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The Microsoft and Yahoo! saga continues.
Google is launching a new feature to allow you to close sessions left open on other computers so you can make sure no one has access to your account.
Lots of people asked for it, and we finally got it. Drobo released v2 today and this version has two firewire ports.
Pioneer has a prototype 400GB Blu-ray, read only, drive. Massive storage on an optical drive is on its way.
XBMC is changing their name to Plex Squared to avoid assumptions that it’s for the Xbox.
Cali’s Tshirt was provided by Allmightys.com.
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July 8th, 2008 at 6:46 am
arhhhh Cali mentions Plex2.com in her brief a few minutes ago and now the site is down… Are we seeing the Cali Effect ?
July 8th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Hey Cali,
Great news that Drobo have *finally* released a firewire version. Is your promo code valid for the new version?
July 8th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Should be good, yes – promo code is CALI
July 8th, 2008 at 9:10 am
That’s what i thought, however after applying that code, entering my zip code and clicking “update changes” it makes no difference.
Oh well. I guess i will have to wait until they sort it out.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Cali,
I think you are not being fair to the poor Yahoo shareholders who have seen their stock plummet with the… well… inactivity and sheer stubborn mindset of the Yahoo Board.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Cali, I feel a bit tricked by yesterday’s teaser that there would be a big announcement today. A new drobo did not excite me.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
LOL! I’m sorry, Lloyd. It excited a lot of people! :)
July 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
So I have been on the fence about the Drobo now for a while. I have an Infrant ReadyNAS that has been fine, but is loud. I have seen some reports of the Drobo being loud, but they all seem to be early reports. Any good feedback on the volume? The ReadyNAS is so loud, I can’t have it in my office, I need to put it on another room of the house. I am a Mac user, so I am spoiled by near silent iMacs and MacBook Pros.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Too bad.
“Thank you for contacting Drobo Support Team. No this code “Cali” will not work on the New Drobo. There is no code offered for the New Drobo Gen 2.”
Greg, they claim to have made the sound better in the new version:
“Drobo is much quieter. DRI has reworked the thermal cooling system. Changes include a larger, 92mm fan, increasing the size of the air intake and exhaust vents to allow more airflow through the system, and changes to the thermal control circuit.”
of course that would depend on which drives you use.
July 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Cali, I’m not sure if it’s the way you present them or what, but rants don’t come across well from you. Maybe you need to explain yourself more as to why you think your opinion is correct. It almost comes across as flippant and that takes away any credibility you have. “…Money isn’t what makes the Internet work, sincerity is what makes the Internet work…” Surely you’ve been in the Internet world long enough to know that for companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and yes, even Apple it’s all about the money.
Stick to the Shiny Happy news or dig deeper for your commentary, but the way you do it now is off-putting.
July 8th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
You should back off the apple crack.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Hi Cali,
That are great news… a Drobo with Firewire 800. I will have to upgrade my “old” one.
Do you know if with this new interface they get rid of the 2TB limit for the partitions. I never fully understood this limit, I guess is because of address space in USB (but not sure)…
So now that they have answered one of my main request (Firewire), it will be awesome if also with they finally provide a “unlimited partition” or something bigger than 2TB ;-)
Thanks for the update!
July 8th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
That T-Shirt link (http://www.almightys.com/) goes to a parked page. Is the site not up yet or is that the wrong address?
July 8th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Cali–
The joking about the “Cali Bundle” has got to stop. It was novel the first time you did it, but now it’s an “old maid” (apologies for the bad pun) as far as jokes go.
BJ
July 8th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for the heads up, Aaron! I fixed it.
This Brief had absolutely nothing to do with Apple. Do you mean the fact that I mentioned Microsoft (again, nothing to do with Apple)? If so, let’s address that. Throughout the history of The Brief, I have always been an Apple fan. I have also praised Microsoft from time to time. The ratio of Apple praise to Microsoft praise has stayed very consistent.
If it upsets you so much that I talk about Microsoft in a negative way occasionally, this may not be the podcast for you.
