Category: Internet

May 28, 2009

The Ultimate Fate of Popular Websites?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 8, 2009

Welcome New Twitter Follower

If you're reading this because you've just followed me on Twitter, thanks...I appreciate it. If you did it solely so I'd follow you back, then you may be disappointed since I don't auto-follow everyone who follows me. If I don't follow you back, it may be because you run afoul of one of a few general guidelines I have.

I probably won't follow you if:

1) Your friends-to-followers ratio is well over 1:1 -or- you have way more friends than followers.
If you are following 1,200 people (i.e., have 1,200 friends) and only have 100 followers, then you're probably up to something. Perhaps you just joined and are trying to build up a huge followerbase by doing mass followings in hopes of snagging lots of auto-follows. In that case, I'm not going to contribute to your game.

2) You haven't tweeted in a long time, if ever.
Why should I follow you when you aren't contributing to the conversation?

3) You don't have a bio or a pic or a website. And no, Myspace pages don't count.
If you aren't going to reveal anything about yourself, why should I follow you? Give me a reason to find you interesting.

4) I'm not finding your recent tweets very thought-provoking, entertaining, or compelling in some way.
You may be doing everything right, but I still may not follow you. Sorry...it might just be that we don't have much in common...it happens. Or, perhaps your tweeting every meal, belch, and bowel movement just doesn't do it for me.

5) You're offensive.
I don't follow raving lunatics, extremists of any kind (political, religious, sports fans, etc.), people who express themselves only in crass banalities, or those who TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

6) You're on Twitter solely to sell me something.
Are you an SEO? Social media expert? Online marketing consultant? Bean curd and flaxseed extract vendor? Sorry...I'm not interested and far too busy bored with you to listen to your pitch.

7) You play games following and unfollowing.
Update: I just was reminded of another reason. If you follow me and then unfollow me shortly afterwards when I don't follow you immediately, and then follow me again when I do follow you, you're getting unfollowed and blocked. You're not only annoying, but you're gaming the system and I don't like it.

Most likely, if you're an actual person with a bio, a photo, and something reasonably interesting (IMO) to say, I'll follow you right back. But if not, well, consider this post our official "it's not me, it's you" talk.

p.s. If you've landed here from my Twitter profile page and aren't finding it very useful to discover just who this schlub called Craig Froehle is, then check out my abbreviated GearBits bio or the longer bio on my personal website.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 27, 2009

Segregating One's Personal and Professional Online Personas: Is it Folly?

I'm losing a battle, the battle to keep my personal online self separated from my work/professional online self. And losing that battle has some potentially serious consequences.

In the 15 or so years I've been "on the web," I've tried to maintain a division between my personal life and my professional life. The reason is pretty simple: some of the things I might say or do with friends and family might be incompatible with expectations for my behavior as whatever kind of professional I'm employed as at the time.

I'm not talking anything scandalous...no KKK activities, secret families, or felony indictments...but statements and actions that might seem totally innocuous in one context and to one person (e.g., joking with an old friend) might seem out-of-place in another context to a different person (e.g., to a student or client).

And that division is slowly eroding...slipping away as my ability to keep one "life" separate from the other disintegrates. Some of my work colleagues and students have started following me on Twitter and friending me on Facebook (hi, folks!), places that I've never intended to engage anyone from work (with, perhaps, a few exceptions). More confounding is LinkedIn, on which I have a complete cross-section of associations from every corner of my personal and professional lives.

Many of those connections, and the overall intermixing of my personae, are, admittedly, my own fault. When I initially set up Facebook, I accidentally let it troll through my Gmail addressbook and send out automatic invitations. Newbie mistake. On Twitter, my profile is open, meaning anyone can follow me. And, I also have this tendency to only use my real name online; I never felt comfortable hiding behind a quasi-anonymous pseudonym or fake profile. All considered, I really only have myself to blame for allowing the online division between my personal self and my work self to blur.

So what does this mean? I think it means that my online "self" will have to be much more thoughtful and considerate of the implications, for every facet of my life, of my actions online. A bawdy joke told in a small, yet public, mailing list could easily find its way to my boss' desk. A thoughtless, or even mean-spirited, comment could ultimately offend a co-worker. These unintended consequences are like civilian casualties in a war; collateral damage from acting thoughtlessly in a casual space that is, ultimately, connected in a very real sense to one's professional environment.

Perhaps this is precisely what all those Gen-Y kids were learning when their Facebook profiles and Myspace pages were being used by potential employers as reasons to not hire them; 27 photos of you drunk off your butt at a fraternity party doesn't tend to impress the HR department very much.

So, the bottom line is this, what I'm calling my Golden Rule for the digital era:

Treat others online the way you want them to treat you in person.

If I treat every interaction, whether online or face-to-face, as if it were happening in person, I'm sure there would be times I would handle it differently. Is it better to have less freedom to do as my basest reactionary self wants, less consideration for the human on the other end of the bitpipe? No, I think society has always relied on our ability to reign in that temptation. And the Internet changes nothing in that regard, except, perhaps, to give us more opportunities to screw up.

So, now, going forward, the real test is seeing if I can live by that rule of mine. Wish me luck!

Posted by Craig in Internet and Other and Society / Politics and Technology
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March 8, 2009

6 Years of Blogging...So What?

Six years ago today, I fired up GearBits for the first time with no idea what would become of it. I was pretty sure I had no desire to turn it into a business (been there, done that), but, apart from that, I wasn't at all certain what I'd write about, how frequently, or in pursuit of what objectives (if any).

Now, it's pretty clear that GearBits has gone through several stages in its short life. At first, it was a curiosity...a chance to learn about blogging, host a webserver, and some other aspects of a techno-centric life that are best acquired through hands-on experience.

Then, I invited some friends to play. Mitch, Sam, and Ken, and later Bob, all brought unique voices, but as the site was never more than a casual outlet for occasional thoughts, it never really gelled with any of them. But, seeing friends contribute their thoughts and ideas in ways very different than I would have was educational for me and a lot of fun.

As their interest vacillated, my own did as well. While I continued to post, it became much more sporadic. I deviated from technology and consumer electronics more heavily into politics around the 2004 and 2008 elections, primarily as a cathartic tool...one small voice calling out the absurdities and injustices.

Then, in Spring 2008, something happened that changed how I see my blog entirely: Twitter. I've become a bit of a Twitterholic. As my brain is rather limited in its capacity for complex thought, many of the things I think seem to fit nicely in 140 characters or less. Since my joining Twitter less than a year ago, I've made nearly 4,000 posts (tweets). Compare that to less than 1,200 posts on GearBits in six-year span.

But why? Thinking about it, it seems there are three reasons: convenience, engagement, and reduced expectations. First, posting to Twitter is incredibly convenient; I can do it through text messages, via the web interface, on custom apps...all easy and quick. Second, given the size of the community on Twitter, it's easy to be engaged in conversations and get feedback very quickly. That's rewarding, so it prompts me to do it more often. Comments work here, too, but they're not nearly as quick and convenient to post, read, or respond to.

Third, and perhaps most surprising (to me), is that I've always felt like anything I post on GearBits needed to have some meat...be substantial. While I clearly didn't always accomplish that, I almost always strived for it. On Twitter, however, there's no such pressure to create meaningful content. When giving a talk, every sentence matters. When chatting with friends, however, there's a much lower bar to clear. And that's the way Twitter feels to me.

So, will I continue with GearBits? Probably...almost definitely. I want to continue having my own server -- it's just too convenient. Since that's in place, hosting Movable Type isn't a huge amount of incremental effort or cost. A second reason GearBits will continue is that I will, from time to time, have information I'd like to "put out there" that doesn't easily fit on a tweet. Product reviews, short essays (like this one), graphical content, etc. all fit much better on a proper blog than on Twitter. Finally, there's value in what I've already done. I don't get huge numbers of people at GearBits...a thousand or so each day...so, if it were to go away, it's not like the masses would rise up and demand I put it back up. But, during the six years I've been adding content, there are some pages that a nontrivial number of people seem to find helpful (see the most frequently commented entries, for example). So, if having it around helps a couple people a day fix a problem or make a better tech decision, then that's more than enough.

Thanks for reading (if anyone actually does) and I'll hopefully see you in another six years.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Other
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March 1, 2009

How, and When, to Use Twitter for Customer Service

PC Magazine posted a list of 10 companies using Twitter in interesting, novel ways. One of the more common uses was as a customer service channel, such as what Palm and some folks from Sprint have been doing.

And it's fairly easy to do. With Twitter's search engine, it's relatively painless to stay abreast of any mention of your company or its branded services. Monitoring this constantly is essential to initiating timely contacts with customers who mention they are having problems.

But, before companies jump into offering customer service via a novel medium like Twitter, some caution should be taken; while the payoff of an innovative move like this can be significant to your customers, there are easy mistakes to be made. So, a quick list of some general lessons:

1) Twitter isn't the best option for most, or even many, of your customers

For part of my PhD dissertation, I worked with customer support of a major ISP researching how they interact with customers over various channels (at the time, it was phone, email, and IM). We found that different problem types and different customer needs were most effectively handled via different media (due to the characteristics of those media)...there was not one medium that did the best under all circumstances.

So what does this mean when using Twitter? Different customers are going to have different needs. Some are going to have very simple problems that can be addressed quickly and are going to be fairly matter-of-fact/rational about the issue. Twitter could be a terrific medium for those kinds of situations.

But, many customers are going to have complex problems, be upset about the problem, or both. In these cases, Twitter is unlikely to be the best choice. In these situations, the 140-character limitation of Twitter makes it really difficult to engage in complex conversations with completeness and clarity. And in cases where the customer is upset or angry, you need to convey empathy and concern. The terseness required in Twitter is just not adequate for mollifying emotional customers.

2) Use Twitter to route customers to better support channels in your firm

Instead of trying (and likely failing) to address customers' issues via interaction on Twitter, use that opportunity to direct customers to those other people/channels in your company who can best handle them. But don't just rely on a message like the following:

You clearly risk losing the customer. Instead, ensure the hand-off happens by getting the customer's contact information (obviously best if done via direct message) and then passing that onto the appropriate channel so a support rep can then join and continue the conversation that was started on Twitter through whatever medium is best suited for the problem at hand (phone, email, etc.).

3) Failures are public spectacles

It's important to remember that Twitter is a social medium. Any failure on your part to soothe an aggravated customer could easily turn into a public shouting match, even if the shouting is only one way. And to make matters worse, that conversation is persistent, there for the customer to reference for any and all friends to view. A happy customer might tell a friend, but an unhappy one will tell the world. And, since that unhappy customer is already sitting there in front of a potentially huge social network, that negative word-of-mouth can spread quickly. This makes it just that much more important to avoid long, public conversations with upset/angry customers on social networks like Twitter. If the customer wants to vent, let them rant over a medium that is isolated away from public scrutiny and where they are guaranteed to have the customer rep's undivided attention.

4) Do it well, or don't do it

As social media are still fairly new to many companies, it's tempting to let an employee or two who are particularly interested in the medium "try it out" informally, perhaps even during off-hours. This approach is unlikely to result in highly satisfied customers for a few reasons. First, the hand-offs mentioned in #1 above are unlikely to happen smoothly and quickly, thus risking further alienating a customer already having problems. Second, these employees who are interested may not be the best people in your company to do this; they may not even be customer support professionals with appropriate training and/or people skills. And third, a lack of formality means that key lessons may not be captured in order to help improve future efforts at using social media for customer service.

No, instead, set up a quick team with appropriate resources. This doesn't have to be, nor should it be, a several-month project to assemble the team and create policies and document processes. But, some level of formality can be helpful, even if it's simply a list of contacts within the company for handing off different types of problems/customers and a regular (e.g., daily) huddle to share insights and set expectations. This will likely be a very new way to engage the customer, so learning is inevitable. You're unlikely to get it perfect from day one, but getting there as quickly as possible is the key to creating an advantage over your competitors.

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet and Technology
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February 18, 2009

How Does Your Writing Compare with Your Personality?

I'm always interested in how our personalities affect what we do, think, and say. Now, there's a tool that uses the Myers-Briggs type indicator personality framework to analyze your writing.

Following up on a tweet from @bshermcincy, I submitted GearBits.com to the Typealyzer and it popped out this analysis:

Keirsey.com labels ESTP profiles "Promoters" and says "Clever and full of fun, Promoters live with a theatrical flourish which makes even the most routine events seem exciting." I guess that makes sense given that not all gadget reviews are inherently exciting and many need a bit of hyperbole to make them interesting.

But that ESTP seemed somewhat different than the profile M-B tests have generated for me in the past, so I self-administered the 72-question instrument here and came up with the more familiar INTJ. INTJs are described as follows (courtesy of Keirsey.com):

Rational Portrait of the Mastermind (INTJ)

All Rationals are good at planning operations, but Masterminds are head and shoulders above all the rest in contingency planning. Complex operations involve many steps or stages, one following another in a necessary progression, and Masterminds are naturally able to grasp how each one leads to the next, and to prepare alternatives for difficulties that are likely to arise any step of the way. Trying to anticipate every contingency, Masterminds never set off on their current project without a Plan A firmly in mind, but they are always prepared to switch to Plan B or C or D if need be.

Masterminds are rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population, and they are rarely encountered outside their office, factory, school, or laboratory. Although they are highly capable leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once they take charge, however, they are thoroughgoing pragmatists. Masterminds are certain that efficiency is indispensable in a well-run organization, and if they encounter inefficiency-any waste of human and material resources-they are quick to realign operations and reassign personnel. Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, and traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchwords. Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted; those that don't, aren't, no matter who thought of them. Remember, their aim is always maximum efficiency.

In their careers, Masterminds usually rise to positions of responsibility, for they work long and hard and are dedicated in their pursuit of goals, sparing neither their own time and effort nor that of their colleagues and employees. Problem-solving is highly stimulating to Masterminds, who love responding to tangled systems that require careful sorting out. Ordinarily, they verbalize the positive and avoid comments of a negative nature; they are more interested in moving an organization forward than dwelling on mistakes of the past.

Masterminds tend to be much more definite and self-confident than other Rationals, having usually developed a very strong will. Decisions come easily to them; in fact, they can hardly rest until they have things settled and decided. But before they decide anything, they must do the research. Masterminds are highly theoretical, but they insist on looking at all available data before they embrace an idea, and they are suspicious of any statement that is based on shoddy research, or that is not checked against reality.

Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Ulysses S. Grant, Frideriche Nietsche, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, Lise Meitner", Ayn Rand and Sir Isaac Newton are examples of Rational Masterminds.

Given the work I do and my albeit limited degree of self-awareness, it seems to fit quite well (if you know me IRL and have a different opinion, let me know).

But why the difference between my writing's ESTP profile and my "normal" INTJ? That will take some looking into, but my guess is that I don't feel a need to juice things up in day-to-day life, but can be very enthusiastic when writing about something because I know I won't be there to convey my thoughts in person. That's just a guess, but it's an interesting difference nonetheless.

If you try this, let me know if you come up with different profiles as well.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Science & Nature
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February 16, 2009

GearBits' Hot/Not List for Winter 2009

It's been about 8 months since our first Hot/Not List, so I thought I'd post an updated one:

HOT

• Logitech Squeezebox - After Logitech's acquisition of Slim Devices, a lot of fans of the smaller company's products were concerned that innovation would halt and corporate fossilization would set in, as happens in so many of these cases. Well, it couldn't be further from the truth. Slim's innovative products are benefiting from Logitech's branding and distribution muscle and the combined firm is churning out really impressive audio streaming devices. Our home audio ecosystem now consists of a Squeezebox Duet controller, two receivers, and a Boom; these three cover about 80% of the house and it's wonderful to have perfectly synced music streamed throughout without breaking the bank.
  
• Palm - The Pre smartphone was the buzz of CES and is still making strong headlines at MWC. Sprint may have a winner on its hands with this new device.
  
• Sprint - Coming off a really impressive turnaround regarding its customer service and anticipation of its 4G wireless network, Sprint could be poised for strong growth in the next few years.
  
• Aptera - So far, this innovative hypermileage boutique car-maker in California has avoided some of the pitfalls that its performance-oriented sibling Tesla Motors has made, and the 2e vehicle it should be shipping very soon looks like it could be a key evolutionary link in transforming the way we think about cars.
  
• Twitter - Easily the most addictive thing I've tried recently.
  
• Windows 7 - Sure, it's still in beta, but I am SO looking forward to its release. As much as I've panned Vista over the years, I think 7 will be a winner.
  

NOT

• Cloud-Based Contact Management - Even with Google's recent improvements to Gmail Contacts, there are no really excellent cloud-friendly contact management solutions available. The best I've found is ClearSync, and that isn't as widely compatible as most would like.
• Battery Technology - Seriously...scientists and engineers have been working on this for decades and we're still not fundamentally better than we were 20 years ago.
• Obese Netbooks - Almost by definition, a "netbook" should be incredibly lightweight. Why, then, are we seeing netbooks weighing over 3 lbs released to market??
• Winter - by definition. I am quite ready for Spring, thanks very much.
• Digital Transition Delay - We set the date for February 17th, and now Congress is pushing it back to June 12 for those stations that want extra time. Why? Delaying it doesn't solve anything and, in fact, actually increases the costs of the conversion and sows more consumer confusion. Clearly a lose-lose proposition.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Phones and Popular Media and Society / Politics and Technology
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ClearSync for Chumby Brings Your Calendars to Desk and Bedside

As a longtime ClearSync subscriber (see my review of ClearSync 1.0 from 2006 here), I was excited when John Tanner, the company's CEO, announced that a ClearSync client for Chumby was forthcoming.

Remember Chumby, that quirky, plush nightstand/desk/kitchen counter companion that streams Internet content to its touchscreen? Chumby is an ideal device for places where you need access to online content but where a laptop just doesn't fit or is "too much" machine (not that I'm sure that's ever possible). To the right is Chumby on my bedside table.

Here's a screenshot of what ClearSync on Chumby looks like:

You get access to some key ClearSync Calendars features, including:
• Viewing multiple calendars in a single, color-coded view
• The ability to enable/disable any combination of calendars
• Date selection (just tap the time/date header to bring up a calendar-style date picker)
• Automatic cloud-sync with your online/handheld calendar updates

Those of you who live and die by your daily calendar know how critical it is to always have it within arm's reach. Now, it can be right in front of you at all times, even when you're sleeping (which is important if you're like me and have literally woken up in the middle of the night in a mild panic because you can't remember what time an important meeting is the next day).

ClearSync for Chumby is available for free to all ClearSync subscribers who own Chumbys.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Wireless
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January 20, 2009

CNN.com Partners with Facebook to Stream & Comment 2009 Inauguration Live

CNN.com and Facebook have partnered to bring a unified live, social experience for the 2009 Inauguration of Barack Obama today. It's accessible to everyone; Facebook account not needed to view (but needed to comment).

It's a pretty cool collaboration...I expect the merging of live TV from established channels with social media functions to be a big theme of 2009.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Popular Media and Society / Politics
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January 2, 2009

GearBits' Predictions for 2009

Once again, here are GearBits' prognostications for the coming year. If you're interested, check out how our predictions for 2008 panned out, or previous years' predictions.

