknowledging them and they'd look like a pissy giant trying to squash poor old little Apple (which is neither poor nor little anymore, but has a fanatical fanbase that could wreak havoc on Microsoft as a result of a move like that). The ads don't have to directly explain why Vista is so great, it just has to get into people's minds enough so that they stop focusing on the bad things they heard about Vista and will be less apprehensive about trying it out. Ultimately, it's about clearing the way for the next version of Windows, which cannot successfully be released until the brand is pulled out of the mud. I actually can't wait to see what the next ad will be and if it will really be in a pink house.

AT&T Starts to Throttle

AT&T has decided that rather than improve their infrastructure that if the network in your area is congested then you will see slowdowns. I guess this isn't a new concept, but it's specifically for higher tier users, so you're already paying a premium for your Internet and it's not even going to be all that reliable. Isn't that just peachy? I don't understand these people and how they're so terrible at managing their network that their best solution to the growth of the Internet is to screw their customers. Bandwidth usage is only going to go up with each passing month, so why not try coming up with a plan to upgrade your network with your ridiculously deep pockets?

Creating a Facebook Botnet

I've explained this before, but I don't expect most people to remember: a botnet is basically a network of computers that have been infected with malware that makes them zombies awaiting commands from a master. They're often unaware of the infection and can be used for sending spam or denial of service attacks (hitting a site hard enough to bring it down), among other things. Some Greek researchers have developed a Facebook application that could be used to launch a denial of service attack under the hood. It seemingly would just show you a National Geographic photo each day but really hit their site each time it was loaded for 3 other images, and at 1,000 users led to 300 requests per hour at its peak. What if it had a million users? It's a really interesting new form of social engineering, but you have to question how far it will get before it's discovered. After all, once someone discovers it Facebook can remove it and the zombies are no longer infected since no malware is installed directly to users' computer. If you put out enough of these though, it would devolve into a race to find them all before they inflict real damage. If you use it for spam then it wouldn't need to be out there for long to be profitable.

Closing Tidbits

I wanted to end with a few quick items.

If you've seen The Dark Knight and want to know if one particular character will be back in the next movie, then click here. I don't want to reveal anything for those of you who haven't seen it, though there may be something wrong with you if you seriously never saw this movie despite the amazing press and my delirious ravings.

Next year, Panasonic will put into production a 150" LCD television! Not only that, but it can recognize your face to have the picture follow you or customize itself to your individual preferences. It's called the Life Wall TV and you can see it in action here.

Lastly, HP claims that its EliteBook laptop has a battery life of 24 hours. This obviously surpasses that of any notebook on the market and would make it of extremely high value to business customers (and software developers who are on call). It has a solid state drive and a mercury-free LCD panel to help with keeping the power consumption low. Starting at $1200, it makes me want one so I can have a computer to play Starcraft 2 for hours on end (not sure if my current laptop, though I love it, can handle the graphics).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Security Bytes Galore

I think that like half the news I found most interesting last week is security related, so let's get down to it!

Defcon Tidbits

Last weekend was Defcon, the Las Vegas convention where hackers and security experts gather to learn from one another and have some fun. One of the things in the latter category was that a couple of hackers were beaten by a relatively simple man-in-the-middle attack (sitting between you and the network and giving you bad packets). One of the former items was an anticipated lecture on a huge DNS security hole. A Domain Name System (DNS) server is what the URLs you write in your address bar get sent to so that you can get an IP address instead. If someone were to compromise the DNS server that you use, they could send you to phishing sites (i.e. fake bank sites and such). The particular exploit he's describing is the fact that if the DNS server you're querying doesn't have an answer, they refer you to other servers based on their response to a query for something called a Transaction ID - a number between 0 and 2^16. Of course, if a bad guy can guess this number then he can pretend to be a DNS server, and he can re-try multiple times so his odds aren't as bad as you'd think. The fix is to increase the range of this ID and not be so lenient about a bad transaction ID, but if your DNS servers (usually defaulted by your ISP) don't have the patch, then you're kind of screwed. The fix is to use OpenDNS, and they have directions for how to switch to them.

