Ted Ritzer: Tech4Communicators

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:58:13 GMT

Lately I've been researching ways to add a Mac Mini to my home theater set, and maybe even replace my second-generation TiVo in the process. Now it looks like I won't have to work very hard: Apple is set to unveil a new Mac Mini at MacWorld that includes Front Row 2.0, DVR functionality and an iPod dock. This project is dubbed Kaleidoscope and will be aimed at the living room, according to ThinkSecret. The Mini will have Intel inside, like lots of other machines being unveiled at the show (six months sooner than expected). Processor speed and other specs are unknown, although it's a safe bet that the hard drive will be larger.

I hate to give up my TiVo—the remote control alone makes it a keeper. But TiVo Desktop has not panned out like I'd hoped, and I'm looking for a way to get my music library, photos and the DVR functionality on my living room set. So, what would you do—keep TiVo, wait for the Mini, or something else?

Road to Expo: Reborn Mac mini set to take over the living room [ThinkSecret]

[Gizmodo]

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:54:01 GMT

Overhaul for Firefox web browser. A big marketing push is planned for the latest version of Firefox, the main rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:28:38 GMT

Open-Source software for OS X. Open Source Mac “is a simple list of the best free and open source software for Mac OS X. We aren’t trying to be a comprehensive listing of every open-source mac app, instead we want to showcase the best, most important, and easiest to use.” By Brent Simmons. [ranchero.com]

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 02:25:05 GMT

Many Went Online for Hurricane News (AP). AP - More than half of U.S. Internet users went online for news and information about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the vast majority having visited the Web sites of traditional news organizations such as CNN and MSNBC, a study finds. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 02:19:13 GMT

Blazing Dual Channel Thumb Drive. Anonomisk Howard writes "The speed results from Big Bruin's review of OCZ's latest flash drive have me lusting for a new thumb drive. From the review: 'The OCZ Rally drive is not a radical new design, it does not look significantly different than any other USB 2.0 drive on the market, but then you plug it in and begin to use it. This thing smokes! The transfer times shown in the charts are what this drive is all about. If you want the fastest, sleekest, and most extreme drive currently on the market, this is the one to get.'"

[Slashdot]

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:38:57 GMT

Murdoch predicts gloomy future for press. Media: Rupert Murdoch forecasts gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the internet. [Guardian Unlimited]

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:38:10 GMT

Freesound Reaches 10000 Files. Bram writes ""The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, -not songs-... released under the Creative Commons Sampling+ License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing and browsing these samples." In less that 7 months we've grown to 30000 users and today we finally reached the first goal of the project: we've collected over 10000 samples, added by various people around the globe: only a slashdotting would be a suiting birthday cake. If you do visit Freesound, don't forget to have a look at the Geotagged Samples as they are well worth it." [Slashdot]

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 01:36:37 GMT

Vienna's open source desktop migration takes off. Thousands of city employees have started using OpenOffice.org and hundreds are running Linux, less than two months after the 'soft' migration started. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 01:34:58 GMT

Dueling simplicities. Most of my writing goes straight to the web, but my column still takes a detour through the print magazine. Usually that's no problem. I'm not a news hound. And while I'm comfortable editing myself, I enjoy the thoughtful feedback I get from Neil McAllister who, in addition to editing my column, writes his own. Every now and then, though, I wish I could have bypassed the print loop. Case in point: next week's column on two-way RSS. I wrote it last week; it will appear on InfoWorld.com tomorrow; magazine subscribers will get it after the holiday. In that column I discuss how both Microsoft and Google plan to use XML syndication for two-way data exchange and, more broadly, to bring database-like capabilities to the web of linked documents that we are all collectively building. If I'd blogged it last week, I'd look really prescient now. ... [Jon's Radio]

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 01:32:09 GMT

Hauppauge Live TV Tuner.