1) Microsoft Launches Windows 7 to Fanfare, Skepticism
Microsoft's two pillars of financial solvency -- Windows and Office -- have been standing on shaky ground recently. Office 2007 was a decent hit, despite it not offering much new and causing significant backward compatibility issues. But Windows Vista, on the other hand, has been an unmitigated disaster. Microsoft even had to resort to tricking users into liking Vista (Mojave, anyone?), it had developed such a bad reputation. Windows 7 will be launched late in 2009 to a general consensus of "it's better," but will not be the "wow" that Microsoft needs to regain the market share it has recently ceded to Apple. But maybe that's a good thing...having strong competitors is usually a good thing for consumer markets.

2) Blockbuster Declares Bankruptcy
This may be a bit "out there," but I see exceedingly tough times at Blockbuster. And this isn't vindictiveness...I've been a reasonably happy Blockbuster.com customer for several years, now. I just think that, given the state of its business (poor), the weakness in the economy (near-critical), the nature of its service (luxury), and the rapidity with which that industry is transforming, I think Blockbuster will file for bankruptcy protection to get out of some of its debt, sell off some property (store locations that aren't faring well), and reinvest that into developing newer and more attractive services. So, they aren't going away...yet.

3) Palm Launches New OS to Fanfare, Skepticism
We've all heard the rumors that Palm will be launching "Nova," its replacement for the ancient Palm OS, at CES 2009 in a few days. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen. I'm also pretty sure that Palm will have at least one new device, if not several, running the new OS available by the end of June. While launching phones can take a while, given the carriers' lengthy testing requirements, launching a PDA doesn't, so Palm could certainly come out with two (or more) non-phone PDAs running Nova pretty quickly. And it needs to...the TX is older than my grandmother (at least in technology years). Generally, I predict there will be more nice things said about Nova, and the new devices, than critical, and it will stack up fairly competitively with Android and WM 6.5. What I do not have a lot of faith in is Palm's ability to develop and deliver the ecology of services (e.g., app stores) that customers are now expecting their smartphones to be integrated into. Time will tell on that front.

4) Blu-Ray Players Hit $99
During 2009, I think we'll see a raft of Korean and Taiwanese off-brand manufacturers launch budget Blu-Ray players. Just like the 2008 holiday sales saw BD players hit $149 in some stores, 2009 holiday sales will see them hit $99...if not sooner.

5) Apple Launches a Tablet to Fanfare
This has been a persistent rumor for years, but I think 2009 will see it actually happen. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple is looking to multi-touch as a key differentiator in its product lines, and having a full-screen, large-display MT device would make total sense. Second, it fits perfectly with the needs of the "creative class," Apple's core customer base. And third, it fills out a hole in their mobile product line that netbooks and other devices not running OS X fill nicely, and that's not a good thing for Apple. So, the technology is ready, the market is willing...and now I think Apple will be able to meet the demand.

6) Consolidation in the Entertainment Industry
2009 will be a strange year on a lot of dimensions. Not only will the stock market be hard to predict, there will be a lot of odd relationships come out of the mess. One industry that is still poised to make things happen is the entertainment industry, where I expect we'll see larger firms (e.g., major movie studios) start to acquire smaller, but very successful, examples from the newer media (e.g., game producers). A good example of the type of transaction I'm imagining would be Vivendi acquiring Ubisoft. I think Time Warner would love to swallow up Electronic Arts, but that might be a bit too big a bite unless something untoward happens to EA's stock price over the next year.

7) Steve Jobs Announces Transition to New Role
I think concerns over Jobs' health have more merit than most of us want to admit. In 2009, I expect him to announce that he's transitioning into a different role than President and CEO of Apple (and CEO of Pixar). Something that keeps him out of the spotlight while he deals with his health issues will be valuable to keep Apple's stock price up and customer base intact. The move towards reducing his presence in near-term product launches is consistent with this strategy. But, he's far from gone...his influence will still be felt behind the scenes, but we'll see less of him in his traditional role as Apple poster boy.

8) Facebook Membership Growth Flattens; Twitter Surges
Signs are pointing towards Facebook's popularity beginning to peak. Just as with everything social, when moms and dads begin to frequent the coffee shop, the kids need a new place to hang out. Facebook currently has almost 40 million members in the US. While that number has been skyrocketing since it opened up membership to anyone in September 2006, I think 2009 will see a marked deceleration in its growth. The loss of perceived exclusivity and the hassle of the relatively unprotected app space will combine to make it less appealing to many long-time users and new prospects will find fewer people urging them to get on board. Twitter, however, will see continued growth as it continues to tweak and adapt its environment to meet its core users' needs.

9) App Stores Dominate Mobile Software Delivery
iPhone's app store, Android's market...these types of bazaars, managed by the sponsors/manufacturers of the mobile operating systems, are coming to be the dominant mode for software distribution to mobile users. It marks a significant break from the traditional model, where mobile developers could sell software from their own sites, through 3rd party aggregators, and through carriers. This new approach is more streamlined, making it easier for users, but also more controlled, which can make it harder to accommodate large and complex ecosystems. The fact that each of the existing app stores serves a relatively small market is why we haven't seen these problems emerge to a point where they start driving users away. 2009 will see continued movement towards these controlled markets and away from the free-form/multi-channel models that previous mobile generations (e.g., Palm OS, Windows Mobile) relied on.

10) Line Blurs between "Netbooks" and Notebooks/Laptops
Netbooks are currently a fairly homogeneous, and well-defined, niche of laptop computers. Most of them have an Intel Atom processor, a screen from 8.9" to 10" in size, no optical drive, weigh between 2.2 and 3 lbs, and cost $300-$500. There's a big gap in pricing then between these netbooks and the subnotebooks/ultraportables that often have slightly larger screens, way more RAM and processing power, and cost $1,500 or more. To paraphrase the old adage, markets abhor a vacuum, so I expect we'll start seeing all manner of new small notebooks come into the market in this $500-$1000 range sporting screens in the 9"-12" range with anything from 512MB to 2GB of RAM, a variety of operating systems (XP and Linux will continue to be most popular), and a range of processing and display capabilities. Not everyone needs to play Crysis on their notebook, but not everyone can get by with a 1024x600 screen and do everything inside their browser.

So, there you have it...GearBits' predictions for 2009. Some are probably pretty safe bets, and some are bound to be wrong. What do you think will happen?

Posted by Craig in Computing and Gaming and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Movies & Books and Phones and Popular Media and Technology
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December 31, 2008

Revisiting GearBits' Predictions for 2008: Lots Right, Some Very, Very Wrong

Each year, we at GearBits post some predictions for the coming year. And then, in the interest of honesty, fairness, and self-deprecation, we take a look back to see how we did. Each of our predictions for 2008 are listed below, along with an update on what actually happened.

1) Blu-Ray Wins the Format War
Yep, I'm going to pick a winner and it's going to be Blu-Ray. The one-two punch of Warner Brothers's move to Blu-Ray exclusivity (from its Switzerland-like neutrality of supporting both formats) later in 2008 and Apple's announcement that BD will be the only HD format available in its products will cement HD DVD's demise. And none too soon. I don't really care which wins...just make it snappy so that prices on players and media can plummet, thanks.

As of now, the end of 2008, it seems like forever since Blu-Ray trounced HD DVD in the format war. But back in early January, it was anyone's guess. But then, on February 18th, Toshiba officially threw in the towel. Interestingly, the Warner Bros. move I thought would happen eventually was actually announced the day after I posted my predictions. Of course, Apple hasn't yet released any products with any form of HD optical drive, so that bit wasn't exactly spot on. And I'm still waiting for my $99 Blu-Ray player. But, overall, this prediction looks pretty solid.

2) Google's Android Shakes Up Phone Industry
For a while now, the cellphone industry has been fairly static. A few smartphone and mobile OS makers have generally tussled for market share, but the overall industry has been pretty evolutionary. Google's entry will prove to be a watershed moment, with open source finally making a big impact in the handheld space (and no, I don't consider the Zaurus to be a big deal...sorry). Actual handsets running Android will be announced, if not available, before the end of 2008.

Depending on your threshold for "shaking up" the phone industry, I think most people would agree that Android made quite a splash in 2008 when the HTC G1 was launched on T-Mobile in the US on September 23rd. And we've already heard of around a dozen hardware makers signed on to release Android handsets. While handset sales still pale in comparison to the iPhone, 2009 looks like it just might be the year of the Android.

3) Palm Supports Android
This is more of a hope than an actual prediction, as I just don't know whether the egos at Palm will let the company do the right thing and admit that their next-generation OS (which has been under development since 2004!) will be a viable contender against Android (which has essentially the same technical details but scads more developer support). But, if cooler, more rational heads prevail at Palm, they'll announce that they're plans will be to produce at least one Android-based product (probably to come out sometime in 2012 :-/ ).

Ouch...I couldn't have been more wrong. While I still think Palm would have been smart to advance their product refurbishment by a full year (maybe more) by going with Android instead of continuing to pursue Nova, the company stuck to its original, go-it-alone plans. We'll see how well that pans out in 2009.

4) Microsoft's HD Photo Replacement for JPEG Image Standard Goes Nowhere
I'm not saying it's a bad idea technically; I'm just saying that JPEG is so entrenched now that replacing it would be about as reasonable a thing to try as would be replacing MP3 with any of the multitudes of better formats. JPEG, like MP3, isn't great, but it's adequate (at least for consumers) and ubiquitous. We'll still be saving all our photos in JPG (and maybe RAW) at the end of 2008...and likely long after that.

JPEG XR, the official name of Microsoft's HD Photo format, has generated essentially zero traction in the camera industry. Part of that is Microsoft's less-than-swift transition of JPEG XR into its quasi-open licensing portfolio, a move that will have to happen for camera makers and developers to trust that they won't be bitten by huge licensing fees in the future if they move their products away from RAW to JPEG XR.

5) Subnotes Will Explode in Availability (and Maybe Popularity)
I've always been a fan of tiny, sub-3-pound laptops, but I think 2008 will see a huge number of these clamshell devices come out of every corner of the consumer electronics space. The Asus EeePC and the OLPC XO Laptop are two examples. While Microsoft had a good idea in its UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) concept, the hardware was just never executed all that well. Frankly, I think a 7" touchscreen for Windows is just too difficult. But, going with the traditional clamshell design and using cheaper and/or smaller technologies (e.g., flash memory instead of a HDD) will bring us a raft of interesting (and some good) designs at <$500 price points. Bring 'em on! And I think we'll start to see a lot more people toting these things along that traditionally avoided laptops for whatever reason (cost, weight, etc.).

Bingo. If the shelves at Best Buy and Circuit City are any indication, these "netbooks" (the now-favored term...at least by everyone except Psion) have multiplied faster than Tribbles on Cialis. One glance at the huuuge list of netbooks over at small-notebooks.com is enough evidence to suggest that this prediction was spot on.

6) The GPS War Heats Up
TomTom, Nokia, and Garmin will exchange hostile fire over the GPS market due to convuluted agreements regarding mapping data as well as market-share for hardware. Products will continue to decline in price and improve in functionality, and >50% of cellphones will have some form of GPS functionality available on them. I guess that's two predictions in one...oh well.

I'm going to give myself this one. While we haven't heard that much more about the complex licensing agreements involving the big three, you need only walk through a Staples, Radio Shack, or Target to see a vast assortment of portable GPS units now available for under $150, most even having text-to-speech and other advanced functions. That's in direct comparison to late last year, when it was difficult to find a decent unit for under $300.

7) DRM Hits Choppy Water
2007 saw some movement away from DRM (digital rights management), especially in the music industry, but I expect we'll see similar initiatives in all areas of media. DRM has been proven again and again to be little more than an expensive technological boondoggle, and the leading innovators at the consumer media interface (e.g., Apple, Amazon, and Google) will make some headway into reversing the trend of more encumbrance for our media. The RIAA and MPAA will continue to fight it...they know how to do nothing else...but economic results will start to demonstrate that DRM actually hurts profitability.

Nope...we didn't hear much consistent with my prediction. While some markets moved towards offering DRM-free downloads, most are still heavily laden. And the RIAA actually reversed its strategy and is now no longer suing everyone and their mother for alleged downloading. So that's two different ways I was off on this one. Just goes to show that there's no telling what the content owners are thinking.

8) Major Tech Stocks End 2008 Up Significantly
These are bound to be wrong, but what the heck...nobody pays me for stock tips. I think Apple will end 2008 at 235, Google will be at 960, and Microsoft will finish the year at 50. As for other stocks, iRobot will end up at either 46 or 12 (can you tell I'm a cynical shareholder?), IBM will show tepid growth to 112, and RIM, hurt by the continued weak US dollar and facing increasing competition, will struggle to match its 1-year high of 127.

Uh, no. While I doubt many saw the massive downturn in stocks coming, tech stocks are decidedly not even slightly better off than most. Let's see how my specific price predictions held up:
  • Apple (AAPL): Predicted = 235; Actual = 86.29
  • Google (GOOG): Predicted = 960; Actual = 303.11
  • Microsoft (MSFT): Predicted = 50; Actual = 19.34
  • iRobot (IRBT): Predicted = 46 or 12; Actual = 8.95
  • IBM (IBM): Predicted = 112; Actual = 83.55
  • Research in Motion (RIMM): Predicted = 127; Actual = 38.77
In summary, do not ask me to manage your stock portfolio...you would be better served by setting your money on fire, as then you could at least stay warm for a while.

9) I Buy a New Laptop and Am Disappointed
My Panasonic CF-W2 is now three-and-a-half-years-old and I'm starting to cringe every time I turn it on (my luck with hard drives makes me skeptical of many living past their 4th birthday). I've been looking at possible replacements (e.g., Toshiba R500, Panasonic W7, maybe the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 or the rumored Apple subnote) and so far every single one has some significant trade-offs. So, I expect I'll get one and it will turn out to be not significantly better than my aging Toughbook. You'd think in nearly four years that two grand would buy something markedly superior. We'll see...

Unfortunately, I was right on this. The Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 I ended up purchasing in February is a good laptop...don't get me wrong. It's just not a heads-and-shoulders better laptop than my ToughBook was, and that's what I was expecting given the nearly 4 years newer technology and the $2500 it cost. And, given that I've already had to send it in for a repair (the power button broke off), I'm guessing the durability won't even come close to that of the Panasonic (which I still use regularly around the house).

10) Major Changes in Automotive Industry Announced
While the car business makes actual change only very slowly, we'll see some huge announcements in 2008 that will fundamentally change the future of that industry. Things like record oil prices, an increasing attention to sustainable/green technology, and significant ownership changes will substantially change the competitive landscape. Make no mistake; Toyota will continue its ascent and eclipse GM as #1 car-maker in the world. But, we will see several major announcements that will start affecting actual consumers in 2009 and beyond.

While I didn't get the stock predictions exactly right (OK, not even close), I think it's safe to say that the US automotive industry has been shaken up with major changes during 2008. We saw record oil prices (check!), more attention to green tech (check!), and the bottom dropping out of US consumption didn't leave them anywhere to go except to the Congress for help. And Toyota did indeed become the biggest carmaker in the world in 2008, just as predicted. Let's hope the Volt truly is something special...for all our sakes.

So, there you have it: our final score is 7 winners and 3 losers. I'll take it. :-)

In a couple of days, I'll be posting GearBits' predictions for 2009, so make sure you come back and check those out, m'kay?

Posted by Craig in Cars and Computing and Gaming and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Other and Phones and Photography and Popular Media and Science & Nature and Society / Politics and Technology and Wireless
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October 6, 2008

Why Are 5-year-old Posts So Interesting?

I'm confused.

I just looked at the entry page logs over the past few months and there's a weird pattern: 11 of the 12 most popular inbound pages on GearBits were posted in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

Nothing newer than 2006 makes the top 20 pages.

Why is that?

One possible explanation: GearBits is so far ahead of everyone that the rest of the world is just now catching up to stuff we talked about here years ago.

Nah.

Another possible explanation: I've reduced my output so much that, compared to 2003-2005, there isn't as much to link to. Hmm...it looks like GearBits had about 950 entries posted during its first 3 years, and then just 550 in the roughly 3 years since. So, that might explain some of the disparity, but surely not all.

A third possible explanation: I've strayed from gadgets into politics more and more and there's less interest in that. Fair enough. After the election, I promise to do less politics relative to the tech stuff.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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September 19, 2008

Google on Talk Like a Pirate Day

Seriously...how can you NOT like a company who does this on International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 28, 2008

Ubiquity: User-Generated Mashups On-the-Fly

If you've been hiding under a rock for the past 48 hours or so, you may not have head of Ubiquity, an amazing alpha release of what may be one day heralded as something that changed everything.

It's hard to explain, but basically, this browser plug-in allows the user to create mash-ups, or concoctions of web content, dynamically, as needed, through a simple, language-based interface. No programming, no obscure commands to remember.

Watch the demo video to see what I mean:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Then download it.

If you're not already a Firefox 3.x user, then get that first.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Technology
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August 22, 2008

You Know It's Bad When...

I was reading a news story about a stolen van, chased by cop cars, sped down a street only to find it closed by police due to an earlier hit-and-run at that location. The van veered onto a side street and the criminal was later captured.

The gem in this otherwise unnoteworthy story was one insightful reader's rather pithy comment:

"You know it's bad when crime scenes start to overlap each other."

Posted by Craig in Internet and Society / Politics
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August 20, 2008

Jott Leaves Beta, Requests Money

I recently started using the Jott service, (at www.jott.com) which, in a nutshell, gives you the ability to leave phone memos that are transcribed and sent to you via email or online (amongst other things).

Today, Jott left beta and has begun requiring users who want advanced functionality to pay monthly fees, per the table below:

The only aspect of Jott I personally found remotely useful was the phone-to-email linkage, as having to log into the Jott website to see my notes wasn't convenient enough. And, unfortunately (for both Jott and me), that isn't included in the free tier.

What I don't understand is why Jott doesn't include the phone-to-email service in its basic tier and just include ads in the emails it sends. That's how Yahoo! and other free email services generate a lot of revenue, so why can't Jott?

So, until they offer phone-to-email transcription in the free tier, I won't be using Jott. Maybe I'll change my mind in a couple of months, but since I never really integrated it into my regular "way of doing things," I doubt I'll miss it much.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 15, 2008

I'm Boycotting Gizmodo

Today, I left a comment critical of the editors (i.e., suggesting a port of Tetris on the iPhone wasn't really very news-worthy) and they disabled my comments. Real mature, guys.

If you can't take editorial criticism from your readers, you don't deserve readers.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 13, 2008

Innovative Personal and Group Productivity Tools

The variety of online tools to help us organize our lives, work with others, and generally get stuff done is just exploding. I've tried to capture some in the list below, but I'm hoping you, dear readers, will leave a comment naming some other tools you like to use.

