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Why MLB.TV is the service to beat in terms of online sports streaming Posted: 26 Apr 2009 02:07 PM PDT Any self respecting baseball fan knows each game out of a 162 game season is very important. Every die-hard fan tries their utmost to catch as much of the game as possible. Now unfortunately, people move away from their town where their team plays, so they may not be able to catch the game often. Fortunately for them, MLB has rejuvenated their online video service with many special features including live streaming games. While I can’t say I’ve actually watched a lot of games through MLB.TV, I’ve watched a few and I have to say, I am very pleased. What exactly is MLB.TV? To put it simply, MLB.TV is a service than runs on a monthly, or yearly subscription, with a price that isn’t all that expensive considering all their features. In previous years, the service has been relatively simple—just stream the game the viewer wants to see. However, in the offseason, a division of MLB, MLB Advanced Media, worked hard to revamp the service to include many new and exciting features. I wholeheartedly believe that the , especially for sports, will include many of these fantastic features. The features Within MLB.TV’s Premium service, you have access to live game highlights, live game radio feed options, HD quality picture, DVR functionality (meaning you can rewind and pause the live game), watch up to 4 games at once, picture-in-picture, and player tracker (which is great for following Fantasy players). Previously, you could only get these features on a HDTV, but the fact that it is now available online for nearly every team; that is truly remarkable and it just goes to show how far technology has come. In addition, MLB Advanced Media even has plans to create an iPhone app and allow for live streaming coverage. As soon as the 3.0 software comes out, MLB plans to unveil their At Bat app with live streaming and such. By reaching out to all major technology venues, like Internet and cell phone, MLB is making a strong case to show that they are the sport to beat in terms of technology. The Price It is very easy these days to catch everything you would normally view on TV, on the Internet and your computer. As a result, it is very possible to drop your TV and cable service altogether and stick to what you can view online. With that in mind, the price of MLB.TV isn’t too expensive. For all the Premium features I listed above, a yearly subscription would run you about $109.95 (which covers 162 games from April-October), while the monthly deal $19.95. Now, without all those advanced features I talked about above, it costs $79.95 yearly, and $14.95 monthly. Despite the current plight of the economy, MLB.TV has more subscribers than last year, and they can probably thank that to the exceptional new features the Premium service has to offer. With a fast, crisp Internet service, users can expect streaming quality to be comparable to normal TV quality. Will the revamp be worthwhile? Since this is the inaugural season of the MLB.TV Premium service, it is hard to say whether it will be more successful than MLB.TV in previous years. To give some perspective on how MLB.TV did last year, and where it should stand at the end of the season, consider this. Last year, it had over 500,000 subscribers and “generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue.” Even though the economy is going to make it tough for some potential users, MLB has dropped the price of the MLB.TV service by 10 dollars, so they do recognize the problem. I do believe that all true baseball fans will find some way to purchase a subscription and try to save money elsewhere. For all other sport fans who would like to see their respective leagues create something similar to MLB.TV, fear not. NHL has already rolled out a video service, called , they plan to use for the Stanley cup coverage. While the features are not as extensive as MLB.TV, I imagine that many sports will follow suit and launch their own video services, as it is quite a profitable business. Check it out

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of April 19, 2009 Posted: 26 Apr 2009 01:34 PM PDT Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week? Here's your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

Who killed Mobile Internet Devices? iPhone and netbooks blush Posted: 26 Apr 2009 10:27 AM PDT It was not that long ago when an announcement of a new mobile internet device, such as this one from Samsung would get us all aflutter. These devices seemed to have missed their window, an unfortunate mistiming of faster network speeds and competition from two sources kept these devices in the rarely seen category. The party responsible for finally slamming the door shut? The mighty iPhone. A MID is a compact device made for surfing the web and performing typically less demanding tasks than a laptop or desktop computer. Their form factor was never agreed upon, so often they have a slide out keyboard or an odd left hand and right hand keypads at either side of the screen. Typically size was about 1/2 a 8×10 sheet of paper and an inch thick. The UMPC was similar only it had a more powerful engine and was capable of demanding tasks. Last week, word came that OQO would not be making more of the Model 2+, their MID. While there are expected to still be units in the supply chain, the company announcing no more will be made is either trying to justify a price hike or lack of customers. My money is on the latter. The reasons are easy. Our smartphones have become our mobile PCs. We can surf from anywhere, rather comfortably, get email, even get applications OTA. For many, an iPhone and desktop/laptop completes the picture, no more is needed. For those that feel the screen is too small, a cheap netbook fits the bill to solve the issue. A $1000+ device, like the MID and UMPCs demanded never figure in to the picture. Smartphone demand continues to rise while telecoms are starting to flood the market with $99 or less netbooks with service contracts to try to keep the netbook market moving. There is no going back. The odd devices that were UMPCs and MIDs time has passed. We’ll miss them, not for their accomplishments, but mostly for how odd they look.