Add live TV to your PC with the WinTV HVR-900 TV Tuner, a very small USB 2.0 stick that plugs right into your laptop or any computer to let you receive analog and digital terrestrial TV. Not a bad thing to have when you're stuck at the airport and don't feel like watching Fox News, the HVR-900 comes with a high-gain aerial, letting you receive up to 40 digital channels. It also lets you record live TV to your hard drive and burn DVDs at 1.68GB per hour. Of course, the bundled travel aerial, which is really what you probably bought the thing for, may not bring video up to your usual standards. Plug-and-play and easy to install, check for the HVR-900 by end of month.

Hauppauge Digital 'TV Stick' [Bios Magazine]

Pricing and reviews for Hauppage TV tuners [CNET]

[Gizmodo]

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:37:53 GMT

Online Video Service Pairs Up With AOL (AP). AP - The migration of television to the Internet is getting another boost with a deal that gives Web video startup Brightcove Networks Inc. a foothold on AOL's Web portal. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:34:14 GMT

Still in the First Coming of Library Feeds.

The Second Coming of Content and RSS Feeds

“Dave Winer recently pointed to a post by Adam Green, which explored similar territory. Adam thinks 2006 will be the year the Web explodes:
"The explosion I am talking about is the shifting of a website's content from internal to external. Instead of a website being a ‘place’ where data ‘is’ and other sites ‘point’ to, a website will be a source of data that is in many external databases, including Google. Why ‘go’ to a website when all of its content has already been absorbed and remixed into the collective datastream."
His post specifically referenced Google, but I think this trend is much larger than even Google. The thing which is going to tie all this together is of course feeds. Mainly RSS, but perhaps Atom's much-vaunted extensibility will come into play too.
This gets to the heart of the matter and I think Feedburner is onto something big here. Feedburner now views the item (e.g. a single post from your blog, or a specific search result in a topic feed) as ‘the atomic unit of measure in the feed’, which will in turn lead to Feedburner managing syndicated content ‘at a more atomic level by attaching 'threads' to the item.’ It reminded me of the Design for Data and ’content will be more important than its container’ themes I was big on at the end of last year and beginning of this (and which I will be re-focusing on now)[sigma].
If you think about it, focusing on the feed item is a profound change in how we think about RSS feeds. Up till this year, most of us thought of RSS feeds as a way to subscribe to single sources of content. But over 2005 it's become apparent that content is being remixed, mashed up and re-published across many sources - leading to heated ethical debates over content rights and confusion amongst publishers on how to 'monetize' (sorry I can't help but use that word) their content. Fred Wilson had a nice post on this theme recently, entitled The Future of Media (aka Please Take My RSS Feed).” [Read/Write Web]

Ask yourself if your library is ready for this type of shift, because overwhelmingly, the answer is no. Librarians just aren’t thinking like this yet, and we need to change this. It’s at the very core of the whole “Library 2.0” discussion, and this is why it’s so critical. If we keep our content locked up on our own websites and don’t get it out there for people to use as they want to use it, then our content will fall by the wayside.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:29:52 GMT

NBC Universal Delivers Content to Paid P2P Platform. A new file-sharing model has recently won the support of massive media conglomerate NBC Universal. The deal involves Peer Impact, which will soon offer movies from Universal ... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:45:15 GMT

TiVo Connects with IPod, PSP (NewsFactor). NewsFactor - Digital video recording pioneer TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) has tweaked its TiVoToGo service to let subscribers transfer recorded TV content to Apple iPod or Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Portable (PSP) devices. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:17:31 GMT

How to make a film, with no money, while being bombed. Xeni Jardin: From Jasmina "Mrs. Bruce Sterling" Tesanovic, in the current issue of MAKE magazine:

Back in 1999, while my hometown of Belgrade was being blown up by 19 different countries, I was writing and uploading a diary. One day, a producer from German national TV phoned me. Sheâo[dot accent]d been reading my online journal (Diary of a Political Idiot) and thought it might make a good film.
Unfortunately, since her country was so busy bombing mine, she couldnâo[dot accent]t give me any practical help. However, she thought that if my film somehow got made, she could promote and distribute it, and show it at film festivals.
Immediately, I said yes! What a great occasion to make a meaningful European art film, without those tiresome commercial restrictions, backers, producers, and other artistic brakes that every true cineaste fears!
First, I found a cameraman who had somehow survived Bosnia with his equipment intact. He was a Serbian CNN stringer, which was perfect since everyone in 1999 thought that wars could only be won by and/or through CNN.

