Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > January
January 2009
The storage solution (I hope)
Peek into the horrifying mind of a tech gadget geek! This is what I’ve been thinking about the last few months.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the Statesman about keeping your data safe via network-attached storage and off-site storage. It’s sort of become an obsession with me since late last year and as the story developed, I had in my mind the idea of a perfect storage gadget that would do three things:
- Keep your data backed up and safe. Redundancy within the device itself (say, across multiple hard drives) would be a plus.
- The ability to stream whatever’s on that storage devices to other parts of the house, like say an Apple TV or an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 hooked up to an HDTV. It would also be nice to be able to access the device from outside the home, say through a private FTP address.
- It would be able to connect to an off-site backup service like Amazon’s S3, Carbonite or something like that to have a duplicate of data in case of fire, theft, food, etc.
The results of that search are what’s in the article, but as for my own home storage needs, I’m still not there, despite all the work I did researching.
In our home, we have a Windows XP desktop computer that doesn’t play nice with other computers on our home network. We have a Macbook and an older iBook G4. We have digital photos scattered across all three computers as well as documents and videos. I’ve tried to make the XP computer the primary one for storage (it has the biggest hard drive space) and do a backup to an external hard drive from that computer regularly.
We only have one external hard drive and it’s not big enough to accommodate the laptop, so only the XP computer is regularly backed up. I’ve been able to stream content from that computer to the Xbox and PS3 downstairs, but as of late it’s been giving me problems.
After looking at all the options, we decided to buy a Drobo. I’ve thought them overpriced, but Amazon has an offer for a base unit at $420 plus a $50 rebate, bringing it down to $370. That’s without hard drives, though. I had to buy two of them separately. Luckily, Newegg.com was having a sale for $99, free shipping. It was a good deal all around. It’s the newer model, which has a Firewire 800 connection, which is faster than USB, at least if you have a computer that supports it. We probably have a Mac computer in our future with that port, so it seemed like a good investment.
A couple of small problems: the Drobo itself can’t be networked without a $200 add-on called “DroboShare” that hasn’t been well-reviewed and which I’m not willing to buy, at least not at the moment. From what I’ve read, it seems slow and maybe not well-suited for video streaming, especially not for HD video.
We have an Apple Airport Express router with a USB connection that would put the Drobo on the home network. Unfortunately, the way the router does the AppleDisk networking won’t allow the drive to be recognized by the Xbox or PS3 for streaming (something about “UPNP” something or other). For that, I’d need a separate network adapter or to keep a computer on to work as the server (not desirable; I don’t want to keep a computer on all the time just for that purpose). I’d like a more energy-efficient solution.
My dad, who has a lot of experience with home networks, has offered his assistance, so I’ll let you know how this big project goes. I just ordered the Drobo and the drives last night. There’s a lot of work ahead; I’ll have to create separate partitions for each of the computers I want to backup and figure out the best way to consolidate our photos and videos into one centralized location as well. And I haven’t even thought about how I’ll use Time Machine with my Macbook.
We’ll have less than 1 terrabyte of room to play with (Drobo’s redundancy uses up a lot of disk space, but makes it very easy to add a third or fourth drive later if we need it. As we shoot HD camcorder video and take photos of our kid, I know that our needs are just going to grow. Buying one external hard drive was only going to be a temporary solution.
I’ll let you know how it goes, but if any of you have experience with this sort of monster data project, I’d love some advice or to hear about your own experiences.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Gadgets, Shopping, TV
The Linkdown for Thursday, Jan. 29
It’s boom and doom and gloom everywhere you look: except in these safe links, chosen for their life-brightening enzymes and joy-giving extracts:
- Tired of waiting for your Windows netbook or laptop to boot up? How does instant-on/off sound? HyperSpace may be the answer; there’s a 21-day free trial.
- Google Docs is great for sharing documents, but did you know they’ve also got templates for financial documents and even fitness ones to plan your workouts? Well, now you do.
- Share Our Strength is fighting child hunger. You can help by texting SHARE to 20222 if you’re an AT&T customer to donate $5.
- VerveEarth, now in beta, mashes up blogs with Google Maps to give you a geographic view of where they’re coming from.
- Late on this one, but Dell has agreed to financial restitutions for some customers.
- Manor is using 2-D QR codes. Go, Manor!
- Health Games Research is looking for proposals for research on how video games can be used to promote fitness. Deadline is April 8.
- OMG, look at these adorable Nintendo Mii-style baby mittens! I’ll take a dozen, please. (via Tara Ariano.
