Archive for the 'Technology' Category



29
Jun

Bush wants to use Military Satellites for Domestic Surveillance

You’re On Candid Camera

A Bush administration program to expand domestic use of Pentagon spy satellites has aroused new concerns in Congress about possible civil-liberties abuses.

What the hell? I mean just how far are we going to let President BombsaLot go? Please, someone explain how far fear is going to allow our country to become a fascist state?

Rep. Jane Harman,
a California Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security
Subcommittee on intelligence, told Newsweek that majorities in both the
House and Senate intend to block all funding for the domestic
intelligence center at least until August, when the Government
Accountability Office, an investigative agency that works for Congress,
completes a report examining civil-liberties and privacy issues related
to the domestic use of picture-taking spy satellites.

Thanks Jane, but what is there to look at or review? Am I going to need to worry about explaining everything I do to big brother soon?

29
Jun

Why cannot iTunes Multi-Task?

Steve Jobs, can you explain to me why iTunes on Leopard cannot download and play a video podcast at the same time?
I do not run iTunes in the background all the time. So when i start it up to watch, typically Diggnation, it starts to update and download all my podcasts, some large some small. When iTunes finishes a download it updates the iTunes database, and I get the rainbow beach ball with now sounds and video for the video podcast I am watching. Oh, and it is not like it pauses the podcast, the podcast still runs, you just cannot hear or see it while iTunes does some update. WHY, tell me why Apple cann fix iTunes to not do this? Please someone explain.

11
May

Circuit City to combine with Blockbuster

Circuit City Gives Up Fight

Well it looks like two crappy stores will be combining. Blockbuster, who overcharged customers for videos and late fees for years has been fighting a loosing battle to Netflix, wants to buy Circuit City and combine in to one chain. So are they going to call it Circuitbuster?
Unfortunately this leaves me with on really one place to get electronics now in Raleigh, Best Buy. Someone, oh, someone please ask Fry’s to come to town.

14
Apr

OpenMac - A Mac Clone soon to be out of business

Company claims to sell Mac clone for $399

It would be lovely if this nice little company down in Miami Florida had a chance in hell of lasting. However, Steve Jobs, seems to forever remain with the corncob shoved waaay up there, and is never ever going to loosen his iron fist grip around his absolute control of Mac hardware. I am not going to deny that this strategy has it advantages. One Microsoft and Vista owners have learned with non-working device drivers. But it is a dream….one day. One could also argue, given the recent success that the absolute control and over charging (Apple tax) for their products has not been a problem. If people are willing to pay the ‘Apple Tax’, myself included, why would Steve wanna change. My answer to that is market share. When Michael Dell calls you up and says, ‘Steve, what is it going to take for Dell to put Mac OX on our hardware?’ That is opportunity knocking.
Do not get me wrong I love my Macbook Pro, and OS X, but Apple has been making some poor choices in my opinion of late.
The whole ‘bricking’ iPhones, making everyone wait a year for an SDK and then denying developers access for no good reason. Talk about a complete control freak. Apple could have the consumer phone markey locked up if they would simply get out of the draconian control mindset. The whole one wireless carrier it stupid, and unecessarily limiting your market. The obvious Apple Tax price of the iPhone is the same. If Apple had released the iPhone for $199 with minimally AT&T and T-Mobile, and worked with the other carriers, and simply not fought with iPhone developers, so we could have free apps — they would have domainated the mobile phone market by now.
Oh well, it was but a dream….like is OpenMac…

01
Feb

Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo

Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

Microsoft and Yahoo logosNot sure how this helps Microsoft. All the duplicate services will be a pain, integration a nightmare, which will only loose consumers to Google. I hate to think of the effect this will have Flickr and del.icio.us. As far as online services Google has the better services in my humble opinion. Gmail is infinitely better that Hotmail or advertisement ridden Yahoo Mail. Google Maps is the defacto standard now. Google even has an office suite online called Google Docs. The best thing that Yahoo has is Flickr and del.icio.us, and that was a purchase that they basically left alone. If it is search engine, I mean does anyone really think that they will beat Google at this. Google is so standard for online search that they have their own verb - to ‘google’ something. So, I am just not sure what Microsoft would pay such a premium for Yahoo.

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13
Jan

Warning when using the Facebook, Bebo, etc. Friends search Function

I came across this in a round about way, but it is something that one should consider before simple giving any website your username and password.
I search for any of your friends, Bebo and Facebook tell you to simply give them your Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, username and password and they will magically search through your contacts and find any of your friends on their site.  Simple, easy…right.  Well it is, and they say that they will not use your password to do anything else.  Well it seems the good people at Bebo lie.

