Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > August
August 2009
Apple event next week: expect new iPods, possible Beatles news
“It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.”
That’s the tagline on the image above, part of an invitation Apple Inc. sent out to tech journalists and others this morning for a San Francisco music event taking place on Wednesday, Sept. 9.
The rumor mill, as always, churns about all things Apple. The most common predictions are that Apple will introduce new iPod models, which will include some features previously reserved for its iPhones (such as a built-in camera). I’d add to the list of new potential features GPS (gotta love that built-in Compass app), bigger memory sizes and possible price drops.
There are also expectations that Apple will introduce its “Cocktail” album project, a collaboration with music labels to make whole music albums into more interactive experience.
Less likely is that Apple will introduce a new touch-screen tablet device. Although tech analysts seem to agree it’s in the works, the timeline for it seems to favor an introduction in early 2010.
The timing of the event and its focus on music, however, seems to suggest some connection with The Beatles, whose music catalog has yet to appear in the iTunes store. September 9 is the date that “The Beatles: Rock Band” will launch (we’re doing a meetup that night to celebrate!) and the date that Beatles remasters will be released.
Which is why the invitation has me so confused. If there’s any connection whatsoever to the Beatles at this event, why tease to it by referencing lyrics from The Rolling Stones?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Here’s a thought: limited-edition Rolling Stones-branded iPod?
One more thing: expect Apple CEO Steve Jobs to appear in his first public event since returning to the company from a medical leave of absence. A big-media, music-related, potentially game-changing Apple industry event is exactly Steve’s style; don’t count on him to miss this one.
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The Smartphone Smackdown: transcript
In Saturday’s American-Statesman story about smartphones (and accompanying video, also below), we invited four Austinites with different devices to tell us about them.
The following is a longer transcript of that meeting, edited slightly for clarity:
American-Statesman: When did you get your phone and where did you buy it? Tell the story.
Cynthia Lux, Palm Pre owner: Hi, I’m Cynthia — I am a computer geek and I’m a gadget geek. I have had several Palms. Actually, I started out with a Handspring Visor as my PDA. Two years ago, I went to a Palm Treo 755, which I liked a whole lot but the screen was really small. I had all these people running around with iPhones making me a little bit jealous because they can get to real Web sites. When Palm announce the Palm Pre, I was really excited; I actually got mine on the first day they were available, June 4 or 6. I waited until 5 p.m. and I managed to run to the main Sprint store during my dinner break and they still had some. I showed it off to everyone that night because I’m a geek. (Laughs)
Jennifer Brown, BlackBerry owner: I’m Jennifer Brown. I have the BlackBerry. I got my phone because I started a company and I really needed a phone that was more oriented toward business and e-mail. I had a friend who had a BlackBerry; she really, really liked it. I went to the store. I had AT&T and they had the BlackBerry plan I wanted. I started off with a BlackBerry Pearl and within about three months I realized I really really liked it with all the features and I went to the Blackberry Curve immediately because it had the full keyboard. And ever since then I’ve been really happy with it. I’ve thought about getting the touch-screen BlackBerry (the BlackBerry Storm) but I have not heard a lot of good things about it. So I am gonna keep what I have because I’m really happy with it.
Clay Spinuzzi, T-Mobile G1 owner: I’m Clay Spinuzzi. I have been using PDAs forever. Like Cindy, I started with the Handspring Visor. I went through PDA after PDA from there. At some point, I thought, I’ve just gotta merge these two worlds and have something that will allow me to do Web surfing real-time. I like to be connected as much as possible. I looked at the iPhone. But there’s just something inelegant about repeatedly jabbing the screen with your forefinger. i wanted to wait until the G1 came out and compare the three major platforms that were out at that point. I did and Google had me from the word go.
Chris Carter, iPhone owner: I’m Chris Carter and I’m the iPhone geek. Like several other people at the table, I tried several other platforms. I had a kinda-smartphone, the Nokia 3650 that I would tether with my Windows Mobile Pocket PC so I could surf the Web with my Pocket PC. That wasn’t the greatest solution but that was the best that I could do at the time. I tried BlackBerry after that and wasn’t quite thrilled with that. Again, that was the best option that was available at the time. When the iPhone came out, being a long-time Mac user, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I skipped the first generation. Got a 3G and used it for the past year. This past June when the 3GS came out, I actually happened to be on a vacation in New York City the day it launched. My vacation was planned ahead of a time; I’m not THAT big of a geek. I went ahead and used the online reservation system and went to the 5th Avenue store. I was one of the first 10 people who came out of the store with the 3GS to get their iPhone at that store when it launched. CNN was there with their cameras interviewing me. It was kinda cool. Never had that happened with my BlackBerry. My Wife now has the 3G. No complaints. I finally found one I’m happy with.
(Continued after the jump…)
American-Statesman: Why you like your particular phone so much?
Lux: One, I really love the community behind Palm. If you go out to the forums and things like that, there’s a lot of great people out there. They do the homebrew stuff. I work for a company where we have a very big online presence. And we have a community of people who go out and help each other and Palm has that too. It’s quite possible that all those phones have that, but I’ve never had to go use it. There’s just been so many things over the years that have made me happy about it. It’s not about who has what apps and things like that because every app comes to every platform eventually. It’s a big equal field right now; the Web OS is brand new so they’re still working on getting more apps out there. You can run an app called “Classic” and run all your old Palm apps on your phone if you really want to. It’s all there.
American-Statesman: You don’t have App Envy yet?
Lux: No. Well, I really don’t need 6,000 apps to put a picture of a lighter on my phone.
Spinuzzi: What about concerts, though?
Lux:It’s really all just about having light. It doesn’t have to be a little Bic. It’s crazy when you can flick the Bic. What’s the purpose? Because it’s COOL! I have lots of cool stuff at home.
(Carter pulls his phone and shows off the lighter app.)
Carter: I hold this up at a concert when everyone is holding up their real lighters.
(Laughs)
American-Statesman: What is it about BlackBerry that’s different?
Brown: For me, when I was looking at a phone, it was all business-related. I didn’t get a phone to start surfing the Internet or playing online or any of that stuff. So for me it was what kind of phone is gonna give me the best results for e-mail, my online calendar. I can sync between Outlook and my phone and that’s a great way for me to store contacts. So that’s how I started with BlackBerry. And for me, for those purposes, I think it does a really good job. I get e-mails quickly, my calendar is right there and it syncs up with my contacts. You can put every piece of information there that you need. For me, it wasn’t really about the Internet. And the only apps I use are… “Pac-Man” (laughs around the table), Facebook and Twitter. And the GPS. And I use the memo pad. For me, it’s not really about the app. For me, the reason I use the BlackBerry was it’s the most business-friendly phone that I was able to find. And also, too, when I bought this, the iPhone was still $400 or $500. This was a lot more reasonable than that was. I picked up this phone and I understood it. I didn’t have any problems with how it was gonna work. With the iPhone, that was really the only other thing I compared it to — how am I gonna learn to use a Mac operating system when I’ve never used it before? So for me it was easy, it was quick to use, it was affordable, and for business purposes, it worked like a charm. The only thing about my phone that I was wish it was a little bit different… in a negative sense, I wish the camera was better. Other than that, no complaints. What’s so awesome about the G1?
