Matthew Cruse alerts us to the news that the Netherlands is the latest in a long line of governments that are considering a “mileage tax” that would require drivers to have GPS devices that track how far they drive, and then tax you for every mile driven. Various US states, including Oregon, California and Massachussetts have toyed with such ideas, and while some in Congress have pushed for it on a national scale, the Obama administration has come out against the idea.
There are lots of problems with the idea, including the privacy implications of the government collecting data on your driving habits. Plus, the massive expense of equipping cars with such devices should not be underestimated. But, the biggest question of all is why such a thing is needed at all. We already have taxes on fuel, which approximates the same thing (the more you drive, the more you pay) which doesn’t have the same expense or privacy implications and has the added benefit that it helps encourage more fuel efficient driving. The idea to do a GPS-based mileage tax seems like one of those things that politicians come up with because they want more money, and they get infatuated with some new technology, without thinking through the implications (at all).
Starcraft2.com updated today. and damn, does Raynor look badass in the flash header.
In case you haven’t been to the site recently, here’s the list of changes Blizzard did to the Starctaft 2 website
We’ve just uploaded new intel to the StarCraft II website. This latest transmission sheds new light on the goings-on in the Koprulu sector […]
Slashdot alerts us to the news that Spain will be following Finland’s lead in declaring broadband as a basic legal right. I’m still not convinced that declaring it as a full legal right makes sense, but it does show how important broadband is becoming to society. It will be interesting to see how this growing trend matches up with the efforts from the entertainment industry to have countries pass laws to kick people off the internet for file sharing. It would certainly appear that the two positions are not compatible.
Get your wallet ready; OCZ’s Colossus line has finally hit the shelves. We were expecting them back in August, but it seems that there must have been some difficulties.
Available in 120GB, 250GB, and 500GB and 1TB capacities, the Colossus marks the first time that SSD drives have reached the storage sizes that users have come to expect these days. The bad news is you can expect to spend a small fortune for these drives. The 1TB sells for $3397, the 500GB for $1530, the 250GB is $820, and the 120GB will set you back $438. Ouch!
Even though we’re inching ever-closer towards consumption-based broadband, not all ISPs are implementing metered or tiered plans as a way to punish users who clog their pipes. For example, Verizon plans to may one day move to a consumption-based model as a way to generate additional revenue, not because of any network constraint. Brian Whitton, executive director of access technologies at Verizon, spoke with me earlier this week about that company’s fiber network — and why he believes every other ISP is going to have to embrace a fiber to-the-home strategy, too:
Personalized Video: As video moves from broadcast to a time- and place-shifted model that lets consumers watch what they want, when they want, sending televisions shows out on demand in a unicast model will overwhelm cable networks.
3-D TV: Depending on the technology consumers adopt (GigaOM Pro, subscription required), sending 3-D video content for games and television could consume up to 1.8 times a normal video stream for autostereoscopic delivery, while true holographic TV, which is the eventual goal, would require 100 Mbps per channel.
Upstream Video: “I think in this whole marketplace of video that oligopoly [of content creation] is deteriorating and HD camcorders and codec tools will lead to different TV programming coming from the masses,” Whitton said. Thanks to YouTube, anyone can create their own content and send it up, so personalized channels are not unrealistic. Whitton said the result will be a burden on the uplink that cable companies can’t current handle.
Despite the trash talk directed at cable companies by Whitton, the companies with the most to fear right now are those relying on copper networks such as Qwest and AT&T, both of which have put their money behind a fiber-to-the-node strategy, which takes fiber out to the existing node and then relies on existing copper wire to get to the home. The cable providers are able to bundle their channels together to provide faster up and downstream access using DOCSIS 3.0, but extracting more performance and speeds from copper is difficult.
That’s not stopping the telcos with copper still in the ground, which is why ASSIA received $10 million in funding recently for its software that helps tweak DSL networks, and why folks are still funneling money into research that boosts copper performance. At some point the telcos are going to have to take a hard look at their aging infrastructure and decide how much longer they should poor money into copper, much like you or I might do when evaluating whether or not to fix or junk a 12-year-old car. In the meantime, I have to agree with Whitton — eventually everyone will need a fiber to their home.
Not that you guys need to hear everything about the paydowns and “outstanding senior notes,” but you might like to know that AMD isn’t going to bite the dust any time soon. With $1.2bn in Intel blood money going straight into debt reduction, the other chipmaker should be able to continue making hardware for years. That’s good, because I’d hate to see them lose while they’re ahead in the graphics game.
