MacMinute reader Alarik Skarstrom reports that Apple purchased a two-page ad for the Power Mac G5 on the inside front cover of The Economist… [MacMinute]
Looks that way to me… I’ve seen the ads in Business Week as well as Fortune.
Lance Armstrong wins his record-equalling fifth consecutive Tour de France title
He beats closest rival Jan Ullrich by 76 seconds. [BBC SPORT]
Wired Tour de France: More Data, Faster. Is That Better or Worse?
Popularized by Lance Armstrong, a radio system that allows riders to communicate with their directors and teammates has its advocates and detractors. [New York Times: Technology]
Not only can teams directors be in touch with their riders, but some teams are scanning for opposing team frequencies to try and listen in…
Time Warner DVR
Yesterday the cable guy came and delivered as expected the new Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 Cable box. It’s loaded with the Pioneer 3.0 OS (according to the installer as I can’t find any reference to that anywhere and have not forced a reboot yet).
I have not had much time to play yet, so bear with me on this quick overview.
It works VERY well. The guide is actually a slicker version of the already impressive Time Warner (NYC) digital cable guide. There is roughly 80GB of storage space, though I can’t see any way yet to determine how much is left. You can record 2 programs at the same time and watch a third that has already been recorded. This is by far the best feature in my opinion as it is hard to do that on existing cable DVR set-ups. The second tuner also allows for a nice PIP addition to any set and as it is not dependent on your TV to use it. It’s all in the box. Picture quality is very good, better that our Series 1 TiVO in my opinion. I have not and won’t actually do a direct test as TiVO is no longer connected to the main set and won’t be… I’m thinking of moving it to our bedroom set for now.
You can easily create a season pass and manage preferences as to which programs should be more or less of a priority. It’s very slick in my opinion and integration in general with how you normally or previously watched TV is excellent. As I know I’ve mentioned to people in passing and I think somewhere previously here, the program guide on TiVo was the weakness. Since our IPG is advanced the TiVo one always felt like a let down. We can easily see types of programs, by color and navigate much more quickly through the vast (channels go over 1000 and while there are repeats, most are used) content.
Three things TiVO has which this box does not which may or not bother me… Wishlist and alpha data entering, predictive recording. Wishlist was something we used rarely, as was the predictive programming past the first few months as much of what we recorded and time-shifted so far has really just been programming we know we want to watch. There is no thumbs rating to allow the box to learn from anything other than what you record but I am quite sure it won’t be doing that any time soon. The alpha entering though is something that would be nice to have. If you want to record a program that is not first to show and not close to being on, you have to surf for it. Once you set the season passes it won’t be much of an issue (I think), but this morning before I left I tried to set-up Trading Spaces for my wife and was let down by having to actually page through the “T’s” until I got to Tr…(There’s a shit-load of stuff that starts with T!!)
Overall, I think Time Warner has a winner in this box. AND – I believe that there is an HDTV version coming soon. My cable guy seemed like he was very in the know, working solely on DVR’s at the moment. The plan, it seems is to roll the initial box out, see how it does and then follow it with the HDTV box.
For now, we actually have two cable boxes hooked up to our TV as it can easily handle it and allows us to have HDTV, on demand but primarily (guessing since it was just installed yesterday) watch TV through the DVR box until the day comes when one box will work for everything we want.
Almost forgot…. There are actually 2, 1394 (FIREWIRE!) ports on this box. I was told they don’t work yet, but it seems worth a shot. I doubt TWC, would allow for hard drive archiving, but just imagine…
updating the MT bookmarklet for Safari
jay’s found a fix that brings back all of the functionality [anil dash’s daily links]
Have to tweak mine right away!
Works as advertised!! Very simple to do…
Reorganizations: What to expect and avoid
Wharton experts examine recent megamergers and find that there are common themes to explain the success–and failure–of what are almost always jarring corporate restructurings.
