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May 2008
Brady mom preaches conversion to DTV
The Consumer Electronics Association has wheeled out everybody’s favorite mom, in hopes of getting people’s attention on the switchover to digital television signals.
Broadcast stations make the switch Feb. 17, but everybody’s worried that Mr. and Mrs. Couch Potato aren’t getting the message about what to do.
Florence Henderson, best known as the mom in The Brady Bunch TV show, gives it to you straight. You can buy a DTV, get a digital converter box with a discount coupon from the government or subscribe to cable or satellite TV.
There’s even a PDF on Florence’s “digitaltips” page on the CEA Website that explains how to hook up the box.
There’s also guide to buying a high-definition television, which doesn’t hurt CEA’s member electronics firms. Honestly, it can’t hurt to run through it before you spend $700 or more on an HDTV, even if you’ve managed to avoid watching the Brady Bunch over all these years.
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Michael Dell vs. Steve Jobs: Let’s get ready to rumble…
The best moment of Michael Dell’s appearance at D: All Things Digital might be this classic tidbit from Engadget.com.
During the audience Q&A, Engadget reports, someone asked Dell if he could take Steve Jobs in a fight. Dell’s response: “Yeah, I could take him.”
Having seen both men standing side-by-side, I can say the size advantage clearly goes to Dell. But then you never know what sort of Zen mastery Jobs might have lurking up those black-turtleneck sleeves.
I think I’d have to put my money on Dell — just can’t discount a Texas boy’s toughness.
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Michael Dell offers a sneak peak at new mini-notebook
Michael Dell showed off his latest toy to some of the folks attending the sixth annual D: All Things Digital conference near San Diego.
After a Q&A with Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, Dell gave a sneak peak of a shiny new mini-notebook. The company has said it will release a small “netbook” this year.
Gizmodo.com posted this photo of the new PC. The site has other shots and a handful of specs on this particular machine here.
In his conversation with Mossberg, Dell said his teams were sharing an “unprecedented level of engagement” with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, the planned replacement for Vista, which has had its share of problems. He noted the companies were hoping to create a more powerful computing ecosystem.
That could prove vital if Dell and other Windows-based PC makers hope to slow Apple’s soaring Macintosh sales, especially among home users. Apple develops both its hardware and its operating system, giving it full control over much bigger piece of the computing experience.
A summary of the Mossberg-Dell discussion can be found here, along with video highlights here.
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Websites offer grocery coupons online
If your weekly grocery tab is flying off the chart, maybe it’s time to start redeeming coupons again.
You can find a healthy assortment in the newspaper but there are several sources online as well.
There are free sites, such as Coolsavings.com and Smartsource.com, but the selection of printable coupons isn’t as varied as other sites, such as centsoff.com, that require a membership fee.
A test of other sites by the Wall Street Journal also found membership sites, such as Grocerycoupons.com and Onlinecoupons.com that ask for a fee upfront, have no better selection than the free sites or the newspaper. The Journal warns to be careful of sites that offer to mail you the coupons.
It’s probably worth checking these sites. The Consumer Reports National Research Center says people using store coupons and loyalty cards save $678 a year, or about 10 percent, off their grocery bill.
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AT&T launches 3G wireless broadband in Delray Beach
Ladies and gentlemen, start your downloads.
AT&T rolled out its 3G wireless broadband service in Delray Beach this week.
The network cell site is located on Lomond Hills Trail near Florida’s Turnpike. It extends high-speed wireless coverage from Lomond Hills Trail north to Atlantic Avenue, south to Clint Moore Road, west to the turnpike and east to Jog Road.
Much of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast already have coverage, although the company expects to complete its network in St. Lucie and Indian River counties by the end of this year.
What’s the big deal? 3G delivers download speeds ranging from 600 to 1,400 kilobits a second and upload speeds of 500 to 800 kilobits. That should make it easier to watch TV on the wireless Web.
