Can cool movie trailers please stop coming out? They always seem to come out right before another movie I'm looking forward to (The Dark Knight which opens Friday) and then I'm not sure if I'd rather see the movie in the trailer more.

Today we have the teaser for next summer's Terminator Salvation aka Terminator 4. Normally 4th movies in series suck and seeing as Terminator 3 was nothing special I'd have little hope for this to be any different -- except that it stars one of the biggest actors on the planet right now, Christan Bale (Batman).

It looks great. Great lead in to the classic theme music.

This teaser will supposedly run before The Dark Knight, obviously since Bale is in both. But you can watch it below now or a higher resolution version at Yahoo.

Some of you may know that a little thing called the iPhone 3G is hitting stores at 8 AM on Friday. Like any good fanboy, I'm going to suck it up and camp out tomorrow night in front of an Apple store.

But it's for work - I swear! I'll be blogging, taking pictures and maybe some video live from the Stockton St. store in downtown San Francisco. More importantly, I'll also once again be leading a live VentureBeat FriendFeed room throughout the night (or until my batteries die).

So join me there or if you're around come say hello in person. And maybe bring me a spare battery.

The iPhone 3G is coming out on Friday. The 2.0 software and App Store will launch on the same day. There are a lot of cool apps out there, but one area is going largely overlooked: games.

The best looking one I've seen so far has to be Rolando. It reminds me a lot of the old classic, Lemmings, but it's all touch screen. If they get the controls right it's going to be awesome.

Rolando will hopefully be out in the App Store by August for $9.99.


Rolando for iPhone - Teaser trailer from handcircus on Vimeo.

Not content to simply unveil a kick-ass iPhone version of the site today, FriendFeed also let it be known that embedded mp3 audio files can now be played from directly within FriendFeed as well. (The feature has actually been quietly rolled out for a few days.)

This is awesome, especially for podcasts, but one service that still does not play nice with this is Muxtape. That's because its RSS feeds don't actually contain an embedded version of the song and are only the title as far as I can tell.

Muxtape and FriendFeed: What do we have to do to get such functionality? It seems like such a no-brainer, being able to like and comment on songs from Muxtapes your friends upload. Not to mention you can have some great music to listen to while you use FriendFeed.

FriendFeed has seemingly been exploding in popularity recently. It's making my statements from December look good:

"I really like FriendFeed and quite frankly I'm a little surprised that more of the 'regulars', those tech users who seem to be on every service, either don't use it or don't talk about it often."

They're heeeerrreee...

And:

"I'd be surprised if FriendFeed doesn't catch on in 2008."

It's happening before our eyes.

Likewise my thought from early October of last year that maybe Google would have been smarter to buy FriendFeed rather than Jaiku seems like a pretty good one. Seriously, does anyone use Jaiku regularly now?

Considering that The Dark Knight is coming out in a couple weeks, I didn't think there was any way I could be looking forward to a movie more than that. Then the trailer for Quantum of Solace, aka James Bond 22 hit the Internet today.

Yeah, I'm more excited for this.

As I've said before, Casino Royale wasn't just a good James Bond movie, it was a great movie, period. Unlike other Bond films in the past, this one is a direct continuation of the last one. It's Casino Royale 2, and it looks amazing.

You can watch the embed below, but I highly recommend you download one of the HD versions - and watch it on a big screen if you can.

I know. Crazy, right? Before everyone collectively tells me at once "No!!!" Hear me out.

Lifehacker has a great how-to guide today for using a Windows Vista PC to stream Netflix Watch Now films to your Xbox 360. This is exactly something I want.

Regular readers may know my hatred of the multiple set top boxes I have in my living room. I want one, not a half dozen, but with me close to adding an Apple TV (or a Mac Mini) and a Netflix Roku box, I could be tangling myself in way more cables than I want.

This solution would replace the need for the Roku box because I already have the Xbox 360 and a computer capable of running Windows Vista (which supposedly is required for the task).

I currently have my Intel iMac dual booting Windows XP, but I haven't loaded it up in months. I scared to death that upgrading it to Vista will brick my system in someway (I'm not sure my copy of XP is exactly...legal), but it may be worth it to get this functionality.

I'm pretty sure I can get Windows Vista Home Premium (one of the 17 versions of Vista) for less than the price of the Roku box too.

