Aug 30, 2007 Sep 1, 2007 Friday August 31, 2007
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NBC wants out of the world's most popular online music, TV and movie store
Apple today announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes Store. The move follows NBC's decision to not renew its agreement with... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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Pzizz nap generator now exports 2.5 times faster
With the release of Pzizz version 2.3 of pzizz for Mac the developer has improved the export speed by nearly 2.5 times, so it now takes just 2 minutes to export a 20 minute "nap" on most... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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ezGear shows off the ezView Leather Case for iPhone
ezGear has announced the ezView Leather Case for iPhone (modeled after their ezView Leather Case for iPod Video) The slim profile of the case reduces extra bulk, while the velcro band allows the... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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Keep it simple, stupid
So while everyone can remember the phrase "KISS" :keep it simple stupid (or keep it sweet and simple if you have kids) it seems that no one can really do such a thing but Apple. You see, creating software and hardware is a really hard thing. You focus on getting the features in and getting the bugs out. And you are so close to the product while you build it that it's easy to lose sight of the goal. Keep it simple. This CW article really hits the nail. One of the tenants of my eBook is clear here: get early adopters to help you, but build easy-to-use pragmatic products for the late majority mass-market. In a nutsell, build it for your mom.
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How do you really feel?
Apple really shouldn't hold back its true feelings about the iTunes Store no longer having NBC's TV shows like this: The move follows NBC's decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV ...
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NBC Fraks Itself
You know something is up when the story goes from anonymous sources say NBC to end iTunes contract to Apple press release saying “see ya NBC” in the course of a few hours. It’s particularly telling that Apple usually doesn’t put out a lot of pressers fired in anger. Usually, Apple doesn’t discuss its negotiations with third parties, so saying that NBC wanted to double the price of TV downloads is a proactive bit of spin on Apple’s part. NBC, you’ve been Steve’d. Or, to quote from your soon-to-be-former download powerhouse, “you’re fraked.” Still, assuming the basics of the story as reported are correct — that NBC sought much a much higher price and more DRM restrictions — they certainly stand to look like fools if this is a bluff that has been called. Considering that network television loses a few million viewers every year (and has been consistently doing so for a decade), it’s vital that they have alternate revenue streams. And they’ve just pissed away iTunes. Amazing. This is the latest in a series of attacks on iTunes by rivals, which seems remarkable in its pointlessness. Apple’s power, and money, come from the iPod, not iTunes. Apple doesn’t make a lot of money from iTunes, and if you fill your iPod with alternate sources, that’s no worse for Apple than if you use iPhoto and get prints from Shutterfly instead of iPhoto’s built-in printing service. As long as people continue to buy Macs, iPods, and iLife updates, Apple’s happy. iTunes challengers may eventually succeed, but even if they do, does it matter? So far, the attempts to unseat the iPod itself have largely been laughable. It remains the dominant portable media player, and the key fact is that it plays two kinds of media: non-DRM’ed media, and FairPlay DRM’ed media. This leaves NBC with four highly unappealing options Release DRM’ed shows in a format other than FairPlay. In other words, don’t play on the iPod. Given the carnage of the many Windows Media DRM stores — Rhapsody, PlaysForSure, Urge, etc. — this is obviously suicide Release non-DRM’ed shows. In five years, we’ll look back and see how obvious this was: watermark the hell out of the files so you can catch the worst scofflaws, but let people play with their media on whatever devices they like and re-use it in harmless ways (Universal is not going to go broke if I use one of their songs in a home video, fercryinoutloud). Given that NBC is reported to want more DRM from iTunes, not less, this is a non-starter for them in 2007. Only release web-player versions of shows. And monetize it how? Can you really sell ads to that format? And is the 600×400 pixel Flash window really appealing to a non-trivial number of viewers Don’t sell digital downloads at all. Step 1, do nothing. Step 2. Step 3, profit! It’s worth remembering that NBC is part of NBC Universal, 20% owned by Vivendi, which also owns Universal Music Group. And those corporate cousins are also threatening to walk out on iTunes and boosting iTunes rivals with non-DRM content. So it seems like there may be a company-wide desire to resist or actively thwart Apple’s influence over media distribution. Which sort of makes sense, given that the various Universal divisions are media distributors, making iTunes a competitor. If Apple had the potential to make my company irrelevant, I’d probably be pissed too. But hopefully not as stupid. Then there’s the other bit of format-wars weirdness from the company, Universal Home Entertainment’s long-time exclusive support for HD-DVD, and its rejection of Blu-Ray. At least Paramount and Dreamworks got paid handsomely for picking sides in the fight… $100 million might be more than either would have made selling discs in either format over the next year, especially now that the conflicting fortunes of the formats (it was just two months ago that Blockbuster dumped HD-DVD) is a strong disincentive for consumers to pick sides in the battle. So, is Universal picking a fight it can’t win, by turning its back on iTunes and the iPod? If they play keep-away with their content, won’t they just drive a lot more users into grabbing pirated music and TV shows off Bittorrent? Or is there some sane, plausible strategy here that I’m not seeing?
