July, 2005 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for July 2005

GigaOm Widget, ready for download

Folks a few days ago I had asked for help on a GigaOm widget for Mac Dashboard. Anders just in a most generous gesture created one for me. So all my readers who have Tiger, hopefully this is worth downloading and installing on your dashboard. Read More »

Tablet PC Show #18 is here!

The Tablet PC Show #18 (MP3 – 19.0MB – 55min)LISTEN HERE Join Marc and I for Tablet PC Show #18 where you’ll find some fun and hopefully interesting talk about all things Tablet PC. We examine the social factors that sometimes become a barrier to … Read More »

 
 

Best paper airplane in the world

Building cool and functional paper airplanes was never my forte but this site makes it easy for anyone to make a great one.  Labelled the “DC3″ of paper airplanes the site offers step by step instructions for turning a sheet of ordinary paper into a … Read More »

Technorati goes mobile, why?

Given that their browser based search is still a bit of hit and a miss, it is tough to figure out how they improve the Technorati experience on the mobile phone. As I said in my previous post, Technorati optimized for Palm Treo (how of … Read More »

Mobile Phone a Social Computer

David Beisel is quite impressed by Trip Hawkins’ portrayal of the mobile phone as a social computer. Hawkins’ who is the founder of Digital Chocolate, a mobile gaming company is of the Silicon Valley set that came of age in the PC era. He was … Read More »

Fujitsu’s all-in-one VoIP phone

Akihabara News is pointing to a new all-in-one phone by Fujitsu. The Linux-based phone running on a 400 MHz chip has 128 megs of RAM, 64 megs of ROM, and 802.11b built right into it. The phone also has CF and SD card slots so … Read More »

Content, the risk in war of the wires?

The Economist has a sort of ‘lay-of-the-land’ piece on incumbent phone companies and their IPTV strategy. It is a lot of what we all know, except packaged nicely for those who don’t follow the arcane happenings in the world of telecom. What I find amusing is … Read More »

GMail Lockdown?

Srijith says Google has locked down his GMail account for 24 hours. “Our system has detected abnormal usage of your Gmail account. As a result, we have temporarily disabled access to this account,” says Google’s email. Other folks have experienced this problem, but not me. … Read More »

Skype now allows users to make calls to toll-free numbers in several countries free of charge, even if you don’t have SkypeOut.  You can now call the following countries using toll-free numbers: France: +33 800, +33 805, +33 809 Poland: +48 800 UK: +44 500, +44 800, +44 … Read More »

Cool Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC review

Unless you are as old as some of us around you may not remember that IBM introduced a pen-enabled ThinkPad in 1993.  The ThinkPad 750P was ahead of its time with no real OS support to take good advantage of the pen capability, and since the … Read More »

Happy Birthday Marc!

Join me today in wishing Tablet PC Show co-host Marc Orchant a very happy birthday!  It is a very special day for Marc as he can now get that big discount at Denny’s!    :) Read More »

Rob Bushway’s thoughts on the LE1600 keyboard

There is little doubt the Motion LE1600 Tablet PC is one of the most capable slate Tablets available today and anyone who has followed Tablet MVP Rob Bushway’s journey with his LE1600 can see how great the device is.  Rob has chronicled his experience with the … Read More »

More Must Reads

I am testing the BlogJet program for creating blog posts offline for upload at a later time. BlogJet looks really nice since it works with just about every blogging service out there (TypePad included) and most importantly lets me include graphic smileys!    I have … Read More »

Windows world is all tipsy topsy over the release of new Internet Explorer 7 Beta which has amazing ground breaking features as tabbed browsing. Apparently, it is/was breaking the Google toolbar and some of the Yahoo’s older toolbars. There is word of the Beta … Read More »

We all know and love the XTen Softphone. Well, we all might have to call it with some other name, because the company has been in a bit of legal tussle over the name with Xtend Communications Corp, a New York-based company. Xtend had filed a … Read More »

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that HP will stop reselling iPod. It was a bad idea to begin with, and now its over. HP accounted for about 5% of total iPod sales. HP will still distribute the iTunes software on its computers. It was a … Read More »

iTunes 4.9 has changed my life. (Okay, not my ENTIRE life, but a large part of it). I’m totally digging these podcast things, and iTunes makes it easy and simple to download new episodes and sync them with my iPod. However, there are a few issues … Read More »

YPulse points to yet another social networking site, gasp…. for Beautiful People. Beautiful People got itself coverage in USA Today. Don’t bother visiting the site with any of these browsers – Safari, Camino and Firefox – i.e., the browsers of choice for the smart … Read More »

Folks I am on multiple deadlines for the magazine this week so the posting has been slow. Perhaps it gives you all a chance to catch up on the reading… seriously, its been a rough week and I will likely be posting at crawl speed over … Read More »

Skype says it is cutting prices on SkypeOut service. The service that allows Skype users to call PSTN is now going to cost 0.017 Euro per minute. Skype is trying to spin this, but price cut show that that the SkypeOut adoption is slower … Read More »