[CNET News.com]
MSN preparing fall broadband launch
Microsoft plans to launch an enhanced version of its MSN service this fall as part of its efforts to tap broadband users for online subscriptions, according to the head of MSN. [CNET News.com]
Are you wanted by the RIAA? EFF can tell you
EFF has launched a service to check whether or not your Kazaa/Grokster/whatever userid is the subject of an RIAA strongarm action against your ISP. It scrapes the PACER subpoena database periodically and indexes all the userids being sought by the recording industry. Link[Boing Boing]
Sony Ericsson’s new
Some (blurry) pics over at Mobile.Burn of two new Sony Ericsson phones, the P810 (the phone on the left) and the Z600 (the phone in the center). The P810 looks even better than its predecessor, the P800, while the Z600 is said to be a essentially a clamshell version of the well-regarded T610. [Gizmodo]
According to the article, the P810/900 may even support Wi-Fi, which will certainly make it a contender in my mind!
Houston residents indicted in Nigerian e-mail scam
A federal grand jury Thursday indicted a Nigerian national and a British citizen living here in an alleged Internet hoax that promised a share of $20 million in a box at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Nigerian Patrick Omu, 36, and Ambrose Agwuibe, 43, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 18 counts of wire fraud and are in jail here.
If convicted, they could receive five years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 20 years in prison on each wire fraud charge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman said.
Numerous people in the United States and Canada were sent e-mails promising them a large share of $20 million if they would pick up a box at the airport and keep it until its owners could retrieve it. People were asked to wire money to cover shipping, handling and inspection fees. [HoustonChronicle.com]
PTT: The New SMS?
“The mobile world has been racking its brains to find something that will succeed on the scale of SMS,” comments James Tagg, managing director of push-to-talk startup FastMobile Inc.. “[PTT] will take off like SMS did. Our estimates suggest that push-to-talk could be worth 150 million ($173 million) in Europe over the next year, becoming a multi-billion-euro market in a few years.” [Ed. note: Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?]
Despite Tagg’s drum-banging, European carriers remain skeptical about the long-term benefits of investing in the technology. Few regional trials have been announced, and local analysts seem reluctant to take the service too seriously.
“There isn’t much evidence of PTT’s success in Europe at the moment,” says Ovum Ltd.’s principal analyst, Jeremy Green. “It is more of a toy and an interesting niche people will fool around with, rather than the next SMS. It won’t be a big earner like text messaging. I don’t believe it is a very big opportunity.”
U.S. analysts beg to differ, arguing that it is only a matter of time before PTT becomes a hit with European users. “I find it strange that we haven’t seen that much interest in Europe, as it is a very attractive product,” says Ken Hyers, senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR. “Clearly, the strengths of the technology will have to be explained to customers, but people aren’t stupid. They quickly realized that SMS is a useful technology, and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t see the advantages of PTT as well.” [Unstrung]
Phelps shatters world record
Michael Phelps moved closer to superceding Ian Thorpe as the world’s best swimmer after a stunning night at the World Championships in Barcelona.
The 18-year-old American destroyed the world record in the 200m individual medley as he relegated Thorpe to second in their much-anticipated showdown.
And that performance came less than an hour after he had broken the 100m butterfly world record in the semi-finals, a mark that had been set moments earlier by Ukrainian Andrii Serdinov.[BBC SPORT]
JBook
I just discovered a very cool piece of Java software thanks to the WebDeveloper Weekly newsletter.
JBook lets users retrieve, read, and bookmark electronic texts from Project Gutenberg and other sources. It transforms any computer into an electronic book reader with an entire library available on demand.
Why I Won’t Be Buying a Pocket PC
Long-time PIC contributor Mike Cane emerges from his hermitage to once again offer himself up as a human target for the PDA zealots. This time he explains why, after lusting for Pocket PC, he finally decided to stick with the PalmOS platform after all. [PalmInfocenter]
AOL corrects their counts…
The media giant hinted at that this week when Don Logan, the executive who oversees America Online and Time Inc., said one reason for the company’s unexpectedly high subscriber losses was the result of “cleaning up the files.”
