Sep 25 2006 9:10AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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Under the tent at the HD DVD promotional truck at CEDIA in Denver a week ago, execs were anxiously introducing reporters to Omar Wasow (he notes on his site "Wasow rhymes with Picasso (or if you know your African geography: Burkina Faso" helpful!). Who is Omar? I asked the same thing... many times.

Right now, Omar is a doctorate student at Harvard and eons ago he taught Oprah how to use email and also launched African-American tech site BlackPlanet.com. As far as I could tell, based on that experience, the HD DVD people welcomed him in to explain their format to the consumer press and I guess do interviews. (which, probably weren't all that different from mine, which involved a lot of questions about how he's connected to HD DVD.)

Omar explained that he got involved with HD DVD to "make it accessible to the consumer media." or translate from "geek to human," he said. He volunteered his tech expertise to them, they accepted.

It was hot and I was hungry and confused but after asking Omar like five questions about what exactly he does for HD DVD, I thought I finally got it: "So are you supposed to make HD DVD cool?" Omar laughed, "I wish. no."

Omar was good-humored, and while I'm still not sure what his relationship to HD DVD is, he's siding with it over Blu-ray.