Denver Post published an excerpt from new O’Reilly book Spam Kings. The excerpt describes Scott Richter, the owner of SaveRealBig and OptInRealBig, who at some point had NY Attorney General’s Office and Microsoft after him.
According to CarPages, Toyota Prius set a new world record for hybrid vehicles. It “set the mark at 130.794 mph on the three-mile short course using a standard Hybrid Synergy Drive power-train - a mixture of 1.5 litre petrol engine and an electric motor.”
After fiddling around with Google Groups interface, which is not too convenient if one decides to read the latest posts one by one, I finally decided to figure out where Comcast hides its NNTP news server. Apparently, they outsource the news to GigaNews and here’s their Comcast-specific page.
NNTP server for Comcast: news.comcast.giganews.com
Username for Comcast newsgroups: your_comcast_account_id@comcast.net
Password for Comcast newsgroups: the same as password for your @comcast.net account when you signed up with them
Pretty interesting collection of tools, helping with data visualization, project management, information management, etc.
Channel 16 (UWTV) is showing an interesting presentation by Larry Dalton, professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington. I am not a Chemistry major, and apparently the high-school Chem is not quite enough to fully understand what he’s talking about, but Professor Dalton is conducting research in organic materials capable of transferring data via electric and optical qualities. Advantages? Smaller size and lower voltage consumption, plus cheaper price since organic matter is so widely available (mad props to Mother Nature).
Here’s Dalton’s mission of statement from his personal Web site:
Over the last two decades, advances in electronics have revolutionized the speed with which we perform computing and communications of all kinds. Three key technologies combined to create a platform that enabled the electronic revolution: semiconductor materials, automated microfabrication of integrated electronic circuits, and integrated electronic circuit design. As a result, the mass manufacturing of low-cost integrated circuits has become possible. But now we are outgrowing the performance of electronics in many applications. Signal propagation and switching speeds in the electronic domain are inherently limited. One area where these limitations are seen clearly is in telecommunications, where bandwidth expansion is desperately needed. To overcome these barriers, we must enter a new computing and communications revolution-this time based on photonics. Photonics plays some crucial and complementing roles to electronics in many application domains. Examples of successful use of photonics can be found in broadband communications, high-capacity information storage, and large screen and portable information display. As demands for information bandwidth increase, information photonics is becoming more and more important in every aspect of today’s technology-driven society. The success of a new technology, however, largely depends on the progress achieved in finding and fabricating new high- performance and cost-effective materials. Recently, as the knowledge base of polymeric materials widened, new functions for polymers have been actively investigated. New and improved polymeric materials were found to show promises in generating, processing, transmitting, detecting, and storing light signals.
He also has a paper on electrooptical and optoelectronic devices:
Electro-optic chromophores (FTC and CLD) were synthesized in bulk (kilogram) quantities and were distributed to the participants of this program project (Steier, Fetterman, Chen, and TACAN/IPITEK). They were also provided to other Department of Defense programs including to researchers at China Lake (Navy), Redstone Arsenal (Army), and Wright Paterson (Air Force Research Laboratory) and to various industrial programs (e.g., Lockheed Martin) participating in DoD research programs. FTC and CLD chromophores were systematically modified to improve their properties, including for lattice hardening to stabilize electro-optic activity for operation at elevated temperatures and photon flux levels. Over 100 variants of these chromophores were synthesized and were evaluated. Reaction yields were optimized by systematically variation of reaction conditions. New chromophores were also synthesized at the University of Washington including those involving incorporation of significantly improved chromophores. These new materials involve factors of 1.5-2.0 improvement over FTC and CLD chromophores in terms of electro- optic activity at telecommunication wavelengths. They also have proven more amendable to being processed into hardened material lattices and have exhibited significantly improved thermal and photochemical stability. The role of chromophore structure and the use of radical (and singlet oxygen) scavengers have been investigated. The results can be utilized to fabricate materials with significantly improved photochemical stability.
Folks at New York Times apparently watch QVC and discover this interesting item from Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer. It’s entire Commodore 64 in a joystick pre-loaded with 30 games like Speedball, World Karate Champion, Surfing, and others. The device connects to the TV and sells for $30. It requires 4 AA batteries, according to QVC Web site:
An arcade full of fun in one take-anywhere unit! Based on the classic Commodore 64 home computer gaming system, this plug-and-play joystick is as easy to set up as it is to enjoy. Simply plug it into the A/V jack on your television and get ready for awesome retro gaming action.
On December 23rd, 2004 Microsoft filed a patent application for XML object serialization:
Herein is described an implementation of an object persister, which serializes an object to preserve the object’s data structure and its current data. The serialized object is encoded using XML and inserted within a message. That message is transmitted to an entity over a network. Such a transmission is performed using standard Internet protocols, such as HTML. Upon receiving the serialized object, the receiving entity deserializes the object to use it. Rather than include copies of referenced objects within the serialized object, the object persister includes references to those objects. This avoids redundant inclusion of the same object and potentially infinite inclusion of the object itself that is being serialized.
LinuxDevCenter interviews RMS. I found myself nodding my head several times and not agreeing with RMS several times while reading the interview, but his articles and express thoughts are always interesting. Stallman actually supports the free software projects ported to proprietary operating systems (read ‘Windows’):
Porting free applications to nonfree operating systems is often useful. This allows users of those operating systems to try out using a few free programs and see that they can be good to use, that free software won’t bite them. This can help people overcome worries about trying a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. Many users really do follow this path.
New York Times reviews the digital picture frames available commercially:
Yes, with the ultimate digital camera accessory: the digital picture frame, a flat-panel screen designed exclusively for showing digital photos. A digital frame can do something no ordinary frame can do: change what’s in it at the touch of a button, or even treat you to a slide show. Think of it as a screen saver that doesn’t tie up your computer.
Both Linux Toys and Wi-Fi Toys books from Wiley had chapters on assembling a digital picture frame on your own, provided you can scrap an LCD screen off the old laptop. Engadget provides a link to a Popular Science article teaching one to build a Linux-based digital picture frame, but the link on PopSci.com appears to be dead. So Channel9 comes to the rescue with their Windows-based digital picture frame how-to.
Extremetech rounds up everything that happened to HDTV industry this year.
This year saw many new players jump into the game. HDTV is a hot product category and is very commoditized with original device manufacturers (ODMs) making the actual sets. “All you need is a checkbook and a plane ticket to China, and you’re in the HDTV business,” said one industry type about this year’s many new entrants.