The History of Improving TV

Just a short post, I want to point everyone to this funny article by Matt Rosoff: a pretty definitive list of "iTV Failures."  Ah, the memories, Web TV in the 1990's.....wait a minute...it's still supported by Microsoft!.

Visually Mapping the World?

I know it's popular to bag on Microsoft but this is pretty amazing stuff.  Are they going to leapfrog Google in photographically reproducing the world online?  And with crowdsourcing rather than actually investing in a physical infrastructure to do it? This is already being integrated into Bing Maps and it is also a nice showcase for Silverlight.

Click on me

I Want My (3D) YouTube TV

Come with us on a trip to the 3D future!

Zowza.  It's starting to look like the early 90's all over again.  Sony has just announced that they will be supporting 3D YouTube video on the PS3.  Why is this like the early 90's?  Well, they are supporting Flash and promoting that as a 3D video player, lining up Sony, Google and Adobe against Apple.  The stars are aligning again for another battle of a generally inferior technological standard (Flash) promoted by "PC" against the upstart technologically superior HTML 5.0 (at least in non-3D, I need to research HTML 5.0 and 3D) being promoted by Apple.  I wonder where Microsoft stands in this battle.  Frankly, I liked the world a lot better when Google was lined up with, and not against, Apple.

This whole 3D thing is either going to bust open and be ubiquitous or is going to be another spectacular flameout, with dens across America littered with unused/unusable 3D televisions.  Click here for a short and interesting history of 3D film.  The most interesting fact is that prior to Avatar, the most financially successful (adjusted for inflation) 3D movie was a softcore porn flick, The Stewardesses.