Here's a CNET review of the mobile Dell XPS M2010 that I'm eyeing for myself for Christmas...well, one can wish, right?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Folder Phantom: Hide Your Files and Folders
By Tim Smith, PC Magazine
NOTE: I reviewed this utility for NerdBoyTV.com and let me tell you it works TERRIFIC! I purchased the annual download membership from PC Magazine for $19.99 (a bargain) or you can just download this application for $7.00. It really DOES hide files and folders on your computer from prying eyes. - - Ryan Yee, Host of NerdBoyTV
Have you ever needed to hide files from prying eyes? Perhaps you have your resumé and cover letters stashed on your machine at work, or maybe a collection of R-rated movies that you don't want your kids to see. This month's utility, Folder Phantom, allows you to easily make folders disappear and reappear.
When you first start Folder Phantom you'll see a toolbar and an empty folder list. Click the Add button to browse for a folder that you'd like to hide. Once you've chosen a folder it will appear in the list with the Status field set to "Visible."
Add as many folders as you like but make sure not to hide the Windows folder or your Program Files folder. Folder Phantom will warn you if you attempt to hide them but it won't prevent you from doing so. Be forewarned, if you do hide these folders your system may become inoperable.
Now that you've added a folder or folders to the list, check the box next to each folder you'd like to hide and hit the Hide button. The Status field will show "Hidden." Open up Windows Explorer and try to find that folder. You won't be able to. Also, if you try to find the folder via the Command Prompt, you won't be able to find it there either. The folder or folders are now inaccessible to Windows.
With the folders still checked, hit the Show toolbar button. The Status field will be reset to "Visible" and you will be able to access the folder from Windows Explorer.
Folder Phantom has several options to enhance your hidden folder security. The first option is Stealth Mode. Stealth Mode keeps the program hidden from view. You can choose to have Folder Phantom hidden at program startup or when you minimize the program. To restore the program from Stealth Mode you need to type CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + M and Folder Phantom will reappear. Please remember this keyboard combination, without it you will not be able to bring Folder Phantom out of stealth mode.
The second security feature is requiring a password. You can choose to require a password when the program starts, when using the Hide All/Show All hotkeys, or when coming out of stealth mode. Requiring a password is a nice feature when you have computer savvy teenagers living with you. However, please take care to remember the password you have chosen. We have no way of recovering a password for you.
Copyright (c) 2007
Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
NOTE: I reviewed this utility for NerdBoyTV.com and let me tell you it works TERRIFIC! I purchased the annual download membership from PC Magazine for $19.99 (a bargain) or you can just download this application for $7.00. It really DOES hide files and folders on your computer from prying eyes. - - Ryan Yee, Host of NerdBoyTV
Have you ever needed to hide files from prying eyes? Perhaps you have your resumé and cover letters stashed on your machine at work, or maybe a collection of R-rated movies that you don't want your kids to see. This month's utility, Folder Phantom, allows you to easily make folders disappear and reappear.When you first start Folder Phantom you'll see a toolbar and an empty folder list. Click the Add button to browse for a folder that you'd like to hide. Once you've chosen a folder it will appear in the list with the Status field set to "Visible."
Add as many folders as you like but make sure not to hide the Windows folder or your Program Files folder. Folder Phantom will warn you if you attempt to hide them but it won't prevent you from doing so. Be forewarned, if you do hide these folders your system may become inoperable.
Now that you've added a folder or folders to the list, check the box next to each folder you'd like to hide and hit the Hide button. The Status field will show "Hidden." Open up Windows Explorer and try to find that folder. You won't be able to. Also, if you try to find the folder via the Command Prompt, you won't be able to find it there either. The folder or folders are now inaccessible to Windows.
With the folders still checked, hit the Show toolbar button. The Status field will be reset to "Visible" and you will be able to access the folder from Windows Explorer.
Folder Phantom has several options to enhance your hidden folder security. The first option is Stealth Mode. Stealth Mode keeps the program hidden from view. You can choose to have Folder Phantom hidden at program startup or when you minimize the program. To restore the program from Stealth Mode you need to type CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + M and Folder Phantom will reappear. Please remember this keyboard combination, without it you will not be able to bring Folder Phantom out of stealth mode.
The second security feature is requiring a password. You can choose to require a password when the program starts, when using the Hide All/Show All hotkeys, or when coming out of stealth mode. Requiring a password is a nice feature when you have computer savvy teenagers living with you. However, please take care to remember the password you have chosen. We have no way of recovering a password for you.
Copyright (c) 2007
Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, October 26, 2007
REVIEW: T-Mobile Sidekick LX
by Sascha Segan
Even in the world of mobile devices, sometimes bigger is better. The Sidekick LX is like a messaging limousine, with a big, luxurious keyboard and huge, bright screen that makes e-mails and IMs fun to write and easy to read. But if you're not looking for something large, this Sidekick is behind the curve (and the Curve).
NOTE: Picked this up for my 14-year-old daughter, Alexandra, on the day it went on sale. Simply put, it's a BIG hit! Sleek design, beautiful monitor with sharp screen resolution. She hasn't put it down, yet (not sure if that's good or bad)! - - Ryan Yee, Host of NerdBoyTV
The LX is the new top model in T-Mobile's lineup of Sidekick messaging phones. Sidekicks aren't quite smartphones, but they have the same e-mail, IM, calendar, and Web-browsing power you'd get from a basic smartphone. In the past, they've been coveted for their fun and easy-to-use interface, too.
This Sidekick is a tall drink of water, that's for sure. It's the biggest device I've handled in a while, the same width and length as the previous model 3 at 5.1 by 2.4 inches but 0.2 inches slimmer at 0.7 inches thick. It is also considerably lighter than the 3 at 5.7 ounces. It has the traditional Sidekick design, with a flip-up display, but this display is far, far better than those of previous iterations. It's bright and glossy, with 400-by-240 resolution and rich colors; its only flaw is that it is somewhat reflective in sunlight.
The traditional Sidekick interface has gotten a shot of color and better graphics, but not many more features. You still navigate a rotating wheel of icons with a trackball that pulses with multicolored light when you get a new message, a cursor pad on the left and four action buttons that perform various functions.
The best feature on the device is the keyboard. The well-spaced, raised buttons make it easier to type on the LX than on almost any other handheld device I've tested. The keyboard ties into the always excellent IM client, backed up with both SMS and MMS support. There's full access to Yahoo!, AIM, and MSN buddy lists, and you can even see your buddy icons. You can flip through conversations quickly, and it's very easy to type speedily on the large, widely spaced keys.
The Sidekick also pushes POP3/IMAP e-mail to you, and it's extremely simple to set up. The device supports its own T-Mobile mail account plus three more. Image attachments appear inline in messages, while other attachments are usually boiled down to text. But unlike every other smartphone platform out there the Sidekick still lacks support for Microsoft Exchange e-mail, Yahoo! Mail, or a native Gmail client.
As a phone, the LX is mediocre. It didn't do very well in our weak-signal test. Maximum call volume wasn't very loud; when it was pumped up by a very loud source on the other end, I heard distortion problems. The speakerphone is fine. The LX supports Bluetooth headsets, but only in mono mode—no stereo music headsets.
The device has very little onboard memory. It doesn't seem to be measured in megabytes, but I managed to max it out with three days' worth of e-mail messages. You'll want to drop a microSD card into the slot under the back cover. My 4GB Kingston card worked fine. The LX's 1.3-megapixel camera takes decent pictures, though I saw compression artifacts on them and outdoor pictures tend to overexpose bright areas.
The built-in MP3 player sounds good over standard headphones plugged into the 3.5mm jack on the side, and the device handles MP3, unprotected AAC, and unprotected WMA files of any bit rate—including non-DRM'd files bought from iTunes Plus or Amazon. You drag and drop music onto your memory card by plugging the Sidekick into your PC with a USB cable. The device doesn't support any video, either recording or playback.
You can download a limited set of games, applications, and ringtones, but nowhere near the hundreds of apps available for other smartphone operating systems. The one included title, a Mario-style game called Bob's Journey To The Center Of The Earth, played very smoothly.
The LX browses the Web, but not very well. Speed-wise, it's stuck with T-Mobile's EDGE network, without the boost of Wi-Fi that other EDGE devices like Apple's iPhone and the Blackberry Curve have. I achieved varied speeds between 50 kilobits per second and 150 Kbps at speed test sites, a wide range that's typical of EDGE. I experienced a very high latency, often having to wait several seconds before Web pages would start to load. The browser is basic, without support for frames or Flash (most notably, Facebook looks lousy); then again, it's no worse than the BlackBerry browser.
To make up for the browser's struggles, the LX includes a dedicated MySpace app. The tabbed client does give you quick access to MySpace profiles, blogs, and mail, but I can't help but think T-Mobile is behind the curve here—aren't people moving over to Facebook?
The LX's main problem is that it's simply outmatched by T-Mobile's BlackBerry Curve. The Curve is better in every way. It's a better phone. The e-mail client is more flexible. The camera is better. The media player is far better, with video and stereo Bluetooth support. The Curve makes free phone calls over Wi-Fi hot spots. It's also easy to use, and stable. It fits much more easily in your pocket. And it costs $50 less.
The cultural appeal of the Sidekick has something to do with the flashing disco lights, loud swooshing alert sounds, and even its large, obvious size. I just find it bulky and a bit obnoxious. And the smarter crowd among the Sidekick's youth market seems to be starting to agree. Paris Hilton still has a Sidekick. Hilary Duff, on the other hand, has a BlackBerry. Who would you rather be with?
That said, there is one big reason to get the Sidekick: It's big. The big, comfortable keyboard and large screen are easy on the fingers and the eyes, a refreshing change in a world where devices are getting more and more tiny and cramped. If you're looking for a messaging device and the superior Curve just seems a little too small, the LX will be for you.
Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 10 hours 49 minutes
Even in the world of mobile devices, sometimes bigger is better. The Sidekick LX is like a messaging limousine, with a big, luxurious keyboard and huge, bright screen that makes e-mails and IMs fun to write and easy to read. But if you're not looking for something large, this Sidekick is behind the curve (and the Curve).
NOTE: Picked this up for my 14-year-old daughter, Alexandra, on the day it went on sale. Simply put, it's a BIG hit! Sleek design, beautiful monitor with sharp screen resolution. She hasn't put it down, yet (not sure if that's good or bad)! - - Ryan Yee, Host of NerdBoyTVThe LX is the new top model in T-Mobile's lineup of Sidekick messaging phones. Sidekicks aren't quite smartphones, but they have the same e-mail, IM, calendar, and Web-browsing power you'd get from a basic smartphone. In the past, they've been coveted for their fun and easy-to-use interface, too.
This Sidekick is a tall drink of water, that's for sure. It's the biggest device I've handled in a while, the same width and length as the previous model 3 at 5.1 by 2.4 inches but 0.2 inches slimmer at 0.7 inches thick. It is also considerably lighter than the 3 at 5.7 ounces. It has the traditional Sidekick design, with a flip-up display, but this display is far, far better than those of previous iterations. It's bright and glossy, with 400-by-240 resolution and rich colors; its only flaw is that it is somewhat reflective in sunlight.
The traditional Sidekick interface has gotten a shot of color and better graphics, but not many more features. You still navigate a rotating wheel of icons with a trackball that pulses with multicolored light when you get a new message, a cursor pad on the left and four action buttons that perform various functions.
The best feature on the device is the keyboard. The well-spaced, raised buttons make it easier to type on the LX than on almost any other handheld device I've tested. The keyboard ties into the always excellent IM client, backed up with both SMS and MMS support. There's full access to Yahoo!, AIM, and MSN buddy lists, and you can even see your buddy icons. You can flip through conversations quickly, and it's very easy to type speedily on the large, widely spaced keys.
The Sidekick also pushes POP3/IMAP e-mail to you, and it's extremely simple to set up. The device supports its own T-Mobile mail account plus three more. Image attachments appear inline in messages, while other attachments are usually boiled down to text. But unlike every other smartphone platform out there the Sidekick still lacks support for Microsoft Exchange e-mail, Yahoo! Mail, or a native Gmail client.
As a phone, the LX is mediocre. It didn't do very well in our weak-signal test. Maximum call volume wasn't very loud; when it was pumped up by a very loud source on the other end, I heard distortion problems. The speakerphone is fine. The LX supports Bluetooth headsets, but only in mono mode—no stereo music headsets.
The device has very little onboard memory. It doesn't seem to be measured in megabytes, but I managed to max it out with three days' worth of e-mail messages. You'll want to drop a microSD card into the slot under the back cover. My 4GB Kingston card worked fine. The LX's 1.3-megapixel camera takes decent pictures, though I saw compression artifacts on them and outdoor pictures tend to overexpose bright areas.
The built-in MP3 player sounds good over standard headphones plugged into the 3.5mm jack on the side, and the device handles MP3, unprotected AAC, and unprotected WMA files of any bit rate—including non-DRM'd files bought from iTunes Plus or Amazon. You drag and drop music onto your memory card by plugging the Sidekick into your PC with a USB cable. The device doesn't support any video, either recording or playback.
