Apple’s iPhone SDK press con­fer­ence will be held at 10:00AM PT / 1:00PM ET

08:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Moun­tain
12:00PM - Cen­tral
01:00PM - East­ern
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Ams­ter­dam
09:00PM - Moscow
03:00AM - Tokyo (March 7th)

Due to the nature of Adobe Flash plugin, Adobe’s pro­pri­etary soft­ware would need to be recom­piled and opti­mized for the ARM archi­tec­ture for run­ning on mobile devices like the iPhone/iPod Touch, so is stated by many web­sites. Quick­time wasn’t build from the ground up to sup­port these devices either (power and memory con­sump­tion wise). But not all QuickTime’s codec’s are sup­ported only H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-​Complexity ver­sion of the H.264 Base­line Profile…(see iPhone Specs for more infor­ma­tion). My ques­tion is: IS THIS TRUE? Adobe is oper­at­ing on Apple’s play­ground (Format Wars). HD-​DVD has left the build­ing in favor of BR-​DVD. But the dig­i­tal format for video isn’t decided yet! H.264, Win­dows Media or Adobe Flash. Adobe has an install base of 90%> it even comes bun­dled with Mac OS X. Quick­Time is installed on every com­puter with iTunes (Apple’s Trojan Horse) and every Mac. Apple and Adobe are com­peti­tors busi­ness wise: Final Cut Pro isn’t one of Adobe’s favorite appli­ca­tions. Apple is expand­ing hor­i­zon­tal in the soft­ware market. Rumors even point to trou­ble in the mar­riage of Apple/Adobe when Apple released iPhoto. Apple had to down­grade iPhoto’s fea­tures. When Adobe bought Macro­me­dia, there was no com­peti­tor left in the market and com­pe­ti­tion is always good! Either Apple will solve our prob­lem or Adobe will the market demands a solu­tion. I am not a big Flash fan as you prob­a­bly know so I am not cheer­ing on Adobe side.

iTunes (Music) (Games) (Movies) Store hence the name! iTunes already left it’s origin a long time ago. Apple should work out some­thing (iMedia Store or what­ever). iTunes is a strong brand, but it doesn’t cover it’s orig­i­nal propo­si­tion any­more! Apple lost the Com­puter in it’s name to state: more then just com­put­ers. The iTunes brand has to be updated! It’s an online store where the con­sumer can buy music, games, movies, audio­books etc. not just music! If I’ve under­stood cor­rectly Apple’s is going to offer soft­ware in it’s line-​up. The iPhone/iPod Touch are the first to receive it’s apps through iTunes.

Online ser­vices are the next big evo­lu­tion­ary thing after Web 2.0. You already see some com­pa­nies making the shift, like Adobe with it’s Adobe Pho­to­shop Online (PSX), Adobe even branded the Pho­to­shop line with a new very much dis­cussed (Web 2.0 Aquaish) logo. Google is also exper­i­ment­ing with online apps (Cal­en­dar, Docs, Talk etc.) and Apple already has it’s .Mac ser­vices for years (thanks to WebOb­jects). I think and pre­dict that a lot of com­pa­nies will offer these kind of ser­vices in the future and see a tighter inte­gra­tion between web-​based appli­ca­tions and desktop-​based appli­ca­tions, maybe even elim­i­nat­ing their desk­top cousins and trans­form into a sub­scrip­tion based model.

As I men­tioned in an ear­lier post, I would be offer­ing a mobile ver­sion of this weblog. It’s been run­ning in beta form for a while now and I think it’s ready to be unleashed into dig­i­tal cyber­space. You can approach this opti­mized ver­sion with you iPod Touch or iPhone by enter­ing this URL in your browser: http://​mobile.​dig​i​tal​ren​dezvous.net and if you have the latest firmware 1.1.3 (4A93) and the Jan­u­ary upgrade for the iPod Touch, you’ll see the magic of Web Clip. So dig­i­tal­ren­dezvous | mobile is ready-​to-​go.

The Inter­na­tional Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show 2008 just launched today in Las Vegas! It will take place Jan­u­ary 7-10. A lot of gad­gets & good­ies will be released during these days. One I would like to show you is this enter­tain­ment system called the Lady­bug from Vestal­ife.

There’s simply noth­ing quite like the Vestal­ife Lady­bug. Flip out the speaker “wings” on this sleek, high-​tech device and you have an iPod-based enter­tain­ment system fea­tur­ing a built-​in sub-​woofer for lots of bass, a dig­i­tal ampli­fier and one of the coolest soft-​touch fin­ishes you’ve ever expe­ri­enced. Sit it on a counter. Take it with you. The Vestal­ife Lady­bug is designed to be part of your life.

A friend at work said I should watch this TV serie called Dexter. My first reac­tion was Dexter’s Lab­o­ra­tory? Dexter is an Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion drama series based on the novel Darkly Dream­ing Dexter by Jeff Lind­say and adapted for tele­vi­sion by Emmy Award-​winning screen­writer James Manos, Jr. The show pre­miered on Octo­ber 1, 2006 and has since enjoyed wide crit­i­cal acclaim. Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) plays the char­ac­ter of Dexter Morgan, a Miami-​based serial killer who works for the Miami Metro Police Depart­ment as a blood spat­ter ana­lyst. Inter­est­ing twist ay

I don’t watch TV reg­u­larly but he pointed me to some good stuff (thanks Rodi): like Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion with David Duchovny (X-Files), who plays Hank Moody, a trou­bled nov­el­ist whose move to Los Ange­les and has prob­lems with his job and a com­pli­cated rela­tion­ship with his ex-​girlfriend Karen (Natascha McEl­hone) and daugh­ter Becca (Madeleine Martin). I love these series so much, I watch almost every day an episode on my iPod Touch.

I am the lucky owner of an iPod touch. I’ve bought the device for mobile enter­tain­ment (music & video). Apple deliv­ers a very crappy user expe­ri­ence with their Quick­Time Trail­ers site: I can’t play their default trail­ers, I am being for­warded to their ’special’ iPhone sec­tion, where I get the ultimate-​postage-​stamp-​sized-​crappy-​compressed trailer there is avail­able. Maybe it’s one-​size-​fits-​all con­cept isn’t bad for the “iPod fatty” user, but the qual­ity on my iPod is shame­ful! What hap­pened to all those lovely pixels? Let me decide if I want to down­load the 640×336 ver­sion or the 320×172 ver­sion. I can do it on my desk­top, so why not on my iPod? Okay, 320×172 is small, but that doesn’t mean that the qual­ity has to be so crappy!
So think you can do better huh…! Well yeah! I haven’t got the RAW-​DV footage but I’ve taken the 480p ver­sion to show my point. Even the recom­pressed mate­r­ial is better then theirs. Here’s are the two files for com­par­i­son: the orig­i­nal Clover­field Trailer (320) versus the recom­pressed Clover­field Trailer (640). Just put them on your iPod for com­par­is­ment.