One last thing from Defcon: it's not as hard as you make think for someone to get into your Gmail account if you didn't choose the option to always use https. I was fooled, too: just because you type in https://www.gmail.com does not mean that the secure cookie (i.e. your authentication token) you have can't get stolen by someone listening in on your requests to http:///www.gmail.com, so make sure you go to your settings and look at the bottom of the general tab for that https option.

Facebook Phishing and Identity Theft

With popularity comes the privilege of being targeted by the sleazebags of the computer underworld. One such Chinese sleazebag has somehow managed to send out messages that look like they're from a friend of yours that ends up at the Facebook login page, but it's really faceilbook.com, and it takes your login information. Why would this be a problem? Because people use the same passwords on many sites, and it could be enough to steal someone's identity. These Chinese hackers do not mess around, so be wary of this. I always wondered at what point these sites would be big enough to be serious security risks (the MySpace stuff was small fry stuff), so I wonder if this is the start of something big.

Back to the bigger issue though: identity theft. Consumer Reports has a pretty good list of things you may screw up online that threaten your identity, of which the above is actually one. My favorite one is to not assume your Mac is a secure because it's a Mac. It astounds me how defensive some Mac users get when I tell them that Safari is a terrible piece of software and they should be using Firefox. As for the online shopping thing: Amazon has a lot of people dedicated to detecting and preventing fraud, so you can shop assured that there are people who have your back.

Privacy Breaches?

Several Internet firms have admitted to using tracing cookies to help drive some targeted advertising without explicitly mentioning it, but I was honestly not all that shocked. For one thing, you should be using SpyBot so these cookies shouldn't stay on your machine for long, but I also don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with these cookies. I think people should be informed that they're taking on these cookies, but I don't think they compromise anyone's privacy. That's just me though, I can understand people getting offended and I think they should be allowed to opt-out.

You should be more concerned about using torrents without getting shut down, even if it's for legal purposes. there's now a program called TorrentPrivacy that creates a secure connection between your machine and a server that downloads the torrent on your behalf and sends the data to you securely (read: encrypted) so that an ISP can't block your download or throttle it. Pretty nifty, huh? I don't know if the ISPs can ever detect this, but maybe if they figure out what servers are doing this they can just block connections to them without discrimination? Of course, with the FCC's recent actions against Comcast (see my last post), they'd be stupid to do so without making it public. Wouldn't that be an interesting PR conference? That they're blocking out an Internet server for trying to give people data that outsiders can't look in on? That would be mutiny for VPN, which is how big companies allow their employees to work remotely, so I think that TorrentPrivacy is a pretty solid solution.

More Apple News

No matter how I try to avoid it, Apple seems to work its way into the limelight week after week. The first thing is real quick: Steve Jobs has admitted to the kill switch that I admitted to last week (to delete any of your iPhone apps). And what's his reasoning? In case they accidentally approve a malicious application. Am I the only person who thinks this is stupid? Also, it's a lie: Apple doesn't care about you past your wallets, the real reason for this kill switch is if their approval people let in an application that displeases AT&T or something in their terms of service. So the what the Hell is the point of their approval process? They're basically telling us that these guys are so incompetent that they had to build in a kill switch. By the way, if they really cared about security they would include a garbage collector in their platform to plug up the buffer overflow exploits that are likely already in the works.

I used to love iTunes, but with each new version they added stuff I didn't want and made it slower. PCWorld is running an article about what they hate from iTunes, and I agree with pretty much all of their points. The most annoying things are the update pushes that they shove down your throat for other Apple products and the fact that it won't monitor folders because it assumes that you only use the iTunes music store. I think that Media Monkey is much better, easier to use, and lighter on memory usage. I have to admit that I did like cover flow though and it has a great CD ripper.

Now for some good Apple news: they're worth more than Google. As you can imagine, this has drummed up quite a bit of controversy, but it's not that extreme when you consider the monumental success of even the newest iPhone and their surging sales in laptops and even iMacs. What has Google done that's so great lately? That being said, investors are irrational and their stock worth doesn't mean that they're necessarily a better company, but I personally believed that they're more focused and will do better in the long run as a result if they can just groom someone to be as resilient a leader as Steve Jobs (but preferable not as scary).

