Matt's Blog

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or away from electronics, which might as well be under a rock), you’ve probably heard of the great “Format War” going on right now. In one corner, there’s Blu-ray, and in the other, HD DVD.

Both formats are great, and share quite a lot of features, but I think that one will prevail over the other. It is possible that both formats could prevail, but it would be highly inconvenient for consumers.

I think that Blu-ray will win. Why? I have a couple of reasons.

First of all, Blu-ray Discs are capable of storing more data (per layer) than HD DVD Discs. This is a major plus for storing extra long movies, TV series’ seasons, extra content, etc.

Major studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox and Loinsgate exclusively back Blu-ray. Most Blockbuster (one of the largest video/game rental chains in the world) stores also exclusively rent Blu-ray.

I’ve always liked Blu-ray more than HD DVD. I don’t know why (as I’ve never used any of them), but I just think Blu-ray is better.

The best thing would be for the companies behind HD DVD and the companies behind Blu-ray to combine their efforts and just make one High Definition disc format. But, I doubt that’ll be happening…

Who do you think will win, Blu-ray or HD DVD?

There’s been a lot of rumors going around the Internet about Google releasing a cell phone. Some say in about 2 weeks, and some say Q1 of 2008. Here’s my predictions for the Google Phone:

• It’ll be released in the first half of 2008
• It will have a multi-touch widescreen display and will have 4 physical buttons. 3 of which will be customisable “shortcut” buttons (eg. Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheet) and one will be a home key
• It’ll have a Virtual Keyboard, like the iPhone
• A major part of it’s OS will be the built-in stuff. Such as Gmail, Reader, gTalk, Docs and Spreadsheets and the other popular Google services
• You will be able to store stuff in your Google/Gmail account. If you get the phone, your storage will be boosted to 5GB
• It will be available in multiple countries at the same time
• It will have a full HTML/Javascript browser.
• Google will have an API in the OS so that 3rd-party apps will be able to be developed for it
• It will come with unlimited data and texting (hopefully 😛 )
• You’ll be able to watch YouTube videos on it
• It’ll be 3G
• It’ll have Wi-Fi (a/b/g)
• You’ll be able to use gTalk to make free VOIP calls through a Wi-Fi connection
• You Contacts will automatically sync with your Gmail contacts (and vice-versa)
• It will have a couple GBs of memory
• It will also be a Music and Video phone
• You’ll be able to store Music and Video in your Google/Gmail account and stream it down to your phone
• Built-in GPS with Google Maps
• Be able to choose to browse through Google’s servers, which will compress/optimise the sites you browse to on Google’s servers, then send it to you (for faster browsing)
• You’ll be able to store a copy (in MP3 format) of your phone calls in your Google/Gmail account

Pretty specific, but I’m curious on how many will be correct, if any…

I think the idea of a Google Phone is great, if done properly. I also doubt we’ll hear anything official about it until close to the launch (that is assuming that there will be a Google Phone). Why, because when was the last time Google announced any new products in advance?

What do you think the Google Phone will be like?