Spinuzzi: (To Brown) You connect your BlackBerry to your computer? Yeah, I don’t get that. It syncs automatically.
Brown: I keep it plugged in. If I get an e-mail that comes across or an appointment, it’ll automatically go into my calendar. If I’m hand-entering, I sync it up every night.
Lux: I use Yahoo at home. I use Outlook at work. Both of those sync with Plaxo. I also have my Plaxo account syncing with my Google Calendars account. And THIS syncs with Google and Facebook. They’re all synced up together, living happily.
Brown: I use Outlook for everything.
American-Statesman: But you’re talking about wireless syncing.
Spinuzzi: I’m gonna be honest here. As far as being a phone-phone, the G1 is not a great phone. Like, placing a call is unduly complicated. Receiving a call is OK.
Brown: So what’s the point?
Spinuzzi: Going through a phone tree is impossible. But I don’t care because I don’t like to use the phone. This is a little Internet device that happens to have some phone capabilities. But that does really fit the bill for me. I use all of Google’s products. They’re completely integrated. If I put something on my calendar here, it’s instantly on my Google Calendar. I can Tweet as much as I want to. I’ve got a physical keyboard. I have push notifications, e-mails, IM’s all of that other stuff. All of that is really important to me. I’m extremely mobile. I may be on the bus or at the coffee shop. I need to be able to get to all of my data as quickly as I can. Those are the big things for me.
Brown: Does everybody here pay $30 a month to have the Internet? Or is that just the BlackBerry?
Lux: Nope.
Spinuzzi: I do, too.
Carter: I do.
American-Statesman: How much is each of your monthly bills?
Lux: Sprint has the Everything Plan. You can get the cheap version or the expensive version and I have the cheap version. It gives me 450 minutes, but it gives me unlimited data. Before I moved up to the Pre, it was about $55 a month. My plan actually moves it up to about $70 a month. I had to upgrade to a 3G phone. I made the manager explain to me in detail before I did it. I don’t mind upgrading to the technology, but I want them to give me a reason for doing it.
Brown: My phone bill runs about $147 a month and I know that because I paid it today. (Whistles and disbelief around the room.) But I don’t have a home phone, so I pay $99 a month. I talk anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 minutes a month. I love to talk on the phone.
Spinuzzi: Are you kidding?
Brown: No, I’m dead serious. If y’all ever see me around town, this little thing will be hanging on my ear. I do, I talk a lot on my phone. For $100, I get absolutely unlimited minutes. For $10 a month, I get unlimited texts and I pay the $30 for the Internet, the data plan and a little bit of taxes. It’s through AT&T. My phone bill is expensive, but it’s worth it because I talk on the phone a lot. (To Spinuzzi) How much is your bill?
Spinuzzi: We’re on a Family Plan so it’s about $110 together. We jailbroke an iPhone for my wife. She’s pretty happy with it. We’re on T-Mobile.
Carter: Since my wife now has an iPhone, too, we have a Family Plan. My total bill is $172. We have $30 a month for each of our iPhones (for data). $30 unlimited text package for everybody on the Family Plan. And then 500 or 600 minutes. We don’t use our phones a lot to talk to people who aren’t on AT&T.
Lux: I was sad when I was told I had to move to one of Sprint’s unlimited plans with 450 minutes. My old plan was 200 minutes and I had unlimited text and unlimited data. And I was very unhappy having to spend another extra $15 a month. And I have these 450 minutes that don’t roll over and I don’t use them! It was annoying. After I made the manager explain it to me, then I said, “Now I’ll buy it.” As long as you explain it and it’s not just because you felt like it.
American-Statesman: What does your phone do better than any other phone in the room?
Lux: Really, they’re all, I think, on a fairly even balance. Android and Apple have more apps out there. Palm is working on the catch-up because this is first-gen. Some do video, some don’t. Some have better cameras. It’s all in what makes you happy, really. For the Pre, I really appreciate the fact that you can switch apps pretty easily. The little card-shuffle thing (switching applications) is pretty easy.
American-Statesman: And they’re all still running in the background?
Lux: Yes.
Carter: I am envious of that feature.
Brown: For me, it’s e-mail. It’s being able to put you here and put you there in a folder and do this and do that. It’s e-mail for business for me that I think makes the BlackBerry rock.
Carter: It is a good dedicated e-mail/calendar.
Spinuzzi: They have that legacy momentum, Exchange out of the box.
Carter: All the IT guys are used to them and aren’t afraid of them like the iPhone and G1.
Lux: And BlackBerry has that security thing going on, too.
Brown: Isn’t that what the President uses?
Lux: He’s got that $8,000, uber-secure one.
Spinuzzi: For me, I like that (the G1) has a physical keyboard and total Google integration. The way it handles notifications is really nice, too. I don’t like the idea of being interrupted in the middle of something with a dialogue box. It’s the most elegant.
Lux: The way Palm does it is it’s a little notification down at the bottom you can side-swipe.
Spinuzzi: I never hook this up to anything except to power it up, which I have to do frequently.
Lux: I’m on Sprint and everyone in the world is on AT&T. I remember being at South by Southwest and everyone with AT&T couldnt’ get online and I could. I had my Treo then. I’ll be curious to see how that goes next year.
Carter: (Rhetorically) What does (the iPhone) do better?
Lux: It’s preeeeetty.
Carter: It comes in black and white… (laughs) I spend a lot of time on the Web, so that was a huge selling point for me. Safari and being able to see pages how they actually look and not the dumbed-down mobile version you see on the BlackBerry.
Brown: I can flip back and forth between the mobile version and the real version.
Carter: I liked having the Wi-Fi on there. I like a lot of the apps that are available. I use a stock app that does a lot of the stuff that the desktop stock apps used to do. I can carry it in my pocket now.
Spinuzzi: Don’t forget the lighter.
Carter: I like the lighter. I don’t have the 5,000 lighter apps. Nor do I have iFart.
American-Statesman: What do you use the most? What apps are most indispensable?
Carter: I rarely… it’s maybe less than 50 minutes a week that I actually spend on the phone, if that. most of my friends if you try to call them, they don’t answer the phone. If you text them, they reply back right away. I text most of the time. Most of my usage is texting, Twitter (Tweetie or Tweetdeck) and my stock app that I use. And e-mail a couple of times a day. The stock app is called iStock Manager. It works with my Ameritrade account. I have a Mophie Juice Pack to extend the battery. It doubles the battery life. I also use Facebook.
Lux: I have a case and a hard case. I rarely use it. I end up sticking this in my pocket all the time.
Carter: Mine stays in my pocket.
Brown: This sucker has been swimming, it’s been dropped. It’s still kicking.
Spinuzzi: E-mail, SMS, Web browsing almost constantly and Twitter, those are really the big ones. I also use Google Maps a lot when I’m traveling. I love seeing that blue dot on places. I use Twidget (A Twitter app) and Twit To go.
