Transmeta, once a darling hardware company, is shifting to an intellectual property portfolio company.
Why is this interesting? Because a fellow by the name of Linus Torvalds used to be a big cog in Transmeta's CPU development. That very same Linux Torvalds is the father of the Linux operating system. Which just happens to the foundation of the Free Software movement, which opposes the licensing of intellectual property in the form of software patents.
An interesting circle, n'est-ce pas?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Friday, February 09, 2007
Tech blogs
Everyone and their proverbial dog has a blog these days, and likely 50% of all of them are blogging tech. That's okay though, most of the cool stuff I hear about comes to me this way. Here are the blogs I like to read:
Engadget
Engadget HD
Wil Wheaton dot Net
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Lifehacker
Download Squad
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) -- I don't own a Mac, BTW
All cool places to put in your RSS feeder (along with the 3 O'clock blog!)
Engadget
Engadget HD
Wil Wheaton dot Net
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Lifehacker
Download Squad
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) -- I don't own a Mac, BTW
All cool places to put in your RSS feeder (along with the 3 O'clock blog!)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Take it with you
Imagine you're staying over at Grandma's house for the weekend. She's just had a kicking T1 broadband connection installed (hey, who doesn't have a Grandma with a T1? What? Seriously, just me?). You're fired up to download some Linux torrents, or an all night FPS frag-fest. But you cannot for the life of you remember what the stupid URL is for the site. Googling for it doesn't help either, as you can't remember the weird spelling of that site. And was it .com, or .net? AUGH!
Enter Foxmarks. This cool site/utility/Firefox extension lets you keep and maintain one unified set of bookmarks, across any number of computers. And even if your Grandma's never heard of the Fox, you can still log into your Foxmarks account on via any browser and you can access your bookmark list.
I use multiple computers in multiple locations, so foxmarks is tailor made for me. On any new system, I just install the Firefox plugin, enter my account info, and boom -- 5 seconds later, all my stored bookmarks are available through the Bookmarks menu, or Alt+B (for you mouse haters). I've been using it for ages, and I love it!
Foxmarks - www.foxmarks.com
Foxmarks Firefox extension - addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2410/
Enter Foxmarks. This cool site/utility/Firefox extension lets you keep and maintain one unified set of bookmarks, across any number of computers. And even if your Grandma's never heard of the Fox, you can still log into your Foxmarks account on via any browser and you can access your bookmark list.
I use multiple computers in multiple locations, so foxmarks is tailor made for me. On any new system, I just install the Firefox plugin, enter my account info, and boom -- 5 seconds later, all my stored bookmarks are available through the Bookmarks menu, or Alt+B (for you mouse haters). I've been using it for ages, and I love it!
Foxmarks - www.foxmarks.com
Foxmarks Firefox extension - addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2410/
Monday, February 05, 2007
Superbowl tech
Does this thing ever live up to the hype?
Even in Canada (where an NFL franchise is only a pipe-dream for some Torontonians) many people gather around the TV in late January/early Feb to watch large men try to gain 10 yards in 4 downs (as opposed to the Grey Cup, where we gather around the tube in late November to watch large men try to gain 10 yards in 3 downs).
Typically though, Canadians are also made to suffer from the pain of "simulcasting" or "sim-subbing" where Global Television, the TV conglomerate that holds the Canadian broadcast rights to the Superbowl, takes the original US broadcast and rips out all the "good" ads and resells the airtime to Canadian companies. If the viewer is lucky, the original advertiser also sells to Canadians, and buys the same airtime to show the "good" ad to Canadian. Digitalhome.ca has a good rundown of the whole evil business here.
Luckily for the guests at my Superbowl party, for whatever reason, the CBS high definition signal wasn't replaced, so we got to see all the original ads. Unfortunately, this year's crop was not the best. A few chuckles, and everyone broke out a hanky for GMC's assembly line ad (which I think is just a ripoff of the great Spike Jonze IKEA commercial from a few years ago), but nothing really that I will remember next week.
The HDTV pictures were great -- pouring rain never looked so good -- and the super-slo motion replays really showed off how talented the players are, able to keep one foot barely in bounds to make a catch, or punch an opponent at just the right spot to knock a football loose. But aside from that, I don't think CBS made the greatest use of the new technologies, partly because the rain kept blurring pictures, or in the case of the overhead field cam, obliterated it entirely.
And the game on the field wasn't that great, either.
Even in Canada (where an NFL franchise is only a pipe-dream for some Torontonians) many people gather around the TV in late January/early Feb to watch large men try to gain 10 yards in 4 downs (as opposed to the Grey Cup, where we gather around the tube in late November to watch large men try to gain 10 yards in 3 downs).
