panyuicacongress2009.com

But the big question is how do we make it easier. That is the first thing that needs to be addressed. And at Cisco we see the network as becoming a platform that can help make connecting these devices easier. We don’t see the solution as simply being a box. You shouldn’t have to boot up your PC to share a picture or a song in the home network.

(Credit:
Cisco Systems)

But how cheap will the price have to be to get people to want to use the service?

Hooper: It’s too early to talk about price points. But what we have seen in the enterprise is that once people experience true high-quality video in this way, they communicate in a different way. There will be huge demand for it. Look at the success of Skype with its Web-based video, which is not the same quality we’re talking about with telepresence. You see how excited consumers are about this service. Once you add an immersive video experience to the communication, you increase the quality of the interaction.

To get a sneak peek at Cisco’s strategy, I talked by phone with Ned Hooper, senior vice president of corporate development for Cisco’s Consumer Business Group. While details of the soon-to-be-announced products are still under wraps, Hooper shed some light on why Cisco thinks there is a big opportunity in helping consumers get their homes connected and where the company plans to go with its strategy from next.

But there are clearly different ways to make money. And maybe we will see more ad supported models. The interesting thing for Cisco is because of our relationships with service providers, media companies and consumers, we can help deliver content across all routes to the market.

Ned Hooper, senior vice president of corporate development for Cisco’s Consumer Business Group

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from people setting up home entertainment systems is that there are too many wires connecting everything together. Do you think it’s possible to shuttle all this bandwidth intensive media around the home wirelessly?

Hooper: We launched a high-end home router in July that we refer to as the Linksys WRT610N router. It’s the first dual-band home router that operates in both the 2.4 Gigahertz and 5 GHz spectrum bands. It enables consumers to separate media content from basic Internet traffic in the home. I actually have been testing out the new products we are announcing at CES at home, and I used this router to put all the multimedia traffic in my home on the 5GHz band while I put my basic Internet traffic on the 2.4 GHz band. And it works great. It ensures that there isn’t any congestion on the network. We also have some quality of service mechanisms that help ensure high quality audio and video.

Q: Cisco isn’t the first company to build products for the digital home. Dell, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard have all tried to develop products to help consumers play their music and video throughout the home. So far, none of these companies have been very successful. Even Apple’s Apple TV is a considered a niche product. Why do you think Cisco will have more success?

Hooper: I think it’s important to look at how media and entertainment is being delivered to the home. The presence of the Internet and digital media is transforming all these industries and how people access entertainment and how they communicate with each other.

Some people have argued that digital rights technologies that restrict how content is shared have hurt innovation. Would you agree?

I don’t think it has hurt innovation. If you look across the industry there have been many advancements. But I think there is a big opportunity for media companies to enhance the experience. We are working closely with media companies to do this, especially when it comes to video.

Once Cisco unveils its products to make accessing media throughout the home easier, what’s next?

Hooper: We also see an opportunity to bring immersive telepresence video technology into the home. We expect we can have something available in about 18 months or so.

We’re still in the very early days of this market. There are only about 39 million households in the U.S. that are networked or “connected” out of a total of about 120 million households nationwide. So, total penetration is still low. But the market is in transition. The first phase of the connected home was all about connecting two PCs to the same broadband connection. Or maybe you connected them to a printer over a wireless network. Now it’s about the media-enabled home and connecting all the devices in the home so you can move and share your media around the house. In this phase, the ability to connect devices in the home to each other is just as important as connecting them to the Internet.

Cisco Systems, which builds the gear that powers the Internet, is making a big push this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with new products that will help consumers move digital media around their homes.

But what can Cisco do that’s different from these other companies that have tried to address this market?

Hooper: What you can do today in terms of sharing media and moving it around the house if you have a high-degree of technical aptitude or a lot of money is really impressive. But we see opportunity in making it more feasible to do in the mass market. It’s all about usability.

The company plans to hold a press conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday to reveal the new products and its refined strategy for providing consumers with “communication and entertainment experiences that are more visual, more social and more personal,” the company said in a press release.

But this service costs large companies tens of thousands of dollars to offer. How can Cisco make high-quality video conferencing affordable enough for people to use at home?
Hooper: There are natural cost reduction cycles. For example, the cost of processing gets cheaper along with other components, which help us move toward affordable price points. Also we are seeing massive capital investment across cable and phone companies to increase broadband speeds. So the broadband capacity will be there to deliver the high-quality video. Consumers themselves are also investing in digital and high-definition TVs as the transition from analog to digital TV takes place. So all these things are coming together, which will help alleviate the cost of offering telepresence.