Webmail
• Gmail - threaded conversations, search

Chat
• Google Talk (integrates conversations with Gmail)

Real-Time Group Collaboration
• Basecamp
• Campfire
• Stickam: group videoconferencing
• Skype: 1-on-1 tele- & videoconferencing, chat, file xfer

File-Sharing
• DropSend (1 GB max size)
• Wikisend (100 MB max size)

Wikis
• WetPaint

Document Sharing
• Google docs

Microblogging
• Twitter

Personal Time Management
• Remember the Milk - Web-based to-do list & task organizer with multi-media reminders

Social Bookmarking/Referral
• Delicious - "Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet."
• Digg - "Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web."

Note Management
• Evernote: Desktop + Web, with wicked OCR for images

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Other and Technology
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August 1, 2008

Blockbuster Testing New Movie Download Service

Here's a sneak-peek at Blockbuster's beta test of its new movie download service (I just received an invitation to try it out). Not thrilled about the movie they offered me, but hey, it's free.

So, it looks like you have 2 weeks to watch the movie, but only 24 hours to finish it once you start watching.

Apparently, you will also need a special player app (a remnant of the Movielink service Blockbuster acquired last year), as this helpful note indicated on the download page:

YOU NEED THE BLOCKBUSTER MOVIELINK PLAYER The BLOCKBUSTER Movielink player is a free program that allows you to download and watch movies. Click on the button below to start installing the player.

The MovieLink player looks to be using Microsoft WMV DRM and it requires the massively bloated .NET Framework 3.0 to be installed as well. Gee...thanks.

So, DRM-laden, non-portable (other than on a laptop), time-limited, doesn't work with Firefox, and can only be played on Windows PCs...I'm having a hard time figuring out why someone would subscribe to this download service instead of just getting DVDs via mail (something Blockbuster already does quite well).

Here's a screencap of the BB Movielink app UI:

Download speed so far is quite impressive...I am averaging 2100 kbps on this trial download.

I'll comment on the video quality after I've watched part of the movie, so stay tuned.

Update: Video quality is quite good...nearly DVD-quality, I'd say. Clearly not HD, but very watchable with minor, if any, artifacting. Download size is 1,243 MB for a 115-minute film.

I then tried copying the download file (a protected WMV file as expected) to another Windows machine on our network and, upon attempting to play in Windows Media Player, got this error:

So, there you have it. If you (a) watch movies only on one PC, (b) always finish them within 24 hours, (c) and have no desire to share or keep a copy for future watching, BB's new download service may be just what you've been looking for. For me, it's not a good fit at all, so we'll keep renting DVDs.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Movies & Books
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July 23, 2008

Star Wars in Real Life: Funny are Spike TVs Shorts

Posted by Craig in Internet and Movies & Books and Popular Media
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July 22, 2008

LifeSpoke is a New Startup with a Familiar Goal

A week-and-a-half ago, I spent all weekend (well, about 34 hours of it) in a habitrail of meeting rooms with about 100 other people trying to do something pretty incredible: invent, build, and launch a new Internet startup in less than three days.

The event, InOneWeekend 2008, was the inaugural entrepreneurial exercise by this new Cincinnati organization, which hopes to jump-start new-venture creation in the technology-based services space (i.e., dot-coms).

After lots of thinking and working and coding and sweating (not to mention eating fast food and swilling highly caffeinated beverages), our concept was outlined and mocked up to a degree that we thought the world should be invited to share in its evolution from beta concept to fully operational service.

I, er, we give you...LifeSpoke.

Go on...click the link and check it out...it won't hurt, I promise.

LifeSpoke is, and soon will be more of, a place to save, organize, and share all your personal memorabilia and life's memories (assuming they come in handy digital format, of course). With an innovative, patent-pending interface (that we're not quite ready to share yet) and a family-oriented content model (that includes loads of privacy, security, and convenience), we're pretty stoked at the idea that moms, dads, kids, grandparents, and close friends will finally have a place to share their intimate memories and most precious media in a rich new environment.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Actually, you're thinking "I'm hungry...I wonder what's in the fridge." Hey, focus...there's just a little more to read here. You were also thinking "But aren't there a bazillion other media-sharing websites out there, like YouTube, most with sharing features?" To that I say of course! But LifeSpoke is different and will be the best solution for families and close-knit groups of friends to share their memories. While those other sites are great for stuff like watching someone's dog ride a skateboard or having anonymous 15-year-olds "friend" you, LifeSpoke focuses on the relationships in your life that mean the most.

So...go sign up for one of the limited beta invitations at LifeSpoke.com and join us as we ride this idea to wherever it takes us. Should be a fun trip.

If you're interested in reading more about the InOneWeekend adventure we had, check out these stories:
• Official LifeSpoke press release (Marketwatch.com)
• Cincinnati Business Courier article (bizjournals.com)

Posted by Craig in Family and Industry and Internet and Movies & Books and Music & Audio and Other and Photography and Photos and Popular Media
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June 21, 2008

Share Large Files with Wikisend

Have an attachment too big to email? Wikisend makes it pretty easy to distribute files up to 100MB in size without a lot of hassle. And it's free, and free is good.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet
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June 5, 2008

Mitch's Hot/Not List

Mitch, seeing my Hot/Not list from yesterday, compiled his own, so here it is:

HOT

• iPod Touch - I tried the Archos 605 Wi-Fi first and its mediocrity makes the Touch that much more delightful. I really love well done user interfaces and this one is first rate. My only complaint is its picky eating habits when it comes to video formats.
  
• iMac - I waited longer than any other tech purchase to finally go with Apple's all-in-one desktop PC. I opted for the top of the line 3.06 GHz 24" model and have been completely blown away by it. So far I have found no flaws. It is stunning.
  
• High Gas Prices - Innovation rocks and if it takes $5/gallon gasoline to get us out of this oil addiction then I'm more than willing to pay my dues. Fewer SUVs and pickups, electric cars, solar energy, alternative fuels, more big butts on bicycles, less traffic congestion; I'm all for it. Let's drop our consumption by half and let OPEC drink their devalued crude.
  
• Synology - A NAS will soon be as ubiquitous on a home network as the router is today. The clever, feature-filled offerings from Synology are the best of the breed. I'll have a DS508 please!
  
• Subaru - Totally agree with Craig here. I've been
  in Imprezas now going on six years and I still feel like I'm cheating when I share the road with normal cars. Scoobys are fabulous.
  
• Ken Follett's Historical Novels - "The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End" are two of my favorite books of all time and I just took them in this Spring. I listened to both on my iPod (over 40 hours each) after downloading them from Audible and they made a month of 1000 mile weekly commutes totally enjoyable. Masterful stuff.
  
• CrossFit - I was in good shape 20 years ago and at 44 I can wipe the floor with my 24 year old self (if that was possible). I've been CrossFitting for almost a year now and some of the things I can do now would have seemed outlandish back then.

NOT

• General Motors - If you Google dinosaur, out of touch, lethargic, and unimaginative you should pull up GM's home page. I used to be a fan, but they have been disappointing me for 25 years now and don't seem to be planning any big changes. The sooner they finish themselves off, the better off we'll be.
  
• Labor Unions - Working in the industrial world I cross paths with unions
  of all sorts way more than I would like. I completely understand why our manufacturing sector is fleeing to other countries. I have never seen such a lazy, selfish, destructive, regressive bunch of people in my life. They can't all be like that, but the ones I've met surely are.
  
• Sheeple-Filled Corporate IT Departments - My 26,000 strong corporation is going to switch to Vista because they don't want to be left with no anti-virus support for their XP platform. Goodbye nice warm frying pan and hello fire.
  
• Cable/Satellite TV - I'm SO tired of paying $80 a month for a bunch of
  garbage that I would never watch even if I had the time. It won't be long until I cut that cord and start rolling my own TV. If I could just decide which way I want to do it!
  
• Global Markets - I realize that even the lowliest trader in/on most investment banks/trading floors/commodities exchanges is smarter than I am, but I would really love to see them use those brains rather than run with every emotion that riffles through the world markets. Do investors even pay attention to P/E ratios or supply and demand or is it all about what the hot analyst is saying or the sheeple are doing?

Posted by Craig in Cars and Computing and Health & Medicine and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Movies & Books and Music & Audio and Popular Media and Science & Nature and Society / Politics and Technology and Wireless
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June 4, 2008

GearBits' First Hot/Not List

I've been remiss on posting, so I thought I'd assemble a whole mess of opinions in one place. Over the past several weeks or so, I've come to appreciate some things/companies and have come to be disappointed in others. So, here's a quick run-down:

HOT

• Shutterfly - always gets me great-looking prints/books in a timely manner at low prices.
  
• Google - just keeps rolling out the innovative, useful, and well-designed web apps
  
• Subaru - they just make terrific cars...durable, high-performing, and affordable
  
• Amazon.com - with reasonably good, if not great, prices, excellent customer service, and a stellar website, what's not to like?
  
• Subnotes - The sudden rash of low-power, low-weight, cheap laptops coming out (which I predicted would happen back at the beginning of the year) is a joy to behold...portable computing for everyone!
  
• NPR - Always informative, enjoyable, and worth supporting.
  
• Logitech Cordless Presenter - Have had it for two years now, am still on the first set of AAA batteries, it has taken tons of abuse, and it still works perfectly. Amazing!
  
• Private Electric Car Companies - It's as if we're on the cusp of another time like the 1920's, when every town seemed to have a local car manufacturer, except now they're all electric, hybrid, or alterna-fuel vehicles (a very good thing).

NOT

• Archos - if my 605 Wi-Fi completely hangs on me one more time, I swear I'm going to chuck it off an overpass (I'll post more about this later)
  
• Palm - if my Treo 700p resets on me one more time, I swear I'm going to chuck...aw, who am I kidding? It'll probably reset before I finish this post. C'mon Android...fill this void in my gadget-hoarding soul, will you?
  
• Megalomaniacal Corporate IT Departments - I hope the day comes soon when we can definitively show that the TCO actually improves when you let corporate tech users select their own personal devices.
  
• Flash memory format proliferation - I mean, seriously, do we really need SD, MiniSD, and MicroSD? It's getting as bad as the dang Memory Stick (and that's saying something).
  
• Download-only music stores - I may be in the minority, but I just don't like the DRM associated with most online music stores. And even without the DRM, the cost seems too much if I'm not getting permanent physical media, liner notes/art, etc. Call me old school if you like...go ahead, it only hurts a little.
  
• Intel's Marketing department - Seriously, guys, could you make keeping track of your product lines any more difficult and confusing?
  
• Getting older - I am no longer the kid I still think of myself as being.
  

So what are your Hot and Not?

Posted by Craig in Cars and Computing and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Phones and Popular Media and Technology and Wireless
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May 18, 2008

Some Twitter Resources

• Twitter: Why It's So Great And How To Effectively Use It (some general guidelines and useful tips)

• Whither Twitter? (a BusinessWeek slideshow on the history (and future?) of Twitter)

• Why Twitter Matters by Steve Baker (based on a bunch of tweets documented in #bwstory)

• Wikipedia entry

• CrowdStatus (organize your Twitter followers into crowds/groups for easier monitoring)

Posted by Craig in Internet
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May 1, 2008

Infochaining the Social Net for Personal Productivity

Yesterday at lunch I demonstrated for a colleague a rather ridiculous, Rube Goldbergian reminder mechanism consisting of Web 2.0 information management and communication tools.

I called Jott and told it to contact Sandy with a message to feed the parking meter in 30 minutes. A half hour later, Sandy sent my Twitter account a direct message, which ended up arriving to my phone via text message. I also had an email message waiting for me, just in case.

Sure, it's absurd to do something like that for a task so trivial as reminding yourself to refresh a parking meter, but it does demonstrate how amazingly interconnected these mobile/web tools are becoming.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Technology
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April 28, 2008

Twitter

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm now on Twitter [CRA1G]...feel free to add me to your follow list.

p.s., I've added a Twitter feed to the menu-bar (on the right side of GearBits' main page), but I'm not yet sure it'll be a permanent addition.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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Consume or Produce: Reflections on an Earlier Post

Eugenio just read one of Clay Shirky's recent articles, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, and said it reminded him of a piece I posted here a little over three years ago:

The Great Decision: Consume or Produce
January 29, 2005

Every time I sit down at a PC and every time I walk into my office at work, I'm struck with a fundamental decision: consume or produce.

I'm talking about information. Any minute can be reasonably and justifiably spent either consuming information, such as reading research papers, news sites, emails, blogs, etc., or producing new information, such as writing my own papers, putting up blog entries, leaving comments on blogs (hint, hint), composing an email, and so on.

Some people are very content to be primarily, if not entirely, consumers. They feel little or no need to share their knowledege, opinions, and thoughts with others. Some are more biased in the opposite direction, churning out an unending stream of content. ...

Read the entire post

What's particularly serendipitous about Eugenio's note is that I recently signed up for Twitter and have been trying to figure out it can be the most useful as a communication tool. Twitter, as you likely know, is much more about production than consumption -- it makes creating and distributing tiny bits of information almost frictionless, thereby further increasing the load on us as consumers.

This is still an issue I struggle with every day. I doubt I'll ever resolve it.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Other and Popular Media and Society / Politics
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April 23, 2008

U-verse multicasting collides with ISPs

I am no network expert, but I've dabbled in streaming content over computer networks at work. So I find it interesting to know how the various cable/phone/satellite companies get their digital goodness delivered to my house. Unique solutions, like this AT&T solution, pique my curiosity.

This wikipedia article summarizes the architecture:

Unlike traditional offerings from U.S. cable companies, video is delivered over IP from the head end to the consumer's set-top box. Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single stream (channel) to be sent to any number of recipients.

Multicasting rocks. This BBC radio page sums it up pretty well:

It's similar to Broadcast. If you think about your Digital Radio it's tuned into a specific station, it picks up data that has an identifier saying 'this is for the station you want', we just have to put one copy of the station on transmitters. Whereas Unicast is a lot more like us having to call each listener on the phone and play-back the station you request.

In the past I've mentioned to Craig that if my ISPs finally support multicasting to my home, then radio stations, like woxy, wouldn't have to pay a gazillion dollars for their internet bandwidth.

Multicasting isn't without it's share of complexities, of course. The U-verse details came to my attention when Comcast reportedly stated problems with U-verse multicasting traffic spilling out onto their network.

Posted by Bob in Internet
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April 20, 2008

Have Fun Tweaking Your Gmail Email Address

I was perusing the Official Gmail Blog and found this gem of a tip: Google ignores periods and anything after a + in your email address, so you can use these characters to provide yourself with infinite custom email addresses that all route to your current account. Here's what they say:

• Append a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.

• Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn't recognize periods as characters in addresses -- we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com.

Read the whole post.

So, spammers, please send me a note at craig.froehle+i.hope.you.die@gmail.com ;-)

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 3, 2008

In Defense of Email

Over at Gizmodo, I came across this entry musing about the pervasiveness of text messaging (apparently not written by a European):

"...I began to wonder about the phenomenon of text messaging as a whole. Sometimes it seems that it would make more sense to call or send an email, but that crap is for old people."

Perhaps I'm mistaken in believing the merits of email should be obvious and that nobody can honestly believe that texting is superior for all, or even most, occasions. So, I thought I'd put together a brief table outlining what I consider the advantages of each technology:

	Text Messaging	Email	Comments
Synchronicity (absence of delay between send and receive)	High Near-instantaneous delivery	Moderate Delivery can be delayed	A clear advantage for texting
Convenience	High Included in all phones	Moderate Increasingly common	Not as much of a difference as even a year ago
Ease-of-Use	High	High	Good mobile email clients are no harder to use than most Texting interfaces
Flexibility	Low 160-character limit	High What can't email do?	Attachments, long messages, and rich text are all things email does easily but that texting doesn't do well, if at all
Archiving	Low no long-term storage	High email archives are forever	Some messages you don't care about referencing in the future, but can you be sure when you send it that you won't care?
Cost	High $0.10+ apiece when not bought in bulk	Low Free with any Internet service	Some may find this contentious, but I pay extra for texting on my cellular account whereas email is just part of my overall Internet connectivity fee

I think the biggest drawback I see to texting is the whole temporal retention issue. I rely extensively on my ability to search through my emails, both professional and personal, sometimes going back years to look up something. In contrast, I don't know anyone who saves their text messages for even more than a few months. I asked a classful of college seniors how long they kept text messages on their phones. Less than 10% keep them longer than a week!

Do I txt? Yep, everyday, but I still use email a lot more. I'm not going to pull the "age = wisdom" card and claim that "old people" (per the Gizmodo story) use email more because they're wiser (I'm not even sure I'd be considered "old"), but my perception is that email offers a lot of advantages that texting just can't match right now.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Phones and Society / Politics and Technology
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April 1, 2008

Bringing Social to the Desktop: The Buddy Bar

The sheer power of social computing had me wondering how I could best capture some of these new technologies in my everyday life. What occurred to me was that I spend a lot of time sharing: links, stories, photos, videos, etc. Sure, there are lots of tools for sharing these days. Sites like Digg and the sharing feature in Google Reader are just two examples.

But those tools rely on my friends/colleagues to use those same tools, go to those sites, or interface with them in some other new way. No, what I'd really like is a sharing interface that spans multiple media and methods. My idea for that is...the Buddy Bar:

Basically, the Buddy Bar combines (some of) the functionality of an IM client, an email client, a photo/document-uploader app, and blog interface. Here's how I envision it working:

1) You add some friends to your Buddy Bar. You include their name and all contact info you have for them: phone number(s), email address(es), IM/Twitter IDs, and so forth.

2) Simply clicking on a friend opens up an IM dialog. Buddy Bar would be service agnostic, so it would use whatever IM service your friend used.

3) Drag and drop a URL onto your friend's avatar would send it to your friend via one of the predetermined methods you set up for him/her (e.g., email, IM, etc.).

4) Dragging and dropping a file would generate a pull-down menu for you to send that file via one of the various methods you set up for that friend. For example, drop a JPG and the menu might include
• Email
• Email
• IM
• MMS
• Flickr
• Webify*

*Webify could be to upload it to a web space under your control and send your friend a URL to that location.

Drop a Word file and you might get a different set of options:
• Email
• Email
• IM
• Google Docs
• Webify*

5) Select some text from a webpage or document and drag that over to your friend's avatar and you'd get a similar drop-down for methods of delivery.

6) Drop something big on their avatar (e.g., a 200MB home movie file) and it could initiate a Torrent invitation to your friend.

7) Right-click a friend and you get options for audio/video chat, invite to room, ping, and other options.

You get the idea. Basically, it would be an automator for distributing content and managing communication with those in your private social network. I think it could also be very handy for people who work in a distributed environment and constantly need to share info (extra functionality could be built in if it was being used in an intranet setting).

One thing Bob mentioned is the chance for abuse. "Stop sending me this crap!" was his actual comment, IIRC. So, you'd have to have some sort of content/contact moderation much like you have in good IM clients, but with better discrimination based on the type of content being offered.

Anyway, I'd love to see something like this developed. Anyone know of an app/service that accomplishes even most of this?

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Society / Politics
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March 31, 2008

Google Docs Now Goes With You Offline

Google's wonderful Docs suite (browser-based alternatives to the core Microsoft Office apps) now lets you work on your documents while offline.