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Beware: Phishers going after iTunes
Phishers are a pretty sneaky bunch within the hacker community.
They’ve gone after Internet mainstays such as eBay and PayPal. CNET says they’re now targeting iTunes.
Phishing is an attempt to acquire sensitive information like passwords, user names and other details by masquerading as a trustworthy company or organization. Typically it’s done by email.
This time they’re creating a bogus site that looks like an iTunes billing page, asking for current credit card information. They certainly have a large customer base to attack, with iTunes huge popularity.
Apple usually isn’t the target of the hacker community. But these guys aren’t really rebelling against anything. They’re just trying to steal your identity.
A couple of quick hits:
President is allowing Americans to send cellphones to Cuba. Sounds great. The question is: Will they even work.
AT&T says it broke its text-message record for American Idol this season with 78 million from voters for their favorite contestant. This season’s idol was the rocker, David Cook. Old record: 64.5 million.
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Greenpeace: Video game consoles could be hazardous to your health
A new study out from environmental activist group Greenpeace claims that video game consoles - Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PS3 - contain high levels of bad chemicals that could pose health risks to you and your kids.
After taking apart and analyzing all three game boxes and their controllers, Greenpeace said it found that all of them contained polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, beryllium and bromine, which is indicative of brominated flame retardants (BFRs).
Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 could be the worst, according to Greenpeace, because they contained levels of phthalates that are even higher than are allowed in components of toys or childcare products sold in the European Union. One type of phthalates it found is known to interfere with sexual development in males, according to Greenpeace.
Along with posing health hazards, the chemicals in the game consoles hurt the earth when they’re thrown out in landfills, the group said.
Parker Brugge, vice president for environmental affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents the game makers, had this to say in a statement:
“Gaming console manufacturers and other consumer electronics companies have made significant progress in the reduction of hazardous materials in their products,” he said. “The industry continues to identify and implement best practices for consumer health and safety as well as environmental sustainability.
Brugge went on to say that the chemicals serve a purpose - flame retardant, for instance, make them safer, he said.
“Also, Greenpeace’s findings ignore the performance and potential impacts from whatever compounds are substituted,” he said. “Manufacturers are spending considerable time, effort and resources to develop and test the performance of these substitutes. “
Check out Greenpeace’s report here and make up your own mind.
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Valence to end sales of small back-up battery systems
For Valence Technology, bigger is better.
The Austin rechargeable-battery maker said today it will phase out its N-Charge products, which are typically used as back-up power for notebook computers and other electronics.
Valence said it will cut off sales of one N-Charge model immediately and stop selling the other July 31. It will continue to support the 12-month warranty on the systems and provide tech support, the company said.
For the past four years, Valence has shifted its resources and energy away from the small N-Charge models in favor of larger battery systems made to power vehicles, boats, Segway scooters and cell phone towers.
Valence’s batteries are made of a lithium-phosphate chemistry that is more stable than the lithium-ion batteries found in most notebook computers and many other consumer electronics. That allows the company to make bigger systems for larger applications without the added risk that can arise with less-stable chemistries.
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Americans are ditching their landlines
Nearly three in 10 households in the U.S. have only a cellphone or they don’t bother taking calls on their landline phone because it’s probably a telephone solicitation or their landline is hooked up exclusively to a computer.
I cut off my land-line phone and my long-distance service last year because it was getting costly to support my family’s three cellphones with extension texting and calling.
The cellphone figures come from a survey by the Centers for Disease Control. They grew markedly since last year, when 16 percent of households only had cell phones and 13 percent had landlines but got all or nearly all of their calls on their cells.
The growth in cellphone-only use might be one of the reasons why Microsoft is aiming to take 40 percent of the smart-phone market with its Windows Mobile OS by 2012. It was in 11 million hand-sets in 2007 and is expected to reach 20 million this year.
Oh great, another device that’s going to be dominated by Microsoft!
