Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang rejected an acquisition bid from Microsoft valued at $33 a share, or about $47.5 billion. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer then pronounced defunct the company's months-long effort to acquire the Web portal. In a letter to Yang made public in news accounts, Ballmer indicated that he would not stage a proxy battle to gain control of the company. (The Wall Street Journal 5/5)

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says he would be open to another bid from Microsoft or other companies at a price he considers appropriate. While the Internet firm isn't officially for sale, it would listen, "should somebody else come back someday and want to buy the company." (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=az5DfMHYs0pY 5/5)

Jerry Yang, chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., speaks during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan. 7, 2008. Photographer: Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg News

With Microsoft walking away from the Yahoo deal, there’s been a lot of talk about what it’s next best option would be. Going after AOL is an obvious choice. It has the ad inventory (aka pageviews) Microsoft needs, has its own collection of growing online advertising businesses, and has a very willing seller in parent Time Warner. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/06/could-aol-be-next-on-microsofts-list 5/6)

Microsoft began offering TV downloads today for its Zune portable media player. The Zune online store, which used to offer only music-video content, will now offer shows from the likes of NBC, Comedy Central and MTV for about $2 each. Zune sales stand at more than 2 million, according to this article. (Reuters 5/6, Variety 5/6)

NBC's return to YouTube with an official channel represents an acknowledgment of the power of Google's community. NBC's new Hulu channel on YouTube features brief clips from popular shows, along with the statement: "At Hulu.com, you can watch videos like this one, for free." (Iwantmedia 5/6, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080505-nbc-using-youtube-clips-to-drive-hulu-traffic.html 5/5)

Social networking and advertising networks are attractive sectors for investors in new media, according to panelists speaking at the Digital Hollywood conference in Hollywood. Also, investors should not look for any meaningful returns "for about five years." (Iwantmedia 5/6, http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=81967 5/6)

LinkedIn, the social-networking site for business professionals, is said to be raising a new round of funding. LinkedIn previously raised $27.5 million from venture firms Sequoia Capital, Greylock and Bessemer Venture Partners. The new round reportedly values the company at $1 billion. (Iwantmedia 5/6, http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/05/whats-happening-at-linkedin-is-it-getting-bought 5/5)

Amazon.com plans to make out-of-print CDs available via its "Disc on Demand" service. The retailer is working with Sony BMG and EMI Music to gain access to hundreds of titles. (InformationWeek 5/5, American City Business Journals/Sacramento 5/5)

Stephen Colbert's use of the Internet is earning the Comedy Central host special recognition in the annual Webby Awards for online achievements. The New York Times's online unit will take home eight honors in the ceremonies, June 9 and 10 in New York. (Iwantmedia 5/6, http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080506/internet_awards.html 5/6)

AP Photo: In this March 5, 2007 file photo, Stephen Colbert poses during the launch party for "Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream", his new Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor in New York.

Wikipedia is asking a court to dismiss a libel lawsuit brought by literary agent Barbara Bauer, who claims she was described as "The Dumbest of the 20 Worst" in an article. Wikipedia argues that it is immune from liability, because Web sites can't be sued for comments posted by users. (Iwantmedia 5/6, http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=81881 5/5)

The Interactive Advertising Bureau released its long-awaited Digital Video in-Stream Ad Format Guidelines to help provide a template for digital media firms to deploy, track and monetize non-linear ads. The goal is to develop common formatting and practices to make video ads more interchangeable between publishers and advertisers. (Cynopsis 5/6)

Multiplatform animation producer aniboom signed a quintet of online syndications deals to increase the exposure of its original content. Branded aniboom channels can now be found on DailyMotion, Metacafe, Veoh Networks and blip.tv, and more than 200 aniboom shorts are now indexed through video search engine Blinkx. The network also signed partnerships with MobiTV and Thumplay in the US and Buongiorno SpA, Cellfish, Jamster and Player X overseas to distribute bite-sized animated shorts on mobile platforms. (Cynopsis 5/6)

Another scalable online HD video start-up called Vusion shed its beta status and officially launched yesterday, competing with other high quality video streaming providers such as Move Networks and Brightcove. Island Def Jam Music will be its first paying customer, streaming music videos of artists such as Kanye West, Rihanna and Mariah Carey in 480p quality. (Cynopsis 5/6)

You’ll have to download a player for this one but the video is pretty impressive.  I checked out Kanye West’s Stronger video which was shot to be a bit grainy.  For a better representation of the quality, click on the image below and check out Rihanna’s Don’t Stop the Music video.

NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow was scheduled to testify today before lawmakers that broadband providers such as cable companies do not need to be regulated by net-neutrality laws, because they already manage the flow of online traffic in an open and effective manner. "The disaster scenarios voiced by network neutrality proponents for many years have never happened," McSlarrow was set to tell the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in morning testimony. "In fact, the opposite has happened -- the Internet is booming without regulation. There is, quite simply, no problem requiring a government solution." (Multichannel News 5/5)

So far we have come up with:

Good Experience Live (GEL) Conference (http://www.gelconference.com/)
Consumer Electronics Show (http://www.cesweb.org/)
South by Southwest (http://www.sxsw.com/)
YPulse's Mashups (http://mashup.ypulse.com/)
Sandbox Summit (http://www.sandboxsummit.org/)
TED (http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/7)
E3 (http://www.e3expo.com/)
Penny Arcade Expo (http://www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/)
PopTech (http://www.poptech.org/video/)

Please send us any additional selections that we could add.

Thanks!

Qin is building a name for herself as a truly versatile designer, able to work on designs for everything from electronics to furniture to baby products. She has worked on projects for big corporate clients like HP, as well as international clients: Qin has designed a cell phone for a major cell phone provider in Korea, created furniture designs for companies based in Italy, and a wide array of other work. She has even completed a successful design for a high chair, which was shown at ICF, a furniture show in New York City.

Qin has received major industry recognition for her work. At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, one of the biggest shows of its kind, Fuse Project was honored with an award for Best Innovation Design.

Qin feels that her studies at the Academy greatly contributed to her burgeoning career, and to this day she is proud that the Academy awarded her one of her first major distinctions in industrial design: a Ford scholarship for minority female designers.

"When you get an education at the Academy, you learn what it is like to really work!" she says. Among her instructors, she sees Jim Schultz as a major influence in her career development.

It seems that in the aftermath of the downsizing and splintering of E3, that all of the other video game conferences are getting bigger. The Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco last week saw an increase of over two thousand attendees from last year. The Tokyo Game Show, Leipzig Game Convention, and The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas have all seen bigger attendance numbers as well.

Now I wasn't lucky enough to get to experience the E3 of years past, so I have no frame of reference for the media circus that was apparently. I've been told by those lucky enough to witness that insanity that E for All and GDC pale in comparison. Of course, neither of those are really meant for press either, with E for All being for the consumer and GDC being for the developers. I did enjoy them both just the same.

Belkin Surge Protector Wins 2008 CES Popular Mechanics’ Editor’s Choice Award!

Belkin International, Inc., received an Editor’s Choice Award from Popular Mechanics magazine for Conserve, an 8-outlet surge protector that helps lower the overall impact on the environment. Conserve makes it simple to eliminate wasteful standby power to electronic devices, helping to reduce energy consumption and costs.

• Offers 8 surge-protected outlets: 6 “switchable” and 2 “always-on” outlets, allowing users to control energy use easily
• Slim, sleek design blends in seamlessly with today’s modern electronics and appliances
• Control multiple Conserve surge protectors with a single remote control from virtually anywhere in the house with user-selectable channels
• “Switchable” and “always-on” outlets ideal for home theater or small office/home office

Contact me for more information.  

Greg

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

The future possibilities were much in evidence at a huge conference in Las Vegas last month.  One of the curious attendees was Sean Prpick of Regina, the network producer at CBC Radio Saskatchewan. Sean is kind enough to share his thoughts about what he saw.  Whether you are in the media business or a consumer, you'll find his observations most interesting.

Radio Signals in Las Vegas

By Sean Prpick, CBC Radio Regina

A colleague and I were recently assigned by the CBC to attend the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Attending CES is a must for media organizations trying to keep on top of consumer technology. That's because over the last 60 years CES has been THE place to debut consumer electronics. Everything from colour TV to VCRs to CD players and beyond have appeared here first.

Over time, CES has grown in importance where it has become literally the biggest convention on Earth. And Las Vegas is the only city on the planet that can handle the 150,000 or so delegates because of its vast number of hotel rooms (and don't get me started on the gridlock around the Las Vegas Convention Center each morning and evening as all those delegates come and go!). This year there was two million square feet of display space filled with gadgets. That's the equivalent in area to 35 Taylor Fields.

The focus of our little team, though, was to learn about the latest developments in radio. And from what we saw, radio is an industry in extreme flux.

As I've told colleagues since I've returned, there was plenty of evidence in Las Vegas that there will be much more change in radio in the next 10 years than there has been in the last 100. Radio as we know it today will become unrecognizable in the decade ahead. In fact, your next radio might not even be a radio. It might be a phone, but more on that later...

Clearly, there was a consensus among industry figures at the show that the sun is setting on conventional analogue AM/FM commercial radio.

Because of its superior sound quality and flexibility in carrying a much greater number of signals, digital radio in some form will eventually take over from old-fashioned analogue AM/FM. But what digital system will dominate in North America remains unclear...that is, if any single digital platform can dominate.

The current saw off among contenders may continue for years to come - and even more digital broadcasting platforms might appear. Economic logic would seem to dictate one of these systems, though, will come out on top.