Check out this Google Docs Blog entry and the little video. It looks pretty easy...can't wait to try it out.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Technology
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March 17, 2008

Hello Verizon, may I introduce you to GPL?

I'm a techie that spends most of my days in the the software world. I sometimes deal with litigation concerns. So this little news update caught my eye, "Verizon settles open source software lawsuit." It seems that a hardware device manufacturer, Actiontec, supplies a FiOS router to Verizon and the device had shipped with some code that it didn't properly license. The code in question was some software, called BusyBox, which is released under an open source license (in this case, GPLv2.)

I actually have an Actiontec FiOS router in my house.

Except for the flaky wireless access point, it does a great job serving up my FiOS internet with phenomenal uptime. I do find myself disappointed that the Actiontec folks didn't concern themselves with the rules of open source.

I haven't dug deep enough to know if Actiontec was sued as well, but they will have to play by the rules and post their own code online. Now, perhaps, I can add some neat features to my Actiontec router at home!

It is interesting how Verizon got caught in the mix here. Not that I know what happened, but you might assume that they picked a hardware supplier and didn't fully check out the suppliers development processes. It almost makes me feel sorry for Verizon.

I'll admit that the fact that I like my FiOS internet makes me more than a bit subjective in this case. :)

If you didn't know, the BusyBox developers are a smart bunch. Their little utility helps you turn some ordinary hardware devices into an interactive computer. (I've recently run BusyBox on a DNS-323 network storage device to improve its ftp support.) It supports a wide range of useful unix commands on a command prompt (for you Windows folks out there, imagine being able to open a Windows command prompt or "dos box" on you wireless router and do a dir command.)

Posted by Bob in Computing and Industry and Internet
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March 8, 2008

What Hot Wheels Should Do with the Web

My daughter and I decided that we wanted to play cars. She was there in her fairy princess outfit running a Hot Wheels car along the floor and it occurred to me that we didn't have any track! When I was a kid (in the 70s), Hot Wheels track was about as ubiquitous as Lego pieces and army men, so it seemed imperative that we go procure some track immediately.

So, we went out to the store and I was shocked and dismayed at how Hot Wheels has devolved over the years. Sure, they offered several track kits, but none of them actually had much track. They had these complicated, automated moving ramps and claw things that picked up the cars and smacked them into each other. The most track I could find in any set was a mere 14 feet! Plus, they didn't sell just track...the only way to get some was to buy one of these kits.

This pales in comparison to how it used to be, when you were able to buy sets with tons of track AND you were also able to purchase separate "Track Packs" of 10-20 pieces and those little purple connectors.

So, I checked eBay. Of course, tons of people were selling old kits like what I remembered. The problem was (a) they were charging an arm and a leg for them (one guy wanted $40 for 40 feet of track), and (b) the shipping charges were even worse (another $20 for UPS ground?!). I'm sorry, but $60 for some Hot Wheels track is just ridiculous.

So, I had an epiphany. Hot Wheels should harness the power of the web to recapture people's imaginations. Currently, the only interactive feature Hot Wheels has is an online personalized database of all the cars you've collected. Whee. No, what I have in mind is a bit more invigorating:

The Hot Wheels Track Set Online Design Studio

Imagine a browser-based tool that lets you assemble parts of track sets that Hot Wheels sells into your own custom track setup. You could drag and drop all the 2-foot pieces you want, add a couple of 90-degree banked curves, toss in an inline accelerator, put in a full loop, and then reconnect back to where you started. The system would automagically calculate all the connectors you need and give you a price quote. Then, if you decided to purchase it, Hot Wheels would assemble your custom package and ship it straight to you.

An interesting extension of this would be if you could take advantage of some of today's gaming technology and actually test out different configurations by running virtual cars through your newly designed track. Finding out that you need a bit more elevation drop (and thus more track) for your design to work would be quite useful to ensure that people aren't disappointed by what they've designed. Plus, Hot Wheels could give each person a list of cars they own that is compatible with the track they've designed. Furthermore, imagine if you could share the tracks you've designed with other people; think Cafe Press for Hot Wheels.

I don't know about you, but I think this would rock. With all the quality issues Mattel has had recently, they're going to have to differentiate themselves on some other dimension, and offering customized Hot Wheels track sets might be just the ticket. Plus, think how much added press and brand-building could be accomplished by an online tool like this. Seems like a decent idea to me.

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet
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March 2, 2008

WikiHow: Great Place for Everyday Tips

I just stumbled upon a site that looks like it's been around forever (how'd I miss it?): WikiHow. It bills itself as "The How-To Manual that You Can Edit."

My first encounter with WikiHow -- the random link that introduced me to the site -- was this entry: How to Organize Empty Food Storage Containers and Lids It basically recommends the same sort of system we've adopted here at our house, but gives pictures and step-by-step instructions. Very nice!

So, anyway, check it out and see what new stuff you learn. And then give some of your knowledge back by editing it.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 15, 2008

Discovery Channel's Dinosaur Viewer is Excellent

The Discovery Channel's website continues to have just awesome stuff. If you're a dinosaur fanatic as I was as a kid (OK, still am), then you'll get instant thrills out of their Dinosaur Planet "Dino Viewer"

It offers everything from profiles to 3-D rotating views to size comparisons (making it simple to tell just how easy it would have been for any given dino to eat or squish you) to rendered animations of the animals in motion (example shown) and all sorts of other nifty info. If you have little kids, I guarantee they'll get a kick out of this.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Science & Nature
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February 14, 2008

I'm Going to Miss the 'Old' Web

I was reading a bit on the Discovery Channel website this morning and one of their links took me to a webpage hosted by the US National Park Service. The contrast between the highly professional Discovery Channel webpage and the old-fashioned page on the NPS.gov website just astounded me. Take a look:

Screen capture of the Discovery Channel webpage

Screen capture of the NPS.gov webpage

That NPS webpage is so plain and fundamental -- so old-fashioned -- it gave me a real sense of nostalgia. And we're only talking about memories from a decade or so ago!

I was introduced to the World Wide Web back in August of 1994 when a friend (hi, Mitch!) and I attended a PC User's Group meeting (we weren't members) that was giving a live demo of this new branch of the Internet (I'd used email and Gopher before in school, but nothing on the WWW). The pages were so alive and rich, I remember thinking at the time. This NPS page looks exactly like the WWW that teemed and thrived in those initial years; early HTML standards hand-coded with text editors. How simple, how quick-loading! Of course, then we moved into the whole flaming, spinning logo era and innocence was lost.

Anyway, pardon my reminiscing. I thought I'd post these screen caps because in a few years, it will be more and more difficult to stumble across a page that has none of the pretense/sophistication that more contemporary tools like Javascript and CSS enable.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 5, 2008

Competition is Good...Unless It's Not

Microsoft's recent play for Yahoo!, an effort to advance its online advertising market share and more effectively dominate the entire world compete with Google, got me thinking back a bit to those interesting days in the late 90s when Microsoft was having to defend its monopoly status in the operating system market. A couple of graphs and quotes might be helpful, here.

So, according to Microsoft, the market on the left is just fine and doesn't need any intervention, whereas the market on the right has no compelling "number two competitor" and would benefit from some consolidation.

I think that's called wanting to eat your cake and have it at the same time.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Industry and Internet
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January 4, 2008

GearBits' Predictions for 2008

As has become customary around the changing of the calendar, here are GearBits' official predictions for 2008.

1) Blu-Ray Wins the Format War
Yep, I'm going to pick a winner and it's going to be Blu-Ray. The one-two punch of Warner Brothers's move to Blu-Ray exclusivity (from its Switzerland-like neutrality of supporting both formats) later in 2008 and Apple's announcement that BD will be the only HD format available in its products will cement HD DVD's demise. And none too soon. I don't really care which wins...just make it snappy so that prices on players and media can plummet, thanks.

2) Google's Android Shakes Up Phone Industry
For a while now, the cellphone industry has been fairly static. A few smartphone and mobile OS makers have generally tussled for market share, but the overall industry has been pretty evolutionary. Google's entry will prove to be a watershed moment, with open source finally making a big impact in the handheld space (and no, I don't consider the Zaurus to be a big deal...sorry). Actual handsets running Android will be announced, if not available, before the end of 2008.

3) Palm Supports Android
This is more of a hope than an actual prediction, as I just don't know whether the egos at Palm will let the company do the right thing and admit that their next-generation OS (which has been under development since 2004!) will be a viable contender against Android (which has essentially the same technical details but scads more developer support). But, if cooler, more rational heads prevail at Palm, they'll announce that they're plans will be to produce at least one Android-based product (probably to come out sometime in 2012 :-/ ).

4) Microsoft's HD Photo Replacement for JPEG Image Standard Goes Nowhere
I'm not saying it's a bad idea technically; I'm just saying that JPEG is so entrenched now that replacing it would be about as reasonable a thing to try as would be replacing MP3 with any of the multitudes of better formats. JPEG, like MP3, isn't great, but it's adequate (at least for consumers) and ubiquitous. We'll still be saving all our photos in JPG (and maybe RAW) at the end of 2008...and likely long after that.

5) Subnotes Will Explode in Availability (and Maybe Popularity)
I've always been a fan of tiny, sub-3-pound laptops, but I think 2008 will see a huge number of these clamshell devices come out of every corner of the consumer electronics space. The Asus EeePC and the OLPC XO Laptop are two examples. While Microsoft had a good idea in its UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) concept, the hardware was just never executed all that well. Frankly, I think a 7" touchscreen for Windows is just too difficult. But, going with the traditional clamshell design and using cheaper and/or smaller technologies (e.g., flash memory instead of a HDD) will bring us a raft of interesting (and some good) designs at <$500 price points. Bring 'em on! And I think we'll start to see a lot more people toting these things along that traditionally avoided laptops for whatever reason (cost, weight, etc.).

6) The GPS War Heats Up
TomTom, Nokia, and Garmin will exchange hostile fire over the GPS market due to convuluted agreements regarding mapping data as well as market-share for hardware. Products will continue to decline in price and improve in functionality, and >50% of cellphones will have some form of GPS functionality available on them. I guess that's two predictions in one...oh well.

7) DRM Hits Choppy Water
2007 saw some movement away from DRM (digital rights management), especially in the music industry, but I expect we'll see similar initiatives in all areas of media. DRM has been proven again and again to be little more than an expensive technological boondoggle, and the leading innovators at the consumer media interface (e.g., Apple, Amazon, and Google) will make some headway into reversing the trend of more encumbrance for our media. The RIAA and MPAA will continue to fight it...they know how to do nothing else...but economic results will start to demonstrate that DRM actually hurts profitability.

8) Major Tech Stocks End 2008 Up Significantly
These are bound to be wrong, but what the heck...nobody pays me for stock tips. I think Apple will end 2008 at 235, Google will be at 960, and Microsoft will finish the year at 50. As for other stocks, iRobot will end up at either 46 or 12 (can you tell I'm a cynical shareholder?), IBM will show tepid growth to 112, and RIM, hurt by the continued weak US dollar and facing increasing competition, will struggle to match its 1-year high of 127.

9) I Buy a New Laptop and Am Disappointed
My Panasonic CF-W2 is now three-and-a-half-years-old and I'm starting to cringe every time I turn it on (my luck with hard drives makes me skeptical of many living past their 4th birthday). I've been looking at possible replacements (e.g., Toshiba R500, Panasonic W7, maybe the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 or the rumored Apple subnote) and so far every single one has some significant trade-offs. So, I expect I'll get one and it will turn out to be not significantly better than my aging Toughbook. You'd think in nearly four years that two grand would buy something markedly superior. We'll see...

10) Major Changes in Automotive Industry Announced
While the car business makes actual change only very slowly, we'll see some huge announcements in 2008 that will fundamentally change the future of that industry. Things like record oil prices, an increasing attention to sustainable/green technology, and significant ownership changes will substantially change the competitive landscape. Make no mistake; Toyota will continue its ascent and eclipse GM as #1 car-maker in the world. But, we will see several major announcements that will start affecting actual consumers in 2009 and beyond.

So, I'll check back in about 12 months to see how I fared. In the meantime, what do you think will happen?

Posted by Craig in Computing and Gaming and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Other and Phones and Photography and Popular Media and Science & Nature and Society / Politics and Technology and Wireless
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December 28, 2007

Most Popular Media on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Wired has an interesting article that shows the media (recording artists, TV shows, and movies) most popular on the P2P networks (i.e., BitTorent). I was surprised...surprised by (a) two of my favorite shows were on the list, and (b) I'd heard of nearly nothing on the music list. I guess aging has its consequences, eh?

Anyway, here are the lists (for the full details, check out the Wired story):

Top Songs of 2007
1. Shop Boyz - "Party Like A Rock Star"
2. Akon - "I Wanna Luv U"
3. Sean Kingston - "Beautiful Girls"
4. Mims - "This Is Why I'm Hot"
5. Akon - "Don't Matter"
6. T-Pain - "Bartender"
7. Soulja Boy - "Crank Dat Soulja Boy"
8. Justin Timberlake - "My Love"
9. DJ Unk - "Walk It Out"
10. Jim Jones - "We Fly High"

Top Music Artists of 2007
1. T.I.
2. T-Pain
3. Akon
4. 50 Cent
5. R. Kelly
6. Lil Wayne
7. Justin Timberlake
8. Fergie
9. Ludacris
10. Snoop Dogg

Top Movies of 2007
1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
4. Ratatouille
5. Superbad
6. Beowulf
7. Transformers
8. American Gangster
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Stardust

Top TV Shows of 2007
1. Heroes
2. Prison Break
3. Top Gear
4. Smallville
5. Desperate Housewives
6. House, M.D.
7. Lost
8. Grey's Anatomy
9. 24
10. Dexter

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet and Movies & Books and Music & Audio and Popular Media and Society / Politics
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December 18, 2007

2007 Google Zeitgeist is Up

Google's end-of-year web search summary has been posted. Check it out.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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October 24, 2007

Gmail Gets Major Storage Space Increase

I just noticed that Google has given me a gift of about 1500 additional MB of Gmail storage. Yesterday, I had ~2800 MB. Here's part of a screenshot:

Might this have anything to do with their recent addition of IMAP service? Hmm...

Posted by Craig in Internet
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September 18, 2007

The Original Emoticon :-) Turns 25

CNN has an interesting story on the origins of the smiley emoticon :-) that is now ubiquitous.

However, I'm still waiting on Strunk & White to nail down how it should get used with punctuation. ;-)

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Society / Politics and Technology
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July 5, 2007

Sick of Messing with Wi-Fi at Home? Consider a Wired Network

For the past four years, I've relied on 802.11g Wi-Fi to get our router's Internet connection up to the second floor office where this web-server and our main PC both live. When we first moved into this house, I had come to the conclusion that there was no way I could route Ethernet cable from the first to the second floor (and across the width of the house) without doing something that She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed would find objectionable.

So, after trying out three routers and countless Wi-Fi adapters looking for adequate range, reliability, and speed, I sunk into the belief that I was destined to put up with wildly fluctuating network speeds (often bouncing between 1 and 8 mbps realized throughput), intermittent connectivity loss (e.g., temporary wireless interference), and a generally unsatisfactory level of network performance.

Then, for no good reason, last week I revisited the idea of having an electrician run Cat-6 from where our router is to the upstairs office. I had always assumed it was prohibitively expensive, but figured getting an estimate couldn't hurt.

Wow! I was simply amazed when the job was done and I was no poorer than had I bought a new 802.11n router and PCI adapter for one computer. For a couple hundred dollars, we now have Gigabit Ethernet connecting our entire network. Granted, the Internet connection still trundles along at 3 mbps, but file transfers within the network (e.g., LAN backups and media copying) are blindingly fast.

So, if you're sick of mucking around with Wi-Fi for networking desktop PCs and other devices that don't move around a lot within your home, consider having an electrician give you an estimate on running some Ethernet cable. You may be surprised at how cheap it actually is (might be less expensive than buying some faster Wi-Fi gear and it's a LOT faster, reliable, and more secure). Make sure to get Cat-6 cable installed so you can be sure to take advantage of the new networking standards coming down the pike in a few years. You don't want to have to go about replacing wire inside your walls, and the better cable is only a few cents a foot more expensive (ours was 30 cents a foot).

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Technology and Wireless
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April 3, 2007

The Futurist a New and Terrific Indie Music Blog

WOXY.com, that phoenix of Internet radio stations, recently launched The Futurist, a top-drawer indie/alternative music industry blog.

What separates The Futurist from the other entries in the music blogosphere is that it uniquely combines the insights of experienced DJs and music professionals with the level independence unmatched by professional blogs hindered by corporate oversight (such as one might have at a ClearChannel). Most music blogs are either the efforts of individuals, so they're uneven and/or highly biased, or are corporate efforts, so are subject to the whims of accountants, lawyers, and advertising/marketing initiatives. The Futurist so far appears to be none of those.

So, go check it out:

Posted by Craig in Internet and Music & Audio
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March 11, 2007

Browser Shares at GearBits.com: Firefox is HUGE

I just checked the Browser Share figures for GearBits (and my personal site, craigfroehle.com, which makes up a teensy fraction of all logged traffic) over the past month and wow! At roughly a quarter of all visitors to GearBits, Firefox's figures are enormous here, especially when combined with Safari, compared to larger averages (some of which, for example, put IE still at 80% or more overall share). GearBits' readers must be a rather intelligent group! :-)

Posted by Craig in Computing and Industry and Internet
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January 19, 2007

The Death of eBay

It seems that 2007 may be the year eBay's undisputed reign as king of the secondary market begins to crumble.

Until recently, I was a fairly satisfied eBay user. Like many, I found their fees to border on the usurious, but since transactions nearly always went through and the most buyers were found there (as any economist will tell you, the bigger the pool of buyers, the better the seller's price will be), I continued to sell things there. Not a lot...a printer here and an antique something-or-other there...maybe 40 items over 8 years.

But recently, as I've begun documenting in another post, scammers are starting to make it nearly impossible to execute a high-value transaction on eBay. Electronics, especially, seem targeted by scam artists who, once they win an auction, ask you to ship it to Nigeria or some other suspicious destination.

What eBay clearly needs is a better authentication system and a way for sellers to screen their bidders more effectively. But, I seriously doubt eBay will do that. Despite charging sellers a final value fee, which is essentially taking a commission on the sale, eBay is quite clear that it wants nothing to do with the actual transaction that follows the sale. Sure, it will engage its PayPal subsidiary to help transfer funds, but given that PayPal, or PayPal phishing attempts, are now an effective tool for these same scammers, that doesn't help much.

So, I predict that something will arise fairly soon as a viable competitor for eBay. Let's hope it is better at building secure communities.

Update (3/3/07): MSNBC has an interesting article detailing the recent upsurge in eBay scams and how little the company seems to be able to do about it. I think we're witnessing one of the biggest, fastest devastations of an industry leader ever.

