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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.

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The Sun-Google partnership

So Sun and Google is pretty straight forward for now… all about MS their collective believe in Open Source.

Of particular note:

Solaris, OpenOffice, Java, open-source software–is there anything in the partnership that isn’t aimed directly at Microsoft?

Not really. Java competes with Microsoft’s .Net and Windows, OpenOffice competes with Microsoft Office, Solaris competes with Windows, and the Google Toolbar provides access to Google online services that compete with Microsoft’s MSN. [ZDNet]

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One More Thing…

Another cool release from Apple looks like it’s coming next week. On October 12, Steve will announce another surprise… Video iPod is the word on the street.

I’d be totally psyched for this, though would really hope it can do more than just music videos which I have no interest in carrying with me. If the screen size and resolution are right it should be a true winner.

Toshiba does have those 80GB drives ready to roll…

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Newsgator buying NetNewsWire?

Om Malik is reporting that Newsgator is acquiring Ranchero, makers of NetNewsWire and the ultimate Mac Newsreader.

Congratulations to Brent if this is true (he has yet to confirm on the mailing list) and if so I would love to see NNW on the PC as well as the sync through the Newsgator API which would be the obvious piece to be added through the acquisition.

Confirmed! I guess I’ll be switching my windows RSS reading to Newsgator Online soon since paid users get a 2 year subscription.

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Google and Sun?

PaidContent.org reports on a deal pending between Google and Sun and there’s certainly a few interesting options to consider from the slightly boring to the very interesting!

InternetNews: They’re expected to announce a collaboration to bring StarOffice productivity applications to Google users.
eWeek: For months now rumors have swirled around the release of a possible desktop operating system from Google as it moves to build a comprehensive platform by turning computing into a utility.
AP: Investors suspect that the announcement will concern a sale of Sun’s recently launched Galaxy servers, the technology company’s first foray into commodity servers.
Marketwatch: One possibility is that Google could be buying Sun servers to run the Wi-Fi network. Software could also on the table, based on Schmidt’s background and ties to Sun.

I’m hoping for the GoogleOS – OpenOffice news… server sales are hardly worthy of a joint press announcement.

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Premium HDTV on Media Center

Chris Lanier posts an interesting reply to the ongoing dialog on HD on MCE which is summed up nicely in the last few paragraphs of here:

Thomas’ idea of the “closed box inside of an open box” is what PVP-OPM (Protected Media Path) is all about. You have an open box that is your PC, and with the framework in Vista and hardware that will take advantage of it, you have your closed box. The reason it looks like Microsoft might not care about HDTV, is because Media Center is of course built on-top of Windows XP. Windows XP doesn’t provide the framework to enable these solutions to work. In fact, the changes are so drastic in the framework that it’s doubtful Microsoft could apply them in XP at all. Windows Vista will change all of this!

Windows Vista, as I keep saying, will bring a world of new opportunities to the PC and hopefully will provide Thomas (and everyone else) with the platform he wants with the features he wants. If you look at some of the functionality that Vista will be able provide it easy to see that Microsoft does care about HD, and they are working towards solutions for Media Center and the PC in general.

PVP-OPM and related technologies should bring CableCARD support. HD-DVD will provide Managed Copies to your hard drive. You will be able to stream DVD’s (the ones you own now!) around your home network to other devices. You might even be able to rip them to your hard drive (legally) too. Media Center will provide the central location to manage and explore all of your content using a remote and a polished interface. Media Center Extenders and the Xbox 360 will bring the ability to move the content to other rooms in your home without needing a PC in each room. There will be even more that can happen once Vista is released too!

It stinks that we can’t have this functionality now, but wait until Windows Vista ships and I can bet some of the current issues will be addressed! [Chris Lanier’s Blog]

If we all just waited for Vista to buy a new system I don’t think HP, Dell, Gateway, Microsoft or Intel would be too psyched. Think about all the lost sales due to waiting on a product which has been coming soon for years. Sure, it’s on the books for end of 2006, but that’s 3 big purchase cycles away!

I don’t think things will change sooner, I guess my point is that you have to be careful stating stuff like this or you can really impact the goals of quite a few companies all playing on the collective team. Sure most users or potential buyers don’t spend their time surfing developer and enthusiast blogs, but more are and they can certainly be influenced.

HD is important, it’s not the only thing, but it’s important nonetheless. Personally I will probably be waiting to see what happens. MCE today is close, not not there for me on a variety of fronts. There is no way I would go back to SD for TV and I can’t live with the music library management issues either.

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Media Center Limitations

Recently, Thomas Hawk opened an interesting dialog via blog on the limitations of MCE and gets some good though defensive replies from Charlie Owen of the e-Home group at MS.

It’s all good stuff… at least it’s a healthy dialog, but continues to bring up the weakness of the platform for power users. I’d really like to see MCE (or a system from Apple) succeed in this category but it has to work for more than just simple users. Tivo (outside of DirectTV and $1000) does not support HDTV. MCE supports OTA HDTV, but can’t handle cable or sat connections at all. This is largely due to restrictions from the carriers and possibly the content owners since a PC is a more of an open system than your cable box which is a prefered system.

Beyond HD, there are some major limitations for those users with large music libraries as well. Apparently this will be fixed with Vista, but windows users have been waiting for quite a while as it is for this and there’s no reason to believe that it will be fixed for real until the day it happens. I am not sure if the limitations are simply UI (likely) but there’s got to be a way to handle this from a 10′ perspective. I don’t necessarily want to use a keyboard to queue up a playlist…

The rest of MCE I think I could tolerate. It’s the best thing from an integrated system perspective going now. Though hopefully things across many fronts will improve soon.

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Skype Spam

Yesterday I received a call on my cell listed as Private which a few people call through with — including my manager. I figured I should answer and when I did I found myself talking to a woman with an island accent who said she found me through Skype! Apparently she does odd jobs and was looking for work.

I did not take her info and promply ended the call… pretty random and unwanted.

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Google Wifi in New York

News.com
picks up on the latest node – Bryant Park.

I am pretty sure Bryant Park was one of the original Unwire locations for Intel from a few years back but it looks like Google has muscled in on it in order to offer their own free access. I have not had a chance to check it out (though it’s not so far away really). I wonder if they upped the speed – I’ve read the SF location is really quick – or just rebranded the portal page.

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Flickr Backup

Thomas Hawk through eHomeUpgrade shares how to backup Your Flicker Photos Seems like a very cool way to to not only backup your flickr account, but also to move images between machines as I just did from a Mac to a PC.

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RIM picks Intel for new BlackBerrys

ZDNet covers the news on the new Blackberry (Electron) which will include Intel Inside.

The gadget rumor mill seemed pretty interested in this new one. Looks like a nice update to the existing wider format Blackberry.