GUI Interface Nightmares!

Check out some of these screen shots of GUI interfaces! What were they thinking when the released these products? All I can say is WOW!

Coding Horror

FileMatrix

Emerging technology sees through clothing

Security in airports and other sensitive areas may get a huge boost, thanks to a technology under development that is straight out of science fiction, said to be capable of looking through clothing to detect weapons and other dangerous items. But privacy advocates—and shy people—may have cause for alarm.

Millimeter-wave technology researchers at Northrop-Grumman Space Technology are developing a technology said to enable small cameras to look through clothing and other inert materials to detect weapons or other contraband. This technology, known as passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) technology, can also see through heavy clouds in order to perform aerial surveillance on bad weather days, according materials provided by the organizers of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Northrop-Grumman researchers plan to present a paper on PMMW at ISSCC here in February 2007.

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VoIP - open season for hackers

This is an interesting article about how easy it is to hack into VoIP calls and extract information, including the ability to listen in on the call itself. Being a VoIP customer, using VoIP in my home, this immediately drew my attention.

But let's give this some thought. So someone hacks into my phone call and discovers my IP address, and maybe even my name. Then let's say they even go so far as to listen in on my conversations. I have to ask myself, do I really care? Do I care that a stranger, who is located "somewhere", knows that in my discussion with a relative that one of my kids were sick or that the car needed repairs? After giving this some thought, this doesn't concern me that much at all!

Now if they were able to get enough information from the call to figure out how to make long distance calls on my tab... then I would be a little concerned.

Click here for the full article.

Apple Mac OS X patch plugs 31 vulnerabilities

I have quite a few acquaintances that use Macs and who have lectured me on the security benefits of using a Mac. My retort was always the same, that since the Mac accounts for such a small percentage of the market, it has not the target of malicious code writers. In the past while, Macs have been gaining in popularity and with that comes more attention.

This recent update by Apple addresses a lot of serious security holes however it does not fix all known issues! As part of an initiative called the "Month of the Kernel Bugs", bug hunters have been focused on finding flaws in Mac OS X. Many of those bugs found are classified as serious and critical flaws.

I guess it goes to show you that Apple is no better at writing secure code or fixing issues when they arise than any other software company. Time to talk to my Mac friends again!

Antique Nanotubes

All hail the great 17th-century nanotechnologist Assad Ullah!

Actually, he was a swordmaker, one in a long line of smiths who forged the legendary weapons known as Damascus sabers. They were strong yet flexible and supremely sharp, which European warriors first discovered, much to their misfortune, at the hands of Muslims during the Crusades.

The recipe for making Damascus steel was lost at the end of the 18th century, so no one knew the reasons for its remarkable qualities. But an analysis by 21st-century researchers in Germany provides a clue: Damascus sabers, they report in Nature, contain carbon nanotubes.
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Google: 'iPod will hold all the world's TV in 12 years'

The idea of fitting your entire music collection into a single device the size of a packet of cigarettes might have seemed outlandish 15 years ago. But that was before the iPod. Now, one Google exec is predicting the iPod will lead a further media transformation of similar magnitude in the coming decade.

Speaking at the FT World Communications Conference, Nikesh Arora, Google's VP of European operations, told delegates that, in the coming years, the plummeting price of storage and its increasing volume-to-size ratio will give iPods almost unlimited potential to hold music and video.

Back Pain? Don't Sit Up Straight!

Researchers are using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to show that sitting in an upright position places unnecessary strain on your back, leading to potentially chronic pain problems if you spend long hours sitting. The study, conducted at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland, was presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," said Waseem Amir Bashir, M.B.Ch.B., F.R.C.R., author and clinical fellow in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital, Canada. "Sitting in a sound anatomic position is essential, since the strain put on the spine and its associated ligaments over time can lead to pain, deformity and chronic illness."
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Laptop Hard Drives Take It Up A Notch

Two new hard drives from Toshiba and Western Digital offer more storage for laptops.


Tom's Hardware reviews these two new 2.5" drives comparing price, storage, speed, and power consumption. Conclusion? The Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS comes out on top.

TEEN GOES NUCLEAR: He creates fusion in his Oakland Township home

This article is amazing, A 17 year old boy in his spare time manages to achieve nuclear fusion in his parent's basement! If an kid, still in high school, is able to achieve this, why is it that someone hasn't figured out how to do this economically on a large scale? Kind of makes you wonder.

