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Update 1:33 p.m. PDT: Netflix has apparently fixed the site’s recommendations and ratings.

That’s in contrast to Monday, when the glitch hobbled Netflix’s logistics and shipping systems as well as the Web site. The company was unable to fulfill all of the orders scheduled to go out.

On the blog Hackingnetflix.com, numerous people who posted to the board said they were informed by Netflix that shipments were held up a day but would resume on Tuesday.

“They need a zero down-time system like any other decent company,” said someone posting to Hackingnetflix.com who identified himself as Bagman. “It is absurd that their Web site shuts down for even a minute…Amazon and Google haven’t been down 11 seconds, that I recall, let alone hours. Please get sorted, Netflix.”

“This is part of the site that we haven’t been able to get back online yet,” Swasey said earlier in the day. “Otherwise the site is fully functioning. We’re shipping and receiving.”

Many of those who wrote described themselves as happy customers and said they weren’t put out by the outage. But others couldn’t understand why Netflix has been plagued by Web site trouble. In July, the movie rental company went down for 18 hours.

Netflix customers saw only minor glitches a day after the movie rental service suffered an 11-hour Web site outage because of an undisclosed systems malfunction.

Customers were unable to access ratings and recommendations on Tuesday, according to Steve Swasey, a spokesman for the company. The company, however, appeared to have fixed the problems by the afternoon.

Under the earlier plan with T-Mobile, Starbucks customers needed a paid subscription to access the in-store Wi-Fi service, and T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers will continue to have access to Starbucks Wi-Fi thanks to an agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile. But the new AT&T plan allows all customers 2 free hours per day, with a $3.99 fee for additional 2-hour chunks of time. Monthly subscriptions will cost $19.99 and will enable access to other AT&T hot-spot locations in addition to Starbucks.

In addition, AT&T broadband customers will be able to surf at the more than 7,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. for free. The new Wi-Fi partnership is expected to be introduced gradually at Starbucks locations this spring.

It’s an understandable move on Starbucks’ part; the coffee chain has a number of deals in place with Apple and its iTunes Store. Apple uses AT&T as the mobile service provider for the
iPhone. Rumors of a Starbucks mobile ordering interface for the iPhone have been circulating for months.

The new partnership also extends to the business side of Starbucks: AT&T will also power an “enterprise class” network for internal operations.

Ubiquitous caffeine conglomerate Starbucks has ended its Wi-Fi partnership with T-Mobile in favor of one with AT&T.

It’s not clear precisely where this latest twist on instant messaging and feed aggregation is heading, but just let it evolve without the prejudice in its own Darwinian way. That doesn’t mean to back away from criticism or debate, but to do so in the context of open networks that provide ways for individual users and groups to shape their online experience.

Steve Gillmor makes the claim that Twitter is being strangled by FriendFeed and that his pal Robert Scoble is hijacking the conversation away from the unreliable Twitter site to FriendFeed. It’s much ado about nothing. Users have the freedom to head to their communications medium of choice. The Twitter conversation stream isn’t locked into a walled garden–tweets can flow like water into applications such as FriendFeed, Summize, and Facebook.

Steve Gillmor prefers the Twitter funnel, while Robert Scoble likes the FriendFeed blender, which can include Twitter streams.

Lately the echo chamber of the blogosphere inhabited by the Gillmor Gang (of which I am a member) has been caught in a loop of Twitter-FriendFeed convulsions.

Steve Gillmor believes that Twitter is the communications medium of the future. Send out a message to your followers and track (when the feature is enabled) the loosely coupled conversation as it wafts deeper into the cloud. FriendFeed, on the other hand, aggregates feeds from Twitter and many other sources, creating an index of the content (gestures in Gillmorspeak) an individual chooses to share with followers.

Twitter’s friendly API allows applications to be built on top of it (when the site is up), letting FriendFeed and other services tap into the Twitter stream. In addition, FriendFeed allows users to comment on the contents of the aggregated feeds and has “rooms” for discussions among a group of people.

Day three of the Democratic National Convention wasn’t just about speeches. It also marked the official anointing of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as the Democratic ticket for the 2008 presidential election.

Earlier in the evening, former President Bill Clinton addressed the party faithful as well.

