Monthly Archives: May 2006

Oh, what a great history!

  1. AT&T is forced by the US DOJ to split into seven baby bells:
    1. Ameritech
    2. Bell Atlantic
    3. BellSouth
    4. NYNEX
    5. Pacific Telesis
    6. Southwestern Bell
    7. US West
  2. Original parent company AT&T spins off AT&T Wireless
  3. Southwestern Bell and Pacific Telesis merge to form SBC
  4. SBC and BellSouth partner to start Cingular
  5. SBC purchases Ameritech
  6. Cingular purchases AT&T Wireless
  7. SBC purchases AT&T
  8. SBC renames itself at&t (lowercase)
  9. at&t rebrands Cingular to AT&T Wireless
  10. at&t will soon merge with BellSouth

Customers of the old AT&T Wireless sevice were often referrenced as Cingular Blue while other customers were Cingular Orange. Someone suggested the new color should be based on the beating the customers have taken, Black and Blue.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was uploaded a bit too soon, but Sony Europe has a picture of the “new” PS3 controller. If someone took a PS2 dual-shock and then photoshopped in a USB port and some really crummy lights, it would look exactly like the real thing:

I’m not terribly proud of it, but I just watched the entire Sony E3 press conference. I’m not going to give you a play by play, but here are the highlights (lowlights?):

  1. Blu-ray should hold 50GB while the 360 discs only hold 9GB. This could be important down the line.
  2. GranTurismo HD is GT4 with slightly better graphics, but without a lot of the polish. The Grand Canyon demo didn’t have any dust!
  3. The eye-toy/card game demo was actually pretty cool. This example wouldn’t be terribly fun, but I can definitely see the potential for innovation here.
  4. Their online service? Everything they announced is supported by Xbox Live. Note they didn’t mention anything about playing games with their free service.
  5. The PS1 Ridge Racer on PSP was one of the worst demos I’ve ever seen where the product actually worked as expected.
  6. The online store for their kareoke product looks great… for a 2 foot UI. Just try using it on a 27″ TV.
  7. Of the games shown, only Eight Days looked impressive, but it also looked more like you were watching a movie than playing a game.
  8. The EA demos were almost painful to watch. I’m sure some of the technology will improve games, but they do not look that impressive standalone.
  9. The new controller looks exactly like the PS2 controller which looked exactly like the PS1 controller. The difference? Built in wireless and 3D pitch/roll/yaw sensors. No more boomerang. :-(
  10. Last and my god, most important: The price! I thought Microsoft was a bit crazy for launching two SKUs at $299 and $399. PS3 will be available in the US at $499 for the 20GB model and $599 for the 60GB model. Is the techology really that expensive? Was it smart to sacrifice price for that level of technology? This could be the one main reason that the 360 holds onto a piece of the marketshare. Little Billy will have difficulty convincing Mommy to drop more on his xmas present than she does for both of the monthly family car payments!