Now I can’t blame that on Gizmo.  Much of it has to do with the SwitchVox system and iPhone I adopted for business use–those two have been transformational to the way I communicate daily.  But now that Google has lapped up the Project, I’m interested in seeing if the Mac version has lost its self-destructive tendencies. But presto the download links are gone.  Boo.

A fantastic example of this dynamic came to light today when it was announced that the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac will replace Redmond’s clunky Entourage e-mail app with an actual Mac OS X version of Outlook, the predominant e-mail application used in medium and large enterprises.  My company alone supports somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve-hundred Outlook nodes at about fifteen different firms.  So a Mac version of Outlook, as the t-shirt saying goes, is “kind of a big deal.”

But what’s an even bigger deal is that Outlook once ran natively on the Mac–on Mac OS 9 anyway–and shared a great deal in common with its Windows cousin.  And, suffice it to say, it was a better product than its redheaded stepchild, Entourage.  It makes me wonder why they ever canned Outlook on the Mac to begin with.

Now I’m beginning to understand that Microsoft is on an all-hands mission to get as many enterprises, large and small, as entrenched as possible before Google and other market players really step to the plate with something that competes with Microsoft, and in particular Outlook and Office.  (Anybody who suggests that Google Apps currently beats Microsoft Office is smoking some pretty harsh crack, sorry guys.)

Entrenchment is the key to damage control: keep the customer believing that it will cost them more in dollars and difficulty to move away from Microsoft, no matter how compelling the alternative, and they’ll stick with Microsoft.  This was how they (soundly) destroyed Lotus Notes, and Redmond’s incredible staying power may allow it to stave off Google Apps for quite a few years to come.

RouteBuddy

TomTom Home

MacGPSPro

Garmin RoadTrip / Nuvi 880

I saw Luca’s tweet about EventBox, and he’s absolutely right.  This program is super cool.  It’s for managing tweets, rss updates, facebook updates, etc etc all in one place.  So far I’m loving it. Growl notifications for updates, heads-up display.  Really cool.  Grab a copy yourself if you’re running OS X 10.5 and let me know how you like it.

The wording of the announcement is tantamount to admitting defeat on Vista:

Over the past few years, you’ve asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it’s time to share an early look at how we’ve used your feedback. Windows 7 is faster, more reliable, and makes it easier to do what you want.

We sent out our company newsletter today. Katie, my CRM manager, wrote a piece about Windows 7.  I don’t know why this release has so much buzz. Maybe it’s because Microsoft has returned to sane version numbering.  Or maybe it’s because they’ve kind of become the underdog, what with Google and Apple trundling all over what’s left of their Windows XP ego.

In any event, I’m actually looking forward to Windows 7 beta tomorrow. See you in the download queue.

Quite an amazing difference.

Sightspeed is a community-centric desktop app that offers PSTN dial-out and runs on both Macintosh and Windows. It’s been hailed by many as offering the best video quality among desktop video chat programs, and it competes against Skype, Gizmo, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and iChat.

Not sure what this means for Vlip, the video discussion service also run by the Sightspeed folks, but I can only imagine that Logitech was interested in it as well.

FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 28, 2008 and ROMANEL-SUR-MORGES, Switzerland, Oct. 29, 2008— Logitech International (SIX: LOGN) (Nasdaq: LOGI) today announced that the company has agreed to acquire privately held SightSpeed Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. for approximately $30 million in cash. SightSpeed is an award-winning provider of high-quality Internet video communications services. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in early November.
The acquisition of SightSpeed will provide Logitech with video calling technology and a software and services development team that can be focused on future video calling initiatives that can enable cross-platform video communications with an intuitive, lifelike experience, for people sitting in front of a personal computer or with their family in a living room.
“With this acquisition, we are significantly augmenting our current video R&D resources to help us move more quickly toward our goals for video services that complement the way people socialize, communicate and enjoy entertainment,” said Junien Labrousse, executive vice president of Logitech’s Products group.
“According to our research, there is a large untapped market of people who want to communicate with friends and family using video. But they want it to be integrated into their family lifestyle, which means going beyond the PC. We believe with SightSpeed we can help create the next wave of video communications enthusiasts.”
Founded in 2001, SightSpeed has approximately 25 employees. The company’s management team includes technology leaders with backgrounds in Internet services and software technology development. The SightSpeed services are based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), a standard that enables the services to be interoperable with other Internet communication services.

