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Wednesday, March 27, 2002 |
Wish List: 9 Innovations in Search of Inventors
"Clearly, the world is waiting for the SnapFlat Screen: a detachable, interchangeable flat panel that you can move from gadget to gadget. After all, you use only one of these expensive machines at a time. At the end of the day, you can snap the screen onto your Web appliance to see how much money you've saved by buying one universal screen instead of six proprietary ones." [New York Times: Technology]
Some fun brainstorming over at the NYT. I also like the Punch-It-Up Alarm Clock, the TivoCorder, and the Intercom-puter.
11:47:00 PM Permanent link here
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"Obiwan Kenobi writes "In a gala event last night New Line Cinema revealed their Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD Plans. This includes a 2-disc version on August 6th (in both Pan & Scan and Widescreen, click here for box art), and a special 4-hour, R-rated cut of the film debuting in a 4-disc set on November 12th. While the August release includes some nifty features, it's the four disc version, with the longer cut and three audio commentaries, that really gets the drool flowing." Now that's what I'm talkin about!" [slashdot]
Oh yeah, baby! Somehow the word "drool" just doesn't cover it.
8:57:31 PM Permanent link here
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Sony Taking Pre-orders for CLIE NR Series
 "Sony has officially launched their new CLIE NR series in the US, just a few weeks after the same devices launched in Japan. The new CLIE's series consists of two models, the PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V which are equipped with a 66MHz Dragonball VZ processor, 16MB RAM, 8MB FlashROM, 320x480 16-bit reflective TFT display, PalmOS 4.1, lithium polymer battery, integrated MP3 player, built-in QWERTY keyboard, a Sony JogDial and of course a Memory Stick slot. Both units measure in at 5.5" x 2.875" x 0.687" and weigh 7 ounces.
The NR series is a very unique device in a number of respects beyond it being the first Sony device to use a software based graffiti area. The NR is the first clamshell based PalmOS device to be launched to my knowledge and has the ability to "morph" into a number of different configurations to suit the needs of a user by way of Sony's Flip-and-Rotate design. The NR70V adds a built-in digital camera to the mix capable of snapping 320x240 photos. The CLIE PEG-NR70 retails for $499.99 while the NR70V will sell for $599.99, both units are expected to be available in early May....
We have posted hi-resolution photos of the new CLIE models in the discussion thread for this news item." [PDABuzz.com]
I'm glad we're starting to see some new designs for PDAs, and I'm glad to see Sony doing it. I hope this is as cool as it sounds. Sounds like I'll have to accidentally end up at Best Buy in the near future to get a gander at these.
7:02:28 PM Permanent link here
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I've emailed this to enough people that I'm going to go ahead and post it. The infamous Lee Jeans commercial. There I did it. Warning: naked butts talking. Consider yourself forewarned. [via MeFi]
6:54:57 PM Permanent link here
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Don't Confuse Fans With Pirates by Roger Ebert
"This year, Universal's music division plans to use a new copy-protection scheme that excludes its discs from being played at all on 'Macs, DVD players, and CD-compatible video game consoles.' This according to Peter Cohen of MacCentral, who also reports that the plan will block discs from being copied to other CDs or being saved to the hard drives of most PCs in the MP3 format. The first disc to get this treatment is More Fast and Furious: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture, a title that will live in infamy....
The way to launch a new CD is to get it talked about—not to insult potential fans by making it unplayable on their equipment even after they buy it legitimately." [Yahoo Internet Life, via Privacy Digest]
6:46:25 PM Permanent link here
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Sorry the home page has been so sluggish today. I think it's because the YACCS service is down, so I've temporarily removed all of their code off my site. Let's see if this helps. Fingers and toes crossed....
6:16:35 PM Permanent link here
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"Let's buy a senator!
As I was eating lunch I was feeling quite anxious about growing up because once I'm grown up I'll naturally be able to afford my own senator. Now that I'm back at my desktop with the Internet in my lap I've realized that the impossible is possible today.
So Senator Hollings the man behind the SSSCA now known as the CBDTPA has been bought for only $300,000 by the media industries. Now what I propose is that we buy our own senator. I don't know which since I'm not American so please suggest one. At $5 a head it'd only take 60,000 for us to get one and with the help of a large tech company or two I'm sure we could even afford one or two more. Let's put the fax machines aside for a moment and fight dollar for dollar." [Matt Goyer]
2:57:14 PM Permanent link here
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How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
"Loop-the-loop
If I recall correctly, this is one path these connections took. There are multiple paths. "It's a small world after all."
