Archive for May, 2008

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Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV Is Way Better Than Cable or Satellite

Friday
May 30,2008

Microsoft’s Mediaroom is the company’s IPTV solution that brings TV into to your house (much like cable and satellite) over IP. You might be familiar with it in its commercially released service forms such as AT&T U-Verse here in the US or BT Vision in the UK. The features out now—quick channel changing, multiple channel records simultaneously without a hardware tuner limit, multi-room viewing, multiple picture-in-picture—are pretty fantastic, but we had a visit with Microsoft earlier this week and learned that what’s coming soon is even better.

First, let’s go over the features that Mediaroom offers now. With a simple set-top-box, you can grab high quality HDTV that’s better quality (seeing as Comcast has been compressing their HDTV shows like mad) than what you’d otherwise get on cable. If you’ve got two set-top-boxes, you can stream shows off of each other so you don’t have to record a program twice to be able to watch it in your living room and bedroom. This feature is called DVR Anywhere, and will be available whenever operators roll it out.

You can even watch the same TV broadcast or recorded shows on your Windows PC or Xbox 360, a feature that’s been announced since CES by Microsoft, but is up to the actual service provider (AT&T, BT) to roll out. In AT&T’s case, it won’t be available until the second-half of 2008. Update: Microsoft tells me that the details here were a bit off. The Xbox 360 support was announced at CES and will be rolled out on BT’s Vision service in the future. AT&T hasn’t announced Xbox 360 support. Viewing shows on a PC is something I saw demonstrated in Microsoft’s labs, but I’m clarifying with Microsoft as to what it was.

This leads us to the new feature Microsoft showed off: Applications. Since IPTV is a two-way street, your Mediaroom set-top-boxes are able to pull down information from the net, leading to very interesting interactive programs that people can code up for shows. For example:

• During a boxing match, you can pull up different mics, view fighter stats, and even view/vote in polls.

And so on. These apps are coded by the shows’ producers, then sold to the provider in order to enhance your viewing experience. You could even code up your own app, tack it onto Lost, and try and sell it.

No service provider currently has applications in place now, but they’re lightweight and should be able to be run on set top boxes out there today. It’s just a matter of your local provider getting these features from Microsoft and integrating it into their service plans.

TAKEN FROM  gizmodo.com

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    • Coders Tell Why They’re Avoiding Vista

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    Windows developers are confirming the results of a survey released yesterday that found fewer than 1 in 12 programmers currently writing applications targeting Windows Vista.

    “None of our customers are saying, ‘G******it, we need those WPF controls now!’” said Julian Bucknall, CTO for Windows programming tools maker Developer Express Inc. , referring to one of Vista’s most highly-touted features, its new graphical subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation . Rather, “we find most are still sticking with ASP.Net and Windows Forms applications.”

    True to Microsoft ’s form, ASP.Net and Windows Forms and most of Windows XP ’s other legacy technologies still work fine in Vista. (The converse is also true: many Vista features can be installed as add-ons to XP.)

    But as in every upgrade cycle, Microsoft runs the risk that developers may bypass the latest technologies — in Vista’s case, WPF, the XPS printing format that Microsoft is touting as a rival to Adobe ’s Portable Document Format (PDF); Windows Sidebar ‘gadgets,’ and others — in favor of those further down the road, such as those expected in Vista’s successor, Windows ‘7′.

    “Microsoft tends to dump ten new technologies on us, but only 2 or 3 really stick,” said Michael Krasowski, vice-president of PDSA Inc., a Microsoft-focused 20-developer firm in Tustin Calif., citing the Windows DNA Architecture as an example.

    Microsoft Corp. undoubtedly wanted to avoid its current predicament. It has been publicly talking up features in Vista since 2003 — half a decade.

    But such “overmarketing,” as Krasowski calls it, can rebound. Experienced developers have become jaded towards the third-party apps Microsoft trots out as exemplars of Redmond’s latest technology — “demoware,” he calls them — that sparkle with flashy animation and video.

    “You can’t write an enterprise app like a demo. It’d be all soft and weak under the hood,” he said. “We’d never put all that stuff in because it couldn’t support 100 concurrent users.”

