Nerdy New Technology to Melt Your Brain
Over the past few days there’s been a surge of new technology on the horizon. It’s all showcased by poorly put together, poorly rehearsed demonstrations at nerd gatherings. There are four new “things” on the horizon that are being put out there very soon. The 4 new things are Google Wave, Vudu, Bing, and Project Natal. (And, like most newscasts, I’m adding my person feelings to each one.)
- Google Wave.
Google Wave is the new bastard child of Facebook’s last Las Vegas bachelor party with Gmail and Gchat. I’m pretty sure Facebook isn’t calling Gmail back these days, and probably isn’t going to pay up on the child support. Google Wave has the potential to be pretty cool, but seems like it’s going to be a cluster… oh… you know. Let me explain. The premise of Google Wave is to make your emails into instant messages that can be commented on throughout the process. You can invite people into the conversation and they can catch up by “replaying” your conversation. You can see what the other person is typing so that “100% of your time is spent either reading or writing” (which is the equivalent of talking over someone else). You can “easily” share all of this stuff along with pictures, documents, and videos. Sounds cool, right? It does, it’s okay to think that. But, if you have a Facebook, then you know that ever since they “upgraded” to the latest most commentable, “realtime” version, it’s been more erratic than a squirrel who just realized that a semi-truck was passing over him and can’t decide which way to try to get out. So, all of this “realtime” updating just seems like it’s going to rely heavily on bandwidth at the server level… which equals SLOW.
- Vudu.
If you haven’t heard, there’s an EVEN NEWER THAN BLU RAY ALTERNATIVE ALREADY. That’s right. Blu Ray is still out of the price range of most everyone, and there’s already something new. It’s called Vudu and it’s the expensive equivalent to HD Hulu.com that hooks up to your TV. It sounds awesome in theory. You download HD movies directly to your TV and can watch 1080p on your HDTV Streaming from the internet without buying a Blu Ray player or renting the Blu Ray discs from Blockbuster (which is like $10…). Sweet. So, what’s the problem? Bandwidth. Again. I was looking at the box and it says that to actually view HD movies in HD quality you need AT LEAST a 4mbps connection to the internet. Which, for the nerdy ones of us out there, we’ve got our internet stretched over a LAN and a wireless network so that each computer gets about 1/4 of whatever internet speed you may have. I know that around here, the fastest a residential residence can get is 7mbps and it’s like $30 more a month… So, after a few months, you might as well have bought the Blu Ray player. Not to mention, it looks like all the new home theater equipment requires an internet connection… ugh. MORE cables… And, they don’t have the prices listed for how much it is to “rent” the movies, but I bet it’s not cheap because the server’s going to have to have some MASSIVE bandwidth capabilities.
- Bing.
You know how awesome Google is? Well, Bing (from Microsoft) hopes to squash that awesomeness by taking all the decision making out of your hands and do all the “thinking” for you. If you’re looking up ticket prices and stuff, it’ll automatically find the cheapest prices. If you’re looking up cars, it’ll find a picture for you and adjust the menu options to be all the other search options it thinks you’ll want. Honestly, I really don’t have a REAL problem with Bing except for the fact that it’s just another search engine that we have to work with. Frankly, people are still going to call it googling something. I HOPE that it doesn’t come down to it and we don’t have to go Bing someone. That’s just getting ridiculous. Oh well, it IS better than the LIVE search that Microsoft has been doing, so… I guess that’s a step in the right direction.
- Project Natal.
Probably the most interesting of the list, albeit awkwardly named. Project Natal is Microsoft’s answer to the Wii. While I think they should be coming out with an external Blu Ray player instead of being whiny babies about HD DVD not panning out, Project Natal looks pretty cool. Apparently, there’s no controllers. They’ve combined a full color camera, depth sensor, motion capture system and some other things to create a whole body motion capture control method. Frankly, I have no complaints about this. It sounds pretty awesome. I just hope it comes out before I finally go out and get a Wii because those are fun for company and getting at least a little exercise while you melt your brain with videogames. (I’m not going to lie, it sounds pretty fun to play Dead Rising on the Wii. We need training for the eventual zombie takeover, after all.)
So, to recap: There’s a lot of cool stuff coming out that we won’t be able to afford coming out and Google Wave. Yeah, see how I did that there? Google’s free. Oh, and all I think about when I hear “Bing” is Matthew Perry.
Oh, and here’s a video with EXPLICIT LANGUAGE (seriously… if language bothers you, just don’t watch this or even look at the video screen) about a new Sony product I think we can all related to.
What are you technological advances excited about?
