POI: Show #25 - 04.15.2007

[Download Show #25 as MP3]

News

This makes it the fastest selling music player in history (according to Apple)
iPods are the new Walkman
Brings understanding as to why people are trying to compete with the iPod
Fastest Selling device, (100 million units in 5.5 years) and beats the Playstation 2 by 2 months
While fastest selling still not the best selling (that honor goes to Sony's Walkman line)

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

Image Formats - BMP, GIF, ICO, JPG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIF, WBMP, WMF
Document Formats - CSV, DOC, DOCX, HTML, ODP, ODS, ODT, PCX, PDF, PPT, PS, RTF, TXT, XLS, XML
Music Formats - AAC, AC3, FLAC, M4A, MMF, MP3, OGG, RA, RAM, WAV, WMA
Video
Formats - 3GP, AVI, FLV, GVI, IPOD, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPG, OGG, RM, RMVB, VOB, WMV

Won Best in Show at CES 2006
Built in WiFi for Streaming Internet Radio, Yahoo! Music & Photo Services (Flickr)

Penny Pinchers

Programs like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or even Trillian cost money (sometimes more than $100)
Open Source alternatives exist for most popular and regularly used software
Examples

Also Check Out the Open Source Alternatives website for a more comprehensive list
Downside is that not every application has an open source alternate that is available on all operating systems

Quick Note: AMD has cut prices on their Dual Core processors bringing the 3Ghz 6000+ processor under $250. Great time to build a new PC or upgrade an older one.

Security & Privacy

Some major fixes to bugs that allowed unrestricted access to computers
Make sure you run your Windows updates.
Running your windows updates will help ensure that you keep your computer safe. While it will not fix everything it will help.

Gamer's Corner

Editorial ("Power Up")

Online video is becoming more popular everyday.
Issues with content rights, copyrights, and even monetary compensation for writers, actors, and others involved
Viacom sued YouTube for 1 billion dollars over supposed copyright violations
As you can see, online video is going to take some time to be fully accepted and be viewed as a viable revenue source
Enter Joost

Created by the same people who brought us Skype and Kazza
Currently Invite Only, it's basically IPTV, but actually P2PTV. P2PTV uses BitTorrent to stream the shows

Viacom has already signed a content deal with Joost bringing shows from MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central to Joost. Currently lots of music videos
The interface is slick, this is what an IPTV application should look like.

Channel Chats so you can chat with others watching the same channel as you
Majorly bandwidth intensive and CPU intensive at times. On my 2Ghz (non-64 bit) with 2GB or RAM I had the occasional application lag
Occasional Commercial before getting to actual selected program, short and to the point though

Proves the IPTV concept. People are chomping at the bit to get Joost Invites
Gives content makers a viable over the internet solution to distribute content
With Joost proving that you can deliver video over the internet and have it generate revenue, others are sure to follow
Something like this was needed to handle the proof of concept. Joost is the forerunner in the game and first to market. Because of them we can bet that we will see more companies try to harness the power of internet video distribution

Joost is not a replacement for television. While they have gotten content from Viacom, the selection is limited.
This distribution model is not going to work great with longer videos. Due to the P2PTV technology longer films will be harder to watch since you'll need to download a considerable amount of content before you can watch a movie smoothly

POI