Category: Technology

  • Microsoft admits: the Zune “iPod killer” exists. Hype time!

    [photopress:zune_logo.jpg,full,pp_image] Microsoft has finally confirmed that its iPod-killer project, Zune, exists. Engadget has a good write-up of what we know, what we think we know and what we don’t know for sure, and the insider blogs have already appeared: ZuneInsider and Madison & Pine. It’s all very interesting. More hype here and here.

  • Damn NDAs

    I’m doing something interesting tomorrow, or at least potentially interesting. Unfortunately I can’t actually say what it is until afterwards, because I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. But there’s a hint here: it involves Sony, a tower block, explosives and paint.

  • HDTV? Meh.

    In my role as rubbish superhero Gadget Boy, I get very excited about anything new, high-tech and shiny – so for example I’d cheerfully give a tramp a “happy finish” in exchange for a Nikon D50 digital SLR. But I can’t raise the slightest bit of enthusiasm for HDTV. At all. It’s like a normal…

  • Woo-hoo for Yahoo!

    According to Paidcontent.org, Yahoo! is experimenting with DRM-free digital downloads. There’s only one so far – a pricey Jessica Simpson MP3 – but it’s part of a general anti-DRM attitude at the firm. Paidcontent makes an interesting point: On the survey Yahoo Music is doing, one of the questions in the survey: “Would you consider…

  • Auctioning podcast ads on eBay

    Mark Hunter of the Tartan Podcast has come up with an interesting idea: auctioning ad breaks on eBay. Reckon it’ll work?

  • Want a free copy of Vista?

    Official Windows Vista magazine has some DVDs of the current Vista beta, and you can get ’em for free – which is handy, ’cause the limited download period has ended. More here…

  • Voice recognition: not dead after all

    Wading through the daily press release pile I’ve discovered that there’s a brand new version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the PC voice recognition program. Voice tech has fallen off the radar screen over the last few years, but according to the nice PR chap today’s speedy processors mean that computers finally have the horsepower for decent,…

  • Prefab populism

    Paul pointed me towards an excellent Esquire article on the problems of populism: The Snakes On A Plane Problem. It’s an interesting piece on the dangers of pandering to blog opinion, and the problem of working out what exactly audiences/readers/whatever want. And it contains this superb anecdote: True story: My friend Jenny is in law…

  • The Sky has limits

    Sky Broadband: for existing telly customers, 16MB broadband with no usage cap for a tenner a month. Yay! But it’s only available to fewer than 30% of the population – and if like me, you’re one of the majority, then the best they can offer is 8MB with a 40GB cap for £17 per month.…

  • Customers who want to cancel are hot sales leads

    Fascinating stuff over at Consumerist, which has got its hands on AOL’s customer retention manual. If you stop and think about it, every Member that calls in to cancel their account is a hot lead. Most other sales jobs require you to create your own leads, but in the Retention Queue the leads come to…