BBC Web 2.0. Seriously. The Beeb’s director-general, Mark Thompson, told his staff on Tuesday that in the new world of BBC Web 2.0, audiences would become participants and partners. Probably means Web 2.0 is officially over. Time for Web 3.0!…
On Wednesday morning, I’ll be in Washington, DC, moderating a panel at a Cato Institute-sponsored summit on Copyright Controversies. Should be an interesting refereeing task. I’ll be sitting between Patrick Ross, a defender of stiff intellectual property laws and fellow…
Hey, this blog is an EPpy Award finalist — a fairly big deal. Even cooler is the e-mail today from rock legend Roger McGuinn about She Took My iPod. Roger writes: Good song Kevin! You have a lot of fun!!!…
Scott McNealy is stepping down as Sun’s CEO. He’ll be chairman. Jonathan Schwartz is becoming CEO. Conference call at 6 pm ET. I’ll listen and update then. Everyone in the industry knew this was coming for a while. Still, got…
I’m sitting in a little café area at MIT, and next to me is brain researcher Rutledge Ellis-Behnke, and he’s got his tablet computer open and he’s showing me all these videos and slides of, like, cutting into hamster brains,…
Looks like the U.S. government is all set to push a program that would tag all farm animals with RFID chips by 2008. It’s certainly the best way yet to track the food supply and watch for things like bird…
USA TODAY colleague Michelle Kessler today covered President Bush’s visit to Cisco. She just shot me this from the scene. From Michelle: Employees of Cisco Systems dusted off their jackets and ties — rarely needed in casual California — to…
Once again, we highlight the very best in superlative excess. Reader nominations welcome. The entries below are verbatim from recent press releases. Global Leader of the Week: Everybody’s a big fish in some pond SchemaLogic is the global leader in…
PC Magazine – The companies backing competing formats for next-generation DVD technology will never again talk about forming a unified standard, an executive at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said on Friday, leaving it to the consumer to choose the winning side.
“We are not talking and we will not talk,” Kazuhiro Tsuga, an executive officer at Matsushita, the world’s largest consumer electronics maker, told Reuters in an interview. “The market will decide the winner.” Matsushita, best known for its Panasonic brand, is a leading supporter of Blu-ray, one of two competing formats for the next-generation DVD. The other format, called HD-DVD, is backed by a group led by Toshiba Corp. At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in current DVD equipment, enabling discs to store data at the higher densities needed for high-definition movies and TV. The two sides held talks last year in the hopes of avoiding a prolonged format battle similar to the one between Betamax and VHS videotapes in the 1980s, knowing that it could discourage consumers from shifting to the advanced discs and stifle the industry’s growth. But the talks soon fizzled out, with each side reluctant to establish a format based on the other’s disc structure. At stake is the $24 billion home video market and a slice of the personal computer market as PCs will be equipped with Blu-ray or HD DVD optical drives. The backing of Hollywood was seen until recently as the main deciding factor in the format battle, but with studio support split between the camps, the focus will now shift to cost-competitiveness and the products themselves, Tsuga said. He said it was doubtful how long Toshiba, which launched an HD DVD player this month for $499, could continue selling its next-generation equipment at such low prices, estimating that Toshiba was probably doing so at a loss. A Toshiba spokeswoman declined to comment on whether it would make or lose money on its players, but said the price point was also aimed at helping the HD DVD industry grow. “It’s now a test of physical strength,” Tsuga said. Matsushita plans to launch DVD players later this year with a price tag likely to top $1,000. Tsuga said that Matsushita was working hard to lower production costs and that it would make a profit on its next-generation DVD products from the start. Earlier on Friday, Matsushita announced that it would start shipping Blu-ray disc drives to PC makers, becoming the first in the industry to do so. It also unveiled single-layer and double-layer Blu-ray discs able to hold 25 gigabytes and 50 gigabytes of data, or 10 times conventional DVDs.
AFP – Microsoft founder Bill Gates has expressed confidence in the success of the software giant’s new Xbox game console as well as high-definition HD DVD technology.
Visiting Japan, a key battleground for next-generation video game consoles and DVD players, Gates said he hoped the Xbox 360 would win a new legion of older fans with its simple games and online multi-player system. “The Xbox came out for the last Christmas season. That’s been a very sold-out product and really ushering in this idea of high-definition gaming — realism — but even more importantly, the idea of community. “Bringing that social community aspect into this we think is very critical and it will redefine and revolutionize those products, in fact make it attractive not just to young men but to people of all ages,” he told reporters. The first Xbox, which was launched in November 2001 and came to Japan in February 2002 — nearly two years behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 — flopped here, in part due to a lack of games that appealed to local tastes. This time Microsoft is doing its utmost to avoid history repeating itself and has stolen a march on Sony, which recently announced a six-month delay to the launch of its PlayStation 3 next generation console to November. Microsoft and Sony are also key players in another battle between global technology giants — over the next-generation of DVD players. The US software behemoth is supporting the HD DVD format pushed by Toshiba and NEC, which is vying with the rival Blu-ray format, led by Sony and Panasonic, in a replay of the VHS-Betamax video tape battle of the late 1970s. “We think products like HD DVD and Xbox 360 are really going to drive consumers to expect that high definition,” said Gates. He also indicated that Microsoft’s next operating system, Vista, the release of which has been delayed until next year, could eventually be made compatible with the Blu-ray format if its developers share the necessary information. “In terms of Blu-ray that’s also coming along. As they finalize their specifications we’ll understand how well that’s able to connect up to Windows. As yet they haven’t shared that,” he said.