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Send your social-network profile to other sites
Google announced this week that it’s going to allow users to transport their personal profile information and favorite applications to other sites.
It’s called Friend Connect and is similar to announcements made earlier by Facebook and MySpace. Google says it will help people interact with friends on other social-networking sites.
Techcrunch.com’s Mike Arrington sees another reason for Google’s interest. The site that holds the information in the first place will likely control the data going forward and be the site the user identifies with.
C/NET blogger Dan Farber suggests that it’s also a great move for Google. Its own social-networking site, Orkut, is much smaller than Facebook and MySpace. But with its software tool for sharing information, Google can build a better connection to those sites.
Let’s see how this shakes out two or three months from now.
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HP-EDS is a done deal — so what’s next?
Hewlett-Packard Co. announced in the wee hours of this morning that it’s official — it is buying Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $13.25 billion. The deal, one of the tech biz’s biggest in recent years, will solidify HP’s status as the world’s biggest tech company and make it No. 2 in IT services behind IBM Corp.
So what’s next? For one thing, HP CEO Mark Hurd told reporters and analysts in conference calls today, EDS will remain in Texas and EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer will keep running the company as a subsidiary.
Hurd also said not to expect the company to sell off any EDS divisions — good news for HP and EDS workers in Texas, Georgia and elsewhere — because the two companies have relatively little business overlap. (CEOs always say this after a merger, of course, but this time it may be legitimate).
Big money’s professional pundits were mixed on what the deal might mean to HP and the technology landscape. Some, like the tech analysts at Goldman Sachs, said the deal has many positives, but also wondered why HP was putting so much money in a company that recently has had a tough time finding profits. Others, like the analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities panned the deal, suggesting it will result in “modest dilution, low returns and significant opportunity cost.”
Others are trying to figure out what it means to HP’s competitors — especially Dell Inc., which HP surpassed a while back to become the world’s No. 1 PC maker.
Many Wall Street analysts suggested Tuesday that Dell will suffer, at least in the short term, as HP is able sell more computers and other hardware through its new connection with EDS. Financial pundit Aaron Task may have the made the best point about HP and Dell on Yahoo Finance. The deal, Task says, indicates that HP has moved beyond its fight with Dell over hardware, putting that one behind it and turning to its next battleground and its next foe — namely IT services and IBM.
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HP bidding for EDS
Hewlett-Packard Co. just confirmed it is talks to buy Dallas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. - a potential mega-deal in the high-tech industry that would push HP further into the services and consulting business and make it an even more formidable competitor to IBM Corp.
In a statement, HP wouldn’t give any more details and said it won’t comment further until an agreement is reached or discussions are terminated. But - citing unnamed sources - the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets are predicting the deal could be worth as much as $13 billion. Word of the talks sent EDS’ stock soaring, while HP fell.
In addition to reshaping the high-tech services business, the deal also could shake up the companies’ operations around the country. HP and EDS are major employers in Texas, Georgia and Florida (as is IBM Corp., for that matter).
Stay tuned on this one.
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Data from shuttle Columbia hard drive recovered
Five years after the shuttle Columbia crashed on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, data recovery experts at Kroll Ontrack Inc. managed to recover data from a 400-megabyte Seagate hard drive that was on board.
The cracked component was discovered six months after the crash in a dried-up lake bed. But the data recovery team was still able to retrieve 99 percent of the stored information, Computerworld.com said.
A science journal in April published results of tests performed by astronauts on xexon gas which were stored on the hard drive.
If they are that durable, I’m going to take a hammer to the next hard drive I get rid of so no one gets my personal data, even if I think it’s broken.
There’s a slideshow of the damaged hard drive on the Computerworld site. Below is one of the images.
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Web site helps women get breast implants for free
Only on the Internet.
There’s a web site at www.myfreeimplants.com that links women who want breast augmentation and guys who want to pay for it.
The women are allowed to post racy photos of themselves and the site gives updates on how much they’ve raised. There’s even a list of surgeons from around the country listed that do the procedure.
