Microsoft this evening has announced that the Xbox 360 will be $50 cheaper beginning August 8th. Here is the low-down of the prices for each SKU of the Xbox 360:

• Xbox 360 Premium (with 20GB harddrive etc) = $349.99
• Xbox 360 Core = $279.99
• Xbox 360 Elite (Black colored console with 120GB) = $449.99

And in September to celebrate the release of Halo 3, Microsoft will release the Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition Console for $399.99. The Halo 3 Special Edition console comes with a authentic Spartan green-and-gold finish with matching Wireless Controller, 20GB harddrive, Headset, and Play and Charge Kit. Click here for the low-down on the Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360 from Joystiq.

Despite owning a Xbox 360 already - the $50 price drop does entice me to seriously look at possibly getting a Xbox 360 Elite or the Halo 3 Special Edition consoles. Or maybe I’ll just go buy the 120GB harddrive instead. I am not sure yet.

Since I am always hunting for the best price for you guys, and probably some of you didn’t get in on the $149.99 deal from best buy, so I figured I would serve this one up while it still lasted.

Over at NewEgg they are selling the HD-DVD player for $162.99. granted you

don’t get the instant gratification, and you have to pay shipping of $7.52. It is  3 day shipping though.

After going through that whole process I would still go buy it from Best Buy, but if are one of those ebayer types that never pays attention to shipping then hell your getting an HD-DVD player for $162.99, AWESOME!!!

Link to sale.

So I read this morning over on engadget that Best Buy was offering the XBOX360 HD DVD players for $149.99. Then Brandon my counterpart wrote about it here at The Geekery. Then a saw a counter post by engadget saying that they were wrong. So I hop on over to Best Buy’s site and I see them for $179.99. I was all like WTF govna! So I called my good pals at the local Best Buy and probed them with a good amount of questions. So in the end I am picking up an XBOX360 HD DVD player tonight for $149.99. He said he read $149.99 on the internal site. So I don’t think it was a mistake, I just don’t think they are ready to sell them in the wild yet for $149.99. But the nice gent stamped my name on the thing and took it to the front counter. Plus get this, Toshiba is upping the ante with the HD DVD give-away, the nice chap at Best Buy told me today that whenever you buy a HD DVD player from Best Buy you will receive a form, you fill out this form with your choice of 5 HD DVD movies you would like and Toshiba sends you those movies for free. WOW!

Now I am not sure if this is just the XBOX HD player and if it is just with Best Buy that you receive this offer from Toshiba, I didn’t want to barrage him with anymore questions. Hopefully he was not feeding me lines just to get into the store.

“So tonight we dine in hell!!”, because I am watching 300 in HD tonight!!!

Wow! I am really impressed with this app, so many options. I was just telling my counterpart Mr.Leblanc how much I am enjoying all of the new Live app’s. they have such a consistent flow to them, I love how everything is uniformed. No offense to MS but the yesteryears of Live app’s were not this good. But I understand things take time and patience, and I really think MS has pulled it off with this line of applications (Live Messenger, Live Writer, Live Mail). If you don’t know what Live Writer is all about here is Microsoft’s explanation “Windows Live Writer Beta is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog.” So in essence it is what FrontPage use to be for other web content, but strictly for blogs. Live writer supports Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services. It is a client side app so you can always edit content even if you are offline. So far so good! Here is the link to download this very effective beta app! Did I mention that it is incredibly easy to use.

The first release candidate (RC) of Microsoft’s Silverlight 1.0 has hit the web and this weekend I decided to take a closer look. I fiddled with it a few months ago but got too busy to pick it up again until now. Tim Sneath has the low-down on Silverlight 1.0 RC1. From a heads up by Somasegar, I installed the latest Expression bits (Expression Media Encoder and Expression Blend 2.0) and started playing with my first Silverlight project that works.

I took the teaser video for The Dark Knight I posted about yesterday and decided I wanted to “present” the teaser to readers using Microsoft Silverlight.

Check out The Dark Knight Teaser Trailer presented with Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 RC1.

I used a combination of Microsoft Expression tools to do some basic stuff. I used the Expression Media Encoder to encode and create the Silverlight project and webpage, I used Expression Web to edit the HTML webpage by adding my own text and title, and I used Expression Blend 2.0 to add text to the actual player itself. You can use Expression Blend to do far more advanced things like creating your own player with  Expression Design. I then uploaded the bits to the site and there we go! Was pretty easy.

