Wired @ Home

Two days ago rumours were swirling about a possible Microsoft takeover of Yahoo and at mid-afternoon yesterday, a bid was put into place by Microsoft. A hostile takeover bid at $31 per share, a premium over Yahoo's actual stock price. This is the largest takeover bid made by a technology company by far with the HP-Compaq deal coming in far second.

While this is not much of an update to most of you, I just found out today that Toshiba is offering 5 Free HD DVD movies with the purchase of one of their players including the XBOX 360 HD DVD add-on. This is all on top of the two included HD DVD movies, 300 and Bourne Identity. For $10 to cover S&H you will get 5 HD DVD movies of your choice delivered right to your door. There is a restriction though. Basically there are 5 categories with 3 movies in each. You are only allowed to pick one HD DVD movie from each category. My favourite movies from each were Babel, TMNT, Pitch Black, Firewall, and Syriana. The offer is valid only for players bought from October 15 2007-February 28 2008 and needs to be postmarked by March 31 2008. This is an extremely good offer and should help HD DVD gain some more market share. I'm just surprised they haven't promoted it as much. I only found out about this by stumbling upon it. For Canadian residents visit Toshiba Canada (exact link for the form). For American residents visit here. The only difference in movies is you can get Troy, Swordfish, and The Italian Job.

The other update is mostly for US residents. HD DVD players have been dramatically slashed in price. For a 1080p HD DVD player (HD-A30) you only need to shell out approx. $180 to Amazon.com, Costco, Sams Club, or possibly Wal-Mart. For a 1080i version, the HD-A3, it will be around $140. Paramount has yet to decide whether or not to switch and Microsoft is backing up its support by doing the same for customers who purchase a HD DVD add-on for their XBOX 360 if they've done so from last month to the end of this month. They have also promised to build-in an HD DVD drive into the new XBOX 360. HD DVD hasn't had its last breath yet, so look for more movies to be out on HD DVD soon.

In a surprise move made by Time Warner Bros today, Friday January 4, 2008, they announced they would exclusively sell the high-definition format offered by Sony. Blu-Ray has made huge strides and has somewhat knocked Toshiba and HD DVD off there feet but, it seems, they have taken their blows and grown better from it.

Toshiba has gone out and found other partners to help fuel the growth of its brand by agreeing to terms with Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures to exclusively sell their format. Those are huge allies in the fight against the powerhouse Sony. What this could remind you is the Big Three and the Asian companies. The same thing could happen here and Sony could loose major ground in the coming years. Sony though is rightfully the powerhouse as they are outselling HD DVDs 2:1 in the US. Look at other stats and you'll see HD DVD systems in Canada are outselling Blu-Ray systems (standalone) by around 500 000:340 000. Take into account the 3.4million PS3's and the 320 000 HD DVD add-on to the XBOX 360 and it looks even. Keep in mind that barely anybody know is buying the PS3 for the Blu-Ray player. I on the other hand have.

If you read my last article, you would have seen I know own a Toshiba HD DVD system, a PS3, and a 50inch, 1080p Panasonic Plasma HDTV. My dad did a whole lot of research when purchasing our new entertainment complex, about 3 months of sitting on the computer and going to electronic retailers. He probably made data sheets, graphs, to-do lists, and what-not. In the end, he found the PS3 was one of the better Blu-Ray players and surprised our family with it. I watched the included disc, Spiderman-3 on Blu-Ray and then I watched The Bourne Idendity on HD DVD. Evidently, Spiderman-3 was suberb on action but was lacking on still scenes. My 23-year old brother who does know his stuff, concurred with me. The Bourne Idendity was great on action and still. I never noticed anything bad about it. That begs the question, why would Sony include a bad disc or a bad movie and if not a bad movie, why is Blu-Ray the fan favourite? My only answer is the name.

"Ironically, Sony was also the backer of the Betamax format. In a repeat of history, Sony is pushing Blu-ray, a technically superior medium, but is seeming to repeat some of its mistakes with Betamax."

Warner will continue to release HD DVD movies until May. Warner Bros. believes further confusion with the consumer will destroy the industry. I was loving Warner Bros. today until I found out this and now I will only buy HD DVD and support all of Toshiba's allies. Warners announcement will only fuel the war that was started long ago and further confuse the consumer.

