corigin.com

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This was previously announced in December, but now it has a real name: “Pepsi Stuff.”
Four billion (with a b!) specially marked packages of Pepsi products will have collectible points on them that can be “banked,” starting Feb. 1, on PepsiStuff.com - and later redeemed for purchases at Amazon MP3.
This was one […]

They’re
joining the family. Surprise!
Oh, yes.
What a no-brainer.

[Disclosure]: MySQL was
involved in the process of moving the text
you are now reading from my screen to yours. Hey, I guess I
can look forward to a discount on ongoing’s MySQL
charges. [Um,
isn’t that free? -Ed.]

MySQL, you know, in my experience, it, well, Just Works. Runs great on our
hardware and OS. Well, OK, GNU/Linux too. What else is there? For
databases, nothing that
matters.

Stand by; this is going to be fun.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Apple is expected to announce a movie rental service at Macworld. Hoping to reduce some of the impact, Netflix is going to expand its streaming movie service, according to AP. Formerly users could only watch a limited number of hours based on their subscription tier, but beginning Monday, […]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Granted, there are some out there who’ve been dodging the whole “limitation” aspect of Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature for a good while, but for the honest, upstanding citizens abiding by the rules, things are (seemingly) about to change for the better. According to a recent report from the AP, Netflix is gearing up to banish the time limits for online streaming on all but its el cheapo $4.99 plan, meaning that subscribers to every other plan will be able to watch online content as much as they’d like. In case you haven’t connected the dots quite yet, it’s being suggested that the move will be made to fend off the looming competition from Cupertino, and while this would undoubtedly increase costs, it doesn’t seem as if the firm plans on hiking rates (at least initially) to compensate. Now that’s a change we can live with.

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
If you were annoyed by the hoops Sony BMG said you had to jump through to get DRM-free downloads of their music, you can rejoice. In a major coup, Amazon.com announced Thursday that by the end of January you’ll be able to download MP3 versions of Sony BMG music from […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The rumors of Paramount dropping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray were dispelled - at least temporarily - earlier in the week when Paramount flatly denied it was leaving the HD-DVD camp. But a report in Daily Variety confirms that Universal’s commitment to HD DVD has expired. And with Paramount […]

Filed under: Gaming

In a piece primarily focused on Blu-ray over at Business Week, a bit of scrolling led to quite the interesting tidbit: Sony has apparently been able to slash the production cost of its PlayStation 3 in half. More specifically, it was noted that the firm has been able to “shrink the PS3’s chips and tweak its design,” which aided in getting the cost per machine “to around $400 now, from above $800 just before it went on sale in November 2006.” According to Nikko Citigroup’s Kota Ezawa, the biggest culprit for such an improvement is the “reduction in the parts count.” Still, we wouldn’t get our hopes up for yet another price cut just yet, but at least things are moving in the right direction.

[Via PS3Fanboy]

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BlueMerle writes “Ars Technica is running a story about how EMI is disappointed with RIAA and ultimately they (RIAA) may disappear. ‘Is the RIAA as we know it about to disappear? As rumors continue to swirl that EMI will pull its funding from music trade groups like the RIAA and IFPI, an IFPI spokesman tells Ars that the group is in the middle of a major internal review of its operations.’” I wouldn’t bet the farm just yet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bednarz writes to mention that NetworkWorld has an interesting examination of young IT professionals and why many make unreasonable demands for their services. “‘The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee’s expectation,’ he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just made my annual donation to
NeoOffice. If you want to deal with
MS Office and OpenOffice.org and ODF documents on the Mac and you don’t want
to buy any overpriced opaque binaries, it’s your best bet. The
new news
is that that the latest NeoOffice (2.2.2) startup is irritatingly slow on my
2GHz MacBook. Which, you see, is good news, because previous
combinations of older NeoOffices and older Macs started up painfully,
agonizingly, slow. For those of us who live on the Web, at this point in
history it’s hard to feel much love for office-doc processing software; but of
its kind, Neo is really not bad.

There’s a boring press release; and interesting write-ups from
Greg
Reinacker and
Brent Simmons.
(Oh, and why is it we need press releases any more?)
This is interesting on a bunch of grounds.

Why a Newsreading Client?

