Category Archives: General

Red Herring reports today on an exclusive partnership between underdog web browser Opera and Thales, a company specializing in in-flight entertainment systems. As part of the agreement, Opera’s browser will be included in Thales’ TopSeries system currently being used by some 15 airlines. Key to the partnership, which will run for a year, is likely Opera’s internationalization features, which make globalization much simpler because of the software’s support for multiple languages. As RH points out, this partnership is a clear indication of Opera’s desire to move beyond the traditional (i.e. home or office) market, moving into embedded devices as a source of additional revenue. Considering the fact that Opera’s basically been a perennial “also ran” in the browser wars (out since 1995, it still commands an estimated 1 percent of the market). According to the article, nearly two-thirds of the company’s revenue already comes from embedded devices, and with its recent decision to offer the product for free, this path is likely a clear indicator of the way things are going for the company. With the ongoing proliferation of mobile devices able to browse the web, I can’t help but agree with Opera’s decision to place a high level of emphasis on this, but when the day is done I still enjoy my computer and a screen bigger than 2.5 inches. Then again, I’m sure there’s plenty of room for both.

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It’s times like these that i validate those psychos who show up to the office with two M-16’s taped together and a grenade launcher under each arm.

Maybe I’m being too dramatic, but Sony has really touched a nerve this time. Engadget reports that Mark’s Sysinternals Bloc has uncovered some malware/adaware/spyware of Sony Music. That’s right. Sony. Sony’s CDs will not play on most CD-ROM’s, unless you use their bundled player. Apparently installing this player also installs a hidden program that hog system resources, is poorly written, and was more pain than a root canal without novocain to uninstall.

DRM isn’t the answer, lower prices and an easy means of distribution is. While Sony spends man hrs coding and covering up junk like this, they could be researching more efficient means to get the music to the people, for a small cost. If I didn’t have hot coffee in my had, I’d show those Sony exec’s a thing or two. But hot coffee can cause 3rd degree burns, at least I think it can.

So you’re a tough guy, right? You’re the one they’re talking to in those “Built Ford Tough” commercials, keen on getting yourself the biggest, baddest set of wheels able to swill gas like a kid guzzling soda tackle the toughest terrain out there. Seriously, though; today Ford announced a partnership with California Custom Sport Trucks to produce a special version of its Super Duty pickup, available next year.

Targeted at construction contractors, the modded truck will come outfitted with a touchscreen PC running Windows XP Pro, broadband wireless capability and digital camera connectivity (PCMCIA/CompactFlash slots). No sweet specs for you hardware geeks (it’s meant to process invoices, people!) – 4GB of flash memory, 256MB RAM, 1 GHz Crusoe processor. Still, mobile ‘net is tasty, no matter how you slice it. Hacker community, prepare thyselves (and cheers to someone who buys one of these pickups just to have a tablet pc to play with).

Props to Sprint for a few news items: yesterday they became the first U.S. company to offer music downloads over a cellular network, besting the Apple/Motorola ROKR’s circuitous “iTunes-to-pc-to-phone” route. Puh-leeze. The dilly: at launch, subscribers have access to some 250k songs from the stables of EMI, Sony/BMG, Warner and Vivendi’s Universal; for $2.50 you get two copies of the song (read: a tinny phone version and one for your PC). Downloads are available to those with EV-DO phones (i.e. those with wireless broadband), which at the moment are only Samsung’s MM-A940 and Sanyo’s MM-9000 phones. With the record labels continually fighting with Steve Jobs over iTunes’ $.99 song price, I’m sure some execs are smiling about Sprint charging $2.50 for a single song (get real – the phone version doesn’t count). With a very small user base and a pricing structure 2.5x greater than the market leader, this has some hurdles to overcome, but Sprint is the first one out there. Check this review of the Sprint Music Store (Laptop Magazine) for more. Their rating? 3/5 stars.

