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OK, We All Know McCain Didn't Invent the BlackBerry
Tweet Share on Facebook September 16, 2008 Comment (5)Sen. John McCain's campaign staff quickly disavowed comments of an aide who suggested a committee membership made him an inventor, calling them a misinterpreted joke. That didn't stop bloggers from jumping all over the remark. The New York Times even felt compelled to assure us "The original BlackBerrys were made by a Canadian company, Research in Motion."
Sheesh. At least some readers have a sense of humor, as relayed by Sarah Lai Stirland in her Threat Level blog:
"McCain economic adviser claims McCain invented the Blackberry. I'd vote for him if it was the iPhone," joked "mnoreen," on Twitter.
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Backblaze Has the Guts to Declare Itself Ready
Tweet Share on Facebook September 16, 2008 Comment (1)The online backup service Backblaze officially launched from testing today. The launch includes nice improvements, including unlimited free Web restores of your data. That removes a 1GB limit per download.
More notable is that the service cut the cord. Backblaze declared itself ready for primetime after only three months of public testing. That's gutsy in this day of endless Web Betas. Google is the worst, what with new services—including four-year-old Gmail—stuck in endless "testing."
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Seagate's New Drives Add Docking Stations
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2008 CommentBacking up should be a little bit easier with new docking stations that Seagate is selling alongside its external hard drives. The company's FreeAgent drives also get new colors and a slimmer look, and versions for the Apple Mac.
The docks are an industry first, Seagate says. They offer a simple way to connect the drives to one computer. They offer a USB connector in the case of the PC dock, and a Firewire 800 connector for Macs. The PC dock costs $30 in addition to the drives, which start at $120 for 250 gigabytes.
The Mac drives come preformatted for OS X and can also be connected to USB or Firewire 400 ports via cables. The FreeAgent Go Drive for Mac includes the desktop dock and a carrying case and starts at $160 for 250 GB.
I've had a chance to try the Mac docking port, and it does offer a bit more convenience for someone who disconnects the drive often for taking it along. Having a dock saves fumbling for another cord. But I'm not sure it's worth the $30 premium, and it fills a valuable Firewire 800 port on a Mac.
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Competitors Gang Up on Apple and Its iPod
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2008 CommentApple and its iPod/iTunes is the bogeyman in a new corporate gang just unveiled. The consortium includes major movie studios, electronics makers, and retailers that want to establish a system for sharing content that is copy protected.
Apple is reportedly invited to join what's called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem. But don't expect the iPod maker to join anytime soon.
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Multiple PCs per Consumer Now the Norm
Tweet Share on Facebook September 12, 2008 Comment (1)Portables are getting so cheap that we can no longer use traditional measures to predict how many PCs will sell in coming years, say analysts at IDC, a market-tracking firm.
We should no longer look at how many homes are adopting PCs, or even the number of PCs per household, says Bob O'Donnell, vice president for clients and displays.
Instead, we should look at the number of machines per individual.
In other words, I've already got a desktop and a laptop. But I've wanted to buy an Asus Eee, which can be had for $300 or so. Or maybe an HP or Dell version as manufacturers rush to the market with ultraportables.
My takeaway from IDC: I should just buy it and not feel wacko. It's mainstream to own multiple PCs, even multiple portables. Different PCs, different purposes.
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Taking the Plunge with VoIP
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2008 Comment (8)I finally flipped the switch. After years of toying with phone calls over the Internet, I've cut off Ma Bell and now get my service from the new kid on the block. The cable company. All right, not the newest kid in the neighborhood, but new to phone service.
I'm no early adopter here. Millions have already made the switch.
But my home phone is my office phone, so I've held back despite my enthusiasm for what's called VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. I've tried VoIP from startups like Vonage and Packet8, and the service was good, even if the quality was occasionally suspect. Calls would drop, not often but more often than with traditional Ma Bell service. Or I'd hear static or echoes.
More than anything, though, I worried about getting my phone number caught in a startup's failure. I've a colleague who lost control of his number for some days after Sun Rocket went belly up.
The local cable company ain't going anywhere soon, even though it's the struggling Charter Communications. But at $30 or $40 a month, cable has wanted too much to make the switch worth it. And Charter finally made an offer too cheap to resist: $15 a month for voice service with all the bells and domestic long distance. That's compared with the $45 a month I've paid AT&T.
Besides, I recently convinced my sister and dad in Florida to try cable phone service. Time for me to do the same.
I'll let you know my experience. Meanwhile, let us know yours in the comments below.
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Google's Supposed Enhancements to Privacy are 'Totally Worthless'
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2008 CommentGoogle got good play the other day for saying it would enhance privacy protections, reducing from 18 to nine months the time it would keep identifiable information on its users. But Chris Soghoian in his Surveillance State blog calls the announcement outright "deception" and says the new policy is "totally worthless."
Whew. No mincing words there.
He says Google is doing nothing appreciable by altering our unique Internet addresses, or IP addresses, in its records. That's because the company will still maintain cookies on our computers, which allow Google to track our searches and post relevant ads.
First, remember that Google will not delete or anonymize user cookies from the logs when it slightly smudges IP addresses after nine months. Second, remember that as long as you use a Google Web property at least once every two years, the company will maintain a unique identifiable cookie value within your Web browser.
Sounds like he has a point.
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'Unwanted Apple Stuff' Continues to Irk Users
Tweet Share on Facebook September 10, 2008 Comment (1)I have to wonder if Apple's new iTunes 8 is compelling enough to overcome the reasons Russ Neumeier at GeekDad said he wouldn't be updating the music player anytime soon.
Like some of us, he's weary of Apple's increasingly aggressive efforts to foist "unwanted Apple stuff" onto our PCs. Apple has returned to hounding me to install its Safari browser, even after I several times have told its software updater to ignore Safari revisions.
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Is it That Easy to Game Google News and the Markets?
Tweet Share on Facebook September 10, 2008 CommentIt seems easy enough to try again, on purpose. The fact is that some clicks sent an outdated story to a newspaper's list of "Popular Stories Business: Most Viewed." Then Google's bot picked it up, a newsletter picked it up from Google, and United Airlines's stock went into freefall.
We don't know how many clicks it took. But it's safe to assume that at 1 a.m., it didn't take many to elevate the story.
So, if I were an unscrupulous stock trader with time to kill, why not try? Click away with one hand, and have the other on the "buy" button—ready to pounce when the shares take an unwarranted dive.
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Apple Rolls Out New Music Players, iTunes, and iPhone Update
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2008 Comment (1)Apple rolled out a raft of products in time for the holidays, including new models of the iPod Touch and Nano. There's also a software update aimed at further easing problems with the iPhone 3G.
But perhaps most interesting are the changes to iTunes. Now, TV shows can be in high definition and can be watched on computers as well as through the Apple TV. A new iTunes 8 adds a "Genius" feature that suggests similar songs from the listener's library or bought from the iTunes store.
There's a good overview of the announcements at ARS Technica by David Chartier.
