Stewtopia

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.

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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.

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(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

Home Entertainment Microsoft Xbox

Xbox 360 is in the house!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 3, 2006

So, I’ve been secretly lusting for the Xbox 360 for some time. I told myself and others that I wasn’t going to hang out at Best Buy or Costco like the other nerds, but all the while I’ve made side trips into these dens of electronic goodness for the past several months.

The persistence finally paid off yesterday, when everyone and their brother could finally get the 360. Apparently, local Best Buy, Walmart and others received shipments of around 60-80 Xbox 360’s. Mind you, they still sold out, but a lot more people got their hands on Xboxes this weekend.

I’ll post a more detailed report later, but so far the experience has been fairly positive. While a minor detail, the most impressive thing so far is how well the wireless controllers work with the Xbox. If you’ve ever tried to pair Bluetooth devices, you’ll appreciate how you turn the Xbox on, hit the big X button on the controller and it just works. You’d think Apple made it :-)

Downloads Home Entertainment Media Servers and Streamers

Movie downloads compete with DVD

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 3, 2006

Movielink and CinemaNow announced today that they will have day and date releases with their DVD counterparts reports the Wall Street Journal this morning. Starting tomorrow with Brokeback Mountain, both companies will give users the ability to buy movies the same day they arrive on DVD.

Both seem to limit what people can do with the movies. Movielink will allow users to burn the movies to DVD, but those DVDs will only be playable on PCs. For the privilege, Movielink will be charging between $20-30 per movie for new films, on par with DVD’s MSRP, but not the actual street price. CinemaNow will be charging between $10-20 per movie, but users won’t be able to burn the movies to DVD.

More details at WSJ.com (paid subscription) and Yahoo!

General

April Fool’s Fun

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date April 1, 2006

Hey everybody, just a reminder that today is April Fool’s Day, so be on the look out for unusual activity. Slashdot for example, is professing it’s true love for the color pink and ponies of all kinds.

Check out urgo.com for a canonical list of April Fool’s enabled sites.

(Via Waxy.org)

iTunes

Free from iTunes

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 29, 2006

This was a feature that I thought about adding a while back, but it looks like someone beat me to it. Worth a weekly check in. Maybe if Apple would get that RSS feed of free stuff going, you wouldn’t go anywhere else.

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Apple iPod Portable Entertainment

Creative Zen review critique

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 29, 2006

Here’s a an email a friend I’ll call ‘iPodFan’ sent me today regarding the Creative Zen. You might remember, I played with the Zen:M back at CES and wished it didn’t suck.
——–

My review of this review… and I’m completely unbiased!! ;)

Creative ZEN Vision:M Media Player

This is the same cost as the 30GB iPod with Video Playback. The ZEN Vision sells at Amazon for $299. The iPod 30GB is $289.99 at Amazon. ;)

My iPod’s hard drive kicked the bucket a mere week after its warranty ran out. Talk about rotten fruit. To get my life back in tune — and to spite Apple — I picked up this Creative media player.

Just like a cell phone, but with a delicate moving part, iPods have a useful lifetime… they won’t last forever. I’m sure Apple feels the spite, enjoy your Creative media player. Good luck getting it serviced if it develops problems.

In fact, upon further research, there are some interesting warranty features:

Creative’s Warranty	Apple’s Warranty
warranty is not transferrable	transferrable warranty
warranty is only good in the country of purchase	worldwide warranty
labor costs are covered only for the first 3 months	labor costs are covered for the first 12 months
refurb models are only covered by a 30 day warranty	refurb models are covered by the same 1 year warranty
buyer pays repair shipping	pays shipping in the first 6 months

Surprisingly, this stylish 30-Gbyte handheld held its own against my old iPod. It matches the video iPod’s MP3 and MPEG playback, makes up for lack of AAC support with DivX and Windows Media compatibility, and dazzles with its 2.5-inch LCD.

Same size screen, wonder how nice the Creative screen looks… I’ve never
seen one that was working on display.

(Editor’s Note – I’ve seen the screen, it was pretty nice.)

