Information Overload

Winter Holiday Hiatus 2011

'Tis the season for spending time with family and friends, catching a cold, email overload, and failing to send out holiday cards. Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, etc. Have a great New Year! Go Niners!

CALM Act 2010

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (S.2847, 2010) is now being enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, which should lower the volume on the remaining 30% of ads that are too loud (albeit companies can try to get a hardship extension through 2014).

RIP CEA Tech Enthusiast

The Consumer Electronics Association moved faster than most of its members by ending its short-lived Tech Enthusiast program. Current members will receive a full refund in the form of a Best Buy digital gift card, and can access the site through the end of this year.

SkyDrive For iPhone

The Borg finally released a SkyDrive app for Apple's iOS devices, a move they should have made long ago. Microsoft moves like molasses, and sucks at marketing so they have yet to educate the masses about their free cloud storage service. SkyDrive for iPhone is pretty basic, but works (unless one wants to open a .one with OneNote for iPhone). This cloud storage user would use SkyDrive more if it could handle 50 MB files like Dropbox, or the rest of Microsoft Office for iOS materializes.

Fix or Block MICA

The intent behind the Mobile Informational Call Act (H.R.3035) is hopefully less nefarious than—unrelated—SOPA/PIPA. However, MICA's current language creates an even bigger loophole to give telemarketers the ability to robocall people's cell phones in the U.S. A practical ammendment to the bill would be to require telemarketers to pay mobile operators for the calls that they place to mobile phones, and prohibit mobile operators from charging recipients in any way for such calls.

Fix or Block PIPA & SOPA

One of the few issues that attracts bipartisan support, and priority (thanks to corporate lobbyists) in Congress is the creation of new laws intended to protect content creators of software such as apps, books, movies, music, and more from digital pirates. Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas that the likes of Hollywood dreams up to reduce piracy are often overreaching, and not in the best interest of most Americans. The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R.3261), and PROTECT IP Act (S.968) are the latest examples of flawed legislation that's seriously being considered by Congress. Fight for the Future has put together an infographic, and short video that summarizes why SOPA/PIPA would be bad for Internet users:

TiVo + DIRECTV = Meh

TiVo is finally back as an option for DIRECTV customers. Unfortunately, TiVo's lengthy absence and stagnation have resulted in trade-offs that DIRECTV highlights on its website. It's too bad TiVo didn't have the cash to buy Hulu because Hulu Plus would make their $20 monthly fee more palatable.

webOS Goes OSS

HP announced that they're working on releasing webOS to the open source software community. Alas, it sounds like there weren't any interested buyers so backing webOS as an OSS venture for 4–5 years is a nice way to save face. If HP is serious, then webOS has the potential to become a viable mobile platform for OEM's looking for alternatives to Android. It doesn't bode well that HP doesn't plan any new webOS hardware until 2013. RIP the Palm part of HP Palm?

Xbox 360 System Update 2011

It's not really clear what Microsoft is calling this week's Xbox 360 System Update. Tuesday's enhancements deliver a "new Xbox experience" but they are once again meh in total. The updated Netflix app looks prettier, but feels far slower when navigating through it compared to its predecessor. It remains to be tried, but Xbox LIVE Cloud Profile and Cloud Storage (512 MB free) seem to be the two best new features if they work as advertised...

My Xbox LIVE For iPhone

Was going to write about Tuesday's new Xbox experience, but Xbox LIVE was overloaded. In the meantime, Microsoft has also released My Xbox LIVE for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The official iOS app brings some of Window Phone's bundled Xbox LIVE functionality to Apple devices. Here's hoping the Borg treat iOS users as equal candidates for assimilation into their Xbox LIVE platform. If MS were quick on their feet, they would release an Xbox LIVE SDK for iOS, and encourage iOS game developers to use Xbox LIVE instead of Game Center, Open Feint, Facebook, etc. Potential upsides would be making inroads with iOS game devs who might consider making WinPho apps, and exposing more end-users to Live. Sony sucks at software.