Courtesy of the Scobleizer …
Chris Anderson, the guy who wrote the “Long Tail” article for Wired that got blogged all over the place is now blogging about writing a book on the same topic.
iPod beats MyFi
Cnet takes the MyFi, XM’s portable player for a spin and gives it a pretty healthy smack-down. Sounds like XM’s naming strategy – stations like Fred and Ethel – are not as easy to get as Sirius’ choices like Purejazz and Chill. I’d still eventually like to see a portable Sirius player he says less than a week into usage. So far I totally dig it. I’ve had the radio going all day basically on the Chill station but with some Jazz (both Purejazz andd Standards) thrown in for good measure.
Back to the review for a sec… it is hard to beat your own personal taste with the radio compared to what you might find on your iPod’s playlists but the right programming can easily keep you happy.
Bring it on!
Michael Gartenberg ay Jupiter says January is going to be an interesting time with exciting products and new technologies… I say Bring it On! I am always ready for new cool stuff!
Just wrapped up another fascinating call. I’m still in thinking mode about the implications of what was discussed. The first few weeks in January are going to be very interesting. 2005 is shaping up to be a year of interesting products, relationships and technologies. Some of this stuff (if executed properly from a marketing and messaging perspective) is going to be amazing. You heard it here first 🙂 [Michael Gartenberg]
Sirius TV
I was just thinking last night that video would be a great complement to some of what I’ve been listening to on Sirius. I was checking out The Tony Hawk show and thinkig I’d really like to see what these guys are doing since they are obviously having a raucous good time. Perhaps soon enough…
I want my…Sirius TV? Sirius is expected to announce video plans at the Consumer Electronics Show in a few weeks. [DROXY]
I don’t think video is an automatic add in for all shows, but for some or for special events (like live broadcasts) it would be a great supplement and could even be made into on-demand for future viewing.
Music Choice via PCS
Given my recent interest in Satellite subscription radio I find this announcement to be pretty interesting, though for now I think I will continue to ride the free wave for cellular… With my Treo I can easily stream from Shoutcast using Pocket Tunes Deluxe for free. I’m not a sprint customer and this is not what I would consider compelling enough to interest me to switch, though it does speak to the network and what you might be using it for other than just making calls.
Music Choice Today is a new music streaming service that is expected to be launched soon by Sprint PCS. Through Music Choice Today, Sprint customers will be able to have unlimited music streaming for $5.99 a month. [Mobiletracker]
Subway from 1940
Yesterday I had to head down to Soho and on my way back the R Train that arrived was a vintage 1940 subway car. It was pretty cool to ride it. Noisier than today’s train, but in many ways I found it to be nicer. It felt like there was more space. You could smell oil pretty intensely but I think that’s just part of the deal. I snapped some shots from the Treo… low-res of course.
Collecting movies
Mark Cuban has an interesting post on the legalities of collecting movies and how perhaps Hollywood might consider some changes in release schedules.
So Hollywood has a choice. They can change their businessmodel of windowed distribution of movies and significantly impede any potential impact of camcordering and internet downloads. How ?
They can release DVDs day and date with their theatrical release. Let the customer consume the movie exactly the way the customer wants to get it. What a concept. Shocking isnt it.
Or, they can keep the status quoa and spend lots and lots of taxpayer dollars filling up our courts suing websites and kids. Of course suing and complaining means there is always going to be an excuse if business doesnt go well. [Blog Maverick]
Doing some Sirius Listening
We received the Tivoli Audio Model Satellite as a gift and it arrived today… I activated it just before dinner and have been enjoying it immensely since. The radio is pretty small and got a “wow thats actually pretty handsome” from my wife – so well done Tivoli! Since we live in NYC, it was a touch tricky getting a good signal with the antenna, but we have that resolved for the time by moving it closer to the window. I’ll probably have to spring for an antenna with a much longer cable so we can connect it to the stereo and still get the same reception. That’s a small glitch, though obviously critical in the whole thing. We face East and are close to the river… There’s no satellite in range, but we are getting a decent terrestrial connection
Sound is rich and warm directly from the radio even in mono which is how it’s setup currently. With headphones, I am very pleased… a touch more volume would not kill me, but perhaps I should look at it more like personal protection that I can’t totally blast myself out. The remote is a slim Bose-like credit card, which are my least favorite as I have larger hands, but I’ll get it programmed into my Harmony soon enough.
Activation of the service was pretty painless, though I’d say I had a rookie guy on the phone. Not sure if that’s a Friday night thing or just holiday season. Steps to listening… attach antenna, plug it in, turn it on and call in with your SID. All told, it took between 5 and 10 minutes to be listening which is really not bad at all.
My wife noticed how great it is to be able to just look up and see who you are listening to and I agree that’s a great feature. Selection is another killer feature. We almost never listen to the radio unless we are renting a car and then it’s reluctantly if the iPod is low on juice or just to listen to the local jazz station since the selection here is pretty weak and filled with commercials. No more…
We’ve listened to some Elvis (13), Kids Stuff (11) and then found our way around the dial through some Jazz Standards (75) followed by Chill (64), a station I will be listening to in heavy rotation. I’ve also been checking out the Reggae (30) and Hip Hop stations and really like Back Spin (43) and Eminem’s Shade 45 (45). There’s much more to check out, including live broadcasting of sports, weather and news. I’ll be able to listen to the Eagles play when they don’t air on TV – like this weekend again!! We’ll probably also be looking into some NPR.. amongst many many other choices.
While I did not previously appreciate the cool factor, I have to say I really dig it. I can see immediately adding this to any future car we might buy. I noticed that Sirius offers free streaming access to everything for subscribers which is very cool for when you might be away from your radio.
Highly Recommended!
