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Brier Dudley's blog

CES: Digeo launches Moxi consumer box, finally (UPDATED)Yesterday

Six years after Paul Allen's Kirkland-based Digeo bought Moxi, a promising digital media hub with an award-winning user interface, the company just released a Moxi device to the consumer market.

The $799 Moxi High Definition Video Recorder with dual tuners and a 500-gigabyte hard-drive is available to start from Moxi.com and Amazon.com. Also unveiled today is a Wii-sized extender device for other TVs in the home, called a "Moxi Mate," but it won't be available until later in the year.

Here's the Moxi DVR:

The interface:

Allen started Digeo in 1999 and the company's slowly but steadily been providing advanced set-top boxes to cable companies, which have installed about 500,000 units in customer homes. The company's also platformiizing its software, licensing it to audio equipment company Monster for an upcoming line of Monster

Dish Network, in contract spat, pulls plug on KOMODecember 18 2008

Sounds like negotiations between Dish Network and Seattle's Fisher Communications -- parent company of KOMO -- are getting nasty.

Dish thought Fisher was asking too much during renegotiations of their distribution agreement, so the satellite TV company stopped broadcasting Fisher channels, including the local ABC and Univision broadcasts at 11 p.m. Wednesday, according to this writeup in Multichannel News and a notice posted today at KOMO's Web site.

The Multichannel report notes that in another recent contract dispute with a different broadcaster, Dish pulled the plug for three days before restoring delivery.

UPDATE: A reader in Yakima noted that it's happening there as well - Fisher has stations around the region. Also, check the comments for a tip on how one Dish customer parlayed this snafu into a nice rebate...

Ex Amazon.com chowhounds launch Foodista, a Wikipedia/IMDB for foodDecember 17 2008

Seattle's cluster of successful food-oriented Web sites - which includes hits such as Allrecipes, Recipezaar, BigOven and Urbanspoon - just got bigger with today's debut of Foodista.

The site is a user-editable online encyclopedia of food, divided into four broad categories - recipes, foods, tools and techniques. Users can upload recipes or photos, and add and edit entries, with changes moderated by the community of users.

Foodista's founders have been blogging for awhile, building relationships with bloggers, to whom the new site will offer a linking resource and embeddable recipe widgets.

They're also taking the open route with their site, using the Creative Commons approach to sharing its data and aiming to release APIs for developers to build applications taking advantage of the platform.

Chief Executive Barnaby Dorfman is a New York native who worked in various food industry jobs and worked at MSN before entering the startup world, a path that eventually led him to Amazon.com, where he worked on the IMDB movie database, the retailer's gourmet food category and most recently was vice president in its A9 search business

Mark Anderson's take on Steve Jobs quitting Macworld: He's sick againDecember 17 2008

Speculation is rampant about what's really going on with Steve Jobs, after Apple abruptly announced today that he won't give his annual keynote speech at next month's Macworld conference in San Francisco.

Apple said its senior VP for marketing, Philip Schiller, will speak instead and the company won't participate in Macworld in the future. So much for the big counterweight to the Consumer Electronics Show taking place the same week.

It also makes me wonder if Apple was the source of rumors this week about the company introducing low-cost netbook-type Macs at Macworld. Could that have been an attempt to keep expectations high despite Jobs' absence?

But Friday Harbor tech pundit Mark Anderson sent a note to his newsletter clients this afternoon that sums up what manyt Apple watchers are probably thinking: That Jobs -- who has battled pancreatic cancer -- is sick again.

There are at least two ways to take this: a cutback in expensive physical presence at a time when everything is going online; or Steve is not looking good physically, and is unwilling to go through the intense examination of his health condition which occurred after the last Macworld.

Unfortunately, I don't think the first is the correct choice.

The final decision here may become c

Timely "REI Snow Report" puts live ski conditions, forecasts on your phoneDecember 16 2008

REI and Seattle mobile developer Zumobi announced a seasonal application today, the free REI Snow Report.

The application delivers updates on temperature, snow (new, top and base depth), the number of open lifts and weather forecasts for ski resorts in the U.S., Canada and Europe. It also displays live Webcam images where available. It also has links to contact the resorts and visit REI's Web site.

It's an iPhone app, of course, but also available on BlackBerries and Windows Mobile smartphones.