Back in the day, one of the major points of things like the World Wide Web and (indeed) the Internet was to seamlessly bridge platform gaps between operating systems, applications, and even processors: no more would data have to live in walled gardens labeled NCR or IBM or DEC or (gasp) Motorola or Intel: systems could just connect to the Internet, exchange information using well-defined open standards, and users would never have to worry about what kind of chip or operating system they were using. Platforms would become a matter of personal choice, rather than a technical requirement for taking part in the Internet community.
AMD seems to have missed part of that memo: the company has just launched its new AMD Fusion Media Explorer, a new “3D immersive social media and digital media browser” that enables drag-and-drop uploads and downloads from Facebook and YouTube, along with an integrated Web browser and a local multimedia search so users can find and share their favorite images, music, and video with their friends and 50,000 closest social networking buddies. It’ll even tap into live TV if users have a TV tuner installed.
The catch? It only runs on AMD processors.
The goal of Fusion Media Explorer is to highlight multimedia capabilities of AMD chips and graphics solutions from AMD’s in-house graphics developer ATI, and show that AMD can deliver premier media experiences without breaking consumers’ pocketbooks. The application features a rotating 3D interface for selecting photos, music, or videos for uploading to Facebook or YouTube. The application can also locate and play back local multimedia files, connect to Web sites via a built-in Web browser, and pull up media and other items related to what a user is viewing or listening to in a related media bar.
Fusion Media Explorer works with Windows Vista and Windows 7, as well as Linux: Windows XP is not supported. The version of Fusion Media Explorer available now should be considered a limited beta, and the company expects to have a more-stable public beta available in a few weeks. And, of course, the company isn’t saying whether they plan to release a version of the application that works on Intel processors.
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