Brown: I use TwitterBerry. I’m a big Facebook person; I use the Facebook app for BlackBerry and I think it is awesome. I talk on the phone a lot and get really good reception. And I use e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and “Pac-Man.”
Lux:: A lot of what I use is e-mail messaging. I do actually make calls from my phone. I do use Facebook but they don’t have a Facebook app. I use Facebook Mobile which I’m not real happy with. I have two Twitter apps, Tweet and Spazz. I haven’t ever played with Spazz because I like Tweet a whole lot. I use the Palm e-mail app. Unlike the old e-mail app on Palm OS, it works great. It syncs all my e-mails. Since it also syncs with your Google Calendar and Gmail and your Facebook contacts, I can keep everything synced up. I sync my Yahoo Calendar also via Plaxo. Everything’s connected and it makes me happy. And I play a lot of Sudoku because it’s the only decent game we have at the moment. There’s a new app too. I haven’t tried yet because I haven’t had a reason to… It actually allows you to accept credit card payments via your phone. I do photography and crafts. It is secure: GoPayment.
American-Statesman: What doesn’t your phone do that you wish it did?
Lux: I don’t have a Bic! (Laughs) I’m waiting for more of the official apps. Database apps I used to use that aren’t there yet. Some tweaks to the apps that are already there. All in all, it’s a great first-generation product and I knew it was first-generation when I bought it. They’ve been pretty consistent about getting operating system and software flashes that you download wirelessly on a regular basis. I’m just waiting for the greatness.
Brown: For me the one thing I wish is that it had a little bigger screen. I think that’s a shortfall on a BlackBerry on this particular model. As far as apps go, I don’t think you buy a BlackBerry for applications. If apps and games and cool features and gadgets is your thing, you buy an Apple. If you want a good, hearty business phone, you buy a BlackBerry. I wish I had a bigger screen and a better camera.
Lux: It makes me miss my Treo. I don’t have a way to go up, down, side to side. I don’t like the roller ball which is why I went with the Treo over the BlackBerry. I miss the jog button that I had on my Treo. I miss that very much.
Spinuzzi: It would always be nicer to have a bigger screen and a longer battery life. I wouldn’t mind it being a little thinner than this. This is a bit thick for your pocket. I hear they’ll have an official Facebook app out this week so maybe I’ll go back to Facebooking.
Carter: For my purposes, not really. I actually like not having a physical keyboard. I can stealthily type during a meeting without it going ‘click click click.” Plus, you tap enough on the keys your finger starts getting sore (on BlackBerry). A couple of people I work with got RSI from using their BlackBerry too much. It’s got resistance. As far as things I would like to have that it doesn’t — longer battery life maybe. I’m pretty happy with it now that they added video capability. A little better camera; it does better in low-light. No real complaints that I can think of.
American-Statesman: Is there peer pressure from a spouse or significant other to have the same phone?
Brown: I’m not married. I have a significant other. He has an iPhone.
Lux: I am the only one in my family with a Smartphone. I did give my old PDA to my sister and she was very happy with it.
American-Statesman: Are you the peer pressure person in the family?
Lux: I am the techno-geek in the family. I have four video game systems and at least three computers in my house and I’m single.
Brown: For me with the BlackBerry when it comes to cool phones, i’m the least cool. People say, don’t you want an iPhone? They do this, they do that, they’re so pretty! Three or four years ago BlackBerry, was all cool and new. Now it’s like the Nokia I had 12 years ago in high school. I think that for me a lot of people always ask me why don’t you have an iPhone? It’s not anything personal with the iPhone it’s just I’m happy with what I have.
Spinuzzi: My wife has an iPhone. She got a regular phone because all she wanted to do was text. It turned out her phone was a poor texting phone. We bought a used iPhone and jailbroke it, put it on the T-mobile network. It’s a 3G. She cant’ use the 3G; the bandwidth is wrong for this carrier. She’s on EDGE. It turns out T-Mobile has a Department of Unsupported Devices which seems like an oxymoron. She’s pretty happy with it. She’s not a fanatic. She says, “I like this better than your G1; it’s too complicated.” And it IS complicated. I’m happy with it. It does exactly what I need it to do.
Carter: My wife has my former iPhone 3G. Before that, she had a slider Sony Ericsson phone. She was perfectly happy with it until she got my hand-me-down iPhone and now she loves it.
Lux: We’ve all been talking so much about texting and Twitter and Facebook. Used to be I would never text on my old phones. I loved the clam-shells. That’s the only thing I hate about smartphones is you can’t get a clamshell. I’m always putting it in my pocket and managing to set something off.
American-Statesman: What do you think your next phone will be?
Lux: It depends on who comes out with that next. It WON’T be an Apple product. I dislike the proprietariness of Apple where you have to use iTunes and I hate iTunes.
Brown: I LOVE iTunes!
Lux: Oh, I despise iTunes. I had MusicMatch Jukebox for a long time. Then it got bought out and killed. I still run my old MusicMatch. (My new phone) might be Palm. I had looked at the Google Android, then they announced the Palm product. It really depends. Pretty much every two years on my birthday I get a new phone.
Brown: I am probably gonna stay with BlackBerry. i’m really happy. I can’t get the BlackBerry touchscreen with AT&T. It’s something I’ve heard really mixed reviews about with the Storm. I would probably be wiling to try it, maybe, if it was offered through AT&T. I’m gonna stay with what I have and we’ll see. I’m really happy with it.
Spinuzzi: I’m pretty happy with the operating system. The hardware — it’s an HTC phone — HTC is the manufacturer. If I can get something that’s lighter, that’s speedier, that’s a little more solid but still has a physical keyboard I’ll consider it , no matter which carrier has it. The fact that it’s all integrated just works for what I do. The one thing I really miss about my old feature phone is texting one-handed. T9 predictive text? I got so good with that.
Carter: Probably whatever the next iPhone is. I’m happy with it. I’m a long-time Mac user. It works and integrates with the applications and the platform I use. It doesn’t take any extra work to get things up and running. It kinda works out of the box.
Lux: It was, in fact, the iPhone that made me jealous enough to go get a smartphone and made me want to get on the real Internet with my phone.
Carter: As far my friends and families — my friend who sells PC parts on eBay — always teases me about being a Mac user. He’s always ribbing me about it. He ended up buying an iPhone. Now he loves his iPhone. Once I bought mine, my parents and my brother who’ve never had smartphones before all ended up buying iPhones recently.
Lux: I’ve gotten plenty of peer pressure from not having an iPhone from my friends.
Brown: You can say that Apple put together a great marketing campaign to build the hype.
Lux: Everybody likes their phone for a reason. Not a single one of these phones does every single thing I want it to do. If one did then maybe I’d jump ship. I’ve been on my plan for my service company for umpteen years. They don’t have a GSM phone which would be nice. When I go to Europe, I don’t take my phone. I think it’d be cool to have certain options that you don’t have. You go with what you like.
Brown: Everybody likes their phones for different reasons. You know how you can build a Dell Computer? It’s too bad you can’t build a cell phone completely custom-designed. I want the screen from Apple and for it to be that size… The likelihood of that happening and for it being cheap isn’t likely. You used to have bag phones. When I was in high school, my mom would say, “Here, Jennifer, take the bag phone with you!” We really have come a long way in phones. In 10 years, it’ll be amazing to see where we’re at.
