...more recent posts
I have over 2000 unread emails my mail client has helpfully marked as spam and put into a separate junk mail folder for me. This is a cool feature, for sure. I used to look through this folder every day or so just to be certain it wasn't holding any false positives. But it's just too much now. So I've stopped looking. And so hopefully nothing you have sent me is sitting in that folder.
As a related suggestion, you might not want to mention viagra or home mortgages if you want your email to get through my shields.
Online Journalism Review interview with the principle scientist behind google news.
Toorcon is a comprehensive, three-day information security extravaganza, featuring lectures from some of the top experts in the field and hands-on demonstrations of the newest approaches to information security and security management.
Here are two "impressionistic transcript[s] by Cory Doctorow": security super guru Bruce Schneier's keynote, as well as that of the always amusing and insightful Robert Cringely.
Cingular is having some sort of GSM cellular melt down. Details are sparse. I know at least one person having trouble with AT&T wireless GSM too (but those networks shouldn't have anything to do with each other, should they? Or could roaming agreements set up some sort of cascading service failure situation?)
How are your cell phones working today?
It was 20 years ago today...
And he pretty much did it. Well, except for the kernal part where there is still, alas, some work to do. Luckily this other guy named Linus had a project of his own that took care of that. And thus we ended up with GNU/Linux, a completely free and open computer operating system.
Thanks!
I've been doing more research on cellular data plans. A friend bought the Sony Ericsson T616 for the AT&T network, and the plans are very confusing. And expensive. The phone, which I've mentioned before, is beautiful. The camera is okay, but not quite as good as hoped. I still recommend looking at this phone (for non text use especially,) but I simply can't recommend AT&T for mobile data usage.
Sprint seems like the way to go for data. T-Mobile, which I have been using, is okay too. At least they have an all you can eat flat rate like Sprint. But Sprint has much faster data speeds. And a much larger coverage area.
The downside is that Sprint uses CDMA, not GSM, so there is no chance of taking your Sprint phone outside the country and having it work (well, maybe Iraq, but don't get me started on that boondoogle.) But the reality is that you wouldn't want to roam in Europe with your U.S. based GSM phone plan anyway because the rates would be orders of magnitude higher than just picking up a pre paid GSM phone while you are over there and tossing it when you are done.
The other interesting thing I've learned is that incoming phone calls don't come through when your phone is sending or receiving data. This explains why so many calls go right into my voice mail without ringing. I can't believe I never realized why this was happening. But this seems true across carriers and technology, so what are you going to do?
Email is the other big differentiator. It can be either push or pull. The blackberry and the hiptop (which is the T-Mobile sidekick) both have push email. This means you don't check for new messages, they are automatically pushed right to your device which notifies you *immediately* when a new message has arrived. Pull email is like what you have on your computer. You have to check and see if there is something new. Sure, software lets you set up automatic checking (polling,) so maybe you don't actually have to check yourself, but it is still pull, there is still a polling interval, and on some mobile services the minimum time between polls is quite large. Obviously push is what you want.
But none of the phone carriers have this (again, excepting the blackberry and hiptop, which are phones, but have their roots in the two-way market.) As I understand it some people have gotten around this by using SMS as a new email notification system, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details of such a set up (seems like it might work though.) This is definitely an area I will be investigating, as I have gotten quite spoiled by the excellent email on the sidekick.
In any case, I think I am going with Sprint. Rumors are putting the Handspring Treo 600 on sale in NYC on either the 5th, 6th, or 7th of October. Here's a flash demo by the European carrier Orange (so it shows the GSM version of the Treo 600 which is almost identical to the CDMA version I want.) It is an almost perfect device for me.
Biggest complaint? No bluetooth. It does have an SD expansion slot, and there are SD bluetooth cards - but it's a Palm OS 5 device, and there are no drivers for bluetooth SD cards for OS 5! I had thought this was just a matter of time, but apparently Palm has said they have no plans to develop the drivers. Opinions differ on how difficult it would be to write the drivers, but it seems clear, at least, that it's not particularly easy. Hagiwara says they are developing such drivers, but apparently they have been saying this for some time without showing anything. Charges of vaporware are rather strong (you'd be surprised how passionate people are about such things.) So possibly the Treo 600 will never have bluetooth.
Why would I want bluetooth? (Bluetooth is a short range, low power, wireless technology.) For one thing it means that my contacts (and calendar, etc...) are always synced between my phone and my computer. And this syncing happens in the background whenever my phone is in range of my computer. I don't have to put it in a cradle. I don't even have to take the phone out of my bag or pocket. That's pretty cool. But it gets even better. Because I run Mac OS X, a bluetooth wireless device can completely control any program (well, any applescriptable program, but that's basically every program.) So my phone, camera, PDA, mobile email device also becomes an uber remote for my computer. And since my computer is at the heart of my audio/video setup, this is quite cool. In fact, a remote is about the only thing I was missing.
