They've done this dance for a while, and with both seeing slowing subscriber rates, it's really no surprise.  I wonder what all the XM fanboys are going to say now?  I'm just happy I don't have to pay double for  my wife's "gift" of XM in her Honda,  and my Sirius subscription  in my car.   Pending shareholder approval, both companies expect the merger to be completed by end of this year.   Glad to see it- this is a situation where the consumer clearly wins.  More details at Orbitcast.

Still catching up on blogworthy items. As is customary with the release of any new OS, a lot of attention is being given to the new, native features of Windows Vista, the compatibility of devices as well as existing applications.  But what about new applications?  Vista doesn't rest on the laurels of traditional, flat, 2D applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a feature of Windows Vista that enables rich, textured, 3D applications to be built that take interactivity to a whole new level. 

One such application was developed by famed design firm, Metaliq. Their Snowboarding application incorporates two of my loves - snow sports and GPS.  Marrying 3D rotatable maps of Aspen Ski Resort with GPS data, it seamlessly integrates  live data, video clips and a playback reel give you the perspective of your runs as you head down. 

I'm a sucker for this kind of app I always take my GPS with me when I go skiing- just "Set it and forget it" while I'm riding.  When I get home, Pictures I take on the mountain are geotagged (I like RoboGeo), and I like to review representations of my runs on satellite maps with ExpertGPS or Google Earth.  This is admittedly geeky today, but imagine being able to sit down after a vacation with the family, and review your photos, ultimate runs, and home videos and navigate it visually.  It's clear we're just getting started.

It's the weekend, and a perfect time to go through Tim Sneath's blog list of amazing WPF applications.  C9 has a great list here as well.

Here's a list of some of my favorite english-language applications (German, French and others on  Tim's site as well):

1. NY Times Newsreader
2. Nostalgia Flickr Browser
3. British Library's Turning the Pages
4. Electric Rain's Standout 
5. Notescraps
6. Denounce (RSS/Podcast browser)
7. Cine.view (NetFlix browser)
8. Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista
9. Calendar Printing for Office 2007
10. Wikipedia Explorer
11. iBloks 3D Movie Creator

Let me know if you find more ;)

I'm having an issue that is driving me crazy.  For some reason, my Samsung Blackjack is unable to sync w/ Windows Mobile Device Center for Vista.  I have five machines that are all recognizing the phone as:

SAMSUNG USB Composite Device
SAMSUNG CDMA Modem
SAMSUNG CDMA Modem Diagnostic Serial
Port (WDM) (COM#)

They should be recognizing it as an RNDIS Network Adapter which will enable WMDC to connect.

I've checked the Settings|USB Settings and even the underlying registry, hard-wiped the phone (hold up arrow and power up) and nothing is working.  After spending two hours on the phone with Cingular and Samsung Level 2 technicians, they told me (nicely) that they'll have to get me to Level 3 which is open Mon-Fri 9am-5pm when I'm working.  Has anyone else run into this issue?  Bueller?  Anyone?

My favorite digital audio receiver just added support for Zune Marketplace, Napster, Urge, Wal-Mart, etc. and enhancements for iTunes though they still won't play Apple's own DRM'd music (something Jobs left out he won't license).  Finally, my little white Sonos boxes aren't sitting in a Zuneless island.  Every time I think I'm done with DRM'd music services, they bring me back in.  I have to say though, I'm increasingly impressed by Rhapsody's integration with the Sonos.  It makes me wonder, why shouldn't all music services offer a network connected version, similar to what Napster is doing today?

Also note to music services - not everyone listening to your service is a twentysomething head-banging, ultramegalophile monster mashup music culture listener.  Take some cues from  XM's "Flight 26".   I like my hard-core, but not when the kiddies are around.  Families want to listen too.  That's a note to Sirius as well.

My father pointed out that Flickr appears to be having some problems with its preview image system.  A bunch of random pictures (not ours) are showing up as previews.  Click through, and sometimes  you'll  get the correct picture.  For me, it's happening on about one out of seven pictures.  We have pro accounts.  Suddenly I'm very nervous about the state of my photos on the site.  Anyone else seeing this?

All I can say is this is the kind of geek "Wow" a certain team was looking for - the evangelism team scored a coup with the hiring of reknowned analyst, Michael Gartenberg, formerly VP of Jupiter Research and prior to that, at Gartner.  While details are still unfolding about his new job, it's possible that in his role as Enthusiast Evangelist, Michael will have an indelible impact in a number of areas ranging from customer interaction to user-centric product design. 

Our team brought in Michael to provide feedback on some challenges we were having last year with digital media integration across the OS.  The engineers found his feedback to be incredibly insightful and focused on the end-user while taking into account technical capabilities of the OS.  A lot of changes for the good were made based on his comments.

As for the news around the blogosphere, Jeremy Toeman has a good summary here.  As do Jeff Sandquist and Thomas Hawk. I for one look forward to working with Michael again.

Welcome Michael!

