Monthly Archives: November 2005

Having recently witnessed Nintendo’s 20th anniversary, I’ve gotten into retro gaming. I wander around electronic stores that specialize in 80’s collector gear, be it Atari games, large computer-like systems or accesories like Nintendo’s long-forgotten Power Pad. Perhaps I’m feeling nostalgic, but I find a beauty in their simplicity and planned obsolescence.

Yes, buying classic games and such can be done online for relatively the same prices, but actually going to the retro store, browsing throug their treasure trove of archived games, it’s like going into a techie pirate shop. There is no greater satisfaction like breathing in 20 year old dust off a long lost Atari game.

Instead of going on with this post in an attempt to remind you of your gaming youth, I’ll just direct you all to a great Flickr collection based on 80’s video game advertisments.

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

Hoping to loosen Apple Computer’s grip on the digital music player market, Microsoft is rallying consumer electronics companies to form a common link.

The software maker is part of a working group launched last week by the Consumer Electronics Association to develop a standard port for connecting gadgets like music players to audio systems in homes and cars.

“It is important for the industry to create an open, industrywide standard for docking connectors that will give consumers greater access to the digital entertainment they have stored on devices,” Jai Jaisimha, the lead program manager in Microsoft’s Windows digital media division, said in a statement.

It’s the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft to try to unify the many device makers and music sellers that use its technology.

Apple’s popular iPod already has a standard dock connector that allows all recent models to connect to speakers, car kits and other devices.

However, other music player makers, such as Creative Labs, Dell and iRiver, have designed their own ports. That makes it difficult for accessory manufacturers, which need to design add-ons that will work with the multiple formats.

We’re seeing iPod connectors in a number of places, but we need to remind ourselves that it is a proprietary connector. This is what kept Zip discs, and Betamax videotapes from ever reaching their full potential. While some autos, like BMW and Volkswagen ship with a connector for an iPod, many of us would welcome a competing standard. Same goes for those speaker docks that accept only an iPod. Wouldn’t it be great if they could just use something like a universal USB connector? I think that Microsoft may have found the chink in Apple’s armor if they can get the rest on board this standards train. In the meantime, Apple is running away with this segment with over 80% of the MP3 player market, and stores running out of iPods already this holiday season.
From CNET.

“Idle hands and idle time give kids the urge to commit crime.”
-lots of old people have said this to me

What’s wrong with having a regular crew of teenagers and pre-teens hanging outside your neighborhood liquor store, smoking cigarettes, stealing candy bars, and badgering patrons?

Everything if you’re the sucker that owns the store! What are you to do? Get a mosquito of course! Studies show that younger people can hear higher ranges of sound waves, hence the high-pitch pulsating-noise-emitting-device deemed, The Mosquito.

This concept in theory would work, except our buddy Steve Jobs has the mass marketed the perfect sound canceling device -that’s right, I’m mentioning it again, iPod. Whoever doesn’t have an iPod of some color, shape, size, generation, or form will most likely get one this holiday season. And then out with the annoying high pitched teen deterrent, and back to the zit lamp (a light that accentuates whiteheads and blemishes). What will they do then? Wear ski masks?!

RSS is what we’ve all been looking for. Really Simple Sindication or Rich Site Summary, is great! but what the heck does it do?

RSS is a faster, easier, way to check your favorite websites for updates. If you were looking for a “free bookshelf” on craigslist, on way to search is the old method would be to keep checking back every day to see if anyone has posted a listing with those key words. Or you may just set up an RSS feed, and as soon as that free bookshelf listing pops up, you get notified via your RSS reader, which can double as your email client.

RSS isn’t new, it’s just a difficult concept to grasp for those who only have one email address, and don’t know the speed of their computer’s GPU. It’s ok.

Yahoo has made it easier, so I hear, to snatch your RSS feeds. Yahoo email users will notice a new folder dedicated to RSS. As you can see, I wasn’t part of the elite few who were able to test this new feature out. But keep on the look, this is the next big thing.

Two new search engines offer to do for podcasting what Technorati does for blogs by letting users search podcasts by keyword to single out audio that suits their interests.

Podzinger and blinkx scour audio content for keywords by translating the audio into text and creating an index for quick searching. It’s a significant step above traditional search engines that identify only keywords in a podcast’s metadata, such as the headline and introductory notes describing the audio file’s general content.