The definition of insanity, the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For the past decade, the entertainment industry has sued one site or service after another that was used for unauthorized file sharing at some time. In every single case, the act of suing that site or service ended up only serving to massively increase attention and usage of those services. Suing Napster made Napster into the service to use. Ditto with Kazaa and Grokster. The Pirate Bay wasn’t that big until Hollywood got Swedish authorities to raid the operations and confiscate the servers.
So, here we go again — except this time it’s even more ridiculous. Entertainment industry representatives have filed a lawsuit against the OpenBitTorrent tracker’s hosting company (Update: noting that the lawsuit is against the hosting company), which is not a file sharing site or service at all. It’s just an open tracker. Now, I recognize that folks in the entertainment industry aren’t particularly knowledgeable about how technology works, but at some point, aren’t they supposed to at least understand the basics? The tracker alone is not responsible for anything here — and even more ridiculous is that the OpenBitTorrent guys (despite not being in the US) set up a DMCA-like process for taking down any info_hash if they want (which, by the way, was the reason the industry claimed it didn’t sue Google — because it took down links on request — but now that OpenBitTorrent does the same thing, it’s a problem?). Either way, with the rise of trackerless solutions means that even taking this site down won’t much matter. Still, it makes you wonder what they’re thinking over in the entertainment industry other than ways to increase their legal bills.
Earlier today in Atlanta, Judge Timothy Batten, Sr. ruled against AT&T in its hunt for an injunction against Verizon’s “There’s A Map for That” ad campaign. While AT&T argued that the maps in the commercial were grossly misleading, Judge Batten felt that although”sneaky”, the fact that the ads could be “misunderstand” by the layperson doesn’t mean that they were “misleading.” The case isn’t completely closed, however, as AT&T has been granted a hearing on December 16th in which it’s lawyers will argue for the judgement to be repealed. In the meantime, AT&T has launched a rather feisty ad campaign of its own called “The Truth About 3G”. The ad campaign kicked off tonight with a TV spot starring Luke Wilson who espouses the advantages offered by AT&T: speed, the best smartphone selection, simultaneous voice and data and the over 100,000 applications. We have the first ad waiting for you after the jump, but first we have to ask — does anyone have any non-flaming thoughts on this matter?
Vevo, the premium music video site developed by major labels Universal and Sony in conjunction with Google, said this afternoon that it will launch its service on Dec. 8th. The news comes less than a day after another major label, EMI, began using Hulu as a distribution channel for high-quality videos. Neither EMI nor Warner Music Group, the fourth major, has reached a deal to participate in Vevo’s launch yet.
While Vevo is often touted as a “Hulu for music,” a premium alternative to YouTube’s comparatively lo-fi music video offerings, it may find itself competing for consumers’ attention with both Hulu and YouTube, as well as MTV and MySpace. Google-owned YouTube is already many people’s first option for streaming music, whether they’re interested in the video element or not, and it may continue to be a “good enough” option for many music fans. What’s more, any new music service that launches without all four majors on board is necessarily handicapped by a library of content that won’t satisfy user searches, all the more so if it’s lacking independent label content as well. (YouTube was missing Warner Music’s songs for several months after a royalty spat, but the two settled in September.)
In theory, the labels and Google can reap greater advertising revenues from a higher-quality music video destination site than from YouTube, where user-contributed videos (and everything else) sit side-by-side with clips distributed by record labels and other content providers. Will consumers find it as compelling as existing alternatives? We’ll find out in less than three weeks.
TF3D 2.5 is by far the best version of Manila to date, with all its shiny new features comes a new way to save your information. Favorite peoples tab has over gone some changes that gives it a more TF2D look, but it is still good and shows you more information and allows you to have more contact.
The new peoples tab takes some time to setup when you start out. That is now going to change, because if you are a person like me, you flash about 2-3 times a week and that means starting over again.
Not anymore. If you have activesync/device center or even Myphone service, then you can sync your file and that means your favorite contacts will sync too. Then when you are done with the flashing your device, just restore you file and that will restore most of your things in TF3D 2.5.
IBUYPOWER computers aren’t exactly known for being subtle, but it’s worked for them for 10 years and they are still going strong. To celebrate their anniversary, IBUYPOWER is re-releasing the Chimera 2 with all new hardware and a pretty impressive new paint job.
Instead of getting gifts on their birthday this year, IBUYPOWER is giving them. In fact, IBUYPOWER is giving away one of these new Chimera 2 systems in a Facebook and Twitter giveaway.
