LIVEdigitally

I’m not sure if all this is from the Video iPod, but if it is, I’d like to thank Apple. Their latest iPod has certainly become a catalyst for some change in how TV content is going to be distributed. First, some popular ABC shows (like “Lost”) are available as downloads at iTunes stores. Then, NBC News decides to stream their nightly news broadcast for those that missed it (often me). But, I didn’t expect CBS to be giving their content to the search engines to store for them. This could be huge as Google has been playing in video recently, but really didn’t have much content. CBS could easily solve that problem. Even Google may have to go out and buy some hard drives to store all of this if it works out. In the meantime, it’s nice to see the networks coming out of the dark ages.

“REUTERS reported that CBS is talking to both Google and Yahoo about storing TV shows and news archives.
And in another demonstration of convergence, the BBC said yesterday it will be streaming some of its live TV coverage on its web site.

But convergence of PCs and broadcast technology could be as threatening to big outlets like CBS as online news has been for print titles.

Quite a few traditional media outlets have realised that they’re a bit behind on the old online publishing front, which threatens their traditional revenue streams and staff laden business models.”

From The Inquirer.

Tis the season for computer bargains! Don’t waste your precious time, fight the crowds, and drive around any more than necessary. Interested in a holiday notebook purchase? Laptop Logic has done the legwork for you; let your fingers do the clicking to the best deal. How good you wonder? How about their “best deal,” an HP notebook from Wal-Mart for the amazing low price of $378.

“This machine has a lot to offer for the money. Its biggest advantage is the AMD Sempron processor, with PowerNow! technology. While performance will be similar, or even slightly slower than the Celeron M competitors, the big advantage you’re going to see here is battery life. This chip has a 25W TDP, higher than the Celeron M’s 21W TDP, but the big thing here is PowerNow! The Sempron chip’s clock will dynamically fluctuate based on load, just like the Turion 64 and Pentium M. Due to this, users will probably see around 2.5-3 hours of battery life on the reasonable 6 cell battery. The rest of the specs are pretty standard, except when you browse to the memory. 1GB maximum DDR RAM? We’re not sure HOW they pulled this off, but HP’s website does not lie (or does it?). While 1GB will be more than sufficient for the average user, or the kind of use buying a sub-$400 laptop, it is something to keep in mind for the long run. All of the other machines have 3 USB 2.0 ports compared to the ze2108wm’s 2 ports, but it does have a higher capacity battery and the more advanced Radeon Xpress 200M graphics.”

This is definitely worth waking up early to snag. Roll back prices never looked this good- best of all no rebates! Read all about it here.

Yep, so the proliferation of iPod-based businesses continue, and with the video ‘pod, the portable video player content creation market will likely start getting interesting (I know, Creative and Archos got there first, but when Apple arrived the market got a big time playa).

Enter PodDater.com, which, currently in beta, does exactly what the name implies. The site lets visitors search for interesting profiles, download the vids to their ‘pod and play away. Don’t leech, either; reciprocate with a vid of your own, damnit!

Yeah, we all know that text ads are sooooo 19th century and online dating sites with mere photos are über prosaic (that’s right, Match.com). Besides an opportunity to really show your personality and dynamically describe yourself, blah blah blah, video gives us the opportunity to do what everyone else does when looking at images on dating sites: be superficial (give us a pic, for crying out loud!).

I do feel sorry for Adrian, the bleach-blond Chicago real estate professional whose short vid plays from the main PodDater page. Not only does she enjoy revolutionary activities like shopping, eating out and walking along lake Michigan, but she also happens to be one of only 16 females on the site at the time of this post. After clicking through some 20 or so profiles, ones with actual videos seemed to be a bit rare [Note: this does include guys]. Mmmmm…beta.

Get busy seducing that 4.6 percent, guys. Positive thing: if you’re searching for a lady and find one with a video, she theoretically either knows how to shoot and edit it herself, or is savvy enough to find someone to help her do it. Props in my book.

All the latest buzz in storage has been in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD standard. With storage capacities of 25 GB to 50 GB, this is clearly going to be needed for the latest high definition programming. What could be better? In a word, holograms!

