Microsoft has decided to scrap its current software based approach to mp3 players (Plays for sure) and enter the hardware market directly with its own music device: Zune.

Plays for sure (PFS) is an interesting approach by Microsoft to control the mp3 market through its Windows Media software. The idea was to offer an alternative to Apple’s iPod by offering a seal of quality grouping all non-Mac providers of soft and hardware (a little bit like the Intel inside – but Windows Media inside).

However early compatibility problems (like the early Plug&Pray) and the continuing radical success of Apple have surprisingly caused Microsoft to change gears, launch its own PFS-incompatible Zune and start the mp3 war all over again (they keep PFS, but with who will support this if Microsoft itself is taking a different system).

The new ZUNE clones the closed-standard strategy of Apple. Like with gaming consoles, Microsoft seems to be betting on a few players controlling the music player market with a closed software and hardware solution. Given that Apple makes no significant money from selling songs, but cashes in on the devices, Microsoft is probably also recognizing Apple’s strategy as the best, at least for the early market situation.

Will Microsoft succeed and turn around the market?

I will put my bet on Apple this time – Microsofts golden age is over!

After a long wait, Microsoft has finally launched its new explorer (download here to check it out).

They have basically copied what can be considered the 4 killer features of Firefox:

- Tabbed browsing and bookmarking

- Integrated RSS browsing

- Configurable search box

- Optional add-ons created by users/3rd parties
They added some minor innovations to it like a “printing optimizer” to shrink very wide pages or tab selection using thumbnails. They also promised increased security protection against phishing etc…

It’s worth taking a look, it certainly catches up with innovations and adds some new stuff, but I will not switch until I have compared it to Firefox 2.0, which is coming out as a final release before the end of this month, although a pre-release version is already available for the impatient.

Happy browsing!

Nicholas Negroponte has been in the news for a long time as the boss of the legendary “Media Lab” @ MIT. Now in his sixties Negroponte has stepped down from that job and pursues the “1 laptop per child” initiative (OLPC).

Check out one of these videos (18 min, 55 min)

“Imagine a world where all school-age children own a laptop computer, even those living in villages lacking power and telephone service. With backing from News Corporation and Google, among others, Negroponte has begun to line up millions of orders from Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, China and South Africa. Even the United Nations has bestowed its imprimatur on the concept.

Negroponte’s prototype computer is a “skinnied down” version of what he describes as the typical “obese” laptop. Remove sales and marketing costs, and set the machine up with a 7.5″ screen, Linux software, a hand crank for power, rugged rubber case, and super bright display so “it can be taken into the sun and read like a book,” and you’ve got a very inexpensive tool for helping 800 million children explore, interact and create.

Negroponte casts a wary eye on the potential grey market appeal of the machines, and is determined to make them so distinctive as a government-distributed, educational tool that taking one would “be like stealing a post office truck.”

Negroponte concludes, “Changing education on the planet is a monumental challenge,” taking decades. But OLPC will “seed the change,” and help “invent the future.” 

Check out the OLPC FAQ for more detail on how they plan to make 100$ laptops 

“The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.”
I guess data storage will be provided by Google (or similar) profiting from ads like with Gmail.

Amazing project – certainly one to track and support!

Check out the wikipedia entry for interesting additional info, like criticism from industry, 3rd world country leaders etc….

I happened to stumble accross this though-provoking video-speech from Dan Gilbert, a Harvard Psychologist – he talks about hapiness and human’s ability to predict the best way to reach it.

Here is a nice description of Dan Gilbert’s conclusions from an Amazon review of his book
“1) We often exaggerate in imagining the long- term emotional effects certain events will have on us.
2) Most of us tend to have a basic level of happiness which we revert to eventually.
3) People generally err in imagining what will make them happy.
4) People tend to find ways of rationalizing unhappy outcomes so as to make them more acceptable to themselves.
5) People tend to repeat the same errors in imagining what will make them happy.
6) Events and outcomes which we dread may when they come about turn into new opportunities for happiness.
7) Many of the most productive and creative people are those who are continually unhappy with the world- and thus strive to change it. Happiness is rarely as good as we imagine it to be, and rarely lasts as long as we think it will. The same mistaken expectations apply to unhappiness.

Gilbert makes these points and others with much anecdotal evidence and humor.

A pretty happy video, but not as happy as you think it is going to be.  ”

If you liked it, Gilbert has his blog full of interesting related posts.