    Some say it’s premature to declare Vista a flop with developers. For one thing, despite the 140 million copies Microsoft claims to have shipped, the market hasn’t reached a tipping point yet.

    “I can???t see targeting something only to Vista when you have XP and Windows 2003 out there in huge numbers,” said Dave Noderer, a Microsoft MVP who runs the Florida .Net User Group as well as his own software development firm, Computer Ways Inc. in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

    Others point out the symbiotic relationship between most Windows developers and the large enterprises that hire and pay them. Enterprises are proving even slower than the rest of the market at moving off XP, say analysts such as Forrester Research Inc.

    “Large enterprise don’t transition overnight to the newest platforms,” said Shannon Braun, a Microsoft MVP and Minneapolis-area-based programming consultant. “To me the adoption pace [of Vista by developers] seems pretty normal.”

    “Vista is too bleeding-edge — not for us, but for our clients,” Krasowski said. PDSA’s clients include large, blue-chip customers such as Kaiser Permanente and Boeing Inc. “They’re all leery of Vista.”

    And why shouldn’t they be? According to data released this spring by migration software vendor AppDNA Ltd., about a fifth of enterprise applications running on XP break when moved straight to Vista, mostly due to pre-XP-era code still lingering in the app. That increases to nearly half for apps migrated from 32-bit XP straight to 64-bit Vista.

    Another reason is that Microsoft, in an attempt to catch up to the Mac, emphasized consumer-y aesthetic features with Vista, with WPF, Aero and the DirectX 10 3-D graphics rendering engine all aimed at making Vista or its apps more pleasing to the eye.

    More attractive apps are more user-friendly apps, says Microsoft, and that translates into increased user productivity. But that message remains a hard sell to enterprises, who demand their apps stay “lean and mean,” said Krasowski, not get “confused and cluttered.”

    Others say learning how to take advantage of Vista’s new visual features remains daunting. Improving data presentation is “a good thing to do, but there is a lot of hacking through the undergrowth first,” Bucknall said. “I don’t think a lot of developers know how to get to that stage.”

    Noderer is optimistic. While XP-era technologies such as Windows Forms “will be around for many years to come,” he said, Vista-era ones such as WPF “will slowly rise as the way to do Windows applications.”

    But others think that the rise in popularity of server-delivered business apps — coupled with Microsoft’s recent moves to make its Internet Explorer 8 browser behave more like other Web browsers — could make Vista’s client-side graphics-enhancing features irrelevant.

    “98% of the apps we write are for the Web,” Krasowski said. “They’re more flexible and easier to maintain. Many of our clients are migrating from apps written in VB6 or .Net.”

    Heather Havenstein contributed to this story.

    Taken From www.pcworld.com

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    • JVC Everio GZ-MS100, Another Camera After YouTube’s Heart

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    JVC’s new GZ-MS100 is totally YouTube. How YouTube? It has a freakin’ YouTube sticker on the side. Also, it allows one-button YouTube uploads to challenge the Flip Video.

    Essentially a high-end SD card video recorder, the $350 GZ-MS100 records MPEG-2 and features a 35x optical zoom, 2.7-inch LCD screen, about 2 hours of stock battery life, various shooting modes, and an optional (YouTube-friendly) 10-minute recording limit. It’ll run $350 this June.

    New JVC Camcorder Offers One-Touch Uploading To YouTube™WAYNE, NJ, May 19, 2008 - Sharing videos over the Internet is now easier than ever with the launch of a new JVC camcorder that provides one-button uploading to YouTube™, the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos.
    The new JVC Everio S Series memory camcorder, the GZ-MS100, was designed to make sharing simple for the millions of people who enjoy sharing their videos with the world over the Internet. And unlike many of the other camcorders that target Internet users, JVC’s GZ-MS100 provides an impressive array of full-fledged camcorder features that give it the versatility to do more than shoot short Internet videos.
    It looks strikingly similar to the popular Everio G Series camcorders, but is smaller and weighs only 0.60 lbs. including battery, because it records to an SD Card (user provided) instead of a built-in hard disk drive. The ever-increasing capacity and affordability of new SD Cards appearing on the market means that over time Everio S will be able to offer expanded recording time at a lower per minute cost.