- Kramer Wetzel, who for years has run the Austin-y astrology site astrofish.net, is now kicking it in San Antonio with a new photo blog, BexarCountyLine. We wish Kramer luck.
- Zootoo is running a contest for animal shelters. You can help Austin/Travis County by registering here and writing what you think about our local shelters. It’s similar to something we wrote about last year.
- Trouble with cell phone service in your house? Verizon has a $250 solution, a Network Extender, which is like setting up a tiny cell phone tower in your home.
- Yesterday was Texas Data Privacy Day. Find out more about protecting your ID here.
- Austin’s Pixel Mine’s new MMO, “Secondhand Lands,” just launched today.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Phones, Videogames
Hardware drive needs your old computers
When last we spoke to Ken Starks of Austin’s HeliOS Project, there had been a dustup involving AISD and some national publicity regarding LINUX.
We won’t go into that whole story (you can read about it here and here, but one thing lost in that bit of news might have been the work that Starks does in Austin to bring computers to kids who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
The HeliOS Project takes donated computers and installs the free-to-use LINUX operating system on them, then gives those computers to community centers and to students. Open-source software (for, say, word processing and Internet browsing) is also installed.
I know these are tough times, but if you have a computer that’s sitting around collecting dust, it would be a huge help to this effort. Their 2009 Hardware Drive has just launched. You can learn more about HeliOS here. Do what you can to help.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can get rid of my wife’s ancient refurbished Dell desktop system; we weren’t using it anyway.
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SXSW’s mystery Sunday keynote spot: who will it be?
A few weeks ago, I had a morning coffee with our biz reporter Lilly Rockwell and two representatives handling PR for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. It was soon after the day-by-day panel list appeared and one of my big questions was what was up with that big hole on the schedule for the Sunday morning keynote.
All the schedule said was, “Keynote TBA,” and when I asked them about it, I was figuring that it was a big name and that logistics were still being worked out.
Instead, I was told that as of that point, there was no Sunday keynote. It wasn’t a big surprise or something being kept under wraps. That person simply wasn’t known yet. They asked me if I had suggestions.
By now, things are probably much further along in the process and I expect we’ll find out who’s in that slot when the more fleshed-out list of panelists goes public in early February. (No, I haven’t seen it. I’ve asked.)
The Sunday keynote slot is a good one because of where it falls during the festival. Out-of-towners have arrived and settled in. People aren’t yet burned out on going to panels (as they tend to be by late Monday and Tuesday), skipping them for a road trips to The Salt Lick or sleeping out the revelry of the night before.
Last year’s Sunday keynote featured the biggest name of the festival, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and it was, well… eventful.
The year before, the keynote was a mid-afternoon “Keynote Conversation” with Limor Fried and Make magazine’s Phil Torrone about open source and the DIY movement. Prescient, right? Those were good picks.
Based on what’s already on the schedule, we can speculate on where the festival might go if they have their druthers. Here are three theories I have on who that Sunday speaker will be:
The Twitter approach: I’m sure most who don’t use Twitter are absolutely sick of hearing about it (I spotted the word “Twittering” on the front page of today’s New York Times, which is happening with increasing frequency). But it is, by far, the most significant technology to launch out of the South by Southwest Interactive festival since, probably, Blogger. Given how tied the fest was to the birth of Twitter, it wouldn’t surprise me to see company founders Jack Dorsey and/or Biz Stone on stage. One or both of them could be paired up with a power-user interviewer (loveable Leo Laporte, perhaps, or the love-him-or-hate-him Robert Scoble). Based on the other keynotes already announced, it makes sense. Saturday is about marketing and business, Monday is about art and Tuesday’s keynote is likely focused on RSS and Guy Kawasaki’s past with Apple. It makes sense that the Sunday slot would be about social networking.
The tech legend approach: Given Kawasaki’s history, it might be too much Apple, but I bet one of the names being tossed around as a keynote speaker is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The Woz is still outspoken about Apple and has a unique perspective on the company’s recent hot streak and its travails with Steve Jobs’ health. Woz is never not interesting; he’d be a great draw and there is never a lack of interest in what Apple is doing, how it is evolving and what the inside scoop might be. Short of that, another interesting tech legend would be HP’s ex-CEO Carly Fiorina to talk about the intersection of technology and politics. If nothing else, it would great to hear some of her war stories from her involvement with the McCain campaign last year from a techie’s perspective.