The good within Hard reset
Based on my recent success with Archive and Re-Install on my Mac I thought the same theory would apply on my Treo. The main difference, is that you have to actually reset your Palm device and rebuild. I’ve posted a how-to at Treonauts – The good within Hard reset
iPod? Hellomoto…
Forbes reports on the long standing rumor of an Apple / Motorola joint development, but beyond the MOT phone that might handle some iTunes stuff. Seems this is going to be a mid-priced phone capable of connecting via bluetooth to your computer to share a subset of your tunes. As Jobs was heard to say, “Think of it as an accessory for your iPod.”
If the phone is as far along as Cue suggests, then Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs would be likely to announce it during his annual keynote speech at MacWorld Expo, scheduled for Jan. 11, 2005 in San Francisco.
In true Apple style, Cue declined to say whether Jobs will indeed address the phone at that event. “What we’ve talked about is a something that is valuable for the mass market,” Cue says. “It has to be a phone in the middle-tier of the market, not a $500-tier phone. It has to be very seamless to use. And we’re very happy with the results.”
MetrO v5.2.7
MetrO is a great, free Palm application which can help you find your way through the subways of the world.
There are no graphical maps to see, but it’s very simple use and plan a route based on known locations if you don’t know the street of your stop. The application fills in likely stops as you enter them to help you along. 5-way support is also there for Treo and Tungsten users and there’s finally a color UI, something I don’t recall from previous versions, though it’s been a while. You can install as many maps as you have room on your device. A great travel helper!
Pocket PC goes EV-DO
While most of us are waiting on WiFi for the Treo, Verizon blasts out with an Audiovox PPC that can run on the super quick EV-DO network.
The XV6600 runs the Phone Edition of Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition on a 400 MHz Intel XScale PXA263 processor. It includes 128 MB of RAM, and has an SD/SDIO slot for additional storage.
This model includes Bluetooth, allowing it to be used with wireless headsets and as a wireless modem for other devices.
Because it has has EV-DO support, it offers typical download speeds of 300 Kbps to 500 Kbps. Verizon’s EV-DO network is currently available in 20 major metropolitan areas and 24 airports, with more expected in 2005. In places where EV-DO isn’t available, the XV6600 will use Verizon’s slower 1xRTT network. [Brighthand]
State of Fear
I finished reading Michael Crichton’s State of Fear last night and would definitely recommend it. If you are a fan of his previous work, you know Crichton does his homework, this time making some compelling arguments against many popular environmental theories we all patently accept. If nothing else, it gets you thinking and certainly kept me turning the pages – well clicking the pages as it happens with an eBook.
Most Hated Advertising Techniques
Don’t miss this…
Advertising is an integral part of the Web user experience: people repeatedly encounter ads as they surf the Web, whether they’re visiting the biggest portals, established newspapers, or tiny personal sites. Most online advertising studies have focused on how successful ads are at driving traffic to the advertiser, using simple metrics such as clickthrough rates.
Unfortunately, most studies sorely neglect the user experience of online ads. As a result, sites that accept ads know little about how the ads affect their users and the degree to which problematic advertising tricks can undermine a site’s credibility. Likewise, advertisers don’t know if their reputations are degraded among the vast majority of users who don’t click their ads, but might well be annoyed by them.
Now, however, we have data to start addressing these questions. At my recent User Experience 2004 conference, John Boyd from Yahoo! and Christian Rohrer from eBay presented a large body of research on how users perceive online advertising. Here, I offer a few highlights from their presentation [ Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox]
Treo 650 Goes WiFi!
Road Runner getting more speed
I love reading that even more speed will be coming my way soon…
Road Runner said Tuesday that it will boost the download speed for its basic subscribers, who pay $45 a month, from 3mbps to 5mbps. Its premium customers, who pay $84.95 a month, will get a boost from 6mbps to 8mbps.
The move comes more than a year after Road Runner’s previous speed bump from 2mbps to 3mbps for its basic subscribers. [CNET News.com
T-Mobile’s Pain
Nice thought piece by Jesse Kopelman at The Broadband daily on what T-Mobile might consider doing now that they are officially a sitant last in the major wireless game. Hard to argue the logic here… just a matter of how much pride needs to be swallowed in order to move on some of the ideas he suggests.
Unlike Sprint PCS, their daddy doesn’t need them to succeed (and may feel like disowning them about now). Unlike Nextel, they don’t have the high-margin customers everyone lusts for nor do they have the management team that routinely makes fools out of the industry, pundits, and FCC. Most importantly, Unlike Cingular and Verizon Wireless they don’t have 40 million customers paying to upgrade their network. To make matters worse, their data network is circa 2001 and they are a long way from being able to do any Verizon-like bragging about the quality of their voice network. [The Broadband Daily]
The Long Tail
In case you missed reading The Long Tail either in Wired or online, you can now download a PDF thanks to ChangeThis. It’s a great read and now in a well structured format for either screen or printing.
StickyBrain 3
Chronos has updated StickyBrain and seems totally worth checking out. You can collect and manage notes from all over your system and SYNC to either your Palm or iPod. You can also link to your Address Book as well as Mail. I’ve just downloaded it and will be moving some stuff I’ve been collecting in both Omni Outliner and NoteTaker to see how I like it.
UPDATE — Stickybrain is nice, but only allows for flat or rich based text. No outlining. This is a bummer since I was hopeful with the sync option. For now, I’ll probably keep going with Omni Outliner and NoteTaker (still deciding which will be my primary tool) and Life Balance for integration with my GTD system. The nice thing about LB is that you get the same full file on both your Palm and desktop.
DIY Verizon Treo 650
Engadget notes a hack to the Sprint Treo 650 to get it working on Verizon…