    Once the provided CyberLink software is installed on a Windows® PC, uploading video clips to YouTube™ is quick and easy. The camcorder has an UPLOAD button that works in two ways. In the camera mode, press UPLOAD and then the trigger, and this limits recordings to 10 minutes in length, which matches the YouTube™ file size limit. This eliminates the need to manually time recordings or go back to edit and shorten footage. After recording is done, connect the GZ-MS100 to a PC via a USB cable and press the UPLOAD button. This automatically launches the supplied application for uploading to YouTube™. After just a few mouse clicks the video will be up on the Internet for everybody to see. The original video quality is maintained in the camera, so it can be used for any other purpose.

    For storage and cataloging, recorded videos can easily be transferred to a PC via USB2.0 or directly using the SD Card. The provided CyberLink application also allows easy burning to DVD using the computer’s optical disc drive. Or, to create DVDs without using a computer JVC offers the CU-VD3 Everio SHARE STATION as an option. Since it was designed as an Everio companion, this DVD burner accommodates Everio’s USB Host function that allows scene playback order to be rearranged within the camera before transfer.

    The GZ-MS100 features Laser Touch Operation, first offered in the Everio G Series camcorders released earlier this year. The feature’s scroll bar and buttons are touch-sensitive so the user just glides a finger up or down the bar to choose menu items while its blue light follows the movements. The LCD screen itself is never touched, so it won’t get dirty, smudged or covered in fingerprints. The 2.7-inch LCD screen, the same one used on Everio G series models, has Auto Backlight Control to automatically adjust brightness for comfortable viewing indoors or outdoors. And with Auto Power ON/OFF, the user simply opens up the LCD to power-on and start shooting (takes only about one second if Quick Restart mode is engaged), and closes the LCD to shut the power off and avoid draining the battery.
    The shape of the camcorder itself facilitates ease of use, with a contoured grip that snugly and securely fits the palm of the hand.

    In addition to the supplied BN-VF808 rechargeable battery that provides 2 hr. 5 minutes of operation per charge, higher capacity batteries are available: BN-VF815 for 4 hr. 15 minutes and BN-VF823 for 6 hr. 25 minutes of continuous operation per charge.

    Up front, the GZ-MS100 is equipped with a KONICA MINOLTA LENS that provides a 35x optical zoom with excellent picture quality. JVC’s proprietary Gigabrid Engine also contributes to quality by incorporating six digital noise reduction systems to improve the S/N ratio by about 30 percent (3dB) over previous models, and integrating the MPEG-2 encoder to help reduce block noise and mosquito noise. Other full-fledged camera functions include Program AE with shooting modes to accommodate a variety of situations (Night, Twilight, Portrait, Sports, Snow, Spotlight), Digital Image Stabilizer to minimize camera-shake, and much more.

    TAKEN FROM gizmodo.com

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    • 3G iPhone Case Shows Thicker, Curvier Backside (and Front-Facing Camera Too?)

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that iPhone case manufacturers have gotten an early peek at the 3G iPhone, but this rendering on XSKN’s site for the EXO mask iPhone 3G is obviously a bit more detailed than the rough sketches from a couple weeks ago. It lines up with them though, as well as what we’ve heard earlier: It’s a bit thicker, with a more pronounced curve to the back, though it’s hard to tell if the headphone jack is flush now. The earpiece hole spans almost the whole width of the phone—could it be for a front-face camera? Apply the usual skepticism here, but this could be plausible, given that cases will have to be ready in time for launch, so manufacturers likely already have the specs. [XSKN via Mac Rumors]

    TAKEN FROM gizmodo.com

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    • DIY Intel Atom Computer

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    While we’re pleased to see Intel Atom processors making their way into mobile PCs, we’re just as excited to see the upcoming Atom-based creations of the PC-building community. Now Trainquil PC is selling ready-to-run motherboards with a bundled 1.6GHz Atom processor and supporting up to 2GB of memory. They promise benchmarks of 3-4x those of similar VIA systems and the capability to power Vista Home Media Center “with ease.” Maybe that’s a slight hyperbole, but hey, it’s a heck of a quote. The board is $103 this June. Here are the full specs:

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    • Samsung OLED Passport Is Perfect for Secret Agents, Plastic Surgery Junkies

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    For some reason, Samsung SDI and German company Bundesdruckerei think that their new passport with a 700µm (tiny) polycarbonate data page, which contains an active matrix bendable 300µm (really tiny) OLED display—capable of displaying video or text regarding the passport holder—is the next thing in border security.

