Archive for July, 2009

Last week I decided to put a call out to have people take a shot of their rear-view or side-view mirror and send to me. It all started simply because a friend of mine – Sean Kelley – inspired me to find out what is in people’s rear-view windows. I also asked them what they used to take the picture, which interestingly enough is not as many camera phones as I would think.

Sean Kelly

I decided to put this into a Gallery of Rear View moments. These are the result – I hope you like it.

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(Disclaimer: As Rob Rosenberger reminds us, this is the time of year for computer security hysteria in the media, so media reports must be taken with several pounds of salt. Both the Black Hat and DEFCON conferences are going on.)

Reuters reports that a security researcher demonstrated a serious vulnerability in Mac computers. This one would allow an intruder to retrieve encrypted data. The story is here.

The existence of a vulnerability does not, of course, mean that Mac users are actually vulnerable.

A vulnerability doesn’t become a threat until someone actually tries to exploit it. Proof of concept viruses targeting cellphones have been tested, but, by and large, cellphones aren’t targets in the wild. The “smartphone” is still a small percentage of the market (though the cachet of the iPhone might be changing that); even a smartphone can’t be reliably integrated into a botnet; and cellphones, except for some persons’ smartphones, don’t usually contain the kind of personal information an identity thief might want.

What I take away from this is the lesson that most Windows users learned a long time ago: Sensible persons take sensible precautions. Be mindful of security (some of the precautions recommended at the preceding link are what I consider a little extreme, but it’s an excellent summary of good security practices).

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A long time ago, while helping someone set up a component stereo system (remember them?), I remarked that modern life is living with wires.

And it still comes down to wires, whether they are made of metal or silicone.

Wednesday, I was wireless. In fact, my whole street was. A garbage truck tore down the main lines feeding the street, as well as one of the poles they were attached to. It took out the electricity, the landline, and the cable, and it emphasized how wound up with wires our lives have become.

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Wow. This week, the studio has a little more light, but the video really needs the work. The video processing computer took a while to render, but it was the computer software that made me bust my headphones into two. No really. I did.

This week on the 5 Tech Things You Should Know:

- Google Voice Blocked on iPhone

• You can still get the Blackberry and run Google Voice AND Skype.
• If AT&T is calling the shots on this, I think we all should call our local Representative.

- Ban on Texting

• Should it be Illegal?
• Will you abide by the law?

- Tennant Tweet Causes $50k Lawsuit

• How a 20 person rant turned into something everyone knows about

- Samsung Electronics 8500 series of FullHD 1080p LCD TVs

• 8500 will have full-array LED backlighting.
• Uses edge-lit LED lighting to achieve a 1.16-inch panel depth.
• The new HDTVs are said to combine the picture quality and thinness attributes of LED technology.
• The 8500 series models will be offered in the 46 and 55 inch ($3,600, $4,500 suggested retail)
• September release

- Bing – Yahoo – Google

• Really, this battle started in 2005
• Can take up to two years to complete
• 10 year contract for Yahoo
• What this means to Google
• What this means to Cuil

Challenge to Notebook / Netbook Makers. The Podcast Machine back up and running… – Final Days – Summer of Podcasts & announcement on Podcast Carnivale – Three more to Show 100 (August 19th). Thoughts out to Andy McCaskey. Looking for some supplemental income.

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I – S.U.N. (Straight Up News)
FreeyourID is Free
Sex Offender iPhone
Booyah!
Changes in Blip.tv
China Bans Mafia Wars
Intel Halts SSD – The fastest data corruption possible.
WD on Laptop 1TB
Million Dollar Netflix Challenge – Revamp and win
Samsung Chips Hit 1Ghz – Speed baby!
Monkey Brain
The 3-D Revolution – James Cameron’s Titanic will go on.

Special Report:
The AP and it’s Practices
Apple Tablet Rumor

II
Apple Blocks Google Voice
-17+ Apps
AT&T Blocks 4chan -
Verizon Palm Pre
-Sprint Acquires Virgin

QOTW – Do you use Hotel TV or your Notebook?

III
What is ‘Augmented Reality’?
Hotel Entertainment Changing?

Extras:
Desktop Background
Great .gov Websites
Bike of the Future
Gizmodo Apple Hype Probability Meter
7 Ways Technology Owns You
I lost the Cheese

YouTubin
How to guess the number of M&M’s

HP Technology Forum Videos – Backchannel
CES Videos – Geekazine
CMSExpo Videos – SDRNews

The Geekazine Weekly Podcast is produced every week for distrobution on Wednesdays. Feel free to contact Geekazine for more information. You can also Twitter – Plurk – Myspace – Facebook Group – FriendFeed or Digg the Podcast. The Geekazine Podcast is under a Creative Commons no-deriv license

Music for Podcast by the John Masino Band

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:50 — 23.7MB)

I might be shooting myself in the foot, but you know, I am not a big fan of the Rumor mill. Especially when it comes to Apple products. In the last 6 months, we have seen and heard about products that don’t materialize. The Apple Mini iPhone and Netbooks come to mind.