Typically though, Canadians are also made to suffer from the pain of "simulcasting" or "sim-subbing" where Global Television, the TV conglomerate that holds the Canadian broadcast rights to the Superbowl, takes the original US broadcast and rips out all the "good" ads and resells the airtime to Canadian companies. If the viewer is lucky, the original advertiser also sells to Canadians, and buys the same airtime to show the "good" ad to Canadian. Digitalhome.ca has a good rundown of the whole evil business here.
Luckily for the guests at my Superbowl party, for whatever reason, the CBS high definition signal wasn't replaced, so we got to see all the original ads. Unfortunately, this year's crop was not the best. A few chuckles, and everyone broke out a hanky for GMC's assembly line ad (which I think is just a ripoff of the great Spike Jonze IKEA commercial from a few years ago), but nothing really that I will remember next week.
The HDTV pictures were great -- pouring rain never looked so good -- and the super-slo motion replays really showed off how talented the players are, able to keep one foot barely in bounds to make a catch, or punch an opponent at just the right spot to knock a football loose. But aside from that, I don't think CBS made the greatest use of the new technologies, partly because the rain kept blurring pictures, or in the case of the overhead field cam, obliterated it entirely.
And the game on the field wasn't that great, either.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Vista: A clear view?
So ... are you sick of the 24-hour a day Vista hype yet? I caught ol' Billy G. on the Daily Show the other day priming the pump:
I almost couldn't believe that it really has been 5 years since the last major Windows release.
(and does anyone remember the "Friends" cast hyping Windows 95):
But anyway, I've had some time to play around with the new Vista release, and on the surface, it looks pretty good. The repeated User Account Control (UAC) requests to enable functionality each time I do something new is a pain in the neck, especially as this comes up dozens and dozens of times during the early phases (since you are enabling lots of new stuff at the start). I know you can turn this off, but that rather defeats the purpose, in my mind. As time goes on, I'll see this warning less and less, so I'm not too worried about it.
I was planning on a major home system upgrade in the next year or so (I have a 64-bit AMD CPU sitting around begging me to put together a new system), so I'm not overly concerned about missing out on the Aero Glass UI functionality. But, if I put that new system together and then it still doesn't work, we'll see how pleased I am.
At IBM, we have the latest release of DB2 Express-C running on Vista, which is encouraging. I'm always leery of existing applications running on new operating systems, but the coders have done a good job and it runs pretty smoothly. Be sure to download DB2 Express-C and test it out on your copy of Vista. [Hey, I've got to pay the bills somehow.]
Next step is to somehow get Vista running on my T60 Thinkpad. More on that as events unfold.
I almost couldn't believe that it really has been 5 years since the last major Windows release.
(and does anyone remember the "Friends" cast hyping Windows 95):
But anyway, I've had some time to play around with the new Vista release, and on the surface, it looks pretty good. The repeated User Account Control (UAC) requests to enable functionality each time I do something new is a pain in the neck, especially as this comes up dozens and dozens of times during the early phases (since you are enabling lots of new stuff at the start). I know you can turn this off, but that rather defeats the purpose, in my mind. As time goes on, I'll see this warning less and less, so I'm not too worried about it.
I was planning on a major home system upgrade in the next year or so (I have a 64-bit AMD CPU sitting around begging me to put together a new system), so I'm not overly concerned about missing out on the Aero Glass UI functionality. But, if I put that new system together and then it still doesn't work, we'll see how pleased I am.
At IBM, we have the latest release of DB2 Express-C running on Vista, which is encouraging. I'm always leery of existing applications running on new operating systems, but the coders have done a good job and it runs pretty smoothly. Be sure to download DB2 Express-C and test it out on your copy of Vista. [Hey, I've got to pay the bills somehow.]
Next step is to somehow get Vista running on my T60 Thinkpad. More on that as events unfold.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Cable this
Best place for AV/Computer cables: monoprice.com. Even to Canada. And they didn't pay me to say that.
My dream
I have a dream system in my head and it starts off with one of these.
That's right -- a 30" monitor. So if you're enjoying this blog, and you have spare cash, feel free to ship one of these my way.
[My wife's response to my wish to sit two feet away from 30" inches of technological glory? "You wouldn't sit that close to our TV, and that's just about the same size!" Ah, the unwashed masses. So innocent.]
Ahem hem hem
Ola!
Welcome to the 3 O'clock blog, where I'll be talking tech. Whatever comes my way, whatever cool stuff I see or sites I come across. It'll be much more tech oriented than the blog on my homepage (Shameless plug), so hopefully you'll give more of a damn than about my favourite movies and how my son is sleeping.
So that's background. Post #1 to follow in about 10 mins.
Welcome to the 3 O'clock blog, where I'll be talking tech. Whatever comes my way, whatever cool stuff I see or sites I come across. It'll be much more tech oriented than the blog on my homepage (Shameless plug), so hopefully you'll give more of a damn than about my favourite movies and how my son is sleeping.
So that's background. Post #1 to follow in about 10 mins.
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