Hey you IPTV lover. Can’t wait til’ it rolls out huh. Me neither. Although Microsoft is still very much committed to its Media Center platform, they’re not keeping quiet about their IPTV plans. Clearly they believe the future is a TV connected to the internet with content delivered on demand. Up until now, that technology was referred to as Microsoft TV IPTV Edition. A convoluted name so they’ve rebranded it as Microsoft Mediaroom. They’ve even expanded its feature set by including picture-in-picture capability, network sharing, and perhaps the biggest addtion - support for digital terrestrial TV. Truly, an Xbox 360 and/or a dedicated set-top box can one day do everything.
Richard Doherty, from the infamous Doherty family and Microsoft’s program manager for Media Entertainment Convergence, slung some proverbial poo at both the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray loving manufacturers and studios. With one quick exhale of his M$ paid voice, he claimed that both formats, as well as any other optical format that is out or may come out in the future will become obsolete in five years.
I showed up just in time to scream “No Shit!” and then ran away into my troll house to wait for the next obvious statement to be spewed from someone’s mouth. Dick went on to say that at Microsoft, they would rather HD content was not on a disc at all, and also added that for the time being they are supporting HD-DVD because it has better interactive content (and Toshiba makes their XBOX 360 hardware, there is an HD-DVD add-on for the 360, the PS3 has a Blu-Ray drive, and Microsoft hates Sony- but they didn’t mention these parts).
Now that the future of disc formats is settled, and before I go back to my trollhouse for some trollhouse cookies and such, I will make another outlandish claim about the future of tech: In five years, today’s processors will be considered ancient and slow when compared to current micro computer processors.
This is an oldie but goodie, Microsoft Research showing off their scene stitching and management software called Photosynth. The program lets you navigate and view linked and related images without having to pre-tag photos. It also lets you fly thru a scene of photos to view them from any angle. It even recognizes key objects in a photo and automatically applies hyperlinks to them. So far its sounds cool, like a super charged iPhoto on crack but the really cool stuff is its 3D stitching capabilities.
Photosynth allows you to recreate three dimensional experiences you can navigate thru by stitching together 2D photos of that scene. For example, you want to relive your recent trip to the Eiffel Tower? Assuming you took enough photos, Photosynth can recreate that seen for you to view and share.
Best part is it’s free. You’ll need a decent graphics card with XP SP2 or Vista installed. Happy photosynthing!
Microsoft finally took the wraps off their touchscreen table technology unveiled this past March and it’s called Surface. It’s the first commercially available surface computer that provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures. In layman’s terms, it’s a 30″ touchscreen backed by some amazing and potentially revolutionizing software. I would get into all the deets but the video does it so much better. Although anyone can buy one, it’s priced squarely for hotels, restaurants and other public venues.
The folks over at iPodMods.com are now helping those that bought a 5th Generation Video iPod or a Zune upgrade to a larger internal hard drive. $299 gets your portable media device 100GB, which seems like a steep price, unless you consider that there is no easier way to have this much space on your iPod or Zune (unless you do it yourself).
With in-depth installation guides that include a step-by-step procedure and pictures, this kit seems like the easiest method of expanding storage size on iPods and Zunes. If your interested, here is a list of all models from Microsoft and Apple that are supported:
To check and see which revision you have, simply browse to the settings on your iPod and click on “About”. If your model number matches any of the ones below then you can upgrade your iPod Video/Zune to a 100GB drive:
So here’s more fuel to the Zune phone enigma. A new patent filed last year was just published and envisages a tiled interface for mobile devices. The patent describes tiles to be dynamic, changing to suit the application in use, sound familiar? It also gives a sneak peak on the kind of power Microsoft has in mind for this mobile device. I’m mean sure, it’s obviously a phone since there’s an address book but I’m more interested in the other apps. From my observation, it looks like this device will control your house, dog, TV, Earth and most importantly aliens.
If all true I’m sold. Where do I sign up and will it cost $500?
