BNA refuses to modernize

My new job requires me to travel quite a bit more than my last job (which required basically no travel at all). I've begun the life of a road warrior to a small extent, already going in and out of BNA (Nashville's airport) a couple of times a month in the last little bit.

Anyone that knows BNA and knows me, knows this means frustration. You see, i'm a geek and like my power-hungry gadgets, and BNA is practically void of convenient power outlets. While most airports in the country have rows of waiting area seats complete with A/C and USB power outlets, BNA has only a few power outlets scattered under payphones, behind doors, and at the base of columns, like the picture to the right. With few exceptions, all of these require sitting on the floor to access.

So imagine my surprise when my dad (who also travels a good bit) sent me this. He decided to ask about what i think we all assumed were impending upgrades to the waiting areas. Apparently, we'll be waiting a while:

I was talking to a gate agent at Southwest Airlines today, and he tells me that Southwest has requested that they be allowed to add outlets and USB charging devices in their gate areas and were denied. They have even installed some of the chairs, but were not allowed to connect the power to them. I have experienced these at other airports and wondered why they had not installed them in Nashville. To find it is our own airport that is keeping these from being installed is frustrating and embarrassing.

If you are like me and want the airport to allow these needed improvements, take a moment and write a short message to the Nashville Airport Authority here:
http://www.flynashville.com/comments

So there you have it. Your call to action. Let's all let BNA know how ridiculous this is, and bring Nashville's airport into the 21st 20th century.

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UPDATE:
My dad just heard back from the BNA authorities. Looks like they do have "plans" and their infrastructure is presenting challenges. About what i assumed, but this still should have been prioritized and implemented a while back.

We were very excited when Southwest approached the Airport Authority with the charging station project however the installation required would have involved significant core drilling of the floor plates to accomplish implementation. The nature of our infrastructure doesnt allow for surface electrical runs which would have continued to be a factor down the line if the charging stations ever needed to be relocated. Realizing this is an important and necessary customers service enhancement, we have taken on the project ourselves through our wireless services provider and hope to be rolling this out throughout the terminal (not just Southwest gates) in the very near future. Thanks for you interest in our facility and our program. We welcome your comments.

Rebecca Ramsey
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority
One Terminal Drive, Suite 501
Nashville, Tennessee 37214-4114
615.275.1600

Cupcake!

Very happy to hear that the "Cupcake" update is apparently being rolled out to G1 users at last. This will finally, really make my G1 the phone i wanted it to be.

Here's the quick list of features i'm looking forward to most:

• Support for A2DP & AVRCP Bluetooth profiles (Stereo!)
• Video recording (with better YouTube account integration)
• Soft (onscreen) keyboard
• Open Applications by Voice Command
• "Significant" bug fixes in email checking, especially POP3 and IMAP
• New menu option to list running processes
• Updated WebKit browser core (way faster!)
• Copy / paste is enabled in the browser
• Find is enabled in the browser (for searching within a page)
• Save attachments from MMS

I'm not sure, but it may also finally include support for more Home Screen widgets.

Another cool addition to the Cupcake build of Android that doesn't affect my G1: It now supports x86, which if i read it right, means i can load Android on my PC if i want to.

UPDATE: Maybe it's coming, maybe it isn't. T-Mobile USA won't confirm or deny it yet, but said an announcement is forthcoming.

UPDATE 2: Confirmed. Rollout starts the weekend of May 9th and will be complete by the end of May.

Little Help!?

Just a quick post to beg for money. Ok, kinda.

For those following the saga of the ReTweetBot (vote here for a new name, we don't like that one), you'll know that it is a cool Twitter app that i had an idea for, and i talked Garrett into coding for me.

Well, i'd like to pay Garrett back for his trouble (and ok, i might keep a little for myself).

So... ChipIn here. Heck, even if it's just $0.50, that's fine.

Thanks!

