iWatch

[4/30/13] The latest rumor of an iWatch claims Intel and Apple are collaborating on a smartwatch that could materialize this year. We believe a smartwatch could make a lot of sense not only for Apple but for Google and the Android camp.

Eight Reasons Why the Time is Right for an Apple iWatch

*** 9/5/13

BERLIN –  Nearly 70 years after Dick Tracy began wearing a two-way wrist radio in the funny pages, the technology that once seemed impossibly futuristic will be widely available by Christmas.

Samsung on Wednesday introduced a digital watch for the holiday season that will let users check messages with a glance at their wrists and have conversations secret agent-style.

So-called smartwatches have been around for several years. But so far, they have failed to attract much consumer interest. That may change with the Samsung Galaxy Gear, which offers the company a chance to pull off the same as feat Apple did with the iPad — popularize a type of device that has lingered mostly unnoticed on store shelves.

The Gear must be linked wirelessly with a smartphone to perform its full range of functions. It acts as an extension to the phone by discreetly alerting users to incoming messages and calls on its screen, which measures 1.63 inches diagonally.

"With Gear, you're able to make calls and receive calls without ever taking your phone out of your pocket," Pranav Mistry, a member of Samsung's design team, told reporters at the launch in Berlin ahead of the annual IFA consumer electronics show here.


Sony and Qualcomm also introduced smartwatches Wednesday. Apple Inc. is expected to release its own smartwatch, though it's not clear yet when. The release of separate products from so many manufacturers could stir interest in smartwatches in general.

operating room of the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IfJemqkby_0

InSightec - Dr. Kobi Vortman, Technion Alumnus

turn Windows 8 into Windows 7 (and Twit.TV) (and 8ctave)

hey a cool new channel for my Roku, called 8ctave.  It's a channel pulling a bunch of content made public by the various vendors.

The meat (as far as I've explored) is in the On Demand section which is further divided into sections: TV, News, Sports, Education, Food, Spirituality, Technology, Life & Style, Music, Kids & Animation, Weather, Audio.

In the technology section is a show called Know How (made public by twitps) starrring liaz akhtar and leo leporte.  And the show (they have 10 of them) Know How 32 is Make Windows 8 act like Windows 7 where they feature some applications which make Windows 8 act like Windows 7.

Since the channel only has the latest 10 shows, hopefully I can find this show on the internet.  And here it is!

Wow, there's a lot of shows on Twit.TV.  Cool.  Don't see see this on cable!

[5/28/13] Twit also has their own Roku Channel.  But the best way to watch it on Roku might be via youtube (via VideoBuzz or Plex) which has the majority of the episodes archived.  There's a few that I don't see.  Recently youtube has been banning the This Week in Youtube episodes.

[5/28/13] A couple more channels from this youtube video on using PlayOn.  FirstRow Sports and SuperusvoxTV.  They get a lot of popups first though that you have to close.  I'm currently looking at a pretty high quality ESPN stream on SuperusvoxTV, apparently via something called iLive.

***

Now looking more at 8ctave.  They also have the top 50 Channels which are (pseudo)live.  Mostly local news stations it appears, but also (4) reuters news network (6) los angeles times (7) natgeo (14) comedy shaq network (18) NBA D-League (22) All Pro Wrestling (24) Professional Bowlers Association (33) USC TV (35) Legends Football League (37) Smithsonian Channel (40) Vatican City (43) Ultimate Rap League (47) UC TV (University of California I assume) (50) Ski Channel

And it don't stop at 50.  There's more categorized as National US Channels, US East, US Central, US Mountain, US Pacific.  Don't see any Hawaii channels though.

Amazon TV

Amazon (AMZN) is making e-readers and tablets and will likely soon introduce a smartphone. As it works to build all types of connected devices, that leaves a natural next step: a television set-top box. The e-commerce giant is planning to introduce a device this fall dedicated to streaming video over the Internet and into its customers’ living rooms, according to three people familiar with the project who aren’t authorized to discuss it.

They say the box will plug into TVs and give users access to Amazon’s expanding video offerings. Those include its à la carte Video on Demand store, which features newer films and TV shows, and its Instant Video service, which is free for subscribers to the Amazon Prime two-day shipping package. The Amazon set-top box will compete with similar products, such as the Roku, Apple TV, and the Boxee Cloud DVR, along with more versatile devices such as the Playstation 3 and the Xbox. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

***

OK, so Apple has Apple TV for iTunes.  Netflix has Roku.  Amazon will have Amazon TV (or whatever it'll be called).  How about a Google TV box for youtube?  Well there's already Google TV (like the Netgear NeoTV) which hasn't really taken off yet (as far as I can tell).