Final Tidbits

It's getting late so let me wrap things up. There's a new P2P game in town called Playlouder that allows you to pay a subscription fee each month to pirate as much as you want and then they pay the copyright holders the appropriate royalties, but TorrentFreak is not impressed. I agree with TorrentFreak: it's not feasible and is going to fall apart quickly.

Intel has announced that their new chip will be called the Core i7, and all will be explained later on as the first of these energy efficient chips will be due Q4 this year. I'm hoping for a bigger L1 cache and more of those architecture features that will make multiprocessors more usable.

Lastly, NBC's olympic site is pretty much only guaranteed to work for Windows users, which leaves some Apple users and all Linux users out in the cold. Given the worldwide importance of the olympics, this is just terribly ignorant. Then again, these are the companies that hate DVRs and online TV because they detract from their antiquated business model, so I guess it's too much to ask that they not exclude valuable customers.

Hack Day

That's it for my real post, but I just wanted to briefly mention that Amazon had a Hack Day last week and it was great. Needless to say, I won't be revealing anything that was created during the event, but it was a really humbling experience. I didn't manage to finish what I was working on, but I was just amazed by what some people were managed to accomplish in a 24 hour time period. It really gave me something to aspire to, and I really took a lot away from it. The main thing I learned is to never underestimate the importance of research and design in any project, no matter how easy or small it seems. Also, never underestimate a team of really bright programmers. Amazon truly has some of the best talent around, and I'm very grateful to get to work with some of them. Today's company picnic was more fun than I thought, and we ever got goodies from Amazon Fresh!

The Roots Rock UT

**UPDATE** The Daily Texan actually has a great article reviewing the concert as well that acts as a nice supplement to what I say below.

NOTE: below the embedded video, you'll see your dosage of tech news to cover the past 2 weeks.

I have to say that Austin has had a pretty fortunate Spring. The weather is still pretty nice outside, despite being April, Barack Obama has come to speak here at least 3 times, we hosted the latest Clinton-Obama debate, Bill Gates visited us, Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke here, we're home to the current Turing Award winner, and The Roots blasted their incredible fusion of rock and hip hop from Main Mall throughout the lower half of campus.



They were the very definition of indie Austin rock, in my opinion: weird, intense, but always fun. I was disappointed that they didn't acknowledge The Roots at all, but I forgive them. If you looked close enough, you could spot Captain Kirk, Owen Biddle, and I think Tuba Gooding, Jr. Feel free to comment if you can spot more of them (it's like "Where's Waldo"):



I tried to keep track of the songs they played, so here's the best set list I could come up with, in roughly the order they were played:

Star
Unknown song from Game Theory (I think)
Quills
Step Into the Realm
Act Too (Love of My Life)
1-minute covers: In a Gadda Da Vida (Iron Butterfly), Jump On It (Sugarhill Gang), Roc Boys (Jay-Z), Get By (Talib Kweli), Just a Friend (Biz Markie), a Wu-Tang song I didn't know, Who Am I (Snoop Dogg), This is Why I'm Hot (Mims), Snap Yo Fingers (Lil Jon and Sean Paul), Sexy Back (Justin Timberlake), Push It (Salt N Peppa)
Extended cover: Masters of War (Bob Dylan)
I Will Not Apologize (off of Rising Down)
You Got Me
Here I Come
cover of Jungle Boogie (Kool & The Gang)
Don't Feel Right
The Next Movement
Web
Encore: The Seed and some song I didn't know (it sounded like the hook was "Men at Work", it was not Thought @ Work)



And again, that doesn't even cover all the songs they actually played, it's just the ones I knew. It made for a great set that covered over 2 hours. They came on stage one-by-one starting off with a song I didn't know, but as always The Roots crew started building up the crowd's energy until the crowd got wild and excited after the Masters of War cover. Speaking of which, you can see a video of it on YouTube from another concert. So picture that but with an insane guitar solo and a longer drum solo. It was seriously worth waiting 2 hours just to see that cover: it was absolutely incredible. The buildup in the show's energy was definitely noticeable though as Black Thought periodically introduced each member of the band giving them a short solo, especially as they went through that long slew of covers that the crowd went crazy over. I don't even like Jungle Boogie and I thought it was amazing when they played it.