You can download a limited set of games, applications, and ringtones, but nowhere near the hundreds of apps available for other smartphone operating systems. The one included title, a Mario-style game called Bob's Journey To The Center Of The Earth, played very smoothly.
The LX browses the Web, but not very well. Speed-wise, it's stuck with T-Mobile's EDGE network, without the boost of Wi-Fi that other EDGE devices like Apple's iPhone and the Blackberry Curve have. I achieved varied speeds between 50 kilobits per second and 150 Kbps at speed test sites, a wide range that's typical of EDGE. I experienced a very high latency, often having to wait several seconds before Web pages would start to load. The browser is basic, without support for frames or Flash (most notably, Facebook looks lousy); then again, it's no worse than the BlackBerry browser.
To make up for the browser's struggles, the LX includes a dedicated MySpace app. The tabbed client does give you quick access to MySpace profiles, blogs, and mail, but I can't help but think T-Mobile is behind the curve here—aren't people moving over to Facebook?
The LX's main problem is that it's simply outmatched by T-Mobile's BlackBerry Curve. The Curve is better in every way. It's a better phone. The e-mail client is more flexible. The camera is better. The media player is far better, with video and stereo Bluetooth support. The Curve makes free phone calls over Wi-Fi hot spots. It's also easy to use, and stable. It fits much more easily in your pocket. And it costs $50 less.
The cultural appeal of the Sidekick has something to do with the flashing disco lights, loud swooshing alert sounds, and even its large, obvious size. I just find it bulky and a bit obnoxious. And the smarter crowd among the Sidekick's youth market seems to be starting to agree. Paris Hilton still has a Sidekick. Hilary Duff, on the other hand, has a BlackBerry. Who would you rather be with?
That said, there is one big reason to get the Sidekick: It's big. The big, comfortable keyboard and large screen are easy on the fingers and the eyes, a refreshing change in a world where devices are getting more and more tiny and cramped. If you're looking for a messaging device and the superior Curve just seems a little too small, the LX will be for you.
Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 10 hours 49 minutes
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Apple expands educational content on iTunes
The Associated Press
Free material includes public radio broadcasts
SAN JOSE, California - Apple Inc. is expanding the free educational content available on its online iTunes Store beyond lectures and videos from universities.
Materials ranging from recordings of U.S. Supreme Court arguments and public radio broadcasts on the civil rights movement to video interviews with sculptor Richard Serra are among the offerings under a new category called "Beyond Campus."
The section can be found within iTunes U, a free service which Apple has offered to universities since 2006 to distribute their course lectures or other digital content through the iTunes Web site. The schools decide whether they want to open the free materials to the public or limit access to students and alumni.
"But we found that there's a lot of educational content from other parties, and we thought it'd be a great opportunity to leverage iTunes U," Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, said Thursday.
A larger learning catalog for anyone — in college or not — helps to broaden the appeal of Apple's iTunes and iPod franchises, Cue said.
The iTunes U material is accessible on Windows-based or Macintosh computers and transferable to portable devices, including Apple's iPods.
Apple began "Beyond Campus" this week, starting with six partners, including public radio producer American Public Media, Smithsonian Global Sound, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and KQED public radio and television in San Francisco, Cue said.
UC Berkeley posting lectures on YouTube
By Michelle Locke
The Associated Press
Watching the videos is free — but you won't get course credit
BERKELEY, Calif. - Move over "Leave Britney Alone Guy." And all those cute kitten videos, too. The University of California, Berkeley, is posting course lectures and other campus happenings on YouTube.
"To a teacher who has a passion for teaching, this is enormously exciting," said physics professor Richard A. Muller, whose "Physics for Future Presidents," is among courses available online.
"My students are everywhere and I don't have to give them exams."
Berkeley and other universities have been broadcasting a variety of courses on the Web for some time, including an arrangement Berkeley started in 2006 with YouTube's parent company Google Inc. The agreement with YouTube was formally announced Wednesday.
Watching the videos is free and for the joy of information only. You won't get course credit.
"It's not meant as a substitute for going to class. You can't interact; you can't be part of that dialogue," said Ben Hubbard, co-manager of webcast.berkeley, a local site delivering course and event content as podcasts and streaming video.
But Muller gets e-mail from all over the world — "Even Timbuktu!" — and Hubbard said course videos previously distributed online through Google scored more than a million hits and about 700,000 downloads.
UC Berkeley launched an audio podcast program with more than 25 courses in 2006. In 2007, the campus is to deliver audio or video for 86 full courses and more than 100 other events — 3,500 hours of content.
More than 300 hours of videotaped courses and events already are available at http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley.
Berkeley's offerings join an eclectic mix of content on YouTube, including the breakout rant from the young man known as "Leave Britney Alone Guy" for his tearful defense of singer Britney Spears's performance on the MTV Video Music Awards.
Muller, known for presenting physics with innovation and relative simplicity, has found his audience is as diverse as it is far-flung.
"I get e-mails from high school students, I get e-mail from college students, people who graduated and never learned this stuff. People listen to this because they enjoy learning," said Muller, who is at work on a book under the same title as his course that he plans to have ready before Election Day.
The Associated Press
Watching the videos is free — but you won't get course credit
BERKELEY, Calif. - Move over "Leave Britney Alone Guy." And all those cute kitten videos, too. The University of California, Berkeley, is posting course lectures and other campus happenings on YouTube.
"To a teacher who has a passion for teaching, this is enormously exciting," said physics professor Richard A. Muller, whose "Physics for Future Presidents," is among courses available online.
"My students are everywhere and I don't have to give them exams."
Berkeley and other universities have been broadcasting a variety of courses on the Web for some time, including an arrangement Berkeley started in 2006 with YouTube's parent company Google Inc. The agreement with YouTube was formally announced Wednesday.
Watching the videos is free and for the joy of information only. You won't get course credit.
"It's not meant as a substitute for going to class. You can't interact; you can't be part of that dialogue," said Ben Hubbard, co-manager of webcast.berkeley, a local site delivering course and event content as podcasts and streaming video.
But Muller gets e-mail from all over the world — "Even Timbuktu!" — and Hubbard said course videos previously distributed online through Google scored more than a million hits and about 700,000 downloads.
UC Berkeley launched an audio podcast program with more than 25 courses in 2006. In 2007, the campus is to deliver audio or video for 86 full courses and more than 100 other events — 3,500 hours of content.
More than 300 hours of videotaped courses and events already are available at http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley.
Berkeley's offerings join an eclectic mix of content on YouTube, including the breakout rant from the young man known as "Leave Britney Alone Guy" for his tearful defense of singer Britney Spears's performance on the MTV Video Music Awards.
Muller, known for presenting physics with innovation and relative simplicity, has found his audience is as diverse as it is far-flung.
"I get e-mails from high school students, I get e-mail from college students, people who graduated and never learned this stuff. People listen to this because they enjoy learning," said Muller, who is at work on a book under the same title as his course that he plans to have ready before Election Day.
Best Buy ends sales of analog TVs
The Associated Press
Electronics retailer pulls sets from shelves, sells only digital products
MINNEAPOLIS - Best Buy Co. said Wednesday it has stopped selling analog televisions and pulled all remaining stock from its shelves, signalling the end of an era as consumers increasingly move toward digital products with flat-panel and high-definition screens.
Best Buy, one of the nation's top electronics retailers, heralded the reign of digital TVs, saying it made the move "as the end of the analog broadcast era draws near." Best Buy instructed stores to stop selling the products on Oct. 1.
Beginning Feb. 18, 2009, broadcasters will stop transmitting analog signals.
Non-digital television sets that are not attached to a cable or satellite service and not equipped with special converter boxes will no longer work.
Best Buy is the first consumer-electronics retailer to report an exit from the analog-TV business. More than 60 million U.S. households currently rely on an antennas or analog cable, and cable operators are required to guarantee their customers will receive broadcast channels until February 2012.
Those millions of households offer a lucrative market opportunity for electronics retailers and television manufacturers alike.
"We are committed to helping people understand the digital television transition, and exiting the analog video business is one way we can help avoid confusion," Mike Vitelli, senior vice president of electronics, said in a statement.
After the first of the year, the government will be making available to each household two coupons worth $40 each that can be used to buy two converter boxes. Best Buy will sell coupon-eligible converter boxes starting in early 2008.
Electronics retailer pulls sets from shelves, sells only digital products
MINNEAPOLIS - Best Buy Co. said Wednesday it has stopped selling analog televisions and pulled all remaining stock from its shelves, signalling the end of an era as consumers increasingly move toward digital products with flat-panel and high-definition screens.
Best Buy, one of the nation's top electronics retailers, heralded the reign of digital TVs, saying it made the move "as the end of the analog broadcast era draws near." Best Buy instructed stores to stop selling the products on Oct. 1.Beginning Feb. 18, 2009, broadcasters will stop transmitting analog signals.
Non-digital television sets that are not attached to a cable or satellite service and not equipped with special converter boxes will no longer work.
Best Buy is the first consumer-electronics retailer to report an exit from the analog-TV business. More than 60 million U.S. households currently rely on an antennas or analog cable, and cable operators are required to guarantee their customers will receive broadcast channels until February 2012.
Those millions of households offer a lucrative market opportunity for electronics retailers and television manufacturers alike.
"We are committed to helping people understand the digital television transition, and exiting the analog video business is one way we can help avoid confusion," Mike Vitelli, senior vice president of electronics, said in a statement.
After the first of the year, the government will be making available to each household two coupons worth $40 each that can be used to buy two converter boxes. Best Buy will sell coupon-eligible converter boxes starting in early 2008.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
iRegret: Apple's smartphone isn't so smart
By Joe Hutsko
MSNBC contributor
My feeling toward my iPhone has gone from reasonably hopeful to hopeless regret.
When I purchased the iPhone the day they came out, I told myself that the long list of gripes was tolerable because Apple would very likely add so many of the missing features commonly found on every other smartphone. Simple things, like the ability to look up a contact by tapping in a few letters, or a way to copy and paste information from an e-mail or Web page into a contact or note card.
Sure, I felt stung by the so-soon-after-launch $200 price drop, and only mildly mollified by the $100 Apple Store credit the company offered in apology for so blatantly screwing early adopters like me. But I was willing to accept that, providing the most important iPhone must-have of all — the ability to run standalone third-party applications — was possible. And it was, thanks to a add-on called Installer.app that opened up the iPhone to a growing library of cool programs.
That is until Apple updated the iPhone’s firmware and, at best, merely disabled add-ons like Installer.app, or, at worst, “bricked” iPhones that had been hacked to work with networks other than AT&T to the point of uselessness. What’s more (or actually, less), those simple hoped-for wish-list items such as contact search or copy and paste were absent from the update.
So here we are, three months later, and this remarkably inventive device that’s so lacking as an actual phone but so promising as the be-all/end-all gadget is no better than at launch, and even less hopeful because of Apple’s action against iPhone customizations that enable it to do more than just what Apple says it can and should do.
When the iPhone was launched it was hyped for its desktop-strength operating system. It’s less a phone and more an all-in-one communicator that happens to make and receive phone calls. Thanks to Installer.app it could do more than the few things it could do at launch. The same way other smartphones running Palm or Microsoft or Nokia operating systems can do.
Coincidentally enough, I happened to install Installer.app the morning before Apple released the 1.1.1 firmware update. So for the hour or two before the update my feelings toward the iPhone had changed, and I was a believer again. I shut off the Treo 680 and Blackberry Curve phones I’d been switching between because I missed so many of the functions that the iPhone lacks.
Things such as being able to set a size limit on e-mail attachments, reading an ebook while riding the subway or keeping a dozen or so sticky notes in sync between the handheld and my MacBook.
Then I received an alert in iTunes, informing me that the firmware update was available. I downloaded and installed it, and when it was done, Installer.app and all the cool applications I’d downloaded earlier that day were gone. History. Attempts to reinstall Installer.app were met with a crashed iPhone that insisted I restore it in iTunes. A little searching turned up the aforementioned revelation, that 1.1.1 locks out modifications or bricks the device.
I’m done with the iPhone for now. I’ll stick with the Palm Treo 680 and probably switch to Palm’s new Centro once Palm supports AT&T (currently the Centro works only with Sprint). Or I may give the BlackBerry Curve a longer trial to see if it’s a better solution.
Either phone does things I need to do, like sync with those sticky notes, and work with Word documents. Yes, the iPhone can open Word documents to view, but it doesn't allow the creation of a new document, or the ability to edit an existing one. A program called Documents to Go allows this ability on the Palm, and for the BlackBerry there's eOffice.
On another note, both phones also let me remove and replace their rechargeable batteries. What's more, a company named Seidio even makes longer-lasting ones than the standard battery that comes with the Treo, the BlackBerry and many other cell phones. No such luck on the iPhone's battery, which is sealed inside the device and must be sent to Apple for service when the battery needs repair or replacement.
