Other Rants

Leave It to the Government to Screw Things Up

info@santry.com — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The tech industry overcame the Y2K issue relatively unscathed, but leave it to government to mess things up when it comes to time. They changed the date of daylight savings time (DST) in the US and Canada, and now companies are rushing out updates to various systems and devices in order to account for the problem. This has caused mass confusion, appointments being changed, and help desk calls on the rise as updates are being applied. This is sure to not be the end of it, and most likely will impact people more than Y2K ever did.

For more information on updating your devices, visit the Microsoft site for information.

NYC to Say "No" To Your Zune or is it iPod?

info@santry.com — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

As a result of two recent pedestrian deaths in Senator Carl Kruger district in New York, Senator Kruger is reported to introduce legislation that would ban MP3 players in metropolitan areas within New York. The proposed ban would ban MP3 players, cellphones, and any other electronic device while crossing the street.

The thing to notice in this article is the use of the word iPod: "New York may ban iPods while crossing street". Is the iPod name going to lose its unique brand identity and become a generic term? It is getting to the point where the word iPod and MP3 player are used interchangably. With the words podcast, and variations of "i" something, Apple's brand is constantly being lost to generalization within the public eye. Even my kids when asking for an iPod last Christmas, said they didn't care which one they got all they wanted was an iPod (meaning any MP3 player would do -- Zune, SanDisk, iPod, whatever).

As this title points out using the word "iPod" interchangably with MP3 points out that Apple is in danger of losing its brand and iPod becomming an generic word. This has been the case with many popular trademarked products in the past: Aspirin, zipper, escaltor, in some countries Sony's Walkman has become a generic term. Is the iPod the next to fall?

Men Need Down Time Too

info@santry.com — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

According to a recent survey commisioned by MSN Games Americans are feeling more stressed out and starved for time than ever, with 56 percent of men (age 18 to 34) and 71 percent of women (age 18 to 34) spending less than an hour on themselves a day engaged in activities that provide downtime or alone time and are pampering or relaxing to them.

Although stress reduction and mental dexterity are often cited as reasons people of all ages play casual online games, males in the 18 to 34 age bracket are most likely to list playing games as a daily escape -- a chance to indulge in some "me time." Men are also more likely than their female counterparts to play a game at work, with males age 18 to 34 most likely to sneak in a quick game during their day.

With many people indicating they have a mere 60 minutes a day to spend on relaxing activities, it is no wonder U.S. men and women are seeking easy, quick stress-reduction techniques. As a result, MSN Games has teamed up with Dr. Kathleen Hall, world-renowned expert in stress and work-life balance and founder of the Stress Institute, to urge Americans to resolve to "Take Back Your Time" this year and engage in activities that help reduce stress and give the brain a boost.

The MSN Games survey found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults who have played a quick, fun online game in the past 12 months say they feel less stressed afterward, indicating that arcade-style games are an excellent destination on the road to wellness.

"We know that 'play' de-stresses the body and actually lowers our blood pressure and heart rate. Taking a break to solve a brain-teasing puzzle or take on a fun vocabulary challenge on MSN Games is a perfect way to clear your mind of the clutter and stress that can pile up during the day," Dr. Hall said.

For more information on the latest in arcade-style gaming or to find stress-reducing solutions, casual gamers can take back their time at http://www.msngames.com/.

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

This week's highlights:

Installing Vista on the Samsung Q1 UMPC - Not really a new story, but it has generated the most search engine traffic this week. Must be a lot of people wanting to upgrade to Vista.
Zune executive to leave the company
Vista Launch Notes - The big story this week was of course the Vista launch. Many companies have released PR to ride the Vista wave.
Origami Experience Available for Download - To go along with the Vista launch, UMPC owners were able to download the new Origami Experience.

Vista Launch Notes

info@santry.com — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Now that Vista is officially launched, Microsoft has updated the Vista updates site to include Ultimate Extras. Owners of the Vista Ultimate version have available to them extras, currently the extras consist of security features, and games. We'll most likely see more of these down the road.

UPDATE: Several Microsoft partners are now releasing PR after PR in conjunction with the Vista launch:

NVIDIA Offers Consumers the Widest Selection of Windows Vista-Certified Graphics Processors and Motherboards
McAfee Upgrades Consumer Security Suites to Ensure Compatibility With Microsoft Windows Vista Operating System
eMachines PC Line Delivers More for Less: Enhanced Design, Microsoft Windows Vista at Top-Notch Values
Pervasive Software Stays in Step With Microsoft Windows Vista Support

It's good to see vendors getting in and supporting Vista out of the gate. It should make the transition a bit smoother for consumers.

