LIVEdigitally

The free shipping era at dell is coming to an end. Next month Dell is going to start charging to get a computer purchase shipped to your house. This penny pinching manuever is supposed to save the company money. There will be a new “pick up at the post office” option to debut soon. This will appeal to consumers who work during the day and don’t want their new purchases sitting on the stoop to get taken.

Dell Inc. will stop its practice of sending low-end computers to customers homes without charge in order to cut costs, the company said on Thursday.

Starting on October 10, Dell’s free shipping offer on basic models will apply only to people willing to pick up their computers at the post office, said Jennifer Davis, spokeswoman for Dell’s U.S. consumer business. Customers will have to pay extra for home delivery.

I personally have not been a big fan of Dell. I’d rather purchase a computer “hands on,” eager to see how it looks up close, and try the keyboard out for comfort. Obviously, many folks buy from Dell, we’ll have to see if it hurts their sales or not.
See over here for more info.

Now, I don’t normally get too excited about bargain basement hardware, but it is nice to see innovation in this price range.

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.
The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.

Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village.

While the hand crank and rubberized case are unique, the notebook is planned to have a 500 MHz processor, WiFi, flash based storage, and USB ports x4. For $100, I might buy one! Actually, they will not be available for purchase by individuals, and you can read more details here.

I’m no math geek, but that doesn’t mean I utterly abhor the stuff; in fact, I have an amazing amount of respect for people who can enjoy manipulating numbers and do it well. Too bad our society continues to perpetuate stereotypes involving brainy, unwashed and socially inept kids hanging out at the other end of a room from the popular crowd, their minds on starting companies, world domination or dungeons & dragons (wait…MMORPGs).

In such a world, I have no trouble painting Stephen Wolfram as one of the last guys I’d expect to find dabbling in pop culture – he developed the 800-lb gorilla of technical computing applications, Mathematica, and built a company around it. But every now and again the stuff results in a mass-market product whose mathmatical underpinnings can hardly be denied. The guys at Wolfram Research recently released a pretty darn sweet web app for creating completely custom ring tones, dubbed Wolfram Tones.

Visitors to the site can create custom music based on a suite of variables and genres, from classical, dance and hip hop to the bit more arcane, such as ambient, latin and signalling (your guess is as good as mine). Monkey with variables in several composition control categories to get exactly what you’re looking for; those uninterested (or baffled) by the mechanics of the minutiae can simply click on genre buttons repeatedly, each click offering up a unique composition. Compositions can be saved via browser cookies, e-mailed to friends or downloaded to a cell phone (charges apply).

Yes, math can be cool. It can!

At least they might make it more expensive. That’s because Microsoft just got a new patent filed the other day directly related to time-shifting technology. Don’t see the connection gumshoe?

The patent is capable of creating a system where viewers are charged extra for skipping commercials or replaying sports highlights.

I hate commercials as much as the next guy, but I also hate throwing money away. If this thing goes big, all it means is that I’ll have to re-learn the ancient art of making snacks in the short period provided by commercial breaks.

I’ll be keeping my eye out for this one, hopefully I won’t miss a thing! …….. ohhahahaha…. damm I’m funny.

My first confession, I do not even own an iPod in the traditional sense. All I have been able to acquire in the several-odd years since the pod people landed, was a measly shuffle pod.

But man do I love that shuffle pod. I put it in my pocket and bike to work or take the subway, and I’m rocking out the whole time. So I don’t know what song is coming up next, that’s the thrill of life man! So you can imagine how bummed I was when my inadequately sized shuffle pod ceased to work.

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A robot that can scan 50 meters deep into the earth may have discovered the 18th-Century buried treasure on the Juan Fernadez island, home to Alexander Selkirk, who we all know as Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk, a Scottish adventurer inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe in 1729.

This little robot, named Arturito, which bears an odd sounding resemblance to R2D2, may be responsible for finding up to 10 billion dollars worth of booty (if the legends of Selkirk are true).

But what I really like about this story is the fact that it was a little robot that found it. Step aside Indian Jones, the next blockbuster movie about an adventurer is going to be about little Arturito, the robot that scanned the ground for treasure. It sure is an advancement from the $20 metal detector I ordered on Ebay when I was a kid.

So Microsoft and Palm finally confirmed a relationship of sorts – after a slew of rumors/spec leaks/photos, the existence of a Windows Mobile-powered Treo is official.

Scheduled for release early next year, yesterday’s press release tells us that Palm has licensed Windows Mobile for what will presumably be successive generations of its popular Treo. Aside from the PR-ese beating us over the head with hyper-positive jargon touting the plethora of wonderful features offered by the OS, the more interesting question is this: what’s the plan for the Palm OS?

Family history: back in 2003 Palm split into palmSource (software) and palmOne (hardware). PalmOne then officially became Palm again back in May when it bought the rights to the name from Palm Trademark Holding, created when the companies split. Japanese software company Access acquired palmSource earlier this month…and the future of the OS remains in limbo.

So I guess this announcement means that if/when I buy a smart device, it will likely be running Windows Mobile…I’m salivating at the thought of Sprint’s PPC-6700 (EV-DO!), but if Palm decides to get cozy with anyone besides Verizon, I’ll sit up and pay attention.

Motorola and Apple are huge players in the portable technology industry. Motorola is hugely popular for their mobile phones. Apple has dominated the market with their DAP’s (digital audio player). What happens when these two companies combine forces? Disappointment. After disappointment comes name calling. Is this kindergarten?

