German subscibers of T-Mobile can now get a hybrid PDA phone that supports both GSM and WiFi wireless networks. The new Mobile Digital Assistant (pretty pictures) will connect to cellular and wireless hotspots built by T-Mobile as well as any 802.11a/g Wireless LANs.
The Express beta editions of Visual Studio language environments just came out today, and O’Reilly Network already has a rather detailed article on what that Refactoring option in the context menu means. Russian company JetBrains is also selling its Resharper tool that’s now distributed for free through the Early Access Program and seems to be gaining traction within the developer community.
Posted in Programming at June 29th, 2004. No Comments.
The day is a total disappointment. First, breaking news from Slashdot - Bill Gates will not actually pay me a hundred bucks for every chain e-mail I forward to a bunch of people I barely know, and now this consumer advice from PC World. Magnets will not destroy data, cell phones do not interfere with airplane navigation systems, cookies do not track every mouse move of yours, turning the power off on your computer without shutting down Windows first will not mess it up beyond recognition, and you shouldn’t every once in a while completely discharge your laptop batteries. They also have a nice bogus-o-meter to describe the ridicule level of a belief.
Posted in Entertainment at June 29th, 2004. No Comments.
Tired of those huge ugly access points taking up the precious space? MeshCube is a 7×5x7 cm transparent access point supporting 3 wireless technologies as well as 100 Mbps Ethernet. 200 pounds is a bit on expensive side, though.
Posted in Gadgets at June 28th, 2004. No Comments.
Eric G. Harrison desribes his experience setting up a Media Center PC. Apparently this project is not for the weak:
Besides the license agreement that took over 50 screens (seriously, it’s that long and stupid) there isn’t anything there that you as a PC user would find overly strange about it.
Posted in Entertainment at June 28th, 2004. No Comments.
Recently a friend of mine asked me about portable hard drives capable of downloading the images directly off the digital cameras. She was going to London with a sweet Canon EOS-10D 6.3 MP camera and a 1 GB CompactFlash card, which would not suffice for a three-week trip. Can I download the images off the digital camera directly to a portable hard drive? - she asked, and at that point I got kinda stunned, since I never really travel without my laptop around, which eliminates the need for additional storage. As far as I understand, the downloading process requires the presence of a USB host, which should be achieved with some embedded CPU and some additional RAM for buffering, so at that point you’re paying for CPU, paying for RAM, paying for storage, which amounts pretty close to buying a cheaply configured laptop from Dell with the largest drive you can find.
Engadget talks about Welland USB hard drive that’s capable of processing USB clients on the go, meaning that a digital camera can be connected to it and images downloaded without the need for a PC. Peter Rojas claims this might be the first portable drive with such capability, but it’s not.
Quick Froogle search reveals a product called Nixvue Vista, capable of storing 60 GB in its most expensive configuration, which is 60 GB. It costs $600, which is within the range for a cheap laptop, although from the looks of it lugging something the size of an iPod definitely beats laptop. Delkin Devices e-Film PicturePad, 60GB is another unit they have for $589, and turns out there are some products from Alera capable of recording to CDs, so it’s a portable CD-RW with some smarts to get the data directly off the digital camera. An 80 GB SmartDisk FlashTrax, 80GB is another one from B&H, capable of storing 80 Gigs of photos off the flash cards, and Froogle finds Buy.com selling it for $615.
Couple of pretty useful links from Microsoft.com for later use:
- MSDN Usenet search - searches only Microsoft-managed newsgroups, so not as broad as Google Groups, but straight to the point when you need an answer on MSFT technology
- Microsoft Script Center - bunch of ready-to-go scripts for Windows Scripting Host. Mainly routine sysadmin operations like system restore, change a drive letter of a volume, schedule a task through Windows task scheduler.
Posted in Technology at June 27th, 2004. No Comments.
Internet is undoubtedly one of the most efficient ways to distribute software applications to the end users. However, not always it’s the best medium for selling broad market apps, as Beyond.com would tell us. Exposing the product through regular retail channels like CompUSA or BestBuy is very tempting, but where do you start? DevX has the article on selling shrink-wrapped software products through retailers, working with the publisher and figuring out the profit margins. The last part, as the article claims, can be negative:
The investment needed to get a product into just one store, says Seeyle, is at least $100,000 and that’s just for the cost of goods. Whether you ever see a return is another matter—retailers won’t pay you until the consumers pay them. And you’ll be expected to take return delivery on all unsold inventory.
Posted in Programming at June 23rd, 2004. No Comments.
Coke or Pepsi? Paper or plastic? Ad-Aware or Spybot? OReillyNet article tries to answer the last question by running a comparison of two most popular Windows spyware utilities. The timing seems about right as both Ad-Aware and Spybot are at the top of Download.com rating, pushing their way through ever popular file-sharing and instant messaging apps. According to J.W.Olsen, Ad-aware found more items, offered more candidates for deletion, but not that aggressive. Spybot found some things that Ad-aware missed, had more advanced options and fresher update file. Author’s conclusion? Use both.
Posted in Technology at June 23rd, 2004. No Comments.
Spokane International Airport is getting wireless connectivity just before the city will expand WiFi coverage to 100 blocks in Spokane downtown.
It will be the largest urban Wi-Fi zone in the United States, said Bob Conley, a founder of Vivato, the company that made the antennas for both installations
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Vivato’s press release mentions the service will be useful not only to casual downloaders.
The downtown “Hot Zone” will improve city services by facilitating intelligent policing, quicker fire and rescue response, and will support e-government initiatives and a more productive mobile workforce.
Posted in Technology at June 17th, 2004. No Comments.