What we saw at CES were five main digital challengers for broadcast radio dominance. In fact, experts at CES were calling these systems by a new collective name, "The Five Radios", a term I predict you'll be hearing a lot in the months and years ahead.

These five are:

• WiFi, which is already delivering Internet radio to wireless home networks and in relatively small commercial settings, like Starbucks coffee shops. Radio-like Internet appliances were on display at CES set up to receive WiFi signals. In fact, one award-winning WiFi radio receiver by the Taiwanese maker Asus appeared to the casual observer to look and act like just an ordinary old-fashioned table radio - except that it was programmed to receive 10,000 Internet radio channels.
• Then there's WiMax, a kind of WiFi on steroids, which can deliver wireless Internet over much wider areas and is comparable in transmission performance to low-power FM transmitters. The transmitters and the receivers on display were about the size of pineapples and a handful of these devices could blanket a city the size of Regina with wireless Internet radio. Promoters of WiFi already recognize WiMax as a threat and they were more than willing to criticize their rivals to journalists covering CES. WiMax, however, got a leg up at the event when Intel announced it was going to start building WiMax receivers into the chips it manufactures for laptop computers.
• An alternative on display was a new generation of super-sophisticated cell phones, which are getting better and better at handling high quality audio over the Internet. Phone manufacturers are also cluing into the fact there is money to be made in delivering radio this way. One maker in particular, Nokia, was explaining at CES how it was turning itself into a content delivery company as well as a hardware maker. It's setting up its own radio portals on the Internet to deliver radio. You'll be hearing soon about its plans for Canada.
• Satellite radio also had a presence at the show. It looked like a "killer ap" for radio delivery at CES just a few years ago but critics in Las Vegas pointed out how the take up of satellite radio now seems to be leveling off or even dropping a little as it hits the saturation point in signing up new subscribers.
• Finally there's HD Radio, which is being championed by conventional broadcasters in the United States. It's enormously attractive to them because it's relatively inexpensive digital technology that has reverse compatibility with AM and FM systems. HD Radio kits can literally be bolted to the side of existing transmitters, putting traditional radio broadcasters into the digital radio game.

I'm going dwell a bit on HD Radio because it's the kind of digital radio that is closest to the old-style analogue system that I work in. It's also the technology into which existing American radio industry is pouring big bucks. To my mind, the muscle the U.S. radio broadcasters can put behind HD gives it one of the best chances of being the dominant new digital radio system in North America.

HD Radio - which stands for Hybrid Digital Radio - was developed by a consortium of American radio industry companies working under the brand name iBiquity.

American broadcasters resisted other forms of digital radio because they had billions tied up in existing analogue facilities.

HD technology, as developed by iBiquity, is welcomed in the USA, though, because it is compatible with the existing radio system and it is a lot cheaper than other digital alternatives. A typical radio station can get into HD for about $150,000. I was told at CES a brand new state-of-art radio station in a major market costs about $200-million - so you can see the attraction of simply upgrading.

So far, HD Radio has spread to 1,500 radio stations in the USA and is available to 82 percent of the American population. This availability is expected to rise to 95 percent by next year.

But here's the big catch: HD Radio is so new to American consumers there are only about a million receivers in homes across the USA - that's in a population of 320 million.

There are other problems with HD. The transmitters have a relatively short range, comparable to the weakest FM transmitter and the audio quality isn't as good as some of its digital rivals, like DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting).

But broadcasters at CES say they've tested their signals time after time with focus groups and these gatherings of ordinary citizens report consistently that HD is superior to FM and equivalent to a listening to a good audio CD.

HD Radio also has an intriguing feature that American broadcasters are just beginning to explore. It's called multi-casting.

I won't burden you with too many technical details, but in broad strokes it works like this: the digital signal broadcast by an HD transmitter can be overlaid on a regular analogue channel already owned by a radio station and then the HD signal can be further divvied up into different sub-channels.

To understand this last concept, imagine that HD Radio has come to Saskatchewan at some future time. In Regina CBC Radio One would continue to broadcast on old-fashioned FM at 102.5 on the dial.

If you had an HD Radio you could hear the FM channel, or, with the push of a button, you could hear on that same channel on your radio in a higher quality digital version. If you were listening in a car and you moved out of HD range, it would automatically flip back to regular FM.

You could also tune your radio into the sub-bands of HD 102.5, say an all talk channel, as well as an all Saskatchewan music channel, as well as an all weather channel and so on 

It sounds futuristic, but it's happening all over the United States now.

One HD-equipped National Public Radio station, based in Washington, D.C., now multicasts talk, classical music, a blue grass channel, weather and traffic channels, all on its HD bandwidth, as well as its old fashioned FM channel.