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Breaking News: NBC Has Shot Itself in the Foot
NBC announced late Thursday afternoon that it will not be renewing its contract with Apple to sell NBC TV shows through iTunes. That is, unless NBC can convince Apple to enforce stricter DRM and allow NBC to charge even more for the TV shows that iTunes has put on the map. That's right, I'm a little worried. But not for Apple… for NBC. As we all know, most “good” TV has been replaced with approximately 9,435 reality TV shows that do nothing but prove that we may not be as smart as we think we are. With a lack of quality television, many networks have seen a decline in viewership. However, out of the ashes have risen a few shows that are starting to achieve a “cult” status - due in large part to iTunes. My favorite example, of course, is The Office. One of my favorite comedy shows, The Office didn't exactly turn into a favorite overnight. In fact, according to NBC execs, the show wasn't necessarily going to survive another season. However, due in large part to its availability on iTunes, The Office has turned into Thursday night's biggest hit for NBC. “I'm not sure that we'd still have the show on the air” without the iTunes boost, says Angela Bromstead, president of NBC Universal Television Studio, which owns and produces “The Office.” “The network had only ordered so many episodes, but when it went on iTunes and really started taking off, that gave us another way to see the true potential other than just Nielsen. It just kind of happened at a great time.” According to the WSJ, NBC's move appears to be a negotiating tactic. Months away from a joint-venture online video site, Hulu.com, NBC is feeling like it can muscle a few more dollars out of the iTunes giant. After all, estimates from Forrester Research put TV show downloads through June at only 50 million. Either NBC thinks its scare tactic is going to work, or they truly believe they'll make up the revenue from online ads at Hulu.com. I believe there are plenty of people who will catch a missed episode or two online, even if they have to put up with embedded advertisements. However, there are apparently a few million people who actually want to own their digital content to watch again and again. Having those digital downloads available turn ordinary computers into home media centers. Somehow I just can't picture watching NBC shows via my Apple TV on an ad-saturated Hulu.com. So if NBC goes through with its threat and pulls all NBC shows in December, I'll be sad. But I believe NBC will be the one kicking themselves in the a** when they see a perfectly good revenue stream dry up. And who knows how many other sleeper shows will go unnoticed because they never had a chance on iTunes. Oh, the tragedy! UPDATE: Just after finishing this post, Apple issued their own press release stating that NBC wanted to double the price of TV downloads from $1.99 to $4.99! And, in a proactive effort on Apple's part, they've decided not to offer any NBC downloads for the coming fall season so that fans (and season pass holders) don't get screwed come December. “We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,â€? said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.â€? I sure hope they do too Apple. I really do. No Tags
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NBC Cancels iTunes TV Show Deal
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- NBC Universal won't renew its agreement with Apple's iTunes to carry NBC shows on the download service, sparking retail retaliation from the computer giant. NBC Universal won't pull its existing content from iTunes until its current two-year deal expires in December. But in response to NBC Universal's decision, Apple today said it would not make NBC's new fall TV shows available for download from iTunes.
