April, 2007 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for April 2007

Looks like my prediction that the masterful mashup known as the 7-minute Sopranos would face a quick pulldown from YouTube was way off the mark — since the video actually seems to be the work of HBO insiders. As sniffed out by the … Read More »

Slow news afternoons are made for browsing forums; that’s where I’ve been for a bit today. Specifically, I was nosing about the Skype forums since I’m such a … Read More »

 
 

Who really likes using Microsoft Word to collaborate on documents? While Word has powerful built-in collaboration features, after a few rounds of edits the documents become unwieldy to read. Reviewers send an email explaining why they made a certain change, along with comments made inline in … Read More »

Jon Westfall of Pocket PC Thoughts has an intriguing review of Innobec’s SideWindow product for Windows Mobile devices. Essentially, you can utilize your handheld as a … Read More »

Piggybacking on the news of a conviction of a file sharer by the Department of Justice, SafeMedia put out a press release touting its product Clouseau “Cracks the Code to Destroy P2P Piracy.” O rly? It does not infringe on user’s privacy, while eradicating … Read More »

Amazon’s eBook reader device, the "Kindle" as it’s known to some, is getting some review time over the UK. The preliminary verdict is promising when compared to the screen quality of … Read More »

New To Mac: App Install and Uninstall

I’ve got a lot of friends who have recently purchased their first Macs. I’m always more than happy to help them get up and running and answer questions whenever they have them – I mean, I do that here for you people and I don’t … Read More »

Hitwise is acquired

Experian Group announced today it had bought online metrics provider Hitwise for $240 million in cash. Hitwise has done an exemplary job of packaging and marketing analytics by hooking them onto relevant happenings on the web. Read More »

AT&T U-verse shows signs of life

AT&T has started offering their U-verse (video) users ability to remotely schedule program recordings, over the mobile and the web, according to a company press release. Typically, our response to this would have been like any TiVo user – yawn! But then we say … Read More »

The most important post-crime aspect of the Virginia Tech tragedy is that Cho Seung-Hei couldn’t conceive of the massacre without justifying it through media. In the videos Cho mailed to NBC, he repeatedly refers to himself in the past tense. He has a meta-cognitive view of … Read More »

There’s a culture clash inside office buildings where workers from the busyness economy sit in cubicles next to workers from the burst economy — web workers. Yes, that’s right: even if you work as a corporate employee in an office building, you may still be … Read More »

Ah, that’s OK, I don’t have a Mazda anyway and I’m selling the house so I can move to Korea for a Q1P Ultra … Read More »

More Must Reads

That’s the best description I can come up with: nearly available. Akihibara News says that the product will be available soon in Korea, but there’s no clear dates or time … Read More »

During a VC presentation I demonstrated an address book feature in our product. I forgot that every VC we were talking with was in it. A list of all our potential investors went up in big letters. It helped us get the funding. *Why posture? Honesty is … Read More »

VLC Media Player 0.8.6b is now available. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, VLC is short for Video Lan Client and is one of the most versatile media players in existence today. According to the good … Read More »

The Windows Home Server beta continues to progress: build 06.00.1371 was just released for beta participants. If you missed out on the earlier beta sign-ups, but would like to participate, … Read More »

This is the first in a series of Venture Hacks articles on how to get the most out of your founder’s equity. “By the time we did the financing we had been working on [the company for] 2 years, but they only vested us a year. … Read More »

The online world (or at least that corner of it where I hang out) has recently seen several incidents in which tempers flared rather quickly. I’m starting to think that we’re reaching a tipping point where our means of rapid communication have completely outstripped the social … Read More »

Tired of downloading video content over peer-to-peer networks like eDonkey and BitTorrent? Prefer to just click ‘play’ and start munching popcorn? Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay for such a privelege — there are plenty of sites out there that make the latest … Read More »

The imminent debut of the YouTube copyright filter wasn’t the only big news to come out of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) hoedown in Vegas this week: Final Cut Upgrade: One of the hits from NAB has … Read More »

(Editor’s Note: The following piece was co-authored with Scott Karp, editor of Publishing 2.0.) One by one, the big media companies and the Internet giants have started to ante up for the big poker game over the future of the video content business. Google … Read More »

I get a lot of early announcements about upcoming products, almost always under embargo until the OEM is ready to have the product officially released.  Normally I don’t have a problem honoring … Read More »

I went ahead and closed the comments on the Joost Invites post. Thanks for all the responses – I really wish I had more than 3 to pass along at this time, as the choices were difficult. I got some good laughs out … Read More »

This morning, having trouble constructing an article to process my intense emotions about the Virginia tech shootings at NewTeeVee, I ended up cutting out most of the parts about television news and online video, feeling the real story was about mourners uniting using tools like Facebook. … Read More »