Cisco has been positioned very well in terms of being able to offer infrastructure for these network services. And we’re already in the consumer electronics business with Linksys and Scientific Atlanta. It might surprise you to know that Cisco has shipped over 160 million consumer devices. This includes set-top boxes and home routers.

You’ve talked about Cisco’s role in connecting devices in the home. But with the economy worsening, I’ve found more people turning to the Internet for video. Do you think video that is freely available on the Internet through sites like Joost.com or Hulu.com or even some of the TV networks will eventually replace cable or other paid TV services?

Hooper: I don’t think that people want to shut off their cable or satellite service. I think what they want is more services. Even in a troubled economy, we typically see people increase their spending on home entertainment ,because it’s cheaper than leaving home. Also, subscription based services have historically shown to be successful. So I think whether it’s Netflix or Time Warner Cable or Verizon Fios, there is going to be growth.

We have been talking to content providers about this. And production companies are interested in a model where consumers own rights to the content instead of the physical media. So they are starting to experiment with different business models. And we are focused on being a partner to help them pull it all together.

Over 100 million households have set top boxes with their cable or digital satellite service. So the digital set top box market is doing well. Services such as video on demand and DVRs are in high demand. But building expensive devices for a single function hasn’t proven to be a viable market.

So far people have been able to deal with managing their music collections. But as these collections get larger, it’s a burden when you have to transition from one computer to a new one. When you start talking about moving video collections, it becomes even more difficult.

Would you sell telepresence as a separate service through a carrier, or would consumers simply be able to buy the equipment and start making these calls at home?

Hooper: The service will ride on an existing broadband connection. But the service provider still benefits because it gives these companies still investing in broadband infrastructure a more compelling service that will require consumers upgrade to faster speed services.

• Civil enforcement. This section would include how to determine IP infringement damages, judicial authority to hand down injunctions requiring a party to desist from an infringement, and the process for destroying counterfeit goods.

“The dissemination of the six-page summary will help to some degree to clarify what is being discussed,” she said in a statement. “At the same time, however… it would have been helpful had the (U.S. trade representative) elaborated more clearly the goals the United States wants to pursue in the treaty and what proposals our government has made, particularly in the area of intellectual property rights in a digital environment.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Monday released a summary (PDF) of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty for which negotiations began in 2006 with the aim of setting standards for the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

After months of secrecy that has rankled public interest groups, the Obama administration is revealing limited information regarding a multilateral anti-counterfeiting treaty currently under negotiation.

The administration last month said the trade agreement and related materials were classified in the interest of national security, a position first taken by the Bush administration.

• Intellectual property rights enforcement in the digital environment. The parties involved intend to include a chapter in the agreement clarifying the “role and responsibilities of Internet service providers in deterring copyright and related rights piracy over the Internet.” The summary gives no further details, saying that the treaty negotiators are still collecting information to develop a common understanding of how to address these issues.

Gigi Sohn, president of the nonprofit public interest group known as Public Knowledge, said the summary is a first step in increasing the treaty negotiation’s transparency.

Some entertainment industry representatives have told Congress that the U.S. should consider using Internet service providers to prohibit the flow of stolen content, as some European countries are doing.

It does, however, indicate there have been discussions of holding Internet service providers liable for infringing material.

The countries negotiating the treaty: the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Switzerland, the 27 EU nations, Morocco, Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and New Zealand.

• Criminal enforcement. This section would, among other things, clarify the scale of infringement necessary to qualify for criminal sanctions; clarify the scope of criminal penalties, particularly in cases of video recording motion pictures and in cases of trafficking counterfeit labels; clarify in which cases the relevant authorities could take action against infringers on their own initiative; and dictate the authority to search or seize suspected infringing goods or the assets derived through infringing activity.

“We look forward to taking more steps to engage with the public in our efforts to make trade work for American families, ” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement that called the summary a testament to the Obama administration’s commitment to transparency.

The summary includes these potential sections:

The summary lays out a set of potential chapters in the agreement and the provisions that may be included in each chapter. It states, however, that “at this point in time, treaty delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist.”