Yesterday I came accross a very interesting video speech by Bill Gates (you can find versions for higher bandwidth here) talking about future trends and upcoming MS product launches (for a shorter version look at this Engadget summary in pictures)

To summarize the main contents:

* In the initial part of the keynote Gates demonstrates how he sees the digital lifestyle becoming real in the next four years, up to 2010. In Gate’s vision user files will be stored on the Internet (what they call “live services”) and will be accessible from all sorts of net-connected devices he demonstrates as examples:

- a huge vertical screen that could well fit on a refrigerator that he uses to check news and emails and see the current location of geopositioned family members
- a huge horizontal screen (1,5m to cover full viewing angle) on his working desk where he runs teleconferences while in parallel working on documents on other parts of the screen (see picture)

- a projected screen in the airport VIP lounge that uses his phone as connection and his fingerprint as user-authentification

All these services will support a fully connected lifestyle, where you have full seamless access to all your data and the Internet at any point in time

* After this first demo there are several product teasers on MS Vista, the new Urge music project and XBOX360 among others
Very recommended video if you are into digital lifestyle and want to check Microsoft’s vision on 2010.

Bingo, the rumour becomes truth!

Several blogs and newspapers (NYT/WSJ) are hinting at the possibility of a large acquisition of Youtube by Google for 1.6 USD billion.

This would be a huge change to the online video market, allowing Google to be number one in this fast growing category, getting an improved position to extend its text-ads/search domination to video-ads, which is the definitely the next big growth frontier.

While some analysts think of Googletube as the result of a perfect match, I definitely understand there would be benefits from structuring the deal as an extended alliance (MySpace style) – certainly a safer option for Google (see Mark Cuban’s opinion)

A Myspace style deal would have following advantages:

• EXTRACTING THE SAME ECONOMIC ADVERTISING VALUE (blocking its competitors from showing ads on the site and revenue sharing for less USD)
• AVOIDING DOWNSIDE RISK OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (check this polemic previous post about how Youtube would face its end soon).

However my feel is, that there is a high chance of the acquisition going through in the end, despite Google never having made any such large-scale acquisition in its entire history. The last 6-12 months have been a collection of deals by Google attempting to pre-empt Yahoo and MSN to get distribution: From the Dell deal to have the Googlebar preloaded for 2 USD per PC, to the multi-year exclusivity deal with MySpace worth 900 USD million.
I believe Google will decide to aggressively bet on user-generated videos, believing it will have to face copyright issues and confront being sued by 3rd parties anyway with Google Videos, so why not bet on a positive outcome thanks to it excellent lawyers and go for full market leadership if everything goes right.

Aggressive? Yeah, but hey we are talking about the same company that:

- offered 2GB free mailspace for anyone (300-500 times more than competitors),

- is building a gigantic proprietary computer network with 10s of thousands PCs running its own OS

- is starting to offer free Wifi for the full city of SanFrancisco (and soon NY?)

This move would certainly not come as a surprise to me.

Good luck Google

The entrepreneurial team behind Kazaa and Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are testing a new system of TV streaming based on P2P.

Based on their success track record, this is definitely a project to put on our “watchlists”.

While the website doesn’t give a way a lot Businessweek has just published this insightful article.

Exec summary of the article:
The Venice Project is currently trying to convince a range of small, medium, and large media and TV companies to place their full-length, professionally produced content on the network, although anyone will be able to post video on the network. It’s also talking to advertisers and marketers that could place video ads on the network.

At the bottom of the screen, there are controls like those on a DVD player, including stop, pause, and fast-forward, as well as a search window to find new videos. An image on the left includes a menu of preset channels. And on the right, there’s a set of interactive tools that let you share video playlists with friends or family. An image at the top of the screen identifies the channel and the name of the clip you’re watching. All of the images can be expanded by clicking on them with a mouse.

The Venice Project is not a file-sharing system. It’s based on peer-to-peer technology, in which the infrastructure comprises user PCs, not central servers. But users don’t download video files. The videos are streamed to their computers instead.

The beta test will be expanded dramatically by the middle of November, he said.

A9 is Amazon’s attempt at search engine (if you haven’t, give it a try).  Since it launched 2 years ago it has been innovating with some cool features but has clearly failed to capture the audience. Since its CEO left for Google it seems Amazon is cutting down the experimentation and is limiting features to those that increase its e-commerce revenues.

If you are a of strategy games and/or a fantasy fan you have to check the amazing trailer to the new Warhammer RTS game Namco is developing.

It’s just amazing how the cinematics look so good. Look at the details, such as the spikes of the priest’s hammer or his facial expressions (watch in HD and full screen)

Unfortunately the in-game units, although pretty decent, are not half-as-spectacular, but that’s the classic disconnect between mouth-watering trailers and real gameplay.