Vista Launch

info@santry.com — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Microsoft announced the big hoopla over Vista today. Yesterday Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was all over TV. I watched the Daily Show where he did well, but nothing major stood out from the interview.

Vista is being launched in 39,000 retail outlets around the world and locations online. Some larger retailers are participating in special launch events to celebrate the launch Vista.

81% Are Downloading and Storing More Than Ever

info@santry.com — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

From music, photos and movies to games and ring tones, Americans are creating, downloading, sharing and storing more and more digital content every day. According to a new Harris Interactive study(1) conducted for Seagate Technology, 81 percent of computer users said they are more likely to download and store digital content today than they were just a year ago.

Before, digital content meant written documents, e-mail or business files. Today, however, digital content is the "stuff" your life is made of -- like family photos and home videos, things you create on the computer -- or personalized entertainment collections that can include thousands of songs, video games, and even full-length TV shows and movies. Not surprisingly, as a result many consumers value their content even more than their digital devices themselves. The Harris study found that a majority of American adults (57 percent) agree the content of the files they have stored on their computer is worth more to them than the actual dollar amount of their computer.

The personalization of content has made consumers much more comfortable with digital media and technologies, and they are downloading and storing digital stuff with a vengeance. This in turn has been driving an almost insatiable demand for more and more gigabytes to safely store and manage all this content. Cost-effective and simple ways to collect, share and access digital files are at the top of the wish list, and hard drives are popping up in all sorts of consumer devices ranging from gaming consoles and MP3 players to cell phones, DVRs, network and external storage devices, and, of course, computers in order to satisfy consumers' demand.

"Americans are finding that it's fast, easy and convenient to download and store entertainment like movies and music or to create, store and share memories and experiences -- like family photos," said Bill Watkins, Seagate chief executive officer. "Seagate plays a key role in the digital download revolution by making it safe, simple and affordable to save, share and manage all kinds of digital content from a wide variety of devices."

  More findings from the study:

  -- An overwhelming 96% of U.S. adults own and use at least one desktop or
     laptop computer in their home;
  -- Computer users in households with a child under the age of 18 are
     significantly more likely than users in households without a child to
     download/store music (45 percent vs. 28 percent), games (26 percent vs.
     17 percent), and movies/videos (23 percent vs. 13 percent) nowadays as
     compared to a year ago;
  -- Women computer users (55 percent) are significantly more likely than
     men (46 percent) to report that they download/store photos more
     nowadays as compared to a year ago;
  -- Adults who report having a child under the age of 18 in their household
     (64 percent) are significantly more likely to own one or more video
     game consoles like Microsoft Xboxes;
  -- And, one-in-four adults own and use Digital Video Recorders
     (27 percent) from TiVo or other sources or an external hard drive
     (24 percent).

To meet consumers' ever-growing desire to download and keep digital content, new storage technologies are providing the means to save hundreds of hours of music and video, thousands of photos and documents on a single one-inch hard drive. Seagate leads the industry in providing storage for a comprehensive range of digital content-centered devices including digital audio players, cameras, DVRs and cell phones.

Source: http://www.seagate.com/

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Here's our weekly highlighted items of the week:

Zune Takes 10%
Vista Media Center Online Content Now Available
More CES Coverage: Xbox 360 iPTV
iPhone On Your Windows Mobile - simply because this story generated more traffic than any other since the story on BackupHDDVD.

Notes of the Day

info@santry.com — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

These aren't deserving of their own post, but a mention should be made.

Zune: Rumor mill has it that Microsoft will be offering free music on the Zune followed by a few seconds of a commercial afterwords. Gee, sounds like radio to me.
Windows Mobile: According to the 'Net, Windows Mobile 6 has been leaked and two ROMs are available for download via your favorite torrent client.

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

The big news for this week was coming out of the CES in Las Vegas. The focus was on everything high-def and integration. Here are our picks for this week:

Mr. Obvious Award Goes to...

info@santry.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

The Mr. Obvious Award goes to the NY Times:

The NY Times has an article today entitled: "Demand Outpaced Supply for New Game Consoles"

When you have Wiis and PS3s selling on eBay for twice the retail value or more, of course demand outpaced supply. Do I really need an analyst's opinion to tell me this?

The article is interesting if you want to know the actual sales numbers. Another point is that the PS3 turned out not to be the Xbox 360's main competition, rather the Wii was. This was also acknowledged by Bill Gates recently who said:

"The strength of Nintendo...in the portable space, has been very impressive. [It's] surprised a lot of people, I think, [that] and the Wii. We see Nintendo as our toughest competition."

