Actually, I think they are referring to small experimental satellites that are piggybacking on the main mission. They are small 4" square cubes powered by off the shelf components and smartphone parts.
http://www.phonesat.org/
I was reading about this new Facebook home app and the thought that jumped out at me is that this is Facebook's version of the Windows 8 Metro UI. Is it Android? Or is is some new Facebook OS? As long as you stay in Facebook Home everything is wonderful. But don't worry, you can always escape back to the normal Android home screen and do everything you used to do. What could go wrong with that?
I would be curious to know how many of the developers are actually collecting ID's or if it is because they are using something like AdMob or iAd in their app and that is what is collecting them...
We wouldn't need a DVR if they would just let us down free TV episodes through iTunes! That is the killer app...
The economics just don't make any sense at all... I can get a DVR set top box that will let me record and save as much as I want for $10 a month or I can watch 10 episodes once with the Apple TV... which do you think people are going to do?
I cant remember when/where it was, but Steve Jobs has publicly stated that their will be no App Store for the Mac and he was pretty emphatic about it too...
What I'm curious about is whether or not the engineer who lost it tried calling his number to try and get back because I know that would be the first thing I would do if I lost my phone. Apparently it didn't get wiped until the next day so if he kept calling and the guy who "found" it ignored the calls then that makes their case much weaker. Also, they reported that it worked for a while so I have a hard time believing that the owner couldn't be determined...
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet is to make sure that you have more than one copy and that you keep the copies separate. In other words, if your house burns down then it probably won't matter how the data is stored. You might want to put a backup on DVD's and put them in a safe deposit box or some other safe location.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Apple updated the iMac to have a touch interface like the iPhone. It already has the glass covered screen like the iPhone and the SDK shows that they can support gestures with Cocoa. It's not the same thing as Surface but it would still be pretty cool.
Actually, I was able to install the SDK on my G4 using only a couple extra manual steps. Because it's not an intel machine it skipped a few critical packages. I merely installed them manually and I was then able to compile some sample applications and run them in the iPhone simulator. You probably won't be able to load your programs onto an iPhone but at least you can do development work using the simulator
I doubt that Apple is going to switch the default file system to ZFS anytime soon, but one situation where I think it might be very useful right away is in the Apple TV or possibly iPods. A lot of people were dissapointed with the small size of the disk when the Apple TV was released and it did have that mysterious USB port on the back. Could ZFS be used to make plugging disks into Apple TVs easier? Just curious...
It's not the problem of catching cheaters that they are trying to solve. The issue is that the toll lanes are being funded by partnering with a private company that will operate the lanes using a SpeedPass like system. The toll lanes will be free for cars with more than one persons but single driver cars will pay a fee per mile. Now there are not going to be any toll gates so in order for the whole thing to work, they have to come up with some way to tell the HOV cars from the single drivers.
The real debate centers around the fact that the private operators don't have a proven system to tell the HOV cars from single driver cars. It's a kind of build it and they will come type of situation which is pretty controversial considering the state wants to grant partial ownership of a public road based on the assumption that they can come up with some kind of technology to solve this problem.
Yeah, I smell bullshit. Besides, the iPods buffer the music so even if there was a read error there is plenty of time to re-read the data before it gets played....
Just wildly speculating, but what if Apple announced new iMacs with a multi-touch display? How cool would that be? And a whole lot more affordable than Microsofts coffee table!
I think it is wrong to imply that networks want to cut out iTunes as a middle man. Evidence to the contrary is clearly exhibited by the announcement today by CBS that they are moving away from offering video exclusively on their website and will begin to widely syndicate their content to other online avenues.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11791043782 5901533-M5HqezmgdosZtIpH3agsJDzQVDY_20070612.html? mod=tff_main_tff_top
Just like in the early days of music downloads, people are looking for end-to-end solutions. They want to watch video on their TV's, not on the web. That is the big stumbling block right now. I do agree that the fate of purchased television episodes has an unknown future however. What I would really like to see is for the networks to offer shows as a free video podcast supported by embedded ads. That would provide the widest compatibility with existing and future products. In Apple's case, the iTunes store coupled with an Apple TV can support this right out of the box today and is a very seamless solution. In fact, I believe that is the main reason that Apple did not build DVR functionality into the Apple TV. The real unkown at this point is the cable/settop box companies and how they will enter the ring. One thing for sure is that change is coming and it's coming fast!
