October 2008 Archives

It sounds like an offer out of the back of a comic book, but Texas Instruments (TI), the maker of the DLP Cinema chip, is developing technology that might make it possible to watch two programs on one TV at the same time.

The company recently outlined some of its early developments that use 3-D technology for home entertainment at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Technical Conference and Exhibition in Hollywood, CA.

One development, which TI expects to begin to preview at year's end, is processing technology that if incorporated in a third-party home entertainment system could allow for 2-D, 3-D or "dual view mode" on the same TV. Dual view mode, similar to 3-D, combines two images, but they are two different images.  

Yes, and you can expect to wear special glasses, too ...

More at the Hollywood Reporter.

If one channel just enough during election season, Dish Network is offering a mosiac channel with six simultaneous feeds of news channels.

It started Tuesday, Oct. 28, and will run through Nov. 7.

For those 11 days, you can turn to Channel 100 and catch Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNN Headlines News, C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2.

(At least the remote control will get some rest ...)

Since May, Dish has offered Dish Decision 2008, an interactive application with news and information about the presidential candidates, plus state-by-state news, information and polling about congressional and gubernatorial races.

Dish rival DirecTV is also offering an Election Day mosaic channel, in this case an eight-channel offering called Election Mix.

Thanks to TV Technology.

 

Nintendo is reportedly likely to launch a new model of its top-selling handheld player, the DS, in overseas markets by next summer.

Nintendo will start selling the DSi, which can take pictures, play music and is slimmer than the current model, in Japan tomorrow for 18,900 yen ($192) in a move to revive slowing domestic sales ahead of the critical holiday season.

Nintendo previously said it planned an overseas DSi launch in 2009.

DS sales in the April-September fiscal first half grew 3% from a year earlier to 13.73 million units worldwide, beating Sony's PlayStation Portable by a 2-to-1 margin.

The DS and Wii console, which has outstripped both Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in global sales, have been Nintendo's twin growth engines in recent years.

Nintendo said it has shipped 200,000 units of the DSi for sales this weekend and plans to ship an additional 100,000 units starting November 4. 

Get more at Reuters.

With Microsoft OCS R2's pending release, I thought you'd be interested in seeing a video interview of Microsoft's Ananad Lakshminarayanan about some of the new features in Office Communications Server R2, which is Microsoft's popular unified communications platform. In the video you'll see some of the IT Admin specific features in OCS R2, which includes an OCS architecture planner to make OCS much easier to deploy. Essentially, it includes a wizard that you provide with your locations, users, and feature requirements and it spits out a detailed Visio style architecture for you, including recommendations for number of servers and locations, as well as bandwidth requirements. The wizard will even list out all the ports & IPs that you need to open.

They've added load balancing for Edge Servers for scalability. Another change is they've reduced the number of ports you need to keep open. They've changed the archiving feature so that it stores instant messages archives separately from CDRs or voice call records. This assists with compliance using 3rd party compliance utilities.

To Virtualize or not to Virtualize, that is the question...
A hot topic in the Office Communication Server community is virtualization for some of the OCS server roles. In the video, Ananad mentions they are looking at supporting some virtualization for some of the OCS roles. Specifically the roles that don't support real-time media (audio, video, conferencing, etc.). Although the video doesn't mention it, Microsoft told me that the voice & video quality and performance in virtualized environments just isn't up to business-grade quality. Nevertheless, I'd still like to see support for virtualization of all the roles for testing in a lab or pre-deployment testing environment. in any event, excluding those roles that require real-time media they will be able to be virtualized very soon. In fact, in the video Ananand says support for virtualization will be likely be post RTM, which is basically plus 90 days from when OCS R2 RTMs.

Click to go watch the in-depth video including a demo of OCS R2:

Hewlett-Packard wants to employ a new tactic to market netbook computers in the U.S., offering them at a steep discount to customers who sign-up for wireless service contracts.

This bundling of cellular service with PCs isn't done in the U.S., but in Asia and Europe wireless carriers routinely knock hundreds of dollars off the price of a computer if a customer also buys a long-term service contract.

Maybe AT&T and Verizon Wireless are interested?

