a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
This looks very cool… too bad the bundled games are not better. I’d like to see Defender, Space Invaders, River Raider and Pitfall.
10-in-1 Atari emulator-in-a-joystick for $19.99: “Eli the Bearded sez: Avon, the makeup company, is selling a
joystick with 10 classic Atari games in it. No console needed, just hook this up to the RCA jacks on your TV and play. I was just watching someone play it, and I want one now. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)” Source: Boing BoingIt’s a broadband world enabled by very cool devices to enable Sony to beam the content from its entertainment divisions to us anywhere we might be. Not bad at all… The airboard sounds very cool and the previously mentioned P800 Symbian device could be a wireless killer device.
Sony’s Gadget Gamble: “Excellent, lengthy article in by Peter Lewis in Fortune about Sony and its vision of the future for gadgets and consumer electronics. Get ready for the Airboard, the SDR-4X, and the Cocoon. Read…” Source: Gizmodo
My search on Google earlier today for more tricks was not too successful, though the ever-handy NetNewsWire just delivered…
Google Hacks: “
Google Hacks is just about on its way to production, ready for a late February / early March shelf-date. The book is written and compiled by Research Buzz‘s faboo Tara Calishain and features contributions from various folks of the blogosphere.
Editing this book and another, along with a plethora of other projects, have kept me pretty much utterly heads-down of late. I’ll be re-emerging soon and putting some re-found energy back into raelity bytes.” Source: raelity bytes
Google tricks is all you have to search for …
Master Ninja – Smartass Remarks
This is in no way what I was hoping to find, but perhaps with more time to kill and patience I will track down a published list of things to try.
This is cool – I wonder what other Google tricks there are to reveal rankings like this…
Internet’s most PageRanked pages: “Feeding the query string “http” to Google causes it to barf up all the pages in its database in order of their “PageRank” value. The ten most important pages on the Web today?1. Yahoo! 2. Google 3. Microsoft Corporation 4. Adobe Systems Incorporated 5. AltaVista – The Search Company 6. My Excite 7. Amazon.com–Earth’s Biggest Selection 8. CNN.com 9. Lycos Home Page 10. MapQuest: HomeThere’s something really cool about that list — the Internet is more about finding stuff than it is about stuff itself, it seems. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, Jeff!)” Source: Boing Boing
No mention on the OS, but I imagine it to be something very possible as Microsoft extends their reach into our cars, homes and phones.
Rebooting the Cash Register: “” Source: Dan Gillmor’s eJournal
Alta Vista has been through many lives in its time. From 1995 into 1996 I recall it being the search engine of choice. Yahoo came on strong in the post-Netscape IPO (not that they didn’t already have a great site) era and won over most of the traffic, creating a new world of the personalized portal. AV tried that and gave it a pretty good go… They could never quite keep up though with the traffic attracted to AOL, Yahoo and MSN. Once Google came on, they officially lost what little they had left. An under promoted venture into quick search, called Raging Search was released to compete with the pure search move, while still trying attract surfers to their portal offering.
My company helped launch the UI, rewards system and all the marketing for the Shopping service within AV in 2000. It is now an affiliate shopping service with Dealtime. At the time, it was widely regarded as a huge success, generating large traffic volumes to earn rewards and shop online. Shortly after the launch, however, AV went through an aborted IPO, lost their CEO and nuked the shopping service, which was the first of the soon to be developed/released personalized services. Game over. From that point, in my humble opinion, AV sank into the abyss… While I can certainly respect another go, it is hard to believe that they will gain any traction given the sheer strength of Google and the even deeper traction and association the surfing public has into their portal of choice.
AltaVista searches for a new image: “The struggling company is trying to recapture its former glory as a search engine heavyweight with a newly redesigned Web site that takes a cue from current search champ Google.” Source: CNET News.com
I wonder how much Microsoft’s strong moves into Interactive TV (web TV…hiring top execs from Liberate and Wink) had to do with this…
SONICblue and TiVo Drop Patent Squabble: “The two leading digital video recorder (DVR) makers decide to advance the technology instead of risking more court time or falling into obscurity.” Source: internetnews.com: Top News
We all win. RIM certainly can claim some serious victories this week based on their latest licensing agreements. Let’s hope these deals show up in products soon… If RIM is the accepted victor in wireless email and handheld keyboards, our future devices should all be well equipped.
