Media consumer, tech enthusiast, and gamer
Last month I picked on search engine Mahalo as an example of a company emailing its customers passwords. I mentioned how having your password floating around openly on mail servers can defeat the purpose of having a password in the first place. Mahalo’s founder and CEO, Jason Calacanis, joined the discussion and some good thoughts were shared from both sides of the issue.
Read More “MySpace: Emails My Password But Says “Keep It Secret. Keep It Safe.”” »
ITaP (short for Information Technology at Purdue) is offering advice for potential buyers of the iPhone: Wait. According to Frank Wolf, Mac specialist and systems administrator for ITaP:
“The iPhone is still being considered by many to be a revision-one product when thinking about it in an enterprise. I recommend to the people we support that they hold off on getting an iPhone until the next revision is released.”
Here’s more of his reasoning as to why you should wait:
Read More “Purdue University IT: iPhones Are Cool But Don’t Buy One Yet” »
Apple has issued a press release about becoming the number two (behind Wal-Mart) music retailer in the U.S. Best Buy used to have that spot, but music downloads seem to be catching on. Well, that and CD sales are declining rapidly.
Apple claims that 50 million customers have bought over 4 billion songs with 20 million sold on Christmas day alone. That’s impressive even if digital music purchases have yet to offset the decline in CD sales.
Read More “Apple’s iTunes Now Number Two Music Retailer in the US” »
Last week plenty of rumors were floating around about a potential Microsoft / Netflix partnership. The announcement was supposedly going to happen during the keynote address (by Xbox Live exec John Schappert) at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco last Wednesday. The concept: make it so Netflix’s 7,000 available “Watch Instantly” movies would be viewed easily on your TV via the Xbox 360.
Read More “Dear Microsoft: Get Netflix on the Xbox 360 and I’ll Buy One” »
So Paul’s latest comparison between PC and console gaming has created quite the firestorm. His financial analysis shows that console gaming is, in fact, cheaper even if plenty of commenters take issue with his assumptions.
But an important piece is missing from his analysis, which swings the vote even more so toward the console side: PC gaming is a huge hassle. This can’t easily be measured in dollars (hence the reason it’s left out of a financial analysis), but here’s my latest ridiculous example:
Read More “PC Gaming Is Expensive and a Hassle, But I’m Lovin’ It” »
For anyone keeping score since Blu-ray won the next generation movie battle, HD DVD players are now $99. And that’s with 7 movies included. Considering these players also work well as upconvert DVD players (DVD players that convert and play regular DVDs at a slightly higher picture quality), in some ways, it’s actually the best deal on the market if you’re looking for a good DVD player.
Read More “Amazon Drops Price of HD DVD Player to $99, Upconvert DVD w/ Free Movies?” »
Toshiba today announced that, “it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.” March 2008 will be the month when the plug is pulled. Just in the last month, we’ve seen Warner Brothers become the latest Hollywood studio to go for Blu-ray while both Blockbuster and Netflix announced plans to phase out HD DVD.
Read More “It’s Official: Toshiba Announces Death of HD DVD” »
So I finally gave in and started using Twitter this past weekend (if you’re on Twitter, follow me at twitter.com/bobcaswell). What is Twitter? It’s a mix of instant messaging, email, Facebook, and text messaging. It’s a network of users that follow each other. Here’s how it works:
Read More “Twitter Review: Waste of Time or Extremely Valuable?” »