Tech Review

Here.

Thinking:

The list has two functions, related to each other:

(a) To rank the most popular children's books so that (b) parents can choose the best ones, as children don't have access to credit cards.

Questions:

Are parents really buying gay-themed books for their children, or are agenda-driven adults buying them for themselves or to manipulate the statistics?

Are the people complaining, parents?

Last year, Microsoft was accused of censoring 'gay-sounding' gamertags on Xbox Live. A few months later, Apple's iTunes suffered a glitch that accidentally censored some song titles and artist names, despite neither being explicit. And now in 2009, it's Amazon's turn to wear the think-of-the-children hat.

Over the weekend, hundreds of gay and lesbian-themed books -- such as Heather Has Two Mommies and everyone's favourite, Daddy's Roommate -- vanished from Amazon.com's search listings. It appeared that the company was trying to make best-seller lists more family-friendly, and that the sales rank, which Amazon uses to list search results in order of popularity, of over 50,000 books were nullified.

Amazon, however, has since stated officially that it was merely a "ham-fisted cataloging error", and reports from anonymous Amazon.com employees confirm they were dragged from their Easter celebrations to fix the "screw-up".
A butterfly flapping its wings in Amazon's office...

In a world where putting a single full stop in the wrong part of a URL can send you to gay porn instead of your local police department's homepage, we're inclined to believe Amazon.

But our own conclusions didn't occur to thousands of angry Internet users over the weekend. And it didn't prevent a weekend of Amazon bashing, viral complaint-making via Twitter, and even the creation of a 20,000-member strong petition against the company's apparent hatred for all things gay.

I have a mountain of Cds I never use anymore. I've moved towards, like most stereophile readers in this article, digital music. I can't tell the difference if encoded at a high enough bitrate (You can't either, liar.) and I play them strait from my computer to a stereo receiver through optical. That's when I'm all alone. The 95% of the time kids or somebody else is crawling around my house, I'm forced to use earphones.

I also ran across this bit of romanticism:

I listen primarily to CDs and maybe 20 percent of the time to LPs. I cannot imagine using a music server anytime soon, and sound quality issues have nothing to do with that. I like picking music from my collection. It's a touchy-feely, organic process. One album leads to the next, or I accidentally find something I haven't listened to in years.

This is the same thinking that Madonna uses to justify getting married in a white dress. Just let go, bro.

There should be some good ebay deals on HD-DVDs this week. Toshiba is ready to throw in the towel on HD-DVD, ceding to Blu-ray and Sony in the splendid little format war noticed by .05% of the population (I didn't invest in either, so I don't care). One interesting question is: what will happen to the X-Box 360 (Microsoft went with HD-DVD;)? Will Microsoft sell a Blu-ray drive for its game console?

Free internet at Starbucks! This is great news. I've actually bought time to use T-mobile wifi. Now, I can get me some gratis wifi when I'm on the road, going someplace for lunch, or just getting a cup of joe. Since there's a Starbucks every 400 feet, I'll never be without access. If you factor in the cost of the coffee, you can get internet for only $4700.00 a month.

That's one less thing Obama will have to do for us.

Story here.

Story here.

These kinds of deals baffle me. What, exactly, can Yahoo do that Microsoft can't? Do they have some secret search or IM technology that Microsoft engineers can't duplicate? Microsoft can't find any yodelers?

Yahoo has servers, but 44 Billion dollars can buy a bunch of desktops.

I'll assume that Microsoft isn't made up of a group of blithering idiots and think it's a good buy. The only thing I can think of, then, is that Microsoft is buying the most expensive client list in history. Microsoft wants all of those email accounts, home pages, and the traffic from the number one site in the world, according to Alexa.

If I were in the market for a new notebook, I'd get this one, I think. The $2743.00 price tag would be lower, I'm sure, were it not for the solid state, flash-based hard drive. LED backlit LCD screens are the cat's meow and I'm sure it'll have that great thinkpad keyboard.

From here:

The configuration available at Best Buy for Business indicates this X300 has a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo SL7100 processor, 2GB of RAM, DVD-RW optical drive, 13.3" WXGA+ display and 64GB SSD. The earlier leak indicates goodies such as an LED backlit display, 3 USB ports, Wireless USB, WiMax, GPS and built-in web camera are all part of the package too.

As you read this, I'm savoring the world-class delicacies of the Maywood Denny's. Why did I choose Denny's over Norm's or any of the other fine dining establishments in the area?

"It's the food, stupid."

You're wrong. It's the free wi-fi, idiot (I don't mean to be insulting, but you started it.).

The city of Maywood provides "free" wifi access along its main thoroughfare, Slauson Avenue.

I'm usually against the government doing things for people that they can do for themselves (read here), but, in this case, I have to make an exception. It's a great idea!

First, I'm here, right? Think of city-funded wi-fi as fancy lamp posts or nice landscaping- an investment that makes the city more attractive to businesses and their potential customers.

Second, it's local. If the city residents want free wi-fi, it's their choice. If they don't like it, they can move to Huntington Park or Bell.

Third, since it's on the main street, unless you're a person of ill-repute, the city's not paying for your...research.

So, there it is: Moderation in action. Eat your heart out, Ron Paul.