There are those, hardwired to Google Reader or some such, who genuinely
don’t understand why someone would use client software at all. Google Reader
is just fine, but I still haven’t seen anything that gets me the news anywhere
near as fast or as flexibly as NetNewsWire. Well, and it makes offline catch-up
very easy, but mostly it’s just about the speed. If you’ve got a job where
you need to soak up a big news-flow without wasting much time, and you’re on a
Mac, you really ought to give NNW a try.

Business Model

Why would you give away popular
software?
Quoting Greg Reinacker: “What we’re working to do is to saturate the market
with our clients.” Which makes excellent sense; because they’re really in the
server/service business.

Plus, they think they can do something interesting with attention data.
Not the first time I’ve heard that, and it’s sure plausible, although I’m not
sure anyone’s actually making much hay with it just yet.

But hey, thanks guys.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
To address charges by the European Union that different pricing in the U.K. violates E.U. rules, Apple has announced it will be lowering pricing in its U.K. iTunes Store to match the already standardized pricing in the rest of Europe, but … there’s that word “but” again.
The wording of the press […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Amazon.com has launched a software download section in their software store. While the product selection is small - meaning, limited to TurboTax products - the fact that they built a software downloader application means that this is not the end of the story.
Install the downloader (in the sidebar on […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The Financial Times has a report that if true, would send HD-DVD into the same abyss as Betamax: it states there is a clause in Paramount’s contract with the HD-DVD group that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner backing Blu-ray, and that Paramount is “poised” to […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Friday Warner Bros., the last “on the fence” studio, announced its decision to drop HD-DVD at the of end of May and focus on Blu-ray only. Fallout, as well as some crowing, and even some veiled threats, has begun.
First the HD-DVD Group issued a short, terse press release in response […]

Thanks to a wee tumble on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, shares in three of Japan’s biggest gaming companies took a fairly sizeable slide yesterday. Sony (and yes, we have to take the company as a whole here) saw their share prices drop 6.6%, Konami’s fell 2.7% while Nintendo’s also took a hit, seeing a 4.5% decrease. This was mostly due to continuing problems on the US stock market, where all three companies have a lot of their business tied up (particularly Nintendo, who love to dabble in foreign currency). Consider this a public service announcement for those who’ve rushed out and bought up Nintendo stocks in the past twelve months.
Sony, Nintendo see shares slump [GI.biz]

I’m not much of an affiliate program fan, largely because they’re designed to benefit the vendor (not the affiliate). Moreover, to be a top performing affiliate, you have to do a lot of legwork, and the affiliate networks don’t make it easy to pull specific programs on-demand.

A reworked TagJag.com helped prove my point. But it’s not just about being able to drive affiliate revenue for myself, but for other publishers and bloggers as well (at least, those who use affiliate programs).

I’m not claiming that every item in the Clickbank database is reputable (or worth promoting), but finding and promoting legit items is still somewhat of a time drain. There are a lot of good eBooks in there!

Let’s say I was writing a post about digital photography (which I do, on occasion). If I wanted to find related products somewhere, I’d have to jump through all sorts of flaming hoops - and even then, if I included the links as static links in the page itself, they might be out of date at some point. The time and futureproofing solution is found in RSS:

shop.tagjag.com/products/photography+ebook

Results in a feed that currently outputs:

• Digital Photography Success. (
  This Fantastic 6 Ebook Package, Transforms Your Digital Photos Into Beautiful, Professional Quality Pictures Even If Youve Never Used A Digital Camera Before.
  )
• Mastering Digital Photography. (
  Brand New EBook 75% Payout $35 Per Sale, Check Out Our Affiliate Tools At Http://www.dpmastery.com/affiliate.html.
  )
• The Science Of Great Landscape Photography. (
  Learn The Science Of Taking Great Landscape Photographs With Any Camera And A Few Basic Accessories With This $19.95 216-page EBook(R)!
  )

I’m currently using FirstRSS to render this feed in this particular blog post. Now, if YOU have a Clickbank membership, you can generate the feed just as easily by appending your affiliate ID to the end of this URL:

shop.tagjag.com/products/photography+ebook?affilid=YourClickbankID

Nice, eh? You can do it on-demand. It’s free for you to use anywhere you see fit, with the full understanding that 25% of the traffic generated through these links will always fall back to Lockergnome’s affiliate ID. If nothing else, this is an easier way of discovering the products in Clickbank’s database (and potentially rendering them, so long as you have something that can handle RSS feeds on your blog / Web site).

