Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger just retired from a long and decorated IBM career of 37 years. He’s doing some cutting edge research on the future of virtual works. Also interviewing him is Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and Podtech.
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Click here to hear Larry Magid’s podcast interview of Eye-Fi CEO Jef Holove.
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Several months ago I wrote about a Nikon camera with built-in WiFi adapter that enables you to automatically upload pictures without having to connect the camera to a PC. Kodak makes a similar camera. Chances are, you already have a digital camera or, if you’re in the market for a camera, it’s likely that the ones you’re eyeing are not WiFi-equipped.
Well, that’s no longer a problem. Silicon Valley-based Eye-Fi Inc. is out with a $99 card that doubles as two gigabyte SD (Secure Digital) memory card and a WiFi adapter, adding wireless connectivity to virtually any digital camera. I successfully tested the little card on the two cameras I had handy: a Kodak C875 and a Canon PowerShot SD 850.
The device, which is exactly the size of the SD memory cards used in most of today’s consumer cameras, works exactly like any other memory card. Just slip it in the camera and it captures photos to its two gigabytes of memory. That’s enough memory to store more than 600 photos from an 8-megapixel camera. › Continue reading…
Adorable: Laughing Baby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXXm696UbKY
Nine-month-old Ethan falls over laughing – apparently ripping magazines is hilarious – and just can’t stop, igniting a laughing fit in his dad, too. It’s infectiously cute and earned Ethan a spot in an insurance commercial, allowing millions of people beyond YouTube to chuckle along with this adorable munchkin.
Comedy: Potter Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4
Neil Cicierega is the talented puppeteer who offers a twisted take on the world of Harry Potter. On a fraction of the budget of the Hogwarts movies, he’s created his own series of Potter puppet parodies, of which “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” is a blockbuster in its own right. Cicierega’s talents go beyond the Potter videos as he can be seen in a number of funny short films and sketches. However, it’s the videos where he’s the hidden hands and voices of the Potter pals that have cemented his reputation as a comedic talent to watch.
Commentary: LonelyGirl15 is Dead!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Tgv2VJEEs
The WhatheBuckShow, an entertainment vlog with several original episodes posted each week, manically covers hot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LtUX_6IXY
Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond of the NOTsoNOISY creative agency is the mastermind behind this innovative video, which uses humans to re-enact a game of Tetris. The stop-motion clip is the fourth video installation of the GAME OVER Project, and took 4.5 hours to shoot using 88 extras and 880 pictures. It was performed and shot at the “Les Urbaines” festival in
Eyewitness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Exquisite footage of nature in action, “
Inspirational: Blind Painter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P84bfFpVWE
This video by the Texas Country Reporter chronicles the life and times of blind painter John Bramblitt, who started to gain international exposure in 2007, with notices by media in the
Instructional: How to solve a Rubik’s Cube (Part One)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM
Even though he wasn’t born when it was invented, Dan Brown is a master of the Rubik’s Cube. He figured out the algorithm to solve the puzzle and has shared it with the YouTube community in nearly a dozen videos on the subject. (His winning video has 3.6 million views.) Not only can the
Music: Chocolate Rain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
TayZonday took the summer of 2007 by storm with his stunning baritone, perplexing lyrics and quirky gestures, single-handedly establishing the move-away-from-the-mic meme that was replicated in hundreds of video responses by everyone from Gruff the Crime Dog to Tre Cool of Green Day. The 25-year-old
Politics: Stop the Clash of Civilizations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyJJQbFago
In the wake of strife in
Series: The Guild
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grCTXGW3sxQ
The Guild is an independent Web series about a group of online gamers staring Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Felicia Day. Written for gamers about gamers by a gamer, the show follows Guild members’ lives online and offline in episodes that usually range between three and five minutes in length. The series has nearly 30,000 subscribers through YouTube, and it’s already won a SXSW/On Networks Greenlight Award this year.
Short Film: My Name is Lisa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiRHyzjb5SI
Sports: Balloon Bowl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_r9joWNXQ
When the makers of this video had the idea to fill a skate bowl with balloons and try to ride through them, they never though it would work. But, as this video demonstrates, it not only worked, it became an Internet sensation. The project consumed over three hours and nearly 8,000 balloons… plus all the sound effects are real. The clip was filmed on location at the “department of skateboarding” in
This article first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News
The era of ubiquitous Internet access is fast approaching and it can’t arrive soon enough.
