Ted Ritzer: Ted's Tech Picks

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]

Ray Ozzie is blogging again

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:10:38 GMT

Ray Ozzie is blogging again at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/rayozzie/

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:37:54 GMT

Ruby the Rival. Bruce Tate's Beyond Java picks Ruby as the front-runner among languages that could succeed Java among enterprise developers. But what's so great about Ruby--and frankly, what's wrong with Java? We asked some top Java bloggers, authors, and developers what they think of Ruby's challenge. [O'Reilly Network Articles]

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:]

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 05:44:31 GMT

Firefox - The Platform. Strudelkugel writes "Business 2.0 reports Firefox is becoming a problem for Microsoft. But FF is not just a problem as a browser; its potential as a platform is significant. From the article: 'It all adds up to a business opportunity for startups, established software companies, and Web giants alike. Though Ross and the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation don't stand to make money, Firefox's open platform gives it enormous potential to hatch a new class of applications that live on the desktop but... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

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!

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.

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!

Wed, 24 Dec 2003 17:54:48 GMT

Merry Christmas from the Accordian Guy worth repeating:

Stole this file from the above site, cause I think it really does capture some of both the frustration and the joy of Xmas.

All the best from WIFLblog and enjoy the Accordian Guy's Christmas story, and don't forget to visit his site:

the Accordian Guy Christmas story now follows:

Merry Christmas, and I mean it in the nice sense of the phrase

by Joey deVilla on December 24, 2003 12:13PM (EST)

This is from last year (with a little polishing up), but it's worth repeating.

While I do believe that some traditions should be put to rest, I also believe that a lot of tradition-bashers are poor-impulse-control cases. Having abandones any actual tradition or culture of their own, they fill the void with a couple of < href="http://www.utne.com/">Utne Reader platitudes, a mild revulsion for anything even vaguely Judeo-Christian, even if it aligns with their beliefs, a pro-pot slant and a half-formed belief in eye-for-eye karmic payback.

Standing for almost nothing, they tend to fall for just about anything.

Chris Baldwin's summed it up pretty handily -- and perhaps unintentionally -- in a Bruno comic from last year:

To borrow the line about Klansmen and Martin Luther King Day: C'mon, Bruno, how hardcore a secularist must you be to not want a day off?

Of course, those of us who celebrate Christmas would argue the exact opposite: here we took a beautiful Christian holdiay and destroyed it through corportization and "We're white, we're straight, we're sorry!" guilt.

(There's a Randroid who would take another tack and say "here we took a beautiful commerical holiday and destroyed it in usual religious fashion." Haven't we developed some kind of Ayn Rand repellent yet?)

In the end, I believe that intent counts.

I'm certain there is no malice, no implicit "convert or die" message and no forcing of one's beliefs on others when someone wishes someone else a Happy Chanukah, Eid, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Tet or even Festivus, the actions of certain vicious zealots notwithstanding. Balanced minds do not see any implied Hitler overtones at Oktoberfest nor Hirohito/Tojo insinuations at the sushi house, and neither do they see the Crusades in Christmas.

When people say "Merry Christmas", most of them are really saying "Happy Holidays, and I'm celebrating them Christmas-style. You do your thing, and I'll do mine. Come by for drinks."

That what I'm really saying, anyways.

No matter what you believe, enjoy the break from the hustle and bustle of 21st century life. Be nice to each other. Hug someone you love.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 14:37:29 GMT

Pivotal dumps Talisma for Chinadotcom unit. Pivotal Corp. said Monday it has signed a definitive merger agreement with Chinadotcom Corp. unit CDC Software, scrapping an earlier agreement with an investment firm that planned to merge Pivotal with Talisma Corp., another maker of midmarket CRM (customer relationship management) software. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Bootstrapping Distiributed Directories

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 04:51:34 GMT

Yikes, another great Dave Winer article and idea, I think I'll hitch a ride on this concept and see where it takes us!! YAHOO!!!

from Dave's latest post, can't wait to see what he is up to tommorow, seems a little like XMAS!!

The last cactus snapshot. No doubt, everything is broken. The blogroll is missing. But some stuff appears to work. I can update. The flow is much simpler. And my editorial system is faster and easier (so it can get slower and more complex). What did we used to say? Still diggin.

BTW, I spoke with Jon Udell this evening to review the plan. He and I have been talking about this stuff for years. I'll be turning on more features tomorrow and Thursday and of course write much more. It's been a long day, and all kidding aside, everything seems to work better than I could have hoped for given how much has changed. Where are we heading? The tree of knowledge. What's our technique? Bootstrapping. Are we building The Semantic Web? No. But we are building tools for people to share and preserve what they know. As Engelbart says, augmenting human intelligence.