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet
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January 2, 2007

GearBits' Predictions for 2007

As per tradition (OK, for at least the third time), here are my predictions for the upcoming year, 2007:

1) Apple's iPod continues PMP domination
Thought I'd start off with a safe one. Yep, I don't think too many would argue that the iPod is poised to remain the de facto standard in portable media players. Given that the #1 seller in Amazon's electronics category during the 2006 holiday season was the iPod by a significant margin, and given that accessories for all other PMPs combined amount to about 1/100th of what's available for the iPod, there's really no doubt that newcomers will have a hard time challenging the king, despite any technical advantages.

2) 802.11n gets ratified and gear floods to market
802.11n, the next generation of that family of wireless networking standards, has been forever in getting off the ground. 2007 should see its final certification, opening the gates to loads of networking hardware compliant to the new standard.

3) Film cameras all but disappear from electronics stores
While you'll still be able to find cheap disposables, it will become nearly impossible to find any mainstream electronics retailer selling more than one or two token models. $99 digital cameras from recognizable brands will become commonplace.

4) Nintendo tops Sony and Microsoft as gaming overlord
Not a big leap here, but Nintendo, through its Wii and DS lines, will lead all brands in game unit sales in 2007. Sony will retain the crown of technological leader (and work though its Blu-Ray production issues), and Microsoft will continue to play the spoiler in the industry.

5) TiVo is acquired
If this prediction was good enough to be wrong in 2006, then it's good enough for 2007 as well.

6) Google launches the GooglePhone
Google, in partnership with some handheld maker and/or carrier, will launch a branded QWERTY smartphone that natively runs its main offerings (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Talk, etc.). Maybe I'm predicting this purely out of desire -- I so want such a device -- but I do think it will happen eventually.

7) eBay sells Skype
You heard it here first. Or maybe you didn't. Either way, this is a long-shot prediction, but I think Meg Whitman is smart enough to realize that Skype is worth more to eBay when it's owned by somebody else.

8) Palm brings Jeff Hawkins back to reinvent Treo line
The current Treo line is getting a bit long in the tooth (not to mention the now-ancient Palm OS, which Palm just repurchased the permanent rights to) and its sales are likely getting pinched by slimmer, more aesthetically appealing (while not as functional, but a lot of people by phones based on looks...kind of like how they pick boy/girlfriends in college) offerings from Motorola and others. So, since Palm doesn't seem capable of designing anything anyone wants to buy on its own, the company will announce that Jeff Hawkins is coming back to help lead the development of the next-generation Treo. And many will ask, "What took you so long?"

9) HD-DVD and Blu-Ray persist; nobody cares
More devices will be available at cheaper prices, but sales of both players and media will continue to be tepid. Not only is renting becoming the dominant mode of DVD acquisition, but the current quality of standard dual-layer DVDs is perfectly adequate for 99% of the population. Maybe in a few years, the proliferating 1080p sets will drive people to want high-def movies, but it won't be as rapid an adoption rate as the original DVD was.

10) Robots become sentient, destroy all of humanity
On a related note, iRobot's stock price will double in 2007 as a result of strong sales and the announcement that a first-gen AI will take over as President and CEO.

Have a good year, everyone!

Posted by Craig in Computing and Gaming and Home A/V and Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Phones and Photography and Society / Politics and Technology
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January 1, 2007

Revisiting My Predictions for 2006

Since I made a series of predictions for 2006, I thought I'd go back and see how many actually came true.

1) Google Launches All-in-One Suite
I've been expecting this for some time, as have other folks, I'm sure, but I think 2006 will definitely see this announcement. Google will, I predict, launch a converged, multi-purpose, browser-based work environment -- lord knows what it'll be called, maybe GoogleDesk or something like that. Anyway, it will incorporate and integrate many of the disparate services that Google currently offers plus add a few. GoogleDesk will integrate Google search, Gmail (plus an enhanced contacts management function), Google Maps (auto-mapping of contacts, natch!), Blogger (for publication/hosting of created content), a new mini-suite of document tools based on the OpenOffice standard (so you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files), GoogleBase (the use of which will become more obvious with time), and Google News (of course). All these will be wrapped up in a browser-neutral (although I wouldn't be surprised for Google to cozy up to Mozilla to enhance Firefox with some special goodies), Java-based interface. Personally, I eagerly await this.

Kinda, sorta true. Google's offerings did indeed multiply in 2006, with Google Documents and a raft of other new and enhanced online services popping up. Technically, they haven't all been integrated into a single UI, but given they all work in a single browser session, that's pretty close.

2) The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war ends...Blu-Ray wins
Yes, Sony will finally be able to claim a victory in the format wars. After so many failed attempts at ruling the world (cue Pinkie and the Brain theme) -- Betamax, minidisc, all the various flavors of Memory Stick, etc. -- Sony and friends will edge out the HD-DVD group and Blu-Ray will become the de facto format for HD content. That is, until something better comes along almost immediately, but hey, that's a prediction for next year.

The war ain't over, but I think most people who follow the industry would agree that Blu-Ray, despite Sony's floundering on the PS3, has more behind it than does HD-DVD at this point. It will likely take a few more years for the winner to become obvious -- until then, consumers will just be faced with more options they couldn't really care less about. After all, normal DVD looks pretty good on an HDTV and more people are choosing to take their video with them on the go; high-definition is the least of concerns for the joe wanting to watch Family Guy on his iPod.

3) The Linux-based replacement for Palm OS comes out
To limited acclaim in the West, it is immediately adopted by a significant number of Asian companies for its cheap, flexible architecture. The number of devices (almost entirely phones) running it by the end of 2006 will be around 10 in Asia and zero (maybe 1 or 2) in the West (US + Europe).

Wrong. Well, ALP (Access Linux for Palm) was released, but I've yet to hear of any actual adoption, so I'll just have to chalk this up to pure optimism.

4) Nokia will launch a Linux phone
Following the nascent success of its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia launches its first phone using a Linux-based OS. It mimics the S60 in look and feel. It does well, but not markedly so, causing much speculation and debate around the web about whether Nokia is abandoning S60 entirely.

Nope, didn't happen.

5) Democrats regain control of US Senate, make gains in HOR
The margin won't be enormous, but the Senate will once again be in the familiar (and, arguably, beneficial to the electorate) position of being led by the party not in control of the White House. More negotiation will result in 2007 and something a wee bit closer to "democracy" will return to the US shortly thereafter. Still a long way from acceptable, but closer.

Pretty much right on the money. In fact, you might say I underestimated their gains. Looking forward to a government much more balanced by checks and balances than it has been lately.

6) Windows Vista will launch, Apple users yawn
Windows Vista (launched in early Q4) will excite few, especially in the corporate ranks, due to the combination of a lack of "must-have" improvements and unattractive licensing structures offered by Microsoft. The 17 or so flavors of Vista will also leave consumers puzzled over which version is best for them and ultimately wait until they replace their hardware to upgrade. Given that processor speeds aren't increasing much and hard drives are getting easier to replace, there will be fewer changing out their PCs. Microsoft faces a tougher year than usual next year regarding financials; Windows Mobile and Xbox divisions still not profitable (but closer).

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of what actually happened.

7) Digital/HDTV makes big inroads
2006 will be the year of the migration to HDTV. Falling HDTV set prices (especially DLP and LCD), plus an exciting bounty of converging digital content, will usher in a period of rapid adoption that will continue into 2007. Content providers will actually start getting significant numbers of complaints when they broadcast non-HD content on their HD channels, leading to fewer programming lapses.

For the most part, yup. The sales of HDTVs were so large this holiday season that they actually affected the profitability of several large electronics retailers. So I guess it's clear that HDTV is taking off as expected. What remains to be seen is whether the broadcasters actually start paying attention now that HD viewership is climbing into significant numbers.

8) Satellite radio subscribership grows, but limited
Sirius and XM will continue to gain subscribers, but neither will top 10 million by the end of 2006. Someone will launch a mySatelliteRadio service that lets users listen to their personal music collections via satellite receiver (think MP3.com's old model applied to satradio). The RIAA will eat it for lunch, with a few hundred new downloading lawsuits for dessert.

XM had less than 8 million subscribers at the end of 2006 and Sirius had about 6 million, with the latter growing more quickly. Both are growing more slowly than the companies had predicted (and promised to investors), so that part of my prediction is absolutely spot on. I haven't heard of anything like the mySatelliteRadio service being launched, but given that many satellite receivers now enable playback of MP3 files, the two music sources are definitely getting closer.

9) TiVo is acquired
I don't know by whom, but I think this will happen within the next 12 months.

Ahem, no.

10) Resurgances of sci-fi/fantasy TV shows
The recent success of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and the big money that the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises generate cause network television studios to start prepping more science fiction and fantasy content. A friend of mine thinks I'm daft to predict this -- we'll see. If not next year, then 2007. Or not.

Not exactly, at least not on the major networks. They are still heading towards the safe-and-familiar lines of reality/unscripted programming, dramas, and situation comedies. Alas, none of those are in space or in a castle somewhere. Too bad.

So, in the end, I had 5 predictions true or mostly correct, 4 that were mostly or completely wrong, and 1 that was unclear. Stay tuned for my predictions for 2007...

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Other and Popular Media and Society / Politics and Technology
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December 15, 2006

Firefox Browser Adoption Continues to Grow

ABC News is reporting that Firefox's share of the browser market as of December 7th grew to 10.7%, up from under 10% in less than two months.

Try Firefox now (it's free).

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet
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September 26, 2006

ClearSync 1.0 Launches Today

The new ClearSync 1.0 is officially launching today, so go check it out if you are interested in shared PIM (calendars and contacts) accessible via Palm OS handhelds and Treos, browser, and PC desktop applications.

According to the ClearSync website, here's what the service/software allows you to do:

Create and Edit
* multiple calendars, shared and private.
* contacts with name and contact info.
* from PC or Palm handheld PDA.

Share
* your calendar and contacts with others.
* selectively, controlling who can view and who can edit your calendars and contacts.

View
* calendars one at a time, side-by-side at the same time, or merged for an integrated view.
* calendars by day, week, or month.
* contacts organized by category.
* on your Windows PC - See screen shots.
* on your Palm handheld - See screen shots
* on any platform with a web browser (e.g. Mac, Linux) - See screen shots.

Sync
* updates all members' calendars and contacts on all their devices, no matter where the edits were done.
* using your one-button Palm sync, the way you always have.
* from PC using one-mouse-click sync.

Access
* calendars and contacts from office or home.
* using wireless laptop or wireless Palm handheld to sync changes while around town or on the road.

Backup
* of calendars and contacts means if you have a PC failure or lose your handheld, you lose no data.

Subscribe
* to public calendars such as U.S. Holidays and NBA schedules . See list of public calendars.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Mobile & PDAs
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July 14, 2006

Congresscritters and the Internet

These are the kinds of people making laws to govern the Internet in America.

Thanks for the lesson, Ted Stevens (R-AK)...suddenly, Al Gore doesn't seem so far out.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Society / Politics
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July 6, 2006

Get ClearSync to Share Contacts and Calendar Data

ClearSync, the service that lets folks share their calendars and contacts data with others, has recently relaunched (it was once upon a time called WeSync) with many improvements.

In a nutshell, ClearSync handles your calendar/datebook data and contacts/address data on your Palm OS device or Windows desktop and lets you selectively share those data with others. Those "others" can either view (and edit, if you so choose) your data on their Palms or Treos or desktop PCs (Windows only), or they can use their browser (virtually any OS) to view (not edit) your calendar and contacts.

The screenshot to the right is one of the calendar views on a high-res Treo -- it lets you see one calendar (e.g., your own) side-by-side another calendar (e.g., your spouse's). These get updated every HotSync or, if used on a wireless device, wirelessly via direct connection to the ClearSync server.

This type of setup is perfect for busy couples, business partners, and other pairs and groups needing to coordinate across corporate lines or outside of a business setting (e.g., softball teams, Boy Scout troops, bowling leagues, bridge clubs, extended families, etc.).

Give it a look-see...www.clearsync.com.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Mobile & PDAs
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June 27, 2006

1-Month Spam Count: 759

Well, for a 30-day period, ending today, I deleted no spam/phishing emails on my Gmail account. Total after a month is 759, or an average of 25.3 spams a day.

I received 825 valid emails in that same period, or roughly 27.5 per day. So, spam made up 47.9% of email entering my Inbox in the last month.

While I'm appalled at the 759 number, I'm actually surprised it's below 50% -- I had expected higher.

And Gmail's spam filter works quite well. I'd estimate that only roughly 50 of the 759 spam messages, about 7%, weren't appropriately flagged and filed automatically.

Thanks, Gmail.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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May 19, 2006

Google Notebook

Constantly finding new tidbits of info, great links, and what-not on the web and wanting a way to keep it all nicely organized? The new Google Notebook extension for the Firefox browser is an excellent tool. With a single right-click in Firefox, you can save web content to your own private Notebook area, which is fully searchable. Give it a try.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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May 14, 2006

The Lie of 'The Shrinking World'

Nearly every day, we hear statements to the effect of "the world is getting smaller." This, of course, is a metaphor for how access to places on the planet we'd previously only read about is getting easier, faster, and more trivial. But it's a lie.

For a while, the world did indeed seem to shrink. In the early part of the 20th century, radio brought us sounds from remote places. Then, with the rise of film reels in the 1930s and 1940s, and television in the 1950s and 1960s, we saw images of these far-flung locations, distant events, and foreign peoples. The 1970s and 1980s brought us cable television and greatly expanded real-time news coverage, which seemed to bring these distant things just that much closer, both in space and time.

Then, we got us the Internet and the World-Wide Web. In the mid- and late-1990s, we were all about connecting each other even more tightly. Email made it trivial to get text messages to each other. We could send photos, which closed the distance that separated us. CUSeeMe and other video/web-conferencing apps enabled us to see each other in real-time, too, making it seem like we were just in the next room. The world did indeed seem like it was growing smaller by the moment.

But then we got the big idea that we didn't need to be constrained by the physical universe. People began inventing alternative, purely digital existences. They started out as MUDs (multi-user domains, or dungeons) and then grew both in sophistication and scope. And they also started generating a whole lotta content that existed only on the web. We moved beyond merely putting images of paintings in the Louvre on the museum's website -- we had started creating art that had no physical counterpart.

Sure, the Internet/Web was referred to as "cyberspace", suggesting that it had some otherworldly dimensions. But for the most part, we used it merely as a reflection of this tangible world we exist in every day.

These online worlds -- the Sims, the WoWs, the Second Lifes -- combined with the social networking spaces -- MySpace and Facebook, as two examples -- are effectively now making the world a bigger place. All this new content -- the what, the where, and the when -- is creating more "space" that we can, and often feel compelled to, explore.

While our ability to communicate with each other improves in both synchronicity and richness, the amount of space -- both physical and virtual -- is increasing at a faster rate than our communication can keep up with. The upshot is that we are getting more and more overwhelmed by the possibilities of how -- and where -- to spend our time. And this will only continue as new virtual spaces multiply, grow, and become increasing sophisticated.

What are the social implications of this? I've some ideas, but we'll definitely all be surprised as the specifics play out. Should be interesting, to say the least.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Society / Politics and Technology
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May 11, 2006

Google Trends Yields Interesting Insights

Google Trends is a relatively new service from Google. In a nutshell, it gives timelines of search traffic for user-selected terms in a line graph format with news volume underneath. Overall, it looks very much like a stock chart.

Here are some interesting comparisons (try to guess which choice will come out on top before you click each link):

Carrot or Stick?

Apples and Oranges (finally!)

Red vs. Blue

East vs. West

Left vs. Right

Up or Down?

Mine or Yours?

His and Hers

Alive or Dead?

Should I stay or should I go?

Chicken or Egg?

#1 vs. #2

Good vs. Evil

Yes or No?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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1,000th Post on GearBits

Back when I started GearBits in March of 2003, I had no idea what to expect -- would this be around in a year? Two? What would it morph into?

Well, despite a short hiatus in 2004, GearBits is still here, and this is the 1,000th post published on this site.

Granted, posts can be sporadic -- this isn't my occupation, after all -- but I think folks are still finding things of value here on the site.

And, as I originally promised, the posts here on GearBits have strayed a bit from technology into politics, science, society, travel, and other topics. But the category post counts show that technology-centric topics still remain the majority (Mobile & PDAs and Computing are the most populated)

I'd also like to thank Mitch, Ken, and Sam for their early contributions -- co-blogging was a lot of fun. Maybe someday I'll scrounge up some friends with a wee bit more time on their hands for another go at that model.

So, will GearBits be around for another 1,000 posts? You got me...we'll just have to wait and see. :-)

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 17, 2006

CNN.com Video In Need of Programming?

I saw this sequence of pieces on CNN.com's "Top Stories" online video feed:

Imagine if two stories about deadly crimes and accidents bookended an upbeat piece about hats on your nightly news...people would simply freak.

Just like "Shuffle" on your MP3 player can't generate a mix as pleasant as a skilled DJ can, random sequencing of news video isn't going to lead to the best possible viewer experience. Maybe CNN.com needs some human programming oversight of some sort.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 13, 2006

Prosper.com: You, Too, Can Be a VC (or "Loan Sharks Go Online")

In an interesting twist on an old business concept, Prosper.com appears to be trying to do to financial loans what ebay did for auctions. It calls itself "People-to-People Lending," where those who need loans can set up profiles and those with funds to loan out can review their options.

So is it an innovative new business model making an end-run around traditional bank lending, or is it just a way for loan sharks to gain some economies of scale?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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Google Launches Shared Calendar

As predicted, Google has launced Google Calendar, a free, web-based calendar service integrated with Gmail, etc. that you can share events among your friends (as long as they have a Google account).

So far, it looks like a nice app. Of course, it could be more full-featured, but for a beta launch, it meets my expectations.

Check it out.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 11, 2006

KittenAuth Test - New Approach to CAPTCHA

I hate most CAPTCHAs ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" per Wikipedia) -- bizarre, twisted fonts on eye-bending backgrounds make it difficult, if not impossible, for this human to read the text. Below is just one example:

So it was with excitement that I read about KittenAuth Test, a new approach to CAPTCHA that relies on image cues instead of text.

Essentially, KittenAuth Test puts up a grid of images, some subset of which belong to a common descriptor or category -- clicking on those common images authenticates the user. One example, keeping with the name of the test, would be kitten photos interspersed with non-kitten images, as this example shows:

Merely clicking the three kitten photos in any order authenticates the user.

This is definitely an improvement. No typing, no wondering "is it an 'l' or a '1'?", and it's fun (well, almost). Plus, the images could easily be customized to reinforce the theme or subject of the website much more consistently than traditional CAPTCHAs. I hope this enhancement energizes the authentication community to move beyond those dreadful warped-text CAPTCHAs that nobody particularly likes.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet
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March 31, 2006

Gizoogle

Combining the usefulness of web search with the pointless humor of jive translators yields Gizoogle.

Gizoogle "GearBits" and you end up with something like this: "I'm a big fan of biznoth tha old-schoo` MechWarrior/Bizzle games n tha new Battlefield 2 FPS tizzle EA Games launched last year. So naturally I'm stoked by EA Games' latest product preview/teazer fo` its upcom'n Battlefield 2142. Battlefield 2142 looks ta be a futurizzles combinizzle of infantry, vehicle, wata/aircraft, n battlemech combat, chill yo."

