Pictured above are the crack team of staff from our Turner Digital Media Tech and Turner Sports Interactive teams as we relaunch the ad systems on Nascar.com today. I played a key role, bringing two dozen hot donuts (from Krispy Kreme, of course) and a humongous box of coffee. The launch went swimmingly, of course - this is a great team to work with!
Tags: adserver, advertising, migration, nascar, relaunch, turner
So this post is going to be one of those geeky excursions into gadgetland - specifically, into the world of the new spiffy camera I bought for my birthday. I’ve been looking for a ‘run-around’ camera - when I don’t want to be bothered by the full Canon 5D and complement of lenses, but just want something close at hand to capture the kids, the world around me, that fits in my pocket, has enough pro features to keep me happy, etc. I selected the Ricoh GX100, a very pocketable, RAW-shooting, zoom-lens rangefinder.
There are a number of entries in the somewhat arcane ‘rangefinder-like’ prosumer point-and-shoot category. These are basically digicams trying to behave sort of like the Leica M-series film cameras of old, for those of us who don’t quite bring in the mon-ay to afford the $5k price tag for the Leica M8 - without a lens. The cameras I looked at all have street prices between $500 and $700 - so they are not toys by any means. Leica has their D-Lux 3, Sigma produces the impressive new DP-1 (with the unusual Foveon sensor), and Ricoh has a couple of entries - the multi-focal-length GX1000 and the fixed-lens GRs. None of these (until you hit the stratospheric M8 class) have truly interchangeable lenses - but the GX has a lovely 24-72 f/2.5-4.4. Wide enough to provide visuals rarely seen on a point-and-shoot - and an aperture range that allows (along with the hardware anti-shake feature) to grab images you might not be able to capture otherwise. The other key feature here was that the camera can capture in RAW format - in this case, the pretty-much universal DNG or digital negative. That makes post-processing a breeze in Lightroom. I’m very happy with this little gem so far. I’m not thrilled with the electronic viewfinder the kit came with - I’m going to be looking into some spiffy Voigtlander optical viewfinders a lot of enthusiasts say work well with the GX100.
Here is a gallery of some other images I’ve captured in these first few days.
Tags: camera, rangefinder, ricoh
So much for the lines. A buddy of mine just called, saying he waltzed into the Lenox Square Apple Store at 8pm EDT and simply asked for and was handed his iPhone. No camping required, which is a good thing, because his wife threatened legal action if any urban camping was involved in his quest for this gadget
Well, I may have to eat my words. First, ZDnet blogger Mary Jo Foley who covers Microsoft reports rumors of ActiveSync licensing to be announced at any time for the iPhone. That means, for those companies who enable this feature on their Exchange servers, OTA sync would be possible for email and calendars on the iPhone - glory be, hallelulia! I want to see Apple confirm this, but this basically blows away the issues around corporate integration. Second, uber-tech writer from the WSJ Walt Mossberg makes an offhand comment in his video review of the device that Exchange integration is possible “if your IT department cooperates by enabling a setting on the server.” Now he didn’t specifically talk about ActiveSync, and may have simply been referring to the capability of Exchange servers to support outside-the-firewall IMAP, but I am keeping my fingers crossed on iPhone & ActiveSync. Mary Jo reports confirmation in both the Times and WSJ on the issue of Exchange IMAP support, but still stands by her report that Microsoft is licensing ActiveSync for the device. And there is an outside chance the gadget fairy may bless me with one of these for testing. Now I’m interested again.
