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.
I want to play a tribble.
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 rides.
Ok, a Jeep with internet access is just cool.
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 fake (and I suspect it is), hopefully someone at Palm is paying attention.
Hat Tip: Boing Boing Gadgets
UPDATE: The ad is apparently the result of someone’s project in a marketing class. Fake, in other words. Come on, Palm — the ball’s in your court. Build this phone already!
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, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence,” said Jane Bradburn, Market Development Manager, Commercial Notebooks for HP Australia.
“However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.”
Of course, Microsoft gets credit for a Vista sale, even when XP is shipped on the PC.
My own experience with Vista has been more positive than many (with most of my exposure coming after SP1), but I don’t see any compelling reason to update, considering the steep hardware requirements. In fact, my last laptop came with a free upgrade certificate that I never used. Apparently, a lot of people agree.
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 this fall. It was apparently getting difficult to convince people to buy a “new” version each year that contained only minor updates.
The other change is even more dramatic. Going forward, Microsoft Money will only be sold online: “Microsoft Money Plus will continue to be available at retail outlets while supplies last. We have stopped shipping new product to retail outlets.”
Both changes make sense. Money’s annual release cycle has always been a bit silly, and buying shrink-wrapped boxes of software at Wal-Mart or Staples started to seem quaint and old-fashioned some years ago. Personally, I’ve been happy with the free versions of Money (and/or Quicken) that came with various PCs and laptops purchased over the years.
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 forces and the growing demand for economical alternatives to costly Windows and Office-based computers, the four leaders sense an ideal set of circumstances allowing Linux-based desktops to proliferate in the coming year. Linux is far more profitable for a PC vendor and the operating system is better equipped to work with lower cost hardware than new Microsoft technology.
“The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president for IBM Lotus Software. “We’ll work to unlock the desktop to save our customers money and give freedom of choice by offering this industry-leading solution.”
The four organizations are working with vendors to build and distribute a PC pre-loaded with Linux and IBM enterprise collaboration software. This move is aimed squarely at corporate and government desktops, a market notoriously resistant to Linux computers outside of server racks. If IBM really wants to tackle the desktop, I think a better strategy may be taking the Apple route and building a new OS based on some other less-popular flavor of Unix, with the difference that it would not be tied to proprietary hardware. Now that would be cool.
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 thanks to plenty of white space (which we are a little obsessive about) and a minimal amount of graphical elements. We promise to stick with this design a while, although we may be making minor adjustments here and there for usability. As always, feedback is welcome.
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 networking site.
Ok, the guide is in that annoying multiple slideshow format, but I guess that’s a forgivable conceit for good content.
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, and one is a serious human rights issue. Which one has media organizations and human rights groups more upset?
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”).
Dell already seems to have a trademark on “Dell Cloud Computing Solutions“, and few would argue that it’s not a legitimate use of trademark protection. But they apparently also feel the need to go after the more generic “cloud computing” mark.
Given the negative publicity this move will (and should) generate, it’s hard to understand what Dell is trying to accomplish here. At the very least, the USPTO should have thrown this application out based on the fact that cloud computing is a generic term in common usage already, but I’m guessing the legal eagles at the trademark office aren’t all that Web 2.0 savvy.
The current status of the trademark claim:
Opposition period completed, a Notice of Allowance has been issued.
UPDATE: Boing Boing Gadgets weighs in with “what a bunch of disgusting shysters“. Agreed!
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 a lot of comics are on sale for $0.99 or a little more.
DriveThruComics.com is the first downloadable comic book store.
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 guys apparently got greedy, holding out for a bigger payday.
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 search results.
And Juan Carlos Perez points out that Cuil’s poor first impression could do lasting damage to the brand the owners are trying to create.
One interesting thing I noted was that as the day wore on, Wikipedia articles started suddenly appearing high up in the search results where they had been conspicuously absent before (something a number of other bloggers pointed out). That’s a positive sign — when you’re researching a famous person, you expect a competent search engine to return an encyclopedia entry fairly high up in the results.