Okay post your horror stories in the comments or on FriendFeed. Tell me why I should do it. It looks like even Intel won't upgrade to Vista. I'm scared, but this new idea intrigues me.

UPDATE: Some good info in the FriendFeed thread on this post here.

Since it first rolled out in late February I have loved the idea of iTunes doing a 99 cent Movie of the Week rental. I still don't love the regular rental store pricing ($2.99 - $3.99) for the time allowance (24-hours from when you start watching), but it's hard to argue with 99 cents.

Each Tuesday I open my iTunes software and wait with anticipation as the top banners in the movie section show what the Movie of the Week is. So you'll imagine my surprise when I opened it today to find that it was RoboCop -- a movie which was already the Movie of the Week, several weeks back. A re-run? Are you kidding me Apple?

I already rented RoboCop, I don't want to see it again. I understand that you don't have that many movies in your store, but you have more than enough so that you don't have to cycle through old ones after just a few weeks. What gives?

If you really want to evangelize RoboCop for some reason, you can do it, but offer a new alternative option as well for those loyal customers who have already seen it.

Think different Apple. As in, different movie.

It seems like more people that I talk to are finally getting the same feeling that I've had for a while: Amazon's MP3 store is kicking iTunes' ass. iTunes is of course still by far and away the industry leader, but I haven't bought a piece of music there in quite sometime and I can't see myself doing it until it is at least comparable to Amazon's service.

The iTunes store offers more convenience as it's contained within the iTunes music library software, but that's it. Amazon offers you entirely DRM free music that is high quality and cheaper to boot.

You want the new Coldplay album? It's a dollar cheaper on Amazon. How about the new Madonna single? 10 cents cheaper on Amazon. These things add up to real savings over the long haul.

Amazon has great promotional deals too. On Fridays it offers $5 albums and for the new Coldplay release, it gave away the bands previous albums for $2 on different days throughout the week.

iTunes is playing a dangerous game right now. It's coasting on its previous successes rather than being an industry leader. It hurts to be complacent. Rivals can sneak up on you no matter your market share. Just ask Microsoft, which had the browser wars on lock down just 4 years ago and now Firefox is zooming past a 20% share.

There has probably never been a game that I'm looking as forward to as Spore. Hell, I've been writing that for over 2 years now. It's the new Maxis game from Will Wright, the guy behind Sim City, The Sims, etc. It's scope is massive - from amoeba to Universe creator - but if they can pull it off, it should be one of the greatest games ever.

I tried out the Creature Creator tonight to make my first creature in the game. The tool is extremely simple to learn and use. This gives me great hope for the game itself which will be out this Fall.

There is also an option to upload your creature to the Spore database -- and right to YouTube. Which I did. Watch him dance below.

I'm sitting here staring at my home entertainment set up. What a mess. Cables and wires are everywhere. Heat and noise are pouring out of multiple boxes. It's digital hell.

I've got about five separate set-top boxes because they all do different things. Can't I just get one box that does them all?

Right now I have the following sitting in on my home entertainment center: An Xbox 360, a Wii, a cable box, a cable modem, an Apple Time Capsule -- and I still don't have everything I need. I have no DVR and no way to get my iTunes-bought movies to my TV. It looks like I'm going to have to add another two boxes. I shudder at the thought.

Yes, I'm leaning towards getting a Mac Mini with an Eye TV device to turn it into a DVR, but that is somewhat complicated. Certainly more complicated than getting an Apple TV and hooking it up via a single HDMI cable -- the Mac Mini has no HDMI output and of course, isn't supposed to be a DVR. This set up is also more complicated than getting a TiVo, which is built specifically as a DVR.

Apple is missing a real opportunity with its Apple TV. It could be the one box for the living room, but it lacks crucial components like DVR, gaming and a optical disc player. Patents suggest they realize this and are working on solutions, but who knows if those will ever come. If nothing else, I'm sure Hollywood will put pressure on them not to add DVR to a box that is playing their movies.

What we have now are several companies with boxes that do one or two things well but cannot cross over into other areas. The Xbox 360 is close as it plays games and allows you to rent movies - but the movie selection is limited and the box still has no DVR functionality. It also, naturally, won't play movies I've bought on iTunes.

My cable box does DVR if I want it to and gives access to some movies, but it's UI and overall experience is god awful. I also refuse to use the DVR functionality on it because I refuse to pay the cable company any more money. I already ranted about my $150 cable bill ($110 of which was for TV), well I've managed to get that down to $33 after bitching and threatening to cancel everything - but I still eventually want to leave them entirely if they don't shape up.

The Apple Time Capsule is cool because it's an external hard drive and a Wi-Fi router, but can't this just be built in to the Apple TV or Mac Mini? I don't care if the box is a little bigger. It's not a portable device, it's sitting in my living room.

What's even worse is that none of these boxes talk to one another. They are all just little entertainment islands in my living room.

I want one device that does it all: DVR, plays movies (both digital and discs), plays games, etc. One box with one single HDMI cable. That is my dream. Can anyone make it happen? Probably not.

Even while writing this, I just remembered that I kind of also want to get that new Netflix Roku box. I could be looking at double-digit boxes on my entertainment center. The thought just makes we want to throw them all away.

At least until wireless electricity and wireless HDMI become a reality.

When the initial trailer for The Incredible Hulk film came out, I wasn't very excited to see it. It looked a lot like the last Hulk, only with Edward Norton replacing Eric Bana, an upgrade, but it's all about the green guy in these films. I was happy when a new batch of trailers came out and made the film look much better, showcasing more of Norton, Tim Roth and William Hurt. But now they've pushed the trailers too far and revealed too much.

*Spoilers Below*

Most of us fans already knew that Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, would be appearing in the Hulk film. Marvel is setting up an entire universe of its characters in these films now, as shown by Nick Fury's appearance at the end of the credits in Iron Man. But to show Robert Downey Jr. as Stark in one of the Hulk trailers is tacky.

It just reeks of trying to mooch off of Iron Man's huge success at the box office as much as possible.

It speaks to a larger problem that I have had with movie trailers in the past several years. They simply give away far too much information. For a lot of movies that I see now, if I've seen a few different trailers for the movie beforehand, I basically know everything that is going to happen.

Stark's appearance in The Incredible Hulk would have been a great moment for many people in the theaters, and it still will for some, but not for me. Now I'll just feel like I'm watching a commercial, because I saw it in one.

An Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray player would be very cool, especially given that Microsoft backed the wrong horse (HD DVD) for so long. But is Microsoft really dumb enough to try and announce it an hour before the WWDC event tomorrow?

That's the rumor that CrunchGear is hearing. 1 hour before one of the largest events in Apple's history, Microsoft will announce an Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray drive that will ship before Christmas and be cheaper than the current Xbox 360 Elite.

If true, why on Earth would Microsoft time it that way? They would clearly have to be thinking that such an announcement would dampen the buzz of the 3G iPhone - but it wouldn't, it would just get completely buried under it.

Save it for another day Microsoft. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

YouTube rolled out a new "Video Annotations" feature tonight in beta which is very cool. For a good proof-of-concept check out the "Interactive Shell Game" video.

This adds a whole new layer of interactivity to videos and should lead to some interesting things beyond those people who will simply make lame rehashes of old "Pop Up Videos".

Features such as this remind me of why I view Google differently than the other companies out there. They have a product that is already great, but then they switch things up a bit and it changes the complexion of the service.

I was thinking about this the other day when playing with Google Maps' new "More..." button which allows you to show photos and Wikipedia entries right on Google Map search results. Something like that makes the application so much more than just a utility.

Too many companies get lulled to sleep by success, become complacent and fail to innovate. That hasn't happened to Google yet, and I certainly hope it doesn't.

Who knows, features such as this may also be a way for YouTube to make that all important dollar in the future. Sponsored clickable areas?

No sooner do I write about possibly ditching cable television for good in favor of getting content online, does a cable company come out and make me question if I soon won't have to quit getting the Internet via that route as well.

Apparently the cable companies are both greedy and stupid. Two traits I really admire in a company. I guess they want none of my money.

I don't have Time Warner cable, but if I did, this news that they are testing out metered Internet would really piss me off. It's exactly what it sounds like, you pay your base rate and for that you get to use the Internet up to a certain point, after which you are charged by the gigabyte.

Remember back in the day on AOL when they used to charge when you went over your alloted minutes? Eventually they had to go unlimited because the market demanded it. Part of that was actually the cable companies and their always-on, unlimited cable modems. This pretty much ruined AOL as a service.