The menus and one of its buttons are customizable, and it has FM radio and a mike for recording messages. Plus, it mounted on my PC as a hard drive, so I could add files by just dragging and dropping — no more iTunes nightmares.

Windows Explorer for organizing your media… that sounds like loads of fun. FM radio: more fun. I am interested in the included Mike, is he cute? Does he take dictation? It’d be cool if they included a mic. (Sorry, pet peeve, Wired copy editors suck… I’ve seen so many typos lately.) My only iTunes nightmares are having to upgrade every ten minutes. ;)

My only complaint is that the vertical touchpad is a little too sensitive. And without iTunes Store compatibility, I have to get most of my video via BitTorrent. But that’s a small price to pay to escape Steve Jobs’ stranglehold on my music collection. — Erin Biba

Have fun getting sued. How does iTunes create a stranglehold? iTunes creates full quality Fraunhofer MP3 encodings at up to 320kbps, or VBR AAC, or even Apple Lossless (okay, that one is proprietary).

——

Thanks for the email, iPodfan! I love it when you’ve woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Keep ’em coming!

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Apple iPod

Volume limit iPod update?

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 29, 2006

Hmmmm….. this sounds like a great idea. Apple has been getting flack for iPods having potentially ear damaging loudness –

The move follows a class action lawsuit that was filed against Apple in a federal court in California in January, which claimed that iPods could cause hearing loss because they have the capacity to produce sounds in excess of 104 decibels and up to 115 decibels.

But it’s a 27.7 mb download for a volume limiter and “bug fixes?” That seems kinda big. I’m not sure we’re getting the whole truth here, folks. Apple has notoriously put new software into iPod and iTunes software releases, so I wonder what else might be in here?

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Download

Apple iTunes

iTunes Season Pass Fiesta!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 27, 2006

Didn’t think they were going to stop with The Daily Show and Colbert Report, did you? Apple added multi-“we-swear-this-isn’t-a-subscription-“passes to Lost and Desperate Housewives tonight. More on this tomorrow morning.

iTunes Video Store

Home Entertainment Tivo

New Tivo?

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 27, 2006

No Series 3 Tivo yet, but Amazon has specs on a SD dual cable tuner (one analog, one digital). Sounds like they may have one input for an external tuner and one internal tuner. Probably not the most straightforward thing to hook up, but Tivo has been pretty remarkable in the past making this stuff just work.

No official word from Tivo yet, but Amazon, Buy.com and a few others seem to have product info, but no ship date.

(Via Zatz Not Funny. . ..)

Satellite Radio XM Radio

XM adds 10 new music channels

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 27, 2006

Haven’t been paying too much attention to our pals over at XM lately, so here is a little update. After a little tiff with Clear Channel about adding advertisements to their channels (CC provides programming to several XM channels), XM decided to add genre channels that match the CC provided channels.

Those new channels are:

U.S. Country – XM 17 – Country Superstars of the 80s and 90s
Flight 26 – XM 26 – Modern Hits 90s & Now
XM Hitlist – XM 30 – Today’s Hit Music
enLighten – XM 34 – Southern Gospel
XM Liquid Metal – XM 42 – Heavy Metal XL
Big Tracks – XM 49 – Later Classic Rock
The Heat – XM 68 – Rhythmic Hits
Escape – XM 78 – Easy Listening
XM Chill – XM 84 – Chill Music
Viva – XM 91 – Latin Pop Hits

They also will be adding 6 regional talk radio stations in the spring and summer.

If you can tolerate another subscription in your life, XM is really great. If you spend a lot of time in the car or just like ad-free radio, check out XM.

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(Via Orbitcast.)

Apple

Mac OS X turns 5 today

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date March 24, 2006

Another Friday afternoon Mac post, sorry Windows people. Ars Technica takes a look back at the last 5 years of OS X. For you fogies out there, we can remember that OS X was arguably the second most important thing that Jobs did upon his return to Apple (the first being the iMac). OS X made Macs cool for developers to use and many normal folks followed their lead. Nice retrospective for this piece of tech I use every day.

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