As I’ve pointed out before, I’ve been a PC guy most of my life and have only been using Macs for the last two years. The biggest takeaway for me has been that Microsoft and Apple are really pretty even: they both pose as poster children for anti-competitive practices, generally favor proprietary code over open source, and make very questionable ethics calls.

Microsoft has been living with the reputation of a big bad corporation for over a decade now. But in the last year or so, there has been a subtle but significant shift in the public opinion, for the better. I can actually pin-point exactly when: it’s since Bill Gates has stepped down. Although Slashdot still illustrates all Microsoft news with the now famous Borg avatar of Bill, the tech media seems to have softened its perception of him. People speak of him with some nostalgia now, and he’s often portrayed as some sort of wise elder spokesman for technology. A lot of that may be due to Ballmer being very unpopular and Gates therefore shining by contrast, but I think that there is something deeper going on here. Read the rest of this entry »
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I hate to be blogging about Apple again, but it has been quite ubiquitous of late and given that I own an iPhone, an Apple TV, a Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro, I cannot help caring.

From a PR standpoint, the last few months have been mixed at best for Apple (more on that later), and yet from a financial standpoint it has been pretty much blowing right through this recession, announcing just last month the best non-holiday quarter in the company’s history. What’s going on here?

I grew up very much a PC guy. My first computer, in 1994, was a 75MHz Pentium I with 8 megs of ram and a 500 MB hard drive running Dos and Windows 3.11. I was 14, it was by far the coolest thing I’d ever owned, and the internet was just getting started. Sometimes when I’d go visit a school buddy of mine, I’d take a peek at his dad’s Apple PowerPC which, he liked to remind me, was much more expensive and cooler than my PC. It also wasn’t compatible with mine. It never would be. Apple actually cultivated that difference, it thrived on it: remember ‘think different?’

From that point until about a year and a half ago, I discarded Macs as over-priced, over-engineered rounded cubes without a delete key or a right-click button, designed by and for intellectual snobs.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve been meaning to document my home media setup for a while now because, well, I think it’s pretty sweet and I very much enjoy the setup literally every day. Before I go into the details of how everything works, here are the key benefits of this setup:

• I can watch 3TB worth of content (202 movies and 99 TV seasons at the moment) anytime I want at home. I don’t have to get up and put anything in or out, it’s just all always available. The data is protected against any single drive failure.

• The computers are set up to backup over Wi-Fi without me having to even think about it

• The computers can play music on the Bose speakers by taking over the Apple TV’s speaker output (this is an iTunes feature)

• In addition to playing games, I can use the XBox 360 for DVDs and to stream instantly from Netflix
• I can remote control the Apple TV with my iPhone! (via the excellent Remote app)

Read the rest of this entry »
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This week in etilities, Comcast (Etilities Forum) tries to expand its footprint, Kazaa decides to become a law-abiding entertainment provider, and Microsoft moves its Office flagship to the cloud.

Comcast releases iPhone app, brings premium content to the web

Comcast is starting an online offering trial where if you are subscribing to HBO or Cinemax you can now watch some of the content online. There will be initially about 750 hours of content available, with both movies and TV shows.

Later in the week, Comcast also released a neat iPhone application that lets you check your voicemail, email, see TV listings, and even let you schedule on-demand rentals.

Microsoft announces Office 2010

It’s been a very exciting few weeks for the tech media with the increasingly apparent showdown in between Google and Microsoft. This week it’s Microsoft’s turn to strike with the announcement of Office 2010, which will be free, web-based, and obviously a direct jab at Google Docs.

Kazaa turns away from the dark side

I have many fond memories of Napster and Kazaa in college, providing countless hours of ‘free’ entertainment. This seems the end of an era indeed as Kazaa has announced a new offering with unlimited mp3 downloads for $20 a month. We wish them the best of luck with this new business model.
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

This week in etilities, Google continues to make headlines, this time with Chrome OS, and Pandora is given a chance to prosper.

Pandora heaves a sigh of relief

We wrote almost a year ago about Pandora being in a tough situation with regards to the outrageously high royalties it has to pay to broadcast music over the web, especially compared to traditional radio. It was bad enough that it was basically impossible for the internet radio provider to turn a profit. We can only imagine their relief this week as an agreement on the issue was finally reached. In the words of Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren: “the royalty crisis is over! Webcasters, artists, and record labels have reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates.”