What was interesting is that even though The Roots and Common are both hip hop, and have both blazed the stage that is Main Mall, there's something fundamentally different in their music that really fascinates. Common is more reflective, soulful, bare bones hip hop whereas The Roots is this rock-driven hip hop experience that revitalizes ever song they play as well as any covers they play. I had seen them live before back after the release of Phrenology, and so some of the band members have changed since then, but the show stayed true to being really high quality. Hell, they even put up these poles where the flag poles are that did something crazy with the sound echoing at some points. I've never seen so many white people go so nuts over 6 black dudes (+ a white guy) taking a stage; I thought it was interesting. I had no idea how cross-cultural The Roots' pull was. It's not hard to see why though when they put together a live show that you'd think was choreographed to the second with perfect harmonies but remixes of songs that most people there had never heard before. Anyhow, the concert was so mind-blowing that I pre-ordered Rising Down so I can give you guys the full review when I get that at the end of the month. In the meantime, here's a video that I took at the concert of the guys dancing on stage, which was started by F Knuckles:


The Roots Dance on Stage from Eptiger on Vimeo.

Ok, so it's time for some tech news! Amazingly, they flow pretty well into each other, so I'll start on the musical track since we started out talking about The Roots. PC World recently updated its list of top 10 Flash-based mp3 players, and I think the order is debatable but from my experience of shopping for one I'd agree that those are pretty much the top 10 out there right now except for the Cowon D2. My lesser known Clix2 (see yesterday's post) made the #5 spot just below the iPod Touch but above SanDisk or the Zune.

Where do you shop to load up these fine mp3 players though? USA Today had a refreshing article pointing out that Amazon's mp3 download service is now number 2 in digital music sales right behind iTunes. They're also tied for the number 4 spot in top U.S. music retailers with Target behind Best Buy, Wal-mart, and iTunes, which is number 1 now (on both charts). I'd say that given that Amazon MP3 was just a whisper a year ago, it's incredible that it has grown to be so popular and I'm excited to see if its greater selection of DRM-free music than iTunes will allow it to overtake Apple's FairPlay-controlled service. I personally have grown weary of iTunes and have switched to MediaMonkey for organizing my music and Amazon for digital downloads because it's just better overall.

(Note: I have no non-public knowledge of the AWS group,=; I did not work in that group.) Amazon also garnered a bit of negative press that I'm almost afraid to link to because I think it's kind of ridiculous. Basically, GigaOM put up a commentary on a thought from Dave Winer that gained popularity (probably more than the Winer original did). No doubt that both guys are smart and know what they're talking about in general, but I don't think there are enough companies that would want EC2 and S3 and such for free like this. Consumers are cheap and love free stuff, but enterprise-level software is all about support. So there's two ways Google could go about this: supporting it with ads or just hoping that one of the companies they back strike it big and Google can acquire them. For the former, I can't imagine that there are a lot of companies who would want to be forced to have big parts of their infrastructure supported by advertising. For the latter, I don't see how the fruits of this would be good enough to warrant providing these services. It's not like the AWS prices are insane anyway. I'm going to be bold enough to say that Google would be stupid to try to compete with AWS with a free model. AWS does pretty well as it is, and Google's style and past success are based in investing in growing markets without a clear leader.

Of course, a well-established leader is no obstacle to Microsoft who took on Sony in the console wars for the past couple of generations and is still trying to buy Yahoo in its war with Google. They've become so impatient that they're giving Yahoo 3 weeks to surrender before they take the fight directly to the stockholders. This could get real messy real fast. As I've mentioned before, Microsoft really does not want a proxy fight here because Yahoo's talent base is very important to them and a proxy fights typically result in casualties and lowered employee morale, but Ballmer has made it abundantly clear several times before that they will stop at nothing to takeover Yahoo, so I'm still appalled that Yahoo is still fighting this so irresponsibly. My opinion is that they told Microsoft they wanted more money because they wanted to stall for time from their shareholders because they knew that Microsoft wouldn't pay up. Either that, or they're delusional (which I also mentioned before).

