iPhonespotting

I’ve seen two more iPhones in the wild lately.

About two weeks ago I was scurrying along Canal Street and blocking the middle of the sidewalk — in broad frikkin daylight! — was some guy holding up his iPhone. He was accessing the Net on it!

Then last night on the subway, I see this huge bright screen playing video — it was a Suit watching some sort of financial video podcast on his iPhone!

To contrast with what used to be the most popular smartphone, the Treo — later last night on another subway line, I saw a woman looking at some built-in app on her Treo (probably Contacts). Then she put it away — and pulled out an iPod Mini to listen to music!

I can’t imagine an iPhone owner pulling out another device to listen to music, can you?

Previously in this blog:
iPhone More Popular Than Zune And Harry Potter

Apple And H.264 Internal Chips: I’m With Cringely

Let the Chips Fall: More 3G iPhone details and some H.264 stuff, too.

And speaking of making bad predictions, several months ago I boldly wrote that Apple would be adding hardware H.264 support to virtually its entire product line. This made sense to hardly anyone at the time, though the ability to support H.264 video ENCODING could have brought dramatic service possibilities to the Macintosh line (HD iChat anyone?). Well call me stupid, but at this point I’d like to specify exactly which H.264 chip I still expect Apple to use. It’s the Type A H.264 Codec LSI from NTT Electronics, presumably a consumer version of the broadcast H.264 chip NTT Electronics introduced at the NAB show in April.

This consumer chip is sampling now and will be in mass production in October, which makes it too late for any Apple Christmas products but just right for a very interesting Macworld show in January.

Internal H.264 would make the Mac leap so far ahead of all other platforms it’s a wonder it hasn’t happened by now. I don’t like the idea of having to wait until sometime in 2008. It would have been a natural for this holiday buying season — that’s also when people buy and use camcorders. Think of all that already-in-H.264 video that could added to YouTube immediately, bypassing Flash! Suddenly, the iPhone would be the killer delivery system for YouTube vids. And just think of all those ready-for-iTunes video (p)odcasts. TV is so dead.

–linkswipe via The iPhone Blog

Previously in this blog:
Jobs Gets YouTube On iPhone — But Without Flash!
Oh Look At This! My Apple-YouTube Prediction Will Come True!
Prediction: YouTube/Google Drop Flash Video

Sue Me. I’m A Man Who Likes Women.

Bah. Generally whenever I see a link touting hot women, I pass it up. I don’t need that kind of distraction. But a link on digg promised The Hottest Female Podcasters of 2007.

Er, wut?

I still had it in my little head that podcasts were audio. So who cares what the voice looks like.

Anyway, I went to the link.

And I saw Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV.

I had to click, especially after it said she did a video podcast.

Oh Major Lust.

That’s all I’ll say.

Now go click.

Reference: Podcast Tech Specs For iTunes Store

Podcaster Tech Specs

Sammy Puts Me On TV. Sort Of.

That Palm Addicts whirlwind mastermind, Sammual McLoughlin, just put out his latest videocast, PA TV #71, and he graciously mentions me in it.

Screensnaps!

And there I am:

Up-close action:

The videocast is QuickTime, but if you use Download Helper and vlc, you can watch it on your desktop and even take screensnaps. vlc is really something else!

Sammy really leads a charmed life. Not only does he have the monster Palm Addicts site, he has a face and voice that work splendidly on video. He’s gonna get a lot of lady fans!

I Call This Bullshit

Dvorak: iPhone battery dead after 40 minutes

Puhleeze!

First of all, Jobs himself was seen in public using it.

The witness didn’t report Jobs having any problems with it.

Second, I’m sure the software isn’t yet final.

Third, Dvorak? Dvorak? Dvorak?

LifeDrive Notes: Software To Try And Video Conversion

Palm Addicts is filled with goodies today:

Display Manager 1.3 is out

Henk has upgraded his Display Manager. Control the state of the dynamic input area and the screen rotation like never before.

With DisplayManager you can set the state of the dynamic input area, the screen rotation, the state of the on-screen graffiti and the input area mode for each application and also change them on the fly.

Screen capture

Have you ever wanted to capture your palm’s screen when you passed a game or show someone what you are seeing on your palm? There are apps out there that do this, screen capture, like your print button in Windows.

Palm/Treo Web Video Generator

Palm/Treo Web Video Generator may have potential allowing you to watch You Tube video’s on your Palm device […]

How to transcode video for your Palm

If you like to watch video podcasts on your Palm but experience choppy video here is what to do.

P2P Forever And Ever!

Appeerances Can Be Deceiving: What’s that 40-gig hard drive doing inside my Apple TV?

Here is what I think is happening with the Apple TV hard drive. I think sometime this summer Apple will ship a firmware upgrade for the Apple TV and it will suddenly gain an important new capability. That’s when the Apple TV becomes a node on the iTunes peer-to-peer video network.

If the Apple TV is plugged in it is turned on. Did you notice that? That means the hard drive will have at least the capability of running 24/7. Now envision a BitTorrent-like file distribution system that is controlled primarily by iTunes, rather than by you or me. A centrally controlled P2P system is VERY powerful because it allows for the pre-positioning of content.

Say Disney releases Cars 1.5 — a direct-to-DVD release expected to sell millions of copies in its first few days. There is no way iTunes could even hope to participate in a launch like that simply because there isn’t enough bandwidth at a good price — or any price. Even BitTorrent would have troubles handling a small part of such a launch until enough seeds were populated and running. But what if the movie was effectively pre-seeded — loaded over a few days on a distribution tree of thousands of Apple TV boxes which could then deliver the movie locally at high speed if purchased. Or if not purchased the seeded copies could still work together to serve other Apple TVs on the same ISP subnet.

Let’s say this is true. How soon will it be hacked for real P2P?

Reference: iPod For Beginners

Need help with that iPod?

iPods are indisputably the most popular gadgets of recent years. The iPod, however comes with very little documentation. As such, NotePage, Inc. has created a downloadable pdf that explains the ins and outs of iPods. The free iPod tutorial explains the differences between the iPod models. It also deciphers the technical jargon used on websites to explain the iPods various features and functions. Check it out … it’s not bad!

YouTube: Bait For The Man

The Puppet Stars of YouTube

I won’t be surprised if someday soon I’m writing about a puppeteer who’s scored a big deal for a TV show or movie and how they got their start on YouTube.