With as many set-top boxes as there suddenly appear to be in the home video market, as long as any one of them has a strong central feature, it could be the one that becomes a household name. Look at TiVo, Slingbox, and AppleTV: Each of these built a TV-based ecosystem around a single unique feature: TiVo's was the DVR, Slingbox was the place-shifting concept, and AppleTV was iTunes.
Now, IPTV startup Myka has designed its own media center STB, focusing on BitTorrent as its winning central feature. Betanews got an exclusive look at this new device.
Openness and simplicity do not often walk hand-in-hand, as anyone with a good deal of experience the various Linux distributions knows. Yet somehow, Myka has managed to deliver a Linux-based STB with a fantastic amount of customizability, and that still manages to "just work."
For example, it can be used as a simple home media server and be loaded with content such as movies, music, and pictures to be watched on the living room TV. Personal media players (it's iPod friendly) and mass storage devices can all plug into Myka via USB and be navigated with the remote control. Users can also browse streaming Web video sites such as YouTube and CNN, with more services expected in the near future.
Click the photo for more images of Myka's STB.
To set up torrent downloads, users can log onto my.myka.tv on their PC, type in their desired torrent's URL, and the STB automatically starts to download it. It ends up feeling a lot like the Netflix Instant Queue for the Roku set top box or Xbox Live.
Myka's Torrent Manager includes a weekly scheduler, which lets the user set limits on downloads so as to not trigger throttling or exceed bandwidth caps. The simple graph sets limits on upstream and downstream speeds and select times of day when full sharing, limited sharing, or no sharing is allowed.
While video quality will vary depending upon the file being played, Myka's default resolution is 720p at 60 Hz. When the device is connected via HDMI to a higher resolution screen, it automatically corrects itself. We tested the device at its maximum resolution of 1080p 59.94 Hz, and .MKV and .Xvid files played back in high definition with no lagging or crashing.
Beyond the simplicity, the device offers a number of features that will appeal to users looking for more control, or users who are familiar with Syabas NMT (Networked Media Tank), upon which Myka is based. The device includes a UPnP AV Server, myiHome Server, an FTP Server, Samba Server, NFS Server, its Torrent Client, and a Usenet Client, all of which can be turned off or halted as the user needs. Because of this server technology, Myka can be contacted via telnet, FTP, or simply through a Web browser connected to the home network.
Myka is available with either a 250 GB ($199) or 1 TB ($299) internal hard drive, and is shipping now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
We spent some enjoyable time earlier this week playing with 
Historic photographs and videos are increasingly coming from cell phones and low-resolution point and shoot cameras; and with streaming services such as Qik, we can already watch live, unfiltered news happen right in front of us. With this technology available to practically everyone, anybody equipped with a phone could be the next Abraham Zapruder. 
As encouraged as I am to see a quick resolution to this obviously ridiculous example of antagonistic customer "service", I'm reminded that AT&T's rapid and complete response has little to do with its efficient customer service capability [cough] and everything to do with Mr. Savage's wide-ranging, tech savvy celebrity.
There's an application just launching into beta called thisMoment, and I've had a tab open for it all week in hope that I'll catch some quiet time to try it out. Harry McCracken at Technologizer 
British LCD TV maker Cello Electronics has populated the European budget TV market with devices sporting some atypical features, such as the 
HTC's Hero, finally formally 
The S1 is also billed as capable of withstanding 800 pounds of pressure, and of putting up with temperatures ranging from -4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit. 
TV critic Alan Sepinwall asked Thursday afternoon, of no one in particular on Twitter, if this was the biggest double-celebrity-death day since Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. both exited (May 16, 1990). And for a generation it sure felt like the world, or one's youth anyway, was coming to an end. 
Greiner's new Web page borrows a New Zealand-based newsletter (which appears to be out of publication since last October) to demonstrate how a non-validated Web page appears when rendered by Outlook. Betanews checked out that newsletter: Abiding by many of the suggestions made by professional Web designers, the CSS for "Soul Purpose" was all embedded in the document -- there were no links to external stylesheets, eliminating one opportunity for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. E-mail clients that do support full CSS often prefer the code to be embedded in the page rather than linked, so "Soul Purpose" was following the rules.
Today, Taiwanese mobile phone maker and principal hardware supporter of the Android platform, HTC unveiled its third Android handset, Hero, which is the first to make a departure from the familiar Android UI.
David Wadhwani, Vice President and General Manager of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe said, "As the first Android device with Flash, the new HTC Hero represents a key milestone for Android and the Flash Platform. With close to 80% of all videos online delivered with Adobe Flash technology, consumers want to access rich Web content on-the-go. The collaboration with HTC offers people a more complete Flash based Web browsing experience today and presents an important step towards full Web browsing with Flash Player 10 on mobile phones in the future."
