eMarketer forecasts the number of US digital TV households to reach 56.5 million in 2005, up from 38.9 million at the end of 2002, according to the Digital Television report. This equates to a rise in digital TV penetration from 35.9% of households in 2002 to 50% in 2005. [eMarketer
Lawmakers to probe RFID technology
Lawmakers in California have scheduled a hearing for later this month to discuss privacy issues surrounding a controversial technology designed to wirelessly monitor everything from clothing to currency. [CNET News.com]
What Amtrak Needs…
Ever been on the train within the Eastern corridor? It’s a great way to travel… but without connectivity. Hopefully this works well enough for there to be interest here….
PR’s PR
Howard Stern said this morning that Lizzie Grubman, people-mowing PR princess and ex-con, is going to be on the show this week. Howard said there was considerable debate about whether to have her, but, hey, she asked to come on and Howard is hardly holding back his disdain for her. He calls it: She is cocky enough to think she can handle Howard. She believes her own PR. [BuzzMachine]
Jostling for the Wi-Fi Lead in a Crowded Field
Is there any advantage in having been ahead of the crowd now that just about every telecommunications company is rushing into the Wi-Fi wireless world? Wayport, a pioneer in installing high-speed Internet access in hotels and airports, is about to find out. [New York Times Technology]
Searching for the personal touch
A stealth start-up out of Stanford University is hoping to raise the heat on one of the toughest problems in Web search–and possibly out-Google Google in the process.
Kaltix was formed in recent months by three members of Stanford’s PageRank team–a research group created to advance the mathematical algorithm developed by Google co-founder and Stanford alum Larry Page that cemented Google’s fame.
PageRank has helped steer people to Web sites like no other search technology before it, harnessing the link structure of the Web to determine the most popular pages. Now, Kaltix hopes to improve upon PageRank, with an attempt to speed up the underlying PageRank computations.
That, in turn, could lay the groundwork for a breakthrough in a cutting-edge area of Web search development known as “personalization,” which aims to sort search results based on the specific needs and interests of individuals, instead of the consensus approach pioneered by Google. [Searching for the personal touch | CNET News.com]
Sounds like acquisition time for Google…
illustrated MT templates
helpful hints for understanding the layout of templates [anil dash’s daily links]
Updated list of RSS readers
Updated list of RSS readers I have updated my list of RSS readers. I’m sure there are some missing, so please let me know and I’ll add them [Blogroots]
This is a great list and I am now testing a few more ways to read my RSS files including an RSS to IMAP path courtesy of blogstreet which is very cool. I’ve also discovered a few new readers that I had no idea even existed…
UPDATE! I just realized and tested this… Through the blogstreet system, I can now receive my RSS feeds on my Tungsten C in VersaMail! This totally rocks! The posts that have come through on my computer and palm so far are very clean and easy to deal with. This system could really be a winner – especially since through IMAP, everything is nicely synced!
101 Uses for Apple IChat
People are finding many versatile uses for Apple’s iChat AV software, like sharing video across town or finding dates. Thing is, they’re not using it much for video conferencing, the task for which it was built. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
Claim: RFID Will Stop Terrorists
Food companies and retailers love radio frequency identification tags: The tiny transmitters will save them big bucks. But privacy concerns are sidelining the technology, so the companies will portray RFID tags as antiterrorism tools to win over consumers. By Mark Baard. [Wired News]
TV: the Next Portal War
FEATURE: The next phase of the Portal Wars appears headed for TV-land as developers of next-generation interactive programming guides (IPGs) race for a land grab reminiscent of headier days. [internetnews.com: Top News]
ZigBee Standard Approved By IEEE
The IEEE standards body has officially endorsed the ZigBee wireless standard, paving the way for the PAN technology to move further ahead. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]
not so special…
Thanks for signing up to become part of the Nokia N-Gage Special Forces. Due to the incredible response, we currently have filled all of our interview timeslots.
With Google News Alerts you…
With Google News Alerts you get filtered stories that can be posted to a cateogry weblog via a “mail-to-weblog feature.” This in turn generates an RSS feed that can be subscribed to. Simple. This is going to be an ongoing thing. Google slowly rolls out services they think they can control and end-users find ways to route around them. [John Robb’s Weblog]
Interesting though as JD has already pointed out and I can confirm from my own alerts, it is tricky to get these to be as accurate as you might like. Perhaps after the beta… I like the idea of looping the content through RSS, but also like getting this stuff directly as it happens via email. Email just feels more immediate to me.
Participatory Journalism
OJR is featuringJ.D. Lasica‘s series on Participatory Journalism. Lots of primo stuff in here. Required reading (and writing).
Microdoc News : “With the implementation of…
Microdoc News: “With the implementation of Google News Alerts I am becoming increasingly aware that Google Inc is fast becoming an Internet Services Company with search being an attractive core, but certainly not the main game.” [Scripting News]
PhotoReviewer
PhotoReviewer doesn’t try to be all things to all people. It is not a replacement for iPhoto or Preview. It won’t remove red-eye, or crop your photos. It won’t generate thumbnails, make HTML pages for you, or put your photos into albums. It does only one thing, really; but it does it well. It helps you wade through the stream of incoming images that you get from your digital camera or your internet connection, quickly and efficiently. It belongs between your digital camera and iPhoto. Between your scanner software and iPhoto. Between your news reader and iPhoto. [PhotoReviewer : Photo & image organization and slideshow display
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Anti-Spam – Executive Summary of International Spam Laws
Executive Summary of International Spam Laws [The DMA]
Swollen Orders Show Spam’s Allure
A New Hampshire company appears to be grossing close to half a million dollars each month by spamming people with sales pitches for an herbal ‘male enhancement’ product. The discovery may explain the intractability of junk e-mailers on the Internet. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]
Comcast to extend 3mbps trials
The cable giant plans to expand consumer trials for a high-speed Internet service, the latest step in the Comcast’s effort to double the speed of its standard cable modem product. [CNET News.com Communications]
I’d take it! We usually get about 1MB on average through Road Runner (NYC) has spiked to 2MB on occasion. I’d even pay more for more speed… especially upstream.