Last night, I had the honor of attending the Technical Emmy Awards ceremony at CES to help accept the Emmy Award for Streaming Media Architectures and Components.  Afterwards, we went to the Vista party at the Pure Nightclub in Caesars and brought the Emmy for safe keeping and to take pictures with other team members. It was a hit with a number of old friends who helped us to get this win.  It was a shared win- there was a sense of surprise when I congratulated the Apple team on their shared win as well.

John Carmack, co-founder of iD, creator of Doom and Quake and founder of Armadillo Aerospace was one of the presenters.  When I get a chance, I'll post some video I took during the ceremony. The DirectX team was also on-hand to accept an award for their 3D engine.

Thank you to all the engineers, designers, bizdev, marketing, management who helped to make the win possible but most importantly, to our customers.

More pictures from the party on Flickr here

Well, no integrated TV (yet), but it looks like my other prediction specific to the iPhone in August may be at least partly right.  Remember how Apple last year made a big pre-order with Intel/Micron's IMFlash effort and everyone assumed it was for new iPods?   An intrepid analyst should ask Apple if they're going to use their 50nm NAND Flash in the iPhone.  I believe so, and that it's the secret to how they're getting it so small.  The 2nd manufacturing facility doesn't come online until oh, just about the time the iPhone will ship.  Most of the other players are still dealing with much larger (and bulkier) flash.

Anyone notice there was no announcement of iTunes Store in related?  I'd expect they'll do a deal w/ Cingular cum AT&T to provide free WiFi hotspot access to iTunes Store in public places.  Next up- direct billing of media purchases to your AT&T bill...

Apple's going to do it with iTV.  Intel's Viiv certifying hardware for it Sling Media is announcing the SlingCatcher.  Microsoft has been doing it with Media Center Extender and Xbox 360. NetGear is getting (back) into it.  Will this be the year of the DMR?  Probably not, but some big names are getting into the fray/renewing efforts.

The challenge is how do you get to a unified view of your family photos, music, video, and recorded TV regardless of which set your on in the home.  Lots of effort in the NAS server space, and I'd expect some additional announcements to make the content easier to distribute, including HP's new Windows Home Server. Still, there's a LOT of work that has to be done for setup and connectivity across the industry.  HDMI makes this much easier but not many consumers have TV's with HDMI, while others have to figure out how to route video to the TV and audio to the AV receiver while getting it all to work well together (hint: start with a Harmony remote from Logitech- I just got a Harmony 890 for the holidays, more on that later).

I'm pretty frustrated right now because BOTH of my Samsung Blackjack batteries fully burned out last night and won't trickle charge.  There should be an "emergency reserve" button on the batteries themselves.  Serves me right for forgetting my AC power cable...

My wild prediction for today: Apple will announce the iTV as an actual HDTV w/ the hardware built-in.   They'll do this before releasing a set-top style product.  That and perhaps Flash gaming support on the iPod.

Michael Gartenberg says it's going to be a year of maturation at CES.  Michael tends to really know his stuff and I have to admit, most of the news out of Engadget of late has been about convergence of technology. 

I expect a lot of focus on usability this year.  The past few years, certain devices have become abominations of usability harkening back 20 years (certain high def players as an example ahem).  Having just built a home media server and dealt once again with the incompatibilities of video formats between my camera, my Media Center (Xbox) and my portable player, I can truly relate to his sentiment.

Let me start off by saying I'm a hard-core Xbox 360 fan and just finished Gears of War. I'm a little less addicted to achievements and points than Scoble discusses (more on that later).  What shocked me this holiday season was how we became a two-console household literally overnight.

Some friends of ours had a large tree hit their house the night of the windstorm and we decided to have them over for a pizza party.  We made fresh pizzas on the Big Green Egg, and they brought over their Nintendo Wii. My in-laws were here too, from the heartland, they had little interest in gaming.  I was concerned this was going to be too geeky for them.

I was wrong. Again.

In what started to look like a tupperware party for the new millennium, from the first time the Wiimote was "thrown", a crowd started gathering.  The kids at first, then... my wife, who on only two occasions with pleading has ventured beyond casual games in Xbox wanted to create a Mii caricature with the older kids of herself.

Then my father in law wanted to play bowling.

Then my mother in law tried tennis.

I then KO'ed my neighbor in boxing.

Which led to my father in law challenging my wife to a boxing match (she won).

Which led to my wife telling me she wanted a Wii for Christmas, and my father in law noting he wanted to get a Wii as well.

In my case, I didn't really mind the lower video quality- the gameplay made up for that.  This is what Nintendo does so well.  The Xbox 360 largely stays turned off during family events and parties unless used for showing home movies, pictures, music etc. via Media Center.  The party game aspect just isn't there and with a 3 year old in the house, there's precious little time when I can boot it up and play games around him.  Sure, arcade is fun, but Nintendo has a lock on the natural interaction model with the Wiimote and Nunchuk, the titles have less depth (so far) but fun and engaging.