Macroblogging

For those that have followed this blog for a while (Hi Christy, mom, dad, etc) you'll probably recognize that i haven't posted in a while. In fact, this is probably coming up in your RSS feed reader and you're wonder what this blog is and why you subscribed. Many of you may have subscribed because you were told by many other people that this was a blog that covers the Nashville Predators. And it does. Or did. Kinda still does. It covers the Predators about as much as it covers anything these days, which is to say, not much.

I have increasingly been using Twitter to share my thoughts with the world. The tool of instant spur of the moment microblogging has sucked me in completely. So much so that i actually created (or helped create) a tool specifically so i could have a place on Twitter to talk about the Predators and not annoy the general population.

However, a strange thing has happened lately. I have begun having more frequent thoughts which i would like to share with the world, but can not be expressed in 140 characters or less. Personally, i blame the long hours minutes of holding my son Ian while waiting for him to fall asleep. With that much unoccupied time, my mind wonders on long tangents it hasn't been able to in a while.

Anyway. I also remembered that i can quickly blog from my phone from anywhere via email in a manner not dissimilar to how i use Twitter. This allows me the freedom to quickly express that brilliant thought that will change the lives of everyone who reads it, but do so in an unencumbered fashion (and with pictures!). For instance, i can now afford the characters to use words like "unencumbered".

So, be prepared to have this space active once again. Or at least a little more so. But to be clear, a lot of what i have to say, especially about the Preds, will probably still be on Twitter.

ReTweetBot: Instruction Manual for Users

(Note: We've finally launched ReTweetBot.com
these instructions are mirrored there along with much more info)

After essentially borrowing and tweaking the idea from a few others, @phragmunkee (Garrett) and i put together what he accurately dubbed the ReTweetBot. A very simple tool that allows for Twitter users to form permanent groups that have a large numbers of users, with a common interest, follow each others' tweets without having to follow all off-topic tweets.

You can check my first post on the topic for a bigger explination of what ReTweetBot groups are and how they got started (and how this differes from hash-tags for topical twittering).

What follows is a quick instruction guide for users of the groups (a set of instructions for managers of the groups will be posted shortly).

---

(For all examples below, I will use the group @PredFans as the group in question. Just substitute the name of whichever ReTweetBot equipped account you want to use when you are posting.)

There are two basic ways of posting to a ReTweetBot equipped group.
1) Using an @ reply. Simply start your Tweet with "@PredFans". Anyone can post to a group this way (if the administrator has the option enabled).

Send a tweet like this...
And it will appear like this...

As you can see, this method has the disadvantage of "double posting" and making what you say show up in your regular Twitter feed as well as going to the group account. Sometimes that is fine, but the point of these accounts is to move topical conversation 'clutter' to the group account, so there is a better way...

2) The other posting option is to send a Direct Message (sometimes called a DM) to the ReTweetBot enabled account. For this to work, the admin must have the option enabled (it is "on" by default) and the ReTweetBot enabled account must be following you on Twitter. If they aren't following your Twitter account, then the @ reply option above is the only way you can post.

The advantage here is that your Tweet will only show up on the ReTweetBot account (for everyone following there to see) and not clutter up your main feed.

So you send the tweet like this...
And it will appear like this...

With no duplicates in the feed!

So, that is the basic method behind posting to a group.
A few more pointers and tips:

• Your name will be added to the front of your tweet (along with a colon and a space), so make sure to leave room - you can't post a full 140 characters. If your username is 11 characters long (like mine), your message to the group can only be 127 characters long (11 for username + 2 for the colon and space + message).
  
• If you want to tweet "at" someone in the group using the @ reply method, make sure you still start with the ReTweetBot group name first, otherwise it won't post. Saying "@predfans @pwnicholson blah blah" will post to the group. Saying "@pwnicholson @predfans blah blah" will not post to the group.
  
• Same principle aplies to DM posting method. "d predfans @pwnicholson blah blah" willpost to the group just fine. "d pwnicholson @predfans blah blah" or "d pwnicholson predfans blah blah" will not post to the group.

When everything is working right, you'll end up with a twitter stream that looks like this:
A bunch of people with a common interest who don't have to follow each others' every tweet to have a conversation about the topic they all care about.

