Author Archives: iksib

It looks like everyone’s favorite Communist state decided to exert a bit of influence over the personal entertainment industry. Last week the Chinese agency overseeing online gaming announced a system to impose limits on time spent playing online games, in a move to prevent game addiction (think there will be a clinical diagnosis for this anytime soon?). Apparently ready for deployment as early as October, the system will reduce the abilities of game characters after a player passes his/her limit of three consecutive hours of play. Character abilities will apparently be cut by one half after three hours and reach the lowest level possible after five consecutive hours of play. Let’s recap:

•A South Korean died earlier this month after a 50-hour gaming session in an internet cafe.
•A 4-month-old Korean girl died when her parents left her alone for hours to play World of Warcraft in an internet cafe.
•China opens a game addiction clinic that uses psychotherapy and the tremendously effective electro shock therapy to treat game addicts.
•A Korean dies after an 86-hour gaming marathon devoid of food or sleep (from 2002)

Methinks Korea needs to be enacting one of these laws too. Sheesh!

[Props to GameSpot]

Stop what you are doing right now and check out this eBay auction (ends 9/1/05). It’s a Dell system upgraded to the bleeding edge – dual 3.2 GHz Xeon processors, 4 GB SDRAM, two 146 GB 10k RPM hard drives and part that made me nearly wet myself: eight 20-inch flat screen monitors tiled in two rows of four. Cheers to the truly copius amounts of free time this guy has. Spreadsheets and web browsers? Puh-leeze. Now if only there could be an easy way to shrink the gaps between the monitors even further, I’d be in World of Warcraft heaven. I always wanted to feel like I had my own top secret military installation command center in my bedroom.

“I’m dreaming…of an 80 x 40-inch monitor…”

If you’re reading this, it’s probably obvious to you that you’re ahead of the general internet population when it comes to embracing new trends and technologies. Congratulations.

eWeek ran this interesting article last week that spends some time discussing the average consumer of blogs, rss/xml feeds and podcasts, based on recent data obtained by Jupiter Research. Some interesting points from the survey, which polled some 4,000 internet users in June:

•11 percent read a blog monthly or more frequently (up from 6 percent in 2004)
•7 percent downloaded or listened to a podcast
•3 percent regularly receive information via rss or xml

According to Jupiter, these people are “super net vets.” How cute. Either way, the pseudonym denotes five-plus years of experience online and an income of $75,000 or more. Yee-haw! Since I meet one of those two requirements, do I classify as a “semi-super net vet?” It’s just money, right? Right?

The statistic that will make companies perk their ears at the sound of is this: 89 percent of these blog/rss/podcast consumers said they regularly buy stuff via the web, compared to 62 percent of the total online population. As the number of people using these technologies increases, we’ll start to see more companies moving to cater to people like us. Watch out world…here we come!

(dramatic music…and fade to black…)

Rants, especially those on the web, typically fall into the category of “things that feel good and are no fun for others to read.” But occasionally someone will pen an angst-laden diatribe worth perusing, if only for its ability to do nothing more than stimulate thought.

Yesterday Gizmodo ran this piece, which spends time talking about the idea of the idiot’s PC – in this case, a machine with built-in drive mirroring, a la RAID (redundant array of independent/inexpensive disks). Having been written by someone with an obvious level of technological competence, I found it particularly interesting.

I rarely back up my data, and I know this complete negligence may very well come back to haunt me someday. But the idea of asking computer manufacturers to include built-in disk redundance (possibly without even mentioning it) is curious. Unfortunately, the author’s confession that he would gladly pay an extra $200 for the pleasure of never having to think about backing up his data is something that I can guarantee will not necessarily be well-received by our hyper price-conscious public.

But the piece still resonates. I guarantee that most people (myself included) only have a limited understanding of what it would/could mean to have complete and utter hard drive failure. At work or at home, we’re so aloof to the simple fact that large percentages of our lives rest inside plastic and metal boxes. The prevalence of digital cameras, home video production and digital music mean that our hard drives are holding more than just word documents and e-mails, and when it comes to preserving these things, being safe and not sorry means paying more attention to safeguarding our electronic lives.

Arrrgh, matey, get yerself ready, because Talk Like A Pirate Day is fast approaching! Get ready to strap on your peg leg, adjust that eye patch and tell Smee to shine yer boot and sharpen yer cutlass! If ye can read, make yer way to The Ship’s Log O’ The Festerin’ Boil, where Ol’ Chumbucket ‘n Cap’n Slappy will tell ye a tale o’ the high seas. On September 6 grab yerself a copy of their book, Pirattitude, with an introduction by Dave Barry. By September 19th you’ll be ready to hoist the mainsail and show those scurvy dogs and wenches what yer made of.

Building on a Los Angeles Times article published today, the net’s heating up with rumors of Google announcing an instant messaging client, dubbed Google Talk, as early as tomorrow. This comes on the heels of the company’s Monday release of version 2.0 of Google Desktop, which is getting some good reviews. The Times cites several sources apparently familiar with the service, claiming it has been in a testing phase for at least a month.

With IM veterans AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft entrenched, it’s not unlikely that Google will incorporate some type of voice service into their client as an added incentive for people contemplating switching. Given the constant stream of news about VOIP these days, I wouldn’t be too surprised. Then again, whatever Google touches seems to turn to gold. We’ll all just have to wait and see.

A bit more “trend” news tonight, interesting not because it’s overly surprising but because it confirms what many of us do every day: use our wireless phones. Use them a lot, in fact.

PC Magazine ran this article last week on the increase in cell phones replacing traditional landlines in homes. Here are some of the key facts from a Forrester Research report cited in the article:

•Five percent of U.S. homes have no landline service (I’ve been on that list for years).
•Nearly 1/3 of American households with cell phones make around 1/2 their long-distance calls from home with their cellies.

Besides using their phones to make a lot of calls (read: obvious), the majority of wireless users apparently prefer using the web sites of their service providers instead of visiting brick-and-mortar stores (again, me)…some 80 percent, in fact. According to RCRNews, a wireless news service, this info came from a survey of some 2,000 online consumers as they navigated cell-phone service provider (or related) sites. I know that when it comes to paying bills or looking at plans, phones, accessories, etc., I definitely hit up my carrier’s site long before I even think about visiting a store. When it comes to the latest news on new phones, I’m also a fan of Phone Scoop.

Something of a home-grown story tonight (it’s tired and I wanted to get at least one post in today before bed). This has been around the net a bit, but I thought I’d mention it: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is getting some press about his plans to give WiFi to the masses.

Given that I may be moving to San Fran very soon, I’m personally quite pleased to read about this. WiFi hotspots continue to proliferate as companies realize an important thing: people want internet access in places other than their homes and offices. The linked article (San Jose Mercury News) gives some nice specifics about the plan, which will supposedly cost $10 to $18 million, according to Newsom’s figures. Citing the hurdles overcome by Philadelphia, a city currently reviewing final bids for installation of its citywide WiFi network, it will be interesting to see if these plans incite complaints from commercial internet providers hoping to prevent additional competition. Both cities are hoping to increase the prevalence of internet access in lower income areas, as well as provide additional resources for city employees, notably police and fire departments.

This is another one of those projects whose struggles have only begun. Capitalism has many advantages, innovation and choice being two of the best, but nowadays we see more and more proliferation followed by consolidation and ultimately the risk of inflation at the hands of a single service provider (let’s think…cable, phone and internet from a single provider…). I hope municipal control over a service like this one results in what they aim to provide: greater access AND affordability.