• Border measures. This section would address whether border measures should only apply to imports or to exports as well, giving travelers permission to carry goods for their personal use, procedures for right holders to request customs authorities to suspend at the border goods suspected to infringing on IP rights, and authority for customs to initiate such suspension of their own volition.

• International cooperation. There will likely be a chapter to recognize the need for cooperation among the competent authorities, for providing technical assistance for improving enforcement, and for sharing relevant information such as statistical data and information on best practices, in accordance with international rules and related domestic laws that protect privacy and confidential information.

Good OS demonstrated its Cloud OS on a gigabyte touch-screen Netbook at the World Summit in Paris. The company says that such touch-screen Netbooks running the Cloud OS and Windows will be released at CES next month.

(Credit:
Good OS)

Unlike the gOS, the Cloud OS isn’t meant to replace Windows but live alongside it, similar to what Asus offers on some of its laptops and Lenovo on its IdeaPad S10 Netbook with the SplashTop app. Good OS states that Cloud “does not require additional hardware and is compatible with any operating system.”

Good OS, the people who brought you the Linux-based gOS found on the $199 Wal-Mart gPC last year, announced a browser-based OS called Cloud at the Netbook World Summit in Paris on Monday. (You know you’ve made it as a form factor when you have your very own world summit. Kudos, Netbook!)

The Cloud OS features a browser with an integrated, OS X-like dock and a Linux kernel that boots “in seconds,” according to the company. The browser looks oddly similar to Google’s Chrome, though no official connection between Google and gOS exists. Within the browser window resides a dock that provides quick access to a number of apps–Skype, YouTube, Google’s Docs, etc.–that you can fire up without running Windows. From the dock, you can also boot to Windows.

Canonical will create standard Amazon Machine Images from Karmic Koala, essentially creating “ready-to-run” appliances that will serve as “standard builds” to the Amazon community.

I am sure others here at CNET will give the desktop portions of the announcement the serious treatment it deserves, but the server functionality that Shuttleworth announced is much more interesting to the cloud-computing community.

The desktop will have a designer’s fingerprints all over it - we’re now
beginning the serious push to a new look. Brown has served us well but
the Koala is considering other options.

If that sounds rather open and nebulous, then we’ve hit the sweet spot
for cloud computing futurology. Let me invite you to join the server
team at UDS in Barcelona, when they’ll be defining the exact set of
features to ship in October.

In case you missed that, let me break it down:

Ubuntu 9.10 will be code-named Karmic Koala, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced on a posting on the ubuntu-devel-announce list Friday. As usual, efforts surrounding the Linux distribution are divided between two target deployments, desktop and server. The desktop goals are primarily around “first impressions,” with Shuttleworth indicating that “boot will be beautiful.” He also promises that the appearance of Ubuntu will change significantly:

How important is this for the future of cloud computing? Only time will tell. There are already other open-source projects with “baked in” images on Amazon (RedHat not being the least of them), and Eucalyptus is a research project that its founder readily admits is not intended for production use without much further work.

A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head
is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of
cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it easy
for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools. We’re
currently in beta with official Ubuntu base AMI’s for use on Amazon EC2.
During the Karmic cycle we want to make it easy to deploy applications
into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a
custom image. Ubuntu-vmbuilder makes it easy to create a custom AMI
today, but a portfolio of standard image profiles will allow easier
collaboration between people doing similar things on EC2. Wouldn’t it be
apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?

It sounds like the majority of the work on the server side in Karmic Koala will be around cloud computing. Here is the entire text of that portion of the announcement:

Ubuntu server will target promoting cloud computing through entirely open-source software.

That, I can’t wait to see.

What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the
trees in the wood, a Koala’s favorite leaf is Eucalyptus. The
Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud
in your own data center, on your own hardware. It’s no coincidence that
Eucalyptus has just been uploaded to universe and will be part of Jaunty
- during the Karmic cycle we expect to make those clouds dance, with
dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your
needs. A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go
to sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine
if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that
drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat,
and waking up when there’s work to be done. No need to drink at the
energy fountain when there’s nothing going on. If we get all of this
right, our Koala will help take the edge off the bear market.

For those wishing to manage clouds, Ubuntu will apparently contain tools that leverage the Amazon APIs. (I would hope the GoGrid APIs are also under consideration, considering its apparent consideration by a variety of Amazon’s competitors.)

