Hasta La Gadget!

As a wise man once said: “Damn, that’s just cold, son.” Merely hours after boxee announced its latest alpha build along with RSS feed support for Hulu, said video portal has now blocked off boxee‘s browser entirely from accessing its content. If you’ll recall, boxee saw a huge increase in interest when it first added easy access to Hulu, and once Hulu demanded that it be removed, boxee sadly complied. The latest move just seems “cold blooded,” as now boxee users who attempt to surf over via a Hulu RSS feed link will be greeted with an infinite amount of nothing. boxee is quick to point out that its browser doesn’t access Hulu content “any differently” than IE, Firefox, Opera or any other browser, which does a good job of explaining just how deliberate this move is. Needless to say, we get the feeling this bout is just getting started.

[Image courtesy of ZatzNotFunny]

Update: boxee now says things are working. For the moment, anyway. Feel free to join us as we throw our hands in the air and give up on understanding this mess.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Hulu blocks boxee browser entirely, gloves get ripped halfway off originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The "plus" version of the Cowon D2 offers improved sound and a prettier interface than its predecessor. Click for more photos.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CBS Interactive)

I just got my hands on the latest D2+ MP3 player from Cowon, which began shipping in the U.S. earlier this week. Unlike the multihued models available overseas, the U.S. version of the D2+ only comes in black (with a possibility of silver coming eventually), and is priced at $139 (8GB) and $179 (16GB).

If you remember the original Cowon D2 from 2007, then the D2+ isn’t going to seem like much of a shocker. The majority of the spec sheet features are the same: 2.5-inch QVGA resistive touch screen; music playback (MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG, WAV,APE), video (AVI, WMV), photos, FM radio, text reader, and voice recorder. Rated battery life is still the same, excellent 52 hours of audio and 10 hours of video. Dimensions, same. Buttons, same. Kickstand, USB port, SDHC slot…same, same, same.

Fortunately, we were already big fans of the original D2, so Cowon didn’t need to do much to keep us interested. The big news here is that Cowon upgraded the D2’s already mind-blowing audio enhancement settings with the latest BBE+ technology (also included in the recent Cowon S9). I don’t have an older D2 to compare against, but I can say subjectively that the sound really is fantastic, and I actually find the EQ and effect settings on the D2+ a little easier to navigate than on the S9–which emphasized presets over individual settings. The EQ on the D2+ also offers adjustable EQ frequency filters and bandwidth settings for the super-picky users, which I remember seeing on the S9 and Cowon O2, but not on the original D2.

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Originally posted at MP3 Insider

While wireless USB hasn’t exactly, um, taken off, there’s definitely still some promise here. We swung by the USB-IF’s booth today at CeBIT in order to have a look at a new single-chip Fujitsu Siemens’ solution along with IOGEAR’s recently released Wireless USB Audio / Video Kit. The former is mostly a European version of the Wisair Wireless USB Display Adapter Set, and while the latter seemed to work perfectly fine in the demo, the resolution was decidedly not 1080p. Nowhere close, actually. We reckon this stuff will get some real traction if and when two things happen: 1) the industry embraces it and begins embedding it into products (no one likes dongles, sorry!), and 2) when prices fall to reasonable levels. Can we get somebody on that, or what?

Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless

IOGEAR Wireless USB Audio / Video Kit, more wireless USB eyes-on at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like a plus-sized dress on a skinny runway model, Windows just doesn’t fit when it’s loaded on a netbook.

So entrepreneurs are taking a page from the fashion industry playbook, and creating new operating systems that are tailored exclusively to fit the smaller, less powerful and inexpensive netbooks.

At least four new operating systems are in the works, all promising to offer a better experience to users struggling with tiny Windows icons on their 10-inch laptops.

"This is an OS built for the Facebook generation," says Tariq Krim, founder of JoliCloud, a new OS being created exclusively for netbooks. "People have their lives on the net now and they want an OS that understands that."

JoliCloud is one of several efforts to create a netbook-optimized operating system. Another startup, Good OS, is planning a browser-centric netbook operating system it calls Cloud OS. Intel is spearheading an open source project called Moblin that aims to create a netbook OS based on a Linux kernel, while offering related software development tools. And while details are sketchy, MSI, a market leader in netbooks, has created a new operating system called Winki aimed at mobile internet devices.

Amid a slowdown in PC sales, netbooks are popular among budget-conscious consumers, with nearly 15 million devices sold worldwide last year. Sales this year are expected to double, says ABI Research. Almost 90 percent of netbooks sold by Acer and Toshiba run Windows XP (the newer Windows Vista is too resource-intensive to run on these underpowered machines). Dell says one in three of its netbooks carries a Linux flavor such as Ubuntu.