BlueStacks

I thought this sounded kind of neat (but I hope it won't mess up your computer).

BlueStacks App Player is an Android emulation tool which can let you run your favourite Android applications on your Windows desktop, laptop or tablet .

You can run BlueStacks on your desktop as a small gadget. With this free download you can install, run and test Android applications before you install them on your smartphone.

This Android application player brings Android to your PC.

the end of free TV?

With all this talk about the cord-cutting masses no longer wanting to subsidize TV channels they don't watch, it's a little surprising that one of the oldest, most widely available forms of TV is waning: over-the-air broadcast TV. Despite its attractive price of $0 per month and billions of advertising revenue, nobody — including the broadcast networks, the tech companies that are out to disrupt them, and the cord-cutters and cord-nevers who hate cable — is very enthusiastic about antennas. Rather, this is the "zero tv" generation, according to a recent Nielsen study, which found that 5 million households have no television at all and would rather pay for Internet distribution than put a set of bunny ears on a TV set.

Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed tech startup, is betting people would rather pay $80 per year (i.e. about what it costs to get a HD tuner for your PC) to deliver this gratis content over the Internet rather than over the air. So enraged at Aereo's elaborate plans of thousands of tiny antennas sucking their signals onto web servers,  Reuters reported on Sunday that the Big Four broadcast networks are considering ending over-the-air transmission to foil the service. On Monday, News Corp. chief operating office Chase Carey said the company would turn Fox into a cable channel if the courts allow Aereo to sell their service: “This is not an ideal path we look to pursue, but we can’t sit idly by and let an entity steal our signal. We will move to a subscription model if that’s our only recourse.”

RELATED: HBO Is Finally OK with Cord Cutting (In Scandinavia)

The networks haven't really been excited about free television anymore for a while and for obvious reasons: they don't want to give their product away for free. (Duh.) The big broadcasters engaged in regular wars with cable companies to get them to pay transmission fees just like they do for their cable-only channels like ESPN and Comedy Central. And really, over-the-air TV is a sliver of the market. Though there have been nervousness about the future of TV, pay TV penetration is still around 90 percent.

RELATED: Cable Companies Rejoice: Longtime Cord Cutter Gets Cable

That's the reason that all the big networks got together to sue Aereo in the first place: They don't want to lose the fees they've come accustomed to being paid. While News Corp.'s threat to stop broadcasting is more likely big talk than an actual game plan, Wall Street likes that idea. News Corp.'s announcement sent its stock soaring, even though it would have to wait until after its current NFL deals, which run for another seven years, expire. 

RELATED: Barry Diller-Backed Aereo Just Got Sued By Fox, PBS, and Others

But look around and content owners have already started pulling their best, most valuable stuff from the public waves. Sports, for example, have started moving to pay TV. Most regular season baseball, basketball, and hockey games now run on regional sports cable stations. While the really big sport events are still broadcast, that's showing signs of slipping, too. Starting in 2014 h the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament will be on TBS. That would follow Monday Night Football, the staple of ABC for decades, that moved moved to ESPN, and even the Olympics, which, aside from the primetime packages, was shown live (whether on cable stations or streamed online) only to people who pay for their TV. Again, these are all things we used to be able to get for free through other means. As sports rights come up for bid, more and more it's flush cable companies who can  outbid the broadcasters. After all, live sports is one of the main reasons people cite for not cutting the cord. Of course, the hefty bill for sports, as I have calculated before, is one of the main reasons non-sports fans most want to buy a la carte.

RELATED: How Many Cord Nevers Are There? An Office Survey

This movement of must-see programming from broadcast to cable might help explain why the people haven't flocked to free television: The best stuff isn't really on there anymore. Either by design, as explained above, or because of our expensive cable packages—The Atlantic's Derek Thomspon theorizes that high cable prices have resulted in better shows—cable and premium channels offer better stuff. NBC, once an incubator of  Must See TV is going through an existential crisis, as The Atlantic Wire's Richard Lawson has explained. "The glory days are past," he definitively wrote. This is partly because broadcast networks are in the business of quantity versus quality. Besides for transmission fees, they make money off of advertising. Much like the Internet business, its a dollars for eyeballs proposition, which has led to an overall decline in quality. Plus, cable companies (because of our exorbitant cable packages!) have a lot of money to pay channels to make great stuff. 

