John Porcaro has reiterated  over at the Gamerscore blog that there are no plans in the works to release game titles on HD-DVD using the upcoming add-on drive. 

Since announcing the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player accessory at E3 2006, we’ve been clear that it is designed exclusively for playing HD DVD movies.  It will not play games on HD DVD.

There you have it.  Time to move along now back to debating the cost of the HD-DVD player. ;)

It looks like a new site is up at www.notfornoobs.com. I snagged a screenshot of the "secret symbol" that shows up, a logo for the Razer brand of peripherals.  I have to admit, it's not the best I've seen- putting Microsoft logos into teaser programs is a no-no in my opinion.  But is this a tie-in with the soon to be smash-hit movie, "Snakes on a Plane"?  Gizmodo thinks it's a new game hardware product announcement.  

Even if I knew, I couldn't say. 
We'll just have to wait and see. ;)

Final Update: Early in the day I posted this, I had some concerns about authenticity which have since been cleared up – looking forward to when we all learn more <g>.

My boss made me do it.  Seriously.  My boss wants me to blog about the Aquagate, saying it's the coolest MP3 player he's ever seen.  It's annual review time at Microsoft so I will humor him.  Matteo Thun has partnered with Villeroy & Boch to bring this showering/steaming class cube that has been buzzing around the Internet. From their product material:

Thanks to the possibility of playing MP3-files or listening to your favourite radio programme, you can now relax and at the same time enjoy your favourite music during a refreshing shower or vitalising steam bath. Hot mist from above, cold mist at head-height, a ‘cool down’ programme that offers you coolness from top to toe, aroma and light therapy, a rain shower or a Scottish shower are all part of the extremely luxurious equipment level.

Aquagate™ is fitted with four delightful automatic programmes in which all functions are harmoniously combined. For a conscious and healthy life the Wake up, Relax, Fitness and Feel good programmes provide perfect relaxation at the right time of the day. The central gate of the Aquagate™ is available in the stylish materials teak-wood, pure Italian limestone and aluminium in a champagne-metallic colour. The cabin can be placed free-standing, but will also make an unprecedented impression as a design-icon in your bathroom against a wall or in a corner. The Aquagate™ is available in two spacious sizes: 90 x 100 cm and 100 x 130 cm. In our special Aquagate™ brochure you can read everything about the endless possibilities of the Aquagate™.

They had me at Steam shower, they lost me at Scottish shower.  But I like the way they spell "programme" so I'm happy enough.  An LCD display, USB port for loading MP3s.  Too bad there's no WiFi.  This thing would be bad-ass with WiFi enabled access to your music library.  Villeroy and Boch, I'm willing to beta test, just leave the Scotsman at home please. ;)

Like coke and pepsi, Windows or Mac, another heated debate is raging- XM or Sirius satellite radio. My wife wants a car that has XM, and already is talking about getting it because she thinks the playlist on Sirius' Broadway is too limited.  Of course, she never would have thought of this if not for my testing the Sirius S50.  I'm sheepishly admitting I'm a Howard Stern fan (for better or for worse- I'm from the NY area) so I like Sirius also for NPR, and Rolling Stones radio.  Fortunately for the rest of the unwashed masses, The Washington Post's Marc Fisher has a great, in-depth guide to picking between the two.  Now debate amongst yourselves :)

This week - a little bit crazy, a little bit soul, a little bit unleashed to make you whole.

• National Lampoon's Animal House (Universal)
• Ray (Universal)
• Unleashed (Universal)

courtesy High-Def Digest

Sometimes a mashup of two existing ideas just makes sense.  For example, let's mash up two of the most popular Windows Sidebar Gadgets (or Widgets) - a clock and a photo sideshow.  After seeing The Human Clock on Time's Top 50 Web Sites it's occurred to me that this would make a great Gadget for Windows Sidebar with a human element.  Imagine a clock that shows original pictures from around the world, each incorporating the time in a unique way.  It should be super-simple to write (I'm just a little busy with other projects right now <g>).  Anyone want to write it (with the author's permission of course).

Chris Pirillo and a group of TechTV alums are reviving the show concept as "UndoTV" as reported today at Wired News.  Taking a page from the YouTube nation, expect to see original content from a geographically dispersed set of our favorite on-air hosts.  Leo Laporte and others have already signed on. Chris and I were talking about his plans to roll this out at a social event a few weeks ago.  Glad to see this happening.

Source: Wired News: TechTV Reborn as 'UndoTV'

As the Sirius S50 continues to shine on the list of Top 10 Most Wanted on eBay, apparently Crutchfield has published details about the truly portable Sirius Stiletto 100.  Here are the latest details from OrbitCast:

• True Portability. The Sirius Stiletto will have a built-in antenna that allows reception of Sirius' signal without the need for an external car-dock or home-dock.
• Antenna/headphones included. For supplemental reception, you get a Sirius antenna strapped to your noggin - included with the Stiletto.
• 100 hours of Storage. The Sirius Stiletto handles MP3/WMA, and allows you to intermingle Sirius content with your own digital music collection. The Stiletto supports Microsoft's PlaysForSure protocol.
• WiFi Capability. The interface (pictured to your right) looks very similar to the Zing interface as SBS points out. I'd it's not too far of a guess to say that the Stiletto is using the Zing's WiFi technology - allowing you to stream Sirius online when you're in a hotspot.
• Battery Life. Two batteries are included with the packaging. One standard, and one extended life, which offers 4 hours of live SIRIUS reception, 14 hours of WiFi reception, and 22 hours of stored playback time. (The wording is a little fuzzy here - are these numbers from the standard battery? extended battery? or both?)
• Cost. The Sirius Stiletto will MSRP for $399.99.

