Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
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Patents, patents, everywhere! It seems you can’t swing a cat these days without infringing on someone’s patent. The latest victim/perp is Microsoft ; an Illinois doctor is suing them because of a patent he was granted in 2002 which allegedly covers the Zune’s ability to tag a song directly from the radio and then download that song once an internet connection is established. Obviously it’s for the lawyers to work out the details, but it seems to me what he must have been granted was more a method of identifying and later purchasing a song, not the plain act of tagging and downloading later. But all the Zune device does is copy the artist and song directly from the digital FM stream, and then search for it in the Zune store if an internet connection is available, right? This is an ability several devices have, including the iPod Nano , though certainly all their methods differ slightly. But who knows? Maybe this guy has a point and his patent does include this stuff. If that’s the case, then may justice be done. I’m more skeptical of his claim that he pitched Microsoft with the idea in 2006; he claims to have emailed them, and includes some of the text — half of it is in ALL CAPS. I have a feeling Microsoft tends to ignore ALL CAPS emails. What’s the likely outcome? Man, I don’t know! I’m not a lawyer!
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Friday, March 26th, 2010
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Just last week Dell Home dropped the 32GB Zune HD down to $240 and we called it the great price drop in the history of price drops. We were wrong. The 32GB and 16GB versions just got another price drop and it’s HUGE . The 32GB is now a clean $199 with the 16GB now fetching $140 . You don’t need a coupon code, secret pass or anything. These prices are for everyone and might signal an official Micrsoft price cut is coming soon. Google Shopping still pegs the Zune HD 32GB at $240 everywhere else so we really don’t know what’s going on with Dell. Maybe it’s a mistake, maybe it isn’t. But $199 is the price point that the Zune HD 32GB needs to be at in order to have a fighting chance against the iPod touch .
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
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With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing . You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad . OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it’s getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights. 4.0 has a lot of features which users like you and I don’t really need to know about. Texture swizzling? Awesome. Tessellation? Sure, as long as it’s not like whatever they used in Messiah — remember that game? These new toys for developers will make for a richer and faster graphical experience, to be sure, but I’m not going to list them off for you. The big news for graphics is handhelds right now. Mobile gaming is blowing up and Microsoft can’t get a foot in the door. Hell, it’s getting its foot booted out from the other side. In the other corner, OpenGL (and the rest of the Open toolset) is setting itself up as being flexible enough to be applied on a handset, a laptop, or a desktop. It may not have DirectX 11 fidelity in water shaders or the latest normal mapping technique, but it’s damn close and what’s more, it doesn’t need a high end graphics card to be the library in use. Though I feel I should add that the games coming out on Windows Phone 7 Series and the Zune HD 2 are looking pretty awesome. This race isn’t over by far. The OpenCL thing is great as well. If you remember, OpenCL is a set of tools for offloading certain tasks from the CPU onto the GPU, when those tasks are better served by parallel processors. Loading web pages may work fine on your Snapdragon, but decoding video will have it at 100% and drain your battery — better to send it over to the GPU. The GPU computing thing hasn’t quite taken off yet, but it’s pretty much inevitable that it’ll start being implemented on a low level, since it can improve the user experience so dramatically. I’m always happy to see this kind of steady progress. More capabilities, more competition, and better devices for everyone, OpenGL-based or not. If you’re interested, there’s much more information available. Many links in the press release:
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
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A bundle of screenshots just hit the net showing off the latest Direct3D-based mobile games running on a WinPho7 device, adn they look pretty hot. We knew that the Tegra chipset in the Zune HD and likely in several upcoming WinPho handsets (Tegra 2, to be precise) is capable of some nice 3D, but these are better than anything I’ve seen yet. The game shown is The Harvest, a dungeon crawler which, if indicative of the general quality of WinPho7 games, portends good times to be had. Read the rest of this post on MobileCrunch…
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
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Greetings! Nicholas and Jimin here live from the big TiVo Premiere launch in New York. There was a man guarding the device, which was hidden under a cloak, but when the cloak was lifted, oh dear! The gist: this is a TiVo you’re probably going to want. HD menus (build using Adobe Flash), searching that actually makes sense, a fancy remote control, and other goodness that you wouldn’t mind. So the UI almost goes without saying: it’s been a long time since you could look at a TiVo and say “Well, that looks good.” It’s built using Adobe Flash, so all of the fancy swoops and swishes you’ve associated with Flash over the years totally applies. I’d almost say Zune HD like, which is a prety big compliment considering what I had to do to get my Zune HD to work. The remote ain’t too shabby, either. It’s exactly like any slider phone you’ve used in the past few years. The “standard” shape has the normal buttons you’d assoiciate with a remote control: volume up down, channel numbers, etc. Flip it open and it becomes a QWERTY keyboard. So, if you’re hankering to watch Lost, just type “L“ and all the shows you have on the TiVO beginning with “L” pop up: Lost, Leopards Are Fun (on Animal Planet), etc. I have literally sat here for one minute trying to think of shows that begin with “L” and I couldn’t.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Monday, March 1st, 2010
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The Facebook app all of us Zune HD lovers have been waiting for has arrived! It looks pretty solid, but due to a hilarious sequence of errors, I can’t update my Zune software to allow the app to be installed. Seriously, Microsoft, I want to recommend Zune stuff to everyone, but you make it so difficult for me. You can see what it looks like in these screenshots, at any rate. More in the gallery below.