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FireWire Not Dead, But It's On Life Support
Steve Jobs Controls the Universe
Free Kodak Software Helps Find, Organize, Fix and Share Photos
Gmail gains 'Web clips' feature
It May Have Lost Apple's Laptop Business, But Freescale Semiconductor Is Moving Along Just Fine
VueScan Multi-sampling vs. Silverfast's
Mac Webcomic Humor
Email: Can't Live With It, Or Without It
eWeek: Intel Research Shows Compound Boosts Chip Performance
eWeek: Flash Memory: Today the iPod, Tomorrow the World?
eWeek: Junk Mail Beats Spam Again in '05
eWeek: The Chicken, the Egg and the Linux Desktop
eWeek: Intel, AMD Believe in the Power of Four
eWeek: Mozilla Downplays Firefox 1.5 Exploit
FireWire Not Dead, But It's On Life Support
ZNet blogger Jason D. O'Grady says:
I was genuinely surprised when Apple dropped FireWire sync from the iPod nano. So much so that I almost returned mine when I first made the gruesome discovery. I thought for sure that FireWire would live forever in the bigger iPods and that it was just a casualty of the nano's small size. Unfortunately, FireWire's almost dead completely.
....I'm hearing that FireWire is gone completely from the new Intel iBooks that are coming next month.....
For the full commentary, visit:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=57
Steve Jobs Controls the Universe
smartmoney.com's Monica Rivituso says:
Steve Jobs wants to sit on your couch.
Actually, the brains behind Apple Computer and Pixar wants to sit on your couch, play your videos, tune your music and arrange that slew of photos from your California getaway into a dazzling slide show. This, if you ask me, is what Steve Jobs really wants.
Now, this is what Steve Jobs is doing: He's ringing your doorbell and pushing a sleek video iPod up against the glass pane. He's got Walt Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger and NBC-Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker in tow, each armed with baskets of digital content. It's enough to thrill even the tiniest iPod devotees.
In other words, Jobs is wooing you anew. It's the same thing he's been doing for years, only this time the stakes are higher, the technology is more sophisticated and the partnerships are all the more critical. We're talking about the digital home, yes, but more importantly, we're talking about who owns the consumer. And right now, Apple's in an enviable spot.
For the full commentary, visit:
http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/Techsmart/index.cfm?story=20051208&afl=yahoo
Free Kodak Software Helps Find, Organize, Fix and Share Photos
Thw WallStreet Journal's Walter S. Mossberg says:
If you get a digital camera for Christmas or Hanukkah this year and start snapping away, you can accumulate hundreds or even thousands of digital pictures amazingly quickly. And even if a lot of them are fuzzy images of red-eyed relatives, you'll soon need a good way to find and organize them on your computer, and to easily touch them up, email them, upload them to the Web and print them.
You could use the software that came with the camera for some of this, but, in general, software created by hardware companies isn't very good. Since most people use Windows computers, they will likely just dump the pictures into the My Pictures folder that Windows provides. But this folder was never meant for true photo organizing.
If you use an Apple Macintosh, you're in much better shape, because Apple provides a very good built-in photo-organizing program called iPhoto. But iPhoto isn't integrated with any of the popular online photo sites that let you store and share pictures. And, of course, it's unavailable to the vast majority of people, who use Windows.
However, there's a very nice photo-organizing program out there that's free, works on both Windows and Mac and is closely integrated with one of the best online photo sites. It brings most of the best features of iPhoto to Windows users, and for Mac users, it offers tight integration with a Web-based photo site.
For the full review, visit here:
http://ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html
Gmail gains 'Web clips' feature
IDG News Service's Juan Carlos Perez reports:
Google is adding a new feature to its Gmail Web mail service that lets users display links to various types of Web content, such as news articles and blog entries, according to information posted this week on the What's New section of the Gmail Web site: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html
Gmail users can customize the new Web Clips feature so that it displays links from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom syndication feeds or to news articles about specific topics, for example. Web Clips items appear along the top of the Gmail screen.
"Each clip displays the source from which it was received, how long ago the clip was published, and a link to access the entire story or page containing the clip," according to an explanation of the new feature posted in Gmail's help section http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=18219
For the full report, visit here.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/12/08/HNgmailwebclips_1.html
It May Have Lost Apple's Laptop Business, But Freescale Semiconductor Is Moving Along Just Fine
ZNet UK reports:
How can a company be just about everywhere, and yet nobody knows its name? Just ask Michel Mayer, chief executive of Freescale Semiconductor.