If you have any questions or feedback for the groups, please let me know in the comments of this post. We hope to be either launching either an online service, open to all, or make the code available so others can start their own groups soon as well. For now, the test groups that are up and running are:

@PredFans - the first group, created for Nashville Predators fans. Already up to 160+ followers with many regular participants.
@TitanFans - for fans of the Tennessee Titans
@GoLeafs - For fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs
@OilFans - For fans of the Edmonton Oilers
@MotorcycleFans - For fans of two-wheels
@BOLOEastNash - "Be On The Lookout" Crime watch group for the East Nashville neighborhood

Twitter Groups Done Right! (aka: I hate Hash Tags)

I hate hashtags.

Now, i know hashtags have a place. For very large groups (for instance, those tweeting about the presidential debates all over the country), hashtags make sense. It allows people to search for a given tag and see what anyone has to say about a topic.

But there is a problem with hashtags.
For large, but closed (and relative to the larger Twitter community: small) groups, hashtags are a mess and create all sorts of issues.

EXAMPLE PROBLEM:
Today many geeks, including myself, are at BarCamp in Nashville. They are encouraging everyone to hashtag tweets with #bcn08. But the problem is, I can garuntee you there are people who normally follow myself, Christy, Jackson, Kate, Alison, etc who aren't the least bit interested in BarCamp. Well, tough for them because thanks to only using hashtags, we're going to flood their Twitter feeds with what is essentially a private conversation for those participating in BarCamp.

There is a solution though!

Last year's BarCamp (back in 2007) featured a basic retweet service that searched tweets for a certain string ("BCN") and posted it to one Twitter account (go search back to posts in 2007). This let everyone that wanted to "hear" people talking about BarCamp follow one account and not miss out. That way they don't have to follow everyone at BarCamp and hear them talk about their kids later on. You just hear what they have to say about BarCamp, but nothing else. Awesome.

That was only part of the solution though. There were still issues.

Problem was, it looked for a simple string in any Tweets. In this case it was "BCN". So if, for instance, my buddy Jackson, who i already follow on Twitter, said something with "BCN" in it, i got it twice in my feed. Not to mention the same problem of cluttering feeds with things people don't want still applied.

THE SOLUTION:
So, the solution seemed pretty simple: change the retweet engine from repeating based on a simple string, and rather look for people who Tweet @replies to the group account, or better yet, send direct messages to the account.

This gives two levels of filtering:

• Those who want to have @reply filtering setup on their Twitter feeds (only show @replies to people i'm following).
• I can keep messages to the group account out of my main Twitter stream by sending it as a DM.

So, i had the brilliant (very very simple) idea (of taking someone else's idea and changing it). But i couldn't code it. My coding-fu has long ago left me and if i can't do it with HTML and basic Javascript, i'm at a loss. Enter Garrett (aka @Phragmunkee). He's a geek in Chattanooga that helped me setup a ReTweet engine for Predators fans.

So, we now have @PredFans. Anyone can post to it by starting a tweet with an @reply (which would leave the post in their normal stream as well), or send a direct message which leaves it out of thier normal stream and says it only to those that want to follow the topic.

This is what the resulting stream looks like:
Clean, simple, and it doesn't clutter up the individual feeds and streams of the users involved.
As you can see, the most important factor is that it allows for very quick, real-time conversations among twitter users in a far better way than traditional hashtags.

It also gives admins more control. While we have @PredFans wide open, you can restrict those that can post to the group to only users you choose to follow with the group account. Creating a closed-posting group that anyone can follow and read.