Second morsel: speaking of EV-DO, Sprint’s getting serious about competing with Verizon, offering several data plans that, I must admit, are very tempting. Where’s my PPC-6700, you ask? Puh-leeze. Mere details! Plans are as follows:

• $15/month gets you the basic Power Vision Access Pack, including an unlimited supply of tasty EV-DO and streaming news and music.
• $20/month for the Power Vision Plus Pack, which includes unlimited messaging and Sprint TV (content from ABC, Fox News/Sports, etc.).
• $25/month for the Power Vision Ultimate Pack includes everything above plus more channels.

I’m waiting for the Power Vision Super Duper Better Than Anything Else Pack! Damn marketing jargon. Yeesh.

The Internet is more than just a place to blog your own personal rants. It has also become the place for hard facts and information when you know how to find it. Problem is, there is just so much out there that it is becoming increasingly difficult to sift through the mud. The post on Wikipedia just a few days ago gets right to the point (although I have a personal hard-on for Wikipedia, the point is well taken).

But there is another field where people go online (almost exclusively) to get information. If you aren’t logging in to get an encyclopedic definition, you are probably getting directions to the airport, party restaurant etc.

But just like online encyclopedias you can’t just take the first site that comes up as the holy grail of online maps. There are tons of mapping services from Google to Mapquest and Yahoo. So what works best? Cartography, a blog dedicated to maps has just finished a 9 part series analyzing which mapping systems work the best under different circumstances. Enjoy and happy traveling.

Day Two:

More of the same stuff happened today. They repeated most of the same things they showed yesterday, so I did the things that everyone did yesterday, but with shorterlines. I played World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (more below). I attended some of the panels, which gave awesome information. I got to play more StarCraft: Ghost. In the afternoon, I attended the comic panel with the guys from Penny Arcade, GUComics, and PvP. Those guys are way funny. Also, the finals of the BlizzCon invitational tournaments were today. I got to see the best StarCraft and WarCraft III players from around the globe compete. It was awesome.
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I’m still having a little trouble swallowing this one. When Apple announced the Video iPod I was a little skeptical. After all, most “iPodders” use their units while exercising, or in the car. Neither needs video, and are definitely more suitable to an audio experience. Most users didn’t really use the photo features of the last generation. And who really wants to watch a 2 inch screen for longer than a few minutes? Finally, Jobs had said in the past that the iPod was really not suited for video in the end.

Well, there are a million reasons why the Video iPod is succeeding. Apparently, there have already been 1 million videos downloaded from the iTunes site! I’m still trying to figure out how many of the players that Apple could have sold in less than a month to have that many videos downloaded, but this sounds like a very hot product, and THE Christmas toy for this year. This also proves that you can’t always guess what’s going to catch on.

You can read the original press release here.

There’s an old saying “two heads are better than one”. This is true when you’re taking a math test, or trying to solve a riddle, but it goes only so far. The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, takes this old staying way further than it should have. If you’re not familiar with Wikipedia, it’s an encyclopedia where the content is created by everyone instead of a few ‘boys in the back room’.

The saying says “two heads”, not 6.5 billion heads, are better than one. Wikipedia is just finding this out now. The content quality is below par, “An encyclopedia can’t just have a small percentage of good entries and be considered a success.”

And I fully agree. My father used to tell me that encyclopedias are like chains, only as strong as the weakest link. Wikipedia has tons of links, and a lot of them seem to be rather weak. The concept is great, but I’m not encouraging my nephew to reference Wikipedia on his 3rd grade report on African Elephants, he just may be misled.

Day One:

We arrived at the aneheim convention center at about 9:00am. The Con didn’t open until 10:00am, but there were a couple members of our party that didn’t have tickets yet, so we went early to see if we could get tickets for them (partially through press connections I have). When we got there, there were already two long lines (about 1/4 mile each). One was the line to pick up tickets (good thing we got ours yesterday). The convention was awesome! They had StarCraft Ghost playable. They had World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade (The just now announced expansion to World of WarCraft) playable. They gathered the best StarCraft and WarCraft III players from around the globe to compete here. They had an art gallery, Blackrock Spire to climb, a sponsor area complete with Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, and a huge store, with an always long line. Not to mention the panels and FMVs they were showing the entire time.

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