I’m no math geek, but that doesn’t mean I utterly abhor the stuff; in fact, I have an amazing amount of respect for people who can enjoy manipulating numbers and do it well. Too bad our society continues to perpetuate stereotypes involving brainy, unwashed and socially inept kids hanging out at the other end of a room from the popular crowd, their minds on starting companies, world domination or dungeons & dragons (wait…MMORPGs).

In such a world, I have no trouble painting Stephen Wolfram as one of the last guys I’d expect to find dabbling in pop culture – he developed the 800-lb gorilla of technical computing applications, Mathematica, and built a company around it. But every now and again the stuff results in a mass-market product whose mathmatical underpinnings can hardly be denied. The guys at Wolfram Research recently released a pretty darn sweet web app for creating completely custom ring tones, dubbed Wolfram Tones.

Visitors to the site can create custom music based on a suite of variables and genres, from classical, dance and hip hop to the bit more arcane, such as ambient, latin and signalling (your guess is as good as mine). Monkey with variables in several composition control categories to get exactly what you’re looking for; those uninterested (or baffled) by the mechanics of the minutiae can simply click on genre buttons repeatedly, each click offering up a unique composition. Compositions can be saved via browser cookies, e-mailed to friends or downloaded to a cell phone (charges apply).

Yes, math can be cool. It can!

At least they might make it more expensive. That’s because Microsoft just got a new patent filed the other day directly related to time-shifting technology. Don’t see the connection gumshoe?

The patent is capable of creating a system where viewers are charged extra for skipping commercials or replaying sports highlights.

I hate commercials as much as the next guy, but I also hate throwing money away. If this thing goes big, all it means is that I’ll have to re-learn the ancient art of making snacks in the short period provided by commercial breaks.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for this one, hopefully I won’t miss a thing! …….. ohhahahaha…. damm I’m funny.

My first confession, I do not even own an iPod in the traditional sense. All I have been able to acquire in the several-odd years since the pod people landed, was a measly shuffle pod.

But man do I love that shuffle pod. I put it in my pocket and bike to work or take the subway, and I’m rocking out the whole time. So I don’t know what song is coming up next, that’s the thrill of life man! So you can imagine how bummed I was when my inadequately sized shuffle pod ceased to work.

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A robot that can scan 50 meters deep into the earth may have discovered the 18th-Century buried treasure on the Juan Fernadez island, home to Alexander Selkirk, who we all know as Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk, a Scottish adventurer inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe in 1729.

This little robot, named Arturito, which bears an odd sounding resemblance to R2D2, may be responsible for finding up to 10 billion dollars worth of booty (if the legends of Selkirk are true).

But what I really like about this story is the fact that it was a little robot that found it. Step aside Indian Jones, the next blockbuster movie about an adventurer is going to be about little Arturito, the robot that scanned the ground for treasure. It sure is an advancement from the $20 metal detector I ordered on Ebay when I was a kid.

So Microsoft and Palm finally confirmed a relationship of sorts – after a slew of rumors/spec leaks/photos, the existence of a Windows Mobile-powered Treo is official.

Scheduled for release early next year, yesterday’s press release tells us that Palm has licensed Windows Mobile for what will presumably be successive generations of its popular Treo. Aside from the PR-ese beating us over the head with hyper-positive jargon touting the plethora of wonderful features offered by the OS, the more interesting question is this: what’s the plan for the Palm OS?

Family history: back in 2003 Palm split into palmSource (software) and palmOne (hardware). PalmOne then officially became Palm again back in May when it bought the rights to the name from Palm Trademark Holding, created when the companies split. Japanese software company Access acquired palmSource earlier this month…and the future of the OS remains in limbo.

So I guess this announcement means that if/when I buy a smart device, it will likely be running Windows Mobile…I’m salivating at the thought of Sprint’s PPC-6700 (EV-DO!), but if Palm decides to get cozy with anyone besides Verizon, I’ll sit up and pay attention.

I have been following John Battelle’s blog Searchblog for almost a year now. He helped start the Industry Standard and definitly knows what’s going on in the world of search engines. Long story short, the blog is a great resource. But that’s not what turned me into a loyal reader of his blog.

What really did it for me was the fact that he gave updates on the book that he has been researching and writing the last couple years. Every now and then he would even ask for advice from his readers, or suggestions on a possible chapter title.

I feel like I have been a part of the process for this book to come into fruition. It has been out now for less than a month and I think it’s been accepted well into the wide world of reading on paper (something I gave up long ago).

If there is an interesting story to be told about the IT world of the last four years I think it lies in Search Engines. So this should be an interesting read.

Ars Technica hits this one right on the head when they label it as potentially simply fodder for the fanboy forums on a Friday (nice alliteration, eh?).

