Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. Sorry for the delay today, but my favorite coffee shop, Joe Joe’s was in transition yesterday, thankfully they are all settled in at the new place and it is awesome! I have an announcement at the end of this blog as well regarding a new technology blog.
Amazon sells millions of Kindles in holiday quarter
Amazon announced they have sold millions of Kindles in the first 73 days of the holiday quarter. They did not release a specific figure but I’m guessing since they said millions that implies over 2 million. Not a surprise really with the much affordable $139 WiFi only Kindle 2, it has never been easier to enter the digital ebook age. I have not got one yet, but at some point I’m sure I will. For now I use the Kindle app on my iPad and iPhone 4 to read books.
Web based video at heart of Comcast-NBC deal
There is a concern that Comcast’s pending purchase of NBC will be bad for Apple, Hulu, and Netflix in-regards to NBC shows. With Comcast owning the content, they could monopolize the content as offered online or charge an extra premium to third-party providers for the shows. Federal regulators will have to fight Comcast on this one before approving said merger. Course you know what my feelings are regarding Comcast from previous posts.
Delta installs charging stations in 19 US airports
Delta continues to be my favorite geek friendly airline. First there was the iPad’s installed in their JFK terminal, now they are adding charging stations to 19 airports in the US. They are installing 2 charging stations per gate, each will have 6 110 volt outlets and 2 USB charging ports. I don’t know when I will fly next but I may fly Delta again depending on the fare.
Well, that is going to do it for this edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. Did you notice something missing here? If you said a lack of Apple stuff then winner-winner chicken dinner! I have decided to start a Apple only blog that will come out on Thursday each week. I haven’t decided on a name for it yet so if you have a suggestion, I’m all ears. For now I’m leaning toward AppleTalk Thursday, a play on their old network name. So come on by Thursday for Apple related updates and as always, Friday brings the latest in Google news.
Showing posts with label Hulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hulu. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday Tech Talk #70
Hey everybody and welcome to another installment of Tuesday Tech Talk.
Big Brother looking at disabling your cellphone in a vehicle
This is somewhat tech and a lot political, but it was enough to fire up the libertarian in me (note the small “L”). Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was quoted as stating the following:
“There’s a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones and we’re looking at that,” said LaHood on MSNBC. LaHood said the cellphone scramblers were one way, and also stressed the importance of “personal responsibility.”
Now here is the problem I have with this statement, scramblers would scramble any cellphone in the vehicle so even if you are a passenger in the vehicle, your cellphone would be scrambled too. Of course if you are driving you should not text and drive that is just personal responsibility which he states at the end. Never the less, with the whole controversy of TSA naked X-Ray machines and pat downs, the last thing the American people want to hear is how someone else in the government wants to take away more of our freedoms. Go shove it Mr. LaHood!
Hulu Plus leaves Preview and drops its price
Hulu Plus is now for everybody and at a $7.99 price and, is available on Roku boxes. No word yet on an AppleTV deal, but with it being available on the iPad and iPhone, it can only be a matter of time before it is available for AppleTV.
Zuckerberg talks Messaging, Data Portability, and Mistakes
Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the future of messaging and how email will be used in more formal communications, but more casual messaging is growing more and more through IM, SMS Texting, and Facebook messaging. He also touches on data portability and mistakes made.
Twitter CEO takes issue with China over labor sentencing over a retweet
Dick Costolo sent out a tweet last week critical of the Chinese government sentencing a woman for one year to a labor camp for “reeducation”. Here is a snap shot of the Tweet:
News Corp and Apple building iPad only Newspaper
According to Women’s Wear Daily, Apple and News Corp are collaborating on an iPad specific digital newspaper called The Daily, that would sell for 99 cents per week. There is even speculation that Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs will make a co-announcement sharing the stage together. I have thought the iPad is perfect for reading a digital newspaper, in-fact I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal newspaper on my iPad and if The Daily is anything like the WSJ, then we are in store for something special at a cheaper price than the WSJ.
Apple working on CDMA-GSM iPad?
According to All Things Digital, Apple may be working on a “World iPad” in that it would contain both a CDMA and GSM chipset to work with multiple carriers. If so this would be huge and is going to sell units in just about every wireless providers store. Take that Samsung Galaxy and Blackberry PlayBook!
