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Sony)

Click the pic to launch the slide show.

Sony didn’t hold back this morning, announcing a massive lineup of more than 25 new portable audio gadgets and accessories. The release includes a handful of new Walkmans and speakers, but is dominated by a slew of new headphones designed with portability in mind. Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch are the sport-style earphones, all of which are water-resistant and feature unique and varied form factors to ensure a secure fit during activity. For more information, check out our slide show, which offers details on 20 of Sony’s new audio accessories. (All of the products are expected to hit shelves at the end of March.)

I discovered the series on DVD and was able to catch up that way. After that, I began downloading it from iTunes when it was available. On those rare Friday nights that the planets aligned and I was at home, I’d watch it on TV–if I remembered to, that is. Accustomed to watching the show on DVD and on my PC, I sometimes just plain forgot that it came on Friday nights.

The producers of the show believe most people do watch the show during long DVD marathons or a few days after an episode has aired on their TiVo or DVR. This doesn’t even mention sites like Hulu, where users are able to stream the episodes over the Web for free.

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SCI FI)

Despite this, the show’s popularity has seemingly only increased. Jamie Bamber, who plays “Apollo” on BSG–and is the one actor whom virtually every woman I know has a crush on–said he gets hounded on the street much more frequently now that the ratings are lower than in 2004 when the ratings were at their peak.

Also, I know many people who only watch it on DVD, and most of these people aren’t even the sci-fi-watching types. For many reasons I won’t go into right now, this show transcends the Trekker/nerd stigma.

Even with its recent improvements, the Nielsen system is broken, as it still does not account for all the many ways that someone can watch a show. It’s basically biased towards shows that are viewed in the more traditional manner. DVD, DVR, services like iTunes, and sites like Hulu are changing he way we watch TV. Here’s hoping a much more accurate gauge of a show’s popularity is on the horizon.

According to the AP article, I’m not alone. BSG’s Nielsen ratings have steadily dropped since the series debuted in 2004. “The series averaged 2.8 million viewers an episode during Season 1. During the most recent run of 10 episodes, the show averaged 2.2 million viewers, a slight dip overall but up from Seasons 2 and 3. The series lost some of that steam by the midseason finale, falling to just 1.8 million viewers,” according to the article.

As a fan of Battlestar Galactica, I’ve watched every episode thus far. What didn’t fully dawn on me until I pondered an Associated Press article this week, however, was that out of all the 60-plus episodes I’ve seen, I’ve probably watched less than five “live” on TV (I don’t have a DVR yet).

Members of the always-smug Battlestar cast are willing to show off their hotness at a moment’s notice.

Data from O’Reilly book sales suggests a similar decline for Java and other traditional programming languages over time. Cause for alarm? Not really. It’s just a matter of the web assuming a more vital importance to programming, a trend that will continue to grow. It will, however, take a very long time to make your Java or C skills irrelevant.

Tiobe Programming Community Index, August 2008

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Tiobe)

Java has its detractors, but according to a recent reading of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, it’s still the dominant programming language, with little change in its overall popularity since August 2007. Runners up? C, (Visual) Basic, C++, and PHP.

commentary

That’s the short-term view of the past year. Looking at the longer-term view, however, Java, C, and other “traditional” languages appear to be on the decline while PHP and its ilk are on the rise:

Truth be told, Virgin ceased being a player in the music category a long time ago, said my music industry sources. The company had begun concentrating on DVD and other merchandise sales awhile ago, said one source.

Apple and digital music will go on, but CDs and Virgin Megastores are on their way out.

“I understand why people buy online,” Gomez said. “It’s easier and we’re a lazy culture. But I’m an artist and I’m going to miss album artwork. It’s sad.”

One can hardly find a better symbol of the music industry’s crossover from physical CDs to digital downloads than the intersection of San Francisco’s Stockton and Market streets.

Just across Stockton is a stainless-steel storefront uncluttered by text. Only a single Apple logo glows from the metal and the overall feeling created is of permanence and futuristic technology. Arguably, Apple has done more than any other company to advance digital music, which has driven the CD into obsolescence and retailers like Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Virgin Megastores out of business.

“We were in the area and came in to see if there was anything we wanted,” Conway, an unemployed student said. “There wasn’t.”