We’re working on re-working simple affiliate feeds for Amazon, eBay, etc.

Related Content:

• Job Search Affiliate Programs
• Feed for All
• Thursday 03 November 2005
• Amazon.com RSS Feeds
• A Little Net Disaster Web Fun

This is the fifth of five predictions for 2008, expanded from the short
form generated on short notice as
described here.

Prediction

The short version:

There will be massive, newsworthy, churn in the
social-networking space, as Facebook creaks under the strain of its own size
and growth, and nimbler competitors find chinks in its armor.

Told Ya So

This one came true within a week of me making it:
Scoble got erased.
Yes, there are multiple sides to that issue. But it’s a hot issue
nonetheless; since Facebook and its competitors are trying to become the
experience of the Internet for a huge number of people, minor disturbances in
that weather system quickly become major issues.

Let me crank that prediction up a bit: The Scoble imbroglio will be just
one of many Social Networking Scare stories this year.

Hold on a second… there’ve been two already since that one blew up.
From Toronto,
serious
legal-disclosure issues and from Fortinet,
insecure
Facebook apps.

The Lesson Is

Leave a gap, as I did, between making your predictions and expanding on
them. Some of them might already have come true.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
According to a report, Sony BMG is about to become the last of the top four music labels - or should we say, the last holdout - to drop DRM. The first signs of this will come in the form of the Amazon/Pepsi 1 Billion Song giveaway, according to Business […]

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Anyone remember the Foleo? We do - it was Palm’s ill-fated attempt to marry an underpowered UMPC with a cell phone, and it died a very, very swift death. See our coverage “5 Reasons Why Palm’s New Foleo Device Will Fail”
Today we fond out that the Foleo concept is rising from the […]

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
OK - so it isn’t, but after all the ugly iPhone imitations, this is the first concept design that actually looks appealing. We hereby take quick a break from reality to bring you the following idea. A forum member on ZuneScene named Teccom747 dreamed up this concept phone. His specs:
The Zune 3 is […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Less than six months after Intel and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation buried the hatchet, with Intel joining the OLPC board as its 11th member, the partnership is over. The reason was apparently continued friction over the Classmate PC, which was a source of friction between the two groups […]

This is the second of five predictions for 2008, expanded from the short
form generated on short notice as
described here.

Prediction

The short version:

The strain due to the fact that most business desktops are
locked into the Microsoft platform, at a time when both the Apple and
GNU/Linux alternatives are qualitatively safer, better, and cheaper to
operate, will start to become impossible to ignore.

Experience

Around our house, we have screens connected to Windows XP, OS X, and Ubuntu
GNU/Linux.
Ubuntu and OS X are easier to install, less trouble to maintain, and more
pleasant to use. If we were tracking the time we spend maintaining these
things, I’m willing to bet that Windows takes more care & feeding than the
other two put together. Down the road we’ll have Windows only for games, I
think.

We also provide tech support for our mothers, a local Pilates studio, and
various random friends, local and remote. Wherever we can, we’re steering them
to OS X just because they’ll experience less pain and be more productive.

Pain

These days, when you live mostly on OS X & Ubuntu, XP is just
incredibly irritating. There’s always something pestering you to update it:
Adobe, Java, Norton, whatever. Plus random other whining from the bottom right
corner of the screen, about unused icons and firewall security and so on.

As for my family & friends who aren’t pros, and who haven’t been under
the tutelage of one either, their Windows boxes are mostly smoking, diseased,
quivering heaps of goo. Who’s got the time to deal with that shit?

Why I Might Be Wrong

I haven’t spent any time with Vista. Possibly, after a couple of releases,
it’ll make Windows competitive again.

From the Business Point of View

I talk to the individuals and small businesses who are still running Windows,
and I compare them to those who’ve escaped, and it’s just not close. Recently
I was helping Mairin get her system set up—a Mac mini, which BTW is a fabulous
computer for a small business—and was showing her how to do
something and she said “But that’s so easy? Why?” and I said “Well, that’s
how things work on this system” and she said “Well, why are people still using
Windows then?”

