Chippy's Hiblue Lab

Apparently Sky, is coming to the UK XBox. Today! (At some point)

Being an ex-pat with a Sky card and a father in the UK who pays way too much money to watch golf, tennis, football etc. on Sky I’m now wondering if I can get me some Sky action on the Xbox in Germany.

Apparently you don’t need a subscription to Sky but you do need an Xbox Gold subscription at 40 pounds per year.  If they can deliver BBC1-4 I’d pay 40 quid per year for that, no problem. I doubt BBC is going to be part of the package but it will be interesting to see what Sky include.

When the update comes I’ll test it out with a monthly Gold subscription.

My Xbox 360 was bought purely to front a Media Centre back-end and it’s turning out nicely. If Xbox could deliver a browser or videocast catcher though, I’d be a lot happier.

Tags: sky, xbox

Archos 5 and the starbucks test.

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

There is a mobile computing test that no-one speaks of. It’s called the Starbucks test. You simply take your mobile device into Starbucks, put it on the table and take a deep breath. There are only two possible results. You either feel good or akward. Today I feel good.

Thumbs up for the Archos!

three device mobility

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

Nokia N82 in the pocket: Camera, GPS, BT, HSDPA, Voice, SMS, MP3, mobile web in the pocket.
Archos 5 IT (Android) in the hand: Quick-snack web browsing, video, navigation, ereading, emergency computing.
Gigabyte Netbook on the table: Productivity, 3G and storage.

This is getting very close to my ideal setup. 3G in the Tablet would probably be as close as it’s possible with today’s technology.

I’m currently testing out the Archos 5 Android Tablet on UMPCPortal.
http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/10/archos-5-android-internet-tablet-first-impressions-long/
It’s a bit unstable but I’m hoping that firmware upgrades will fix it.

Notice that the Omnia Pro that I bought isn’t in the picture. I’m really leaning towards keeping the N82 based on it’s digital/internet camera capabilities and the fact that the Omnia Pro doesnt really give me the web experience that I need.

I think this is the setup i’ll take to Amsterdam next week – The Maemo conference!!!

Look U driving 3 million pixels

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

Since I bought my full HD 1920×1080 monitor (LG W2261VP) I’ve been testing with Menlow-based UMPCs. Yesterday I managed to get the Kohjinsha SK3 driving it but it took a few driver updates to get it working at the correct reslution. Today i’m using the Fujitsu Loox U in it’s docking station and it’s driving the two displays in extended mode without any problems at all. I’ll use this as my desktop setup for today to see if I notice any issues, slowness, noise.

The problem with launching a location-enabled service is that there are hundreds of other services already out there. The early adopter user base is spread all over these services and it makes it hard for any to gain traction and critical mass. The other problem is that each application has a fixed use as defined and programmed by the developer which means it may not hit the target requirement.

I’ve always said that Twitter needs out-of-band GPS  information in order to make tweets more relevant to the user and to be able to filter out countries or events when needed and the announcement from Twitter last week that they are working on it literally kept me awake the other night as I thought about the scenarios that would form.

There are two great things about Twitter that make this announcement very interesting. First is that Twitter has millions of users. It’s well established and well past the critical mass needed to keep it going. Secondly, Twitter won’t be making the apps themselves. Just as before, apps will be developed by third parties that dream up cool ideas meaning you can switch between clients and features without losing your data or history. This makes is quite unique and as far as I’m concerned, lines Twitter up to be the #1 location based service within a very very short time.

Clearly there are security and privacy issues to be dealt with. One hopes that Twitter puts strong guidelines in place and that application developers will consider them but ignoring that for a minute, just think about what’s going to happen.

Location means mobility and GPS. Of course you’ll be able to take advantage of location data on your desktop or laptop but the smartphone and mobile internet operating systems are where the action is going to really happen and are really going to be fun. Smartphones with GPS will be able to add location information and show local information either as a separate search or highlighted in the normal stream as you move through different areas. PC’s will fall behind here.

A few ideas…

• Viewing historical location information
• Viewing live local information
• Friend Radar
• Local Events
• Local advertising

One area where geo-enabled tweets will take off immediately is local advertising. Imagine you are tuned into a local stream of everything going on, which I imagine a lot of people are going to do. It only takes one geo-enabled tweet from an advertiser to appear on your stream. ‘Big Mac available half price for the next 30 minutes’ or ‘Happy Hour just started at Coopers’ or ‘Tracy is bored. Wanna meet round the corner?’  is a message you’re going to see a lot. Companies with large numbers of outlets are going to be banging out location-based twitters in huge numbers. Many times more than they did previously! Accounts with _us or _uk at the end will be common too as the advertisers try and hide the big amount of advertising going out!