And while my msnbc.com review of the iPhone ended with the revelation that I’d typed the entire first draft of the story as a long e-mail using the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, the reality is I prefer the real mini-keyboards found on the BlackBerry and Treo smartphones to Apple’s unreal-feeling on-screen keyboard.
Apple has stated the iPhone will eventually support third-party applications. To be fair, there’s no doubt that a great many iPhone users couldn't care less whether the iPhone syncs sticky notes or supports ebooks or can do things beyond the limited things it currently does. For those people, the iPhone is a snazzy iPod that also happens to be a so-so phone with an excellent Web browsers and light-duty e-mailer.
For the rest of us who believe the first half of the word smartphone is why we want to use one, the iPhone is just too dumb to be taken seriously. Smarten up, Apple, and open up the iPhone. Seriously.
MSNBC contributor
My feeling toward my iPhone has gone from reasonably hopeful to hopeless regret.
When I purchased the iPhone the day they came out, I told myself that the long list of gripes was tolerable because Apple would very likely add so many of the missing features commonly found on every other smartphone. Simple things, like the ability to look up a contact by tapping in a few letters, or a way to copy and paste information from an e-mail or Web page into a contact or note card.
Sure, I felt stung by the so-soon-after-launch $200 price drop, and only mildly mollified by the $100 Apple Store credit the company offered in apology for so blatantly screwing early adopters like me. But I was willing to accept that, providing the most important iPhone must-have of all — the ability to run standalone third-party applications — was possible. And it was, thanks to a add-on called Installer.app that opened up the iPhone to a growing library of cool programs.
That is until Apple updated the iPhone’s firmware and, at best, merely disabled add-ons like Installer.app, or, at worst, “bricked” iPhones that had been hacked to work with networks other than AT&T to the point of uselessness. What’s more (or actually, less), those simple hoped-for wish-list items such as contact search or copy and paste were absent from the update.
So here we are, three months later, and this remarkably inventive device that’s so lacking as an actual phone but so promising as the be-all/end-all gadget is no better than at launch, and even less hopeful because of Apple’s action against iPhone customizations that enable it to do more than just what Apple says it can and should do.
When the iPhone was launched it was hyped for its desktop-strength operating system. It’s less a phone and more an all-in-one communicator that happens to make and receive phone calls. Thanks to Installer.app it could do more than the few things it could do at launch. The same way other smartphones running Palm or Microsoft or Nokia operating systems can do.
Coincidentally enough, I happened to install Installer.app the morning before Apple released the 1.1.1 firmware update. So for the hour or two before the update my feelings toward the iPhone had changed, and I was a believer again. I shut off the Treo 680 and Blackberry Curve phones I’d been switching between because I missed so many of the functions that the iPhone lacks.
Things such as being able to set a size limit on e-mail attachments, reading an ebook while riding the subway or keeping a dozen or so sticky notes in sync between the handheld and my MacBook.
Then I received an alert in iTunes, informing me that the firmware update was available. I downloaded and installed it, and when it was done, Installer.app and all the cool applications I’d downloaded earlier that day were gone. History. Attempts to reinstall Installer.app were met with a crashed iPhone that insisted I restore it in iTunes. A little searching turned up the aforementioned revelation, that 1.1.1 locks out modifications or bricks the device.
I’m done with the iPhone for now. I’ll stick with the Palm Treo 680 and probably switch to Palm’s new Centro once Palm supports AT&T (currently the Centro works only with Sprint). Or I may give the BlackBerry Curve a longer trial to see if it’s a better solution.
Either phone does things I need to do, like sync with those sticky notes, and work with Word documents. Yes, the iPhone can open Word documents to view, but it doesn't allow the creation of a new document, or the ability to edit an existing one. A program called Documents to Go allows this ability on the Palm, and for the BlackBerry there's eOffice.
On another note, both phones also let me remove and replace their rechargeable batteries. What's more, a company named Seidio even makes longer-lasting ones than the standard battery that comes with the Treo, the BlackBerry and many other cell phones. No such luck on the iPhone's battery, which is sealed inside the device and must be sent to Apple for service when the battery needs repair or replacement.
And while my msnbc.com review of the iPhone ended with the revelation that I’d typed the entire first draft of the story as a long e-mail using the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, the reality is I prefer the real mini-keyboards found on the BlackBerry and Treo smartphones to Apple’s unreal-feeling on-screen keyboard.
Apple has stated the iPhone will eventually support third-party applications. To be fair, there’s no doubt that a great many iPhone users couldn't care less whether the iPhone syncs sticky notes or supports ebooks or can do things beyond the limited things it currently does. For those people, the iPhone is a snazzy iPod that also happens to be a so-so phone with an excellent Web browsers and light-duty e-mailer.
For the rest of us who believe the first half of the word smartphone is why we want to use one, the iPhone is just too dumb to be taken seriously. Smarten up, Apple, and open up the iPhone. Seriously.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
T-Mobile introduces new Sidekicks - Screen resolution doubled
By Peter Svensson
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - T-Mobile USA is updating its Sidekick cell phones, adding a high-end model and the first Motorola-built entry in the line of quirky gadgets with a screen that swivels to reveal a keyboard.
The new luxury model, the Sidekick LX, has a screen with more than twice the resolution of the previous top-of-the-line model, the Sidekick 3. Criticism of the low screen resolution has dogged the line, which still has found a home among young people who like to communicate by text message.
The LX will go on sale online Oct. 17 for $300 with a 2-year contract, T-Mobile USA said Wednesday. The cheapest current Sidekick, the iD, costs $50.
Apart from the improved 3-inch screen, the LX is slimmer than previous models, with a more elegant styling. It's an attempt to broaden the Sidekick user base among older customers, said Leslie Grandy, vice president of product and systems development at Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile USA.
The LX is also the first Sidekick to allow text messages with attached pictures. Previous models allowed pictures from the built-in cameras to be e-mailed, but Sidekick users prefer text messaging, according to Grandy.
T-Mobile also announced the Sidekick Slide, which breaks away from the Sidekick line in two ways: It's made by Motorola Inc. rather than Sharp Corp., which makes the others; and its screen slides up to reveal the keyboard, rather than swiveling.
The Slide is smaller than the other Sidekicks and is more tightly focused on messaging. For instance, it won't play music until you buy a memory card for it. It will cost $200 with a 2-year contract when it goes on sale Nov. 7.
The Sidekick runs software from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Danger Inc. The first Sidekick was launched by T-Mobile in 2002.
On Tuesday, T-Mobile announced that it was introducing a BlackBerry that can make and receive calls over Wi-Fi in addition to the cellular network. That substantially reinforces T-Mobile's HotSpotAtHome program, which previously has offered only two low-end phones, neither of them e-mail-oriented devices like the BlackBerry.
With a HotSpotAtHome plan, which costs $20 a month, subscribers can place unlimited calls over Wi-Fi routers at home or on T-Mobile's commercial HotSpot network.
The new BlackBerry Curve costs $250. AT&T launched the same model this spring, but without the ability to place calls over Wi-Fi.
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - T-Mobile USA is updating its Sidekick cell phones, adding a high-end model and the first Motorola-built entry in the line of quirky gadgets with a screen that swivels to reveal a keyboard.
The new luxury model, the Sidekick LX, has a screen with more than twice the resolution of the previous top-of-the-line model, the Sidekick 3. Criticism of the low screen resolution has dogged the line, which still has found a home among young people who like to communicate by text message.
The LX will go on sale online Oct. 17 for $300 with a 2-year contract, T-Mobile USA said Wednesday. The cheapest current Sidekick, the iD, costs $50.
Apart from the improved 3-inch screen, the LX is slimmer than previous models, with a more elegant styling. It's an attempt to broaden the Sidekick user base among older customers, said Leslie Grandy, vice president of product and systems development at Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile USA.
The LX is also the first Sidekick to allow text messages with attached pictures. Previous models allowed pictures from the built-in cameras to be e-mailed, but Sidekick users prefer text messaging, according to Grandy.
T-Mobile also announced the Sidekick Slide, which breaks away from the Sidekick line in two ways: It's made by Motorola Inc. rather than Sharp Corp., which makes the others; and its screen slides up to reveal the keyboard, rather than swiveling.
The Slide is smaller than the other Sidekicks and is more tightly focused on messaging. For instance, it won't play music until you buy a memory card for it. It will cost $200 with a 2-year contract when it goes on sale Nov. 7.
The Sidekick runs software from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Danger Inc. The first Sidekick was launched by T-Mobile in 2002.
On Tuesday, T-Mobile announced that it was introducing a BlackBerry that can make and receive calls over Wi-Fi in addition to the cellular network. That substantially reinforces T-Mobile's HotSpotAtHome program, which previously has offered only two low-end phones, neither of them e-mail-oriented devices like the BlackBerry.
With a HotSpotAtHome plan, which costs $20 a month, subscribers can place unlimited calls over Wi-Fi routers at home or on T-Mobile's commercial HotSpot network.
The new BlackBerry Curve costs $250. AT&T launched the same model this spring, but without the ability to place calls over Wi-Fi.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Recording Songs from Albums
Adapted From: Digital Photos, Movies, & Music Gigabook for Dummies
Albums may be a joy for listening, but they're a pain to store. Plus, you always worry about when it's time to change the needle. Playing any rare singles? Don't they deteriorate each time they're played?
Converting albums to MP3 combats these problems and adds an advantage: Because the sounds originated from an album, the MP3 still holds some of that warm vinyl feel - none of that sterile CD feeling. Any of today's portable MP3 players will easily hold a full album - some, like Apple's iPod mini, can store 1,000 songs.
Most all-in-one MP3 ripping software records albums and converts them to MP3s on the fly, but that skips the WAV stage. Without this intermediate stage, you have no way to remove any recording flaws before the final encoding.
These steps show how to record songs from an album and save them as WAV files (where you can touch them up before turning them into MP3s):
1. Clean the album.
The cleaner the album, the cleaner the sound. Try these cleaning tips:
• Wash both sides of the album with a lint-free cloth. Most music stores sell record-cleaning brushes designed expressly for removing dust.
• To remove extra-stubborn goo from the grooves, try a mixture of 50/50 rubbing alcohol and distilled water. Lacking that, small amounts of baby shampoo can do the trick. Be sure to rinse well.
• Always wash the record with a circular motion; don't scrub "across grain" because it might scratch the grooves. When you finish cleaning, dry the album and touch it only by the edges.
• If it's an important album - a rare import, or an old 78 - check the phone directory for professional record-cleaning services found in many big cities. They can often remove any extra-persistent grunge from the vinyl.
2. Clean the turntable's needle.
Wipe it off with the little brush that comes with the turntable. Lost yours? Pick one up at the music or stereo store. They're cheap.
3. Connect the turntable's output cables to your sound card.
4. Adjust your recording level.
Your recording program will have a recording monitor display, which flashes according to the incoming volume levels.
Start playing your album and watch the monitor. If it flashes too close to the right end (or the red), turn down the volume going into the sound card, or use the sound card's mixer program to turn down the incoming sound.
If the level's too high, it will distort; if it's too low, you'll hear background noise. Take your time to find the right level before recording. Be patient.
5. Start the recording software.
Begin recording using Adobe Audition, Roxio Capture, or another recording-and-editing package.
6. Play the album.
Be sure to press the Record button on your recording software before playing the album. Don't worry about the initial plop when the needle falls onto the record or the empty space before the first song. You can easily edit out those sounds later.
As you convert album songs into WAV files, keep the following points in mind:
Hear a persistent humming sound in the background? Plug your turntable into the "unswitched AC adapter" on your receiver or amplifier. If you can't find the unswitched adapter, try plugging your computer and turntable into the same wall outlet. (Use an adapter, if needed.) The two devices then share a common ground.
Remember to record at a level that's very close to the 0 on the recording level - but never too close. Otherwise, the recording won't sound loud compared to others, like MP3s created from CDs.
Recording an old mono album? You might only hear the sound on one speaker. You can correct this with sound-editing software.
Record the entire album's first side and save that as a single WAV file. Then do the same with the flip side. You can easily separate the tracks into separate files later with sound-editing software.
In the eyes of the law, converting albums to MP3 files isn't any different from copying CDs. You can keep the file for your own personal use, but don't give it away or sell it, or you might be violating copyrights.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Gadgets at IFA promise simpler, more beautiful life
By Nicola LeskeMon
Television sets traditionally dominate the IFA consumer electronics trade fair but there is an abundance of new high-tech gadgets on display in Berlin this week aimed at making life simpler and more beautiful too.
Whether in the car, enjoying nature outdoors or even relaxing in the bath, reasons to be disconnected from the electronic matrix are becoming ever scarcer.
Creative minds at Dutch electronics group Philips (PHG.AS) presented a universal plug dubbed Power4life intended to be compatible with just about any portable device ranging from a laptop to a MP3 player that promises to put an end to batteries running out when it is least convenient.
The charger, which includes an LED indicator to tell how much power is left, is due to be available in December.
German company Sunload offered a greener approach to keeping portable devices fully charged at all times.