I have a copy of Portraits, a book of Steve McCurry's photographs, on my bookshelf. The Afghan girl is on the cover -- you know the photo, yes you do, and those eyes have never left you. McCurry photographed Sharbat Gula in 1985 when she was a 13-year-old refugee, and about seven years ago he found her again, living in a remote region of Afghanistan.
August 15, 2009 > Have you been putting off that Win7 RC download? Get on the stick, because the end is nearing. Microsoft expects to release Windows 7 to manufacturing in July, and 
Mr. Jaquith reached out to Mr. Anderson (pictured right) -- who is currently the editor-in-chief of Wired -- and his publishers at Hyperion before going public with the saga on Tuesday in the company blog. Mr. Anderson said he'd correct his "screwups" online by the time the book is released (in July) and in future editions; Hyperion said that was good enough for them.
With the iPhone's 3.0 software update, Apple's iconic touchphone finally has access to AT&T Navigator, the carrier's branded GPS software solution provided by TeleNav, and the first turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone.
It's an argument we've seen before from Microsoft's competitors and opponents, as well as from many sensible observers: It may be unfair for the manufacturer of the operating system to leverage its customer visibility to advance a free software platform that cuts out commercial competitors. But there's another argument from opponents as well, many of them the same people: Microsoft should be responsible for the health and well-being of its customers' systems when the operating system is threatened, either through malicious use or from system defects.
What it's calling Security Essentials today is a piece of this and a piece of that: the core scanning engine from OneCare, along with the capability to share malware signatures in real-time with the Dynamic Signature Service originally intended for its Forefront commercial package, wrapped together with a front end that effectively substitutes for Windows Defender, and that looks slightly more like an XP product than a Vista product. But at the heart of the system is the first public test of an idea that was supposed to premiere with Forefront last April and didn't: a live database of security events compiled with the aid of perhaps as many as 20 partners.
"This is just the beginning," said Francisco Carias, product manager for Lenovo's ThinkPad series. Going forward, all ThankPad laptops will be based on the redesigned keyboard. Lenovo is also eyeing future innovations beyond the new laptop's keyboard, multitouch touchpad, and expanded VOIP support.
"Today, when you sit down at a computer and you access a broadband connection, you're not told by your broadband provider that you have to have a Dell or an HP or an Apple in order to access the network," stated Sen. John Kerry (D - Mass.), the former presidential candidate who chaired a portion of Wednesday's hearing. "And when you purchase a wireless phone in Asia or Europe, you typically don't buy it through a wireless carrier. You purchase it separately from the manufacturer or from an outlet."
"Exclusive device deals lead to lower prices. Consumers pay well under what AT&T pays Apple for the iPhone. It's a standard US industry practice for the device [to be] sold below its cost, in return for a two-year agreement where the subsidy that made the initial price possible is recovered over the term of the agreement," Roth testified. "In the past two years that the iPhone has been exclusive to AT&T, the price of the iPhone has gone from $399 to $199, and just last week to $99, all while exclusive to AT&T. And with the iPhone at $99, prices of other devices, including other exclusive devices, have dropped and will continue to drop in response to that."
"There is harm in urban areas as well. Consumers who desire an iPhone or a BlackBerry Storm smartphone cannot use it on our network, even if they prefer our service," Rooney continued. "We do not understand how the public can possibly be served by such a practice. If you take away nothing else from this meeting, I want you to understand a central goal of policy makers should be to enable consumers to buy the handset they want, and choose the service that best suits their needs."
"Near-exclusive reliance by wireless carriers and their agents on a single business model, which combines wireless service and handsets used to access the service, strongly influences what kinds of services the handset can perform, and what kind of software the subscriber can download," said Prof. Frieden. "This combination of handset and service also creates incentive for carriers to secure exclusive distribution rights for choice devices such as the Apple iPhone. It motivates carriers to favor ways to recoup their handset subsidies rather than to concentrate on offering unconditional access to the features within the handset, or services available by downloading software and content to the handset."
"Consumers will remain protected from demonstrable anti-competitive activity or unfair and deceptive practices in this sector by our antitrust and consumer protection authorities. The FCC has repeatedly found the wireless marketplace to be effectively competitive -- not perfectly competitive, but effectively competitive," Esbin testified. "Carriers are willing to pay for exclusive arrangements because offering subscribers a hot new handset is a way to differentiate their services. The FCC has acknowledged that product differentiation is a natural competitive response by carriers to customer churn. Churn itself is a sign of competition, and the exclusive arrangements are simply a feature in an intensely competitive market. And handset manufacturers benefit from the exclusives by being able to develop the initial version of a device for one type of network, ensuring both speed to market and some control over the user experience. Guaranteed minimum order from the manufacturer, another common feature, can remove some of the risks associated with a new product offering, thus permitting riskier and more innovative designs."