And yes, Twitter quickly granted us white-list status so we can poll the API twice per minute to check for new posts. We could go faster, but we're running on a borrowed server for now :-)

---

FYI: We just started a few more groups as well:
Tennessee Titans football fans: @TitanFans
Toronto Maple Leafs fans: @GoLeafs
Edmonton Oilers fans: @OilFans
East Nashville Crime List: @BOLOEastNash
Motorcycle Fans: @MotorcycleFans

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Random Updates

Two quick random updates on previous posts:

1) Back in May i posted about Fox Sports' announcement that they would be increasing their ability to handle HD signals and that in 2009 they would be 100%, 24/7 HD. Of course there was no promise as to when in 2009 they would be 100% HD... Today we got the confirmation that out of the 55 Predators games that will be airing on FSN South (or is it FS South now?), 22 will be in HD. They are pretty widely spaced through the season, and don't seem to pickup later into 2009...so we'll see if that improves or how that is connected to this great new HD signal processing center.

2) The KeepOn that i raved about back in September of '07 (you remember that right?) is finally going on sale...for $30k each. A company (BeatBots) has been formed to sell the cute little interactive robots, and for now they are primarily targeting the technology to research firms and universities. So i guess that goes on my "If i had a million dollars" wish list, not the "General Wishlist". Check.

As a reminder of how awesome this thing is, here's its appearance in Spoon's video for "Don't you Evah"

the return of Turbo

Overclocking PC's makes sense to me. Manufacturers send out PC components clocked to certain standard speeds that make sure the components operate well for long periods of time with no errors - but usually they could go faster if a few tweaks are made, so some people (as i have done a few times) change a few settings and boost the performance of their system a bit. Simple enough.

Some manufacturers even make 'pre-overclocked' systems where they take the biggest, baddest hardware available and push it even higher. They are sold at a high premium for gamers that want the absolute best performance possible.

But what i haven't seen since the 486 era is a turbo button. But check out MSI's new videocard - the 9600GT will have a big red "Turbo" button on it that will automatically overclock the card.


Why? If the card is stable enough to run overclocked, what person in their right mind would turn the "turbo" off? It never made sense to me back in the 386/486 era either.

UPDATE: To be clear - i know why they do this. It's all psychology. Just like Spinal Tap. 11 is one higher than 10, so if my amps go up to 11, then they are louder. If my video card has a turbo button on it, then surely it is faster than some old "normal" overclocked card.

I'm on Google News!

For those that don't know, Google News pulls stories from major news sites, but also pulls stories from blogs as long as they are authored by more than one person (like say, ghia's blog).

There are also a number of sites such as Bleacher Report and BallHype that aggregate sports blog stories and republish them together. The practical upshot is that post that a person makes on an individual blog now show up like they are posted to sites authored by many people, so Google News will search them.

You can also setup Google News to search for certain terms and display those results for you next to the pre-set categories (such as Sports, World News, etc). I have it setup to search for Nashville Predators news and guess what just showed up...


Look familiar?

Not that big a deal, i know. But i just think its cool that something i wrote would come up on Google news :-)

All Predators games in HD "soon"

Good news Preds fans - more HD is on the way!

I had the "HD will do more for hockey than any other sport" discussion again last week. Between the ability to see the puck (sans glowing) and the ability to see more of the play developing on the ice (much of hockey actually happens away from the puck), the benefits of getting as much hockey in HD as possible are evident.

Last year, we Preds fans groused about not having more games in HD repeatedly. Center Ice didn't show the games in HD (even if they were available) and Fox Sports Net: South, which carried most games locally) only provided a relative few games in HD. The worst came in the playoffs, where Preds fans only got one game (on NBC) out of 6 in HD. Out of 94 Predators games played in the 07-08 season, only 23 were available in HD in Nashville (1 NBC, 1 Versus, 21 FSN-S).

We were told that most of the games weren't available in HD because there was 1) a limited number HD production trucks at FSN's disposal and 2) a limited amount of bandwidth and signal processing ability to simply handle that many HD feeds.

So, back to the "good news": FSN just announced that they will soon be opening a new signal processing facility in Houston that will allow them to "handle up to 40 live [HD] games per day". More importantly, they promise that "in 2009", they will be 100%, 24/7 High Definition.

Of course, that could take until December of 2009...or they could miss their target entirely. But the fact that they are making a concerted effort to get as much HD out there as possible is a good sign. And 24/7 means that even if the NHL is the last thing they support, it will be here eventually!

