There is a rumor that Apple is developing a networked HDTV.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours here at the office with Valleywag’s most cherished and adored tech celebrity, Jason Calacanis. Love him or hate him, the bloke’s got contacts, and he confirmed to me that he knew first-hand that Apple was working on a networked television.

These LCD HDTVs will be fully networked, with the ability to stream all your iTunes content from your Mac or PC. In fact, Calacanis told me they’ll function like a standard TV with an Apple TV box, only without the need for the box.

Source: cnet uk

HDTV technology varies greatly. Will this be a plasma or an LCD HDTV? Choosing the right panel for each person depends on a lot of factors. I prefer having more options.

Imagine a Vizio panel in an Apple labeled HDTV? Will there be panels from different brands or will people be stuck choosing an inferior brand panel? The idea says one thing to me: Ouch. For the brand of Apple at least.

So given all of that I doubt they will do this.

Here’s what I would propose:

There needs to be industry standard support for some sort of module to go in every TV sort of like the CableCard. Let people choose their own HDTV panel. Then the television manufacturers should allow companies like Tivo, Apple, or SlingMedia to tap right into the TV without the need for a set-top device. Come together and agree on an industry standard port. Tivo, Apple TV or a SlingBox functionality would be nice to have integrated right into the TV via a module/card.

How about some sort of blank slate module that you can put software on from the companies and do a combination of functions? A board with an SSD that can have an Apple, Google or Microsoft OS loaded to control the UI and the core then have Tivo, SlingBox and other add-ons expand functionality.

Tech companies should avoid proprietary technology more. Of course they don’t want to but it is in there economic best interest to do so. Open is the way of the future. Ask Google.

Let Apple, Goolge, Microsoft, Tivo or some other companies control the TV’s UI and add more features. Most TVs have awful menus and features. Give us some alternatives. Hardware manufacturers should stick to the hardware and leave the software to people who know software.

After I got home from seeing Iron Man I went online to read the reviews and do a little follow up. Maybe I should have read a little more about the movie before going to see it.

All I will say is make sure you wait until after the credits finish. There is a little more and cameo appearance. I missed it. Don’t make the same mistake.

Go see the movie. I had a great time. Robert Downey Jr. did a nice job playing Tony Stark. This was one of the better comic book based movies I have seen in a while.

I have to say, during the last week there has been a lot of consolidation going on. Now I can link Twitter, flickr, delicious and a bunch more of my social content right into Facebook.

When I started trying to link these services I had to use some 3rd party Facebook apps and it wasn’t pretty. But yesterday Facebook announced new features that allowed us to import some content to the mini-feed in our profile.

It’s going to be interesting to see what the nexus of all of this will be in the future. Will it be Facebook with Blog It? Will it be FriendFeed via a client like AlertThingy? I welcome seeing the competition.

I was too late to get a vote in for the Rickrolling but it looks like it didn’t matter. The folks at digg got the job done. What a way to go out on the last opening day (they also lost the game). Check out the booing.

Put this one in the archives.

It’s been a few weeks since the sniper fire in Bosnia story has been making the rounds.  As we all know the saying goes “when you are in a hole stop diggin’”.  Well there goes Bill with shovel in hand.

Of course this invites a flashback:

and…

I have been monitoring twitter and according to TechCrunch and Robert Scoble something is going to be announced at 10:30 PM EST. It sounds like it is kinda big. We’ll see.

I wonder if all this tweetering about Google has anything to do with Twitter not responding. It looks like twitter is down.

I noticed that they had a campaign over at digg to sabotage the Mets. Of course as a Yankees fan I would have loved to chip in. I don’t know how I missed it, but hopefully enough people already voted to get the song elected.

Muuuuahahaha…… That would be too funny. I could see the Mets fans singing that at Shea. Put that bad boy on YouTube if it shows up on TV.

Let me just say, I feel ill. It was supposed to be a night for a gaming session but boy did it take a turn for the worse and fast.

Yeah I’m late to this blah, blah, blah. It is not exactly the type of thing I spend my time doing online. So anyway, my friend Paul gives me a call the other night and tells me about the infamous 2 Girls 1 Cup video. I thought, OK I am going to meet up with some friends this Friday. I’ll watch it then with them. It took a little work to find it since it seems to have been pulled from YouTube and other video hosting sites. Finally I find the link on wikipedia and we watch it. It pretty much played out like many of the reaction videos you see all over the net. I was reminded of one of George Carlin’s bits about traffic accidents (skip ahead to 3:36-5:18):

As much as people say how nasty this sort of thing is, they want to see it anyway. I suppose we can call it internet rubber necking.

So basically the 2 Girls 1 Cup is just another Goatse.cx

The only way I was able to sort of recover from the sickness to my stomach was by watching the reaction videos going around now. Here you have people who have already seen the video set up a camera and record the reaction of friends that have not seen it as they watch it.

I have had enough. You can see all of this for yourself at Mahalo.

Got the food, the Xbox is packed and I am ready to blow some stuff up.

There may be some action in the Yankees game after the brawl in spring training. Hopefully not.

After a good start from Phil Hughes let’s see what Ian Kennedy has against the Rays. Now they are the “Rays” instead of the “Devil Rays”. Maybe they were not too happy with the “Devil” part of the team name.

This weekend I’m gonna try and check out some video highlights of TED.