Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2005 > November
November 2005
All the way Viiv?
Intel’s announcement of partners for its new PC entertainment platform (wait, isn’t this about five years too late?) called “Viiv” (pronounced to rhyme with “live,” “jive” and “hive,” since it’s running on a Windows-based platform) will apparently do for home entertainment/PC interoperability what the Centrino chip did for Wi-Fi.
Wait, didn’t you hear? Intel is taking credit for the wireless revolution! Says Kevin Corbett, an Intel vice president in charge of content services, “We basically accelerated the heck out of Wi-Fi (with Centrino). We plan to do the same thing around digital entertainment.”
Huh. And here I thought cheap routers, Internet cafes, Starbucks and non-profit free wireless groups accelerated that growth.
In any case, Intel’s plan sounds an awful lot like what Microsoft is trying to turn its Xbox360 console into. (It didn’t quite work out that way for the original Xbox, but that console wasn’t built for High-Definition and video streaming.)
This AP article emphasizes the relationship Intel has formed with struggling TiVo Inc., but what’s promised doesn’t sound very different from TiVo’s own “TiVo-To-Go” technology or its recent announcements about making TiVo programs available to iPods and Sony PSPs.
Journalists love including anything TiVo-related in stories because it’s one of the few continually evolving technologies that readers seem to really grasp. Yeah, this Intel thing is pretty boring and complex, but check it out… it’ll have TiVo! TiVo, people! You can spend another few hundred or thousand dollars to watch “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” in whole new ways! It’s a great day for technology!
Permalink | | Categories: Computers, TV
TiVo tussling
Omar’s handy guide to recording three items at once on a two-tuner TiVo:
Tell TiVo to record a second item when you already know it’s set to record “Smallville” on Thursday night. Perhaps “The O.C.,” which your (hypothetical) wife watches.
When TiVo tells you it’s already set to record something, widen your eyes in surprise.
Curse.
Check TiVo’s To-Do list. Realize that it wants to record “The Daily Show” again even though it’s a repeat and you have it set to only record new episodes of “Daily Show.” This is the only show TiVo does that with, which drives you nuts.
Cancel “Daily Show” recording.
Go back to schedule a recording of “The O.C.” This time TiVo obeys.
Tell TiVo to record “Everybody Hates Chris.” TiVo will ask if you want to cancel “Smallville.” You wish you could, but watching “Smallville” is part of your job, so sigh and tell it not to.
Remember that you have two things to record at 8 p.m. as well, but the extra two minutes you tell the TiVo to record at the end of some shows so you won’t miss previews for next week’s episode make this a physical impossibility in TiVoland.
Curse, more colorfully this time.
Decide to deal with your 8 p.m. traffic jam later. Besides, nobody ever died from missing “The Apprentice.” That you know of.
Try to reason with your wife that “Everybody Hates Chris” is so much better than “O.C.,” especially lately. Lose argument when it becomes evident you aren’t even watching “O.C.” anymore.
Confirm for your wife that you didn’t secretly switch TiVo recordings to cancel “O.C.”
Record “Everybody Hates Chris” on the other TiVo, the one in the other room hooked up to the tiny TV that you’re convinced makes the show less funny to watch.
[Note: If you don’t have a second TiVo, replace Step 13 with: 13a. Don’t record “Everybody Hates Chris.” Hate yourself the next day as you hear your wife watching Marissa and Ryan break up for the 135th time.]
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: TV
Xbox, too
I’m reading a book called Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution right now, which takes an interesting approach, in its New York Magazine-style vignettes about shapers of the videogame industry.
One of the later chapters is about the staggeringly expensive and difficult development of Microsoft’s Xbox — the timing is good to read this now, in the days leading up to the Xbox 360 launch. Even if parts of the book feel about three or four years too late, this chapter at least provides a nice framework for understanding one of Microsoft’s biggest current investments.
Permalink | | Categories: Videogames
Uh oh.
I was invited to speak to a classroom of St. Edward’s students by one Mr. Michael Barnes today and in the middle of boring the students to absolute death about my myriad middling accomplishments (seriously, folks, I could see myself taking years off their lives like some sort of public-speaking incubus), I asked a simple question, “Do you read blogs?”
I waited long enough to make sure the blank stares weren’t residual from the rest of my speaking so far, but it was true. None of the 20 or so students said they read any blogs. They read news online and one technologically advanced (for, oh, about 2003) student says she even does RSS feeds. But personal blogs with the self indulgence and the flower backgrounds and the linking to the “Which ‘Friends’ character are you” tests? Not so much.
Way to break it to me this late in the game, youngsters. We in the journalism game are always the last to know.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Austin, Internet
Yawn-worthy tech words
When I see a press releases or news items in my inbox that contains the following techno-buzzwords, my mouse finger immediately moves toward the “DELETE” key (note — these words can be combined to make even more boring phrases):
MMORPG
Tech-savvy
Proprietary
Security-enhanced
Solution
Wireless
Hotspot
Must-have technology
Functionality
iPod-compatible
Anything to do with awards for blogging
Mobile
Storage
Microsoft
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Internet
Signal loss
I’m no closer to buying a cell phone than I was in my last entry. The more research I do, the more mind-bogglingly complex a decision it seems.
And a two-year commitment for most good deals on cell phones? Man. Talk about commitment issues. I think you’re sweet and sexy, Motorola Razr, but I’m not sure I’m ready to get married to you just yet.
To add to my confusion is the realization, after struggling to call in by dictation two recent concert reviews, that I may need something more robust for sending text in on deadline. A Sidekick, maybe? A Treo 650? A Blackberry, even though I’m partial to Palm and Danger’s less corporate-seeming interfaces?
I still want: something small that I can fit in my pocket. But now I think I might need something with a full keyboard. Decisions, decisions…