Even Adrian Gomez, 23, a Virgin Megastore employee, says he buys much of his music online and understands why consumers are going digital. Still he says, the crossover will mean he will lose his job, along with hundreds of other store employees.

Cameron Conway, 21, and his fiancee, Nici Rodich, 43, didn’t buy and neither of them felt much remorse at the loss of record stores, they said.

How bad have things gotten at Virgin? On Sunday, while the San Francisco location was attracting shoppers, many of them were leaving empty-handed. Apparently 40 percent off isn’t enough to get some shoppers to buy.

On one corner sits a Virgin Megastore, once an icon of hipness and high-end music tastes. Now it looks more like a schlock discounter. Signs blare from the facade: “Store Closing” and “Up to 40 percent off.”

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET News)

Virgin will close the last six U.S. retail locations over the next several months. There were once more than 20 stores based in this country.

Rodich, of Novato, Calif., said she remembers how important to our culture albums were years ago but said, “You can’t stand in the way of progress. I’m a court reporter and I’ve learned that when it comes to technology you’ve got to move forward or fall by the wayside.”

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET)

Bad sign: Adrian Gomez, a Virgin Megastore employee tries to sell iPods across the street from the Apple store.

Lenovo Group reported a 10.5 percent increase in its fiscal first quarter revenues, despite a weakening global economy.

Sales in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, for example, increased by 26 percent, while Asia Pacific shipments grew 11 percent.

Lenovo posted earnings of $1.25 a share for the quarter, up from 78 cents the previous year.

The computer maker reported revenues climbed to $4.2 billion in the quarter ending June 30, up from $3.8 billion a year ago. Shipments of PCs climbed 14.6 percent for the quarter.

The Americas, however, continued to be affected by a weak economic environment, the company stated.

“Despite a softening global economy, we delivered solid gains in worldwide sales,” Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo chairman, said in a statement.

So, again, we bid adieu to a failed format. If you’re finding it hard to let go, hit up your local Best Buy for some HD DVD titles. We hear they’re desperate to get rid of them.

Please access to DVD Forum for HD DVD formats, and
DVD Format/Logo Licensing Corporation for format books and its license.
Regarding the HD DVD products, please contact each selling agency directly.

Last one out, turn off the lights.

March 28, 2008

The HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved as of March 28, 2008,
and the website was closed accordingly.

That was essentially the tone of the note that the HD DVD Promotional Group sent to its members Friday. The obituary for the format was short and to the point:

It was also a bit late. The battle between HD DVD and its nemesis format, Blu-ray, ended as soon as HD DVD’s biggest backer, Toshiba, announced it would stop making HD DVD players. That was almost six weeks ago.

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Crave UK)

HD DVD Managing Members

Google-DoubleClick skated through its quarterly earnings call, with a healthy $5.19 billion in revenue for the quarter ending March 31, and operating income of $1.55 billion. At this rate Google is on track to top $25 billion in annual revenue. The company has a nest egg of over $12 billion in cash. The stock price is up $76 (about 17 percent) in after-hours trading as of 3:30 p.m. PDT. And, Google’s search share in the U.S. is nearly 60 percent. All is well at the Googleplex.

While some pundits don’t see the deal as the right strategy to attack Google, Microsoft’s exec team appears to be wedded to the idea. And, Ballmer and company are nothing if not persistent and relentless when they want something.

In view of Google’s revenue, profit, and romancing of Yahoo, how does this make Microsoft feel? Jealous and angry, I presume. The longer the mating dance lasts, and Google continues to print money and Yahoo plays hard to get, you might expect that Microsoft is more motivated to get the deal done. Microsoft covets Google’s business model and its growth potential, so it makes good sense to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to join up with Yahoo to stop Google from taking over the world, as Microsoft did with Windows and Office.

Yahoo announces its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, and the results will likely be acceptable to the Street given the signaling from the company. Earlier the company said that it expects to post revenue within a forecast range of $1.28 billion to $1.38 billion. For further reference, Yahoo’s full year 2007 revenue was $6.97 billion, with an operating income of $695 million. Revenue for Q4 2007 was $1.83 billion.

During the earnings call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt referenced the ad “test” his company is doing with Yahoo: “It’s nice working with Yahoo and we like them very much,” he said. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Yahoo is getting closer to a deal to outsource its core ad search business to Google.