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The Next Killer App
Any successful information technology requires a killer app — an application so compelling that it can, all by itself, justify the purchase of a given device. When it comes to personal computers, there have been many killer apps, starting with the spreadsheet, but there haven’t been any new ones in a long time, which is a problem. This column is about a potential new killer app for the PC platform, perhaps its last one. What do you know about telepresence? I have for the last several months been shooting for Maryland Public Television a new PBS documentary about how information technology has transformed our lives and businesses. It is an esoteric and very close look at a few technologies. Some, like the rise of office automation and the personal computer, are obvious: secretaries and telephone operators have disappeared while all the rest of us learned to type. Others, like RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips, are harder to see but just as transforming by creating a real-time distribution system in which we can know where everything is moving all the time, taking just-in-time inventory from a goal to a reality. One of the most striking of these technologies, which has yet to achieve wide use, is telepresence — high-definition video conferencing as a substitute for business travel. Telepresence is not far from being here on a wide scale and the effects — even beyond business — should be profound. I see telepresence shortly invading our homes. The way vendors tend to implement telepresence today is fairly uniform if inconsistently interoperable. A special conference room is built that is actually half a conference room, half of a table set against a wall that is all video screens. Typically three big projection or LCD displays are side by side in landscape mode with a third landscape screen mounted higher on the wall above the middle lower screen. The three lower screens are used to show the remote participants in the meeting. Sometimes all three screens are devoted to participants at a single location, but up to four locations can be linked if needed. The top screen is used for meeting materials like PowerPoint presentations or videos intended to be seen by all the participants. A couple weeks ago I used a system of this type (in this case it was from Hewlett-Packard but there are similar systems from Cisco and other vendors) to interview the people who designed it. I was in Palo Alto and they were in Corvallis, Oregon. In addition to the telepresence system (called Halo, whatever that means) I had a camera crew at both ends to record the action in each room. These rooms are not cheap to build or run. The HP systems cost either $249,000 or $349,000 to build, depending on the model, and $18,000 per month to operate. This gets you a DS3 connection (45 megabits per second) to a low-latency global network and 24/7 support. Each of the lower screens uses six megabits per second, with the remaining 27 megabits per second for that fourth upper screen. If this seems like bandwidth overkill for PowerPoint, understand that this HP system was co-developed with the Dreamworks movie studio specifically to allow dispersed groups of executives to review 1080p HD footage from upcoming films and for dispersed editors to actually work together to edit films without having to be in the same city. With feature film production budgets now averaging $50 million, $18,000 per month for editing support is nothing. With just over 100 such rooms now in operation for HP, part of the high price is also simply investment recovery. If HP were selling 10,000 of these rooms per month the price would be substantially lower. Video conferencing has been around for a couple decades, but telepresence is different from that. You can see the entire other side of the conference table, for example, and the people who are sitting across from you appear to be life sized. They can see you and you can see them. When another person speaks to you they can look you in the eye. Body language and emotions are easy to detect and the sound of each participant seems to come from his or her direction. You can watch the people who aren’t talking to see if they are even paying attention. It really is tele-PRESENCE and the fact that you are looking in a video screen is forgotten after a minute or two. Here are some lessons I learned from the experience. For one thing, size really does matter. The big screens changed for me the entire experience, though I think a home telepresence system could do fine with a single big HD screen instead of three. Eye contact is important, too, and that is generally accomplished through two techniques — mounting the camera as far as possible from the subject then using some subtle video morphing software to make it seem as though the camera was actually mounted behind the screen. For a home system I believe most of this effect could be achieved by simply increasing the distance from subject to camera, reducing the angle at which the camera is seen above the screen. This is the major failing in video chat systems where the camera is mounted on the display. Using the system I quickly came to understand that the real power wasn’t in bringing together groups of big shots for huge powwows at which sweeping global decisions would be made. The quintessential telepresence meeting lasts 10 minutes and involves a group of people at any level who simply need to come to a concensus. Nobody flies 10,000 miles for a 10 minute meeting yet everybody walks down the hall for one. Being able to hold such a meeting is what can make a widely distributed group of workers function like people in the same building, which has been one of the nagging problems of global development and outsourcing. The