My conclusion though for all you readers is, buy a player from both sides, rent a HD DVD and Blu-Ray movie of your choice and see which is the best for you.

A little earlier I mentioned Alaska Airlines was going to be offering Internet Access on some of it's flights by 2008 but now another American airline will be offering it even sooner. JetBlue is working with Waterloo-based Research in Motion and Yahoo to provide internet access on one of its' planes today, Tuesday December 11. 2007 on one of its Airbus A320 planes. While it's only a trial, and a free one at that, the email and instant messaging service they are offering is definitely a step up from nothing. The only catch is, you have to be a Blackberry user or have a Yahoo account and it is not full internet access; they will only offer email and instant messaging obviously with only Yahoo and Blackberry services. In 2008, JetBlue says they will offer full WiFi internet access that will be built by LiveTV, a JetBlue owned subsidiary that coincidently won rights to 1MHz of the 800MHz spectrum last year. A quick note to Blackberry users getting on that lucky flight today, you have to connect through WiFi as the FCC doesn't allow mobile calls on planes.

Three other airlines including Alaska Airlines are planning to come out with Internet Access on all of their flights by 2008. A recap of Alaska Airlines plans are: an antenna will be placed on top of the aircraft which will connect to a satellite which will be used by the in-flight system. 802.11b/g WiFi will be offered for use on laptops, phones and PDAs that will be allowed to access the internet as well as email, VPNs and stored in flight entertainment. Unlike JetBlue, Alaska Airlines wants all of their 144 planes up and running with WiFi by Spring 2008 but that still depends on how well Row 44, an airline telecom provider, can keep up with that demand. They claim they can offer downlink speeds of 81Mbps and uplink speeds of 1.6Mbps and is not limited by international borders as they use a satellite to dish out there services. They also plan to roll out in-flight entertainment services including more than 100 channels of live TV. Alaska Airlines definitely seems to be ahead of the game.

Virgin America's plans are not as elaborate as other airlines as they will offer air-to-ground internet connection for 802.11a/b/g WiFi enabled devices and they will allow "customers" to use a variety of instant messaging services including MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, and AIM. AirCell is building the network and hopefully they can work on American Airlines as well.

American Airlines passengers will have nationwide internent access using devices that support 802.11a/b/g. Their goal is to to offer internet access at the start of 2008 but there is no mention how many airplanes will be equipped. They have already begun testing on its fleet of Boeing 727-200 aircraft in August. AirCell is building their network as well as Virgins. They own 3MHz of the 800MHz spectrum and they've already demonstrated in-flight WLAN capabilities which took place in 2005. Virgin America first announced its in-flight broadband service plan in
September, and the company hopes to have its all of its planes
connected "sometime in 2008."

By the end of 2008, Internet access will be close to a standard on commercial airlines except for the low-cost airlines like JetsGo and Air Transat. The next airline to move onto the scene should be Air Canada and possibly WestJet. Definitely, this has revolutionized the airline industry and should provide a boost to the sagging industry.

Silverthorne is Intel's first crack at making a brand new processor aimed at ultramobile PCs except for those small cell phones like the iPhone. Intel is not only working on this processor, but an update to it's upcoming Penryn family using a 45nm notebook processor, plus Montevina, a sub-notebook processor with 40% smaller components. Intel will make its integrated Wi-Fi/WiMax chip set available as an option with Montevina-based notebooks. As always, Intel is looking to shake up the industry and as usual, it will go off with a bang.

Around June 2008, Intel will release a new platform, Menlow, that will use Silverthorne and another chip set, Poulsbo. Using their new technology of a 45nm chip, which is being drooled at by other chip makers such as ATI/AMD, they will hopefully drill a new market wide open between the cell phone and notebook industries.

On Tuesday November 27, 2007, Google announced a new initiative to produce renewable energy at low costs to the consumer, but more importantly, cheaper than coal. Officially known as RE

The whole idea was started when Google started building and designing large energy efficient data centers. Slowly they learned the benefits and decided they wanted to apply that same creativitiy and innovation to developing cheaper renewable electricity for the masses.

"There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy. Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal. Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there."

-Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google

Google's goal is to 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal and accomplish it in years, not decades Just to put things in perspective, 1 gigawatt can power the city the size of San Fransisco. Not only will doing this help the environment, but many people will flock to Google, once again, because nowadays, people are trying to save the planet.

