A great debate is raging as to what the future of video distribution will look like. On one side of the debate are those who claim that physical discs like DVDs, Blu-ray, and whatever format will eventually supplant Blu-ray, will always deliver a superior viewing experience than anything that will be available via streaming or on-demand content.
With all the talk about privacy, this caught my eye. I just found this setting on my Yahoo account. Thankfully it was deactivated.
Epson's Stylus Photo PX800FW is a feature-packed multiformat device that can print borderless photos from 10x15cm up to A4 size.
It also prints directly from memory cards, preview photos on an 8.9cm LCD viewer, photocopies and faxes in black and white or colour, prints onto a CD or DVD, scans text into docs and connects to your Mac through USB, Ethernet or WiFi. But does it perform any better than Epson's PX700W, which was poorly received last year?
Bit of a wash-out
Unfortunately, our base test, a colour print on standard-quality paper, proves just as problematic. The colours look washed out and lifeless, with the occasional banding line. For a printer that costs more than £200, this is simply unacceptable. It performs much better on Epson's own glossy photo paper, with vivid colours, little banding and near-perfect photo reproduction. But with an all-round, jack-of-all-trades workhorse like the PX800FW, you expect all-round quality.
Its failings are less noticeable when printing text, but comparing results with those offered by other multifunction printers, soon highlights its limitations. Very small point sizes look smudged and indistinct, and even larger print loses its crispness and finesse. Very large or bold text suffers the same problems as the colour printouts, with the washed-out feel taking its toll.
It performs better in timing tests, outputting a 20-page black-and-white text file in two minutes, 50 seconds. Colour and black-and-white copies took 25 and 16 seconds respectively, but also looked washed out.
However, the machine is feature-rich and easy to set up to get working. Printing on CDs using the software app is a cinch. Yet this counts for little when its print quality is lacking. Steer clear, unless you do all your colour prints on photo paper.
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Apart from the games and hardware, one of the things about Nintendo that endears it to fans is its general openness – a quality well illustrated in a recent official publication that lifts the lid on planning the DSi.
A new 'Iwata Asks' roundtable with company president Satoru Iwata and the engineers who worked on the new handheld is surprisingly frank about its conception.
Unpopular design
Masato Kuwahara from the Development Engineering Department reveals that he began the DSi project as early as the end of 2006 on the instructions of his superiors.
Kuwahara didn't meet immediate success, however, because of the first design with two DS slots that his team came up with. "The response wasn't that great, and, to tell the truth, we'd sort of been expecting that," he explained.
Extra game slot
Even though customers had asked for a dual-slot system, internal reviews of the prototype found it made for an unpleasantly large DS, resulting in the plan being scrapped.
The rethink brought larger screens and two cameras instead of a single, swivelling camera originally planned, all in a smaller case.
Object of desire
Ever with an eye on the bottom line, Iwata admitted: "Of course, that decision pushed back the release date, and you had to give up the double-slot design. But it was more important that lots of people who would see the Nintendo DSi would want one."
Come April, we'll all be able to see if that turns out to have been a wise decision or not. We know where our money is.
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A feature launched last month, called "suggested users," has given some accounts spikes in the neighborhood of tens of thousands. Some high profile users, who built their grassroots following but were ignored on Twitter's "suggested" list, are getting left in the dust.
Everyone loves a fulsome flat screen. And why not?
You can now bag yourself 22 inches of half-decent LCD panelry for under £150.
But how much do you really know about the technology that goes into these widescreen wonders? The next time you buy a monitor, will you have a clue what you're buying? Or will you be winging it based on little more than size, price and maybe the number of input options?
Fear not - we're going to give you all the information you need to sort the good panels from the bad.
Monitor makers may have a nasty habit of fluffing up spec sheets with all manner of distracting disinformation. But we'll help you keep them honest with the most powerful weapon of all – knowledge.
Not all LCD monitors are the same
If you come away with just one insight from this LCD technology expose, for the love of liquid crystal make it the appreciation that not all LCD monitors are the same.