Entire teams at Microsoft watch GeekBrief.TV and they don’t seem to have a problem with it. I’m sure they cringe if it has to do with their department, but they’ve watched long enough to know that I praise them when they do it right.
Off that subject, I think everyone’s pretty sick of the whole Microsoft/Yahoo stories. We all just want a deal done (or not done) and for it to be over. I said the same thing when there were rumors of Digg being bought over and over and over, over the course of several months.
I love that what podcasting offers is a conversation between all of us. If you don’t like something, you say it. If you like something, you say it. Either way, I value this medium for that reason. But I have to say, I can’t comprehend why in the past few months people criticize me for my Apple bias when I’ve been consistent all along. No one ever used to say “you have to stop talking about Apple”. My only conclusion is that you haven’t been around very long. I’d love to hear from you. When did you start watching GBTV? Do you watch or read other gadget blogs that praise Apple from time to time? I’m very curious! :)
It also seems as though feedback from people is changing from constructive criticism to basically telling me what to do and not to do. That gradual change bothers me. Why do we tell each other what to do? We’re each our own person and constructive feedback helps, but demands…they just don’t.
One last thing, this is the week of a major Apple release, and maybe frustrations have to do with that?
July 8th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Cali, I assume your response was to Toneroo? I think he meant your comments sounded a bit too naive. I think the better way of saying it would be the internet is driven by innovation, not necessarily money. Because money does have a huge influence (VC money anyone? google buying tons of little companes… ditto microsoft.. apple buying NeXT). And to this point, I agree.
As for the Drobo.. glad to see a price drop for the original. It’s almost tempting if I didn’t just severely cut back on my budget, heh. I still would like to have seen the NAS portion built in, and about $100 more maybe (ideally no price increase… but trying to be a *little* realistic).
July 8th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
No, actually it wasn’t meant for Terneroo. I meant to say that he had a valid point. It’s actually meant for more than what you see just here on comments. I apologize I didn’t specify that! :)
July 8th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Haven’t read the comments in a long time and I was surprised by how critical some people are being.
On another subject…I think this was the first time I have ever raised my arms and yelled “woo hoo” during a podcast. I’ve been holding out for a firewire Drobo and it’s finally here.
Cali: Does the Brief benefit directly from our use of the promo codes or is it more along the lines of our use of the code encouraging the sponsor to stick around? Just curious how/if I’m helping the podcast when I buy from a sponsor.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Cali, I like “GeekBrief” most of the time. My problem is, I don’t always say when I love the show. And all to often, I am quick to express my opinion when I don’t. I think a lot of people are that way. So from now on, I will try to be more positive.
Thank you for a wonderful show. I appreciate the work that you put into making the Brief.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Absolutely, TBigMan, it’s kind of natural I think, unfortunately. :)
Mike: the codes do benefit us directly. Thanks for using them!
July 8th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I’ve been fence-sitting regarding the Drobo, but I really need it. This one is enough to make me jump. It’s very expensive here in Australia from the local distributor–$730AUS, which is $695US. That’s ridiculous, even accounting for some middle-man markup, considering that the Australian dollar is running between 95 and 96 cents US. I’m trying to find out if I can buy it from the US, but I doubt it. That’s quite annoying.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Wow, I never noticed that feature in gmail before, thanks for the heads up! I’m able to access it from my account, and it’s pretty neat, shows what ip addresses have been acessing my account, and from where (gmail.com, igoogle, and gmail notifier for me) pretty neat feature!
Also, I wonder if there was a significant firmware or hardware rework in the new droob, as from what I understand, the reason the first drobo sported only usb is because firewire and e-sata offered no feasible speed advantage due to the fact that the seek/read times themselves were too slow. Perhaps you could elaborate on this?
thanks for another great show!