It's all very exciting, but to repeat that earlier stumbling block: there are only a million HD radios in all of America. iBiquity and its friends say, though. that is about to change. The cost of HD Radios is starting to plummet and the first iPod-size portable HD receivers will be on sale by Christmas. Engineers at CES also say within three years HD chip technology will be so sophisticated and tiny that receivers can be discretely slipped into cellphones and computers, making HD invisible, but ubiquitous.

You may well ask, when do I get my HD Radio? Not for a while yet. Regulators and broadcasters here are taking a typically cautious Canadian wait-and-see approach. But if HD Radio ever does gain mass acceptance in the USA, you can rest assured it won't take Canada long to join the party.

• Wall Street Journal
• San Jose Mercury News
• CES Daily
• Twice
• Reuters
• Chicago Tribune
• Washington Times
• EE Times

iBiquity further boasts 25 other booths displayed products featuring HD Radio technology.  In more recent HD Radio news:

• HD Radio will be available as a standard or dealer-installed option in 2009 Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury lines.  Ford Motor Company joins BMW, Mini, Volvo, Hyundai, and Jaguar as car manufacturers offering factory-installed HD Radio options.
•  Portable HD Radio units were demonstrated at CES, including models that combined MP3/HD and Cellular/HD.  Samsung leads the way via their lower powered Cayman chipset.
• Alpine, Dual, JBL, JVC, Polk Audio, and Sony showcased HD Radio models incorporating the new iTunes "tagging" feature.
• MSN Direct HD possibilities for restaurant information, gas prices, and live traffic updates were demonstrated.
• Navteq demonstrated new real-time traffic, weather, and location-based services via HD Radio.
• Harris, NPR, & Towson University demonstrated HD Radio technology which may benefit hearing and visually impaired consumers, including "closed captioned radio" (International Center for Accessible Radio Technology).
• ESPN multi-casting showcased the potential for subscription based content using HD Radio.
• Alpine, Dual, LG, JVC, Jensen, and Sony all made announcements regarding new HD Radio products within their brand line before the end of 2008.

Hyundai unveiled their Genesis luxury model at the International Automotive Show in Detroit, which includes factory-installed HD Radio.

And, finally, the HD Digital Radio Alliance committed another $230-million in HD Radio promotional support during 2008 -- a total radio promotional committment of more than $680-million!

Even more amazing new inventions that may or may not have debuted there!

By Jeremy Azevedo

While I didn’t manage to make it to the Consumer Electronics Show this year, I did get to get to have a look at some of the amazing new devices that debuted there. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to read any of the descriptions that came along with them.

However, I felt that most of them were pretty self-explanatory, so following is my best guess at what some of these astounding new inventions actually do:

CES is quite possibly the only event where speakers can be described as “sexy” and everyone understands what that means. And you never know how cool Bill Gates was until he rocked out live on Guitar Hero with Slash.

Top products:

1. Sony’s 11 inch Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) HDTV
2. Panasonic’s record setting 150 inch plasma HDTV - This is the world’s largest TV, stretching a monstrous 8 ft x 11 ft, with a kickin’ 4k resolution.
3. Pioneer's Project Kuro - This video says it all
4. GM’s Cadillac Provoq - GM's fifth-generation fuel cell with a lithium-ion battery to produce an electrically driven vehicle that uses no petroleum and has no emission other than water
5. Motorola’s Moto Rokr E8 phone - This flat glass covered phone, which shifts from music player to phone to imaging device at the touch of a button. What's even crazier is that there are no buttons. This is a touchscreen phone with vibe feedback. Yes you touch a flat surface (think iPhone) and via the haptic feedback it feels like you are pressing an actual button.
6. Bug Labs’ open source modular gadgets - what if you could design the gadget you need, not what some company wants to sell you.
7. NEC and Alienware’s curved gaming DLP gaming displays - The Crysis 2880 x 900 res curved screen not only mimics peripheral vision, but also gives a player the ultimate surround experience.
8. The Eye-Fi SD card that wirelessly sends photos to a PC or any of the online photo sites

The worst gadget of the show:

1. Philips Swarovski crystal USB pendant - are they serious? Did they really announce this at a press conference?!

Anyway, if you live in the states and have any knowledge of the tech industry at all, then you probably know that Bill Gates will retire in July.  During his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, he showed a video that predicts his last days before retirement.  It's one of the most hilarious corporate videos I've seen in a while, so I just had to share it. 

The video includes cameos by Matthew McConaughey, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Brian Williams.  Check it out...

Some green ideas are so simple, they're almost no-brainers, but competition between manufacturers keeps them beyond reach - until some clever intermediary sees a solution, that is. This is what has happened with GreenPlug, a brilliant new technology announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, 2008, last week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The concept is simple - although main power supply leads are standardised across all electrical devices (within country boundaries), there has not so far been any such standardisation of the connecting leads, transformers and chargers that we use for our direct current devices attached to them. Consequently, laptops, PDAs, mobile phones and anything other electronics we might plug in via a charger or transformer each have their own separate kit. Even though my home isn't the most gadget-heavy in the world, I know the chaos that this causes. Old power supplies pile up in drawers, when their gadget friends have long since met their demise, rather like the keys we all accumulate for locks we no longer have access to.