The Future

Microsoft’s continuing extraction of monopoly rents is dependent, near as I
can tell, on just two things:

1. MS Office staying good enough that people don’t
   mind paying the fearful Windows tax that goes with it. Except for, Office
   runs better on OS X than on Windows.

2. The Exchange/Outlook lock-in. This seems the big one to me.

Like I Said

This problem is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. Especially now
that nearly everyone has someone in the family with a Mac.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
February 17, 2009, is the last day that broadcasters will transmit analog signals. For many of us, this will mean nothing, as those with cable or satellite TV won’t need to worry about this … only those receiving signals over-the-air (OTA) whose TVs don’t already have a digital tuner.
Those TVs […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
What’s “Naked DSL?” It’s DSL you can get without having to have phone service as well. With more people going totally wireless phone-wise, it’s a “tier” people want. And it was part of the conditions (.PDF) AT&T agreed to in order to get FCC approval of the BellSouth […]

Time Slows Down writes “Scottish born musician and former record label owner David Byrne says the future of music as a career is wide open and identifies six different distribution models now available to musicians in an article in this month’s Wired magazine. At one end of the scale is the 360, or equity deal, where every aspect of the artist’s career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. At the other end of the scale is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Engadget article notes that the Washington Post RIAA article we discussed earlier today may have been poorly phrased. The original article implied that the Association’s suit stemmed from the music ripping. As it actually stands the defendant isn’t being sued over CD ripping, but for placing files in a shared directory. Engadget notes that the difference here is that the RIAA is deliberately describing ripped MP3 backups as ‘unauthorized copies’ … “something it’s been doing quietly for a while, but now it looks like the gloves are off. While there’s a pretty good argument for the legality of ripping under the market factor of fair use, it’s never actually been ruled as such by a judge — so paradoxically, the RIAA might be shooting itself in the foot here.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
In the case Atlantic vs. Howell, husband and wife Jeffrey and Pamela Howell have been accused of file-sharing over the KaZaA network. Their defense has been that although there are plenty of MP3 files on their computer, the files were not shared but were ripped from purchased CDs for personal […]

christian.einfeldt writes “Computers and handheld devices running default GNU Linux or Unix OSes have swept Amazon’s ‘best of’ list for 2007, according BusinessWire.com for 28 December 2007. Best selling computer? The Nokia Internet Tablet PC, running Linux. Best reviewed computer? The Apple MacBook Pro notebook PC. Most wished for computer? Asus Eee 4G-Galaxy 7-inch PC mobile Internet device, which comes with Xandros Linux pre-installed. And last, but not least, the most frequently gifted computer: The Apple MacBook notebook PC.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Although Netscape was once a mighty pioneer in the world of internet browsers, it didn’t take long for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to overtake it and squash its dreams of market dominance. Granted, we highly (and we stress “highly”) doubt any viewers reading this now are relying on Netscape Navigator as their primary browser, but seeing it finally bow out is a bit surreal. According to a post on the Netscape Blog, support (and subsequent updates) for it will no longer be provided by AOL (disclosure: AOL is our parent company’s parent) after February 1, 2008. Sure, old versions will still be available for those who just hate to move on, but the team is suggesting that any remaining Netscape users (a show of hands, anyone?) make the leap to Firefox, and they even point you in the direction of a Netscape theme should you find yourself uncomfortable with change. Rest in peace, dear Netscape — it’s about time that last heap of dirt was finally flung.

[Via BlogRunner]

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Filed under: Gaming

We already knew Nintendo’s DS was quite the popular handheld, and while the PSP recently overtook it in Japanese hardware sales, the most recent numbers show that the Big N’s famed DS has actually rocketed above the mighty PlayStation 2 in lifetime sales (in Japan). Notably, the numbers do combine DS and DS Lite units, but there’s no mention of how the systems stack up worldwide. Nevertheless, the feat is a fairly impressive one when you consider how much longer the PS2 has been available compared to the DS, and unless Sony somehow lightens the PS2 load even further and starts bundling them in with cereals, we doubt it will reclaim the top spot anytime soon.