In fact, there are three major types of LCD panel technology - TN, IPS and VA. Each has its own very distinct characteristics in metrics such as pixel response, contrast and viewing angles. No single panel type is superior across the board.
However, before we trot out the various pros and cons, it's worth understanding the basic principles that underpin any LCD display, from a simple monochrome panel in an ancient pocket calculator to the latest high screens with millions of eye-popping colours. LCD, of course, stands for liquid crystal display. Each picture element, or pixel, in an LCD panel is made up of just that, a cell containing liquid crystals.
On a desktop LCD monitor, there are thousands – if not millions – of these pixels, arranged in a grid pattern. Behind this grid is a light source, literally the backlight. When an electric current is passed through the crystals courtesy of a pair of transparent electrodes, they realign themselves. Precise techniques vary between panel types, but the idea is that there are two basic positions or states the crystals can assume. In one, light is allowed to pass through, in the other it's blocked out.
OK, it's actually a little more complicated than that. The crystals don't block light, they polarise it in a certain plane, and in combination with static polarisation filters, light either passes through the LCD panel or is blocked. What's more, the crystals can assume intermediate positions, allowing some but not all light to pass through. But you get the idea.
Now, on a full colour LCD panel, every pixel is actually made up of three individual elements, each with a colour filter – red, green and blue. However, these elements are so tiny, the light emitted by them is amalgamated at normal viewing distances. Hence, by varying the intensity of light that passes through these elements, a full palate of hues is generated and Bob's your mother's technicolour brother.
Those principles all LCD panels share, but there are lots of detail differences. For instance: some panel types block light more efficiently, allowing deeper blacks and greater contrast.
In others, the liquid crystals change state more rapidly, delivering better pixel response and hence sharper moving images. Still others offer finer control of the positions that the crystals assume, giving superior colour accuracy. But which are best in what areas?
TN – Twisted nematic
TN or twisted nematic panels are easily the most common in today's desktop monitors. For the most part, that's because they are dirt cheap to manufacture. Unsurprisingly, TN panels aren't exactly the sexiest lookers.
A dingy, washed-out image with mediocre contrast and very restricted viewing angles is the hallmark of a TN display. Much of this is because the default position for the crystals in a TN panel allows light to pass through. Only when a voltage is applied do the crystals 'twist' into a position that blocks light.
Fine control of the crystal states is another TN shortcoming, leading to poor colour accuracy. However, one of the upsides is rapid response. The crystals in TN panels change position more quickly than any other panel type, making them great for fast-paced frag fests and action movies. In terms of quoted specifications, TN panels therefore lead the pack for pixel response, achieving very low single digit milliseconds times.
Elsewhere, things aren't so impressive. Static contrast ratios for TN screens are usually well below 1,000:1 while viewing angles are typically below 170 degrees in both horizontal and vertical planes. However, all of these specifications are subject to abuse by manufacturers.
IPS – In-plane switching
At the opposite end of the scale for everything from price and image accuracy to frequency of use is IPS or in-plane switching technology.
Where other panel types have just one controller transistor per picture cell, IPS screens have a pair and therefore offer the best control and colour accuracy. But, this added complexity not only leads to increased cost. It also blocks more light and can lead to slightly less saturated colours.
Initially, this might sound like a somewhat disastrous disadvantage when compared to the competitor panel types, but it's not: the finer crystal control of IPS technology delivers the widest and most consistent viewing angles. The reasons for this are a little complex, but involve the way crystals rotate about their axis rather than the way that they tilt up or twist at one end in a TN panel.
Anyhow, the upshot is that crystals in an IPS panel present a more consistent face to the viewer at varying angles and therefore allow a more constant quantity of light to pass through each of the red, green and blue picture elements. That prevents the colours from going wonky when viewed from an angle.
However, the definite area in which IPS panels are recognised to fall short is concerning pixel response. The greater range of movement makes the crystals in IPS panels a little more reluctant to shift. The longer that takes, the blurrier a panel looks when rendering moving images.