But back to the complaints - I'd also like the camera to be higher resolution. It does take 640 x 480 pictures, which is as good as it gets right now in the U.S. camera phone market, but I know that 1 megapixel camera phones are right around the corner. Still, these pictures will be good for the web, and you can't really do better at the moment. I guess the question is how long does a moment last? Into the first quarter of next year I'd say. At least.
Metaweb: a Wiki for Neal Stephenson's new novel Quicksilver. (What's a wiki? "The simplest online database that could possibly work.")
Nokia 7600 (page requires flash.) Wow. Very nice to see something a little different.
Nokia is also introducing wearable necklace displays that you can transfer pictures to over IR. Cool idea, although I doubt this will really take off. Two models: here and here. And similarly, the Kaleidoscope. I've wondered before if such a setup could work for reading email and web surfing.
(all links via gizmodo)
Google has a new toy: Search by Location. Here's the FAQ page. This is definitely beta, as I'm getting more server errors than actual results. But I'm sure they will get the bugs ironed out. Definitely cool when it works.
Apple has posted OS X 10.2.8 (for non G5 computers.) This will be the final 10.2 update before Panther (10.3) arrives in the next few months.
But I'm advising people to wait on installing this one as their seems to be some problems with loss of network connectivity for some people. Always safer to let others go first.
Looks like sales of camera phones have outpaced the sales of digital cameras in the first half of '03.
I've been saying this for a long time: the stand alone consumer camera market is doomed. But the handset manufactures still have some progress to make. We're starting to see 1 megapixel units, but we need at least twice that resolution. And, more importantly, we need on the fly variable jpeg compression. I mean: each time you snap a picture you should produce two images. One full size image that gets stored in your phone (and synched to your PC later by bluetooth or cable,) and one smaller (the user can select a target size, say, between 20K and 200K) reduced quality image that can be emailed (or sent via mms) right from the phone immediately. I think this is key. So far I know of no one doing this.
Fastap is a new alpha keyboard layout for cellphones. Very interesting compromise. Intel has some reference designs and we should see production models by the end of the year. Will this finally get Americans text messaging?
On Wednesday there will be an Applescript for system admins webcast featuring Apple's AS guru Sal Soghoian.
Pictures of my new 1,100 dual 2.0 Ghz G5 Mac cluster.
Oh no wait, those are shots of the cluster at Virginia Tech.
Got a chance to play with Alex's new 17 inch Powerbook yesterday. That is one sweet machine. Compared to my 15 inch (last generation titanium,) the 17 inch aluminum is much nicer. The screen is sharper, with (it seemed to me at least) better color. The hinge mechanism for the screen is greatly improved and now glides open fluidly. A real pleasure. And the backlit keyboard is hard not to fall in love with.
This was also my first chance to play with two wireless powerbooks. We had Alex's machine connected to the office router with an ethernet cable. And my machine was wirelessly connected to Alex's through airport. This is very easy, but still not perfectly easy. I could share his internet connection. And my iTunes library automagically showed up in his version of iTunes (and vice versa.) That one is especially impressive.
I can't wait for the first time my iTunes program loads up some unknown iTunes users library when I'm out in public somewhere. Imagine being on a plane flight and having the music library of everyone with a powerbook on the plane suddenly display on your computer. "I wonder which of these people is the big Joy Division fan?" That's going to be fun. Ad hoc local wireless networks. Wi-fi and zeroconf (airport and rendez-vous in apple speak) are going to make the gadget world very interesting.
Still, when I tried to copy over my 17 gigs of, uh, uncopyrighted, uh, historical data (yeah, that's it, Alex and I are *way* into historical data,) we could see the limits of 802.11b 10 mb/sec connections. The highly unreliable time remaining indicator told us we would be waiting 9 days for it to finish. Plugging the machines directly into each other with an ethernet cable (both machines have gigabit/sec ethernet) resulted in the transfer time being knocked down to under 1 hour.
The WSJ's Walt Mossberg loves the Treo 600.
Canon EOS 300D - $899 6 megapixel digital SLR:
This digital SLR based on the EOS 10D's superb six megapixel CMOS sensor and image processor in an inexpensive consumer body similar to the film EOS-300. This camera is designed to take the prosumer end of the digital camera market by storm, everyone is fully aware of the image quality of the EOS 10D (considered by many as the benchmark six megapixel digital SLR), and so a consumer priced digital SLR based on the same sensor is irrefutably attractive to anyone who would have previously considered an 'all in one' prosumer digital cameras.
