Entries from June 2007 ↓

The latest news on the iPhone is that it will infact have the capability to user microsoft exchange server, which will require apple to license the activesync protocal. This is a very big step for apple to make the iPhone appealing to all users, which any business user will tell you that they must have push email and synchronization capabilities on a phone. With only one more day to go before the iPhone launches this is probably the best possible news I have heard so far, all that is left to find out is how will that beautiful touchscreen hold up over time.

In an effort to compete with Google and yahoo for online services Microsoft is adding two new features to it’s windows live suite, first they are adding a web storage service called windows live folder which will have about 500 megs of storage capability to start, and they are also adding windows live photo gallery. Both services seem to have potential to help Microsoft gain some momentum in the web service arena, since we all know Google is working day and night with it’s Google apps and even a rumored online storage service themselves. Both of these services will be free and Microsoft hopes to bundle them together as one download of the entire windows live suite. The online storage probably won’t be that big of hit right now because people are still leery about uploading private data online and not knowing who may or may not be able to access it, but I think the new live photo gallery could prove to be a huge hit, especially if they integrate with other services like flickr which is a possibility. Windows live already has search, chat, email, and maps so these new features can only make it that much better.

Just a few weeks ago dell anounced that they would start selling computers in walmart stores, getting away from their direct sales approach to try and boost up their market share. Now dell is introuducing a new line of notebooks that come in a variety of colors starting at around $749. They also introuduced a notebook computer that runs on flash memory instead of traditional hard drive, but it only comes with 32 gigs of storage which is not enough by todays standards. While Dell has only fell down into the number 2 pc maker it seems as though they are panicking and possibly comprimising the quality of products just to get sales numbers up.

Bittorrent fans have lost two more sites toady it seems, as both torrentspy and isohunt have announced that they will be implementing a filtering system to stop copyrighted material from being shared. The system that they will be using is called FileRights, which will require the movie studios and music labels to provide file hashes for their content. Even though torrentspy is cooperating now it may not be enough to get the movie studios to back off for things done in the past. With these two big torrent sites down it will be interesting to see if the movie studios and record labels can slow down torrent servers not located in the U.S.

It would seem that lately Blu-Ray has began to pull away from it’s competitor HD-DVD with the announcement that blockbuster will be sticking with just blu-ray disc and replacing their entire line of HD-DVD with Blu-Ray disc. Both formats are about the same really as far as quality and storage capability, the only real difference is that one group of movie studios and hardware manufacturers support blu-ray and the other group support HD-DVD. The problem with blu-ray and HD-DVD is that the consumer will be the one to lose out if they pick the wrong format, which has already happened sometime ago with VHS and Betamax. While one of the formats will win (and it seems to be blu-ray) I think that people are starting to warm up to the idea of digital content, bypassing a physical media all together. With bandwidth becoming readily available and products like the appletv and netgear eva8000 starting to gain momentum I really believe that physical media such as DVD’s no matter what format will be a thing of the past in the very near future. Digital Media receivers have been around for a few years but have never really caught on until now because most of them were very unstable and had really poor codec support, but those issues seem to have been resolved recently with the latest crop of receivers. The online music business has become very popular in recent years thanks in part to itunes and record studios seeing the potential and growing market of online distribution, I think that now is the time for the movie industry to really embrace online distribution of movies, because then the consumer wins and also has more choices.