fact that it already has eight rooms up and running in India may give HP some advantage in that respect. We’re early in this process, but I think telepresece is going to be a big deal. It comes down to a big, high-resolution screen, good sound, mounting the camera far enough away to simulate eye contact, and of course throwing lots of bandwidth at the problem. Some of these components, like relatively cheap high-def big screens, are here today. The processing power required is here, too. The only significant obstacle to us having our own telepresence systems is bandwidth, and we can predict with some accuracy when we’ll have that. This bandwidth calculation involves applying some variation of Moore’s Law in two dimensions. Available bandwidth at a reasonable price is always increasing over time. The second dimension involves changes in compression technology and increases in processor power that over time reduce the amount of bandwidth that will be required to carry a high-res video signal. With the passage of time, then, available bandwidth increases while, at the same time, bandwidth requirements decrease. This has the effect of amplifying Moore’s Law, accelerating that point at which telepresence at a reasonable cost is possible. So when will it happen? When will we have telepresence capability in our homes? Some of us are there already and don’t even know it, the only remaining problem being one of integration. The home embodiment of that HP Halo system would be a single big screen, which using even the current HP technology would require six megabits-per-second. Millions of Internet users in Asia and Europe already have that kind of upstream bandwidth and hundreds of thousands of U.S. residential customers (mainly Verizon FiOS users) do too. But HP’s Halo system is old-tech, using MPEG-2 compression that is more than a decade old. A home system built around a more powerful codec like H.264 and using more powerful hardware could reduce the required bandwidth for home telepresence by at least half, making the likely barrier three megabits-per-second. That kind of bandwidth is nothing to users in Korea or Japan and it is nothing, too, for fiber-to-the-home users in the U.S. (mainly Verizon) and wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, either, for fiber-to-the-curb vendors like AT&T. Giving two megabits upstream to every cable modem user wouldn’t be trivial, but it is possible and could be — I think WILL BE — spurred by competitive pressures from DSL. So the bandwidth is coming and millions of people will have it, even in America, by 2008. What’s missing is both consumer demand and painless satisfaction of that demand through easy-to-use high-volume products, which come down to big screens, cameras, and PC systems running the right software. The part of this that is both hardest and easiest is stimulating demand. People aren’t demanding telepresence because they have never experienced telepresence. If you show them they will come. This is 100 percent analogous to the introduction of color TV in the 1950s. People didn’t know they wanted color TV until they saw color TV. But once they saw it, the lure of color TV was instant and obvious. What was difficult with color TV was that it required a large and very expensive video production and distribution infrastructure that cost tens of billions of dollars and required major financial commitments from vendors like RCA, which had to build transmitters, receivers, cameras, an entire TV network (NBC) and even subsidize the production of color programs like Bonanza to seed the system. Home telepresence requires almost none of that and, in fact, actually leverages the huge investment already made in HDTV, since that’s what those big telepresence screens will no doubt be used for when nobody wants to visit with Grandma or play video strip poker. All that’s required to sell consumers on home or small business telepresence, then, is allowing them to experience it. And, of course, making it affordable. I think Apple will be the first PC-only vendor to embrace the telepresence business. Steve Jobs would like another killer app. His last attempt at creating one — video editing — was only somewhat successful. The iPod of course qualifies for killer app status, but I don’t think it has actually sold many computers, though lots of iPods. Apple had big screen TVs ready to introduce a year and a half ago but cancelled them at the last moment as too mundane. You could buy an HDTV from HP or Dell and Apple apparently didn’t have that much more to offer. But this time it will be different. Imagine one of the new aluminum and glass iMacs only instead of a 24-inch screen make it 42 inches. The familiar iSight camera will be there in the bezel. but this time the camera will have HD resolution. This hang-it-on-the-wall iMac would establish yet another category of computers, which is what Apple loves to do. They’ll sell a million units to the faithful and all it will take is putting an active telepresence system in every Apple store connected to every other Apple store for prospective users to play with. This gets Apple into the big screen TV business with a system that has higher margins simply because it isn’t just a TV but is also a Mac. Look for all this after Christmas along with refreshed Macs featuring the H.264 encoder chip I pre-announced a number of months ago. Look for Apple to also facilitate telepresence by turning it into a service as it has more and more wanted to do. Then imagine that system connected to a 3G iPhone. For Apple the point is to create a platform to allow more natural implementation of “lean back” content. Apple TV was the first push in this direction, but this telepresence system will be both easier to use and more expensive, two attributes near to Steve Jobs’s heart.