Unfortunately, the rewards in this area are going to be big and application developers and advertisers will jump on it very quickly. I really hope it doesnt damage the Twitter / Geo ecosystem before it becomes really useful. Having a high-rate account option on Twitter to transport this information is a must-have. This could be an important revenue stream for Twitter while providing an easy way to control the information.

Friend Radar is one to watch although having a blanket on/off location service is going to be difficult. Google Latitude sorted this problem out early with per-friend sharing. Again, it depends on how the applications develop. Sub-accounts or groups (as per Friendfeed) could be a way to deal with it. Joining with Google is another option!

Events and information will take off quickly and it would be great to see busses and trains tweeting their location in real time. Weather agencies need to get up to speed on this too. It’s not only very interesting for many people to know the weather, it’s a very very simple way to save lives. Road traffic information is a good application too and I can’t wait for the first 3G and twitter-enabled navigation application. Nokia are in a good position to be able to do this on Maemo very quickly.

The possibilities are endless and with such a head start and open ecosystem it’s possible that twitter becomes the de-facto channel for sharing ANY geo data. In my opinion, Twitter have just positioned themselves as an important layer for the Internet. Early players will stand to gain a lot.

Twitter: Location, Location, Location

Tags: gps, lbs, twitter

Viliv S7

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

Despite a ton of competition from cheaper netbooks, this 800gm 1.3Ghz Atom-based convertible UMPC has me quite excited. I’ve tested the keyboard and it’s excellent but the main thing is the super-efficient build. Viliv are saying that it will playback videos for 7 hours on one charge. That means at least 5 hours online time. UMPCPortal should be getting one for testing soon so i’m really looking forward to it.

Morning paper.

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

I remember how my Dad used to read the paper at breakfast. I used to do it too but now, things have changed.
Despite handling a lot of devices recently, the U820 has become a real workhorse for me in both my business and social life. It goes everywhere and always returns to the docking station when not in use. The docking station is important.

Tweetdeck, Reader, Techmeme and Gmail are the apps I reach for along with my wake-up drink every day!

Today I have the rare pleasure of being able to sit in the garden at 0900.

Nearly two years ago, Adobe announced that the Flash 9 player would support H.264. There was talk of ‘hardware acceleration’ too but event though we’re up to version 10 of the player, its still one of the most CPU-heavy video playback methods there is. Not only does it appear (in testing with many UMPCs over the last 2 years) to be CPU intensive but it still can’t hook into any H.264 hardware decoding that is available on many pc’s out there now. What are Adobe doing?

Is there a problem with hooking into the hardware layer? XP was always difficult in that respect but Windows Vista introduced  DXVA 2.0 which was supposed to make hardware acceleration easier. Not easy enough for Adobe it seems.

They must know about the problem because you don’t have to search too far in the netbook computing space to find a ton of questions about the topic. The flash video experience on a netbook, umpc and MID simply sucks! It looks like it will take a big GPU manufacturer to convince (read: pay) Adobe to fix this and that’s why Nvidia and Broadcom have said that things will change in 2010. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the majority of the small , cheap PCs based on the GMA950 and GMA500 chipset. It looks like nothing will change for devices based on these platforms.

One hope for the big low-cost, low-end (largely Intel-based) notebook and mobile computing market is that Intel get together with Adobe to make sure that the next generation of the netbook platform and mobile computing platform  is supported. No-one knows what GPU core is in those platforms yet (Pinetrail and Moorestown) so maybe Intel will surprise us with a Broadcom core and a hardware accelerated Adobe Flash player in Moblin at IDF in Sept. As for the high-end devices, maybe Adobe is just happy to let everything run in big fat, power-hungry CPUs.

Tags: adobe, flash, moorestown, netbooks, pinetrail

U820 and MiFi with Earl Grey

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

I’ve been using the U820 as my only mobile device for a week now. For ad-hoc work it’s been fantastic. Small enough to take everywhere and big enough to be able to scan a ton of email or RSS feeds or to tap out the occasional long email or post, like this. The only thing I need to fix is the resume time. From hibernation it takes minutes. Longer than a cold boot. Something is definitely wrong!

The Mifi makes accessing the Internet as comfortable as being at home. Built-in 3G would be slightly easier but I wouldn’t be able to advertise UMPCPortal.com as the hotspot name!

Mobile internet event with vodafone

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

Im at the mobile internet event with Vodafone today. Using the MiFi over the O2 network!

X70 is working well too.