That said, the latest IPS panels are capable of grey-to-grey response as low as 6ms, so you'd hardly call them slow. As for viewing angles and contrast, look for figures of at least 170 degrees and 1,000:1, respectively.
VA – Vertical alignment
The final panel type is VA or vertical alignment. There are actually two types of VA technology: PVA (patterned vertical alignment) and MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment). PVA is much more common, but both share the same basic structure and give similar image quality.
In most regards, VA panels are a half-way house between IPS and TN technology. For price, pixel response and colour accuracy, they fall neatly between the two. However, VA panels have a few foibles that set them apart from other panels. For starters, the default position of the crystals blocks light from passing through. Consequently, VA panels have the deepest, inkiest blacks available and the highest contrast ratios.
They also boast the highest levels of colour saturation (though not colour accuracy) and viewing angles that are nearly on a par with the best IPS screens. All these factors together make VA the most vibrant, eye-catching panel technology of all.
The richness and depth of a higher-end VA monitor gives TN and IPS technology a thoroughly good spanking. Static contrast ratios of 1,000:1 or more are common as are viewing angles in excess of 175 degrees.
But, there is one catch. VA panels are not the speediest. In an attempt to push response times below 10ms, many VA monitors use a technique known as pixel overdrive. While it's a pretty effective measure for speeding up raw pixel response, it introduces a new problem: input lag.
Making your choice
That's how the different panel types stack up. Funnily enough though, many monitor makers are doing their best to avoid mentioning panel types at all, particularly when the panel in question is TN. But there is tell-tale sign you can use for panel spotting: price.
Pretty much all 22-inch widescreen monitors and certainly anything below £250 will be TN-based. Just about any 23 or 24-inch screen cheaper than £300 will almost definitely be powered by a TN panel. Likewise, there are a number of even larger 26 and 27-inch TN monitors priced around £250 to £350.
PVA is the next most popular panel type. It's most commonly seen in 24-inch monitors priced in the £350 to £500 range. A handful of MVA screens also fall into this range.
A number of manufacturers also knock out 26 and 27-inch PVA panels; again, these will be significantly pricier than their TN-based equivalents. Finally, Samsung makes a monstrous 30-inch PVA panel. It's arguably the most spectacular monitor currently on the market.
As for IPS technology, it's becoming increasingly rare. With a few exceptions, IPS is restricted to seriously expensive panels aimed at graphics professionals who are willing to fork out for the very best colour accuracy.
Tricksy tech
As important as panel type may seem, it's not the only factor that defines image quality. Recently, several new electronic image enhancement technologies have emerged, not all of which have been unambiguously successful.
The most infamous of these is dynamic contrast. The theory behind it is simple enough. Motion video and 3D games contain scenes that vary in terms of light intensity from brightly lit daytime vistas to dingy dungeons and nightscapes. So why not vary the backlight and therefore enable deeper darker blacks to be rendered without compromising on vibrancy and brightness for brighter pictures?
That's exactly what dynamic contrast attempts to do by analysing image data as it reaches the monitor and adjusting the backlight to suit. In theory, this all sounds rather impressive, but unfortunately in practice, the result always turns out to be pretty clunky.
Typically, the backlight is noticeably slow to respond, and when it eventually does it tends to crush the fine details in darker colours. We've yet to see a dynamic contrast implementation that actually benefits image quality.
Then there's digital colour enhancement. Here, the monitor's colour balance is digitally processed with a view to either compensating for the shortcomings of the panel itself or just jazzing up the visuals. As with dynamic contrast, we've yet to see a colour enhancement technology that really delivers.
Final screening
By now you'll have a good idea why some monitors look so much better than others and how the different panel technologies compare. More importantly, armed with this information, manufacturers can no longer bamboozle you with superficially spectacular specifications.
If you see a TN monitor with a sky high contrast ratio, for instance, you'll know there's some dodgy dynamic contrast technology at work.
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First published in PC Format, Issue 223
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Materials researchers in the US have come up with a new kind of storage medium that promises tiny devices capable of holding terabytes of information.
