Posted on

ESPN going HDTV

Thank to this tip from AudioRevolution I know that ESPN is going HDTV at the end of March 2003.

ESPN HD will include 100 live telecasts in its first year featuring Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, and the National Hockey League — produced and distributed in high-definition HDTV.

The resolution on ESPN HDTV will be 720p like parent company ABC. Where can you see ESPN in HDTV? This is no answer yet as ESPN is currently in negotiations with Cable and Satalite providers.

Posted on

Is Chimera Dead?

Is Chimera Dead? [MacSlash]

Also Is Phoenix Dead? [Mozillazine]

Seems that the impact of Safari on the Chimera project has been to cause an almost sudden death to the spurt of developmental energy which has been invested so far.

It’s too bad that the Phoenix team is also suffering a similar fate. Safari has been great as my primary browser so far but certainly lacks some of the features that have been incorporated by the Chimera team. It seems that Dave Hyatt is working hard to defeats bugs (first) and continue to develop the feature set.

Posted on

Report: AOL insiders sold $1.5B in stock

Report: AOL insiders sold $1.5B in stock

[Google Top Stories]

The Washington Post, quoting Thomson Financial’s examination of insider sales records, reports that outgoing company Chairman Steve Case leads the list with $697.4 million in stock sales during the period. Robert Pittman, who resigned as chief operating officer of the combined company, is second on the list with $267 million in stock sales, while director James Barksdale, who received AOL stock for selling Netscape to AOL, sold $219.5 million, the paper reported.

Posted on

Pop diva Celine Dion pitches

The Chrysler arm of DaimlerChrysler AG is hoping pop diva Celine Dion can convince people to actually fall in love with Chrysler cars. [Auto.com]

The idea that the cars are so great to drive and so beautifully designed that they inspire passion is behind Chrysler’s new brand slogan “Drive & Love,” which has changed slightly from last year’s tag line “Drive-Love.”

Buzz words like passion, romance and emotion are featured in the new advertising campaign, which debuts Sunday on leading U.S. television networks.

“Drop-dead gorgeous cars, that’s what this is about,” Bill Morden, vice chairman and chief executive officer of BBDO Detroit, the ad agency that created the new campaign, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Calling Dion an “ambassador of love,” he said she was an “absolute knock-dead gorgeous person” and an ideal pitchwoman for Chrysler. “She’s a megastar,” he said.

I’m not sure about you, but Celine Dion does not equal love for me. While the cars certainly are beautiful (well, the Crossfire anyway) the campaign ran with such a high frequency last night it’s already old and tired.

Posted on

WSJ: Apple Reveals Its Latest Ace: Substance Behind Pretty Case

This morning’s WSJ is running a great story on Page 1 of the Marketplace section entitled Apple is Now Showing some Real Substance behind the Pretty Case, which talks about the recent development of Safari and Keynote as well as assumung that there are apps to handle word processing and spreadsheets on the way. The software efforts are being matched by other companies as well as noted by the return of QuickBooks which had been killed in 1997 but returned at the end of last year.

While I don’t agree author Lee Gomez about his idea for Apple to release hardware that would fit the beige special category, I can’t help but agree with the idea that Apple is here now and very strong despite what the nay-sayers feel. The software and hardware combos they offer today are simply the best for most computing applications. Sure there are PC only apps, but those things (whatever they are) could be converted or re-developed if and when the Mac audience grows. I believe that the experience is the best for handling digital media, content creation, email and web content as well as educational applications. Games is an easy target for where things are lacking compared to PCs but that is just fine for now. Mainstream computing is not high end PC gaming. It is, however manipulating digital photos, listening to MP3 tracks and of course sending email about the new web site you made with all that great stuff within a matter of minutes thanks to Apple’s ease of use and software genius.

Apple these days is in the unique and enviable position of appealing simultaneously to computer users at both ends of the usage spectrum. The first is the home user, someone who just wants to surf the Net and read e-mail. Not long ago, home users would have been crazy for considering a Macintosh. Now, they are crazy if they don’t.

The second is the technically minded user, who likes the new Mac because it’s based on software called FreeBSD, a kissing cousin to Linux. Apple says the Linux-on-the-desktop movement is stalling, which would once again make the Apple ecosystem the gathering place for people disinclined to like Mr. Gates.

Posted on

Help with Plucker?

So many people have found my post on Plucker, it’s amazing! I’m glad the help I got to get this to work has been able to help so many others as well.