Nokia to license RIM software: “A pact between the two companies completes a licensing trifecta for Research In Motion, which also announced deals with Palm and Handspring this week.” Source: CNET News.com
Only 4.8 million households have digital TVs, and most of those don’t even have digital-broadcast tuners to receive HDTV signals over the airwaves. Customers use the sets to watch DVDs. Nearly half the USA’s 1,300 TV stations beam at least some prime-time shows in crystal-clear HDTV.
HDTV leaps ‘last hurdle’ in transition: “TV makers and cable companies have tentatively reached a landmark agreement aimed at kick-starting the tepid rollout of digital high-definition TV (HDTV) – and eventually eliminating the need for cable set-top boxes, say people close to the matter.” Source: USA Today: Money
The women I know would all prefer diamonds…
Diamonds? Who Cares? Give Me HDTV: “If there’s a segment of the population that really wants digital television, it’s women. According to a recent study, women prefer a DTV than a 1-karat diamond ring. By Elisa Batista.” Source: Wired News
Source: The McKinsey Quarterly
Sendo was a very early supporter of MS SmartPhone, but I guess they found something better, even before their product hit the market.
Handset maker hangs up on Microsoft: “Sendo, one of the earliest hardware partners for Microsoft’s Smartphone software, will instead license the Symbian OS and a Nokia interface.” Source: CNET News.comI was pleased to read this morning that both Walt Mossberg in the WSJ and David Pogue in the NYT gave the Tablet PC a luke warm reception.
Seems they both agree that it is an expensive semi-effective novelty that will appeal to some vertical markets and gadget freaks, but comes with a host of short comings that will drive you bonkers. David Pogue sums things up perfectly:
Meanwhile, Microsoft faces a tough competitor, the dominant player in the business-meeting note-taking market. It’s a rugged, crashproof portable that accommodates any writing implement, feels just like paper and costs .02 percent of a Tablet PC. If it’s prestige you’re after, you can even tell your friends that it has a fancy name: Windows XP Legal Pad Edition.
When Everything Was Spam to ISP: “Legitimate e-mail to EarthLink subscribers was inadvertently blocked by a filter in October, which some observers think could be an indicator of worse things to come. By Michelle Delio.” Source: Wired News
I really miss AvantGo, but have a love hate relationship with them. For whatever reason they have decided not to support Palm Desktop 4.0 and Mac OS X. According to them, they just can’t figure it out and say they have spoken to both Palm and Apple. This seems like a standard line of corporate BS to me. Since they recently updated features on their web site, I was able to check my stats and realized that the last time I synced AvantGo was in March. That is about the same time I asked the question about when it would work…
Vindigo used to use the exact same method for synchronizing that AvantGo did when I was back in OS 9 and Palm Desktop 2.63. It seems that they were able to advance, but AvantGo was not. My guess is that they do not value the Mac market and have moved on without publically stating so.
In search of an alternative, I ran into Plucker. Plucker looks great, supports VFS, has a great desktop component, but does not support Mac. There is sourcecode available, but so far no know build for Mac that has been released. I tried get things going but quickly ran into the limits of my understanding of the command line and the developer tools.
Anyone know of a release either private or public that can be shared? Perhaps an alternative solution?
Palm and Microsoft have switched roles in their battle to control the handheld market. The former is pushing more expensive models while the latter is pushing less expensive ones. The battle is for control of the cellphone market too. “Both PalmSource and Microsoft believe that sometime in the next few years, nearly every handheld device will have wireless capabilities built in.” So far PalmSource has stayed ahead by betting that consumers aren’t ready for PDA/cellphone combinations, but neither company has a clear advantage says the piece. Source: Mercury News
Qualcomm ships globetrotting phone chip: “The company ships a chip that lets a mobile phone use nearly all of the world’s wireless networks, regardless of the standard they’re based on. Verizon may be a customer.” Source: CNET News.com
The real question is whether you want to watch a movie on your computer… How can this possibly compete with VOD over cable and satellite systems? I don’t think it can. This is an idea that waited too long to make a difference in my humble opinion.
The Potential for Net-Delivered Movies: News.com article on both the legal and customer challenges facing online movie delivery services such as Movielink, Intertainer and Movieflix. Their conclusion: net-delivered movies will have no impact on the business as the customer base for the business is too small. Source: Paid ContentThe picture says it all… Nokia is not fooling around.
Wireless game console from Nokia: “” Source: infoSyncThe N-Gage mobile game deck, together with branded game titles from top games publishers and developers, will be available for purchase February 2003. To ensure a steady supply of games, Nokia has teamed up with Sega – a collaboration which will have Sega develop games for the Nokia N-Gage which will run on the Nokia Series 60 platform and Symbian OS. The branded outbox games will be available separately on memory cards in MMC format.