Check out Gizoogle (Thanks, Bob!)

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 8, 2006

Google Calendar 'CL2' Screenshots Leaked

TechCrunch has posted some screenshots of what look to be a very compelling calendaring app from Google. It's said to be tightly integrated into Gmail, and further supports my belief that Google will launch an integrated suite of desktop productivity (e.g., office apps) and PIM (personal information management) tools by the end of 2006. Maybe a bit later, but it's definitely on its way.

One feature I cannot wait to get is widespread PIM-sharing.

And I, for one, welcome our Googly overlords.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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January 17, 2006

GoDaddy.com Commercials

In case you want to see what all the uproar is about, check out the GoDaddy.com commercials on Google Video.

Too racy for the Super Bowl?

I dunno...the halftime show two years ago was pretty funky.

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet and Popular Media
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December 29, 2005

GearBits' Predictions for 2006

Gazing into my crystal (liquid crystal, of course) ball, the haze clears and 2006 looms large. Here is what the future holds for us in the coming year:

1) Google Launches All-in-One Suite
I've been expecting this for some time, as have other folks, I'm sure, but I think 2006 will definitely see this announcement. Google will, I predict, launch a converged, multi-purpose, browser-based work environment -- lord knows what it'll be called, maybe GoogleDesk or something like that. Anyway, it will incorporate and integrate many of the disparate services that Google currently offers plus add a few. GoogleDesk will integrate Google search, Gmail (plus an enhanced contacts management function), Google Maps (auto-mapping of contacts, natch!), Blogger (for publication/hosting of created content), a new mini-suite of document tools based on the OpenOffice standard (so you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files), GoogleBase (the use of which will become more obvious with time), and Google News (of course). All these will be wrapped up in a browser-neutral (although I wouldn't be surprised for Google to cozy up to Mozilla to enhance Firefox with some special goodies), Java-based interface. Personally, I eagerly await this.

2) The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war ends...Blu-Ray wins
Yes, Sony will finally be able to claim a victory in the format wars. After so many failed attempts at ruling the world (cue Pinkie and the Brain theme) -- Betamax, minidisc, all the various flavors of Memory Stick, etc. -- Sony and friends will edge out the HD-DVD group and Blu-Ray will become the de facto format for HD content. That is, until something better comes along almost immediately, but hey, that's a prediction for next year.

3) The Linux-based replacement for Palm OS comes out
To limited acclaim in the West, it is immediately adopted by a significant number of Asian companies for its cheap, flexible architecture. The number of devices (almost entirely phones) running it by the end of 2006 will be around 10 in Asia and zero (maybe 1 or 2) in the West (US + Europe).

4) Nokia will launch a Linux phone
Following the nascent success of its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia launches its first phone using a Linux-based OS. It mimics the S60 in look and feel. It does well, but not markedly so, causing much speculation and debate around the web about whether Nokia is abandoning S60 entirely.

5) Democrats regain control of US Senate, make gains in HOR
The margin won't be enormous, but the Senate will once again be in the familiar (and, arguably, beneficial to the electorate) position of being led by the party not in control of the White House. More negotiation will result in 2007 and something a wee bit closer to "democracy" will return to the US shortly thereafter. Still a long way from acceptable, but closer.

6) Windows Vista will launch, Apple users yawn
Windows Vista (launched in early Q4) will excite few, especially in the corporate ranks, due to the combination of a lack of "must-have" improvements and unattractive licensing structures offered by Microsoft. The 17 or so flavors of Vista will also leave consumers puzzled over which version is best for them and ultimately wait until they replace their hardware to upgrade. Given that processor speeds aren't increasing much and hard drives are getting easier to replace, there will be fewer changing out their PCs. Microsoft faces a tougher year than usual next year regarding financials; Windows Mobile and Xbox divisions still not profitable (but closer).

7) Digital/HDTV makes big inroads
2006 will be the year of the migration to HDTV. Falling HDTV set prices (especially DLP and LCD), plus an exciting bounty of converging digital content, will usher in a period of rapid adoption that will continue into 2007. Content providers will actually start getting significant numbers of complaints when they broadcast non-HD content on their HD channels, leading to fewer programming lapses.

8) Satellite radio subscribership grows, but limited
Sirius and XM will continue to gain subscribers, but neither will top 10 million by the end of 2006. Someone will launch a mySatelliteRadio service that lets users listen to their personal music collections via satellite receiver (think MP3.com's old model applied to satradio). The RIAA will eat it for lunch, with a few hundred new downloading lawsuits for dessert.

9) TiVo is acquired
I don't know by whom, but I think this will happen within the next 12 months.

10) Resurgances of sci-fi/fantasy TV shows
The recent success of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and the big money that the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises generate cause network television studios to start prepping more science fiction and fantasy content. A friend of mine thinks I'm daft to predict this -- we'll see. If not next year, then 2007. Or not.

OK, those are my predictions. I may add some more...come this time in 2006, I'll look back on these and, well, probably LMAO at how poorly I forecast the future. Until then, have a good one!

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Other and Popular Media and Society / Politics and Technology
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December 16, 2005

Blogger Web Comments - New Firefox Extension from Google

Google has a nifty new Firefox extension out called Blogger Web Comments.

In a nutshell, imagine a browser plug-in that automatically does a Technorati search for every page you visit, popping up the results (if you like) in a little balloon. That's basically what Blogger Web Comments is. Here's a screen cap of what it returns:

But, if you're also a user of the Blogger blogging site, then Blogger Web Comments does something extra: it allows you to post a blog entry about the page you're looking at with just a single click (and then typing whatever it is you wanted to say about it).

Nifty...and as always with Google, the price is right. Go check it out.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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December 15, 2005

Tokens - The Next Revolution in Communication

A friend of mine has patented a method to validate a variety of technology-mediated communications by way of tokens, or small codes appended onto email addresses, phone numbers, etc. These tokens help screen out spam from legitimate messages, help message/call recipients establish different treatments for different senders (or classes of senders) and contexts, and a variety of other uses we're still developing.

The interesting bit is how this token approach is better than every other method currently in use, including whitelists, blacklists, and "intelligent" filtering (e.g., Bayesian methods). All these start falling down in the face of unique problems, and spammers tend to outwit automated methods fairly quickly.

We're working on getting the technology into the market, so more as things develop. Should be interesting...

Posted by Craig in Internet and Technology
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October 29, 2005

I've Been Plagiarized...in Arabic Farsi or Urdu (I Think)!

At least, it appears that a site has ripped off some GearBits content, translated it into Arabic Farsi or Urdu (thanks, IssamE), and posted it as its own original content.

It looks to me like this other site took my Digital Photo Printing Worksheet (posted December 7, 2004), translated it and made a few changes (e.g., Imerial to metric units), and added links to its own site with no obvious reference back to GearBits as its original source. I have no problem sharing -- in fact, I encourage it -- but GearBits' Creative Commons license clearly states that attribution is expected.

Here's my original post:

And here's the rip-off derivative work:

I think it's pretty obvious that they've modified my worksheet, but if anybody speaks Arabic Farsi or Urdu and would be willing to tell me what the other page actually says, I'd appreciate it (all the free machine translation services I've tried give me back nothing but jibberish). If the other site is, in fact, giving proper attribution, I need to post an apology. :-)

Posted by Craig in Internet and Photography
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October 15, 2005

The Open Source Collaborative Novel

Imagine this: someone crafts the outline for a new novel -- characters and a detailed series of plot elements -- and then invites a bunch of people (hopefully writers with a modicum of talent) to craft the actual content using some of the same collaborative techniques that have been honed in the open source software community. Then, the novel continues to evolve as future contributors come up with better writing to replace, or enhance, existing text.

Is this possible? I think it is. Imagine running it like a software project. The main architect sets up the parameters (key characters and their important attributes, signature plot devices, milestones for each chapter, etc.) and the coders (writers) fill in the details. There'd need to be checkers for consistency and continuity, and that's where the user community (readers) could hopefully help a lot ("hey, here in chapter 2 on page 32, you said Bob is wearing a Yankees hat when we know he's a National League fan.")

Perhaps a more important question is whether or not this approach would be desirable. I think it could be a unique way to construct a novel, or, perhaps even the foundation for a completely open source (i.e., copyright-free) foundation for fan fiction and amateur writers. Who knows...if it were successful enough, maybe even professionals would enjoy using some of its elements in their own writings.

Does anybody know if something like this already exists?

Posted by Craig in Internet and Movies & Books
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September 6, 2005

TV Post Crazy with Comments

I never would have guessed that one of my posts about old TV shows put up almost two years ago would accumulate 200 comments, but it has.

Check it out: GearBits: Lost & Forgotten 70's & 80's TV Shows

 

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 18, 2005

Bow Man: A Flash Timewaster

Got 10 minutes to kill before that next meeting? Check out Bow Man, a Flash-based game that offers an addictive combination of simplicity and challenge.

The arterial spray is an excellent touch.

Play now

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 15, 2005

Comment & Trackback Spam Flood Thwarted

I installed MT-Blacklist 2.04beta, a comment/trackback anti-spam utility for Movable Type, 13 days ago. Since then, it has outright rejected 1,395 submmited spams, flagged 52 for moderation (of which most have been legit), and blocked 39 duplicate submittals.

I knew I got a lot of comment spam, but I didn't realize it was over 100 a day! Thanks, MT-Blacklist, you're a life-saver.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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August 10, 2005

The Llama Song

I don't know why I find this so funny.

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August 3, 2005

The Middleman is Dead...Not

I remember people saying with great sincerity that the Internet would connect buyers and sellers directly and cut out the middleman (i.e., retailers). Well, apart from ebay and a few wholesale .coms, this couldn't be further from the truth.

In fact, a whole new breed of middlemen has sprung up because of the Internet. PayPal, ebay clearing-houses, and search engines are all examples of new businesses playing the middleman role...and making money at it.

ExtremeTech has an interesting little article about another Internet middleman whose business is booming:

Commmunications clearinghouse NeuStar Inc. reported its first public quarter of revenues, with a roadmap to 36 percent revenue growth for the rest of the year.

The reason? NeuStar is responsible for managing all telephone portability within the U.S., transferring numbers from one carrier to the next. The company also manages the Common Short Codes governing the SMS service, as well as the directories for the .us and .biz Internet domains.

Ah, yes, the middleman is definitely dead. Long live the middleman!

Posted by Craig in Industry and Internet
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August 2, 2005

MT-Blacklist 2.04beta

OK, in my never-ending quest to make GearBits easy to leave comments on while keeping the spammers at bay, I've installed Jay Allen's much ballyhooed MT-Blacklist 2.04beta (which supposedly works with Movable Type 3.1x and above).

I'll know if it works in a day or two...and so will you all. :-)

If you notice any weirdness, please let me know...leave a comment or email me at craig dot froehle at gmail dot com.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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July 26, 2005

Google Personalized Home Page Now Full RSS Reader

Google continues to innovate and improve the web experience. Bless 'em. A feature that was just recently turned on is the ability to add any RSS feed directly into your Google Personalized Home page (which resides at http://www.google.com/ig). The screenshot below tells the story.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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July 22, 2005

Microsoft Perpetuating a Bad Browser Experience

I recently followed a link from LostRemote.com (a TV/press industry blog) to a news story on MSNBC.com. There, I wanted to watch a brief, free video about one of the stories.

First, you can't do this in Firefox -- the MSNBC.com site won't let you access any of its multimedia content (hosted by MSN Video) unless you use Microsoft's browser. Strike 1.

Second, you have to have at least version 9 of Windows Media Player installed. No other formats are offered for guests not willing, or able, to use Microsoft's multimedia player. Strike 2.

Third, the site requires you to have Macromedia Flash 7 installed into Internet Explorer in order to watch the video (why, I have no clue). But, once installed, you have to completely reboot your system. Other browsers' handling of plug-ins is much less ridiculous -- a simple restarting of the browser app (NOT a complete shutdown of Windows) is all that's required. Strike 3.

Sorry, Microsoft, I'm not going to update and/or install 3 pieces of software and restart my entire computer just to watch a news story clip. Despite your claims that you "get" the Internet, you certainly don't understand the diversity inherent in the Internet community. You can't be, and you certainly aren't, the best solution to everyone's computing needs, so why lock out those from your partner's (NBC) content whose needs have advanced past your offerings? If you're going to start convincing us that you're not a monopoly, you'll have to first stop acting like one.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet
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July 2, 2005

Podcasting: Fad of the Moment

Rob Griffiths at MacWorld writes up why podcasting is a fad (my words, not his).

My interpretation of is article is that podcasting is popular at the moment only because it is new, and I would have to agree with that.

Let me clarify: by "fad," I mean something popular with the masses, and by "podcasting," I mean producing podcasts, not listening to them. Producing high-quality audio content is hard work, and producing low-quality audio content isn't nearly as easy as producing written content (such as what you're reading now), so I think that a lot of people currently producing podcasts will give it up fairly soon and we'll be left with (a) those with something interesting enough to say that they become/remain popular, and (b) professional outfits using podcasts as a supplemental channel.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Mobile & PDAs and Music & Audio
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June 11, 2005

Store Wars

Funny and well-done parody of the original Star Wars trilogy from the organic produce industry (thanks, Alex!). Watch

Posted by Craig in Internet
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June 8, 2005

Returning to Registration for Comments

Well, the comment spammers have stepped up their intensity level to the point where I had to turn off anonymous comments -- the constant (several a minute) bombardment of automated comment spam was just running the GearBits webserver into the ground. So, if you want to leave a comment, just register with TypeKey (it's free!), sign in, and your comments will appear automatically (no more waiting for me to moderate them). Cool, huh?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 15, 2005

My Blockbuster.com Movie Rental List

I don't know if this is a new feature or not, but I just found out that I can pull up a list of every movie I've rented from Blockbuster.com, when it was sent to me, and when I returned it. This is pretty nifty info to be able to pull up. Here's the list of what we've rented since we joined last November:

Elf [P&S] (2003)
Godfather (1972) 
Last Samurai [WS] (2003) 
Mean Girls [WS] (2004) 
13 Going on 30 (2004) 
Donnie Darko (2001) 
Jersey Girl (2004) 
Raising Helen [WS] (2004) 
I, Robot [WS] (2004) 
Nightmare Before Christmas [Special Edition] (1993) 
Bad Santa (2003) 
Control Room (2003) 
United States of Leland (2002) 
Minority Report [WS] (2002) 
Casablanca [Special Edition] (1942) 
Elephant (2003) 
Mona Lisa Smile [WS] (2003) 
Dr. Strangelove [40th Anniversary Special Edition] (1964) 
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood [WS] (2002) 
Modern Times (1936) 
Terminal [WS] (2004) 
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004) 
Soylent Green (1973) 
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) 
School Ties (1992) 
Night in Casablanca (1946) 
Saved! [WS] (2003) 
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [Special Edition] (1975) 
Terminator [Special Edition] (1984) 
Amelie (2001) 
Army of Darkness [Limited Edition] (1992) 
Top Gun [Collector's Edition] [WS] - Bonus Disc (1986) 
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle [Unrated] (2004) 
Cutting Edge (1992) 
Taxi Driver [Collector's Edition] (1976) 
Andromeda Strain (1971) 

What I wish they'd do is offer up a little RSS feed of what I currently have out so I could add that feed to my blog's index page. Instead of a "Now Playing" showing what I'm listening to (as many people have), it could automatically show what movies we're watching.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Movies & Books
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April 7, 2005

WOXY.com Adds High-Fidelity aacPlus Streams

97X WOXY.com has upped the fidelity of their online broadcasts by employing an impressive and relatively new audio format: aacPlus. Two streams are currently offered:

Stereo aacPlus v2 48k - http://woxy.com/stream/aac48.pls
Stereo aacPlus v2 24k - http://woxy.com/stream/aac24.pls

At just 48kbps, a very modest bandwidth requirement, it sounds very, very close to what I'd consider "CD quality" audio. Impressive, indeed.

aacPlus, an MPEG-4 audio format, is the combination of three MPEG technologies comprising Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), coupled with Coding Technologies' Spectral Band Replication (SBR), and Parametric Stereo (PS) technologies. More about aacPlus can be read here.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Music & Audio
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April 4, 2005

Trackback Spam Continues

Well, I've had to disable trackbacks here at GearBits due to an accelerating onslaught of tasteless trackback spam. When it was just "texas hold'em" and "v1agra," that was one thing, but now it's smutty listings like "gay bear sex." I don't even know what that means. :-|

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 30, 2005

Archiving: The Secret to Gmail Usability

A friend and I were having a conversation and he expressed his frustration over his Gmail Inbox being messy and in disarray. It turned out that he never archived anything, which is really the key to making Gmail into a truly useful, and usable, email application.

So, if you haven't been archiving your messages, go back and archive everything in your Inbox that you've already read. It doesn't go away -- you can access, search, and read it all just by clicking the "All Mail" link in the menu on the left.

Think of your Inbox in Gmail as a holding area for new email and messages you need to do something about (e.g., reply to, read more carefully later, etc.). Once you've read an email and no longer need immediate access to it, archive it and get it out of your Inbox. There's little need to have more than a few read emails in your Inbox at any one time.

Anyway, that's the tip of the day...happy Gmailing...

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 25, 2005

What to Do About Comment Spam

So the every-day grind of deleting comment and trackback spam from this blog is wearing thin. I have to think this practice is quite similar to graffiti or other vandalism of private property -- imagine a building owner coming to work each day to find that someone has tacked up signs advertising something on his building's walls and windows. This can't be lawful. But...what is there to do?

Today, I stopped to check out where the trackback spams pointed before deleting them. They all went to various sub-domains under the sw-op.com domain, so I checked out that WHOIS record:

What I find interesting is that the Registrant doesn't give a last name (how can this be permitted?), the phone number for a business supposedly located in Minnesota has a Dayton, OH prefix (937), and the contact info doesn't even give a street address. Why bother requesting contact info during registration if there is no attempt at ensuring that it's accurate, valid, or even usable?

I think I'll attempt to call the number today just to see where it leads me -- probably some little old lady who's never even heard of the Internet. *sigh*

p.s. I just added a "Spam Policy" over at the bottom of the menu bar on the right (index page only at the moment). IANAL, but what do you think...does it give me at least a foundation for requesting that comment/trackback spammers cease and desist?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 21, 2005

SpreadFirefox.com Hacked?

Visiting SpreadFirefox.com just now, all I get is a blank page. Viewing the page source reveals only this:

<html><body></body></html>

Has the site been hacked, or did somebody just accidentally delete everything?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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Professional Blogs -- Suggestions?

There are lots of blogs out there employed for personal uses, such as posting pics of one's vacation trips, complaining about politics, and raving about the latest new laptop. Many of these are excellent, too. But, are there any (many?) examples of how executives and/or academics have used blogs in their professional communities or as part of their job?