But existing operating systems don’t take into account the netbook’s quirks, say the developers of the new OSes. A netbook is much smaller than a laptop, which means a smaller screen size. That’s why the user interface becomes the most pressing issue. Makers of the new OSes hope to create something more appropriate to netbooks’ small, 8- to 10-inch screens and their puny keyboards.

"XP uses a lot of tiny icons that are scattered on the startup screen," says Phil Solis, an analyst with ABI Research. "With a different OS you can reimagine the way your computer looks and reacts to your needs."

Netbooks are also used for different tasks than traditional desktop and notebook PCs — mainly web surfing, e-mail and chat. In short, they are used more like mobile phones, says JoliCloud’s Krim. "I have been a Linux evangelist for a long time and I love the interface of the iPhone," he says. "So I thought, why don’t we have a perfect mix of both?"

JoliCloud’s OS will offer iPhone-like icons to navigate. It plans to offer a custom browser, and the entire OS will be built on a Linux kernel, says Krim. The icon-based interface also makes it easier to support touch screens.

Apart from the interface, these new OSes should better serve users who are increasingly living "in the cloud."

Creating a system for users who live, work and play online has driven the development of Cloud OS, says David Liu, founder and CEO of Good OS. For these users, their word processor is Google Docs, their e-mail is Gmail, and their phone service is provided by Skype. For such users, the browser isn’t just an application — it’s a lifeline.

That’s why Cloud OS will have a small Linux kernel at is core and will offer a browser screen on startup, says Liu. "The idea is to make the browser the starting point for the user," he says. "It fits well with the internet heavy usage pattern of netbook users."

The rise of netbooks offers one of the best opportunities in more
than two decades to challenge Microsoft’s near-monopolistic dominance
of the operating system business.

But Microsoft isn’t taking
the threat lying down. The company is hoping to establish its dominance
in the category with the upcoming Windows 7. Windows 7 will be
optimized for netbooks and could even come in a lightweight edition for
smaller devices, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a recent interview. The Windows 7 Starter edition will be offered for less powerful machines, such as netbooks, and will be able to run only three applications at a time.

Ultimately,
whether netbook-optimized OSes live or die will depend on PC makers.
Although Good OS and JoliCloud plan to distribute their software
online, the key to success in the operating system market is getting
your product pre-installed.

Their one hope might be PC makers’
need to differentiate cheap netbooks from ostensibly similar,
higher-priced notebooks. Netbooks, priced at an average of $400, offer much lower margins to companies than their bigger, more expensive counterparts, says Paul Moore, senior product director at Fujitsu Computer Systems.

Netbooks
with well-tailored OSes could help companies build greater differentiation into their products. Often consumers are disappointed with their netbooks because they expect similar experience and performance from these cheap ultraportable machines as they do from their heftier notebooks, just because the two run the same operating system, says ABI Research’s Solis. Putting a different interface on the netbook might help signal its different purposes.

It’s an argument that plays well with former netbook user
Kaan Yigit, president of SRG Solutions Research Group. Excited by all
the buzz around netbooks, Yigit bought a Asus Eee PC with a Windows XP
operating system earlier this year. "It looked extremely attractive
online and offline and I thought, ‘Let me try small form factor,’" he says.

Barely days into using the machine, Yigit found the keyboard too
cramped and the XP user interface grating. "You couldn’t do anything
with it that you could do with a standard XP machine," he says. Using
the small trackpad on the keyboard to maneuver through XP icons required great dexterity for
even the simplest tasks, says Yigit.

Six weeks later, frustrated with the challenges, Yigit gave the
netbook away to a colleague at work. "Design of everything, including
the OS, has to follow the users needs and the form factor of the
device," says Yigit. "Old school XP in a tiny machine does not work."

It’s that call to entrepreneurship that upstarts JoliCloud, Moblin and Cloud OS hope to answer.

Photo: JoliCloud OS Interface

About three weeks ago I wrote a post for Gearlog called “The New Kindle: Not for Comics.” Essentially I lamented the lack of sequential art-friendly features on the device–it doesn’t have a color screen, and the zoom feature is, at best, lacking. This is unfortunate, really, because comics have a huge potential in the ebook market–after all, even today many folks are embarrassed by the idea of reading comics in public, on, say, a subway train. With a Kindle in hand, however, the person sitting across from you don’t know whether you’re reading War and Peace or Richie Rich.

In my humble opinion, the best device for reading comics at the moment (besides, you know, old-timey comics themselves) is the iPhone. The screen on the device is small, sure, but it’s brilliant, and the multi-touch capabilities make flipping through a book a fantastic experience.

Now that we actually have the new Kindle in the office however, it seemed like a good time to test out the hypothesis. There isn’t really much in the way of comic books available through the Amazon store, so I took matters into my own hands and used the PDF import function.

After the jump, check out a few of my favorite comics as seen on the Kindle, including Watchmen, Bone, New X-Men, and Jimmy Corrigan.