Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

A treatment center for internet addiction has opened near Seattle. The story is in the Guardian. I wasn’t going to mention it until I started reading the comments; some of them are priceless.

My favorite comment:

I wonder whether they offer the counseling courses online….

I returned yesterday evening from three days and two nights of almost no innertubes or cell phone.

I was staying in a hotel that I’ve used many times. The ethernet connection in the room did not work. We tried two computers and two cables and nada. Because of the nature of the family business I was there to conduct, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to change rooms. (There was wireless in the lobby.)

In addition, my cell carrier’s local tower was apparently having issues. There was unbroken coverage a few miles away in either direction. (On my way back, I called my carrier to report the problem, since I suspect they have few customers in the local area, as they are new there; they were shocked when I refused to discuss any kind of credit or refund).

And, you know what? the world didn’t end.

It was still there when I returned.

Which makes me chuckle at this column in the New York Times about the fragility of the internet.

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Reuters reports that a real estate agent who had registered the domain name, thejaylenoshow dot com, violated comedian Jay Leno’s “common law” right to his own name, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency. The story is here. The agent used the domain name to direct web users to a real estate site. An excerpt:

Furthermore, real estate agent Zambrano did not have any legitimate rights to the disputed web address and had registered it in “bad faith,” according to the ruling by William Towns, an independent arbitrator appointed by the Geneva-based agency.

I suspect that the “bad faith” element will be a key to any precedent this ruling establishes. A domain name registration which had led, for example, to a parody or fan site, would not necessarily be in “bad faith,” because the domain name would have some relationship to the purpose and contents of the site.

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Reuters, citing the Wall Street Journal, reports that Dell is developing a pocket-sized internet device. Read the story here. Here’s an excerpt:

The gadget would run on Google Inc’s Android software, the people told the paper.

According to the paper, two people who saw early prototypes described the device as slightly larger than Apple Inc’s iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone but does not have cellphone capabilities.

Busy Week
Thanks for coming to the site. We had another great week – busy week. It was a lot of fun and really productive.

Post – HPTF

Of course, we went to Vegas the week before to cover the HP Technology Forum Expo. Andy McCaskey, Kara Karsten and myself were working hard with interviews, product reviews and more. This week was planning to get some of the videos out to you. So far, we’ve posted the HP POD video on Friday and have a lot more coming soon.

Summer of Podcasts – Podcast Carnivale

This is what really took up the majority of the week. The last month I have been working hard in getting prizes together. Now it’s time to put a contest together. That is where the Summer of Podcasts comes in. Each week, Podcasters will be giving out codewords during their shows. We will be giving away a USB wireless VGA from IOGEAR (See the video below), a WebAround Web privacy screen and a lot more. The best part is a lot of prizes are from the Podcasters themselves. Caffination is giving some Coffee, Bageltech News gave a NYC canvas print, Bwana.org is giving Team Fortress 2 for PC and a T-Shirt, SDRNews is giving a MagicJack, Techpodcasts (Geek News Central) is giving an iPod Touch: there is a lot more.

Wednesday, July 1st is when the contest starts. Check out the site before hand to which shows are giving codewords for the week.

Bands

It’s summertime, so the band ramps up in it’s playing. It’s all well and good – I enjoy taking the trips and playing the gigs. This last weekend I played 3 shows and it wasn’t even Sunday. This afternoon is one more show. Next week is just about the same.

Interview

This last week, I was interviewed on the Isthmus – a local tabloid – style paper in the Madison area. The interview will be out next week, when that happens, I will post it.

PC/Mac Smackdown

Had lunch with Cal last Wednesday. He said – “Hey, why don’t you come on the show”. I said “Sure, why not?”. Therefore, I was on the PC / Mac Smackdown with Cal Davis and Rachel Baker.

Windows 7

Pre-Orders of Windows 7 means a significant discount. I have Windows 7 RC on my Dell D600 and really like how it works. What is even more interesting – Windows 7 works a lot better on that machine than when I put on Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu would lag when I was working – and I mean REALLY Lag. I would litterally select something, count to 5, then watch it execute.

