It sounds like Netflix is halfway open to the idea:
Online movie rental company Netflix Inc has surveyed its subscribers to gauge their interest in streaming movies to their televisions using Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360, a Netflix spokesman said on Monday.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey declined to say whether the survey indicated a soon-to-be announced partnership between the two companies, but said Netflix was interested in getting its movies to consumers’ TVs “in as many ways as possible.”
As a current Netflix subscriber and proud Xbox 360 owner (one of the few MS products that I ride for), this would certainly be a match made in heaven! Unfortunately, I wasn’t surveyed (what’s up with that?), but I’m hoping that those who were did their part to move Netflix in the right direction with this. We’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.
Engadget and Boy Genius Report are just a few of the cool kids on the scene that are already spending quality time with the iPhone’s 2.0 firmware update–and they’ve got some pretty decent preview coverage too. Peep:
Well, maybe not HD exactly, but by adding &fmt=18 to the end of YouTube urls you’re directed to a version of the video with higher image and sound quality. It’s a slight increase, but it’s definitely noticeable in some cases. Try it out for yourself with the video below, and see what you get.
PBS talk show host, Charlie Rose knows a thing or two about this:
Viewers of the Charlie Rose show tonight were stunned to see the normally composed Rose looking like he’d just been in a bar fight. He has a very bad black eye and a bandage over part of his forehead. I contacted the show’s producers to hear what happened. Earlier today, they said, Rose tripped in a pothole while walking on 59th Street in Manhattan. He was carrying a newly purchased MacBook Air and made a quick (but ultimately flawed) decision while falling: sacrifice the face, protect the computer. “In doing so, he pretty much hit the pavement face first, unfortunately,” they said.
Ouch! It’s good to see that he’s doin alright (minus the shiner), but he still gets the gas face for buying a Macbook Air.
The Good News:
• Push Email, Instant Messaging, and a host of other 3rd Party Apps are finally headed to the iPhone. The announcement came yesterday during a special press conference in which Steve Jobs and company (i.e. Sega, Electronic Arts, AOL, etc) previewed the capabilities of the new 2.0 Software Beta Update. It’s gonna to turn the iPhone into a real monster. Finally Blackberry’s will have a true rival on the scene.
The Bad News:
• It won’t be available to the public until late June.
Damn, damn, damn (c) Florida Evans.
In the past, iPhone updates have dropped to the public immediately after they’ve been announced in press conferences. So this late June release date definitely caught me off guard. If you don’t want to spoil the surprise, then I advise you to not watch this. Seriously. My only guess, is that aside from working out all the kinks, and assuring that developers have had enough time to create a gang of solid apps, they’ve also chosen a June launch date to coincide with the release of the 3G iPhone. Just watch! So if you were planning on buying an iPhone, you might want to hold off for a just a little bit. We may also see some price cuts in June as well. Let’s wait and see.
Normally I wouldn’t use words like cool and clever to describe a computer virus (a few *expletives* here and there would be more like it), but The Newton Virus definitely manages to pull these two words out of me. Instead of booting your precious files into oblivion, or sending your machine into a state of perpetual shock as most malicious codes do, Newton simply introduces the forces of gravity to your Mac computing experience. When transferred to a machine from its custom usb drive, the virus causes your desktop icons to crash to the bottom of the screen, and move freely in response to the earth’s gravitational pull. Peep the video demo.
The Newton Virus was create several years ago by London based design studio Troika to showcase ‘virtual gravity’, and not by some random group of computer hackers looking to exploit a weakness in Mac OS as most would think (then again…). Either way let’s just hope no ones gets any crazy ideas from this.
The other day it was hip hop producer Just Blaze, running down some of his most anticipated gadget releases during a recent interview with HipHopGame.com. Today’s hip hop producer engaging in gadget talk is none other than Pharrell Williams–1/2 of The Neptunes/N.E.R.D. frontman/’Hypester’ Icon. Recently he sat down with The Boy Genius and talked about everything from his cell phone of choice (peep his solid gold iPhone), to his current production setup, to the possibility of making a splash into the mobile phone market in the near future.
Jump to the link below if the embedded clip gives you trouble.
In the latest installment of Hip Hop Game’s 3-part interview series, Just talks about some of the gadgets that he’s looking forward to seeing this year–high capacity storage drives seem to be at the top of his list. Peep the full excerpt after the jump, along with a clip of Just and Pete Rock battling it out on the Xbox 360. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember when a cell phone was just a cell phone? When things like internet access, camera quality, and IM capabilities didn’t impact your final decision when buying one (since most of these features were limited or nonexistent at the time anyway)? As long as your phone made clear calls, clocked sufficient talk time, and looked fairly decent–LED screen, pull-out antenna and all–you were straight! And you probably held on to the same model for more than a year. That’s hardly the case these days. With features like text messages, mobile web, and IM (among others) now on the scene, the game, as well as consumer demands, have been changed forever.
This article in today’s New York Times takes a look at the steps that a few cell phone manufacturers are taking to appeal to the tastes of today’s design and environmentally conscious consumers.
Like fashion or entertainment, the cellphone industry is increasingly hit-driven, and new models that do not fly off the shelves within weeks of their debut are considered duds. The most gadget-conscious shoppers buy new phones every nine months, twice as fast as they did a few years ago. And teenagers, one of the fastest-growing markets, are especially quick to dump a brand if it loses popular appeal.
Might we finally hear news about the delayed iPhone SDK’s and the future of 3rd party iPhone apps? It looks that way:
Apple distributed invitations Wednesday morning for “an iPhone software road map” event next week, which means we’re finally going to hear details on the plans for an iPhone software development kit.
As you might be aware, next week is March, not February, which means Apple will have missed its deadline for shipping the SDK this month. Still, on Thursday, March 6, at 10 a.m. PST the company will hold a “town hall” meeting at its headquarters in Cupertino to discuss the State of the iPhone, and probably answer several questions about how iPhone application development will unfold.
RSS
Twitter