I’m writing this column from 35,000 feet on a flight from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco aboard Virgin America, which has Gogo Internet access on all of its flights. American, United, Delta and U.S. Airways are among the airlines that have access on some flights. Virgin America also has standard power outlets at every seat which makes it possible to use a laptop for the duration of a cross-country flight.
I was also online on the way to Dulles Airport, thanks to a borrowed Sprint EVO 4G phone that generates its own Wi-Fi hotspot. Customers pay an extra $30 a month for that service. Verizon’s new Droid X has a similar feature.
A friend of mine recently upgraded his Google Nexus One phone to the newest Android 2.2 operating system and it, too, now supports “tethering” and creates a Wi-Fi hotspot. This feature will presumably be available on all phones that run Android 2.2 or higher but it’s up to the carriers to decide whether or not to charge extra for the service.
A few weeks ago, I took the Bolt bus from Washington, D.C., to New York, which also provides Wi-Fi and power outlets.
I have a friend who works at Google, which operates a free shuttle between San Francisco and its Mountain View campus as one if its many employee benefits. Naturally, there is Wi-Fi aboard. BART is in the process of rolling out Wi-Fi on its trains.
This is a good trend. But one challenge of many public Wi-Fi networks and 3G solutions is that they are often not fast enough to stream video. On this flight, I was able to stream a Hulu video and a Netflix movie, though there were frequent starts and stops when the Wi-Fi wasn’t able to keep up with the amount of data needed to view the video. The same is often true when I’ve watched video on the 3G networks run by Sprint, Verizon or AT&T.
While I realize that the ability to watch TV and movies 24/7 is not exactly an inalienable right, it is one of the most popular things people want to do online. Hulu, last week, announced a $10-a-month Hulu Plus service, which will allow subscribers to stream all episodes from the current and past seasons of many popular shows, including “The Office,” “Glee” and “30 Rock.” If people are going to be able to enjoy this while on the move, they are going to need wireless broadband at a consistently fast speed.
The new so-called “4G networks” promise this. But with the exception of Sprint, none of the carriers currently offer 4G. Sprint’s version, so far, is available only in 33 markets, with the Bay Area slated to come online later this year.
Despite my travels, I haven’t had the opportunity to try the EVO 4G in any of Sprint’s current 4G markets, but The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg was able to test his in Baltimore, where he discovered that “when using 4G, the EVO’s battery runs down alarmingly fast.” Even without using 4G, I’m having battery issues with the phone. I rarely get through an entire day without having to recharge it.
The iPad 3G is one of many devices with built-in wireless capability. Owners of that device can tweet, update their Facebook profiles, send e-mail and, in theory, watch movies from anywhere there’s a 3G cellular signal. But there are some issues with that as well. In addition to not always having enough bandwidth to stream a movie, AT&T’s new 2GB-per-month cap on its data plan will greatly limit the amount of video users will be able to watch before they have to start paying extra for data consumption.
So even though the prospects for ubiquitous Internet are getting better, we still have a long way to go. While current 3G networks are fine for using a smartphone for e-mail, texting and limited Web access, they are not generally adequate for serious use of a computer or iPad-like device.
Not only do we need more access, we need faster access and we need more affordable access. My hope is that as the carriers roll out their next-generation services, they will not only provision enough bandwidth to make them truly useful but also will price them within the budgets of most consumers and business users. Until then, most people, when away from home, will continue to hunt around for Wi-Fi access when they need to get online.
It was the Saturday night before the Oscars and my wife and I realized that there were several nominated movies we hadn’t seen yet. It was also a very rainy evening and we were in no mood to drive to a movie theater or even to the local Blockbuster store.
So we used Apple TV to download “In The Valley of Elah,” featuring Tommy Lee Jones who was nominated as best actor in a leading role. On Sunday we watched “The Assassination of Jesse James,” which was nominated for best cinematography. Other Oscar nominees available for rental include “Michael Clayton,” “3:10 to Yuma,” “Ratatouille” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Many of the nominees, including best picture winner “There Will be Blood” were not available.
If this had been the eve of last year’s Academy Awards we would have had to either rent the movies from a video store or watch them on a PC, but this year we got to watch our rented nominated films in our living room on our high definition set thanks to Apple’s newly enhanced Apple TV.
Apple TV is a small box that sits on or near your TV and connects to the Internet via a wireless WiFi network or a wired Ethernet cord. Ever since it was first released in 2007, it’s been able to stream video, music and photographs from a PC or Mac running iTunes, and it also has its own internal hard drive, enabling you to transfer iTunes files from a computer to the box itself, so, once the files have been transferred, it can work even if the computer is turned off or the network connection is down.
