Mari Silbey

Mari’s tech career started when she became the default “IT guy” in her first job out of college. Since leaving help-desk duties to the experts, she’s focused on trends in technology as a consultant, writer, reporter, analyst and at-home gadget tinkerer. Her current paid gig is with the non-profit organization US Ignite where she focuses on how networks and digital technologies impact smart cities. All posts on ZNF represent her own opinions and not those of US Ignite. Mari is a sucker for anything in the digital media space and covers interesting happenings in cable, telecom, and whatever else she feels like. Find her on Twitter at @msilbey.

Swaptree Beta

Ages ago I signed up to be a beta tester for a service called Swaptree. I finally received my invite last month, and at long last signed on last night. (The beta is public as of July 4th, so you can try it out yourself.) The premise of Swaptree is simple. You list books, movies, games and music that you’re willing to trade and then browse for items you’d like to get in exchange.

I set up my Swaptree account by typing in the ISBN numbers of 9 books I have and got a list of 176 items that I could potentially receive in a trade. These included 143 books, 18 CDs, 8 video games and 7 DVDs. Not bad. I initiated one trade and now I’m sitting back to see what happens.

The service is drop-dead simple and I can see how it might get addictive. However, it does have a few quirks.

Straight to Download

Last100 spotted this Hollywood Reporter story over the holiday detailing MGM’s venture into straight-to-download movies. On Tuesday, MGM debuted “A Dog’s Breakfast” on iTunes and Amazon Unbox. The flick is directed by and stars “Stargate Atlantis” actors and is being hyped on YouTube. The key here is that the movie has a built-in audience of … Read more

On-Demand DVDs

While some of us just can’t resist endless iPhone coverage :), there are a few other things in the CE world to keep an eye on. Among them, the DVD Copy Control Association has very quietly approved CSS copy-protection technology for use in movie download services and DVD kiosks. What does this mean? It means that companies can start offering on-demand DVD burning of the movies you buy. Instead of figuring out how to transcode video for a portable media player or how to stream downloaded flicks from a PC to a TV, now you can transport media the old-fashioned way. Just take it with you on a good old DVD.

The one major downside? If you’re consumer at home (i.e. not buying from a kiosk), you’ll need a new DVD burner and a new type of DVD-R disc to burn downloaded movies.

In the endless quest to move media around, we’ve come up with a couple of “alternative” solutions in our household.

AT&T’s Other Network

With all of the iPhone hype, AT&T’s taken something of a beating around the quality of its cellular network. Meanwhile, the company’s wireline ventures chug along without much public notice. This week AT&T’s U-verse IPTV service went live in Cleveland and Akron Ohio, bringing the total number of homes passed with U-verse to 3 million. … Read more

Radio Silence

It’s come to this: a day of radio silence. Pandora, AccuRadio, and my own local WXPN among many others are going silent today to protest fee increases from the Copyright Royalty Board that will effectively put them out of business if something is not done before July 15th. We’ve covered this story multiple times in … Read more

The Onion’s iPhone Feature Roundup

A dedicated Apple fanboy I know sent me this link to The Onion with a list of the most anticipated iPhone features. (see below) Sure there’s no keyboard or stylus, but can you beat the Lightsaber sound effects? Click through to read the full Onion post. Trust me, it’s worth it. iPhone Features: Nanotechnology enables … Read more

Says the College Degree, “What’s This 1080p?”

We love our HDTV, except when it comes to explaining it. According to Hitachi Research, 66% of American consumers surveyed say they would not be comfortable trying to explain HD options such as 720p, 1080i and 1080p. But here’s the real kicker, as ZDNet points out, 72% of college-educated adults are “not comfortable”, while only … Read more

Surface Computing Laptop

If you don’t think a Microsoft Surface Computing coffee table is going to fit in your living room, have no fear. The Microsoft Cambridge team is working on a prototype Surface Computing laptop. See the video scenes above of the prototype in action. These snippets are from a longer five-minute video, but I figured our … Read more