Redesigns, Microsoft and Dominoes

Well all, it has happened. This blog has gone through quite a few little changes over the past 4 months. Many have been good and some have been downright awful but, this is a definite when it comes to the new look and feel. It is very simple yet allows you all (not really sure who you all really are) to easily see past content as well as comment and subscribe via rss. All these features are key and I am uber glad to be able to bring them to you tonight, very late tonight.

Speaking of other changes to design, tomorrow marks the largest change to the Xbox 360 content section. Microsoft is getting rid of the old "blade" concept in favor of something a little more colorful, spaced out and avatar-rific. Now some folks who have their hands on the update are giving mixed reviews about the avatar system (think nintendo mii's). The avatar should be a great improvement over the simple gamertag and should allow people who have multiple player accounts to easily manage them instead of the old log out and in fashion. Unfortunatly, as the previous Wow post signifies I am a little strapped for cash these days (saving for the big day) and am actually going to build myself a nice and long cat 5 cable to run from our upstairs router since the wireless adapter is quite expensive. In addition, if you run over here you can see that Microsoft is starting up their engines by reducing their flash Zune team's price tags (I loved my flash Zune and they are definitely a great device if you run Windows only...but who reading this REALLY does that anymore). The Zune is a great piece of hardware but MSFT needs to get off their rears and simply opening the device up instead of requiring software.

The grande finale of this post is going to be something that will make us twice as lazy and therefore twice as fat as we already are. It appears that some folks stumbled upon a new widget built into our favorite drool box recorder the TiVo. It appears that you know will be able to actually record television and order Domino's pizza at the same time. I am definitely on the line between cool and extremely useless with this one but as an upside I do not actually own a TiVo. What do you guys (and gals) think about the idea of ordering your favorite italian or maybe even asian food over your set top box? Also feel free to hate on or love on the new design. Ciao.

A New Breed?

As none of us know because you should be working hard enough to not have time to surf the web during the work week. Or for the folks who actually get paid to do this, take it from me; it is not as glorious as it sounds....well actually it is. Wait, where was I going with this?? Oh yeah! Itunes 8 was released today along with a slew of new ipod nanos and a slick new ipod touch.

Starting with Itunes 8, the big thing is Genius, which compares your music and attempts to make intelligent guesses on other groups you might like. This is basically the same service that Pandora and Last.fm use. In addition, they have introduced grid view which media player 11 had way back in 2005. Beyond all of this, I think Itunes is much faster, it syncs with my Iphone much quicker and easier and seems hands down a much more native app on the Macbook Pro.

Because I own an Iphone I could care less about the Ipod touch but the new 16gig colorful nanos do look very cool. They have a very curvy design and a Zune like accelerometer that allows you to control certain parts of it via shaking the nano or putting it sideways into landscape view (Zune only does landscape). They look very cool and the Nanos seem to be they direction Stevie is going these days. Unfortunatly, I still would rather have the big Classic, but with almost no update to the current Classic today, it looks like this could be the last iteration of the big ipod. Sniff...16gigs is 50 bones cheaper and very small....more then 16gigs needed with genius and smart playlists? What do you all think?