Hover Mouse

This thing looks really cool, but is it just a gimmick? The claim is that it is a 100% frictionless mouse that hovers over the mouse pad by about 1 cm. The pictures on the site show the mouse hovering but do not show how it works when someone is resting their hand on it. Will it still float?

Although this looks cool, I'll wait to see some reliable industry hardware reviews before putting down my cash on this one!

New software promises to unlock iPod, iTunes

A 22-year old hacker known as "DVD Jon" has developed a method of making music purchased on iTunes work on players other than iPods AND has made it so that music purchased from other sources will play on the iPod! Since this new method does not remove any copyright protections and does not try to "hack through" any DRM schemes, it is perfectly legal. The system tricks the iPod into thinking it is playing a song with Apple's FairPlay copyright technology while at the same time allows that song to be played by competing mp3 players.

Read more about this here.

DoubleTwist Ventures for whom "DVD Jon" is working, says they plan to license this system to businesses allowing them to complete directly with Apple on their own turf.

This all sounds great but iPod users already have another alternative to free themselves from the DRM shackles slapped on them by Apple. This solution sounds a lot more appealing to me however I'm sure that DoubleTwist's solution is easier for those iPod owners who are less technically savvy.

It's all fun and games at NYC's Wii launch

Here is a wonderful article about the launch of Nintendo's Wii. Roughly 3,000 people lined up at Toys "R" Us in Times Square NY to get their hands on the new system. There was no pushing, no shoving, no altercations and no-one was overly anxious in line because everyone knew that although there were 3,000 fans waiting to get their hands on the new system, Nintendo had supplied Toys "R" Us with 4,000 units!

To help entertain waiting fans, Nintendo sent staff up and down the line riding Segways with TV monitors and Wii gaming systems attached, giving people a chance to play the new system. The only time things got a little wild was when Nintendo staff gave out swag (T-shirts, beanies and baseball caps).

It sounds to me like this was a positive, exciting experience for fans of the new Nintendo system and that Nintendo put some thought into ensuring that its customers would be "satisfied". This makes the whole ruckus and mob mentality around the release of the much more expensive Sony PS3 seem rediculous. It makes me wonder if Sony intentionally created a shortage in order to create sensational hype and increased media coverage. Considering several people have gotten hurt in the zeal over getting a new PS3, and a few reported cases of shootings, I would think that Sony fans might re-think their allegiance.

Working Up to a Global Orgasm

There is a really funny article here about a peace group promoting people to have sex on December 22nd. The idea is to get as many people around the world as possible to have an orgasm that day and try to get those people to think thoughts of world peace while doing so. Why you may ask? The belief held is that it will boost some positive cosmic energy that envelops the universe and will promote good things to happen. I think these people may have been watching StarWars one to many times! Use the force Luke!

So on December 22nd, find a willing partner and help contribute to global peace and join in on the global orgasm!

Sony PS3 Craze

I just don't get it. I really don't.

I'm the first one to admit it, I'm a sucker for new hardware however there is no way I would stand in line for 2 days, overnight, in bad weather, just to get an opportunity to purchase the latest and greatest.

Yes, the new PS3 has some great looking games but IMHO, a gaming PC is far superior and I don't have to jump through hoops to get it! The retail price for the PS3 is enough that I could upgrade my current computer to "bleeding edge", and I'm not even talking about the crazy prices they are going for on eBay. I guess there are a lot of people in this world that have more money than they know what to do with!

Thanks, but I'll just stick with my PC for games.

FOLLOW UP
This system just sold for $9,000 on eBay. Insane!

Liberating iPods

I must be one of the few people left in North America who does not own an Apple iPod. Yes, I do have an MP3 player but I opted to use an alternative product rather than Apple's golden child. Why do you ask? Simple. You may own your iPod, but you have almost no control over what goes on inside it. One cannot, for example, plug your iPod into your computer and browse the contents, store PDF or Word documents for transporting data from computer to computer or even play music purchased from other legitimate music sites! These limitations are imposed by the firmware embedded inside every iPod.