"Will Congress sit by and allow the largest carriers to lock the most attractive netbooks into exclusivity agreements before this segment of the market fully emerges?" Meena asked the Sen. Commerce Committee members last Wednesday. "Left unchecked in this segment of the PC market, the largest wireless carriers will gain control and begin to restrict PC innovation and distribution, just as they have wireless handsets. Furthermore, the claim that exclusivity agreements drive innovation is completely unfounded in this segment of the market. Companies like Dell, Acer, and others were advancing the netbook market well before the largest carriers got involved. How, then, can the largest carriers claim a divine right to exclusivity on netbooks?"
But why shouldn't a customer of Rooney's US Cellular, for instance, have the right to purchase an iPhone for whatever price US Cellular might make it available, Kerry proceeded. Roth responded that the real reason was because US Cellular -- along with Cellular South, which was also represented -- made the wrong choice of network protocols: CDMA as opposed to GSM, which he described as the global standard and the one that AT&T, and any other network that cares about customers, supports. Comparing CDMA to GSM, Roth argued, was like comparing VHS to Beta, in that order.
For all the wild success Steve Jobs has achieved in business, he remains a husband and a father facing down a serious, potentially life-ending illness. The image of a robust, confident, billionaire captain of industry clad in his iconic black turtleneck and jeans as he delivers yet another blockbuster message to the world does little to mask the frightening reality of his current state. Sick or not, every CEO eventually leaves the post. And life goes on.
Various people have talked about geek communication styles over the years. In particular, there was a blog by Michael Schwern a while back (Geek 2 Geek) that had some interesting thoughts on how the geek mind works. Sadly, it went dark some time ago; I never sent a note to Mr. Schwern telling him how much I enjoyed the blog, and honestly I hadn't thought about it for a long time until lo!, I see he's presenting at OSCon next month on 
Next Tuesday at the 
For fanatics of anything, camping out in line for the latest product or event is a chance to show off their loyalty and devotion to whatever their chosen obsession may be. Waiting for hours in unforgiving conditions creates a real camaraderie between folks, and helps soften a person's judgment of the product they waited for.
Apple has made the process of obtaining the new iPhone much smoother, and in doing so, much less exciting. Customers who pre-ordered the device can pick up their reserved iPhone at their leisure, or get it 
Quick question: What's cooler, a guy with a Bluetooth headset, or a Secret Service agent? If your answer was "neither," you might want to divert your eyes from Motorola's new Endeavor HX1 bone conduction Bluetooth headset. The not-yet-available Endeavor HX1 is Motorola's first attempt at marketing a Bluetooth headset with a bone conduction microphone in addition to its typical noise-canceling audio microphone. 
Santa Barbara-based Solid Oak set up a hue and cry over the weekend, saying that China's "Green Dam Youth Escort" filtering software bears unmistakable proof of piracy. Examination of the software and its server logs seems to indicate the company is correct -- aside from the long list of sites to be filtered, there are bits of familiar code and even calls back to Solid Oak's servers. (Chinese officials have flatly denied that any intellectual property was stolen, and a subsequent update to the package eliminated many of the callbacks and other suspect code.)
Just as the eagerly-awaited iPhone 3.0 software update became available, AT&T made an announcement that some subscribers' upgrade eligibility would be bumped up just in time for the iPhone 3G S launch this Friday.
What we've been calling a "perception problem" with Windows Vista -- the notion that users may tend to think it's less secure or reliable than it has proven to be on a large scale -- isn't just about perception for users faced with severe unreliability issues. As a Windows user for over two decades, I have been to the far depths of unreliability, and have lived to tell the tale. Probing the problems with Windows is actually part of my job, and one reason I actually am a Windows user -- unlike the rest of the world.
What's more, the fact that you can see a piece of your desktop wallpaper through the transparency of the Sticky Keys dialog's title bar (though this screenshot was taken later) is a clear indicator that Windows is running perfectly, and the Black Screen is just a very effective façade.
Today, Nokia announced that the N97, the newest handset in its flagship N-series, will go on sale in 75 countries this month. The device was first unveiled 
You know the guy I'm talking about. What's-his-name. The guy with the big chin, from that movie you like that had the girl in it. Kind of rugged. Looks a little like Scott Bakula. Not William Holden.
June 1984 · A quarter-century ago this week, Alexey Pajitnov stayed up late and turned the well-known Pentamino Puzzle into a computer game for Electronika, a Russian computer system. The rest is 
The Supreme Court wasn't necessarily expected to grant the a certiorari for Bilski v. Doll, a case involving a denied patent application for a method of using masses of data, specifically weather data, to predict movement and hedge bets on the commodities market. That they did agree to look at the case indicates that we may, very soon, see the definitive close of an ugly period in patent law as it applies to technology.