GreenPlug is an intelligent, real-time protocol that enables all devices to connect in the same way, drawing on the existing universality of the USB connector. The GreenPlug chip is embedded in the laptop or mobile phone, for instance, and through the Universal Power Protocol (UPP) is able to communicate with the power supply so that exactly the right amount is delivered. More importantly, though, the UPP also allows the device to tell the power supply when it is fully charged or idle, eliminating the "phantom" power that is normally consumed in standby mode or when power no longer need to be drawn.

Since this all requires manufacturers to cooperate, the most impressive part of the story is how GreenPlug aims to achieve this. For a start, the technology and the protocol were developed in collaboration, but the GreenPlug chip and help in implementing the protocol will be provided free of charge to manufacturers, who win by not having to make or buy in expensive transformers for their products. GreenPlug win by selling their cables and hubs, whilst you and I win through convenience and in energy savings. Finally, the planet wins too, from the energy saved in the use of the devices, and unnecessary manufacture of non-standard connectors, and from the reduction in the number of chargers and adapters going to landfill each year.

It's altogether very smart indeed, and the plugs and hubs are pretty good looking, too. My bet is that in a couple of years time these will be as ubiquitous as Scart leads, and just like those, we'll wonder how we ever managed without them.

Amanda

NEW YORK, NY -- January 15, 2008 -- BlogTalkRadio (www.BlogTalkRadio.com), the Internet’s first live social talk radio network for citizen broadcasters, today announced that it is partnering with Yankee Group, the first independent technology research and consulting firm exclusively focused on connectivity change, to produce the “Post 2008 Consumer Electronics Show Analyst Roundtable” radio program. The live program will air on January 16^th at 11:00 AM ET.

BlogTalkRadio’s VP of Business Development, John C. Havens, will host the live broadcast, and it will feature three Yankee Group analysts, Michael Goodman, director of digital entertainment, Josh Martin, consumer research analyst, and Jennifer Simpson, consumer research analyst. Each analyst will provide insight on the top trends and products from this year’s CES. The show can be heard live online the Yankee Group profile page on BlogTalkRadio (www.BlogTalkRadio.com/YankeeGroup). Listeners are encouraged to call into the show and discuss the topics with the analysts at (347) 205-9329.

“We are witnessing swelling ranks of connected-consumers raising demand for digitally-delivered content due to the impact of ubiquitous connectivity,” said John Jacobs, senior vice president of Marketing and Product Management at Yankee Group. “Together, BlogTalkRadio and Yankee Group will offer listeners important and interesting developments of 2008 CES through this new channel that is beginning to resonate strongly with our audience.”

“After participating in Yankee Group’s 2007 Mobile Internet World, we’re very excited to be working as a partner with Yankee Group for this CES-specific program,” said BlogTalkRadio’s Havens. “Yankee Group’s unparalleled research on global connectivity change is in-line with what BlogTalkRadio seeks to deliver to our wide audience; rich, socially-impacted news and insights.”

After the live broadcast, listeners will be able to hear a podcast of the show on Yankee Group’s profile page on BlogTalkRadio.

About BlogTalkRadio

Originally launched in August 2006, BlogTalkRadio is a free, web-based platform which allows any user with a phone and a computer to host a live, interactive radio show. Hosts call into the service by phone, managing callers on the web-based host dashboard. Shows stream live directly from the host’s BlogTalkRadio webpage. Since the company’s 2006 launch, thousands of hosts have broadcast more than 47,000 shows on BlogTalkRadio. Notable hosts include Marla Cilley, the FlyLady home and life organizer; Doug Christie, former NBA player; and the LAFD. Guests on BlogTalkRadio have included Yoko Ono, Brad Pitt, John McCain, Brian DePalma, Shirley MacLaine, Oliver Stone, and Mike Huckabee, just to name a few. BlogTalkRadio relaunched an updated site with special features in September 2007, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com.

# # #

Contact:
For BlogTalkRadio:
David Bray
Middleberg Communications, LLC
P: 212.812.5665 X 107
dbray@middlebergcommunications.com

Amazing new inventions that may or may not have debuted there!

By Jeremy Azevedo

While I didn’t manage to make it to the Consumer Electronics Show this year, I did get to get to have a look at some of the amazing new devices that debuted there. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to read any of the descriptions that came along with them.

However, I felt that most of them were pretty self-explanatory, so following is my best guess at what some of these astounding new inventions actually do.