Now those same cable companies are going the opposite way. And guess what is going to happen? Something else, be it WiMAX or super-fast 3G or 4G connections are going to come along and blow them out of the water. They don't realize it yet, but if they actually go ahead with this plan, they are already dead.

On the L33t Tech News podcast this past week we spoke briefly about cable companies and the problems they face with the movement of digital content into the living room through other means. It's simply getting a lot easier to live without cable television.

I'm pretty sure I'm about to venture off and try to experience that first hand after I got my cable bill today: $150.

Let me repeat. $150. Preposterous.

Granted, I have cable and Internet on the bill, but you subtract the Internet and it's still $115 dollars. A month. For what?

I watch maybe five channels regularly, yet I get a few hundred. Despite the ever forthcoming promises that a la carte programming, the cable companies still do not allow you to pick and chose what you want - which is ridiculous. Do I want Spike and the Weather channel? No. But I need to take them if I also want ESPN and the History Channel.

I was thinking about it today, what do I really need cable for? I like sports, so that is basically all I watch live. Everything else I record on a DVR (which I don't currently have), but I do that more out of convenience than anything else. Pretty much all the shows I want to see are now online in one form or another. And a lot are free on sites such as Hulu.

With HBO now finally putting its content on iTunes, I think I'm done. For the $150 a month I pay the cable company I could buy an Apple TV and a ton of content for it in just two months. In six months, with the money I'd be saving by not having cable, I could add the Netflix Roku box and buy everything I could ever want on Apple TV and Xbox Live's marketplace as well.

In a year's time I would be saving so much money. I'd miss some things, but there is plenty of stuff to occupy my free time already. I hardly watch television as it is.

I might not even mind getting ripped off that much if cable actually made the presentation halfway decent. Instead I have an awful cable box that is not only incredibly slow, but has a horrible UI to boot.

Last year I wondered if 2008 would be the year that companies like Apple, Sony and Microsoft moving into the living room would force the cable companies to get their acts together and start caring about the product they are putting out there - kind of like how Apple's iPhone and just the fear of Google has transformed the mobile phone industry in this country in a very short amount of time. All of a sudden we have talk of "open" networks and cool phones and unlimited data plans for cheaper than regular plans used to be. For cable television, that transformation hasn't happened yet.

It's pathetic. And expensive. I'd much rather pay for quality and programs I know I want to watch.

The public at large is still far away from jumping ship, but the cable companies would be foolish if they think that will never happen with the way things are going. Apple has already made the Apple TV pretty compelling, a few more features such as a DVR and we may see more people take the cable-less path.

I remember when my cable bill was $60 for cable and Internet in college. Now it's $150 for the exact same service. I was in college in 2004, not 1954, that rate of inflation is ridiculous.

For too long I've been saying, "I wish I knew how to quit you, cable." I'm just scared. I've lived so long with it. But enough is enough.

I was thiiiissss close to buying an Apple TV - something tonight may have changed my mind. Netflix just unleashed a new box with Roku and here's all you need to know: $99, access to 10,000 titles that can play instantly on your TV - for free.

For more details check out my longer post on VentureBeat.

Apple did a pretty good job upgrading its Apple TV service in January with a slew of new features - namely movie rentals, but it still left a few things to be desired. The prices aren't great. There is no rent-to-own option. And the device still has no optical drive and no DVR functionality.

Still, I was more than willing to overlook those to get the device - especially since two of those would be upgradable via software if the options ever became available. Now I'm not sure I could justify buying an Apple TV because if nothing else, I think Apple is going to have to release a new version of the device to compete with Netflix, or cut the price once again.

Clouding my decision even farther is the fact that Netflix has more devices in the pipeline. We already know about one they are working on with LG, but the real kicker could be if they team up with the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 to bring this instant watch features to those devices.

If Netflix launches a device that also allows you to purchase new releases on top of viewing the instant watch films I see absolutely no reason to get anything else. I can't see why they wouldn't eventually do that.

So when that happens, Apple is going to need something more to differentiate their device. I think more than ever now they need to merge the Apple TV with the Mac Mini. Release a device around the $499 price point that will handle all the media center requirements, but is also a full-fledged computer to boot.

Some people may not think they want a true computer in their living room, but imagine being able to use a program like Google Earth on a big screen HD TV. How about browsing the web and chatting via IM? The current Apple TV doesn't allow for any of these things, but maybe it should. How about some games as well?

