Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

The Mossberg Solution offers a primer on buying a digital camera. Very basic.

Mossberg wrote about a compact camera he liked, the $299 Konica Minolta Dimage Xg, on February 19.

Pew Internet & American Life Project

In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. Some 44% of the nation’s adult Internet users (those 18 and over) have done at least one of the following:

• 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
• 20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers.
• 17% have posted written material on Web sites.
• 13% maintain their own Web sites.
• 10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them have posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
• 8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
• 7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they belong such as church or professional groups.
• 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
• 6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
• 5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
• 4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
• 3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
• 2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog….

The most eager and productive content creators break into three distinct groups:

• Power creators are the Internet users who are most enthusiastic about content-creating activities. They are young — their average age is 25 — and they are more likely than other kinds of creators do things like use instant messaging, play games, and download music. And they are the most likely group to be blogging.
• Older creators have an average age of 58 and are experienced Internet users. They are highly educated, like sharing pictures, and are the most likely of the creator groups to have built their own Web sites. They are also the most likely to have used the Internet for genealogical research.
• Content omnivores are among the heaviest overall users of the Internet. Most are employed. Most log on frequently and spend considerable time online doing a variety of activities. They are likely to have broadband connections at home. The average age of this group is 40.

Check out the real Google Holiday Logos.

Leap year, 2004

NewMexiKen has been using Mozilla Firefox for a few weeks now and I find it generally an improvement over Internet Explorer. One, it prevents pop-ups. Two, the history file is — imagine this — in chronological, rather than alphabetical order. Three, it seems faster than Internet Explorer. It also has a convenient bookmarks toolbar.

Today I read in Fast Forward, the personal technology column from The Washington Post, that it is also safer.

For most people, the best IE replacement is a free copy of Mozilla, the descendant of Netscape. If you don’t mind using a preview release, however, the faster, simpler and also free Mozilla Firefox will be a better fit.

In his weekly email newsletter, David Pogue of The New York Times sets it straight:

But here’s the thing: The typical iPod battery does not, in fact, die after 18 months. That’s possible, but not typical; I have two, and they’re still going strong after about three years.

The iPod literature makes clear that the battery can be charged between 300 and 500 times. So to burn out the battery in 18 months, you’d pretty much have to charge and deplete the battery (eight hours of playing) almost every day. That’s probably not how most people use their music players.

A new battery is $100.

Walt Mossberg reviews Mailblocks, a free (or with additional features very inexpensive) web-based mail program that seems to have an effective antispam system.

The program is called Mailblocks, and despite a few downsides, I like it a lot. It’s aimed at consumers and small businesses…But it has lots of sophisticated features, and can consolidate all of your e-mail accounts — even AOL accounts — into a single in-box.

In Mossberg’s Mailbox he describes how to play an iPod (or other portable music device) through a car stereo.

From Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things:

Schlotzky’s is a deli chain that gives away free WiFi…The company has released new market research showing that free connectivity is a selection-factor for 40 percent of its customers.

Not bad sandwiches either.

Looking for a slim, lightweight digital camera tiny enough to carry around in a pocket but that still delivers great photos? Walt Mossberg says to look at the $299 Konica Minolta Dimage Xg.

Not only did the Dimage photos have the sharpest details, but they were also the most color-accurate, indoors and outdoors, in a variety of lighting conditions.

From The Washington Post:

The Federal Trade Commission is warning people not to fall for a Web site claiming to offer an e-mail version of the federal do-not-call registry. The “Do Not Email Registry” invites folks to submit their e-mail addresses to stop getting junk e-mail. Trouble is, the site has no affiliation with the government, despite what its Web address (www.unsub.us) might suggest….

The FTC (www.ftc.gov) issued a press release Thursday saying the site appears to be a scam that could be collecting e-mail addresses on behalf of spammers.

Tired of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator? Try Mozilla Firefox — tabbed browsing, popup blocking, integrated search, etc.

Not that it seems all that different.

Update: It does seem faster.

From Tom & Ray:

Car Talk will now be available via the Windows Media Player, rather than RealMedia. That’s right, we’re unceremoniously dumping RealMedia.

Why? Because, for a long time, we’ve had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it’s shared by enough of our listeners, that we finally decided to take action.

Here’s the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their “free” RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to “buy” a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That’s something, huh?

We’ve heard from many of our fans that have been duped, and who have accidentally shelled out their hard-earned dineros. And we won’t even get into the ways that the RealPlayer tries to take over your computer once you install it. So, after surveying the alternatives, we’re switching to Windows Media Player (which works on Macs, too).

