I Watch Tivo, Tivo Watches Me

I love PVRs. I started with a Dish Network PVR and eventually I switched to DirecTV to get the DirecTivo. I loved them both, though I definitely love the more advanced features on the Tivo (like WishLists, Suggestions).

In the time since I’ve had some sort of PVR, I basically have watched … probably less than 20% of the commercials I could have watched. Why even that high? I’m probably being generous. There are times when I’m watching live TV (such as sports, or when I really want to watch something live). Other than that I usually only watch when I see a commercial that I’m skipping that catches my interest.

We know that Nielsen is releasing PVR-based ratings. Now Tivo is starting a research division to monitor us commercial-skippers.

The service is based on an analysis of the second-by-second viewing patterns of a nightly sample of 20,000 TiVo users, whose recorders report back to TiVo on
what was watched and when.

On average, TiVo has found that its users spend nearly half of their television time watching programs recorded earlier. And viewers of those recorded shows skip about 70 percent of the commercials, said Todd Juenger, TiVo’s vice president for audience research. Source: IHT

So … I’d like to know a) who these 20,000 are (if they’re randomly selected every night), b) if I’m in that list, since there are over 4 million Tivo users. 70% is probably about right since I was thinking I skipped about 80%. I can see why this type of data would be really handy for networks, as most advertisers assume people skip everything in playback mode. If Tivo can provide enough data to the contrary, it would really be a boon to networks trying to sell ads in the PVR era.

Tags: Tivo, PVR, advertising

Monopoly to Ditch Play Money for Credit Cards

Blasphemy! Instead of faux paper money, new Monopoly games are going to use faux credit cards and an electronic banking system.

Parker Brothers is phasing out the cash-based version’s funmoney and replacing it with an “Electronic Banking” flavor that could leave Mr. Moneybags turning his pockets inside out as his stash is replaced by a magnetic strip. New kits are completely devoid of the famous multi-colored bills; instead, you’ll find phoney Visa debit cards and a calculator / reader which keeps a running tabulation of your riches — or lack thereof. Source: enGadget

What’s next? Are they going to get rid of the race car and the little dog? Actually, it’s a sweet deal for Visa as they created the fake credit cards and the reader … and you can see the Visa branding on the reader.

The real reason for this is probably that people can’t do any math without a calculator any longer. When I was in middle school my math teacher would let anyone out early for recess if they could do a complex … and I mean complex … math problem in their head. And now I can do 4 x 4 digit multiplication in my head. Ask a middle school student nowadays to multiply 2 x 2 digits and you’ll probably get a blank stare.

Tags: Parker Brothers, Monopoly, Board Games

Antivirus Protection? For Your Best Protection, Buy a Little Known Product

ZDNet Au has an interesting article called “Why popular antivirus apps ‘do not work’”. The article posits that apps like Symantec, McAfee, TrendMicro … the big 3 … do the worst job of protecting you because virus writers, knowing they are the big sellers, target their malware to bypass these AV products.

“The most popular brands of antivirus on the market… have an 80 percent miss rate… So if you are running these pieces of software, eight out of 10 pieces of malicious code are going to get in,” said (Graham) Ingram (the general manager of Australia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT)).

I’m not sure about that 80% miss rate. I usually watch sites like AV-comparatives.org or Virus Bulletin to check on results of comparisons between products. Nowhere do I see that level of miss rate.

I will admit I have changed from Symantec to McAfee (once Symantec started their activation program, as I won’t buy activated software … except Windows) to NOD32 (when I decided that I didn’t like the ActiveX part of McAfee … plus both Symantec and McAfee are bloated and slow down PCs a lot. As a gamer I want the best performance I can get. NOD32 has a small market share, but it has a very good reputation among its users, almost a cult following. It has a small footprint, very good heuristics and very good scanning speed.

Also, I run BOClean, an anti-Trojan scanner; once again by another small company. Both BOClean and NOD32 have caught malware before it reached my system.