This morning I stumbled across an article which explains that one can replace the firmware of just about any iPod, returning control of YOUR hardware back to you! Two projects (iPodLinux and RockBox) offer free firmware alternatives! Both of these solutions provide an interface very similar to the origional iPod interface and most people do not have any problems with the switch. After installing the firmware, one can browse the contents of their iPod as if it were any other USB drive, place whatever content they desire on it including non-music/video files for transport and are also able to play music that was purchased through other online services. Terrific!

I might just have to reconsider purchasing an iPod. That new iPod Shuffle v2 looks pretty cool!

Intel unveils 'Web 2.0' software suite

Is Intel ready to be a software company?

The question is posed in this article about Intel's recent announcement that they will be releasing collaboration software suite. I guess if Bill Gates can purchase a hotel chain, why can't a hardware company get into the software market?

Imagine though that Intel expanded and grew a large software vertical within their business and it became a dominate player in the software market. Now they would control both halves of the computing equation allowing them to dominate the industry unchallenged. Software and hardware teams could work together to bring us seamless integrations, graying the line between hardware and software, producing applications not yet dreamed of... creating a monopoly, taking over the world!

Yea, ok... back to reality...

IT jobs healthy, study says

This article quotes a report stating that there are more IT jobs now than there were 6 years ago during the "Dot Com" peak.

Maybe it is just me, or maybe they are right and it is just the way I am perceiving the market, but finding a job six years ago seemed a lot easer than it is now. I wonder if someone has looked to see if the growth in the IT job market has been outpaced by the number of new workers in IT over the past 6 years?

Gates to buy Four Seasons

From software mogul to hotel chain?

This article caught me by surprise this morning. I suppose Gates is just diversifying his portfolio a bit. So what can we expect when staying at the Four Seasons in the future:

• automatic upgrades
  
• blue screens
  
• windows desktops in every room
  
• a damn robotic paper clip in the lobby asking if you need help

The full article can be found here.

Fox Interactive Launches Desktop/Website Widget Platform

Fox Interactive Media will announce a new widget platform called SpringWidgets on Monday morning at the Widgets Live Conference in San Francisco. It is a unique offering in the increasingly complicated widget space, although the desktop portion of it only works on the Windows platform.

Widget platforms today work on websites (see Google Gadgets and WidgetBox) or the desktop (see Yahoo Widgets). Microsoft has a widget platform that will work on the Vista desktop and also on live.com pages. But no one has created a single widget platform that works on most websites as well as the desktop. That’s what SpringWidgets is launching.
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Wireless insecurity: do not use the cheerleader defence

Comment: The message boards are alive with misguided advice about wireless networks. Switch off your security, they say: you’ll get away with murder.

It follows the news that the music industry has dropped a lawsuit against Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California. Marson argued that the fact that her computer contained illegal music files downloaded over her internet connection was not proof of a crime. As a cheerleader teacher, she said, hundreds of girls passed through her house, any one of whom could have used her PC. She also ran a wireless network without security – so anyone outside her house could have used her net connection.
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Nvidia buys iPod chip supplier

Nvidia is buying PortalPlayer, Apple's supplier of the MP3 decoder and controller chip that goes inside your iPod.

Founded in 1999, PortalPlayer also supplies silicon for Sandisk media players, and counts Bang & Olufsen, Philips and Samsung as customers.

The headline price for the Silicon Valley semiconductor firm is $357m, but the real price Nvidia is paying is the $161 million net of cash on PortalPlayer's balance sheet as of September 30, 2006.
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Sun's board gets leather jackets and talking cars

Sun Microsystems appears to have misunderstood analysts' call to "see some black ink."

The company today picked up two new board members with strong ties to the publishing industry. Tony Ridder, the former chairman and CEO of newspaper giant Knight Ridder, will serve on Sun's Leadership Development and Compensation committee. And Peter Currie, a CNET board member and former Netscape CFO, will serve on Sun's Audit committee.

Sun's board opened up when venture capital legend John Doerr left the company this month. Doerr had been one of Sun's strongest supporters, during booms and busts.
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Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk Program to Speed Software Testing

Microsoft has unveiled a virtual hard disk test drive program, which allows customers to evaluate its enterprise software and products from its software partners in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

The software maker announced the new program ahead of VMware's VMworld show, where it will give booth demonstrations of its application virtualization, server virtualization and virtualization management tools.