The real story is the Chimera 2 though, with its custom paint job, and your choice of whichever configuration you want. IBUYPOWER carries the latest in Intel i7 and Core i5 systems, as well as AMDs new Phenom II processors.
Pricing on the Chimera 2 starts at $999 and goes up depending on how fast you want to spend.
Speaking yesterday at the Professional Developer’s Conference, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie explained what’s really important when it comes to the smartphone business, and it’s apparently nothing at all to do with the number of apps available on any one platform.
All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them. It’s a completely different situation from the PC market, where software’s built to run on a Windows or a Mac. Mobile apps require very little development, so it’s much easier to bring them onto every platform.
Yeah. That’s why there are more than 100,000 apps in the iTunes Store and, what, five in the Windows Marketplace? And that’s why quality apps like Facebook or Tweetie 2.0 have been ported, feature-complete, from the iPhone to Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm OS? Oh, wait…
The point here is that Microsoft’s senior execs apparently continue to misunderstand what’s going on in todays smartphone market. Microsoft seems to view the iPhone not as a serious competitor but more as a toy, something to disregard because grown-ups (grey-suited corporate drones) aren’t interested in all that flashy functionality and rich media. They’re not interested in the astonishing range of software available for the iPhone. They just want Mobile Powerpoint and Excel, plus a few other ageing Office apps. That’s all that really matters, right?
Wrong. We need look no further than JD Power’s recently published results of a satisfaction survey they conducted of business smartphone customers around the world. Apple came in at number one, RIM finished second.
WIRED’s Gadget Lab published an article yesterday examining some of the mistakes Microsoft has made with Windows Mobile. NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin told WIRED:
Microsoft’s mobile OS history is rooted in personal digital assistants, which were marketed toward enterprise audiences. Today, the smartphone has shifted into the mainstream as a consumer device, and yet Windows Mobile is still largely focused on enterprise features.
Perhaps Microsoft has a significant change planned for the release of Windows Mobile 7, WIRED’s Brian Chen asked Redmond HQ. They declined to discuss Windows 7 directly, but did have this to say about their mobile OS business;
The company’s mobility strategy has not changed; it is and has always been to provide a software platform for the industry. The company works closely with many mobile operators and device makers around the world because people want different experiences on a variety of phones.
Well, it’s certainly a different experience alright. A lousy one. That’s one reason Microsoft’s global smartphone market share has dropped from 11 percent in 2008 to 7.9 percent today. In the meantime, Apple and RIM have seen their market shares swell to 17.1 and 20.8 percent, respectively.
Microsoft’s Mobile strategy is out of touch. Ever-increasing numbers of enterprise customers who once used Windows phones are today carrying Blackberrys or iPhones and have entirely different expectations of their cellular devices. Mobile Outlook just won’t cut it any more.
Hopping Mad
Driving the point home is a timely article published this week by the Wall Street Journal, about the disparity between old, primitive tech used in the office, and the far more capable and empowering technology found at home. According to the WSJ’s Nick Wingfield, execs at Kraft Foods noticed the difference.
Executives began to worry that the company’s technology policies were preventing employees from staying in step with trends. Kraft was a consumer company, they figured, so workers needed to be more familiar with the technologies that consumers were using, whether the iPhone or YouTube.
So, the IT department stopped blocking access to consumer Web sites, and the company started a stipend program for smart phones: Workers get an allowance every 18 months to buy a phone of their choosing. (Over 60% picked iPhones.)
With all the above in mind, I can’t see how Microsoft’s Mobile strategy could be considered sound business. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I’d be hopping mad at the company’s apparent inability to understand — and adapt to — the demands of today’s smartphone consumers.
It’s paradoxical, really. Microsoft has always highlighted how customer choice is of paramount importance, indeed, a key component in its success with Windows. In the quote above, Microsoft’s own spokesperson stresses how Microsoft works with mobile operators and OEM’s to provide choice. But at the PDC yesterday, Ozzie seemed to be saying that an impressive selection of apps (ie. choice) is unimportant. He mentions “apps that count” but doesn’t say what those apps are; in any case, that’s a short-sighted assertion. Apps that matter to me, may not matter so much to you. That’s precisely why an iPhone owner’s home screen is so fascinating to other iPhone owners.
The iPhone’s greatest strength is the tens of thousands of software titles available in the App Store, usually at a knock-down price. There is, literally, something for everyone, no matter how discerning ones’ taste in Games, Productivity tools, or fart apps.
