Rattleblog: Tales from the bloggosphere

29-07-2006

by Damien Mulley

In Damien Mulley's latest roundup of what's making waves in the bloggosphere he finds that video news dominates discussions on the tech blogs and that sex sells.

The biggest news on the blogs this week is the Microsoft Zune or iPod killer as everyone calls it. Engadget were first to blog about this a few weeks back and have now unveiled lots more information, including that it will connect to your PC and other Zunes wirelessly. It's also expected Microsoft will preload the Zune with any songs you have downloaded from iTunes.

We make money not art reports that now your Granny can read those mobile media messages you send her sitting at her TV.

Kevin Burton mentions that Google Video now allows you to bookmark sections of Videos. You can now bookmark any part of a video down to the second and send a link to friends who can then watch the video from this point onwards.

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis reports that NBC signed up TV show "Nobody's Watching" after seeing a pilot for it on YouTube. The pilot had been uploaded on YouTube after being rejected by Warner Brothers but became a hit on the video site.

Techcrunch reports that Amazon will now be getting into the video downloads market. It is going to skip music downloads for now and concentrate on the emergent digital video sales market. They'll sell and rent both movies and TV episodes. One thing massively in Amazon's favour is the fact that they own the Internet Movie Database -- the most comprehensive site in the world for movie and tv show information.

On the subject of the small screen, Om Malik reports that the founders of Skype who previously created file sharing network Kazaa are now going to launch a peer to peer TV service. Staying with Skype Tom Raftery takes the new video enabled Skype for a test drive and is well impressed.

In Mac news Apple has filed a patent for a proximity detector for the iPod which creates a virtual scroll wheel on the Ipod screen and as you move your fingers over it, the iPod feels the movement and you can scroll through the menu without even touching the screen. Star Trek fans are starting to realise their dreams.

BoingBoing mentions SeisMac a software based seismograph that uses the Sudden Motion Sensor in your MacBook to detect vibration and displays it in a three-axis acceleration graph.

Here in Ireland, Julian Ellison gives a summary of start-up funding, finance and the Irish economy for new tech businesses. This should be a help for all those wanting to know what it is like starting out in the local market.

So how does Google respond when someone says they are giving them a headache you might ask? They send the person a packet of headache tablets and a handwritten letter letting them know they are listening to their issues.

Lastly sex and tech mixed together equals more traffic. A single blog post about ways to meet girls using Google has brought huge numbers of people to my own humble blog in under five days. This indisputably confirms that sex sells... in case there was any doubters out there.

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a technical writer in Cork.