At CES there are companies from all around the world. And the respect people have for intellectual property seems to depend on the culture. There's nothing quite like walking the show floor only to see your stuff on some computer's screen without permission. The above photo doesn't really show it well but Chinese Computer Manufacturer "Lime Computer" was showing their full screen weather application on their PCs. It's cool but it's using Stardock's copyrighted weather images. ...
By now you have probably heard that this year is the last year Bill Gates will be giving a keynote. He's going to devote his full time efforts to his foundation. You can see his awesome keynote (parts are hilarious) over at Neowin.net here . The nice thing about trade shows is that they force companies to pick the things that really matter to show off. Booth space is always at a premium and so only certain things can make the cut. Based on what I saw at the Microsoft booth the key i...
I like toys. I admit it. When I was 15, I would go to the store to buy a Transformer and claim I was buying it for "my little brother" for a gift. Here at CES, there are lots of toys such as these cool World War II era toy tanks. I've only had time to barely scratch the surface of what's at CES. Stay tuned.
One of the big trends at this year's show is that people want to customize their gadgets and computers to a level unheard of just a few years ago. One of the things Stardock has been showing off to partners is MyColors 2.0 . With licensed content from the NBA, NHL, NCAA, GM, with more on the way, the library of MyColors themes is growing quickly. Stardock plans to begin making MyColors generally available later this month. MyColors Theme Manager MyColors 2.0 is set to be pr...
While the HD-DVD group canceled some of their press events due to the defection of Warner Bros to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD has a pretty significant presence. There seems to be no shortage of HD-DVDs currently available on the show floor as my blurry picture makes clear. The CEA announced awhile back that over 30% of American households own an HDTV. With approximately over 60 million HDTV sets sold, the demand for high-definition video is growing. Thus far, both Blu-Ray and H...
One trend that is dear to my heart is the furthering of customization of PCs. At CES, we're seeing a lot of customized cases. Various cases seen at CES Alienware has a very impressive set of cases including the one pictured above. While I personally would probably not personalize my case (my case is under my desk) it is pretty cool to see how far the quality has come and like the idea of PC users being able to customize their PCs far more than previously.
While most attendees pick up badges and badge holders for the show, bloggers were introduced to a somewhat...different experience. To get their badge holders (i.e. the things you put your badge into) you had to go onto a great journey. Here you can see bloggers making th etrek away from the show into the dark reaches of South Hall to get the official badge HOLDER for the badges they already have. That said, bloggers do get to enjoy all the goodies of being the press. ...
Last year I spent a lot of time reading up to improve my business skills. This year, I am prepared to make better use of what I have learned as well as administer some tough love in the process that will, on the surface, violate a lot of the rules of business management. So below are some New Years resolutions I've made for business: I'm going to administer less and be more hands on to discipline ourselves on how we get things done. Not that I'm going to be some sort of nasty basta...
RWN has a great collection of obnoxious quotes made by famous people last year. Here are some examples: 34) "Perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for [the falsely arrested Duke lacrosse players] Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced....As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives....They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's bask...
Warning: Spoilers below. The Thalan have the most unique technology tree in the game because they come from the future. Here are some of their unique technologies: Hyperion Domination (Evil Only) Hyperion Domination incorporates a number of various tweaks to ship design that results in a 10% bonus to ship hit points. Unfortunately, the work to do this is very dangerous. Luckily, the steady supply of slaves abducted across the galaxy to work on these special ship ...
Apple is conquering the world Google vs. Microsoft Live DRM is losing ground PC Makers need to improve experience The Cloud is starting to take over Last year was one of the most exciting years in tech I've ever seen. Not only did we see amazing new products come out such as some great new digital cameras from Canon and Nikon, but we also finally started seeing cell phones take usability more seriously, the launch of Windows Vista, cars starting to cater to techies in a big way and a lot ...
Twilight of the Arnor raises the stakes. I really don't like the concept of nerfing. If someone is too powerful, then I tend to like to correct this by making everyone else subsequently more powerful. Those of you who have played the beta so far can attest that if the civilizations from Twilight were to go up against the same civs from Dread Lords that the Twilight civs would utterly destroy the Dark Avatar civs. But what we're working on right now is just going to be so much fun in ...
Windows Live Writer is a pain because it tries to do its own custom skinning. The Live team really should adhere to the standard Windows UI conventions IMO. It just bugs me that the Live apps, which are pretty good, should have their own wacky look that is different from the rest of Windows.
The Altarians do not call themselves Altarians. It is the term humans call the residents of the third planet orbiting Ara Centauri. Known as "The Altar", it has become simply known as Altaria since it is the only planet with intelligent life in that part of the galaxy. The evolutionary history of the Altarians is a story on its own. The Altarians name for their own planet is loosely translated as "Elemental". But how they evolved on this world is something of a mystery. Long ago, a sentien...
I'm using the "release candidate" of Windows Vista SP1 and so far, it's been pretty buggy. My big grief is with Internet Explorer. It regularly will just hang. It doesn't take down the system but there's nothing quite so annoying as having a long post you're working on get lost because IE7 just starts to hang. I'm really going to have to reconsider using Safari I guess at this rate.