Side Note: If they can get all Preds games in HD sooner rather than later, and the NFL does indeed go into a lockout*, this could be a very good year for hockey in Nashville indeed.

*I like the Titans just fine, and wouldn't wish a lockout on other fans for anything. But from a strictly business point of view, you know having the NFL go into even a short lockout would be a boon to the Predators business. UPDATE: If the NFL does go into lockout, it won't be until the 2011 season.

I love technology (and the Spurs)

We don't have cable, but that hasn't prevented me from watching any of the Stanley Cup and NBA playoffs. Thanks to MyP2P, which provides live feeds from China (makes you realize how useless the commentators are when they speak another language and you don't miss anything), and ESPN360.com, i've been able to watch all i want, live over our broadband connection.

ESPN360.com is particularly great. I can watch anything on any ESPN/ABC sports property around the world (including rugby, soccer, etc if i wanted to), many of which are available on "replay" (on-demand). Best of all, the quality is outstanding. The feed of last night's Spurs/Suns game (which the Spurs won handily) was a feed of the HD broadcast (which means widescreen) and i think darn close to HD resolution itself. Certainly looked great.

Here's a screen cap (click on it to see it full resolution) so you can see the awesomeness.
Best part: it is free, at least for anyone whose ISP supports it, which AT&T (Bellsouth DSL) does. Not sure about those on Comcast or TDS or other ISP's around Nashville.

critter captcha

First off, for those not familiar with a 'captcha', they are basic test for humanity in web-based forms, meant to keep spammers away. If you make a comment on my blog, you'll see one. They are generally a random collection of text that you have to enter into a form...the typical "type the word you see here" kinda stuff. The one at the right here ("A6LTY") is from a Facebook sign up page.

You may have seen them getting more and more distorted lately (like the one to the right from MSN). This is because spammers were starting to use basic OCR software to allow their automated programs to defeat the tests. OCR software has a hard time seeing through distorted letters that (most) people can still easily see.

Last week captcha's were in the news not once, but twice. First, Gmail's captcha on their sign up process has supposedly been cracked. Gmail had been a pretty safe place to do your email business until recently, but now we may start seeing more spam come from "@gmail.com" (like we've been seeing from @hotmail and @yahoo for years). If that wasn't bad enough, there are apparently spammers in Russia paying people $3 a day to do nothing but enter captchas all day.

So, what is a site supposed to do to protect its users against spammers?

Go fuzzy.

I just signed up for an account on the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle to comment on a story about East Nashville's 5-points area*. I was greeted with this captcha:
That's right. You now get to go back to kindergarten and identify your animals. I hit refresh and it gave me 9 new animal pictures and asked me to click on all animals with four legs. Creative and kinda fun. I wonder how long it will take to crack though...

* I wanted to make a comment, but haven't been able to yet due to a really screwed up sign up process, because this chick must be really dumb to think that 5-points is named that just because the businesses are part of the Greater 5-points Merchants Association...wow...is Brooklyn named that because you get to it on the Brooklyn Bridge?

headset for the truly cool

This is awesome.

A Bluetooth headset for your phone...that also functions as a USB MicroSD card reader. Just pop in any MicroSD card and unsnap the ear-piece off the headset...and plug it in to a USB port. Wow.

And it's just $80, which isn't much more than your standard higher-end Motorola headsets these days. And it looks really cool. Video here.

I wish i didn't have a laundry list of other stuff on my gimme list, and a shortage of cash for it already.

GrandCentral

I just signed up for the latest cool tech to come into an open "Beta" from Google: GrandCentral. Really cool concept, pretty solid execution. Can't wait to see what it turns into eventually (or how they monetize it in the future).

The basic concept is this: Signup. Get a new phone number. Setup all your real phone numbers to tie to your account. Now, when someone calls your GrandCentral number, it actually rings any of your numbers.