I give Windows Mobile another year, max. If it can’t build its app marketplace into a substantial repository of quality titles at (very) low prices, it won’t matter how closely Microsoft works with its technology partners. Because, at that point, Windows Mobile will be reduced to a Wikipedia entry as an “also ran” in the history of the smartphone.
The Short Version: The ContourHD 1080p is a capable, semi-rugged, conveniently-shaped HD camcorder that’s great for all kinds of sporting and active events where a full-size camera isn’t practical. The 1080p video has admirable still image quality, but skew and compression mean it’s more of an enthusiast tool than a professional one. But for $330, it’s a great little tool for documenting your rides, falls, and so on, and putting the results up on the internet.
Features:
1080p max resolution
Water-resistant
Compact casing
Variety of mounts
MSRP: $329.99
Pros:
Small and lightweight, can be taped or mounted to nearly anything
1080p image quality is good under the right circumstances
Much more resilient than your average HD camcorder
Cons:
No LCD means it’s hard to frame shots
Skew in fast-moving video
Aside from start/stop, peration isn’t really intuitive
We’ve seen the ContourHD camera in a few guises before: first as the VHoldR, then as the ContourHD proper, and now the ContourHD 1080p. Does a resolution bump really necessitate another post? Well, it’s a cool gadget and there’s no danger of running out of internet, so why not?
Peter demonstrated the ContourHD on his skateboard, and I’ve done the same on my bike. Throwing caution, traffic laws, and my hair to the wind, I raced (-ish) from the top of Capitol Hill (15th) to Cafe Vita on Pike Street. Then we taped this sucker to my friend’s shoe and went for a walk in the park. That part of the footage is nauseating, so I’ve kept it to a minimum. Check out the video below; my comments on quality, exposure, and so on are embedded.
[One correction: I say 640×480 in the video, but it’s actually 848×480. There’s also a “tall HD” mode, 1280×920, which is handy if you’re working in 4:3.]
I had the camera stuck to the frame of my bike with one of the included flat-surface mounts; we also attached it to a headband-mounted flashlight but the end result was too ridiculous to wear in public. The ContourHD comes with a sticky mount for putting on a helmet or, say, car hood, and also a goggle strap attachment that took me a while to figure out. You can order additional mounts and replacement sticky pads from the site for a reasonable fee, or you can just wrap the thing in gaffer’s tape like we did in order to get it on something new.
Build and usability
The camera itself is small, as you can see in the pictures; I tried to have some objects in there for scale (the candy corn was not wasted). I put its weight at about a quarter of a pound, and upon checking the specs… yes, 4.3 ounces. I’m really good at ballparks like that. It’s heavy enough that you’ll notice it on your goggles (or shoe), but light enough that you don’t have to worry about it flopping down or peeling off its mount. It’s mostly aluminum on the outside, and it feels sturdy but not exactly rugged. I’m sure it can survive being banged about, but I wouldn’t trust it in a more punishing situation. It’s water-resistant, as you can see when Mike jumps in the puddle there. The lens has a plastic protector over it, so you don’t have to worry too much about what you wipe it with. The rear door just has a power button on it and the record slider above, but it’s quick and easy to pop it up and switch out the MicroSD card or change shooting modes.
The device is meant to be set up beforehand and simply activated on-site. The switches and flashing lights aren’t exactly user-friendly, so keep the user guide handy if you want to be sure you’re doing it right and not trying to record to a full card. Basically you can switch between two recording modes and either record or stop recording. Beyond that there’s nothing to it.
Video quality
You can activate a little laser level, which is kind of cool, but not really a precision instrument. The two dots, which indicate the horizon of the video, are no more than an inch apart, so if having a really level video is important, be sure to do a test before doing the actual stunt or race. In fact, due to the lack of any kind of feedback or monitor on the device, it’s probably a good idea to do a really quick video every time you set it up, to make sure you’re in the right mode and have the thing pointed in the right direction. My bike video has a lot of sky because I didn’t think to tip the thing down a bit.
Video quality is a mixed bag. Obviously 1080p is the star of the show here, so that’s what I tested. At that bitrate it’ll fill a gig in about 15 minutes, which is perfectly reasonable. Its max file size is, I think, only limited by the file system the MicroSD card is formatted in. It’s encoded in Ambarella something something, “minimal” quality, basically an H.264 .mov file. I was pleasantly surprised by image quality, at least during calm moments and still shots. Fast motion, as is the case with every low-end camcorder sensor, leads to skew and jelly effect. You may notice it in quick turns and during bumpy parts of the ride above: objects sort of distort or stretch briefly. Strangely, it also has a fast exposure speed, as evidenced by the individual drops visible when I ride through the mud puddle after entering the park. Slow sensor pull but short exposure… a strange combination. But it ends up looking fine, and certainly no worse than comparably-priced camcorders. Watch the video above to see how it performs in different circumstances, and click here to download a full-res, unprocessed movie file.
