Archive for October 1st, 2008
Smelly MacBook Pros Not Good for You
Strong-smelling MacBook Pros have been discussed on Apple forums, but an anonymous French molecular biologist/researcher went to Greenpeace to check out why his smelled. Greenpeace got Analytica involved, and then Inéris, France’s national institute covering the industrial environment. Apparently benzene is a component of the smell, and this could be risky — over time, sensitive people could develop leukemia. Unconfirmed stories suggest the problem Mac Pros have been built in Ch...
How about Being Your Favorite Gadget for Halloween?
With October ringing in today, of course thoughts turn to Halloween — yes, I know it’s nearly a month away. Wonder why we don’t see any trick or treaters dressed up as their favorite gadgets? Would be pretty easy to be an iPhone (or just about any cell phone for that matter, but those clam shell designs could be trouble?). TV set or computer monitor is another good one — at least for head gear. What do you think? Does this make any sense? And if it does, what ...
AT&T Reorg Could Be the First Step Toward Layoffs
AT&T’s move to reorganize itself into four business units is likely a precursor to layoffs, according to sources within the company who asked not to be named. The reorg comes as AT&T tries to adjust to the realities of the credit crunch, a diminishing access line and DSL business, and increased headcount caused by two large mergers in the last three years. News of the reorg, which will see the creation of consumer, business, infrastructure and diversified products business units, ...
Nokia Takes Another Crack at IM With OZ Buy
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, has agreed to buy Montreal-based OZ Communications for an undisclosed amount of money in a move that will allow the Finnish handset maker to offer consumer IM technologies on its phones. Nokia’s internal IM efforts don’t even merit an “F” and this purchase pretty much proves it. OZ has about 5.5 million monthly paid users, and partnerships with carriers and many other handset makers. As we’ve already noted, OZ h...
Adtran IP 706 Review
Adtran recently launched their IP 700 series of IP phones in late April. Adtran sent TMC Labs the IP 706 model, which supports up to 6 lines, but the 700 series also includes the IP 712 which is identical feature-wise but supports up to 12 lines. Each line can be configured to register with unique SIP proxy/registrar servers. This allows a different line for every line key on the phone. A line is called a multiple call appearance (MCA) type if it will be assigned to one or more line keys on th...
Skype 3.8 Hotifx Released Today
In addition to the launch of the Skype for Windows 4.0 Beta 2 program today, Skype also released a hotfix update for its current public release version 3.8. It includes support for High Quality Video on the Logitech Vision Pro camera in addition to the Logitech Carl Zeiss optics cameras previously supported, support for mjpg webcams (at the legacy 320 x 240 resolution) and updates to the Firefox and Internet Explorer toolbars, amongst other minor changes. Go to Help | Check for Updates on your c...
Google Data Centers More Efficient Than the Industry Average
Google today released the findings of some of its internal research, which shows that the company runs some of the most efficient data centers in the industry, without resorting to exotic techniques. The findings were based on the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric, which is defined as the ratio of the total power consumed by a data center to the power consumed by the IT equipment that resides inside of it. For instance, a PUE of 2.0 means that for every watt of power needed to run equipmen...
Online Music
The news this week in online music is that Best Buy is buying Napster and now has anti-trust approval from the FTC to do so, according Yahoo news. Also, Yahoo News reports that “After approval by the U.S. House and now a nod from the Senate, the Webcaster Settlement Bill is headed to President George W. Bush’s desk for his signature. The bipartisan bill will allow copyright owners and artists, on behalf of SoundExchange, to negotiate with Internet radio services. The bill i...
IBM’s Cell Chip Gets Another Home: TV
Like some sort of silicon Superman, IBM’s Cell processor, originally designed (in Austin!) for the Sony Playstation 3, is taking on even more duties. After its starring role in the PS3, it co-starred with some AMD x86 chips in RoadRunner, the fastest supercomputer ever built. Meanwhile, engineers started putting it in blade servers for high-performance computing. Now IBM says it will return to its entertainment roots in a Toshiba television due out next year, making it official: Big Blue&...
2009 Microsoft MVP Award
Today, I was awarded a 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award, making this the second year in a row I’ve been granted this prestigious award that has fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide. As part of the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) announcement, a message from CEO Steve Ballmer said, “As the independent voice of users worldwide, your influence on technical communities is felt in many ways–enhancing people’s lives and contributing to our industry’s success. We̵...