It was the break I was waiting for. When Sony unveiled a multi-format (DVD-RW+-) DVD recordable drive for under $300.00 in 2000, I bought one immediately. History may be repeating itself with the under-$200.00 BDU-X10S.

Eventhough HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVDs aren't the huge jump in quality and convenience over DVDs that DVDs were over VHS (remember those?), if one combines their computer with a large LCD screen to make it an HTPC, the difference in price between a DVD drive and an HD drive isn't too much, and the new drives are backward compatible with DVD, getting an HD drive makes sense.

This Sony drive can't record Blu-ray. It would be nice to back up a whole hard drive on one or two 25GB discs, but it's not a big deal for most people. Neither does the Sony BDU-X10S play movies in rival format HD-DVD.

But, the competitor to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD is a dead format walking. With the recent decision of Warner Brothers to only release titles in Blu-ray, only two of seven movie studios support HD-DVD. blockbuster only deals in Blu-ray as well. The inclusion of Blu-ray with the Sony Playstation 3 seemed to do the trick.

Now, because of copy protection schemes in Blu-ray discs, you can't just pop in a Blu-ray drive and start watching the director's cut of Exit to Eden in all of its high definition splendor.

Exit to Eden

You need compatible video cards from Nvidia or ATI (I recently purchased an 8500GT in anticipation) and a post-2005 HDTV with the right kind of DVI, HDCP, or HDMI (If you're confused, good. That means I'm not the only one.)

XFX PVT86JYAHG GeForce 8500GT 450MHz 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card ( S-Video / DVI / VGA )

Anyways, lets see how the whole thing shakes out. I'm testing my 2005 TV sometime this week.

I feel partially vindicated after several people faulted my review of the Dell 1520 and 1521 for focusing on aesthetic, quality, and "feel" issues instead of pure performance. I did so for a reason. Let's face it: There's not a whole lot of difference between laptops with the same components. I noted the small difference in LCD quality between the Dell, the HP, and the Sony, but otherwise, it's all about features (in which the Dell 1520 excels), looks, and convenience (where they locate the USB ports, etc.).

Apparently, Dell agrees with me. They've shrunk the 1520 and 1521 and called it the 1525. Now that the girth issue is settled, let's see upgrade the cheap plastic. If they do that, I'd buy one for my mom. Seriously.

This year is a holding pattern for internet 2.0 things. Facebook and Myspace are still popular amongst the hip and nerd alike, but not growing. Digg and some of the interest sharing traffic generators are neat to look at on occasion (but have a ponzi quality to them). Blogs are old news, but indispensable. "Online presence," "my life is internet-dependent" things like Twitter are ridiculous.

Then there's stuff like blogshares which I'm a part of, I guess, but don't know what it's for.

Computers have gotten faster for no reason. Despite the million-fold increase in performance, I can't think of anything I did in 2007 that I couldn't do in 2001 except for wireless networking.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD aren't a huge leap in entertainment: I don't need to see every pore on Jessica Alba's face.

Streaming radio and podcasting jogged in place.

Best Tech of 2007:

The winner by default, then, is the iPhone. It added nothing new to the mobile phone experience except a sleeker interface and and a lower shelf for some notoriously confusing tech like GPS. Some of the teachers at my school have them as well as some of my students and they love them. They're all women. In fact, I don't know any men with an iPhone. Why? Don't kill me for stating obvious things, but in electronics, women are all about ease-of-use and style. Like in high-end-stereo, cars, and computing, only guys care about mega-this or frequency-that. Apple made internet-connected phones simple and cute, period.

yooZoo Silicone Skin Case for Apple iPhone with Screen Protector - Sunset Pink

The runner-ups are movies-on-demand and DRM-less music downloads, both of which I used this year and found convenient. Specifically, Amazon's high-quality 256kbs mp3s is the best for music (if they carry it) and Netflix and iTunes make downloading and streaming video easy. Walmart is OK, but it's Walmart.

The best place to get music if you can find it.

Honorable mention:
Cheap GPS devices that are as good as 2005's high-end products.

Navigon 2100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

Bluetooth peripherals for computers.

Logitech V270 Cordless Optical Bluetooth Mouse- Charcoal

Worst technology developments of 2007:

Besides non-detonating North Korean nuclear missiles, the worst tech product of the year is Microsoft Vista. I'm not a Microsoft-hating Linux nerd or Mac zealot; I bought Vista the day it came out and upgraded my Dell laptop the same evening. After making my computing life a string of annoyances for six months, I uninstalled it after I came back from Army training.

Vista is a puzzling phenomenon; a sign of societal degeneration, actually, for here is a product that makes computing harder, slower, and more prone to error while adding only the ability to see through menu bars.

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium FULL VERSION [DVD]

The runner-up goes to Microsoft Office 2007. If there's any product that makes me think there's a conspiracy afoot in Redwood, it's Office 2007. First, computer trainers must have paid Microsoft for adding a built-in IQ test in the form of a bar, called a ribbon, that requires one to memorize a series of symbols. Text-based learners have no recourse: You can't go back to the normal intelligence-oriented menu bar used by millions for fifteen years.

Second, by default, Office 2007 saves documents in a format only only Office can read. Is there a good reason for this?

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007

Honorable mentions:

Wavy keyboards.

Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Set

Apple reducing the price of the iPhone by $200.00 one month after Apple's biggest fans camped-out to buy them on launch day, making them feel like suckers.