Author: Randy Stewart

iTunes movie downloads by year end?

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 19, 2006
1 Comment on iTunes movie downloads by year end?

The rumor du jour is that Apple will announce movie downloads from the iTunes Music Store by year’s end. The rumor that won’t die was substantiated by Variety today with quotes from unnamed sources within the movie industry.

The article also talks about movie studios balking at the single $9.99 price point that Jobs has proposed, getting Apple to relent to a two-tiered pricing system of $19.99 for new releases and $9.99 for catalog titles.

While I have no doubt that this rumor is true, two other products must be released to make this happen. First, a new widescreen iPod must be released and more importantly, a device for the living room needs to be released as well. Why? Movie downloads are great, but the screen on the current iPod is too small for movie viewing and more importantly, the market for video at home (vs. on the go) is much, much larger.

What is the living room device? I’m not sure what form it will take, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a Mac Mini, as it is too expensive and might scare Windows users (the larger market) away.

Read [via AppleInsider]

Downloads Home Entertainment Microsoft Sony

The D: All Things Digital

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 19, 2006

The Wall Street Journal released their report from the Walt Mossberg’s CEO love-in from a few weeks back.

(FYI – “The D” is a small conference for executives from large companies and essentially is a series of discussions and interviews conducted by the Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.)

Interviews include Bill Gates, “who showed off a dramatic new version of the dominant Office software, took shots at search rival Google, and declared the network-TV business dead,” Robert Iger (Walt Disney CEO), “who didn’t agree with him,” Sir Howard Stringer (Sony CEO), who was indicted by Martha Stewart for cluttering her life with wires, and Barry Sonnenfeld, (Movie Director) who thinks the movie to DVD release window is too short.

Much of this year’s conference was devoted to the changing media landscape and the disruption that technology is creating for old business models.

If you have a WSJ subscription, the D conference report is essential reading. I’ll provide some highlights in subsequent postings.

Read

Links

Thursday Links

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 15, 2006

Nike+iPod available for pre-order [via TUAW]
Nintendo launches DS Lite – [via GigaOm]
Grand Theft Table Tennis? – Rockstar Games Table Tennis debuts.

General

Difficulty posting?

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 14, 2006

I’m trying to figure out what the heck is wrong….

[Update] Posting should work fine now. I think there was something wrong with the Ajaxy fanciness I had going on, so we are back to our old, faithful Stewtopia UI.

General

Wednesday’s Links

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 14, 2006

Engadget and the WSJ have the scoop on MusicGremlin’s Gremlin, a WiFi enabled portable WMA player. Just don’t feed it after midnight.

CinemaNow has added Fox movies and (old) tv shows to their lineup. The first season of 24 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been announced so far.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox keeps links, tabs and passwords synced on different machines. It’s a little slow, but it gets me closer to using Firefox full time.

Wireless

Ow! That Hz

I heard this story on the NPR Story of the Day podcast a couple of weeks back and then a friend sent me an article from the NYTimes yesterday.

The gist is, in the UK, “inventor Howard Stapleton” discovered that teenagers can hear frequencies that many adults can’t and so he decided to turn those frequencies against them. Dubbed the “Mosquito teen repellent,” the frequency would be emitted at irregular intervals and would prove to be really irritating to teenagers and they would leave the premises.

The twist, however, is that teenagers have turned this invention on it’s head and are using it to send text messages undetected in class to one another. Most teachers can’t hear the tone and the virtual note passing is successful.

I thought I was done with the story until I ran across this while surfing tonight. Blogger Ochen K has the original mosquito sample as well as a series of test frequencies for your listening (ear shattering) pleasure.

For me it stops hurting at around 20,000Hz, whereas my wife is fitting in perfectly with our over-30 demographic.

What frequencies can you hear?

Site News

I’m back

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 13, 2006

for now. After a little hiatus, hopefully you’ll be seeing more posts in the not-too-distant future. Hope you didn’t miss me too much.

Google

Google Sketchup = Bee’s Knees

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 13, 2006

Wow… I had seen Sketchup at MacWorld Expo this year and thought, wow, that’s kind of neat, another 3D drawing tool that I may have some use for, but not $200 some odd-dollar use for. Along comes Google shortly after Macworld and scoops up the company and makes the program free… for Windows.

Well, laddies, get your drawing pencils ready. As of yesterday, the free version of Google Sketchup is available for Mac OS X and boy is this program cool. Most CAD or 3D programs have been expensive and fairly difficult to use, not so with Sketchup. Take the 10 minute video tutorial and you’ll be up and running fairly quickly. You’re not going to releasing the next Pixar movie with this app, but you will can make some 3d representations of objects pretty darn fast.

Call me lazy, but I’ve always wanted a program like this to layout a room or space to get a sense of what it might look like before I do all the heavy lifting. This app is so easy to use, my back thanks you, Google.

Download

Games Xbox

Gaming Quickies – Xbox update, Seattle #1 gaming city

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date May 3, 2006

Xbox Live returns with Message Center integration
Looks like no other fancy-pants updates with yesterday’s downtime. Damn…I’m falling into Xbox 360 fanboy hype. On the other hand, I’ve got a really fancy answering machine for Xbox 360 now.