GoogleTV gets double negative reviews from New York Times and Wall Street Journal
Basically calling it complex and not as straight forward as the AppleTV. The New York Times and WSJ said that GoogleTV is a step in the wrong direction and missing the mark, respectively. Quite frankly, I would agree, I played around with both the Logitech Revue and Sony-based systems and found it to be a cross between watching WebTV while viewing TV content. Look, if people want to browse the web while watching TV, their going to do it from their laptop, smartphone, or tablet device and not their TV. It may be ahead of its time possibly, but for right now it is a pure geek device and not something you would get your parents or grandparents. By contrast, the AppleTV is straight forward, you have a basic remote for browsing a basic onscreen menu to jump between the different services that all do one thing, provide video and audio content for your TV. Once again, Apple gets it, try again Google!
Well, that is going to do it for this edition of Tuesday Tech Talk, I still love you guys at Google, but with Thanksgiving this week, there will be no Googling Friday this coming Friday. You don’t need to spend your time reading my blog that day, instead spent it with your family. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Big Brother looking at disabling your cellphone in a vehicle
This is somewhat tech and a lot political, but it was enough to fire up the libertarian in me (note the small “L”). Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was quoted as stating the following:
“There’s a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones and we’re looking at that,” said LaHood on MSNBC. LaHood said the cellphone scramblers were one way, and also stressed the importance of “personal responsibility.”
Now here is the problem I have with this statement, scramblers would scramble any cellphone in the vehicle so even if you are a passenger in the vehicle, your cellphone would be scrambled too. Of course if you are driving you should not text and drive that is just personal responsibility which he states at the end. Never the less, with the whole controversy of TSA naked X-Ray machines and pat downs, the last thing the American people want to hear is how someone else in the government wants to take away more of our freedoms. Go shove it Mr. LaHood!
Hulu Plus leaves Preview and drops its price
Hulu Plus is now for everybody and at a $7.99 price and, is available on Roku boxes. No word yet on an AppleTV deal, but with it being available on the iPad and iPhone, it can only be a matter of time before it is available for AppleTV.
Zuckerberg talks Messaging, Data Portability, and Mistakes
Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the future of messaging and how email will be used in more formal communications, but more casual messaging is growing more and more through IM, SMS Texting, and Facebook messaging. He also touches on data portability and mistakes made.
Twitter CEO takes issue with China over labor sentencing over a retweet
Dick Costolo sent out a tweet last week critical of the Chinese government sentencing a woman for one year to a labor camp for “reeducation”. Here is a snap shot of the Tweet:
News Corp and Apple building iPad only Newspaper
According to Women’s Wear Daily, Apple and News Corp are collaborating on an iPad specific digital newspaper called The Daily, that would sell for 99 cents per week. There is even speculation that Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs will make a co-announcement sharing the stage together. I have thought the iPad is perfect for reading a digital newspaper, in-fact I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal newspaper on my iPad and if The Daily is anything like the WSJ, then we are in store for something special at a cheaper price than the WSJ.
Apple working on CDMA-GSM iPad?
According to All Things Digital, Apple may be working on a “World iPad” in that it would contain both a CDMA and GSM chipset to work with multiple carriers. If so this would be huge and is going to sell units in just about every wireless providers store. Take that Samsung Galaxy and Blackberry PlayBook!
GoogleTV gets double negative reviews from New York Times and Wall Street Journal
Basically calling it complex and not as straight forward as the AppleTV. The New York Times and WSJ said that GoogleTV is a step in the wrong direction and missing the mark, respectively. Quite frankly, I would agree, I played around with both the Logitech Revue and Sony-based systems and found it to be a cross between watching WebTV while viewing TV content. Look, if people want to browse the web while watching TV, their going to do it from their laptop, smartphone, or tablet device and not their TV. It may be ahead of its time possibly, but for right now it is a pure geek device and not something you would get your parents or grandparents. By contrast, the AppleTV is straight forward, you have a basic remote for browsing a basic onscreen menu to jump between the different services that all do one thing, provide video and audio content for your TV. Once again, Apple gets it, try again Google!
Well, that is going to do it for this edition of Tuesday Tech Talk, I still love you guys at Google, but with Thanksgiving this week, there will be no Googling Friday this coming Friday. You don’t need to spend your time reading my blog that day, instead spent it with your family. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Tuesday Tech Talk #67
Hello all and welcome to another edition of Tuesday Tech Talk. This week I am going to depart from the regular format and share with you a review of AppleTV which I unexpectedly got on Saturday.