Recently, I've been playing with a free Gadget for Vista Sidebar called, Visual Voicemail from CallWave and color me impressed.  Stevie J is right - audio management of voicemail is a pain.  CallWave on Cingular and other carriers can replace your existing voicemail system so that incoming calls are automatically routed to their service offering email notification, SMS notification with call details, and the Gadget, which provides a management feature for viewing, listening to, and deleting messages.  Nicely done.  It's free for a basic voicemail box with the gadget, or you can pay $9.95 for call routing etc.  My only complaints are the lack of a way to turn off SMS (it costs me $$) and lack of a Windows Mobile client for my Blackberry (er Blackjack) ;).

It's distressing to many in the community to learn of Jim Gray's disappearance.  A fixture in the industry and reknowned scientist, teams have been searching for over 4 days for him now.  Amazon's Werner Vogels is asking internet users to pore through recent imagery from Nasa plan flyovers to try and locate his missing ship.  You can help by clicking here and just reviewing a sampling of images.  This is community in action- distributed human computing.  Please take five minutes and help look for signs of Jim.

Disclaimer: I don't speak for Microsoft nor work for any group involved in HD-DVD in my below comments.  There's purely my own for right or wrong.

ArsTechnica has an interesting take on the new Nielsen VideoScan data that shows Blu-ray is starting to close the gap.  What's not covered here is the intellectual savvy of many consumers to NOT BUY EITHER DISC and rather rent from Blockbuster or NetFlix, both of which support both formats.

Nielsen VideoScan is the go-to source for the consumer electronics industry when it comes to tracking video sales. The metrics firm tracks sales in nearly every distribution channel from the Internet to big-box retailers and specialty stores. Although hardware sales figures have been easy to come by, the movie studios and distributors have kept actual movie sales figures under wraps, so this is one of the first clear glimpses of what's going on with next-gen disc sales.

I thought this was a new tracker for Nielsen?  They're the only source as far as I know.  At least Ars points out all these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. 

The units sold #s are highly circumspect.  HD-DVD units for Xbox are bought for HD-DVD viewing, HD-DVD players are bought for HD-DVD viewing.  I'd be interested to see what percentage of PS3 owners are actually using their PS3 for viewing Blu-Ray discs. Just because PS3 ships with a Blu-Ray disc player does not mean the consumer has a) an HDTV or b) a desire to view Blu-ray discs.

I wrote more about the cost/benefit of HD-DVD late last year and recommendations that consumer do not buy discs in either format.  Where are the NetFlix and Blockbuster #'s on rentals of both formats?  Let's see the full picture.

It's propping to the servers.  If you're a developer and actually read my blog.  Here you go:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb188266.aspx

Last night, we posted a February update to the "WPF/E" Community Technology Preview for Windows and Mac.  Ryan Stewart at ZDNet picked up the new and talks about the update here.  The Channel9 guys already updated the C9 "WPF/E" playground to support the new release.  The SDK should be available shortly - team is putting some finishing touches on it and the webpages at the DevCenter. 

New features for developers include:

• Keyboard Input (KeyUp/KeyDown)
• MP3 Support
• Mouse cursor support
• Async downloader
• Simple text metrics
• Full screen mode
• Lots of performance work
• Improved JavaScript APIs

The team is making good progress and a sincere thank you goes out to all the customers providing feedback.  We're getting lots of requests for briefings, details, and the general buzz is palpable.  It's hard to handle all of them.  In fact, I'm hiring- more details on that later.

(For those who have asked, I still have the flu but getting better.  Thanks for the well wishes- heading back to bed.)

For those of you waiting for Nikon's official RAW image file reader (.nef) to show up and integrate with Windows Photo Gallery, it's now available.  Canon's RAW codec (.cr2)is still AWOL as is Adobe's Digital NeGative format (.dng).  Here's to hoping they show up soon.

While consumers work through the dizzying array of new features in Windows Vista, Ryan Stewart cuts through the hype and brings it back to what really matters - User Experience.  He notes, "We're all better off when experience wins and Vista is a huge step forward."  I couldn't agree more. But what about after the hype, the roar of marketing moves into sustain?  I'm expecting to see big pops of innovation as new Vista-enabled applications start to emerge.

An example of this is WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation, which is going to enable the next-generation of desktop applications that are 3D accelerated, and designer-developer collaboraration with Expression Studio and  Visual Studio.  I agree with Ryan, and look forward to seeing Tim Sneath write about these new applications.  Yes, they'll run on many XP PCs as well, but will truly sing on Vista.

Another will be "WPF/Everywhere" or "WPF/E" (Codename), which will take rich media experiences traditionally targeted at the desktop, and bring those to the Web with the flexibility of standards-based programming, and the power of XAML for presentation.  I've seen how important XAML is first-hand- when I worked in Windows as a program manager on Windows Vista Sidebar, the tension was palpable between the User Experiece designers creating the UI, and the developers who were unable to fully realize the vision pixel for pixel.  With Expression Studio + WPF, what you can envision, becomes programmable, pixel for pixel.  That is a powerful thing, and soon we're bringing that to the web as well.

Try WPF for yourself with my favorite "essential" application - the NY Times News Reader (beta). 

(I have the flu so I'm heading back to bed. :( )