Source: Gamespot.com

Sorry Sony, but maybe pushing Blu-ray down the throats of the consumers didn't pay off for you.

New Resource Repository

info@santry.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Redmond Gadgets now has a resource repository for placing your downloads, websites, and other information for sharing with our user community. You need to register for free membership (no we won't spam you), and then you can then post your resources for sharing. In addition, registration enables you to post unmoderated comments to weblog entries.

Redmond Gadgets Does Well Out of the Gate

info@santry.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Not that I'm one to toot my own horn, but RedmondGadgets.com hasn't been around for a month yet, and the site is doing extremely well. The site has finally received a Google rank, and our initial rank is a 5. A page rank of 5 is pretty respectable for a site that is under one month. In addition, we have made it to the front of digg.com (the first day of launch), and consistently beat many weblogs with news and information about your favorite devices. We currently average over 300 users per day, not as good as my other site wwwCoder.com which gets over 4,000, but excellent nonetheless.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to read my rants, and hopefully believe as much as I do that all the Redmond gadgets are related, and having a central source for them is the thing to do.

Here's to a good new year, thanks.

iPhone Revolutionary, Yeah Right.

info@santry.com — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

In my previous rant, I compared the new Apple iPhone against Windows Mobile and how there really isn't anything revolutionary about the features it provides. Over at engadget.com, they point out that the design really isn't that revolutionary either. It appears that the Apple iPhone is very similar to the LG KE850.

In another development, the name iPhone isn't even revolutionary. It appears Apple is now being sued by Cisco for trademark infringement over the name iPhone. Cisco has several IP phones that go by the name of iPhone and the name iPhone has also been extended to Cisco's Linksys brand as well. It appears to be a clean cut case against Apple, we'll be watching to see how that develops.

Apple's iPhone Announced - Cutting Edge or Old News?

info@santry.com — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

The news today out of the Mac world is the iPhone will become available sometime in the future. This was anticipated in the Apple fanboy community for a while now. According to the story on MSNBC.com, the phone will support touch screen, wireless Internet browsing, and music and video playing. All of this is supposed to be cutting edge and new. According to Steve Jobs:

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he said during his keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. “It’s very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple’s been very fortunate in that it’s introduced a few of these.”

Revolutionary? Let me pull out my Samsung i730 SmartPhone running Windows Mobile 5.0 and see what revolutionary features I may be missing. Synch with Media Player and my music library, ok check. Hmm... ...touchscreen, uh no, I got that as well. Wireless Internet browsing, let's see... ...oh, yeah, got that, either WiFi, or EVDO access. Music and video playing, let's see.. WMV, DivX, Xvid, MP4, even that ugly Apple format I have, hmm... ...guess that isn't too revolutionary either. So what is? And I can pick from many different styles and vendors. So wake me up when Steve is done, ok?

Really, there is nothing revolutionary about it. The one thing that is, is Apple Inc.'s ability to dumb down the features and interface to something that the general consumer will be attracted to. If Microsoft were to position themselves in this market, they already have the applications and resources to compete here. Create two separate products one aimed at the corporate users which contains all the features they want and another aimed at consumers giving them the media management capabilities they want. Microsoft has done it with Vista, they can do it with Windows Mobile (which the Zune already runs). I'm sure this isn't an original idea, and someone in Redmond is already working on it. We'll just have to wait and see what 2007 or 2008 brings.

Windows Home Server

info@santry.com — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 06:00:00 GMT

One of the big news items out of CES is the addition of Windows Home Server to be released by Microsoft this year. This will provide a central place for storing files, printer management, backing up, and accessing your media. According to the release, Windows Home Server will integrate into Windows Live for access via the Internet.

Windows Home Server is a major step towards device and media centralization. Microsoft puts out so many devices like the UMPC, Xbox, Zune, Vista, Media Center, and Windows Mobile, but all of these are somehow seen and marketed separately. Many people like myself, are corporate users of Microsoft technologies, but in addition, we have Media Center PCs, or an Xbox at home and would like to see more centralization of our home technologies as we have in our corporate applications. There is no technological restriction that prevents you from being able sync your media from a centralized Media Center to your phone, Zune, or send it to your Xbox. All devices should be able to share contact information, or other resources that available on your home network.

More and more homes have more than on PC and getting them to work together seamlessly usually takes an effort. However, Redmond has been trending toward centralization of media and resources for the home the past couple years. With Windows Home Server, I hope we'll see a major effort to get every device to work together.