That being said, the Ubuntu crew is in my view the Apple of Linux, and will likely change the game not through the infrastructure itself, but the user experience they introduce to building and managing clouds.

Don’t want to commit to Amazon? Would you rather build a cloud on your own infrastructure to get a feel for things while the public clouds “cure”? Starting with Karmic’s predecessor, Jaunty Jaguar Jackalope (soon to go to code freeze), UC Santa Barbara’s open-source cloud project, Eucalyptus, will be included in every install package.

I’m certain that Simon Wardley, now Canonical’s services manager for software, has had tremendous influence on this direction. His long-term drive for open-sourced standards in the cloud-computing space makes the selection of tools here quite logical. It is quite possible that the exact platforms included in Koala will change over the next several months, but the open software philosophy that Shuttleworth, Wardley, and the Ubuntu community espouse will guide their choices.

(Credit:
CNET Tech Index)

Technology stocks also surged ahead, with the CNET Tech Index climbing 67.84 points to jump ahead by 7.35 percent to 990.66.

Tech stocks soared Tuesday, as the broader markets surged ahead on news that Citigroup generated an operating profit for the first two months this year.

Within the tech sector, Adobe Systems jumped 10.37 percent to close at $18.52 a share. Research in Motion was not far behind, with a 10.53 percent gain to $38.96 a share, and Nokia climbed 10.84 percent to $9.71 a share.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 379.44 points to end the day up 5.80 percent at 6,926.49. And the Nasdaq climbed 89.64 points to close the session up 7 percent at 1,358.28.

"The enlightenment idea of privacy is breaking apart under the strain of new technologies, social tools and the emergence of the database state. We cannot hold back the tide, but we can use it as an opportunity to rethink what we understand by ‘personality’, how we engage and interact with others and where the boundaries can be put between the public and private. Those of us who are ahead of the curve when it comes to the adoption and use of technologies that undermine the old model of privacy have much to teach those who will come after us, and can offer advice and support to those who might be unhappy to have their movements, eating habits, friendships and patterns of media consumption made available to all. But every Twitterer, Tumblr, Dopplr or Brightkite user at Lift is sharing more data with more people than even the FBI under Hoover or the Stasi at the height of its powers could have dreamed of. And we do so willingly, hoping to benefit in unquantifiable ways from this unwarranted–in all senses–disclosure. I’ll argue that we are in the vanguard of creating not just new forms of social organization but new ways of being human."

Finally, Bill Thompson’s vision of the future was optimistically fatalistic or pessimistically upbeat, depending on your point of view. He rocked the house with a provocative obituary. "Privacy is dead," he argued passionately, "get over it!" Instead of complaining about this, Thompson pledged we should embrace the new freedom that comes with radical transparency. The abstract of his talk is so succinct that I simply want to repost it here verbatim:

(Credit: CD Sleeve Design)

This new post-privacy era is not without risks: Thompson conceded that "some will suffer, some will even suffer imprisonment." But that wouldn’t release us, the digital avant-garde, from our responsibilities. His mandate for the creative tech community assembled at LIFT09 was in fact a moral obligation: "You need to act as mentors for everyone living their life in the open."

(Credit: Stephanie Booth)

I have, I do, I will.

Fabio Sergio, creative director at frog design’s Milan studio, laid out the power of "design thinking for the future." He used the case study of Project Masiluleke (a large-scale initiative that leverages mobile technologies to combat HIV/AIDS in South Africa) to illustrate a model of design that "is not about creating compelling visions of perfect futures but rather shaping betas of presents of a future we want to live in." Quoting an Italian bus customer ("In the past you had to stamp the ticket. Now you simply have to caress the machine."), he spanned the arch from ‘form follows function’ to ‘form follows emotion’ to ‘form follows meaning’ (design that resonates with people’s value systems). Empathy, technology as "material to sketch with," people-centered user experiences, and social impact – these are, according to Sergio, the characteristics of "meaningful design."

Both Nova and Gyger heralded a more pragmatic model of future-oriented thinking. But I’m not sure if I share their skepticism toward grand visions. What if the future has arrived, however – to paraphrase William Gibson – it is so widely distributed (that is, buried in fragmented micro-markets) that we don’t notice it?