This is the setup I would recommend. A virus scanner, whether a small company or big company … at least get something. And an anti-Trojan scanner (besides BOClean there is a-squared and TrojanHunter, among others). You can’t be too careful. Tags: BOClean, NOD32, Symantec, McAfee, Antivirus

Yahoo Messenger Down … What an Effect!

It appears Yahoo! Messenger is currently down. I was asking a question at Yahoo! Answers and I saw tons of questions there about … “I can’t connect to Yahoo! Messenger, why?” … “I can’t login”, etc. etc.

First, it amazes me that people don’t read the other questions! They could have easily seen that the servers were down.

Secondly, it also amazes me how much something like this is affecting people. It’s Saturday night guys! Get out and do something! I would except the SF Bay Area is so frigging hot it’s ridiculous. The only comfortable place right now is my car with the A/C on … and I don’t want to go to a movie just to get cool.

The PC Industry is Really Hot … Temperature-wise …

There’s a heatwave going on in the SF Bay Area and right now it’s 107 outside. In my office, the only room in the house with A/C, when I came home (I left the A/C on in the office for my dogs to, if they were smart enough, cool off in), it was 85. I decided to turn on the PC and do some game playing. That meant turning on my gaming PC, which is 3 years old and not state of the art. Yet it puts out tons of heat. I can feel the heat rising from it as I type.

So, we came home at 2:30 PM. It’s now 6 and it’s 91.4 in this room. How could it go up 6 degrees? Well, outside it’s gone up from 104 to 107, but it’s the PC that’s been doing it.

When I turn on my PC, I also turn on a router, a cable modem, a printer, 5 external hard drives, a print server / switch, a Linksys NAS file server, and speakers. And that’s just one PC; I have 3 in that room. Just the external drives alone put out tons of heat … I put my hand on a 250 GB Lacie drive … I didn’t realize how hot the darn thing gets.

So, I turned off the file server, the 5 external drives … that’s really about all I can turn off … yeah, I guess I could turn off the printer.

Honestly, I was going to get a more state of the art PC but I’m worried about even more heat in this room. And it’s so hot right now I’m seriously considering powering down the gaming PC and turning on my really, really old Dell Dimension 8100. And my next gaming PC may in fact be a gaming laptop. No way they put out as much heat as a desktop PC. I’m even thinking of rewiring the house to allow more portable A/C units or maybe getting central A/C.

Finally, don’t anyone get me started on global warming. This area was nowhere near this hot when I moved into it 5 years ago. When it starts to affect my gaming, you’ve hit a nerve.
Tags: A/C, global warming, PC, gaming

Microsoft Confirms Zune; Watch Out (?) Apple

I’ve been writing about the Zune both here and at RealTechNews for some time now. Today Microsoft caved in and admitted it exists … though at their blog they were a bit coy about what it was. “Microsoft’s new, holistic approach to music and entertainment.”

After months of speculation, this might qualify as anticlimactic, but Microsoft confirmed today that it plans to come out with a portable media player and related software under the name Zune. The company announced the project through an article in Billboard magazine, an abbreviated version of which is here. Source: SeattlePI.com

So here’s the deal. This is exciting, because it’s new. But is it really a threat to Apple? Anything Microsoft does is a threat, but with Apple’s large market share and almost cult-like following … this is more likely to hurt second-tier companies like Creative Labs, at least at first.

Also, is it only me, or does every 1.0 release of anything Microsoft does seem … well, less than optimal? It usually takes them a while to get it right.

Tags: Zune, Microsoft, MP3, Apple

Online Maps Still Failing Sometimes, Part 2

I wrote earlier about how online mapping services still fail to meet my needs sometimes. Today I thought of a great feature, at least IMHO, that’s still missing.

