08 November 2002

Leaked Memo Shows Open Source Gains Over Microsoft Richard Stallman -- Every Halloween, Stallman finds another reason to poke two fingers at Microsoft. This month, it's another leaked Microsoft memo. You could conclude that the memo shows Microsoft's strategy failed when publicly bashing the Open Source Movement. You could also conclude Microsoft is going after open source. Dan Gillmor believes the primary method will be to launch patent lawsuits. Microsoft has explicitly threatened to do this. This tactic might catch the Open Source movement on the back foot. [InfoWorld: Top News and Dan Gillmor's eJournal]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Your e-Book Should Be An Audio Book K Oanh Ha -- The Audio Publishers Association says that the audio book industry has become a $2 billion business, with revenue for audio books outstripping printed books by more than 41% between 1996 and 2000. Many publishers now release audio books (which can sell for as much as $80 for an unabridged selection) whenever printed versions go on sale, and almost any new title is available in audio format. (Some publishers are offering downloadable MP3 audio books on the Web, for about half the cost of books on tape or CD.) And the latest wrinkle is the development of audio book rental stores, whose success is in more-or-less direct proportion to the amount of time weary commuters have to spend in traffic. This is the kind of product that Irish planners are trying to promote with their road works strategy.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Type Once, Read Many Places AFTENPOSTEN no -- Two men in Norway discovered that the text one of them was typing on his Hewlett-Packard cordless keyboard was also appearing on a neighbor's computer in another building at least 150m away. They have since had their equipment replaced, but the problem persists and HP Norway product manager Tore A. Särelind says the firm is taking it "deadly seriously," and has mobilized forces to correct the situation. "Among other things we will check the suitability of the frequency we use. It is a so-called walkie-talkie frequency with a radius that can be difficult to limit," says Särelind. "We would also like to do an 'on-site' test in the area where Helle and Evjeberg live to see if there are special circumstances there which might influence the wireless reach of the keyboards." Over 65,000 of the keyboards have been sold in Europe. [Newsscan]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Gelernter's Vision of Personalcasting NYT -- Yale computer scientist David Gelernter believes "operating systems are lapsing into senile irrelevance" and he thinks, "every piece of digital information you own or share will appear (in the near future) in one universal structure" -- one to which you'll have access from any Net-connected computer anywhere. "I have time for only one screen in my life," says Gelernter. "That screen had better give me access to everything, everywhere." The universal structure, dubbed Scopeware, will be a narrative, 3D stream of electronic documents flowing through time. "The future (where you store your calendar, reminders, plans) flows into the present (where you keep material you're working on right now) and on into the past (where every e-mail message and draft, digital photo, application, virtual Rolodex card, video and audio clip and Web bookmark is stored, in addition to all those calendar notes and reminders that used to be part of the future and have since flowed into the past to be archived.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Competitions All Over the Wall John Stanley -- "Competitions attract people. Think of the crowded shopping mall where people hang around a storefront or a sign. Now add interaction to it." The Light Surgeones get people to stop in their tracks when they beam displays onto large wall. Imagine what that looks like if you mix that with multi-player games.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Sighting: Powerpoint from My Palm Margi Systems -- The missing Palmm m505 functionality -- what turns the little handheld into an ultimate business tool -- is the ability to view and display PowerPoint presentations from the Palm. Presenter-to-Go from Margi Systems makes that happen. The SD card add-on costs $199.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Palm's Market Share Drops Dramatically Gartner Group -- Gartner Dataquest released third quarter 2002 market share results for the PDA sector, revealing that PDA shipments for the first three quarters of 2002 are down 8.3 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Palm retained only 30 percent market share in the third quarter, down from 70 percent a year or so ago. But what would I do without my Palm m505?   [Comment on Shoptalk]