RELATED: Why the Television Will Be Not Revolutionized

All of this is alarming. People should be alarmed. A public good is slowly eroding right before our eyes. And yet, consumers don't seem to care. Maybe it's because there is not much to be done? Cable companies have created such a stranglehold over the market, if we want certain shows, we have to pay for a lot of nothing in our cable bills. If not, we can pay for content through Netflix or Hulu. This is the beginning of the end of free TV.

Zero TV

There are 5 million "zero-TV" households in the U.S., more than double from 2 million in 2007. It's a small but growing trend that has the media establishment plenty worried.

These people, who make up fewer than 5% of U.S. households, haven't stopped watching television shows. They just do it on their own terms over laptops, tablets and cellphones.

As Nielsen notes, about 75% of these homes still have TVs, but people use them mostly to play video games and watch DVDs.

This creates a huge problem for the industry, one that will likely be a key topic at this week's National Association of Broadcasters' annual trade show. Content creators and broadcast networks make money from these viewers through arrangements with streaming sites such as Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu and through advertising on their websites and apps, according to The Associated Press. Television stations, however, get shut out.

"Unless broadcasters can adapt to modern platforms, their revenue from zero-TV viewers will be zero," the AP says.

A handful of video-streaming sites have become hot properties. Hulu, for example, has reportedly received a $500 million bid from former News Corp. (NWS +2.27%) president Peter Chernin. The site is jointly controlled by News Corp. and Walt Disney (DIS +1.94%).

Luckily for broadcasters, most people are still transfixed by the boob tube. According to Nielsen, Americans spend an average of nearly 41 hours a week, or about 5.5 hours a day, watching content across all screens. People spend more than 34 of those hours in front of a TV.

Even so, given the technological changes in the works, the television industry 10 years from now may not look much like it does today.

tablets catching up to PCs

Worldwide shipments of PCs, tablets, and mobile phones are expected to total 2.4 billion units in 2013, a 9 percent increase from last year, according to new data from Gartner.

Shipments of these devices are forecast to grow even further by 2017 to reach more than 2.9 billion units. But over the next few years, the mix of these devices will "significantly change," as consumers increasingly choose tablets over PCs, the research firm said.

The traditional PC market of desktops and laptops is expected to decline 7.6 percent to 315 million units in 2013, and continue dropping over the next four years as the tablet market grows. Worldwide tablet shipments are predicted to total 197 million units this year, a 69.8 percent increase from 2012 shipments of 116 million units.

"While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device," Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. "As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis."

By 2017, tablet shipments are expected to reach 468 million units, outpacing PC sales of 272 million, Gartner said. This transition from PCs to tablets is being driven by a recent explosion of low-cost tablets with impressive capabilities, according to Gartner.

***

Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance in the next four years unless it can make progress in the smartphone and tablet markets, because the PC market will continue shrinking, warns the research group Gartner.

It says a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device, researchers say.

That will also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017. Microsoft-powered device shipments will almost be at parity with those of Apple iPhones and iPads - the latter a situation not seen since the 1980s.

In a new forecast published on Thursday morning, Gartner says that by 2015 shipments of tablets will outstrip those of conventional PCs such as desktops and notebooks, as Android and Apple's iOS become increasingly dominant in the overall operating system picture. Android in particular will be installed on more than a billion devices shipped in 2014, says Carolina Milanesi, the analyst who led the research.

The reality of climate change

10 myths busted

-- according to LiveScience anyway

When critics point out that normal fluctuations occur that create climate change -- regardless of human interference -- they are right. But that doesn't change the fact that what we're seeing today is unprecedented, and there's likely more at play than normal global cyclicality.

-- according to Brian Stoffe, but Schneidku40 comments

You may want to revise your #2, at least to say the levels of CO2 are unprecedented during the Holocene/modern history/recorded history/ice history. This level of CO2 is certainly not unprecedented in earth's history. The dinosaurs were walking around in CO2 levels that were likely somewhere around 5 times what it is now. 500 million years ago the CO2 levels 10-20 times what they are now. The average global temperature has also been much higher for most of earth's history.