For instance... if you were to call 615-823-1734, it would ring my work number, cell number, and home number simultaneously. I would then have the choice of answering, forcing the call to voicemail, or screening it...you'd start leaving a voicemail and i could "pick up" if i wanted to. I would be able to access your voicemails from any phone, or from the web. I can also set rules to direct different callers to different numbers at different times of day, and even have custom voicemail greetings and rings for different people.

The fabulous thing about this, is the people calling my number will never see my real phone number. I can even call into my GrandCentral number and then dial out to someone - the GrandCentral number would show up on caller ID, not my real number.

And it's all free...for now anyway. I could easily see a time when in between my witty custom ring sounds callers would have to hear ads, or something similar.

But for now, this is pretty sweet.
It is a semi-open beta, and i have 7 more invites i can send to people (leave a comment if you want one), or you can just hit their site and try to sign-up yourself.

And gimme a ring if you want: 615-823-1734 :-)

LAN Party!!!!

It's that time of year again: My good friend Matt and I are celebrating another trip around the sun (my birthday is March 7th, his is March 1st). So, we're going shoot each other. :-)

Yes, we are throwing another LAN party!

dark picture from last year's party

This year we're going to try to make things a little more coordinated. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to base the day's gaming around the Valve Orange Box and games distributed through Steam. Specifically, mods for Half-Life 2, but we'll probably throw some Team Fortress 2 in there, and may break out Quake 3 Team Arena, Battlestations: Midway, or any of the other free demo games on Steam.

Depending on who is there, we may end up playing some Tribes 2 (now free online), or some RTS or other (Battle for Middle Earth?) and we may even devolve into playing some console games (like 8-player NHL 08 on my shiny new PS3). But we'll mostly stick to stuff on Steam.

The party will be March 8th at my place in East Nashville, from 1:00pm to... late (probably around 10:00pm or 11:00pm...)

Here's the fun part - you're all invited!

What you have to bring:

* Your own PC (with monitor, keyboard, mouse, and headphones!)
* A running copy of Steam and Half-Life 2 installed - before you arrive if possible
(the full Orange Box package is a plus, but not needed)
* $5 for pizza

We'll provide snacks and drinks, as well as seating, tables, power, and network connections.

If you are interested in attending, then let me know by either commenting on this post or direct message me on twitter (just post to Twitter "d pwnicholson: i want to come to your cool LAN party") and i will get you directions. If you are some really random person i've never heard of before, i may want to at least...ya know...talk to you first. But all my rad blogger buddies are certainly invited, male and female alike (of course, be warned: to have fun at this party there is something of a requirement to be a gaming geek at some level).

If you can only come to part of the party, that's certainly fine. Several people are already planning on being there for "only" 4-5 hours. It's cool.

It's over

UPDATE: Toshiba did not make the surrender announcement as expected. However, one of the manufacturers of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies has switched to Blu-Ray only production given the shrinking demand for HD-DVD media. Toshiba is holding on, but the end is inevitable. Just a matter of when.

-----------------------------

Wow. That didn't take long.

The official truce documents haven't been signed yet, but it looks like the Blu-Ray doesn't just have momentum - the battle is over. HD-DVD will be no more very shortly.

After all the major studios switched to (save Universal and Paramount) and Netflix, Blockbuster, Best Buy, and Walmart all went Blu-Ray exclusive...it only took a day or so for Toshiba, the main manufacturer of all things HD-DVD to pull the plug. That pretty much seals the deal. If they stop making HD-DVDs, that just leaves one manufacturer (Hitachi - who made only about a third of the HD-DVD hardware to begin with).

Those wanting to track the state of the battle near the end, check this "state of the division" that lists the basic tech differences, which studios support which format, manufacturers, and other pertinent information that led to the downfall of HD-DVD.

So, everyone go grab your PS3's and stand-alone players. The war is over!

more bad news for HD-DVD

When Wal-Mart drops you, you are pretty much done.

