Gadgetopia

This is a big win for Sony: The Sony Corp. and Panasonic led Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) welcomed Apple Computer Inc. to its board of directors on Thursday. The Blu-ray Disc format now seems more certain of being accepted as the future standard for storing High Definition movies, photos and ...

How many of us when we were 12 used a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays on something just to see it smolder? Grass, ants, paper, you name it. I suspect that most of you reading this did something similar in your youth. Well somebody has taken it a ...

The grumpy grandfather at the heart of the SCO-Linux mess: An interesting look at Ray Noorda, Novell, and how they play into the big debate. "It's a company that founder Ray Noorda wanted to take on Microsoft, while promoting open-source networks. So it's fitting that Novell, which kept for years ...

Report: Toshiba making funeral plans for HD DVD; Wal-Mart to go all Blu: And just like that, the format war is over. Throughout the battle with Blu-ray, Toshiba and the HD DVD Promotions Group had fought aggressively to defend HD DVD, even as Warner Bros. abandoned ship. But that strong ...

Air travelers stripped bare with X-ray machine: Electronic strip search, coming to an airport near you. Security workers using the machines can see through clothes and peer at whatever may be hidden in undergarments, shirts or pants. The images also paint a revealing picture of a person's nude body. And ...

640KB ought to be enough for anyone: This was published a few weeks ago, and although I was beaten over the head with references to it in my aggregator, I just got around to reading it. I don't know what to think. The first part of the article is Ray ...

Ray Ozzie's Weblog: Ray Ozzie gets medieval on the future of email here. "Anyone who is doing a critical business process online that involves substantial dialog between individuals should NOT be using email at this point in history, and many no longer are." That Ray feels this way shouldn't be ...

Developers, analyst predict $500 price tag for PlayStation 3: Some speculation here about where the PS3 will slot in terms of price. I personally think $500 is ridiculous for a video game machine, but it is packing some high-tech junk. The strongest argument behind the $499 price point is the ...

Porn industry mulls next-generation DVD: We've talked a bit before about the upcoming format war between next-generation DVD formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. Blu-ray has the edge since it's backed by Sony and Phillips, but you'd be surprised who is probably going to end up deciding who wins: Pornography customers ...

Fantastic Voyage: Evolution of Science Fiction: Okay, folks, if you like science fiction, watch your TV listings for this History Channel program to come around again. It's two hours of the history of science fiction, from H.G. Wells to Edgar Rice Burroughs to Metropolis to Ray Bradbury to Flash Gordon ...

In War Over Spam, One Company Is Happily Arming Both Sides: Interesting aticle about IronPort, a company that sells numerous anti-spam devices...right alongisde its industrial strength mass emailers. "Their primary market is exactly the same set of companies that are most adversely affected by the blocking lists like SpamCop," said ...

I m leaving tonight for FM s Conversational Marketing Summit. I m flying from Sioux Falls to Denver to San Francisco. I need to work from my hotel room, and I can t stand laptop keyboards or pointing devices, so I m taking a full-size keyword and trackball in my carry-on. So, in the luggage ...

Bill Gates to step down from Microsoft: Wow. But he's always been great from a philanthropic standpoint, so he'll do well just running his foundation. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday he will transition out of a day-to-day role at the company he co-founded to spend more time on ...

DVD developers set for format war: Because all know how good format wars are for consumers. The electronics and entertainment industries are shaping up for the biggest format battle since the "video wars" between VHS and Betamax to decide the future of DVD. Two rival "next generation" DVD formats look ...

Architecture astronauts take over: This whole thing is great. Spolsky gets downright medieval further down. And what is this Windows Live Mesh? It s a way to synchronize files. Jeez, we ve had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, ...

Why tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine.: This is an interesting article on Second Life, which I think is the next YouTube in terms of its effect on the Internet. Really, really big things are going to happen with this. By early January more than 3,000 ...

I've got a bad cold, so my butt hit the couch tonight, and hasn't moved much. Fortunately, it was a good night to be stuck in front of the TV. Discovery Channel ran Corvette: Rebuilding an Icon, which covered the design, testing, and release of the new C6 Corvette. The ...

How to make friends by Telephone: Boing Boing linked to this today. When my grandparents did some housecleaning a few years ago, they offered me this instructional booklet entitled How to make friends by Telephone and asked if I'd be interested in it. I estimate it to be from the ...

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, with a hexagonal mirror array 11 metres across. Although very similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas, SALT has a redesigned optical system using more of the mirror array. It will be ...

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army s new secret weapon: This an article about Raytheon s new Silent Guardian. It s pretty horrifying. When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to ...

Till Death Do Us Part: An extremely interesting story in Wired about the attempted separation of those Iranian twins a few months ago. This piece lays some of the blame on a technological failure. Doctors depended on a 3D imaging system that didn't reveal the presence of a massive vein ...

Shadows of future versions of Outlook?: Here's a look at an internal company memo about how to organize email messages. Essentially, you treat email conversations as threads of a discussion forum conversation. ...about half the time you use e-mail, it's a no-brainer. Someone sends you a message, you reply, they ...

I don't think so, but I guess that's pretty subjective. Someone in the Orleans Public School system thinks they may have a gold mine on their hands in the form of waterlogged school buses. This New Orleans Public School Bus is a 1993 International Blue Bird with 147,797 miles. The ...

A friend of mine sent me this joke today. Pretty funny. A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL ...