Archive for April, 2008
Enter the Schwaggin’ Wagon. Born just ten days ago over lunch in LA, the Schwaggin’ Wagon has cut a high profile at this year’s Web 2.0 expo. “I was having lunch at a Thai restaurant and I brought up the fact that there is a lot of waste in this schwag game,” says Michael Liskin, an LA-based social media consultant who is one of the group’s six founders. Schwaggin’ Wagon’s mission is to raise awareness about wasteful schwag practices and, eventually, to find a better use for the mountains of conference bric-a-brac that would otherwise end up in landfills. In just ten days, the Schwaggin’ Wagon crew has built a website, procured a van, and attracted more than 150 followers on Facebook. They plan to collect schwag from conference-goers and donate it to Innerkids, an LA non-profit that hosts after-school programmes local youth. Eventually, the group hopes to act as a bridge between conference producers and a number of charities who can distribute things like leftover t-shirts and pens to people who really need them. It is still early days, but judging by the reaction among conference-goers, Schwaggin’ Wagon has struck a nerve. Several Web 2.0 companies have lent their support to the project and organisers are looking for more sponsors. Mr Liskin stresses that the group’s goal is not out to eliminate schwag altogether - a potentially Sisyphean task. Rather, it is to make everyone involved think twice about what happens to their wares once the party ends. “It’s not about putting anyone out of business in any way,” he says. “It’s about streamlining and giving it more thought.” Popularity: 1% [?]
I recieved yet another new toy in the mail today. This one I purchased from Battery Geek. Here are the specs: I’m sure the review will hit the paper in a month or so. Popularity: 1% [?]
Apr
25
2008
 
Prediction: Windows Vista successor coming sooner rather than laterPosted by: in General NewsWhile Microsoft is officially repudiating Steve Ballmer’s ruminations on giving Windows XP a stay of execution, the writing is clearly on the wall for Vista. Let me say upfront that I think Vista is a perfectly serviceable, visually attractive and reasonably secure operating system. Anyone out shopping for a new computer with decent hardware should feel comfortable about buying a PC with Vista pre-installed. But that doesn’t matter. Vista has been so poorly received, for reasons real and manufactured, that Microsoft simply has no choice but to get its next OS on the market as soon as possible. If corporate customers aren’t upgrading from XP to Vista, then Microsoft’s fabled incoming river of cash slows to a trickle, and shareholders will not be pleased. So before Vista mutates into an outright debacle, Microsoft will certainly get its successor on the market by 2010 at the latest. That allows Vista to retreat from the battlefield with some semblance of honor, while Windows 7 can be billed as the revolutionary OS you’ve been waiting for: sleeker, leaner, faster, re-built from the ground up and unburdened by ancient legacy code. Windows Vista is nowhere near the technological flop that was Windows Me. But it’s rapidly garnering the same reputation and, with Google breathing down Microsoft’s back, there’s no way Microsoft can afford to let a negative public perception turn into a financial catastrophe. So bank on Windows 7 by Spring 2010 at the latest. Popularity: 1% [?] Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday that the company may reconsider its plans to stop selling windows XP this summer. Even if Microsoft does pull the plug on XP, however, some of its biggest partners apparently plan to keep the operating system alive. Dell Inc. now says it will sell XP professional on business computers until 2010. Given that Microsoft may begin selling the successor to Windows Vista by then, Dell’s move, according to EE TImes, may give businesses the option of skipping Vista altogether.
I wonder if Dell or any other big computer seller will provide a similar option to consumers. Popularity: 1% [?] A new report from ABI Research suggests the biggest impediment to Blue-ray DVD sales isn’t Internet downloads but user eyesight. The folks at ABI said that many people can’t tell the difference between a Blue-ray DVD and the regular one played on up converting DVD player. This strikes me as absurd. It’s like saying that most people can’t tell the difference between color and black-and-white. Up-converting a standard DVD does make it look better, but it doesn’t look anything like true high definition. That said, ABI’s assertion does gel with other research. Many people apparently buy HDTVs, plug them into their cable boxes and think the low-definition programs that appear on the screen are actually high-definition. Even the tech bloggers at the NYT seem to find it plausible that many viewers will be content with regular DVDs.
. How can people who spend more than a grand on a nice television think it sane to forgo HD movies in order to save a couple hundred bucks? Are people really this blind? More importantly, will people whose eyes actually work forever get less true high definition because many Americans are apparently blind? Popularity: 1% [?] Here’s a video I shot this week at Lockheed Martin’s Aeronautics division in Fort Worth, showing their assembly line for the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. It’s not exactly what you’d call personal technology, but I think most geeks and gadget heads will enjoy the tour. You can also check out my interview in today’s paper with Lockheed’s chairman and chief executive officer, Bob Stevens. In the interview, he talked about Lockheed’s new focus on upgradeable systems and technologies, including the F-35, to deal with constantly evolving threats. Cross posted at our Aviation blog. Popularity: 1% [?]
Techdigest has news that new iMacs are haeded our way. Not that its a big thing since its only a small upgrade in terms of newer faster CPUs and larger hard drives. Definitely a good wait for those who want to move from Windows to the Mac for a good deal. And I do love their slim sexy keyboards. Tags: apple, imacs, New Upgraded iMacs coming Popularity: 1% [?]
Jenn Van Grove, a social media consultant, says Twitter helps her follow the latest online buzz and keep in touch with hard-to-reach people. “If I need to get in touch with someone, Twitter is much faster than email,” she says. Ryan Kuder, a former Yahoo who is working on a new web startup, assured me that time invested keeping track of contacts on Twitter returns dividends.  ”People ask if you can spend too much time on Twitter,” he says. “I say you can’t spend enough.” Sceptical journalist that I am, I signed up for Twitter in March of last year but never really got into the service. Intrigued, I dug out my Twitter ID and passed it along to Jenn, Ryan and a few other bloggers seated at our table inside the Web 2.0 blogger lounge. I have now been Twittering for all of two hours, and thanks to my new Twitter friends, I’ve managed to attract more than 50 followers. Better late than never, I suppose. Popularity: 1% [?]
Who knows what Microsoft will make of this, given its plans to acquire the company. Microsoft itself has launched its Mesh hybrid computing platform at the conference. Yahoo’s new chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, told attendees its moves were not to build a new social network, but to “build social into everything we do.” He showed off some smart retooling ideas such as a Yahoo Mail application that allows you to sort through your Inbox more efficiently - highlighting emails from people that are part of your closest social network. From today, the company is opening up its environment for developers to build applications that users can add to any Yahoo page. Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, used her keynote to talk about the Firefox browser being worked on for mobile phones. Fennec, named after the small version of a fox found in the Sahara Desert, is much faster than existing cell phone browsers, according to early reports. Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, spoke by video from London and answered questions in an online chatroom set up by the conference organisers. His argument seems to be that new smaller devices for accessing the internet, such as the iPhone, are more proprietary and closed than the internet accessed through a PC. Increasing use of them will stifle innovation, he says. I’m not sure I agree, given how open the iPhone is becoming and the forthcoming virtualisation on mobile phones, which would allow them to run any kind of operating system or browsers like Fennec, which is open source and open to every kind of additional features. You can read Richard Waters’ review of Jonathan’s book here. Popularity: 1% [?] |
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