ATI Starts an Interesting Conversation ... Unintentionally

The technology blogs have been buzzing for the past two days about what is perceived as a weak launch of ATI's new flagship graphics card, the HD 2900 XT. Less emphasis is being paid to the extremely cost-competitive offering (ATI's top of the line, while underperforming Nvidia's, is $200 less) than the fact that they expected ATI to beat Nvidia on performance. Part of this is due to a late launch, and the remainder is simply fanboy wishing. It's more fun to argue about who has the better card when the answer isn't so clear.

What's interesting to me is what the price difference offers in terms of value-added opportunities. Already, vendors are coming forth with ways to make these uninspiring cards more appealing. Namely, Sapphire has launched a custom liquid cooling package, offering overclocking for two cards in Crossfire mode, as well as cooling CPU and RAM as well. There's really no room in the market for this kind of option at Nvidia's high-end.

I haven't bought a high-end card in years, simply because the need for them quickly eroded as I transitioned away from PC gaming (all I was playing was WOW, and I quit that cold turkey) and moved back into the living toom for console gaming. What's very interesting to me is video processing and offloading of the UI onto the video card in Vista, and it looks like even ATI's low-end cards should do this very well (they even have one passively cooled).

One of my favorite ATI products is my HDTV Wonder. Without an HDTV, it's the only way I can catch some of my shows in HD. Surprisingly, ATI has no mention of the card on their website any more, and there doesn't appear to be an HD tuner option on any of the new cards. I wonder if they're holding back, or if they've written off the HD market. Doesn't seem like there's much reason to be able to process high-end video without the one way to get video into your machine that makes the most sense; not everyone has an HD camcorder yet.

Maybe I could talk one of my friends at AMD/ATI into sending one of the new cards my way. I've got a hankering to build that Media Center PC that I've been putting off for a while.

Bloggers freak out over free laptops, missing big picture

So I'm insanely curious. Over the past several days, word of bloggers getting free laptops from Microsoft and AMD has lit the blogosphere on fire. Apparently if you got one and didn't disclose it, you're a dirty, filthy liar. Me, I'm wondering if there's a reason why they aren't disclosing it, and if it's at all related to the Vanishing Point game. Supposedly, letters from Loki are coming with them, and there's a couple of different groups of people ... encoders and decoders. We're supposed to be seeking out these people, but maybe some of them have a reason for remaining quiet for the time being. These bloggers are being recruited into the game and perhaps some of them don't even realize it.

That hasn't stopped people from grousing about the laptops and claiming bribery and unfair treatment with hardly a mention of the game they're connected to. Curious. Sure, they're "gifts" to help promote Windows Vista, but come on ... let's have a little fun with it.

I have managed to figure out part of the game, or at least, I think I have. A note from Loki suggests that the one winner will be immortalized, and will be one of less than a thousand people to see the Ultimate Vista. Of course, most people think this means that people will win Vista Ultimate. Suckers. I dug a little deeper, and noticed that one of the keycodes was "3scap3grav1ty" (escapegravity), and that the equations shown in a video provided by Loki look like calculations for Escape Velocity, which is the speed you need to achieve to break away from the Earth's gravitational pull and travel into space. Of course, it all ties into the idea of a Vanishing Point, which is the name of the game. Curiouser.

The only "ultimate vista" that less than a thousand people have seen is a view of Earth from outer space. Sounds like one lucky person will win a trip into space, probably to the International Space Station.

I wonder if the bloggers will freak out over this "bribe".

I wanna be famous!

Microsoft and 4orty2wo are doing another viral game, this one seemingly promising lavish prizes and global fame for at least one person. While it looks like things really start kicking off during CES, there's an event planned for Seattle at the end of January.

Bloggers are receiving mysterious gifts, from small items like puzzle boxes containing memory cards with more clues, all the way up to tricked out customized laptops running Windows Vista (which is what this new alternate reality game is supposed to be promoting). Apparently, I'm not on the A-list, as I haven't gotten anything ... yet.

This sounds like it'll be fun ... hey Loki! I'm in.

Six Degrees of Rafi Mohammed

I've talked before (on the Marketsync blog) about one of my Intro to Marketing textbooks, The Art of Pricing, by Rafi Mohammed. It's a fascinating book, and one that I've thought about while going through some interesting pricing challenges in my work. I consider Rafi's work right up there with the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Steve Levitt in terms of insightfulness.