SlashGear Week in Review - Week 17 2009 Posted: 26 Apr 2009 10:09 AM PDT It’s been a week of mobile device reviews, along with the Bluetooth accessories that go with them, here at SlashGear, with Samsung’s for the iPhone 3G got its review. Elsewhere, netbooks suffered a hiccup after MSI, ASUS and Acer all to Intel’s GN40 graphics chipset. We still can’t get enough of the Viliv S5 MID, and it seems we’re not alone. Presales for the 4.8-inch touchscreen device for their Model 2+ UMPC. If OQO’s struggles weren’t bad enough, SlashGear favorite Ugobe have also hit some unsurmountable trouble. The Pleo-makers have by the highest bidder. Elsewhere, MSI’s X-Slim X340 ultraportable finally got an official price-tag, though we’re sad to see it their X340 to reveal compact components and a surprising amount of masking tape. Don’t forget, SlashGear is to find out more, plus details on how you can answer (hint: it’s very, very simple); entries will be accepted up until the end of the month. Good luck! Relevant Entries on SlashGear

Windows 7 RC1 upcoming, XP Mode coming later Posted: 26 Apr 2009 08:08 AM PDT Windows 7 is certainly getting a lot of attention recently as Windows users try to forget about the mistakes of Vista and focus on the next OS. It seems every major release of the OS has appeared ever appearing out in public. There’s always a lot of speculation as to when it will be released and how quickly the newness might wear off. But, since it’s not here yet, we still have room to hope, even more so in recent announcements. Microsoft has finally come clean with the release of Windows 7 RC1, which will in fact be released on May 5th as we’ve expected. But, they also made an important announcement. Turns out those who go all out for the Professional and Ultimate versions of 7 will be able to download a new “XP Mode.” XP Mode will allow for users to run programs in a XP environment, which will apparently run just the same as Windows XP does now. The programs will even look like they are running in XP, complete with the familiar XP title bar. It should be useful to those who use abandoned software that only runs in XP, or for companies who use software that is only available for Windows XP at least until it gets upgraded. The new XP mode could potentially sway a lot of people to buy the Ultimate edition if Windows markets it correctly, especially if it works well. What should be interesting however, would be if a 64-bit version of 7 can emulate a 32-bit version of XP in XP Mode. There are some programs now that will work well on XP and Vista, but not on 64-bit Vista, which leaves those users out in the cold. This XP Mode could potentially serve as an easy solution to those issues.

We all want an Apple netbook, but who really needs it? Posted: 26 Apr 2009 07:24 AM PDT - Houston Neal at Software Advice is getting specific in his rationale for the need of an Apple Netbook; specifically, as it pertains to the medical industry.

Largest Model Rocket In History Launch Appears To Have Been A Success Posted: 26 Apr 2009 06:23 AM PDT By Andrew Liszewski Last reader Ben submitted to their site, the launch looks like it was a complete success. There’s even a video of the launch that I’ve included , and I hate to sound cynical, but it doesn’t actually look much more exciting than the Estes model rockets I used to launch as a kid. But I’m sure experiencing the launch in person would have been an impressive experience.

Dropbox lets you sync for free Posted: 26 Apr 2009 06:17 AM PDT There’s a fairly new file syncing program in town, and it is getting lots of positive feedback from its users. Dropbox is an online sync and storage service that is able to be used over Windows, Linux or Mac. It relies on Amazon S3 storage, and has both a free and a paid storage service; although the free version does provide you with a more limited amount. They claim to have over one million members currently, which isn’t bad for a rather recent start-up. Signing up When you first sign up with Dropbox and create your virtual machine, it then uploads the “virtual disk” to their site. The time this takes can vary depending on your upload speed, but once this disk is created, it then gets syced with all of your Dropbox machines. P2P coming soon One feature they don’t have yet, but are supposed to be getting is P2P sharing. This will let users that share the same network share any of their files directly. They will be able to bypass first uploading them to the Dropbox servers. As it stands, you can open up your virtual disk from any machine on the network, make any changes you want and sync and save them, and the changes on the virtual machine are able to be seen by everyone. A word of caution There is one important thing you will want to take note of before using Dropbox though. If you make any major changes to a file, you have to wait for it to completely finish syncing before shutting down your computer, or you will lose your changes. Also keep in mind if you are looking to do an large shared install…make sure there is enough room if you are using the free version (2 GB), you may need to go Paid which gives you 50 GB. Have you used it? Do you like it? Let us know your thoughts. Product Site:

On video: WoW running on iPhone via 3G Posted: 26 Apr 2009 04:51 AM PDT World of Warcraft (WoW) on the iPhone? Yes, you read it correctly! This isn’t necessarily a new app for the iPhone though. What you see in the picture and the video below is actually WoW being streamed to the iPhone via the iPhone’s 3G connection. What we understand from this is that, the actual online game is running on the PC but with the help of Vollee, WoW can be successfully streamed and yes, played on the iPhone 3G. It looks like from the video, most features of the game can be played and the speed looks pretty smooth taking into consideration it is 3G. It’s done using Vollee, which is used to stream games over 3G, so the video is actually just a stream and the rendering is done on the PC. But it’s much smoother than we’d expect over 3G, and comes with enough features that true WoW addicts will be able to get their fix on the run, buying and selling elves or whatever happens in that game. via Everyone: Folks, we’re having an issue showing videos in our feed right now, this is since we upgraded to Wordpress 2.7. We hope to fix it soon, meanwhile if you see a blank video slot, just click on the post’s link and you will see it properly on our site, sorry about this! Written by: Tell us what you think about the post you’ve just read: Related posts

Egnyte beats FTP? Posted: 25 Apr 2009 05:41 PM PDT It is a known fact that modern day business relies on everyday data sharing. The bigger company is – the more complicated schemes binding customers, managers and developers appear. FTPs may not do the trick then. The better solution for sharing files is professional software developed for the need of firms. One of the young but promptly growing companies that have succeeded to build a software package like that is Egnyte. Since year 2006 they have expanded from Silicon Valley to Europe and Asia, so I think they really have a point.

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