Category Archives: General

Target (as I pronounce it Tar-Jay) is stocking shelves with the new Firefly phone. 8-12 year olds will get to call mom and dad via their own cute and fun phone. There’s parent safety features and prepaid minutes that come along with this $99.99 investment. I feel that insurance is a must have when it comes to this. When I was 8 years old the only thing I didn’t lose was my superman cape and underwear.

ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3 was created in 1992. The technology: decrease audio filesizes by a factor of 12, while maintaining high quality. Three years later, via a mass email, this Audio Layer 3 stuff was named ‘MP3’. This was the birth of the MP3.

The Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG) Audio Layer 3 has dominated the internet since it’s arrival. Phenomenon such as the iPod and Napster owe their existence to the birth of the MP3. I take my hat off to you Mr. MP3. It is you who has revolutionized the digital world and I thank you for it, congratulations on a decade of success.

Call me on my computer, I don’t want to waste my mobile phone minutes while I’m at home. Since I don’t have two phone lines anymore (land line and mobile aka cell phone) my precious minutes shouldn’t be wasted on frivolous conversation before the 9pm barrier. Vendex International must have been having the same issue, so they bridged the gap between mobile phones and Skype. You’ll need a GSM phone, and Bluetooth to download the software. Skype and mobile phones are moving closer and closer together. Communication just gets cheaper, and that’s good for my social life!

NASA crashed into a comet if you haven’t heard, and that action created quite an interest for people on their computers. Tomorrow, July 13th, NASA plans to launch Space Shuttle Discovery. We’ve definitely come a long way, I remember watching Kevin Arnold of The Wonder Years watch space shuttles take off on a black and white, wood encased Television set. Now here we are, streaming live feeds of comet crashing to hundreds of thousands. Tomorrow I’m going to contribute to the expected millions of page requests, let’s see if NASA can handle it.

The computer chip seems to follow a certain law. Simply put, the capacity of the computer chip doubles every 12 months or so. This is called “Moore’s” law, named after some old dude who was president of Intel at the time he said it.

While that rule has held (more or less) another area of the modern computer has been left sorely behind. The mouse and keyboard interface. I’m 23 and I feel carpel tunnel coming in already. What gives? Where is the doubling of efficiency every year or so of that stuff? Cells improve every 6 weeks, would it really kill people to find a better way to make a keyboard (and I don’t feel that mid-way arch design either).

Computer techies should really look into doubling their efforts in developing touch-pads like the one below called the Tactapad. First off, they look pretty cool, a mix of Matrix, Johny Mnemonic and other sci-fi films staring Keanu Reeves, but also because it looks like (with improvement) it could prove to be more comfortable than a rounded object named after a small mammal.

People like Sergey Gridasov really chap my hide. This guy went and registered the domain names: googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com. He did so a bit after Google.com was registered by the company that we all know and use. Had he been making parody sites, or something of benefit to the community, I would have deemed Gridasov a funny guy. Instead he was trying to spread Trojan horses and spyware to his mistaken visitors. Type in google.com incorrectly and you may end up with a Trojan horse! I’m glad the judge ruled in Google’s favor this time in court.

Before I went out and bought a new shiny iBook, I should have looked into going back to high school first, high school in Arizona that is. A rather small high school (350 people) decided that it would be a good idea to give each student a computer instead of outdated and beat up textbooks. When I first got textbooks back the, I’d thumb through the book in search of written notes like “turn to page 106 to read the funniest joke ever”.

The ‘real world’ working environment is based on computers, I don’t see why each and every school has a computer for each student. Arizona is either ahead of it’s time, or their school administrators are huge Apple fans.

For as long as I can recall, I’ve fantasized about living wirelessly. Sure I change the TV channel wirelessly, carry a wireless mobile phone, use a wireless Bluetooth mouse, and have wireless internet in my household. Wireless is the way to go, and we’re going there. How do we know when we are there? For me, when high speed wireless internet access is as abundant as running water, we’ve made it. Jupiter Researchers are telling us that it’s not going to be as easy as we think. Their research estimates that a citywide wireless network would cost approximately $25.00/person. That’s not exactly free WiFi last time I checked. I hope Jupiter is wrong on this one.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), one of my favorite movies, has a scene where Ferris hacks into the school computer and changes the numbers of days absent in his file. Although this concept is more than 20 years old, it’s still making news today. I am unsure if the kids are getting smarter, and waging more attacks at the school’s systems. Or is the administration is getting wiser, by finding out that the attacks are being done. The University of Spoiled Children (USC) had a security breach lately and alarmed 270,000 people that their information may have been seen. A similar event has taken place at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, University of Texas, and California State University, Chico. Schools better beware because I don’t see it getting easier for them in the near future.

The terms Adaware and Spyware are usually coupled and even blended together. “What’s the difference between adaware and spyware?” people have asked me many times. “The difference between adware and spyware is actually very simple: Users have agreed to install the former on their computers. Spyware simply installs itself without your knowledge.” This article is amusing, the statistics are almost unbelievable, but the quotes are my favorite: “[I think] lightning had something to do with it.”

I remember playing the video game Robocop more than the actual movie. The film came out in 1987, and back then I was an 8 year old Nintendo addict. Meshing machine with man has always been the fantasy of us geeks. Some people are pretty close to having their mobile phones attached to their ear permanently, but for the most part electronics and mankind are two separate entities. Bill Gates was interviewed on the topic, and told that our sci-fi future is nearer than we think. Some people already have devices that help with hearing, seeing, and pain relief. I’m not in need to see or hear any better, but I would like to have a WiFi chip integrated into my head, and some sort of heads up display on the inside of my eyeballs, with speech recognition software. I could surf the net and read emails while pretending to pay attention.

I heart blogging. I have my very own “Blogger” shirt purchased via the Google store that I wear with the utmost pride. Written journals were for middle school girls, but as soon as someone put an electronic spin on them and let the whole world read, they were suddenly for everyone. General Motors has even jumped on the wagon. First they let everyone buy their cars at the employee discount, and now they’re blogging! I’m personally not a fan of American cars, but these guys are raising my brow. They allow comments. The filter only cuts out the SPAM and the obscene remarks. GM and blogs, what a great combination.