* You are viewing the archive for April, 2009
Back when I originally reviewed Twitter (over a year ago), I asked the question: Is it a waste of time or extremely valuable? At the time, I had no idea it would take off like it has today. But now that it has, it seems to moving more toward “extremely valuable” and further away from “waste of time” (though I still think it’s kind of both).
Warner Brothers had come up with a slick promotion to get some much needed buzz around Blu-ray. My consensus: great idea but flawed execution. Here’s how it works (and why it won’t work):
You send in the cover art sleeve (keep the disc) and the UPC from your HD DVD movies. And for $4.95 per movie, plus $6.95 S&H per order, you’ll be sent back brand new Blu-ray copies of any movies you have in HD DVD. There are a few restrictions (only 1 copy per movie and only up to 25 movies per household) but nothing really that prohibitive.
The Microsoft Games for Windows team working with the SideWinder (gaming hardware) team put together a fun event a few days ago. Of course, I may be saying it was fun because I won third place in one tournament and first place in another.
Winnings included everything I needed for a lazy weekend: Fallout 3, 007: Quantum of Solace, SideWinder Mouse, SideWinder X6 Keyboard (won two!), and a LifeChat LX-3000 headset (see picture above or see an unboxing video here by a fellow winner).
Check out the email (below) I got from the Hotmail team. Much has changed in the last 10 years, but somehow I’ve managed to hang on to my original Hotmail email address. (I opened my account the end of 1998.)
Earlier this year, I made a New Year’s resolution to blog more. But now, only a few months into 2009, my New Year’s resolution seems irrelevant in the new “statusphere” world. Brian Solis ala TechCrunch defines “Statusphere” as follows:
Meet Lisa and her son Jackson, who’s looking for “speed, big hard drive, and a good gaming computer” for under $1,500. After a quick look at some PCs, Lisa says, “Let’s go see the Macs, they’re kind of popular at this age.” But then, Lisa points out that “…these are way more money, dude” quickly followed by Jackson saying (about a Mac), “It’s a little too small.”
So back to the PCs: We’re shown how you can use a PC with a remote and then we see both Lisa and Jackson get really excited about none other than “Bluuu-ray!” And, of course, Blu-ray is missing from Macs. For me personally, not a huge selling point of the PC. But for others like Lisa and Jackson, it seems pretty cool. And that’s the point being made here: there’s something for everyone.
Microsoft just came out with its second Laptop Hunters video. Personally, I think this one is better than the first one, but you decide (embedded below).
We’ve got a guy with a $1,500 budget looking for portability, battery life, and power. And he says he’s “technically savvy” and knows what he wants.
This past weekend I spent quite a bit of time doing some social networking spring cleaning. I use too many services, have too many “friends,” and don’t have good filters to get to the signal I want through all the noise. But that’s ok. Before I get complaining, I realize I should reflect on the fact that all of this social networking stuff didn’t even exist 10 years ago.