Han Solo, a G4TV.com poster whose claim to fame apparently includes a remarkably accurate leak of Xbox 360 stats prior to the official announcement, posted (located approx. 2/3 of the way down the page, #3 of the forums) what he claims are the specifications for Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution game console. Some details:

• 1 custom, dual-threaded IBM PowerPC 2.5 GHz processor w/ 256k L1 cache and 1 MB L2 cache (potentially L3 cache as well). 512 MB of 700 MHz system RAM

• ATI custom graphics chip w/ 256 MB RAM and a 600 MHz core supporting 2048×1268 resolution. HD support is still undecided.

• The system will support a PPU (physical processing chip) w/ 32 MB of its own RAM, which links to the CPU, GPU and the controller(s).

Aside from straight out comparisons to the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Solo says the PS3 still has a CPU edge, while the Revolution technically matches the superior GPU performance offered by the Xbox), Ars makes note of the fact that Nintendo may be playing it smart by providing potentially developers with a core system for which it’s easy to write games. Given that the majority of titles end up going cross-platform at some point, if the Revolution forgoes any ridiculously esoteric hardware that provides a novel gaming experience but a headache for developers might be the way to go. I make no pretense about being a game expert, but that’s my $.02.

Yeah, I know – no good eye candy or sweet hardware specs to get you drooling. Just some good, old-fashioned numbers that made me stop and think for a few moments:

According to the Pew Internet Life Project, the rate of growth in home broadband adoption dropped dramatically this year, climbing a measly 3 percentage points between December 2004 and May 2005 – approximately 53% of U.S. households now have broadband internet access. This data seems especially surprising, given the 20% growth rate reported between November 2003 and May 2004.

The report cites the changing demographics as the cause for the slower rate of growth, as the majority of today’s dialup users are “older, less educated and with lower income.” This basically translates into a smaller, less net savvy pool of potentials to graduate to broadband (I can’t help but picture some sort of geek-themed ceremony for this involving cat-5 cable, routers…ok, I’ll stop).

The report doesn’t offer other explanations or theories about whether or not we’ve hit some sort of saturation point (temporary or otherwise), but I find it surprising that we’re slowing down after hitting the halfway mark. Then again, I have a hard time remembering life P.I. (pre-internet). Then again, even my 75 year-old grandparents have broadband, having migrated up from dialup, just as the report says.

Right now I’m sitting on dial up via AOL. I haven’t dialed into an ISP since 1998, and I don’t miss it one bit. The boing beep boing boing sounds don’t bring back happy nostalgic BBS memories either. But the fact of the matter is, I’m connected to the internet. Having a computer that isn’t connected to the net is about as useful as a bike with no seat. Being connected is everything.

Verizon knows this, and has decided to push their 3G network just a bit harder than they have been. They lowered the prices and have helped integrate EV-DO ( a.k.a. 3G) chips into laptops. WiFi used to be an add-on only feature, but is now standard with almost any consumer laptop.

This way we could be connected all the time, Continue reading →

As someone who spends a lot of time online (I’m in love with the internet – what can I say?), I can definitely appreciate those who can critically analyze the system we’re using today and contextualize it with praise and suggestions for improvement.

BusinessWeek has this nice article up that includes a transcript of a discussion with Jakob Nielsen, a web design consultant apparently snazzy enough to earn praise from BW as “the acknowledged leader in making Web sites more usable.” I haven’t heard of him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything – he makes some good points while talking about today’s ‘net and what we can do to make it better. Some stuff of interest:

• There is a glut of bad content out there, especially at company web sites. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. He accurately refers to many of these fluffy bits of eye candy as “brochureware,” which don’t actually provide information to potential consumers in plain language. Cut the flash crap and the blaring audio and give it to me in a clean package. Less IS more!

• Bad searching. While Google and its kin do a good job on the general web, we again return to company sites and their typically horrific proprietary search algorithms. I don’t know how many times I’ve searched through company web sites and found nothing even closely related to what I wanted.

• E-mail overload and the need for better spam filtering, as well as the rise of phishing (getting credit card and other personal information through illegitimate e-mails).

• Companies need to talk to real customers and find out what they want from the web. Teens and seniors are two important groups.

Ultimately, it all boils down to packaging content in ways that are more accesible to users. Blogs need to be written this way, RSS and its kin need to be de-geeked and podcasts…well…only time will tell on that one. Vodcasts/vidcasts, too – I think mobile video’s success will depend largely on how big of a screen people are willing to tote around – something no bigger than a PSP (such a stunning screen) that’s capable of mobile browsing and/or something like UMD might really push this over the edge.