Tags: active_sync, apple, Gadgets, iphone, Mac, macintosh, microsoft
In keeping with the gaming theme of recent posts, I must share the photo above. I used a gift certificate from my sisters-in-law they sent as a thank-you for helping them with their new jewelery business (their site will be unveiled soon) to buy the much-heralded Guitar Hero II. There is no doubt this is an amazing game - do not pass go, do not collect $200 - go out and get this game if you have an Xbox 360 or the Playstation. Sam, of course, loves it as well as you can see! Amy also manages to mostly kick my butt at this one - hmm, perhaps her years in the music conservatory finally paid off? Anyway, I’m just trying to figure out how to hold the darn guitar in a way that doesn’t result in the tips of my fingers on my left hand going numb and staying that way for going on 48 hours now. It seems to be getting better, but I’m so uncoordinated that I have to mash the buttons on the guitar neck far harder than necessary. I seem to keep playing Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend over and over again, but my scores are far behind all my Xbox Live buddies. I’m somewhere in the 350,000’s on the leaderboard, while my friend Juanita Winters is up around 25,000 worldwide. Scary, really. Can’t wait for the reported 2007 Summer release of their update with only 80s music, or the late-year Rock Band - where multiple players will be able to join together online on bass, drums, vocals and guitar.
Yesterday marked a major milestone for everyone’s favorite broadband gaming service. Launched back in 2005, Gametap was born out of the concept of doing what Turner Broadcasting has done for other businesses - acquiring rights to libraries of content, then programming that content in new and lucrative ways. Now, with yesterday’s launch, Gametap is adding to that subscription model by offering a rotating selection of free games to play from their web site, as well as simultaneous access to new releases (Lara Croft’s latest). There is now also a direct digital download service where you can download to own games. David Reid, Gametap’s VP of Marketing, sums it up this way:
It’s really hard to explain to someone what 900 of the greatest games of all time in one place means.
My team has been working with Gametap for several months now integrating advertising into both their new and improved web site as well as their new lite and existing deluxe player. It’s been an exciting project - it’s always fun to do work where it involves gaming! And did I mention that there will soon be a Mac client too - said to be by late Summer according to one of the Joystiq articles! Woohoo!
More coverage here:
Tags: advertising, gametap, Gaming, Mac, turner_broadcasting
So the news broke earlier this week that everyone’s favorite broadband gaming site, Turner’s very own GameTap is expanding their offering to include free-to-play games in an ad-supported environment. You can guess that my team has been actively working on this project for a while. It’s pretty exciting. Much like the varying levels of ‘membership’ on services like Xbox Live, GameTap will offer non-paying, non-registered users access to some games, playable from a light-weight version of their ‘grandaddy’ client. General Manager Stu Snyder (who was just promoted yesterday to a new role as executive vice president and chief operating officer of animation, young adults & kids media in addition to his GameTap role) said it this way in the Business Week story:
“With 2 to 3 million uniques per month, we realized we weren’t monetizing that many uniques to our website,” he says. “We kind of looked back and said, ‘gee, we should [offer an ad-supported version].’ Also, our demographic was looking for an easy way to play games without making a huge time commitment or financial commitment. So we figured why not have all options for all gamers?”
Other content becomes available with a free registration, and users can graduate to the full product and 800+ games with a full subscription. We have also been working to support an ad-supported version of the large range of video content previously only available in the full client known as Gametap TV. I think this ad-supported model has some real legs! Coverage of the project has been widespread, from Business Week, Ars Technica, Kotaku, and the San Jose Mercury News.
Tags: advertising, Gaming
I think they’ve outdone themselves - the new iPhone 
(despite the Cisco product by the same name) looks absolutely killer - taking a completely fresh approach to the UI of the mobile phone, and creating a true mashup of relevant technologies. Apple has posted a great walkthrough of the features including their interesting approach to many of these features at http://apple.com/iphone/ - check it out.