The device also lets you download free video and audio podcasts and access YouTube video.
Apple TV was introduced in January 2007, but in its first year on the market it didn’t sell very well. Apple CEO Steve Jobs even referred to it as a “hobby” during an on-stage conversation last May with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg at the Journal’s annual “All Things Digital” conference. › Continue reading…
A new Facebook scam is taking advantage of people’s desire to be able to “dislike” posts by tricking users into completing an online survey and spamming links to their friends.
Sophos blogger Graham Cluley has reported that there is a rogue Facebook application that promises to give you a dislike button but instead “silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts.”
The app never actually installs a dislike button but does require you to compelte an online survey (which Cluley says “brings money for the scammers”) and then points you to a Firefox browser add-on from FaceMod which installs a browser-based dislike button. FaceMod does not appear to be connected with the scam.
Facebook doesn’t actually offer or support a dislike button, though it is apparently a frequently requested feature. The service does have a “like button” that lets users indicate their appreciation for posts, groups and other elements on the service.
In a statement, Facebook said “We’re working hard to block and remove malicious applications that claim to provide dislike functionality and inadvertently update people’s statuses. It’s important to keep in mind that there is no official dislike button. Also, don’t click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if you see something suspicious. For more information on how to protect your data on Facebook and across the Internet, like theFacebook Security Page”
Fake Facebook Dislike Button
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On September 2, I wrote a first look about Google’s new Chrome browser. I gave it a mixed quick review but now I’ve had a chance to live with it for 10 days and I have to admit it’s growing on me.
Let’s start with the issue of speed: My first impression was that Chrome was about as fast as Firefox and maybe just a hair faster than Internet Explorer. In a sense that’s true – at least on my PC. I can’t operate a stopwatch fast enough to measure the performance difference between Chrome and the two other popular browsers, but Chrome does seem snappier.
Using a browser today reminds me of using PCs back in the days when hard drives and processors were slower. Sometimes you’d have to wait three, four or five seconds for something to happen and felt good when you could reduce that to a second or two.
It’s not as if those few seconds made any real difference in your day, it’s just the psychological aspect of getting instant gratification rather than having to wait even a short time. We can all relate to that when we’re stuck at a traffic light that slows us down a tiny bit – not enough to make us late but enough to make us feel frustrated and held back.
One very cool aspect of Chrome that’s gotten little attention is the way it respects screen real estate. In addition to keeping the interface simple and clean and devoid of too many icons, tool bars and even menus, the browser allows you to move tabs from the main window to separate windows and then move them back. At first I didn’t appreciate that feature, but now find it awesome.
When using Firefox or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, there are times when I decide to open a page in a new window instead of a new tab because I want to be able to see it and another page at the same time. Typically, I then move away from that page and forget it’s there, which results in lots of windows cluttering my screen. With Chrome you can open a new page in a tab and – if you later want it in a separate window – you can drag it away. And you can later drag it back to consolidate it with other tabs.
A lot has been said about how Chrome is crash-proof. While nothing is anything-proof, I have already experienced the advantage of Google’s multi-threaded approach. I visited a couple of sites that ground Chrome to a halt. But instead of having to close the entire browser, I just closed that one tab and everything continued to work. With Firefox, I often have to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to abort the entire program and there have even been times when I’ve had to power down my PC to get out of a browser crash.
Ease of use is an issue with Chrome. Many aspects of its interface are not readily apparent, which forced me on more than one occasion to look at Google’s help page. For example, I had a hard time figuring out how to drag tabs back to the main window. I kept trying and failing until I realized that you need to grab the visual depiction of the tab itself, not the blue bar at the top of the window. And because there are no menus, you have to click around to figure out how to do basic tasks like printing.
I wish that both Google and Microsoft hadn’t messed around quite so much with the interface. I still have trouble getting used to the non-standard interface in IE 7 and, for that matter, the new version of Microsoft Office. However, anyone willing to consult the help screen and spend a couple of hours of trial and error should be able to figure out how to use Chrome’s essential features.
Like the public beta version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, Firefox has a private browser option that doesn’t record anything from your session. As with Explorer this is an option. When you’re using Chrome’s “incognito” mode, what you do won’t appear in your search or browsing history and there won’t be any traces such as cookies. Google is quick to point out that this won’t provide protection for “Websites that collect or share information about you, Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit, Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys, Surveillance by secret agents or People standing behind you.” “Googlers” (people who work at Google) have a sense of humor.
