December 2006 Archives

Admittedly, I'm on an Ars Technica bender today. They test Windows Vista on old hardware to see if it'll run ... or run like an old dog.

The worst: The HP LaserJet 1020 -- HP's cool, cheap printer -- won't work.

Another red flag:

We expect that the biggest headache for users will be so-called in-place upgrades. While Vista was reasonable on all the machines where we performed a clean install, it was an absolute mess on the machine upgraded from XP, and this problem has been noted by others.

And ...

For a great experience, we would pack all of the systems with at least 1GB of RAM. We make the same recommendation for XP today.

Another Infinite Loop special: There really are vending machines that sell iPods Here's Jacqui Cheng on the phenomenon:

So is anybody buying these things? As it turns out, they are, and "they" are buying a lot of them too. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is reporting pretty good sales from their electronics vending machines, which happen to include iPods (among other things, such as headphones). A single vending machine in Concourse A of the airport has made $55,000 worth of sales in just one month.

The company that makes the machines, Zoom, says that customers seem to have no resistance at all to buying multi-hundred-dollar items out of a vending machine. The company's executive vice president, Mark Mullins, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "We put in some iPods and found we couldn't keep them in stock." And so a star was born.

Just last week, I was at the State Street Marshall Field's Macy's in Chicago and saw an iPod vending machine in the Men's department. iPod nanos were completely sold out.

I'm just gonna repeat what I found at Infinite Loop, via the UK. Here are the top 10 Apple Computer rumors of all time:

1. Apple Computer to buy Nintendo
2. Mac OS for the PC
3. Return of the Newton
4. Apple to buy BeOS
5. A "secret" OS X build
6. iPhone
7. iTunes record label
9. "True" video iPod
9. 30th anniversary Mac
10. Apple to buy Disney

Of course Infinite Loop itself, and the many commentators below feel the list is lacking Here are two of those comments:

here:

My top ten dumb Apple rumors of all time.

1 Apple teams up with Nintendo (I mostly remember collaboration rumors not buyout ones).
2 Apple has some super secret chip in development that will allow Macs to smoke windows PCs in performance.
3 Apple getting serious about game market.
4 Apple will make its own Office-killer software.
5 Apple will go bankrupt and go out of business in (insert year here).
6 Microsoft will buy/and/or already owns Apple
7 Apple will gain exclusive access to some super secret technology that will enable them to crush windows pcs in performance (similar to #2 but not the same)
8 Using a new display patient Apple will create Macs that the whole case will change colors and pulsate to user perference. (disco iTunes iMac baby)
9 Steve Jobs will leave Apple to run for Office.
10 Apple will license OS X to PC makers.

and here:

SONY to buy Apple
Apple and Disney to merge
iPhone (they registered www.iphone.org in 1997, or something like that, rumors ever since)
Newton/PDA (true, but never released)
Apple's dumping Motorola (true)
Apple's going IBM (true)
Apple's going Intel (true)
Apple's going bankrupt (not so true)

The Sony Reader is positioning itself as the electronic book of the moment. It costs $349 and can hold "hundreds" of books at any one time, with thousands available for purchase:

The Sony® Reader offers a new and convenient digital reading experience. It boasts an amazing screen with technology that rivals text on paper. Weighing less than 9 ounces2 and at only ½� thin, it’s more compact than many paperbacks. Plus, it comes with a soft, black cover and software that seamlessly allows you to search and browse thousands of electronic book titles from the Connect® eBookstore and then easily transfer from your PC to your Sony Reader.3 With built-in memory and multi-format support, you can take many of your favorite titles and documents with you. So compact and convenient, you’ll want to take it everywhere.

The screen technology is unlike anything else out there (I've really got to see one of these in person):

What is e Ink® Technology?

The Sony® Reader’s display uses e Ink® - a significant improvement over CRT and LCD technology. Instead of rows of glowing cells, e Ink® microcapsules actually appear as either black or white depending on a positive or negative charge determined by the content. The result is a reading experience that’s similar to paper - high contrast, high resolution, viewable in direct sunlight and at a nearly 180-degree angle, and requiring no power to maintain the image. In other words, it's a screen that, like you, is well read.

Click is supposed to be all about cool Web entertainment, and today I will not disappoint you. Yogabeans is a Web site that exists for one reason, and one reason only: To show plastic action figures doing yoga poses. And if that's your kind of thing, by all means.

The dialog is freakin' priceless:

Spiderman: "Okay, paarsvottanasana means "intense side stretch pose," so what you need to do first is step your feet about three feet apart and get your hands behind your back in reverse namaste."

Barbie: "Reverse namaste? What's that?"