Thomas Russell of Massachusetts University and Ting Xu from the University of California, Berkley have developed nanotechnology techniques that pack around 15 times as many bits of data in a given area as current methods allow.
Super-dense data
They did this by effectively getting silicon or sapphire crystals to arrange themselves into optimum configurations for data density.
Existing ways of etching data-storing dots onto silicon are approaching their limits because the wavelength of the light used to do so is bigger than the dots needed.
Size of a coin
The method created by Xu and Russell promises more than 10 trillion data bits in an area the size of a coin – that would be enough to hold 250 DVD movies.
Although the theory is in place, nothing commercial is imminent, as reliable ways to read from and write to the material haven't been worked out. Should that happen, we can all expect our iPods to get a lot smaller and our storage abilities exponentially greater.
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Are you using the Windows 7 beta? Are you anxiously awaiting updates that may advance its capabilities? Are you hoping, perhaps, that Microsoft will make it easy on you by turning your beta copy into a release candidate via Windows Update? Well, starting next week, Windows 7 users will start getting updates, all right. But don't get too excited.
As much as web design is about big things – getting your site structure right, creating a compelling visual design, ensuring your code doesn't cause browsers to copiously vomit error messages on an absurdly regular basis shortly before committing seppuku – it's also about little things.
A good site is polished and finely tuned, taking care to include and refine content that many users won't ever see, because the savvy designer knows full well that some of them will.
A case in point: the humble 404 error, an HTTP standard response code that's shoved in your face when a browser communicates with a server and promptly discovers that what it was looking for isn't there.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why a user might happen across such an error message, but they usually arrive because of one of two reasons: user error or webmaster error – unintended or otherwise.
Spulling mistokes
Probably the most common reason for a 404 is that someone with sausage fingers (or, indeed, perfectly normal fingers, but that's a much less funny image) hammered away at the keyboard, hit Enter, and failed to realise that the URL they wanted doesn't actually exist due to, for example, cunningly spelling 'contact-details.html' with some exciting extra characters that really shouldn't be there.
Net result: the server unintelligently goes "We're all out of cpntact-details.html, I'm afraid" and spews out a 404. The other issue is your fault (assuming you're a designer, developer or general website-making person), if you've linked to something that doesn't exist (due to some amazing sausage-finger handiwork of your own) or if a once perfectly valid URL is now a dead link, due to you moving content about.
Depending on your hosting environment, the 404 can take on all manner of guises, most of which are somewhat unhelpful. On IIS, you often get an error message that makes perfect sense to web designers, but that will make the typical user squeal in horror at its barrage of technical information.
Apache is rather more blunt, uttering 'Not Found' and scant other information, doing the rough digital equivalent of slamming the door in your face and grumpily muttering about "when it was much quieter around these parts and you didn't keep getting interrupted". And if you're using Internet Explorer, there's a good chance it'll hijack whatever it should be showing to instead display Microsoft's 'friendly' error message anyway. (To be fair to Microsoft, its message is friendlier than the standard one, but hijacking default behaviour is always reprehensible and makes us angry.)
Creating custom error messages
With a little thought, most of this nastiness can be avoided, since it's simple enough to create custom error messages for the vast majority of hosting environments. This means that instead of seeing whatever garbage a server spews out, or whatever branded message your host has decided to apply (several hosts now cunningly hijack 404s to present an equivalent page with a URL back to their homepage, rather than yours), you get to decide exactly what appears on the error page. The important thing is to ensure that whatever you present is a lot better than what exists by default.
Jakob Nielsen more or less suggests that because default error messages are so appallingly bad, the very act of changing them at all is an improvement. However, he cites as a starting point taking into account three basic guidelines.
First, the error message must be written in a language that can be fully understood by everyone, including non-technical users, and in a way that doesn't imply what's happened is the user's fault. Secondly, the message needs to detail precisely what's gone wrong. Finally, suggestions need to be made regarding how the user can deal with the problem at hand.
