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Elgato CEO tapped to head Apple Germany

CNET News.com reported that the CEO of ElGato has left to head up Apple Germany. While this is a return for him (and Apple) I personally hope it’s the beginning of more in the direction of what ElGato has been up to…

What’s that you ask? Why TV on the Mac of course! ElGato is the hands down leader on the Mac platform for integrating TV from analog and digital sources. I find it particularly intersting that this move comes right on the heels of FrontRow being released… Some special sauce from beyond Cupertino to spice up the delivery of an HTPC on Mac? Time will tell… I hope it’s all there soon.

As I’ve noted quite a few times MCE is close, but not the ideal deal and even with the fixes allegedly coming in Vista late 2006, it will still likely need an incredibly powerful system and patience. An Apple ElGato partnership or collaboration could lead to a nice simple and powerful solution for storing, serving and managing digital content at home.

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MCE – My DVDs

Via Addicted to Digital Media comes an easy way for MCE users to manage and play archived DVDs. This is a very nice feature to have since you’ll get the same familiar UI but access to all your DVD content without the need for a DVD changer.

Certainly my Mac HTPC Brethren already know all about this type of function through Matinee . If Apple added support for .vob and Video_TS folder playing you could do the same thing through the nice UI in FrontRow. Guess we’ll have to wait to see if this gets released for additional machines to really play…

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DS owners get WiFi with that

Nintendo is announcing a WiFi deal with McDonalds today… You know, like Starbucks for Kids.

Nintendo of America on Tuesday will announce a groundbreaking partnership with Wi-Fi provider Wayport to make available free Internet access to DS owners at McDonald’s restaurants across the nation. Nintendo and Wayport will offer complimentary Wi-Fi hotspots at McDonald’s establishments, enabling DS owners to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which launches November 14 in the states, to play online games with or against each other. [IGN]

Personally I think this deal makes an amazing amount of sense based on the shared audience of the two companies. While there are not many games for the DS supporting WiFi today this could lead to some great hacking or force developers hands a bit as the 6000 enabled locations will be quite tempting…

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Apple to Release Photoshop Rival

This would be a great addition to Photoshop noobs like myself. I’d love more powerful editing with Apple’s ease of use! A great addition to my home workflow for my new digital cam.

According to an unconfirmed report, Apple is planning to announce a professional photo retouching application, during the special press event scheduled for October 19th…

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Ward Pound Ridge Reservation



Ward Pound Ridge Reservation

Originally uploaded by atmasphere.


Ashley hooked me up with a new Nikon D70S and I had my first real opportunity to explore with it today…

We had a nice family hike through Ward Pound Ridge Reservation and I snapped away while Hannah relaxed in the backpack.

I clearly have much to learn about both the camera and photography, but I am having a great time exploring the new potential. It’s by far the most powerful and advanced camera I’ve ever owned – my first SLR actually – and really enables an amazing amount of control compared to my historical point and shoot cameras.

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Is 2006 The Year of the SmartPhone?

Seems like things have finally heated up in the race for the ultimate communicator – and nice timing for Palm now that they’ve all but left the race.

In lane 1, the Treo 700w which will run Windows Mobile 5. Many are already aware and comfortable with the hardware and I am sure it will be quite nice given my own usage with a Treo 600 and Treo 650. I keep hearing good things about the latest rev in mobile Windows, and I think this phone will attract quite a few Blackberry users, though it’s unclear whether Blackberry mail is supported so this may actually be a tricky one for corporate buyers. Microsoft has Exchange 2003 sync in the box which is pretty good, but not BB. This will apparently support EV-DO data through Verizon which is excellent as you’ll get a nice mobile broadband connection for all your data needs…

In lane 2, the Motorola Q phone…will also run Windows Mobile 5. It’s coming from the same team that brought the RAZR and looks very slim and sexy. MOT is billing it as the thinest QWERTY phone and perhaps it will be… Again no BB sync, though Exchange is an attractive alternative. You get a very rich feature set in a sleek and slim package… not clear yet whether this is a true 3G capable phone working on either EV-DO and UTMS / HSPDA or what. MOT is apparently pushing to get this out by the end of the year in 2005 knowing things are heating up in the space.

Lane 3 holds the dark horse only because Nokia has not had much success selling smartphones. Regardless, the Nokia E61 looks very slick. You get it all in this baby, except for a camera, which will allow corporate appeal. The features are seemingly endless here… WCDMA, WLAN – allowing for both data and VOIP functions, full office compatibility (the others have this as well) and multimedia.

All in all an interesting group. I am definitely intrigued by both the Nokia and MOT phones… they looks very cool. I“m more inclined towards the Nokia only because I’ve steered pretty clear of mobile Windows, though these days it looks like it will be pretty hard to avoid. I’ve skipped over the latest and pending devices from RIM because I use one now and find they are more limited than other platforms with a significant over-balance on email. My blackberry is good on calendar and phone as well, but really sucks on ToDo list management and there is a much more limited list of applications to consider adding in…

I think we’ll have to wait on most of these to see not only who carries them, but what limitations are imposed as a result. It’s going to be a good race to watch… and certainly participate in as well – gotta have the goods.

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3ivX your existing movies, compatible for iPod Video (No recompression!)

