. . . that works over any sort of IM client. Done thinking? Check out WigiWigi. Beta testers are saying that while it’s not ready for prime time, at a download size of 450K and an install and configuration time of about 30 seconds, the software is really cool. WigiWigi will work over all IM clients such as Skype, AIM, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, etc. and will be multi-user when complete.
WOW!
Get it while it lasts — you can download the iPod plugin for WinAmp that will allow you to interact with all kinds of iPods in WinAmp. Couple that with the iTunes Database Importer and the M4P Input Plugin, which together will allow library importation and playing of AAC (i.e., iTunes Music Store and Apple Lossless) encoded files.
Does anyone else think that there’s probably going to be a cease and desist letter and/or firmware “upgrade” from Apple to stop this?
If you are married, sometimes it is more worthwhile to not have both husband and wife working because of the tax effect. Here’s a simple calculator from MSN Money to help you do the analysis.
Sure there are taxes (those of you in California have them listed out for you on the pumps), but really a lot of it is driven by speculation (i.e., buying and selling of futures). Mark Cuban has a great post about the effect of futures trading on gas prices.
With oil and gas its different . There is a finite supply at any given point in time. The current and future availability of which can be impacted by any number of issues, from natural disasters to man made events. When enough speculators come in and start going long, it drives up prices not of a piece of paper, but of products whose pricing impacts me , you and everyone we know and don't know.
When a bunch of “momentum speculators” jump in trying to make money off the price movement and push up the price, everyone in this country is the loser with higher gas and oil prices.
You can use the Google Planimeter to measure area between points you define on a map or satellite picture.
Damn cool.
You should read this story on the Car Connection.
I’m holding out for 0% for 60 months from GM before I’m willing to look at anything and I just saw yesterday that Toyota is already running 0% for 60 months on 2005 4Runners, so I may not be too far off in my expectations.
We’ll see what happens. I’m not sure that they are going to do anything starting next week, but you never know.
I stumbled across Webhuddle when looking into some other online meeting services. Although I have not yet tried the service, here are some attractive points:
There is not information on the site about pricing.
On Monday, according to this article on Collider, T-Mobile will release the Blackberry 7105. Although I can’t tell any difference at all, apparently these are the new features:
Doesn’t really seem like that much of an upgrade, but I don’t use one myself, so I guess I really can’t say.
Interesting that this coincides nicely with the rumored next week release of the Blackberry 7100i for Nextel/Sprint.
Cool post on TUAW links through to this how-to guide on streaming video straight from a video camera to an iChat user.
Pretty interesting.
The Nokia 9300 will be carried by Cingular and be available in November, but the interesting functionality that this phone will have is a Blackberry Connect client. Full details of the phone are available at this post on MobileWhack. Essentially the 9300 is the remake of the old candybar communicator that you clamshell open to find a full keyboard and screen. Cost from Cingular will be $299 with a 2–year contract and after a $50 MIR; users will be able to add the unlimited Blackberry data plan for $44.99 per month.
Does this mean that some of the other phones that have been promising Blackberry Connect for years will finally start releasing it to compete?
. . . but this guy has supposed screenshots of iTunes for Windows Mobile 5.0.
It would certainly be way cool if it’s not a hoax and may mean that Apple will be introducing various versions of iTunes that will run on different mobile platforms. The author of the link above claims:
Although this was supposed to be out about 1 year ago, Sprint finally announced the i930 for the iDen (read “Nextel”) network. Underwhemingly, the phone will run Windows Mobile 2003 SE instead of Windows Mobile 2005 and seems to be twice as thick as an i730. On the cool side for international business people, the phone does allow international roaming on the 900/1800 GSM bands; no GSM roaming in America though. Furthermore, the phone will allow GPRS data roaming in “. . . areas where Sprint has international roaming agreements.”
Right over here at this post on Engadget. Rumors have been flying that RIM would officially unveil this device today, but the source of the pictures on the Engadget site are not from RIM. Here’s on of the pictures:
Still looks like a pocket calculator to me.
From this digg, this post will tell you how to reuse your Windows Activation files.
Why would you need to do this? Well, I would think of the following reasons:
What is exactly is this thing called "Google Secure Access"? From the FAQ:
What is Google Secure Access?Google Secure Access is a downloadable client application that allows users to establish a more secure WiFi connection.
Why would I want to download and install Google Secure Access?
Google Secure Access allows you to establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi. By using Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted, preventing others from viewing the information you transmit.
Ok, so essentially Google Secure Access is a PC-only wireless internet connection utility. The Secure Access software is free, but you may want to browse the privacy policy, especially after you read the following in the FAQ:
What sort of information does Google have access to?
If you choose to use Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted and sent through Google's servers to the Internet. The data that is received will then be encrypted and sent back through our servers to your computer. Your privacy is important to us, we strongly encourage you to read our Privacy Policy to be fully informed about how your privacy is protected.