But even if Cuil gets its act together, it doesn’t seem to bring anything compelling to the search engine space. Maybe I’ll change my mind once the stability and load balancing issues are sorted out.
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
I was worried early on…the first part of the movie has the feel of a second-rate remake or reboot more than a sequel. But eventually the plot heads back to the original source material and brings it up to date nicely.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of silliness in this movie–like the McGyver moment when Will ‘invents’ a WiFI antenna from a Pringles can, and his friends act like he’s just invented the wheel. And the premise that get’s Will in trouble in the first place — an autonomous government computer system identifies terrorists and executes them based on how well they play a computer game — is utterly preposterous. Sort of like locking up people who are good at Grand Theft Auto. And the frequent World of Warcraft references may help sell this movie to most viewers, but they are more likely to induce groans from the more online-savvy viewers this movie will appeal to most.
But overall, this movie works. Even the special effects and action scenes are well done. And, without giving too much away, several characters from the original movie play significant roles in The Dead Code.
I’m sure the plot holes and occasionally weak dialog could have been tightened up a lot with a bigger budget, and it’s unfortunate that this movie was made for DVD instead. But it’s still a decent movie worth watching — and a must-see for any fan of the original.
Buy On Amazon: War Games: The Dead Code
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 still available.
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 like many browser-based online applications.
If you need offline access to your email or want to consolidate your various accounts into a single inbox, Zimbra may be worth a try — the reviews seem positive so far.
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 easier.
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. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer’s operating system.
For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.
I’m glad to see these protection schemes collapsing, but seriously — how much would it really cost a huge multi-national corporation like Yahoo to maintain a single license server in perpetuity? Avoiding the bad publicity that goes with screwing your customers should be worth a few thousand dollars a year.
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. He was about five weeks into a 21-month prison term.
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.
The content is pretty sparse right now — leaning heavily towards medical articles. However, with Google’s backing, content growth should be rapid.
Another high-profile reference site should compliment WikiPedia, while the different format and methodology of Knol will provide some much needed checks and balances for us knowledge consumers. Knol is a site to watch.
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 PCs I’m syncing, with about 1.5 GB of data so far (Live Mesh offers 5 GB). The synchronized files can be accessed locally on either machine or can be accessed on the web from any computer.
So far, everything is working great. The client software runs unobtrusively in the background, and files added to folders flagged as Mesh folders are uploaded and distributed to other synchronized machines without any fuss. I’ve managed to organize some files I’ve had spread out over multiple computers and drives for years, which should make my life easier. I can now work on these files wherever I happen to be, without worrying about version control.
Live Mesh is a “technology preview” (which is MS speak for public beta, I guess), but I haven’t encountered any bugs or issues so far.
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 bring Digg under the Google News property
Digg was once a vital destination for anyone interested in technology news, but the quality has been sliding for more than a year. I don’t know if Google can turn that slide around, but it will be interesting to watch them try.
By the way, I hereby formally propose calling this acquisition “Giggle”. Hey, it’s catchier than “Microhoo”.
Referenced:
www.digg.com
www.google.com
UPDATE: I see from the trackback below that Netpaths links to me with the keyword “nervous” about this deal. Thanks for the link, but I’d classify myself as “indifferent”, or “curious” at best. Nice to see someone running with the “Giggle” meme so quickly, though. 
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 Destroy (spyware), Avast and ClamWin (antivirus), password managers, secure deletion tools, and encryption software.
Note that many of the apps in the directory must be installed locally, but the program folder can then be copied to a usb drive and executed from any computer without worrying about registry entries and such.
See also: PortableApps.com for a less diverse but high-quality selection of portable apps.
Michael Arrington wants to design and prototype an open source web tablet that can be built and distributed for $200. It would run Firefox and maybe Skype on a minimal linux OS. I’d buy 2 or 3, for sure.
Tony Smith at The Register has tested the latest version of PwnageTool, designed to jailbreak and unlock the latest iPhone firmware.