Its laptop bags contain a flexible solar panel that powers a charger inside. It also includes two USB cables and a storage battery pack.
A messenger bag starts at around 400 euros ($546) and a leather briefcase at around 1,000 euros. The laptop bags are available through the company Website (http://www.sunload.de/).
Keeping mobility in mind, German firm Funkwerk Dabendorf showcased a portable, hands-free communications kit called EGO Cup that fits into a car's cup holder and plugs into a cigarette lighter's socket.
It is compatible with eight different mobile phones and connects via blue tooth technology, the company said. The EGO Cup will be available for 89 euros in November.
While mobility is a major theme at IFA -- the world's oldest consumer electronics trade fair -- manufacturers also presented coveted objects for the home.
Swiss company Xounts offers a cone-shaped combination lamp and sound system with a choice of "skins" that currently come in a range of patterns and designs from which to pick.
Eventually customers will be able to upload their own images on the website and order a customized lampshade.
The basic version costs 329 euros and includes subwoofers, light sources, volume and bass controls as well as connections for a stereo line or iPod.
Currently only the European voltage model is available, but a U.S. model is in the works for next year.
German technology company Grundig brought back its iconic Audiorama speakers from the 1970s, known for their futuristic spherical design.
They come either as floorstanding or ceiling hanging configurations in black or white, both offering 360-degree sound. They are due for launch next February, with a price of 600 euros per set.
Ever wanted to watch television while soaking in the bathtub? Manufacturers at Germany's ad notam GmbH have a solution. The company makes sleek-looking LCD display screens that double as bathroom mirrors when shut off.
The Twister is fully rotatable and is made to be resistant to humidity and water. It can be attached to the bathroom wall or even the edge of the bathtub. Prices start at around $2,700.
Korean company esencia hopes to address those consumers concerned with ultimate cleanliness by taking dental hygiene to a new level with its toothbrush sterilizer.
The devices come in a portable version too and kill germs with UV rays. The company reasons that "bathrooms are a hotbed for germs" that makes the sterilization of toothbrushes "a very urgent issue."
The IFA consumer electronics fair is open to the public until September 5.
Television sets traditionally dominate the IFA consumer electronics trade fair but there is an abundance of new high-tech gadgets on display in Berlin this week aimed at making life simpler and more beautiful too.
Whether in the car, enjoying nature outdoors or even relaxing in the bath, reasons to be disconnected from the electronic matrix are becoming ever scarcer.
Creative minds at Dutch electronics group Philips (PHG.AS) presented a universal plug dubbed Power4life intended to be compatible with just about any portable device ranging from a laptop to a MP3 player that promises to put an end to batteries running out when it is least convenient.
The charger, which includes an LED indicator to tell how much power is left, is due to be available in December.
German company Sunload offered a greener approach to keeping portable devices fully charged at all times.
Its laptop bags contain a flexible solar panel that powers a charger inside. It also includes two USB cables and a storage battery pack.
A messenger bag starts at around 400 euros ($546) and a leather briefcase at around 1,000 euros. The laptop bags are available through the company Website (http://www.sunload.de/).
Keeping mobility in mind, German firm Funkwerk Dabendorf showcased a portable, hands-free communications kit called EGO Cup that fits into a car's cup holder and plugs into a cigarette lighter's socket.
It is compatible with eight different mobile phones and connects via blue tooth technology, the company said. The EGO Cup will be available for 89 euros in November.
While mobility is a major theme at IFA -- the world's oldest consumer electronics trade fair -- manufacturers also presented coveted objects for the home.
Swiss company Xounts offers a cone-shaped combination lamp and sound system with a choice of "skins" that currently come in a range of patterns and designs from which to pick.
Eventually customers will be able to upload their own images on the website and order a customized lampshade.
The basic version costs 329 euros and includes subwoofers, light sources, volume and bass controls as well as connections for a stereo line or iPod.
Currently only the European voltage model is available, but a U.S. model is in the works for next year.
German technology company Grundig brought back its iconic Audiorama speakers from the 1970s, known for their futuristic spherical design.
They come either as floorstanding or ceiling hanging configurations in black or white, both offering 360-degree sound. They are due for launch next February, with a price of 600 euros per set.
Ever wanted to watch television while soaking in the bathtub? Manufacturers at Germany's ad notam GmbH have a solution. The company makes sleek-looking LCD display screens that double as bathroom mirrors when shut off.
The Twister is fully rotatable and is made to be resistant to humidity and water. It can be attached to the bathroom wall or even the edge of the bathtub. Prices start at around $2,700.
Korean company esencia hopes to address those consumers concerned with ultimate cleanliness by taking dental hygiene to a new level with its toothbrush sterilizer.
The devices come in a portable version too and kill germs with UV rays. The company reasons that "bathrooms are a hotbed for germs" that makes the sterilization of toothbrushes "a very urgent issue."
The IFA consumer electronics fair is open to the public until September 5.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Creating an Online Presence is easy
by Dan Hounshell
I like the post Seth Godin made a few days ago: Memo to the very small.
I, too, believe that we are in the midst of change. Well, at least it is much easier to create an online presence today than it ever has been - especially for those that are very small. Of course there have always been inexpensive ways to create sites, but there weren't always good ways of promoting them. Don't tell me about webrings or other such nonsense. If you'd have mentioned directory listings then I would have given you partial credit because I built up some very good site traffic over a period of time almost completely attributable to multiple directory listings.
However, I'm talking about small business - the local mom-n-pop doo-dad shop.
Seth Godin's post mentions using hosted Typepad, building a Squidoo lens, and posting images on Flickr to help build a professional site and put some pieces together to generate traffic to the site. I'll take it a step further:
Save links to your site(s) via social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us
Put your url in your signature for any community sites that you frequent, especially for local-based sites like your town's site, forums, and newspaper.
The two above items will help get your small site noticed by search engines as well as help with rankings. Before you realize it, your site will be near the top of the results when doing a search for your business in your town - like "Anytown, OH doo-dad shop".
A lot of this stuff is still really a bit above the head of the non internet-savvy, but its nothing that your neighbor's kid couldn't accomplish for a couple of dollars. You might want to spend a little money on some good copywriting if you don't have the skills, but it's really an inexpensive exercise, with almost guaranteed results.
I won't try to amaze you with some of Seth Godin's quips like "Small is the new Big", but I will say that I do appreciate hometown businesses. I try to give them my business whenever possible. Those with an online presence make it easier for me to choose them.
I like the post Seth Godin made a few days ago: Memo to the very small.
I, too, believe that we are in the midst of change. Well, at least it is much easier to create an online presence today than it ever has been - especially for those that are very small. Of course there have always been inexpensive ways to create sites, but there weren't always good ways of promoting them. Don't tell me about webrings or other such nonsense. If you'd have mentioned directory listings then I would have given you partial credit because I built up some very good site traffic over a period of time almost completely attributable to multiple directory listings.
However, I'm talking about small business - the local mom-n-pop doo-dad shop.
Seth Godin's post mentions using hosted Typepad, building a Squidoo lens, and posting images on Flickr to help build a professional site and put some pieces together to generate traffic to the site. I'll take it a step further:
Save links to your site(s) via social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us
Put your url in your signature for any community sites that you frequent, especially for local-based sites like your town's site, forums, and newspaper.
The two above items will help get your small site noticed by search engines as well as help with rankings. Before you realize it, your site will be near the top of the results when doing a search for your business in your town - like "Anytown, OH doo-dad shop".
A lot of this stuff is still really a bit above the head of the non internet-savvy, but its nothing that your neighbor's kid couldn't accomplish for a couple of dollars. You might want to spend a little money on some good copywriting if you don't have the skills, but it's really an inexpensive exercise, with almost guaranteed results.
I won't try to amaze you with some of Seth Godin's quips like "Small is the new Big", but I will say that I do appreciate hometown businesses. I try to give them my business whenever possible. Those with an online presence make it easier for me to choose them.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Text Messaging On Steroids
By Mike Elgan
Each communications medium offers unique power. E-mail is asynchronous and can broadcast "one-to-many." IM and e-mail can be done on a PC and with a proper keyboard. IM and phone calls are instantaneous. SMS and cell phones calls catch people away from their desks, and grab attention by audibly ringing the phone.
A new service called Joopz combines the power of each of these media into one.
Joopz is a Web site that lets you send SMS text messages from a Web browser. Big deal, right? But check this out: You can send to groups, not just individuals, and reply to their replies. You can schedule messages. And you can forward conversations from the Web to your cell phone.
Those capabilities give Joopz advantages from the other four media: It's one-to-many like e-mail, instantaneous like phone calls, can be done from a PC like IM, and audibly rings the phone like SMS.
I'll give you some tips below that suggest how you might use these Joopz capabilities to be a more effective boss and a more productive person. But first, let me tell you how Joopz is different from other browser-to-phone text messaging services.
There are perhaps dozens of Web-to-text services out there. Some of those services don't allow replies. Others allow replies, but only to your phone. Joopz allows you to get your replies on the same page where you sent the messages. It's like instant messaging, but potentially one-to-many, then many back to one, and to cell phones rather than PCs.
If you're in the middle of a conversation, and gotta run, you can "forward" a Joopz conversation to your phone, and continue with "regular" SMS.
Like e-mail, but unlike most SMS, phone call or IM sessions, Joopz can "record" your chat, so you don't have to take notes to capture all the details.
When you start a group chat, you can be in "Broadcast mode," where the replies come back only to you, or "Chat mode," where the replies go to everybody.
You can set up several "groups," give each a name, then in the future "broadcast" to each group by simply sending to each group's name.
Joopz works with most, but not all, North American carriers, including Cingular/AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Virgin Mobile.
Serving Suggestions
Meeting reminders. One of the biggest time and money wasters in business is meetings. If ten people are invited to a meeting, and a couple people show up 15 minutes late, you’ve wasted two and a half man-hours before the meeting even starts. By broadcasting a meeting reminder five minutes before the meeting starts, you kill excuses for being late, and make sure everyone gets the reminder – even those away from their desks.
Wake up calls. If you really can’t afford to sleep in, use Joopz as your own wake-up call service, by scheduling an SMS. And if you really want to make sure your meeting goes well, set up a wake up call for colleagues as well.
Joopz is powerful. It gives you the advantages of SMS – immediacy, mobility and audible alert that your message is there – and removes the disadvantages.
Use it. And take advantage of it. But, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it.
In addition to writing for Datamation, where this column first appeared, Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan+datamation@gmail.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com.
Each communications medium offers unique power. E-mail is asynchronous and can broadcast "one-to-many." IM and e-mail can be done on a PC and with a proper keyboard. IM and phone calls are instantaneous. SMS and cell phones calls catch people away from their desks, and grab attention by audibly ringing the phone.
A new service called Joopz combines the power of each of these media into one.
Joopz is a Web site that lets you send SMS text messages from a Web browser. Big deal, right? But check this out: You can send to groups, not just individuals, and reply to their replies. You can schedule messages. And you can forward conversations from the Web to your cell phone.
Those capabilities give Joopz advantages from the other four media: It's one-to-many like e-mail, instantaneous like phone calls, can be done from a PC like IM, and audibly rings the phone like SMS.
I'll give you some tips below that suggest how you might use these Joopz capabilities to be a more effective boss and a more productive person. But first, let me tell you how Joopz is different from other browser-to-phone text messaging services.
There are perhaps dozens of Web-to-text services out there. Some of those services don't allow replies. Others allow replies, but only to your phone. Joopz allows you to get your replies on the same page where you sent the messages. It's like instant messaging, but potentially one-to-many, then many back to one, and to cell phones rather than PCs.
If you're in the middle of a conversation, and gotta run, you can "forward" a Joopz conversation to your phone, and continue with "regular" SMS.
Like e-mail, but unlike most SMS, phone call or IM sessions, Joopz can "record" your chat, so you don't have to take notes to capture all the details.
When you start a group chat, you can be in "Broadcast mode," where the replies come back only to you, or "Chat mode," where the replies go to everybody.
You can set up several "groups," give each a name, then in the future "broadcast" to each group by simply sending to each group's name.
Joopz works with most, but not all, North American carriers, including Cingular/AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Virgin Mobile.
Serving Suggestions
Meeting reminders. One of the biggest time and money wasters in business is meetings. If ten people are invited to a meeting, and a couple people show up 15 minutes late, you’ve wasted two and a half man-hours before the meeting even starts. By broadcasting a meeting reminder five minutes before the meeting starts, you kill excuses for being late, and make sure everyone gets the reminder – even those away from their desks.
Wake up calls. If you really can’t afford to sleep in, use Joopz as your own wake-up call service, by scheduling an SMS. And if you really want to make sure your meeting goes well, set up a wake up call for colleagues as well.
Urgent information to groups. Let's say you have a meeting, and five minutes before it starts the meeting has changed. You can quickly broadcast the new details to everyone in the meeting.
Set "calendar reminders" – for others. If you ask someone to do something, you hope they add it to their calendar, sync their calendar with their phone, and get the reminder on their phone. But setting up a Joopz reminder is like adding an item to their calendar yourself.
Give yourself “just in time” information. Schedule messages just when you land in a new city with the rental car and hotel information you’ll need. Remind yourself a few days in advance about upcoming anniversaries, birthdays and other events.
Joopz is powerful. It gives you the advantages of SMS – immediacy, mobility and audible alert that your message is there – and removes the disadvantages.
Use it. And take advantage of it. But, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it.
In addition to writing for Datamation, where this column first appeared, Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan+datamation@gmail.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Facebook Grows Up: Can It Stay Relevant?
At 19, Mark Zuckerberg came up with a new way for college kids to connect—and started an online revolution. Now 23, he's trying to build out his business without losing its cool.
By Steven Levy
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - On Tuesday, July 31, Shara Karasic's world came to a temporary halt. Facebook was down. She could not follow the fortunes and foibles of her friends. She could not see if any photos had been posted that were tagged as including her. She could not even know if anyone had "poked" her (which is not a sexual act, but just a little cozier way of saying "hey, you" online). Even though she had the entire Internet to entertain her and connect her, she felt the loss. "Over the course of those four hours," Karasic says, "I probably tried to get in five or more times."
This would not be surprising if Karasic were a college student. Facebook is as much a part of campus as finals, iPods and beer—the contemporary equivalent of jamming several people into a phone booth is squeezing one's entire social life onto a series of photo shows, news feeds, invitations, friend requests and status updates on the spare blue-and-white grid of a Facebook page. Nor would it be remarkable if she were in high school, where millions of Facebook users, feeling very much like their big brothers and sisters in college, log on as soon as they toss their books on the bed, forming outrageously named groups and moving their lunchroom cliques and locker-room gossip online. Shara Karasic, however, is 40 years old, a Santa Monica, Calif., working mother with a young son. Despite a suspicion that the site was only for college students, she signed on a year ago and found professional people like herself; she quickly got requests to be "friended" from two 40-year-old cousins. And on July 31, when she couldn't get in for a few hours, she realized something: "I'm addicted to Facebook."
Addictions like hers bring joy to the already bursting hearts of the geeky, soon-to-be-loaded executives of Facebook, the hottest tech start-up in Silicon Valley since Sergey and Larry made us feel lucky. Everyone knows that Facebook is the online hangout of just about every college student in the nation as well as the inevitable source of photos of nominees for the Supreme Court in 2038 cavorting in their underwear as youths. But the student population is only a beachhead in the vast ambitions of Facebook. Its people claim that more than half its 35 million active users are not college students, and that by the end of this year less than 30 percent of Facebook users will sport college IDs.
Anything goes in the spirited Facebook world. Just about everybody updates his or her status line with pithy, haiku-ish and often profane precision. For only a dollar you can send a friend a "gift"—an image of a cute item like a polka-dot thong, a champagne glass or sushi. Thousands of groups form daily: sufferers of cancer, conjunctivitis or bad taste. People who scale public buildings in Princeton. Supporters of every politician imaginable. Facebook last year took down the student-only sign and instituted an open-enrollment policy. The idea is that as more people do this—and invite their friends to join the fun—there will be a mass movement to access the world through the interests of, and interests in, the people you know personally. Karel Baloun, an engineer who worked at Facebook until last year, recalls vividly the baldly stated prediction of one of the company's cofounders: "In five years," he said, "we'll have everybody on the planet on Facebook."
That's far from a given: just because older people sign up, there's no evidence yet that it's ubiquitous in their lives the way Facebook is in the school world. Nonetheless, "Facebook has emerged as the 'it' service and company ... It represents the next logical progression," says former AOL CEO Steve Case (via the messaging system on Facebook, where Case has been digitally hanging out of late; he's even friended Bill Gates). Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old Harvard dropout who started the site, is high tech's new prince. Having turned down a reported $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year—and enduring the taunts of bloggers who predicted that he'd rue the day—Zuckerberg in May took Facebook in a new direction: he opened up the Web site to thousands of developers, who can now unilaterally install applications designed to take advantage of Facebook's people connections. This, along with an astonishing growth rate of 3 percent a week, has triggered a Facebook mania in the Valley. Early investor Peter Thiel, who sits on Facebook's board, believes that a measly billion dollars for this 300-person company spread over three buildings in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., is a risible sum. Instead, he compares Facebook's current price tag to that of MTV, which he values at about seven or eight billion bucks. "Between the two, I'd want to own Facebook," he says. Not that it's for sale. Thiel and other Facebook folk are now talking about an IPO in perhaps two years that would almost certainly be the biggest public offering since Google.
Zuckerberg himself, whose baby-faced looks at 23 would lead any bartender in America to scrutinize his driver's license carefully before serving a mojito, eschews talk about money. It's all about building the company. Speaking with NEWSWEEK between bites of a tofu snack, he is much more interested in explaining why Facebook is (1) not a social-networking site but a "utility," a tool to facilitate the information flow between users and their compatriots, family members and professional connections; (2) not just for college students, and (3) a world-changing idea of unlimited potential. Every so often he drifts back to No. 2 again, just for good measure. But the nub of his vision revolves around a concept he calls the "social graph."
As he describes it, this is a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know. "We don't own the social graph," he says. "The social graph is this thing that exists in the world, and it always has and it always will. It's really most natural for people to communicate through it, because it's with the people around you, friends and business connections or whatever. What [Facebook] needed to do was construct as accurate of a model as possible of the way the social graph looks in the world. So once Facebook knows who you care about, you can upload a photo album and we can send it to all those people automatically."
Zuckerberg believes that this is what makes Facebook so compelling: as your friends join Facebook, that part of the social graph—the part that matters to you—moves into the digital fast lane and you're getting more out of your connections than you ever could have imagined. (Of course, since your friends on the graph are connected to other people, you have the advantage of seeing their friends, and expanding your circle.) Unlike services like the giant MySpace—which at more than 70 million users still wins in raw numbers—Facebook is not a place where emerging stand-up comics, hip indie bands and soft-porn starlets try to break out by tagging thousands of people as virtual friends. Zuckerberg even says Facebook isn't intended as a venue to seek out new people, though certainly it's possible to locate promising strangers whose relationship status is "anything I can get." (Proof of concept is Aaron Byrd, who as a Texas-born Harvard senior searched through Facebook networks looking for women named Grace—hey, he likes the name—lighting on a pretty U of Georgia sophomore. First he friended her and then, reader, he married her.)
Still, the Facebook experience is built around people you know, and the center of the page is a News Feed where the stories largely consist of the activities, brief status reports, photo and video postings, and comments from those you have earmarked as friends. Facebook also places ads on the News Feed, so after learning that Sue is out of her relationship and Francis has posted a picture, you may get a "sponsored story" featuring the Geico cavemen. News Feed ads are "well targeted—people like the content," Zuckerberg says, unconvincingly. Facebook also takes in revenue, from banner ads sold by Microsoft, in a partnership that's contracted until 2011.
These were stakes undreamed of when Zuckerberg, a computer-savvy Harvard sophomore who grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., started a site called thefacebook.com in February 2004. The name refers to the yearbook-style booklets of photos and vital statistics that incoming freshmen receive at Harvard. (Late the previous year Zuckerberg had apparently agreed to do some of the computer coding for a different planned social-networking site. The founders of that site, ConnectU, are suing Zuckerberg, charging that the then sophomore intentionally stalled, then took the idea from them. Last month a Massachusetts judge indicated that ConnectU's case might be flimsy, asking the plaintiffs to come up with more evidence than "dorm-room chitchat.")
Zuckerberg's site was an instant success. "It was a pretty bare-bones, uploaded Harvard directory when I signed up on the first day—but it became an immediate distraction," says Olivia Ma, user No. 51, who knew Zuckerberg because he lived in her dorm. "Within a few weeks it seemed the whole school signed up." Indeed, two weeks after its release The Harvard Crimson reported the site had already attracted 4,300 students, faculty and alumni.
Zuckerberg had done some things very right. "In the Ivy League, where very few incoming freshmen know more than one or two people, the facebook is a really key piece of the social infrastructure," says Danah Boyd, a researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Information. "Zuckerberg made it interactive. It had a slight social stalking element, too. It was addictive, it was juicy—a great way to see what was going on." Another key feature: only those in the Harvard.edu Internet domain could get in. "The fact that you could only see people on your network was crucial," says Boyd. "It let you be in public, but only in the gaze of eyes you want to be public to."
Within days of its release at Harvard, students at other schools were clamoring for their own versions of the site, and by the end of March it was at Stanford, Columbia and Yale, on its way to capturing the entire college market. But even more extraordinary was the way people used it. Facebook, as it became after a name change, was permeating every aspect of campus social life. Students even came to use its messaging function instead of e-mail.
That spring, Zuckerberg quit school, and he and his partners moved to Silicon Valley, where they met with investor Peter Thiel. "Mark was clearly a brilliant engineer with a great vision for his product," explains Thiel, who kicked in $500,000. "Mark's plan had all the fundamental characteristics you would see in a Google or eBay in the early days of those companies," says Matt Cohler, an executive who sat in on the meeting and wound up working at Facebook himself.
Later Facebook received $12.7 million in venture-capital money from Accel Partners. (Zuckerberg took this in preference to an investment offer from Don Graham—chairman of NEWSWEEK's parent, The Washington Post Company—with whom he is friendly.) Accel's Jim Breyer recalls the 2005 dinner that clinched the deal: "I ordered a nice pinot noir and Mark ordered a Sprite, telling me he was underage." Breyer was impressed with Zuckerberg's youthful passion for his product, though he says the investment was controversial within his firm—some colleagues wondered whether social networking was a fad. (The early leader in the field, Friendster, had fizzled.)
Armed with cash (the most recent influx was $25 million in 2006), Facebook began its march beyond colleges, adding high schools in 2005 (no one under 13 is permitted to register) and then "work networks" within corporations in early 2006. By September of last year, anyone could register, and the site's numbers started climbing. That's when Terry Semel, who was then Yahoo's CEO, dangled a billion dollars in front of Zuckerberg—which he blithely ignored.
Zuckerberg's next big move was to fill Facebook with all sorts of applications people could use without leaving the site—programs that took advantage of Facebook's vast social networks.
"There are a ton of different ways that people can share information, and rather than trying to develop all those ourselves, we wanted to allow anyone worldwide to create any kind of application," says Zuckerberg. Thousands of developers, from big companies to kids in dorm rooms, instantly began creating applications that piggybacked on Facebook's infrastructure. The new applications could get instant viral distribution, since the News Feed blasts a report to friends every time someone installs a new app (in other words, free promotion). Developers could make money from Facebook-embedded apps by taking ads or selling things—without sharing a penny of the proceeds with Facebook.
For instance, one company took two weeks to create a Facebook version of iLike, a music-recommendation and band-tracking service, and within a month more than doubled its users. A 22-year-old college student stayed up all night to hack a free (though less polished) version of Facebook's $1 graphic "gifts"—and 5 million people downloaded his application.
What does Facebook get from this? If all goes well, much of what people do on the Internet will be accomplished within Facebook. Instead of eBay, you can buy in Facebook's marketplace. Instead of iTunes, there's iLike. In other words, Zuckerberg wants to keep you—student, graduate or graybeard—logged on to Facebook, organizing virtually everything you do via the social graph.
Though some are grumbling about this "walled garden" system's being overly cloistered—and others believe that adding all those applications muddies up Facebook's austere appearance—1 million people a week are flocking to Facebook. And the international push is only beginning. While the site is now available only in English, Zuckerberg says that versions in other languages will appear soon. (Facebook is already the top Web site in Canada, and the geographic network with the most Facebookers is London.)
Still, one big question dogs the company in its attempt to leverage the social graph in the same felicitous—and wildly profitable—way that Google found fame and riches through search. Can Facebook be as much a presence in the life of graduates and geezers as it is to college students? Zuckerberg can't see why not. "Adults still communicate with the people they're connected with."
At this point, though, much of the grammar of the site (as well as much of the first wave of applications) is still tilted toward student life. David Rodnitzky, 35, a San Francisco marketing executive, was having a fine time on Facebook until he installed a widget called "My Questions." Unbeknownst to him, it sent out a query to people on his friend list, specifically: "Do you kiss on the first date?" "Here I was, asking some of my company's venture capitalists, along with some of my guy friends, if they kiss on the first date," says Rodnitzky. "Probably not the best way to interact." Nor is it clear whether grown-ups embrace the new SuperPoke third-party application: instead of a mere poke you can bite, slap, bump, spank, lick, grope or head-butt friends, acquaintances and, uh, business colleagues.
Also, there's a question of whether older people want to interact with fewer or more people as they nestle into their family and work lives. For some, use drops off right after they grab their diplomas; Stephanie Shapiro, 21, a recent Dickinson College grad, has seen her Facebook time drop from up to two hours a day to less than an hour a week. "It's almost an afterthought," she says. It's often one of life's pleasures to lose touch gracefully with people you'd had quite enough of—with a lifetime of Facebook you will have to delete them cruelly if you want to get free. "The social graph will get incredibly meaningless," says Berkeley's Danah Boyd. "Do you really want to be speaking with everyone you ever met?"
