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Blog power

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Jan 07, 09:30 PM

Hands up anyone who thinks blogging is a waste of time? Okay, put your hands down.

Hands up anyone who was invited to interview Bill Gates today? Ah, there are five people over there who have met the boss of Microsoft.

And who are they? Yes, they are bloggers.

Writers from , , and , together with , an ex-Microsoft employee and blogger extraordinaire, sat down with Bill Gates today to chew the fat ahead of his keynote tonight.

It's an indication of how influential bloggers are in the technology market. Microsoft is not stupid - it knows that these bloggers speak directly to a large community and are admired for their honesty, cynicism and knowledge of subject matter.

Are they all trained journalists? I don't know. Does it matter? Possibly.

One thing I do know is that the 大象传媒 was not granted an audience with Bill Gates at CES this year. We will - hopefully - be speaking to him later this month when Vista launches globally to consumers.

So if you want to find out what they asked him and what he told them, keep an eye on the bloggers.


What Is Vegas Trying To Tell Me? Part I

  • Paul Mason
  • 7 Jan 07, 06:10 PM

"There's a lot of women in there," the taxi driver told me after I emerged from CES clutching my orange backpack and press pass. "Really? I didn't notice many," I replied. It was early morning and the conventioneers are setting up. There is a kind of waddle people do who produce and erect technology shows, and it involves holding a Starbucks in one hand, your mobile to your ear in the other and a large bag carrying your laptop hangs from your shoulder to your waist. And, let's put it this way, when Johnny Vegas chose his stage name, he was probably inspired by the bodymass index of some of these guys. So what did the driver mean?

"The booth hoochies," he expanded. "They wear a lot o' negligees and they hit on ya when you approach the stall. I never been in there but I seen 'em leaving." But this must wait until tomorrow. For now we are gearing up to present Newsnight from the Consumer Electronics Show, as part of Geek Week 2.0 - our celebrated and notorious annual take on technology. As it's all hi-tech we are planning to go live over broadband, though the techhie people on the 大象传媒 team have told me I must not move around as it breaks up the picture....

Continue reading "What Is Vegas Trying To Tell Me? Part I"

That's Entertainment

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Jan 07, 05:52 PM

A few years ago BitTorrent was being discussed in the same earthy tones reserved for Napster back when it was turning the music industry on its head, helping people pirate music for free.

BitTorrent is a program which makes high-speed transference of large files across the net simple to do.

Unsurprisingly it was soon adopted as the program of choice for people wanting to distribute copied versions of films and TV programmes.

But the company has successfully turned itself into a player in the digital media world of the 21st Century and has done a number of deals with content providers to distribute their programmes, films and videogames using the BitTorrent software.

, makers of routers, modems, and digital media devices, has now teamed up with BitTorrent to "promote video downloads streamed to high-definition TVs".

What that means is that legal content will be delivered via BitTorrent to a new device unveiled by Netgear at CES - the Digital Entertainer HD.

The machine is basically a wi-fi-enabled super-set top box. It can connect to your PC over your home network and access movies, photos and music stored on the hard drive and then play it on your television - and in high definition too.

The player can also act as a personal video recorder - allowing you to record your favourite TV programmes direct to the device.

Vivek Pathela, vice president of product marketing at Netgear, was suitably jubilant about the device but reserved his greatest enthusiasm for one particular feature.

"You can watch YouTube on your TV," he cried.

Yes, the Digital Entertainer HD will let you access You Tube clips and watch them on your television.

Apparently the ability to is apparently a big selling point.

On a wider note, many of the functions of the Netgear device are expected to form part of Apple's new iTV player - to be unveiled in a couple of days.

I'm guessing that there will be a lot more attention given to the iTV than to the Digital Entertainer HD.

The battle for control of the living room in the digital age is far from over.

Super Multi Blue to the rescue?

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Jan 07, 05:30 PM

A day full of press conferences, meetings and ending with Bill Gates' keynote speech began with LG giving people the first look at its much-hyped, high definition DVD player that can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Dr H.G. Lee, chief technology officer at LG, said the player "would end confusion for consumers".

The two formats are incompatible with one another and are backed by two rival consortiums of technology firms and movie studios, with only a few players straddling both.

The Super Multi Blue player uses technology developed by LG to read both discs; a feat achieved by having two different lenses and two different lasers in the machine.

It is priced at a premium of $1,199 (拢650) and so is a long way from becoming a mass market product.

But it could help the growth of high definition DVD, which is not developing as quickly as the industry wants - hardly surprising given the fractured nature of the market.