It's probably wrong to say they only support formats they own, but rather that they only support the set of formats that they believe are worth paying the licensing fees for.
What is going to be interesting to watch is that very quickly I think you are going to see more and more content showing up that is playable on the Apple TV/iPod. Also, I expect DVD ripping programs to arrive very quickly that will let you rip a DVD into an Apple TV compatbile format with a single button press. You'll know something is really happening out there when you start seeing the pirate sites offering movies/shows in H.264/MPEG-4 instead of DiVX.
It's actually kind of funny to see Apple getting criticized for delivering products based on open standards....
One of the issues that I have been kicking around back in forth is which is better? TiVO? Or on demand viewing? With regards to TiVO, what are you really doing? You pick your favorite shows and set it record them and then you watch them later. But isn't it just as simple to decide that you want to watch last nights Lost episode that you missed and look it up in some kind of menu system and then start watching it? I have to believe that the vast majority of TiVO users are recording and watching basically the same set of content.
I have a feeling that Apple is going to come out and say: Look, the majority of people are watching the same basic set of shows. Recording a show takes too much effort to set up and manage and what if you forget to record the show you wanted to see? What do you do then? We're going to give you a system where you can just pick your favorite show and you just pick the episode that you want to watch. We stream it right to your TV. We're partnering with X,Y and Z networks and offering all of their shows. We're also giving you rentable movies so you don't have to go to the video store.
I don't believe for a second that the iTV is just going to be a device to watch content on your TV that is stored on your computer. There just has to be more to this device. Clearly there is a broader vision for this device and I guess we will just have to wait until Apple lays it out for us....
This new information actually muddies the water quite a bit. What is Microsoft's goal here? Are they trying to make an iPod killer music player that also happens to play games? Or are they targeting the PSP market with a device that also happens to play music? With the XBox I could see how they would want to levarage that investment in a handheld device but a device like that I don't think could compete with iPods at all. In fact, it sounds like there falling into the old 'throw everything in it but the kitchen sink' trap that they've always fallen into...
While the implications of this "test" are debateable, what I would really like know is how the hack was done. Is there some flaw in OS X that was exploited? Or did the admin do something else silly like make the root password something simple like "hello" and it was guessed/dictionary attacked. Is this a Mac OS X specific hack? Or did they use a vulnerabilty that is common to other UNIX flavors as well?
This whole business of watching videos on an iPod is just silly. Other than being a neat technical trick, why would your average consumer want to do that? Apple doesn't sell technology, they sell sell products that everyday people use in everyday situations.
I think there is a much bigger plan in the works here and people are coming up with scenarios that just don't make sense. When it comes to video, where does your typical consumer watch video? Where do you watch video outside the home? The only real place that jumps out at me is where parents put a TV in the car for kids on long trips.
What about the iPod as just a device for temporarily transporting video content? In the same way that you can transport pictures from a digital camera and then sync them with your computer later. What if I could go to Blockbuster or even a kiosk at the grocery store and load a movie on my iPod? I could then take it home and watch it, and it may expire after a week or two. Not everyone has a computer and an internet connection you know!
Maybe there really is some kind of home media server in the works where you can download movies from an iTMS-like store and the iPod plays more of a role of temporary transport than actual consumption of the content.
I think more and more in the future the storage and management of digital content (photos/music/video) is going to become the key driving force. How/where do you store all of this data? How do you safeguard content that you have purchased or is otherwise not easily replaced (ie photos)? Do you really have to have a computer to do this? Doesn't some kind of dedicated device that doesn't cost as much as a computer make sense?
What I think would be an interesting design would be if they created a player that takes multiple memory cards. Right now 1gb cards are too expensive for a low end player. But what if the player had room for four cards for example? The device could ship with a single small card to keep the cost low much like digital cameras do. Then users could add more/bigger cards at a later time. If they used something like Sony memory sticks it certainly wouldn't take up that much space. They might even group the cards together in a RAID configuration so they appear as a single volume to iTunes. The real question is the display. Would it be as easy to use as an iPod if it didn't have the large LCD?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think they are referring to small experimental satellites that are piggybacking on the main mission. They are small 4" square cubes powered by off the shelf components and smartphone parts. http://www.phonesat.org/
I was reading about this new Facebook home app and the thought that jumped out at me is that this is Facebook's version of the Windows 8 Metro UI. Is it Android? Or is is some new Facebook OS? As long as you stay in Facebook Home everything is wonderful. But don't worry, you can always escape back to the normal Android home screen and do everything you used to do. What could go wrong with that?
