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This may just beat out the MovieWedge and MiniRizer for bring-your-own in-flight movies.

The wide variety of Apple knockoffs available via coin-op crane machines on the boardwalk is rather amusing

Air France Concorde, at the Air and Space Museum. Panorama by Autostich for iPhone

As much as we are all enjoying iPhone 3.0, here’s a completely random list of mobile technology I’d love to use:

• Parallels/VMware for the iPhone - no, not to run Windows 7. It would be great, though, to run a virtual Blackberry. It could be isolated or as integrated as the iPhone user and/or the BES administrator would allow. Right now, I carry a Blackberry for work and an iPhone for everything else; this would give users the best of both worlds. (likelihood of happening: slim to none)
• Mobile docking station - rumors of an Apple mediapad or small tablet continue to fly. But why do I need another computing device to carry? The iPhone already has enough processing power; all I need is a larger screen (8-10”) and some way to connect the two. There should also be USB ports for external keyboard and mouse, if I don’t want to use multi-touch.
• iPod classic with Bluetooth - while the Bluetooth connection wouldn’t benefit iPod-only users, it would be great if iPhone could see the contents of an iPod. I like to have a large media library with me. Imagine keeping a 320gb iPod classic in your bag and having all that media available to your iPhone, wirelessly
• WiFi in airplanes (all of them)
• CDMA handsets that do simultaneous voice and data. Very geeky, I know, but my iPhone can be in a call and still get on the ‘net. As far as I know, no CDMA devices can currently do this.
• WiFi tethering. The MiFi is great in that it is a small battery powered device and any WiFi device can connect to it. Since iPhone, Blackberry, and many other smartphones have WiFi, why not turn them into portable access points?

I spent more than a few hours today fighting with the Crystal Reports 2008 Enterprise installer. For some reason, no matter what options I selected for installation, the thing hung up with the following message:

“Please wait while the installer finishes determining your disk space requirements”

After fiddling with settings, checking Windows installer, and the general registry/.dll hacking that makes Windows tick, I found the answer:

Install the Crystal Reports French language pack.

I had no idea why, and wasn’t able to find any reason why installing the French language pack makes any difference in how the installer works, but it installed without a hitch afterwards.

Hopefully this post makes it to Google and saves someone else several hours of banging their head into the wall.

Merci, BusinessObjects

This post started as a rant about how Netflix announced a rather large price hike for Blu-ray disk rentals. Starting in late April, access to Blu-ray disks will cost an additional $5 a month (up from $1/month) on the 4-at-a-time plan. While their timing is simply perfect - I purchased a Blu-ray player about a month ago - Netflix is claiming that the increase is due to the increased cost of Blu-ray disks.

While retail prices for Blu-ray disks are in fact higher, producing a high def disk simply cannot be that much more expensive that producing a DVD. Its more of a matter of new technology being priced higher than older, established technology.

I think the Netflix price increase has to due with the problems inherent with physical media, and is a sign that Blu-ray may be the last mainstream physical video format we see. For the first 11 years or so of its existence, Netflix only had to stock one version of each movie in its catalog: the DVD. Of course, they had multiple copies at each distribution center, but each disk was identical, and it didn’t matter which customer got which physical disk. Bringing in Blu-ray, they must now stock two versions of each title: one DVD, and one Blu-ray. Only customers who request Blu-ray should get that format, everyone else should get DVD. Now, their entire distribution model is split in half - the scalability of all of their systems relied on only have one set of disks per movie. Now, they need to manage two.

Where is this leading? Speeding up adoption of digital distribution! Netflix has a growing collection of movies and other video available for streaming to computer as well as televisions. As of yet, there is no additional charge for this service, and Netflix has seemingly gone out of its way to make it easily accessible. While it started on PCs, streaming is now available on Macs, too. They also have a $100 box to connect to your TV and formed partnerships with companies like TiVo to make Netflix easy to view in the home theater setting. All for “free” with your Netflix subscription.

Digital distribution is much more scalable than having to effectively double physical inventory, and thus, can be offered less expensively.

Digital video distribution still has some problems, of course. Netflix doesn’t currently offer offline access - their offering is streaming only - not useful on an airplane, for example. Competitors like Apple offer some movies for rental in digital format, but come at a higher price and some serious restrictions (only a 24 hour viewing window) Of course, none offer the same quality as Blu-ray - not even the “HD” offerings on iTunes. I suspect this will change as bandwidth becomes cheaper. Considering my home cable modem gives me the same bandwidth that just a few years ago would have required a T3 costing thousands per month, this will only continue to get better. In the meantime, Netflix will collect a few extra bucks from some of us - and hopefully invest further in their digital offerings.

GrandCentral is a service I’ve blogged about before. It was a web-based service that assigned you a single phone number, and allowed it to be forwarded to other numbers. Calls could be routed based on caller, and the service had other great features like visual voicemail.

Google purchased the developer a few years back, and the service seemed to stagnate. Today, however, Google announced Google Voice, based on the GrandCentral service. In addition to the original features, Google Voice now has voicemail transcriptions, SMS support, conference calling, and support for international phone numbers. I’m looking forward to trying this out when it goes live.

I know, the headline is hard to believe. I just found a problem on my Comcast bill and decided to give their online chat service a try.

A agent was connected to me nearly immediately, didn’t type entirely from a script, and knew what she was talking about. Further, I got a six month promotional discount that will save me about $40 month on my bill.

Comcast has historically not had the best customer service (actually, from previous personal experience, they have been the downright worst) but based on this brief encounter I’m hoping they are getting their customer service act in gear!

Looking forward to this - the 1st generation X-mini has pretty good sound!