People familiar with the situation say part of the cleanup involves the termination of subscribers generated by a little-known America Online initiative. Starting in 2000, AOL began selling limited-usage online accounts in bulk for as little as $1 to $3 a month to its marketing partners such as Target Corp., J.C. Penney Co. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. A regular limited-usage subscription at that time cost about $10 a month, while a regular subscription was slightly more than $20. The retailers then could offer the online service to their employees for a discount and pocket the difference.
It isn’t clear how many of those subscriptions were offered to employees or even activated. And there are no rules governing the reporting of such subscribers. [WSJ.com] (subscription required).
Snapster
Very clever scheme from Robert X. Cringely to legally subvert the current music distribution model – he calls it “Snapster”:… [Blogcritics]
This actually sounds like an idea a friend of mine and some buddies were working through. It makes huge sense to me. I wonder if Muse could pull this off since they are all about ubiquitous streaming… I did not see anything about sharing or extending your collection to a device – at least for now.
Time Warner Cable integrated PVR Cable box!
Coming on Saturday is a delivery from Time Warner Cable which is their new cable box which includes built-in PVR. I believe the box is the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 Digital Video Recorder. For $6.95/mo. you can record two programs and watch a third previously recorded show. It’s an 80GB box…
The only sacrifice/question mark for us is HDTV. It’s not supported with the box and it’s not something we want to give up. I’m already thinking how I can hook 2 boxes up to our existing television… Otherwise, we’ll have to hook the new cable box up in the bedroom, at least while the guy is here.
BTW – Time Warner is not officially launching this service until September and it actually took two calls to get this to happen. I first called the main number in Manahattan and my option was to bring in my old box for a swap. Not sure about you, but I’ve been to the TWC office before to exchange a cable modem and it’s not something I really want to do again. I called the Brooklyn office and after confirming I had submitted my info on the sign-up page, they called me back for an install time.
Thanks to Peggy for the tip on this one!
Motorola in Jordan push-to-talk trials
Motorola has signed an agreement with Jordan mobile network operator Fastlink to be the first in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region to pilot Motorola’s General Radio Packet Service (GPRS) Push-To-Talk (PTT) solution. Point-to-point PTT calls to individuals and PTT group calls have been demonstrated successfully at Fastlink’s facility in Amman.
According to Motorola, the company has GPRS PTT trials and demonstrations with other wireless network operators in EMEA scheduled throughout the remainder of this year. Commercial launch of Motorola’s GPRS PTT solution is targeted for 2004. [infoSync]
I find it very interesting that this is being tested first outside the US … far away from Nextel.
Actually here’s some more detail as reported by CNet:
On Thursday, Motorola announced that Jordanian carrier Fastlink will be the first company in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region to use push-to-talk (PTT) technology. Fastlink plans to introduce a pilot version of a service similar to Nextel’s popular DirectConnect, which creates an instant connection between two cell phones.
In addition, Nextel Mexico, owned by Nextel subsidiary NII Holdings, plans to launch soon its own DirectConnect-like service in Tijuana and in Baja California, Mexico, a source said. [CNET News.com]
RSS for Credit Card Activity
Here’s an idea that credit card companies should implement: an RSS feed of your credit purchases, in real-time. Basically have an RSS feed of every authorization on your credit card(s), as they happen. [Gadgetopia]
Interesting thought, but how would it be secure? Seems relatively easy to discover RSS feeds… which is also kind of the idea of RSS. I don’t think we want everyone browsing through our credit card purchasing habits.
Add an internal mic to the Tungsten C
This company seems to have successfully modified the internal workings of a Tungsten C and will do it for you as well. Cost is $69.99, and is guaranteed for 30 days…
We have modified a number of Tungsten C’s by adding an internal
condensor microphone and boy do they work great! This mod allows you
to make full use of the voice features built into the Palm OS 5x.
Enjoy all the benefits of the Tungsten T with the thumb board of a C.
I’m not sure if I don’t use the voice note feature of my Tungsten because there is no mic built-in or because I don’t generally feel the need for voice notes. I recall using them on my Newton MessagePad 2100, which not only recorded the notes but listed them on my “Today” screen like ToDos and memos…