More Blu-Ray goodness

If all of this wasn't reason enough to consider the HD-format war over, Netflix just announced that "Netflix, Citing a Clear Signal From the Industry, Will Carry High-Def DVDs Only in Blu-ray Format". As for its current HD DVD inventory, they said the company "would continue to rent until the discs' natural life cycle takes them out of circulation in the coming months". So it sounds like HD-DVD will be going sooner rather than later. (This makes me wonder though - do Netflix discs get abused that badly? Each disc only lasts a few months? Ouch.)

Between Netflix and Blockbuster going Blu-Ray only, Engadget is right - it is going to be darn hard to find HD-DVD to rent, even if they don't truly go away.

In related HD-format war news:
Here's the list of movies being released in each format this week. Still have any questions?

Blu-Ray: The Amateurs, Becoming Jane, Gone Baby Gone, No Reservations, Over America In High Definition, Over California In High Definition, We Own the Night

HD DVD: The Amateurs, (and a 'mature audiences' movie that will remain nameless)

Total count is now HD-DVD: 333, Blu-Ray: 476

In related Netflix news:
Someone just posted a new plug-in for Windows Media Center that allows you to integrate the Netflix online streaming "Watch Instantly" content. Sweet. This will go perfect with my new MCE setup upstairs :-)

And in other related Netflix news:
Netflix has apparently started a contest (no idea how long ago) for someone to develop a better way to predict what type of movies people will like. The "Recommended For You" section of their site, along with Amazon and other sites is based on algorithms that factor your past viewing habits and ratings. $1mil to a great idea. Anyone have any thoughts?

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UPDATE:
More bad news for HD-DVD. Best Buy just announced that they will switch from a neutral stance to recommending Blu-Ray. They will promote Blu-Ray hardware and titles on their website and in their store. They will still carry HD-DVD, but will give preference to Blu-Ray.

is the format war over?

Personally, i think it is fairly safe to call it. At 'worst' we might end up with a truce and both formats will survive in some capacity, but i don't think it'll even come to that. Sony finally beat the Betamax (and mini-disc, ATRAC, memory sticks, Super Audio, and UMD among many others...) curse and won a format war.

Blu-Ray is here to stay.

Blu-Ray had a huge boost in market share after Christmas, and still routinely controls 60%-plus of the high-def movie market week after week. Since the inception of both formats, Blu-Ray controls 64% of the market, and has controlled all 10 spots on the Nielsen VideoScan list of top titles every week since Christmas. It is also worth noting that many HD-DVD movies come bundled with the standard DVD as well, so the HD-DVD numbers may be given a boost by customers buying those copies for the standard DVD's, not the high-def format.

I even did a little research for ya. Here are a few interesting fact nuggets that lead me to believe in HD-DVD demise:

• Blockbuster has decided to go Blu-Ray exclusive in over 1,700 stores.
• You can get a Blu-Ray drive for your PC for under $200 now.
• Sony just announced a smaller and cheaper Blu-Ray laser system. Cheaper and smaller players should follow.
• Sonic (makers of MyDVD personal DVD making software) are halting production of Scenarist for HD-DVD. This is the professional-level application used to author (make menus, features, etc) many hollywood retail discs.
• Microsoft VP of global marketing recently said that the XBox 360, which has an optional HD-DVD add-on, may one day have a Blu-Ray add-on instead/as well.
• A german retail recently began offering a rebate/discount on the purchase of Blu-Ray players for people that exchanged (brought back) "old" HD-DVD players.
• Many retailers are shifting shelf space away from HD-DVD and toward Blu-Ray, making HD-DVD's available "for special order". Ouch.
• Woolworth's is making HD-DVD online only. Blu-Ray exclusive in stores.
• Warner Brothers elected to cease HD-DVD exclusivity, and is switching to Blu-Ray, and is taking New Line Studios (read: Lord of the Rings) with it. Many (including the New York Times) feel this is the death knell for HD-DVD.
• The only studio to switch from Blu-Ray to HD-DVD was Paramount Pictures (along with Dreamworks) back in August of '07. This switch prompted director Michael Bay to say that he wouldn't make Transformers 2 if Paramount didn't release it on Blu-Ray. Of course he later backed-off, but still...