Spiderman: "It's like -- it's like when you put your hands together in prayer, but you slide them up behind you, between your shoulderblades."

Barbie: "Ohmygod, reverse prayer position? That is totally the position of Satan."

Spider-man: "Uh, I never thought of it that way . . . "

Barbie: "Okay, listen, don't worry, I'm totally badass bendy, if Satan comes in I will get all up in his shit, okay? But is it okay if I lean up against the wall while we do this?"

Spider-man: "Why do you need the wall?"

Barbie: "Because I can't stand up on my goddamn feet."

Spider-man: "Whoa!"

Barbie: "See what I mean? I mean, I look really hot in heels but I'm fucked if I need to find a pair of sneakers that fit."

Spider-man: "Yeah, I can see how that'd be a problem . . ."

Barbie: "So, if you could just support me while I get into position?"

The blog writer calls herself (I'm assuming herness, but could be wrong) Elastigirl and issues this disclaimer:

None of the plastic action figures seen on this site are certified yoga instructors.

Fair enough.

The e-mail came through a couple of hours later: All five of my Blogger blogs moved over from the old system to the new one. I looked for little things that might be wrong ... and they really did think of everything. I thought having similar account names on both systems, plus blogs on both, started at different times, would cause problems.

But all is well and working great. Hats off to Blogger and Google for what must be a difficult technological transition.

Now if only Google Docs could do real smart quotes and paragraph indents that translated into real Word formatting ...

I finally got the re-invite to move my four old Blogger blogs to the new Blogger. During the process, I got the message above. I think that the whole mechanics of blogging is a programming feat in itself, but automatically moving blogs from one system to another? I can only imagine.

P.S. I haven't yet gotten the e-mail that all is well ... and when I log into the new Blogger, I get my old blogs in the old Blogger. Where my new blog in the new Blogger is ... that's a mystery.

You might not have noticed as a reader of blogs on the Blogger service, which is owned by Google in case you didn't know. But if you write a blog on Blogger, and especially if your blog has maybe a couple hundred posts or less, you've no doubt been pestered by Blogger to move your blogs over to Blogger Beta, which brings the process further into the Google fold.

By "further," I mean that the blogs in the Beta are tied to a Google account, rather than the separate Blogger accounts that have been used until now. Not a big deal for me, because I already have a Google account for Gmail, Google Groups and Google Docs. Clearly they want eveyone who uses Blogger to also use more Google services (including AdSense, I'm sure) that add more directly to the parent company's bottom line.

And the Blogger Beta (which went out of that status yesterday, if I'm correct) does things a little differently. First of all, blogs don't "rebuild" after each post is published. The updating process is much quicker, since posts are part of each blog's database, and the blog page itself is built on the fly for each visitor who accesses it. As a reader, you don't notice the difference, except that the fonts all look a bit different.

Other Blogger Beta features include the ability to restrict the readers of a blog by e-mail address. I guess there is some kind of login process. Google seems to think that blogs are more -- or can be more -- than people like myself blathering about who knows what for who knows who. Instead, the blog format (which really, when it comes down to it, is a unique and useful way of presenting and organizing information), as Google envisions it, is something that can be applied to business, where the information in any given blog is not necessarily for public consumption.

I think they are on the right track, although the whole idea of public blogs (like this one) is not something that's going to go away or ebb in any significant way.

One thing for sure, the nature of the blog itself will change. Daily News online guru Josh Kleinbaum clued me in to a new Yahoo! service that, as he explained it, is a video-based blog-like thing (couldn't find it, but I'll inquire later). In other Yahoo! news, the company has a video service meant to compete with YouTube.

It also has Yahoo! Go, which feeds video, audio and still photos from both digital cameras and mobile phones to your home-entertainment devices, and featuring a virtual online DVR with no TiVo-like fees (with compatible TV tuner cards, of course). Go to the faq to read more.

Back to the Beta ...

Just to check compatibility with all my old programs and hardware, I started a new blog in the Beta, This Old Browser, which has many scintillating posts about ... old browsers, including the quest for the holy browsing grail, which is the elusive Netscape 4.8 ("Hey, I though it went from 4.7 to 7, you say," but you'd be wrong.) I didn't get the invite yesterday, as I have about six times in the past few weeks, but once it does come, I will move the rest of my Blogger blogs over to the Google-ish new system.

My editorial on the iPod, digital downloads, and the transformation of the music industry is in the opinion section of today's Daily News:

Like the portable CD player before it, the Sony Walkman, cassettes, LPs, 45s, 78s, wax cylinders and radio, the iPod represents a degree of technological evolution and change that would come one way - and with one device - or another.