A quick scoot around dozens of 404 pages shows that the majority of sites don't in fact take a great deal of notice of such advice. Some actually go as far as to call the user a ham-fisted idiot, which might just about be OK for a cartoon site for teens, but it's not going to win much praise for a shopping portal.
Too many sites also have a seriously geeky love-in, peppering their 404 pages with imagery and in-jokes that'd even make the typical B3ta aficionado wince and then request a claw hammer for uncurling their toes. (As a quick sidenote, the characters '404' are particularly overused as a design device, despite meaning nothing at all to non-technical people.) Most importantly, many of the pages simply aren't usable: they don't provide any indication of what's happened to get the user there, nor do they offer any means of helping them figure out what to do next.
Amazon's 404 page is brutally simple but surprisingly effective, and covers most of Nielsen's points in just a few lines of text. The user is told that the address entered is not a functioning page on the website, and a clear link is provided back to Amazon's homepage (along with a logo, which does the same).
Yes, the company could do more to help, but as a minimum Amazon's is a good model to follow. Play.com, by comparison, commits one of the worst sins in 404 world, by just redirecting you to its homepage instead of displaying any kind of error message.
The problem there is that a user might assume that the site itself is defective (rather than their typing or a search-engine listing) and go elsewhere. At the very least, it'll take a second attempt to get to relevant content, which psychologically makes people think negatively of the site that's being used.
If no-frills 404 doesn't appeal, others have taken their pages a bit further, with varying degrees of success. BBC News offers simple branding on a white background, and displays "404 - Page Not Found" in red.
Underneath, there's a clear explanation of why this page may have been arrived at, including a brief explanation of link conventions, stating that spaces and capital letters don't exist in BBC URLs. It also explains that the user can click the back button, and gives links to homepages and the BBC's full list of sites and services.
Note that the BBC provides a link to its sites and services, rather than nailing a site map to its error page. The latter was once considered good practice, but it can be overwhelming on an error page for lost users; nowadays, a diminishing number of sites use site maps in this way.
Search boxes
One device that's proving harder to shift, however, is the search box. Although it often makes sense to enable users to search from an error page, it's almost a method of avoiding truly helping the user out: you're providing the pretence of doing so, but actually forcing them to do further work themselves.
If you're keen on integrating a search, follow Microsoft's example. On visiting its 404, you're presented with a search form, but with results based on the erroneous string that led to you ending up on the error page.
Common misspellings are also corrected using a 'Did you mean... ?' sentence, and the entire system is far friendlier and more helpful than just presenting a barren search box. (Also, if your site has integrated search, try using your standard layout for your 404 – more on doing this later.)
If you have neither the time nor the inclination to work on an advanced search tool, there are other ways of helping users access your content. You could, for example, present a short list of links to particularly popular items or pages, or to recent posts on a news site or blog.
These shouldn't become a distraction, though, and simple design devices – headings, coloured boxes and so on – enable you to separate information regarding what's happened from suggestions regarding what to do next.
Fully integrated 404s
A final consideration is whether to fully integrate 404s into your site's design. Again, opinion is divided, with some suggesting that error pages should be simple and have no distracting elements.
Others note that if you do use your site's design on the 404 page it should be stripped back, lacking things like navigation. Frankly, we're not so sure: if your site has a fairly simple design there's really no reason why the 404 can't be directly integrated.
One of the best examples of this is Happy Cog's 404, which uses the site's standard layout, typography and navigation. Because all of the components of the site are clear, the user shouldn't be confused, and because the site's standard navigation is there, access to site sections is only a click away, rather than forcing the user back to the homepage before progressing. (Note, though, how Happy Cog still uses inline links within the error text to direct users to the homepage, design work and company information page.)
Apple also uses this kind of layout although its 404 is less successful, due to welding a site map (albeit a simplified one) to the page. Some might argue that these links enable you to access content more quickly, but Apple has a serviceable search in its navigation toolbar, and dozens of links clamouring for attention isn't what a lost user needs.