Eliminating coal, is another step to be taken in reducing green house gases, with coal supplying more than 40% of the worlds electricity, Google is taking a huge step forward. Mentioned in their Press Release many times is "Cheaper than Coal" and that is huge, because no government will change their power structure unless it is cheaper and more reliable. China and India might be the first countries to switch.

Google plans to work with two companies to develop and design large scale renewable energy projects. eSolar Inc and Makani Power Inc, which both specialize in different aspects of renewable energy, will both provide a huge asset to Google as they pave the way for a brighter future.

All the major phone manufacturers are all abuzz about creating an iPhone killer much like the digital music industry was trying to create an iPod killer. Now Microsoft might have finally succeeded at doing that with the new generation Zune as it's currently hard to find in many US retailers. But that's not the story for today. Today I am here to report on the Blackberry 9000 which is supposed to be an iPhone killer.

Dell has finally matched Apple's feat by developing an All-in-One computer that fits into a slim, nice, looking monitor after HP and Gateway both completed copies of Apples iMac. The Apple iMac was first released on August 15, 1998 and has never seen a down moment as it's been featured in pop culture and movies and with successful marketing it seems it won't slow down.
Dell though might have a winner with different models to choose from that have somewhat unique names. On both sides are stereo speakers with media buttons down one side with a 20-inch widescreen TV down the middle. There will be four available systems that mimick an Apple name. The Essential One, the Performance One, the Music One, and the Entertainment One. All of these systems have 4 things in common; they all have an Intel Core 2 Duo running them and Windows Vista Home Premium operating them. As well a TV tuner and a remote come standard.

The Music One and Entertainmet One both have small differences to there siblings. Music One comes with wireless headphones for the music enthusiast. The Entertainment One will mimick a Home Entertainment system with all the best technology. There will be a Blu-Ray DVD burner and an ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro graphics card with 256M bytes of memory.
All these models are available on the Dell (CA)(US) website for pre-sale. Actual selling of the Dell XPS-One will take place next week.

YouTube has been well known to have crappy quality videos but it still survives will lurking under the shadows are sites such as Revver and Blip.tv produce amazing quality videos without the viewers. Now that's all about to change. Steve Chen, the co-founder of YouTube, announced November 14 2007 that a high-quality YouTube would be in the near future of their business plan. As little of you know, YouTube's goal has been to stream video to everybody with an internet connection but with high quality videos that wouldn't be possible. That's why they are testing a player that will recognize a users internet connection and decide whether or not to stream low or high quality videos.

An online-only version of Adobe Photoshop Express is slated to be released by the end of 2007 with an open beta. It is doing this to keep up and compete with other offerings by companies trying to get rid of software and instead use online-based applications. First announced at the beginning of the year, Adobe recently announced it would be officically releasing it.

If you are a fan of Mozilla or you are getting fed up of Internet Explorer, then Mozilla is updating its much respected broswer, Firefox. Entitled, Mozilla Gran Paradiso, it aims to better the graphics and text rendering and improve stability.

Cairo is a new type of Windows Shell alternative that will be released as a free standing application. There is no word yet on when it will be released but we can all hope it will be sooner than later. Many, including me at first, don't have a clue what a Windows Shell Alternative is; but let me dumb it down for you. When you install a WSA, it replaces explorer.exe. Explorer.exe displays the icons, folders, start menu, and taskbar but Windows has made it possible to change it in numerous ways only if you are good at computers or if you've downloaded something like Cairo.


I was told about this revolutionary piece of "software" by a friend and I decided to do some of my own research. So far though, Cairo's official website is the only place with reliable information.
Even with an official website it isn't sufficient enough to write a full article so this is just an article in development. There are 9 features on Cairo that are either new or improvements on Windows' version. Some of them are:

• A start bar with easy access to all your files and applications.
• Slick and Stable, you never hear those words together
• Multi-Desktop lets you easily organize your workload by desktop
• Dynamic Desktop enables you to browse files and folders right there
• Make virtual file stacks to easily locate files with File & Application Grouping
• Launch applications that are more frequently used and hide the ones you don't with LaunchCairo
• Preview files and folders such as documents, music, and images with File Explorer
• Configure Cairo just the way you like it by adding and removing features with Cairo's unique plugin system