Although I need to see it to really understand and confirm, Jobs keynote speech seemed to describe the new phone as less a touchscreen and more of a ‘proximity’ screen - where your gestures, not ham-handed mashing of buttons triggers responses. So from unlocking it (a side to side gesture over an on-screen ’slider’) to zooming in on webpages or images by ‘pinching’ the area of interest, this sounds like an amazing step forward. It’s super slim - 11.6mm thick, about the width of the Uniball pen I carry around. It’s running some flavor of OSX, so development of applications will hopefully be straightforward. And it includes some very tight integration with Cingular (exclusive in the domestic market for some time to come) in regards to a visual form of voice mail - where each message can be accessed independently, rather than the typical wading through obscure menus. And it includes robust Wifi and Bluetooth 2.0, with some very smart widget integration from Google Maps (GPS of some sort active here), to Weather (location aware), to Stock Quotes. No RSS shown, but I suspect that’s probably not hard to pull off either. Anyway, at a price of most other ’smartphones’ like by Verizon PPC6700, this is a strong contender. Too bad it doesn’t include an expansion card slot. My only hesitations here are that although it supports IMAP or POP email, getting to my corporate Exchange server is my top priority, as well as the fact that it’s on Cingular, when I’ve recently moved over to Verizon. I may still be drawn to try this out come June. Price is not bad either, at $499 for the 4gb or $599 for 8gb.
Also announced to day was the shipping date (February) and the final name (Apple TV) of the ITV product mentioned here previously. No big surprises there, although it’s now confirmed to include a hard drive (40gb) as well as 802.11n, the speediest of the current close-to-standard Wifi technologies. These features were both rumored over the last few months.
Not mentioned in the Stevenote was the addition of a new Airport Extreme Base Station, shaped to fit squarely below or above your brand-new Apple TV box. See picture at right. The unit is prices at $179, and includes a USB port for shared devices, as well as a hub to connect other Ethernet devices. Obviously, this is also an 802.11n device. Apple has a new feature built in here to provide extended network storage as well. You can connect an external USB hard drive to your network via the USB port, or attach a USB hub to connect multiple devices. Ideal for network-attached storage of large video, image or music libraries or simply for backups.
Tags: Gadgets, Interactive Television, Mac, macintosh, mashup
Well, it’s back. After initiating a return of my MacBookPro with the defective screen on November 4th, the brand-spanking new replacement made it in record time from Shanghai, arriving today after shipping out yesterday! She looks A-OK - I’ll post impressions shortly…. By the way, I think this makes it two MacBook Pros in my hands in the same time some of my coworkers have been waiting for one to arrive. I guess the ‘expedited order’ since my first was was ruled DOA by the helpful folks at AppleCare actually helped this time.
That’s the good news. And, I might add, the little wonder arrived at 10:09am today, despite Fedex estimating delivery by Monday at 10:30am. So total turnaround time was 10 business days since I ordered on the day the new Core 2 Duo versions came out, including custom build options. Now on to the bad news…
The machine has an obvious screen defect (as seen at left). I went with the glossy version, and approximately 100 pixels from the right side of the screen is a band roughly 100 pixels wide which is significantly washed out compared to the rest of the screen. It runs from above the top menu bar to the bottom of the display.
Guess I’ll be visiting my friends at the Apple store at Lenox tomorrow. Click here for a gallery of the ritualistic unpacking of the new machine.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.
As those of you who know me well, it has been a painful year for me. When I moved back into the world of ad serving last Fall nearly full time, I needed a PC laptop to access our adserving system (’twas not Mac-friendly).
I have been waiting with baited breath for the first major revision to the Intel MacBook Pros that came out almost eight months ago. That has led me to travel with not one, but two laptops for most of the past year. Oh, my aching back! All that changes next week when my new MacBookPro arrives.
This morning, I was oh so excited to see a notice on TUAW.com that the Mac store had it’s old-skool ‘We’ll be back soon’ message that typically precedes a new product being posted. Lo and behold, shortly after arriving at work I visited Apple.com to see the beautiful news you see in the image above. Fully capable of running Windows via BootCamp or Parallels, this will replace both of my existing laptops. First to retire will be my ancient (4 year old) Titanium Powerbook G4 running at 1Ghz. I’ve been using that laptop for over a year with no functioning ethernet access and miserable battery life, and can’t wait to get my hands on this new machine. Also heading for the backup bin will be the sorely underpowered IBM Thinkpad Tablet I have as well - it’s better in concept than reality. The Core2 version of the MacBook Pro will run at 2.33Ghz, includes 3GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. My back thanks you, Apple.
