The show is being streamed live by Command Guru until December 12 and you can follow along with the development process and any theatrics right here.

Now come on: Make the Real World jokes you came here to make. I need the laugh. [Command Guru via TUAW]

The bad news is that it suggests their gaming framework isn't that far along, meaning badass games are still a ways off. [Mary-Margaret via Pre Central]

Here's stuff from the NYT article that we already knew:

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas. Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said.

This stuff is common in normal companies even, and a good majority of tech employees have badges as a permanent fashion staple. But this, this is interesting:

Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

That seems a bit over the top to me, but hey, you know what? It seems to be working for them. Waitaminute.[NY Times]

On the one hand, it's good news that they're going to get an SDK available in three or four months from launch. The iPhone took an entire year to get an SDK available. The bad news is you have to wait three or four months to get Palm Pre apps that aren't from people with closer relationships to Palm.

But, they're going to "accelerate" their early access program, letting in more developers into their inner circle. That's good news, since it means an increasing amount of apps between now and the general release of the SDK. [Palm blog]

New features for Windows 7 include recognition of mathematical formulas and East Asian languages, as well as the addition of a soft keyboard with multitouch and a totally revamped method for correcting handwriting. Here's hoping we finally get a droolworthy, sleek, and most importantly, useful tablet to take advantage of the new features. [MSDN, thanks JagsLive]

As of today, a new Vudu Labs area on standard Vudu boxes will offer access to Flickr, Picasa and YouTube. In addition, the Labs' new "On Demand" area opens free streaming from ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Nickelodeon, Discovery, and ESPN—among lots of other web-available media.

Vudu's Rich Internet Application platform will be opened to developers in Q1 of 2009. And it seems like a pretty good way for Vudu to stay competitive against the likes of Netflix, Blockbuster and AppleTV.

VUDU Brings the Web to TV with Breakthrough Internet Application Platform

Company Launches More than 120 Channels of Web Based Content and Applications, Announces Rich Internet Application Platform Open to All Developers in 2009

Santa Clara, CA - Dec. 16, 2008 - VUDU today took a major step forward in bringing the Web into the living room by launching the VUDU RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform, a standards-based platform that brings Web-hosted rich applications and services to consumer appliances
such as the popular VUDU Internet movie player. VUDU RIA combines the openness and ease of development of Web applications, lightweight hardware requirements compatible with today's consumer Internet appliances, and a lean-back user experience optimized for television.
To demonstrate the power and flexibility of VUDU RIA, VUDU has created an initial set of applications and services in a new area of the VUDU home page, called VUDU Labs. Available today to all VUDU owners, these applications include casual games, implementations of Flickr, Picasa and
the entire YouTube library, as well as a new "On Demand TV" area with more than 120 channels.
Today, VUDU customers can access a broad selection of free on-demand shows provided by major network television and on-line specialty sites spanning news, food, music, sports, and more. Programs include daily highlights from shows such as "Today", "The Rachel Maddow Show", "Anderson Cooper 360", "Fantasy Focus NFL", "MTV News", as well as full programs, some in HD, from Nova, National Geographic, PBS and others. VUDU plans to add more applications and services throughout 2009.

"VUDU RIA enables us to quickly open up huge libraries of web based content to TVs in living rooms around America," said Edward Lichty, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Content. "We are excited to
deliver both high quality TV shows as well as Web applications which enable our customers to share their photos and watch the tens of millions of YouTube videos on their HDTV's." VUDU RIA Brings Web Application Development to CE devices VUDU RIA allows developers to take advantage of the most advanced RIA techniques such as asynchronous Web queries, local scripting, and persistent client-side storage, along with unique TV-centered technologies such as VUDU's acclaimed user interface, one-wheel remote control navigation, and VUDU's TruFilm-powered video rendering for
maximum visual quality. VUDU RIA enables the development of responsive, rich applications
optimized for display and use on high definition televisions that bring the wealth of data and content of the Internet to the living room without needing to deploy new software on the consumer appliance, a
first in the consumer electronics world. VUDU RIA is targeted at today's low power set-top boxes and Internet appliances and delivers a lightning fast user experience on a 300 MHz embedded processor with 128MB of RAM. Applications developed on the VUDU RIA platform are as responsive as native applications but have the added advantage of being able to pull from the vast and growing reservoir of
Internet content and services. They can also be updated anytime without modifying any software in the consumer's appliance, creating a dynamic experience heretofore unavailable in the living room. VUDU RIA
will be opened up to third party developers in the first half of 2009.

"Our goal in creating VUDU RIA was to allow anyone with Web development skills to easily author Web-driven applications for the TV," said Prasanna Ganesan, VUDU's Chief Technical Officer. "We are very pleased with the results and look forward to opening up VUDU RIA to the developer community."

The organization is divided up into 25 teams, which encompases stuff like Applets and Gadgets, the File System, Core User Experience, Find and Organize, IE, Kernel & VM, Media Center, and Security. Of course many features span various parts of the OS, and it's up to the management to coordinate between the numerous groups. What would we want to see more of? Better and smarter integration between various apps on Windows, for example having their Mail application be tied into Calendars for meeting schedules and Contacts, or making Gadgets able to access various parts of the OS. These are just two examples we came up with in as many seconds, but you get the idea. More integration. [Windows 7 blog]

As everyone knows, Sony is a hardware company. But when making the PlayStation(s), they've become a software company as well. The problem came from the fact that they didn't know whether they're a software company or a hardware company or even both, which influenced the way the PS3 was developed. In this case, the hardware guys developed the console fairly independently then dumped it onto the software guy's lap, effectively saying "do something with it." In essence, as Tretton says, the PS3 was not developed in collaboration between the two teams. As a result of this, the software team has been cleaning up the mess made by the hardware team for years.

This is one of the biggest problems with Sony as a whole. Their UI designs are not as good as they could be because much of the company still sees themselves as a hardware force first and a software firm second. Hopefully with previous boss Ken Kutaragi out and guys like Kaz Hirai and Jack Tretton influencing development on the sure-to-be-upcoming PlayStation 4, things will be better in the next generation.

A beta will hit the streets before August passes into September; the final release is expected during the holidays.

Perhaps Microsoft wanted to tap into the same homebrew software community that brought us Xbox Media Center and ported over numerous emulators to the original Xbox? At least then they'd be able to control people's creations. – Nicholas Deleon

Play your own Xbox game [C|Net]