I would be curious to know how many of the developers are actually collecting ID's or if it is because they are using something like AdMob or iAd in their app and that is what is collecting them...
We wouldn't need a DVR if they would just let us down free TV episodes through iTunes! That is the killer app... The economics just don't make any sense at all... I can get a DVR set top box that will let me record and save as much as I want for $10 a month or I can watch 10 episodes once with the Apple TV... which do you think people are going to do?
I cant remember when/where it was, but Steve Jobs has publicly stated that their will be no App Store for the Mac and he was pretty emphatic about it too...
What I'm curious about is whether or not the engineer who lost it tried calling his number to try and get back because I know that would be the first thing I would do if I lost my phone. Apparently it didn't get wiped until the next day so if he kept calling and the guy who "found" it ignored the calls then that makes their case much weaker. Also, they reported that it worked for a while so I have a hard time believing that the owner couldn't be determined...
Supposedly Apple has converted all of their .Mac applications to use Sproutcore so they are pretty heavily involved in the project.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet is to make sure that you have more than one copy and that you keep the copies separate. In other words, if your house burns down then it probably won't matter how the data is stored. You might want to put a backup on DVD's and put them in a safe deposit box or some other safe location.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Apple updated the iMac to have a touch interface like the iPhone. It already has the glass covered screen like the iPhone and the SDK shows that they can support gestures with Cocoa. It's not the same thing as Surface but it would still be pretty cool.
Actually, I was able to install the SDK on my G4 using only a couple extra manual steps. Because it's not an intel machine it skipped a few critical packages. I merely installed them manually and I was then able to compile some sample applications and run them in the iPhone simulator. You probably won't be able to load your programs onto an iPhone but at least you can do development work using the simulator
I doubt that Apple is going to switch the default file system to ZFS anytime soon, but one situation where I think it might be very useful right away is in the Apple TV or possibly iPods. A lot of people were dissapointed with the small size of the disk when the Apple TV was released and it did have that mysterious USB port on the back. Could ZFS be used to make plugging disks into Apple TVs easier? Just curious...
It's not the problem of catching cheaters that they are trying to solve. The issue is that the toll lanes are being funded by partnering with a private company that will operate the lanes using a SpeedPass like system. The toll lanes will be free for cars with more than one persons but single driver cars will pay a fee per mile. Now there are not going to be any toll gates so in order for the whole thing to work, they have to come up with some way to tell the HOV cars from the single drivers. The real debate centers around the fact that the private operators don't have a proven system to tell the HOV cars from single driver cars. It's a kind of build it and they will come type of situation which is pretty controversial considering the state wants to grant partial ownership of a public road based on the assumption that they can come up with some kind of technology to solve this problem.
Speaking of Podcasts... why don't they just release them as a video podcast? That would be much more useful...
Yeah, I smell bullshit. Besides, the iPods buffer the music so even if there was a read error there is plenty of time to re-read the data before it gets played....
Just wildly speculating, but what if Apple announced new iMacs with a multi-touch display? How cool would that be? And a whole lot more affordable than Microsofts coffee table!
I think it is wrong to imply that networks want to cut out iTunes as a middle man. Evidence to the contrary is clearly exhibited by the announcement today by CBS that they are moving away from offering video exclusively on their website and will begin to widely syndicate their content to other online avenues. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11791043782 5901533-M5HqezmgdosZtIpH3agsJDzQVDY_20070612.html? mod=tff_main_tff_top
Just like in the early days of music downloads, people are looking for end-to-end solutions. They want to watch video on their TV's, not on the web. That is the big stumbling block right now. I do agree that the fate of purchased television episodes has an unknown future however. What I would really like to see is for the networks to offer shows as a free video podcast supported by embedded ads. That would provide the widest compatibility with existing and future products. In Apple's case, the iTunes store coupled with an Apple TV can support this right out of the box today and is a very seamless solution. In fact, I believe that is the main reason that Apple did not build DVR functionality into the Apple TV. The real unkown at this point is the cable/settop box companies and how they will enter the ring. One thing for sure is that change is coming and it's coming fast!