PDF Link (via Bruce Sterling's blog) [Boing Boing]

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:27:27 GMT

Google Weblog. The latest news on everyone's favorite search engine. [Most popular feeds from Syndic8.com]

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:35:49 GMT

Media Buddy Digital Photo Storage Saves Photos on 30GB and 80GB Hard Drives. Digital Foci, Inc. introduced today Media Buddy portable digital photo storage with hard drive and card reader that lets you instantly and securely save digital photos on a hard drive wherever you go, so you can keep snapping away and not worry about running out of memory card space. With Media BuddyÃ[not equal]Â[base ']s 30GB to 80GB hard drive versions, youÃ[not equal]Â[base ']ll virtually never run out of memory card space on the road again. Media Buddy frees up expensive memory card space and lets... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:05:06 GMT

Michael Covers Library 2.0 Whitepaper from Talis.

Today is turning into a very lucky day for me, because I was also going to write about the recent Talis whitepaper on Library 2.0, along with some context for what libraries should be starting to talk about in this area. However, Michael beat me to it on the ALA TechSource Blog. It's a great post, too, so click the link and go read it!

[The Shifted Librarian]

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:35:32 GMT

Getting the Video out of Your New iPod--for Cheap!. Yes, you can spend extra dollars for Apple's sleek white video cable for TV connectivity, or you can hack your own together for cheap. Erica Sadun shows you how. [O'Reilly Network Articles]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 06:05:12 GMT

R/C Aerial Photography.

Gary Dickerson pointed out these folks over at the RC Groups forums who have been rigging up small digital cameras to their R/C airplanes and getting some fantastic low-altitude aerial pictures. The trick is to find cameras that are light enough not to affect the handling of the planes too much, like the 2-megapixel Sony DSC-U40 that Gary rigged up with a custom mount and a hand-built trigger. The RC Groups forum is putting together a 2005 calendar now, too, collated from photos sent in by their users. Take a look at some of the great shots they're gettingóit looks like a lot of fun.

2005 Calendar Entries [RCGroups]

[Gizmodo]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:43:13 GMT

Open Source Multimedia Center For Windows. An anonymous reader writes "A new opensourced multimedia center for Windows has been released. Media Portal boasts the ability to turn your PC into an advanced HTPC (Home-Theatre PC) and PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). It allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio, watch all your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more. The software is a port of the homebrew Xbox Media Center software which requires a Modded Xbox to run." [Slashdot:]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:38:59 GMT

Podcasting mechanics. After I posted yesterday's audio interview, Paul Schaeflein wrote to point out that I ought to be using RSS 2.0 enclosures in my feed so that enclosure-aware aggregators can download media objects. ... [Jon's Radio]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:16:57 GMT

Personal soundtracks. Online: Ben Hammersley on how audio programming led to the rapid spread of the podcasting phenomenon. [Guardian Unlimited]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:57:17 GMT

BBC: Blog picked as word of the year. Slow news day. [Scripting News]

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 01:43:32 GMT

Decentralizing Bittorrent. An anonymous reader writes "Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralized BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Currently, the network is in beta testing and already has 5,000 users (the beta testing is closed.) Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous. " [Slashdot:]

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:38:21 GMT

October 27, 2004.