Bring on the game God: Another keynote subject missing is something about video games. I hate to beat the drum again about how significant the games industry has become (last year, it outsold movie and DVD sales). That being said, most game industry types are not fantastic speakers for conferences like this. “Sims” creator Will Wright spoke two years ago and was riveting. Richard Garriott is always entertaining, but his last gaming venture was not a huge success. The best speaker (with a translator) would be Nintendo’s legendary Shigeru Miyamoto. The Mario maven and Wii wizard is beloved, intelligent beyond belief and riding a wave of success unparalleled in the games world right now. He was instrumental in the shift to making games more mainstream. It would be incredible to hear where he thinks Nintendo can go from here.
So, there you go, South by Southwest. My consulting fee is waived. Go get ‘em.
Readers — what do you think? Who do you think should be the Sunday keynote speaker?
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Is Austin the most-wired city? Not by a long shot
Forbes has released its list of most-wired cities in the country and while it’s no surprise that tech-company-heavy Seattle ranked number one, you might be surprised at how low on the list Austin ended up: Number 30.
That puts Austin behind such booming tech centers as Milwaukee, Cleveland and Nashville. Ouch.
The criteria for the ranking includes the percentage of home Internet users with high-speed connections, the number of companies providing high-speed Internet access and the number of public Wi-Fi hotspots per capita. Data for the rankings came from Nielsen Online, Scarborough Research, Federal Communications Commission, JiWire and the U.S. Census Bureau, according to Forbes.
So… 30th, eh? Well, at least we ranked. Last year, Austin didn’t even make the list.
You can see the entire list of 30 as a clickthrough-generating slideshow on the Forbes Web site. It’s not exactly user-friendly, but at least it gives you time to absorb the shock and outrage as you wait for each generic image of each city to load.
The top 10 are, in order: Seattle, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Orlando, Boston, Miami, Minneapolis, Denver, New York City and Baltimore.
The Forbes list has been going since 2007. Last year’s top spot was held by Atlanta.
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The Linkdown for Thursday, Jan. 22
The Internet doesn’t want to be president. It doesn’t need an Oscar nomination. The Internet didn’t e-mail you asking you to contribute to the boss’s birthday gift. The Internet merely asks that you click and enjoy the bounty. How selfless is that?
Here is what the internet wants you to know about today:
- Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration hat is making its way through the land of memes.
- Howcast shows you how to lose a guy in 10 texts.
- KUT radio has an iPhone app. You could use it to, say, listen in around 4 to 6 p.m. on Mondays. Just sayin’.
- Design geek, but not a Web geek? PSD 2 CSS will convert a PhotoShop file into a functional Web site, as if by magic. I thought it was some sort of trick, but the head of PSD2CSS e-mailed me personally and explained it. I was not smart enough to keep up, but by gum, I believe him.
- The call for South by Southwest volunteers is coming up.
- Austin’s BroadQ has been working on enabling Internet video for the PlayStation2. “PlayStation2?” you’d ask. To which I’d reply, “You’d be surprised how many are still sold and how many are still in people’s homes.
- On Saturday, Richard Garriott will be recounting his wild space adventures at Zach Theatre. If you go, please ask him about Tang. And don’t tell him I was so skeptical.
- WEbook.com plans to publish a book of user-generated inauguration stories.
- Slacker has introduced a redesigned Web site and has released versions of its audio software for BlackBerry and iPhone
- It’s been so long since I Linked-down that I never got to mention that Microsoft released the public beta of Windows 7. The word so far is good, but then, it would have to be after Vista.
- The Center for Screen-Time Awareness thinks your TV is evil and is making your butt huge. They’re probably almost 50 percent right.
- $594 million: that’s how much was invested in virtual world-related companies in 2008. It’s also about how much I lost on my 401k.
- Austin’s Aspyr is partnering to bring out five new PC games in ‘09.
- Still need an ‘09 calendar? That’s sad. But this video will make you happy: Dachshunds! Buy the calendar here.
- Fox covers Austin-based HeroBracelets.org.
- “Mommy, Why Is There a Server In The House?”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Videogames
E-nauguration ‘09 — Social networking matures
Last night, I was invited to be a co-host of a Tweetup at a non-partisan inauguration party, Geek Austin’s E-nauguration Party (as written about earlier today by Michael Barnes).
The intriguing part of the party for me was that there would be a concurrent party happening in Washington D.C. fronted by Austin’s Tom Serres of the company Piryx. Tom did a very good job promoting the party on a CNN segment and I was pleased to learn that his company is involved in politics and technology, not, as I initially thought, the business of high-quality glass cookware.