But still, the fact that I couldn’t get web-based SnapYap conferencing to work with my Macbook Pro is an issue, especially considering how easy it has been in the past to use Vlip and other web-based video services.  What’s really cool about SnapYap is that it allows you to create a web-based portal for folks to video-call you via a page you link from your own web site. Nifty.

Not so nifty is the fact that SnapYap’s  troubleshooting steps don’t resolve my issue.  Anybody else try this service with Firefox on Leopard? (Didn’t work on Safari either.)

And I don’t mean the X11 port either.  This is a full-on Mac port.  I’m downloading it as we speak.

WHY AREN’T OS X APPLICATIONS OFFERED ON THE APP STORE?

Things to ponder….

That is, to put handheld entertainment in the pockets of adults, not just kids and guys who still live with mom at age 35.

I’d say it’s a reasonable bet, especially if Apple can find a way out of that creepy deal it has with AT&T.  This deal is stifling to the consumer at large, keeping the iPhone out of many needful hands (including my own, and I’m an AT&T customer–contract-free and loving life, baby).

With the PSP having shipped close to 28 million units, it has a big head start on the iPhone, which will only ship 10 million by the end of the year, according to estimates. The DS, meanwhile, has shipped somewhere around 31 million units, easily three times Apple’s take.

Nevertheless, the iPhone has a larger screen and more storage than either device, meaning it’s better for movie-watching, and the Internet surfing experience on the iPhone is priceless. If you’ve ever used the YouTube app on the iPhone, you know what I’m talking about.

Let’s talk games, though. Early attempts at iPhone games were online, web-based tripe. DHTML stuff. Not that compelling.  But more recently, Pangea was able to port some of their flagship 3D game products over to the iPhone–products like Cro-Mag rally, a caveman racing game (think Flintstones meets Mario Kart). Apparently the conversion was done in “a matter of hours” with a “decent framerate”.

So there’s 3D API on the iPhone, the development environment, Xcode, is Cocoa-based, the operating system is OS X, and the availability of cross-platform game frameworks for OS X is excellent.  The drawback, if you consider it one, is that the iPhone doesn’t (and can’t) have a true gamepad-type control system, since it’s a 100% touch-screen device.

But with Apple’s influence and a steadily decreasing price point, the iPhone has a change to be the next big game platform, minus the AT&T stick-to-head contract, of course.

But they also help Apple. Apple may not have wanted a heavy-handed 2-year agreement attached to all iPhone sales.  Crap, that’s why most of us who should have an iPhone, for free even, don’t own one yet. 2 years is an eternity these days.  So VoIP-enabled iChat spits of the rebellion Apple used to be famous for.  It’s a way of telling AT&T Apple still runs the show, even IF Apple is taking a piece of the service revenue.

Come on Apple, show us you care about US.

- Protect the lucrative, platform-neutral, and fan-adored Blizzard franchises from being eaten up by the Microsoft and made Windows/Xbox-only, a la Bungie and Halo (which originally was a Mac game).

- Give Vivendi a way to compete with EA Games, whose cash cows include such perennially-oriented franchises like Madden and the Sims. People buy the same game over and over year after year from EA–Vivendi wants to figure out a good way to capitalize the same way.
- Accelerate the likelihood of Blizzard console franchises.

- Bring some speed to the appearance of Diablo 3. Blizzard has been mum on the second sequel to their previously bestselling game (at least before World of Warcraft was born), but Diablo fans are fierce and will gobble anything up with a Diablo III logo on the cover. Perhaps this merger will give them the developmental leverage to finally make it happen.
- Hopefully bring back some of the old-school studio mentality and creativity that has been absent from Activision since the late 1980′s, but is beating strong at Blizzard.

Friend and fellow Mac user Andy Abramson reports that once he installed Leopard, all of his SIP software quit working. No Sighspeed, Gizmo Project, or even Eyebeam. When first reading Andy’s post, it sounded like the Leopard installer mangled his local firewall settings, but I don’t think so any more. It’s definitely SIP-related as Andy pointed out, but iChat, which is communicates using SIP, appears to be immune.

Once I get Leopard rocking on my Mac I’ll dig into this as well.