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Apple to NBC: Drop Dead
In a rare display of pique and public one-upsmanship, Apple (AAPL) has answered NBC Universal's (GE) decision not to renew its iTunes contract by halting sales of NBC's fall season. In a press release issued shortly after news of NBC's decision appeared in the New York Times, Apple went public with what had been private negotiations, characterizing NBC's latest bargaining position as a "dramatic price increase" and painting Apple -- and its customers -- as the aggrieved parties. The release read in part:Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode. “We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,� said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.� (link)Although many press reports make the assumption that Apple intends to pull all NBC programming off its site starting Sept. 1 (see for example here), the language of the press release is ambiguous. The key sentence reads: "Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September."Which when carefully parsed seems to be saying that Apple will not put up any new NBC material so as to avoid showing the beginning of a new season without being able to show the end. NBC Universal, with nearly 1,500 hours of programming on iTunes, is Apple's single largest content partner for digital video. Many Apple watchers were surprised to learn today that NBC's programs -- from current shows like The Office and Heroes to archive material from Saturday Night Live -- represent between 30% and 40% of the video downloads on iTunes. (See What iTunes Looks Like Without NBC.) Although NBC and News Corp are scheduled in October to start putting content online in a joint venture called Hulu.com, it was expected that all of NBC's content -- old and new -- would stay on iTunes until its two-year contract with Apple ran out in December. Apple's preemptive move this morning to call NBC Universal's bluff and cancel, in effect, the network's fall season -- at least on iTunes -- deprives NBC of whatever revenue and promotional push a presence on Apple's Music Store brings them. It also strengthens Apple's hand should negotiations resume. As one might expect, much of the analysis among the Apple commentators was harshly critical of NBC. "Bottom line? Apple's looking good here, championing users," wrote Michael Gartenberg, a tech analyst Jupiter Research. "Sometimes I think God put video content guys on the planet to make the music guys look progressive and visionary." Curiously, some of the content NBC sells on iTunes is available for free on NBC's websites, although not in a form that's as easy to search or download. In any event, $4.99 sounds more like a bargaining chit than a final price. An investor at the Apple Finance Board points out that at $5 a show, 24 episodes of Heroes would cost almost $120, more than three times the price of the DVD set. "What are they thinking?" he asked.
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Apple calls NBC TV's digital download bluff
Earlier today, we got news that NBC was planning not to renew Apple's distribution of its TV shows via the iTunes Store, but there was always the possibility they might negotiate a new deal by December. Well, Apple has decided to call NBC's bluff by publicizing the terms of disagreement in a press release:CUPERTINO, California—August 31, 2007—Apple® today announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com). The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,� said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.�Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.I don't know about you, but to me, that sounds like a very good call on Apple's part. Would you pay $5 -- half the price of a feature movie -- for an episode of a TV show? I sure wouldn't. Heck, I can rent the entire season on DVD from my local blockbuster for $10.But Apple didn't leave it there. To avoid disappointing subscribers who wanted complete season sets, it is cutting NBC's fall season from the iTunes store in September instead of January when the contract expires. Apple's saying to NBC, "OK, explain to your board why you just gave up $20 million a year [my estimate] in very-low-cost digital revenue that you now have to make up in advertising sales." Personally, I'd love to hear the answer to that one.Every business thinks they can be a destination on the Internet, but the reality is that consumers only have so much time available to hunt down content they want; it's just the tyranny of too much content. If convenience didn't trump most other marketing factors, we'd have no convenience stores. Yet network execs are still fighting to believe that they can be THE portal to digital content -- despite the fact Apple is five years and a multi-billion-dollar business ahead of them in establishing that beachhead with iTunes. And we'll ignore the issue that the only way to get video onto the best-selling portable video players and the hottest cell phones in the world is through Apple.NBC put down a $20 million bet on a bad hand. Apple just called, knowing that even if it loses, it has a $2 billion a year iTunes business bankroll to keep playing with. Want to bet who wins the match?Full disclosure: the author owns Apple stock.Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, NBC
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On Mice