Facebook must also deal with persistent privacy concerns. When the company first rolled out the News Feed, and any change on a user's page suddenly began scrolling on the screens of anyone who'd added him or her as a friend, the social graph went bonkers: more than 700,000 people joined a user group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed." The company acted quickly to install privacy controls to let people opt out of the information flow, and the crisis cooled, though Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says that setting privacy preferences is still too complicated. The company says that plenty of protections are built in. "Facebook is about replicating the social restrictions of the offline world," says its chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly. The problem is that Facebook is on the Internet, and it's all too easy to circumvent those and dig up private stuff. This is all too clear from the experience of political offspring who seem engaged in perpetual competition to embarrass their parents.
Meanwhile, some in the college community—the company's most passionate users—are not happy that Facebook is welcoming swarms of people whose absence was previously appreciated: older people. "Facebook is becoming a different place as it attempts to mass-market itself," says Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina grad student who researches social networks. "Do I want to be friends with my uncle?" Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," a book about the disconnectedness of contemporary Americans, worries that the site is becoming less useful as it reaches a broader audience and adds applications. "Facebook was originally a classic 'alloy,' bonding the Internet and the real world," he says. But now he says it feels less rooted in real life.
Zuckerberg and his team feel certain that the Facebook idea will trump all these concerns. He's built a superhigh-IQ engineering team (after three years of living on Facebook, top grads desperately want to work there) who drift in late and stay much later at the cheerfully cluttered Palo Alto Facebook headquarters. "Absolutely yes," says Facebook's COO, Owen Van Natta, to the question of whether it will change the world of 30-, 40- and 50-year-olds the way it has on campus. He then amends the question to conform to the company's new unofficial, and weirdly defensive, motto: it's not just students. "Facebook did not change college life, but it changed the lives of the early adopters ... many of whom were in college. We're entering a phase where every single day we have more people over 25 entering Facebook than any other demographic. So, absolutely, yes."
Expect a lot of poking.
By Steven Levy
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - On Tuesday, July 31, Shara Karasic's world came to a temporary halt. Facebook was down. She could not follow the fortunes and foibles of her friends. She could not see if any photos had been posted that were tagged as including her. She could not even know if anyone had "poked" her (which is not a sexual act, but just a little cozier way of saying "hey, you" online). Even though she had the entire Internet to entertain her and connect her, she felt the loss. "Over the course of those four hours," Karasic says, "I probably tried to get in five or more times."
This would not be surprising if Karasic were a college student. Facebook is as much a part of campus as finals, iPods and beer—the contemporary equivalent of jamming several people into a phone booth is squeezing one's entire social life onto a series of photo shows, news feeds, invitations, friend requests and status updates on the spare blue-and-white grid of a Facebook page. Nor would it be remarkable if she were in high school, where millions of Facebook users, feeling very much like their big brothers and sisters in college, log on as soon as they toss their books on the bed, forming outrageously named groups and moving their lunchroom cliques and locker-room gossip online. Shara Karasic, however, is 40 years old, a Santa Monica, Calif., working mother with a young son. Despite a suspicion that the site was only for college students, she signed on a year ago and found professional people like herself; she quickly got requests to be "friended" from two 40-year-old cousins. And on July 31, when she couldn't get in for a few hours, she realized something: "I'm addicted to Facebook."
Addictions like hers bring joy to the already bursting hearts of the geeky, soon-to-be-loaded executives of Facebook, the hottest tech start-up in Silicon Valley since Sergey and Larry made us feel lucky. Everyone knows that Facebook is the online hangout of just about every college student in the nation as well as the inevitable source of photos of nominees for the Supreme Court in 2038 cavorting in their underwear as youths. But the student population is only a beachhead in the vast ambitions of Facebook. Its people claim that more than half its 35 million active users are not college students, and that by the end of this year less than 30 percent of Facebook users will sport college IDs.
Anything goes in the spirited Facebook world. Just about everybody updates his or her status line with pithy, haiku-ish and often profane precision. For only a dollar you can send a friend a "gift"—an image of a cute item like a polka-dot thong, a champagne glass or sushi. Thousands of groups form daily: sufferers of cancer, conjunctivitis or bad taste. People who scale public buildings in Princeton. Supporters of every politician imaginable. Facebook last year took down the student-only sign and instituted an open-enrollment policy. The idea is that as more people do this—and invite their friends to join the fun—there will be a mass movement to access the world through the interests of, and interests in, the people you know personally. Karel Baloun, an engineer who worked at Facebook until last year, recalls vividly the baldly stated prediction of one of the company's cofounders: "In five years," he said, "we'll have everybody on the planet on Facebook."
That's far from a given: just because older people sign up, there's no evidence yet that it's ubiquitous in their lives the way Facebook is in the school world. Nonetheless, "Facebook has emerged as the 'it' service and company ... It represents the next logical progression," says former AOL CEO Steve Case (via the messaging system on Facebook, where Case has been digitally hanging out of late; he's even friended Bill Gates). Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old Harvard dropout who started the site, is high tech's new prince. Having turned down a reported $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year—and enduring the taunts of bloggers who predicted that he'd rue the day—Zuckerberg in May took Facebook in a new direction: he opened up the Web site to thousands of developers, who can now unilaterally install applications designed to take advantage of Facebook's people connections. This, along with an astonishing growth rate of 3 percent a week, has triggered a Facebook mania in the Valley. Early investor Peter Thiel, who sits on Facebook's board, believes that a measly billion dollars for this 300-person company spread over three buildings in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., is a risible sum. Instead, he compares Facebook's current price tag to that of MTV, which he values at about seven or eight billion bucks. "Between the two, I'd want to own Facebook," he says. Not that it's for sale. Thiel and other Facebook folk are now talking about an IPO in perhaps two years that would almost certainly be the biggest public offering since Google.
Zuckerberg himself, whose baby-faced looks at 23 would lead any bartender in America to scrutinize his driver's license carefully before serving a mojito, eschews talk about money. It's all about building the company. Speaking with NEWSWEEK between bites of a tofu snack, he is much more interested in explaining why Facebook is (1) not a social-networking site but a "utility," a tool to facilitate the information flow between users and their compatriots, family members and professional connections; (2) not just for college students, and (3) a world-changing idea of unlimited potential. Every so often he drifts back to No. 2 again, just for good measure. But the nub of his vision revolves around a concept he calls the "social graph."
As he describes it, this is a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know. "We don't own the social graph," he says. "The social graph is this thing that exists in the world, and it always has and it always will. It's really most natural for people to communicate through it, because it's with the people around you, friends and business connections or whatever. What [Facebook] needed to do was construct as accurate of a model as possible of the way the social graph looks in the world. So once Facebook knows who you care about, you can upload a photo album and we can send it to all those people automatically."
Zuckerberg believes that this is what makes Facebook so compelling: as your friends join Facebook, that part of the social graph—the part that matters to you—moves into the digital fast lane and you're getting more out of your connections than you ever could have imagined. (Of course, since your friends on the graph are connected to other people, you have the advantage of seeing their friends, and expanding your circle.) Unlike services like the giant MySpace—which at more than 70 million users still wins in raw numbers—Facebook is not a place where emerging stand-up comics, hip indie bands and soft-porn starlets try to break out by tagging thousands of people as virtual friends. Zuckerberg even says Facebook isn't intended as a venue to seek out new people, though certainly it's possible to locate promising strangers whose relationship status is "anything I can get." (Proof of concept is Aaron Byrd, who as a Texas-born Harvard senior searched through Facebook networks looking for women named Grace—hey, he likes the name—lighting on a pretty U of Georgia sophomore. First he friended her and then, reader, he married her.)
Still, the Facebook experience is built around people you know, and the center of the page is a News Feed where the stories largely consist of the activities, brief status reports, photo and video postings, and comments from those you have earmarked as friends. Facebook also places ads on the News Feed, so after learning that Sue is out of her relationship and Francis has posted a picture, you may get a "sponsored story" featuring the Geico cavemen. News Feed ads are "well targeted—people like the content," Zuckerberg says, unconvincingly. Facebook also takes in revenue, from banner ads sold by Microsoft, in a partnership that's contracted until 2011.
These were stakes undreamed of when Zuckerberg, a computer-savvy Harvard sophomore who grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., started a site called thefacebook.com in February 2004. The name refers to the yearbook-style booklets of photos and vital statistics that incoming freshmen receive at Harvard. (Late the previous year Zuckerberg had apparently agreed to do some of the computer coding for a different planned social-networking site. The founders of that site, ConnectU, are suing Zuckerberg, charging that the then sophomore intentionally stalled, then took the idea from them. Last month a Massachusetts judge indicated that ConnectU's case might be flimsy, asking the plaintiffs to come up with more evidence than "dorm-room chitchat.")
Zuckerberg's site was an instant success. "It was a pretty bare-bones, uploaded Harvard directory when I signed up on the first day—but it became an immediate distraction," says Olivia Ma, user No. 51, who knew Zuckerberg because he lived in her dorm. "Within a few weeks it seemed the whole school signed up." Indeed, two weeks after its release The Harvard Crimson reported the site had already attracted 4,300 students, faculty and alumni.
Zuckerberg had done some things very right. "In the Ivy League, where very few incoming freshmen know more than one or two people, the facebook is a really key piece of the social infrastructure," says Danah Boyd, a researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Information. "Zuckerberg made it interactive. It had a slight social stalking element, too. It was addictive, it was juicy—a great way to see what was going on." Another key feature: only those in the Harvard.edu Internet domain could get in. "The fact that you could only see people on your network was crucial," says Boyd. "It let you be in public, but only in the gaze of eyes you want to be public to."
Within days of its release at Harvard, students at other schools were clamoring for their own versions of the site, and by the end of March it was at Stanford, Columbia and Yale, on its way to capturing the entire college market. But even more extraordinary was the way people used it. Facebook, as it became after a name change, was permeating every aspect of campus social life. Students even came to use its messaging function instead of e-mail.
That spring, Zuckerberg quit school, and he and his partners moved to Silicon Valley, where they met with investor Peter Thiel. "Mark was clearly a brilliant engineer with a great vision for his product," explains Thiel, who kicked in $500,000. "Mark's plan had all the fundamental characteristics you would see in a Google or eBay in the early days of those companies," says Matt Cohler, an executive who sat in on the meeting and wound up working at Facebook himself.
Later Facebook received $12.7 million in venture-capital money from Accel Partners. (Zuckerberg took this in preference to an investment offer from Don Graham—chairman of NEWSWEEK's parent, The Washington Post Company—with whom he is friendly.) Accel's Jim Breyer recalls the 2005 dinner that clinched the deal: "I ordered a nice pinot noir and Mark ordered a Sprite, telling me he was underage." Breyer was impressed with Zuckerberg's youthful passion for his product, though he says the investment was controversial within his firm—some colleagues wondered whether social networking was a fad. (The early leader in the field, Friendster, had fizzled.)
Armed with cash (the most recent influx was $25 million in 2006), Facebook began its march beyond colleges, adding high schools in 2005 (no one under 13 is permitted to register) and then "work networks" within corporations in early 2006. By September of last year, anyone could register, and the site's numbers started climbing. That's when Terry Semel, who was then Yahoo's CEO, dangled a billion dollars in front of Zuckerberg—which he blithely ignored.
Zuckerberg's next big move was to fill Facebook with all sorts of applications people could use without leaving the site—programs that took advantage of Facebook's vast social networks.
"There are a ton of different ways that people can share information, and rather than trying to develop all those ourselves, we wanted to allow anyone worldwide to create any kind of application," says Zuckerberg. Thousands of developers, from big companies to kids in dorm rooms, instantly began creating applications that piggybacked on Facebook's infrastructure. The new applications could get instant viral distribution, since the News Feed blasts a report to friends every time someone installs a new app (in other words, free promotion). Developers could make money from Facebook-embedded apps by taking ads or selling things—without sharing a penny of the proceeds with Facebook.
For instance, one company took two weeks to create a Facebook version of iLike, a music-recommendation and band-tracking service, and within a month more than doubled its users. A 22-year-old college student stayed up all night to hack a free (though less polished) version of Facebook's $1 graphic "gifts"—and 5 million people downloaded his application.
What does Facebook get from this? If all goes well, much of what people do on the Internet will be accomplished within Facebook. Instead of eBay, you can buy in Facebook's marketplace. Instead of iTunes, there's iLike. In other words, Zuckerberg wants to keep you—student, graduate or graybeard—logged on to Facebook, organizing virtually everything you do via the social graph.
Though some are grumbling about this "walled garden" system's being overly cloistered—and others believe that adding all those applications muddies up Facebook's austere appearance—1 million people a week are flocking to Facebook. And the international push is only beginning. While the site is now available only in English, Zuckerberg says that versions in other languages will appear soon. (Facebook is already the top Web site in Canada, and the geographic network with the most Facebookers is London.)