NewMexiKen understands that you can download a spyware free copy of RealPlayer from BBC Radio.

From The Washington Post

David Bradley spent five minutes writing the computer code that has bailed out the world’s PC users for decades.

The result was one of the most well-known key combinations around: CtrlAltDelete. It forces obstinate computers to restart when they will no longer follow other commands.

Bradley, 55, is getting a new start of his own. He’s retiring Friday after 28 1/2 years with IBM….

Bradley, whose name was once mentioned as a clue in the final round of the TV game show “Jeopardy,” will continue teaching at N.C. State University after retirement.

“After having been the answer on final ‘Jeopardy,’ if I can be a clue in ‘The New York Times’ Sunday crossword puzzle, I will have met all my life’s goals,” Bradley said.

Key quote:

At a 20-year celebration for the IBM PC, Bradley was on a panel with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other tech icons. The discussion turned to the keys.

“I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous,” Bradley said.

Gates didn’t laugh.

NewMexiKen attended a demo by Gates several years ago. The demo crashed, much to the audience’s delight. I always wondered if Gates had enough of a sense of humor (and marketing savvy) to plan the crash. Guess not.

The third fastest computer in the world has been built by Virginia Tech. According to Engineering School Dean Hassan Aref, “An underdog in the competition, Virginia Tech, landed the number three position by building a machine in less than three months–utilizing 1,100 dual-processor Macintosh G5 PCs–that cost one-fifth to one-tenth the average price.”

The Virginia Tech machine clocked 10.28 teraflops; that is, 10.28 “trillion floating point operations per second.”

Go Hokies.

Type miserable failure into Google and you still get the same result — the official White House biography of George W. Bush — but Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore and Hilary Rodham Clinton are moving up.

Google French military victories and read the first entry of the search results.

Read Engineering Google Results to Make a Political Point in The New York Times if you want to know more.

Report in The Washington Post

Google added five features last week that boost its numerical smarts, providing specific results in response to particular numeric searches.

Enter an airline flight number — for example, “united 80,” — and the popular search engine will provide links to reports on that flight’s status at Travelocity.com and Fboweb.com, including maps showing its progress.

Type an area code into the search box, and you’ll be pointed to a MapQuest.com map of the general region that area code covers. A U.S. Postal Service package tracking number yields a link to a delivery-status page at the Postal Service’s Web site. A vehicle identification number will call up a page describing the car’s year, make and model type.

Or you can type in a universal product code number — minus the dashes, but including any tiny numbers appearing to the far left or right under the bar code — and Google will look up the product’s full name, then generate a list of Web sites selling the item or providing other information about it. This can spare shoppers from trying to guess which search keywords would bring up the same information.

Walt Mossberg reviews the other browsers at Personal Technology.

Several of these alternate browsers have a very cool feature to which I have recently become addicted: tabbed browsing. With tabbed browsing, you can keep multiple Web pages open at the same time, on the same screen. Only one page is visible at a time, but the others are identified by a row of tabs, usually at the top of the screen. To switch screens, you just click on one of the tabs. The new page appears instantly, because it has already been downloaded.

Tabbed browsing is the biggest fundamental improvement in the Web browser in years.

From Google

The 2003 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year’s major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world. Whether you are tracking the global progression of the latest news or learning about healthy searches in Japan, the 2003 Year-End Zeitgeist enables you to look at the past year through the collective eyes of the world on the Internet.

Zeitgeist Explained
The term “zeitgeist” comes from the German “Zeit” meaning “time” and “Geist” meaning “spirit”. The term is defined in English by Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.”

55 billion searches — 55 Billion!

New Intel Chip for Digital TV Could Remake the Market

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which opens on Jan. 8, Intel is expected to disclose the development of a class of advanced semiconductors that technologists and analysts say will improve the quality of large-screen digital televisions and substantially lower their price, according to industry executives close to the company….could lead to lightweight 50-inch screens only 7 inches thick for about $1,000, perhaps as early as the 2004 holiday season.

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship’s foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft’s well-known ”slideware” program.

NASA, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via PowerPoint, instead of by means of traditional ink-and-paper technical reports. When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide — so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle. ”It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation,” the board sternly noted.

PowerPoint is the world’s most popular tool for presenting information. There are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint is actually making us stupider?

NewMexiKen has seen enough PowerPoint presentations — and, alas, given enough — to believe the way the software is used often hinders rather than enhances communication. See the Gettysburg Address PowerPoint style for an illustration.