-David
July 9th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Yahoo is irrelevant. Does anyone still use Yahoo?? I mean sure, they bought a few great companies (like Flickr) but seriously.. Last time I used Yahoo was when I used to use AltaVista for search back in the early 90’s.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Cali,
Don’t let complainers get you down. People need something to bitch about, and web forum give them a safe way to outlet some frustrations. It happens on all forums. Check out any political or even video game forum and you’ll see that the negative stuff you’re getting here is nothing.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
XBMC have not changed name to Plex, (XBMC for Mac will still be called XBMC for Mac). It is only OSXBMC (a unofficial fork of XBMC for Mac) which was previosly hosted at hosted at osxbmc.com that have changes their name to Plex Squared to avoid it being confused with the original XBMC. The original XBMC and Team-XBMC (the 30+ developers of XBMC) is not the developers working on the Plex fork, but the original XBMC and Team-XBMC will continue the development of our version of XBMC for Mac (as well as XBMC for Linux, XBMC for Windows, and XBMC for Xbox).
Here is a more detailed clarification of the XBMC name and its ports and forks:
You see it is a bit confusing because of this; the original XBMC is no longer named “XBox Media Center”, since it was made cross-platform (ported from Xbox to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, now available on all those platforms) XBMC was a few months back officially been renamed to simply “XBMC” (and that is not an abbreviation any longer, it is just “XBMC” now, see xbmc.org which is the official website).
XBMC (at the xbmc.org website) is and always will be the original upstream version of XBMC (and forks like Plex, Boxee, and MediaPortal will probably always continue to copy code updates from the original XBMC, same as we do from them if they implement a new feature or function that we like, that is the nature of open source).
Now to the recent history and reason of OSXBMC being renamed to PLEX; Elan Fieldgold, as then a Team-XBMC developer member, originally ported XBMC for Linux to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard later forked away from XBMC and called his fork OSXBMC (I will not go into details but the fork was due to development practice differences), Elan and Team-XBMC at that time agreed that it would then be best if he renamed it from OSXBMC to something else as Team-XBMC plan on continuing our version of XBMC for Mac to avoid the confusion from having two Mac OS X version out there with “XBMC” in the name. Now almost months later Elan has announced that the new name of OSXBMC is Plex, and that a new domain will be followed soon called plexsquared.com
So to sum up:
OSXBMC (www.osxbmc.com) becomes Plex (www.plexsquared.com)
XBox Media Center (xboxmediacenter.com) is now just XBMC (xbmc.org)
Team-XBMC (xbmc.org) will continue developing XBMC for all platforms
XBMC for Linux
XBMC for Mac
XBMC for Windows
XBMC for Xbox
Again, I ask this is because it is not XBMC that has been renamed to Plex, (as that is what is causing the confusion in the first place), again it is only the osxbmc.org fork of XBMC for Mac that has been renamed to Plex, (Team-XBMC original version of XBMC for Mac hosted at xbmc.org will continue to be named XBMC for Mac, and Team-XBMC will continue the development of the original XBMC for Mac, …sure Plex has a few more Mac specific features than the official version from Team-XBMC do so far, but we at Team-XBMC have now also ported our version to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and are in the process of porting XBMC to PowerPC processor-architecture, while the developers of Plex have stated that they will only support Mac OS X 10.5 on Intel-based Mac hardware).
For a more detailed history of XBMC history from 2002 and onwards please see the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC
July 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I’m not sure what makes you think that sincerity is what makes the internet work, but the Yahoo thing has nothing to do with the internet, it has to do with business. Yahoo is a publicly owned company and their stockholders are in favor of the Microsoft purchase. The Yahoo board did their stockholders a disservice by not taking the Microsoft offer which was for considerably more than the stock was currently worth.
Microsoft probably won’t be going back to the Yahoo table regardless of what anyone tries to do so it is a moot point.
BTW, this brief had nothing to do with Microsoft either as it is not Microsoft continuing to pursue the Yahoo acquisition, its the Yahoo stockholders that would like to oust their board for making an irresponsible business decision.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
It’s funny that you finally spoke up! I have been waiting for someone to bring this out to the open! Anyway… nice post. I will be back.