Dave Winer is playing with his AppleTV and discovering some fun things it can do with RSS. Here’s a video. Since its release, there has been lots of blogosphere coverage of geeky-stuff that people who read Make Magazine can do to an AppleTV that will turn it into everything but a flying car. However, as a non-geek, non-do-it-myselfer, just a regular “user” of AppleTV, here’s my review of it:
In the same way an iPod is not a Mac, an AppleTV is not a Mac mini. If a non-geeky person likes the iPod/iTunes approach to accessing, organizing and displaying music and video, they will like AppleTV. AppleTV allows you to turn your HD-TV into a giant video iPod with some wifi capabilities. It extends the stuff you do with an iPod onto your TV and into your home sound system — if you have that connected to your TV.
Again, it will do lots more cool stuff — and can’t do other stuff that you could do if you paid $300 more and hooked a Mac mini into your TV — but if all you want is to play music and watch videos and display all sorts of photos on your TV like you do on your computer or with an iPod, then an AppleTV gives you a drop-dead-simple way of doing that on your big-screen.
That’s what it will do. I could go on for a week about what it won’t do — I’m still wanting that flying car feature.
Technorati Tags: appletv
Magazine-launch watcher extraordinaire Samir Husni (Mr. Magazine) is counting down the hours until Monday’s FedEx arrival of Condé Nast’s new business magazine, Portfolio. After he read* my whinning post the other day oozing jealously that Jeff Jarvis got to preview the magazine’s website while all I got was an umbrella, Condé Nast Business president and Portfolio publishing director David Carey emailed to assure me that, “I’m on the list” for Monday’s distribution. (Disclosure: I’ve known David many years and he sent me cool schwag long before I ever started blogging.)
Chart: The newly redesigned MinOnline.com is running a survey asking readers where they believe the launch cover will first appear: On Saturday morning, the screen grab on the left shows that most magazine people think the New York Times will get the image first. I think it will appear first on Portfolio.com, myself, as that site will launch also on Monday. Just a guess — or perhaps a suggestion.
*Maybe you haven’t heard: It’s a requirement that magazine professionals read this blog.
Last night I attended a fight and a Stanley Cup Playoff game broke out. Via her photos on Flickr, I see this morning that Nashville blogger Pink Kitty was there also — and had better seats than my wife and I had at the fight we attended. Oh, by the way, the Predators beat the San Jose Sharks 5-2 and the best-of-seven quarter-finals series is now 1-1.
Despite my partial ownership of season tickets and attending many games this season with off-spring who have, by attending a New England prep school at which hockey is the marquee sport, become nuanced fans, I know nothing about the sport other than that which is obvious: it’s fast, fluid, exciting and both graceful and violent. And like a lot of other things, it can’t be understood by watching it on TV or reading about it on the Internet. It has to be experienced live to truly comprehend what the appeal is. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of hockey yet. However, I always like to pull for a home team.
By the way, something about that Pink Kitty picture that I’ve displayed over on the left reminds me of a typical day on the blogosphere lately.
Flashback: As I wrote about it on this weblog before anyone actually read this weblog, I’ll point back to a post from 2002 that recounts another hockey game I attended: the USA-USSR game in the 1980 Olympics. Until the Predators came to Nashville, that was the only hockey game I had ever attended. I know with certainty it will always be the best.
Technorati Tags: nashville, nfl, predators