I am really impressed with this OS, so I am excited this is coming out.

MJ, FF and EM AND BM

It was a sad week for a lot of people. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson took the Trifecta this week as all three passed. Ed McMahon was the sidekick of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, Farrah Fawcett was the poster girl of the 70’s and of course, Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. While I was never a big MJ fan, I do appreciate his music and also how he let Weird Al Yankovic to make fun of his music.

I remember when I first heard “Eat it” 0n the radio. While I never listened to “Bad”, I did have the “Even Worse” album which featured “Fat”.

*Update – Just as I published this, the Internet found out that Billy Mays – the Oxy Clean promoter (as well as Mighty Putty, Big City Sliders, Kaboom and a lot more) was found dead at his  home. He was 50. I guess it’s more than a Trifecta…

Studio

This week was a lot of work with the studio. Only problem – I can’t find my staple gun. I had it, then it dissapeared. I am not sure where it went. AUGH!

Still, the new studio is doing well. I am hoping to record the first video there by Mid-week. My bedroom is getting cluttered with PC stuff and that needs to head down to the Dungeon. The door to that room is the main reason why I call it the Dungeon.

Looking at Phones

I have to admit, I have been looking at the iPhone 3GS. The one thing I like is I have fatter fingers. I was able to use the screen a lot better than with the 3G. For instance, when I hit the “N”, on the 3G, I would always miss and hit the “M”. However, with the 3GS, I have not done anything different and seem to be hitting the “N” key and actually getting an “N”.

I still have some tests to go. I am also looking at the Palm Pre, but in order to do that, I would have to switch to Sprint, which I don’t know if I am ready to do. Android is a possibility, but I really don’t want the G1. I am waiting for the Lenovo version.

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That’s pretty much it this week. Keep watching the site for more info on the contest. Of course if you want to give a prize for the contest, let me know.

The Guardian reports that some scientists are concerned that the internet is consuming too much electricity. Read the story here; I’m not even going to try to excerpt it.

I guess it’s time for all of us to go back to chipping out our bitstrips on the walls of the cave.

The latest answer, the latest of many, to the question of “earth, the universe, and everything” in computerdom seems to be cloud computing, in which users’ applications and data exist not on their local machines, but up there, somewhere, in the “cloud.”

(Aside: In the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, it was called “networking,” but “networking” is not a new, marketable term, so the marketeers disdain it.)

I am as skeptical of this as I was of doing grocery shopping via the internet.

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From MarketWatch, which reports that Microsoft

“unveiled Internet Explorer 8, the newest version of its Web browser. The software will be available for download in 25 languages at noon Eastern Time on Thursday at Microsoft’s Website.”

Here is a link to the IE 8 webpage.

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The corporate forces opposing and supporting net neutrality have decided to fight it out in Europe, according to the New York Times. Read the article here.

The says that those ISPs who want to charge for bandwidth and to charge websites for higher priorities have concluded that, if they can establish those practices in Europe, they can more easily establish them in the United States.

The new buzzword for this assault on net neutrality is “traffic management.”

An excerpt:

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Bill and Jon talk about the Blogger area

We stopped at the NBC Universal Bloggers area and Andy McCaskey talked with Jon and Bill about the Sharp Blogger area. Jon talks about the design of the booth and Bill talks about how NBC Universal has been detrimental to CES.

Blogging at NBC Universal

Best part is that I got to sit down and catch up on my blogs. The connection was fantastic!! We had the Backchannel of the interview up in a matter of minutes.

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Don’t ya hate it when your computer crashes? You want to continue working, but you have no hard drive! Well, todays technology gives us another way to do the same thing. You can do something as simple as plug in a pen…

Andy and Ernie with Back in a Flash

Sometimes, when you are so wrapped up in the moment of CES, we miss some cool items. We almost missed Back in a Flash. But Andy McCaskey reeled us in and we learned how a little USB drive can not only back up our data, but give us a way to get to the Internet and get our documents when the computer goes in for repair.

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