Podzinger, in beta until mid-December, lets users jump to the spot in a podcast where their search term appears, rather than forcing them to scan an entire program for pertinent parts as blinkx does. Its minimalist design has an uncluttered search page, à la Google. And Podcasters can link to a searchable index of their content in order to sell sponsored links to text in the index provided by Podzinger.

Both Podzinger and blinkx include information about the source of the podcast and excerpts of text translated from the podcast with the relevant search terms highlighted. But Podzinger’s information is more extensive and the results include a counter indicating where in the podcast the snippet is located. And Podzinger allows users to click on the Play button to hear the excerpt and determine its relevancy before clicking on a link to download the entire podcast.

With the explosion of podcasts, users need a way to find the one of relevance. These podcast search engines are first attempts to bring some order to the chaos of finding a needle in a haystack. If this takes off, how long do you think it will be until we see Google Podcast Search?

From Wired.

The Washington Post (and others) report today on New Orleans’ launch of the first-ever city-owned WiFi network available for free.

Apparently Louisiana law prohibits localities from offering connection speeds above 144 Kbps (telco lobbyists getting their way in the name of “preventing competition”), but the 512 Kbps speed predicted by city officials currently gets the green light because the city remains in a state of emergency, temporarily removing the teeth of said telco-friendly laws.

Intel and Tropos Networks were among those who donated the equipment required for the WiFi infrastructure, currently up and running in the city’s central business district as well as the French Quarter. Outside of the public, city officials believe the network will see regular use by law enforcement and likely emergency personnel, as well as other city government functions. Might not be enough to get your game on, but it’s perfect for e-mailing and other light web work. Anyone reading this from said network should give us a shout.

Al Jessup of Beckley adjusts one of his 12 satellite dishes Saturday at his home on James Street. All 12 dishes are in working order receiving 5,000-plus radio and television stations and Jessup plans to buy his 13th soon. Lew Whitener/The Register-Herald

With 5000 channels from twelve dishes, this guy is a role model for the digital lifestyle. I’m not sure I understand what “free channels” means. Isn’t that stealing content? If he is, he’s not exactly keeping a low profile from DirectTV and the Dish Network. His family definitely can’t complain that there’s nothing on TV tonight!

The January issue of PC World magazine has an article with some real data on the downward trend seen in HDTV prices; a well-known phenomenon in the electronics industry, it’s still interesting to look at some real numbers about how much prices can change over just 12 months. Based solely on the graph at the left:

• 42-inch HD plasma in Q4 2004: ~$4,000
• 42-inch HD plasma in Q4 2005: ~$2,600

• 32-inch LCD TV in Q4 2004: ~$3,000
• 32-inch LCD TV in Q5 2005: ~$1,600

The take-home message here? Prices fall. Forget timing the market, but know that any shiny new plasma/LCD/DLP today will cost less in the future. If you braved the Black Friday scrum and came away with a smokin’ deal (and sans an ear or a finger), props to you. If you want a big screen and can get a fair price for it, do it.

U.S. online holiday sales are expected to hit nearly $20 billion this year and should take off on Monday, when consumers return to work and their fast Internet connections after the long Thanksgiving weekend.

“Cyber Monday,” the term coined for the Monday after Thanksgiving, comes on the heels of the busy “Black Friday” shopping day when many brick-and-mortar retailers begin turning a profit.

The good news for online shoppers this year, is that “Cyber Monday” is becoming the Web shopping equivalent to “Black Friday” when retailers launch major sales and discounts to drive traffic, analysts said.

So now the Monday after Thanksgiving kicks off the online holiday shopping season. It’s a good thing to have online access at work. So now, you can not only surf the web to your heart’s content, but you can do your gift shopping as well. Let’s hope work doesn’t interfere with this too much.

From MSNBC.

Wow… I don’t know if this is any good or not, but it’s amazing to see how far the prices for flat-screens really have dropped. I’ve been doing a lot of comparison research at the ~$2200 and ~$1600 price points, but this is amazing. Anyone have any experience with the Syntax Olevia products?

Also, anyone who missed this year’s Black Friday, make sure you bookmark bfads.net for next year!

I know there are plenty of devout iPod users out there, but this is giving new meaning to the phrase “I worship my iPod.”
See the story over at Gizmodo.