Jacky Bauer's Blog

The Blu-ray Disc, the high-definition successor to the DVD, was one of the few products that did well in the just-ended holiday season, with sales tripling from the previous year. The figures were released this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, which last year was the scene of what proved to be a decisive victory for Blu-ray over a rival format, HD-DVD. Just before the 2008 CES opened, Warner Bros. withdrew its support for HD-DVD, giving Blu-ray a strong majority of support among Hollywood studios. A few months later, Toshiba, the creator of the HD-DVD, said it would stop making players for the discs. That left Blu-ray as the lone high-definition disc. U.S. consumers bought 28.6 million of them in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to The Digital Entertainment Group, a consortium of movie studios and electronics manufacturers. That’s up from 9.5 million in the previous year.

The biggest seller was “The Dark Knight,” which was also the first Blu-ray disc to sell more than 1 million copies, said Andy Parsons, president of the Blu-ray Disc Association, which promotes the format in the U.S. By Parsons’ count, Blu-ray is showing a faster adoption rate than the DVD, the CD, high-definition TV sets and several other common household technologies. At the end of last year, 2½ years after they first became available, there were 10.7 million Blu-ray-capable players in United States, according to research firm DisplaySearch. Three years after the DVD launched in the 90s, there were 5.4 million DVD players.But the 10.7 million Blu-ray players includes more than 6 million Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles, bought mainly for gaming. With those taken out of the comparison, sales of standalone Blu-ray players are similar to those of DVD players at the same point.

Source: Mercury News

Dell got things rolling this morning with an announcement on the software distribution side. Where Dell.com recently began offering music and movies, there will now be downloadable software as well. Next up was a subsidized netbook partnership with AT&T similar to the one the company announced with Vodafone in September. The next announcement was where things began to pick up steam. Adding to Dell’s Mini line of netbooks, the company unveiled the Atom Z530-powered Inspiron Mini 10 this morning. Their “perfect 10″ netbook offers a 16:9 720p HD display, a full edge-to-edge keyboard, a built-in TV tuner, built-in mobile broadband connectivity, GPS, 802.11n, a multi-touch and gesture touchpad, and design studio customizability.

Aesthetics was an important theme in today’s Dell gathering, with the hallways lined by artists’ design studio laptop shell creations, and Kidrobot artist Tristan Eaton putting his trademark designs on Dell products in the background. Dell is drawing a sharp line between performance and design in its product line, the company’s peak performers fall under the Alienware line, and the peak examples of design will come under the new Adamo line. The product which had various accessory leaks happen several months ago has caused a great deal of speculation among fans of the company. Today, a production model of Adamo was shown off, ever so briefly, ever so distantly, and with no information regarding specs. We do know that there is both a black model and a white model.

Source: Betanews, AP

Web sites saw visitors deserting Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser in favor of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome in December, according to Web analytics company Net Applications. Internet Explorer was used by 68.15% of Web surfers monitored in December, down from 69.77% in November and 71.27% in October, according to preliminary figures published by Net Applications on its Hitslink Web site Friday. IE’s share has slipped from around 75% since the start of 2008. Safari, Firefox and Chrome all profited from the slide in IE’s popularity. Firefox’s share rose to 21.34%, from 20.78% in November and 19.97% in October, while Safari’s climbed to 7.93%, from 7.13% in November and 6.57% in October.

Google’s Chrome browser topped the 1 percent mark in Net Applications’ survey for the first time, with a share of 1.04%, up from 0.83% in November and 0.74% in October. Opera’s share remained steady at 0.71%. Net Applications warned that decreased workplace use of the Internet in December may have biased its results. “The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage,” it said. However, Internet Explorer’s market share actually declined more slowly in December than it had done in November, according to the company’s figures.

Source: Network World

Breastfeeding or nursing represents a way to feed infants and it’s also a natural part of being a mother. But the popular networking Facebook removed all the photographs which showed this type of mothers nursing their infants. And this wasn’t left unpunished as on Saturday many activists gathered round in front  of Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters in order to make protests connected to this censorship. Yet, the Website clearly stated that they had no problems with breastfeeding and that they only try to keep away images of fully exposed breasts. But the activists think that the images aren’t obscene and shouldn’t be taken off the Website, even if Facebook’s decision is irreversible.

For example, Heather Farley put a photo of hers while breastfeeding her infant around Halloween, but the picture was removed in November. In addition, Farley was warned that she would have her account erased if another photo of this kind would have to be removed again. Barry Schintt, spokesperson for Facebook, stated that the pictures which show a nipple or areola are considered to be vulgar and violate the policy of the site. Thus, any kind of photo which presents such images has to be removed.

Source: Efluxmedia

The U.S. intelligence community is concerned that terrorists might use micro-blogging tool Twitter to coordinate attacks, according to a purported draft Army intelligence report posted on the Web. The report–present by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and posted to the Federation of American Scientists Web site–examines the possible ways terrorists could use mobile and Web technologies such as the Global Positioning System, digital maps, and Twitter mashups to plan and execute terrorist attacks. The report (PDF), which appears to have been first presented earlier this month, was reported Friday by Wired magazine’s Noah Shachtman.

A chapter titled “Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter,” presents general, introductory information on Twitter and how it works, and describes how the service was used to report details of a recent earthquake in Los Angeles and by activists at the Republican National Convention. “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” the report said. The report describes hacktivists as politically motivated hackers. However, the overview notes that the research used to generate the report was gathered from open source intelligence and not compared with information in classified venues.

Source: Cnet, ABC

YouTube said it will begin showing full-length television programs in addition to its shorter video offerings to generate ad revenue. The Google Inc.-owned Web site said the new program is to begin with shows from CBS Corp., including “The Young and the Restless,” “90210,” “Dexter” and “Californication.” YouTube said it is in discussions with other media partners, but declined to elaborate. The Web site plans to start selling commercial slots for advertisements that are to run before, during and after full-length videos. The content provider—CBS, initially—has the option sell the ads and YouTube will take a cut of the revenue.

YouTube previously resisted selling this ad format because the Web site feared turning off viewers of its shorter clips. But marketers have been slow to warm to advertising adjacent to the usual user-created videos that make up a majority of the videos on YouTube; some larger advertisers say they would prefer to run their ads alongside more-predictable online video content. Web sites that show full-length videos—such as ABC.com, owned by Walt Disney Co., and Hulu, a joint venture between News Corp.’s Fox and General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal—can charge high rates for their ads and frequently sell out their available inventory.

Source: WSJ