The VHD program is a first for Microsoft and for the more than 7,000 software vendors that can now deliver pre-configured applications within Windows Server-based virtual machines to their customers, said Mike Neil, senior director of virtualization strategy for Microsoft's Windows Server Division, in Redmond, Wash.

The VHD format captures the VM operating system and the application stack in a single file to create a larger virtualized system.
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New bug found in Microsoft's Core Services

An "extremely critical" vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft's XML Core Services, according to several security firms.

The vulnerability, caused by an unspecified error in the XMLHTTP 4.0 ActiveX Control, could be used to seize control of an affected system, according to note posted on Secunia, a security company based in Denmark.

IBM-owned ISS X-Force detailed on its site the kind of damage that could be caused by the vulnerability.

"This could lead to loss of confidential information, disruption of business, or further compromise," according to the security firm.
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Coming soon to YouTube: Sun product videos

In a sequel to its advocacy of internal blogs, Sun Microsystems has begun encouraging its rank-and-file employees to publish videos promoting the company's products.

Sun has launched an internal contest to see who can publish the most compelling video at video-sharing site YouTube, said Sun Chief Marketing Officer Anil Gadre. He said that Sun minions tell him, "If I could just get out and tell everyone about my product myself, we would sell so much more," Gadre said. "YouTube allows us to enable every one of them to do just that."

The internal contest has triggered some inter-group rivalry, Gadre said. John Fowler, executive vice president of the server group, posted his own Halloween video exhorting his employees to come up with "creative, wacky, energizing educational videos."
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RealNetworks reports leap in quarterly earnings

Digital media company RealNetworks on Monday reported a sharply higher net profit, boosted by proceeds from the settlement of its antitrust litigation against Microsoft and commercial agreements with the software giant.

Net income was $42.2 million, or 24 cents per share, compared with $11.2 million, or 6 cents per share, in last year's third quarter.

Third quarter revenue rose to $93.7 million from $82.2 million in the year-ago period.
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Eclipse marks five years of expansion

If you'd like to study how open-source development has transformed the software industry, look no farther than Eclipse which celebrates it fifth anniversary on Monday.

Founded by IBM in 2001 as an open-source project, the now-independent Eclipse Foundation has built its market clout by attracting many software vendors to collaborate. Its development software is popular with end customers as well: Eclipse claims 2.25 million users worldwide.
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Will Blu-ray, HD DVD be united by 2008?

Chipmakers such as Broadcom, NEC and STMicroelectronics are preparing components that will allow consumer electronics manufacturers to come out with players and PCs that will play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs.

And these universal players may come out sometime in 2007, according to a story in EE Times. While the report was a little vague about when in 2007 these players might come out, at least one exec was bullish on the presence of these machines in 2008.
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Novell Layoffs Rumored

According to sources close to Novell, the Linux company has laid off numerous mid-level employees from several departments, including training and sales.

While Bruce Lowry, director of global public relations for Novell said, "We don't comment on rumors," one former employee said that he had been let go on Nov. 1.
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NTP slaps Palm with patent infringement suit

NTP, the company behind the epic patent infringement lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, is now going after Palm.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia on Monday, NTP asserted that Palm's products, services, systems and processes infringe on NTP's patents.

NTP is a holding company that was formed to pursue intellectual-property cases involving patents held by the late Thomas Campana for a wireless e-mail system. The company settled a multiyear legal ordeal with RIM earlier this year for $612.5 million, after alleging that RIM's BlackBerry devices and wireless e-mail service infringed on NTP's patents.
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CBS goes 'Interactive' with hire of Valley veteran

CBS has hired Silicon Valley investment professional Quincy Smith as president of its new CBS Interactive division, a revamped incarnation of its Digital Media group.

The 35-year-old Smith made a name as a tech investor, specifically working on mergers and acquisitions like Delicious' sale to Yahoo and AOL's buy of Netscape. Prior to his hire at CBS, Smith worked at the firm Allen & Company.

