by Tim Leberecht@ cnet.com
Has it finally arrived, the post-advertising age? Advertising Age, nomen est omen, recently ran a story on the blurring line between commercial and editorial content, as media companies are facing a fiercely competitive marketplace amid declining advertising budgets (according to the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenue in 2008 decreased by 17 percent, to $38 billion), and the looming crisis of the news industry as a whole (see Clay Shirky’s seminal essay on “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”). (continues@cnet.com)

I’m not a huge phone person. I don’t need my phone to get online and play a whole host of games and what not. I like something small, portable and that i can text on. Though i do like the direction that smarts phones are heading with applications I don’t know if i’m trying to be addicted to my phone like that. But trust i do use my phone as a tool (made my promo on my phone) and like different fresh celluar devices. I currently have an LG phone and like there interface and design so i think i’m going to stick with them for a while as a developer. Here is what CNET.com has to say.

My first stop this morning at CTIA was to the LG booth, particularly to take a closer look at the LG Xenon, which was announced earlier this week. The Xenon is quite svelte at 4.16 inches long by 2.11 inches wide by 0.62 inch thick, and it has a nice 262,000-color 2.8-inch QVGA touch-screen display. Underneath the display are three physical keys; the Send, task manager, and End/Power keys. The task manager key brings up a list of open applications that you can toggle through. The touch screen has vibrating feedback, and there’s an internal accelerometer that will rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode in certain applications.
Read more here

by Caroline McCarthy

These days, in this world of IKEA and Target and “Project Runway,” we like to think we know about design. We also like to think that the biggest names in Silicon Valley know what they’re doing design-wise.

Yet recently, we saw two of the Web’s most prominent players hit by design-related snafus: first, the continuing brouhaha over Facebook’s latest home page redesign, which many users claim makes the service more difficult to use; and second, the departure of Douglas Bowman, a high-ranking Google designer who accompanied his resignation with a blog post detailing his frustration over the company’s data-above-all mantra. (continues @ cnet.com)

Here is a list of free stuff on the web.  I can say that I’ve used it all and it works very well for the most part.  I hope this helps some people out.  I always have people asking me for the websites to some of the things I use to fix spyware and all kinds of other stuff.  If you have any suggestions for free stuff please let me know.

1. Idrive.com allows you to backup your data from your computer on their servers.  You can get 10 gigs of data for free to backup your files.  If you want to pay you can get I think 100 gigs for 50 dollars a year. .
2. freeconferencecall.com.  It allows you to host a conference call with I believe up to 96 people.  Don’t quote me on that.  But it beats paying eight cents per minute per person for a conference call with AT&T
3. http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ have you ever needed to find your windows or office key.  Well there you go.  This finds it for you.
4. mint.com. Use at your own risk. You plug in your financial info and it tells you where all your money is going
5. http://www.safer-networking.org .  This saves your computer when you’ve been looking at porn and get spy ware on your machine.  I think a lot of people know about this product by now. 
6. Hijack this is another good free tool for getting rid of spyware http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html
7. AVG virus scan.  If you don’t want to pay get some basic protection http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
8. Searchme.com is a cool search engine that I found.  It’s really cool app for the iphone
9. For all the cool things coming out http://www.engadget.com

http://www.cnet.com/8301-18603_1-10197108-73.html

In perhaps the most ill-advised branding move since New Coke, NBC’s basic-cable Sci Fi Channel will be renamed the phonetically similar Syfy on July 7.

The eulogy reads:

“We shall miss you paperback book.  You have served a noble purpose and role in history.  You’ve taught and guided us. You’ve prescribed and described our history. Your time here has been worthy of note, but dear paperback book you are bad for the environment.  You have caused us to cut down countless trees.  You stack high and far in our land fills.  Yes, here lies our dear old friend the paperback book.  We will look back on you fondly (cough…unless you are a 1,200 page college text…) today we lay you to rest.”

Today technology brings forth the paperback replacement.  The Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader.  While these are not entirely new technologies they are relatively affordable given the current economic slump.  And as a video game generation grows up (GenX) we are laying down our rumbling joysticks and opting for a single book bound by a similar technology.

These personal wireless books offer unlimited book storage potential (via removable memory card) and all but eliminate the need for a home library.  They weigh the same or less than most books and have a similar footprint to breed ergonomic similarity.  Generally they are bound in a aesthetically pleasing leather or leatherette casing.

The Kindle is completely wireless (save the charging) and doesn’t need the support of a PC.  The Sony Reader is a few steps behind, but charging hard and offers more competitive pricing initially (cost of books is a little more expensive on the Sony).  Both offer some drawbacks (limited availability, lagging wireless capability, limited periodical content)that will keep librarians relevant for years to come.

Make no mistake, paper books are fast becoming a thing of the past.  And for the cost of a modern day gaming system ($300-$400) you can have unlimited access to reading and best selling titles that come at a fraction of the cost (around $10) of their counterpart gaming titles ($50 and up). And as the video game entrenched Gen-Xer’s mature, expect them to trade in RPG’s for something a bit more intellectually stimulating…a book.

CNet review of the Amazon Kindle.

CNet review of Sony Reader PRS-700 BC

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10149348-235.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-10146314-39.html

This afternoon, the traffic to my blog, http://simonkapenda.org, sky-rocketed to over 410% in less than 3 hours after my blog appeared on “CNN.com Tech Linking Blogs section”, in regard to my response posting to “Microsoft‘s Outlines Vision of Pay-as-You-Go Computing”, an idea which I find to be ridiculously amusing, dumb, and ill-conceived.

My blog has never had so much traffic in a single day, let alone in a single month. So, this is soooo cool and awesome…!

Read more about my response to Microsoft’s dumb idea on Pay-As-You-Go Computing.

A few days ago, CNET.com posted an editorial about the founder of WordPerfect and his donation of a million dollars to support California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage.  I couldn’t help but think of the Barenaked Ladies’ song “If I Had A Million Dollars,” in which the Canadian ban muse about what they would buy or do with that large sum of money.  While I don’t think I’d be as carefree with a million bucks as BNL, I sure as heck wouldn’t spend it trying to deny people the right to get married.  The way I see, Joe and Tim or Lisa and Anna wanting to get married has no bearing on my life whatsoever.  In fact, I’d probably congratulate them for finding someone with whom they want to live for the rest of their lives. It saddened me to think that someone with a million dollars to spare donated that money to a deny people a chance at (legally) being together, which, if you think about it, is a ridiculous “proposition” in the first place.  What right does the government (or anyone, for that matter) have to tell me or anyone else who they can and can’t love?  Now, religious institutions are a different story.  But marriage, in the eyes of the law, shouldn’t be about sex or gender.  It’s about paperwork and taxes and insurance.  So what if it’s Michael or Michelle?  Alex or Alexis?  On paper, “Chris” marrying “Chris” could be a man and woman, two men, or two women.  On paper, does it really matter?

Reading that article also got me thinking about what could have been done with that wasted (yup, I think it was wasted) million dollars.  Instead of promoting a silly ban on something the government shouldn’t be allowed to regulate in the first place, that money could have (among other ideas):

- funded more cancer and AIDS research;

- given many underprivileged high school students a chance to attend college;

- fed hundreds of families in third world countries;

- helped out some homeless in this very country;

- helped get some struggling citizens out of a financial bog;

- funded research toward alternative and/or renewable energy sources;

- pumped back into the economy to help the US get back on its feet;

- helped me buy a house, settle my debts, treat my parents to something nice, and put a little away for a rainy day.

But all those ideas are hypothetical, of course.  It was Alan Ashton’s money to do with as he saw fit.  He and I have very different views…and even more vastly different bankrolls (that he even has a bankroll is the primary difference.  I just with he would have used that money for a more constructive cause.

(Oh yeah…and WordPerfect?  Who uses that program any more?  Can’t say I miss having those little templates over my keyboard telling me what Shift-F7, Ctrl-F4, or Alt-F11 did.)

