Thursday, May 31, 2007
Sony PSP Firmware Update Gives You Remote Play from PS3
11:40PM Seamus Byrne | Sony’s PlayStation portable (PSP) now has a new version 3.50 firmware update available, letting you access music, pictures and videos on a Sony PlayStation 3 from a PSP wirelessly connected to the Internet. When Sony upgraded its PS3 firmware to version 1.80 last week, one of its key features was Remote Play, giving you media streaming over a network, but the missing link was the ability to receive that content. In this PSP firmware update, Sony also threw in a RSS Channel Guide for those newbies not familiar with that concept, but the real deal here is that Remote Play trick. It’s a bit of a misnomer because it won’t let you play any PS3 games remotely on a PSP. Own both devices? Now you can go all-Sony, all the time. Fanboy. – Charlie White PSP firmware updated for new PS3 features [Computer and Video Games] More »
Video: Jobs Says “Fake Steve” is “Pretty Funny” and Other Semi-Revelations
11:24PM Seamus Byrne | You like the Steve Jobs? You hate the Steve Jobs? We gave you the textier version yesterday, now here’s a clip of his All Things D appearance, in full technicolor moving picture, for you to comment on in your own special way. – Wilson Rothman Jobs on YouTube Weirdness, Windows Love and “Fake Steve” More »Zip Zip’s Lego Bricks Stash 1GB Worth of Storage
11:05PM Seamus Byrne | When it comes to looks, most USB flash drives are cut from the same cloth, which is why we’ve taken a liking to Zip Zip’s Lego drive.
The bite-sized drive is small enough to attach to your keys (via the strap) yet packs a full gig of storage space. It’s available in six colors for $59 a pop, so you better be a real Lego fan to splurge on one of these. – Louis Ramirez
Louis writes it up, but this is an Aussie production – and that $59 is technicolour AUD. Go you good thing!
galleryPost('ZipZipLego', 4, 'ZipZipLego');
Product Page [Zip Zip] More » Jobs v. Gates: The Movie
11:03PM Seamus Byrne | What we thought might be a Showdown at Carlsbad was, in reality, a love-in at the Four Seasons. Steve and Bill had good times, reminiscing and talking about the future. There was Beatles music to harmonize to (though Yoko was mercifully nowhere to be found). Jobs even revealed that he and Gates had been secretly married for years. (Wait, he was kidding?) Enjoy the video. – Wilson Rothman D: Notebook [WSJ] Live Rumble: Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs vs. Swisher vs. Mossberg [Gizmodo] More »
Apple TV with 160GB Drive Now Shipping
11:03PM Seamus Byrne | As announced in a press release yesterday, the Apple Store today offers an Apple TV with a 160GB hard drive selling for $399, $100 more than the 40GB model. Apple says it can hold “up to 200 hours of video,” but could this be a sign that 720p downloads of movies and TV shows are not far behind? Bring on the HDTV downloads, Apple! – Charlie White AU: It’s on sale right now here too, at $579. Product Page [Apple Store] More »
More on the iTunes Plus High Quality, 256kbps Bitrate Tracks
8:00PM Seamus Byrne | If Charlie’s take on the iTunes Plus songs wasn’t enough for you, then check out our own Wilson Rothman’s piece in the NYT about the same subject. Not to spoil anything, but Wilson and his two test partners could hear a difference between 128kbps and 256kbps on his medium to medium-high end speaker setup. However, if you’ve got a $50 speaker setup running from off your motherboard’s sound card, you probably won’t. – Jason Chen Where’s the Other Half of Your Music File? [NYTimes] More »
Live Rumble: Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs vs. Swisher vs. Mossberg
12:22PM Seamus Byrne | 7:15 The show is about to start, and I’ve got major butterflies. Fingers and liveblog gear don’t fail me now. The transcript is off limits as a full copy, so I’ll be writing in honor of Sci Fi author Rudy Rucker’s style of fiction based on true events, which he calls Transrealism. 7:19 No one’s on stage, but there’s a video on screen, of the Macintosh dating game. The year is 1983, and Microsoft needs Apple to make half its revenue. Jobs is introducing Bill, and Bill has scripted lovely to say about Apple. It’s stable. It’s wonderful. He loves it. The Second video shows Jobs at the 1997 Keynote, announcing the reestablished relationship with Microsoft. They both look like Goobers. God, I’m glad no one has 80s footage of me. More »
Steve and Bill…in Pirates of Silicon Valley
12:04PM Seamus Byrne | Bill and Steve go on stage in about 30 minutes or so. And before they start pulling each other’s hair, and before Walt starts dancing around these two with tough questions, I’d like to take this moment to remind you of Pirates of Silicon Valley, the made for TV, unauthorized 1999 “docudrama” of how Steve got rich and cool, and Bill got so rich he doesn’t even care how cool he is. (Only $7.49 on Amazon, btw.) Anthony Michael Hall, who played a perverted panty-sniffing geek in both Weird Science and Sixteen Candles plays Bill Gates. Noah Wyle, pretty boy doctor from ER, plays a young Jobs. This movie was made far too early, if you ask me. Someone needs to do a proper sequel. galleryPost('piratesofsiliconvalley', 8, 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'); Pirates of Silicon Valley [IMDB] Pirates of Silicon Valley [Wikipedia] Pirates of Silicon Valley [Amazon] More »
iTunes Australia selling DRM-free tracks at $2.19
11:28AM Seamus Byrne | So we have indeed seen a worldwide launch – that actually includes us – from Apple on the DRM-free EMI tracks, and local pricing on these 256kbps AAC files is…
$2.19
Great to see we’ve got it, but that price differential again stretches out just too far for me to want to pay it. Album pricing is $22.09 (haven’t seen it directly, but that’s based on their $5.10 upgrade price for previously purchased albums) Oh yeah, forgot that albums work differently, and so far I’m seeing iTunes Plus options from $17.99 to $20.99, and you do have to pay about $5.10 “for most albums” to upgrade them. I can (still) go and buy ANY album I want on CD for a lot less than that price.
More than ever I’m inclined to go buy discs, and rip them in the format of my choice. But I do appreciate us getting the choice, so cheers for that. -Seamus Byrne
More » 