I have a friend working on the Windows 7 team so I'm always excited to get news on that front because he's a smart guy and I think that he'll help guide Windows back on the right path. There's already rumors that Windows 7 will be modular, meaning that it'll come out in pieces so that it can be developed monolithically while providing the flexibility of a highly customizable OS (this is a similar idea to people who use Linux so that they can tinker with it). Also, Bill Gates let slip that Windows 7 will be out next year, but he didn't say much other than that. It's likely a beta that will be ready late next year since the release timeline for 2010 hasn't changed, but I hope that they are trying to pick up the pieces of Windows Vista and build something truer to what people really want.

Alas, I have one more piece of news from Redmond: the Microsoft Surface will be in AT&T stores in a few select cities to show off cell phone models by just placing them on the device to help sell the phones. It's an interesting application for the product, though I'm sure quite expensive. I wonder if AT&T bought them outright or if they're on loan? We have no idea whether it'll only work on the demo models or if your own phone could be placed on the Surface to be played around with, but it's launching April 17 so we'll know soon enough. Despite my initial skepticism, I think that the Surface could be really cool in retail stores and bars and restaurants.

The CEO of the Mozilla Foundation is leading the herds of people who are disgruntled that the Apple Software Update application, which PC users typically use to get updates to iTunes but Apple users use for other applications, automatically puts Safari on the list of updates it will provide to you and check the box by default so that if you just click "Install" whenever it bugs you about upgrading you'll have one more browser that you may not want (I certainly wouldn't want it). While I think it shouldn't be checked by default, I think that John Lilly is getting too worked about it. People shouldn't be clicking on things they haven't read or don't understand, anyway, because it could be a virus. That's why people should use ZoneAlarm and SpyBot. I personally think that anything that auto-updates is evil and should always ask you first, but nagging you can also be problematic. Still, it's the lesser of two evils, and so at least Safari doesn't actually install itself without asking you. Of course, what Lilly should keep in mind that if Safari is worse than Firefox (which it is) then he has nothing to worry about. The only helpful feature I ever found in it was the Activity window, which is like Down Them All but not as good. Oh, and Firefox 3 Beta 5 is out for all you hardcore nerds and developers out there.

Azureus, creators of the famed torrent application of the same name, have released a plug-in that will allow you to determine if your ISP is throttling your connection for using torrents. It may sound useless because you'd know if you were being throttled, but it will then send that information to Azureus to help compile a list of such terrible ISPs and I presume help your case in suing them.

Now, I have several high points I'd like to hit real quick because this post is taking way too long and I have other things to attend to. GigaOM put up something more enlightening than what I mentioned above: a guide to what makes a good mobile application great. Having dealt with horrible ones, I can attest to this list's validity. The New York Times had an excellent editorial about how Hillary Clinton is dragging along this battle because she feels like she politically deserves the nomination and will drag the party through the mud to get it. Clinton supporters: don't fight me here, there are field reporters attesting to shady tactics at conventions here in Texas alone. I'd vote for her if Obama loses, but I don't think it will come to that and she needs to start to realize that before we lose people to McCain and the arguably more decisive Republican Party. The SciFi channel put up a really neat recap of the first 3 seasons of Battlestar Galatica for those who want to get into the show but haven't been keeping up. It makes me want to go out and rent these first seasons, but unfortunately it's down momentarily. I'm sure it'll be back soon (it's called 'What the Frak is Going On?'). Lastly, in my hunt for Seattle apartment I came across HousingMaps, a Craigslist/Google Maps mashup that will map out housing ads in various big cities. I love it and am using it constantly so I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new place.

Hopefully I'll have another post up early next week, but until then I have much work ahead of me this week so wish me luck!