Meanwhile, word began to circulate that McCain had decided on his running mate, though there was no specific indication yet as to which of several likely individuals had made the cut. The Republicans hold their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul next week.

Catch up on Wednesday night’s developments in this video with Katie Couric of CBS News:

But there were speeches aplenty, of course. Biden gave the climactic address of Wednesday evening in Denver, laying into the Republicans and their presumptive nominee, John McCain, after which Obama made an unscheduled appearance on stage, offering a few words in advance of his speech Thursday night.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

We don’t have many details yet (iPaq App Store?), but the latest iPaq apparently will sport a touch-screen and keypad and will run on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system, according to sources cited by the WSJ. The phone will likely hit Europe by the end of this year, with a broader release to follow.

Aiming to push its hardware beyond the corporate world, Hewlett-Packard will release a new version of its iPaq smartphone that will also be marketed to consumers, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Fellow PC maker Dell, meanwhile, has been hinting of its own plans to enter the smartphone realm. And up-and-coming PC maker Acer of Taiwan said earlier this year that it has a smartphone on deck for the end of this year or early 2009.

Though definitely better known for its laptops and desktop PCs, HP isn’t new to smartphones. The company has released several models in the past, including the HP iPaq hw6945 Mobile Messenger and the HP iPaq 510 Voice Messenger (the first Windows Mobile 6 smartphone). Both were geared mainly toward businesses, and both garnered their share of favorable reviews from users.

The most recent iPaq, the HP iPaq 910c Business Messenger, launched this summer. CNET reviewed the phone and found it to be a well-stocked, messaging-centric smartphone for mobile professionals, but said it faces stiff competition from the likes of HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.

The HP iPaq 910c Business Messenger is getting a younger sibling, according to reports.

For example, do we really need a law that prohibits the use of cell phones in
cars? Sure, it makes sense to stop people from talking on phones while driving to some extent, but a slew of studies have shown that other activities like singing and smoking have proven to be just as dangerous. Will lawmakers remove radios and ashtrays from cars?

But the real issue is not that a woman is being charged over $9,000 for each song she allegedly “stole” from the recording industry or that the battle over Net Neutrality is still being waged even though none of the three presidential candidates even care. Instead, the real issue is that lawmakers are doing their part to ruin the tech industry as we know it.

How many times must we listen to people in positions of power wax poetic about the banes of piracy? Invariably, the discussion will move from one about illegal activity to a referendum on losing money. But if these lawmakers had a modicum of knowledge on the subject, surely they would know that piracy is not the cause, but rather the effect of deplorable tactics on the part of organizations like the RIAA and even lawmakers themselves that force people to pay thousands of dollars for a stolen track that’s worth no more than $1, right?

So bad are these developments that it is my belief that lawmakers themselves have set the tech industry back at least five years and have single-handedly ensured that the momentum of the industry is kept in check long enough for powerful organizations to find a way to stop it and profit off even the most trivial of circumstances.

In fact, during that time we have seen lawmakers institute ridiculous privacy laws, succumb to the pressures placed upon them by huge organizations and set dangerous precedents that have proved detrimental to the entire tech industry.

No better is this exemplified in the average lawmaker’s ignorance about what’s really going on in the world of piracy.

Let’s not forget that the XM-Sirius merger debacle is the norm and most certainly not the exception. Almost every day we’re inundated with news that highlights the ignorance of lawmakers and shows the negative impact those faulty moves have had on millions across the globe.

Maybe I’m partial, but couldn’t it be said that the technology industry is easily the most important element of the entire world economy? And while I know some would say that healthcare is an important industry and others would argue for the financial sector, I disagree.

Don’t be so sure. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the XM-Sirius merger, the debate (or lack thereof) has lingered longer than any other merger bid in history. Just a few weeks ago, the Department of Justice said the merger should happen and now even more bureaucrats must make the final decision. And although it should have happened months ago and the discussion about ‘monopoly’ is one that’s both faulty and illogical, lawmakers are doing everything they can to ensure that the merger doesn’t happen and make it seem that Clear Channel isn’t playing a part in it.