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 20:27:34 GMT

Like it or not, it's time to start flipping switches in the transition of Scripting News from weblog to directory for the World Wide Web. Some changes will be visible to the public, others will only be visible to me. By this time tomorrow the cactus will be gone. Everything will change, except one thing will remain constant. It's all still the unedited voice of a person. But it will be modular, and it will be possible for my voice to be mixed with others, in new ways. [Scripting News]

Sun, 09 Nov 2003 03:34:40 GMT

Novell/SUSE Prime for Aquisition?. Ho Kooshy Fly writes "Supposedly Novell/SUSE looks like a good buyout target now. The likes of the obvious, IBM and the less obvious Cisco might be interested ... [Slashdot]

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 02:28:18 GMT

Another Dave Pollard-How To Save The World blog article worth reading:

November 6, 2003

BUSINESS 2.0: BEST NEW TECHNOLOGIES

(expertise finder from Entopia's Social Networks Analyzer)

The November edition of Business 2.0 (only available on-line to subscribers) has selected Social Networking Applications as the Technology of the Year. Mentioned in the survey are Ryze, LinkedIn, Friendster, Zero Degrees, Tribe.net, Spoke Connect, and Visible Path. The magazine should be commended for this insightful choice, but they missed the companion technology that will provide the data essential to the functioning of future Social Networking Applications. That technology: Personal Content Management and Publishing Applications (notably Blogs and RSS). You can't have one without the other.

In the same edition, editor David Pescovitz lists Ten Technologies to Watch in 2004:

1    HOME NETWORKING
Ultra-wideband: Imagine a television that can wirelessly send three different programs to separate monitors. Low-power, low-cost, and with roughly 45 times the data transmission speed of run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi, this wireless technology is finally ready to debut in the living room.

2    SUPPLY CHAIN
RFID: While they've been talked about a lot, radio frequency identification tags have yet to appear in a big way in the supply chain. Wal-Mart (WMT) is making it happen: All its suppliers must use the tags for pallets and cases of merchandise by 2005.

3    WIRELESS BROADBAND
802.16: WiMax enables wireless networks to extend as far as 30 miles and transfer data, voice, and video at faster speeds than cable or DSL. It's perfect for ISPs that want to expand into sparsely populated areas, where the cost of bringing in DSL or cable wiring is too high.

4    ENERGY
Micro fuel cells: Japan's largest wireless phone carrier, NTT DoCoMo, plans to introduce cell phones powered by miniature fuel cells -- which run on hydrogen or methanol -- late next year. Look for them to also show up as expensive add-ons for high-end laptops.

5    HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS
Gecko tape: Lizards climb walls using the mechanical adhesive force of millions of tiny hairs on their feet. A synthetic version of those microscopic hairs allows gecko tape, developed at England's University of Manchester, to stick to almost any surface without glue. Applications include gloves that allow a person to climb a glass wall, the ability to move computer chips in a vacuum, and new bandages.

6    SOFTWARE
Antispam software (that works): If you've tried filters, whitelists, and blacklists, chances are you still receive plenty of junk e-mail. "Challenge/response" technology may be the answer; it requires senders to manually verify their identity before e-mail is passed along to the intended recipient.

7    CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
OLEDs: Organic light-emitting diodes are brighter and use less power than normal light-emitting diodes. (They rely on carbon with nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen elements -- thus, the "organic" tag.) They're perfect for screens on cell phones, digital cameras, and camcorders, and even for a new crop of affordable flat-panel monitors.

8    LIGHTING
LED lightbulbs: LEDs will outrun obsolescence by moving into the home. Philips is already pushing its Luxeon line of LED lightbulbs, which can last 10 to 50 times as long as incandescent bulbs while consuming 80 percent less energy.

9    COMPUTER MEMORY
MRAM: Magnetoresistive random access memory is (in theory, anyway) more than 1,000 times faster than the fastest current nonvolatile flash memory and nearly 10 times faster than DRAM. "Nonvolatile" means it retains memory when the power is off. Add in its low power consumption, and it's perfect for use in an upcoming crop of computers and cell phones.

10    MEDICINE
Bioinformatics: Researchers, such as those at IBM Life Sciences, are finally getting a handle on building complex protein models to aid in drug discovery. The new, computationally accurate models mean that potential drugs can be identified more quickly and stand a better chance of working.