I suspect this device, like the Sirius S50 may be based upon a PortalPlayer design. Portal also provides the innards for the iPod as well as other players on the market.  The implementation of course, is largely up to the end-manufacturer of the product.  To me, it looks like an S50 and a Sansa got sensual and forgot to wear protection. ;)

Update0: According to Anything but iPod, CNet reports this device is powered by Zing.

Courtesy OrbitCast and Sirius Backstage

THANK YOU to maverick Mark Cuban and C|Net's Blogma for ranting about a topic I've also been on the warpath over for years- product packaging that makes the customer the enemy.  We've all experienced it- tough plastic-molded around the product we just bought, the knives, the scissors, the bloody incisions on our fingers.  One brand name these are known under in the business is "Thermoform".  Thermal molded plastics.  I call it "The Polycoffin".

But the blame doesn't rest solely with the manufacturer.  Retailers are playing a larger part in detailing packaging requirements, threatening not to "assort" products that do not use the packaging.  They claim that a high likelihood of theft is the reason why they do this.  The risk to the manufacturer is lost shelf space at retail, lost sale in the store (due to lack of shelf or floor space), both of which are crucial to success for many CE manufacturers.  Smaller CE manufacturers don't have the retail power (read: $$$) to fund their own retail programs in-store so they're over a barrel. So the retailer wants to reduce their cost of doing business and passes the buck to the retailer in one direction, the customer in the other; knowing the customer will blame the manufacturer, not the retailer for the situation.  Mail-order products are also affected because the manufacturer cannot afford to keep inventory of products in multiple packaging types. 

But the problem is that thermoform is so cheap now thanks to economies of scale that even low-priced products - kids toys, tools, and blank DV-camera tapes are being put in thermaform.  It's a retail addiction.

So what can we, the measly consumers do about this?  I firmly believe the manufacturers take their cues from the retailers.  Here are a few ideas on how to take back the packaging and put the customer first!

1. Require the Retailer remove the packaging at point of sale.  Let them know that the product you're holding will not be purchased because it is in thermoform.  Offer an alternative - tell them if they're willing to, "Remove your anti-theft packaging from the product after purchase", then you'll buy it.  You wouldn't buy clothing with an ink-tag anti-theft device still attached and they don't expect you to remove it.  Same should go for thermoform. Make it their time and effort that's wasted.  Unfortunately this doesn't work for gifted items :(
2. Mail the Thermoform back to the retailer's HQ care of the CEO. This takes up more of your time, but include a politely worded letter that you don't appreciate being subjected to physical harm in exchange for your purchasing dollars and will be returning their anti-theft device.  This requires a lot of people to do in order to be useful.
3. Speak to the Manager; boycott the product. If they are unable or unwilling to remove the packaging, ask to speak to a manager.  Explain that you will be sending said plastic along with his/her name in a letter to the CEO to the company.
4. Liability. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be and generally think our society has become too litigious.  But I am just waiting for someone, somewhere to get sliced by one of these packages bad enough to do a)nerve damage,  b)require stitches, or c)contract a severe infection that spawns a class action lawsuit. 
5. Blog About it. (Thank you Jeremy).  Bloggers and professional reviewers should consider packaging a part of the criteria as well in their evaluation of products.  It's all about cognitive dissonance.  Buyer's remorse is amplified by bad packaging. 

It's time to end the addiction to thermoform plastic packaging and put the customer first again.  We need a better solution to anti-theft.

Back when the Xbox 360 was announced, J. Allard and Robbie Bach also talked about a new development platform called "XNA", designed to make it easier to build games Xbox and Windows PCs, sharing much of the same high performance code.  A series of tools announcements were made and then frankly, we didn't hear much more in the general tech 'sphere.  Until now.

XNA Game Studio Express will be unveiled today at Gamefest, an annual event Microsoft holds.  Until we have a public demonstration, here's a little snippet about XNA Game Studio:

XNA Game Studio Express will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.

Stripping away the PR-speak, these tools are being developed specifically with Game developers in mind.  The Express moniker is also used in Microsoft developer tools such as Visual Studio Express and SQL Express to denote fully functional but slightly less industrial-grade versions focused on students, hobbyists, and the like. 