It's probably wrong to say they only support formats they own, but rather that they only support the set of formats that they believe are worth paying the licensing fees for. What is going to be interesting to watch is that very quickly I think you are going to see more and more content showing up that is playable on the Apple TV/iPod. Also, I expect DVD ripping programs to arrive very quickly that will let you rip a DVD into an Apple TV compatbile format with a single button press. You'll know something is really happening out there when you start seeing the pirate sites offering movies/shows in H.264/MPEG-4 instead of DiVX. It's actually kind of funny to see Apple getting criticized for delivering products based on open standards....
One of the issues that I have been kicking around back in forth is which is better? TiVO? Or on demand viewing? With regards to TiVO, what are you really doing? You pick your favorite shows and set it record them and then you watch them later. But isn't it just as simple to decide that you want to watch last nights Lost episode that you missed and look it up in some kind of menu system and then start watching it? I have to believe that the vast majority of TiVO users are recording and watching basically the same set of content. I have a feeling that Apple is going to come out and say: Look, the majority of people are watching the same basic set of shows. Recording a show takes too much effort to set up and manage and what if you forget to record the show you wanted to see? What do you do then? We're going to give you a system where you can just pick your favorite show and you just pick the episode that you want to watch. We stream it right to your TV. We're partnering with X,Y and Z networks and offering all of their shows. We're also giving you rentable movies so you don't have to go to the video store. I don't believe for a second that the iTV is just going to be a device to watch content on your TV that is stored on your computer. There just has to be more to this device. Clearly there is a broader vision for this device and I guess we will just have to wait until Apple lays it out for us....
This new information actually muddies the water quite a bit. What is Microsoft's goal here? Are they trying to make an iPod killer music player that also happens to play games? Or are they targeting the PSP market with a device that also happens to play music? With the XBox I could see how they would want to levarage that investment in a handheld device but a device like that I don't think could compete with iPods at all. In fact, it sounds like there falling into the old 'throw everything in it but the kitchen sink' trap that they've always fallen into...
While the implications of this "test" are debateable, what I would really like know is how the hack was done. Is there some flaw in OS X that was exploited? Or did the admin do something else silly like make the root password something simple like "hello" and it was guessed/dictionary attacked. Is this a Mac OS X specific hack? Or did they use a vulnerabilty that is common to other UNIX flavors as well?
This whole business of watching videos on an iPod is just silly. Other than being a neat technical trick, why would your average consumer want to do that? Apple doesn't sell technology, they sell sell products that everyday people use in everyday situations.
I think there is a much bigger plan in the works here and people are coming up with scenarios that just don't make sense. When it comes to video, where does your typical consumer watch video? Where do you watch video outside the home? The only real place that jumps out at me is where parents put a TV in the car for kids on long trips.
What about the iPod as just a device for temporarily transporting video content? In the same way that you can transport pictures from a digital camera and then sync them with your computer later. What if I could go to Blockbuster or even a kiosk at the grocery store and load a movie on my iPod? I could then take it home and watch it, and it may expire after a week or two. Not everyone has a computer and an internet connection you know!
Maybe there really is some kind of home media server in the works where you can download movies from an iTMS-like store and the iPod plays more of a role of temporary transport than actual consumption of the content.
I think more and more in the future the storage and management of digital content (photos/music/video) is going to become the key driving force. How/where do you store all of this data? How do you safeguard content that you have purchased or is otherwise not easily replaced (ie photos)? Do you really have to have a computer to do this? Doesn't some kind of dedicated device that doesn't cost as much as a computer make sense?
What I think would be an interesting design would be if they created a player that takes multiple memory cards. Right now 1gb cards are too expensive for a low end player. But what if the player had room for four cards for example? The device could ship with a single small card to keep the cost low much like digital cameras do. Then users could add more/bigger cards at a later time. If they used something like Sony memory sticks it certainly wouldn't take up that much space. They might even group the cards together in a RAID configuration so they appear as a single volume to iTunes. The real question is the display. Would it be as easy to use as an iPod if it didn't have the large LCD?