How we went to the Apple Store for iLife ’11 and walked with an AppleTV
So on Saturday we decided to head up to Memphis, specifically Germantown to visit the Apple Store at Saddle Creek and grab lunch at Qdoba there. We were just going there to pick up a copy of iLife ’11 in order to take advantage of the new features of iPhoto.
Once we arrived at the store, I showed Kristen on one of the iMac’s what iPhoto ’11 can do and she was quite impressed so I grabbed a copy off the shelf. After doing so, I showed Kristen the AppleTV box they have connected to an HDTV next to the software shelf. I showed her how easy it is to browse Netflix and YouTube content.
After only a few minutes she asks how much it is and once informing her of the $99 price tag she replies with, “Ok, lets get it!”. I stood there stunned and reminded her how it is a $99 item and she said, “thats Ok, lets get it.”.
Once I picked my jaw off the hardwood floor, I grabbed an AppleTV box and looked over the cables needed to connect it to our TV. My setup is an HDTV and an audio receiver, the 2 HDMI ports on our receiver are already taken by a DirecTV HD-DVR and a Sony Blu-ray player. So I find that not only does Apple sell their own HDMI cable, but it is $20! I looked for the optical audio cable next and can’t locate one, luckily Jacob our friendly Apple Sales rep looks in the back and minutes later, appears with a 6’ one which is perfect and also $20.
So the AppleTV plus the cables rings up at around $150 with tax. Course we also get the iLife ’11 as well. Jacob rings us up and we are set to go, before departing though, we look at the MacBook Air, the iPod touch, the iPhone 4, and the iPod nano and shuffle, models but depart without buying anymore Apple goodies. We eat at Qdoba and then head home.
The Setup
Once home (I had unsealed all the wrapping on the items on the drive down.), I open up the box to the AppleTV and I find one thing very striking, Apple knows how to package product efficiently. Enjoy the un-boxing photos.
All sealed up
Apple TV itself, right in the palm
Next, the remote
A little divider which doubles as a remote holder, separates the remote and AppleTV from the power cable and instructions and Apple stickers.
The power cable (note the excitement on Angel’s face)
Setup Guide (didn’t need it)
Apple stickers (I got a lot of these!)
The box nearly empty of its contents.
So the hookup to the TV and audio receiver took less than 5 minutes. Within 10 mins, I am entering in my user and password for Netflix, iTunes Store info, and wireless network password. About 5 mins after that, we are watching YouTube videos first, you know kid, your finger wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t put it in Charlie’s mouth to bite in the first place.
Initial Thoughts on AppleTV
So what are my thoughts after a couple of days of using AppleTV? Well, I can safely say if you have a broadband connection, an HDTV, and a Netflix account, then you should get one of these! The content available from Netflix alone is worth the $99, but when you consider you can watch video content stored on your Mac computers, on the AppleTV it is even more compelling. At this point I have not rented TV shows on it yet and I don’t see myself doing so either.
VideoCasts
I want to share something else I realized while watching video podcasts on the AppleTV. I think devices like AppleTV, Roku, and GoogleTV can do for good quality VideoCasts what the iPod did for audio podcasts. I watched 2 episodes of MacBreak Weekly, a show that is between 90 mins to 2 hours and watching a show of similar length is much more preferable on the TV over a computer, iPhone, or iPad.
How this changes TV
After a day of using the AppleTV, we went ahead and cut our DirecTV package down to Choice programming which is their minimal programming package. We intend to keep it there until our contract ends at which point we will look at providers of the same day content we enjoy. I don’t see myself ever getting rid of Satellite or Cable TV outright simply because I love to watch live sports and that is just not available right now with AppleTV, Roku, or GoogleTV. However, the days of Sat. and cable companies charging an outrageous fee for programming, is nearing its end. These boxes offer a competitive alternative to sat. and cable and they will have to get better on pricing or lose customers.
So, that is my AppleTV review. I would love to see Hulu added to the mix at some point for even more TV content. Next week I will return to the normal format of Tuesday Tech Talk, but if you have any questions about the AppleTV, feel free to leave some in the comments.