Spinuzzi: I think most of our phones are gonna be able to do this stuff in the future. I think feature phones are gonna start disappearing. I think all of these are great phones. I could see myself using pretty much any one of these for different reasons, I’m just happy with the one I got.
Carter: Different phones work for different people. I don’t give anybody a hard time or try to convince them to buy an iPhone. If it works for them and they want to ask me about it, I’ll be glad to tell them about it. I carried a BlackBerry and an iPhone. I kept them separated. BlackBerry is a good dedicated e-mail and calendar device, if that’s all you really care about. It’s definitely not as intuitive to pick up and use like the iPhone.
Brown: I think the really awesome thing about all these phones is it’s getting so affordable. It’s really gone from you having to be the CEO of the company —
Lux: It was executive jewelry, really.
Brown: Yes! With this I can go to the beach and go on vacation. Do I have to check my e-mail every hour to see what buzzed in? Sure. I’m a small business owner. I couldn’t go on vacation without this. I’d be tethered to the office. This gives me affordable freedom. That’s worth $147 a month for me.
Spinuzzi: When do you turn your phone off?
Brown: Never!
Spinuzzi: I mute it and that’s it.
Carter: I have to remind myself to reboot it once in a while. I mute it.
Lux: This is why I love the Palm: It has a ringer switch.
Brown: Mine’s my alarm clock.
Lux: I usually leave it on in the other room.
Spinuzzi: I think the only time the phone is off my person is at the gym.
Lux:Every phone, not just smartphones, have a camera. That’s a big issue.
Brown: I would say I never (turn it off).
Carter: Mine’s on 24/7. My BlackBerry I had programmed to turn off every night at midnight and then came on at 7 in the morning.
Lux: How many of your phones actually turn off? This, it doesn’t turn off.
Brown: Mine turns off if I drop it and the battery flies out.
Carter: My wife goes to bed before I do. Sometimes she wakes up at night and she has found my holding my iPhone, asleep.
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Meet/chat up a BioWare developer tomorrow
Game emporium Gamerz Videogame Exchange, which we’ve written about before, is hosting an event tomorrow for those interested in breaking into the games industry (or those just curious about what it’s like behind the scenes.)
Lou Talamo, a senior environmental artist at BioWare in Austin, will speak and greet at 3 p.m. Saturday. Talamo has worked on games including “Tarzan Untamed,” “Area 51” and “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.” He’s also worked in film.
The store is located inside Lakeline Mall near the cinema, on the lower level.
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New receiver, mo’ problems (Part 2)
One of the more frustrating conversations you can have by phone is trying to help someone figure out why components in a home theater system aren’t turning on or displaying the way they’re supposed to.
A few days after I’d installed our new Pioneer receiver and switched many of the connections and inputs to a more efficient HDMI setup, our Logitech Harmony remote control still wasn’t set up perfectly and I’d get phone calls from my wife about something that wasn’t working.
It wouldn’t have been an emergency except that we have a 2-year-old and part of her afternoon routine after daycare is to come home, eat an early dinner and watch one of her favorite movies, “Bolt.”
When the DVR wasn’t displaying properly to show Noggin on the TV or the receiver would turn off instead of switching to the PlayStation to play her DVD, she’d throw a fit. My wife would call, ragged, asking what was up with our setup, which had been working fine before I “upgraded” to the new receiver.
A couple of things were happening: the remote didn’t have all the buttons customized as I’d taken the time to do for commands from old receiver.
Also — and I didn’t figure this out until much later — our TV was set up to control other devices via HDMI connections. That means that every time the remote told the receiver to switch to a particular input and sent similar commands to the TV, the TV was also sending out commands of its own to the receiver to do the same thing, resulting in the Pioneer shutting down or switching to the wrong input. It wasn’t until I disabled that option that I stopped getting weird shut-downs and input mistakes on the receiver.
Another big wrinkle that I’m still ironing out is that HDMI works differently than traditional composite (red/white/yellow)/RCA or S-video connections. HDMI is digital and it requires devices on both sides of the cable to do a “handshake” before transmitting information. It works a little like this:
Receiver using traditional A/V cable: (Knock knock) Hey, TV, I have come to your door to deliver this signal.
TV: Well, I’m a little busy right now.
Receiver using traditional A/V cable: OK. Well I’m just gonna stand here and keep delivering this signal until you’re ready for it. I could wait for hours if you like.
TV: That’s very sweet, thanks.
But with HDMI cables, it’s a bit different:
Receiver using HDMI: (Knock knock) I have a digital package for you.
TV: I’m not quite dressed yet. Could you leave it at the door?
Receiver using HDMI: Nope, sorry, I need a signature.
TV: Ah. Well, could you come back later?
Receiver using HDMI: Maybe. We’ll see. Probably not.
TV: But…
Receiver using HDMI: See ya!
This became a problem with us when the receiver would switch to the correct HDMI input before the TV fully turned on (it’s a Sony rear projection TV and takes a few seconds to warm up). The remote would turn on the DVR, the signal would be transmitted, but the TV would miss the handshake and would stay blank even though we could clearly hear the audio from the DVR through the receiver.
Most of the calls from my wife were about the TV staying blank while the DVR or Blu-ray player were trying to display.
That’s what I’ve been playing with lately. The Harmony remote’s software allows you not only to determine what order devices are turned on, but also the actual timings between commands being sent and how long it waits for a device to turn on before sending them.
I’m still fine-tuning the timings for commands and the order devices turn on. We’ve had fewer and fewer blank screens as I keep experimenting and the receiver really does sound very good (even if I can rarely crank it up).
HDMI is great for transmitting audio and video over a single cable, but it can also be flaky in certain situations and cause a good deal of frustration. I’m glad Harmony has robust “Help” options in the remote and in its software because some of this stuff is not easy to figure out.
It’s about 100 times harder to figure out over the phone.
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Xbox 360 Elite drops to $299; 360 Pro is no more
As expected, Microsoft has announced it’s dropping the price of its flagship Xbox 360 Elite game console to $299.
That comes on the heels of a price drop from competitor Sony, which is now selling its PlayStation 3 for that price. Sony is also introducing a smaller PS3 called the “PS3 Slim” for $299.
The Elite is a black console that comes with a controller, headset and 120 GB hard drive. The other version of the Xbox 360 is a stripped-down “Arcade” edition that does not include a hard drive. It costs $199. The Xbox 360 Pro, which was $299, is being phased out and will cost $250 until supplies run out. That model has a 60-GB hard drive. The new pricing goes into effect on Friday.
Game sales have softened over the last few months and both companies will be expecting the price cuts to spur holiday sales. Nintendo, which sells the Wii for $250, has announced no price cut on its console, despite dips in sales.
News of the Elite price drop was leaked early in a Wal-Mart circular that listed the price reduction.
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New receiver, mo’ problems (Part 1)
There’s a school of thought in upgrading computers and electronics that tech geeks frequently ignore: if it ain’t broke, don’t go trying to fix it (or upgrade it).