So last week I did the unthinkable and stood in the cold at 6am in front of Fred Meyer with others to get a Nintendo Wii.  Since then, we've had one small party and again it was a huge hit.  My son is getting good at bowling too. 

Would I play Call of Duty 3 on the Wii? No.  That's the kind of game that for me requires the visual impact and cinematics the Xbox 360 does so well.  But there's space in my home for the Wii for all ages. We're trading Mii caricatures of famous people with friends.

Now my sister, a Doctor at the CDC called to rant that a second Wii I happened on was sold (at retail cost) to my Uncle and young cousins.  Apparently she wanted  it.  She doesn't play video games.

Kudos to Nintendo for bridging the generation and gender gap in this release.  Their commercials are spot-on. There are some things I don't like about the Wii, but more on those after I've had it a few more weeks.  (I'll post my Wii access code shortly).

After we got power, I had a great vacation where I stayed unplugged from the grid (mostly) and reconnected with family and friends. But it's a new year. I notice that Long Zheng and Brandon LeBlanc both tagged me for their "5 Things you didn't know about me" meme:

1. I got my first computer ~1984 and after playing the first game, I knew wanted to work at the game developer some day - the game was "Flight Simulator II".

2. I sold my backup copy of same program to a friend, something I'm not proud of.

3. I was operations manager of a small communcations software company making the first Windows GUI-based BBS.  I quit and went back to school after being told the Internet was a fad.

4. I once did a developer keynote in germany with a 103+ degree fever and delirious.  At the end of the presentation I reintroduced myself.

5. I ran the only Windows-based mirror site for the Mars Pathfinder project in partnership with NASA's JPL.  And yes, the load was so great, the mirroring software so bad that I spent nights in the server room debugging it.  We've come a long way.

So there you go.  I'm supposed to tag other bloggers.  Here goes for Chris Pirillo, Shawn Morrissey, Robert Scoble, and Thomas Hawk.

P.S. - I'll be at CES Sat-Tues. Ping me if others want to meet up, we may do a small dinner on Saturday.

Amazing video of a band called Corporeal doing a live rendition of the Halo theme song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLt5_ME_2_M

I really like my Zune, except for one thing- I'm obsessed with battery life so I tend to keep the wireless radio off except when I want to actively look for others.  The likelihood of users to do this could severely diminish the "social" aspects of the device.  I want to be social, but I don't want to run two WiFi radios between my laptop and my Zune, unnecessarily using up battery power.

What I really want is a small utility that runs on my laptop and notifies me when a Zune comes into the area.  It's running WiFi so it must have some sort of broadcast/ID mechanism no?  I can see all sorts of interesting applications of this- mashups that show how many Zunes are available in a given area for one.  It would be interesting to see if I could use my laptop to broadcast the fact that I have a Zune, and take requests.  Then I'll turn on the radio and away I go. And with Vista support now out for Zune, I'm hoping someone will write the ZuneFinder gadget.   Anyone working on this (psst. Phil Torrone, psst) :)

Zune update 1.2 with support for Windows Vista is out.  More details at www.zuneinsider.com

Thanks to the intrepid work of my wife, we're back! She found a generator at 6am yesterday and we had it in-hand at 6:45am (tip: Home Depot expects to receive more Tuesday if you're looking). Like the famed Cabbage Patch craze, my wife called down lists of Lowes and HD stores (among others) from the hotel last night.  CraigsList failed us as we looked.  Thanks to everyone for their well wishes.

Our area was among the hardest hit in the storms.  Not directly thankfully (though I did awaken at midnight with other neighbors to help secure the home of a friend who had a maple tree hit their house and blow out all the windows on the backside.

It's amazing how scary and liberating it can be when you are forced to unplug from the grid. No net access, no power, no phone communication, only AM talk radio for 60 hours can get to you.  The lines at the gas station (and the civil yet

I'm on Cingular's EDGE network right now on my Sony VAIO laptop.  It has built-in EDGE so I just popped the SIM card in and away you go. 

This entire experience though minor in comparison has made me think about the plight in Darfur and others war, famine, and poverty stricken areas.  This holiday season, it's reminded me to do what I can to reach out to others and help in their time of need.

Update: We got power this afternoon. Thanks again to everyone for their help and research- it means a lot!

Cutting to the chase:  If you have a credible source for generators in the 5000 watt range without price gouging in the Seattle area, please let us know here. Our area was among the hardest hit and we're still without power in sub-25deg weather at night.  We were VERY lucky (our neighbors had a 30ft maple tree come down on their house, we were boarding it up at 1am on Friday).  I don't trust PSE's estimates - website says updated every few hours, they updated at 6am and 5pm tonight with limited information, KIRO 770AM has conflicting info. 

A number of us are looking for generators in earnest. If you have a legitimate offer or contact, please let us know here.  Thanks and god bless to others in similar situations.

A small gift for those of us who want to watch Knight Rider and Firefly reruns in HD as well as the occasional music video or Unplugged session.