Air Just Got Pricier

I was talking to my brother earlier about this morning's Mac World keynote and he was really impressed. After keeping up with this stuff for over 4 years now, I know better. This keynote was underwhelming, and the investors seemed to agree. I guess the MacBook Air wasn't enough for them. If you want to read all the hairy details of the keynote, there's the Engadget live blog. If you have 90 minutes to spare, you can watch the whole thing. I'll give you the gist of it though and some of my thoughts. The big deal was this thing to the left here: the MacBook Air. You can see the details here and specs here. At it's thickest it's less than 0.8 inches thick and at its thinnest it's less than 0.2 inches thick. It's absolutely ridiculous. Not necessarily bad ridiculous, it just is. You can even see a video of it here. You can count the ports it has on one hand (includes headphone jack, DVI, MagSafe power, and USB) and it doesn't come with an optical drive of any sort, it costs $100 if you really want it (Steve thinks you're done with CDs). It has a great 13.3-inch screen, it comes with an 80 GB HD, it has one of the lower speed Core 2 Duos, it's 802.11n wireless and comes with Bluetooth, it has a backlit screen and keyboard, and it's fairly environmentally friendly. This can all be yours for the low low price of one arm and half your leg: just $1800. The trackpad also supports multi-touch, like on the iPhone, for pictures and I'm not sure what else.

There are a number of issues with this device. Anything Jobs presents, including this laptop, looks like gold on stage. The reality is a number of things. The battery isn't replaceable, and if you've owned a laptop then you know what a horrible relationship people have with their laptop batteries. It doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, so you have to already have a computer in your household (Mac or PC) on a network so you can connect to it to install remote disk, which allows you to install software you have on that remote computer. When it comes down to it, this is a really expensive, really thin, stripped-down laptop. For the form factor, you need to sacrifice things, and so I can accept that, but I just don't see the need for a super-thin laptop. Do people really want this? I'm not saying they don't, but besides the glamor of being so thin, what do you really get out of this? So you can carry around a manila envelope instead of a laptop case? I was impressed initially, but not so much anymore. It's a good laptop, but not better than the old MacBook or MacBook Pro lines.

The next biggest announcement, in my mind, was the Apple TV Take 2, which is a free software upgrade for the Apple TV that allows you to rent movies and download iTunes content directly to your Apple TV without the middle man of your Mac. Oh, yeah, renting movies is new, too, but it was leaked a while ago. You have 30 days to watch it, and 24 hours once you start watching it to watch it. Pretty standard pricing: $3 for old, $4 for new, and a buck more for each for HD-quality. Anyway, back to the Apple TV: they're dropping the price to $229 with this new software as well included. So this is a big step in the right direction, because you can see photos on it as well and browse Flickr from it and all that good stuff. However, it's not enough. Apple could dominate if they come out this summer with a fully featured home media Mac. It needs all the stuff it already has, plus DVR -like features and possibly another version with a Blu-ray player built-in as well. I feel like they're still not bringing the living room entirely together, but I do like the price drop. They may be able to save the Apple TV yet. There is a catch: if you rent movies on your Apple TV then you can't watch it later on your Mac or iPod, but the reverse is true (if you buy on your Mac you can watch it anywhere). Oh, and the HD-quality video is for the Apple TV only, and it doesn't come with Dolby 5.1. Plus, the Apple TV hardware isn't changing so you're limited to 1280x720 resolution. Ouch.

The last big thing is the iPhone/iPod Touch updates: you can customize your home screen (in a cute way, too), you get simulated GPS in Google Maps to find your location (triangulation from WiFi and cell phone towers), Google Maps now has hybrid view, you can SMS multiple people at once, movie rentals are supported, lyrics are supported, you can change the movie's language (if it has another language track), and you can save web clips to your home screen. Oh, and the SDK is still on track for release next month, it appears. What's lame is that the updates will cost you $20 on the iPod Touch, except that you get mail, weather, stocks, and maps now as well (though I don't think you get the SMS). Also, I don't think the GPS locator thing means that you can get driving directions in real-time, which would've been cool. So these are nice things, yes, but not as impressive as he was trying to make them out to be. It's nothing terribly innovative or exciting: the map stuff isn't new nor is the SMS thing. Only rentals and lyrics are new, as far as I know, for phones/mp3 players in general. Google improved a number of things for the iPhone as well though: faster Gmail, iGoogle gadgets, a quicker calendar, and more.