Pure CSS Slideshows

CSS expert Eric Meyer came up with a pretty awesome slide show system called S5:

ìS⁵is a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With one file, you can run a complete slide show and have a printer-friendly version as well. The markup used for the slides is very simple, highly semantic, and completely accessible. Anyone with even a smidgen of familiarity with HTML or XHTML can look at the markup and figure out how to adapt it to their particular needs. Anyone familiar with CSS can create their own slide show theme. It's totally simple, and it's totally standards-driven.î

Even cooler, CityDesk expert Brian Cantoni created a very slick CityDesk template for S5 so you don't even have to know HTML. CityDesk is free for sites with less than 50 files which should be enough for most presentations, so this is a pretty cool free, standards-compliant improvement on PowerPoint that lets you put your presentations on the web.

[Joel on Software]

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:24:15 GMT

Microsoft Debuts MSN Spaces for Bloggers (AP). AP - Hoping to keep more Internet users in its branded universe, Microsoft Corp. has become the latest company to offer blogging to the masses. [Yahoo! News: Technology]

Google Local is sooo cooool

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:17:57 GMT

Google Local. Better than the yellow pages [Cool Tools]

like the man says, my wife and I like East Indian food, typed in that put in our city, Edmonton, Alberta and bingo bango a map with a list of East Indian food restraunts.

I will never let my fingers do the walknig again!!!!YAHOO FOR GOOGLE LOCAL!!!

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 06:11:36 GMT

Google's Windows-Centric Stance. Google, one of first of the truly Web companies, is increasingly a Windows-Web company. Consider:

In July, Google acquired Picasa, a digital photo management company. The application only runs on Windows PCs.

Google's Desktop Search application, launched earlier this month, is Windows-only.

Today, the company announced it had acquired keyhole, which does digital mapping in amazing ways. You guessed it: Windows or nothing. Actually, this is the same old story in some ways. Given Microsoft's monopoly status, it's almost impossible to compete with Microsoft without simultaneously boosting the monopoly. I don't think Google is abandoning its Web roots. But its increasing Windows-centricity, at least on the desktop, sends an unfortunate message to Mac and Linux users -- and to those who believe in diversity and open standards. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:58:18 GMT

iPod Photo is Alive.

It lives: iPod Photo. Back in a minute with details.

Lots of tasty details in this post, if you're coming in from a direct link.

iPod Photo: First Details [Gizmodo]

[Gizmodo]

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:56:07 GMT

Yahoo, Adobe Team Up for New Web Services (AP). AP - Stepping up the heated battle of online search and services, Yahoo Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. have joined forces to tap each others' customers and put Web search features into Adobe's popular Acrobat Reader software. [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:54:12 GMT

Google Desktop Outshines Windows' File-Search Capabilities (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Google is famed for its Web search engine, but over the past few years it has acquired a different role: Microsoft's No. 1 foreign aid donor. First, Google fixed some of Internet Explorer's worst defects with its Google Toolbar, a free add-in that blocks pop-up ads and provides a shortcut to (naturally) Google's search engine and an auto-fill option to complete Web forms. Now it has released the Google Desktop, another free program that fixes an equally glaring weakness of Windows: its woeful file-searching capabilities. [Yahoo! News: Technology]

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 06:54:58 GMT

Trying out FeedBurner / Flickr.

This weekend, I was trying to extend my web design skills, so I was crawling through the code of my friend Caterina's site (I've always admired her site design) and noticed that her RSS feed was linking out to FeedBurner. Then, just this morning, one of my colleagues asked me what I knew about FeedBurner, and I said, "Not much." All this after I had meaning to go back and look deeper into the Flickr / FeedBurner announcement several weeks ago that slipped by while I was on vacation. FeedBurner, FeedBurner, FeedBurner -- time to check out FeedBurner.

I decided to redirect my RSS feed over to FeedBurner. Subscribers shouldn't notice anything -- I inserted a temporary redirect into our Apache config while I'm trying this out (so please don't subscribe to the new URL!):

Redirect temp /dickerson/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/infoworld/dickerson

After an hour using FeedBurner, I'm already really pleased with the stats reporting on my RSS feed: click-throughs on individual items and the number of subscribers (something I could easily get for Bloglines, but not as easily for the general universe). So far, so good for something that is pre-alpha.