Next stop: Athens, Greece
Later today I will be leaving New York to attend Stream 08 a special un-conference taking place in Athens, Greece. I am looking forward to being part of the group of people attending, contributing to and participating in this event. Im honored to be invited and have the opportunity to participate in the experience. Im not sure what my Internet connectivity will be like but I look forward to posting photos and videos from this event here in my blog while I am in Athens. Tags: Athens, WPP, Str...
eBay publicist kills a meme
Here’s a tweet from an eBay publicist, Richard Brewer-Hay, auto-sent from their new new-media aggregator and PR coverage home page. The eBay Ink blog sucks up feeds from eBay and subsidiary blogs, and seems to be a well designed and executed system while suffering from a corporate, inauthentic voice. And the answer is: No. When eBay offers IVR (voice menus) and Skype CRM (sales and contact management) for sellers that are: Turn-key (zero install) Simple (15 minute setup) Hosted ...
Discounted Tickets for Social Capital Markets Conference
A growing number of entrepreneurs are seeing — and seizing — the opportunity to apply for-profit technology models to pressing social and environmental issues, from health issues in the developing world to green products in the U.S. A new breed of angel investors and investment firms alike are ready and willing to take a gamble on some of these companies. On Oct. 13-15 in San Francisco, The Social Capital Markets Conference 2008 will bring together entrepreneurs and investors like these, co...
Don???t Pay Ransom
The world shouldn’t pay ransom to Somali pirates; clearly the ransoms paid lead to more piracy. The US shouldn’t pay ransom to Wall Street; ransoms paid will reward past reckless behavior and incent reckless behavior in the future. They won’t “save the ecomomy”. I’m sure you’re getting as tired of reading about the bailout as I’m getting tired of writing about it ??? but it just won’t go away. Congresspeople are now saying that constituent ...
Amazon EC2 running Windows Server and SQL Server
Amazon just announced that Amazon EC2 will soon run Windows Server and SQL Server. The announcement was made to Amazon Web Services developers this morning. This announcement may be partly in response to Microsoft who has been building a hosted development platform of their own. In fact, Microsoft is expected to announce the hosted platform officially at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business,...
Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud Gets Windows
All you Microsoft-lovin’ techies out there, rejoice! Amazon said today it is now using Microsoft’s Windows Server in its Elastic Compute Cloud. That broadens the number of applications that can run on the service and the potential customer base. It also means that when the service is out of beta some time later this year, GoGrid and FlexiScale, which also provide a Windows computing platform, will have lost a competitive edge against Amazon Web Services. For those who want to know ...
Network Neutrality Exists!
The often-cluefull Geoff Daily heard some network manager state that “There’s no such thing as network neutrality,” and he swallowed it. Now, I’ve looked into the hearts of men and women, and I can flatly state that there’s no such thing as good people. I’ve analyzed at all kinds of governments to conclude that there’s no such thing as democracy. So why should network neutrality be any different? Such assertions are not only absurd, they’re degradi...
Quel Surprise: StumbleUpon Evolves!
StumbleUpon unveiled some major changes, highlighted by the news you’ll no longer have to use the plug-in/browser toolbar to benefit from StumbleUpon’s popular Web site discovery service. For extensive details on the changes, head on over to VentureBeat, which did an interview with SU co-founder Garrett Camp, who suggests the removal of the toolbar could boost SU’s user base to 50 million to 100 million from six million. Stepping back, what’s particularly interesting abou...
HP Buys LeftHand Networks to Boost Storage Chops
Computing giant Hewlett-Packard said today it would spend $360 million in cash to buy LeftHand Networks, a storage company that straddles two hot trends right now — allocating storage for virtualized servers and the using Ethernet for storage networks. LeftHand’s software essentially allows a user to create a storage “cloud” connected via iSCSI, an Ethernet standard rather than the proprietary Fibre Channel networking that dominates the storage industry. The software cou...
Google No. 2 Cleantech Venture Investor in Q3
Google has taken such an enthusiastic role in investing and promoting clean energy that, in terms of number of deals, the search engine giant was the second most-active cleantech venture investor during the third quarter. Google invested in five cleantech startups during the three-month period ended Sept. 30, according to a report from the Cleantech Group, including lithium-ion battery startup Actacell, geothermal company AltaRock Energy, electric vehicle makers Aptera Motors, high-altitude wi...
