Chad's News

This topic has been popping up in quite a few of my news sources, and it just makes sense. A large number of people don’t want complicated cell phones, and this attitude seems to be more true of older people. The problem is that the cell phone market is saturated, and the cell providers are looking to extra features as their way of increasing revenue. (Remember, as a publicly traded company, it’s never sufficient to maintain the status quo—you must continue to grow and increase revenue in order to increase shareholder value). The net result of this conflict between the customer’s desires and the company’s desires is a renewed focus on usability. The iPod is an over-hyped, too-expensive MP3 player. But, as the article states, it took over the market due (in part) to its simplicity and ease of use. It’s good to see that other companies are finally figuring this out as well.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/…

I really enjoyed the Fight Club movie, once a roommate convinced me to watch it. (The previews did the movie an injustice.) Now we’re seeing life imitate art with the advent of real-life fight clubs. The linked article details one such club in Silicon Valley where tech workers compose the group. As weird as it may sound, this makes a lot of sense to me, and the concept holds a certain attraction.

http://www.usatoday.com/…
(via slashdot)

A true indicator of how difficult it is to end a tax, even one that was supposed to be temporary. Save those phone bills—I’m betting that the standard refund won’t cover the actual tax paid.

http://www.usatoday.com/…

There is a new security threat, this time in specially-crafted Microsoft Word documents. If you have Office 2002/2003/XP or Word 2002/2003, be careful about opening untrusted Word documents that you receive via the internet. The good news is that it isn’t a virus, i.e., it doesn’t progagate itself. The bad news is that infected Word documents allow the author to take control of your system.

http://www.tgdaily.com/…

An extra $1200 for a flash-based “hard drive” is steep, but I expect the price to fall significantly over time. Hard drives are one of the weakest points in a computer system, mainly because of their mechanical nature. I just had one fail after many years of use, and it wasn’t pretty. A solid-state storage device would be a great improvement, both in speed and durability.

http://www.cio.com/…

I guess this doesn’t really matter that much, seeing as how the scalping companies are very good at getting the best tickets—but it still seems wrong somehow.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

I was in a negative-g dive once and watched a pair of headphones bounce off the cockpit ceiling, but this is pretty amazing. The barrel roll with the iced tea is at the end of the video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/…

This number is pretty impressive, considering the web is less than 15 years old.

http://news.yahoo.com/…

As of this time last year, Colorado had exactly one theater with digital projection. It must be a 2K or less projector, because I was able to see pixellation in Attack of the Clones (I was sitting in the first row of the stadium seating section). Here’s hoping digital projection comes into widespread use.

http://www.businessweek.com/…

Microsoft has released the minimum system requirements for Windows Vista. Looking at them, they are very minimal—it may be possible that Vista would run on such a system, but a lot of other programs will not. Vista will be officially released in January.

http://arstechnica.com/…

With all the concern over the NSA wiretapping, this is just perfect. Direct link to the product page is here.

http://www.consumerist.com/…

(Those not familiar with Skype and VOIP may want to review my previous post on the subject.)

For the rest of the year, SkypeOut (computer-to-phone) calls are free as long as both the computer and the phone are in the US or Canada. I’m not sure how useful this will be, as most cell phones have free long-distance—Skype’s primary selling point is cheap international calls.

http://www.consumerist.com/…

Official Skype announcement: http://share.skype.com/…