My next move is to experiment with my own recorded video content with my HD camcorder and possibly creating my own player.

I was incredibly surprised on how easy it was to create and upload video presented using Silverlight. I could never figure out Flash and how to use Flash and with Silverlight I was able to figure it all out in a matter of minutes.

When viewing the video, you will be prompted to download and install Silverlight 1.0 RC1 which allows you to view the video in Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you are on a Mac and using Safari, you should also be prompted to download and install Silverlight 1.0 RC1 as well.

According to Engadget - there is a delay in the upcoming 2nd Generation Zune devices. There’s more to the story with lots of unofficial information, codenames, etc… but… How he HELL can there be a flippin’ delay in something that hasn’t been officially announced by Microsoft? Just because something accidentally leaks hardly categorizes as a delay in my opinion. For all we know, those codenames refer to new Zune headphones or perhaps a better Zune cloth case that isn’t so much like a condom.

Both The Geek and I are Zune users so you can bet we’re watching the Zune news carefully.

As many geeks already know, Microsoft has two fantastic sites called Channel 9 and Channel 10. Channel 9 is designed for developers and code geeks to talk about developer stuff and Channel 10 is for the tech enthusiast. The same team (led by the awesome Jeff Sandquist) is now launching Channel 8 - a new site dedicated to helping students connect with other students (and other folks) interested in writing code and excited about technology. Check out Channel 8 here.

Mary Jo Foley had broke the story shedding light on Channel 8 earlier this month.

I am unsure on whether or not Channel 8 has actually officially launched just yet. Usually Jeff posts about a new property launch from his team on his blog and I’ve not seen anything yet (he is on vacation though). The site may be up for testing and may go down. If it does go down, enjoy the above screenshot.

Thanks to Mark Johnston for the heads up.

I’m not a student so not sure how much this site will relate to me. I usually read Channel 10.

A lot of people know how much I hate Google’s Adword system, but the thing is they make money and they help business’s make money, thus it is good business. I just don’t like the whole process probably because we here at TheGeekery are poor, their are lot of rumors around the net about foul play with Adwords and how Google manipulates the system as well but that is still under investigation. But I simply don’t understand this one….

Google is in the process of acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, but for some reason the FTC is already investigating them on antitrust violations just for this attempted acquisition. I understand that Google already has the largest market share for ad based e-marketing, but when Yahoo proposed its acquisition of Rights Media was proposed not to long ago it flew through the antitrust regulators stamp of approval process. The same thing happened when Microsoft proposed the acquisition of aQuantive a DoubleClick rival, no one complained no one whined. Why is Google taking so much flack for this, this is capitalism, this is big business.

The answer is in this quote

“Google, which dominates the business of placing text ads alongside search results and on sites across the Web, is expected to capture 27.4 percent of the $21.7 billion in United States online advertising in 2007, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The acquisition of DoubleClick would turn Google into a dominant player in the business of serving banners and other graphical ads that appear on Web sites.”

Yahoo, AT&T and dare I say Microsoft are afraid, very afraid. Google is starting to scare me as well, I just don’t understand how a company can spread the spectrum so wide across so many industry sectors.

Google, even though I do not enjoy some of your business models I do salute you for the massive kahoneys you have.

-TheGeek

The Windows Live Spaces Team has announced that Windows Live Spaces received 3 months worth of new updates to the service this past week. Users can expect to see the following changes:

• Updated Windows Live Spaces Homepage
• New Birthday Notifications
• Ability to re-order Lists
• View Image Slideshows in Full-Screen mode
• New Download Photo Option for Photos in Galleries
• New Templates based on what you want to do
• Clickable Blog Entry Title

Windows Live Spaces is now also available in 8 new markets: Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Serbia, and the Ukraine. This update signifies the commitment the Spaces Team has to improving the service at an amazing pace. It seems we’re getting new updates to the service every few months which is a good feeling as a user of the service myself.

This update also introduces the brand new Windows Live Header taking the place of the old-style flare design that’s been in use for quite some time. The new header signifies the direction Microsoft is heading with Windows Live with the 2.0 releases of services and new desktop applications and ties the UI together. I love the new header myself. I can’t wait to see it across Windows Live.

Windows Live Spaces is shaping up to be a very useful social-networking service for sharing photos, information with family members and friends. It’s certainly not Facebook though. But it does have quite a bit of potential.

This post was written using Windows Live Writer.