It’s why many of us have stuck with Windows XP instead of moving on to Windows Vista and why some people would rather stick with an old Palm Pilot for appointments and contact information than upgrade to a snazzy new smartphone.
In upgrading my home theater A/V receiver from an 11-year-old Sony model to a new Pioneer receiver, I knew I was taking a risk in upsetting the delicate balance of cables and devices in our living room cabinet.
One late Friday night when my wife and daughter were asleep, I got back there in the thick of wires and connections and got to installing. I used my handy labelmaker to make sure I didn’t mix up speaker wires and I was able to eliminate about half of the cables back there by switching over to HDMI, which can carry audio and video signals in one cable. In the end, I had a box full of extraneous wire, an old Sony receiver to get rid of and a pretty great-sounding new receiver.
There were a few small glitches. My Xbox 360 (an older model with no HDMI) couldn’t display 1080p video through its component cables via the receiver. I had to connect the 360 directly to my TV for that, but the sound still goes to the receiver and everything works fine now with the game console.
The included microphone on the receiver, which can set detect the room’s acoustics and adjust speaker settings automatically, is incredibly loud. It’s like setting off fireworks or watching “Rambo” full-blast in your living room. I wasn’t able to even use this setup option until my wife and daughter were out of the house.
But the rewards were pretty immediate, even aside from the reduction in cables and clutter. The new receiver works well with an iPod; it has a USB port and can display title and artist information as well as album art on the TV. It’s awful for video, though. Any video I tried to play off the iPod was in a tiny box on the screen and stuttered so badly it was unwatchable. But for listening to music, it’s a great setup.
I invested in a Sirius/XM Connect tuner ($29, refurbished, on eBay), and can now hear satellite radio through the receiver and — as with the iPod option — see artists, song titles and other information on the TV screen. It works great, but adding a second tuner to my Sirius/XM account was pricier than I expected: another $8.99 a month plus an activation fee.
One of the main reasons I got the receiver — to enjoy Blu-ray’s high-def audio options — has been the best reward for upgrading. Even though I have a 5.1 speaker setup and not a 7.1 set, formats like Dolby Digital TrueHD, DTS Master Audio and even uncompressed Dolby Digital all sound fantastic. Uncompressed Dolby Digital in particular is surprising: movies I’ve seen over and over now sound richer and more detailed.
When you access the PlayStation 3’s display options while watching a Blu-ray movie, it’s easy to see how much bandwidth is being used to transmit the audio. It’s easily pumping out 7 or 8 times the amount of audio data now over the HDMI connection than it was capable of doing over the previous optical cable with regular Dolby Digital.
Stuff like that warms my geek heart.
We watched “The Pixar Short Films Collection” with uncompressed Dolby Digital and, while it might have been my imagination, I definitely could hear the difference from the regular DD 5.1 feed. Things were good. I was even thinking about adding on those two extra speakers for 7.1 nirvana (if I could just figure out where on the walls to hang them and how to get them wired).
But there was one problem looming and it was a big one: since we bought a Logitech Harmony 880 remote years ago, we’ve managed to get the settings on it exactly right to control all of our devices (except for the PS3; more on that in a bit). It worked like a charm and never caused problems.
Little did we know the Harmony Remote was going to become the biggest problem in our new dream home theater setup. Things were about to get ugly…
(To Be Continued.)
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It’s on: ‘Beatles: Rock Band’ meetup on 9/9/09
We’ve been planning this for a while, but I’m pleased to announce things have been firmed up: On Sept. 9, the release date of “The Beatles: Rock Band,” we’re inviting all of you to come out for a Digital Savant Magical Mystery Meet-Up at Opal Divine’s North.
It’ll take place at happy hour time, around 6:30-9 p.m.
There will be music, drink specials to salute the Fab Four and a copy of “Beatles: Rock Band” on hand for you to check out and play. (Bonus: We’ll be giving away a new copy of the full game set at the end of the event.)
We’ve been wanting to do a Digital Savant event in a while to thank all the readers for supporting this blog over the years and the release of this game seemed like a great time to do it. Hope to see you there. I’ll post more details about the event closer to the date. Keep your calendar open for Wednesday, Sept. 9.
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The Linkdown for Monday, Aug. 24
School starts today, which means there’ll be shorter lines when The Linkdown goes to the candy store in the middle of the day to buy delicious Sour Patch Kids in one-pound quantities.
What? You don’t do that?
Here are some tech links of interest:
- This Texas online harassment bill (HB 2003) becomes a law on Sept. 1. It applies to text messaging, social networking and e-mail.
- First, Keyboard Cat is used in a Texas ad for Gov. Rick Perry, then we hear about an lolcats musical. It’s gone too far, hasn’t it?
- The official Wikipedia Mobile iPhone app. (iTunes link)
- Demand Media takes a stake in CoverItLive, which we use on this site for our live chats.
- Yesterday’s Back To School Tech Gifts package from the paper. Wish we could have included Dell’s new Nickelodeon-themed netbook, but it’s not out until October.
- Sony and Best Buy debut the “Altus” line of electronics.
- Droid Security: virus and hacker protection for Android phones.
- “Skanks in NYC” blogger outed, seeks legal action.
- Verizon drops $79 million to beef up its Texas services and coverage.
- NCSoft’s much-anticipated MMO “Aion” has gone gold.
- Apple’s Snow Leopard OS upgrade will be out early, Friday to be specific. I didn’t think there’d be an actual cat on the box.
- The Puppy Channel!
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What’s up with the gaming recession?
Recession-proof? Says who?
Said me, last year. While the rest of the world seemed to be slipping into a recessionary hole, the video game industry was still flying high in late 2008, with strong holiday sales and never-ending momentum for Nintendo’s Wii console.
In fact, it seemed that the video game industry was becoming the best entertainment bargain for people forced to stay at home and limit spending. You can spend 40 or 50 hours on a single video game, something that only the most obsessive DVD-extras watchers do with movies.
But the news has changed. The video game industry has taken a hit this summer, specifically a 29-percent dip in hardware and software sales for July. What happened?
A lot of it, I think, has to do with the games themselves. Last summer, we had several huge blockbusters out on shelves, including “Grand Theft Auto 4,” “Metal Gear Solid 4,” “Wii Fit,” “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” (which turned out to be a disappointment), “Lego Indiana Jones” and “Spore,” not to mention the usual suspects like “Madden” and “Tiger Woods PGA Tour.” It was enough to inspire me to write a story called “The Summer Games” for the newspaper last year because of the sheer number of big titles introduces in the summer of ‘08.
This summer, the biggest hits have been Nintendo’s “Wii Sports Resort,” EA’s “NCAA Football” and older Nintendo games still clinging to the sales charts like “Wii Fit” and “Mario Kart.”
While there’ve been a few pleasant surprises like “Plants vs. Zombies,” “Ghostbusters” and “Punch-Out!!” none of them were the giant blockbusters on the scale of what we saw in 2008. These are games that did well, but are don’t seem to have helped affect hardware sales as big games did last year. Arguably the biggest game of the summer was “The Sims 3,” but that game is limited to PCs. PC exclusives don’t tend to sell as well as games that ship on a variety of game consoles.
