Blogging Ahead

More travel tech

Following up on the last post, here, via Gizmodo, is a review of another, non-Apple, traveling access point:

SMC has thrown the kitchen sink into its traveler’s access point, a street price $99 device that has the full complement of Wi-Fi options

Connecting on the road

This is a little on the techy side of things, but this discussion on using Airport Express in hotel rooms might be of interest to business travelers (or the sort of people who bring their laptops/WiFi devices everywhere they go).

The conversation started with the author explaining how he used his AX to bridge a wired connection to his laptop. The real value, though, might be in the comments readers have added:

We've done something similiar to what Colin Smith described above. We had three people that needed to work together in the hotel room, so one of us connected to the hotel LAN network, charged the $10 to their room and then created a wireless network using their powerbook. Then the two other people connected to that powerbook wirelessly.

Getting ready for prime time

Here's another kinda-personal-finance sort of thing -- but one that fits well within the "news you can use" focus of Getting Ahead.

With the number of options and technological changes in television sets, simply buying something to zone out in front of in the evenings has become ever more complicated. To that end, Technology360 offers a primer on how to buy a television.

TV buying is much more complicated than it used to be.

In the past 50 years, there haven't been many features to pick from, and once optional things like UHF tuners, remote controls, color, stereo and cable channel tuning have all become standard. The main constant over the years was a choice of picture size.

Now, there are SIX different decisions to make and the choices within decisions keep changing. This confounds even the experts. So don't feel alone in your quest!

I find it somewhat ironic that the big box electronics retailers have all moved to non-commissioned -- which often means not as well trained -- sales staff at a time when the products they sell have gotten more complicated.

Valenti verbiage

Standford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig has compiled a collection of quotes from Jack Valenti, who has stepped down as president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, where he was the industry's chief lobbyist.

Valenti, of course, has been a staunch opponent of various forms of technology that do not include digitial rights managment schemes, while Lessig is one of the foremost proponents of freedom of ideas, acclaimed for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

The best Valenti quote, I think, is his statement arguing against the VCR, which has created a hugely profitable distribution channel for the film industry. When the device was introduced, though, the movie lobbyist said:

"[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

Don't be a disease vector

Just another public service announcement, reminding you to update your virus software, for your own protection and for other's.

All those virus-laden e-mails you've been seeing? Yep, things are getting worse:

The number of new viruses detected during the first six months of 2004 is up 21 per cent on the same period last year.

The first six months of the year have been characterised by a number of big-name viruses - most notably Sasser and huge number of Netsky variants.

Table for two?

I've never been much of a sim-game player (apart from a brief addiction to the original Sim City), but Restaurant Empire sounds like it could be fun, especially if you've ever thought about opening up your own eatery.

Restaurant Empire gives you a good sense of managing a restaurant. You hire and fire staff, construct a menu, place tables, decor, and kitchen equipment, and open the doors. Over the course of a day, people wander in and order. As is typical in games of this type, each customer's desires, wants, and reactions are tracked in detail, and you can click on any guest to see what he or she is thinking about (often, about the rudeness of staff or delays in their order).

I'd be curious to see what a real restaurant manager thinks of this. When I was playing Sim City, I knew a city manager who thought anyone going into municiple administration should play the game, saying it gave a decent look at the pressures of the job.

Got game?

Ever dream of playing games for a living? Technology and culture Web site Kuro5hin examines the downside of professional computer gaming:

All is not fun and games in the world of professional gaming though as my friend has revealed to me. A lot of sweat, and sometimes blood is involved. The concept of e-sports is still far from being a reality and few people can actually earn enough to support themselves and secure their futures.

On the other side of the gaming equation — and on a local note — Florida Community College has two game programming courses, which appear to be part of the Computer Programming and Analysis associates degree program.

Browser Wars

Talk of new browser wars -- harkening back to the days when every other Web site urged you to go with one or another broswer -- might sound a little too much like inside tech baseball. What makes the subject so important is that the way that Microsoft and its competitors make their browser have a radical impact on how we interact with the World Wide Web:

The tiniest shift, history shows us, can signal the greatest change. News last weekend that Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser had lost a single percentage point of market share might not sound all that significant today, but it could well mean the browser wars are back on. One percent is all it takes.

As someone who spends much of his Web time on a Macintosh equipped with IE 5 (still using OS9, so no chance of going with Firefly), all I can say is I hope that either Microsoft gets standard compliant real quick, or someone ports one of the new Mozilla browsers from OS X.

By design

The 130 winners of the 2004 Industrial Design Excellence Award are online, providing a glimpse at how creativity can be applied to a range of products.

With the jury looking at a variety of categories, the winners include business tools like the Bloomberg Terminal (above), consumer devices such as the MovieBeam receiver (MovieBeam debuted in Jacksonville) and oddities like the blogospher favorite Circular Printer.

Apple for teacher

Those of you white-headphone-types all het up about today's release of Apple's new iPod (which you can get here) might be interested in Newsweek's article on why the little music box is so revolutionary. (One major impact of Apple's entry into the music realm has been the affect on digitial rights management, which this article does a nice job explaining.

You also, by the bye, might be interested in Alpine's iPod-your-car kit, which is considered one of the better ones out there (yes, better than the built-in BMW version, although if you can afford a BMW, you're probably not complaining.), as well as this, which is so odd that we just like sharing it.