Next Stop - BroadSoft Connections
This a busy time for industry conferences, and like everyone else, I’m trying to pick my spots and attend what I can while still leaving time to get the work done that pays the bills. Last month I attended two conferences - IT Expo and Toronto Tech Week, as well as a handful of local vendor briefings. This month I’m going to two vendor events so far. Other things may well pop up, but I’m definitely trying to limit my road time. Next stop for me will be BroadSoft Connections 200...
Google’s SketchUp Goes to Work for Green Buildings
Michelle Kaufman's mkLotus design in SketchUp Back in 2006, when Google acquired startup @Last and its 3-D modeling product, SketchUp, most observers saw it as a nice add-on for Google Earth, perfect for “hobbyists and enthusiasts.” But since then, the SketchUp program has blossomed into a tool in its own right, used by design professionals to fashion everything from consumer products to urban landscapes to country homes. Green design professionals are particularly taken with...
Mike Bartlett on Skype 4.0 Beta 1 Feedback
Earlier today we posted information about the availability of Skype for Windows Beta 2 along with a video as well as download and feedback links. This morning Product Manager Mike Bartlett put out a post where he provided more details about the information gathering process that contributed to the redesign: Different types of users gave us very different feedback. For example, in the Skype forums, where some of our most experienced users hang out, we heard a lot more negativity, in particular ar...
texas peeps
"loves Skype! keeps me in touch with my Texas peeps!" — Jackie Gilbert tags: skype, texas, distance, friendster Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype. Follow Skype Journal on twitter ...
Skype the US Congress
One-click call to Congress. Email corrections and your stories about your Skyping your elected officials to tips@skypejournal.com. Revised 30 September 2008. State District Home Page DC Phone District Phone Contact Form AK SR Ted Stevens (R) 202-224-3004 907-376-7665 Contact Form AK JR Lisa Murkowski (R) 202-224-6665 907-376-7665 Contact Form AK 00 Don Young (R) 202-225-5765 907-225-6880 Contact Form AL SR Richard C. Shelby (R) 202-224-5744 205-759-5047 Contact Form AL JR Jeff Sessi...
Hello October! Beantown Bound
It is October and they are still playing Baseball in Boston and Chicago and LA and Philadelphia. Just not in New York, where even a combined payroll of $335 million doesn’t buy a playoff birth. The only team(s) more incompetent is in Washington DC, playing football with the future of US. The ignominy that is NY Baseball (with its all sorts of lame excuses — injuries) makes it hard to get on the plane taking me to Boston. I still can’t believe I am going to Red Sox Nation where...
Europe Leads Global Broadband Growth Again
Led by Germany and the UK, broadband subscriptions continue to grow faster in Europe than any other region in the world, trade group Broadband Forum said today, rising to almost 120 million out of the worldwide total of 380 million, in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the U.S. still has the lead in terms of raw subscriber numbers — with China expected to soon surpass it, according to the data, which was compiled by DSL and broadband-focused research firm Point Topic. And it makes clear tha...
Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 2 Available Wednesday
Wednesday, October 1, the second beta release of Skype 4.0 for Windows will become available for worldwide testing. Via a mix of the Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 1 feedback channels involving legacy users and new users, bug reporting and usability issue forums and direct surveys that resulted in over 45,000 participants’ responses and feedback, Skype learned: 70% were in favor of the new “large desktop” user interface; about 30% wanted to return to the traditional compact user ...
Survey Says…Cable Sucks
Cable providers rate poorly on both customer service and pricing, but thanks to their speedy broadband service, they have so far managed to score more customers than the phone companies, according to a survey out today from research firm CFI Group. The survey, which quizzed 1,318 households online at the end of June, measured consumer satisfaction with telecommunications providers. The research showed that while cable providers were getting more customers for the time being, telecommunications ...
T-Mobile’s 3G Network Comes Alive in San Francisco
Three full weeks before T-Mobile’s Google-powered G1 handset is due to arrive, the wireless carrier has lit up its high-speed wireless spectrum in San Francisco. The UMTS/HSDPA service is usable on handsets that currently support the 1.7 GHz frequency like the upcoming G1 and the currently available Sony Ericsson TM506, allowing their owners to take advantage of a network not yet oversaturated by data-hungry devices. San Francisco was on a short list of cities slated to receive the fast...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.