And when your Shuffle will no longer shuffle, the devaluation of recorded music as a salable product - given that it's too easy to get for free - is transforming entertainment way more than the iPod itself.

While on the topic of wax cylinders (have you ever even seen one of these pre-record media?), BoingBoing today had a post on the curious "digital rights management"-type statement printed on the 1907 cylinder. I guess you could call it an analog rights management disclaimer.

If you don't understand the French introduction to Jerome Murat's television performance, don't worry. There's nothing that host in the tux could say that would add anything to his work anyway. He's a mime who can make you forget any pest in white makeup who ever dogged you down Pier 39 or along the Venice boardwalk, or the also-rans in an Intro to Theater course who should have stayed in their imaginary boxes. Et merci beaucoup a mon aimee Bunny pour le video.

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend, and now that I've gotten the cliche out of the way, if you're loaded and looking for a last-minute gift, BoingBoing points us to a diamond-encrusted USB drive, made in solid platinum with 350 white diamonds and 4 gigabytes of storage. Cost: $40,000.

She didn't want A GIANT LEXUS ... just a diamonds-and-platinum THUMB DRIVE.

Look on the bright side, it's upgradable, so when 4 GB seems small, they'll pump it up, according to the original post on ShinyShiny. Going back another link, it has 350 white diamonds, total weight of 5.8 carets, and the drive is a Sandisk.

The Stor-Data Web site that's selling this thing barely works, but hey, when you're peddling $40,000 thumb drives, who needs a working Web site?

I've been working on the Powerbook 1400, the 10-year-old project computer I've been shaping up as much as I can to work in the 21st century. From cleaning the mold off of its bag to loading a new operating system to getting Ethernet to work on the office network and with my home DSL connection, it's been a geeky six-month journey, all chronicled at http://thisoldmac.blogspot.com (I'm not hot-linking until later because I am NOT hand-coding, and no blogging software supports browsers this old -- I'm using IE 5 for Macintosh at the moment).

I'm no techno-genius, and this project happened more due to the enticement of resurrecting a laptop for free than for any other reason. This past week, I got the Powerbook working on 802.11b wireless -- this from a computer produced when the World Wide Web itself was just getting off the ground (about three years into the WWW's life, I believe) and nobody had anything but dialup -- and wireless hadn't been invented, at least for Web connections.

While I've gotten it to work as well as I can, there's nothing like a modern (i.e made in the last two years) computer with fast processors, adequate memory and up-to-date software. But if you have to get along with old, creaky hardware, it can be done, and you will have fun doing it.

The internet is entertainment, no way around it. So it only makes sense that newspapers begin to cover the internet the way we cover movies and television. Which means the inevitable end-of-year lists.

So here, from the Associated Press' Jake Coyle, is a list of the Top 10 YouTube videos from 2006, with the videos embedded for your viewing pleasure:

2006 was the year YouTube became culturally ubiquitous. Declared the invention of the year by Time magazine, the video sharing web site had Ohio judges posting their weekly sentencing hearings and spawned countless explosive experiments involving Diet Coke and Mentos candies. YouTube, based in San Bruno, provides a list of the most viewed videos, which remains the gauge upon which all clips are judged. Here, though, are the most significant YouTube videos of the year:

1. THE FACE OF YOUTUBE: The cute, bedroom confessions of Lonelygirl15 remain the site’s quintessential expression. Of course, the pretty high schooler named Bree was eventually revealed to be 19-year-old actress Jessica Lee Rose, who was acting out a scripted plot with two behind-the-scenes producers. But that strange mutated duality of what’s real and what’s fiction, what’s amateur and what’s professional, remains the heart and soul of YouTube, where everybody and nobody is a star.

2. NETWORK WAKE-UP CALL: Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday� mock-rap sketch was, in some ways, what started the revolution. The video was seen by more than five million viewers before NBC asked YouTube to remove it in February. Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg’s rhymes boosted the hipness of “SNL,� but more importantly, it was the first time networks were alerted to their new competition. NBC reacted fearfully, and later opted to built up its own Web sites with online video. The networks continue to experiment with YouTube; recently, CBS has claimed its late shows have increased in ratings after posting clips from “The Late Show with David Letterman� and “The Late Late Show� on YouTube.

3. POLITICAL FALLOUT: YouTube — like the Internet in general — has made it a specialty to reveal the gaffes and mistakes of the establishment. Of course, few would say Virginia Sen. George Allen didn’t deserve his fate after a video of him calling a rival campaign staffer “macaca� drew constant clicks on YouTube. Allen went on to lose an extremely close election — a race that YouTube could well have turned. On the other end of the spectrum, Michael J. Fox’s tremulous campaign ads for various Democratic candidates who support stem cell research proved powerfully effective and were seen by millions more than would have otherwise caught them on TV.