Dr Lee likened the new machine to Superman - the superhero dressed in red and blue to represent the blue disc of Blu-ray and the red disc of HD-DVD.

The product is released in the US in February and Europe by the end of the year.

We'll see if Super Multi Blue really does have super powers soon enough.

In an encouraging sign, Dr Lee also said the technology in the player could be licensed to other manufacturers and he said that there were no intellectual property issues preventing other firms from developing their own dual-format machines.

Could the high definition DVD madness be close to an end?

Do you speak Geek?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 7 Jan 07, 01:26 PM

As I pushed though the seething masses of techno hacks at last night's CES Unveiled preview show - overhearing some of the veterans complaining about the standards of the free food and backpacks - I started to become anxious.

Did I really have the language skills to cope in Vegas? No, it's not about knowing the difference between Texas Hold 'Em and Seven Card stud or whether to order your eggs "easy over" or "sunny side up".

It's about speaking geek.

A Babel of acronyms and codewords - from UWB to HDMI to 802.11n - filled the air. I watched as a journalist and a salesman from one exhibitor batted increasingly complex terms across the net , each apparently trying to batter the other into submission with his superior command of geek.

I left them to it - and headed to my first conversation of the show with a company showing off its wireless speakers. I was doing fine - but the salesman did keep going on about "you pee and pee...". What?

Oh right - universal plug and play - UPnP.

Having negotiated that linguistic hurdle I moved on to a stand displaying a system to distribute one HDTV signal around a home - quite a big theme here. But when the talk turned to "simultaneous Gigabit ethernet and IEEE 1394 connections over Coax", I turned pale, made my excuses and moved on.

Far too many in the technology community speak a language that is a barrier to understanding. Now I suspect that many of you reading this blog have a deep knowledge of the subject - in other words you speak fluent geek - and may feel patronised if we start translating every term.

My problem is that I am broadcasting to a mass audience - the five million or so who watch the 大象传媒's main television news bulletins - and we know that most of them don't speak geek. Every day I have intense discussions with editors who want me to explain even the simplest technology terms - we've even argued over whether the word "broadband" is understood by most people. While nearly half the homes in Britain have it, that leaves millions who don't and may need it explained.

When I went out on to Oxford Street in London on Friday to ask people about the battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD - we were previewing the launch of a dual format player here - just about everyone I stopped looked at me as if I'd landed from another planet speaking fluent Venusian.

And when we ask viewers and listeners to send in e-mails, we still get plenty of complaints - by letter or phone - from those who have yet to join the online society.

Pretty complex new technologies are now arriving in our homes - and in explaining them we tread a difficult line. We want a wide audience to understand what we're saying - but we could end up trying the patience of the minority who really know and care about the subject.

But there's a simple message to the thousands of companies hawking their wares here - if you want to get into my reports, you'd better speak English, not geek.

Beware the backpacks

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Jan 07, 02:09 AM

The first official events are underway, with 400 people crammed into a room designed to hold half that number and everyone wearing the official press backpacks - bright orange and black and causing mayhem as people blunder into each other like weebles.

The luminous backpacks give the room the feel of a field trip by Italian school children.

The event is ostensibly a show and tell for a number of exhibitors wanting a leg up on the grand opening of the CES show floor on Monday but with around half of the room present to get some free food and wine it quite literally is a bun fight.

The backpacks are also the subject of much grumbling - some show veterans are complaining that last year's bags were much better and came with....wheels and a retractable handle.

So the technological talking point at CES so far is the lack of wheels!

The products on display were a real mix of the hi-tech, low-tech and what the heck?

and are the two biggest firms at the sneak preview - the former showing off high definition video streaming products which uses the electrical network in your house rather than cables or wi-fi.

Netgear believes its Powerline system gets round the problems wi-fi networks have currently with streaming large amounts of data and also the unsightly trail of ethernet cables.

LG was demonstrating a new phone to a camera crew which - like many others on the market - can receive TV pictures. I tried to take a photo and get some more info but a PR told me it was embargoed until tomorrow (Sunday). So I guess I'm breaking the embargo by about five hours - but I'm willing to take that risk.

elvis203.jpg

As always the most popular items on show were the most bizarre.

, makes of the RoboSapien robot, were showing off an Elvis head, which sings and delivers catchphrases.

It will sell for a hip-swivelling $349 (拢185) and comes with just eight songs and around 30 phrases. It has sensors in the eyes to react to people and you can plug your MP3 player into it and it will react to the music.

Viva Las Vegas indeed.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the help with my spelling and grammar. The coffee and jetlag are indeed playing havoc with my mind.

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