One exemplar site I've found is in the area of law. Larry Lessig's blog, at www.lessig.org/blog, is chock full of legal curiosity and insight. Another great professional site is Clay Shirkey (www.shirky.com), which is clearly a good pick from the (all-too-popular) "tech futurist" niche.

From the business world comes Mark Cuban's blog at www.blogmaverick.com. Cuban's blog is one example of how an executive might write about his industry.

Does anyone know of any other stellar examples of academics/researchers/executives employing a blog to further their own voices and make an impact in their communities?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 8, 2005

Google Maps -- One Step Ahead

Tired of those little, teensy maps that Mapquest and other mapping sites give you? Check out maps.google.com...they're huge, draggable, and the business/location finder is oh-so-pretty. Once again, Google does it right.

Now if they'd just link up one of those satellite photo services with their maps, that'd totally rock.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 1, 2005

The New Scourge (for me): Trackback Spam

It seems that the evil scum of the planet who have nothing better to do than create comment spam have come up with a NEW way of torturing bloggers: trackback spam.

When another blog references one of my blog entries, they will usually create a trackback (so people can find their way back to the original post). Now, since we've gotten better about locking down comment spam, spammers have decided they'll add trackback spam to muck our blogs.

This is so damned irritating. I'm off to the Movable Type website to see if they have a fix yet.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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January 28, 2005

Merging Two Blogs -- Suggestions?

As you may know, three friends and I ran GearBits, a tech-oriented blog, for about 15 months. In June, we put it on hiatus because real life was getting in the way of our posting (darn you, real life!). Since then, I've started this personal blog on my home machine, but I'd like to somehow combine them so that what was posted on GearBits isn't lost.

GearBits was run using Movable Type 2.66, which was free for multi-author, non-profit blogs, and is hosted on a friend's machine (thanks, Hal!). This blog is powered by Movable Type 3.x, which is not free for multi-author blogs, and is hosted on my own webserver at home. I don't really want to have to pay just to keep archived material in its original form, but I would like to retain its structure.

Also, GearBits got, and still gets, a fair bit of traffic, so I'd like to serve those readers with some new content. But, I don't want to have to maintain two separate blogs. Does anyone have a solution/suggestion for migrating GearBits?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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January 16, 2005

No sense of humor? Buy one on ebay!

If you remember, I was ebaying a U2 Edition iPod and it got bought. Well, the asshat who won the auction never paid me (thanks for nothing, Jay Augstine, 222 N Ocala Rd, Apt 211, Tallahassee, FL 32304). So, I decided to relist the item.

A friend (hi, Hal!) suggested I spice up the ad to differentiate it from all the other U2 iPods up for sale by stating that it was possessed by my dead grandmother or something. It sounded like an interesting idea -- entertaining, at least -- so I put up the following item description:

Rare, Haunted Apple iPod 20GB U2 Edition This haunted iPod is possessed by my dead grandmother. I can hear it playing her favorite songs even though it's never been loaded with any music! I bought this U2 Edition Apple iPod for my grandmother -- she loves music, as the picture below attests (hi, gramma!) -- and I didn't get a chance to give it to her before she died. Somehow, I think her spirit is now inhabiting the iPod because I can hear songs coming from the box! The box has never been opened, but if you hold your ear up to it, you can hear some of my gramma's favorite songs (like "Highway to Hell" and "Born To Be Wild") emanating from the white iPod earbuds inside. I think she would have liked the red and black design of this U2 Edition iPod -- those were the colors she painted her Harley last year. I'm selling this iPod to help pay for funeral costs -- she requested to be buried with her bike and that was expensive. This item is brand new in the box, never opened, and still shrink-wrapped!! If you have any questions, please email me and I'll be happy to answer them. Capacity: 20GB (roughly 5,000 songs) Interface: USB 2.0, FireWire 400, spiritual medium and/or psychic Battery: Internal Lithium-Ion rechargeable, up to 12 hours of continuous playback Audio Support: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, Audible Design: Black face with a prominent red Apple Click Wheel. On the polished silver back are the autographs of the U2 band members (see picture). Dimensions: 4.1" tall x 2.4" wide x 0.57" thick, 5.6 oz. Included: Beyond the actual iPod, included is a pair of the signature white iPod earbuds, a user manual, FireWire and USB2.0 cables, AC adapter, an iTunes Music Store coupon for $50 off the entire U2 music collection, and the soul of my dead grandmother. Shipping Shipping is $19 and I will ship this USPS Priority (2-3 days anywhere in the US) unless you specify differently (and pay any additional cost). I will add postal insurance to the shipping price if you wish to pay for it. NOTE: This iPod isn't really haunted, but it is brand new, unopened (still shrink-wrapped) and otherwise exactly as described.

Now, what's really funny is this email I got from someone who saw the listing:

"Why would you say it was haunted and waste all your time and our time (people reading it all) just to say at the end that it isn't haunted?"

Dear girl, I hear that you can buy a sense of humor on ebay...why don't you look into that? Or, as I said in my reply, were you actually surprised and disappointed that this iPod wasn't, in fact, haunted? I'm not sure which is sadder.

p.s. No, that's not really my grandmother.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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December 16, 2004

Firefox 1.0 makes big splash in New York Times

Firefox, the excellent and free browser from Mozilla.org, was the subject of a 2-page ad in today's New York Times. The ad was paid for entirely by donations from happy Firefox users. Read more or download the PDF of the ad (names are legible).

My name's on there...somewhere.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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December 7, 2004

Corporate website decay

United Airlines doesn't have much extra money floating around these days, but is that an excuse for letting its website fall into a woeful state of disrepair?

For example, here's what United says if you click on the "Compatible browsers" link on their site:

The United Airlines web site is best accessed with one of the following (or other compatible) web browsers:

* Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.0 to 4.7x
* Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer

The United Airlines web site does not currently function well with Netscape Navigator/Communicator version 6.X.

Netscape 4.x? Really?

Not only does this show that United's united.com folks don't really care about keeping up with the times, it shows a healthy disrespect for the significant and growing number of people using Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers.

When attempting to register for a flight status page, the webpage that supposedly allows me to do that comes up entirely blank in Firefox, yet it works in Internet Explorer. This is evidence that the united.com programmers employed IE-specific code rather than relying on universal HTML/W3C standards. Not a good approach, if you ask me (but then, nobody did).

So to all you corporate websites that still have "recommended browser" statements: get over yourself. Rework your site to rely on universal web standards and you'll no longer have to worry about the browsing tools your customers choose to rely on.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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November 18, 2004

Blog Software Comparison

Asymptomatic.net has a really nice table comparing several (many, actually) blog software packages. In case you're thinking of blogging and don't want to use a hosted service, check it out -- it will save you hours of time spent comparing the different alternatives yourself.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Technology
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November 13, 2004

Nifty site of the day

Grand-Illusions.com has a whole host of cool, fun and/or interesting little projects you can do, from a "gun" powered solely by magnets and ball bearings (it's all ball bearings these days) to a paper dragon that gives the illusion of moving its head to follow you around the room. Terrific stuff!

Posted by Craig in Internet
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November 12, 2004

'Sorry Everybody' Most Awesomest Site

Go check out SorryEverybody.com, which contains thousands of pictures of Americans apologizing to the rest of the world for Bush getting elected. Gives me hope for 2008.

Posted by Craig in Internet and Society / Politics
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April 25, 2004

eBay Classic: Ryobi Router Table

Amidst the questionable sales of souls and Stinger missiles, sometimes someone on eBay, comes up with a straightforward classic, like this sale of a Ryobi Router Table that is a triumph of modern marketing.

And since we all know that eBay listings are ephemeral, I've reproduced the listing here for posterity.

RYOBI ROUTER TABLE - WORTHLESS JUNK NR!

Item number: 2389286139
Winning bid: US $26.22
Ended: Mar-28-04 10:45:22 PST
Start time: Mar-21-04 10:45:22 PST
Winning bidder: burglarproof(110)
Seller information: davesan455(48)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description (revised)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For any prospective bidders - I have 100% positive feedback so you know my descriptions are good. I'm trying to describe this item the best I can.

This Ryobi router table is the worst thing I've ever spent money on. Period. I've wasted money on a lot of things in my life: women, cars, other things I didn't need, you name it, but I've never felt like I totally 100% wasted my money on something until I bought this router table. I've wasted money, but I normally got some sort of satisfaction out of it, no matter how small, I got something out of it This is the most worthless piece of crap item I have ever had the displeasure of working with in my life. I have much more colorful ways of describing this but I realize that there may be some kids that will read this so I will try to keep it PG.

It comes complete with most of the crappy accessories it came with. An example is the plastic pusher miter thingie that's so sloppy that I don't understand why they even bothered making it adjustable. It's really nice when you're trying to rout something at an angle and it slips in the middle of the cut and jerks the workpiece right out of your hands and flings it across the room. Or the super anti-precision fence that's almost impossible to adjust and keep in place. Or the slippery painted surface that wears off, exposing the rough surface that mars the workpiece as you slide it over. It does come with a power switch that always worked. I'll give it that. It has a really nice power switch. Some of the other small items got destroyed in a fit of rage one day after fighting it for a couple of hours.

The best part about this table is that it's a one of a kind. yep that's right it's a three legged router table. It became three legged after I was trying to rout something one day and I noticed that the table was moving. That was from the plastic inserts working loose on the leg mounts. It was like routing wood on a waterbed. It was moving back and forth oh I'd say an inch and a half or so. Well after a few more pieces I'm in the middle of a cut and the leg just fell off. So I had to stop to keep from losing any fingers, and I tried to beat the inserts back in. Looked ok so I start making my cut again and would you believe it fell out again?!?! It's supported by a beer bottle to keep it from falling over while taking the picture.

I am an engineer by trade and I feel sorry for the engineer that was responsible for this marvel of science. Someone told him to design this thing and not spend any more than $0.65 on it. So he did it, but I bet he probably lost all self respect for himself after he realized that he just released this miserable failure onto society. Or maybe he got a big kick out of it and is still laughing I don't know. I know they suckered me out of my money that's for sure.

There is a router shown in the picture, the router is not included since it will kind of work most of the time. This auction is for the table only. Hell I'll even throw in the beer bottle (not full per eBay standards) if the buyer wants it. I wouldn't use it as a leg though.

This table comes with no warranty from me. I never bothered to try to take it back, even though it was under warranty because I was so ticked off that I knew I would create a scene when I threw it through the front window of Home Depot. So it sat in my basement for a few months, and now you have the opportunity to own this piece of scrap. If someone had some time they could probably work on it a bit and make it into something that's functional. Like a doorstop or maybe a paperweight. But it will need some more work before it's that good.

I accept paypal, cashiers check or money order. Shipping quoted is parcel post. If for some reason you would want to receive your misery faster I can do that ask me for a quote.

Seriously though I have a couple other nice things that I'm selling. Check em out if you need a saw blade or 1972 Z28 parts.

ADDED 3/22/04 - I've received some emails, and yes I am willing to set it on fire, shoot it full of holes, etc. and mail pics/video to you. If the bid gets high enough to cover my ammo costs, I'd be willing to shoot it full of holes with your choice of the following: 12 gage slugs, 00 buck, or a 40 round mag from an AK. Then I can make a pile of the remains, douse it in gasoline, make the Wile-E-Coyote trail of gas dribbles for my safety, and light it on fire. The winning bidder would get pics if they so choose. Or I can ship it to you. I could even ship you the charred remains if you like. Hey man I just hate it. Let me know. Whatever trips your trigger.

ADDED 3/23/04 - Yes I can drive over it with something. I can drive over it with a Massey Ferguson 620 CI diesel powered tractor.

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On Mar-24-04 at 09:06:41 PST, seller added the following information:

For those who are interested, the bottle does carry a $0.10 Michigan deposit, and it's pre printed for the other standard deposits for other states ($0.05). So yeah it's like a huge bonus, worth hundreds of times what the table is worth. Remember - I'm throwing that in for free!

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On Mar-24-04 at 20:59:57 PST, seller added the following information:

Yes the beer bottle is a "double deuce" or a 22 oz ish beer bottle. Actually it's a Miller Lite 24 oz beer bottle, so that makes it extra rare. From what I hear there was only somewhere around 42 million of them made this year, so get yours fast! I suppose it has some additional extra value from a scrap weight aspect, but I think the deposit is the same. Collector's value had got to be in the hundreds if not thousands of Turkish Liras.

No unfortunately I don't know of any women that are willing to fire the guns naked and send you the pics. If I did I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this auction, that's for sure.

The tractor is basically a huge articulating tractor with dual wheels on each corner. It weighs somewhere around a gajillion pounds. It's about six times the size of the largest general motors product you can think of. It's big. It might take me a couple of weeks to get video etc but yeah I'll send it to you. Pics/video will be complete with firearms, Ryobi arson and all the profanity you desire, whatever you want. Again - for christ's sake the next bid is $0.02, and I'm willing to do all this crap for a penny - the video's got to be worth $5!!!!!! Bid and tell me what you want!!!!

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On Mar-25-04 at 18:31:48 PST, seller added the following information:

Dear davesan455,

I will bid if you place it in a barrel and fill barrel with concrete. I will pay the insurance if you pay the shipping.

um....ok. I can do that as long as the bid is $1400.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mar-25-04 at 19:08:08 PST, seller added the following information:

Why are you restricting shipping to USA only? I would think you should be excited about the possibility of sending it to Iran, or hell or france or something. Just wondering.

Yet another good idea. I will ship free to France as long as they surrender. It doesn't matter who they surrender to, it could be Australia, Bruce Willis, or even McDonalds. But if they surrender before this auction ends free shipping to France!

Also- Free shipping to any US military base (Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Venezuela, Selfridge Air force Base, etc) upon the following conditions: The person receiving the router table send clear pictures/video back of the table being destroyed by superior force, i.e. tank shelling, hellfire missile attack, shooting sheet with an anti-aircraft gun, or some sort of awesome display of military power, or even a pic of their whole company dancing around a bonfire which contains the router table. Three Cheers to the US Military / Coast / National Guard! I'll drink to that.

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On Mar-26-04 at 05:18:33 PST, seller added the following information:

Could I see a picture of it actually ripping something out of someones hand and tossing it to the other side of the room? Or better yet an arm off or something?

Sure. Buy it, and have someone videotape you using it. Eventually someone's going to lose an appendage.

Posted by Sam in Internet and Other and Society / Politics
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April 16, 2004

Ramifications of a Ubiquitous Internet

Because of new technologies like Broadband over Power Lines, WiMAX, and other innovations on the horizon, high-speed access to the Internet will soon be almost completely ubiquitous in developed countries.

By "soon," I mean possibly by the end of the decade. By "almost completely ubiquitous," I mean that there will still be gaps; the Badlands of South Dakota, Death Valley, some summits in the Alps, perhaps all of Alabama (I kid, I kid) may not be covered.

What are the ramifications of this? If access to the Internet is truly as omnipresent as, say, electricity, if not moreso, what does this do to the price of access? Obviously, it should drive it down...way down. At that point, using the Internet won't ever require an "is it worth it" evaluation, much like electricty is today (assuming you don't live off the grid) and much like how home broadband users slurp up bandwidth without a second thought today.

Another ramification of truly ubiquitous, fast Internet connections is that nearly everything involving electronics -- cars, refrigerators, traffic lights, HVAC units, car stereos -- will somehow use, access, or rely on the Internet for some part of its functionality. In addition, many things that don't today involve much (if any) electronics, such as running shoes, bicycles, a gallon of milk, street signs, shopping carts, etc., will start to in order to enhance their functionality.

Based on this, my prediction for the next two buzzwords that marketers will start to over-use and abuse when describing or naming their products will be "connected" and "smart." We've already seen the rise of "the connected organizer" from Palm, and we've been so far subjected to smartcards and smartmobs, but these are just the tip of the marketing iceberg.

So, what would you do with truly omnipresent broadband Internet access?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 14, 2004

Free Soft-Core Courtesy of the Miss USA Pageant

Yes, beautiful women representing everything that is unholy to the contemporary feminist abound at the Miss USA website. However, their website is slow as molasses and painful to navigate, so I scripted up a set of links to the swimsuit photos from each contestant, er, delegate (sorry) with a link to her profile page.

The profile pages are where you can watch videos of them strutting the catwalk and answering really interesting questions such as "what's your favorite movie?" Or, if you're really hard up with some cash to burn, you can actually purchase photos of the contestants delegates.

Click the "Continue reading..." link below to see the photo page I crafted up (warning: lots of women in bikinis, in case that offends). If it's slow, blame their server...I'm not hosting any of the photos for obvious (c) reasons. Hint: best enjoyed without sound.

AL

AK

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

DC

FL

GA

HI

ID

IL

IN

IA

KA

KY

LA

ME

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

Posted by Craig in Internet
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April 3, 2004

FuelEconomy.gov

The US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) runs a really useful, interesting, and fairly nicely laid out website at fueleconomy.gov. There, you can look up nearly any car model sold in the US in the past 20 years and compare its environmental impact side-by-side with, say, what you're driving now or something you're considering buying. Or, it could be handy if you just want to shame that SUV-driving friend of yours. There's some good info on fuel cells and hybrid technology at the site as well.

Posted by Craig in Cars and Internet
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April 2, 2004

Update on Internet Setup at Our Home

Well, we finally moved into our new house. Well, sort of. There are still a lot of unpacked boxes sitting on the basement, but at least my office is clean. One of the things I did when we moved was to get rid of the phone company's DSL service and moved over to Earthlink cable service (via Time Warner Cincinnati), and I'm happy to say that the change was well worth it. The cable service is much faster than the phone DSL service, and it's a lot more reliable (no more interrupted service when phone rings and no more occasional resetting of the modem box--power down/up).

Well, it also turns out that my study does not have a cable outlet, and in order to install another cable outlet, it would have been extremely costly (we would have to call an electrician to do this). So, we are now completely wireless, and as a result, we have switched over to 802.11g from 11b. After reading Craig's recent entry on the switch, I couldn't resist, and I'm really glad about the change. I got a great deal on the Belkin router from Staples ($49.94) and the notebook card ($39.94). I can't believe the speed improvement here. Even though we are not really getting the full 54Mbps, it's still darn fast.

Anyway, that's all for now. My weekly PalmCorner will not be back for another week or so (I'm testing the new Sena Palm T3 case--it's great btw), and I'm off to assembling my new ping pong table in the basement. I can't believe the table weighs 270lbs (it almost didn't make it down to the basement).

Posted by Ken in Internet
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April 1, 2004

Free Google eMail

I heard this morning that Google will be offering free email accounts with 1 gig of storage in the near future. If you don't want to be Bob54789 you better be ready to jump.

Posted by Mitch in Internet
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March 11, 2004

Beware of Scams in Ebay

One of the greatest inventions in the Internet is Ebay. If you are a seller, where can you go and post your items so that everyone in the United States or the world can see what you are selling? If you are a buyer, where can you go and find assortment of items that you might be interested in buying? I'm actually new to Ebay, but I have recently sold a number of items, and I personally think this concept rocks.