---

Cat Translator

If you have two or more cats from different parts of the world, then you know how difficult it can for them to communicate in their various native tongues. Now, thanks to the Cat Translator, Little Paco can finally communicate to little Klaus just exactly what’s on his fuzzy little mind! The Cat Translator comes pre loaded with extensive vocabularies in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese, LOL Cat and Meowlish. Miscommunication is the root cause of most feline disagreements. Bring peace to the Middle East of your home or apartment with the Cat Translator!

---

· So, The Consumer Electronics Show is over for another year, and Bill Gates is now a part timer. As he wanders around his office looking for things to do (one of them could be to start clearing out his 4 million spam emails) the thought must have crossed his mind about what a great year he could be missing out on. His Surface product could finally start taking shape, whilst the Xbox360 goes from strength to strength. So, following on from last week's topic of predictions, guesses and imminent arrivals this year, here's another look at what could be happening in 2008 in the world of technology.

BT Vision on the 360
You can imagine how this caught my eye: "Xbox? BT? I have those!" Yes, this is the news that BT is teaming up with Microsoft to offer its television service via the 360 console. This announcement falls in the same week that BT took a giant step forward in the world of broadband by announcing plans to install a network in Kent that offers speeds 20 times faster than the average UK household connection. Exciting times for BT customers, it seems.
The Microsoft deal will see on-demand films and sports content available later in the year via BT Vision, but will not be able to receive or record live TV. To get the service, customers will have to first subscribe to BT broadband. Sadly, this does mean that I have to wait another 5-6 months, just to how this deal pans out, and if it's worthwhile. As someone who already owns BT broadband, and has been considering the TV package since its launch, I must admit that I'm now stuck between a rock and a hard place, as although I could be getting sport and film through the console, I'll still be short of Freeview channels and, more importantly, something to finally kick my terrestrial TV channels in the bin. Analysts also spotted this flaw, one in particular said:

"People will have to sign up to a 12 month broadband contract and not all Xbox owners may want to do that. The fact that it cannot offer the Freeview content or DVR functionality of the dedicated BT Vision set-top box may also prove a barrier."

Local Networking
2007 was the year of Facebook. You couldn't do anything, see anyone or visit anywhere without hearing those immortal words "poked", or "his/her status", and then when we thought it couldn't get any bigger, we found something even more irritating than the crazy frog: Applications. So will Facebook fall out of everyone's favourite tabs anytime soon? It's looking unlikely, but then again look how Myspace fell from grace so quickly. So what's out there that can tame Facebook, and be the next big thing in outline networking?
Experts are predicting that this whole 'social networking phenomenon' will diversify next year, with the rise of smaller, "local" sites for a single neighbourhood, street or building. While Facebook is good for catching up with friends on the other side of the world, or country, whilst exchanging virtual pets or beers, a more local network setup could actually be a lot more useful. Enabling people to advertise or promote, they could help with anything from lost cats to trader recommendations. The BBC article added:

"They also have the potential to recreate the kind of community spirit we like to imagine existed in the days before we spent our lives glued to computer screens."

The ZCam
This gizmo is essentially a 3D camera that can capture movement and gestures to control activities on a computer or TV screen. The company is showing off two big uses at CES: the first, like Microsoft's Surface, shows how users could use gestures to open and close programs on their computer and move things around on-screen. The other use is as a games controller, rather like the motion-recognition used by the Wii, but without the need for a remote control. Instead, the ZCam will allow you to dictate the actions of your on-screen character through movement, but without having to wave a controller or wear special motion-capture suits and gloves. It will even allow you to combine your own 3D image inside the game, with your movements shown in real time. It's nearly ready to leave the prototype stage, with the technology almost at 100%, So it should be expected to hit the market by the end of this year, with the price likely to be a bargain £70-ish.

So, goodbye CES, Hello Macworld. More on that in the weeks to come.

~

· Channel 4 have started the year by trying to make us a bit more aware about what goes on our plates every evening, and with the help of Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall they just might do that. The trailers for the current season of food programmes, entitled The Big Food Fight, started over Christmas, and fortnight long season of shows starring three of the biggest and well known chefs you're likely to see in a room together, Channel 4 hopes to change the way people of Britain think about their food.

The adverts are what initially caught my attention, not because of what they were promoting, or the way they were doing it, but because they had managed to get all three guys to film together. However, because of their frantic schedules (and not because of Gordons hatred for Jamie, or their inflated ego's), it wasn’t possible to film all three chefs at once. Using the magic of modern telly, the trailer makes it seem as though they were all there at the same time. The extended trailer, despite this, is one of the funniest adverts I've seen in a long time.

Hugh's effort so far has been the most eye opening. His contribution to the season is 'Hugh's Chicken Run', shown over three consecutive nights last week, in which he built three chicken farms in Axminster (one intensive, one commercial free range, and a community farm project staffed by volunteers), culminating in a campaign to encourage the eating of free-range instead of intensively-reared chicken.

