Month: November 2005

Prince Print Sets Auction Record For Photography “An untitled cowboy photograph by Richard Prince set a record last night for the most expensive photograph sold at auction, with a price of $1,248,000.”

Heh. I just know my digital photography habit is going to pay off ANY day now!

The best part: “Asked by e-mail for his reaction to the record-setting sale of his picture, Prince wrote back: “When it happened last nite [sic] I was at home wrestling with my eight year old daughter in our bed watching the World Series of Poker, eating the last of our Halloween candy and drinking hot chocalate [sic].”

Latest iMac reviewed by USA Today – Media PCs – mediapcs.engadget.com From Engadget: “In the end, Baig finds that the iMac doesn’t quite measure up as a media PC, due to its lack of a built-in TV tuner and maximum screen size of 20 inches.”

They have some good things to say too of course — but bottom line the two flaws above are simply unsurmountable in my opinion.

Original USA Today article.

Michael Creasy’s blog – Already have an Xbox 360 and a Media Center? Use them together now!: Michael Creasy is out with a post on how well the new XBox 360 units will work as Media Center extender units. I know I plan on buying one as soon as I can and will report back once I test it. Especially with the XBox 360 being able to stream HDTV and the new HDTV CableCARD compatibilty for Media Center announced yesterday, things are going to be Grrreaaat!

From Michael: “The Xbox 360 is the best Media Center Extender currently available. If you have a Media Center PC you need to get and Xbox 360 and if you have an Xbox 360 you need a Media Center PC. They really do work so well together you won’t believe it. The Media Center UI is identical on the Xbox 360. The full animated graphical experience. It looks fantastic.”

AOL Pictures: Free Storage, 100 Prints – Photography News – Designtechnica: AOL is out with their own free photo sharing service AOL Pictures.

From DesignTechnica: “AOL Pictures is a revamped version of You’ve Got Pictures, AOL’s previous members-only photo service boasting about 6 million users. However, as AOL increasingly tries to reposition itself as an Internet portal rather than a proprietary online service, it’s launching tools, services, and features designed to compete with online titans Yahoo and Google—and, in this case, with popular photo-sharing sites like Flickr. Folks need to sign up with to use AOL Pictures, but the service is free and users don’t have to be a subscriber to America Online’s online service.”

Ed Bott’s Media Central ? CableCARD and Media Center PCs: More questions than answers Ed Bott posts today in response to an InfoWorld article on yesterday’s announcement from Microsoft and CableLabs that CableCARD ready Media Center PCs would begin shipping next year.

Ed asks the question if CableCARD-ready Media Centers will be restricted to name-brand PC makers. If this is the case Ed says to, “expect screams of anguish if people buying high-powered PCs in the next year discover that there’s no CableCARD ugprade path.”

Of course not much information is out on the CableCARD/MCE topic yet so most of this is really conjecture at this point. But… I would have to assume that at least one high end OEM (Niveus?) would have a CableCARD machine. I can’t imagine Microsoft getting this done and then abandoning the high end user that this would appeal to most. Also, as Dells are pretty customizeable, I’d imagine you could also put together a pretty powerful high end Media Center PC custom built by Dell. I’m not too worried about this one yet.

It is interesting, however, that in spite of this monumental press release yesterday most people at Microsoft are still being very hush hush about this announcement. Although the press release itself has been cited on a number of Microsoft bloggers blogs we have seen little additional information from them. My guess is that they are not allowed to talk about it yet.

Over at Michael Creasy’s blog he writes, “There’s not too many details available yet, but when I can talk more about it I will do…” I asked Michael if this was the reason why we we weren’t seeing more exuberance from the Microsoft bloggers on this announcement and Michael confirmed, “Yup, this is going to be one of those things where I can’t say any more than the press release. I’d like to keep the lawyers out my office.”

Fair enough. I’m looking forward to more details on this annoucement when the Media Center team can tallk.

