Information Week:
Windows XP SP3 Sows Havoc, Users Complain. Always happens with an SP release.
NY Times Fashion & Style:
Steampunk hits the bigtime. I have to say, I didn’t realize it was a fashion movement as well.
Extreme Tech seems
to like the beta of DropBox for file sharing and syncing.
Dr. Dobbs Portal:
“Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion. The chance of running into all kinds of memory problems is gradually outweighing the performance penalty you have to pay for garbage collection. Another language that has had its day is Perl ...”
Extreme Tech:
Review of the new 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor. You really do want 10,000 RPM for your Windows boot drive.
Shared code snippets …
Snipplr. Some EE and other weblog stuff in here.
NY Times Editorial:
That Book Costs How Much? Mark my words, this is how the e-book will enter the mainstream.
The US Copyright Office
is experiencing delays. But you can help beta-test their new electronic system in the meantime.
Wired:
Pay Attention! Brain Scanners Detect Slip-Ups Before You Do. “Researchers observed test subjects’ minds going on autopilot up to half a minute before the subjects actually made mistakes, even though the subjects weren’t aware of their own lapses of attention.” computers need I one of those ...
37 Signals:
Great video ... The secret to making money online. The top vid didn’t work for me ... try the bottom one. You can find more of these “startup school” presents on Omnisio (lower left). Thnx, korf420.
Extreme Tech:
Review of an external RAID array.
The Economist:
I like the term ”techno-bedouins.”
NY Times Business, DealBook:
Yahoogle? Yoogle? Gahoo? Goohoo?
Guardian.UK:
Kindle helps tiny ebook market. “The market is very narrowly confined, to New York and Seattle and to a few people who travel and read a lot.” To repeat myself, I’ll have my prose without batteries, thank you very much.
CNet:
Microsoft will extend life of Windows XP - again. For low cost PCs.
Random observation:
Two more people of my acquaintance, burned by Vista in the workplace ... planning to switch their personal computing from PC to Mac. Trend seems to be accelerating.
CNET:
Turning over a new leaf at Quark. “It may well have been down to some pent-up anxiety over the level of customer service we were delivering, particularly in Europe, but we are fixing this. We may also have been perceived as expensive. I mean, people probably looked at Adobe’s products and probably felt that they had to buy PageMaker and Illustrator, so they pretty much got InDesign free anyway.”
Woof. They’re still not living in the real world. I, and everyone I know who utilized Quark, purposely and intentionally moved away because InDesign was simply a better product, no matter the price ... and could export PDFs without grief, which more and more printers were requesting. Quark killed Pagemaker because of the precision of placement, thousands of an inch (Pagemaker couldn’t). You could enter measurements directly by keypad in the interface. That single feature converted more people than any other in the early days. Printers loved the precision, hated the increasing quirkiness with every update. Quark got too big for its own boots, buying Strata 3D and making other wacky business decisions. I have a feeling the inertia of existing code and interface will remain daunting, and unless they make better strides with PDF creation, they will remain at the current marketshare.
From 2.3 to 2.4:
New OpenOffice is available for download.
NY Times Technology:
Comcast Adjusts Way It Manages Internet Traffic. “Comcast said it would change its fundamental approach to playing Internet traffic cop. Instead of interfering with specific online applications, it will manage traffic by slowing the Internet speeds of its most bandwidth-hogging users when traffic is busiest.” I have a feeling they’ve been doing this anyway. I don’t torrent, but when I’m busiest, doing the most uploads to websites I’m designing, I seem to get throttled for a period of time.
seifi.org:
Whats new in Safari 3.1 Web Inspector and Snippet Editor. If you’re using the Windows version as I am, go to Preferences > Advanced and click the Develop menu checkbox. When I opened the Web Inspector, I got nothing but blank panes ... right-click the leftmost pane, and choose “Reload”. Interesting things lurk within that Develop menu, for later perusal.
The Economist:
Online social networks: Everywhere and nowhere. “No more logging on to Facebook just to see the ‘news feed’ of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.”
ReadWriteWeb:
The Best Tools for Visualization. Visualization/mapping tools for just about every interest.
Rob Galbraith:
Adobe releases Camera Raw 4.4, Photoshop Lightroom 1.4.
NY Times Tech:
Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam. ISPs need stretch waistbands on their bandwidth.
CMS Wire:
CMS Watch Puts CM Vendors in Their Place. Their ‘subway’ map. Their site.