Thanks to Atmasphere.net, I now have a functional Plucker Desktop on my iBook. After a comment in one of my old posts, from the man in the Atmasphere himself, Jonathan Greene, I got jpluck up and running. As the title of this post suggests, jpluck is far from attractive, but it does make it easy to get Plucker content from an OS X machine to a Palm OS device. Here are the Atmasphere details. I’m working on a slightly more idiot proof version of the instructions, based on a couple of hitches I ran into while trying to get jpluck…

[ReadYourPalm]

Posted on

Every time I post a comment on…

I could not agree more! I don’t want to see comments for every post on a blog in my newsreader either. It would nice to subscribe via email like the way you get comments on your own blog in MT.

Every time I post a comment on a weblog I have to remember to go back and see if anyone followed up. We have to figure a way to automate this. Agree or disagree?

[Scripting News]

Posted on

Latest on Teen Texting Subculture

The phenomenon has businesses that cater to teenagers scrambling to keep up.
At MTV Europe, a number of text-oriented programs have been added.

Some MTV shows allow viewers to send in text messages that crawl across the screen during music videos — what better way to send a note to a friend? — and others allow texters to choose the next video to be played by casting a text vote for one of two options.

These “video clashes” are extremely popular, says Seth Schulte, vice-president of MTV’s Interactive Europe project. He said programmers who do not move into texting are missing important opportunities.

“The importance of this is huge,” he said. “It’s very important strategically in the sense that we know our audience is not afraid to adopt new media to consume — whether it’s the Internet or mobile — and the research we’ve done very clearly shows the audience is doing all of these things simultaneously, which is pretty staggering. They can consume four or five things at once.”

[Smart Mobs]

Posted on

A Star Is Born (If AOL Rebounds)

Don Logan’s genial ruthlessness in pursuit of dominion over America Online has been notable not just for its speed, but also for its effectiveness.

[New York Times: Technology]

But turning around America Online will not be easy for Mr. Logan and Jonathan F. Miller, the division’s chairman, whom Mr. Logan, Mr. Parsons and Mr. Case hired last summer. Although America Online is still profitable and its margins are better than the parent company’s music and movie divisions, they are rapidly diminishing. America Online’s customers are increasingly shifting to high-speed Internet access, an area in which AOL faces much lower margins and much tougher competition. Its cash flow is expected to drop to $1.4 billion in 2002, from $2.3 billion in 2001, almost wholly a result of a drastic falloff in ad revenue. American advertising and e-commerce revenue, which totaled $2.3 billion in 2001, is expected to come in at $1.2 billion in 2002.

Posted on

Report: Good nabs some RIM customers

Handheld-software maker Good Technology is gaining some ground on rival Research In Motion by winning RIM subscribers over to its service, a research note says.

[CNET News.com Personal Technology]

The highlight for me in this article:

The first Palm OS-based devices using GoodLink will be available in the first half as well, and Pocket PC-based devices with GoodLink will be available in the second half, Cook Fleming said.

I wonder when this is coming exactly. This is the first I have heard of a Good based Palm… could be killer, but I hope it syncs with my Mac!

Posted on

First-hand review of in-flight WiFi on Lufthansa Frankfurt-to-D.C. flight

This sounds like a fantastic success! I just hope other airlines get in on this. The only negative is that we will have to wait until sometime in 2004 for Lufthansa, who knows when or if other airlines will go for it.

Read Seattle Post-Intelligencer aerospace reporter James Wallace’s review, filed yesterday while on the Lufthansa 747 that was the first commercial jetliner to use Boeing’s “Connexion” WiFi service.

LinkDiscuss (via IP)

[Boing Boing]

Posted on

TVs and PCs in the home

pctv.jpg

Lots of TVs and lots of PCs. Isn’t it time this all worked together? Seamlessly? One of the reasons that consumers are not converging on this stuff is that it’s just too hard. I used to think the PC industry was the most buzzword and jargon filled industry. The truth is the PC industry is a minor leaguer compared to consumer electronics. Poor consumer walks into the store… “HDTV, 480p, 1080i, progressive or interlaced with that HDTV?”. None of it, of course, is designed to work with the PC. This will happen but in the interim it’s going to get ugly.

[Michael Gartenberg]

Posted on

KisMAC AP Scanner

So I am not sure exactly what the deal is, or how this works for that matter but when I used the Kismac AP scanner software quite a few new networks showed up at home. I usually only see Zion, which is my Airport (yes I like the Matrix). Standing in exactly the same place in my living room I was able to see four additional networks. I can sometimes see additional networks walking around and trying placements near my ceiling or floor, but this is amazing. Kismac uses its own drivers instead of the standard Airport driver which is clearly enhancing the range and signal on my PowerBook.