Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category
Hardware is back
The iPad, right, changed the game for manufacturers of mobile technology. Its simplicity helped create devices defined by what their hardware will — and won’t — let you do. Google’s Chrome notebook, left, has no obvious file system or desktop. The eLocity A7, center, is just one of dozens of Android-powered tablets that try to mimic the iPad’s intuitive look and feel. (John Brecher/msnbc.com)
When was the last time you referred to your computer as a “486-DX66”? When was the last time that you even thought about what microprocessor was beating at the heart of your PC/laptop/phone/game?
Computer processing has leaped so far so fast that sometime in the past decade it became commodified. Consumers no longer pay attention to what’s inside their devices because just about any computer they can buy is guaranteed to be far more powerful than they probably need for everyday browsing, storage and media.
This is odd if you stop to consider it. Think of it in terms of cars: Sure, there are gearheads who obsess over things like fuel injectors and cubic capacity, but normal humans just pick a general category and trust that whatever they buy has the appropriate engine for their needs and it will get them from Point A to Point B with the greatest efficiency.
What determines buying decisions are the personal choices drivers make that are peripheral to actual driving. You might be raising a family in the suburbs, so you buy an SUV with a DVD system to keep the kids occupied. Or maybe you’re single and looking, so a sporty convertible is more your speed, or you want to save the world, so you seek out a hybrid or even an electric car with no air-conditioning. If you’re like most people, you’re not interested in a turbocharged racing car to get you to the grocery story.
It doesn’t work that way with computers, which mostly come in two racing classes that all look alike, like Formula 1 (desktops) and NASCAR (mobile computers). The odds are you’re computing on the equivalent of a Ferrari when all you really need is a nicely detailed Honda.
WikiLeaks attacks getting more sophisticated
Over at Technolog, I’m analyzing the newest DDoS attack on WikiLeaks. This one is 50 times the size of the Anonymous attack on Scientology in 2008.
Google ending support for much of Google Groups, pushes you to Docs and Sites
UPDATED 5:05 p.m. ET:
Google confirms. Starting Jan. 13, you’ll no longer be able to upload new content.
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Much of what’s good about Google Groups is going away: Welcome messages and files are no more. This, Google says, is so “we can focus on improving the core functionalities of Google Groups — mailing lists and forum discussions.”
Instead, Google says, you should use Google Docs or Google Sites if you want anything other than just another heavily automated message board — “the content will only be available for viewing and only existing files will be downloadable.”
Screenshot after the break.
Reporting: States working harder to collect online sales taxes
Sales taxes or similar levies have always been in place on most online purchases in most states. But they are almost never paid. And with their budgets in crisis, states are more determined than ever to get their share.
Full story (Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
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Florida college students’, staff members’ personal data exposed
The central library system for Florida’s public colleges is sending out e-mail notices this week to as many as 126,000 summer school students, faculty and staff at six colleges disclosing that it exposed their personal information online from May 29 to June 2.
Investigators with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office discovered that “some personal information had been accessed by unauthorized persons and that some was available through Google until the search engine was notified,” the College Center for Library Automation said.
“The records of these institutions were contained in temporary work files that were being processed by CCLA at the time of exposure” during a software upgrade, it said.
While “CCLA has found no indication that the data has actually been obtained or misused,” it urged students, faculty and staff at the six institutions — Broward College, Florida State College-Jacksonville, Northwest Florida State College, Pensacola State College, South Florida Community College and Tallahassee Community College — to immediately place fraud alerts on their credit files.
Imagine that: I was right about Safari 5’s Reader
Download Squad has confirmed that I was more right than even I suspected in yesterday’s post about the Reader function in Safari 5 browser. It doesn’t just mimic Arc90’s Readability bookmarklet — it is Arc90’s Readability bookmarklet.
That means Apple is making big marketing hay out of its adoption of a feature PC users have enjoyed for years. Somehow, Cupertino has made this sound like a revolution in browsing. Well, it may be a revolution for the 10 percent or so of folks who live on Mac technology only. For the rest of the world, the proper reaction is “What took you so long?”
Read Dan Kennedy (@dan_kennedy_nu) for an outline of Reader’s Mac usability and a smart kinda-sorta counterview.
Safari 5: Apple hype in overdrive
(Fun update at the end!)
Besides its speed, which is real and impressive, the big feature everyone seems to be touting in Apple’s new Safari 5 is something called Reader, which strips a page to its simple text. Setting aside the hand-wringing over whether it Presages the Death of Ads (© Every Blogger With a Media Job Inc.), the truly impressive thing about Reader is how Apple has swallowed a simple java bookmarklet, which already works in Chrome, IE, Firefox and as far as I know Netscape 1, and spit it back out to Apple fanboys as some major advance.
People, this is just Arc90’s Readability bookmarklet, or a very convincing ripoff. If you’re reading this in any other flavor of browser, you can enjoy the exact same utility. It’s free, and it’s at http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/.
Screenshots after the jump.
Alex Johnson - Journalist at Large 