More significantly, the Nintendo Wii is no longer selling like the hotcake console it was last year. It had a great run, but it’s now easy to find the Wii on store shelves; demand has dipped significantly. Nintendo has the top selling home and portable consoles of this video game generation, and any hit they take will affect the entire games industry.
And while music video games like “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero 4” that have been the darlings of the games industry, they’ve been seeing sales dips, too. Interest in music rhythm games will no doubt be revived by “The Beatles: Rock Band,” but I’m not sure that they’ll top that success anytime after that.
At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest news was not big games due out in 2009, but new technologies for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that will bring camera-based motion controlled games. Target date? Sometime in mid-to-late 2010. Those devices may change the landscape of gaming for home consoles when they arrive, but that’s going to be a long wait.
But the news isn’t all bad.
While the games industry has taken a summer beating, things are looking bright for the fall and holiday seasons. The PlayStation 3 just got a long-overdue $100 price cut. There are rumors that a small Xbox 360 price cut may be next. (Don’t expect a $199 Wii this holiday season; Nintendo is usually slow to embrace price changes on its consoles, especially when they lead the pack.)
“The Beatles: Rock Band,” “”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” “Halo 3: ODST,” “Assassin’s Creed 2,” a 2-D “Super Mario Bros.” game for the Wii, a Zelda game for the Nintendo DS, and “Uncharted 2” are all going to be huge sellers, some across multiple consoles. “Madden NFL 10” is already out and “Batman: Arkham Asylum,” which fills the void left by the lack of a “Dark Knight” game last year, hits stores next week.
Although “Bioshock 2” was pushed back to next year, there’s still plenty to play later this year. There’s a new “Left 4 Dead” game due out this holiday season, the much-anticipated rock-humor game “Brutal Legend,” a big sci-fi MMO from NCSoft called “Aion” and “Champions Online,” all coming soon.
Add to that lots of smaller sleeper hits like the reboot of the LucasArts classic, “Monkey Island” which seems to be doing well on PCs and the Wii as a downloadable series of games.
Maybe people aren’t buying as many game consoles as they did last year, but that’s to be expected as the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii start to show a little age. It’s not surprising that it always comes back to the games — if there aren’t enough big AAA-list titles out there, console and software sales will flag. But if there’s one thing we can count on during the holidays is that game publishers will put their best foot forward and flood the market with the most-anticipated titles.
Will it be enough to rebound the games industry? Maybe not all the way, but people who love video games won’t be lacking options by the time we hit November and December.
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Geek Squad gets in on girls in tech
Seeing first-hand what the great instructors at Girlstart do here in Austin has made me a long-time proponent of programs that introduce girls to tech.
(Having a daughter of my own has only reinforced the notion.)
Best Buy’s Geek Squad has partnered with the Girl Scouts and is holding a Summer Tech Camp this week in Austin. Running through tomorrow, the camp focuses on girls and includes activities like building computers, working with music and digital imaging, and learning about social networking and Internet safety.
About 60 students from 6th to 10th grade are participating and Geek Squad workers are volunteering for the camp.
While tech affects all our lives, middle- and high-school aged girls are especially at risk to get turned away from math- and science-based courses and careers. There’s a dearth of women in the hard tech world and programs like this are meant to encourage girls to take a look at fields like engineering and computer science.
Kudos to Geek Squad and the Girl Scouts for putting the program together. We’ll give you an update when we hear how the camp turned out.
Edited to add: photos from today’s events. Instructor Zak Holder teaches a class on “PC Build.”
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Sony introduces new PS3 Slim, less ridiculous pricetag
Photo courtesy Sony Computer Entertainment Inc..
Today, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. announced the reality of the long-rumored “PS3 Slim,” a thinner, lighter version of its PlayStation 3 game console/Blu-ray player. The previous PS3, which sits in my home theater cabinet like a gargantuan tank, has been due for a redesign for a while, but the more welcome news is that Sony is finally dropping the price of its flagship consumer electronics device to $299. The news was announced in a news conference earlier today.
While the move feels about a year too late, it will probably spur some strong sales going into the holiday season. While the PS3 has not had a sustained lineup of blockbuster games and lags far behind the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 in terms of popularity, the PS3 is a solid piece of hardware and a very good Blu-ray player.
There had been rumors that Sony would announce a $50 price cut during May’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, but that wasn’t to be. The $100 price cut today is a bold move, but also very necessary: Sony is competing against the $250 Wii and the Xbox 360, which starts at $200 (to be fair, that the version with no hard drive). Sony has long touted what it says is the technological superiority of its console, but it’s as if the company thought it was competing against high-end consumer LCD TVs and Blu-ray players, not the incredibly competitive world of video game consoles. You can dress the PS3 up however you like, but it is first a game console.
It seems Sony finally got the message.
Sony dropped the price of its current 80-Gigabyte PS3 model to $299, which will be the same price of the PS3 Slim, which will be equipped with a 120-GB hard drive. It debuts in early September, the company said. The current 160-GB version of the PS3 dropped in price to $399, effective today.
Sony also announced it will position its PSP (PlayStation Portable) system as an e-reader with a “digital reader.” It’s partnering with publishers to offer downloadable comics. Sony is also introducing bite-sized games that can be downloaded to the PSP and its successor, the forthcoming “PSP Go” system. The “Minis,” as they’ll be called, are downloadable games under 100 Megabytes.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Sony’s CEO and President Jack Tretton discuss the news below. He wants to make your wallet less sad:
Edited to add: I just realized what the PS3 Slim reminds me of: it looks just like a black Trapper Keeper!
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Pimp Your Panel Picker!
With the Panel Picker going live on the South By Southwest Interactive Web site, the lobbying has begun. Although the Picker is not the sole criteria by which panels for next year’s South by Southwest Interactive are chosen, they do carry weight, so those who took the time to submit panels want your votes.
Already on Twitter and Facebook, I’m seeing lots of post from people who want your vote. Why not give them a place to do some hard-core lobbying? You can only do so much self-promoting in the space of a Tweet or status update.
Here’s the deal: if you’re promoting a Panel Picker panel, post here in the comments telling us why we should vote for it. The rest of us can ask questions, offer suggestions or feedback or tell you why we are/aren’t voting for your panel in a shame-free Internet zone. Don’t be shy. Give us the hard sell. You may link directly to your panel’s page where everyone else can vote.
Sound good? Get cracking. Tell us why your panel is going to be awesome.
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On your mark. Get set. Panel pick!
As we said previously, the South by Southwest Interactive ‘10 Panel Picker went live today.
Not only can you participate in selecting Interactive panels, but this year Film and Music have also been added to the mix.
I saw some reports earlier today on Twitter from people saying they were having trouble on the site, possibly due to a rush of traffic, but from what I can see on my end, things seem to be running fine now. What do you think of the panels? Have you already made your picks?
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Austin tech meet-ups: too much of a good thing?
I’ll keep this brief because it’s Friday and we should all be going home right now.