It's been over a year since the official launch of the HD DVD and Blu-Ray and now here comes some great discounts. Toshiba is in the works to offer a $198 HD DVD Player from Wal-Mart before the holiday season. This marks a huge gain for the HD DVD format as Blu-Ray has been stealing most of the spotlight and for good reason. The Blu-Ray format has garnered much support from studios including: Warner, Lionsgate, Paramount, Disney, Fox, Sony, and MGM; it supports a higher playback quality (1080p vs 1080i), it stores more on a same size disk, and it records faster. A price drop can help get HD DVD into more families homes and widen its customer base helping it catch up to Blu-Ray. With this information though, I'd rather wait for a similar price drop from Blu-Ray and get a much better quality player and product.Wal-Mart to me hurts the HD DVD repuation even further as Wal-Mart is a place to get cheap products, not quality ones. If I were a Blu-Ray maker, I'd be cheering inside.

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Why would Apple choose to release an unlocked iPhone in France when they could more easily release one in Canada, locked, which is what they'd like to do? The reason they had to unlock there product in France was simply because of law. French law states that no company can bundle a cell phone to a mobile operator. However, Apple has made a deal with Orange, a European mobile carrier, to sell its phone with them for $560 but to obey the law, they will sell an unlocked version at a higher, undisclosed price. What is iffy though is whether or not Orange had to agree to give a slice of the revenue earned from selling those iPhones to Apple. This is another huge step in taking away the power from carriers but it can also mean drastic things in relation to power with the handset makers. I would feel much better if Canada decided to bring in a law much like that of Frances, but then again I'd much rather like better phones to be offered.

Sharp Non-iPhone Imitator

Sharp has been working on a phone for 3 years to date, that is better than the iPhone which shows just how much better our Asian competitors are. Not only do they plan better but they follow through with so much better phones in Asia that would kill in North America. This phone is titled the Sharp WSO11SH and was officially announced by Microsoft June 7th 2007 but it is just getting noticed as it is being showed at CEATEC, Japans largest electronics show, this weekend. Microsoft has a stake on this phone as they are using Windows Mobile 6 Classic but it can make VOIP calls which only WM6 Pro can do. The specs of this amazing phone are a 3"WVGA TFT screen with a total phone weight of only 157g and 18mm thin. It also has a 520Mhz CPU, 128MB SDRAM with 256MB included flash memory which can be expanded by a microSD slot. As well, there is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and is equipped with Wifi. The most important feature though on this phone is it can't recognize 2 fingers, but it can recognize all of five (four if you want to get technical) fingers and on top of that it can scan images such as a business card.

Sony seems like a crap company now that the PS3 is a complete failure but with the continuing success of Ericsson and there TV division finally making some huge strides, they may not be out of the game yet. Sony has just announced an 11 and 27 inch OLED TV with a contrast ratio of 1 000 000:1 coupled with a 1080p resolution and 100% NTSC colour reproduction. It is a smaller package but give it a year and it should be at a reasonable price and being offered with a bigger screen size. For an 11inch OLED TV from Sony, it'll set you back $1,740.50 at the start of the holiday shopping season, permitting the release date doesn't move.

I've never associated a phone with kung fu before but Motorola always like to break the ice starting with the thinnest and best selling phone. Now they break onto the ad scene with an amazing commerical designed by a Chinese animator. Just a tidbit on Motorola: it was started by a man who's first and second company went bankrupt. When thinking of a third company to start and name, he was shaving. Enjoy!

Apple's long awaited new OS for its Mac computers and laptops has been finally completed and is being readied for shipment by the end of this month. There are conflicing reports on the issue though with AppleInsider saying its true and MacRumours denying but most bloggers including me are betting on the last Friday of October, October 26, to be the release date of Leopard. The reason for releasing Leopard on the last Friday of the month is because if you look at when they rolled out the iPhone and the previous OS, Tiger, they both came out on the last Friday of there respected month, June 2007, and April 2005. Supposedly, Apple is readying its technical staff and briefing them on there new OS just before they release it. Obviously Apple is keeping its mouth shut on the issue and doesn't look to drop hints any time soon. You can pre-purchase Leopard at Amazon at a list price of $129 and take note that Amazon pegs the release date as October 31.