Saturday, April 16, 2005
	4:29:29 PM   The Red, Red Hills of Mars Spirit, Sol 455, Columbia Hills - NavCam, Right - 15:38:38 and 15:44:28 Local Solar The black and white picture at right links to a 645K full-sized greyscale image; the one below to 989K colorized 1280 x 1024 desktop.   11:06:53 AM   The new media realities Is it finally time to drop the piano roll surcharge? Try as you might, you can't blame it all on illegal MP3s, but you probably can blame "The Internets". The audience for television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, and music continues its steep nose dive. At the same time, the sales of movies (DVD and theatre), videogames, and web ads continue to set new records. In Mainstream Media Meltdown Chris Anderson provides detailed statistics and sources on what's happening to the consumer media world. [The Long Tail 4/10/2005 via Boing Boing 4/12/2005] It should be fascinating to see how Star Wars III compares to Halo 2's $125 million in first-day sales. The people have voted with their wallets ... and guess where Microsoft is putting its money?   8:22:50 AM   Microsoft makes its move in the media market This time, for sure. Microsoft has a history of coming late to the game but going home with all the prizes. Just as the advent of the Internet spurred people to upgrade their PCs from mere word processors, Microsoft is counting on integrated media as the next big thing. Think of the incredibly successful iPod, combined with the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), but with seamless TiVo integration. Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2, which is fully integrated with their media strategy, is expected to find its way into millions of homes disguised as a simple gaming platform. Software giant plays catch-up [Globe and Mail 4/16/2005; 3:52:41 AM] The battle is really about who controls the next generation of home entertainment; how content is received, stored, viewed, manipulated and distributed. In essence, it is a platform war like the one in the early 1990s that firmly established Microsoft as the rainmaker of the PC world. Some 15 million people have bought an Apple Computer iPod, making it a cultural icon in less than three years. Archrival Microsoft has spent years formulating a strategy to neatly combine all the elements of home entertainment: music, photos, movies, TV shows, and games, in a way that is easy for the consumer to embrace. Finally, Microsoft's hardware partners are starting to ship handheld devices that use the software giant's technology to handle all kinds of media. One of the reasons Microsoft is playing catch-up is the typical home computer hasn't been ready for the challenge. That's changed with faster computers, faster and continuous Internet connections, and affordable, massive hard drives to store hours of movies, TV and music and years of family memories in digital form. Easy-to-use software lets users personalize and edit that content. And new wireless standards offer the means to move it all over the home.

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