More information on Windows Home Server can be found in the official press release.

UPDATE: Mary Jo Foley has several pictures of prototypes and design concepts of the Windows Home Servers.

Another CES Blog To Watch

info@santry.com — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

CESBlogs.com contains aggregated feed from various weblogs that are covering the CES this week.

Microsoft at CES

info@santry.com — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Here's your chance to keep an eye on what's going with Microsoft at the CES in Las Vegas, NV. Microsoft has placed a new up on the Web for you to keep up to date with their going ons.

http://microsoftatces.com/Default.aspx

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Another week, and the first one for 2007. Here are our notable items for this week:

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

You would think it would have been a quiet week, but with the news of the alleged compromise of AACS DRM using BackupHDDVD, it caused a major amount of traffic for people looking for more information, so here are a notable stories of the week:

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Time Person of the Year: You

info@santry.com — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 06:00:00 GMT

Well it looks like the editors took a little break this year trying to figure out who was going to be person of the year. Maybe in a politically charged year they didn't even want to go there. But basically everyone who sits in front of the computer is person of the year. The year of the weblog, YouTube, MySpace, and other sites considered to be part of Web 2.0. Whatever you want to call it, there has been more interest in the Web this year than in other years, but person of the year, I dunno.

Anyway, I'd like to thank my family, my friends, and other people who inspired me throughout the years to become a computer geek, I never expected this award. Thank you, thank you, sniff, sniff, choke.

Online Spending Soars

info@santry.com — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 06:00:00 GMT

According to comScore Networks in a release today, they estimate that online spending in the US for the 2006 holiday season through December 15 reached $19.5 billion, marking a 25% increase over last year.

  2006 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days in 2005
  Non-Travel (Retail) Spending
  Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases
  Source: comScore Networks
                                          Billions ($)
                                                           Pct
  Holiday Season to Date         2005        2006        Change
  November 1 - December 15      $15.73      $19.48         25%

"Retailers have been aggressive this year with their online marketing efforts, targeting consumers with early-season promotions," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks. "And now they're looking to finish off the season strong by tempting consumers to continue shopping online later, with guarantees of on-time delivery for items purchased as late as December 18."

"The growth rate of online retail spending accelerated during the latter part of last week, with sales on Friday, December 15 growing 38 percent versus the corresponding day last year," Mr. Fulgoni added. "This demonstrates consumers' willingness to rely on retailers' late-season shipping guarantees."

  Daily Online Non-Travel Holiday Consumer Spending
  Week of December 15, 2006 Versus Corresponding Days in 2005
  Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases
  Source: comScore Networks
                 Millions ($)
                Corresponding               Pct
                Days in 2005    2006      Change
  December 11      $556.2      $660.8       19%
  December 12      $554.4      $619.8       12%
  December 13      $516.9      $666.9       29%
  December 14      $477.4      $634.4       33%
  December 15      $450.8      $623.9       38%

On Monday, December 11, consumers set a single-day record for online spending with $661 million. Two days later, that record was broken as consumers spent $667 million online. Importantly, the growth rate versus year ago accelerated toward the end of the week, demonstrating that consumers are continuing to shop online later this season.

"Last week, online spending rose to its highest point of the year," said Mr. Fulgoni. "Several records were set, including the highest single-day of e-commerce spending ever on Wednesday, December 13 when consumers spent $667 million online, up 29-percent versus the corresponding day last year. Later shipping deadlines this season and the fact that many consumers received a paycheck on December 15 could keep online sales in full swing early next week."

Web site: http://www.comscore.com/

Gates on DRM

info@santry.com — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:00:00 GMT

TechCrunch was one of the bloggers who recently were able to do a sit down with Bill Gates and one of the questions they asked was concerning DRM and the viability of it. The advice given by Bill Gates was:

“People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”

I think even RIAA may have some issues with his advice. But the point here is DRM is makes the online purchasing experience a royal pain in the butt, and is a major reason why consumers haven't embraced online music fully. It causes a major inconvenience by the lack of a standard DRM that could work across all players on the market.

Many people just burn the songs they purchase to CD and rip them to MP3 format so they do not have to be inconvenienced by backing up license files, losing their rights in the event of a machine rebuild, or purchasing another player and it not supporting the same DRM scheme. Things definitely need to change in order for online music to take off, hopefully with this being recognized by Bill Gates more focus will be placed on reassessing DRM.

Highlights of the Week

info@santry.com — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 06:00:00 GMT