a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
I would imagine as this gets easier PodCasting will begin to take a more enhanced form which will only lead to more interesting uses of the technology.
Podcast AV lets you enhance your podcasts by adding links and pictures to them. These podcasts can then be viewed in iTunes 4.9 or on an iPod with a color screen. [Old Jewel Software]
Technorati Tags: Podcasting
Not the blog, but our home!
I stepped off the red eye Thursday and immediately got to moving. First 2 guys arrived to disassemble and reassemble a couch we had to have taken apart to initially fit in a room when we purchased it about 5 years ago. Soon thereafter our team of movers arrived to pack up our stuff. Having someone else pack was totally worth the extra cash and just made everything that much less stressful. Of course I say that and it was my wife who had to deal with most of the details while I was away on business, but still they just came in and simultaneously took care of all our rooms at once.
By the end of the day, we were mostly packed with the exception of our bed and the desk to allow fro some civilized internet access. We made a final stop at our storage unit and closed shop for the day. Friday started early again and by noon we were on the road to Westchester. It only took the team a few hours to move everything inside – though much of our stuff headed to the basement for future sorting and purging. We spent the whole day and well into the evening unboxing and getting things put away.
Saturday was more unpacking and dealing… fishing lines with the cable guy and getting settled with the grill. Sunday was more of the same with some local errands as well.
Amazing what can be done in a short time. I’d like to spend more time there this week but I am off to the other coast with more travel, so things will have to wait until the end of the week.
Waiting at least a month until the TV you want is even available, let alone the time for your installation and configuration… This is no small deal and to do it right requires the patience to get it done. Instead, she (can’t just be my wife) wants it to be done now – with no understanding of the quality that will be well worth the wait for the ultimate — at least for now… 😉
This totally kicks… I’ve yet to try this, but if you can pull down the video as an enclosure in RSS, it would be an amazing tracking tool for topics of interest or just video to watch.
San Francisco-based startup Blinkx has announced its multimedia search engine will be able to notify users whenever it indexes content that matches a term the users previously searched for.
The RSS alert system, called SmartFeed, is expected to go live on Blinkx’s Web site on Tuesday. After users enter a search term on Blinkx TV, they will get the option of setting up an RSS alert for it. Blinkx TV delivers the alerts to the user’s Really Simple Syndication aggregator service as text links to the multimedia content.
Users can opt to receive content alerts for any search term from all or some of Blinkx TV’s more than 30 audio and video channels, which include BBC News, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg Television, NBC, MSNBC News, ABC, and ESPN, said Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx’s co-founder. PCWorld.com
Engadget notes the announcement of the Garmin GPSMAP 376C portable GPS with XM built in! WOW WOW!
Unfortunately though I’d like it to do Sirius which is the service to which I currently subscribe. Still totally cool and a great way to add 2 services to any car or location you happen to be.
We are getting closer to the move “North” at the end of the month and have been enjoying getting out of the city the past few weekends as time has permitted.
This week, I feel like we covered some serious ground:
Stew Leonards – Check.
Costco – membership activated.
Last week we tracked down the mall and spent some time at the house dealing with closet people as well as just doing a walk through to sort out our punch list. We met our next-door neighbors which was good and it seems they will be good neighbors and possibly good friends as well. Our kids are close in age which never hurts…
We are amazingly close now, with the close set for either this Thursday or next Monday depending on schedules. My schedule actually only allows those two days and we’d like to try and move the last week days of the month… fingers crossed!
Actually no I don’t love it… I try not to use it at all, but there are certain work-related tasks that require I do based on certain additional technological pieces also from Redmond… Even then in an almost contained online space things still break.
Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's
Lovely. Too bad this site works less in Firefox.
The problem was that even though it had the Plays for Sure logo, it wouldn’t work with subscription content. It only took me a few minutes to figure out why. A closer look at the Plays for Sure logo indicated this device would work with downloaded content but not subscription content. Oops. No biggie. Problem was with me or as we used to say in technical support PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). I’m actually in good company, last summer when I was at MSFT, one of the Sr. Execs made the same mistake in front of a whole room of snickering analysts and reporters. [Michael Gartenberg]
Michael Garternberg is a smart guy, but I think he’s being way too forgiving on how things get packaged and sold. The MS Plays for Sure and Music Services in general are too complex. There’s a reason why the iPod / iTunes combo works so well… it just works.
Content is content to an end user and the collective industries need to understand that we consumers (even advanced consumers) would prefer to think less about what it is they have (codec, file format, download or subscription) and more about just enjoying what we are being asked to pay for.
Microsoft Might License Xbox Software and man is that something to think about…
Sony and Toshiba are goiing to enable CE devices with Cell processors to make an end-game around the PC as the center of the living room and now MS is potentially pushing a lite version of Xbox 360’s software – clearly as a media connector (to me anyway).
This has to be a way for Redmond to get more PCs in the home through an eventual upgrade to MCE, the more optimal way to view content in home.
May the best product (ahem marketing) win!
At this point it’s way to early to even figure out what will work out on a mass level. PC usage is pretty different globally and many users in non-US markets will be more likely to want a CE device controlling things rather than a PC initially given cost and space issues in homes. Homem size and space is considerably smaller outside the US…
Perhaps an Xbox or PS3 is the path… Microsoft wants to sell 10 million units next year from what I’ve read and moving beyond games is a good way to get a much broader market.
Sony has yet to be public with their plan on how this stuff really works beyond games. Connect will clearly be their premium cocntent path, but that probably won’t be revealed until close to the end of this year – after MS and Xbox have had some time to build.
