Do you use Technorati to look up blog content? I do. They just launched a new front page interface that scrolls in new "headlines" every few seconds. The "cool factor" is there, and it’s fun to watch, but is it useful? Time will tell. Check it out.
I have been a fan of SpinVox since they made their debut in the States. I even teamed up with the company to give away 1,000 free SpinVox accounts earlier this year. This is the single most useful piece of technology in my administration arsenal, it organizes things better for me than anything else.
You can imagine my intrigue when I read that SpinVox will offer voice updates for Facebook.
Hrm…the greatest productivity tool mashes up with the greatest social networking site. It sounds like a good match to me.
Every time I put up stuff about Zune I get blasted by the iPod koolaid drinkers. So have at it, Apple fans.
Last night I went to a Zune 2 preview party in Hollywood. The Zune 2 is slated for release in mid November, so Cesar Menendez from Microsoft if making stops around the country to show off the latest offering.
I have to tell you…I’m very excited for this to come out. Aside from the 80GB “brick” they are offering little 8GB Zunes (I call them “Zunitos”). They come in a variety of finishes and have a Zune pad that is controlled by swiping the finger and clicking. It is very easy to navigate and is very fast. It has a speed up feature that, as you scroll through your music, speeds up as you go down the list. Very cool.
Some obvious changes from the first generation Zune are the addition of Podcasts as a top-level service and some neat additions to the “social” (or wi-fi) aspects of the Zune. Wireless syncing with your computer? It’s there. I love that. If you have other Microsoft Products (like an Xbox 360) it will sync content to that. I also love that.
I’ve written about the Zune Marketplace before, and what a huge fan I am of this service. The improvements to the Marketplace that coincide with the launch of the hardware are great. Of course they are adding podcasts, but they are also adding a ton of video selections. I’m pretty excited about this.
The picture on this post is Cesar Menendez holding one of the Zunitos. It was very low light and they wouldn’t let me take hi-resolutions pics, but you get the idea.
The bottom line? I believe this 2nd generation will eat up more market share. It is clear that Microsoft is not leaving the personal media market anytime soon. They are in it to win it, and I think the Zune 2 is a step toward that goal. I will buy one the day it comes out. What about you…are you sticking with iPod or considering a move?
Two great maps to share with you. First of all, check out this Google Maps mashup. It will give you a frame of reference for the fires that are in SoCal right now. It’s scary how many there are. BTW, On Sunday I took the pic that you are seeing from Woodland Hills, looking toward Malibu…that is a lot of smoke.
Second map: Microsoft’s new maps are absolutely amazing. Maps.live.com is a very useful utility. Want to see my church?? Click here then click “see this location in birds eye view”. The picture is about a year old…you can see the construction.
Microsoft has announced the release of the second generation Zune player. I’m pretty excited about this, and in classic Microsoft fashion they are making many upgrades to the next gen offering. I know there are many iCult members that read this, but you have to hand it to Redmond for their ability to learn and deploy better products. Think Xbox and then Xbox 360.
The most obvious change from Zune 1 to Zune 2 is the physical hardware itself. The 80GB offering is much less "bricky", and the 4GB and 8GB models are closer in size to the iPod Nano.
They h
ave improved the wi-fi so that you can sync the device without the use of cables. This is a massive improvement and one that I had hoped for. Goodbye proprietary cables cluttering my drawers and laptop bag. Another nice feature is "top shelf" billing for podcasting. This is now a major category in addition to radio, pictures, video and music. Well done!
Of course my favorite feature of the Zune continues to be the Zune marketplace. For $14.99 per month I can download just about anything I want. Yes, it’s DRM protected and yes, if I quit paying my subscription the music goes away. I’m okay with all of that, I really am. I think the Zune Marketplace is genius.
Will the Zune 2 carry enough improvements to take a bite out of Apple? (Aren’t I clever with my puns?) That remains to be seen. I still think that the iPod will hold the majority of the market share, even through this release, but by the 3rd generation I think we’ll see an even split. Bill G is not giving up on this project, and typically when that happens, big market share follows.
I can’t wait for the Zune 2!
Apple just rolled out some security upgrades for the ultra-coveted
iPhone. Things aren’t going very well for users of this new patch.
The savants that unlocked the phone to use on networks outside of AT&T now have $600 bricks. It seems that the new upgrades "likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable."
Robert Scoble is reporting that even peoplo without unlocked phones are having problems.