Was Mac World really that underwhelming? I suppose I exaggerated that point a bit for dramatic effect. In reality, everyone expected too much. I kept my hype meter largely at bay, but I still thought we'd see something cooler today. In my opinion, the biggest deal was movie rentals and the Apple TV stuff. Though Amazon is kind of competing with rentals since Unbox can rent to your Tivo and Amazon is posing a new threat to iTunes, which Job obviously didn't want to discuss. Anyway, in most people's mind: the biggest deal was probably the new laptop. I have no idea what'll be more profitable to them. Or maybe they'll just sell more iPhones now because of the new updates (not likely, they've already sold 4 million so they're doing pretty damn well). Fortunately, I don't have to keep droning on about Apple so let me cover a couple of other things real quick before I hit the sack.

Netflix subscribers rejoice: you can now see Netflix flicks online as much as you want. Well, if you're on their cheap plan you have a limit, but the higher tiers get the all-you-can-eat plan. It's pretty awesome, I think. I don't know if this will hurt Netflix's business or help it, but I imagine that it will help people rationalize a subscription even though they won't use it a whole lot and so Netflix will just continue to do well.

A rumor has been substantiated that Facebook is planning on buying Plaxo
. Plaxo gives you kind of an easily shareable online business card and card holder because it links you with all your e-mail addresses and social sites (AIM and such) to have a huge database of contacts with birthdays and e-mails and all that stuff. I'm really interested to see what Facebook does with this, but I imagine this goes along with the very loose idea of an online desktop whereby Facebook will empower you to share and communicate with anyone you talk to on any other service straight from Facebook.

Why did Warner go Blu-ray? It turns out that it may be because Sony paid them and others off to do so. I personally feel like this is a kind of dirty technique, but I don't think this is illegal or uncommon for other consumer products. Retailers often get a rebate for giving items more shelf space or promotion. What amazes me is that Sony has all this money to give out. They keep creating failing products like rootkit-loaded CDs, a console that is not doing terribly well in sales, the minidisc, and a ridiculous competitor to the mp3, and yet they have vast amounts of money to throw around for Blu-ray support. Anyway, it's not over for HD-DVD yet, but given that everyone is writing them off they may lose support from everyone soon enough if they don't act quick.

I didn't have time to cover CES, and it has lost its luster in the past couple of years anyhow, but here's a good round-up of what we missed. The two things I like most on that list: 150-inch TV and Optimus keyboard (I need to eventually get me one of those). The shadiest item on that list is hands-down the FryeTV thing though. I mean...wow. Will people really buy that and leave it in their living room?

Victory for Digital Music

A belated 'Happy New Year' is in order! I would've posted sooner except that I've had a fever since Wednesday evening and I'm only now starting to recover from it. It did give me a chance to pop open my Veronica Mars Season 2 DVDs though. I think my recent posts have been on the attacking or cynical side, but I think it's amazing news that Sony has caved and so now all the major music labels have switched to DRM-free music downloads. I cannot emphasize how big of a deal this is. After years of issues with mp3 players only playing certain mp3s and rootkits and breaking DRM schemes and all that jazz, the big guys have finally admitted that DRM-free is the way to go. Why? It's not altruism. Rather, they're scared of Apple. Amazon made a bold move when they decided that they only digital music they'd offer would be DRM-free. Some probably thought it was stupid for a nascent service to be so greedy. Funny how in less than half a year they brought around every major record label, huh? I don't know how many of the labels (besides EMI) is selling DRM-free through iTunes, but some have been selling to others as well (e.g. Rhapsody and Wal-mart, whose pompous site insists you use IE). Somehow, Amazon mp3 has been the common denominator. I really want to meet that team when I get back to Seattle to find out how this all came to be.

