Thursday, August 31, 2006

CrossOver virtualization software public beta offered

Hot dog! I'm downloading the beta now. Be sure to check out the special price if you pre-order.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

ATTN J. Seiter: Kevin Rose needs a refill

"Last night's Tech Crunch / August Capital Party down on prestigious Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park was amazingly over the top."

Well, over the top with Web 2.0 celebs. Jump for more photos, including Web 2.0 bubble coverboy Kevin Rose (pictured).

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

MacBook firmware update adjusts fan behavior

If you have a MacBook, you may have noticed that Apple recently released a firmware update that "adjusts fan behavior in the MacBook." (If not, jump to read the official story.)

Hmmm, what exactly does that mean? Well, MacSlash offered a much better (and more interesting) explanation than most other news reports: Say Goodbye To The Moo.

Still not sure what they're talking about? Listen and see for yourself over at the MacRumors Forums. Haven't noticed your MacBook mooing about the place? You probably listen to music. Quiet things down for a bit and check it out.

But before you go ahead and install the update, you might want to get some baseline measures on your own MacBook first. That's super easy with a little app called CoreDuoTemp available for free download from VersionTracker. You can even add a continuous temperature reading to the menubar for a quick read to avoid inadvertantly searing your lap. Cool, huh?

No more MooBook.

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Monday, August 14, 2006

'Snakes' charmed by Net fan base

Snakes. On a Plane.

"To say that 'SOAP,' as New Line Cinema calls it, is the most Internet-driven movie since 'Blair Witch Project' is like saying Brad and Angelina enjoy a healthy following. The Web sites include New Lines' official snakesonaplane.com and law student Brian Finkelstein's popular snakesonablog.com. Available online are 'Snakes' posters, T-shirts and, at youtube.com, gag trailers and auditions for the film. Tagworld.com/snakesonaplane has links to the more than 400 'Snakes' songs, many submitted for New Line's soundtrack contest."

Sammy is calling....

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The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time

And the number one greatest PC of all time, according to PC World? The humble Apple II, "The Machine That Changed Everything".

Complete List

(via via MacsimumNews: Apple has four machines on ‘25 Greatest PCs’ list)

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Leopard first looks: Spaces

"Apple brings decades-old virtual desktops to the masses"

Another nice looking feature of the forthcoming OS release that you can also approximate now with third party utilities. I'm thinking about trying one of them at work, VirtueDesktops, just to see if this is as useful as I think it might be. Other options are mentioned in the article.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Goggles, the Google Maps flight sim

This is a fun way to fly over your favorite city -- and shoot things up. Kind of a pain to select a city not already on the start list, but at least it can be done without flying there in Goggles. (via GMSV)

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There's a very good explanation for the popularity of text messaging among teenage girls

"Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl's brain. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."

Well, then, let your fingers do the talking.

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No, 503 is the investment jerks; the political jerks are calling from 571

Now, this could be immensely useful -- whocalled.us -- if you get lots of spam phone calls. And it's not even a Web 2.0 site. On the other hand, if you get lots of those calls, you should add your number to the National No Call Registry.

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Wii vs. PS3: Round 1! Fight!

And this little one went, "Wii, Wii, Wii!" all the way home.

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How To Prep Laptops For Airport Security

"These precautions make good business sense at anytime not just during a period of heightened security. Laptop theft, data security and identity theft are threats that all travelers face on a daily basis. These steps can help mitigate risk, prevent a business disruption and lead to the recovery of lost or stolen laptops."

Yes, indeed. So even if you're not flying via the UK or using your laptop for sensitive business purposes, you might find many of these tips useful.

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Leopard first looks: iChat

"Chat client adds requested features—and makes several add-ons obsolete"

In fact, you can jump ahead and get many of these features with Chax. It's free and the tabbed interface is the most welcome feature. Chax doesn't quite turn iChat into Adium, but it moves it much closer. If the Adium folks could find a way to support audio and video chat using the iSight camera built into the Mac Book, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. But, in the meantime, Chax is making me much happier about using iChat.

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Friday, August 11, 2006

IBM's historic PC was clunky, slow and very expensive

Just like today's models. Wait, they sold those to Lenovo.

I had a later version of this model, with dual floppies and a color monitor (and likely more memory and a faster processor), but otherwise just like this one. That thing was a beast. Kinda wish I still had it, but where the heck would you display such a thing?

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Wednesday, August 9, 2006

ATTN J. Seiter: Kevin Rose needs a couch

"I'm not a multi-millionaire, I'm not a millionaire or even a thousand-aire. ... I can't even afford a couch in my new apartment."

-- Digg founder Kevin Rose says the folks at BusinessWeek got their math wrong when they profiled him

Hear him say it on TWiT.

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Leopard's top-secret secrets

This article speculating on the features of Leopard that Steve Jobs didn't present is fairly interesting, but the real value is in these two gems:

"I mean, Microsoft is so desperate to distract attention from their inability to ship that they’re sending Bill Gates out to end hunger and disease as a diversionary tactic. That’s desperate."

"And besides, it’s a testament to Apple that they routinely produce products that are worth speculating about. When I get a new Microsoft product in the mail it’s often like that moment when you’ve got both feet on the brakes but you know that the car can’t possibly stop in time. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You just hope it won’t hurt too much."

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How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?