In other news, Halo 3 walked all over entertainment industry records for opening day sales. Seems the video games have a little more pull than movies.
For those keeping score at home, here is today’s tally: Microsoft 1, Apple 0.
SpiralFrog is getting a lot of buzz on the internet right now. Two reasons: first, it is offering free downloads of the most popular music. Not a bad gig. Sure, you have to put up with 90 seconds downloads, banner ads and surveys, but hey…it’s free. And 90 second downloads? C’mon…does anybody remember the original Napster? I was happy with 5 minute downloads back then. The second reason it’s getting buzz is because it’s not compatible with iPods. Oh no! Say it isn’t so! :P
I would love to give you a full review of the SpiralFrog music service, but I can’t. Why? I cannot register. I open up my trusty FireFox browser (yes, I’m 100% on FF these days), but I couldn’t complete registration because the CAPTCHA wasn’t showing up. It just said “SpiralFrog Security Letters”. Weird. I refreshed. I tried to add in some missing plugins (FF tells me that “no suitable plugins found, unknown plugin (application/x-spiralfrog)). No dice. I couldn’t register.
So I went back to the old standby of Internet Explorer. Guess what? I had the same problem! No CAPTCHA. Bummer.
So instead of a glowing (or not so much) review of SpiralFrog, all I can tell you is that it does indeed exist, that (in theory) you should be able to register and download a bunch of music, free and legally. </review>
What a great way to start the Labor Day weekend…NOTHING in my inbox! I’m pretty excited about this.
Inbox confessional…how many are in your inbox right now?
I recently downloaded and installed a cool new app from Banana Security. What does it do? It uses a web cam to “enroll” your facial structure as your windows credentials. Huh? It recognizes your face as yours and unlocks your computer like your password does. Pretty cool idea.
It says that it is for Windows XP but I don’t find anything about Vista. So what do I do? I install it on my 64-bit Vista Ultimate machine at home. It actually installed just fine! Super! Upon a restart (which it did not prompt me to do, but it wasn’t working yet so I figured that I needed to do something) it came right up.
It worked great! I took the time to enroll my face, and after that it worked. My computer would lock after 60 seconds and would only unlock when my webcam scanned my face and recognized me. I tried to have my wife and my son unlock the computer with their faces and it wouldn’t let them. Cool. Oh, one BIG downside: once the computer locks up with the banana security there doesn’t appear to be a way to switch between users. That’s a real problem if I’m not around to smile at the camera.
Now the not-so-cool part. One more restart later and it all went sideways on me. One of my two monitors (c’mon…who doesn’t use dual monitors?) would flicker like crazy to the point that I couldn’t get it to stay on long enough for me to see what was happening.
Then my accountability software, Covenant Eyes, completely crashed. If that isn’t working you can forget about internet access…no DNS translation! So I was kind of dead in the water there. Then any active window that I had open that had a scroll bar…well, this was just crazy. I would put my mouse over it and it would freak out. The scroll bar would go back and forth really quickly and everything would shake on the screen. Weird.
So the punch line of this story is that I uninstalled Banana Security. Sure, it was cool and all, but it REALLY messed up my computer. I would like to know how it works on an XP machine though…
Summary Review (scale of 1 to 5)
Something that is intriguing me: I get about 1,000 hits/readers a day, yet I only have about 100 readers subscribed through RSS. Why?
A couple of years ago I switched over to TypePad with the idea to write mostly about technology. I have greatly expanded my repertoire of writings, almost too much. I think I need to have more tech posts. But I digress. I think it’s interesting that for a blog that is rooted in technology, very few readers are actually leveraging technology the way it is intended!
Folks, if you are not subscribing to my blog (and others that you read) through RSS then you are burning up way too much time clicking around. For those of you that ARE using feed technology, just stop reading now. Those that aren’t, please read on, I need to help you out a little bit.
RSS (really simple syndication) is a technology that turns blogs and other written sources into “feeds” that can then be read by a feed reader. What does this mean? Well, it’s like taking all of the blogs that you read and instead of clicking through to each page, new posts magically appear all in ONE place.
In the morning I open up my Google Reader and read all of my subscriptions (over 100 as of this writing) in one place. It’s like flipping through the headlines of the local newspaper (remember those things? You know…that stuff you use to wrap dishes with when you pack?). In about 20 minutes I have skimmed or read hundreds of posts. If you are not using an RSS feed reader than you probably cannot keep up with more than a few blogs.
Here is what I want you to do. Follow these instructions.