Once you're settled on the type of 404 you want to create and have put it together, making it live depends on the type of hosting you have, but is generally a simple process. For example, on Apache you can create a .htaccess file and use the following line of code to redirect the error message to your custom page (replacing '/path/to/file/' with the actual path to your file):
ErrorDocument 404 /path/to/file/404.html
Once you have your custom error pages up and running, things will be easier for your users. However, you can also take advantage of errors to make things easier for you. Consider setting up a system that provides you with reports detailing the 404 errors on your site.
The bulk of 404s will be mis-typed URLs, but many will be links to dead content from search engines, and some might unearth problems in your site itself. If you see the same strings showing up time and time again, you can do something about them, such as fixing broken links or redirecting popular URL misspellings to correct locations.
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First published in .net magazine, Issue 185
Now read 10 things to put on your web design to-do list
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Adography is essentially a marketplace where people can put their amateur photos up for sale, while businesses can put out requests for photos by creating so-called ‘want-ads’. You can find an example of a listing here, which includes the image specifications, asking price, and more. The service is free for people who upload their photos.......
The nanny state lives and breathes – quite literally, in the form of a new kind of mobile phone that can check what's on our breath and inform the authorities of its findings.
Middlesex-based Applied Nanodetectors (AND) has come up with a chip that can analyse anyone's breath and look for indicators of health problems, including carbon dioxide, ammonia and nitrous oxide, as well as alcohol.
Auto pilot
The company has already built the device into a mobile phone with an air hole that lets it function similarly to an alcohol breathalyser – just blow and you're done.
While the bio-chip can detect lung cancer, diabetes, asthma and food poisoning, it's slightly worrying that the makers suggest its presence in a phone might allow doctors to be automatically notified.
Nokia talks
Still, knowing is surely better than not knowing, so it can't be long before blowing into a phone becomes as much a part of daily life as teeth brushing or showering.
AND is already in talks with Nokia about introducing the device in Europe and with Japanese networks about doing the same there.
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Rip-off Britain's service-with-a-snarl ethos could be about to get a kick in the pants thanks to a new system for shops and department stores that measures just how friendly staff are to customers.
Japanese high-tech firm Omron has developed a computer package that uses a camera and the company's Okao Vision software to analyse the quality of a smile.
Honourable face
The Okao software (it means 'honourable face', by the way) rates a smile based on factors that include the angles of the mouth and the corners of the eyes and spits out a score between zero and 100.
Omron says it intends shops to use the package to help train staff to be friendlier in their dealings with customers.
Westward ho
As that's generally not a problem in Japan, we can only assume it has designs on overseas markets in need of a boost on the retail frontline.
Pricing starts at ¥300,000 (£2,235) for a basic system, of which Omron hopes to sell at least 100 in the first year.
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The social networking wunderkind may be cool. But enough already! How's it ever going to make money...especially in a recession?
If you believe certain outlets, Last.fm is in bed with the RIAA and sharing your data with them. However, that's not really the case...
Imagine being on the autobahn with the accelerator down and then you realize that you are driving a wrecked car. The plight is not so uncommon on the information superhighway too.
Britain's love affair with mobile phone text messaging has reached such profound levels it's even being used to help young people protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases.
London's Hounslow NHS has just launched a scheme whereby residents between 16 and 24 years old can receive STD test results by SMS.
Old-fashioned ways too
Users of the service have to first request a chlamydia self-test kit online and send in their samples, of course, but results can be sent by text message, in a letter or through a phone call.
Even though the free service is being offered to almost 20,000 people, each response is made by a human, not an automatic system.
A spokesperson explained: "We are not expecting that volume of people to respond and the texting service is not being automated. Someone will be responsible for answering and receiving the texts."
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Yes, shamelessly 'stolen'(whatever the fuck that means) from reddit.
Now and then you have to stop and wonder what the names of those everyday gadgets we often claim to not be able to live without actually mean?
This absurd little video is ostensibly to show off the sweet new AMOLED screens gracing the S8300, OmniaHD and others. But I’m thinking it was more of a way for their internal viral team to get to play with a whole bunch of baby animals.