A Consumer Reports WebWatch research report, prepared by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab:

"Nearly half of all consumers (or 46.1%) in the study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and color schemes.... Participants seemed to make their credibility-based decisions about the people or organization behind the site based upon the site's overall visual appeal."

The study found that less than 10 percent of the participants' comments referred to the identity of the site or its operator, the site's customer service or related policies, or the site's sponsorships in assessing credibility. Perhaps most surprising, the study found that neither a site's privacy policies nor whether or not it corrected false or misleading information affected how participants evaluated credibility. "We found that when people assessed a real Web site's credibility they did not use rigorous criteria."

So, as long as you have a pretty site, you'll be seen as credible by at least about half of the consumers who see it. Nice. This is good news for ecommerce operators.

Interestingly, the effect was reversed for experts reviewing websites in their area of expertise. It's comforting to know that at least somebody's paying attention.

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Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Sprint Nextel to form network with WiMax

WiMax, aka 802.16e, will form the basis of the first announced 4G mobile network. "The company said the new network, expected to launch in some markets by late 2007, will provide customers with wireless Internet speeds on par with DSL and cable TV modems and four times faster than speeds available on current wireless networks.... The network will take advantage of Sprint's extensive holdings of 2.5-gigahertz bandwidth spectrum covering 85 percent of the nation's 100 largest cities."

Woo hoo! Here we go -- ubiquitous broadband everywhere. Just as people now are dropping their land lines for phone service, a few years from now we'll all be doing the same with Internet access. With IPTV on the horizon as well, it might just be all wireless, all the time.

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MySpace deal gives Google access to "oblivious teenager" demographic

"Murdoch's News Corp. paid $580 million for MySpace last year, and now Google's agreed to pay it $900 million over three and half years to provide search services and advertising on it. Not a bad return on investment."

Not bad, indeed. Jeezle!

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Duran Duran to give virtual gigs

"Duran Duran are to create a virtual island within online game Second Life, on which they will perform actual live concerts."

Well, does life get any better than this?

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AOL offers disturbing glimpse into users' lives

"AOL user 9486162 appears to live near Edisto Beach, S.C., and could be a poker aficionado who's a fan of the University of Kentucky's football team" -- and suicidal. Being a fan of UK football can do that to you....

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Tom is not my friend

Hahahaha! Great t-shirts for sale at Busted Tees.

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Monday, August 7, 2006

Live from WWDC 2006: Steve Jobs keynote

Engadget has the best recap of the WWDC Stevenote I've seen so far; includes photos. Also, be sure to check out Apple's preview of Leopard, complete with video demonstrations.

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Sunday, August 6, 2006

AOL Proudly Releases Massive Amounts of Private Data

Holy shit! What were they thinking? This is going to be one large class-action lawsuit. Lawyers everywhere will be fighting over who gets to represent the 17.7 million U.S. subscribers AOL reported having in the second quarter.

And why, if you were going to release this data, would you do it for FREE? With business acumen like this, it's no wonder they're losing customers faster than they can count them.

UPDATE: AOL: Breach of privacy was a mistake "'This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it,' AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said." I bet.

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Keep an eye on Government: WashingtonWatch

This looks to be an excellent application of Web 2.0 tools to a task that seems insurmountable to most people -- making sense of federal legislation. Unfortunately, it's also subject to certain biases of the designers, or at least of over-simplification of the issues. Be sure to check the TechCrunch comments for a solid (and, so far, brief) discussion.

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The Clicker: ESPN360

Think the phone companies' ideas about net neutrality (or lack thereof) are bad? Try the opposite: content providers charging ISP's for the right to carry the content. Sound familiar? It's called cable TV -- and ESPN is trying to establish it for Internet content. It's a brilliant idea and a spectacular turning of the tables, but how bad would this suck: you can't get something on the Internet becuase the ISP you picked doesn't subscribe to it? Are you kidding me?!

Make the Internet more like cable TV. <sarcasm>What a great idea!</sarcasm>

That's my Insight.

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Repairing permissions: What you need to know

"What repairing permissions does and whether you should do it"

Pretty much never, or at least rarely.

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Friday, August 4, 2006

Victoria's Secret Models Like MacBooks Too!

"Two sexy Victoria's secret ladies, Allesandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen, were caught backstage at a Victoria's Secret event woman-handling some Apple hardware."
Hahahaha. Time for a sexy party!

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OK Go: Here it Goes Again

Next Olympic sport: synchronized treadmill. (Thanks, jBlog.)

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Thursday, August 3, 2006

'Cider' makes Windows games run on Intel Macs

Now here's an interesting development that may cheer many a heart. The natural question, assuming it works as advertised, is whether this will draw more game developers to the platform or further encourage them to develop for Windows only.

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Technology is a girl's best friend?

Some people might be tempted to think that increased usage of electronic devices by women has something to do with the devices becoming easier to use, but aside from being a sexist interpretation it would also be incorrect. As "gadgets" become more about communication and less about amusement, it's inevitable that women will become more interested in using them.

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Wednesday, August 2, 2006

NeoOffice 2.0- "Aquafied" Beta Released

NeoOffice 1.2 is pretty good, but not quite sufficient for adoption by "ordinary users" in lieue of Microsatanic Office -- but dang close. Version 2.0, on the other hand, looks to be the real deal. It's also $400 cheaper than the bloatware from Redmond. I'm nearly giddy with anticipation.

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