Mayer's $6bn Austin, Texas-based company, a recent spin-off from Motorola, is one of the 10 largest microchip manufacturers in the world. When it comes to brand awareness, it's another story.
While the public may not have a clue, industry insiders are quite familiar with Freescale. The company's best-known client is Apple Computer, which is under contract to use Freescale chips to build its G4 PowerPC computers through the end of 2008. The company has about 10,000 other customers, including the top 10 automotive manufacturers.
CNET News.com sat down with Mayer to talk about Freescale's evolution, as well as the future of the PowerPC architecture and the company's growing role in creating embedded processors....
On Apple:
"Desktop is a very small piece of our business, and it's going away. Our only customer is Apple (for laptops), and they are switching to Intel sometime next year. We were not happy to lose a customer, but frankly, with all of the growth opportunities that we have in front of us....."
For the full report, visit here.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020436,39240834,00.htm4
VueScan Multi-sampling vs. Silverfast's
it-enquirer.com reports:
Silverfast has a powerful multi-sampling feature, but VueScan has such a feature as well. When one of the readers on IT-Enquirer suggested that I put the two next to one another, I decided to go along with that suggestion. I downloaded a copy of VueScan and ran a multi-sampling scan on the same image with both applications.
I scanned the cover of a book at 600 dpi, 24-bit colour with an Epson Perfection 4870. Both images had grain reduction turned on. In VueScan, I chose "Light" grain reduction, in Silverfast I chose the Low GANE mode. GANE is one of Silverfast's patented algorithms to reduce grain. To further reduce noise in the image, I multi-sampled 4 times in both applications.
For the full review, visit here.
http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/vuescan_vs_silverfast/
Mac Webcomic Humor
The webcomic Dueling Analogs released a comic explaining why Mac users are less likely to game online.
Link: http://www.duelinganalogs.com/?date=2005-12-08
Email: Can't Live With It, Or Without It
Forbes' Rachel Rosmarin says:
Every information technology manager knows to reach for the aspirin when the company's e-mail system goes down. Thousands of dollars are lost, and employees across all departments call to demand restored functionality and complain about lost productivity.
But what IT managers and their superiors may not know is that the process of trying to fix an ailing e-mail system creates an even bigger headache. Troubleshooting e-mail problems costs twice as much per year as e-mail downtime, according to a new study from Osterman Research.
For the full report, visit here.
eWeek: Intel Research Shows Compound Boosts Chip Performance
"Intel Corp. is trying out new material in an effort to boost chip performance in the next decade.
Researchers at the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker have made strides in replacing silicon-which for decades has been the backbone of chip manufacturing-with a compound semiconductor made from a blend of the elements Indium and Antimony."
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1897661,00.asp
eWeek: Flash Memory: Today the iPod, Tomorrow the World?
Innovations 2006 Analysis: Is Flash memory taking over the world? It's not likely to in 2006 or even 2007. But it will begin showing up in PCs much more often in the near future, thanks to work by Intel, Microsoft and Samsung.
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1896385,00.asp
eWeek: Junk Mail Beats Spam Again in '05
"The Internet continues to take its toll-both pro and con-on the U.S. Postal Service, but the post office may be starting to win the fight.
For the first time in several years, the USPS reported an increase in first-class shipments, albeit a nominal one of one-tenth of one percent.
But that's the first time in several years that the USPS didn't report a sharp drop in first-class mail."
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1897671,00.asp
eWeek: The Chicken, the Egg and the Linux Desktop
Opinion: Here are some reasons why the Linux desktop has been so slow in coming: good, bad and interesting.
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1897398,00.asp
eWeek: Intel, AMD Believe in the Power of Four
"The race is on to produce four-core processors for PCs.
Intel Corp., which is readying a bevy of dual-core chips for release in systems in the next month, is already plotting a move to quad cores, which some reports have said could come as soon as early 2007.
Thus the two main PC processor manufacturers, Intel and its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., appear to be working toward the same goal of doubling the number of cores their processors can offer customers during 2007."
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1898914,00.asp
eWeek: Mozilla Downplays Firefox 1.5 Exploit
"A private security outfit has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a security flaw in Firefox 1.5, warning that the code can be modified to launch code execution attacks.
However, officials at the Mozilla Foundation are downplaying the threat, insisting the bug is more of an "annoyance" than a serious security vulnerability."
Read more at:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1898253,00.asp
Charles W. Moore
Tags: News ď Tech-Industry ď