Over the past few years, technology legislation has become a major issue with lawmakers all over the world. Instead of focusing on issues that may be a bit more pressing, most laws or rulings have been aimed at making our tech-filled lives increasingly more daunting to enjoy.

Once again, lawmakers are making things far more difficult than they should be and in the process, they are punishing two companies that provide a service that millions of people enjoy. And if they don’t approve the merger, the chances of both XM and Sirius hanging around are actually quite slim.

If we know this, why don’t lawmakers? Why are lawmakers constantly doing what they can to make the Verizons and Comcasts of the world happy to the detriment of the Joes and Janes all over the United States? Why is it that when given the opportunity to do something that could have a dramatic impact on the entire nation, lawmakers instead choose to ignore the problem or find a way to reduce the positive impact?

So what’s the solution? Time. Until the younger generation that truly appreciates technology assumes positions of power in the government, expect more of the same.

Think of it this way — without technology and the developments being made each day in the sector, the world economy would not be nearly as strong and many of the progress we’re seeing in any other field can be traced back to a computer or the Internet or any other tech that provided the catalyst for action.

If left to their own devices, lawmakers will continue to stunt the tech industry’s growth and put millions across the globe in a position where doing what they want, how they want with any piece of technology is abandoned.

As I said once before on these pages, the Internet is as important to the world’s survival as water and although I wouldn’t paint such a picture with every piece of technology, the entire industry is extremely important to this country and especially, the world.

Does that mean that Apple’s end-user license agreement clearly breaks the rules? Well, few things are crystal-clear, when it comes to legal matters. In this 2006 post in InfoWorld, James Bailey’s quoted comment gives a good precis of the relevant issues:

My personal history here is that, at one point in my career, I spent many hours with huge Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, working to unbundle Data General minicomputer operating systems from the hardware on which they ran–and to do so in a way that was hopefully approximately revenue-neutral, as well as not too annoying to any customers.

The Mac OS X end-user license agreement prohibits its use on hardware other than that sold by Apple. It reads, “You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”

It was a convoluted court case, but the bottom-line result was that Data General could not prohibit the use of its operating system on someone else’s hardware. To use the legal term, you could not “tie” hardware and software. Related cases have involved prohibiting the use of specific supplies (such as punch cards) with a specific vendor’s hardware.

But I wanted to focus on one issue in which I have some personal experience.

A little legal history now. Way back in 1978, a company by the name of Digidyne brought suit against Data General, alleging that it was restraining trade by “tying” its RDOS operating system to its Nova minicomputer hardware. (Digidyne sold Nova clones.)

commentary

Are Macs really overpriced these days, compared to a truly comparable Wintel alternative? (Certainly far less than in the past.)

Does PsyStar have the right to preinstall an operating system for which it (apparently) doesn’t have an original-equipment manufacturing, or OEM, license? (Seems dicey.)

This was, of course, a wholly different generation of hardware and software than was in place at the time of the original lawsuit–and there were no actual Data General hardware clones any longer. But nonetheless, it had to be done.

There are a variety of issues here:

Even DG admitted that there was no viable alternative. Again from the record, “the only full-service operating system available for the Nova.”

It doesn’t take much to put Apple in the news, and this afternoon’s excuse is that a Miami-based company called PsyStar is selling a
Mac clone.

Are any possible savings worth getting a PC-Mac OS combo that the Apple won’t support? (Not from where I sit.)

To quote the 9th circuit decision: “Although expressing some doubt as to the sufficiency of the evidence, the district court assumed defendant’s RDOS was superior to competing operating systems and was viewed as uniquely desirable by buyers. 529 F. We do not share the court’s hesitancy about the adequacy of the proof of the strong preference of many customers for RDOS. It was a most popular product.”

The fundamental question, perhaps, is this: in a world where Apple has moved to Intel processors, brought its pricing much more in line with comparable competition, and is, well, cool, how much opportunity is there for an unsupported cut-rate clone, anyway?

Second, the court determined that to re-create RDOS would be prohibitively expensive and probably not practical. Again, with Linux and other free operating-system software readily available, it is hard to believe that the courts would come to the same conclusion in the case of Apple and OS X.