With the addition of Smith, announced Monday morning, CBS has replaced its Digital Media division with the new CBS Interactive. Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, has in turn stepped down from his post but will remain a presence at CBS as an adviser. Smith will now oversee CBS' digital and interactive brands, which include CBS.com, CBSNews.com, CBS SportsLine.com and the Innertube broadband channel, which recently saw a popular Web-only show, Inturn, promoted to on-air status.
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Video: Microsoft Virtual Earth preview

One-upping Google on several fronts--including using real photographs of buildings--Microsoft has released Virtual Earth, a competitor to Google Earth that works with its Live Local service. CNET's Rafe Needleman gives a preview and compares the two platforms.
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ActiveX Flaw Identified

Unpatched vulnerability, triggered by certain sites, could give intruders remote access.

Microsoft is investigating reports of a vulnerability in a Windows ActiveX control that could allow an attacker to remotely take control of a computer, according to an advisory issued Friday. One security company rated the vulnerability critical, while Microsoft said it allows only limited attacks.

The vulnerability, which was not patched as of this morning, affects certain versions of Windows running Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0, a set of tools that allows programmers to use scripting languages to access XML documents.

The affected versions are Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.
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IT managers increasingly in demand

A war between companies for the favors of top IT managers and tech-savvy staff is looming, according to industry consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Within three years a scarcity of talented technology staff will cause a scramble for those with mathematical, scientific and engineering skills. The best positions will go to those people who are innovative and able to collaborate, and who demonstrate a willingness to learn, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report titled "Technology executive connections--successful strategies for talent management."

The report is based on interviews with 153 top European executives. Eighty-three percent of respondents thought that engineering knowledge coupled with creative and collaborative thinking is in short supply. Similarly, 55 percent say that mathematics, science and engineering talent pools in developed nations are drying up, compared to those available in emerging markets.
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FTC chief warns against 'unnecessary' Net regulations

update: WASHINGTON--The head of the Federal Trade Commission on Monday voiced reluctance toward adopting consumer protection laws that target technological concerns du jour, saying the "collective voice" of consumers often prompts change.

Deborah Platt Majoras, the agency's Republican chairwoman, said she prefers relying on a combination of existing laws, vigorous competition and user pressure to address complaints about new products or potentially worrisome uses of technology.

For proof, look no further than a situation in September in which hundreds of thousands of users of the popular social-networking site Facebook rebelled against a new feature that some charged was Big Brother-esque, Majoras said. Within days, the site's president had quieted some of the fury by giving users the option of turning off the "minifeed," which showed users whenever someone in their network makes a change to their relationship status, favorite music or other profile information.
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Review: Vasstek's 'Quasi' RAID 6153S

Hardware Review: Redundancy is always nice, especially when a drive meltdown decimates high profile data. You find yourself working on deadline and then, wham, your system has corrupted files, or worse yet, a drive that will no longer boot.
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InterSystems' Cache 2007 Speeds Database Development

The latest version of InterSystems' Cache database product features new technology for rapid, rich Internet application development.

The Cambridge, Mass., company released Cache 2007 Nov. 6 and announced new components including Zen, a framework for building rich platform-independent Web applications faster than ever before. Another new component, known as Jalapeño, eliminates object-relational mapping for Java programmers and reduces development time by at least 40 percent, the company said.

Zen features a library of prebuilt components, including grids, tables and selection trees that enable the quick creation and easy management of complex processes, InterSystems said. It also builds on the concept of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and takes advantage of the Cache security model to avoid security issues.
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VMware, VMLogix Court Software Developers

Software developers are getting more tools that take advantage of virtualization to streamline the application testing and quality assurance processes.

In advance of its VMworld 2006 show in Los Angeles, VMware on Nov. 6 is introducing Lab Manager, a product designed to enable enterprises to automatically provision data center resources to application development teams.

For its part, VMLogix on the same day is launching its first commercial product, LabManager, which—while not a virtualization platform—enables enterprises to leverage multiple virtualization technologies to make it easier and faster for engineers to create applications.
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SPI Adds Web Application Security Tools for Java, AJAX

SPI Dynamics launched the newest iteration of its DevInspect Web applications vulnerability testing software on Nov. 6, adding support for programs written in Java and Microsoft's flavor of AJAX.

The Atlanta-based software maker introduced several new add-ons to DevInspect 3.0, which promises to help Web applications designers locate potential flaws in their work using so-called black box testing tools in combination with source code inspection technology.