Something’s been bugging me the last few weeks as I’ve looked at the calendar of social media-related and tech-related meetups (most of which I can’t attend because I live way out of town and have a toddler): are there are too many of them happening?
Except for the organizers of Tweetups, high tech happy hours and other such events, it’s always been considered a good thing to have options on a typical Thursday night in Austin. Sure, it’s sometimes tough to pick which event to go to, but it’s fun to hop from one event to the next and see familiar people.
I’ve been thinking, though, that as more events become regular happenings as Austin’s tech social scene evolves if we’re not in danger of the old silo effect. When there are enough regular tech events happening up north and near downtown and enough events catering to social media people, engineers, serial start-up starters and other like-minded individuals, so we run the risk of these disparate groups losing the interaction that a single, large mixer might bring.
If you work and live up north, there are enough events now that you never need to come downtown to socialize. The same with events like Social Media Club and the various Twitter-driven meetups I’m seeing lately: you don’t really have to attend more general tech evening events if you’re already seeing the people you want to see.
Except for South by Southwest Interactive, which always seems to bring the big tossed salad bowl of crowds, I’m wondering if these smaller, specialized tech meetups are hurting the Austin tech scene more than they’re helping.
But maybe I’m overthinking it, since I don’t get to go to very many of them in the first place.
What do you think?
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The Linkdown for Thursday, August 13
Yesterday’s splash of sudden, furious rain first elated and then disappointed The Linkdown. Where’s the rain today? Truth be told, The Linkdown is getting tired of being indoors, shielded from 105-degree heat. But at least it’s useful for collecting the best tech-related Web links for you:
- The Austin Game Developers Conference keynote will be John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment on September 16th. How are those “Free Realms” going?
- A tech company called Software Advice has moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Austin and wants you all to come to an party at 714 Congress Ave. tonight!
- Speaking of parties, there’s a New Media Labs-organized Tweetup this evening, 5:30 p.m. at Iron Cactus North.
- San Antonio-based USAA bank introduced an iPhone app that allows you to deposit by taking a photo of a the check and e-mailing it. The future is now! $1.5 million has already been deposited using this method, USAA told me by e-mail.
- AT&T is offering tips on how to avoid scams like Cramming, Slamming and SMiShing, which is new to us.
- Sept. 8 is the deadline for The Economist’s Media Convergence Competition. Submit your brilliant idea.
- Slacker.com is giving away free BlackBerry Curve phones (with two-year contract).
- A reader asked me to alert you to Card Call, an app that allows you to use Google Voice with your iPhone without jailbreaking.
- There’s a new dashboard update out for the Xbox 360. Check out the group Netflix viewing and other new features.
- Seemingly good deal: $49 for a year of Sports Illustrated, a John Madden DVD and a copy of “Madden NFL 10” for any console. Just beware the auto-renewal when your subscription expires.
- A new RF remote for those who use AT&T’s U-Verse service.
- The Engage! 2010 Expo, organized out of Austin but taking place February in New York City, is looking for speakers.
- The miraculous $99 Roku box can now access MLB.TV. Yay, streaming baseball!
- Want to save the arcades? Namely, Arcade UFO here in Austin? Stride Gum shows you how you can help.
Arcade UFO owners Ryan Harvey and Crissy Knape.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Gadgets, Internet, Videogames
ISPs talk up their services at Mac User Group meeting
Last night, the Capitol Mac Users Group invited me to check out an ISP forum for its members. Internet providers including AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Verizon (which only has broadband in a limited area of Austin) and Grande Communications were invited to come to talk to the group about their broadband services and pricing and to answer questions.
It all sprang from the the April kerfuffle over Time Warner Cable’s plan to introduce tiered billing for its Road Runner service in Austin and San Antonio, among four test markets. After a strong and sustained public outcry, the company shelved the plan, but it still left a lot of questions about how the company and its competitors are going to be expanding their services and dealing with pricing in the future.
Before the evening’s event even started, there was behind-the-scenes drama: representatives from AT&T and Grande agreed to appear, but, according to the Mac User Group, Time Warner Cable backed out of the event Tuesday afternoon. Michael Sidoric, one of the directors at large of the group, said he was told the company was “having trouble locating an appropriate person to appear.”
Jason Cardwell and Michael Pace from AT&T touted the company’s wide broadband availability, AT&T’s 100,000 Internet hotspots worldwide and the availability of AT&T 3G service in 350 markets and 3G roaming in 80 countries.
They stressed that DSL Internet connections are not shared among users they way they are on cable Internet service and that they provide a free copy of McAfee security software to customers. For those eligible for U-Verse TV service bundles, fiber optic service allows for up to 18 Mbps download speeds. The company also offers 24/7 live tech support, even on holidays.
Grande representative Roberto Chang said that while Grande is limited in the areas it covers, it is rapidly expanding and takes seriously requests through its Web site for coverage in new areas. Grande has about 145,000 customers currently and offers high-speed Internet plans that start at $15.96 (when paired with TV service).
The company also offers online backup services and “Bolt,” a service that speeds up Internet downloads significantly for the first 20 or 30 seconds, a good feature for downloading files like photos and short videos.
Verizon, which offers FIOS service, was invited to participate, but did not attend. Time Warner Cable was much-discussed. Although AT&T has tested tiered broadband service in some test markets, the representative said there are no plans to roll such pricing in Austin. Grande said, as it has in the past, that it does not base its prices on Internet usage.
AT&T also touted its expanding 3G service, beefed up in Austin, which will at some point soon offer speeds as high as 7.2 Mbps to iPhone 3GS users (the older iPhone 3G is not capable of reaching those speeds). When asked about 4G (or LTE) networks, the reps said that although that’s definitely in AT&T’s future plans, there’s still plenty of headroom in 3G, which is capable of speeds of up to 20 Mbps.
Questions from Cap Mac members mostly focused on customer support (some expressed frustration with AT&T’s phone support; one member gushed about a positive experience with a Grande Communications support experience).
iPhone wireless issues were brought up — one member said he desperately wants an iPhone, but refuses to get one until it is offered through another wireless carrier. Some in the audience said they don’t live in an area where Grande service or AT&T’s U-verse is available. Both companies said they are working to expand their coverage and serve more Austin customers.
I asked about stimulus money and whether some of that might be used to reach more areas. AT&T didn’t have an answer for this, but Chang said Grande has looked into this and that many of the areas they want to reach are not considered “Rural” and don’t qualify for some of those funds.
The biggest faux pas of the night was that both companies sent representative to a meeting of Mac users equipped with Windows laptops. I’m not a marketing or PR specialist, but this would seem to be a very bad case of not playing to your audience. Several more questions from the audience focused on the perception that tech support reps often blame the Mac computers for the Internet issues the users may have. The consensus seemed to be that companies need to do a better job supporting Mac users and making sure their tech support reps are trained in Mac OS.
The Cap Mac User Group meets monthly and has a variety of SIGs (Special Interest Groups) in areas including iPhone tips, photography, audio/video and other areas.
