Mobilewares has brought RSS, weather, business information, and photos to the Media Center PC by adding a 10-foot interface with their sweet of "Big Screen" products. Now you can add Big Screen Contacts to the list, which lets you browse your Outlook contacts on a TV screen.
Big Screen Contacts for Vista Media Center has just been released as a public beta (version 0.9).
The program lets you search, browse, and view contacts, which yo ucan import from Outlook 2003/2006 or from Windows Mail. The user interface is designed to mirror Vista media Center.
But to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I see the value in this sort of product. Sure, I was skeptical of programs to bring RSS feeds to the living room as well. Why read text on your television screen from 10 feet away when the stories are written to be read from computer screens just 2 or 3 feet away? (In terms of paragraph length etc.)
Anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard to read the occasional news story if you've got a good TV display. But I'm just not sure I need access to all of my contacts in the living room. It's not like they'd be taking up too much screen real estate, because the program only shows a few at a time, and you search for the contact you need. But that just seems like the sort of application I'm more likely to use in the office than the living room. Not that this is the only program that blurs the line between the living room and office for Windows Media Center users.
Maybe I'm biased because as a writer and reporter, most of the 1200 contacts in my address book are business contacts. Maybe if I had just a few dozen friends to look up, I'd want to be able to turn on the TV to find a number and dial my cordless phone. What do you think? Is this a useful addition to the list of things you an do with a media center PC?
1. I think it's nonsense. Really, why do I need all my contacts from Outlook in my living room? Am I going to type them letters with a remote control?
Posted at 8:25AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Kevin