By identifying and verifying exploitable security defects using the automated black box system, and scouring program source code for more common errors, the company maintains that the product provides customers with a hybrid technique for eliminating potential glitches in Web-based systems.
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Cingular Wireless to Sell First 3G PDA

Cingular Wireless will begin selling a new broadband PDA on Nov. 15, a company executive told eWEEK.

The new HSDPA/UMTS enabled Cingular 8525 includes a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a wide screen, and it also supports quad-band EDGE, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The device will sell for $399.00 with a two-year agreement. It supports tri-band HSDPA, so it should work anywhere in the world that the wireless broadband protocol is supported.

"This is the first 3G PDA that we've offered," said Mike Woodward, executive director of Cingular's Mobile Professional Solutions.
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Virus creators target Wikipedia

Malicious hackers have turned to Wikipedia to try to help them catch out PC users.

The virus writers created a page on the German Wikipedia that linked to a fake fix for a new version of an old malicious Windows worm.

But instead of curing a bug, those installing the fix would be infected by a new Windows virus.

The booby-trapped page on the German version of the online encyclopaedia has now been removed.
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Zune problems for MSN customers

People who have bought music from Microsoft's MSN Music store could face problems if they decide to buy the firm's new Zune portable player.

Microsoft has said it will stop selling music from MSN music from 14 November, when Zune goes on sale in the US.

But in a move that could alienate some customers, MSN-bought tracks will not be compatible with the new gadget.

The move could also spell problems for the makers of MP3 players which are built to work with the MSN store.
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Microsoft Ends Photo-Sharing Project

'Max' image technology may appear in new Web, desktop applications.

Microsoft has ended a project to develop a tool, codenamed Max, for sharing photos with friends and reading Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, among other functions.

In an October 31 blog posting, Microsoft said feedback from the project has contributed to development of its .NET 3.0 programming framework, and may also end up in Windows Live, a new series of Web and desktop-based applications.

Max also let users annotate their photos, as if they were using a felt-tip pen, while the original images were preserved. In March, developers incorporated MSNBC Newsbot into Max, which pulls content from online news sources.
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DriveSentry Unveils Storage 'Firewall'

Program manages whitelist of safe applications, blocks others from writing to hard drive.

A Mountain View, California startup company has developed what it calls a storage "firewall" to prevent computer viruses from wrecking the data on desktop computers.

DriveSentry's software sets up a whitelist of trusted programs that are allowed to write to certain folders or file types. Should another program try to write to the drive, DriveSentry generates a pop-up window and asks the user if this should be allowed.
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Microsoft aims to make Dynamics more dynamic

Microsoft is looking to liven up its Microsoft Dynamics line of applications for midsize businesses.

Bill Gates, the company's chairman, is slated to outline Microsoft's strategy for these customers on Monday at its Convergence conference in Munich. The event, the first Convergence to be held outside the U.S, is for users of Microsoft Dynamics products.

The software maker has been touting a future in which its desktop applications for midsize customers will be augmented by a host of online services. However, it is still treading fairly cautiously when it comes to providing full-on hosted versions of its Microsoft Dynamics products, which include customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools.

With hosted services, companies buy access to software running on an outside server, rather than on their own in-house machine.
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Microsoft wraps up work on new Office

Microsoft said Monday it has finalized the code for Office 2007, marking the completion of the first of two key projects for the software giant.

Both Windows Vista and Office are slated for release to big businesses on Nov. 30. Microsoft has issued near-final test releases of Vista, but has not yet completed the final, or "gold," code for the new operating system.

As for Office 2007, the upcoming release sports some major changes from Office 2003, including new file formats and a radically revised user interface. In addition to those and other changes that have been known for months, Microsoft noted that it has also added a feature to Outlook to make it easier to send text messages to cell phones.
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Why tomorrow’s election won’t change net neutrality debate

I know that many advocates of meaningful Congressional action on net neutrality are hopeful that tomorrow's elections will result in a shift of power to a Democratic party that generally seems to be more sympathetic to pro-net neutrality arguments than the Republicans are.

There's two reasons why tomorrow's results are not going to shift things.
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HD radio boosts distribution, marketing

U.S. radio operators on Monday said sales of its high-definition radios will expand to Circuit City, and stations are set to air some 75,000 ads a week pushing HD digital radio, in an effort to defend its turf against satellite radio and iPods.

