a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
The digital video recorder company is allowing existing service subscribers to transfer their membership when they purchase a new Series2 recorder. [CNET News.com Personal Technology]
The company officially kicked off the promotion Tuesday, according to TiVo spokeswoman Rebecca Baer. Customers must purchase their 80-hour Series2 boxes directly from TiVo for $349 after a $50 mail-in rebate. The promotion ends March 10.
NetNewsWire 1.0 is shipping!
Many thanks go to all the beta testers and people who helped with their ideas and encouragement. Thank you! [inessential.com]
Just one of those things that has to be seen… I definitely dig it.
Konfabulator is an OS X control-panel for desktop widgets, web-services and a lot of other junk, besides, with a beautiful UI. It’s like Watson or Sherlock, but it’s free and it’s got a wide-open API so developers can add their own widgets to the panel. I’ve only played with it for five minutes, but I’m hooked. I wish there was a way to float the widgets in the foreground, set their transparency and resize them, though…
(Thanks, Matt!) [Boing Boing]
The motivation for such an exercise is the attempt to break away from classical TV production requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in specialized infrastructure and enable immediate and on-the-fly transmission from remote locations to the TV network, ultimately leading toward creative production of programming from within a P2P network.
Source: MNN.org
Big news, though not that surprising…It’s all about ROI.
NYT: Amazon Tries Word of Mouth
Now Amazon has turned its quantitative prowess on one of the most vexing questions in marketing: Is television advertising worth the expense? Amazon’s answer is no. And it has canceled plans for any television or general-purpose print advertising this year. The company is so sure of its decision that it has dismantled its five-member advertising department, assigning the employees to other roles.
[…]
Jeffrey P. Bezos, the company’s founder and chief executive, said that the television campaign did increase sales, but not by enough to justify the spending. Instead, Amazon has decided to concentrate on lowering prices, mainly in the form of free shipping for orders over $25.
Posted by Olivier Travers at 04:40 AM
TOM FRIEDMAN IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT: India should replace France on the Security Council: Why replace France with India? Because India… [Instapundit.com]
Time Warner… where are you?
Company: Cox Communications announced this week the commercial deployment of an integrated DVR/STB, the SA Explorer 8000, in Gainesville, FL.
Key points: 50 hours of capacity two tuners, and Picture in Picture (PIP). Cox DVR service is available only to Cox Digital Cable customers for $9.95 per month, in addition to the customer’s digital cable service. Incidentally, this is the same price as the standard digital set-top box.
Take: Smart move from one. Our research has shown, time and time again, that DVR functionality is the number one or two service that consumers are most interested in from their cable operator.
Obstacles: DVR functionality has always been hard to market but revolutionary on TV watching behavior once adopted. Cox, and other operators that are deploying integrated DVR/STBs, still need to be mindful of how they are going to translate the value of this technology to the general TV population.
Terry Tate, Office Linebacker strikes again… this time sticking it to Nike
After a few more hours of use and a few more lessons of learning/training, iListen is turning out to be much more useful than I would have imagined. I feel better than I did earlier today which is great. Dictation into applications is working much more reliably. I just need to work out the kinks in commanding certain key commands within different applications and in general.
While no word on price or availability in the United States, this baby looks totally outrageous! (20 GB hard drive… wifi enabled)
After some reluctance and I guess some frustration with ViaVoice, I decided to try iListen. Technically I have been a beta tester for some time, though I’ve actually never really used it. Shame on me…
The recognition engine seems infinitely more responsive, and though the commands seem a bit different I think I can easily adjust and the more satisfied with how to talk to my computer. I’m sure you remember the ads “you talk it types” but the reality is quite a bit different in general. IListen does seem to learn quicker in my short amount of time using it which terrific. I will spend some more time training this evening and report my progress back.
Since last Friday I have only have use of my left hand and arm. This makes it very difficult to do many things proactively on the computer amongst many other personal activities. Since this is actually the second time my right arm has been immobilized in a cast I was at least prepared this time. In order to function at work I try to limit the amount of text in my e-mails. I have been dictating into the computer using ViaVoice which works fairly well. Then in combination with some macros that you can program I am able to launch applications as well as command certain functions within them such as “delete.”
What I can tell you is this … voice recognition and command is far from perfect. It is actually quite difficult to be even moderately as efficient as I was only a week ago. I find that my performance on the computer is roughly 40 percent of what it was with two hands. In short, it sucks.
DMNews: Report: DM Owns Online Advertising
Direct marketing increasingly rules the Internet, according to a report published yesterday by Nielsen//NetRatings.
Sixty-six percent of online ad impressions served in fourth-quarter 2002 were direct marketing ads, said the report, “The State of Online Advertising.” This is up from 59 percent in fourth-quarter 2001, according to the New York-based online measurement firm’s AdRelevance service.“If you firmly believe online advertising is a direct marketing medium, you think like most advertisers out there,” the report said. “While the balance between branding and direct marketing has shifted throughout the tumultuous life of the Internet, today direct marketing is lord and king.”
Here is a statement from John Thorne, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Verizon.
“Verizon will use every legal means to protect its subscribers’ privacy. The recording industry brought this case as a ‘test case’ of its aggressive legal theories. We are seeking a stay so that the Court of Appeals can issue a final ruling on the critical legal issues before we are required to turn over our subscriber’s identity.
I had surgery on Friday … still in quite a bit of discomfort. My painkillers are working, but creating a slight haze in my brain.
For the next four next four to six weeks I will be dictating everything to the computer as I only have use of my left hand to type. Entries here will probably be fewer unfortunately just because it’s less practical for me to do this.
For the curious … My surgery involved stitching the meniscus which was torn in my right wrist. This is where your wrist connects to the ulna (pinky side). We also learned that the ligaments in the middle of my hand/wrist were stretched not torn. This is better than being torn but still not great. Apparently it’s still a wait-and-see after I recover from this procedure. From my conversation with my doctor, it will be a matter of how much pain or discomfort I can tolerate in the future which determines whether I need or want to have another surgery. Fixing the ligaments however will certainly limit my future range of motion probably by one third.