I just got my Iron Man DVD yesterday and I’m still amazed how they made and choreographed Iron Man with a real life-like human actions instead of some clunky machine with, well, maybe cheesy FX. But thanks to folks at Industrial Light and Magic in San Franciso that we have a superb special FX for our good on’ Shellhead.

Check out the link on how they create motion capture for Iron Man, courtesy of CNET.com

Becoming Iron Man

Wow, I think it’s really really nice to see the old schools side-scrolling game like Mega Man once again. But it’s not reimagining or reinventing or anything. It’s an old school retro-style Mega Man!! I still remember the time I played Mega Man game series back in NES age with beyond-human-capacity difficulty. It was very fun back then. And it’s really nice to see such retro style Mega Man back in action.  But this time he’s in Wii console. Too bad I don’t have Wii, otherwise I’d go out and buy this game this minute.

Check out the link for Mega Man 9 (Wii) review courtesy of CNET.com

Mega Man 9 (Wii)

Ce lo dice cnet.com indicando i cellulari venduti in USA che emettono maggiori radiazioni, ecco i primi dieci:

Manufacturer and model 			SAR level(digital)
1 Motorola V195s 				1.6
2 Motorola Slvr L6 				1.58
3 Motorola Slvr L2 				1.54
4 Motorola W385 				1.54
5 RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Sprint) 		1.54
6 RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon Wireless) 	1.54
7 Motorola Deluxe ic902 			1.53
8 T-Mobile Shadow (HTC) 			1.53
9 Motorola i335 				1.53
10 Samsung Sync SGH-C417 			1.51

Ed ecco invece quelli che emettono di meno:

Manufacturer and model 			SAR level(digital)
1. LG KG800 					0.135
2. Motorola Razr V3x 				0.14
3. Nokia 9300 					0.21
4. Nokia N90 					0.22
5. Samsung SGH-G800 				0.23
6. Samsung Sync SGH-A707 			0.236
7. Nokia 7390 					0.26
8. Samsung SGH-T809 				0.32
9. Bang & Olufsen Serene (Samsung SGH-E910) 	0.33
10. Motorola Razr2 V8 				0.36

Forse si ci dovrebbe preoccupare più di questo che del wifi..

The General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today detailing the nature of sensitive military equipment for sale at online sites like eBay and Craigslist.

The report was prepared by the Special Investigations Unit of the GAO for the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, which held a hearing today. Chairman John Tierney was prominently featured in a subsequent news release entitled “Investigation into the Sale of Sensitive, In-Demand Military Equipment and Supplies on the Internet.”

Most of the equipment in question, such as aircraft parts, night vision goggles, antennae, and chemical/biological protective gear, could jeopardize technical secrets if it fell into the hands of enemy military forces capable of sophisticated reverse engineering.

One relatively simple piece of equipment, however, would also allow individual terrorists or insurgents to easily masquerade as American soldiers, putting both soldiers and missions at risk. Stolen military uniforms, much like police badges and uniforms, have been available on the black market for some time; this specific piece of equipment, however, is small and simple; it’s the size of a name tag and is made to be used with special night vision goggles that allow US forces to operate at night with a huge advantage over the enemy. Unlike the more complicated equipment, it could potentially be copied by terrorist or insurgent organizations or cells.

ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson aired a story containing the nature of the equipment in question yesterday evening after a copy of the report or some part of the report was apparently leaked.

Today MSNBC, as well as cnet.com and fcw.com, also published the nature of the equipment.

That the GEO and the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs would alert God only knows how many terrorists and insurgents to both the existence of this equipment and its availability is highly questionable. Moreover, the release of the report has significantly increased the demand for this “sensitive, in-demand military equipment,” raising its value considerably.

Raising the value of such equipment can only increase the rate at which it is being stolen and sold on the Internet.

The fact that so few news organizations chose to publish the nature of this particular piece of equipment is heartening; ABC and MSNBC, however, should surely have shown more restraint.