Incidentally, if you have a digital camera and you have friends (and here's hoping you have both), you have to sign up for Flickr -- now. I don't know quite how to explain the visceral thrill of using Flickr to post photos, share them with friends, and gather their comments. Not to mention your window into the photo streams of people you don't know who have made their photos public. You have to use Flickr to really get it. You can subscribe to an RSS feed that alerts you when someone has commented on your photos, which is really nice. (Full disclosure: the Caterina mentioned above works for Ludicorp, the folks who you bring you Flickr, but I'm posting this only because I think Flickr is really cool. Flickr seems to be percolating around InfoWorld right now -- Jon Udell ties Flickr into a discussion of enterprise knowledge gardening in his latest InfoWorld column.)

[Chad Dickerson]

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:14:58 GMT

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:25:14 GMT

Zope 2.7.3. Application server for building web sites. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:18:40 GMT

More podcasting noise.... One of my favorite writers, Rory Blyth, takes on the podcasting hype and anti-hype. Meanwhile, Carl Franklin is starting another audio show, since his first one, .NET Rocks, was very successful. They are having a contest to figure out a tagline for the show, which is named "Mondays." In another post Carl defended podcasting. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

nixMoneyMachine-Sticking it to the Status Quo!

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 18:16:36 GMT

nixMoneyMachine-sticking it to the status quo!

this new category, came about as a direct result of my disgust with a recent headline about Microsoft releasing a product which has been called an iPod Killer! Fuck it, I have had with this kind of BS, where monopolies that don't have an innovative fiber in their being, watch the market and wade in after an innovator like Apple creates it out of nothing, and then ends up losing it, just because of the monoolie's sheer size and money reserves!

Microsoft did this against the Mac, then against Netscape! Do we as consumers have to keep supporting greedy monopolies!

I remember when Mosaic first came out and for me the Internet was a place where the little guy could innovate and create a decent living, and in some cases create fortunes based upon creativity, hard work and luck! The iPod Killer headline is so cynical, and it assumes that the only thing the consumer cares about is money, and that the only thing the producer concerns themselves with is money too!

Well how bout this, why don't we come up with some truly innovative business models that put the power in the hands of the content producer, and in the process create cheaper content, get more people producing digital content, and get more developing nations into the digital economy as well!

Accoring to Robert Young found of Red Hat:

"You can't compete with a monopoly by playing the game by the monopolist's rules."

Well fuck the old models, the old rules and the old approach to operating systems, software and digital content!

I have just had it with this bullshit, and this is what nixMoneyMachine is about, proposing new economic models to stick it to the status quo!

Stay tuned!

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:49:00 GMT

Michael Moore endorses file-sharing of his movies. Here's a wild video of Michael Moore at a Q&A session, being asked if he minds people on file-sharing networks passing around rips of his movies. His answer, in a nutshell: "Share away!"... ... ... I don't agree with copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it...as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labor... ... I make these movies and books and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who ge... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:46:11 GMT

Mac Founders Push for New Ideas. The crew that put together the first Mac is celebrating its 20th birthday, but some are disappointed over the apparent lack of innovation in personal computers. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:30:43 GMT

I gotta say that this title, about a Microsoft iPod Killer for me is depressing, in that wherever there is a market created by a true innovator like Apple, that Microsoft is able to through its sheer size and market dominance, steal that market away from the ture innovator!

Think Mac vs Windows, think Internet browser, Mosaic then Netscape.

The only ray of hope I can see on the horizon is Open Source Business Models, that create new opportunities for innovators!

Microsoft's iPod-Killer: Portable Media Center?. securitas writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop reports on what's billed as an iPod-killer: the Microsoft Portable Media Center line of digital ... [Slashdot]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:43:04 GMT

I don't agree with copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it...as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labor...
I make these movies and books and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who get to see them, the better.