The Washington Post took a look at the Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC and according to the reviewer "gets it right".  The reviewer likes the feel of the pen on the screen and the quality of the hinge swivel mechanism.  If you are interested in … Read More »

I have been a long-time follower of Jeff Kirvin’s Writing on your Palm website because Jeff’s writings are usually right on the money where mobile technology and PDAs are concerned.  While a big fan of Palm devices Jeff has never hesitated to use other products … Read More »

France Telecom is making a concerted effort to converge home communications and entertainment services into the Livebox service that has been available to customers for some time.  They recently announced the addition of "Liveservices" which adds a WiFi-based cordless home phone to the internet, telephone and … Read More »

The story of Brice Mellen of Lincoln Nebraska is one of the most amazing ones you will ever hear.  Brice has been blind since birth and has used his 17 years to learn to play video games.  Well, he doesn’t just play them, he is … Read More »

Pretec has introduced a new 4 GB SD card that is a high speed addition to the company’s growing line of memory cards.  The 4 GB card has access speeds up to … Read More »

The Technorati experience just got a little richer for those accessing the web from mobile devices with the introduction of Technorati Mobile.  The new mobile edition is formatted specifically for the small screens of handhelds and mobile phones and provides the same rich search capabilities … Read More »

As discussion has intensified over potential problems with the shuttle re-entry due to the foam problems I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed over NASA’s public grounding of the shuttles while Discovery is in space.  This is something that could surely have waited until the … Read More »

“The halo effect enabled them to go after PC users and sell them Apple products,” said Will Poole,, the Microsoft executive in charge of desktop operating system products. Read More »

Huawei, might be becoming a fixture in telecom bids around the planet, but its low-cost products are finding few takers among the US telecoms, reports The Wall Street Journal. The company which is on a tight leash from its masters in China made all the … Read More »

Andy says “In marketing, it’s what makes you different that matters.” Andy is right, Michael Robertson should articulate why Gizmo is better! And it is – for many reasons. Open, elegant, simple to use, and it works with many different SIP networks. Read More »

Dan Gillmor discovered that Macromedia was putting stuff in the shopping basket which he did not order. They call it convenience, and it is everything but. I hope they fixed this glitch. One of Macromedia employees has been in touch and is working on getting … Read More »

Sonos might have set the bar for digital music systems for the home, but that doesn’t stop others from trying, and knocking it off its perch. The latest is San Francisco-based Olive Inc, which has just launched Symphony, a wireless music hub powered by IBM … Read More »

So what’s the big news about a new review of the several years old Sharp Zaurus SL-5500?  The SL-5500 is antiquated by today’s PDA standards and even Sharp has released a couple of later … Read More »

Alera Technologies announced the availability of the USB Copy Cruiser Plus (UCCP) that provides a direct USB to USB connection between two devices eliminating the need to connect … Read More »

Tapwave has posted a notice on their website informing customers the Zodiac has been discontinued and that service and support are no longer available.  This is really sad as the Zodiac was one of the most innovative handheld devices to hit customer’s hands in a … Read More »

MSNBC columnist Brad Stone pokes fun of his digital life and all the work, scheduling and planning that goes into maintenance of his high-tech gear.  It’s a very funny read so if you find yourself trying to find time to schedule that defrag or backup … Read More »

Rob Bushway has updated is first impressions of the Motion LE1600 Tablet PC and the result is a good review of the new slate from a user’s perspective.  Rob covers the slate, convertible keyboard, battery and even the bump case.  For a complete overview of … Read More »

America Online is one step closer in its bid to transform itself from a dial-up ISP into a content powerhouse. The company has just announced MyAOL (it must be 1999, Yahoo people are thinking.) The most exciting part of the news is that they are taking … Read More »

I just got Skyped by Dave Ciccone who points me to a video demonstration he’s done showing how to capture podcasts directly onto the PSP.  This requires a new 2.0 ROM and of course a WiFi connection.  Cool stuff, Dave! Read More »

Business 2.0: How do you get people to pay for a Web browser? Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner found the answer by diving into wireless. I interviewed him, and asked him how come he can charge for a product that is available for free. … Read More »

Business 2.0: It uses less power than a night-light and plugs into a TV. Best of all, as the first $100 computer, it’s affordable enough to propel the rest of the world into the digital age. The inside story of Novatium, an Indian start-up, that … Read More »

On the heels of its first beta release which we covered a few weeks back, a new Beta version of the Mac OS X Gizmo Project is out. Among one of its more notable new features, is support for Encryption of Gizmo-to-Gizmo … Read More »

I caught this on MacNN a couple of days ago. Henrico County Public Schools is preparing to sell some of its used iBook computers that had been used as part of its effort to provide that provided laptops to every middle- and high-school student and teacher … Read More »

Just like cell phone companies trying to lure you with free phones, now VoIP providers are offering free hardware with their service package. Chris has tips on how to use it with the Gizmo Project SJ softphone. Read More »

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