I’m not one to follow the he-says-she-says BS that goes on, but this one wowed me. Ed Zander’s words towards Apple’s newest iPod “Screw the Nano”. Knowing that the Nano does not have threads, Ed was not implying that the Nano be twisted into a piece of wood.

I’m going to speculate a few things here now. The iPod Nano holds 1,000 songs, and Zander said “What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? People are going to want devices that do more than just play music”. Thing is, that iTunes phone, the Motorola ROKR, only holds 100 songs. The Nano was released on the same day that the ROKR was debuted, and the ROKR took a blatant second place. The iPod Nano blindsided us, nobody had any idea that a smaller, color iPod Mini killer was to be announced.

Motorola and Apple’s combined phone efforts were talked about, written about, and forged about. The phone was hyped up so much that when we found that only a mere hundred songs would sit on the phone, everyone turned their attention to the pencil thin iPod Nano. That’s where I think Ed Zander lost his temper, and whipped out his Philips screwdriver.

I have been following John Battelle’s blog Searchblog for almost a year now. He helped start the Industry Standard and definitly knows what’s going on in the world of search engines. Long story short, the blog is a great resource. But that’s not what turned me into a loyal reader of his blog.

What really did it for me was the fact that he gave updates on the book that he has been researching and writing the last couple years. Every now and then he would even ask for advice from his readers, or suggestions on a possible chapter title.

I feel like I have been a part of the process for this book to come into fruition. It has been out now for less than a month and I think it’s been accepted well into the wide world of reading on paper (something I gave up long ago).

If there is an interesting story to be told about the IT world of the last four years I think it lies in Search Engines. So this should be an interesting read.

Ars Technica hits this one right on the head when they label it as potentially simply fodder for the fanboy forums on a Friday (nice alliteration, eh?).

Han Solo, a G4TV.com poster whose claim to fame apparently includes a remarkably accurate leak of Xbox 360 stats prior to the official announcement, posted (located approx. 2/3 of the way down the page, #3 of the forums) what he claims are the specifications for Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution game console. Some details:

• 1 custom, dual-threaded IBM PowerPC 2.5 GHz processor w/ 256k L1 cache and 1 MB L2 cache (potentially L3 cache as well). 512 MB of 700 MHz system RAM

• ATI custom graphics chip w/ 256 MB RAM and a 600 MHz core supporting 2048×1268 resolution. HD support is still undecided.

• The system will support a PPU (physical processing chip) w/ 32 MB of its own RAM, which links to the CPU, GPU and the controller(s).

Aside from straight out comparisons to the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Solo says the PS3 still has a CPU edge, while the Revolution technically matches the superior GPU performance offered by the Xbox), Ars makes note of the fact that Nintendo may be playing it smart by providing potentially developers with a core system for which it’s easy to write games. Given that the majority of titles end up going cross-platform at some point, if the Revolution forgoes any ridiculously esoteric hardware that provides a novel gaming experience but a headache for developers might be the way to go. I make no pretense about being a game expert, but that’s my $.02.

Yeah, I know – no good eye candy or sweet hardware specs to get you drooling. Just some good, old-fashioned numbers that made me stop and think for a few moments:

According to the Pew Internet Life Project, the rate of growth in home broadband adoption dropped dramatically this year, climbing a measly 3 percentage points between December 2004 and May 2005 – approximately 53% of U.S. households now have broadband internet access. This data seems especially surprising, given the 20% growth rate reported between November 2003 and May 2004.

The report cites the changing demographics as the cause for the slower rate of growth, as the majority of today’s dialup users are “older, less educated and with lower income.” This basically translates into a smaller, less net savvy pool of potentials to graduate to broadband (I can’t help but picture some sort of geek-themed ceremony for this involving cat-5 cable, routers…ok, I’ll stop).

The report doesn’t offer other explanations or theories about whether or not we’ve hit some sort of saturation point (temporary or otherwise), but I find it surprising that we’re slowing down after hitting the halfway mark. Then again, I have a hard time remembering life P.I. (pre-internet). Then again, even my 75 year-old grandparents have broadband, having migrated up from dialup, just as the report says.

Introduction

My Panasonic VCR died a few months back, and I went to the store to replace it. After going up and down the aisles in more than one electronics giant, I came to the conclusion that the VCR was rapidly headed for extinction. The last remaining VCR’s were being sold for cheap in a corner. Soon the VCR will join the ranks of 8 tracks, records, and cassettes. In our new digital world, the analog VCR just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Truthfully, I liked the VCR very much. It was affordable, and the tapes were as well. Each tape could be used probably 100 times, more than I seem to get out of my rewritable optical media. My VCR was a 4 head model with HiFi stereo sound. On my 20” TV, through a stereo system, I could hardly tell that a DVD movie was any better than a prerecorded VCR tape.

But alas, while I lament my dead VCR, it was time to move on. My “wish list” for the new digital recorder included a large hard drive, fast DVD burner which is compatible with every disc, and a built in TV Guide (with no monthly fee). While such machines are coming on the market now, their caviar (over $500) price tag simply didn’t fit with my Cheeto’s ($100) budget. Also, I hesitated to spend “the big bucks” when the new HDTV standard is planned to replace our current TV signals in March 2006, and am unsure of future compatibility of all these devices. However, the new fall season of shows is imminent, with the need for time shifting, so I decided to take the digital plunge. The allure of being able to record to a disc that I could watch on a DVD player, or with the DVD drive of my computer was very strong. (more…)