In the latest phase of a $200 million marketing push, timed to take advantage of the holiday season, the radio industry starting November 13 will also cut prices, bringing some automotive units to around $150, according to the HD Digital Radio Alliance, a group of broadcasters hoping to speed consumer adoption of HD digital radio.
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Why Wi-Fi competition is good for Logan, and for Boston

By now, some of you know that after a 17-month battle, the Federal Communications Commission decided last week to let Continental Airlines provide Wi-Fi service at its Presidents Club facility at Boston's Logan International Airport.

Massport, which runs Logan, had claimed the service violated Continental's contract with Logan, which charges $7.95 a day for their Wi-Fi offering.

I'm happy with the ruling for several reasons:

Wi-Fi reception sometimes don't work well in enclosed airport areas, exemplified by lounges such as the President's Club

Airport VIP/Frequent Flyer facilities already pay rent and service fees to the host airport. So why shouldn't they have the right to offer Wi-Fi as well?
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Take your MacBook Pro’s temperature

If you've used an Apple notebook for any extended length of time you probably have an opinion on its operating temperature. But how do you quantify the temperature of an Apple's notebook? Let's take a look at different ways to measure the temperature in the MacBook Pro.

You may have noticed that CoreDuoTemp (upper highlight in the screen shot at right), smcFanControl (lower highlight) and Fan Control all report different temperatures on the MacBook Pro. That's because they're measuring different things.

CoreDuoTemp (1.0) is a menu bar application that reads the temperature from the Intel CPU's built-in sensor. The primary purpose of this sensor is to shut down or slow down the CPU if it is in danger of overheating. This sensor is rather simple and can be inaccurate.
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Microsoft “bricked” 360s with “Live” update

Users had been anticipating Microsoft's dashboard update for some weeks. It was the update that bought 1080p support to the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, it bought something else to some users - a totally bricked console.

It's pretty easy to spot a bricked 360. Just turn it on and watch ERROR CODE E71 flash endlessly on the screen. A bricked 360 is bad news for anyone wanting to play games or surf Xbox Live - because you can't do either of those things. In fact, it turns the games console into a very expensive paperweight.

Initially it was believed that the bricking was confined to consoles which made use of firmware modded to allow backups of games (or, lets be honest here, pirated games) to be played, but now it seems that this isn't the case. However, the issue does come down to Microsoft trying to detect consoles running on modded firmware. Unfortunately, the experiment seems to have gone too far, damaging consoles that weren't modded in any way (it's unclear what effect the update was supposed to have on modded consoles).

Microsoft says that it is aware of the issue, is working on a fix and that "less than 1 percent" of users have been affected.
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One Skype user’s tale of SkypeOut “Add Credits” woe

Skype user rox has recently experienced a customer-service meltdown of the highest magnitude. She writes us to call attention to the many Skype Forum posts she has made in which she has given a blow-by-blow account of the ordeal.

This whole bloody mess started when rox attempted to add an additional $30 to her SkypeOut balance. The credit card authorization for the purchase went through, but it seems that the requisite amont of minutes weren't added to her account.

Four days after contacting Skype support, rox received a response asking her for additional details about the credit card account she used to make the purchase. Then, she received a follow-up from Skype saying that an unnamed "another department" would look into this issue. By that time, the problem was nine days old.

After multiple attempts over the next six days, she finally made things work on October 15. Here's what rox did to get Skype to let her in:
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Newspapers invest $15 million more in Topix.net

update: News aggregator Topix.net on Monday announced that it has received an additional investment of $15 million from the three newspaper groups that already own a majority stake in the company.

After the latest funding, Gannett and Tribune each own 33.7 percent stakes, and McClatchy owns an 11.9 percent stake in Topix. Last year, Knight Ridder--which was acquired by McClatchy in March--jointly purchased a 75 percent stake in Topix with Gannett and Tribune. The second round of funding boosts the newspaper companies' combined total stake to 79.3 percent.