They are doing construction on Interstate 880 in the SF Bay Area right now. It’s caused incredible tie-ups. Normally, there’s heavy traffic, but right now, it’s horrible. I know of an alternate route, but I’m pretty sure it’s further distance-wise … I’d like to see just how much further. Of course, if I try to use a mapping service to get directions, it tells me the most direct route … the one I want to avoid.

So (are you listening, Google?), what I’d like is a way to draw my own route on a map, and have it tell me the distance. Now that would be a cool feature. That way I could see, is this alternative 10 miles longer, 5 miles, what? Which is why I asked if Google is listening; sounds like something they would latch onto sooner than the others.

Tags: Google, Mapquest, Yahoo! Maps, maps

Cingular Orange Network Does Not Support IPv6

For those who don’t know, Cingular Blue is the old AT&T wireless network, and Cingular Orange is the … well, Cingular Network. The problem is, the Orange network does not support IPv6. And, if you also don’t know, Cingular is telling customers with older SIMs to come and and (for free) get a new SIM … which will use the Orange network. So what’s the big deal?

Well, Windows Mobile 2005 devices use IPv6. If a device tries to do a DNS lookup using IPv6 on Cingular Orange, the request will be rejected. There appears to be a 1 – 2 minute delay for this. This hasn’t really been noticed before since the push to move to Cingular Orange is just now taking place.

What does this mean? Keep your old Cingular Blue SIMs if you are using Windows Mobile 2005, at least for now.

Tags: Cingular, IPV6

No DRM in the Future @ Yahoo! Music?

It’s just an experiment, but it’s an exciting one. You can buy a personalized version of the new Jessica Simpson song “A Public Affair” at Yahoo! Music. So what? Well, besides the personalization, which means it’ll insert your name, the tracks are MP3s … no DRM. And, as blogged at the Yahoo! Music blog, this is something Yahoo! would love to extend to … well, everything.

As you know, we’ve been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now. Our position is simple: DRM doesn’t add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day — the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform. Source: Y!Music Blog

They go on to say how DRM is costly to implement, etc. etc. And here’s something I love to hear: they state how much more valuable un-DRMed content is for consumers.

And it’s great to hear that Yahoo! is actively trying to convince music labels to sign on to this concept. It sounds like the idea is to charge more than the going rate for un-DRMed music (99 cents or so) … “And on the consumer end there is certainly some discount built into that $0.99 download for the fact that you can burn a limited number of times, can’t play it on your Squeezebox, can’t DJ it with your DJ software, and can’t make a movie out of it with iMovie?“

I, for one, would be extremely willing to pay more for music that’s un-DRMed. I’d even be willing to pay more for a subscription service, if one of them offered such a thing. And … this would break me out of my MP3 Player malaise. My wife has an iPod, but as you know she uses it as much for her patients as for her music. Me, I’ve not wanted to get locked into any particular DRM … so I’ve stayed on the sidelines (plus I kinda like listening to NPR rather than music on the way to work). Something like this … sign me up.

Tags: MP3, DRM, Yahoo

Too Many iPod Accessories for Words?

My wife has an iPod, but she has a real use for it. She also has a clever way of telling me she wants something. I had spoken to her about getting an iPod before, but she didn’t want it. Then she saw one at school. She mentioned it to me, which I tend to recognize as a hint to me … Since she needed a recorder to use in her psychology sessions (where’s she’s the therapist, not the patient, BTW) at school, I used that reason to justify buying one for her.

Her accessories to date include a) a case, b) a voice recorder attachment. That’s it, done. I was thinking about this as I read a Newsfactor story about how big the accessory market is. My wife’s pretty practical, and she hasn’t gone crazy over her iPod.

I did some research, and found some wacky accessories.

Examples: an iPod toilet paper dispenser; the iBuzz music activated sex toy; the black thong case for the iPod nano … and yes, it’s a case, not anything else. Though with the iBuzz around, I have to say I’m glad my wife is practical.

Tags: Apple, iPod, MP3