Show #67

[Download Show #67 as MP3]

News

• Gartner Research says HD-DVD's resistance is "useless"
• Gartner, the fat lady of research firms, is singing HD DVD's swan song this morning. Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. He goes on to call the recent price cuts "useless resistance" in avoiding the inevitable. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over. With 5 of the 7 major studios now backing Blu-ray exclusively, Gartner's certainty on the subject doesn't appear to be much of a stretch.
• WMV HD
  

• Pownce Launches
• Pownce, a micro-blogging website launched last week.
• What can Pownce do?
• Keep your friends and "groups" updated on your latest happenings
• Send pictures, files, & events
• Pownce offers a $20/year premium plan that offers you more space for files & photo storage (up to 100MB)
• What can you not do with Pownce?
• Have it update your status from RSS feeds (like Jaiku)
• Post from third party applications
• Receive mobile updates (IM or SMS)
  
• What is micro-blogging?
• Micro-blogging is about the "what are you doing RIGHT NOW" mentality. What has your attention, what are you focusing on?
• Think of it like a constant instant messaging status that you update whenever you change your focus
  
• Why would you micro-blog
• Micro-blogging is a great way to keep your friends up to date on what's going on with you
• If your friends are all on the same service, then they can choose to be updated via IM or mobile phone with your updates. Ensuring they know what club you're at, or what restaraunt you're headed to.
  
• Other micro-blogging websites
• Twitter
• Simple and easy to use. Does not offer a ton of extra features (none really)
• Awesome development API so people have made tons of Twitter "helper" applications
  
• Jaiku
  
• As easy to use as Twitter but offers some items that Twitter does not
• Add RSS feeds that relate to you (your blog, podcast, flickr, del.icio.u s) and have your Jaiku status updated when those feeds are updated
  
• How about updating multiple sites?
• Check out Hellotxt.com it's AWESOME!
  
• Jaiku's new API key
• A flaw in a Jaiku iGoogle component caused the API keys to be reset
• Get your Jaiku API Key
  
• TwitKu
• JaikuBook for Facebook
  
• Twitter for Facebook [Koby]
  
• Sony/BMG download cards for sale at Best Buy
• On a recent trip to Best Buy I noticed an endcap that contained gift-card like cards featuring Sony/BMG artists available for purchase
• I take this to mean that Sony/BMG has gotten those cards in stores now.
• The cards look nifty, they basically have the album artwork on the front and a barcode on the back.
• Sony/BMG DRM-Free downloads are also available from Amazon's Mp3 Store
  

Gamer's Corner

• WoW Hits the big 1 "oh" (10,000,000 subscribers)
• MMORPG Competition in 2008 (Wired)
• Pirates of the Burning Sea (Last Week, January 22)
• Age of Conan (March 25)
• Warhammer Online (Quarter 2 - 2008)
• Blizzard also clarified what the company means by “subscriber” further underlining the credibility of the 10 million figure. (For instance, the number doesn’t include unused pre-paid cards)
• It should also be noted, the game’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was the best-selling PC game of 2007, holding the record for fastest-selling PC game of all time--nearly 2.4 million copies flew off store shelves in the first 24 hours it was available.