The Mighty Mouse. Loved and hated, this little gadget looks like nothing else around. (I, personally, am firmly in the love-it camp; I'll say that right now.) But mice are a very idiosyncratic kind of thing; unlike any other peripheral, the mouse is the one that the average user spends the most time using. Because they literally have to fit the user, there are seemingly more tweaks and features than anything else offers. As for the Mighty Mouse - while I like the lack of buttons, using only right- and left-click, may people complain about a lack of configurable buttons. I, personally, don't need a way to set the side buttons to something else, and more buttons than four or five are, in my opinion at least, overkill. And I love the aesthetics and long battery life. But, as I said, that's me. What do you need in a mouse? If Apple redesigns the Mighty Mouse to match the new keyboards, what would you want to see? (Aluminum? More buttons?) No Tags
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Booq Vyper exo Laptop Bag Review
Back in March I sold my G5 tower in favor of the mobile life and have been using a 17″ MacBook Pro since then. There are a plethora of bags/totes/backpacks/etc for traveling with your laptop so there was a pretty big sea of things to chose from. I've tried a few different bags over the past few months a must say that the bag I use now is by far my favorite. Booq is know for their durable and sleek bags. Almost all of their bags are made out of ballistic nylon, waterproof zippers, and a hard shell with seatbelt nylon straps. These things are seriously heavy duty. I was particularly attracted to their Vyper exo line which is large enough to carry some extras with you but not so bulky that it looks like you're carrying around a duffle bag. Their Vyper exo line is also their first product to make use of their new Terralinq feature. Each booq bag comes with a unique ID number etched in metal and attached to your bag so that if you loose your bag (and laptop), the person who finds it just goes to the booq site and reports the bag with the unique ID. You'd then hopefully get your precious cargo back. I lugged around my 17″ MackBook Pro all over the country in both cars and planes and must say it easily withstood the beating. It fit perfectly in under-seat airplane storage while still holding all the random extras I was carrying with my laptop. The only thing I might change is to lower the number of extra pockets and storage areas. It seems a tad overkill to me but I'm sure others could easily put them to use. The price tag on a Vyper exo XL (the largest size) is $195. The price can give a little bit of sticker-shock, but these really are top of the line bags that you'll get years of use out of. 10 out 10 stars…easily. bag, booq, laptop, storage, vyper
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FFOSS (Freeware/Free & Open Source Software) Friday
Journler 2.5.3 Sat, 25 Aug 2007 10:34:58 Journler 2.5.3 is a Mac OS X donationware (free for personal use) journal (daily notebook) application. This latest version only works with Tiger (10.4.x). However, older versions of Journler (1.17) is available for Mac OS X 10.3.x or older. Journler integrates with Apple’s iLife suite and lets you add audio, photos, and video in your entries. Panoramio: Submit Place Photos to Google Earth Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:27:37 OK, this is more of a request than my usual nano-commentary. Panoramio: Photos of the World …was acquired by Google last month (July 2007). If you download and install the latest version of Google Earth, you’ll find that one its features displaying user submitted photos of places all over the world. This is great stuff (and a tremendous time waster :-). So, here’s my request… read more Lightning: Mozilla Thunderbird Calendar Add-in Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:11:15 This has probably been around for a while. However, I only learned about the Mozilla Lightning add-on calendar project for the Mozilla Thunderbird email client (another on my must have list) a couple of days ago. It is listed along with the better known (to me anyway) Mozilla Sunbird standalone calendar client as a calendar project. I hope this add-on doesn’t fade away along with Thunderbird after it is split off from the main Mozilla group. Buzzword: Web Word Processor Sun, 19 Aug 2007 21:22:26 I use Google Docs a lot and I’m always looking for the next web-based untethering app like it. So, I hopped over to… preview.getbuzzword.com read more Got Open Data???
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mPhone, Anyone?
Somewhere on the Redmond campus… The vein in Ballmer's forehead is throbbing. If he's not careful, he may direct his anger on yet another unsuspecting, innocent victim, a chair that is soon to feel his wrath. Why? Because of Apple's continued success with the latest darling being the iPhone.…
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The Video Generation Has Yet To Hit Hard
As you know, the reaction to iMovie '08 has prompted some very shocked and demeaning responses. The interesting thing, though, is why the massive overhaul occurred. The redesign was targeted more towards the average consumer who wants to patch up a bit of video and share it with his…
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Alternative delete a 'word' shortcut in Terminal
Often times I'm in Terminal and I recall a command using the up-arrow. I then want to delete a portion of this command and replace it. Hitting the Delete multiple times is annoying at best. The bash shell offers limited Emacs-style command line editing, with which one can delete a word using the sequence Escape-Control-H. While this works, it's awkward because it requires lots of movement with the left hand, and is difficult to do repeatedly.It occurred to me that the Delete key is probably sending out a Control-H, so I tried the sequence Escape-Delete instead, using my left hand for Escape and my right hand for Delete. It worked, and was very easy to do repeatedly. And even if you miss the Escape, you still get the Delete, so no damage is done.