Basically what it comes down to is that I want one set-top box in my living room. If Apple would simply merge the Apple TV with the Mac Mini, that could certainly be it. Otherwise I'm probably going to buy the new Netflix box instead of an Apple TV. If I really need to watch a new movie for now I can either a) rent it from Netflix via mail b) Buy it on demand via cable c) download via some other means and stream it to my Xbox or d) buy it via Xbox Live.

I continue to love the online mixtape service, Muxtape, and so I've made another. One of the service's strengths is also a weakness: you can only have 12 songs at a time. In order to put up my new 12, I had to delete my old 12. I realize it's probably too much to ask for a full archive of previous iterations of a muxtape, but I do wish they would at least keep track of a previous song list or the like. For posterity's sake I'll write on the song's on my latest one here.

Luckily you can subscribe to the RSS feed of any muxtape to know when it's updated - here's mine.

The ParisLemonMuxtape 2nd Iteration twelve:

My Morning Jacket - At Dawn
She & Him - This Is Not A Test
Matt Pond PA - Last Light
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
The Kooks - Shine On
The Black Keys - Oceans & Streams
Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
She & Him - I Thought I Saw Your Face Today
Bloc Party - I Still Remember
Metro Station - Seventeen Forever
Atmosphere - Shoulda Know
Huey Lewis & The News - The Power of Love

Also check out Muxtape with CoverFlow if you haven't yet.

Iron Man was a solid movie. It has already made a ton of money, and deservedly so - it was very good. BUT, the new trailer for The Dark Knight, just looks great.

I really liked the first two Spider-Man films, liked the first two X-Men films even more, but for my money, Batman Begins has to be the best comic-book adaptation to date. Kind of like how Casino Royale was a great movie and not just a great James Bond movie, Batman Begins was just a great movie, period.

The Dark Knight looks like it could be even better.



Fear not though Iron Man fans, with a $100.7 million opening (the 2nd best ever for a non-sequel), you can be sure the 2nd and 3rd films have already been greenlit. And yes, all the main people are signed up for two more already.

Who says old school media companies still just don't get it? I do.

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch had arranged to rent out a theater in San Francisco tomorrow night to show Marvel's new film Iron Man to 600 of his readers. He paid for every seat in the theater and then put up a post directing readers how to sign up (paying $1 to make sure people would actually legitimately want them). It went smoothly, me and several people I know were supposed to go.

A few hours later, TechCrunch gets a cease & desist letter from Marvel stating the showing was unauthorized -- even though Arrington had called the group sales lines on the website to set the whole thing up. He was told to take down the post immediately and contact the lawyer who sent the very terse letter.

Now, I don't know all the legal angles at play here, but I assume Arrington does, he is a lawyer after all. But just from a pure PR perspective, this has to be one of the dumbest moves in recent memory on the Internet for a mega movie's opening weekend. They were basically getting 600 fanboys to come see their movie, and thousands more buzzing about the event if they couldn't make it. These folks, myself included, probably would have provided plenty of free PR whether it be via blog post, IM, Twitter, etc.

So now I'm thinking either a) the movie sucks or b) Marvel is very stupid or c) both.

I had been very excited for Iron Man too.

Bitchmeme on.


UPDATE 4/30: The show will go on! Marvel blames Oracle who apparently has an event at the theater at the same time and thought the TechCrunch readers (The Sharks) would break into a melee with the Oracle invitees (The Jets). Sure.

I'd like to think that being near the top of Techmeme most of the night as well as consistent coverage on Twitter and FriendFeed helped the cause. That, or Arrington's $2,000 in legal fees...

A few weeks ago I wrote about my love of Muxtape, the super simple web version of the mix-tape. Now Internet Jogging has made the experience even better utilizing the web app web browser Fluid.

If you love the Coverflow view on iTunes, you're really gonna love this.

Marshall has a great write-up of it at ReadWriteWeb, but pretty much all you need to watch is the video below.

I plan on finally updating my own Muxtape tomorrow, now that I'm actually home where my music is. For now I'm enjoying Zelda's Muxtape - by the way, did you also see you can now favorite up to 12 Muxtapes at a time? I love the idea of limiting this, lest I favorite everything and that becomes yet another means of clutter in my life.

Hey FriendFeed, how about adding Muxtape support?