I asked the great people-connector Lynn Bender of Geek Austin what I needed to do as host and we made some vague plans about a microphone and a projector that Ricardo Guerrero of Dell might secure for us. We’d show Twitter feeds from Austin and D.C. on a screen and I’d say a few words about networking and whatnot. Easy peasy, right? Plus, with my allergies acting up and a full day of inauguration-related journalism, I was going to be wiped.
I even had a little (questionably) funny bit worked out that I’d read. Wanna hear it? Of course you don’t. Here it is anyway:
“I work at one of those dying newspapers you keep hearing about. But we’ve still got some fight in us left. If any of you brought any cash with you tonight, we are actually for sale. And my bosses have asked me to tell you that I am included in that package. And they’ve asked me to also say that I… like to party. (Sad look.)”
But the microphone never showed up, the party was spread out among a rooftop, a large bar area and the red, thumping “Boom Boom Room,” so it was never a good opportunity to try out my comedic stylings, so we settled for the projection and lots of great chit chat.
At one point, someone asked me, “So you’re the host? What does that mean exactly?” My answer consisted of looking intensely at the floor, moving my hands around and mumbling, “Uhhh… there’s a projector and uh… no microphone, so… I like to party?”
Erica O’ Grady trekked from Houston to be there and told me her plans for a pre-South by Southwest Interactive birthday party she’s throwing that, if pulled off, could be quite awesome.
Co-conspirator Valerie Kusler, on my urging, hijacked Ricardo’s Twitter account and posted something about hot panda masks. I think I’d had a few gin and tonics by that point.
Chelsea Stark and I discussed how our respective newsrooms covered the inauguration, Julie Gomoll told me she needs to update me on the progress of Launchpad Coworking and the power couple of Benn and Lani Rosales showed up from the great expanses of North Austin.
I finally got to meet face-to-face “Elizabeth S.” of Austinist for the first time, as well as Jen Wakely and a woman named Carla whom I mostly know as “Redyelllow” (yes, with three “L’s.”) Austin tech mavens Whurley and Michelle Greer were on hand to keep the average IQ in the room very high. Brewster McCracken showed up wearing a tie, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him and ask what a mayoral candidate does, exactly. Maybe he could have given me party-hosting tips.
I’ve spent the last two years on Twitter and though I’ve tried to keep the list of people I follow tightly controlled, it occurred to me last night that more and more of the people I read about every day are coming to feel indispensable. At events like this, i see more familiar faces every time, and even those I’m meeting for the first time often have lifecasted enough about themselves that I feel like I have a longtime connection.
My online neighborhood is growing and, rather than becoming thin and spreading out, these relationships feel like they’re deepening and building into a vocal, entrenched community. I’ve been listening to the daily thoughts, jokes, fears and disappointments of some of these people for days turning into weeks turning into months and now, years. You start to pick up on things, see some threads, learn some history and view all these overlapping arcs.
If you pay attention. I still don’t get how people can follow thousands of other people on Twitter or Facebook and get any sense of a running story. Maybe that’s not what it’s about for those people. Maybe dipping in and out of the conversation stream and getting a roomful of echoes makes more sense to them than reading the book from start to finish.
But my sense is that even as our individual relationships and connections are maturing and changing, the Austin social networking scene itself is transforming into something like an established contingent. Leaders are emerging, localized celebrities are coming to the fore and an increasing number of people on the outside, looking in, are joining the fold and seeking to be engaged.
That’s my sense of it, anyway. As always, I’m just as interested in hearing what you have to say about it than pondering it on my own.
Edited to add: Bonus — more photos from the event as posted by @imelda.
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The inauguration, online
Even moreso than the presidential election night in November, today’s Washington D.C. festivities are in the middle of becoming one of the major defining moments of the Internet era. Many people are back at work today and will only have access to the sights and (live streaming) sounds of the event from their work computers.
News outlets, blogs and tech companies are pushing out as much content as they can to meet what is likely to be insatiable demand: The American-Statesman itself is, as I type this, streaming the AP video feed here and Statesman reporters on the ground in D.C. are using Twitter to post updates that you can read in aggregate here.
It’s likely they may have to rely on text messaging; as I said in a report for “All Things Considered” yesterday, the major cell carriers are struggling to keep up with unprecedented access demands after having spent millions of dollars to prepare for the event. (You can hear the segment here: part one and part two.)
A list of more resources and events happening online can be found at the All Tech Considered blog.
Where can you watch a live video stream online? Where can’t you? It seems all the major news outlets will be doing it and as long as the Internet doesn’t melt down, you should be able to watch. If your workplace is like ours, however, you may get warned that too many people viewing online at the same time will cause the network to slow down. We’re being encouraged to watch on TV instead.