Jamie followed this up in more graphic detail, with Jamie's Foul Dinners, in which he used shock tactics and statistics to get his point across, with films showing the insides of battery cages, and little chicks on conveyor belts, and the chicks that weren't up to standard being gassed, and also showed live demonstrations about the quality of eggs and chicken not just on their own, but also those that will end up in our ready meals. He also invited all the major supermarkets to show up and argue their points, with only the 2 showing up. Jamie said in an interview:

"As far as I can see, the British poultry industry is at an incredibly vulnerable point right now and if we don't start making changes, like shopping differently, we might not have a poultry industry in 20 years time."

Gordon's contribution is this coming Friday, as he hopes to lead the nation in a live cook along event. The menu looking like this:

• Pan-roasted scallops with tomato & herb salsa
• Steak and chips with rocket & parmesan salad
• Chocolate mousse

It's not too late to take part either, all of the details, including videos on preparation are on the Cookalong website on Channel 4.

~

· It seems that over the next year or so, the word 'social' will take on a whole new meaning as far as technology is concerned. As I stated elsewhere in this article: 2007 was the start of the Facebook generation. Communicating with friends, a place for your photos, and a place to join and chat with like-minded people with similar interests, this is social networking at its (current) peak. Then there's websites like YouTube, which specialises in social video media sharing, there's del.icio.us which is social bookmarking, Flickr can be described as social photo sharing community... the list goes on. So where do browsers fit into all of this? They are, after all, the gateway to the whole Internet, and yet technology in this area seems to have slowed down over the last few years: You click on a site, look around, watch or listen to something, click somewhere else- all by your lonesome self. Earlier this week that I was to try one of the 2.0 alternatives that has had a few people talking: Flock. Upon reading an article last year on a PC World blog about how it had become the author's favourite browser (even over Firefox), I started to sit up and take notice. More importantly, I wanted to have a try myself of this new creation.

The thing is, it isn't new at all. In fact, history in this browser dates back to 2005, and the company has been teasing releases of a final product since then. In all fairness, initial reviews of the browser from that year seemed to highlight a promising venture, but that soon died away when the months rolled on and nothing greater arrived that a weak beta attempt. However now it seems to have got people's attention again, including the Telegraph:

"Flock does all the normal stuff that other browsers do, but it also pulls content from a host of social-networking sites directly into your browser window, so that it's all there at a glance; there's no need to visit individual sites. Flock is a browser without the browsing."

So when does it stop being a browser, and start being a homepage? Despite it's obvious similarities to iGoogle, there's arguments to say 'never'; maybe it's just simply a very clever browsing tool, even Flock's creators have dubbed it a "social browser", which will win its hearts amongst today's tech-heads for sure. But it's not just that, it's the browser's ability to 'interact' with the aforementioned social networking web services, such as Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and many more. Maybe this doesn't sound as '2.0 attractive' as it really is; however on first try of the browser, I was slightly taken aback by it's ability to recognise my accounts on Facebook, Livejournal, Flickr and also right here at Wordpress. Without even asking it to, it introduced me to exactly what it can do, by syncing the accounts up so you don't really need to keep jumping back to the sites to see updates or information.

"One of the best features is the People sidebar. Activate it, and you'll never need to log into Facebook again... ...You'll be able to instantly see when friends have updated their profiles or added new content, and communicate with them through the browser, sharing content as you wish."

My initial impression of Flock on using it for the first time is how much of an influence Mozilla Firefox seems to have had over it. It looks and feels much like its competitor (which isn't surprising since it's built on the same open source code), but this isn't a bad thing at all. Which asks the question; How long before this technology is snapped up by Mozilla, and implemented into a browser people are familiar with?

That negative thought aside, I'm impressed by what it can do so far. Sure, it's a little slower than Firefox, and to be fair to the company I have only just started using it; I've so much more little gems yet to find, and I'm confident that they do exist somewhere. It's elegant and well-designed, and hopefully one which has a bright bright future. The next big social thing? Only time will tell.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Pandora is no more for the UK, it was found that it could cost £25,000 to stop snoring, Last.FM and iGoogle will soon be optimized for the iPhone, Copying CD's will soon be made legal, and what if Jeremy Clarkson was in charge of us all?

a bit of fun to close this week off: how long does it take to get from Here to There? 7 hours and 51 minutes apparently.

ttfn
x

Com ela vieram várias novidades engraçadas que devem ter tido a oportunidade de ver no site Engadget ou Gizmodo...

Mas agora é vez da apresentação mais aguardada do ano para muitos fãs da empresa da maçã...

É a MacWorld 2008!

Está será na próxima Terça-feira, às 17h (hora de Portugal continental)...

Até lá, e para vos abrir o apetite deixo-vos dois artigos interessantes.

Um da revista wired, sobre a "verdadeira história" do iPhone.