    The only problem is that they forgot that if it’s electronic, chances are that it will be hacked, no matter what. According to Samsung SDI and Bundesdruckerei, however, their ePassport will be completely manipulation-proof. The thing is even heat-resistant, so it can be laminated to avoid access to it. The display itself won’t use any batteries: it will be activated by a reader that won’t require any contact, which will transmit electricity using induction. Jason Bournes and plastic surgeon junkies of the world, rejoice. [OLED Info]

    TAKEN FROM gizmodo.co

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    • Don’t give Microsoft the remote control - fight against DRM

    Friday
    May 30,2008
    If you put Microsoft at the center of your home entertainment system, be prepared to hand them the remote control, literally.

    Following reports that digital television viewers were blocked from recording the new season of NBC’s “Gladiators”, Microsoft confirmed that it is preventing users from recording the show. They claim they were acting on behalf of NBC, and are in line with regulations set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in disrupting computer usage based upon the so-called “broadcast flag” that was transmitted alongside the show.

    A Microsoft spokesperson told CNET News, “…Windows Media Center fully adheres to the flags used by broadcasters and content owners to determine how their content is distributed and consumed.”

    What is the broadcast flag?

    The broadcast flag is a sequence of information transmitted alongside television programs as a kind of digital order telling viewers to not do certain things, such as record the show or share it with a friend.

    Many of the large media companies and the FCC tried to make obeying the broadcast flag a law. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation took the FCC to court, and US Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority, and that no such law could exist. Despite this ruling, it appears that Microsoft has decided to work directly with media companies to implement these rules anyway, restricting how and when you watch television.

    Building such a system is no trivial task. To do this, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to restrict users from saving a television program to their computers, we call this kind of functionality an “antifeature,” because it takes more work for Microsoft to prevent the user from saving the program, than if they were to leave just the default behavior alone. So instead of letting you record programs as you normally would, it locks you out and deletes the show before you can save it.

    However, Microsoft hasn’t just made a little tweak to their software to do this — they have compiled an entire system built upon antifeatures. This antifeature platform is integrated into their Windows Media software and forms the basis of their Windows Vista operating system, and they are working hard to convince companies like NBC, that Microsoft can be in control of how and when you get to watch television. As creepy and as ridiculous as it may sound, this is their business strategy, and by getting this control, both the television and movie industry and computer users will be tied to Microsoft software.

    Don’t be fooled into their claims that they are following regulations by the FCC — the court ruled that the FCC has no power to make such regulations. This is also claimed as a measure just to stop unauthorized file sharing, yet what Microsoft is doing is trying to make sure that they are on every end of the market, from how it is delivered, to how you watch it. As Ars Technica reporter Jacqui Cheng puts it, this is not about Microsoft preventing people from sharing files without permission, “[i]t’s about the ability to strictly control how we consume content”[2].

    Microsoft wants to have that control, and this software is the way they are trying to get it. Software that is designed in this way is known as ‘DRM’, which stands for ‘Digital Rights Management’, and yet it is really just another way to restriction how consumers interact with things on their own computers and devices. Because of this restriction, we refer to DRM as ‘Digital Restrictions Management’.

    The alternative to DRM: free software

    By far the best way to avoid DRM, is to refuse to use software that is infected with it. Better yet, you should choose software that tries to do the opposite of DRM — software that gives you complete control. This kind of software is called “free software,” and it is based upon the idea that software carries certain freedoms to you:

    • The freedom to use the software for any reason you wish — including to the ability to hit the save button when you* wish.
    • The freedom to examine how the software works and make changes, similar to a car engine — you can remove the bugs or soup it up.
    • The freedom to share the software with your neighbor, like photocopying a newspaper article or sharing class notes with a classmate.
    • The freedom to share your modified software with other people, similar to how mathematics and science have worked for centuries.