In keeping with the current grim economic mood, the conference bemoaned the shallow glory of sci-fi future visions that, to date, haven’t lived up to their promise. What is worse though? Dystopian visions that have become real or utopian visions that haven’t? For Patrick J. Gyger, a Swiss historian, curator, and writer, it is clearly the latter. He revisited former notions of the future and investigated what became of them: "What happened to the flying
car?" Well, it actually made it to market, like many other product aspirations, yet without much fanfare. Or as Gyger dryly remarked: "The future is here and we’re not impressed." Instead, a profound disillusionment with technology-driven visions of a better life has kicked in (space travel, end of poverty, the smart Internet, anyone?), and free-market capitalism has betrayed the idea of sustainable prosperity.

In any case, for a no-show, the future was still suspiciously present at LIFT09. Matt Webb (co-author of "Mind Hacks") described "the pleasure of watching things unfold" and recommended a "narrative" process for invention and creation (of which his Olinda radio prototype is a brilliant example), highlighting in particular the role of writing in the context of design: "Design is a way of walking over the landscape of possible worlds."

Nicolas Nova applied this retro-skeptical view to the world of business, walking the audience through "the recurring failure of holy grails." He presented a nonchalant history of product flops (from the picture phone to the smart fridge to location-based services), which were in his judgment all hampered by "over-optimism," "lack of knowledge," and "blind faith in the Zeitgeist." Yet I found his definition of product success flawed as it was obviously based on the principle of mass adoption – a questionable proposition in times of increasingly fragmented audiences and micro-markets. Which new product – besides maybe the
iPod and the
iPhone – has really gone mainstream in the past 10 years? Many of the products and technologies Nova stigmatized as "failures" have found their audience in some form and created significant value both for their inventors and consumers. Yet we simply fail to recognize their success since it occurs in market niches and communities.

Empathy, in particular, is not only the foundation for meaningful social innovation projects (pro-bono or for-profit), it is also the very prerequisite for every act of human cooperation. Sympathy creates compassion, empathy breeds solidarity. However, solidarity does not always mean consensus, as UCLA’s Ramesh Srinivasan pointed out. He suggested the indigenous use of digital objects and called for systems that "celebrate difference" instead of eradicating it. 

Mindful of this preamble, the LIFT09 conference, dedicated to discussing the social implications of technology, came with a special twist this year. Bypassing the here and now, it attempted to directly link yesterday and tomorrow: "Where did the future go?" was the big question during the two days in Geneva, and the program was carefully designed to draw lessons from "a history of the future" in order to develop more enlightened concepts for tomorrow. Re-booting the future, so to speak.

I’ve been conference-hopping through Europe for the past two weeks. In Berlin, I discussed new "quality of life" concepts for Germany, and in Geneva I listened to speakers who held Utopian visions from an earlier era accountable for what could have been but wasn’t. My own personal well-being was more mundane. I schlepped two big suitcases with me and saw the sun shine only twice. When you travel so much, you start to feel like Tyler Brule: quality of life is defined by the quality of the airports you pass through, the quality of the Wi-Fi connections, the quality of the hotel room showers, the quality of the food in the random restaurant next to your hotel, and the quality of the casual human interactions along the way. Really, it’s that simple. Travel, as we know, makes the human all too human, bringing to the forefront the five basic human desires that David Rose described in his LIFT09 talk: the desire to know, the desire to protect, the desire to heal, the desire to communicate, and the desire to travel.

Indeed, life is basic when you travel, yet I am frustrated with my inability to process the complexity of everything I hear and see on the road. I know I should blog about all the panels I’ve attended but I can’t even decipher my notes anymore because they’re a week old and life has changed. "We must write the story before we forget," as CERN’s James Gillies noted in his LIFT09 talk about the origins of the Internet. We live in the now and here, and there is no there there.

Clive van Heerden, senior director of design-led innovation at Philips Design, showed some of Phillips’ PROBES videos that explore ‘emotional sensing’ – from electronic tattoos to skin dresses to food creation.

(Credit: design mind)

The CNET Reviews team has been toying with the beta code of CS4 for several weeks. Check out its first-take reviews and videos of the suite applications for more details. They will report back with rated reviews after working with the final code.

Options for working with high-definition video and mobile content expand too, with support for the latest formats, as well as for making Adobe AIR applications.

Adobe continues to improve integration among the applications. After Effects, for example, can import Photoshop 3D layers and export content directly into Flash.

Click on this image for more details about Adobe Systems’ CS4.