4. FLOUNDERING FOUNDERS: When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in October, YouTube
founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen posted a goofy, unrehearsed video with a glint in
their eye and a smirk on their face that said unmistakably: “We just became insanely
rich.� It was true to YouTube style, but the site’s video-posting community couldn’t help
thinking, “Didn’t we do all the work?�

5. OK STOP: MTV turned 25 this year, but it became clear a long time ago that its programming doesn’t have room for music videos anymore. YouTube’s expanse is endless, of course, and the site turned a little-known power pop group into the music video sensation of the year. OK Go’s video for “Here it Goes Again� was made in one long take with the amateurish creativity that YouTube specializes in. Their playfully choreographed treadmill dancing was the most absurdly graceful thing of the year: YouTube saved the video star.

6. CELEBRITY SPY: Michael “Kramer� Richards’ racist rant at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood in November would have drawn headlines without YouTube, but would millions have seen it? We’ve all become trained at this point: if something happens — check YouTube.

7. NOT JUST TEENAGERS: Though YouTube is generally viewed as a playground for the young,
many elderly people have seen its unique facility for communication. A user named Peter
who goes by the name geriatric1927 has become one of the biggest and unlikeliest stars of
the YouTube community. Dubbed “Virtual Granddad,� the British 79-year-old is beloved for
his “Telling it all� series of posts in which he warmly recalls his life stories — from
his days as radar mechanic during WWII to his life as a motorcycle salesman.

8. DOCUMENT OF INJUSTICE: A number of videos led to legal action that might not have otherwise been taken. Footage of a police officer striking suspect William Cardenas in Hollywood was viewed in court in September and a Superior Court commissioner ruled the officer’s conduct was “more than reasonable.� But after the video hit YouTube, it triggered an FBI investigation. The law can work both ways on YouTube, though. When two Nebraska teenagers posted a video making threats against their high school, they were soon arrested and ticketed on suspicion of disturbing the peace.

9. INTERNATIONAL COMPENDIUM: Unlike perhaps anything before, YouTube compiles videos from around the world, making for a truly borderless repository of pop culture. We’ve become accustomed to seeing soccer highlights among the most-watched YouTube videos, and aren’t surprised to see videos in Japanese or other languages. In this environment, two art students in China — known as the “Two Chinese Boys� — became internationally known without saying a word. The basketball jersey-wearing duo (Huang Yixin and Wei Wei) captivated with their passionate lip-synching of Backstreet Boys songs.

10. STAR MAKER: One of the most viewed, most discussed videos shows a slight figure, his face obscured by a beige baseball cap, sitting in front of his bedroom computer playing electric guitar. Sounds typical right? Except he’s playing a rock arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon using a difficult technique called sweep picking. The guitarist, named in the video only as “funtwo,� was eventually revealed to be a 23-year-old Korean named Jeong-Hyun Lim, now known the world over. Others, like the comedy duo Barats & Bereta, parlayed their video success into deals with giant media corporations like NBC Universal. Some didn’t find fame on purpose: Aleksey Vayner saw no humor in his boastful video application for an investment banking job.

O.J. Simpson's latest 15 minutes of infamy may have passed for many of us, but the site geeks at GSN.com aren't over it. Those still thoroughly disgusted by his ploy to profit from his alleged crimes with a book and a TV special can work out their anger with an online game called "Throw the Book at O.J." The idea is to put the crosshairs on The Juice and then click to clobber him with airborne copies of "If I Did It" as he dodges behind a sign about a cancelled bookstore appearance. It's primitive, as these current-event-inspired games usually are, but there's something satisfying in scoring points by bruising him.

You're not the only TV star who figured out that the internet can create a comical dialog with your audience.

That's right. Conan O'Brien gives us hornymanatee.com.

Because we all need some horny manatee. For the history of The Tee, check out this New York Times story.

Yes, that's Mark Pender, the great trumpet player from the Max Weinberg 7 (who also toured in Springsteen's Seeger Band and is a longtime member of Southside Johnny's Asbury Jukes). Pender has provided some great Conan moments, including a hilarious ode to Gigli, which I have long searched for on YouTube, to no avail. So if you've seen it, post a link.

Got a glimpse at Target while the pharmacy was prepping my antibiotics. Dang is that thing small! That's the way to do it. I'm not a gamer, so other than that, I've got nothing, and I leave you with our resident expert, Redmond Carolipio, who likes the Wii.