Amazon's set-top-box!
Oct 3rd, 2013
Amazon is going to release set-top-box for the holidays (link).
Another set to box from another vendor? Don't we have enough already with Roku, AppleTV, Google ChromeCast and various devices from small players? I would like to see someone release a full-fledged TV DVR plus streaming device like SageTV(other than Tivo). I've been using SageTV and its Media Extender STP-HD300 for the last three years without any issue and loving it. I've not spent a single dollar with Comcast or Dish since then.
SageTV uses computer as the media server to control HD HomeRun over the air TV tuner over regular ethernet cables and streams live/recorded TV to the HD300 box sitting next to the TV and Home theater system. I don't see a good alternative to this powerful system right now, and I'm worried if something happens to my computer or to the little wonder box HD300 (already 3 years old) I would end up either loosing access to TV altogether or cut my pride and subscribe to Dish/Comcast.
When Google acquired SageTV last year, the hope was that they'll make it better by integrating more services and killing the Google TV and replacing it with SageTV. Whatever happened to that hope and to SageTV!!! Can someone take up the SageTV flag and help those occasional TV watchers save some dough and have choice? I don't see any other option, short of Tivo that charges $15/m just for the service and TVGuide? Give me choice folks!
July 21 - Early Week Readings
- Why Surface RT failed and iPad didn't (NYT)
- A telling lesson on why too many options is not necessarily a good thing
- Tiny lasers will speed up future computers (ars)
- Apple TV: Cooperating with content providers (NYT)
- Economics 101: Killing America (salon)
- Economics is not science, agree to that
- 10 mind blowing technologies that will appear by 2030 (io9)
- Why retailers ask for ZipCode when you checkout (forbes)
- Ofcourse for marketing purpose.. but can lead to unexpected consequences
- This debate never dies off
- Finance set to surpass tech as the most profitable industry (usatoday)
- Which investment is better: Hollywood or Siliconvalley (NYT)
- History of Apps pricing, why most apps are free (flurry)
- How Windows monopoly is getting destroyed (BI)
- Give me back my iPhone (slate)
July 17, Mid-Week Readings
- PivotalHD is available for download by SK (yours faithfully) (gopivotal)
- Pivotal ships Hadoop to masses - my first appearance in The Register (TheRegister)
- Social Media bubble is deflating (BW)
- Pivotal ships Hadoop distro complete with SQL (jexenter)
- Hey engineers - Your product manager needs a hug (aha.iohttp://blog.aha.io/index.php/hey-engineers-your-product-manager-needs-a-hug/)
- Practical introduction to Data Science skills (google)
July 15, Early week Readings
- The Dropbox opportunity (link)
- Microsoft overhauls the Apple way (NYT)
- How to tell you've a lousy 401k (YahooFinance)
- Cars are fast becoming Smartphones on wheels (TR)
- You want to hide from NSA? Guide to nearly impossible (wired)
- Not even Hadoop is free of patent-troll attack (NYT)
- Warren: Human Bigdata engine (gooddata)
Mid-Week: Reads
Mid-Week Readings:
- Unexpected use for Enron emails - BigData! (MIT Tech Review)
- Tech spending will reach $3.7 trillion in 2013, Gartner predicts (AllthingsD)
- How Apple and IBM learned to change with times (USANews)
- The essential WallStreet summer reading list (NYT)
- What's wrong with technology fixes (BostonReview)
- Why doesn't Apple enable sustainable business on the AppStore (Stratechery)
- Pandora paid over $1300 not $16 for playing one million songs (Link)
- How to give a killer presentation - a story of "lion lights". Inspiring (HBR)
Mid-Week Watch list:
- Art of choosing: Fascinating book about the choices we make. Quick intro by author (Columbia U's Sheela Iyengar) (video)
Big Data and where it is going
Just posted a blog in Greenplum.com about the platform I help lead bring to the market. It is exciting to see the buzz it created in the market, proof that Pivotal is marching in the right direction.
Got a surprise invite to Google Music
I don't remember asking for Google Music invite. Surprisingly received an invite today and promptly signed up for it. It is obviously a competing service to iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive, no matter how slice and dice it. Difference is, Google Music is free while the others are offered for a nominal price but with unlimited storage.
After sign up, the music service ask you to select your preferred genre of music style. To upload your songs you need need install a small piece of software. You can update up to 20,000 tracks to the service. I suppose that is more than enough to store most people's collection (I've 32k tracks!). Here is a screenshot of the service:
Google Music has free selection of music that is presented to you based on the music genres you like. I've some free selections shown (I cannot figure out the total number of tracks in my free music playlist?).
The service is a good add-on for Google's ChromeBook OS, as a iTunes replacement for ChromeBook. Google's strategy does seem to evolve towards moving users to Cloud based OS, Storage and Media(refer my previous post on SageTV acquisition). However, I would like to have offline storage as well. ChromeBook's cloud OS seem to choke my computing senses by offering just a browser. I invariably try to close that damn browser (jail) and feel choked when I cannot access my hard disk!. Why not offer a local caching option so that I don't need to always look for internet connection to use my Laptop? Have some intelligent caching and offer users a way to access local storage for music, photos and video that they don't want to upload to cloud?
After sign up, the music service ask you to select your preferred genre of music style. To upload your songs you need need install a small piece of software. You can update up to 20,000 tracks to the service. I suppose that is more than enough to store most people's collection (I've 32k tracks!). Here is a screenshot of the service:
The service is a good add-on for Google's ChromeBook OS, as a iTunes replacement for ChromeBook. Google's strategy does seem to evolve towards moving users to Cloud based OS, Storage and Media(refer my previous post on SageTV acquisition). However, I would like to have offline storage as well. ChromeBook's cloud OS seem to choke my computing senses by offering just a browser. I invariably try to close that damn browser (jail) and feel choked when I cannot access my hard disk!. Why not offer a local caching option so that I don't need to always look for internet connection to use my Laptop? Have some intelligent caching and offer users a way to access local storage for music, photos and video that they don't want to upload to cloud?
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