Don Judd's blog

Direct to Net videos are picking up steam

Over the last several months, we’ve started to slowly see a change in the way smaller independant productions are released. It began with the comedy/horror flick Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, and then the sport comedy Goon.

Both of these movies were released on iTunes prior to a theatrical release.

Who is this year's best QB?

The NFL draft is less than 24 hours away, and we already know two important things.

#1 Andrew Luck will be the first player and first QB selected in this year’s NFL Draft.

#2 Robert Griffon II, better known as RG3, will be the second player selected in both categories.

And there has already been a lot of debate about which of these two guys will be the best QB taken in this year’s draft. My argument?

Neither.

iTV is not happening this week... I think

There has been a lot of talk about Apple’s scheduled event for this Wednesday, in which invitations have already been sent out to the media depicting what appears to be the bottom dock of an iPad.

The controvery begins when you examin the picture Apple included with it’s media invitations. You might notice the lack of a home button on the bottom of the iPad. To many people this indicates what we are really looking at is not an iPad at all, but a touchscreen television.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is an Assault on Social

Apple made a lot of headlines last week with the announcement of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, especially since they had no prior announcement of anything coming soon, and it looks very much like they may have stolen quite a bit fo the thunder out from under rival Microsoft, who also debuted their new OS, Windows 8.

I am excited for Mountain Lion

This summer, Apple will ship it’s next generation operating system, Mountain Lion, which is really a better way to integrate some of the better features of IOS 5 with Mac OS X.

Not a big surprise, I think we all expected at least a minor update, ala Snow Leapord, in the near future. And this isn’t even as big of an upgrade as Snow Leapord was.

So why am I so excited? Simple really… Airplay Mirroring from my Mac! This is the one feature of IOS that I really, really, really wanted.

Cord Cutters: Pan Am Season 1 for Free on Vudu

Quick tip for all of my fellow Cord Cutters out there… you can get Pan Am season 1 in all definitions for free on vudu.com this month.

How Viable is Ubuntu?

More than two decades ago, Linus Torvalds began tinkering with the Minix kernel to see if he could get a non-network version on Unix that was popular in European univerisites to communicate with another machine. He had written a segment of kernel code that would scroll "AABB" across the screen and decided that if he could output characters directly to the video device, he could output characters to a modem through the computer’s bus.

He was Insanely Great

As a geek, I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of one of America’s great tech geniuses, Steven P. Jobs, and while I was preparing a blog this week about the cool new features of the iPhone 4S, a new gadget seems so hollow now.

It seems that way because what Steve brought to the world was so much more than a shiney new phone, or a cool new computer interface.

Movie theaters must now adapt to survive

About two years ago, I wrote a little blog about the future of movies, and predicted that it wouldn’t be long before movies would be released on services like iTunes or Amazon at the same time they were released in theaters. Escalting movie costs coupled with the rise in movie piracy make such a movie necessary in the grand scheme of things.

Well, I was almost right. It seems that you might be able to see those new movies before they hit theaters in the near future.

What does Steve Jobs resignation mean for Apple

Steve Jobs, the man who created the personal computer craze, has finally resigned his position as CEO of Apple, leaving Tim Cooke the man in charge and taking a seat as Chairman, a position which is really nothing more than a title and a paycheck for his input.

And of course the blogosphere and social media sites are all a-Twitter about it.

"Is this the end for Apple" is already the hot question, and the answer, simply, is no.