Microsoft Buys Seattle Top Spot In Gaming Cities Poll
Glad to see my epic Oblivion playing last week might have helped our fair city gain some notoriety.

Btw, if you are on Xbox live and want to play head to head, my gamertag is stewtopia.

Games Microsoft Xbox

Xbox Live outage on Tuesday

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date May 1, 2006

As in tomorrow. Xbox Live will be down for 13 hours tomorrow for what many presume to be a major update. Many are speculating that this update will include background downloading for Marketplace content.

For those of you that don’t have an Xbox 360, one of the cooler features is demo and content downloading on the unit. Demoing a new game before purchase is pretty wise on almost any gaming system, but before Xbox Live, demos were for PCs and game magazine subscribers only.

Microsoft has said recently that E3 will have lots downloadable coverage on Xbox 360 and this update makes sense before such an update occurs. What makes this interesting to me is that this new feature and a deluge of HD or SD content could really test a video download system. Oh, ya, and Xbox Live is free to non-subscribers next week.

If Microsoft wanted to start a video download service, the Xbox 360 could be a perfect Trojan horse to get them in a lot of living rooms. Apple might own the portable content, but no one owns the living room just yet.

Serious side bar aside, don’t plan on playing Burnout Revenge between 2am and 3pm tomorrow morning.

Xbox Live down for 13 hours

E3 on Xbox Live

Home Entertainment

ABC shows online today

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date May 1, 2006

As promised a few weeks back, ABC launched their experimental streaming television shows today. Launch shows include Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias and Commander in Chief. All shows come with 4 30 second ads from a single sponsor (reload if you don’t want the first one they give you. I’ve seen Tylenol, Toyota and Cingular) and the video is in Flash, so don’t worry Mac users, it works fine. Video is running at around 533×300 resolution, so not only is this free, it runs at a decent, near-tv-quality resolution.

The downside? Besides ads, you can’t take it with you and you can’t go full screen. I think that ABC really intends this for occasional, “oops-I-missed-Deperate-Housewives” viewing and not for the gym or for family viewing. But if you are a feeling like a total slacker in your cube or you missed last night’s Lost, free might just be better than $1.99.

View

(Via Zatz Not Funny)

iTunes

Onion Headline: “iTunes To Sell You Your Home Videos For $1.99 Each”

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 19, 2006

“Ladies and gentlemen, the future of home-video viewing is now,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at a media event Tuesday morning. “As soon as you record that precious footage of your daughter’s first steps, you’ll be able to buy it right back from iTunes and download it directly to your computer and video iPod.”

It’s funny because it’s true. I can’t ever seem to find the videos that I’m looking for and if someone would just digitize, compress and organize them for me, I’d always be able to find them… Oy.

Read

Home Entertainment HTPCs PVRs Yahoo

Yahoo! acquires Meedio

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 18, 2006

Ten foot interfaces. Microsoft has one and recently, so does Apple. And now, Yahoo! bought their very own. Meedio, one of the many television front ends for Windows XP, was acquired today by Yahoo! Strangely, tho, it appears that only the company was purchased but not all of their products, so it is unclear whether Yahoo! intends to use the technology as a DVR front end or to merely have ten foot interface of their own.

This acquisition reminds me a bit of the Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets) acquisition made earlier this year by Yahoo! Much like Konfabulator, Meedio had an avid developer community and there were many plug-ins developed for weather, news, RSS and the like. So while a web based DVR may be part of the picture, don’t be too surprised to see Yahoo! on your television in the not-to-distant future.

Read

(Via Zatz not Funny)

Apple iTunes

Alias, The Apprentice launch on iTunes

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 18, 2006

Looks like everyone’s favorite pregnant super-spy and the Donald meet in the strangest of Apple’s launch parties (Man, what I would pay to see Jennifer Garner kick Trump’s ass after being fired…). Continuing the cavalcade of ABC and NBC programs on iTMS, The Apprentice and Alias launched this evening for your viewing pleasure.

The question on my mind is… when will new providers be added? CBS, Fox… maybe HBO?

Ask Stewtopia

Not dead yet…

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 11, 2006

Sorry folks, I’m still here. Very busy last couple of weeks, but posting should resume soon. And no, I haven’t just been playing the Xbox for the last week.

Apple

Apple 30th anniversary mega-link-post!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 3, 2006

Here’s a bit of the online celebration for Apple’s 30th birthday. Hopefully, we will not see a $7500 gold plated 30th anniversary Mac for sale anywhere.

History

History of Apple Computer – CNN/AP
Steve Wozniak “Woz” Interview – SJ Mercury News
Steve Jobs’ quotes – Wired
Apple-History.com

Visual History

Timeline of Apple Macintosh Models – Wikipedia
30 Years of Apple products gallery – Wired
30th Anniversary GUI Gallery – Wired

Rumors

Is Apple getting ready to run Windows? – Engadget
Nine least likely Apple-turns-30 surprises – Valleywag
#7 – The iPhone Shuffle: hit a button, call a random number