Dave Winer pointed to Daniel Berlinger. Daniel pointed to Zimran Ahmed. Zimran pointed to Larry Staton. Denise Howell posted a comment in one of Larry's posts that I also commented on.
Dave Winer pointed to Jenny Levine, as did Jon Udell. Jenny asked for some lawyer 'blogs. I sent her Denise, Larry, and Zimran. She posted. Later, I read in Radio's aggregator, this post from Bill Humphries about acquiring LawMeme via Jenny. Going to his page, I see that he also reads Larry Staton. Bouncing to Denise, she's picked up on Ernie the Attorney through Dave Winer, while Jenny had introduced him, so to speak, earlier." [The Peanut Gallery (Will)]
12:20:35 PM Permanent link here
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I need Tom Peters to start a blog so that he can fill-in-the-blanks for me on such issues as the Open Access Initiative. Unfortunately, I don't have time to track this one, and it's tangential to my job.
"Napster for academics My entry in a Chicago business plan competition was software that helped academics share their research with each other. Academic journals make obscene profits (libraries are very price insensitive) and I wanted to shift some of that surplus to consumers (the scientists -- who also happened to produce the content). The judges were not impressed by my idea, but it lives on as George Soros's Open Access Initiative.
The whining you hear in the article is the handful of academic journal publishers moaning about their profits (maybe) going down. But they shouldn't worry -- refereed journals bring prestige because they are hard to access, and thus are valuable to academics." [winterspeak , via Will]
How does all of this relate to Docster, and what do I need to know about all of this? C'mon, Tom!
11:57:56 AM Permanent link here
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GPS Enters the Mainstream
" 'It’s stunning,' Enge said. “In the beginning, the expected marketplace was 40,000 receivers — total — for military use. Today, we build 100,000 receivers a month, and most of it isn’t for the military....'
Soon, Pulse Data HumanWare will sell a portable GPS navigation system that tells sight-impaired users how to get to more than 15 million “points of interest,” such as museums and amusement parks.
Five years ago, SiRF Technology Inc., the leading GPS chip supplier, produced a chipset the size of a playing card. Today, it’s as small as a thumbnail....
Companies such as Enuvis Inc. are working to improve GPS so receivers could work indoors and in so-called urban canyons — downtown areas with tall buildings that have long acted as barriers for GPS signals.
'We imagine a world one day where you’ll never lose anything and nothing will ever be lost,' said Michael Kim, president of Enuvis." [MSNBC Technology]
I'm already addicted to the Visteon GPS navigation unit in my car, so I can understand why this technology is becoming so popular. While I would love to embed a GPS chip in my car keys and ReplayTV remote, I'd like the ability to toggle it on and off for privacy reasons.
8:58:16 AM Permanent link here
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"According to a recent study by InfoTrends Research Group, 33 percent of households surveyed owned a digital camera in 2001. Most of them used their digital cameras as their primary means of photography, while 19 percent said they have stopped using film cameras altogether. So which brands are most popular?
Some 14 percent owned cameras from Sony, 12 percent cameras by Polaroid, 10 percent by Eastman Kodak, and 9 percent by Olympus. Seems those low, low prices we saw near the end of 2001 helped speed adoption. And it looks like the trend will continue. By the end of 2002, 60 percent of households that use the Net are expected to also have a digital camera." [ZDNet]
Which will be yet another generational shift as NetGens grow up with digital cameras rather than film ones. Whenever I take a picture of the kids now, they immediately ask to see it. So I turn the dial to "play" and show them, because for some reason, they get a really big kick out of this. I noticed when we were on vacation earlier this month, Sheree took a picture of Brent with her film camera and Brent immediately said, "Let me see it." She had to try to explain to him that she couldn't show it to him until the film was developed.
We still buy the kids disposable cameras for vacations, but I can tell that they're almost ready for their own digital cameras. They're only eight- and six-years old, so they're probably going to grow up without really using traditional cameras.
8:44:36 AM Permanent link here
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The CBDTPA Is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism
"I'd love to close this with encouraging words, but I'm actually pretty scared. I can see the CBDTPA passing. We've been fighting ignorance for the last several hundred years, but it's still rampant, as the very fact this bill was proposed proves. It may be too much to handle." [iRights, via Privacy Digest]
I was starting to quote some stuff from this essay, but it would have filled up your whole news aggregator. Lots of good stuff here, including a specific example of how it could affect John Q. Public on a the most base, personal level (there you go, Bruce). Definitely worth your brain cells to read.
7:15:40 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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