Most importantly and before you download this thing — IT ONLY WORKS ON THE GOOGLE WIFI NETWORK, WHICH IS CURRENTLY ONLY AVAILABLE IN CERTAIN AREAS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA.
So with the locational information above, why am I posting about this? Two reasons:
. . . leads me to provide you with my recipe for the perfect shave. Here goes:
A couple of other thoughts:
Everything above is my recipe for the perfect shave. Your mileage may vary. Note that although it may seem like it, none of the companies listed here have paid me any sort of promotional dollars to plug their products; I just like the products listed here and if I find something better, I’ll switch.
This article on MSNBC has an article about the new 5–blade razor announced by Gillette. Here’s the picture from the article:
Do we really need a 5–blade razor? I would have said that we never really needed a battery-powered 3–blade razor, but according to the article, the M3Power is “. . . is now the world's top-selling razor. “
To get more information, I went to the Gillette site and selected the Fusion Tour. It appears as though the Fusion and Fusion Power might both be released at the same time. Ok here seem to be the benefits:
I think that I’m just going to go buy a straight razor and strap from Shavecenter.com. Hell, I’m already using a brush, so I might as well go totally old school. Of course, I don’t think they’ll let me bring a straight razor on a plane.
Ever since the Sprint/Nextel merger, Nextel service in the Denver Tech Center seems to have gone to crap. In places where I used to have full service, I now don’t receive service at all. Furthermore, there seem to be many more instances of my receiving a voicemail message without ever having had my phone ring. The interesting part is that Sprint and Nextel do not use the same technologies, so it’s not as if Sprint took down a bunch of duplicated towers once the merger was complete. I can now transfer service to Sprint with no Early Termination Fee (ETF), but am wondering whether the service is really better.
DTC is the primary place where I use my phone, but I also use it in downtown Denver, and I travel frequently to Dallas, Washington, San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cleveland, and some other major cities. I am not out of contract with Nextel and would have to pay a ETF if I went with a carrier other than Sprint.
Any thoughts from anyone?
I was out in Washington over the weekend. Unfortunately on Sunday morning there was a rock slide on the Sno Pass; I hadn’t been watching the news, so I didn’t hear about it.
I arrived at the Pass at about 10:30AM to find it was closed, but I heard it might open around 12PM. When 12PM arrived, the new time for opening was 2PM, so I decided to take an alternate route through Wanatchee. Unfortunately, a lot of other people decided to use the alternate route as well, so, long story short, I finally arrived at the Seattle airport around 8:30PM. Because there were no flights out to Denver that night, I got on the 6AM flight yesterday.
Despite the inconvenience, Washington is a beautiful place to drive through. If you ever get the chance to take the longer drive from Seattle out East and you have the time, I recommend taking the 405 to the 522 to the 2 and driving through Wanatchee — the drive is very scenic and all of the little towns along the way look like cool places to stop and/or camp.
One thing I found very interesting was that every little mom and pop gas station or store along the route I took had a drive-through espresso shack. I guess Washington is the home to Starbucks and coffee is a way of life, it just sort of surprised me.
There’s tons of media around Sept. 7th’s anticipated announcement of the ROKR iTunes phone. So here’s a question: Why couldn’t Apple just release an unlocked GSM iTunes phone that they had made by a company like HTC? There certainly seems to be a little of fighting amongst the carriers about carrying a phone that potentially takes revenue from and over-the-air download model. If Apple were to create a GSM iTunes phone that was unlocked (i.e., would take any GSM SIM card), they would at least have a phone that would work with Cingular and T-Mobile — Verizon and Sprint/Nextel might be harder due to the fact that they do not use SIM cards. This, of course, would open the phone for use to many overseas carriers as many of those carriers use GSM technology.
The current model for cell phones is that the carriers subsidize the cost of the phone in return for a one or two year contract commitment that is enforced with an Early Termination Fee (ETF). If Apple were to manufacture their own iTunes phones, they would have to bear in mind that the retail cost would be the retail cost to the consumer.
To take this a step further, if Apple were to take the time to sub the manufacturing of their own phone, it is not inconceivable that PIM functions in the phone could easily sync with OSX applications — easily synchronize your contact and calendar with the built-in applications in OSX.
Here’s the big limiting factor, Apple by itself or Apple with Motorola — the damn battery! Every phone that I have ever used burns through a battery very quickly with heavy phone usage. Probably the best phones that I have used are Nokias that can go several days in standby mode, but still do not last any longer than any other phones when actively talking. How long is the battery really going to last on a phone that has an iTunes player built into it? Batteries are, of course, what make phones heavy, so it’s a matter of the right performance/weight matrix.
Perhaps Apple should focus on software development for existing platforms. What if Apple created iTunes that would run on Symbian, Windows Mobile (it could be the “best Windows Mobile application ever!”), Palm, and RIM? Granted not every phone has flash memory or large built-in memory, but a software model might be a good play to drive people to the iTunes Music store. Of course, this gets away from the hardware model, but might be the best play in the long run.