[Via DSFanboy, thanks J]

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I am trying to find out from my GoDaddy Rep if Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is going to be out at the Consumer Electronics Show because I know GoDaddy is exhibiting this year at CES.

Seeing that GoDaddy just signed Junior (I’m a big fan) to drive a NASCAR GoDaddy car I would think this would be a great opportunity for GoDaddy to connect us NASCAR fans that will be at CES with this living legend!

While GoDaddy has been a long time sponsor of the Geek News Central Podcast. I hope that I can pull some strings and get some camera time with whoever GoDaddy has at the show.

Andy McCaskey and I will be running ACES contest that will be baked into the content we will be creating out their on our 2008 CES daily wrap ups. Companies far and wide have been reaching out to us to trying secure a interview spot with us, to be fair we are once again going to scour the show floor to find you the hottest technology that we will highlight each day.

While we reached over 13 million viewers from our CES coverage last year, the opportunity remains for a company or companies to get some major exposure by being a dedicated sponsor for the event.

Being GoDaddy is our regular show sponsor you can help the show out by sharing our GoDaddy Promotion Codes with folks that like to save a lot of money.

I cannot tell you how cool it is to be Sponsored by a company that is also Sponsoring Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Our Sponsor: GoDaddy Promo Codes, Todd, Geek5, Aloha, Comsale, Central, Geek will save you significant cash at the checkout counter. Using these codes at the checkout counter will help me cover expenses at CES 2008

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Wal-Mart quietly closed its video download service on 12/21, so quietly that no one noticed it — perhaps because no one used the site in the first place.
The store first opened last November, though it didn’t really get moving until early in February. Ironically, the first line of the NY […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
It’s a sad day and the end of an era. Development is to cease on the Netscape browser, which at one time held the largest market share of all browsers, and was the first browser to gain mass popularity.
However, it had been evident for a while that this move was […]

eldavojohn writes “A year after opening its movie download service, Wal-Mart has abandoned the endeavor. They claim this is a result of HP’s decision to stop supporting its video download store software. The article also notes that, unlike iTunes, Wal-Mart offered variable pricing which attracted a lot of studios. ‘The world’s largest retailer instead turned its rental service over to Netflix Inc. Wal-Mart still operates a music download service and continues to sell CDs and DVDs at retail stores and over the Internet for shipping by mail.’ Is this evidence of the strength of unified pricing in media downloads or just another company being squished by the giant Netflix & Apple?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joseph Hargett’s Casual Contrarian, a regular video series examining hot stocks on the US exchange, has just taken a look at Nintendo. Hargett, an analyst with Schaeffers, wonders why only two analysts in the US are covering the stock (Prediction: NOBODY cuts in on Pachter’s turf), before giving it his own personal thumbs up. Which is all well and good, but the real joy here is in getting to the 1:40 mark then trying to make sense of a single thing he says.
[Sadly, Schaeffers aren’t up on embeddable vids, so you’ll have to visit the link below to watch]
The Casual Contrarian [Schaeffers]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
iTunes, Wal-Mart, and Amazon’s “Amazon MP3” service sell DRM-free music downloads, but so far only from EMI (along with a “test” by Universal Music Group). Today Amazon.com announced it has beaten Apple (!) to the punch; it’s signed a deal with Warner Music Group to sell MP3 downloads, giving customers […]

In a constantly-changing society, new technologies exist today that haven’t existed yesterday. Blogger Wendy Piersall says that the best way to move forward and prepare our children is to educate them to innovate, think for themselves, and give them the skills necessary to make a living in the future. How is this done? Teach them through games. She proposes fourteen games that will teach children about business and makes clever arguments about why each is a solid choice. For example, the Sims 2 Open For Business expansion pack lets you manage businesses that can either thrive or fail. Lemonade Tycoon 2 is another viable choice, allowing children to understand the value of their money as they sell the drink in NYC. The Stock Rush game teaches children to invest wisely. These games certainly can teach children the value of a dollar, and they’re fun, too!

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This Forbes story is interesting, but what it doesn’t mention is as interesting as what it does mention. This MacBook is indeed #1 on the Amazon.com Computer Sales List (at the time of this writing), despite the fact that the #2 seller is (after rebates) priced nearly 50% lower, but […]