This camera is probably the most fundamentally important step for digital SLR's since the introduction of the Nikon D1. It will place digital SLR's into the hands of consumers (with a moderate budget) and will probably also have a very strong negative effect on the $1,000 prosumer digital camera market.
The Howard Dean campaign is developing an open source "web community kit" for building grassroots campaign websites. Deanspace.org is the developer site. This is cool even though it's just a modified version of drupal.
A company I've never heard of (no big surprise) called Firetide has announced a wireless mesh router. This is very sexy technology. If you're into such things. I will be very curious to read independent reviews of this product when it ships. It's the software that will make or break this device. Seems expensive at $799 per access point, but not completely crazy in such a young market. Assuming it works. And scales.
Texas Instruments joins Broadcom, Atheros, and Philips in announcing a wi-fi chip aimed at the cellphone market. TI's chip will support 802.11a and g in addition to the older (and most widely deployed) b variant. Looks like we will definitely be seeing combo cellular / wi-fi mobile phones next year.
But it's hard for me to understand why telco's would offer such a product. Seems to me like it will be the beginning of the end for them. Do they figure they'll get the backhaul business? Are they just scared that the competition will offer this and steal their business? Do they really want to give us something cool? (Yeah, I don't believe that last one either.)
Maybe they'll incorporate wifi but still charge you minutes for using it? They could have the phones "call home" and report on your wifi usage. But that would be insane...
iRider is a new web browser (for windows) that looks really interesting. It's described as "visual hierarchical tabbed browsing." There's a long flash movie that demonstrates how it works. Worth a look. I'm jealous.
Apple finally releases new 15 inch Powerbooks.
$1999 for 1 ghz, 256 megs RAM, 60 gig hard drive, CD burner / DVD player
$2599 for 1.25 ghz, 512 megs RAM, 80 gig hard drive, CD/DVD burner
Posting will be sparse to nonexistent, as opposed to merely intermittent, for the next week.
Mimi Smartypants makes my life much much better. Congratulations on the adoption if that is not some sophisticated joke I am missing.
The Handspring Treo 600 (previous mentions,) which is probably my next phone / pda / camera combo device, goes on sale through Orange in Europe next week. This is sooner than I expected. No word on when it will hit these shores, but you'd think it wouldn't be too much longer. Right? Right?
Wow. Mobile device concept designs galore! Click on the company logos to see their mock ups. I cannot wait for the future. (via gizmodo)
Excellent. Broadcom announces a single chip 802.11b WiFi solution.
The AirForce One BCM4317 integrates the broadband and MAC components customarily offered on one chip with the radio and power amplification units built into current WLAN adaptors on a second chip.Power reduction is reported (by Broadcom) to be up to 97%! If true (or even mostly true) this will be huge. Presently WiFi is too power hungry for most portable devices. Also this will hopefully crush Bluetooth, as the only reason for that technology was the power savings over 802.11x.
Come on WiFi equipped mobile phone / PDA / camera uber convergence device! You can do it!
I put up a page for questions since I sometimes get asked things in random comment threads here that might do better as threads of their own. And also, you know, since I am like a world expert in several areas and need to share this abundant knowledge with the world.
If I know how to work my own software anyone (signed in or not) should be able to post.
Website being served from a MacPlus! I had the model right before that one (the one pictured actually, which isn't a Plus, but looks basically the same.)
And check out the picture of Jobs at the top of the images page. Who wouldn't buy a computer from that young man? (thanks, mimi)
Apple updated iPods and iMacs today, bumping the 15 and 30 gig iPods to 20 and 40 gigs (10 gig remains the entry level,) and bumping the iMac to 1 ghz (w/ 15 inch flat panel, $1299) and 1.25 ghz.(w/ 17 inch flat panel, $1799.)
Updated my links a bit to better reflect my actual surfing habits.
Arnold Kling with some reality for the video on demand crowd:
But I am skeptical of any study that forecasts a big market for movie video-on-demand. That forecast has been made wrongly for years, and it continues to defy the fact that hard disk space is increasing faster than bandwidth.
I think that the correct answer to the question, "When will video on demand become mainstream?" is "Never." By the time we have the bandwidth to make it work, we will have hard drives capable of storing all the movies ever made.
Skype: VOIP (Voice Over IP) P2P software from the kazaa people. Windows only (d'oh!) And, of course, kazaa is notorious for installing all sorts of spyware along with their software. But still, this looks *very* cool. If I ran a telco I'd be calling my lawyers just as soon as I changed my pants. Please let me know if you try this. Leave a comment below if you install it but don't know any other users and maybe we can get a test going. (via HTP)
There are a bunch of GPS (and GPS/PDA combo) related posts scattered throughout the comments. I'll post new stuff I find in this thread from now on.