Looking at stills from the above-linked video, it’s clear that the compression hits the wall in areas of intricate detail or very high contrast, and the lens loses a lot of detail at the very edges. That’s really to be expected, though; remember, this is a compact, fixed-focus camera. Compared to, say, the Sanyo I like so much, it’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Exposure is remarkably even throughout; even when I’m pointing the camera more or less into the sun, it retains some shadow detail.
A camcorder for all seasons
The ContourHD 1080p is a handy little camera. The question is whether it has $50 worth of advantage over its friend the ContourHD “original flavor.” I’d say that if you’re already working in 1080p, the extra dough is justifiable. That said, the physical limitations of the sensor size and lens clarity mean that you’re not really getting that much more detail. It comes down to what format you prefer to work with. And it’s certain that 1080p downrezzed to 720p will look better than the “plain” 720p. As for the camera itself, if you are willing to accommodate the spartan controls, this little guy will be handy for lots of projects. Since it’s pretty resilient, you can put it in situations you might hesitate to put something like a Flip or a nicer 1080p camcorder.
Like the high-speed Casio I reviewed a while back, the possibilities really open up once you have the thing in your hand. I’d recommend the ContourHD in either of its forms to any amateur videographer looking to expand their oeuvre a little.
2009Nov18: Prime Minister Singh’s government announces that it will spend about $922 million in the first of three phases of India’s new solar technologies program (New York Times).
Image Description: Heydarabad, Charminar, India. Photo by Rhaessner, 2003Feb. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charminar.jpg Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.
While the Googlebot’s YouTube is a web video behemoth, Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook nation have become an online video sleeping giant, and it may have just woken up. Facebook jumped to No. 3 behind established video powerhouses YouTube and Hulu in terms of total streams, according to Nielsen’s VideoCensus numbers for October. That’s up from No. 10 just last month. Facebook generated more than 217 million streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers, up from 110 million streams to 23 million viewers in September. Get the full breakdown of Nielsen’s Top 10 and analysis over at NewTeeVee.
Asus is latest manufacturer to out a Windows Home Server. The TS Mini Server seems to pack the goods too with up to a 2TB capacity and a modest price. Too bad it doesn’t have easy-access hard drive trays for expandability.
But I can’t hate on everything. Asus has built-in a couple custom WHS plug-ins that allow for more detailed back-up and restore options, along with an interface for an online storage locker that’s free for the first year.
Hardware wise, the TS Mini Server is on par with other offerings. A N280 1.66GHz Atom is at the core, paired with 2GB of RAM and up to a 2TB hard drive. It 6x USB ports, 2 eSATA ports, and, of course, Gigabit Ethernet. The server isn’t shipping yet, but Amazon has the 2TB version priced at $529 and available for pre-order.
I’m actually writing this post just minutes after passing through TSA security at JFK, where I was stopped to investigate the fact that I have a candle (a gift) in my carry-on luggage. I’m not sure if this sort of thing makes us any safer (I have my doubts about this kind of “security theater”), but the overall experience was fine and the TSA folks were perfectly nice and professional and let me go on my way (yes, with the candle) in less than a minute. However, apparently some TSA agents have decided that they should serve a purpose well beyond their assigned domain of air travel security. They’ve been investigating other crimes as well, sometimes going on pure fishing expeditions if they think something looks suspicious, even if it has nothing to do with air travel safety. For example, people have been detained for traveling with large quantities of cash. However, after being sued multiple times, the TSA recently agreed to change its rules to limit its agents actions, so that they are no longer allowed to investigate random crimes and are officially limited to just focusing on air travel security.
Get your wallet ready; OCZ’s Colossus line has finally hit the shelves. We were expecting them 
Even though we’re inching 
Vevo, the premium music video site developed by major labels Universal and Sony in conjunction with Google, 
IBUYPOWER computers aren’t exactly known for being subtle, but it’s worked for them for 10 years and they are still going strong. To celebrate their anniversary, IBUYPOWER is re-releasing the Chimera 2 with all new hardware and a pretty impressive new paint job.
