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Archives for June 2006

Shuttle taking off

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Shuttle Computers is preparing for one hot summer, with three innovative product launches planned for June-July.

The most exciting of those is the Shuttle M2000, a home entertainment PC featuring wireless inputs, an Intel Core Duo processor with Viiv Technology, gigabit Ethernet and a DVD +/-R/RW burner.

I’m sure that sounds like a lot to swallow so let’s take a look at the M2000.

The M2000 is a media center. It seeks to replace a good chunk of your existing home theater components by providing an all-in-one digital video recorder, HDTV tuner, radio tuner, DVD player and audio/MP3 player.

It’s only three inches tall and 17 inches wide, making it roughly the size of a first generation DVD player. That is the truly amazing part of this product. Shuttle has squeezed optical audio, a/v inputs and outputs, digital video out, component video out, a TV/FM tuner card, a front panel LCD display and your typical firewire, USB and Ethernet ports (and 802.11b/g wifi just for good measure) into one of the smallest HTPC packages I’ve ever seen.

Shuttle’s new home entertainment PC is being received well so far. CNET gave it a 7.0 out of 10. It lost points for lack of expandability and for not having enough RAM. I agree with the RAM part—the M2000 comes with 512MB of DDRII-533 standard and it really should be 1GB minimum. However, I disagree with “lack of expansion options” being a negative factor. You don’t buy a Shuttle PC to expand it. Apple users don’t buy an iMac to expand it and both Apple and Shuttle manage to squeeze a lot into a spall space. It’s not mean to be ripped open and rebuilt.

Sheila Dy is the Public Relations Manager for Shuttle Computers. I recently asked her about the M2000 and their marketing efforts.

“We have a few viral marketing efforts around the M2000,” Dy said. She also credits the success of Shuttle’s newsletter and their efforts to reach out to media relations groups for the success of the M2000 buzz.

Shuttle has two more releases up its sleeve this summer. The X100, ultra-slim PC will feature a duo 1.8GHz and 1GB DDR2 standard. The P2 2700 is a gaming PC with a 64 bit processor that can load up to 8GB of DDR2.


Shuttle M2000 Full Specs

Aristotle is turning over in his grave.

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Jay Leno will play “Golden Mean” this evening on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” when two ideological extremes come together—-hopefully.

Ann Coulter, the blonde bombshell/conservative firecracker whose latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is causing an explosive stir, will be a guest alongside legendary comedian George Carlin.

The two are scheduled for separate timeslots, however.

Coulter’s book has drawn fire for, among other reasons, questioning the motives of 9/11 widows when she said: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”

Carlin is known for his no-subject-is-taboo comedy and commentary on politics and religion especially. He was the first host of NBC’s Saturday Night Live in 1975 and has been a perennial guest of “The Tonight Show” since even before Johnny Carson was hosting. He has written three books; When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, Napalm and Silly Putty and Brain Droppings.

Does the “extreme” work in public relations? Certainly to liberals, Coulter is no less than the devil in Prada. But how many books has she sold? Carlin has made jokes saying that rape can be funny and once said “Fuck Mickey Mouse,” but he is one of the most followed American comedians in history. You be the judge.

I just really hope they get a chance to communicate meaningfully.

Coffee 1, Cirrhosis 0: This is why you should buy a mug at the PR store.

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And your mom said it would stunt your growth.

“Drinking coffee could help protect against alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver,” according to a press release published by Kaiser Permanente June 12.

Kaiser Permanente conducted a study of over 125,000 it its health plan members who received a medical examination between 1978-1985. They kept track of their alcohol, coffee and tea consumption through a questionnaire, and by the end of 2001, 330 people had developed liver disease and 199 had alcoholic cirrhosis.

Interestingly enough, the pattern of disease development shows that the more coffee a person drank, the less likely they were to develop alcoholic cirrhosis.

“Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis,” said Arthur Klatsky, MD, a Kaiser Permanente investigator, “and the more coffee a person consumes, the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalized or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis.”

The data shows that one cup of coffee per day made a subject 20 percent less likely to have alcoholic cirrhosis. Two to three cups: 40 percent less likely. Four or more cups of coffee a day indicated an 80 percent decrease in the risk of having alcoholic cirrhosis.

According to WebMD alcoholic cirrhosis is a life threatening disease that can develop in people who drink excessively over a 10-15 year period:

At least 10% to 15% of people who drink alcohol excessively will develop cirrhosis. Of the 26,000 people who die from cirrhosis each year, at least 40% have a history of alcohol abuse.

There are other types of cirrhosis, but the study did not show that coffee had any affect on non-alcoholic cirrhosis.

The press release is generating good play in the media. CNN.com ran an article about the findings. CBS News, ABC News and MSNBC are also running the story. Kaiser Permanente’s public relations team, including Kevin McCormack and Michelle Ponte, have also seen their efforts result in coverage in hundreds of newspapers today including papers in China, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and all over the United States.

“This is not a recommendation to drink coffee,” said Klatsky, “nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee.”

You should buy a mug anyway.

On Wii.

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A series of posts and my own response on The Wiire encouraged me to write this followup.

I have read and responded to many comments here and on Blogcritics…many well reasoned arguments that have caused excellent debate.

Now, I obviously expected to take backlash from this article. I’m well aware of the excitement being generated over the Nintendo Wii and I think it’s great that many gamers seem up to the challenge of a completely new style of play. It’s promising.

I’ve been writing about games and technology for a long time and based on what I said in my article, It is my opinion that the Wii will be ahead of its time and end up #3 over its lifespan compared to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

But certainly, if we’re going that way, Wii will open the door to a future generation of “player motion” consoles. The main point of my article, however, was that I don’t think gamers are 100 percent ready for a total immersion into this completely new technology and never-before-seen style of play.

Xbox 360
You are definitely, definitely looking at an Xbox 360 screenshot

I gave the Sony controller points–knowing full well that it doesn’t have the same capabilities as the Wii Remote–because it is a “baby step” into this technology. I never said it was a better controller, and it might not be in the end. But it is a conservative step in an industry where major innovations (changes) seem to always have a guinea pig. Sony’s marketing has been terrible with regards to the Playstation 3. Their E3 showing, as we all know, was shameful. I properly prodded Sony for that and even hinted that the departure of a major public relations person at Sony might be related to their E3 failure.

The Nintendo Wii E3 video is a work of genius. It shows a diverse age group, including people that don’t normally play video games such as grandmothers and an older couple playing a golf game. From a public relations perspective, it’s perfect. If it works, this effort will go down in history as one of the great technology marketing initiatives.

Major changes like this have always taken a few steps to become mainstream. The analog stick that we saw on the Nintendo 64 took a lot of criticism but now analog is the standard on this generation of consoles. It took the N64 to get us ready for it. The D-pad back in those days was another revolution that gamers took their time warming up to at first.

Maybe ‘fail’ was a strong word to use. I meant that in terms of market share being below the competition over the next few years–much like I predicted about the Dreamcast several years ago.

The Wii will be the first step toward what could be a new standard of playing, but my point is that history shows that new standards are rarely completely ingrained in American video game culture with the first try, which happens to be the Nintendo Wii in this case.

So, critique the article and argue with me, but please take the time to read the whole article first, and I don’t respond to personal attacks. (I actually got an e-mail saying: “I didn’t read your article, but you’re a moron for saying that!”) I’ve responded to some good comments on here as well as Blogcritics that were completely against my argument, but that were well reasoned and thought out.

As for the screenshots, the one in question is assuredly from the Xbox 360. You can click HERE to verify that. That link will take you to the EA Sports E3 shots for Madden 07 on the Xbox 360.

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