Microsoft’s David Fleishman at his blog did offer the following in a comment (by the way, it’s easy to overlook comments on blogs, be sure NOT to miss the comments at David’s blog, this is where some of the best material is and David is very active in responding to comments) “I don’t know about the specifics on HW yet. I believe you’ll need a specific type of tuner and other HW but I just don’t know the list at this time. It is pretty new for us on this. I’ll ping the folks driving the project and see what, if anything, we have availalbe and post back here if I find out anything interesting. I am super-excited though, still.”

The MCE CableCARD story was also Slashdotted yesterday.

eHomeUpgrade | Television Networks Say DVRs Raise Viewership Ha! I almost spit my coffee all over my keyboard when I read this one.

According to Reuters, the major six networks have released a report trying to calm concerns over DVR usage.

“Far from being the TV doomsday machines that some have predicted, digital video recorders that allow viewers to skip advertising and watch shows at their leisure will actually boost television audiences, the major networks said on Wednesday.”

“While 90 percent of viewers surveyed said they skipped all or most commercials when they watched a show played back on DVR, the networks’ research showed 58 percent paid attention to the commercials in a fast-forward mode and 53 percent have gone back to watch an ad that interested them, the networks said.”

It is totally laughable to me to see the TV networks trying to put a positive spin on DVR usage. This obvious marketing spin is a blatant attempt to allay the concerns of their advertisers — who quite frankly should in fact be very concerned.

While certainly a case can be made for live sports and some extremely hot shows like Desperate Housewives, where people will not time shift them, in general DVR usage is pure poison to the television industry. Rather than adopt and move to a VOD model though, they will drag their heels still for many years while they continue to try and BS Madison Ave. on why they should in fact pay more for ads that people skip.

What’s next, a study from Ford and GM that SUVs don’t cause air pollution?

Even more over the top than the Reuters article though is this other laughable quote over at MSNBC (get it, NBC) by Alan Wurtzel, head of research at NBC. He also noted that 80 per cent of viewers preferred to watch television programmes live. “Most people want to watch TV the way God intended – they want to watch it live,” he said. The way “God intended?” You have got to be kidding me. So I guess the next time I’m sitting there just about ready to fast forward that commercial on my TiVo, I’d better stop and ask myself, “what would Jesus do?”

Somehow I’m not sure that “God” intended me to watch TV at all and if he did I can’t imagine he’d be opposed to my skipping commercials. This quote is unbelievable really.

This latest study and these comments make me think back to the last time Hollywood came up with their ludacrious spin campaign that ad skipping was “stealing.”

PVR Wire PVRWire is out with the latest hire by TiVo, a “content services” VP.

“”Tara’s blend of industry relationships, deal-making skills and experience with new media platforms will enhance our efforts to creatively deliver best-in-class content over broadband to the television and attract new audiences for TiVo,” Edward Lichty, vice president of corporate development, said in a statement.”

Tara, here’s an idea. Figure out how to harness the content of the Internet Archive, filter it, and you’ll have something pretty cool for the old TiVo box.

Yahoo adds Gawker blogs to its media content offerings – Forbes.com Scott Moore of Yahoo! and Nick Denton of Gawker Media were just on CNBC chatting up the deal. Yahoo! will syndicate news from some of Gawker Media’s sites including Gizmodo.

Wired News: Digg Just Might Bury Slashdot Wired News is out with an article on new social bookmarking site Digg and is suggesting that Digg could possibly be a “Slashdot killer.”

The major difference between Slashdot and Digg (both cover tech news) is that Slashdot’s stories are chosen by their editors while Digg’s stories are pushed into the limelight by votes from their members. The wisdom of the crowd vs. the wisdom of the tech editor.

But there are more differences than just this. Although Digg has a decidedly tech bent to their news, their news is certainly as much human interest as tech and something that you’d see on Boing Boing that you’d never see on Slashdot very well could end up as a top story on Digg.

In any case, the power of social input into search and smart filtering is certainly gaining momentum. Whether Flickr’s interestingness or Digg’s top stories, smart algorithms are using communities to incorporate in the wisdom of the crowd and the result’s thus far have been pretty impressive.

Oh, and by the way, this story is the top story on Digg today.

Update: Digg gets Slashdotted. Let the dance off begin.