Still, one big question dogs the company in its attempt to leverage the social graph in the same felicitous—and wildly profitable—way that Google found fame and riches through search. Can Facebook be as much a presence in the life of graduates and geezers as it is to college students? Zuckerberg can't see why not. "Adults still communicate with the people they're connected with."
At this point, though, much of the grammar of the site (as well as much of the first wave of applications) is still tilted toward student life. David Rodnitzky, 35, a San Francisco marketing executive, was having a fine time on Facebook until he installed a widget called "My Questions." Unbeknownst to him, it sent out a query to people on his friend list, specifically: "Do you kiss on the first date?" "Here I was, asking some of my company's venture capitalists, along with some of my guy friends, if they kiss on the first date," says Rodnitzky. "Probably not the best way to interact." Nor is it clear whether grown-ups embrace the new SuperPoke third-party application: instead of a mere poke you can bite, slap, bump, spank, lick, grope or head-butt friends, acquaintances and, uh, business colleagues.
Also, there's a question of whether older people want to interact with fewer or more people as they nestle into their family and work lives. For some, use drops off right after they grab their diplomas; Stephanie Shapiro, 21, a recent Dickinson College grad, has seen her Facebook time drop from up to two hours a day to less than an hour a week. "It's almost an afterthought," she says. It's often one of life's pleasures to lose touch gracefully with people you'd had quite enough of—with a lifetime of Facebook you will have to delete them cruelly if you want to get free. "The social graph will get incredibly meaningless," says Berkeley's Danah Boyd. "Do you really want to be speaking with everyone you ever met?"
Facebook must also deal with persistent privacy concerns. When the company first rolled out the News Feed, and any change on a user's page suddenly began scrolling on the screens of anyone who'd added him or her as a friend, the social graph went bonkers: more than 700,000 people joined a user group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed." The company acted quickly to install privacy controls to let people opt out of the information flow, and the crisis cooled, though Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says that setting privacy preferences is still too complicated. The company says that plenty of protections are built in. "Facebook is about replicating the social restrictions of the offline world," says its chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly. The problem is that Facebook is on the Internet, and it's all too easy to circumvent those and dig up private stuff. This is all too clear from the experience of political offspring who seem engaged in perpetual competition to embarrass their parents.
Meanwhile, some in the college community—the company's most passionate users—are not happy that Facebook is welcoming swarms of people whose absence was previously appreciated: older people. "Facebook is becoming a different place as it attempts to mass-market itself," says Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina grad student who researches social networks. "Do I want to be friends with my uncle?" Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," a book about the disconnectedness of contemporary Americans, worries that the site is becoming less useful as it reaches a broader audience and adds applications. "Facebook was originally a classic 'alloy,' bonding the Internet and the real world," he says. But now he says it feels less rooted in real life.
Zuckerberg and his team feel certain that the Facebook idea will trump all these concerns. He's built a superhigh-IQ engineering team (after three years of living on Facebook, top grads desperately want to work there) who drift in late and stay much later at the cheerfully cluttered Palo Alto Facebook headquarters. "Absolutely yes," says Facebook's COO, Owen Van Natta, to the question of whether it will change the world of 30-, 40- and 50-year-olds the way it has on campus. He then amends the question to conform to the company's new unofficial, and weirdly defensive, motto: it's not just students. "Facebook did not change college life, but it changed the lives of the early adopters ... many of whom were in college. We're entering a phase where every single day we have more people over 25 entering Facebook than any other demographic. So, absolutely, yes."
Expect a lot of poking.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Tots getting Internet identity at birth
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name.
Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.
"One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available," Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett's online identity.
A small but growing number of parents are getting domain names for their young kids, long before they can do more than peck aimlessly at a keyboard.
It's not known exactly how many, but the practice is no longer limited to parents in Web design or information technology.
They worry that the name of choice might not be available by the time their babies become teens or adults, just as someone claimed the ".com" for Britney Spears' 11-month-old son before she could.
The trend hints at the potential importance of domain names in establishing one's future digital identity.
Think of how much a typical teen's online life now revolves around Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace. Imagine if one day the domain could take you directly to those social-networking profiles, blogs, photo albums and more.
"It is the starting point for your online identity," said Warren Adelman, president of registration company GoDaddy.com Inc., which sells basic domain name packages for about $9 a year. "We do believe the domain name is the foundation upon which all the other Internet services are based."
Hundreds of companies sell domain names with suffixes like ".com," ".org" and ".info," which individuals can then link to personal Web sites and e-mail accounts. Parents simply visit one of those companies' Web sites, search for the name they want and, if no one else has claimed it yet, buy it on the spot with a credit card.
There's no guarantee, though, that domain names will have as central a role in online identity.
After all, with search engines getting smarter, Internet users can simply type the name of a person into Google.
"Given the pace of change on the Internet, it strikes me as a pretty impressive leap of faith that we're going to use exactly the same system and the same tools ... 15 to 20 years from today," said Peter Grunwald, whose Grunwald Associates firm specializes in researching kids and technology.
Still, even if the effort is for naught, $9 a year is cheap compared with the cost of diapers and college tuition.
Besides providing an easy-to-remember Web address, the domain name makes possible e-mail addresses without awkward numbers — as in "JohnSmith24", because 23 other John Smiths had beaten your child to Google Inc.'s Gmail service.
Parents not ready to commit or knowledgeable enough on how to buy a domain, though, are at least trying their luck with Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail or Gmail.
Melissa Coleman of Springfield, Mass., grabbed Hotmail addresses for her two kids. She said the kids' grandparents occasionally send e-greeting cards to those accounts, and she sends thank you notes for gifts in her child's voice.
"I think it's great that it's so loud and that it came with an actual WORKING MICROPHONE ... and I'm not sure what `annoying' means, but I'm sure it means that Mommy loves it too!!!!," read one message to Grandpa.
She said she logs in at least once every month to keep the accounts active and plans to save all messages for when her children get older.
Tony Howells, a business consultant in Salt Lake City, got a Gmail address along with the domain name for his daughter, believing people would enjoy seeing "an e-mail address pop up for an 8-month-old who is obviously not equipped to use it."
Although some parents have yet to use the domain names they've bought, others are sending visitors to baby photos, blogs and other personal sites. Domain name owners have a variety of options to have their personal sites hosted, typically for free or less than $10 a month. They include baby-geared services like TotSites.com and BabyHomePages.net.
Theresa Pinder initially received a domain name as a Christmas gift from her son's godparents and gives it out to friends and family who want updates.
"People are like, `Wow. He already has his own Web site,'" said Pinder, a physician assistant in Phoenix.
There are downsides to all this, though: An easy-to-remember domain also makes a child easier for strangers to find. Chances are one only needs to know a child's name and add ".com."
Pankow, a database administrator in Phoenix, said that was one concern keeping him from using the domains he bought for his five children, including a 9-year-old daughter.
"I'd want to research and try to figure out how easy it is to find out what school she goes to and where she lives" based on the Web site and domain name, Pankow said.
GoDaddy and many other registration companies offer proxy services that let domain name buyers register anonymously. Otherwise, the person's name, address and other contact information are publicly searchable.
Notwithstanding the privacy concerns, Adelman said domain names for kids have become more and more popular as parents start to get domains for their business or family and realize how difficult it is to find ".com" names not yet claimed.
But the numbers are still relatively low. Our Baby Homepage, which lets parents set up personal baby pages with photos and greetings, says only 10 percent of its customers have bought their own domains. A similar service, Baby's First Site, considered selling domains for parents but didn't get much interest.
Brian Vannoy, founder of TotSites, said parents might need more lessons on safety measures such as how to password-protect sites. But he believes the hurdles can be overcome once parents who are less-savvy about technology see the benefits.
"It's easy to remember," Vannoy said. "Everybody knows the new baby's name."
Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name.
Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.
"One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available," Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett's online identity.
A small but growing number of parents are getting domain names for their young kids, long before they can do more than peck aimlessly at a keyboard.
It's not known exactly how many, but the practice is no longer limited to parents in Web design or information technology.
They worry that the name of choice might not be available by the time their babies become teens or adults, just as someone claimed the ".com" for Britney Spears' 11-month-old son before she could.
The trend hints at the potential importance of domain names in establishing one's future digital identity.
Think of how much a typical teen's online life now revolves around Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace. Imagine if one day the domain could take you directly to those social-networking profiles, blogs, photo albums and more.
"It is the starting point for your online identity," said Warren Adelman, president of registration company GoDaddy.com Inc., which sells basic domain name packages for about $9 a year. "We do believe the domain name is the foundation upon which all the other Internet services are based."
Hundreds of companies sell domain names with suffixes like ".com," ".org" and ".info," which individuals can then link to personal Web sites and e-mail accounts. Parents simply visit one of those companies' Web sites, search for the name they want and, if no one else has claimed it yet, buy it on the spot with a credit card.
There's no guarantee, though, that domain names will have as central a role in online identity.
After all, with search engines getting smarter, Internet users can simply type the name of a person into Google.
"Given the pace of change on the Internet, it strikes me as a pretty impressive leap of faith that we're going to use exactly the same system and the same tools ... 15 to 20 years from today," said Peter Grunwald, whose Grunwald Associates firm specializes in researching kids and technology.
Still, even if the effort is for naught, $9 a year is cheap compared with the cost of diapers and college tuition.
Besides providing an easy-to-remember Web address, the domain name makes possible e-mail addresses without awkward numbers — as in "JohnSmith24", because 23 other John Smiths had beaten your child to Google Inc.'s Gmail service.
Parents not ready to commit or knowledgeable enough on how to buy a domain, though, are at least trying their luck with Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail or Gmail.
Melissa Coleman of Springfield, Mass., grabbed Hotmail addresses for her two kids. She said the kids' grandparents occasionally send e-greeting cards to those accounts, and she sends thank you notes for gifts in her child's voice.
"I think it's great that it's so loud and that it came with an actual WORKING MICROPHONE ... and I'm not sure what `annoying' means, but I'm sure it means that Mommy loves it too!!!!," read one message to Grandpa.
She said she logs in at least once every month to keep the accounts active and plans to save all messages for when her children get older.
Tony Howells, a business consultant in Salt Lake City, got a Gmail address along with the domain name for his daughter, believing people would enjoy seeing "an e-mail address pop up for an 8-month-old who is obviously not equipped to use it."
Although some parents have yet to use the domain names they've bought, others are sending visitors to baby photos, blogs and other personal sites. Domain name owners have a variety of options to have their personal sites hosted, typically for free or less than $10 a month. They include baby-geared services like TotSites.com and BabyHomePages.net.
Theresa Pinder initially received a domain name as a Christmas gift from her son's godparents and gives it out to friends and family who want updates.
"People are like, `Wow. He already has his own Web site,'" said Pinder, a physician assistant in Phoenix.
There are downsides to all this, though: An easy-to-remember domain also makes a child easier for strangers to find. Chances are one only needs to know a child's name and add ".com."
Pankow, a database administrator in Phoenix, said that was one concern keeping him from using the domains he bought for his five children, including a 9-year-old daughter.
"I'd want to research and try to figure out how easy it is to find out what school she goes to and where she lives" based on the Web site and domain name, Pankow said.
GoDaddy and many other registration companies offer proxy services that let domain name buyers register anonymously. Otherwise, the person's name, address and other contact information are publicly searchable.
Notwithstanding the privacy concerns, Adelman said domain names for kids have become more and more popular as parents start to get domains for their business or family and realize how difficult it is to find ".com" names not yet claimed.
But the numbers are still relatively low. Our Baby Homepage, which lets parents set up personal baby pages with photos and greetings, says only 10 percent of its customers have bought their own domains. A similar service, Baby's First Site, considered selling domains for parents but didn't get much interest.
Brian Vannoy, founder of TotSites, said parents might need more lessons on safety measures such as how to password-protect sites. But he believes the hurdles can be overcome once parents who are less-savvy about technology see the benefits.
"It's easy to remember," Vannoy said. "Everybody knows the new baby's name."
Monday, July 30, 2007
15 Ways to Increase Laptop Battery Life : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
15 Ways to Increase Laptop Battery Life : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- Several good tips here, including dimming your screen, adding more RAM, and not leaving DVDs in the player if you're not watching them -- all of these ideas help increase your laptop's battery life. Try them.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Apple shares drop on iPhone activations - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com
Apple shares drop on iPhone activations - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com -- WOW, I'm really surprised about this...only 146,000 activations for the new Apple iPhone on the first two days of its release??? I was definitely ONE of the 146,000. This is really surprising--and of course Apple's stock plummeted after AT&T released THESE numbers. Well, let me just say, I STILL love the iPhone. It's the best little gadget I've bought over the last few years. And, I STILL have no "buyer's remorse." Now, THAT's saying something.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Can the iPhone do double duty as a laptop? - Wireless World - MSNBC.com
Can the iPhone do double duty as a laptop? - Wireless World - MSNBC.com -- Joe Hutsko of MSNBC really liked iPhone's capabilities to sub as a laptop. I'm not ready to say that just yet, but he does put the gadget through its paces.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
FILMED BY BRANDON: Nicholas discusses his drawings
This video was totally directed, recorded, and produced by my 9-year-old son, Brandon. He's using a camcorder for kids that he just picked up today. I didn't help him at all. He learned how to use the camera right out of the package by reading the directions. WOW, pretty cool!