One thing missing in Chrome is the lack of a send-this-page option. I frequently find myself wanting to share Web links with others and, unlike Firefox and IE, Chrome offers no way to e-mail a link directly from the browser. You would think that Google would want to at least let you do that via Gmail.
The nice thing about Chrome is that it’s free and a relatively small download so there’s no impediment to checking it out. If you decide to try it, give it a few hours. Like anything else that’s new, it will be unfamiliar at first. But after a few hours you might find yourself liking it. If not, you still have the option of using Firefox or Internet Explorer.
I was not surprised when iSuppli announced that notebook sales exceeded desktop sales for the first time in the third quarter of this year in what the research company called a “watershed event.” The report singled out Acer which “grew its unit shipment market share by 45 percent, and by 79 percent on a year-over-year basis.”
The Taiwanese company, according to the computer analysis group, shipped nearly 3 million more notebooks in the third quarter than in the preceding quarter, “with the majority of those 3 million being the company’s netbook products.”
“Netbook” is a relatively new category of notebook computer noted for being smaller, less expensive and generally more energy efficient than typical notebook or laptop PCs.
In many ways, netbook is simply another name for subnotebook PCs, which have been on the market for a long time or “ultra-mobile” PCs, a category championed by Microsoft, Intel and other manufacturers in 2006. Ultra-mobile PCs were typically tablet PCs, sometimes without keyboards, while most netbooks are basically just smaller versions of traditional laptop PCs.
I’m writing this column on an Acer Aspire One, a 2.2 pound netbook PC that can be purchased stand alone for as little as $350 or for $99 at Radio Shack along with a two year commitment to an AT&T $60 a month Wireless broadband service. I’m not sure that Radio Shack’s marketing idea makes much sense. People are price sensitive enough to buy $99 PC over one for $350 or so are probably not going to spend $60 a month for wireless broadband. I have Verizon wireless broadband in my laptop and love it but I’m a frequent business traveler. For personal use at home and at my usual local haunts, I’m content to use Wi-Fi.
With a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and 1 gigabyte of memory, the Aspire — running Windows XP — is a bit more sluggish than many full sized laptops but it’s powerful enough to run Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and most of the other standard applications that people typically use. The 160-gigabyte hard drive provides ample room for applications.
In order to keep its size down to 9.8 by 6.7 by 1.4 inches, Acer shrunk the size of the keyboard by about 10 percent, which is slowing down my typing and slightly increasing my typos.
The 8.9-inch screen is considerably smaller than than other laptops, but it’s not a bother. I find the size adequate for things I would do on a small computer. My only design complaint is the narrow buttons on the left and right side of the track pad.
To its credit, the Aspire One has three USB ports which make it easy to plug in an external keyboard and mouse. There is also a VGA port for an external monitor. The Aspire also has an Ethernet port, a slot for an SD memory card and jacks for a headphone and external microphone.
Acer is not alone in this product category. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo also have their netbook or mini-notebooks.
Although the unit that Acer sent me is equipped with Windows XP, Acer, Dell, and HP also offer versions equipped with Linux. I didn’t try any the Linux versions but based on my experience with that leaner and faster operating system, I doubt if it is will be nearly as sluggish as with Windows XP.
What excites me most about this category is that it makes notebook PCs affordable to a wider audience, including high-school students who — in many cases — could use this as their primary home PC as well as a classroom tool.
Until the mid-’90s, if you wanted to print something in color, you had to use an ink jet printer. Laser was for black and white only. Then in 1994, CMS came out with a color laser printer but it was priced at $10,000.
Listen to Larry Magid’s interview with Brother spokesman Jeffrey Sandler
What a difference a bit more than a decade makes. Today you can get personal color laser printers for less than $400. And based on my recent experience with a couple of inexpensive Brother printers, the quality can be remarkably good.I started out by borrowing a $399 Brother HL-4040CN but liked it so much that I would up buying an upgraded version, the HL-4070CDW which Brother says costs $499, but I found it online for $388, including shipping.As far as speed, print quality and supplies are concerned, both printers are identical but the higher-end version comes with wireless Ethernet (as well as wired and USB) and can automatically print in duplex mode – on both sides of the page. Duplex mode saves both paper and money. Printing is a little bit slower than if you print on one side, but not much.
When you use duplex with an ink jet printer there is a considerable delay for the ink to dry before it goes back to print the other side. Laser is a dry process so there is no need for drying time.
Both the black text and colors were crisp and vivid, especially when I used the printer driver’s advanced settings to take advantage of its highest quality mode. › Continue reading…