So I was surprised to receive an e-mail from the author today. What! A famous author reads my blog? Wow! Rafi told me that he's launched a website companion to his book, with useful pricing tools and a blog of his own. His most recent blog post was about his pricing conversation with rock legend Don Henley. It's a mildly amusing story, if only because I've learned form personal experience that sometimes the best brushes with fame come from suppressing your desire to gush like a starry-eyed fan and try to have an actual conversation.

Then it struck me. I'm now just two degrees of separation from Don Henley! Thanks, Rafi!

Another tiny anecdote ... Rafi's sister teaches in the Nursing program here at UW Bothell. What a small world!

Are Blogs Authoritative?

As a college student, I've heard a lot of discussion about sources, what constitutes a reliable source, what constitutes a scholarly source, and what constitutes an authoritative source. "Consider the source" are the watchwords of any critical thinker when conducting research.

Now that I've set the stage ...

I was listening to this week's episode of This Week In Tech, Leo Laporte's podcast netcast about technology, and the subject of the Google buyout of YouTube came up. Unfortunately for Leo and his crew, they discussed it the day before the buyout took place. Apparently, the Wall Street Journal cited a blog as a source for the story, and the TWiT folks immediately jumped all over them for citing a blog. This was without any knowledge of any additional work the WSJ might have done in checking out the sources the blog might have used.

There are a bunch of issues here, and it's all a bit complex. That said, I think that the word "blog" needs more definition, as was suggested by the TWiTs. What exactly constitutes a blog? Fortress of Solitude is clearly a blog, as it is opinions of one person, but does that preclude me from running news? Does it make me less authoritative? Does the subject matter, since over a decade of experience as a video game industry journalist would make me an authoritative source on that subject? Planet GameCube was around in various incarnations before blogging was en vogue, but would they be considered a blog now, just because similar sites like Joystiq are called blogs? Is Joystiq even a blog anymore, now that they have a corporate parent?

As I said, this is complex stuff. What I want to take issue with is the attitude expressed by the TWiT folks, concerning blogs as sources. They immediately discredited not only the WSJ, but the blog cited simply on the basis that it was a blog, without any further research. The story turned out the be true, and next week's show should be interesting. But I've seen this anti-blog bias before ... Digg.com is rampant with prejudice against blogs simply because of the name. There is no consideration of the person(s) behind the blog at all, nor of the reliability of said blog. At the same time, posts from Joystiq and Engadget pass muster with them all the time, despite being self-confessed blogs. Again, all I can see is that corporate ownership seems to be a thread there.

I think it all stems from our loose definition of the term "blog", and the negative connotations blog sites like MySpace carry. Blogs are seen as less reliable and less authoritative simply by their nature. Seemingly, the lack of editorial oversight for blogs without a corporate parent and a somewhat muddled history of personal blogs with strong opinions (ones that tend to have little thought or research involved) carries a lot of weight. Or maybe it's just the sheer volume, and rather than deal with the signal-to-noise ratio, they've simply turned off that channel for information. Or maybe it's because of Google's AdSense, and the fact that people can make money on their opinions makes them less authoritative (again, a strange double-standard is applied for sites like Joystiq).

More examples of the confusion over the definition of a blog came quickly, as later in the same podcast netcast, TWiT talks about Sun wanting to post financial disclosures and other information required by the SEC in their corporate blog. Immediately, Leo jumped on this as an unsuitable avenue simply by it's nature, rather than considering that it's still the company divulging the information through their official website. (Patrick Norton, to his credit, defended the suggestion. I should also mention that Leo frequently plays the part of the technological neophyte in order to encourage discussion, so that could have been his role here.) Bear in mind, in a corporate sense, there's no difference between a blog and their website ... the company hosts both. It's simply a matter of getting information out quickly, and people have learned to look to blogs when they need information fast. It's clear evidence, however, that the word "blog" carries a lot of meaning on its own.

Undoubtedly, the TWiT cast considers each other to be reliable, authoritative sources (as is evidenced by John C. Dvorak's gushing over Hybrid Hard Drives, and immediate acceptance by the other TWiTs), and perhaps that's simply a matter of the TWiT folks being too comfortable in their own echo chamber. (That's actually the reason why I rarely listen to the show anymore, but that's a different discussion.) Needless to say, it's certainly wise to be critical of sources when doing any sort of research or letting information come to you. At the same time, dismissing a source simply because it comes from a blog without considering the history and background of the author in question is naive and foolish. It also contributes to an echo chamber effect when you dismiss good sources simply because of a label placed on them, keeping you from allowing someone else with valid thoughts and opinions to be part of the conversation.