For example, Taiwanese carrier Far EasTone Communications sells the EEE PC from Asustek Computer for $29 with a two-year contract, rather than the usual price of $429.

Hewlett-Packard says the surging interest in netbooks -- stripped-down computers that offer basic applications and Web browsing -- is driving the move. With the economy fading and lots of high-speed cellphone networks available, the world's largest computer seller by revenue sees bundling as a way to move more of its computers into customers' homes.

Yesterday, H-P introduced three new netbooks, including a $399 HP Mini 1000 and a $699 HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition, with flourishes like a "red with peony flower"-colored case.

More at the Wall Street Journal.

The next ITEXPO marks the 10th anniversary for Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. I for one cannot believe its been 10 years! We started ITEXPO way back in 1999. That was way back in the 20th century. Did VoIP even exist back then? Yep, it sure did - take a walk down memory lane.

In celebration of 10 years of TMC's most successful event, our art department has designed a new logo. Check it out:



Thanks to all of you out there that have helped make ITEXPO the success that it is. I hope to see you all at the next event. The show takes place February 2-4, 2009 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, Florida.

Now you no longer have to worry about the tragic and unthinkable happening -- losing power to your iPhone or iPod!

Brando's iPhone/iPod Emergency Charger puts the emphasis on simplicity, portability and usefulness. (So nice!)

This compact, lightweight Emergency Charger with retractable cable can use "AA" batteries to power the Apple iPhone and iPod anytime, anywhere and at the time that you need it most. 

It features anytime, anywhere instant charging, and it's retractable cable makes it very easy to carry.

But remember, this is just for emergency use only and doesn't replace your A/C power charger to make your iPhone or iPod 100% charged.

Cost: $10.00

mobile.brando.com.hk

According to Andy Abramson's post published 20 minutes ago, Carl Ford and Scott Kargman, who were big parts of the VON brain trust has joined forces with TMC. As Andy also commented - Hath hell frozen over?

This is like Mirror! Mirror! where Captain Kirk and Spock meet their opposites. Or even worse the episode called The Alternative Factor where two enemies both named Lazarus who Spock concludes is Lazarus and an "anti-Lazarus", possibly from a parallel "antimatter" dimension. Should Lazarus and his anti-self manage to destroy each other, it could spell doom for both universes.

Fortunately, the joining of former VON employees with TMC has not destroyed the VoIP universe!

Andy said:

What I'm hearing is that long time VON business brain-trust, Scott Kargman, and VON Conference impresario, Carl Ford have teamed up with TMC's Rich Tehrani to produce the 4G Wireless Evolution Website and a conference in Miami next February.

I was aware of what was going on between the VON heavyweights and TMC but kept it hush. I saw both Carl and Scott in TMC's main conference room a couple times over the past couple of weeks meeting with my fellow co-workers Rich Tehrani, Dave Rodriguez, and others. I was told about the negotiations but didn't sit in on the meeting since I was busy testing some VoIP products, including the new snom 820 phone.

Rich also got me involved with testing a cool HD streaming over coax product. More on that soon.

Ya know, I saw the demise of VON in 2006 coming when I poked fun at Jeff Pulver changing the focus from Voice on the Net (VON) to Video on the Net (VON 2.0?). My only question now is should I expect to see Jeff Pulver in TMC's conference room? Then hell will have truly frozen over!

For more on the deal, read Andy's post.

Wal-Mart has re-launched its new and improved MP3 Music Downloads store, with MP3 tracks starting at just 74 cents, to give us a greater value and an even bigger selection in digital music.

Wal-Mart has exclusively sold MP3s through its online store since February 2008 and now offers more than 3 million MP3 tracks with content from all major labels.

The enhanced MP3 online store is supported by multiple elements in Wal-Mart stores, including a free MP3 download with every CD purchased in stores or online at www.walmart.com/music. 

Get more at SmartBrief.com.

TrickleStar, a Hong Kong-based manufacturer, will be making the U.S. debut of the "world-first" power-saving device. 

TrickleStar's products address the issue of standby power consumed by PC appliances and TV accessories by stopping the flow of standby power when in "standby" mode. 