Its Web site was down earlier–ostensibly because of the overwhelming reaction to its product. As Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer reports:

Before its site went dark Monday, PsyStar was pitching an Intel-based system it said could be configured to run Leopard, Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5. The machine, which was priced at $399 minus Leopard, $554 with it already installed, is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and includes 2GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive, optical drive, and on-board graphics based on Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 graphics processor. The GMA 950 is part of several Intel chipsets–notably the 945 series–that are popular on PCs designed to run Microsoft’s Windows.

Bottom line?

The case wound its way through the courts. A 1984 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision held for Digidyne; the case was later denied rehearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.

First, DG lost because RDOS was the only viable operating-system software for Nova and any clones. There was no other reasonable OS available for the clone makers. Dell can hardly claim the same, considering that they currently ship both Windows and Linux. Claiming that those two OSes are not “uniquely desirable by buyers” would be a stretch.

Is OpenMac a trademark violation? (Seems possible. I am not a lawyer.)

Apple’s end-user license agreement may or may not be an issue. The tying of hardware, software, or services has generally been frowned upon by the courts. On the other hand, the ultimate resolution resolves around specific facts about market power and the like. And, in any case, there would seem to be far more immediate questions about the PsyStar approach than those that would only be resolved by multiyear court cases (which would inevitably favor Apple, in any case.)

Huang is confident his company can maintain its lead. “GPU technology is far, far ahead of integrated graphics,” he said. “We can innovate our way forward. The world already has computing companies that make processors for everybody. I’m supposed to add the secret ingredient that differentiates it for the few. Now the few that I’m talking about happens to be hundreds of millions of people. I’m OK with that.”

(Credit:
Nvidia)

• Intel multicores do not handle tasks better than discrete GPUs, but they are complementary in a heterogeneous computing environment.

“Intel is going to be as competitive as they can possibly be,” said Dean McCarron, founder and principal of Mercury Research. “There is a pretty different vision between what Nvidia has and what Intel has about the future of the market. You seem to see a lot of pressure on some kind of integrated solution (from Intel). That is not compatible with a standalone graphics market, where Nvidia is the largest player.”

Intel sees a future where it is a bigger graphics player at the high end of the market. At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai earlier this month, Senior Intel VP Patrick Gelsinger spelled out Intel’s vision: ray tracing-based rendering technologies that can be used in high-end gaming, an Nvidia stronghold. “An intro of these capabilities into mainstream gaming we believe is possible in the future,” Gelsinger said. Another prong of Intel’s strategy is to offer a graphics platform, code-named Larrabee, based on the long-standing x86 instruction set.

Nvidia, as it prepares for a long, grueling fight with Intel, got some solace on Friday from a report issued by Doug Freedman of American Technology Research itemizing why Nvidia may be in a better position than casual observers believe. These include:

“Supporting Via’s new CPU is not a big leap for them. And, it’s a fantastic vote of confidence for Via because Nvidia wouldn’t commit the engineering talent to it if Nvidia didn’t believe the processor had a big opportunity,” according to Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research.

Most observers agree that the graphics processing unit (GPU) is gaining on the central processing unit (CPU) as the single most important piece of silicon inside the PC. “When you start looking at a PC today, the (central) processor means less and less,” according to Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. The GPU is simply becoming a better way for PC makers to differentiate in a landscape dominated by Intel CPUs, he said.

• Intel projects strong performance gains in IGP roadmap (10x performance in 2010), but from a very low performance base. 66 percent of top selling games fail or have issues in current IGP solutions.

Nvidia is teaming up with Via to build a low-cost PC platform to compete with Intel.

Bravado aside, to effectively do battle with a circa-2009 Intel that excels in both central and graphics processing and AMD-ATI, Nvidia must seek new partners. It is turning to one of the only other–aside from Intel and AMD–x86 processor suppliers to build an alternative PC platform. Billed as “The World’s Most Affordable Vista Premium PC,” the sub-$45 processing platform will combine Via’s Isaiah processor with an integrated Nvidia graphics chipset.

• Nvidia remains the No. 1 graphics supplier as up to 73 million Intel integrated Graphics Processors (IGPs) are unused in systems due to “double-attach” with a Nvidia solution. (Note: Market share calculations from researchers such as Mercury Research and Jon Peddie Research show Intel as the No. 1 graphics supplier–ed.)