Is Bebo using your AIM credentials behind your back?

So warning to everyone:
1)  Do not give Facebook, Bebo or anyone else your username and password.  It is just asking for a problem and not real smart.
2)  If you have already done this, by all means change your password now.
You have been warned…

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13
Jan

To Tweet or to Pownce, that is the question…

Many know that I tinker in the social networking side of the Web 2.0 technology extravaganza. I have introduced several friends to Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, etc. In return a couple of these friends have introduced me to other things as well, which is part of the idea behind social networking. However, with all these sites and applications popping up everywhere, one only has but so much time in the day. For anyone who knows me, over the past several months my time as been a wee bit occupied. ;-) So to better organize my ‘geektime’ it would seem that I wil have to prioritize my activities. As you will notice, I have been blogging a bit more, and I plan to keep this up. I typically keep my Facebook account updated - it is just fun. However, the microbloging with Pownce and Twitter seem to be a bit redundant. So I have come to the conclusion that I need to pick one.

Twitter.com

Twitter came first, and basically started the whole craze. It is centered around a webpage, multiple Twitter apps and getting updates to your mobile phone. I never really got into the mobile phone part and neither did any of my Twitter friends. So I found Twitterific (application), updated this blog with a nice little Tweet update box, and discovered PocketTweets for my iPhone. At times however, I wanted to do things a bit more, post more than 140 characters, or reply more easily to friends, or even post a picture I just took spontaneously with my iPhone to say look at this. Twitter really did not provide this experience and really it did not seem if the developers wanted it to either. But it would seem that I was not the only person thinking this. Kevin Rose and Leah Culver evidently were thinking similar thoughts, because along came Pownce.

http://www.appscout.com/images/Pownce_Logo.jpg
Pownce builds on Twitter and takes it into a new direction. It is a web page, just like Twitter, and there is a desktop app based on Adobe Air. The best part is that you can create groups for your friends, you can send pictures, files, etc., links and even create events. So now when I want to say, checkout this website or look at this picture i can easily post it on Pownce. I can also limit to message or all or a subset of friends, and they can reply to just me with comments. So immediately signed up.

Well, it seems a bit redundant to post the same thing to both, and unlike others I do not see any different between what I would post to one or the other. I have noticed Veronica Belmont seems to differentiate between the two a bit. On the other hand it comes back to time, which is limited. So given this limitation, I have decided to Pownce rather the Tweet. If anyone has any other opinions on the difference between the two, please feel free to comment.

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12
Jan

VMware Fusion Wins Annual Macworld Editors’ Choice Award

VMware Fusion Wins Annual Macworld Editor’s Choice Award

VMware MacWorld 2008

I have been running Fusion on my Macbook Pro since it was in beta.  Have yet to have any issues with it at all. Been running a couple of Windows XP VMs for several months.  It is good product.  nice to see it getting some recognition.  Also, as a VMware stock owner, I like this too.  ;-)
 

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30
Dec

iPhone Fireware Update 1.1.3 to Add New Features

iPhone 1.1.3 to bring Home customization, Locate Me, more

Well, all I can say is that it is about time that the good folks at Apple finally decided to start added some features and learn from the iPhone application hacker community that they have a wonderful platform on which to build new features and apps.  …and that they need to get off there asses and start developing.  I mean give me a break, if the iPhone Hackers can do all this development in there free time and for free, why cannot a big corporation with a stock price around $190 do at least as much if not more.

Ok, I will stop ranting, as i willbe looking forward to the 1.1.3 firmware update.  However, I will have to unhack my iPhone now to update it, so the good folks at Apple do not brick my phone.

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24
Dec

1Password 40% Off

For anyone that uses the Internet now days, a password manager is an essential tool.  There are simply too many website with too many usernames and passwords to keep track of.  Now if you simply this by using the same username and password for all of them….well I wish you well.

Before I transitioned to a Mac I was using Keepass for my password management.  It is a great tool for Windows users.  Once I transitioned to my Mac, I found KeepassX, which is a Linux/Mac port of the same code.  Then I found 1Password.  I did not realize just how much I depended on this little app until a couple of months ago, when a new update to Firefox disabled it.  My browsing experience was a nightmare.

Check out the video of how it works on the link below.  That is one of the cool things the Mac folks do.  Unlike the Linux guys, who typically give no documentation, feature list or any clue what the application does or the Windows guys, who typically give you screenshots and a feature list; the Mac guys provide all that but typically a video of the application in action.

1Password 40% Off

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