Category Archives: General

I’m constantly amazed by these offers that seem too good to be true. After all, what is better than free? Well, if it seems too good to be true, it ussually is. This latest offer from Visa is an example of this.

I received an offer from Visa this week for a free Dell Laptop that they say is valued at $850. Naturally I’m skeptical, but before I threw the ad in the trash I looked over it to see what you had to do to get the “free” computer.

To qualify for your “free” computer you must transfer a balance of $5000 to the new card and maintain a balance of $3,500 for 18 months. If you don’t have $5,000 on another card to transfer you can take out upto $2,500 in cash advances to make up the difference. This means you need to have at least $2,500 on another card in order to transfer it to the new card.

After some serious number crunching, they figure out that the “free” laptop ends up costing over $900! Now that’s an offer I can definitely pass on.

Some users downloaded too much stuff from Napster have larger music collections that come close to the current capacity of current iPod offerings of 60 GB. If their collection is that large today, imagine what will happen now that the Video iPod can play back videos. And don’t forget about the thousands of 7 megapixel photos that you’d like to be able to share at all times. One analyst is hypothesizing that a terabyte iPod could be available in 5 years. While a capacity of 1 terabyte seems daunting (remember 1 terabyte=1000 gigabytes!), why do I think that some power users will be able to fill that up, with a few more tracks to spare?

“Apple could possibly create an iPod with 1 terabyte of storage, as well as a true “iPhone” says one analyst. “A terabyte iPod might sound crazy today, but we believe in five years a terabyte iPod will emerge as a portable home media center,” says Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster in an research report obtained by iLounge. “We continue to believe that Apple will enter the mobile phone market. We would not expect an ‘iPhone’ to be launched for at least 12-18 months.” “

From iPod Lounge

What do you do when the president of your company says the department that pulls the best prank will win $100 each? Cover an entire office in aluminum foil. That’s right. All the walls, all the furniture, all his office equipment, every paper clip and even the sticky notes on his desk. We aim to never be outdone, and this was no exception.

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It looks like the guys at XM are interested in helping you do more than hear news from ex-NPR icon Bob Edwards; earlier this week they announced their intention to provide drivers with real-time information about parking spot availability. Now, you might find yourself asking, “How could XM do this?”

Well, that’s the kicker – while this may be cool, it obviously requires the deployment of spot-detecting technology wherever parking spots might be available. Translation: if this gets off the ground we’ll likely see it at large parking structures first. XM is working with Nu-Metrics and InfoGation to develop a system that uses color-coding to notify drivers about the percentage of available spots (methinks this is done via a simple mechanism that counts the number of cars coming in and subtracts the number going out). Let the satellite radio wars continue.

First there was regular phone service. Then there was cellular phone service. The latest buzz has been about VOIP (voice over internet protocol). By routing phone calls through a broadband internet connection, there can be real cost savings. This has been gaining momentum, and starting to become prevalent with such bonuses as one monthly payment for unlimited phone calls including long distance. In short, this has been a revolution in telecommunications!

Never to rest on their laurels, the next act planned is for VOIP broadband phone calls across wireless internet connections. Now, anywhere there is an open wireless network, with a handheld wifi phone, you can sit all day and talk. I could see this type of device as really useful for folks that like to talk at Starbucks all day, and for travelers at airports and hotels where wifi networks are commonplace. Perhaps, for urban dwellers with city wide wifi networks (like those being assembled in San Francisco and Philadelphia), this may one day become the phone of choice for many users.

Growing up is sometimes a painful prospect. Getting hazed at school is a fact of life for generations, and probably generations to come. Unfortunately, the latest is cyberbullying, and this definitely goes too far. This involves criminal activity, including hacking into a school’s server, and posting “mean spirited images” and racial epithets.

San Francisco school officials are trying to figure out who hacked into a high school Web site, posted a student’s face over vulgar and mocking images, then added racist and gang-related captions using the student’s name.

Normally, the Washington High Web site features the usual school fare: club news, athletic schedules, student triumphs and information for parents.

But on Wednesday, school officials realized that someone had replaced all the school information with a set of photo montages apparently intended to humiliate a single student.

Some news from earlier this week: according to the rumor mongers at loyal Apple fansite AppleInsider, the first batch of the much-awaited Intel-based Macs may arrive well before late 2006/early 2007, as originally forecast, possibly at the Macworld show in January. The article is based on comments made by Ben Reitzes of UBS Investment Research, who believes there is a fair likelihood of an Intel Mac introduction in early ’06, quite possibly the Mac mini (even the analysts think Power Macs and PowerBooks will be stuck in the labs until later in the year).

Given Apple’s penchant/desire/obsession with creating a media frenzy, we need to take this with a fairly hefty level of skepticism, at the same time realizing that the likelihood for such an announcement is relatively unquantifiable.

Those Scandinavians and their hacking. First it’s Norwegian über-hacker DVD Jon making headlines (instead of cracking DVDs he’s now working in the States), now it’s some Swedish Master of Science students carrying the “Doom to the iPod” torch a bit further, making it available on the iPod nano. I did play around on their site for a few minutes, watching some vids of the game in action, and I must say that I’m really surprised at how good the framerate is. Then again, Doom was released back in 1993. Keep in mind that iDoom still comes w/o sound and uses controls that aren’t, well, exactly designed for gameplay, but it’s still cool to see this in action. I’m not sure I’m ready to slap this sucker on my ‘pod just yet, but anyone who’s done so is more than welcome to talk a bit about their experience.

[Warning: this is NOT supported by Apple, and installing or attempting to install it will void your warranty. I know, I know…YOU know that already, but maybe some people don’t. Just covering our bases here.]

Truly inventive. The development log indicates that this has been in the works for several months, but a guy/gal/person (TehDiplomat) has created a playable version of Risk using Google Maps. Available with 2 – 6 players (only humans at the moment), go get a few buddies to huddle around your computer and start conquering the world from the likes of the pleasant-tasting, multicolored, do-no-harm Google environment.