Archive for December 2008
It’s the holiday season, the season of giving, and the people behind MacHeist are giving away a bundle of free applications through the Mac Giving Tree. It’s simply a case of signing up and returning on Christmas Day to receive the promotional codes and … Read More »
It looks like Roku made its first move to go beyond being just “the Netflix player” this weekend. Firing up the ole Roku box this afternoon brought up the new home screen instead of immediately jumping directly into the Netflix streaming queue like it … Read More »
The folks over at Lumosity are serious about the brain. Some of the leading neuroscientists in the world have come together to create a brain fitness program to improve your brain’s health and performance. Although the full Lumosity brain training program involves many other … Read More »
This is a test of live blogging from the iPhone in preparation for our CES trip. :)
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Chanukah Sameach, everyone! In today’s Station Conversation, Jill Weinberger gives Liz Shannon Miller a brief education on Hanukkah…through online video, of course.
Liz: Hey, when is Hanukkah this year?
Jill: Sundown on the 21st.
Liz: That’s Sunday! We should do something to celebrate.
Jill: The thing is, it’s … Read More »
We have a broadband problem in the U.S. There’s not enough real competition to drive either innovations or price reductions. This is also true of cable television, was true for landline phone service and will likely be true for wireless broadband service for a few … Read More »
I had a hard time watching Thursday’s NFL game, and not just because the Indianapolis Colts won. While their comeback was tough to take for this New England Patriots fan, it was not as difficult as trying to watch the game on a cell phone using … Read More »
The week of the contest has flown by and we want to point out that the last day to enter is tomorrow. That’s only two days left to have a shot at over $6,000 of holiday tech goodness put up by our friends at HP and … Read More »
More Must Reads
By Omar McFarlane
Dec. 20, 2008, 2:30pm PT
Only two months after going into beta, AOL has released AIM for Mac 1.0. Unfortunately, not a whole lot has been changed since our review of the beta. There is still no option for video or audio chats, and beyond the addition of AIM … Read More »
It’s time to get out my asbestos coveralls because the touchscreen faithful always appear with their flamethrowers when I broach the “touchscreen in laptops” subject. This is a hot topic currently as almost every day we see rumors that “netbook X” will be appearing with a … Read More »
By Kevin Kelleher
Dec. 20, 2008, 9:00am PT
Let’s say Steve Jobs retires next year. So what?
I’m one of those in the lonely camp that doesn’t believe Jobs is Apple and Apple is Jobs. Or that when he disengages from Apple the wheels must necessarily fall off.
Jobs bought Pixar in 1986, and … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Dec. 19, 2008, 7:23pm PT
Monday Update: Over the weekend repair crews were dispatched for all three cables. Engineers arrived at the SEA-ME-WE3 and SEA-ME-WE4 cables on Sunday. India, Singapore, and about 80 percent of Egypt (according to the Egyptian government) regained internet service. Reliance said it expects the FLAG cable … Read More »
By Darrell Etherington
Dec. 19, 2008, 5:00pm PT
By Josie Garthwaite
Dec. 19, 2008, 5:00pm PT
Bring On the Renewables: A new study suggests California’s electric grid may be able to handle three times as much wind and solar energy than previously thought. — Wired Science
Picturing Federal Priorities: Andrew Revkin looks at trends in the government’s non-defense R&D spending since 1953 … Read More »
Getting content from the web to your TV is driving the release of several new set-top boxes such as the Roku, Apple TV and ZeeVee. And yet one of the top chipmakers in the set-top box market doesn’t see those types of appliances winning out over … Read More »
By Samuel Dean
Dec. 19, 2008, 4:00pm PT
Have you been using Google’s open source Chrome browser? If you’re like me, you use it some of the time, and take notice of how speedy it often is, but favor Firefox for the many useful extensions that it supports. Because of the might of the … Read More »
By Charles Moore
Dec. 19, 2008, 3:00pm PT
Apple’s new notebook-oriented 24-inch LED Cinema Display is certainly a glorious piece of equipment. If you’re not up to speed, this 24-inch LED-backlit 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution glossy-finish widescreen unit includes a built-in iSight video camera, mic and speakers in an elegant, thin aluminum … Read More »
By David Ehrlich
Dec. 19, 2008, 3:00pm PT
The Recording Industry Association of America has decided to end its five-year-long lawsuit campaign against music file sharers, the Wall Street Journal reported today, with the major record labels opting to instead work with ISPs to combat the practice. Some major ISPs have apparently already … Read More »
Foxit Software are the folks behind Foxit Reader, a free PDF reader that is a great alternative to the standard Adobe Reader. The folks at Foxit know text file conversion and formats and in a surprising twist are going to introduce an electronic ebook reader … Read More »
By Josie Garthwaite
Dec. 19, 2008, 1:30pm PT
Japanese shipping giant Nippon Yusen K.K. and oil distributor Nippon Oil Corp. today launched the first-ever cargo ship with a propulsion system powered, in part, by solar energy. The freighter, which left a port in Kobe carrying vehicles by Toyota, sports $1.68 million worth … Read More »
Hard to believe, but the big national switch to digital TV is less than two months away. Nielsen released its December update on the national readiness status and found that the number of U.S. households completely unprepared for the DTV switch dropped to 6.8 percent from … Read More »
Just a quick reminder that if you haven’t entered already you’d better jump in and do so soon. The contest ends in just a few more days and that $6,000 prize package is definitely going to someone and it might as well be you. Find the … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Dec. 19, 2008, 1:00pm PT
There are a large number of project management applications and service out there; we’ve looked at many of them in the past. Most of them are explicitly … Read More »
By Jill Weinberger
Dec. 19, 2008, 12:30pm PT
I’ll admit it; I’m not the biggest fan of bodily fluid-related humor. And Benny and Rafi Fine — aka the Fine Brothers — tend to hold nothing back when it comes to the gross, the inappropriate, and the completely NSFW. But … Read More »
By Katie Fehrenbacher
Dec. 19, 2008, 12:00pm PT
Greening product lines and reducing carbon footprints is clearly a point of pride for tech companies — so much so that it’s got Dell’s competitive juices flowing. In the wake of Apple’s claims that its latest Macbook is the world’s greenest notebook, Dell decided to … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Dec. 19, 2008, 11:00am PT
By Katie Fehrenbacher
Dec. 19, 2008, 10:45am PT
By Dawn Foster
Dec. 19, 2008, 10:00am PT
With any luck, you might also have a few slow days during the holidays: clients are on vacation, the family is driving you nuts, and you’re caught up on “real work”. What now? I even have a wish list that I hope will help me turn … Read More »
By Mathew Ingram
Dec. 19, 2008, 9:35am PT
The Recording Industry Association of America, which has spent the past five years suing tens of thousands of individual file-sharers for copyright infringement, has apparently decided to change tactics, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal (hopefully this one is a little more … Read More »
By Josie Garthwaite
Dec. 19, 2008, 9:30am PT
President Bush has announced the federal government will provide $13.4 billion in emergency loans for Chrysler and General Motors and another $4 billion that will become available in February. If the two auto companies do not prove profitability by March 31, 2009, the government will demand … Read More »
Universal Music Making “Tens of Millions” from YouTube; between YouTube and other streaming sites, company has gone from making nothing on music videos to nearly $100 million today. (CNET)
YouTube Responsible for 25 Percent of All Google Searches in the U.S.; if it was on its … Read More »
This week saw big changes in the gear at Mobile Tech Manor (MTM) and the freeing up of a lot of desk space. I played around with getting multi-touch to work in Vista and have created a great work scheme using Parallels on the MacBook. Come … Read More »