What if that was your job? I mean, I’m not complaining — I’m doing my job sitting here without a shirt, drinking pomegranate tea and eating hot hot hot ramen. But if someone said “take this HD video camera and get lots of cute footage of baby animals, with our phones in the background,” I might be conflicted.
[via Crave]
Those lucky (and sadistic) ducks over at iFixit have taken their brand new 17-inch MBP and torn it down with their usual gusto. As expected, the layout and parts are much like its 15-inch cousin but bigger, and of course the much-advertised battery is different. It was removed like any other… not sure why Apple made such a big deal about it. It’s 12820 mAh, which is a grip — for comparison, my G1 has a 1150 mAh battery.
It’s pretty much as advertised, but if you’re planning on swapping out your hard drive or whatnot, this is the best guide you’re going to get.
Olympus will launch five new digital SLRs this year, the first of those being the new prosumer class 12.3 megapixel E-30.
The new E-30 will be made available in a variety of kits with a 14-42mm lens or the new 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 II prosumer lens. Five different camera and lens bundles will be available.
New features include an in-camera “photoshop”, a 270 degree swiveling live-view LCD, and with certain lenses, the fastest autofocus in the industry. The viewfinder is said to be much larger and brighter than the first generation E1/E300 and the image quality has “improved considerably.”
The Asian lady pictured is strictly for beautification and will not be included in any kits.
The Mac Mini rumors are flying like toasters in System 7 these days, and this one is particularly robust. Although some image analysis on the original picture has shown it to be likely a fake, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning out video of this crytogadget.
We know the new Mini will be using Nvidia’s Ion platform, but beyond that it’s mostly guesswork. This little box is small, sure, but I’m expecting something even smaller, or with a different form factor. This one looks like it was manufactured by Nestle Toll House. There’s a “giga bite” joke here somewhere, but it’s just not coming to me.
[via CNET]
The Washington Times has always focused on content. After careful review, we determined that the best way to have the top tools to produce and publish that content is to release the source code of our in-house tools and encourage collaboration.
While we haven’t got any more major news about the Mini 10 (like when it’s shipping, officially), Dell has finally put some decent pictures up on their site. The price hasn’t changed, it’s still going to be $499, and we’ll update more as soon as more information becomes available. You’ve got to admit though, they look pretty good. Better then most netbooks out there in fact.
With the proposed $2.5 billion merger between TicketMaster and Live Nation looming large, many venue owners and promoters are up in arms, deeming the deal anti-competitive and monopolistic (they may be right - the deal is being examined for possible anti-trust violations). Now ShowClix, a TicketMaster competitor that launched in early 2007, is launching the Fair Ticketing Fund, setting aside up to $5 million to entice venues and promoters away from the pending Live Nation Entertainment goliath. Other ticket vendors are also beginning to offer similar deals, including TicketBiscuit, which launched a $10 million fund last week.
For those who aren’t familiar with the ticketing business, here’s a bit of a primer. TicketMaster has long been contracting venues into exclusive deals, promising some portion of the service fees (also known as convenience or venue fees) the site racks up as an incentive for them to sign on. TicketMaster has become notorious for gouging customers with these fees, and many fear that with the Live Nation deal they’ll only continue to rise higher.
Smaller ticket companies like ShowClix don’t typically charge service fees that are nearly as high as TicketMaster’s so they usually can’t promise the same returns to venues. That’s where the their new funds come in: each is promising venues that they’ll use the new funds to compensate for the income they stand to lose from leaving TicketMaster. In effect, they’re giving venues opposed to the new deal a chance to protest it without doing too much damage to their bank accounts.
However, while ShowClix and TicketBiscuit may be giving away money for now, this is hardly a charity - any venues looking to take advantage of the Fair Ticketing Fund will be signing on with ShowClix under an exclusive year-long deal (which is fairly common in the industry), and TicketBiscuit will also mandate an exclusive deal. Still, it’s nice to see these smaller entities take on TicketMaster - I’m getting tired of “convenience” fees that cost a third as much as the ticket itself.
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