Verizon is building a nationwide fiberoptic network to offer video and television services as well as high speed Internet connections at speeds of 30 Mpbs. They have to do it to compete with the cable companies that are now starting to offer VoIP phone service over their cable lines. If Verizon pulls it off, along with the other phone companies, this could mean great things for us home users.
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Hybrid cars aren’t really that good
Apparently hybrid cars don’t actually get the great gas mileage the EPA ratings indicate. Angry car-owners are holding their fists up in the air to the car companies, but the car companies claim it’s a side-effect of out of date testing methods employed by the EPA. Still, you don’t hear the car companies mentioning that when you go into purchase a hybrid.
On top of this, something like half of all the energy consumed and emissions generated by a car are during its manufacturing process. Buying an old Volvo is probably better for the environment than buying a brand-new hybrid. Still, every little technology step in the right direction is worth supporting in my opinion.
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Battle Cancer Cells in Ben’s Game
The Make-A-Wish Foundation has helped a 9 year old boy with Leukemia create a computer game featuring a hero that battles cancer cells. Eric Johnston of LucasArts volunteered to help make Ben’s wish come true and the result is now available for Mac and Windows. Sounds like an all-around great thing to me.
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Apple iTunes in a Box
I had a brain flash last night and I think I’ve figured out what the next Apple digital lifestyle product is going to be. I won’t bore you with my thought process, so without further ado:
The next Apple digital lifestyle device will be essentially a hardware version of iTunes with ethernet (wireless optional). It will connect to your television and stereo and will come with a combination DVD and CD-R (combo drive in Apple lingo) as well as an internal hard drive. It will allow you to import music into MP3 and AAC from CDs as well as burn playlists onto CD-Rs. It will also allow you to browse through the iTunes Music Store and buy music with a remote control from the comfort of your couch. Purchased music will be downloaded directly to the device. You would authorize it as one of your 5 computers (is this why the limit was raised from 3 to 5 computers?) and you would be able to play any music shared from other iTunes on your home network. It would share its own music so you could play it on your home computers as well. It would sync directly with iPods.
I suspect the device would also include DVR functionality (perhaps licensed from Tivo, but Apple is more likely to create their own) and it would of course act as a DVD player. The slam dunk would be the ability to easily copy music, photo, and video (and other?) files back and forth over the network so it could act as your local file server.
Unfortunately, I predict the device will be priced at around $600 which is a little too high for me to buy one right away. That’s the way Apple seems to like to do things.
Only time will tell if I’m right!
AMD sold more desktop processors than Intel for the week ending April 24th, with 52% of that market. It’s thought to be the first time that has ever happened. AMD already gave Intel something sour to chew on with their Opteron 64 bit processor and now they’ve managed to become more than just a little competitive in desktop cpu sales. All of this is without the help of Dell, too.
Geeks everywhere are no doubt watching all of this with keen interest…
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Hey Crackhead
A San Francisco guy who had his motorcycle vandalized twice in a couple of days wrote an open letter to the perpetrator. I laughed out loud a few times, though it still sucks that his bike was violated like that.
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What about that John Kerry?
I’m starting to lean this way myself.
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Sony launches Digital Music Service
Sony has launched their Connect digital music service. It boasts the largest music selection (bigger than iTunes?) and has the same pricing structure as the rest (99 cents a track, etc). It’s for Windows only and I think it uses their own proprietary ATRAC-3 digital music format and is playable on their own Minidisc devices.
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Fix for CD stuck in G4 Powerbook
I just had an audio cd get stuck in my G4 powerbook (rev 2 667 Mhz, combo drive). It was a mechanical
problem as the OS still saw the CD and it tried to eject it but couldn’t. Most of the fixes I found on the
web were for problems where the CD didn’t show up at all. I tried rebooting with no change and I tried
squeezing on the powerbook case around the combo drive in case something was stuck or something. I then
decided to let good ol’ gravity help out. I first held the powerbook so the combo drive was vertical with
the slot facing straight down while pushing the eject button. No luck. Then I tried holding the powerbook
upside down and voila it popped right out when I pushed the eject button. Nice. Sometimes it’s the simple
fix that does the trick.
UPDATE: It turns out I now have to hold my powerbook upside down every time I want to eject a cd. It’s more of a workaround than a fix, I guess.
UPDATE2: More of a real fix for this problem is to stick a quarter in the cd slot opening a little ways and just twist it a bit. Don’t twist too hard, obviously! This worked for me and popped things back into place so it worked perfectly again afterwards.
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The Punisher
I saw The Punisher movie. It was entertaining, but I think they might have tried too hard to stick with the comic book theme in parts. I’ve heard of some people completely hating it, but I didn’t think it was all that bad. If you’re a fan of The Punisher comic book series, you’ll get a kick out of the movie. It’s violent and a lot of people die as one might expect. Thomas Jane, the actor they picked for the title role does a good job and captures the character well. John Travolta never seems especially menacing to me, but he does manage to feel at least a little slimy in his role as the bad guy. Overall, it was a fun movie, but don’t go into it expecting much.