Getting a handle on which studios are lined up fully in which camp would be tough, especially given the distribution rights for different territories, etc. However, I think one of the more important aspects of a format war is the ever-important Killer App.

Killer Apps for a movie format would of course, be movies. So, let's make a short list of movies or series with a major cult following that might compel someone to purchase a player for either format (in no particular order):

HD-DVD:

Bourne Trilogy
Serentiy
Dune
The Mummy
Shrek
Star Trek (movies and TV shows)
Battlestar Gallactica (TV show)
Heros (TV show)
Braveheart

Blu-Ray:

Pixar Movies (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars, etc)
Stargate (movie and TV shows)
Pirates of the Caribbean
X-Men
Lost (TV show)
James Bond (many not yet released)
Disney Animated Features (many not yet released)
Lord of the Rings (not yet released)

Both:

Monty Python
The Matrix Trilogy
Harry Potter
Bladerunner
Terminator
Superman Returns

Still undecided:

Star Wars
Indiana Jones
Firefly

So...spot anything you can't live without?

One of the other early deciding factors has been who is buying these players. It would be all well and good if all ABC sitcoms from the 1990's were released on one format or another, but if those people don't drive early adopter sales, then it won't matter.

Which brings us to another point: HD-DVD has been pushing massive price cuts for players and media. However, mass-consumer demand is still for normal DVDs. The only customers buying high-def format movies are early adopters and videophiles. Not the types that generally react well to red-tag sales and feature stripped players for low prices.

As of Jan 28th, there were 381 HD-DVD titles compared to 459 Blu-Ray titles available. Blu-Ray also adds more each week on average, and they tend to be more popular and "a-list" titles. Here's the "new release" list for the month of January as an example:

Blu-Ray:

• Shoot 'Em Up (New Line)
• War (Lionsgate)
• Resident Evil (Sony)
• Resident Evil Trilogy (Sony)
• Resident Evil: Extinction (Sony)
• 3:10 to Yuma (2007) (Lionsgate)
• Con Air (Buena Vista)
• Dragon Wars (Sony)
• Killing Machine/Shogun's Ninja (BCI)
• Man on Fire (Fox)
• Night of the Werewolf/Vengeance of the Zombies (BCI)
• The Rock (Buena Vista)
• Sister Street Fighter/Sister Street Fighter 2 (BCI)
• Sunshine (Fox)
• Breaker Morant (Image)
• Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate)
• Mr. Woodcock (New Line)
• Suburban Girl (Image)
• Went To Coney Island On A Mission From God...(Starz)
• The Game Plan (Walt Disney)
• Saw IV (Lionsgate)
• Daddy Day Camp (Sony)
• Damages: The Complete First Season (Sony)
• The Invasion (Warner)
• Justin Timberlake: Live at Madison Square Garden (Sony BMG)
• Monty Python's Life of Brian (Sony)

HD-DVD:

• Mobsters (Universal)
• The Pianist (Universal)
• White Noise (Universal)
• White Noise 2: The Light (Universal)
• Zodiac: Director's Cut (Paramount)
• The Ten (City Lights)
• Channels (Vanguard Cinema)
• Method Man: Live from the Sunset Strip (Music Distribution)
• Strauss: Die Fledermaus (Opus Arte)

Both:

• Dispatch: Zimbabwe - Live at Madison Square Garden (WMG)
• King of California (First Look)

So. I've got my PS3 and am firmly in the Blu-Ray camp now. Pixar was my killer app, but Stargate, the 5th Element, Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter sure didn't hurt. Cars alone is worth the investment for me. If you haven't seen it in HD yet, let me know and i'll arrange a time for you to come over and watch it. It will blow. your. mind. Just make sure you put in a fresh set of contacts or clean your glasses well before you come over.

blogging to go

After a few hundred blog posts or so, and many months of being mobile-web enabled, i have finally setting up Blogger's email-to-blog feature.

This is not without its limitations (no formatting, no links, poor image embed ability). Never the less, this post is coming to you straight from my new blackberry via the gmail mobile app.

You may be amazed at my geek power now.