"The support of these leading newspaper companies has been invaluable in helping us quadruple our traffic since their initial investment," Topix CEO Rich Skrenta said in a statement.
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MySpace to launch in Japan with Softbank

News Corp.'s MySpace.com online service will be launched in Japan in a joint venture with Japanese Internet and telecoms group Softbank, the Nihon Keizai business daily reported on Monday. The 50-50 venture, to be called MySpace Japan, will first offer services for personal computers and later allow users to post photos and write blogs via cell phones, the paper said.
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TVU chief grapples with copyright questions

Paul Shen, the CEO of controversial TVU Networks, said he doesn't understand why anyone in television would consider his company a threat. In fact, he said he comes to the TV industry bearing gifts.

Shen is the creator of the TVUPlayer, which enables people to stream live TV broadcasts to one another via the Internet. The blogging community in recent months has showered praise on the technology for aggregating TV channels such as ESPN, the Disney Channel, Fox and NBC in one place, and for creating a Web TV experience that more closely resembles traditional viewing.

But almost everyone who writes about TVU Networks' growing popularity has plenty of questions about the start-up. Who is behind the nifty technology? How does the company make money? Is the service legal?
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Does Web 2.0 bubble have a silver lining?

Hundreds of technology executives and investors will congregate this week to take the quickening pulse of Internet entrepreneurship.

At the third annual Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, dozens of industry players will gather to break down topics like Internet infrastructure, Net neutrality, mashups, data protection and the future of video. Among those on hand at the city's Palace Hotel will be Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie; and Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

For industry players, many of whom lived through the dot-com crash, the surging wave of new Web companies and the corresponding media buzz can mean only one thing: an investment bubble where too much money is chasing too few good ideas.
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Political ads go up against DVR tech

Christopher Ditty, like so many television viewers by now, is sick of political ads.

The Horn Lake, Miss., resident lives just five minutes from Memphis, Tenn., and is being bombarded with commercials from the two candidates for the open U.S. Senate seat in Tenneesse, Republican Bob Corker and his opponent, Democrat Rep. Harold Ford.

"It seems like there (are) one to two (political) ads every break," Ditty said.

But Ditty now has the technology to fight back: His digital video recorder (DVR), a generic model from his local cable company, allows him to skip through the barrage of increasingly nasty ads.
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Original PS1 commercial

Quite a clever commercial for the PS1 in EU, when they were using the slogan 'Do Not Underestimate The Power Of The PlayStation.'
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Photos From The Vloggies Video Blog Awards Ceremony

Photos from last night's Vloggies, a video blog awards event in San Francisco produced by PodTech and hosted by Irina Slutsky and Daniel McVicar. Top honors went to the amazing Alive In Baghdad video blog.
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Tracking Traffic Jams With Cell Phones

kaufmanmoore writes,
"Companies and governments are looking to alternatives to expensive radars and road sensors to track traffic jams. Two Atlanta-based companies are aiming to use data from wireless carriers to mark how fast phones are moving and overlaying that with maps to calculate traffic conditions. One of the companies, AirStage, has already partnered with Sprint-Nextel and the Georgia DOT to cover Atlanta's notorious traffic. The plans raise obvious privacy concerns over the usage of the data of your cell phone's location and the accuracy of this data."
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Web 2.0 definition updated and Enterprise 2.0 emerges

The annual Web 2.0 Conference starts this Tuesday and with it comes an important update of the vision of the next generation of networked applications. Thus, the major event during the leadup to the conference is not the pending renaming of the conference to the Web 2.0 Summit, but the issuing of the most complete articulation yet of what exactly Web 2.0 is, something which the industry has frequently struggled with.

Written primarily by John Musser (of the terrific Programmable Web site) along with support from Tim O'Reilly and the O'Reilly Radar Team, the new 100 page report — titled Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices — was published late last week and is available immediately. As most readers here know, O'Reilly Media originally introduced the term in 2004 and followed it up in 2005 with a widely read seminal five page essay that attempted to describe the successful design patterns and business models emerging on the Web today. This new report, probably not given as much fanfare as the original essay due to it being a commercial report, is significant improvement on the articulation of Web 2.0 in a number of ways.
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100 Oldest Domain Names

A list of the 100 oldest dot-com domain names. With the oldest one dating back to March of 1985!
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In-Game Unreal Tournament 2007 footage!

While the graphics updates are no surprise, apparently by the footage they're will be some interesting new addtions such as hoverboards (racing) "War of the Worlds" style walkers and tanks the size of goddanm buildings!
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