It’s been impossible not to spend hours following links to all the publicly accessible sources of information about the Virginia Tech shootings over the last couple days. Facebook and MySpace pages, LiveJournals, and Flickr give us back story and the unfiltered play-by-play. Social web … Read More »

A little South by Southwest love, a lot of mainstream press ink, and some overloaded servers have convinced Obvious to turn Twitter, its little hotshot web and SMS service, into its own company. Evan Williams’ Obvious Corp. said this week that it’s spinning off the … Read More »

Thurrott is back in action with the continuing contribution of fence riding quotes this week. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read his articles since I was a young little geek and enjoyed them. It’s just great to see someone who’s career has focused on Microsoft’s products … Read More »

Is Google feeling jilted? They just released a StumbleUpon type service and are talking about it on their site right now. The first is a recommendations button on the Google Toolbar that looks like a pair of dice. Click on the dice, and we’ll take you … Read More »

Are Skype’s plans to push users into higher-revenue calling plans starting to take hold? That might be one explanation for a surge in revenue during the past quarter, from $66 million in Q4 2006 to $79 million in the first quarter of 2007, while total … Read More »

Oh how I love Twitter since it can be faster than RSS feeds. Just read a Twitter that Josh Bancroft ‘tweeted’: he’s got a few minutes of playtime and video with a "Menlow"-based UMPC via a peer at Intel. It’s just a prototype … Read More »

The original reports that bounced around the web covering the HTC Shift, an innovative UMPC with a sliding keyboard stated that the Shift would be powered by a Via processor.  Then today it was reported that the Shift would come with one of the new Intel … Read More »

I was hoping we’d see this new 16GB flash chip with integrated controller as part of a Solid State Disk drive announcement, but Toshiba indicates that their new … Read More »

In another million dollar homepage for the YouTube generation installment, MyBowlAd is an attempt by three regular joes to appear in a Super Bowl Ad and make a little money in the process. They hope to raise $3 million, enough to purchase a … Read More »

Elgato Systems has released EyeTV 2.4, a free update which now includes one-click export for Apple TV. The feature functions in the same way as EyeTV 2′s iPod export button: select a video from the list of recordings and click the new Apple TV button in … Read More »

It’s not difficult to get business cards. Order online at some place like OvernightPrints if you’re on a limited budget, try a copy center like Copy Max for nicer card stock at a moderate price, or go with a full-service printer like Sir … Read More »

Updated: TechCrunch just reported that StumbleUpon is in talks to being acquired with AOL, Google and eBay as possible suitors. Though we have not been able to chat with folks from StumbleUpon, the social bookmarking discovery service, we have heard that eBay is the likely … Read More »

It’s not as sexy or fun as dressing all in black, but providing custom content for corporate digital displays is likely to produce a lot more NewTeeVee-type jobs in the near future, if the boom in display hardware is any indicator. That was just one … Read More »

A couple of years ago, I attended a launch event for Halo 2 in Chicago that drew a crowd from all over the country. As I was introducing myself to attendees, I asked: “What’s your name?; Where are you from?” I was expecting to find out … Read More »

Motorola CEO Ed Zander has been calling the company’s handset results “unacceptable,” with a pledge to improve performance. But it looks like it’s going to take several quarters to try to fix the problem. The company posted first quarter sales of $9.43 billion – … Read More »

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s similar question where your participation added tremendous value, it’s time for another. Lawrence asks what I think is the best UMPC on … Read More »

There are many alternatives for collaborating with distributed teams online, including such well-known Web 2.0 sites as Basecamp. But the cutting-edge nature of these sites can be a drawback for some teams: flashy user interfaces and wiki-style editing have a learning curve, and … Read More »

A report from Digitimes (via Engadget) says the Google phone is coming from HTC, as early as the end of 2007. If that’s really true, I’m not sure which I want more, iPhone or Google phone. Read More »

There is nothing like having the top job at a phone company. Whether your stock goes up or down, you still make millions. In fact you make way more than say CEO of GE or Pepsi. * In 2006, Richard Notebaert, CEO and Chairman of Qwest got … Read More »

When Roxio showed off the TiVo capabilities of Toast Titanium 8 at CES in January, there was a TiVo-themed menu style that could be used when burning DVDs. But when the product arrived, the menu style was not included. According to a poster on the TiVo … Read More »

More than 100 “Great Albums” on the iTunes Store that normally sell for $9.99 or more are now selling for $7.99 each. As Apple puts it: Did the car stereo chew up your cassette of Nevermind? Is your Kind of Blue LP scratched? Have you always meant … Read More »

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