However, as with anything else these days, you have to careful not to fall prey to a scam perpetuated by unscrupulous buyers and sellers. I came across a scam recently, and I feel fortunate that I didn't fall prey to it.

The scam works something like this:

1. You get an e-mail saying that he/she would like to buy your product and ask you to close your auction early.

2. Then he/she will ask you to ship the product to an international location (e.g., it's a gift). He/she usually insists that you ship by International Express Mail the same day you receive your payment and asks you to forward the tracking number when you ship it.

3. You get a paypal payment (usually via credit card).

4. You ship the product as requested and send him/her the tracking number.

5. A few hours after you send them the tracking number, he/she reverses the charge on the payment (you usually get notified by Paypal).

Of course, by this time, you would have lost your money and the item (since the package is already on the way to an international location). In other words, you've been duped and you will never see your product again and never receive your money.

Recently, I almost fell prey to this scam, and fortunately for me, the product wasn't physically shipped (only the tracking number was generated). So, I just did not ship the product. Of course, I never heard from the buyer again. I'm sure this is not an isolated incident.

So, if you want to do business in Ebay, I suggest you protect yourself by

1. selling only to US customers.
2. shipping only to a confirmed address (especially credit card purchases)
3. getting e-check payments (or direct transfer from bank account)
4. shipping UPS ground a day after the payment is received (so there is one day buffer and also few days in transit)

This way you and your buyer will also be protected by Paypal/Ebay seller/buyer protection, and you won't fall prey to the scams out there.

Happy E-baying!

Posted by Ken in Internet
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March 10, 2004

Cool Site: [Divide by Zero] Fonts

[Divide by Zero] Fonts offers some really interesting, fun, free Truetype fonts as well as a handful of scanned notebook pages from a talented young graphic artist. The Tombats series (sample below) is especially wonderful stuff.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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Not Impressed with New Gizmodo 'Style'

A few weeks ago, after losing Peter Rojas, Gizmodo made some editorial changes. One of the changes appears to be an attempt to bring a rather sophomoric emphasis on sex and drugs to the site. OK, we get it...you hipsters are just so cool. Now, how about going back to focusing more on the tech, hmm?

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 8, 2004

GearBits Celebrates First Birthday

A year ago today, I posted the first entry at GearBits, a new blog mostly about my love of technology. It was born of my desire to share my experiences and opinions with others and start a dialogue. Along the way, I invited some close friends -- Ken, Mitch, and Sam -- to join me in writing down what they thought was interesting.

Well, it's now a year later and the site is still going. I guess there's something to be said for sheer stubbornness. The graph below shows what kind of ride it's been so far -- since I started keeping traffic stats back last July, visitations to the site has grown quite a bit.

As you can see, in the middle of last summer (2003), we welcomed under 100 different readers each week. Now, that number has grown a hundred-fold. Hopefully, that's a sign that we're providing some useful, interesting, or provocative reading (an alternate explanation is that there are just a lot more search bots combing and cataloguing the web).

Either way, thanks for a great first 12 months. In the brief time we've been around, we've made 556 posts and you all have added 1,230 comments. Please let us know what you like and what you don't and we'll try to do more of the former and less of the latter. We're looking forward to another great year!

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 4, 2004

Phone Company or Cable Company--Lesser of Two Evils?

As you know from my recent entry, I have an opportunity to select a new broadband carrier in the next few weeks. I have been using the phone company's broadband service (DSL) here at Cincinnati (Cincinnati Bell's Zoomtown). Last year I upgraded my service to hyperspeed (3 Mbps download / 768 Kbps upload), and I haven't had any problems. However, I thought I should check out the cable broadband service this time. Looks like the cost would come out about the same (less than $5 difference per month) and therefore the cost is not an issue. So, it may come down to performance and service. I got my own Wireless router; so, I don't need to worry about that also.

So, folks out there, what's your opinion? Should I stay with the phone company, or should I switch over to cable?

Posted by Ken in Internet
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March 3, 2004

Rojas' New Blog

Peter Rojas, the creative force behind Gizmodo, has left that site and started a new tech blog called Engadget.

According to Peter, Engadget will focus on "lots and lots of gadgets and [be] obsessively updated every day." Should be a great daily read.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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March 2, 2004

Broadband over Power Lines Rolled out in Cincinnati

Cinergy today announced that it is concluding a successful trial of providing broadband Internet access via power lines (BPL) to about 100 residential customers and will be, starting today, rolling out the service to about 16,000 homes in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"A unit of Cinergy Corp. today will become the nation's first electric utility to offer high-speed Internet service to customers via its power lines, turning every electrical outlet in homes or offices into a Web connection.

The technology, which will be offered first in Hyde Park and Mount Lookout, holds the promise of adding competition and cutting prices for broadband services while making such service available (particularly in remote and rural areas) without costly investments in cables."

The whole story is here...more soon once I've looked into it a bit more. Given that I live in Hyde Park, I expect I'll be investigating this quite closely in the near future.

At first blush, this is pretty exciting! It will definitely put pressure on Time Warner and our local phone company, especially when Cinergy starts offering VOIP phone service too. Things they are a-changin'.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 24, 2004

Using Technology to Find Your Dream House

If you read my entry yesterday, you know I have been house hunting. During our search for the "perfect" house, I came to rely more and more on several Internet real estate websites, and I wonder what would have been like to shop for a house when these tools were not available.

First, I've been using our local MLS (multiple listing service) website here at Cincinnati to do our initial search. We can do a search on multiple neighborhoods, price range, and other requirements. You can even do a search on upcoming open houses and new listings as well. The listing also contains several outdoor and indoor pictures, and although they are not perfect, they help us to select or eliminate certain houses from our list of potentials. Some houses even boast virtual tours of the house (where we can scan the 360-degree views of rooms).

We've also discoverd that most county auditors have their own websites that list all the properities in the county. We've been able to look up previous sales data, lot size, improvements, and especially in one county, we can even look at the aerial photo of the house. We wanted to have a wooded backyard view, and the aerial photo helped us elimianate a number of houses that we thought we liked from the MLS list.

Overall, these tools have helped us save tons of time in our search, and who'd ever thought even a couple of years ago, this would have been possible. I wonder whether in not so distant future, we would all be doing virutal house hunting where we don't even have to be at the house physically to find the "perfect" house.

Posted by Ken in Internet
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February 21, 2004

WheresGeorge.com

I wandered down to the vending area at work on Friday and I found a dollar bill sitting on top of one of the snack machines. Stamped on it was "wheresgeorge.com" -- so I had to find out what this was.

Well, it turns out that the Where's George? site bills itself (pun intended) as "The Great American Dollar Bill Finder."

The idea is that you can enter the serial code and unique ID info from the dollar bill into the database and see where it's been tracked. The tracking isn't anything scientific or government-sponsored, it's just folks like you and me putting the data into the website. But, it's amusing when you see one.

It's ironic to think that there are lots of folks freaked out about the (false) idea of the government tracking those $20 bills in your pocket using the little plastic strip in them, but other folks are more than happy to input the location of their cash into a publicly accessible website.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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February 9, 2004

Imaginary Girlfriends on eBay

Want a girlfriend? Hate the hassle? Check out eBay.

A few enterprising individuals are offering "imaginary girlfriend" services to bidders.

Listings are similar: "Sexy college student seeking money for books will, for one month, write you frequent e-mails and send pictures and perfumed letters you can show to family, friends and ex-girlfriends."

However, in most cases personal contact is strictly prohibited. One listing points out: "This in NO WAY makes me your real girlfriend."

Hundreds of listings were previously available. Unfortunately for lonely geeks all over the world, some listings began to cross the line into more overtly sexual. eBay now deems all such auctions as inappropriate, and has started closing them down, so you have to act fast to get the girl of your dreams.

Posted by Sam in Internet and Other and Society / Politics
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January 1, 2004

Sir Tim of the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee, known as the "Father of the World Wide Web", is receiving a knighthood, as announced by Buckingham Palace as part of Britain's 2004 New Year's Honours list.

Laying the groundwork in the early 1980s, Berners-Lee proposed development of the World Wide Web in 1989 while at the CERN Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland. He wrote the first WWW client and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining the URL, HTTP and HTML protocols.

London-born Berners-Lee graduated from Oxford University in 1976, and is currently a senior research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Ironically, the news of his knighthood was given to Berners-Lee by telephone, and not by email.

Happy New Year, Sir Tim!

Posted by Sam in Internet and Society / Politics
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December 27, 2003

Gamer Sues, Wins Over Virtual Property

In a landmark case on virtual property rights, a court has ordered a web-based game company to return virtual property to a player whose online cache of virtual currency and weapons was stolen.

Li Hongchen, 24, spent the equivalent of $1,210 over two years on his virtual cache for the Chinese game Red Moon, only to find in February that his account had been cyber-burgled via the game's central servers by a hacker.

Hongchen took the game's creators, Arctic Ice Technology Development, to court when they wouldn't help him identify the hacker.

In court, the company stated that Hongchen's property had no real world value, but this December, a District People's Court in Beijing ruled that the company was liable for the player's virtual property because access weaknesses in its servers had allowed the looting to take place.

The result is one of the first legal rulings on virtual property rights, and another example of the blurring line between virtual and real worlds. Some Everquest gamers, for example, already trade game characters and articles for real money through eBay and similar sites.

Posted by Sam in Computing and Gaming and Internet and Society / Politics
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December 19, 2003

Fun With Spam

I have an email address that has been active since the mid-1990s. That was back when it was unheard of to post anything commercial to USENET and there was no such thing as spam on the computer unless you were a messy eater. Email addresses were posted in the open in those dawning days of the new Internet frontier. That has come back to haunt the folks who have been "here" for a while.

My old email account receives 99.999% spam and the host it resides on does not filter at the mail server level. I have taken to not monitoring it for months and then opening the firehose just to see what crawls out.

Today I downloaded nearly 10,000 emails and started playing "The Spam Game" with them. Using the search tool, I tried to come up with the most common words that might reside in spam subjects. Using my total messages and my find hits, I could get a pretty good running percentage score.

OK, so I had some spare time today...

Posted by Mitch in Internet
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December 18, 2003

The Funniest eBay Auction Ever

I've always been a big fan of the Brit sense of humor. The average bloke on the streets of London is funnier than our best stand up commedians. Case in point with this eBay auction for the world's junkiest motorcycle. This guy deserves a million hits for a presentation like this.

Posted by Mitch in Internet
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December 13, 2003

A New Favorite: Eyesore of the Month

Boing Boing linked to a wickedly cool site: James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month. James takes a no-prisoners approach to pointing out how the great banality and poor taste evident in a lot of American architecture is representative of failures and disturbing trends in other aspects of life in this country.

In one of my favorite pages from July of 2003, James posts this under the photo of a Denny's with an enormous American flag in front of it:

   Do you have this problem -- you walk out of the Target store at 4:30 in the afternoon after a day of shlepping and chaufeurring and. . . you forget what country you're in??
   Where the fuck am I??
   Portugal??
   Lichtenstein??
   Oh, thank God, there's the American flag. Whew, that's a load off my mind. Now I can drive eleven miles across the metroplex and pick up the kids at Soccer World.
   Actually, I have a theory about the promiscuous deployment of Old Glory all around the tilt-up utopia of Parking Lot Nation. A flag is a sort of supernatural totem, meant to protect the bearer against animadversion and harm. We're trying to distract ourselves from the spectacle of ugliness and banality that we've created, and protect our sensibilities against the suspicion that we have become a land of wicked, self-destructive slobs.
   Happy Independence Day.

Genius. Enjoy...

Posted by Craig in Internet
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December 12, 2003

Eye of the Beholder

Speaking of virtual people, the website for the first ever virtual beauty pageant - Miss Digital World - is now open, and accepting entries.

Franz Cerami, creator of the pageant, said "Miss Digital World is the search for a contemporary ideal of beauty, seen through virtual reality."

The outpouring of interest after the first announcements meant that the pageant - aimed at digital artists, advertising agencies, movie production companies and videogame developers - has pushed back several entry deadlines to December 20.

Prospective contestants should note that models "should not have taken part - not even as extras or cameos - in pornographic films, shows or plays nor have made statements...in any way out of tune with the moral spirit of the competition." (Too bad... it would have been nice to see Lara Croft on that catwalk...)

Contestants will be programmed to parade along a virtual catwalk, surrounded by virtual guests, with a virtual emcee presiding over the event. The winner - determined by votes over the Internet - will be crowned at a real world celebration in November 2004.

Posted by Sam in Computing and Internet and Popular Media and Society / Politics
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December 10, 2003

One Remote to Rule Them All

If you're like me, you've got a remote control for your TV, DVD, PVR, video, stereo, satellite, and other sundry electronic boxes....12 at the last count. Universal remotes? Cumbersome IR programming, new remotes which turn out to be incompatible, the need to switch modes from TV to DVD to stereo....I'd just about given up.

Until now. The Harmony Remote by Intrigue Technologies is a universal remote with a difference - well, three to be exact - and promises to herald in a new era of clickophile nirvana.

Advantage one: A scroll wheel aids navigation through different modes, and aids in accessing stored preferences, viewable via a small LCD screen at the base of the unit. This makes the Harmony ergonomically a joy to use.

Advantage two: Instead of having to switch control modes by electronic box (TV, DVD, stereo), the Harmony uses macros to organize functions by activity: "Watch TV", for example, turns on and controls your TV, cable/satellite and speakers. "Listen to CD" turns on and controls your amplifier, speakers, and CD player. "Play a DVD"....well, you get the picture.

Advantage three: The Harmony Remote is the first Internet-programmable universal remote. Connect the Harmony to your computer via USB, and you can tap into a growing online database of tens of thousands of remotes. Everyday new remotes are being added, thanks to Harmony's online user community. You simply select the remotes you want mimicked, and download to your Harmony....no more IR mating rituals to teach your universal remote new tricks. Oh, and you can download TV listings as well.

The reviews have been ecstatic. One user enthused: "My mother-in-law, a 77-year-old woman raised on an island mountain farm without electricity, got it working within seconds. And her techno-hostile daughter, my wife, declares the Harmony the first gadget I've brought home that actually does something useful."

All this adds up to the Harmony being possibly the one remote worth fighting over.

Posted by Sam in Home A/V and Internet and Music & Audio
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December 4, 2003

Largest Prime Number (Yet) Found

New Scientist is reporting that the largest prime number yet was just found using a distributed computing system consisting of over 200,000 computers.

The new prime is 6,320,430 digits long (yes, so I won't be publishing it here). The result is a victory for the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project.

Math news is usually pretty rare, but late 2003 has had a couple neat stories. Beyond the new prime story above, we also were tantalized by the partial solving of Hilbert's 16th problem by Swedish PhD student Elin Oxenhielm.

Posted by Craig in Computing and Internet and Other
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November 26, 2003

iTunes Hacked

Apple's digital rights management (DRM) system on the iTunes Music Store has been challenged by Jon Johansen, well-known as the author of the DeCSS program for bypassing DVD copy protection.

The new program, QTFairUse, does not actually crack the DRM. Instead, it intercepts the music file while it is in the process of being streamed and before the DRM is applied.

While this implies that - similar to DeCSS - the program works only on content legitimately purchased from iTunes, a number of observers suggest that the program can be mis-used because it allows users to compile their own database of unprotected - and potentially distributable - content.

In its current release, QTFairUse does require some programming knowledge to implement, but more user-friendly versions are likely to appear in time. The current version is available only for Windows-based PCs.

Posted by Sam in Computing and Internet and Music & Audio and Popular Media
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November 14, 2003

NEIC -- A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

I found a really cool website last night. A friend reported that he thought they had just felt a small earthquake, so I started Googling to see what resources I could find to let me know if they had.

What I found was the National Earthquake Information Center (or NEIS), a division of the US Geological Survey (itself a division of the Department of the Interior).

The NEIS's website has some of the most real-time and user-friendly science resources I've seen, especially on a governmental site. For example, the Current Worldwide Earthquake List displays all the recent seismic activity of interest, updated almost to the second. Clicking on an activity will take you to a page providing incredible amounts of information about the event, including clickable maps that convert to high-detail diagrams providing additional info.

Perhaps even cooler are the Recent Earthquake Activity maps for the USA and the world. These diagrams are both visually useful (Tufte would be proud) and interactive (you can click on them to get more detailed close-ups of areas with activity). You can even see actual seismogram charts for US stations (updated daily).

Anyway, whoever did this website deserves some major kudos, as it's well-designed, fast, user-friendly, and highly informative. Now if only my state's DMV would be so innovative with its website...

Posted by Craig in Internet
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November 10, 2003

Fark.com -- News with Reviews

Fark.com is a news aggregator blog with something extra: it both classifies the stories (e.g., Amusing, Dumbass, Obvious, Unlikely, etc.) and offers readers message boards on which to post their reactions. Based on the number of posts, Fark.com gets a lot of readers.

Fark covers a lot of the same news stories you get on other media, but also throws in a refreshing dash of the odd, the bizarre, the disturbing, and the naked just for fun.

Think of it as /. for the rest of us.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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November 4, 2003

Watchster

Watchster is an interesting website. It is a news aggregator or meta-blog (whichever you prefer) site that focuses on tech news and gadgets with three categories of stories:

PDA News has links to stories about PDAs from over 30 PDA-centric news sites like Palm Infocenter and Pocket PC Thoughts.

Tech News lists stories from about 20 general tech and gadget sites, including Slashdot, Gizmodo, and yours truly, GearBits.

Mac News lists, as you might guess, stories from dozens of Mac news sites -- the list is absolutely huge.

Go check it out.

Posted by Craig in Internet
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October 31, 2003

More Halloween Horror? Microsoft Eyes Google Takeover

According to the New York Times, while search company Google prepares for an IPO, it is also entertaining the possibility of a partnership - and even a merger - with Microsoft.

Google has noted that its preference is to take the IPO route, but it has been in talks with Microsoft over the last two months regarding possible alliances, including the possibility of a full acquisition.

Google is considering selling a 10-15% percent stake to the public, expected to raise more than $2 billion.

According to some sources, even if Google completes its IPO, Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing Google at a later date.

Posted by Sam in Computing and Industry and Internet
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October 24, 2003

Amazon.com Launches Full Text Searching of Books

A letter from Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, on his Amazon.com site today, states:

"Starting today, you can find books at Amazon.com based on every word inside them, not just on matches to author or title keywords. Search Inside the Book - the name of this new feature - searches the complete inside text of more than 120,000 books - all 33 million pages of them."

Click here, for example, to find all the books that mention MemoWare, Craig's main online endeavor before GearBits.

After finding books that mention your search terms, you can also see a scan of that page. An Amazon.com press release gives more details of the service. The service inaugurates a capability unmatched by any other major online or bricks-and-mortar book retailer - although publisher O'Reilly's subscription-based Safari service has previously allowed IT professionals to search through the text of 1,000 selected technical reference books.

This appears to be the first results of Amazon.com's foray into search, under its wholly-owned A9 subsidiary. A9 was founded earlier this year, and operates independently of Amazon.com under Udi Manber, a former executive at search giant Yahoo.

Posted by Sam in Computing and Internet and Popular Media
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