new iTrip

This past Thanksgiving weekend I got a iTrip for my trip back home, by the way it's a good little device for those long drives, but the signal is kind of weak. In either case I went over the unofficial apple weblog and saw this cool little hack to help boost that little transmitters signal. You can check out the hack here .

What a week - XBOX 360 launches, another Black Friday, and Turkey's

Okay so it's the end of the week and the Xbox 360 finally gets released and there we're some cold ticked off people but not just because off the short supply. In either case there has been a few very vocal complaints about the instability of the console platform mainly due to overheating. Apparently the power supply, that black brick that plugs into your new Xbox, tends to overheat under varying conditions and has some people are pissed off. This new concern could possible affect the early market saturation of the new platform that Microsoft hopes to gain in its console war with Sony. If consumers can't be sure of the quality of the product then the next round may be very rough for Microsoft. The problem has already tarnished the console release by placing doubt in the minds of would be early adopters that couldn't buy the new system due to availability or cost. However, its very likely that these issues will be resolved within the next few shipments, but only time will tell.

For a short while there it looks like that Cingular was going to go through a re-branding i.e. being named AT&T, but instead it seems that all the money that Cingular spent on switching over the AT&T Wireless to Cingular, since SBC is changing its name to AT&T and will be reviving the AT&T Wireless name brand. For more information check out the Engadget article here .

Well, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and had much to be thankful for and all that good stuff. Which leads me to the nightmare that is Black Friday. The day that is named that by companies since its the one day that help many retails get into the "black" before the end of the fiscal year or something like that. In either case I pretty much hate it, not because of the sales but the craziness that occurs due to the sales for crying out loud people, we've got online shopping and people are still nearly trampling each other for a freaking scarf. So please let's all be nice little shoppers and not nearly knock out the passer by otherwise with a few added pounds and a higher credit card bill, I wish all of you a happy holiday shopping season.

Two cents on xbox and sony

Okay with in the last two weeks, just about every other post has dealt with either the Xbox 360 or Sony's DRM software. I was going to do another week in review but decided to put in my two cents on the issues. So let's start off with the new Xbox.

This shiny little box will cost you a pretty penny with all of the options, during its initial weeks, but speculations about supply shortages has generated a lot of additional buzz about the new platform and at least seems to have created a large demand for a next-generation console that only a few months ago only a small few were truly exited about. Now I know all about the specs and how everything will have the ability to look that much better, especially in HD; but the bottom line is that the game developers are the only ones who should really care about these new next-generation platforms, yes it's nice to have a potentially cheap new multi-processor computer, but this is a gaming platform. So why should game developers be pretty much the only ones who care about the console specifications? Well simply put their making the games, hence they have direct control over how well it runs and looks on these new consoles. so why anyone makes a big deal about the hardware just seems dumb to me. Okay on that note, these consoles, at least in the case of the Xbox, are hoping to become more home media machines, meaning it can stream media content from your computer and other things, in general its a great idea and was one of the main reasons to mod the original xbox. The problem is their not quite their yet, why? Not enough people use their xbox's as a media device, this is where Microsoft can really gain some ground, but we'll have to wait and see. The main thing that will prove the new Xbox 360's success is games, just like every other console out there if the good games aren't on xbox no one is gonna care about it even if they can't get one.

Now for the Sony topic which quite frankly I'm tired of reading about, but would like to comment on. Yes, what they did was wrong in almost every way. Now let me clarify that statement, there is nothing wrong with protecting one's own content, what is wrong is using poorly designed software to protect it. Don't think so? If you release software to the public, in a final release, you should be accountable if it creates vulnerabilities and can do harm to another computer system other companies do; especially if that piece of software damages systems when you try to remove it, the "rootkit" software released to the public by Sony contained such software that has potentially compromised many systems. So what did they do? Well after a lot of media attention, they've started to fix the problem by re-calling CD's and to some degree apologize for their actions. I for one really hope Sony, learns from this and starts to be more consumer friendly and starts producing better products that don't compromise the consumers trust. The sad thing is that the damage has been done and it doesn't seem like Sony has learned anything from this except to not get caught next time or have a better way to contain the situation. In the end this has tarnished Sony's image but probably not for long, since most people aren't really concerned with things like "rootkits" unless it breaks something their currently using. Which is a shame since Sony really needs to be held accountable for their actions.

Quick week in review

Since I've been swamped with work, posting on a more regular basis is becoming more of a chore so I'm gonna try doing a quick review of my favorite postings of the week so here is the run down.

Sony screws up by using "rootkits" for their music CD's DRM, yes they've been doing it for a while, the difference between now and then? Awareness of rootkits, a bunch of media coverage, and just about every tech site on the web putting in their two cents; if you haven't guessed they're all a little disappointed at Sony. To top it all off the CD's also contain extensions for the Mac, no that thing with an apple on it is vulnerable too, looks like Sony is going to try to ride this out quietly but with out really apologizing. To check for a list of all affected CD's check the Slashdot posting here .

Penny-arcade the popular gaming comic site, has done some revisions to its Charity site Child's Play and also to its main site. Just fair warning the comics are hilarious just don't forget they tend to get pretty ...um ... graphic sometimes.

A Shot of Orange Juice has a great use of the Google maps APi, by creating a web based Risk game. Finally I can take over the world in between classes.

Video podcasting gets its own Emmy category, sounds kinda cool, this seems to be a good showing of how portable media content is moving more mainstream. Check out News.com's article here

I would do a posting about the Xbox 360 here but I think it's been done to death, the short of it that even if you pre-ordered you won't necessarily have one and if your luck enough to be able to get one on it's launch date then "congrats" there a bunch of postings on how most major retailers are gonna try to herd you like a bunch of sheep. Personally I won't be picking one up until the price gets lower or if Halo 3 is coming out, which ever comes first.

XBOX 360 brings shinier Halo

Bungie has post on there website what we have to look forward to when it comes to Halo and Halo 2 on the XBOX 360. Basically you'll be able to play the game at a higher resolution, which by looking at their screenshots don't look half bad. However, if you read the site it seems the people with HDTV's will probably see the best results, but I'm fine with less blur on my screen, it just means I can snipe my roommate that much easier.

Microsoft Bit

Quick bit on Microsoft and its latest news

Windows Live - looks a lot like google personal homepage, first of all no this isn't an operating system, its a customized portal page. They use a similar AJAX interface that google does, so what's the big advantage now ? We'll I guess we'll have to wait and see. Check it out here

Visual Studio 2005 - Release date coming up (Nov. 7) Yay one of Microsofts most robust/usefull products finally gets an update. The betas we're pretty good and showed off a lot of the new features of the new framework. Check out the press release for more info.

XBOX 360 - no HD-DVD? Gizmodo has a posting how the yet to be release XBOX 360 probably won't support HD-DVD for games, um okay I'll bit but one has to ask why would a company that has publicly supported HD-DVD, not try to push it with their products.

Web based Microsoft Office Beta - signup here http://www.microsoft.com/office/officelive/default.mspx, it has the potential to be really cool. Yes, they've had the ability to do this for a while, especially with outlook for anyone whose used Exchange should know. This is the one web service Google doesn't currently offer, but then again technically Microsoft hasn't launched this yet.