Home Alone 3

I really don't want to harp on Sony's PS3 Home.  It sounds kind of interesting, but in the grand scheme of things not as important as the impending onslaught of XNA-related goodies.

That said, this Joystiq article caught my attention:

For starters, O'Luanaigh lauded the Home Development Kit Sony has created as an incredibly robust game-creation engine. Nobody knows about this potential, though, because most developers have spent their time in Home making simple promotional spaces for other games. "We see games as exciting asJoe Danger [coming to Home]," O'Luanaigh said. "It's essentially a great MMO engine."

Wait a minute, Sony has a development kit for Home? Makes sense, it just hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to have to see what I can dig up on this.

Grand Google Canyon

I defy anyone to try the Google mini flight simulator without a certain virtual thrill. I would recommend using the Grand Canyon instead of the default location, though.

Which brings up an interesting question: has anyone used the Google Earth API to create a virtual world?  Or maybe I'm looking at it wrong.  Maybe anything created with Google Earth actually is creating a virtual world, I'm just not used to looking at it that way.

No Place Like Home

Currently, Sony's Play Station Home is the only console-based virtual world.  I would think this is a space that Microsoft would be interested in:  (Virtual Worlds News)

Home features 100 games, an average user session time of 70 minutes, over 50 virtual spaces, 85% repeat users, and 14 million users overall.

That's pretty good.  That 70 minute session time alone would suggest that this is a space that the ad world should be interested in. For that matter, why isn't there interest in the PSP side of Sony to provide a mobile experience?

For that matter, at the point you're providing 100 games I would think someone would create a mobile device whose only function was accessing that virtual space.

More Fun with Tivo

Not to be too hard on the good folks at Engadget, but Tivo Desktop 2.8, which has been out for a while, already had the iPad support.  It also had some weirdness on some installs of Windows 7 with file transfers.  I've got 2 Windows 7 PCs at home, one of them worked with 2.8, one of them didn't.  The 2.8.1 release fixed things nicely.

I am noticing, however, that when I convert video for Zune the picture is too small.  I'm sure Tivo will fix this just as someone else besides me buys a Zune.

My Apartment Looks More Like a Lab

From Drop Box

Fun with Tivo

About 2 weeks ago I bought a Tivo Premiere.  While I'm not someone who's a big advocate of more television in your life, the way that I use the Tivo evolved to the point where it's worth while describing.  It's also worth mentioning that I was just curious how a Tivo worked, and why it's different from any old DVR (or using Media Center on Windows 7 for that matter).

I've had an XBox 360 for 3 years, and it has become sort of the center of my entertainment universe.  If I wanted to watch a TV show I'd download it through what's known as the Zune Marketplace and play it back on the XBox, a laptop, a desktop PC or my Zune HD.  In my home I have 6 devices I can play back Zune-purchased media, so it's an attractive option.  The problem is that I started to spend a lot of money on media. So, I thought I might as well just get the Tivo, and download whatever I wanted.  Which is more or less the case, though the "less" part of that merits some discussion.

Here's how it works in practice: I sit down in front of my main TV, copy over files from the Tivo, and watch it on the high def, or copy on to a laptop (either Mac or Windows 7) and watch it on the go.  If I wanted to, I could compress the recording for an iPhone or iPad, but that extra step seems too far to go.  One thing that's kind of nice is being able to start watching something on my Windows 7 netbook, then plugging it into the high def using HDMI to finish it.

So, here's the exception to all this space age science.  The programs recorded from HBO are copy protected.  That means I can only watch it on the TV where the Tivo is plugged in.  I have it set up right now in my bedroom where it gets the direct connection to the cable modem, but if need be I could re-wire things.