Tag: Technology

Set the Way Back Machine For Way Back

OK this is kind of awesome in a nostalgic sort of way. Access who purchased PalmSource which was the spun off software side of Palm (seriously if you ever want to read a book on the most convoluted company history ever Piloting Palm is a good read) has release an Android input system that uses the old Graffiti system from original Palm PDAs.

I installed it and it’s kind of fun although still slower than the Evo 4G’s built in keyboard. Surprisingly I still remember most of the Graffiti strokes. Now that I think about it that shouldn’t be very surprising since I used it a lot throughout college (I wrote entire speeches for class on my PDAs because I didn’t often lug around a laptop).

When a Problem Isn’t a Problem

Google’s been getting some flak for recording MAC addresses and unencrypted data from unsecured wireless access points while cruising around in their little street view cars. Several European countries have blown this completely out of proportion as have 37 states in this country.

Google has been very forthcoming with information including the fact that they were running Kismet in their vehicles. Kismet was being used to record the MAC addresses of wireless access points which were than tagged with GPS coordinates. The idea behind this is pretty simple; each access point has a unique MAC address. If you know the location of these wireless access points you can determine your location through Wi-Fi instead of having to rely on aGPS. The main advantage is you can have location based services with devices that have Wi-Fi cards but no GPS (for instance most laptops). By default Kismet saves all unencrypted data so Google obtaining this information isn’t so much nefarious as just forgetting to change the default settings.

Truth be told very little information is going to be gleamed from this data because the speed at which they were driving around put them in and out of range of most access points pretty quickly. Of course there is another thing to note here.

If you have an unsecured wireless access point and somebody is grabbing your data it’s your fault. Wireless data is broadcast out for all to hear. Treat it like yelling, if you and your significant other get into a yelling argument you can’t blame your neighbors for hearing what you two were screaming at each other. Wireless data is the same way. If your wireless signal enters my property then I have every right to eavesdrop on it. If you don’t want me to be able to do this you need to encrypt the data or shield your house well enough where your wireless signal isn’t entering my property (or in Google’s case public property where there is no expectation of privacy).

Instead of wasting time with this case I’d love to see these State Attorney’s deal with some real issues.

Finger Pointing at It’s Finest

Let’s say you’re a multi-billion dollar technology company who puts out a phone almost everybody seems to want. Now let’s say you release a new phone which has a slight problem, it drops calls when being held in a user’s left hand. What do you do? Well you could recall the phone or offer an in-store hardware fix.

Or if you’re Apple you could point the finger at everybody else and claim you’re phone is still good because everybody has similar issues. I guess I do like one thing about that page, it shows the Jesus Phone isn’t actually better than other phones on the market. Apple zealots always claim Apple makes hardware that’s far better than the competition but in actuality that’s just a total pile of shit (yes they make nice hardware, but so do many other companies).

Cue the Sad Trombone

Remember that pay wall Rupert Murdoch is tossing up on all the “news” sites he owns? Remember all that bitching about freeloading Internet users no longer getting a free lunch? Remember how this was going to monetize the news industry and turn a profit? Well not so much. Via Dvorak Uncensored it appears as though not many people are subscribing to the London Time’s website:

After a month of forced free registrations and two weeks of a full paywall, Dan Sabbagh at Beehivecity.com says these are the numbers:

Apparently, the 15,000 paid subscriptions figure is considered “disappointing.”

That may sound like a lot but really isn’t not enough to pay for anything:

At 2 pounds a week, the average online subscriber would produce 100 pounds of revenue a year. 150,000 of them would produce 15 million pounds of revenue.

15 million pounds of revenue would be nice for a company used to living on, say, $5 million of revenue. But it wouldn’t even begin to offset the cost of the Times’ huge newsroom.

Meanwhile, what has the new paywall done to online traffic? So far, it has dropped by two-thirds. That, apparently, is actually better than expected. One editor feared it would collapse by 90%.