With storage capacities starting at 300 GB, and scaling up to 1.6 TB (that’s 1600 gigabytes), this has the potential to swallow data like a hungry shark. Thoroughput starts at 20 mb/s, and is predicted to scale to 120 mb/s.

“Holographic recording technology utilizes intersecting signal and reference laser beams to store data in a number of 3D hologram images capable of saving hundreds of data pages in a single location. One 5¼ inch-diameter optical disc can store up to 150 million pages – more than 63 times the capacity of DVD. Also, with holographic recording, a multiple of form factors, such as discs, cards, etc., and laser wavelengths (red, green, and blue) can be used.”

Once again, I will be able to back up my hard drive on one disk. I can’t wait!

Read the entire press release here.

LEGO blocks are designed to work well, and with simplicity. With a simple “click,” they just fit right, and stay. Storage company, LaCie is playing on our nostalgia. They are releasing a line of external hard drives that can be stacked with LEGO simplicity. Look carefully at the image to the left. It’s not just ordinary LEGO blocks, but rather a housing for the hard drive. Look for both desktop and mobile versions. Now, adding storage can be just a click away!

Features:
* Stackable Hard Drives in White, Red and Blue
* Spacious storage capacities of 160-500GB (Desktop) or 40-120GB (Mobile)
* Building block hard drives for the kid in everyone
* Ultra quiet operation for use in the office or living room
* No setup needed, just plug-and-play
* Backup software included

See the original press release here.

Hollywood, move it on over! The Hollywood Walk of Fame is now demoted to the
Walk of Lame compared to San Francisco’s Metreon sidewalk. The San Francsico Walk of Game is a sidewalk thunder stealer, and inducting members by the fist full.

The Walk of Game is gaining 6 more members, on behalf of Sony, the Metreon’s older brother. Starcraft, Final Fantasy, John Carmack, Sid Meier, EverQuest, and of course… the lovely Laura Croft.

October 2004, San Francisco, the WCG conference was held. I was there. Not as a player, but as a volunteer helper. The World Cyber Games is to gamers, as the World Cup tournament is to soccer, the Super Bowl is to football, the World Series is to baseball, the gold medal to ice skating. It’s the one, all the marbles. 64 different countries were represented last year, and this year 67 attended.

Some teams show up in matching jump suits, with handles embroidered on their breast and a team name, sometimes accompanied by a logo, across the back. Geeks Gamers of all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, gather to compete in almost half a million dollars in prize money. This isn’t your neighborhood LAN party, we’re talking Seoul, San Francisco, and now Singapore. In the final standings, the USA placed 2nd overall. Korea took top for most overall wins. Brazil, Germany, and China filled the 3rd-5th spots. This isn’t a game anymore, these… games.

Next year it’ll be in Italy. Bonjourno!

It is a global village. With Avian flu it has become a global barnyard. But with Sony’s rootkit, well, it’s a less friendly place to compute.
(more…)

As USB flash drives are designed to fit anywhere, the real concern about losing such a diminutive device is certainly a concern. Who wants to lose their drive with all that precious data? With the large capacities, it’s like carrying around a filing cabinet with you. LG has come up with a way that their drive can email you if an unauthorized user plugs it into a computer hooked into the ‘net. This is a great feature whose time has come.

“No longer you need to panic in an even of a stolen thumbdrive. If you’ve a LG trackable flash drive, sooner or later you’ll get an email informing your precious data whereabouts. And that’s all thanks to the embedded Inspice Trace – the privacy-safe tracking software.

During initial registration, you are supposed to file with Inspice Trace your drive serial number, model and your email address. Then if someone else tries to access the drive’s data, the embedded program will send out a homing beacon (IP address, host name, etc), helping you to trace the data. For all these to work, we bet the bad guys need to decrypt your data using a Internet-enabled Windows. We weren’t so sure if the program would work on a Mac.”

From Everything USB

If you’ve got some extra time this weekend, and a free serial port (remember those?), this is a project to consider. Sure, there are many more elegant solutions for controlling your music player. My personal favorite is the Logitech diNovo Bluetooth Media Commander which has the added benefit of being wireless. However, for a home brew solution, this project looks pretty good.

“Nowadays, Winamp has full support to keyboard shortcuts. But some time ago, when Winamp didn’t have this feature, I was thinking in some way to make a easy way to change music by simply pressing one button, it would make things faster and would help me to change music during games. So I decided to make a external control panel, to make it easier to change musics, volume up or down, toggle shuffle and many other features by pressing just one button. I found one winamp plugin that shows how to configure a external control using the Serial Port, being able to make 4 or 15 buttons control. I decided to make this, step-by-step, how to do it, hope you enjoy.”

Disguised well, this could be the center piece of a “computer jukebox.” Who says that geeks can’t rock?

Ready to go? Here’s the link.

New technology often creates new problems. When Apple introduced the iPod, their scroll wheel was praised for its ease of use. Now music fans could scroll away to find just the tune they were looking for. Users loved it, and sales skyrocketed, and the rest is history.

However, folks may have scrolled too much. In what one site is dubbing “ipoditis,” doctors are seeing an increase in repetitive motion injuries involving the thumb.

“Music fans may enjoy the ability to spool through 10,000 songs on their iPods, but medical experts warn that jumping from tune to tune has its risks.

Carl Irwin, from the British Chiropractic Association, said: “This is a really serious problem. The action needed to move the wheel on an iPod is totally unnatural and effectively separates the joint in the thumb every time you use it.

“This causes inflammation in the thumb or fingers and can be very painful. We have also seen cases of iPod users where the problem has spread to their elbow and neck.”

Does this make an argument for just shuffling your tunes? I’m not sure, but this repetitive motion injury is on the rise. We’ve explored this before, here at LD, with our look at the Vertical Mouse.

Here, in a Live Digitally exclusive, we’re getting a first look at the latest Video iPod fighter. Ritek is planning on introducing their new OLE 8100 at the upcoming CES this January with availability for early 2006. The unit is to be flash based, with a capacity of 1 or 2 GB. The OLE 8100 will support audio, photo, and video files.

“The addition of the OLE 8100 MP4 player to our RIDATA family is
further evidence of our commitment to provide our customers with the
latest in portable digital-oriented products,” stated Harvey Liu,
Advanced Media Inc. president. “With audio, video, and photo-viewing
capabilities, it offers users phenomenal flexibility in when and where
they enjoy their media of choice.”

MP4 is the latest compression standard developed by the Moving Picture
Experts Group (MPEG). Formally known as MPEG-4, it was designed to
store and deliver both professional-grade audio and video streams.

The RIDATA OLE 8100 supports the following formats – music: MP3,
WMA, OGG, AC3; video: AVI, MPEG-1,2, and 4, VOB, DAT; and photo: JPG,
YUV (up to 4800 x 3600), support picture preview/slide function. Video
and photos are displayed on an energy-efficient 2″ LTPS LCD panel.

It features five-mode equalization (normal, rock, jazz, classical, and
pop), three playing modes (normal, repeat one, and repeat all), and
both digital voice and line-in recording capability.

With its embedded solid-state NAND flash memory, the OLE 8100 can
perform up to one-million erase/rewrite operations. 1GB and 2GB
capacities are available. The 2GB model provides up to 3.5 hours of
video play time and over 3 hours worth of audio.

The unit supports WIN98SE/ME, WIN2000, and WINXP operating systems.
Video output to NTSC or PAL standards is by the included A/V cable.
Video output ports are RCA and S-tunnel. A/V input/output ports include
MIC in, line-in in, earphone out, and A/V out. A USB 2.0 PC interface
is also included.

The RIDATA OLE 8100 MP4 player is packaged with an earphone, USB cable,
audio output cable,
S-terminal/RCA video cable, installation CD, audio line-in cable, AC/DC
universal charger, and a user’s manual.

The compact, pocket-size unit is 2.6″ x 2.6″ x 0.75″ and weighs less
than 3 ounces. It comes with Advanced Media’s quality promise and
one-year warranty

For users (such as me) that don’t have an iPod, and have some music as WMA files, this could be a great music player. I’m also particularly intrigued by the MP4 support for video files. Maybe we don’t have to jump on the Apple bandwagon after all. One suggestion to Ritek though: they need a more memorable and enticing name for this thing!