Newsprism

No April Fool’s jokes from moi today, so I’ll just jump right in.

***

Kassia Krozser of Booksquare pointed out an interesting piece on Medialoper that talked about maintaining contact lists.  More specifically, the post noted that many writers (and musicians, artists, etc.) have built large fan bases on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.  What if those sites disappeared?  For authors very dependent on their social networking “friends,” they may want to encourage those fans to additionally sign up for mailing lists / newsletters so they have fans’ contact information should the networking sites ever go kaput.

***

TechCrunch posted a piece yesterday about traffic on blogs versus traditional media sites.  The writer, Erick Schonfeld, brings up an interesting point, which is that the blogs with the highest traffic, like TechCrunch or CNET.com, have professional staffs, while traditional media sites that have the highest traffic, like the New York Times, have very active blogging staffs — in other words, the sites with the most traffic are really a mix of the old and new worlds.

This raises another issue which is that not all blogs are the same — many blogs are like this one, with one person writing posts.  (This applies to pretty much all the literary blogs.)  Other blogs — often those in the technology and political spheres — like CNET.com or the Huffington Post, are pretty big enterprises, some with with dozens on staff.  Naturally, this will affect how you build a relationship with and pitch a blog / blogger.

***

FishBowlNY reports that the editor behind Blackbook will launch a new magazine this fall called Tar.  You can check here for details, although it doesn’t actually say what the magazine is about although it will be glossy, expensive ($20) and eco-friendly …

Ok, this is just enough.  I will not post about the Spitzer situation anymore – it’s overdone now.  He is wrong, everyone knows that.  I was reading some industry news today on CNET.com and came across this article from yesterday, talking about a Web site that helps married people find dates.  What was that?  Yes, you heard right.  The NPR story is here.  This is insane to me – it really is.  I know I live in NH and have been called naive all my life, but THIS?  Are you kidding me?!!?!?

What is the ultimate portable computer – Apple’s Newton MessagePad or Samsung’s Q1, a modern pocket-sized PC?

Thanks to the UK’s edition of CNET.com, we can finally learn the truth.

Two writers, Rory and Chris, duke it out in several key areas, like battery life and available software, to find out which is the better platform for the on-the-go Brit.

They describe their fight as, ultimately, a fight against boredom:

Having nothing better to do with our time, we’ve decided to throw them into the ring for a head-to-head comparison. In this feature we’ll take an in-depth look at their design, usability, reliability, input, output and synchronisation capabilities, and any special powers that help them stand out as the best-ever handheld.

I’m obviously biased, but the result was still a surprise to me. Based on what they found were the “knockout” features, I can’t blame the conclusion.

I won’t give away the end, but it’s a good read, and shows how – even after all these years – the Newton holds its own as a usable device for everyday tasks.

If you’re interested in technology and computing, you would love to read this one.

The only time in the day when I have time for leisure is every day at 9:00PM. That doesn’t leave me much time to read books and news. Recently, I found an excellent way to keep myself updated in all of latest technology news. Podcasts are perfect for this purpose.

Podcasts are pre-recorded radio shows, which can be downloaded via the internet and listened everywhere using your portable media player. Most people will find podcasts incredibly comfortable, because of the download once – listen at any time method. Moreover, it’s easier to download podcasts nowadays than ever using elaborated RSS readers and feeds.

One of the best podcasts out there is actually a network of internet podcasts (netcast). TWiT.TV are out there for almost three years now, and has reached a level of expertise, which allow them to talk almost about everything at any show. TWiT consists of various independent shows, all hosted by Leo Laporte and additional co-host(s).

Once I found out TWiT and became fond of it, I found myself in a problem. TWiT has only one weakly show for general tech news, called This Weak in Tech. Since I was looking for a daily show, it wasn’t sufficient. Then, in one of the older TWiT’s shows, I came across a mention of CNET.com podcasts section. I discover a new realm of podcasts; most of them are published on a daily basis. Those two, TWiT and CNET’s are fully recommended. Trust me, you won’t regret trying them.