O gadget mais aguardado dos últimos anos!

Podem encontrar o artigo aqui.

Mas outro artigo que achei interessante, é um que tenta explicar porque a Apple vai, ou deve, comprar a Adobe!

Até faz sentido... E a Apple tem dinheiro para isso...

Vamos lá ver...

Podem encontrar este artigo aqui.

Boa leitura!

Mais informações depois do keynote do Steve Jobs... ;o)

P.S.: Ultimamente não tenho actualizado tanto o blogue porque estou a tirar CCNA.

Not much to say about this one, looks like iRiver came out with another nice mp3 player. Unfortunately the video doesn't turn the power of the device on so we don't get to see how the interface looks and works but it's appearance is very up-to-date. The screen is large-a feature not many portable mp3 players have so that's nice and the spin-scroll is very unique. I'm not sure how well that'll work out but if it's anything like the iPod scroll wheel, it should work well.

The solution could be found here.

Oh, my, God. Can someone just tell me what's the need for such a huge television? No, wait, I got it, it's awesome!
Panasonic showcased their 150" plasma television at this years Consumer Electronics Show. And get this, the television still manages a 4000 x 2000 pixel resolution with double the brightness and a 50% less energy. They say they had to fly them here on a Boeing 747 because of the gigantic size of this 8' by 11' widescreen. It seems like the Bug Labs post right below is a bit dull compared to this...
Anyways, I guess we now just have to wait for Best Buy to start carrying them and hope they offer installation on this beast.

It's never a dull year at CES. This time, a small company called Bug Labs stole all the attention. Their new super customizable, all-in-one gadget is just purely genius. Just purchase the base and connect all the extra devices you want. The best thing is that it's open-source so everyone can create programs for it and third-party devices just gives it infinite possibility. Although the base is a few hundred, the devices will only range from $49 to $99 (at launch-set to go up thereafter) and though those add-ons can add up, having the convenience of all your electronic devices in one piece is worth the cost. And because of all the third-party involvement, getting more for your money will definitely have it's place here.

1. I didn't brush up on my Chinese, the native tongue of half the conventioneers. (I wondered if our friends from the People's Republic of Capitalism view Vegas with revulsion or envy.)

2. I didn't wear more comfy shoes. (My feet still feel like the back side of a slow rodeo clown.)

As for the electronics, Panasonic's 150-inch TV was definitely drool-worthy, and I dug the projector the size of a deck of cards. But what snagged my attention was this upstart electronics brand that's purely marketing on steroids.

Surrounded by companies with soul-numbing names like Tech-Em, Tech-Power, Tech-Top, Tech-Vision, Techko, Techman, Technocel, Technosonic, Techwell, Techwin and Tekocell (all present at CES), one start-up stood out like Paris Hilton in a nunnery. And all it took was the name "Skullcandy" and the edgiest logo within miles. (Most of the other logos at CES ranged from clichéd to pathetic.) If you didn't notice that, the blaring industrial music by a live DJ did the trick.

Skullcandy makes headphones and other lifestyle products. Correction: Skullcandy doesn't make jack. Skullcandy is a bunch of designers and marketing guys partying in an office in Park City, Utah, designed like a skateboard park with a swimming pool. Skullcandy founder and CEO Rick Alden proudly acknowledges that he sources his products from Chinese manufacturers, and that he hired his first one at CES 2002. He did develop the idea of a headset that simultaneously plugs into your cellphone and your MP3 player, and his friend came up with the name. Everything else is derived from the good underpaid engineers of the Middle Kingdom. Alden didn't even have to pay for his product prototype, he boasts.

And, hence, I kneel before thee, Master Alden, for thou art a true marketeer.

With his new brand, Alden targets skatepunks and other denizens of the extreme set. His website features extreme-sports junkies in mid-flight and bands with names like "Swollen Members." And his edgy brand has attracted fans ranging from Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh to my fellow USC Trojan Reggie Bush.

It's working. While the Chinese engineers who created Skullcandy's products still inhabit tiny booths on the convention's periphery, Skullcandy scored attention in the center ring. Its products can be found in retailers as disparate as Amazon, Best Buy and Emporio Armani. And it's become a cult brand among musicians and other trendsetters.

The lesson here? If you'd like to be a hotshot in consumer electronics, ditch the engineering classes and call up your designer buddies and a Chinese contractor. It's America 2.0 folks, and that means looks are everything. As a marketer, I should be celebrating this fact, but I'm kicking myself for not launching my own electronics brand. (Atomic Tangotech?) Of course, there's always CES 2009...

Ah già, ma tu hai idea di che razza di posto sia Las Vegas? No? Dai un'occhiata qui. E dato che a Las Vegas (come del resto ovunque) ci vanno le persone più diverse ecco dei profili di visita. Non è una bella idea da proporre a qualche ufficio turistico nostrano?