...more recent posts
Atrix has faux carbon fiber weave silkscreened on the back. Rather than snapping it in half to see, I asked a guy who fabricates composites. He spotted it as fake immediately.
Still waiting for a sim card. (insert sad face)
Comcast's streaming video, within the house. Implemented via transcoding in the house -- like a slingbox that slings just over local wifi.
Place your bets. New iPad to be announced at Apple event starting in half an hour. Signs point to incremental feature bump rather than a large leap forward. I think 512MB RAM (up from 256), and front facing camera for video chat. Plus probable second rear facing camera (this one doesn't make sense to me, but 3rd party iPad case design leaks all show a cut out, so I'm saying it's true solely on that evidence.) Maybe slightly larger screen (smaller bezel) but same resolution. No SD card slot. No USB. No Thunderbolt. Really new iPad with more major changes to come in September.
Also revamped Mobile Me may well be announced, finally providing some clarity to the purpose of their *massive* new data center in NC. I'm guessing this will provide "cloud" storage for iTunes Store purchased media so that you can access from any of your iDevices. But not, as some people are speculating, cloud storage for all your digital media (i.e., I think they won't allow you to upload and store non iTunes Store purchased media.) Also I think no streaming music or video services (i.e., no pay $x/month to stream whatever music you want a la Rhapsody) making Apple's LaLa purchase still a bit hard to understand. Some basic features of Mobile Me to become free (or maybe "basically" free, like $1.99 from App Store), but anything really useful will be an add on with a (probably too high) price.
Yes I have no life and find guessing these things sort of fun.
ars technica gropes the atrix
Engaget fondles Xoom -- Hits retail tomorrow. Wifi-only version coming later.
Interesting take on Apple's subscription kerfuffle. Apps aren't magazines and vice versa.
In 1926, Tesla predicted the portable TV
streaming video twofer:
Google’s YouTube in Talks to Stream NBA, NHL Games Live
CBS and Netflix Announce Two-Year Licensing Agreement For Library Content
So, these days I'm using (as a user) XP, OSX, Android, iOS, Windows 7, and Ubuntu. I've just successfully done an NFS mount in Ubuntu (which required finding and downloading some packages), so I'm well on my way to being a Linux fanboi.
More resistance to iOS subscription model. Their solution illustrates a path for some developers: fuck doing an app, just use http.
egyption baby named 'facebook.'
WP7 marketplace is a no GPL zone
Using handbrake (open source media encoder app which uses open source x264 encoder) to encode some HD. Turned the knobs up to 11 on the "advanced" settings page for max quality. It's been cranking on a two minute clip for 15 minutes, and it's about halfway through. My Core2 Duo laptop is going to burst into flames any moment now.
My favorite video player is 10 years old.
Music in the Cloud
Wifi-only Xoom = $600.