Some call it "democratization of the game platform". Ick. What's cool about this announce is that the same way YouTube and GarageBand.com are opening up the doors to indie video, film, and music creators, this will do the same for gaming for the first time.  Up until now, you had to be a game publisher paying thousands of dollars just to get your foot in the door to do serious development for game consoles.  It will be a trickle at first, but this is a disruptive technology that has the potential to revolutionize game development similar to when a few hard-core enthusiasts built a little game called, "Doom".  Think about all the games that could be developed that never would have seen the light of day because, "some suit" said it didn't test well in a focus group. I think the flood gates have just opened. 

Update0: The XNA team has posted their blog here.  More details to come soon ;)

Back from camping (pictures to follow) and I can finally talk about what I and many other Microsoft bloggers have been quietly beta testing for some time now: Windows Live Writer.  A simple WYSIWYG editor with powerful features for blogging, I'm just starting to scratch the surface.  The ability to add watermarks and frame effects to images alone is reason for me to use Writer.  It also helps me avoid the dreaded situation where I write an entry in a browser window and another application grabs that instance and redirects, which under DasBlog would make me lose the entire post.  I'm also interested to see the Plug-in model once the links are up and running.

Congrats to the Windows Live Writer team.  Here's to hoping for more to come.

Download Windows Live Writer Beta

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Hot Donkey!  Nikon just scored FCC approval for their new WiFi add-on to the Nikon D200. Engadget reports:

This new WT-3 Wireless Transmitter that's just gotten FCC approval, however, looks to be fairly substantial, so maybe it won't be so easily susceptible to the same problems. It's also quite a bit more capable, not only wirelessly transmitting photos to your PC, but directly to an FTP server or printer as well. The transmitter will also apparently let you control your camera from your computer, and works with 100BaseTx/10BaseT wired networks if WiFi's not your thing. According to the FCC filings, the transmitter's designed to work exclusively with Nikon's D200 digital SLR, but it seems fairly likely that the same technology could be put to use with other cameras sooner or later.

More details and pictures via Engadget

No, seriously I love the revisionist history tact Apple is taking in their "PC Guy" video from the WorldWide Developer Conference.  Yep, I'll link to it too.  At the beginning of the "wink wink" comments about Vista, they mention Vista's Gadget feature vs. Apple Widgets.  Funny - Apple was inspired by Konfabulator Yahoo Widgets enough to what... dare say you... copy it?  Name for name? Years after Konfabulator's release?  The concept isn't new- Microsoft Research did a paper on it in 2000, well pre-dating either product.  Then they make a statement about Windows Gadgets (which in full disclosure, I helped to name for Vista prior to Google shipping their dashboard) :). 

A few days ago, I called up the guy in charge of Windows Sidebar to congratulate him on the Apple video.  Apparently the competition thinks enough of the feature to slam it.  Like it or not, a good idea is a good idea, and I won't get bent out of shape when OSX SP3 Leopard is made available for download for purchase and includes some features inspired by Vista.  Windows XP has the feature Apple calls Spaces too, but it's a powertoy. It's been available since 2005, mentioned in Wikipedia for some time and it's a free download for Windows customers.

Others took shots at OSX when it was late to arrive, and didn't include features like DVD playback.  Vista will ship when it's ready and include advanced features such as digital cable HDTV PVR and enhanced home networking that makes it super-simple to set up and even diagnose when a WiFi router or other component goes on the fritz (happening a lot since I upgraded my WiFi- another story). Yet my Powerbook consistently decides to drop connection after ~5 minutes of access (WEP is enabled and authenticated). My wife on her Tablet PC right next to me?  She's still online.

For me, I welcome Apple's ads. The prevailing sentiment outside Microsoft circles?  Go to the "Nascar Nation" and I hear "That Bill Gates guy gives billions to help poor people".  What do they say about the Apple ads?  You be the judge  This is one PR battle I actually look forward to seeing more of.

Update: Paul Thurrott has his own thoughts here.  As does Engadget's Ross Rubin. And in the Apple camp, Daniel Eran. All in all, I think it's fun and not worth getting bent out of shape over. Satire is satire.  Apple's just trying to pull a Colbert/Wikigate (Video on YouTube).

New HD-DVD's released this Tuesday

• Aeon Flux (Paramount)
• The Italian Job (2003) (Paramount)
• U2: Rattle & Hum (Paramount)

courtesy High-Def Digest

Meanwhile in other news, HBO has announced they will be releasing The Sopranos in HD-DVD, making it the first TV program for either format.  <rant> Unbelievably, The Sopranos hasn't jumped the shark despite HBO's ridiculous "season" schedule designed to extract maximum dollar from you and me. </rant>

Come and get it :)  http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/downloads.html 

As I mentioned before, I've been working on a side project to address issues with the blog- the increased spam and difficult in reviewing statistics in particular.  Thanks to Ryan Hoffman at Telligent who wrote me an unofficial DasBlog to Community Server 2.1 converter, I was able to easily migrate all posts and comments into the system, but not without losing some items such as permalinks.  The system is much more robust and may pave the way to offering forums and more community submitted content in the future. 

So I submit for your review and feedback, "Addicted to Digital Media v3.0 Beta".  Please let me know your likes and dislikes, CSS issues or otherwise.  This site exists for you- let's talk about what you want to see more of/less of.