Not enough? TechCrunch last week posted an excellent list of what’s going on online and CNET.com put together a similar list. And last, but not least, China expert Christine Lu has put together a well-thought-out list of 50 people you can follow on Twitter who plan to post live updates about the inauguration. And C-SPAN has introduced what it calls the The Inauguration Hub, yet when I tried to go there, it was slow-going.
And Project Gutenberg promises it will have a transcript of Barack Obama’s speech an hour after it’s delivered at this URL.
It’s not too late: if you can’t be in D.C., you can still witness everything on the Web.
As for me, I’ll be working all day and then co-hosting a non-partisan inauguration party tweetup tonight at Union Park. It’s a free event put together by Geek Austin, Piryx and the Austin Electronic Music Grid. Hope to see some of you there!
Got more links to stuff happening online? Having trouble accessing certain sites? Post about it in the comments.
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Goodbye, Ana Sisnett
Like an increasing amount of breaking news, I first heard about Ana Sisnett’s passing on Twitter from several Austin techies I follow.
It had been years, at least six or seven, since I’d last spoken to her, but I never forgot her. We wrote about her several times when I was a reporter, then editor, of our old personal tech section, Technopolis.
She was one of the people who best embodied what the section was about and why it was so unique to the culture of Austin: she was an artist, a techie with reservations about technology, a community activist and, above all, a genuine human being. Her name came up often when we discussed ideas for stories about people who were making a difference in the Austin tech community. Browsing through the archive, I see stories from ex-Statesman reporters like Cara Anna, Robert W. Gee and (current business reporter) Lori Hawkins about Sisnett.
As executive director of Austin Free-Net she helped bridge the digital divide. In a 1998 American-Statesman business story, she told Lori Hawkins:
“We’ve been very successful at getting people to understand the need to provide technology, and we have the equipment set up, and that’s wonderful. But just having a room full of computers is not enough. We need volunteers who can help people get started. Volunteers who can answer questions like, ‘How do I turn on the computer? How do I open a program? How do I do research?’ What we’re hoping to do now is improve our training. When it comes down to it, people are our greatest resource. We want to demystify technology. What I’m finding is there are a lot of people who are embarrassed to say they don’t know this stuff. They are from different income levels and different communities and different professions. It seems like everybody is doing it and they’re not, and it’s mindboggling to them. So, they are afraid and they don’t know where to begin. The idea is for us to be the beginning for them. That’s where the training comes in. It goes far beyond surfing the Internet. We offer classes in Microsoft Word. People use our computers for job searching, resume writing and to learn computer skills to make themselves more employable.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
It is not enough to say the Austin tech community will Ana Sisnett. That much is obvious. What we must say is that we need more Ana Sisnetts who care enough to help bridge the gap between the tech haves and the tech have-nots. Ana may be gone, but that mission must continue.
Edited to add:
A reader informed me of these memorial times for Ana:
Altar-Building
La Peña
Thursday, Jan. 15
6 p.m.
Bring flowers, candles, Ana’s favorite things to place on an altar to celebrate her life.
Celebration Circle
La Peña
Friday, Jan. 16
7 p.m.
Bring items to place on Ana’s altar, a piece of Ana’s writing or writing in tribute to Ana to read.
Memorial Service
Trinity United Methodist Church
Saturday, Jan. 24
1 p.m.
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Steve Jobs goes on medical leave until June
It’s spreading all over the news, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going on medical leave until June over health issues he says are more complex than he originally thought.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog posted a copy of the letter Jobs sent to employees. In it, he says his health issues have become a source of public speculation and distraction for the company.
Last week, he addressed the health issue question in an open letter on Apple’s Web site.
Sales of Apple stock have been halted. We’ll have to wait and see what happens, and of course, we’re all hoping for a speedy recovery for Jobs.
I can’t help think that all the people who speculated about Jobs’ health and how it might affect the company if he stepped down were unfairly admonished for their concerns. It is now an issue for the company and now all eyes are on Apple to see how they’ll handle the next few months without Jobs firmly at the helm.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Computers
Hilton Garden Inn and Sony check into PSP hotel training
Pick up a Sony PSP game console, learn how to work at a hotel.
That’s novel idea behind a demo I checked out yesterday at the downtown Austin Hilton Garden Inn, where a summit of several hundred HGI managers were meeting. David Kervella, a senior manager in brand education for the company, showed me a video game the company commissioned that it will distribute to the 450-or-so hotels around the world for employees.