The launch, which Adobe described as the largest in the company’s history, includes updated versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, OnLocation, and Encore. Four different flavors of the suite are available, with prices ranging from $1,699 to $2,499.

(Credit:
Adobe)

Adobe Systems announced late on Tuesday that it has begun shipping
Creative Suite 4, the latest edition of its bundle of professional graphics and media applications.

(Editor’s note: Due to production issues, some readers may not be able to access this podcast. We hope to have the problem resolved soon. Please check back to hear the podcast.)

On this week’s EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan and I discuss Yahoo’s new CEO vacancy and the newly launched BlackBerry Storm. We also talk about the grim economic outlook for the holiday shopping season, which will be great for bargain hunters online and offline.

No. So, why do you do it?

The reader, Charles, who e-mailed me, asks this question: “Would you have thought to design in ‘voice report,’ plus device-decentralized ‘hard controls,’ into an $80 music-player appliance?”

I agree–and I suspect this voice-over introduction is part of a companywide shift for Apple into the voice arena and a new user interface mode. But think in these terms: instead of it being a one-way street from machine to man (or woman), the more advanced version will go both ways. You’ll be able to talk to your device–whether an
iPod Classic, iPod Touch,
iPhone, or even the rumored Apple Netbook, a device that allegedly has a touch screen and perhaps minimal hard controls–and it will talk back to you. Of course, many mobile phones have voice recognition features today, but Apple’s version–for better or worse–will take voice control to a whole new level.

Charles notes that Apple usually has pretty good reasons for its design decisions and that Steve Jobs said early on that iPods were about “navigating content.” So while this first implementation may look a little contrived and gimmicky, if Apple can really pull off a user interface paradigm shift, we may really want to buy an overpriced adapter and a whole new set of voice-over-compatible headphones to take advantage of this fantastic new interface.

Of course, I could be wrong. And even if I am right, I’m not sure that a shift to a voice-based user interface mode will turn out well–or that it’s the right way to go. But I’m all ears as I sit here wondering whether Apple’s “Small Talk” headline will become “Big Talk” in the days to come.

While everyone was harping about how the thing’s really small (I say too small), requires an adapter for you to use your own headphones, and has a voice-over feature that doesn’t seem to really add much (we know what our favorite songs are, right?), the real story may be that Apple’s getting ready to launch all this voice stuff across its whole line of mobile products.

What do you guys think?

Well, I meant it. A buttonless, tiny, entry-level MP3 with special “VoiceOver” features just seems so unnecessary. But then a reader made an interesting point to me. What if the lead got buried in Apple’s Shuffle announcement?

We’re still a ways away from being able to talk to our computers like Dave talks to HAL in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But as I sit here writing this column, feeling the carpal tunnel creeping into the hands and wrists, I’d welcome the idea of turning to my
Mac and saying, “Dude (yes, my computer’s name is Dude), here are few scattered thoughts. Please write a column.”

(Credit:
Apple)

“Well,” he goes on, “if you were testing consumer acceptance of a new product module…you’d probably do well not just to tweak, but educate, your adopter audience on the sensory essentials of your new interface. Technology is best delivered in metered morsels to be digested.”

Is Apple's small talk really a precursor to big interface changes across its entire line?

That would be nice. But in the short term, we’ll get to see what Apple’s rolling out at its iPhone 3.0 software event on March 17. I’m betting we’re going to be hearing a lot more about VoiceOver. And we’re going to be hearing a lot more about VoiceOver-compatible accessories that have built-in mics that enable you to record notes, navigate content with your voice, and maybe even dictate e-mails instead of typing them.

I recently trashed the third-generation Shuffle in a blog post, saying it was “a disaster.”

In the meantime, Microsoft is encouraging users to download any photos or documents they have stored in their events, either to their hard drives or to Windows Live SkyDrive. The service has also long had a way to export events to other services including Outlook, Google, and Yahoo calendar, as well as Apple’s iCal.

Windows Live Events was launched as part of the Windows Live rebranding back in late 2007. Designed as an Evite competitor of sorts, it let users create events that could be shared publicly. It also made use of other Microsoft services like Live Spaces and Live Messenger to let party goers and planners alike communicate.

Microsoft has decided to close down Windows Live Events and will be focusing its development efforts on building event planning and management tools for Windows Live Calendar instead. Beginning next month, users of Windows Live Events will be unable to create new events. And sometime next year, the site will simply redirect to Live Calendar instead.