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I told you so…

Friday, June 17th, 2005

Remember back in April of last year, when the EU successfully defended customer choice by crushing the big, bad monopoly power of Microsoft?

Well, as predicted, it turns out that a whole lot of time & effort has gone into defending a choice that no one wants:

PC makers snub Windows sans media player

“Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens all said they have no firm plans to install Windows XP N, citing a lack of customer demand. A Dell representative added Tuesday that customers expect to have a media player included. . . ‘Customers purchase computers expecting them to come equipped with the capability of playing back digital media files, and it’s our obligation to meet this need. ‘ “

As I said in my original essay on the topic, Windows is not number one because of its quality; it’s number one because of its ubiquity. It’s only through the twisted logic of government-think that making the product less functional is somehow a good thing for consumers.

Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »

Family Spam

Wednesday, June 15th, 2005

Cleaning out my junk mail box today, I noticed quite a few spam e-mails addressed to me and cc:’ing my wife.

Kudos to the spammers, whose technology has advanced to the point where they can figure out that my wife & I are related (same domain? Same personal webpage? Whatever). I’m always impressed with new, effective technologies.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t happily delete it after my automatic spam filter captures it & files it away…

Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on Family Spam

The Vast Algorithmic Conspiracy

Wednesday, June 15th, 2005

Internetweek is complaining once again about Google News:

When America Online announced this week that it would give IM users free email, Google News was all over the story.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with a link to InformationWeek.com were such lesser-known technology news sites as Techtree.com, Netimperative, and Kashar News from Pakistan. At one point in the coverage of IBM’s attempt to simulate a brain, gossip site TheBosh.com got the lead spot over articles from News.com and Forbes. In a real puzzler, Google ran verbatim copies of a “puppy” Linux from five different sources, including in Singapore and Australia, without linking to the original story file on TechWeb.com.

All in a typical day’s work at Google News. The company–so beloved as a search engine for its wide range and knack for always knowing the most relevant Web pages–often does just the opposite when it comes to selecting stories for its news pages. Sources that would be considered authoritative brush up against stories from Web sites most people have never heard of, with no clue about which one is a higher quality than another, or a so-called “expert” site, which Google is so fond of making much of in the pure search-engine side of its business.

Right tool for the job, guys. Right tool for the job.

Google News is not where you go when you want authoritative sources for news. It’s where you go when you want to see a wide variety of sources with a wide variety of opinions. The goal of algorithm-based editing is to eliminate the advantage of the big guys, and show the user the most relevant stories based on content, rather than reputation.

I turn to it when the mainstream media seems to have reached an opinion about a story, and I’m not sure the opinion is universally shared. For instance, reading about Michael Jackson’s recent acquittal in the MSM, one gets the sense that he was really guilty, but got away with it due to incompetence on the prosecutor’s part and/or his status as a celebrity. Turning to Google News (with sources such as Toronto’s Fashion Monitor, AZ Central.com, the London Mirror, and Workers World), I learn that most of the world is focusing on the fact that he’s sworn off sleeping with children, that the prosecutor is having a hard time dealing with the defeat, that the accuser’s family is rumored to be considering a civil suit (where the real money is, I guess – cf. the O.J. Simpson trial), and a discussion about whether MJ can resurrect his music career after the trial.

All of this adds a certain texture to the story that you won’t find on Reuters.com or nytimes.com. I’d encourage you to check out the recent Newsweek hubbub, and the war in Iraq on Google News as well. A lot of the stories/opinions are the same, of course, but there’s definitely a diversity there that you don’t see elsewhere.

Bottom line: most of us are smart enough to look at the article and the source before determining what to believe. And depending on the subject matter, a reporter at the Wyoming News might be more interesting to read than the editor of the Washington Post.

Categories: News and/or Media, Tech Talk | 2 Comments »

Cats & Dogs Living Together

Monday, June 6th, 2005

Yet another sign of the world converging upon itself:

Apple said it will begin delivering Macintosh products using Intel microprocessors, the number-crunching nerve centers of PCs, by this time next year and will have all of its Macintosh computers using Intel processors by the end of 2007.

Categories: Tech Talk | 1 Comment »

You Can Go Online When You’ve Finished Cleaning Your Room!

Sunday, June 5th, 2005

This is fantastic news:

Some 23 percent of children in nursery school

Categories: Family Matters, Tech Talk | Comments Off on You Can Go Online When You’ve Finished Cleaning Your Room!

