Online financial news show “Wallstrip” got a new host this week, Julie Alexandria, and she’s planning on spicing things up. NewTeeVee editor Liz Gannes has the interview.
Also this week, India saw its biggest-ever IPO debut: Reliance Power. So if it’s about new power, it must be green, right? In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Read more over on Earth2Tech.
No, that’s not “The View” you’re watching! It’s “the GigaOM Show,” this week with two female hosts, a female guest, and some touchy-feely subject matter. Given Om’s recent heart attack and the loop it threw us for, the team went with a health theme and brought in Heidi Roizen, a technology VC who recently switched things up to fund and write a CD aimed at inspiring people to lose weight. She tells us about “Skinny Songs” and her newfound interest in health-oriented technology companies. We also read some viewer/reader comments from the outpouring of support Om received in the last two weeks.
The writers’ strike just keeps dragging on and on, and new episodes of your favorite old teevee shows are running out. Face it, it’s time to move online. Don’t know where to start? NewTeeVee has put together a handy guide to finding the web shows you’ll like best.
Just before the holidays we took a trip down to Sand Hill Road, where we filmed this interview on cleantech investing with Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s partners Steve Jurvetson and Raj Atluru. With 11 deals and over $40 million dollars, DFJ was one of the leaders of funding the industry in 2007. We shot the video in the lobby of DFJ; they thankfully cut my bad joke about ultimate frisbie. Thanks to Steve and Raj, who gave us a lot of insights on energy efficiency, waste-to-energy, thin-film solar, synthetic genomics, and the rest of their portfolio — they also made up for my newbie video skills! Check it out, and for coverage of everything cleantech read GigaOM’s Earth2Tech:
In the most recent episode of our show, I am joined by Dan Farber, of ZDNet, and Rafe Needleman, of CNET’s Webware, to discuss and the top technology trends for 2008. Sitting in as guest host this week in Joyce Kim’s absence is the editor of Earth2Tech, Katie Fehrenbacher.
Download in Quicktime, Windows Media and Xvid.
We have many holiday traditions around our house, and one of them is talking about the latest consumer electronics. So as I was sitting on my couch the other night, staring at my cable set-top box (STB) and TiVo DVR, a thought came to me – where is the next-generation STB that we’ve been hearing about for at least the past three years? You know, the über STB with HD, TiVo, networking, storage and more, the one that will be the center of home entertainment?
I’ve done a considerable amount of looking and I have yet to find it. I know about the latest TiVo boxes, Apple TV, Vudu, Microsoft’s Media Center and the numerous ways that I could build something and get close to what I desire, but there is no one, integrated product that has the features I want.
What do I want, exactly? To start, the next-gen STB has to be drop-dead gorgeous, as it will more than likely occupy a prominent place in my living room and I’ll have to look at it for some time. So I expect great design, reminiscent of the latest Apple product, with a simple-to-use user interface. It should also be compact in size — no larger than a standard STB today — and work with multiple universal remotes, such as the Harmony line made by Logitech.
I need high-definition output (1080p) with a TiVo DVR (not a clone) built in and an HD-DVD/Blu-ray player. Beyond these features (which I consider table stakes), I’d like to see the next-gen STB have at least 500GB of storage, which could be expanded through the use of a firewire or USB 2.0 disk drives, as well as slots for an SD memory card that can be used to upload files and photos. The box needs to run a Samba-like fileserver to either allow access to all of the content on these storage devices from any computer in my house or allow me to use this storage as part of my file backup system.
On the networking and connectivity front, the next-gen STB would need to function as a wireless router and switch, providing Internet connectivity, firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware and malware protection. An IEEE802.11b/g/n wireless access point and at least five separate gigabit Ethernet ports for local connections are also desired features. For video connectivity, I’d expect an HDMI interface and, at some point, support for a wireless HDMI interface.
Beyond features, the STB would, of course, need to be able to access content. Now I consume both music and video content, so this STB would have to be able to stream music, and a built-in cradle for my iPod would be a plus. As for video content, I know that most of what I watch on TV would either come from my provider’s walled garden or from shows I would request, on demand. I’d like to be able to use this next-gen STB to access content streamed via IPTV from any content provider on the Internet, but until the carriers here in the U.S. deploy enough fiber or VDSL to provide a reliable 12 megabits per second to my house (I’m imagining that I’ll want two simultaneous HD sources of content at approximately six megabits per second each), I will stick with my cable provider.
Finally, while I am a fan of on-demand and streaming Internet video, I understand that all of the content that I want to watch is not accessible yet. Call me a video quality snob, but I’m not ready to plop down on the couch and watch a small, grainy video from YouTube on my plasma screen. That being said, I expect the next-gen STB to have the proper codecs and client support for Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight, Apple’s Quicktime and others for watching Internet video. Typing in URLs of Internet video with a remote control would be tiresome, so there should be a mechanism by which I can transfer a video playlist from a local computer to the STB – imagine surfing to the content you want in a browser and dragging and dropping URLs onto an icon of the STB, which then interprets them as menu choices.
OK it’s a long wish list, but it’s that time of year. Anyone care to take a stab at when I may have my next-gen STB wishes fulfilled? And from which vendor? Maybe you’ll start a new holiday tradition at your house.
While Om was off gallivanting in Paris this week for a conference, I subbed in for him as co-host of the GigaOM Show. I got to pick a guest from my video beat at NewTeeVee, so we brought in Stanley Burrell, a.k.a. MC Hammer, to talk about his new startup, DanceJam. Roll the tape:
DanceJam aims to bring together various dancing communities. The site will include videos from aspiring dancers everywhere as well as Hammer and his celebrity pals. It will be driven by contests that include offline regional meetups, and be monetized through ads and contest sponsorship. The company — which is based out of a few offices in the Bay Area — hasn’t given us a firm launch date. The latest word is “mid-January” — but last week it opened up part of its site to the public so as to solicit videos to have ready for the launch. Check it out for an early preview.
I have been playing around with the latest beta version of the Songbird multimedia browser based on Mozilla Firefox’s core technologies. It is an interesting little application that should be a must-have on any music lover’s laptop. I recently chatted with Rob Lord, one of the guys behind the San Francisco-based startup Pioneers of the Inevitable.