5:27:36 AM trackback [ 1] comment [ 1]

Nov. 4, 2003: Day Linux Landscape Changed Forever

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 01:44:23 GMT

OK, so the big IT news for today is that Novell is acquring german Linux powerhouse SUSE, and IBM is helping out by investing $50 mill in Novell.

Can you say new improved networking for Linux!!!With Novells influence re networking and Ximian's influence re Linux desktop ease of use and with SUSE business grade version of Linux, looks like Red Hat has a real competitor now!

And the pressure is on Microsoft from the new Novell,

go Provo, go Provo boys! Show us what you got!

Nov. 4, 2003: Day Linux Landscape Changed Forever

WIFLblog nominated to BlogsCanada Top Blogs list

Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:43:25 GMT

WIFLBlog nominated to BlogsCanada's Top Blog list

so the little banner with the maple leaf represents that latest honor, and the following email was what notified me of this honor, thanks BlogsCanada!

"Hi Ted,

In October, WIFLblog was nominated to BlogsCanada's Top Blogs list. The November
2003 top ten list has now been published and your site is included. Congrats!

The Top Blogs page is at http://www.blogscanada.ca/topblogs/.

Best Regards,

Jim Elve
www.blogscanada.ca"

As is appropriate you will also see Dave Pollard's How To Save The World, another Canadian Salon blog, has also been nomiated to BlogsCanada's top blog list. I must admit to stealing a number of Dave's great articles and reposting them on WIFLblog. Check Dave's blog out for yourself at:

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 02:55:52 GMT

Groove is Strategic Tech:

Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes fame has engineered a strategic winner in the development of the P2P groupware Groove product. I have tried several pilots of this software and it works well and intuitively. This is the real deal, and is head and shoulders ahead of its competitors.

Apparently Micrsoft agrees to the tune of $40 million dollar investment in Groove, must have been a heck of a day for Ray Ozzie when this was announced!

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:01:07 GMT

Now available: Radio UserLand Kick Start. Radio UserLand Kick Start arrived in stores this week and had the highest first-day Amazon rank of any book that I've written -- it was at around 2,300 when I decided that three hours was enough time to spend reloading the page like a crazed day trader. I've sold around 30 copies on Amazon this week to Workbench visitors.

I mention all of this because I'm eager to prove that UserLand Software's products are a viable topic for book publishers. This is only the second book on a UserLand product after Matt Neuberg's excellent Frontier: The Definitive Guide from 1998, and one of the first devoted to a specific weblogging tool. Sams Publishing is taking a chance on the subject with this Radio UserLand book, and I'd like to gloat about my savvy publishing acumen as soon as possible.

To mark the occasion, I've put a chapter online about my favorite aspect of Radio UserLand: the outliner. When I began using Radio as a version 7 beta tester three years ago, I thought it was heresy to create Web content -- much less source code -- in an outliner. These days I'm an outliner junkie, writing programs, magazine articles, and everything else I can in either Radio or the Java Outline Editor (JOE). The ability to see as much or a little of a document as needed -- by expanding and collapsing outline subheads -- is a huge timesaver, especially when it needs to be reorganized.

With the release of the book, the Radio UserLand category of Workbench will be picking up again. I took a few months off writing about the subject after filing the manuscript -- I was spending so much time on Radio that I began having dreams about bees. [Rogers Cadenhead: Salon Blog Tips]

Skype Hype or the Next VOIP King?

Mon, 27 Oct 2003 04:05:31 GMT

Skype has the potential to be strategic

Snagged this form Roland, who got it from Stuart Henshall, at any rate this does looks disruptive!!!

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Skype P2P free telephone service is disruptive

(SOURCE:Unbound Spiral - Stuart Henshall's blog:)- Stuart's usual insight! Maybe I should install the sound card in my one and only PC (I have 4 Macs) and try this out! Might be able to use it to make free calls to my sister in Rotterdam if/when they get broadband.

QUOTE

It also turns IM on its head. It's ring centric. All those adults.. that are failing to understand messaging... understand how to make calls. Yep your PC will soon be ringing. Now what I want to know is:

What will the impact be on corporate systems... I'm sure employees will bring this in when they realize they can call anywhere... and not be logged on /via the corporate system? Will this add corporates to the sharing process? Will there be an enterprise package?

How will we control spam calls, telemarketing calls etc.

Will telemarketers who have been put on a "do not call list" have to comply with this service? Legal Issues?

Which blogger will give me an online/offline MT plug-in for my blog.

How soon will conference calls be available?

What will regulators and the tel co's do to make it illegal?

UNQUOTE

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