Seeking Nerdvana

The movie industry has decided to train 'em young, teaming up with Boy Scouts in Los Angeles to introduce a patch for learning about the evils of stealing movies and music.

Beware, Little Brother is watching you.

Read the full post at http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/play/2006/10/27/boy_scouts_learn_to_dob_dob_dob_in_pirat

* NOTE: This post is on Hydrapinion, an opinion-based, multi-headed blog - or hydrablog - I've started with four other freelance technology journalists. My topic is Play and my day is Friday so from now on I'm going to point to Hydrapinion every Friday, but Friday is also the day I'll post TechVidReviews here at Seeking Nerdvana and reprints of my magazine products reviews that don't appear online elsewhere.

This week, Seeking Nerdvana's TechVidReview looks at Asus' AiGuru S1 cordless Skype phone.

Convergence can be a wonderful thing and one of the finer examples is the evolution of Vosonic's X's Drive image tank into a full blown Portable Media Player.

=> Read more!

If you're security conscious but on a tight budget, you don't need to spend a fortune to keep an eye on things at home or around the office. Capture-Cam video monitoring software lets you remotely monitor up to 16 cameras via a host PC running Windows 98 or above...

Read the full review at http://www.theage.com.au/news/upgrade/on-the-lookout/2006/10/24/1161455708153.html

Yesterday I said Vista's restrictive licensing conditions could make it a bad choice for a lounge room PC, but I didn't go into the alternatives to Windows' Media Center Edition. Ed Bott over at ZDNet has drawn up a good list of media center options, comparing their features, which makes interesting reading. Vista Media Center Edition still comes up the winner, which isn't surprising because - like it or not - it does just about everything you could ask for.

Showshifter is a digital lounge room pioneer that never made it to the promised land.

Missing from the list is media center pioneer Showshifter which is stuck in liquidation limbo. I always thought Showshifter was the one to keep an eye on but its developer, Home Media Networks, went into voluntary liquidation this year. Fans are doing their best to keep it alive at www.showshiftergroup.com, hoping to revive it as an open source project. Even before development stalled, Showshifter had lagged far behind Windows' Media Center Edition. The official site has insisted "ShowShifter is making a comeback!" for months now, but it looks like Showshifter may have shifted its last show.

Seeking Nerdvana means constantly riding the upgrade cycle, but Microsoft's new Vista operating system looks set to make life impossible for those of us who like to indulge in the occasional hardware refresh.

Embracing Vista in the lounge room could mean the end of hardware upgrades.

Microsoft plans to limit the number of times a retail copy of Vista can be moved to new hardware (retail meaning a stand alone boxed copy as opposed to a pre-installed copy). This doesn't just mean transferring Vista to a completely new computer because, if you change too many components in your PC, Windows can decide that it's a new computer. Under XP you're forced to reactivate your copy of Windows when this happens, or else it will stop working after 30 days. Now it looks like you can only do this once and then Vista will stop working for good. So Microsoft expects you to shell out an obscene $AU751 for retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, incorporating Windows Media Center, and then has the arrogance to restrict your right to upgrade your hardware.

Windows users are waiting on Microsoft to clarify the situation and I suspect the software giant will back down on this one before Vista hits the retail shelves in January. Otherwise I'd say if there was ever a reason to jump off the Windows merri-go-round and embrace Apple Mac or Linux in the lounge room, this is it.

"The key to the digital lounge room is content. The Greeks knew it. The Carthaginians knew it, and now you know it ..." (with apologies to General Patton and Springfield's one-armed Herman). Yep, content is king and the lack of it is what's holding back the digital lounge room from going mainstream, so they tell us.

Content is a strategic element in the battle for our lounge rooms.

The content won't come until the delivery platform and digital rights management are locked down - which will probably mean putting hardware into your lounge room. This is Apple's goal with iTV, to create the iPod of home entertainment and encourage digital couch potatoes to sacrifice functionality and freedom for ease of use.

Of course file-sharers (the polite term for pirates) are either laughing or shaking their heads at this point. Take copyright concerns out of the equation and there is loads of great content online, at DVD quality and in easily handled formats. As broadband sloooowly gets cheaper and faster in Australia, it's ridiculously easy to find episodes of Lost that have just screened in the US, download them, burn them to disc and watch them on TV using a $AU100 DivX DVD player. If you're a bit more tech-savvy you could play them directly to your TV from your computer or network drive. It's not rocket science, any computer literate seven-year old could do it.

So if technologies like BitTorrent put a wealth of content at our finger tips, why isn't everyone watching The Sopranos as it screens in the US rather than when Australia's Nine feels like showing it? Respect for the law? I think not. (Speaking of Nine, lets hope Jamie Packer sells the network to a consortium of Sci-Fi fans and Star Trek finally gets the respect it deserves).

Most people are too stupid, lazy or technophobic to download music, movies or television shows and will be until you make it "green button simple" for them - a great term I picked up from a guy at Xerox referring to the fact that some people can't do anything until they're presented with one simple green button. If you need proof just look at the iPod, it wasn't the first MP3 player, nor is it the most flexible or the cheapest, but it's as close to green button simple as an MP3 player gets. Now the race is on to develop the lounge room equivalent.

So I guess "ease of use" is king. It will be interesting to see who manages to make the digital lounge room green button simple first, but those who don't need their hands held are already there.

Never trust a skinny technology reviewer - it means they're not doing the hard yards sitting on their arse playing with new tech. That's always been my motto, but I've decided I don't want it on my tombstone - we'll not anytime soon anyway. It's my son's third birthday today and I bought him a present - a treadmill. Actually the treadmill is for me but the gift is to my son, his baby sister and their mum.

Repco's RK3200 Enduro Racer and, no, she's not included :-(

Since I went freelance 18 months ago, my daily commute has consisted of walking from the bedroom to the spare bedroom, sometimes strolling to the corner for a coffee with too many sugars. My office is the digital lounge room - offering readers a view from the couch with a remote in one hand and a stiff drink in the other. I've even got a Homer Simpson-esque butt crack groove in the couch to prove my dedication. The groove is getting bigger, as is my butt, and it's time to do something about it - thus the treadmill.

I'm not a gym person by a long shot, I've never done anything "healthy" in my life, but there's no point in seeking the ultimate home entertainment nerdvana if you don't live long enough to enjoy it. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit to my friends I've bought a treadmill, but if I pimp it out with a wide screen TV, surround sound and internet access maybe I can pass it off as a Nethrone. Just coz you're on a health kick doesn't mean you have to give up the finer things in life.