So, I am browsing around looking for a combo HD-DVD / Blu-Ray Player and stumble upon an offer from Best Buy where if you buy their LG Combo Player for $1,199.99 you get 10 free HD-DVD or Blu-Ray Movies. I think to myself, well the price for the player is kinda high, but I might as well get some movies for free to play on my new player. The offer page tells you to add the 10 movies to your cart then come back to this page and add the player to your cart to get the free movie deal. So, I add the movies to my cart and they all qualify for free ground shipping. Sounds like a great deal? Welll, it was all down hill from there…
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Posted in: New Technology News
On Thursday at a conference for its field sales for, Microsoft discussed its newest version of Windows which is currently being developed under the codename “7″ (The OS formally known as Windows Vienna). I was sitting here pondering where they may have come up with the name from, but couldn’t quite nail it down. My first reaction was well, this is the 7th major release of Windows if you take out all the ones that didn’t count such as Windows ME and Windows Vista (Well, I guess the verdict is still out on Vista). Then I thought well, maybe they named it after the number of years it took them to get their last OS out the door.
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Posted in: New Technology News
According to an article posted on Georgia Tech’s website, researchers there have achieved 15 gigabits per second wireless data-transfer rates at a distance of 1 meter. While not as fast as the speeds that I am sure MacGyver could achieve with 3 paper clips, a stick of chewing gum and some tin foil, I have to admit these are some pretty impressive speeds. The article discusses real world application of these speeds such as a rack full of servers with no network cables connecting them, or downloading DVD movies to a cell phone wirelessly in a matter of seconds. Another application mentioned in the article that I would love to see would be having backup drives that are currently connected via USB or Firewire backing up data wirelessly.
Posted in: New Technology News
An announcement has been made on the Google Lat Long Blog (Never knew it existed till today) that ImageAmerica has been acquired by Google. The company builds high resolution cameras for aerial imagery.
Google and ImageAmerica have worked together in the past creating high resolution imagery of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. I tried to reach ImageAmerica’s site to give some more details on the company, but it appears that Google has replaced their site with a small announcement and the Google logo.
“Google has acquired ImageAmerica. For media inquiries, please contact press@google.com.”
Posted in: New Technology News
| OKay, OKay… I was half tempted to switch over to Blackberry before I touched the Holy Grail of phones the iPhone from Apple. But, you have to give credit to RIM for trying. Their latest BlackBerrys have added some class to the boring business device. RIM announced the Blackberry 8820 on Tuesday which is the first Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerry. I have to give kudos to BlackBerry on all their efforts lately. They have taken the black hockey puck of cell phones and made it into a sophisticated looking business device. While Wi-Fi enabling their devices and making them prettier is a great idea, I think the biggest boost in their popularity will come from the full QWERTY keyboards on their newer devices. One of the major downfalls though with BlackBerry is having to purchase their overpriced push software for syncing the device over the air. Their syncing is the one thing they have that they can hang over Apple’s head right now in the competition, but rumors are swirling all over the internet about a deal between Microsoft and Apple to license ActiveSync and push technology to work on the iPhone.
All in all the BlackBerry 8820 looks great and I am sure will be wildly popular with die-hard blackberry fans, at least the ones that have never heard of the iPhone. |
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Posted in: New Technology News
| The team over at Firefox released version 2.0.0.5 earlier today patching 8 security holes and fixing several bugs in the Firefox browser. These security fixes included some that would simply crash the browser along with one that allows remote code execution and one that allows privilege escalation. According to my favorite security gurus over at the Internet Storm Center, one of these exploits is launched from Internet Explorer where IE calls the URL handler and provides the path to add additional options that lead to increased scripting rights inside of Firefox.
Reports have been surfacing all week about the gaining popularity of Firefox as statistics show it taking huge bites out of Internet Explorer’s market share. As the browser gains more market share, I am sure we will see more and more exploits becoming available at a more rapid pace. For now though, Firefox still tops my chart as the internet browser of choice. |
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Posted in: New Technology News
July12
By: Jim Watt - Dynamic Solutions Group
Having used the iPhone since release day in a metropolitan area (Tampa) the cell service has been decent, although crossing the bridges I did have some dropped calls / lost service and in one of the large department stores on the first floor the phone lost service. So I got to thinking / worrying, as I had just ported my number over from Verizon to AT&T, how would the iPhone on AT&T perform while not in my home area. So I booked a flight to the mountains of Colorado to do some testing (actually it was a planned family vacation).
Results after the break
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Posted in: New Technology News, Technical Articles, iPhone
Still kinda wondering how they pulled this one off, but tonight Microsoft announced the addition of Walt Disney Company fils to the Xbox 360 Download service. The Xbox live download system already includes titles from Warner Brothers, Paramount and Lion’s gate. This will be a nice addition to the download library on Xbox live although they will not have as many Disney titles as iTunes. One of the bigger titles that will be missing from Microsoft’s library is “Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End” Speculation is this is because of the close ties between Disney and Apple.
Posted in: Gaming News
| Kevin Rose and the good folks over at Digg.com have officially launched an iPhone compatible version of Digg. The iPhone version of Digg offers Native iPhone like story reading, mini permalink pages with top 5 comments, Login, digging and much more.
I gave it a test run on my iPhone and it works quite nicely. I am of course using my wifi because the Edge network is unbearably slow, but it displays the content very well in landscape or portrait mode. I did notice one quirk though that I hadn’t noticed with other sites yet, and that is during the login it really slowed the iPhone down. I literally typed my entire username on the keypad befor it started to type on the screen. Then after that it did about 1 letter a second till the word was done. May be totally unrelated to digg, but that is the only site it has happened on so far.
Head over to digg on your iPhone at http://www.digg.com/iphone
Happy digging! |
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Posted in: Apple Computer News, New Technology News
Sony may be the first to offer a price break on the newest generation of video game systems, but the are behind the eight ball on the download services. According to CNET News, Sony may be set to announce a movie and TV download service for the Playstation 3 at E3 Week this year. Microsoft has had movie and TV downloads for sometime now, and Apple entered the ring earlier this year with the introduction of their Apple TV. Both of the current contenders have their drawbacks though.
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Posted in: Gaming News