The TrickleStar PC Standby Power Saver connects to a PC via a standard USB cable and detects the power status of a PC via the USB port. When a PC is "on," the product will switch "on" all accessory devices. Conversely, when a PC is switched "off," it will switch "off" all accessory devices.

I like it. Let's get some of these soon.

More at CEPro.com.

Thanks to Waynet.org for the image.

In the on again, off again department ...

AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi is even hotter. Which is why free AT&T Wi-Fi access is now available for Apple iPhone at thousands of hotspots nationwide, including Starbucks.

Now you can can relax and access music, email and web browsing services with your favorite brew in hand from the comfort of your nearest location. (That's if AT&T has a good signal in your area.)

AT&T provided a number of early hints that the service would be coming and sent a message to iPhone users announcing the plan. (And who paid for those bits of data?)

You can locate these free Wi-Fi hot spots through AT&T's little online tool at www.att.com/attwifi or can locate a Starbucks instead.

For more, check out the always delightul MacRumors.com.

I'm a huge fan of SightSpeed and so I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read that Logitech has acquired SightSpeed for approximately $30 million in cash. I'm a fan of both companies actually, and my favorite webcam is the Logitech Quickcam Orbit AF, The acquisition is expected to close in early November. Just check out my favorable review of SightSpeed here and how SightSpeed carried out their patriotic duty in offering SightSpeed videoconferencing for online gameplay between Pros and G.I. Joes.

SightSpeed supports up to an amazing 9-way videoconferencing. Take that Skype! Even Dell jumped on the SightSpeed bandwagon by offering SightSpeed preloaded onto all Dell consumer PCs (called Dell Video Chat).

No doubt with this acquisition, Logitech will bundle the SightSpeed software onto their software CD that ships with every webcam they sell. This will no doubt boost the number of SightSpeed users. My heart congrats go out to the SightSpeed team, including SightSpeed's VP of Marketing Eric Quanstrom whom I have spoken to many times.

Founded in 2001, SightSpeed has approximately 25 employees and unlike Skype which is proprietary, SightSpeed leverages the industry standard SIP protocol.

Designer Sleeve Laptop Cases are a fun and functional way to protect your laptop computer. You ain't seen anything like em!

Composed of thick, durable neoprene rubber that cushions your laptop for maximum protection, it can slide in and out of your backpack, briefcase or luggage with real ease. The natural rubberized feel of the wet suit material is fun and fashionable, while providing natural moisture, shock and scratch protection.

You can't believe what designs they have! Check out the one they call Anime (at left). But they are perfect for life on campus, business travel, everyday work or vacation. 

Going beyond basic print patterns, the company's Subliprene process allows high-quality, full-color graphics to be printed on each one of the three panel sleeves. In addition, they have the capability to take any design and personalize it with your name or company logo. 

Prices start at $34.95.

www.designersleeves.com

There are ads for them all over the place as everybody seems to be pushing Blu-ray as the better version of DVD -- much like DAT was the new audio cassette (but at least that's digital vs. analog, not better digital vs. digital) and we know what happened to DAT ...

And who can argue with 1080 lines of resolution (BR) vs. 480 (DVD), but we the consuming universe just don't want to shell out $30 for a BR title when we are quite happy to pay less (often much, much less) for a regular, good old DVD.

(And DVD are not really that old, are they?)

In a sign that there is than one of us out there with the same way of thinking, as of last month, only 4% of U.S. movie disc sales were Blu-ray, according to Nielsen VideoScan. Many consumers remain happy with mainstream DVDs, surveys show. 

So let me hear your arguments about going over the blu side ...

Well, you may never bend it like David Beckham, but his little MatchMaster electronic soccer game let's you practice, train and eat properly to get you well on your virtual way.

Sort of like an updated and totally sports-obsessed Tamagotchi, it's an interactive handheld game (even down to very small hands) that let's you live the life of a soccer star -- and no, it's not all glamour and glory!

MatchMaster will test your ability to develop your gadget's expertise by managing its daily schedule. Each player can test their gadget's ability by playing matches against other MatchMasters.

Each MatchMaster will have its own life table. Each life table has six 
lifelines and will need to be developed and maintained on a daily basis.
If you look after your lifelines correctly, the MatchMaster will develop into a stronger gadget.

www.matchmaster.com