http://www.surflizard.com catching the digital wave Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:15:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Dell's "Cloud Computing" trademark application: denied http://www.surflizard.com/archives/dell-cant-trademark-generic-term-after-all/1158 Book: I just finished reading Small Favor, the latest installment of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. This is actually the tenth novel, and the series is still going strong. Harry Dresden is a modern-day wizard who manages to spend most of every book bruised and battered by ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/some-end-of-summer-recommendations/1150 A Star Trek MMORPG is in the works: The massively multiplayer game, from Cryptic Studios for Windows PCs and perhaps Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, takes place about 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis. Players can captain their own starship, as a human or alien, as they seek out new civilizations. ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/boldly-going-massively-multiplayer/1146 Wireless internet is coming to a Chrysler near you: Chrysler will reportedly offer up its in-car EV-DO solution (dubbed Uconnect Web) starting on August 25th, and owners of 2009 Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles (along with a few "earlier models") will be able to have the $499 box retrofitted into their ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/chrysler-readies-mobile-internet/1143 Not sure if this is legit or not, but the device in this leaked Palm Centro 2 advertisement looks a lot like my idea of what the next Centro should look like: Here's my take on such a device, from the 14th of last month: If the ad is a ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/leaked-centro-2-photo-shows-new-form-factor/1133 Microsoft allows PC vendors to sell PCs with Vista licenses, but with Windows XP installed (the famous "downgrade" right granted by MS through December 2009). Now HP has told APC that that's how they sell most of their business PCs (in Australia, at least): "From the 30th of June, ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/when-you-get-xp-preloaded-ms-gets-credit-for-a-vista-sale/1131 Microsoft announced two big changes to Money Plus, their personal finance software, last week. First off, no more brand new version each year. Microsoft is "moving off of an annual release cycle for Microsoft Money Plus." In other words, there will not be a "Money 2009" released ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/money-disappearing-from-store-shelves/1129 From an IBM press release: For the first time, IBM and leading Linux distributors Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat will join forces globally with their hardware partners to deliver Microsoft-free personal computing choices with Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony in the one billion-unit desktop market worldwide by 2009. Citing shifting market ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/ibm-to-microsoft-its-go-time/1126 Surflizard.com gets yet another re-design. We are now sporting a new look, and tighter integration with Techlizard.com, our technology and gadget blog. The clean new design for both sites is based on Andrew Faulkner's The Fadtastic Theme, featuring an adjustable width that fits your browser and good usability ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/surflizard-and-techlizard-get-redesigned/1123 InfoWorld has posted their "2008 Best of Open Source Software Awards", cleverly nicknamed the BOSSIES. Most of the picks are obvious (Firefox, OpenOffice), but it's still worth reading for those hidden gems you might find. There's Elgg, for example, which let's you set up your own MySpace-like social ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/infoworld-gets-bossie/1121 Reporters in China to cover the Olympic games may not have unlimited and uncensored access to the internet for a few days or weeks. Chinese citizens will continue to have their internet access filtered and censored during the games and after the games. One is a minor inconvenience, ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/media-only-upset-about-their-internet-access/1118 Reported in The Industry Standard, Dell is seeking a trademark on the term "cloud computing." As we all know, cloud computing is a generic term used commonly to describe the use of software served remotely, also known as "web apps" or "software as a service" (abbreviated "SaaS"). ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/dell-trademarks-the-future-internet/1110 A free comic book download, Kolchak the Night Stalker: Fever Pitch, is available from DriveThruComics.com. This comic features first-rate artwork and a good story. Fans of the original tv show will be especially pleased. The Silencers #1 and Twilight Crusade: Gabriel are also available for free, and ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/return-of-the-night-stalker/1106 ReadWriteWeb has an overview of the Scrabulous shutdown. Don't feel too sorry for the game's creators -- they were reportedly offered $10 million and the right to keep some version of their game -- which is a direct copy of Scrabble -- up on the web. But the ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/scrabulous-take-down/1102 I played with over-hyped new search engine Cuil.com off and on throughout the day, and I'm amazed at how poorly and inconsistently it worked. There appear to be serious architectural flaws that resulted in inconsistent and unpredictable results. John Dvorak has a scathing review slamming Cruil for poor ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/cuil-not-so-cool/1100 War Games, the 1983 film that had kids all over America dreaming of cracking government computers, has finally spawned a sequel. I watched War Games: The Dead Code today, and it was better than I expected given the sacred ground it was treading on -- not to mention the ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/would-you-like-to-play-a-game/1096 Mygazines.com has an impressive selection of magazines available for online reading. Users upload high-quality PDF files that are then available for anyone to read, rate, comment on, and mash up into personal 'mygazines'. Reading magazines doesn't require registration. This is an amazing site...enjoy it while it's ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/read-magazines-online/1091 Version 3 of Yahoo's Zimbra Desktop offline email client is now available as a free download. The software competes directly with Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc., and works with any POP or IMAP mail server. Although Zimbra is a stand-alone application running locally, it uses Java and Ajax just ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/zimbra-email-client/1089 TypoBuddy helps you search Ebay and Craigslist for mistyped words, automatically searching for typos based on your search terms. Many people have been doing this on their own for years, and it really is a great way to find deals on ebay. TypoBuddy just makes things a lot ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/typobuddy-turns-bad-spelling-into-bargains/1087 Yahoo is not only closing their music store, they're advising customers to circumvent their copy protection by burning music to a cd and re-ripping the tracks without DRM: After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/yahoo-advises-customers-to-break-copy-protection-on-music/1085 Convicted spammer escapes from prison: Eddie Davidson escaped from a Colorado prison over the weekend. Davidson pleaded guilty to tax evasion and falsifying information in an email – he sent hundreds of thousands of unsolicited messages touting penny stocks; he altered the emails so they appeared to come from legitimate businesses. ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/prison-needs-better-spam-filter/1083 Knol from Google is a new wiki-ish knowledge base. Unlike WikiPedia (the comparison is unavoidable), a Knol article has a single author or group of authors that determine the level of community collaboration he or she wishes to allow. Interestingly, multiple articles can exist on the same topic. ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/knol-wnats-to-be-an-authoritative-database-of-everything/1080 I've been looking at services that allow the synchronization of files across multiple computers. There are a lot of these services out there, but I decided to give the new Live Mesh service from Microsoft a shot. So far it's been a good experience. I've got two ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/live-mesh-synchonizes-files-without-fuss/1078 Google is pursuing an acquisition of Digg for a reported $200 million: Google’s on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside of Google, and the two companies are close to a deal that will ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/google-doing-digg-deal/1071 App-Stick.com is an impressive directory of hundreds of portable applications that can be executed directly from a USB drive. The security section alone offers a treasure trove of invaluable apps for when you're called on to perform tech support for friends and family. Offerings include Spybot Search And ... http://www.surflizard.com/archives/apps-to-go-lots-of-them/1060