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Bandwidth as currency goes to Harvard -- and possibly Leopard
Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is trying to crack the code on one of the social questions of peer to peer file sharing: "How do you get people to upload as well as download?" Their approach incorporated in
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What iTunes Looks Like Without NBC
Almost as shocking to Apple (AAPL) watchers as the news that NBC Universal is not renewing its iTunes contract is the news that the network's content, according to the New York Times, represents 30% to 40% of digital video downloads on Apple's site. When did that happen? NBC is hardly the Must See TV powerhouse it was in the days of Friends and Seinfeld. It routinely runs fourth in the Nielsen broadcast TV ratings, and on iTunes it has to compete with not just ABC, CBS and FOX, but with 63 other networks, including youth-oriented powerhouses like Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Comedy Central alone offers the Daily Show with John Stewart, the Colbert Report, South Park and the Sarah Silverman Show, just to name their top sellers. NBC's top sellers on iTunes, as many commentators have noted, are The Office (currently the No. 2 season download on the site, after Showtime's Weeds) and Heroes. But scroll down the page and you start to get a sense of how NBC could be racking up all those $1.99 charges. The network has a strong bench. Number 3, 4 and 5 downloads are Scrubs, 30 Rock and Studio 60. Below them you'll find series like Friday Night Lights, My Name is Earl and the Law and Order franchises. And unlike Comedy Central, which offers only the last dozen or so episodes of the Daily Show, NBC has gone for the Long Tail play, digging deep into its archives to repackage old Saturday Night Live episodes, Gen-X nostalgia like the A-Team, Xena and Saved by the Bell and Baby Boomer classics like Dragnet, Rod Sterling's Night Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. All told, it has put some 1,500 hours of programming on iTunes, all of which could disappear in December when the two-year contract with Apple runs its course. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, it's almost as if Jeff Zucker's NBC were using the iTunes Music Store as a proving ground to test the format and audience appetite before striking out on its own -- or rather with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- on Hulu.com, scheduled to launch in October. Could Apple have made a strategic blunder, letting NBC slip through its fingers? As the Times points out, NBC's defiance, following Universal Music's rebellion earlier this year, could embolden other networks, whose contracts will presumably come up for renewal in the months ahead. "No The Office, no Battlestar Galactica, no Heroes?," writes MG Siegler at ParisLemon. "Suddenly I'm starting to rethink video on iTunes. No Universal Music Group tracks, no Fox movies? Suddenly I'm starting to rethink iTunes in general. Apple is still in an utterly dominant position even without NBC -- its the music sales, not the video sales that drive the service -- but it could all come crumbling down rather quickly." (link) Steve Jobs, asked recently what he most admired about Bill Gates, answered that he envied Microsoft's ability to work with its partners (link). Both men bargain hard, but Gates seemed to be better than Jobs at keeping his frenemies inside the tent. Has Jobs learned that lesson? We may see next Wednesday, when we find out how he responds to Zucker's challenge, and what he plans to do next with iTunes, the iPods and Apple TV. UPDATE: Apple has called NBC's bluff. See Apple to NBC: Drop Dead.
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MacNotables #758: Dan Frakes on What's Next for the iPod, Better Video Options and Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Dan Frakes of Macworld examines some of the possibilities for Apple's September 5 music-focused media event. Dan offers his perspective on what features might be included in the next generation of the iPod and why some features make more sense. Dan and host Chuck Joiner then veer off on a comparison of portable video playing options and wrap up with some preliminary thoughts on choosing noise-cancelling headphones from an upcoming article by Dan. Links: Noise-canceling headphones by Dan Frakes on PlaylistMag.com I Want Buttons by Dan Frakes on Playlistmag.com “Archos 605 WiFi Portable Media Player (30GB) “Archos 704 80 GB WiFi Portable Digital Media Player” (Archos) “Archos 705 Portable Video Player Sonic Impact V55 iPod Portable Video at Dr. Bott Sonic Impact Video-55 review on PlaylistMag.com “wiDock Wireless Dock for Ipod Synch & Transfer of Music & Videos” (Silex Technology) MacVoices #731 - MacVoices at Expo: Hubbert Smith of Silex Discusses the wiDock and Wireless Device Server “Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones” “Bose® QuietComfort® 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones” “Bose® QuietComfort® 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones” “Panasonic RP-HC500 Noise-Canceling Headphones” “Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard Active Noise Canceling Headphones”
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Mac OS Ken: 08.31.2007
Ken Ray and guest August Trometer kick around recent Apple related news including: Wal-Marts music moves, the Nokia music play, freeing the iPhone, and more.