The game, “Ultimate Team Play” will be sent out along with a PSP game system and used by hotel staff to supplement training.
We took it for a spin on a PSP hooked up to a large TV and, while it’s not going to make Kratos of “God of War” worry about his position in the video game hierarchy, the title is clever and well-produced. In it, a 3-D representation of a Hilton Garden Inn hotel is presented. You can choose to work the front desk, housekeeping, engineering or food and beverage.
In the segment we played for housekeeping, you roam the hallways and rooms, cleaning up, vacuuming and sticking to a schedule. The game rates virtual customer satisfaction. In a front desk portion I saw, you can interact with customers using pre-selected dialogue and answer the phones. Scoring is rated as “SALT” (Satisfaction and Loyalty Tracking) on what looks like a video game energy bar.
The game doesn’t affect employee evaluations or raises (not everyone is good at video games, even ones related to their job), but the company thinks the game can be a good supplemental tool to existing training, especially for younger workers who speak fluent Videogamese.
About 14 people worked on the game at the North Carolina-based game company Virtual Heroes. Kervella says it’s the first time Sony has allowed one of its game console to be used as a corporate training tool.
Will we see more of this in the future? I’ll be first in line to buy a personal copy if they ever make a “Whataburger: The Game.” (Though I will probably skip, “Super Newspaper Tech Blogger Brothers.”
(Left to right) Bob Tellez, lead engineer at Virtual Heroes, David Kervella of Hilton Hotels and G. Steven Cattrell, game designer/producer demo “Ultimate Team Play.”
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Day-by-day panel list released for SXSWi ‘09
It’s hard to believe South by Southwest Interactive 2009 is only two months away. But the reality sinks in when you look at the day-by-day lineup of panels and keynotes: SXSW has released a list today and says it will have a finalized schedule of timeslots and descriptions by early February. (The festival runs March 13-March 17.)
Aside from panels we see variations of every year (“How to Rawk SXSW,” “Building and Maintaining Strong Communities Online”) there are some interesting trends. Staffers from The New York Times, which was recently pre-obitted by Atlantic in a piece that imagined its demise, are on the schedule, including a Monday keynote interview by Virginia Herffernan of Graffiti Research Lab founder James Powderly. There’s also a panel called “Designing the Future of The New York Times” and “Get Me Rewrite! Developing APIs and the Changing Face of News,” featuring Times staffers.
The keynote slot for Sunday is still TBA, but the opening remarks on Saturday will be from Tony Hsieh, CEO of shoe seller Zappos.com, which has made a big splash on Twitter.
Tuesday’s keynote is a conversation between Chris Anderson of Wired and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki of alltop.com (who made his name as an Apple evangelist).
Many locals are heading up panels and, as usual, there’s a good mix of business-focused panels, panels about design and Web interfaces and, not surprisingly, a lot about social networking.
What panels are you most looking forward to checking out if you’re going to SXSW?
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Review: ‘Mirror’s Edge’
We are entering an age when the physical space we occupy while playing video games will likely become a key component in the gameplay itself. The physicality that the Nintendo Wii has brought to the mainstream is an idea that will only be refined: some people won’t care to play games where you actually must jump, dodge and run, but for game designers it will represent a fertile playground for a new level of engagement.
Or it could be a goofy, embarrassing mess that will suck the fun and suspension of disbelief out of video games, and will prove to have been a tangent not worth pursuing.
The Electronic Arts game “Mirror’s Edge,” released in October, represents both the potential thrills and dangerous pitfalls ahead for games like that. It’s not a particularly great game. I got bored with it after only a few increasingly repetitious levels and the game’s storyline, played out in ugly, stylized animations between levels of action, is lame, bordering on completely incompetent.
In the game, you play as Faith, a courier living under a futuristic totalitarian regime. There is family intrigue and a conspiracy, but the game is really about moving Faith across sparsely rendered rooftops and through obstacle-course interiors as swiftly as possible, avoiding gunplay and conflict when you can.
What the game does successfully, in occasional flashes of inspired brilliance, is to convey a sense of speed and momentum in a way that only some of the best racing games (and, oddly, the early “Sonic the Hedgehog” titles) have been able to do successfully enough to trick the brain. Moreso, its first-person perspective does a miraculous job putting your brain into Faith’s virtual body (seen, in action, only as flailing legs and ledge-grasping hands). You run and it feels like running. You jump off a rooftop and it feels like you’re in the air. It’s a unique and amazing technical feat.
For many gamers, it might also introduce nausea. I’m prone to getting motion sickness from some games like this, but I made it pretty well through by taking a few breaks when I was overcome.