While I DO believe that Apple is making a Tablet, I don’t want to get caught up in the hype. That way we won’t have to turn around and say it didn’t happen. We’ll leave the rumor mill to TechCrunch who will tell you about the $800 Netbook and Touchscreen trackpad.

Even Patents cannot tell a whole story. Remember the rumor about an iPhone Flip? The iPod was suppose to get a facelift with buttons all around the device.

Personally, I feel stunts like this are no different than “Pump and Dump” scams.

From now on, we at Geekazine will give a “Rumor” the attention it really deserves. When it becomes fact, we will properly report on it.

Jeffrey Powers
Geekazine.

P.S. This is not at any means a dig on TechCrunch or it’s subsidiaries. It is otherwise a very informative website.

P.P.S. I understand this comes AFTER the post by Frank called Tabble. That post will stay active.

The Guardian reports that the Financial Times (subscription required) reports that Apple is working on a tablet computer. The story is here. And here is a report from AppleInsider.

I remember once, when I was going from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, on the choo-choo, sitting next to a guy who had an tablet computer–I think it was an Intel. It was interesting, but it pretty much left me cold. Nice gadget, not for me.

He was using extensively one feature that a regular laptop does not lend itself to: handwriting recognition. He wrote a lot of notes directly on the screen and saved them to a file.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – for Yahoo, anyway. It was the botched 6 month drama between them and Microsoft that made things so stressful. With Carl Icahn nipping at the heels for a takeover – then subsequent seat offering as a settlement – Yahoo had to create a great first impression to their stockholders so they could move on.

It was a long meeting. There was some debate on who should stay on the board and who should exit. There was even concern over the new seats and who would occupy them.

By the end of the day of August 1st, the meeting had resulted in a switch of power, ultimately leading to Jerry Yangs’ step down as CEO. By the next day, T. Boone Pickens had gotten rid of all his Yahoo stock.

Other items in the Week in Tech History – Fingerprints are used, The TRS 80 line is introduced and Windows Millenium Edition is dubbed “Millenium Alzheimers”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:20 — 14.3MB)

When I travel, I routinely three extra USB cables: The proprietary cable for my cell phone, the proprietary cable for my podplayer, and the proprietary cable for my digital camera.

For the camera and the podplayer, the cables serve for transferring files. For the phone and the podplayer, the cables also charge the batteries (the camera uses AAs). And I know other persons who are tangled in cables that they use primarily for charging the batteries of their USB devices.

Now comes a company called Witricity, which is working on a wireless charging system using, if I remember my high school physics correctly, electromagnetic induction to charge a device without a cable.

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Twitter in the Movies

- What takes Bruno from 14.4 to 8.8 in 24 hours?
- The trend of Twittering is increasing
- Kevin Spacey explained to Dave Letterman
- Not the fact that both Oprah and Uma are on Twitter….
Uma Twitter
Oprah Twitter
Kevin Spacey Twitter
Placemark for David Letterman Twitter

Windows 7 is Done
- Win7, Server 2008 R2 hit RTM
- Doesn’t mean it’s ready to ship, just that it’s done
- No plans to push up release date
- October 22nd

Medical Marijuana? We got an App for that!
- Activists Justifying the Natural Agriculture of Ganja (AJNAG)
- $2.99
- Map will contain Doctors to prescribe, and Lawyers that Specialize in those lawsuits.

PSPGo Hands on
- Chad Sapieha met with John Koller – Sony Director of Hardware Marketing in North America
- Portable
- 16 GB SSD
- Slide out Joystick
- Bluetooth & Wi-FI
- Compatible with PS3 devices
- No UMD Disc slot. Download games only.

Being Laid off is Good.

- Skilled tech workers are hard to find.

- Silicon Valley lost 10,000 tech jobs in the past year, according to the state’s Employment Development Department,
- trend is expected to continue.
- Wired says that lack of loyalty has been a key driver of the Valley’s rapid innovation over the past three decades.
- You can skip from job to job, but watch out and don’t burn bridges.
- Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding – just ready for entreprenuerial talent.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted a Bitstrips. Today I was inspired.

Me and my brother really enjoy going to breakfast every now and then. What was better – there was a restaurant that actually had Wi-Fi access. Therefore, we both would take our laptops and surf while eating.

That was two weeks ago.

Now we have smartphones that have wireless access. Of course, I have the iPhone 3GS and he has the Blackberry 8330. So why do we need the Notebooks? Heck – we can go to any place that serves breakfast because the Wi-Fi access selling point is null.

The only thing we cannot do is run any program that requires Flash. That means no Bitstripping while at breakfast with the phone. So we still need the computers and access at one point. That is, until we get netbooks with 3G access….