Well not TV the device, TV the service. I have just made my last payment to the horrible bitch goddess that is subscription programming. I’m generally taken aback and amused by the reactions from people I talk to. The Gen X and Ys don’t care but the Boomers seem to think I’m some sort of social deviant. “You don’t want, ANY, tv? But you’re going to have an antenna, right?” Of course we will still have television shows, via iTunes and other <wink> thanks for the cash NBC </wink> downloads. This is kind of the point of my otherwise meaningless post. The digital download model just makes so much more sense. Why bother programming a DVR when I can subscribe? Why bother waiting for a rerun when I can just download from an archive? Why sit through commercials, aren’t you paying enough already? Sure, the television services offer “on demand” programming, but you have to pay for that on top of your monthly fee. But, most important, why pay $80 a month when you can get exactly what you want for $400 a year.

Over the past two years I’ve been making sporadic posts about my set top box. Now that the whole family is using it exclusively, I suspect I’ll have a lot more content to post about it as I tweak. The $80 a month that formerly went to DirecTV will now go toward iTunes subscriptions and enhancing my setup. Yes, I will be getting an antenna once I can afford the 40 foot ladder I need to install it. In the meantime, my first project will be to figure out how to integrate the television software with Front Row.

When I originally read the news, I knew it had to be a joke. I knew it had to be an article from The Onion. Then I looked at the link, and it came from TechCrunch. My reaction can best be described in three letters: WTF? What could Microsoft possibly want with Yahoo.

Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot in common. Mainly, both companies are failing miserably in the internet. Yahoo has been taking the Google approach of buying up existing properties. Microsoft has been taking their typical approach of making bad copies of existing properties. While both approaches have been immensely successful in the past, now the barrier to entry is so low on the web it simply doesn’t work. The point here is that neither company has been nearly as successful as their competitor, Google. Do they honestly think that mixing two rotten lemons will produce refreshing lemonade?

There are only two possible explanations for this: Either the decision makers at Microsoft are incredibly ignorant or stupid or both. Or, this is just an elaborate April Fools joke. Personally, I don’t think the Microsoft people are that dumb. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the most elaborate April Fools joke ever. I guess we’ll find out in two months, because I really hope I’m right on this one.

The smart move for Microsoft would be to buy up all the small web 2.0 companies before Google. Then provide these companies with unlimited funding from their massive treasury. Leave them completely alone to produce top quality web products, thus gaining the users to profit from through advertising and subscription sales. Microsoft’s failure to see this, either through ignorance, or blinding hatred of all things Google, will prove to be one of their biggest blunders. As they loose traction in the desktop market, and fail to gain traction in the web market, I see tough times ahead for Microsoft.

My new favorite podio book, Playing For Keeps, by Mur Lafferty takes the super hero genre to a whole new level.

It tells the story of Keepsie Branson, a bar owner in the shining metropolis of Seventh City: birthplace of super powers. Keepsie and her friends live among egotistical heroes and manipulative villains, and manage to fall directly in the middle as people with powers, but who just aren’t strong enough to make a difference. Or that’s what they’ve been told. As the city begins to melt down, it’s hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad.

Playing For Keeps dives deep into the philosophy of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It poses the question: What if the super power isn’t very useful. Imagine if, after being bit by the spider, Peter Parker found that his power was the ability to frighten away spiders. It may make him a successful exterminator but it wouldn’t help him fight DocOck. The book features powers such as a waitress who can’t drop her tray, or a bartender that can make people sober instantly.

The lead character, Keepsie, got her name from one of the most creative powers I’ve seen. Whatever she owns, can not be stolen. That concept is taken to some very interesting extremes, making her far more powerful than anyone realizes. Keepsie is caught in the classic struggle between heroes and villains which, in and of itself takes interesting twists. The villains seek her help in their struggle while the heroes overbear her with posturing and threats. Keepsie and her other not-so-powerful friends are left not knowing who to trust.

While the print book is ready for purchase right now (I ordered my copy today), the audio version is released as a free podcast. Playing For Keeps the podcast is about two thirds of the way through so there’s still time to catch up and follow to the end.

First entry of 2008! Last week I saw a crap load of technology predictions for 2008. Most just parroted the same wishful thinking we’ve been hearing all last year. In short, there’s a lot I disagree with. That inspired me to make my own list; things that we’re supposed to see but won’t. So, I give you Matt’s list of 2008 anti-predictions (in no particular order):

1. An end to the HD format wars.

Everyone loves a good conflict. And what better for tech geeks when all the big companies take sides in a war only customers will win. However, no one seems to acknowledge the third party in this conflict… BROADBAND!HD Discs will eventually suffer the same fate as their ancestor, the Laser Disc. Waiting for plastic to come in the mail (or worse, going to the store for it), may be acceptable to baby boomers and aging gen-x’ers who like to think they own something. But it just isn’t appealing to younger generations who gain more buying power every year.

2. Wii games for the “serious gamer”.

The “serious gaming” community just refuses to listen to Nintendo’s message, “YOU ARE NOT PROFITABLE”. When the Wii was announced Nintendo made a very important point, the “serious gamers” account for about 20% of the potential video game market. Let us not forget that in its heyday Atari was worth more than PS3 andXBox today, combined. The reason for this is that everyone could play an Atari game, the old arcades used to fill with guys in suits after work. It did not require hours of dedication or hundreds of dollars, and as a result people dedicated hours to it and spent hundreds of dollars. Nintendo understands this and is making a fortune by it.

3. Increased use of social networks.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that social networks are going to hit a brick wall. Not from lack of popularity, rather lack of time and desire to maintain them. The real problem is that all of these sites are run by for-profit companies. I have no problem with for-profit companies, however they have every financial incentive to lock in whatever data you give them and never let go. This means that my Facebook friends have no connection to my LinkedIn contacts and someone is always yelling at me for not checking my MySpace page. Maintaining Facebook alone can eat up hours a week. I call that work. Add several of those sites and I have a second job, for which I earn no money. I call that slavery. We are slaves to our social networks. I suspect that this year the novelty of these sites will drop off quite a bit, only to be replaced with real work as more and more core users graduate.

4. Explosion of ebooks.

The supposed high demand for the Amazon Kindle would sure lead one to think there will be an explosion of ebook sales in 2008. I’ve already expressed my skepticism toward the e-reader platform in more detail in a previous post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the future of books is audio books. Products like the iPhone make it very easy to buy an audio book on the go without the need for an extra device. Theebooks however provide only a more expensive way to do something you’re doing quite effortlessly already.

5. Semantic search.

This is another case of wishful thinking. The kind of semantic search technology that would actually be useful simply doesn’t exist, nor will it this decade, maybe next decade. There simply is no advantage to writing “What is the date of the next concert for insertbandnamehere” over “insertbandnamehere concert schedule”. A useful semantic search would be something more like “what was on the small sign I saw on the side of the road while driving down rt. 1? It was red and white and had some sort of logo on the bottom that looked like a bird”. Oh, and speech recognition will have to be perfected as well because no one is going to type all of that. Context sensitive search may however see some growth. There is definitely some usefulness in being able to ask my phone where the best pizza is near me. The holy grail being that Joe’s Pizza can advertise for a small fee and that small fee gives me cheap-to-free phone service. However none of this will happen this year because the pda/gps phone is still too expensive to become ubiquitous.