‘Twas a lovely six days spent in Swampscott, Littleton and Boston with the my brother, Amy’s sister, and the extended Trotz-Handelman-Sagan clans. Sam had a heck of a great time with all his cousins and was even happier than usual. This gallery includes photos of Mason’s Thanksgiving pageant, turkey preparations and carving, an NHL game at the ‘new’ Boston Garden, Faneuil Hall, and lots of family photos (starring Sammy, of course!). Enjoy.
technorati tags: thanksgiving, sam, baby, boston
Important news last week to position Microsoft as an ever-increasingly established competitor to the Motorola and Scientific Atlanta (nee Cisco) set-top box makers. Microsoft has struck a deal with CableLabs, the non-profit cable industry technology consortium, to allow Windows PCs to view HDTV content from cable providers, including premium networks. The technology should be shipping before the end of 2006.I’d like to hear what the upgrade path will be, if any, for current MCE systems.
The agreement includes efforts to qualify MSFT’s digital rights management under the OpenCable standards, and paves the way for the Microsoft Media Center Edition (and then Vista), to receive the full spectrum of content from the cable industry. The announcement also touches on the ability for consumers to share this content throughout the home on compliant network devices – including the Xbox360. And while the CableCard is a one-way device (no interactive TV, EPGs, etc which require 2-way comms), having a PC with broadband connectivity on one pipe and HDTV coming in the other should further expand the impact of Microsofts eHome stratgegy, long before IPTV establishes a significant footprint.
Technorati Tags: mce, cablecard, cablelabs, iptv, xbox360, drm, vista, ehome, microsoft
Ziff-Davis 
publication Publish (ah, how I loved that magazine back in the desktop publishing days of the early 90s) covers what they describe as the ‘beta of [CNN’s] new streaming news service, CNN Pipeline, to a select group of employees.’ They provide nine screenshots of the application, showing portions of an order path, the main feed, login, application live, on-demand, browse, mini and search modes. They also point out that there are two players, one web-based and another a PC desktop app. Gallery is here, story here.
This is a good read. Rob Galbraith digs more deeply into Apple’s Aperture due later this month. In addition to looking at many of the features in more detail, Rob has some interesting conclusions about how the new app compares with other programs in this category. And he obviously concludes that Photoshop remains safe and sound, but seems to think this will be a great addition to many shooters workflow setups.
Rob Galbraith DPI: Bringing Aperture into focus
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, photography, aperture, photoshop