(Credit:
Nvidia)

Referring to a question from the audience about Intel’s Larrabee chip at the analyst meeting on Thursday, Huang responded: “The question from the gentleman is we haven’t really talked about Larrabee and is he opening up a can of worms. Well, we’re going to open up a can of whoop-ass in a little bit,” Huang said, referring to future technology that Nvidia is working on.

Huang sees his company doing battle not only with Intel but with a guiding principle put forward by one of the company’s founders, Gordon Moore–that the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double every two years–as Intel continues to integrate more graphics silicon into its chipsets. “We can get integrated into anything. Integrated into a (chipset’s) south bridge. If you’re not good enough, then Moore’s law is your enemy. Moore’s law will stick you in some random chip. We get integrated into a speck of dust,” Huang said at the meeting. Here he was saying that if Nvidia doesn’t stay well ahead of Intel–where it is now–the CPU giant will simply integrate the graphics technology into its own silicon and Nvidia will become irrelevant.

The question is, who is going to be the largest provider of that differentiation and what form will it take? The pressure on Nvidia–expressed by Huang on Thursday at an analyst meeting–is understandable, as the company seeks to fend off both Intel and AMD, who are increasingly focused on graphics, said McGregor. “Nvidia faces serious challenges. One of their big customers (AMD) went out and acquired a competitor (ATI) and then (you have) Intel saying we’re going into your territory.” That has put Nvidia on edge. Intel, not surprisingly, is the biggest threat.

Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang’s jeremiad against Intel heralds future melees with the chip giant over computer graphics technology. Behind the sound and fury lurks Moore’s Law.

(More background from CNET on ray tracing here: “CPU: The future of GPU?” and a discussion of ray tracing vs. rasterization here.)

• Integration of IGP with CPU does not present a threat, but may increase double-attach (adding a graphics card to a system with an existing integrated graphics chip) opportunities for Nvidia as it continues to add differentiated features for the few high-end graphics, gamer customers.

Nvidia says about 73 million Intel integrated graphics chips go unused.

Developers, start your engines: submissions are now open for the developer application contest that Facebook created for its FBFund grant program. Winning developers, who submit business plans for their prototypical Facebook Platform applications, will receive between $25,000 and $250,000 in grant money. The company plans to give away $10 million total.

Additionally, FBFund has heretofore flown under the radar, unusual for something that has come out of a publicity magnet like Facebook–and some of the moderate press it’s gotten has been fairly negative. Throwing a contest is probably a decent way to drum up some attention.

Monday saw the kickoff of the competition’s Round 1, in which 25 winning proposals announced on September 22 will each be awarded $25,000. The winners of that round will have the option to apply for Round 2, in which five final winners will receive $250,000 to fund the development of their Facebook applications. Winners will also have access to “mentorship” from Facebook as well as a boost in publicity and marketing resources.

Facebook is drawing developer attention to its platform at a crucial time: first, it’s expanded its API to the Facebook Connect initiative; and second, it’s now competing for geek attention not only with rival social-networking platforms but also with Apple’s
iPhone, the hot platform du jour.

The contest was originally detailed at this year’s F8 conference, in which the 10 original FBFund selectees were also unveiled.

Some say it was 'The Best Damn Show on Television.'

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)

I’ve always thought it was strange that so many people who bought VHS tapes rarely watched them. And then a lot of them bought them again on DVD! They needed to own Sex in the City, The Godfather, or the Star Wars trilogy, but never even broke the seal. Maybe they buy them as keepsakes, to remind them how much they loved the film or TV show, but don’t actually need to see it. Or they watch it once and that’s all they need. Big multi-disc box sets can be daunting, I bet half the ones sold remain unviewed.

Sure, it looks like downloads are the future, but how does that jive with the desire to covet your favorite films? Millions of people keep buying new editions, Director’s Cuts, 20th anniversary editions, remastered Sopranos, and some smaller number will buy them again on Blu-ray. Will the keep buying new downloads of old faves?

Maybe it’s just that people crave a physical connection to the things they love and virtual facsimiles don’t cut it. Physical media may be impossible to replace–its actual usefulness doesn’t seem to be the point.