Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Tue 6th Nov 2007 00:47 UTC
A few days ago we published a review of the Linux-based Neuros OSD recorder and player. Now, you can win one of these devices! All you have to do is research on the product to find out its current capabilities, and then comment below with suggestions on how to make it better and with ideas for new applications and hacks. The Neuros Technology guys will pick the best idea in 3 days time and we will provide them with the winner's email address so they can send him/her a free Neuros OSD device (that info won't be used for other purposes). If you wish to comment but not to participate in the competition, please clearly state so on your comments. Update: The winner is FunkyELF for this post. Congrats!
Thread beginning with comment 283761
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2007-11-08
Seriously folks: before this thing can get third party applications it needs to attract third party developers.
Mr. Third Party Developer is not thinking, "Gee, I'd really like to plunk down $230 plus tax and shipping in the hopes that someday I might think of a programming project only to find out that none of my friends have hardware that can run it."
Where did the enormously popular Counter-Strike mod come from (developed out of love, by fans)? It came from a large group of people who already owned Half-Life. Some of those owners had creative developer personalities and Half-Life-owning friends with whom they could share their work. The, "Gee, I could make a really cool application for this thing," feeling comes after it gets into someone's living room--not before. How many people do you know who yearn to write programs but don't own PCs?
In order to get the Neuros OSD into the hands of lots of people who are really going to discover new and fun uses for it, it needs to sell itself on its own merits first.
So you want a suggestion for how to accomplish that? You need to target people like my girlfriend's brother. He has lots of creativity, free time, technical knowledge, and most importantly a half ton of music and video files on his computer's hard disk. What he needs is for the device to boot up into a Dead Simple Mode (TM) that lets him pick the type of media file he wants (Audio, Video, whatever...), and then show him a list of all of the media it can access of that type. It shouldn't matter if it's on an SD card or a USB HDD or an SMB share, and I can't stress how important the automatic aggregation is. It is key.
The ease of playing media without having to configure anything or hunt for it first? That's fun. Ripping DVDs/VHS casettes/DVR recordings to your PC or other storage device? Sheesh. Maybe it'll be novel the first three or four times if you're a geek, but once you've gotten over it there's a business in my city where you can pay other people to do that chore for you. Oh, and my girlfriend's brother? His friends may not be as bright and creative as he is, but they do have piles of media files on their PCs. (remember: developers need community)
So I guess that's more of a rant about the way Neuros is going about getting third party developers than anything else. If I had to boil it down to a suggestion, it would be "You guys need to take everything that doesn't directly involve playing media as simply as possible and stick it under an 'advanced features' menu. Then let the user play any media from an aggregated pool of media of the same type as simply as possible." That includes autodetecting and reading from SMB shares. You can't get by without that.