We’ll see what happens on Sept. 7th.
Seth Godin’s promised new e-book, Who’s There is available here and here. What is it? Well, it’s Seth’s incomplete guide to blogs and the new web. More importantly is what this e-book is not. From Seth’s post:
Who's There is not an ebook about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It's not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either.
Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas.
I promise this ebook is incomplete. I hope, though, that it encourages you to pay attention to some of the underlying forces at work online and off.
Read and share.
This article on Internet News provides information about a company called Reactivity that has hardware solutions to provide secure RSS feeds.
Imagine what you would send via RSS if you had a secure feed — the possibilities are endless.
I had never really gotten into watching the TV show 24, but I did watch all of the second season during the twenty four episode run on A&E.
This is a damn good television show; I will definitely be watching season 3 and plan on borrowing the DVDs for season 1 from one of my friends.
It is programs like these that do make me want TiVo — I could have recorded all 24 episodes this weekend and watched them at my leisure, including skipping the commercials, at my leisure.
TiVo is running a $150 cash rebate for all TiVo boxes. Over the weekend, Amazon, a certified TiVo seller was selling the 40 hour TiVo box for $99, which meant that you could have received $50 in cash if you had purchased the box; unfortunately, just yesterday Amazon changed the price of the 40 hour box for $199, meaning that the net cost to you is a $40.
Now, in order to qualify for the $150 rebate you need to sign up for a one year commitment with TiVo at $12.99 per month or alternatively you can sign up for a “lifetime subscription” for $299 (note that “lifetime” refers to the lifetime of the piece of TiVo hardware — if you upgrade, the membership is not for your lifetime).
Something new is this page on TiVo that instantly gives you a $150 rebate is you pre-pay for a full year of TiVo service with the purchase of a TiVo box (note that the page I link to is for the 40 hour TiVo box with the one year pre-pay).
Here’s something important to note if you are going to get a TiVo box — you need one-time access to a land-based phone line for the initial TiVo installation. This is especially important for someone like me that does not have a land-based phone at home. Assuming that you can plug your box in at work, a neighbor’s house, etc. for a few hours, you can then purchase a USB ethernet adapter to plug in an ethernet cable or a USB-based wireless 802.11 receiver into your Series 2 TiVo box and receive all further updates in that manner. As a side note to all this, there is this guide on configuring your TiVo from the start without a land based phone line, but obviously I haven’t tried it, so I have no idea if it works — based on research it seems like this works well with TiVo Series 2 boxes using the 4.0 software, but not necessarily for DirecTiVo boxes.
Why is TiVo doing this? Both Dish and Comcast are pushing hard on their own brands of DVR services. Additionally, DirecTV will be launching their own DVR service in October, which may significantly effect the number of TiVo subscribers, especially as the Comcast DVR, Dish DVR, and DirecTV DVR services all cost around $5.99 per month as compared to the $12.95 per month for TiVo.
This certainly makes TiVo more attractive to me from a price perspective, but I am still worried about of the monthly fees. I’ll let you know if I decide to take the plunge.
For those of you that don’t know, a Technorati cosmos search shows blogs that are linking to a particular blog address. I have posted recently about Technorati sucking, and so I was interested to see this post by Joy Ito that links through to this post by Dave Silfry with Technorati. From Dave’s post:
The blogosphere has been growing at an explosive rate - Technorati is now indexing over 16 million blogs, with about 100,000 new blogs created every day. And there's over 1.4 Million new posts every day, and about 22% of those posts are from spam or fake blogs, which means that even after we pull out the spam and fake blogs from the indexes, we are dealing with about 1.2 Million posts each day.
We just weren't expecting that kind of sudden growth, both on the posting side and also on the search side, and frankly we didn't plan well enough to handle the load. We've been adding new machines to our datacenter, - over 400 now - and more coming each week, and we've been fixing bugs and making performance enhancements on the web site as well.
. . . Cosmos search (or URL search) is still being worked on, and is often timing out under the increased load. Unfortunately this is also one of the searches that bloggers find most compelling, as it helps you to all know who is linking to your blog, and it is the very first type of search that Technorati made available, so it is near and dear to our hearts. Everyone here also uses it every day, so it really sucks when it isn't working right.
Once we got our keyword search infrastructure back on track, our infrastructure team has been working 100% on fixing Cosmos search. Our current plan is to have Cosmos search back up and running by the end of September, and you'll see incremental improvement throughout the coming month. I'll keep you informed on progress of this critical project. As the project progresses throughout the month, you'll be able to see progress because you'll see fewer and fewer error messages when you do a URL search as September progresses.
I guess I’ve been waiting this long for a Cosmos search that I can wait through September, but I do have to say that I haven’t had a cosmos search return results for the last 3 days.