[Mon Apr 16 04:42:03 2007]Cameron, out of character, ‘Sorry Rob, this is kind of a long title, but it was so epic’
[Mon Apr 16 04:42:36 2007]Admin shouts, ‘Cameron, your account has been banned, you pulpy tulip’
[Mon Apr 16 04:42:56 2007]Cameron, out of character, ‘I like that. Tulip is much better than mongoloid’
[Mon Apr 16 04:43:09 2007]Fansy shouts, ‘I’m Fansy the Famous Bard!’
Behold! The mighty Zune 2 concept photoshop from Zune Groove!
This Zune 2 looks pretty nifty. From what the picture suggests, it’s got wireless headphones (probably via Bluetooth), fresh controls, and sleek flash storage that allows for smaller form factor and longer-lasting battery life. These should be in the next Zune, since they are excellent features. While exact details of the Zune 2 are still unknown, hopefully Microsoft will add technological upgrades like what is displayed in the picture.
NextLust readers: What kind of stuff would you like in the Zune 2? [Also, extra points if you get any movie reference in this post without using Google]
One of Vista’s greatest selling points is ironically the fact that software pirates may actually have to buy it. Microsoft is trying to catch every last hack, exploit, workaround, and any other method used to illegally deploy copies of Windows Vista. On Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage Blog, the efforts against Vista and XP activation vulnerabilities are chronicled, giving well-informed consumers and hackers an inside look into their war on piracy. Recently, blog writer and Microsoft Senior Product Manager Alex Kochis posted an article regarding the Original Equipment Manufacturer motherboard BIOS workaround, and what Microsoft was planning to do regarding the activation security flaw.
But, what exactly is OEM Activation? Basically, it is an agreement between Microsoft and motherboard manufacturers, originally created for Windows XP, to put a marker inside the BIOS of the motherboard that designates that it will have a copy of Windows XP pre-installed on it’s system. Hackers quickly found a way to thwart XP’s protection, named OEM Activation 1.0, since BIOS editors made injecting the marker rather simple.
Of course, Windows XP was easier to get into than Paris Hilton’s … purse. Pirates discovered several simpler methods to illegally use Windows XP, making the actual implementation of OEM Activation 1.0 nearly worthless. With Vista came new techniques from Microsoft, forcing exploiters to be more creative. Likewise, Microsoft got more creative as well, adding new features in its BIOS protection and updating Vista motherboards with OEM Activation 2.0. Naturally, stubborn computer fanatics have once again found flaws in the new protection, but Microsoft has remained calm and composed.
Kochis sheds some light on the software giant’s understanding of the exploit:
There appear to be two primary variants of OA 2.0 hacks circulating. One is similar to the XP approach I described above where actual editing of the BIOS on the motherboard is done to make the motherboard appear to be from an OEM. It is a pretty labor-intensive process and quite risky. If you mess up editing the BIOS of any motherboard, you can quite easily render it permanently useless. So while this method works today, it’s potentially hazardous and really doesn’t scale well to large numbers of systems, which makes it less of a threat.
The second variant does not change anything in the BIOS itself, but uses a software-based approach to fool the OS into thinking it’s running on OA 2.0-enabled hardware. And while this method is easier to implement for the end user, it’s also easier to detect and respond to than a method that involves directly modifying the BIOS of the motherboard.
Since the mass-machine reproduction of the first method would be pretty difficult, mainly due to the possibility of broken hardware and various BIOS factors, Microsoft would rather focus on more wide-spread activation exploits. Stressing customer satisfaction over anything else, Microsoft does ensure that it would put in full effort to counteract this workaround if too many of their customers got scammed by sellers of illegitimate OEM Vista machines.
Microsoft plans to ship 100,000 pink Zune players on the first of May, and they sure do look pretty. While there have been fake pink Zune players in the past, this one is a genuine release model, and will have all of the same features as its brown, white, and black counterparts. This version of the pink Zune looks very sleek and shiny, and certainly outdoes the standard issue magenta and orange Zunes (Joe) for Zune insiders:
