Data encryption

We all have more and more data floating around. Surely we have it on our PCs at home but those of us who have laptops have some further consideration. SUrely we can get and use one of the USB attached hard drives but the question really is about the security of the data we take with us. It is about time that the hard drive companies allow for data encryption as part of the hard drive electronics. The user is authenticated, could be at the OS layer and the remainder of the data becomes accessible. This way it is less painfull to just have the laptop stolen but at least the information that is on the drive such as social security number from that tax software we have on there is nice and safe

Spyware...nasty stuff

It is a constant battle on the internet to ensure that one's PC does remain free of crap also known as spyware. This stuff comes in various flavors. Some poses as a cute game or card or picture show. Some is embedded in an application that is offered free on line. Some of it is within the ActiveX or plug ins that are downloaded. ALl of it points to the need for a software package that will detect this stuff. The reason being is that this stuff will get through the firewall on the PC no problems as it is just like any other internet traffic. Once it gets to the client i.e. the PC, then it is up to the protections on that machine. Unfortunately most people running windows use an account that has administrative priviliges which allows for things like sfotware installation. Surely, this is the least hassle route, but it does require a separate layer of protection in the form of anti spyware product. There are quite a few out there from the free ones like Lavasoft or Spy bot to ones that come with a fee. Bottom line is to get one, free or otherwise, please install one on your machine and scan your PC frequently, daily is not too much.

Multiple Blackbeerries...what???

Some people have a tough time with the Blackberry as their work life never leaves them alone. Some people however enjoy the craziness....and then take it to the next level. The next level being a usage and carrying of multiple black berry devices. CRAZY!!! Here is an idea. On the server/computer side we have a capability to host multiple systems on one piece of hardware. We install multiple network cards and really one piece of hardware efficiently supports multiple systems. Translate this to the phone/blackberry world and I see a gizmo that will be one physical gizmo but will actually have multiple phone numbers in it, kind of like multiple phone line office phones. The gadget will allow the owner/user to maintain separate address books, separate calendars etc. In fact with each phone number that would be implemented by inserting a card or an ID of some kind or scanning a 2D barcode, the gadget would not only get the new phone # as well as setting up security on whether the address boook, calendar, e-mail etc. associated with this phone # can actually be shared within the device or not. This would allow a person to have several phone numbers and use a single phone book, but in case of a corporate/work stuff, the company could set it up so its information could not be copied within the gadget or added to either. Here is an idea...You heard it here first!

Computer systems

It is interesting to think about the computers we have at home, then some systems that power amazon etc. Then there are the systems that support very complex functions, I guess what some people referred to as "mission critical" applications. The areas that come to mind are foreign exchange trades (FOREX) out there, air traffic control and nuclear plant operations. Pretty cool stuff when you read about it.

The projectors...

It is very interesting to see the prices of the video projectors dropping and also the quality of the image going up and up and up. It is certainly the case that most houses have basements that could be home to a set up with a projector and a screen or just a blank wall. Such a home cinema would definitely be a hit with the kids in the family and also with the sports fanatics in the house and around the neighborhood. Definitely recommended item to look at closely.

Technology continues to eliminate economic inefficiencies

Since technology has become part of the society it has managed to eliminate inefficiencies in the society. This in turn allowed savings of capital through the elimination of inefficiencies. These savings are of course redirected towards other, hopefully and potentially more value add activities. The most recent examples are outsourcing of jobs to India which allowed companies and individuals to obtain significant savings. As such those resources were devoted toward activities such as R&D (corporate) and various spending(consumers). In the early days of the last century it was the invention of the assembly line that allowed many workers to leave the hazardous manufacturing jobs. They in turn could focus on more value add activities such as design of cheaper and more durable products. Surely, inventions such as post-it, plastic wrap, microwave etc. all came because fewer people were needed on the assembly lines. In the internet age the impacts are much more wide spread. One of very interesting examples is the land of professional photography or stock photo business to be specific. Prior to the internet "coming to this space," it was a fairly limited business in that the relatively few agents for the photographers had high standards, were very selective etc. etc. There were of course second tier agents, but overall it was a "tribal" business that was not really well known to the wide world. Just like in any industry, excellent product is accompanied by lower quality product etc. etc. Because of the limited exposure this industry has seen in the society, many people whose products were of medium quality were participating in the marketplace that would reward them disproportionately high capital for the quality of delivered work. Since not so distant past, the digital camera ownership has been spreading wider and wider. In addition the quality of the photos coming form the digital cameras is going up and up. Some of it is due to people trying to take better photos, some of it is due to the camera makers trying to compensate for the lack of photo taking skills. This can be well observed by Nikon, Canon, Sony and others pushing professional level capabilities to consumer level cameras. All of this activity spurs a huge amount of quality photographs being available. Even a small percentage of 100M pictures taken a year is a large number of photographs that are quality enough to be considered for stock, especially when considered to mid level stuff. Put this together with microstock sites and there is bound to be inefficiency eliminated from the market. Those individuals who have been relying on their income from producing stock photos yet producing mediocre quality are now in competition with everyone out there who took a photo of one thing or another and will sell it for pennies. This is done not because of desire to make a fortune but for desire to get a recognition of how cool their photographs are. Unfortunately, this reality is causing some people a lot of "indigestion." Some of which is actually resulting in personal attacks on those individuals. This shows not only how effective the technology is at eliminating inefficiencies in the market place, but also shows the level of faith individuals have in their skills as well as the deep down held confirmation that the inefficiency did exist and as such was eliminated. A great example of this is a blog post by John Harrington on his blog. It is really rare to see this type cause and effect in real life. We often read things like this in the press, but to actually see it is of great value and significance as the $$$ in the society are redistributed.

Blue screen of death....on an Apple???

Reports on tomshardware and other sites suggest that the joke Apple used to make of Microsoft is now on Apple. It appears that Apple's new Leopard operating system produces a blue screen with nothing on it on many Macs. It seems that the operating system has not been properly tested prior to its release probably due to the popularity of Mac computers and the infinite combination of hardware that popularity brings. While Microsoft has been dealing with this for many years and has set up programs with its partners to deal with such a thing, Apple appears to be caught with its pants down here. The company seems to have missed the boat here big time and it is looking really bad, probably not much better than a high school project by a few children thrown over a weekend. Hopefully Apple gets its act together. It is definitely true that Steve Jobs can sell this stuff, but Apple must ultimately deliver a product that is more than just demo system for Steve or an Adobe Photoshop workstation for a few fans out there of Apple's products. It is time for Apple to show that the cute commercials they make making fun of Microsoft are really what Apple is like. At this point, it looks like the roles in those commercials should be reversed.

Have no fear the D300 is here

The shipments of D300 are all over the world now heading to people who will enjoy their new cameras. Clearly the earlier post about a 3rd party battery is key here. Keep that in mind. If you need any lenses to go with the camera, do some research as there are plenty of good choices out there and some not so hot ones, so tread carefully.

Memory cards

We can see migration and development in the memory card area toward larger and larger memory cards. The compact flash, the memory stick pros etc. Now the question is whether the consumers should bite. On surface it makes sense as there are fewer cards to carry to store the data that is recorded on digital cameras, camcorders, mp3 players etc. however, it is possible that a card will go bad, now looking from this angle, having a single 4 gb card vs. 4 cards 1 gb each is now a much more favorable proposition. Similarly to losing a card etc. So when you select the memory cards for your gadgets keep this in mind as you make your purchases.

Black Friday ad leaks...

It is an interesting thing to see all of this internet posting and traffic about black friday shopping and leaked ads. What is the big deal? Is someone planning to get in line like on Monday in anticipation of say Wii sales? Come on!!! The regular ads come out on Thursday and there is plenty of time to pack lunch boxes and stuff and park in a line to get that $20 DVD player or something. What a waste of web space storage and internet bandwidth spending it on the black Firday stuff.

Generic batteries....

So you bought this fancy camera or camcorder or a laptop PC. Spent quite a bundle. Now the question is whether Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Dell, HP or other manufacturer designed the equipment that expects their brand of batteries or you can purchase a 3rd party one. We clearly know from the Dell and other problems a few years back that the batteries sold under many brand names come from one or two sources across many manufacturers. In the laptop scare it was SONY that was the culprit, if I remember right. So now, what is the difference to you? Well obviously the 3rd party batteries cost less in some cases quite a bit less. So is it worth it? In theory all batteries follow the same path in that they look inside like this (courtesy of Panasonic):



In practice perhaps a manufacturer of the equipment tweaks the schematics just a bit, or allows for tolerances different than the 3rd party supplier. In my mind the bottom line is that use of 3rd party batteries makes sense provided that: (1) you do your homework on the manufacturers of the batteries (2) you don't buy the lowest price ones from the 3rd party list. I personally will go with the Nikon supplied ones into my D300. Saving $20 is not worth it for me to do the research in (1) and (2) earlier.

PCs are power hungry

One of the things that is not talked about in the discussion about "green" stuff is how much power every one of our PCs consumes. Sure, companies with large data centers are looking at this and trying to get efficient power supplies in their system. Some companies put power supplies in a separate room from the server room so that all the heat from power supplies does not cause increase in data center cooling costs. Well...with the invention of Skype and such products, more and more people have their PCs on all day long. Most PCs have a 400 W power supply. I know I know, the laptop machines don't consume as much, but it is only recently that the laptops have breached $1000 mark, which in today's reality $1000 is a large amount to pay for a PC. Apple still disagrees, but PC makers have gone down to probably $400. However, many people still have desktop machines, myself included and the power supply in this machine is definitely taking quite a bunch of "juice" to run. One way to improve the world would be to devise an inexpensive and very efficient power supply so that it can be put into the desktop machines as a replacement. Someone like a local utility or energy board could sponsor this program.

Apple Leopard....

I remember the key note by Steve Jobs a few years ago about migrating to Intel CPUs. I watched it on Quicktime and it was a good show. Fast forward a year or two and Apple devised a scheme where users can run Windows on their Macs. Very cool indeed. Of course along the way, Mac OS was described as much better, faster, quicker, prettier etc. than windows. With the latest incarnations of Windows and Mac OS it is interesting to see that Windows will still run on a Mac but Mac OS will not run on a PC. Why is that? A quick search on the web will reveal that it is not a technical issue. In fact is it a choice Apple has made. Each Mac has a chip in it that is examined by Mac OS installation software. If the chip is there, the machine is a Mac, the software will install. If the chip is not there, the machine is not a Mac, the software won't install. Why would Apple do such a thing? Development costs to make Mac OS really compatibile with all the PC accessories out there? May be, but could be remedied by working with hardware manufacturers, after all Mac OS is better, faster, quicker, prettier etc. than Windows, so manufacturers would love to do this work. Seriously, manufacturers would do this development as much of the drivers would be portable from the Mac platform, plus Max OS running on a PC would spur additional PC sales. There are other reasons perhaps, but only one comes to my mind and that is that Apple is afraid. What are they afraid of? They are afraid that once Mac OS runs on a PC, people all over the world will find out what has been only argued to this point. The crux is pricing of Apple hardware. It may be better, it may be faster etc. etc. Once Mac OS runs on a PC, we would not be relying on comments from Apple or Apple zealots. We could spend $149 or whatever it is and put it on our PC and find out for sure. Surely there is something to think about when an entry laptop running windows is $300 and one running Mac OS is $999. So here is a business opportunity for you...devise a little card or USB gizmo that plugs into a PC and allows people to install Mac OS on their PCs. The work on this has already started on the internet, but so far it is a painful process. For now, judging by Apple's actions to lock Leopard to the Mac hardware, we perhaps got another point about Apple's belief about how strong their hardware offering is and it is not an encouraging vote of confidence from Apple.

USB storage

It is interesting these days how popular the USB hard drives are becoming. First it was the solid state "key fob" drives that can now take several gigabytes of data. Now the regular hard drives are put into enclosures and can be attached with USB port. However, outside of a basic back up function, are they really that useful? Really? The drives can surely offer storage that is easily accessible, simply plug into power and USB and off you go. However, given the size of files today's digital camera's produce, videos and even e-mail, it is critical that this data is not lost in case of a drive failure. As such simply attaching a drive to USB to store those precious pictures from the honeymoon is just not smart. Individuals who go this route are just asking for trouble along the way. Let's explore another shortcoming and that is data sharing. More and more gadgets like PS3, XBOX and normal cable boxes will now display media from home network on the TV as well as play music from the home network on the home sound system. If one uses the USB attached drive, the drive has to be carried from the computer room to the TV room. Alternatively, one can keep the computer on, with average PC having a 400W power supply it is rather wasteful to go with the PC on option. SO where does this leave us? Network attached storage also known as NAS. All we are talking about here is a case that will take a few hard drives. Then the case is plugged into power and the network and voila, there is available storage for all devices on the network to use. The NAS boxes offer redundancy in a way that preserves data when one drive fails. In addition they consume much less power than a full blown PC. The issue here is really the size of the NAS "cases" as most will allow only 2 drives i.e. the "original" and "the mirror/copy." Which is not that great, given that $100 buys a 500GB disk at the moment. Moreover, as people grow their data need they may want to buy more drives. The cases that take more than 2 drives are pricey for what they do. Here is a business idea -> cheap NAS devices. Sell them for $100 with 5 hard drive slots. Case is probably $15, power is $15 and some minor electronics. The thing can run Linux to make for a cheap OS and off we go. You heard it here first....

EPSON R380...NICE!

As mentioned in the previous post, it was a great deal for EPSON photo paper in Office Depot. It just turned out that I had an immediate need to print some pictures on my R380 and as usual, they came out really really nice. I would definitely recommend it. Many people look to buy some cheaper ink as the Claria one is expensive. I would say that there are three options (1) buy the ink from Epson, as the double capacity cartridges are $20.00 where the regular capacity are $15. Saving $5 per cartridge right there (2) the smaller capacity cartridges come in a pack, I think except the black one and in that case they are $10 each. (3) buy another printer. I really don't get buying discount ink to print pictures that your family or you yourself want to keep for a while.

Nice deal....Epson photo paper

In today's flyer (Sunday), office depot has 4x6" ultra premium paper for $15.99, which is $2 less than AMazon.com....but wait there is more...if you buy one, you get another one free....this makes it 50% off comparing to Amazon.com price....go to office depot if you care....

Go DAPRA teams

In the last few days DARPA has conducted its urban challenge. As I type this the competition is going with the remaining 11 cars. It is truly a pleasure to watch the teams complete and certainly everyone's hard work is showing. Congratulations to all teams!

Apple making Microsoft look good????

Very interesting developments are happening lately around Apple products. First we had the iPhone thing where just a few weeks after product introduction the price was reduced by a THIRD. Now with Leopard OX coming out, more very questionable behavior is taking place. First is the whole thing about not offering upgrade rebates to people who will buy a Mac a few weeks prior to Leopard's introduction. Second there are now reports of users having their posts censored=deleted form user's forum for complaining about this. Third, people who challenged Apple on the deletion of posts, had their posts deleted. last but not least, there are also reports of Apple support stuff lying to the customers about Leopard. WOW!!! Steve Jobs puts Apple in such a positive light, yet the company treats its customers not that well...I have not read any reports ever about a behavior like this from any other company. Steve Jobs is known to take shots at Microsoft but it is the trivial stuff like colors in Outlook. This is serious stuff. Very very disappointing....

DSLRs....camera laws or consumer electronics laws....

Prior to introduction of DSLR into the marketplace, their ancestors were SLR cameras that used 35mm film. The SLR market was clearly ruled by camera laws were supporting lenses and accessories would create an "ecosystem" around a particular manufacturer of SLR equipment. This "ecosystem" was of great importance to professional photographers. Now enter DSLR world. At first the prices of DSLR cameras were too high for most consumer to consider a DSLR as their regular camera. Since those days much has changed. A DSLR like Canon Rebel or Nikon D40 come with a lens in a kit ~$500. This has sparked interest from a lot of consumers as the cameras produce better images than plain point and shoot models, the cameras provide more flexibility, more accessories and expandability through the "ecosystem." This in turn made DSLRs more popular than SLRs have ever been. Does this popularity change the dynamics of what forces govern the DSLR market? I think so. No longer can Nikon, Canon etc. plan their product portfolio solely based on the needs of a professional photographer. The products now also have to take into account millions and millions of consumers who bought lower end DSLRs. This means that products that previously may have been discontinued or transitioned to a more expensive new version may now need to have their own path in product development. There is a lot of talk about upcoming Nikon D300 and whether it is the last camera to use a DX sensor (sensor smaller than 35 mm film). Because of the consumer adoption, the DX cameras (mostly lower end DSLRs) are now governed by the consumer electronics laws. This means that Nikon has no choice but to have a product development and support path for these cameras for a long time to come.

Skype....Logitech....Intel....

When e-bay purchased skype there was all this discussion in the marketplace and the press about paying huge amount of money for a company that is famous for offering free product and service. Fast forward to now. The latest move in the skype area is in the introduction of high quality video over Skype version 3.6. The interesting business move is around how the introduction took place. First, one must own a logitech digital web cam. Yes that does exclude all the other web cam manufacturers out there from Creative Labs to Microsoft. Second, the PC must be with an Intel CPU in it. Very interesting indeed. Looks like Logitech has figured out what drives their web cam sales now and can drive them further in the future. Surely for Skype to lock their software into a single web cam version, even if it is just for now, there is more than likely some $$$ changing hands. Let's not forget Intel that is in constant duel with AMD and it looks like the boys of Centrino, core Duo etc. got this one in their favor.

In the current state of technology, one welcomes with open arms the open standards (another topic altogether ;) ) that make the technology inter-operable. It looks like this time up of Logitech, Skype and Intel is not one with open standards, but some interoperability is promoted, which is what it is all about.