Oh and one more thing, if you are reading this on November 2nd, don’t forget to vote today! If you don’t vote, you can’t well, you know.
How we went to the Apple Store for iLife ’11 and walked with an AppleTV
So on Saturday we decided to head up to Memphis, specifically Germantown to visit the Apple Store at Saddle Creek and grab lunch at Qdoba there. We were just going there to pick up a copy of iLife ’11 in order to take advantage of the new features of iPhoto.
Once we arrived at the store, I showed Kristen on one of the iMac’s what iPhoto ’11 can do and she was quite impressed so I grabbed a copy off the shelf. After doing so, I showed Kristen the AppleTV box they have connected to an HDTV next to the software shelf. I showed her how easy it is to browse Netflix and YouTube content.
After only a few minutes she asks how much it is and once informing her of the $99 price tag she replies with, “Ok, lets get it!”. I stood there stunned and reminded her how it is a $99 item and she said, “thats Ok, lets get it.”.
Once I picked my jaw off the hardwood floor, I grabbed an AppleTV box and looked over the cables needed to connect it to our TV. My setup is an HDTV and an audio receiver, the 2 HDMI ports on our receiver are already taken by a DirecTV HD-DVR and a Sony Blu-ray player. So I find that not only does Apple sell their own HDMI cable, but it is $20! I looked for the optical audio cable next and can’t locate one, luckily Jacob our friendly Apple Sales rep looks in the back and minutes later, appears with a 6’ one which is perfect and also $20.
So the AppleTV plus the cables rings up at around $150 with tax. Course we also get the iLife ’11 as well. Jacob rings us up and we are set to go, before departing though, we look at the MacBook Air, the iPod touch, the iPhone 4, and the iPod nano and shuffle, models but depart without buying anymore Apple goodies. We eat at Qdoba and then head home.
The Setup
Once home (I had unsealed all the wrapping on the items on the drive down.), I open up the box to the AppleTV and I find one thing very striking, Apple knows how to package product efficiently. Enjoy the un-boxing photos.
All sealed up
Apple TV itself, right in the palm
Next, the remote
A little divider which doubles as a remote holder, separates the remote and AppleTV from the power cable and instructions and Apple stickers.
The power cable (note the excitement on Angel’s face)
Setup Guide (didn’t need it)
Apple stickers (I got a lot of these!)
The box nearly empty of its contents.
So the hookup to the TV and audio receiver took less than 5 minutes. Within 10 mins, I am entering in my user and password for Netflix, iTunes Store info, and wireless network password. About 5 mins after that, we are watching YouTube videos first, you know kid, your finger wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t put it in Charlie’s mouth to bite in the first place.
Initial Thoughts on AppleTV
So what are my thoughts after a couple of days of using AppleTV? Well, I can safely say if you have a broadband connection, an HDTV, and a Netflix account, then you should get one of these! The content available from Netflix alone is worth the $99, but when you consider you can watch video content stored on your Mac computers, on the AppleTV it is even more compelling. At this point I have not rented TV shows on it yet and I don’t see myself doing so either.
VideoCasts
I want to share something else I realized while watching video podcasts on the AppleTV. I think devices like AppleTV, Roku, and GoogleTV can do for good quality VideoCasts what the iPod did for audio podcasts. I watched 2 episodes of MacBreak Weekly, a show that is between 90 mins to 2 hours and watching a show of similar length is much more preferable on the TV over a computer, iPhone, or iPad.
How this changes TV
After a day of using the AppleTV, we went ahead and cut our DirecTV package down to Choice programming which is their minimal programming package. We intend to keep it there until our contract ends at which point we will look at providers of the same day content we enjoy. I don’t see myself ever getting rid of Satellite or Cable TV outright simply because I love to watch live sports and that is just not available right now with AppleTV, Roku, or GoogleTV. However, the days of Sat. and cable companies charging an outrageous fee for programming, is nearing its end. These boxes offer a competitive alternative to sat. and cable and they will have to get better on pricing or lose customers.
So, that is my AppleTV review. I would love to see Hulu added to the mix at some point for even more TV content. Next week I will return to the normal format of Tuesday Tech Talk, but if you have any questions about the AppleTV, feel free to leave some in the comments.
Oh and one more thing, if you are reading this on November 2nd, don’t forget to vote today! If you don’t vote, you can’t well, you know.
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