    Now you may not be a computer programmer, or know how to understand or change computer programs, but there are plenty of people out there who do, and they are likely already making the kinds of fixes and changes you’d like to see, or are often part of a community willing to make those changes for you.

    There are thousands of free software programmers, and many thousands of free software programs, and even complete free software operating systems. You usually won’t find annoying antifeatures in a program, and if there were one, you can rest assured that other programmers will have removed it by the time you get to use it.

    Conversely, software that doesn’t give you these freedoms is software you cannot control, and we think that kind of software doesn’t belong on your computer. We say, ‘free software, free society’ — with free software, if we are each in control of our machines, then we are all in control of how we use them and what we use them for.

    And, don’t let Apple fool you into thinking that they are the alternative to DRM and Microsoft, they, too have their own DRM schemes, and seek to control the world in their own way, from branding their DRM music player, to entrenching the world in their proprietary formats and DRM music purchasing programs.

    The alternative to Windows and Apple is software that you control, software that is guaranteed to give you all of the freedoms you need to be in control. Free software.

    There is a good chance you are already using free software, directly, such as using the Firefox web browser, or indirectly, by visiting a Web site that is sending you web pages with the Apache web-server. However, there are also entire, user-friendly operating systems that you can install on almost any laptop or desktop computer. So, if you are running Windows or Mac OS, consider replacing these with a free software based GNU/Linux operating system, such as gNewSense[3].

    Using free software will take the control out of Microsoft’s hands. With free software, you are in control.

    [1]: You can read Mako Hill’s article on antifeatures, here: http://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2007/fall/antifeatures/

    [2]: It should be noted that this writer refers to a person that shares files as a “pirate,” we think this is a bit of an extreme description that should be avoided. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080514-nbc-vista-copy-protection-snafu-reminds-us-why-drm-stinks.html

    [3]: gNewSense, a free software distribution of GNU/Linux http://www.gnewsense.org/

    TAKEN FROM badvista.fsf.org/blog

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    • Microsoft And The $1,632 Copy Of Vista

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    Microsoft charged Bill $1,632 for a single Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade license. Each time Bill, an IT Manager, tried to his enter his payment details through Windows Live Marketplace he was told that Microsoft could not be contacted, and to “please try again later.” What Microsoft really meant was, “Ha! Got your money! How ’bout some more?!”

    Bill ultimately entered his payment information 7 times. Each attempt cost him $233.15. Now his account is out $1,632, and Microsoft is refusing to help.

    TAKEN FROM consumerist.com

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    • Windows 7: First Official Photos

    Friday
    May 30,2008

    The first legit shots of Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista, were just unveiled by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in person at the All Things D conference. It’s the evolution of the surface table, using multitouch on the desktop. Looks like Tablet PC. I’m not impressed so far, but only because it doesn’t move that far beyond the Surface Table demos we saw last year. More photos in a bit. [All Things D]
    TAKEN FROM gizmodo.com

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    • Windows 7 Features Revealed

    Friday
    May 30,2008

     

    Here’s what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer revealed about Windows 7 at All Things Digital a few minutes ago. The biggest “feature” is the touch and multi-touch integration, which takes many of its roots from Microsoft’s Surface Table, and will be available as an interface options for other apps. Here’s some more stuff they pulled out, which we captured in photos here.

    • There will be a OSX-like dock, though how OS X-like is yet to be seen.
    • Multi-touch gestures in photogalleries like two-finger zoom, flicking, and panning. Think of the photo app on the Microsoft Surface table.
    • Multi-touch paint program where you can draw with 10 fingers (again, think of what you’ve already seen in Surface)
    • Multi-touch piano app
    • In-depth mapping application that pulls from Microsoft’s Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth

    Looks like a LOT of the multi-touch features were culled from the Surface team, and the non-touch features look fairly similar to what’s already in Vista (based on the video above). Those apps are demo apps only, and will be revised/rewritten/reworked before the final version of Windows 7 is available. All this will be yours in about 18 months.

    TAKEN FROM gizmodo.com

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