I’m still doing a little house cleaning and reorganization… I came across a TiVo sackpack that I picked up at DigitalLife in October – it needs a good home. Leave a comment today, and I’ll randomly pick a winner tomorrow. Over the next few months, I promise to give out much cooler prizes… such as reviewed gear.
The DEMO 2007 conference started yesterday, and I’m terrifically jealous of anyone who’s out there now. Luckily, we’ve been able to make a few arrangements to keep us up to date on any juicy DEMO news. Dave squeezed me into Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s schedule for a SplashCast briefing, and I’ve got a friend on the ground who promises to send on-site DEMO photos.
Here’s the deal on SplashCast: Marshall calls it a “media syndication platform” and Liz Gannes calls it a widget. Whatever the right term is, it’s a pretty cool tool. Simply put, SplashCast lets you string together text, images, audio and video for a multimedia production viewable (and listenable?) on a Flash player. Unlike YouTube-alikes, SplashCast also embeds a menu to provide access to multiple videos from just one embedded web player.
Here’s a sample SplashCast with text and random ZNF photos. More details after the jump.
On January 26th, in response to a TiVo motion to enforce his earlier order to deliver certain documents, a frustrated-sounding U.S. District Court Judge Duffey slapped the wrists of Echostar and “non-party witness” Homer Knearl, requiring them to sign pre-prepared affidavits that they had, in fact, complied with his order. Duffey accused Knearl and Echostar of playing “a legal shell game” and called their earlier responses “vague, equivocal, and qualified.”
TiVo has been seeking documents produced by Knearl and his former associates at the Merchant and Gould law firm that relate to a legal opinion of non-infringement that M&G gave Echostar in their patent dispute with TiVo. That opinion was not allowed into evidence at trial (primarily because of Echostar’s failure to deliver related documents under an earlier court order), and has now become a significant factor in Echostar’s appeal and TiVo’s counter-appeal.
In case you hadn’t heard (yeah, right), Windows Vista is now shipping. One of the more interesting features is Windows Media Player’s ability to stream media, not only to Xbox 360s and Media Extenders, but to other LAN PCs running Vista. Though WMP 11 has been available on XP for some time, this particular feature is not supported. Yes, I know, iTunes enables library sharing as well.
You can share nearly any digital media file in your Player library, including protected Windows Media files that you have downloaded from online stores. To share a file in your library, the original file must be stored in one of your monitored folders.