The game offers the option of picking up and shooting guns, but it’s more about disarmament. You can take a weapon away from an enemy and move on. It’s a first-person shooter, minus the shooting.
The breathtaking action of the game and its striking visual design begin to lose their ability to dazzle as the game goes on, however. You wish the game’s levels and storyline were on par with its physics. What seems at first amazing gets boring very quickly, until “Mirror’s Edge” begins to feel more like a demonstration of what this kind of technology can actually do than a fully fleshed-out adventure. And almost half of the action takes place indoors, where the pleasurable momentum of fast motion comes to a dead stop. Without the freedom of running and jumping, it introduces the same rehashed dynamics of ductwork-tunneling and ledge jumping you’d find in an old “Prince of Persia” or “Tomb Raider” game.
The most exciting thing about “Mirror’s Edge” is the potential in future games taking the idea several steps further. With some refinement, it could be a fine, fun-to-play series of games. And without all that living room jumping around. Who needs all that exercise?
“Mirror’s Edge”
$50-60, for Xbox 360, Windows PCs and PlayStation 3
Rated T for Teen
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Dell and AT&T introduce $99 laptop that costs $1,539
I was really hoping that the PC industry would never go back to those late-1990s deals where you bought a computer for less than you’d normally pay, but were saddled with multiple years of Internet service at a set price.
It was a trend that deservedly died out, but is now common in the cell phone industry. Get the phone relatively cheap, but get locked in to a two-year contract. As I’ve written before, the $199 iPhone is anything but cheaper than the $400 first-gen when you look at the bottom line.
Let me ask you this: do you know a single person who likes being locked into a cell phone contract?
Today, Dell and AT&T announced a new pricing option for the Inspiron Mini 9 notebook. The $449 laptop will sell for $99 (after a $350 mail-in rebate). The catch, if you want to call it that, is that you’ll be required to enter into a two-year Internet contract with AT&T for mobile broadband. The cost? $60 a month. (Plus, the press release says, “Additional fees.”
Not counting those fees and taxes, the total price of the laptop ends up $1,539 after two years.
If you already pay for broadband in your home (I pay about $46 a month), or are used to relying on Wi-Fi, you’ll have to consider if mobile broadband is the way to go. The advantage is that (as long as you’re within coverage areas), you won’t have to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot.
On the other hand: $1,539.
Where AT&T has the advantage is that there simply hasn’t been enough competition in broadband Internet service. We pay much more for broadband here than people in other countries do, and many of us are getting double- or triple-charged for having broadband in the home, broadband in our phones and broadband in wireless PC cards with not enough options to combine all that Internet service.
Maybe I’m not the audience for a product like this (I won’t even upgrade to an iPhone 3G because of the cost of 3G service), but it sure sounds like a raw deal to me.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Computers
Palm: back from the dead?
It was only a month ago that I was mourning the potential loss of Palm, the company that started the PDA revolution (with apologies to Apple’s much-maligned Newton). More recently, Palm has lagged behind the iPhone, the BlackBerry and practically every other new smartphone released in the last six months. The aging Palm OS software was a 1990s relic covered in cobwebs.
Perhaps I spoke too soon. Based on what I’m reading on tech and gadget blogs today, Palm is emerging as the belle of the Consumer Electronics Show ball with Pre, a slick, sexy new Palm slider phone that carries a new Palm OS that addresses much of what was decrepit about the last version.
You can bet it’ll be priced under $200 (plus the obligatory two-year contract) if it wants to compete with BlackBerry, the iPhone and T-Mobile G1 phones.
Most intriguingly, Palm is promising a charger that will re-energize the phone by placing it on a pedestal, no plugging-in necessary. If that works as promised, it’ll be the first mass-market phone to incorporate this kind of technology.
If it works, it’s a neat trick. That’s good because Palm is going to need something nearly magical to make a comeback at this late stage. So far, Pre might be that miracle.
News story from New York Times.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Gadgets, Internet, Phones
The Linkdown for Wednesday, Jan. 7
It’s been so long since I’ve shared a tasty, savory set of Internet links with you (almost three weeks, to be exact), that I almost forgot how to do it. I bounced around the Internet like a wayward pinball machine mercury sphere, forgetting to copy and paste, neglecting to fill you in on the cornucopia of linkyness that is yours for the taking, should I only post it here.
I call it vacation.
So let’s fix that, shall we?