The point is, this was a huge risk for these labels. They're making a huge statement in saying that they'd rather risk feeding piracy with DRM-free music offerings than let iTunes remain the #1 digital music source with no close competitors. Think about that for a second. It seems a little paranoid, doesn't it? There's probably more to it than that, but I'm really curious as to what was going on behind closed doors for Apple to piss these guys off so much. It may very well be true that the labels saw the error in their ways in sticking with DRM for so long (especially the bad PR that geeks like me spared no time in propagating). It may even be true that they crunched numbers and thought that selling DRM-free may make them more money. Or maybe they did surveys or something. It's tough to say. There's no doubt in my mind that at least one factor in their decisions was to diversify who receives their content, and the fact that Amazon Mp3 now has claim over a library formidable to Apple means that my prediction from way back when may be true: Amazon can give iTunes a run for its money. They're finally proving that Apple is not invincible, something that companies like RealNetworks and Napster never accomplished. We just have to wait and see what the numbers say at time progresses. Amazon can still blow it, no doubt (though I've only seen the UI get better). But the fact that they've made it this far is a pretty big deal, in my opinion. One more thing: if this DRM-free thing works out for music than we can hope to see it spread to movies and television shows as we see mirroring trends in putting content online.

Of course, not all is well in online music. Napster has raised its monthly rate by $3 to $12.95. Mashable likes to be melo-dramatic and claim that this signals their downfall, but I think that's a premature statement. I think they still have a chance, but I do think it'll be hard for them to attract more subscribers with a higher rate. Also, Apple is being sued, again, for having a monopoly in digital music and mp3 players. Given that there are some sizable competitors though that are doing decently well (not gangbusters, but not bad either), I can't see this lawsuit going far.

Warner Brothers has decided that it will not sell HD-DVD discs, only for Blu-ray. Why? Well, Blu-ray sales were apparently strong in Q4 last year and they claim that the numbers are not in HD-DVD's favor. Could this be the start of a Blu-ray victory? Over the past year there was never really a clear winner, as there isn't still, but rather one would just inch in front of the other. If what Warner claims is true though, then maybe HD-DVD won't exist this time next year. We'll have to wait and see.

I have some bad news: Intel has decided to put an end to their involvement with the One Laptop Per Child program. Sounds kind of weird, right? I don't know if Intel is fully to blame here as the OLPC project asked them to not work on any other platforms but OLPC. Anyway, they've had issues working together for a while and Intel has its own low-cost laptop platform called the Classmate PC. It's not a total loss, but the impasse is still mildly tragic.

Seth MacFarlane made a speech at one of the WGA rallies and I thought it was interesting enough to share with you all:



It just gives a very real viewpoint from their side as to why the strike makes sense and why it's not about being greedy. Plus, he does his Stewie voice at the end.

I have a couple of quick things. There's a new torrent site called YouTorrent that searches the torrent search engines for the good stuff. It's pretty good and worth giving a shot. The other thing is that Google has had a couple of high-profile defections including their UI designer for Gmail. These probably don't mean anything because it's not unusual for young talent in the tech industry to move around, but it just shows that Google isn't a paradise for everyone, despite popular belief.

To compensate for not posting in a while I figure that I'd share a video I took on New Year's Eve after we finished setting up my brother's house for the New Year's party. The featured drinks aren't out yet (mojitos and pomegranate martinis), but it still looks nice:


Shawn and Selina's New Year's Eve Tour from Eptiger on Vimeo.

Lastly, I haven't played in a meme in a while, which is kind of a shame. I thought I'd give newcomer Saturday 9 a try:

1. Do you have a dishwasher?
I do, but I never use it.

2. What noise do you hear?
The TV behind me. I swear cable is the devil.

3. Next concert you hope to go to?
I don't have one in mind, but I still need to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

4. When was the last time you said I love you and meant it?
To be honest, I'm not sure. Maybe a week ago? I used to say daily, and I usually say it to my mom on the phone, but since I'm here in Houston I don't talk to her on the phone.

5. If all of your friends were going on a road trip, who would be most likely to over pack?
Me, I'm sure.

6. Who is the youngest in your family?
I guess my cousin Sherylann's son, who is not even two months old now.

7. Do you know anyone with the same name as you?
Kind of. I know this guy is out there. ;) If you just mean by first name: I know there's Elton John, but I don't know anyone personally.

8. How many shoes do you own?
Probably 6 pairs.

9. Do you mind flat soda?
I don't drink soda period, except with alcohol. Even then, I don't think I'd mind terribly.