Web

The Week In Sling (iPhone 3G, Bell TV, Remote Learning)

As the bastard child of EchoStar, Sling Media no longer enjoys the same sort of blog love seen in years past. So while many learned that the 3G iPhone Slingbox client ($30) was finally approved over the weekend, you may have missed a few other nuggets of Sling goodness… Bell TV is the first licensee, … Read more

Video of the Day: Google Buzzkill

Nope, Google Buzz is definitely not a Twitter or Facebook killer. In fact, it won’t even be a contender until they beautify the UI and remove it from the recesses of my Gmail. Not to mention, many are spun up regarding the (non)privacy implications. With that in mind, please enjoy the Google Buzz parody video … Read more

Closed Captions & 5.1 Audio Coming to Netflix

CNET got a look at Netflix’s 2010 roadmap… And we can expect both 5.1 surround sound and closed captioning from their streaming service in 2010. Depending upon who you are, these are both very meaningful developments. Which will hopefully complement better (newer, mainstream) movie content. Yes, I’m willing to pay more for premium content. Bring … Read more

The iPhone Apps of the Week

SlingPlayer AT&T has finally relented and it appears that the iPhone Slingbox client ($30) will be shedding it’s WiFi-only designation in the near future. But it’s not going 3G without a bit more drama… AT&T says “we’ve worked with Sling Media” to further optimize SlingPlayer for 3G. Something Sling has absolutely no recollection of: “AT&T … Read more

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish (Yahoo!)

I’ve been with Yahoo!, in one form or another, pretty much since the beginning (when they began life as a human-generated index of the then finite and mostly manageable World Wide Web). As a customer, as a blogger, and as a professional. Like most, I long ago moved to Google for modern web search. But I’ve been using Yahoo Mail nearly exclusively since the late 90s (never mind those two years of Hotmail and Mac.com experimentation and despite grabbing a Gmail account 11/04).

As changing homes is quite disruptive and I do quite like the ad-free Yahoo Mail Plus UI ($20/yr), I’ve tried to be patient while Google has run laps around the schizophrenic Yahoo. (Who else would kill the #1 web photo sharing site? And plenty of other initiatives I previously relied on.) But I’ve had enough.

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Unboxing the Twitter Bird!

We’re closing out an unusual week here at ZNF… Rumor and speculation, followed by some cleavage, all without a single iPad joke. But we may have saved the best for last: Unboxing Ollie the Twitterrific bird. I’m not quite sure what I was thinking when I made this impulse purchase ($19.95 + $6.55 S/H), that … Read more

Digital Media Bytes: The Davis Freeberg Edition

Photo by Thomas Hawk Looks like Davis Freeberg has awoken from his long blogging slumber…! How To Save Blockbuster With the future looking pretty bleak for just about any video store, how can a company like Blockbuster save themselves? By sacrificing their media business in exchange for an opportunity to reinvent their retail business. Cut … Read more

Two Firefox 3.6 Tips (Fullscreen, Tab Placement)

I’m generally well ahead of the crowd when it comes to Firefox. In fact, I’ve been running pre-release versions as my primary browser since the days when the Mozilla browser was known as Firebird. However, early versions of 3.6 were particularly crashy (along with the Flash 10.1 beta) and buggy in inconvenient ways (couldn’t access … Read more