5.4MB DivX Link (Thanks, Kolano!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 15:09:49 GMT

Spectrum Conference.

You can now register online for this month's Project Safecom spectrum conference in Salt Lake City. It will be held on January 22nd. Registration deadline is January 15th. Anyone involved in the UWIN project should be interested in this seminar.

With all of the meetings that we hold in government, it is important to try to maximize the benefit and reduce the amount of time spent and reduce time spent on less than meaningful activities. Val Oveson has brought in David Spann, a certified facilitator and director of the MBA program at Westminster College to teach a short course on facilitation. Hopefully, this can improve the quality of our meetings.

Randy Hughes, the new state information architect is working to formalize RSS as part of the state's information architecture.

[David Fletcher: Utah Government]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 07:43:20 GMT

Useit.Com: Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution. All time-management courses boil down to one basic piece of advice: set priorities and allocate the bulk of your time to tasks that are crucial to meeting your goals. Minimize interruptions and spend big chunks of your time in productive and creative activity. [Tomalak's Realm]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 04:46:15 GMT

Epson P-1000 Photo Viewer. CES 2004: Epson has today announced the P-1000 Photo Viewer, a 10 GB storage unit with a large 3.8" VGA LCD display designed as an advanced portable digital photoframe. The P-1000 has a Compact Flash slot (other media supported via adapters) and TV out as well as connectivity to Epson Printers for direct print. But the features keep coming, the P-1000 can also be connected directly to a computer via USB for transfer or a USB CD writer for archival. This product has been available... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 04:38:41 GMT

Competitor for Visual Communicator?Apresso

Not sure that this is really a competitor for Visual Communicator, but the Apresso product has been receiving glowing reviews from a number of sources. What it does is create the ability to easily create copies of your PowerPoint presentations that capture your presentation in both audio and video. All you need is a mic, webcam and the Apresso software.

Once I get a chance to try this, I will update my Visual Communicator story, but in the meantime, I will still go with Visual Communicator. If you would like to read that article, try it here.

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 21:45:35 GMT

Wired News: The Fantasy and Reality of 2004. So we asked a dozen experts in fields that are apt to touch all our lives this year -- privacy, defense, spam, security, open source, technology development, life online and human rights -- to answer this question: "What do you wish would happen in 2004, and what do you think will actually happen?" [Tomalak's Realm]

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:38:13 GMT

Holy Grail of Inexpensive Laptop Alternative!

My daughter wants to be able to write articles for her university newspaper, but can't afford a laptop!Dana may have the answer running on Palm! So if you want to check this laptop altnernative, check out their website.

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:20:06 GMT

Social Networking One 2003 IT Stories:

this info seems to have struck a chord with the blogging community, and there are of course lots of blogs with their social software links. For a good introduction into this phemonena check out Anne Kandra's article at PCWorld.

The Linux Switch Experiment!

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:13:14 GMT

The PCworld Linux Switch Experiment:

this article is based around the idea of taking away Windows from a non-geek, and replacing it with Linux for a month to see if they could be productive using Linux, and secondarily to see if they would immediately switch back after the experiment.

The punchline, OK, I can't resist, and for you Linux people, the punchline is this Windows user had not yet switched back, but as he says the jury is still out on the complete switch scenario! That said though you will really want to read the article, and track the wouldbe Linux user's switch or not story.

But to me this seems like a cop out, if after a month you choose to stick with Linux, I would say you by your actions have already made the choice!

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:02:48 GMT

Guide to Online Photo Albums

So you got a digital camera for Xmas, and want to share those digital photos you took of the tree, etc with your family and friends. But your family is spread out around the world!

Well Lincoln Spector at PCworld wrote and article that just may have some great advice!

Lincoln researched the use of free and almost free online albums, if you would like more info on this approach, check out Lincoln's article.