AOL Allies With Sony For PS2 Services 22
AEton writes "America Online has announced that it will merge some of AOL Instant Messenger's features with the Playstation 2. Through the 'AIM Talk' service which they plan to offer, any PS2 user with a headset will be capable of voice messaging with any other PS2 or PC user. AOL will also offer PS2 users streaming music and video clips and a new gaming AOL Players Club service. These services will require more hardware: a 40GB drive for the PS2 (new in the United States) will be required to use AOL's software when it is released in early 2004."
Good move. (Score:1)
Re:Good move. (Score:2)
Wile this is better than Xbox Live in that they can communicate with people on other systems, it is still proprietoray.. You have to be an AOL subscriber..
If they opened the API and AOL hapened to step in then this would be a good thing.
Re:Good move. (Score:1)
I hate Y, I'm commenting on it.
Anyone else find the formula the parent uses a bit odd?
for x=AOL y=MS
Average Joe Doesn't? (Score:2, Insightful)
Would I choose that combo? NO Way. But for people that aren't tech savy, MS, MSN and AOL have done a fairly good job of keeping it simple for the end user to accomplish what they think a computer is used for. I run web editing, photo editing, video editing, and a TON of games on my
Headset? (Score:2)
--riney
Re:Headset? (Score:3, Informative)
The "new" SOCOM headset is supposed to be of considerably better quality than the current one (which is as cheap as they come).
With a HD will come Linux (Score:1)
Though the Xbox does look a little more eye pleasing but I'm sure casemods could fix that little problem.
Re:With a HD will come Linux (Score:4, Informative)
and
Source for kit: http://www.linuxplay.com/ [linuxplay.com]
I don't know much about it other than there are some restrictions on what it can do. Give it a look and see if it's what you want.
Ignore me, I knew there was a Linux Kit but... (Score:1)
First attempt at matching Xbox Live (Score:2)
$5 says Microsoft implements a similar way of voice chatting with PC users.
Talk about code bloat! (Score:1)
(I'm sure there is a good reason, but it just struck me as strange.)
Re:Talk about code bloat! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Talk about code bloat! (Score:2)
Re:Talk about code bloat! (Score:2)
The next Ma Bell (Score:4, Interesting)
Xbox Live, presumming MS manges to talk enough people into installing it, could become a way of using long distance especially for kids away at college (great excuse to get an xbox, too). Sony can try the same thing. Eventually one of them is going to offer a gateway of POTS to VoIP; this will be a number or 1-800 number and extension you can get for a few dollars a month, and they will have outgoing gateways in every areacode so they never pay long distance.
In fact, YOU will pay the long distance, by buying your bandwidth. This is exactly the kind of shady high-margin shit that attracts MS types like flies (actually now that I think about it maybe that explains a lot of the character of telecoms). You pay for everything, you can shop around for bandwidth and ISPs so those guys get to live on razor thin margins, and MS (or sony,or whoever else gets their paws in there) just reaps a huge margin for maintaining a database and a routing table.
You don't need to worry about the real telecoms offering any competition. Ed Whitacre's 80 Million a year salary is exactly why this opportunity is there. (What the fuck is the economy going to look like when SBC and their ilk shed a half million jobless into into the market ? But that's another issue.)
Needless to say this is a nightmare for anyone who believes in an open society.
What we need to do is build our own peer-to-peer VoIP telecom. We need to setup and easy to install package, or a run-from-cd that requires a dedicated box, to allow someone to set up their own VoIP gateway, voice mail with as many extensions as they want, etc. That will get us part of the way.
But what we really need to do is make it worth people's while to run gateways into the regular telephone system, until we grow so large that they need to offer gateways to us. For this we need a distributed tit-for-tat minutes bartering system and clearing house.
For example, you could hook up your new GnuTelephone and set it to allow the use of your SBC line for local calls only from midnight to 6 am, 1 cent a minute; during the day it would be annoying to have the phone in use so you charge 8 cents a minute; and in the evening you might want to have your phone available, so you would not allow it at all. After a few months you have racked up several hundred dollars credit with the system, in reality with a variety of other individuals whose credit can be exchanged in a clearing house for where you want to spend your minutes.
About that time you would get a nasty letter from your telecom; but you can just cancel the line and spend out your credit for a few months.
The real way to make money in the system would be to set up gateways in high volume areas. Ultimately some enterprising individuals would have to begin using 802.1x to provide some of their own bandwidth, starting with connecting across national borders (biggest difference in phone rates that way). But that might be out of the reach of most of the hobbiests.
After that you would have to buy credit in the system, or get another phone to build up credit, or whatever. Hopefully if you were careful with your minutes you could last until the phone companies imploded into a moldering heap of stolen pension plans.
The final result would be a society which spent much less on communications, but people who actually did real communications (lay wire, setup routers, etc) would get paid a lot more (as independents, of course).
Most of the current people in telecom companies won't be there of course. They will be in the labor market somewhere because their pensions will have been stolen and they can't retire, but these people are not wired right to be able to do business on their own; they couldn't even go door to door with a lawn mower mowing lawns for $20. (Because they'd spend the first week of summer seeing lawyers about the liability issues, or some shit.)
If we don't do this, MS/AOL/Sony is going to take over raping us for telephone service where Verizon/SBC/WorldCom left off.
Re:The next Ma Bell (Score:2)
I didn't hate the phone company until AFTER they broke up Ma Bell. That's when the service went to crap.
What's the point? (Score:2)
Advertising? (Score:1)
Finally.... (Score:2)