10 Free, Essential Computer Fix-It Tools : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
10 Free, Essential Computer Fix-It Tools : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- I'm definitely going to set up a USB PC Repair Kit as mentioned in this article. The Ultimate Boot CD sounds like another keeper, too!
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Internet frenzy as fans fight to get new iPhone - Yahoo! News
Internet frenzy as fans fight to get new iPhone - Yahoo! News - Jeez, all this "anticipation" really makes me want to buy one. Ahhhhh alas, I'm not an AT&T (Cingular) user anymore and I don't plan to switch back now. That's something they don't really mention in all this hype--you MUST use AT&T Mobile. Also, like the article mentions, just how long DOES this battery work when you're using phone, mp3 player, video, and browser? Are we talking 1 hour? 2? 3?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wii a winning mix of fun, family, friends and affordability - Yahoo! News
Wii a winning mix of fun, family, friends and affordability - Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Computer game makers and industry analysts agree that Wii is trouncing rival video game consoles due to a captivating blend of ease, fun, family, friends and affordability.
April US sales of Wii consoles with simple motion-sensing controllers were more than double those of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and quadruple those of Sony's languishing PlayStation 3.
Demand for Wii consoles has outpaced supply since they debuted in November of 2006. Nintendo has reportedly sold more than 2.5 million Wii consoles in North America.
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Computer game makers and industry analysts agree that Wii is trouncing rival video game consoles due to a captivating blend of ease, fun, family, friends and affordability.
April US sales of Wii consoles with simple motion-sensing controllers were more than double those of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and quadruple those of Sony's languishing PlayStation 3.
Demand for Wii consoles has outpaced supply since they debuted in November of 2006. Nintendo has reportedly sold more than 2.5 million Wii consoles in North America.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Flip Video Camcorder is AWESOME!
The Mossberg Solution -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal. I just bought this little gadget today. Expert to see a lot more videoclips on this website soon. VERY easy to use--got up-and-running in minutes.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
PC World - Making Movies: From VHS to DVD#
PC World - Making Movies: From VHS to DVD# - Copying your home movies from videotapes to more durable DVD doesn't have to be difficult or time-consuming. Here's how to do it.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Forget CDs: Distributed music is next - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com
Forget CDs: Distributed music is next - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com
Forget everything you know about home audio. It’s all about to change. First there were vinyl records, turntable and needles. Then reel-to-reel, cassette and 8-track tapes. Finally, in the 80’s, CDs became the next “big” thing. Now, it’s compressed music files and portable players that are all the rage.
But iPods and the like are very personal devices. For the most part, they’re designed for one person to listen at a time using headphones. What about a system that would allow you to distribute, control and listen to those same computerized music files throughout your home?
That’s why the engineers at Slim Devices devised a pair of network music devices. They call one Squeezebox and its bigger, more expensive brother, Transporter.
Forget everything you know about home audio. It’s all about to change. First there were vinyl records, turntable and needles. Then reel-to-reel, cassette and 8-track tapes. Finally, in the 80’s, CDs became the next “big” thing. Now, it’s compressed music files and portable players that are all the rage.
But iPods and the like are very personal devices. For the most part, they’re designed for one person to listen at a time using headphones. What about a system that would allow you to distribute, control and listen to those same computerized music files throughout your home?
That’s why the engineers at Slim Devices devised a pair of network music devices. They call one Squeezebox and its bigger, more expensive brother, Transporter.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Nifty Tricks For Your Digital Camera : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
Nifty Tricks For Your Digital Camera : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- I'm going to definitely try some of these "nifty tricks" with my digital camera. Shooting from the ground instead of eye level sounds interesting.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Logitech Products > Webcams & Video Services > Ways to Communicate > Video 'How To' Guide
Logitech Products > Webcams & Video Services > Ways to Communicate > Video 'How To' Guide -- If you don't have a webcam in this day and age, run (don't walk) and pick one up at Best Buy, Fry's, Target, Staples, or wherever. Webcams have REALLY come a long way in the last several years. The video is crisp and clear, the audio is great, and the cost ranges from $20 to $140. I have the Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks (usually retails for $100...I got it on sale at Best Buy for $49). Click on the Logitech link to see a lot of things you could be doing with your very own webcam. I use mine for Vlogging (video blogging). Works GREAT!
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Five Ways to Watch TV on Your PC : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
Five Ways to Watch TV on Your PC : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- Sure, you might be sitting at a desk and not really thinking about 24, but why wouldn't you want to watch TV on your computer? Your LCD almost certainly has better resolution than your TV, and when you're right in front of it, with two decent speakers (or more), it can be a pretty good way to watch a show or two.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Quick Guide to IM-ing at Work : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech
Quick Guide to IM-ing at Work : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech -- These are good tips if you use instant messaging at work. Actually, they're not bad rules to follow for personal IMs, as well.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Not your father's ink-jet printer - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com
Not your father's ink-jet printer - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com -- Just bought a new HP inkjet printer for my son, Cameron, that's compatible with Vista (kinda important, didn't know that!). This multi-functional printer sounds very cool, too.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
USBTV: Watch Desktop Videos on Your TV, Easily : Tom Samiljan : Yahoo! Tech
USBTV: Watch Desktop Videos on Your TV, Easily : Tom Samiljan : Yahoo! Tech -- This USBTV is a handheld USB device that lets you play videos off a PC on any TV. Sounds pretty cool to me!
Unpacking Your New PC : Yahoo! Tech
Unpacking Your New PC : Yahoo! Tech -- Since I JUST bought a new Dell computer for my son, this article on getting all setup definitely attracted my attention. Hope it helps you, too.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Tidying Up Your Laptop : Yahoo! Tech
Tidying Up Your Laptop : Yahoo! Tech -- If you're desperately in need of laptop "detailing," you may want to read this article. ;-)
Friday, February 02, 2007
Get Better Portraits by Turning Your Camera Upside Down? : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
Get Better Portraits by Turning Your Camera Upside Down? : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- Hey, I just gave this photo-taking tip a try. I can kinda tell the difference. Why don't you give it a try?
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
TipTalk: from Microsoft At Home & At Work : Read piles of e-mail in less time
TipTalk: from Microsoft At Home & At Work : Read piles of e-mail in less time -- This is a fantastic tip. Give it a try if you want to tame the e-mail tiger!
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Delete (Erase) a Digital Photo by Accident? : Yahoo! Tech
Delete (Erase) a Digital Photo by Accident? : Yahoo! Tech -- For those of us who sometimes accidentally erase/delete digital pictures we meant to say, this link has the answer for you.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Use instant messaging and video to stay in touch
Use instant messaging and video to stay in touch -- If you've never used any of the FREE instant messaging applications like Yahoo! or AOL or MSN Messenger, then this link is for you.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Costa Living: The Five Coolest Things at CES 2007 - Gearlog#more
Costa Living: The Five Coolest Things at CES 2007 - Gearlog#more -- The people at Gearlong share their picks for the five coolest things they saw at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. Thought I'd pass them on to all of you.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Awesome Freebie: Jott Phone-to-Email Memo Service : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
Awesome Freebie: Jott Phone-to-Email Memo Service : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- This free (for now) service is pretty cool. I just signed up for it and sent an e-mail reminder by calling from my cell phone. Not only did it translate my words into text, but it also attached the message as an audioclip. How cool is THAT? Nice idea.
Hacking Through Life’s Electronic Clutter - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com
Hacking Through Life’s Electronic Clutter - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com: "Drowning in e-mail? Plagued by digital distractions? The editor of Lifehacker.com shares her organizing tips and tells us why old-fashioned index cards are still great tools."
Yahoo! 360° - a nice alternative to MySpace.com
Yahoo! 360° - Home -- Yahoo! 360° adds to the fun of Messenger. Now enjoy even more ways of staying in touch with all your friends.
I just couldn't bring myself to join the MySpace youth movement (grin). Yahoo! 360° does much the same things as MySpace, but it also connects seemlessly to the photo site, Flickr.com, and Yahoo! Messenger.
With Yahoo! 360°, you can:
Share what matters
Post photos, start a blog, critique a new restaurant, whatever...
It's your personal site for connecting with friends.
Get the latest news
Easily see what your friends have shared with you.
Check out your friends' Yahoo! 360° updates right from Messenger (just look for the yellow gleams in your Friends List).
You're in control
Don't want to show your blog to a specific friend? No problem - you decide who sees what.
Quickly and easily customize how your page looks.
I just couldn't bring myself to join the MySpace youth movement (grin). Yahoo! 360° does much the same things as MySpace, but it also connects seemlessly to the photo site, Flickr.com, and Yahoo! Messenger.
With Yahoo! 360°, you can:
Share what matters
Post photos, start a blog, critique a new restaurant, whatever...
It's your personal site for connecting with friends.
Get the latest news
Easily see what your friends have shared with you.
Check out your friends' Yahoo! 360° updates right from Messenger (just look for the yellow gleams in your Friends List).
You're in control
Don't want to show your blog to a specific friend? No problem - you decide who sees what.
Quickly and easily customize how your page looks.
SlySoft Products | Copy Movie DVDs with AnyDVD and CloneDVD
SlySoft Products Copy Movie DVDs with AnyDVD and CloneDVD -- All of these GREAT products are sold as 'try-before-you-buy'. You can try them free for 21 days in order to evaluate the software and the functions before you purchase.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Download This: Simplify Routine Tasks -MSN Tech & Gadgets - Downloads
Download This: Simplify Routine Tasks -MSN Tech & Gadgets - Downloads -- With all the websites that I have to log onto in order to get to my accounts or customized webpages, this little application that generates random passwords but allows you to keep using the same one seems like a god-send. Read about it here.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Levy Interviews Steve Jobs About iPhone - Newsweek Steven Levy - MSNBC.com
Levy Interviews Steve Jobs About iPhone - Newsweek Steven Levy - MSNBC.com: "In a two-hour speech at Macworld, Steve Jobs redefined the iPod, the mobile phone and his own company."
Playlist: Who's Afraid of the Apple iPhone Megamix
Playlist: Who's Afraid of the Apple iPhone Megamix -- Writer N'Gai Croal breaks it down as to WHO should be afraid (very, very afraid) of the new Apple iPhone. What do YOU think?
Apple - iPhone
Apple - iPhone -- Okay, with much, much fanfare (I drove by the MacWorld Expo on the way to work ;-), here is Apple's new iPhone. Click on the link to see all the features. Seems like a pretty nifty device, for sure!
Monday, January 08, 2007
Tech & Gadgets - MP3 & Digital Music - iPod vs. Zune
Tech & Gadgets - MP3 & Digital Music - iPod vs. Zune -- And the debate continues with folks posting which is the BEST digital music player...throw Creative "Zen" into the mix, and you have several different ways to go. Click on this link to read and join the "war of words."
'Elebits' allows the Wii to really shine - Games - MSNBC.com
'Elebits' allows the Wii to really shine - Games - MSNBC.com -- As everyone knows by now, it's the motion-sensing controllers that make Nintendo's new Wii the standout gaming machine that it is. What this little white box lacks in the way of visual oomph and processing kapow it vows to make up for by providing innovative game play through the use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
But the question remains: Will game developers be able to create titles that fully capitalize on the machine's unique controllers and, more importantly, use them in truly ground-breaking and gratifying ways?
Thankfully, Konami's first offering for the Wii — "Elebits" — is a sure sign that developers and publishers are, in fact, rising to the challenge.
But the question remains: Will game developers be able to create titles that fully capitalize on the machine's unique controllers and, more importantly, use them in truly ground-breaking and gratifying ways?
Thankfully, Konami's first offering for the Wii — "Elebits" — is a sure sign that developers and publishers are, in fact, rising to the challenge.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
How to Reset a Wireless Router : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
How to Reset a Wireless Router : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech -- I just set up a new Netgear Wireless Router G for the family. I hadn't upgraded my wireless router and adapters for several years (way before B, G, and N...grin). Anyway, this article may be of some interest to you if you ever have to deal with the Administrator router settings.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
TipTalk: from Microsoft At Home & At Work : Save time booting up your computer
TipTalk: from Microsoft At Home & At Work : Save time booting up your computer -- Oh, this is a GREAT tip! My laptop takes FOREVER to bootup (even after deactivating almost everything using MSCONFIG). I just tried this "hibernation" tip instead, and boy, does it work terrific!!! Try it.
5 ways I'm more productive with my mobile device
5 ways I'm more productive with my mobile device -- This article by Joli Ballew describes ways in which Ms. Ballew uses here Pocket PC to stay connected at all times. I use a Blackberry, myself...
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