It didn’t take long for investors to pounce on the occasion. Pandora has already secured $35 million in new funding since the announcement, and it is expected to become profitable very soon.

Google announces Chrome OS

It was hard to miss Google’s announcement of Chrome OS this week, and most of the tech media has talked of little else since. The important takeaway here is that the age of the browser-as-OS will soon be upon us. Very soon. The very fact that Google is naming the OS after its browser coupled with its target market (netbooks) means that you can expect an OS built around the browser, for the browser and with little else in it.

There have been other recent developments in the industry that have shown that we’re about to turn a corner and make the browser the only truly relevant “software product” (aka not in the cloud): Mozilla is adding multiprocess support to Firefox, and Silverlight is working on utilizing your GPU (graphics card) for better HD streaming. This is a clear trend of browsers (and their extensions) becoming more and more like operating systems and the line between the two slowly fading to the point where it will soon no longer exist.

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It’s been a quiet week in etility news, probably because most of the world is either talking about the iPhone 3GS or Michael Jackson. The relevant news mostly revolved around Google’s various services and its attempt to complete its takeover of the digital world.

Google Voice can change your phone number for you

Phone number from an area code where you no longer are? Google Voice can help: for $10 you can change your phone number without any activation delay, and Google even throws in three months of continued service to your old phone.

Google is trying to attract news publishers to YouTube

Google wants more content from reputable, legitimate sources on YouTube, not just videos of your neighbor’s cat falling off a couch. It is obviously in Google’s best interest to take all of the content available on Cable TV and bring it to the web, as it increases viewership and therefore ad revenue. And so once you’ve registered your source with them (and there seems to be a review process before you’re approved), you get perks like featured premium placement, viewership analysis and even revenue sharing from Google’s ads. YouTube already has a pretty big group of sources, since it’s starting with all 25,000 registered organizations from Google News.

Google antitrust investigations heating up

We hardly need to point out that not only is Google already huge, but it also keeps on growing and growing, slowly penetrating all etility and online markets to the point where it is becoming ubiquitous. It is not surprising then that it is increasingly receiving pressure from various judicial bodies to answer antitrust charges, as is the case with its Google Book service which would establish a monopoly on orphaned books (copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder).

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This week in etilities: companies keep competing for dominance in the internet TV market, the case is made for and against Google Voice, and your last excuse not to back up your data is taken away.

Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix still going after Hulu

Comcast (Etilities Forum) and Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) are working on a response to the Hulu (Etilities Forum) phenomenon with the development of a ‘TV Everywhere‘ service that allows users to view content that they pay for via subscriptions on their computer. The main differentiator here with Hulu is obviously the fact that you need to be paying for a subscription. If, like me, you find yourself increasingly unable to tolerate advertisement, and if Comcast and Time Warner manage to keep the costs associated with this reasonable (this is where I’m not so hopeful), this could be the beginning of an appealing alternative to ad-supported TV.

Meanwhile, Netflix (Etilities Forum) is also looking ahead, projecting that the number of subscribers for its DVD-mailing service will slowly decline over the next ten years. Their answer? Boost the number of titles available for streaming, as well as their quality. Great idea on paper; the trick will undoubtedly be to sell the big studios on it.

The case for and against Google Voice

PC World put out a great piece this week on the five reasons to use Google Voice, and the five reasons not to. What it allows you to do is centralize the control of all of your phone numbers in a single location so that, for example, calling your cell phone number also makes your phones in your home and office ring. You can also manage your voicemails, SMS messages, and much more. According the PC World, the possible downsides mainly fall within two categories: privacy and reliability.

You can now afford to keep your data safe

Do you want a place to safely store your ripped DVDs and other large amounts of data at an affordable price? You may be in luck. Gizmodo came out this week with the review of a great new product from Western Digital: the My Book World Edition II. For $700, you can buy a 4TB networked storage book with 2TB of usable storage space (the other 2TBs back up the first 2TB). Unless you have a bigger media library than I do (yeah, right), that is more than enough space and you can sleep soundly and know that your data is safe from a hard-drive failure.

You no longer have an excuse not to back up!

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