Whether Microhoo can stop Google’s growth is questionable, the two could be a very large No. 2. Shareholders want a resolution. Will it be AOL + Yahoo with a little help from Google, or some other combo, or Microhoo? Perhaps Google’s continued dominance in the Web era will be a tipping point for Microsoft to sweeten its offer.

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Yahoo)

Yahoo has a good, profitable business, but Google did $4.83 billion just for its fourth quarter in 2007. In essence, Google is pummeling Yahoo, and Microsoft, in the lucrative ad/search space.

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Google)

On the other hand, Microsoft is doing just fine in its current set of businesses, which are coming under a little stress as the cloud inhabited by Google, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, and others affects the perception and future of the Windows and Office franchises. For its fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, Microsoft is expecting revenue in the range of $59.9 billion to $60.5 billion, and operating income in the range of $24.2 billion to $24.4 billion.

MySpace is owned by News Corp., which operates MSNBC competitor Fox News.

Called Decision ‘08, the new site is part of MySpace’s “Impact” political channel, and showcases election news (complete with links to MySpace profiles of NBC News anchors and analysts), opinion, video from MSNBC, polls, and a discussion forum.

“The 2008 election is proving to be the most youth- and technology-driven race in history, and MySpace is a significant forum for political discussion today,” Lee Brenner, MySpace’s executive producer of political programming, said in a statement. “We are privileged today to be partnering with such revered news organizations…and to be taking our first steps in what will be a unique and engaging collaboration for the MySpace community.”

This is very similar to what MySpace rival Facebook is doing through a partnership with ABC News. For NBC, it’s a way to reach a younger audience that likely isn’t watching nightly news broadcasts.

Social network MySpace might’ve chosen MTV as its media partner for the 2008 presidential primaries, but on Tuesday it’ll be launching an election news hub in conjunction with the more traditional NBC News and MSNBC.com.

That’s not the case. Alex Vieux, Red Herring’s CEO, has told employees he is in negotiations with potential new landlords. He said Wednesday, after sheriff’s deputies had evicted him and his staff, that he would announce the location of his new headquarters on Thursday, and added that Red Herring is not in danger of shutting down.

The publication has seen high employee turnover, sporadic publishing of the magazine, and a quirky corporate culture.

Vieux hasn’t revealed the new location, but I’m told by former employees not to take him too literally.

Since Vieux took over Red Herring in 2003, the publication has been less notable for what’s in its pages than for its internal struggles.

Troubled online news site RedHerring.com was inaccessible Friday for more than an hour.

Updated at 2:49 p.m. to include the information that Red Herring’s Web site is back up.

Red Herring is on at least one tech pub’s “Death Watch” and the site outage might have led some to believe the company had finally packed it in.

Vieux has stood out among technology publishers in Silicon Valley for his insistence on a dress code (male staffers must wear a tie), and his former policy on not including bylines on stories. Former employees have complained that the company was often late with paychecks.

According to a former Red Herring employee, many staff members–who have since moved on–referred to Vieux as “Boss Hogg.”

In the same week that the publication was booted from its offices in Belmont, Calif., Red Herring’s Web site suffered a glitch Friday and didn’t go back up until about 1:30 p.m., according to a source, who asked for anonymity.

Now that Microsoft’s Hyper-V is free it will be widely adopted. Which means that Windows won’t be displaced at companies that are going down a virtualized path. Portability and interop have been an after-thought for all of the vendors. It’s about time they started making things work together.

Microsoft and Novell announced that they will jointly support a virtualization scenario in which Suse Linux is running as a guest operating system under Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization.

But, Sun also announced a partnership with Microsoft on virtualization, which leaves Red Hat and VMware without an MS relationship. Dare to dream that all the vendors will figure out a way to make virtualization consumable and portable across operating systems?

As Suse Linux fades further from any relevance outside of Microsoft, and Red Hat and Sun make huge strides in virtualization, Novell plans to offer support for Suse running on Windows. Is there meaning here or is Novell just becoming more of a Microsoft puppet?

I can’t see any production scenario where you would possibly want to go through all those layers of abstraction and performance degradation. As one commenter stated “Linux running in a VM on top of a MS host platform..because everyone wants to put their Corvette on top of a skateboard.”