So what did Murdoch’s pay wall accomplish? A complete obliteration of online traffic and probably destroyed any chance of making a reason for advertisers to pay for in-site ads. Nice job dumb ass. I hope getting hit with the clue stick hurt.

It’s practically impossible to provide a free service and later turn it into a pay service. Almost everybody who has attempted to do as such has failed pretty miserably. The other thing to remember is the fact it’s very difficult to get customers to pay for a service that is provided free elsewhere (and even more difficult when those free sources are better than the pricey one).

About Time

Adobe has been receiving a ton of flack form the security community recently due to all the holes being exploited in their Reader and Flash applications. Well it appears Adobe is finally sandboxing Reader in the hopes of preventing malicious exploitation of the software.

I’m sure not many people think too much about receiving a PDF. I mean it’s a document that is read-only. Well except for the fact that PDF’s can include JavaScript which is executable by Reader because… it was bad idea gets included into the product day I guess. Hopefully Adobe gets their sandbox working correctly although I’m skeptical looking back at their previous security practices (quarterly update cycles anybody?).

Serves Them Right

You know what’s my favorite feature of my new Evo 4G? It’s the fact I can hold it in my left hand and still have a signal! If you’ve been watching any technology news lately you know Apple is having some problems with the newest version of their Jesus Phone. See if you hold the phone in a certain way which many people do when just normally talking on the device the Jesus Phone 4 loses signal and the call is dropped. Steve Job’s solution was to tell one upset customer to stop holding it that way. Yup it’s your fault for wanting to hold the phone in your left hand you stupid peasant.

The Jesus Phone 4 is also having problems with the proximity sensor which prevents random shit from being pressed when the phone’s screen is connected to your phone. This problem isn’t as big since in order to experience it you must be talking on the phone and that doesn’t seem to be a feature of the newest model.

Well Apple is now holding a special Jesus Phone 4 press conference tomorrow. There are two possibilities here; they are going to address the recent troubles with their new phone, or they’re going to unviel the new white version of their new phone. Hopefully it’s the latter.

As much as I like Apple’s computers I don’t really like anything else they produce (especially their fucking wireless access point, it can go die in a fire). In the case of the iPad I just don’t like Apple’s draconian control over it but in the case of their new phone I don’t like the idea of a phone that doesn’t work in my left hand. Either way all this karma serves them right.

Technical Specifications on the New Kindle’s Screen

Yesterday I posted about the new Amazon Kindle DX. One of the new features being boasted about is the 50% higher contrast ratio screen. Well E Ink, the company behind the displays, has released some technical specifications on the new screen.

It appears that the new screen not only brings better contrast ratio to the table but also less power consumption to boot. From the specs page it appears the resolution of the new Kindle DX is 1200 x 825 which is pretty respectable considering some netbooks with 10″ or larger screens barely exceed that.

New Kindle Released

Yes I’m a Kindle fan boy and no I don’t care if you’re sick of hearing about them. Amazon annouced a new version of their gigantic uber-Kindle, the Kindle DX. The new Kindle DX sports a new color (graphite), a screen that is advertised to have a 50% higher contrast ratio, and a new lower price coming in at $379 (which is high in my opinion).

I have to say going by the pictures I like the new graphite color. It’s muted enough to not be a distraction when reading (as shiny black would be) but also different from the previous white. I would very much like to check out the screen and see how much of a difference the higher contrast ratio makes.

Anyways it ships on July 7.

Kindle for Android Released

There are two devices I love at the moment; my Amazon Kindle and my HTC Evo 4G. So what happens when you combine the two? Well I wasn’t terribly impressed but alas it’s not possible since Amazon finally released a version of their Kindle software for Android. It’s still reading on a phone which means you have a small screen with a back lit LCD instead of a good sized screen with an e-ink display. But it might be nice as a mechanism of having fast access to reference manuals you may have.