- Old-school gamers are mourning the passing of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the print publication that shared many a cheat code and thousands of reviews. Ziff-Davis is also shutting down the popular 1Up podcasts (my favorite was the “GFW/LAN Party Weekend” podcast), which is a tragedy in and of itself.
- Do you lose your remote all the time? Are your couch creases THAT deep? AT&T has an Easy Find Remote for $60. It’s cheaper than hiring a full time remote control guard dog.
- Glassdoor.com uses reader reviews to rate the naughty and nice CEOs of ‘08. They also list General Mills as the top place to work.
- A virtual worlds lawsuit involving Austin’s NC Soft. Also, a Penny Arcade comic commenting on the matter. (Warning: the comic contains an F-bomb.)
- Yes, there is such a thing as a group called Wii Fit Mommies.
- Crazy-cute Japanese gadgets? Find them at Gizmine.com.
- Make Magazine, which has a strong presence in Austin and brings us the awesome Maker Faire, has an online TV show.
- Wanna see a Webcast of the Emmy Technology and Engineering Awards? Of course you do! You’re geeky like that. See it streamed tonight here.
- This week’s All Tech Considered segment on NPR was about TV on the Web. You can hear all the recent audio segments here.
- Film site spout.com is introducing tools to promote and distribute films online. Find out more here.
Got more links I should be sharing? E-mail them to me.
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iTunes news the only spark at snoozy Macworld keynote
It’s suddenly clear why Steve Jobs begged off on delivering Apple’s last keynote address at the Macworld Expo today: it was a bit of a snooze.
There was certainly no announcement on par with the introduction of the iPhone or even the more recent unveiling of aluminum-body Macbook computers. Except for an already-expected announcement that all 10 million songs on iTunes will be made available without copy production (or DRM-free, as it’s called), nothing really dazzled at the presentation.
The highlights, which I followed via the excellent Engadget play-by-play:
- iTunes will offer all of its music library, about 10 million songs, DRM-free. Of course, Amazon MP3 has been doing this with its downloads for a while, but Apple has a larger library. The DRM-free revolution begins today with eight million songs available DRM-free. The other two million will be DRM-free by the end of the quarter, Apple says. Upgrading an existing library will be 30 cents per song.
- Music publishers will have more freedom in setting pricing on music. Gone is the one-size-fits-all 99 cents-per-song pricing. Now some music will be made available at $1.29 or 69 cents.
- A new 17-inch Macbook Pro features a longer battery life (eight hours!), but it comes at only one price: $2,799. Ouch. Too much of a good thing? The technical specs on the machine are certainly impressive, but are people really clamoring for a huge laptop that costs almost three thousand dollars? I’m not.
- Apple is introducing iWork ‘09 and iLife ‘09. Most interesting is that Apple is introducing iwork.com, which will be an online space for collaborating on documents, much like Google Docs. Again, are people really desperate for this when a perfectly good free product already exists?
- iLife ‘09 will feature big improvements in iMovie and iPhoto. iPhoto will have facial recognition, the ability to geotag photos on maps and the ability to upload directly to Flickr and Facebook. iMovie improves on the much-maligned iMovie ‘08 by reintroducing features and adding slick video editing features and effects.
- The iPhone 3G will now be able to download iTunes music via the 3G network (previously only possible over Wi-Fi).
- Tony Bennett came out and sang. Awesome, but… safe and predictable. Like the rest of the presentation.
Your thoughts?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Computers, Gadgets, Movies & DVDs, Shopping
Best tech trends of ‘08 and a look at ‘09
In yesterday’s paper, we ran a story listing what were (in my view), the top five tech trends of 2008 and what five technologies to look for in 2009 might be.
Of course, a list like this covers an awful lot of ground and must overlook a lot of trends that were certainly important just to keep it to five.
With unlimited space, I might have talked about coworking, electronic voting, the ascension of Netflix to multiple streaming platforms and online shopping.
But I’m a lot more curious about what you readers have to say. What were your top five tech trends of 2008 and what are your predictions for ‘09?
If case you don’t have time to read the whole article, here’s a tiny version of mine:
Trends of 2008:
- Cloud computing — your stuff, online.
- App stores — cell phones grow up, get programs.
- Social networks — Twitter and Facebook continued growing.
- Hybrids — gas prices spiked and people got interested.
- Screens — cheap displays meant more content on more screens.
And my picks for stuff to watch in 2009:
- Netbooks
- Off-site storage
- Smarter TVs
- New media gets more competitive
- Air/gesture-based computing/gaming
What do you think? Get to prognosticating!
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Computers, Gadgets, Internet, Movies & DVDs, Phones, SXSW, TV, Videogames