Digital Media Thoughts is reporting on a scheduled Apple special event for this coming week…
It’s unlikely that a special event would be only for iTunes 4.9 and is likely for a new generation iPod. If it is (and that’d be cool) I hope it supports video, yet retains the same dock connector so all my accessories will still work.
If it has nothing to do with iPod, I’ll settle with something totally new!
“Apple and the Sundance Channel have signed a deal (free subscription required) that will make content from the network available as a podcast via the upcoming release of iTunes, version 4.9, due sometime next month. [Digital Media Thoughts]
I was stunned to learn a few things about my work issued Dell laptop recently…
First, it’s quite sensitive to the type of power adapter you connect. The initial one I received was not quite strong enough and was actually incapable of charging the battery to the point where the battery would die. I am on my 3rd and 4th batteries now.
Second, I purchased an iGo since I am doing quite a bit of travel and thought it would be nice to consolidate things to a single charging system for land, plane and even car if I want to. The Dell (Latitude D600) laptop was not part of the standard kit of tips since it uses a unique connector. At purchase they did offer a tip for the system, but it clearly came after the thing was developed and the best part is that you CANNOT charge the battery at all. It ONLY offers DC to the system. What the hell is that??? What’s the point of such a thing? If I only wanted to use a system that ran off a power cord, I would have requested a desktop.
I still like the iGo and am hopeful that an eventual upgrade to my system will change this, but until then aigh… Dell what’s up?
Technorati Tags: Dell
I’ve been moving at a pretty good personal clip lately and in combination with an exhaustive work schedule have not had a chance to put my thoughts down regarding the move to Intel. In short, I think it rocks!
I bought the previous lines from various keynotes on the benefits of RISC over CISC and saw the bottleneck demonstrations, the burning bunnyman etc. All that was great and yet even with the reality distortion effect in full effect, I was still left wanting more. Clearly my desire was not alone as the Apple shift to Intel hardware will enable a much greater capability within existing hardware and allow for some amazing developments – some that were probably cooking, but on back burner while waiting for IBM.
Intel is about much more than the CPU… If you are just an average joe consumer, you probably have no idea, but Intel has been developing a pretty deep platform strategy that takes the various silicon sets they manufacture and enable things to work together.
The Mobility, Digital Home and Enterprise platforms are all the same places Apple has been sighting and yet been unable to break through from a mass perspective. Windows is clearly a big obstacle to mass adoption, but the hardware is bigger in my view, given the relative eco-system of products that end up getting designed to work together (below the OS level). The work that Intel has championed on the Centrino certification program for example is astonishing. You may recall they were actually quite late to the WiFi game initially, but you only hear about Centrino and Pentium-M today, not really much about Apple’s Airport – other than it’s just in there. Centrino actually goes quite a bit beyond the WiFI and is actually a set of chipsets designed to enable longer power, wireless and multimedia. These are things my Powerbook needs today. Sure it does wireless (B/G) and can handle multimedia (2-channel), but Centrino can actually bang out quite a bit more and can most likely add hours to the life of the system. If Apple offered an Intel based Powerbook today, I would immediately upgrade – well OK perhaps after I settle on the house.
On the Digital Home front, Intel is pushing and pushing hard. The AOpen device, was designed by Intel, yet is being produced by an OEM who has been able to get the benefits of several billion in R&D. That mini-clone device can bang out much more than the current mini can – all thanks to Intel’s thinking. If you combine the Mac OS, some very capable Intel hardware and of course the Apple Magic sauce – product design and marketing – and well, I think the living room will become very enabled. In fact this is the area in which I am most interested in witnessing the change. I like the mini and it can do some nice stuff. Even without an Apple 10 foot UI to make it all slick from the couch, the mini really needs more power for basic media center functions. I want more ports (check), better integrated audio (check) and video (check) and HD capabilities (check!). If this can be done today what can be coming for us within the year?
All in all, I am clearly excited at the prospect of this change. Reports from WWDC are confirming the keynote info on the ease in which applications can be ported. I can’t see the Cringely effect, with Intel acquiring Apple to fully beat the doors off of Microsoft, but I do see a very dynamic partnership. BSD, the core of OSX, has been running on Intel for more than a few years and can apparently run circles around Windows on similar platforms. MacWorld January will certainly bring some very cool announcements – especially keeping the normal Apple delivery schedule in mind to keep things on track per the WWDC Stevenote.
james duncan davidson has a great piece on the transition to Intel…
smash notes the launch of ITMS pre-ordering… which is a very cool advance. I can only wonder if this is an extension of how the Podcasting feature works… Hit the link, downloads as bandwidth and product is available.
“Outlet Shopping”
The fine art of searching for power for your laptop, phone, iPod etc … while in a public place like an airport.
This is something I see all too often. While waiting on extended delay in O’Hare yesterday it occured to me it needed a name.
ArsTechcnica and News.com are both discussing the possibility of Apple making an Intel announcement come WWDC on Monday.
I’ve only given it a bit of thought, but I find the proespect incedibly exciting. Think about it for a second (of course not counting the work required to port the OS or applications) and you’ll likely agree it would be an excellent move. For starters, the Centrino platform would enable a significant boost to both mobile and small form factor systems allowing for integrated wireless and AV capabilties right in the box. The servers could be 64 Bit right away (Itanium2) and Enterprise customers would be more likely to adopt Macs on for end users knowing there would be no issues running things as the hardware would all integrate with existing systems.
Since it’s all just speculation at this point, there’s no way to really understand the possibilities, but purely from a hardware view, it would be very good direction.