Heavy Xbox users won’t be surprised to find out that Microsoft will be expanding functionality with “Xbox TV” this Christmas (2011).
Xbox users can already rent movies and watch Netflix and Hulu Plus. It will be interesting to see how they will further their penetration into this space which has been traditionally dominated by cable companies. (Disclosure: Oceanic Time Warner Cable sponsors my Your Computer Minute vignette on the radio). Can Microsoft provide a better set-top box experience? What happens when the world’s largest software company connects the Web …
The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, just penned a blog post combining an apology for how they handled recent price increases and an announcement of a new company spinoff, “Quickster”, which will handle the DVD-by-mail service. The idea is that Netflix focuses on streaming and Quickster focuses on DVD by mail.
I know a lot of people are upset about the price increase (if you did both streaming and dvd by mail you will now pay more for what you used to get) but IMO Reed did the right thing. …
I’m so torn between getting and iPad right now and holding off until the Android tablets drop enough in price. Here’s one more straw on the camel’s back as what looks like a nice 10″ tablet with 16gb of storage going for $100 less than an iPad w/ the same amount of memory. Is that enough to make me buy the Android’s limited app selection? Probably not (meaning that yes, fans, I would, today, buy an iPad) but if the prices keep dropping and more apps start showing …
Google Googles is one of those OMG! apps. You just take a picture of something in public and Google attempts to match the image against its database and provide you more information. It’s quite astounding and an indication of a “virtual assisted reality” future where our sunglasses constantly scan what we’re looking at and continually provides more in-depth information (think Terminator eyes).
Though that feature isn’t quite here yet, you can still get some pretty good functionality with this App. It’s worth the free install if only to try it …
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
If you’re using gmail, you’ve got to explore gmail labs to get fantastic productivity. Just go to settings and then click on Labs and you’re in for a real treat. My favorite is the Send and Archive add on which sends your email and archives it with a single click.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
If you’re using Gmail and you need to create a task based on an email you’re reading, click on more actions and then add a task. Gmail will create a task with a link it to the email you’re. If you have keyboard shortcuts on it’s a quick Shift-T.
Last week Google had a nearly 1 hour outage on Google Docs. Wish I would have had this application then! Though you can’t edit Google docs (yet), you can do your Gmail even you’ve lost your net connection. Let me know what you think of it.
via googleappsupdates.blogspot.com
I’m checking out BitCasa, which is a cloud-based file storage company. I used (and loved) Mozy until they went bonkers with their prices. Then I switched to BackBlaze to handle my backups. One of the founders of BitCasa is from Mozy so that got my attention.
BitCasa uses some apparently sophisticated technology to encrypt your data at your computer, before it uploads and then efficiently store your data in the cloud. So efficiently that they can do it for super cheap. I’m hearing prices under $10/mo. For …
Very cool. Very Google in terms of speed, simplicity and power. It just takes a few clicks to instantly get competitive flight information for any round trip in the U.S.
via google.com
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
I watch more Internet video on my smartphone than on my TV and it’s because I’ve got my phone using the wifi and got my wifi using my Road Runner Broadband which just doubled their speed. Now I watch my favorite Internet videos out on the lanai instead of the living room.