TV Hits the Road

Sunday, June 5th, 2005

We all should have seen this coming:

Users of TiVo’s personal video recorders will be able to transfer recorded television content to [Intel] Centrino notebooks using pre-installed software. Notebook users will then to take the programming with them while traveling.

So as long as I told my Tivo to record something, I can watch it whenever I want and wherever I am. Being in the same room with the TV becomes as unimportant as being there when the program starts. Heck – the TV isn’t even required anymore – just the laptop and one of those ridiculously huge flatscreen monitors.

If they make it simple enough to use, this could be huge…

Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »

Twin Mini

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

It seems a Taiwanese company called AOpen, acting at Intel’s request, has built a machine that looks very similar to the Mac Mini, in the sense that it looks exactly like the Mac Mini.

Interestingly enough, analysts are pooh-poohing it right out of the gate. Roger Kay of IDC says “I don’t think the two — Mac mini and whatever Intel puts out — are really in the same market; that is, of course, unless Apple starts running OS X on x86 hardware.” Huh? What about all that stuff I read when the Mini came out about it’s form factor, it’s place as an appliance rather than technology, etc.? Was that all just cover-up for “it has a great OS?”

He also questions whether anyone will be able to market the machine with an Intel Chip & Windows XP and still hit the $499 price point set by Apple. To that point, I say don’t underestimate Intel & Microsoft’s ability to buy market share. If they think the Mini is going to be a serious challenge, both of those companies are in a position to give these things away and make their money on the peripherals, home networks, and software.

All of this is not to say I think that either product will be all that successful. The Mac Mini will sell like hotcakes for a while, but once it’s no longer the newest toy on the block, someone will invent the true computing appliance – one that doesn’t require separate KVM’s to get them working…

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Breaking News – You Can Tape Stuff Off the Radio…

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

Remember the good old days when everybody was stealing digital music? Then iTunes came along and made it so easy (and cheap) to buy music, that stealing it actually became more of a hassle than it was worth? Well, in what should have been an obvious next step, that state of affairs appears to be short-lived:

Lawyers, others questions radio TIVO-like devices – Yahoo! News

Various devices that enable listeners to record Internet radio streams and then convert them into MP3 files are catching on and making Web radio and streaming services more appealing to the general public.

But some legal experts say the recording software may violate digital copyright laws and does little more than promote piracy.

I must admit, I never understood how Digital Rights Management (DRM) was going to last. When I was a teenager, I knew the 50 ways to hack through Apple II+ copy-protection so I could copy my friend’s new video game. Nowadays, I’m just an old fogey at 35, relegated to reading about today’s teenagers, who hack into massive government or corporate networks and cause millions in damages. Still, even *I* can figure out how to break DRM protection. Simply play the DRM-laden song on the PC, have the PC record straight from the sound card into an (unprotected) MP3 file, and then “Save As…” Voila! Instant cyber-thief. So if I can figure this out, why is the rest of the world pretending the teenagers are even breaking a sweat?

Tools like Replay Radio put the issue in the forefront, though. Music is different than TV. It’s portable and personal. A copy of a TV show still requires a TV, and usually, if you’re lucky, someone to watch it with. A copy of a song, though, is the whole package. It’s a 100% replacement for the purchased product. Not to mention the fact that you could conceivably go to work/school and leave Replay Radio running all day, then come home and cherry-pick the songs you want to add to your collection. A few weeks and some creative choices of radio stations, and you could fill an iPod for free.

Jay Cooper, a veteran entertainment lawyer, is quoted in the article singing that old refrain: “[This] Technology’s way ahead of the law.”

Indeed…

Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »

Home Networking – Now with More Wires!

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

Here’s a prediction: As soon as I get off my butt & configure a wireless network in the house, this will become ubiquitous.

Categories: Tech Talk | 5 Comments »

(Grease) Monkeying around with the web

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

Almost as if the whole controversey around Google’s new toolbar didn’t happen, now there’s a tool for Firefox browsers called Greasemonkey, which lets users write client side scripts to change the way a web page looks or functions directly from their browser.

Examples include a script that removes all stories about Michael Jackson from a Reuters newsfeed, and one that makes the Chicago Transit Authority map a background on the Google Map of Chicago.

Watch for the intellectual property rights police to jump all over this one…

Categories: Tech Talk | 7 Comments »

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