Gotta love this… an “easy” way to convert those larger higher res files you might find through certain non-ITMS channels for use on the iPod.

Convert your existing movies(Divx, Xvid) into iPod video format without having to re-encode the file. DivX Doctor II updates DivX .avi videos to 3ivx QuickTime (.mov) videos. After the conversion you will be able to play the video smoothly, and the audio glitches inherent in the AVI format will be fixed. The conversion is fast.

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Mac mini needs a Front Row seat

This piece in MacWorld pretty much sums up my question on the FrontRow application… When can I install it on other machines??

Love the idea and want it very badly, but I dont want a new computer… I’d like to do this on a kitchen Mac Mini and via a mini in my home theater. This would be the more ideal way to share content around the home. The simplified UI looks solid and very easy for my Wife and Daughter to use with the remote…

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Yahoo and MSN chat nicely

I received an update from both Cnet and the WSJ tonight on my blackberry that Yahoo and MSN reached an agreement to get their IM services to work together. This is great news for interoperability. Andy notes VOIP will work between platforms as well since they both use SIP. That would be very cool.

AOL … where are you? I’d love to use a single IM service / app and get it all in one. It’s silly to have to use a multi-IM app just because people have signed up with different services. Email plays nicely… IM and enhanced services should as well – especially since these things are free. Perhaps a new leaf with the Yahoo / MSN deal? AOL is pushing more free stuff now anyway…

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Network Solutions – Bad Renewal Mail

I just received a message from NSI warning me my services were about to expire… I reviewed their email a few times and can’t quite figure it out.

Here’s what I saw –

Domain 1 — Mar 08,2006
Domain 2 — Jun 16,2006
Domain 3 — Aug 17,2006

Today is October 11, 2005. Nothing is due to expire for at least 5 months…

If you need to send premature renewal notices at least confuse me like magazines do (ahem) by not printing the date. This is simply a crap email wasting my time – though clearly I’ve thought about it long enough to blog it.

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Plaxo swings and misses

I like the idea of keeping things in sync. I use a variety of machines and handhelds and being able to use the network to my advantage is cool. When I recently installed the new AIM on my work PC, I got Plaxo inluded as you can link your contacts through Plaxo with your AIM screen name and thought this was a good thing.

I updated my contact info since I have moved since I last used the service and got an email back telling me that Jonathan Greene had moved! Um, Plaxo, I am Jonathan Greene and outside of a bad George Constanza impression, I don’t often refer to myself in the third person. The whole premise of Plaxo is keeping all your information up to date — the first step should be knowing who you are.

I only have a single contact card for myself in my files so it’s a bit lame for such a message to get sent…

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Gamers like the ads

Gary Stein notes a BusinessWeek piece which says apparently Gamers like ads in games. This is certainly good for companies like Massive and companies like EA which sell space in games.

Gamers apparently like the realism you get from seeing brands integrated. Good news all around as the gaming market is an excellent target for many companies – including my clients.

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Missed your show, no problem!

It’s amazing that there truly is an on-demand IP system through the magic and universal goodness of netizens who continue to enable it. Just about a year ago, I had missed a few recordings due to a DVR glitch and in the past two weeks I’ve missed a few more due to having new DVRs in the new house… No problem, thanks to some shared bandwidth and a bit of time (though not that much actually) I was able to recover the shows I wanted to watch.

P2P networks are amazingly powerful and in particular Bit Torrent can be a seriously disruptive technology. I think the right publisher or content creator can really enable a vast content network. Imagine if Bit Torrent was enabled through your set-top box connected to your TV and your playlist was simply a seed request and completed uploads that were being shared back. Given how the credit system works, you could easily be sharing with a vast viewing public in a more high end way to your TV, rather than to you PC. Certainly those of us with HTPC configurations can take advantage of a set-up like this today.

The shows I’ve been finding are the HDTV versions, stripped of ads and ready to watch. How do you like to watch? Even with a DVR, you have to fast forward… this is a straight pass. Last night I was able to pull down something I had missed from Thursday which I would not have been able to have watched that day anyway. It’s quite likely that this one hour show was available sooner, I just did not have the chance to download what I needed any earlier. Regardless when I did it only took about an hour to download to my desktop, which is pretty amazing considering the file is about 350MB.

Bit Torrent recently received a nice round of venture financing which could certainly make this a more accessible system… peerhaps for the IPTV crowd as a shared DVR of sorts against the cable cos. Who knows…

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Google Reader

Google Reader is a web-based newsreader which takes some of the solid simplicity of Google plus the AJAX goodness of Gmail and rolls things together for an almost good thing.

If you read a few feeds, I can see really liking this. I was able to import my full OPML file (which I use through Newsgator, NNW and Bloglines) and while it imported smoothly (even over GPRS on the train) I am not too psyched with how my feeds are displayed. I’m used to folders by topic with feeds rolled up within. Google Reader took my folders and applied their names as tags to the feeds listed. I frankly don’t like this at all given the numbeer of subscriptions I manage.

I really like how easy it is to navigate about and think they’ve nailed that piece. I’d like to see things go further actually and get more sophisticated.

Feedlounge – which I still can’t get access to – seems to offer desktop parity in browser which would be nice. I’m torn between wanting NNW and not being able to use it on a PC so instead I am making sacrifices to maintain sync compatibility through the Web UI.