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Facebook acquires FriendFeed: why you really shouldn’t care
As happens now when tech news breaks, Twitter suddenly exploded with the news from TechCrunch.com that social network aggregator site FriendFeed has been acquired by Facebook.
(It was confirmed shortly thereafter by a blog post on FriendFeed.
In case you’re not familiar with it, FriendFeed allows you to share your accounts from multiple social networking sites with your friends and to quickly browse through the accounts of others, aggregating it all together in one real-time-updating stream. You could, say, include your Twitter feed, your Flickr photos, items you share on Google Reader and content from about 58 Web services.
Like Facebook, FriendFeed’s last major redesign put a major emphasis on short Twitter-like status updates. It’s no surprise that Facebook would want a more streamlined way to provide real-time wall updates to its users, something it has tried to do, but not in a particularly elegant way.
Although the acquisition would seem to give FriendFeed some sudden cachet, the truth is that FriendFeed has gained some traction since its redesign (I still get several FriendFeed friend requests a week), but not enough to make it a darling of anyone but the most committed social networking geeks. FriendFeed can be useful and elegant, but it also becomes quickly overwhelming if you follow too many people and don’t set up good filters to manage your feed. (The same could be said about Twitter and Facebook, but FriendFeed tends to dump exponentially more content at you as users share all of their sites.)
Every time I’ve tried to dive into FriendFeed, I get frustrated that I’m seeing the same posts I already view on Facebook and Twitter (and Tweetdeck, if I happen to be using it). FriendFeed has never made the case for being easier to use or more convenient than all the services it tries to replace.
I’ll be blunt: FriendFeed has just never caught on. Although many like its flavor, FriendFeed is the Sierra Mist of social networking sites. It was never going to be Sprite or 7-Up, but for many it was a perfectly acceptable substitute.
Facebook doesn’t need FriendFeed. Not really. But my guess is that, as hinted in the TechCrunch article, Facebook is looking at its long-term future and wants to bring in some of FriendFeed’s ex-Google talent among its 12 employees.
Because, honestly, Facebook is doing just fine on its own. And, while it may improve some of Facebooks more clunky import functions, it’s not a deal that sound to me like a game-changer for Facebook, Twitter, users or anyone besides FriendFeed itself.
It’s not a big deal. Unless you really, really like Sierra Mist.
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Twitter outage just another hacker day
Those hoping to get up this morning and post about their breakfast cereal of choice might have been disappointed by the slow or not-at-all access they got to Twitter and Facebook this morning.
Both sites were under denial-of-service attacks (or, more formally, “Distributed denial of service”) which seem to be taking down major Web sites quite a lot lately, including government sites, sites owned by Gawker, USA Today (more of a vandalism than denial-of-service) and others.
On Twitter and Facebook, the silence was more noticeable as gaps in timelines appeared. Of course, the moment service was restored, people began posting about the outage. Woot.com posted a blog entry (on their own site) about what they did during the Twitter outage.
It wasn’t long before ’80s director John Hughes died, giving the heavily Gen X/Y Twitter and Facebook citizens something to collectively grieve about.
It was a strange day on the Internet. But as I said elsewhere, it would not surprise me if all those hours of inactivity this morning might lead to a baby boom in our future.
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Digital bankruptcy: sometimes it’s liberating
Last week, I wrote a short piece about the feelings of anxiety you get when your DVR starts to fail and you know you may lose all the recordings that have built up that haven’t yet been watched.
My fears were confirmed when the DirecTV technician came to my house on Saturday. He made some adjustments to the dish (which was seriously out of alignment), but concluded that it was the receiver in my living that was failing. Suddenly, all those episodes of “Nurse Jackie” and “Reno-911!” and others were about to walk out the door in a cardboard box, never to return.
I panicked, but only a little. It’s summer and most of the urgent TV watching (“Lost,” “24,” “Flight of the Conchords”) had been done back in May. Everything left was stuff I might get around to someday. Maybe. In a way, I was relieved that all those old “Saturday Night Live” episodes (which, truth be told, were pretty weak last season) would not be there to trudge through. Was I really going to watch 11 episodes of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” a show I’ve gradually fallen out of love with?
Even though I didn’t declare DVR bankruptcy on purpose, it was still liberating to have all those shows off my list of things to do. As my wife succinctly put it when I told her that 8 episodes of “Desperate Housewives” she hadn’t watched were gone, “I don’t want TV watching to be homework.”
I’m starting to feel the same way about Google Reader. I follow dozens of Web sites using the RSS reader and at any one time, I usually have over 200 articles unread. If I go a day without checking it, it jumps to 500 or 600 items. On a bad week, it might creep up past 700. Skimming articles doesn’t take too long, but once my Wired and New York Times Technology feeds get past 50 unread items, is it unrealistic to assume I’ll go back and read everything someday?
I’ve been tempted to simply hit the “Mark All As Read” button and start fresh. If a story is more than a month old, how badly do I need to read it, anyway?
What stops me as that a log of blog entries were written by friends and are pieces I really do intend to go back and read, probably all at once, next time I have a free couple of hours.
But, yeah, Google Reader, like the DVR, begins to feel like work the longer stuff builds up. It can be overwhelming (and don’t even get me started on how hard it’s been to keep up with Twitter lately).
Are there technologies you struggle to catch up with? I’m pretty good about my e-mail these days, but Google Reader and my DVR are getting harder and harder to manage.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, TV
The Statesman gets Appy
Last night, the Statesman’s official iPhone application hit the iTunes App Store.
The application allows you to browse news, blogs and photo galleries (which has been difficult to do on the Flash-less iPhone) from both Statesman.com and Austin360.com, and to post stories to Twitter and Facebook right from the app.
The free iPhone application has been in the works for months and it was the first time I’ve been able to see an app developed over time — to see the tweaks and improvements that were made along the way — and to be able to enjoy the final product. I didn’t have anything to do with the development of the app — I’m no programmer. But a few of us in the newsroom did get to offer feedback and to try out early builds of the Statesman app.
There’s an official page for the app (which includes the video below). Most importantly, the staff behind the app wants to know what you think. Send feedback to iphone@statesman.com.com to tell the developers if you like the app and what you’d like to see in future updates.
We’ve been getting lots of questions about the app at tech happy hours and over Twitter, and it’s great to finally see it out there in people’s hands.
Hey, that’s here!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, Phones
UPDATED: Get ready for ‘10: SXSW Interactive site is up early
According to a post on the official South by Southwest Interactive Web site, a newly redesigned Web site was set to launch on Monday, but it looks like it got here a few days early. As of late Friday night, the SXSW site (including Music and Film) was all-new.
Registration appears to be open (at $395 for a basic Interactive badge, $920 for platinum) and the site itself has a new look. Not sure what I think of the ultra-boxy font or the orange-on-off-white blog post headlines, but part of SXSW is going with the flow, so I’ll do just that.
Go check it out and let us know in the comments whether you like the new Interactive ‘10 design.
Edited to add, Monday, Aug. 3 at 11:30 a.m.: Official word from South by Southwest is that the Panel Picker will not start next week as some had been posting on Twitter. It begins Aug. 17 and runs through Sept. 4.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, SXSW 2010