The brainstorm for the site came in 2005 at a bachelor party when some of the participants essentially passed around the hat to pay for a woman there to get implants.
You have to register on the site before you can see the women’s posted photos and interact with them electronically, although there are some before-and-after teaser shots (fully-clothed).
It asks that the men be respectful of the women on the site. “While you may request particular outfits for custom photos, the ultimate decision is up to the lady. We encourage you to both work together in a civil manner.”
Natasha is the face of the web site, and it’s official “spokesmodel.”
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Online content, straight from the sewer
For one city in Britain, superfast Internet service is going to stink.
H2O Networks, baed in Wales, will deliver fast Internet connections to Bournemouth via the sewer system. More than 88,000 homes and businesses will benefit from Internet speeds up to 100Mbps under the plan, a connection that’s a lot speedier than the current broadband services on the market.
H2O, which has been plotting its underground invasion for the last six years, plans to spend the next six months laying fiber-optic cables through the sewer system. The company hopes to create a nationwide network for consumers over the next few years.
Proponents say it’s a lot cheaper and more environmentally friendly to use Britain’s 360,000 miles of sewers rather than to dig up roads to lay fiber.
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Manny, Moe, Jack - and Michael
It looks like Michael Dell is getting into the car business.
MSD Capital, the private investment firm for Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell and his family, said Wednesday it has teamed up with the former CEO of the Pep Boys auto parts stores to start a chain of premier car dealerships across the country.
Dell’s new partner Jeffrey Rachor will run MSD Automotive Partners from headquarters in Chattanooga, Tenn. No word just yet on where the company wants to open its high-end car lots.
Rachor served as president and CEO of Pep Boys - Manny, Moe & Jack for about a year before leaving in April. Previously, he ran car retailer Sonic Automotive.
Dell, as one of the richest guys on the planet, can of course drive just about anything he wants. In a statement, MSD Capital partner Howard Berk said the investment house has been looking to get into the car business for several years.
Founded in 1998, MSD Capital exclusively handles the investments of Dell and his family. Currently, the New York-based firm has more than $12 billion in assets.
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Webgrrls comes to Boca Raton
The women’s Internet organization, Webgrrls International, is launching a new chapter in the Boca Raton/Fort Lauderdale area.
Webgrrls International is a global group for women which offers online and offline resources, offering a forum for women to network and to exchange job and business leads. As important, it helps women to learn Web-related skills.
Allison Nazarian, president and founder of Boca Raton-based Get It In Writing, heads the organization locally.
You can find the Webgrrls International website at http://www.webgrrls.com. It is part of the Cybergrrl Network of websites for women including Cybergrrl.com and Femina.com.
The first Boca/Ft. Lauderdale Webgrrls meeting will be held Thursday, May 22, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Art That Works Inc. at 270 W. Hillsboro Blvd. in Deerfield Beach. For more information, contact Allison Nazarian at boca-fl@webgrrls.com or call 561-989-8555 or visit http://www.webgrrls.com/boca-fl/.
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Dell brings a bit of the beach to its laptops
Dell has teamed up with Brooklyn artist Mike Ming to give one of its notebooks a surfer’s edge.
The special edition Inspiron 1525 will feature two of Ming’s designs: “Bunch O Surfers” (black-and-white) and “Sea Sky” (color). The laptops are available for order, and pricing starts at $699.
The Ming-designed PCs are the first of what Dell plans to grow into a series of special art-edition laptops. More on Ming and the laptops carrying his design can be found here.
Computer makers have looked to spruce up their notebook designs to give them more appeal. Dell added several color options to its lineup last year. And Hewlett-Packard joined with MTV in a contest to find a design for an H-P notebook.
Apple, which has about the hottest consumer products out there these days, is sticking with plain old silver, black and white.
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CompUSA: Can you build your own computer?
This has got to be a geeks’ fantasy come true.
On Saturday, at its new Palm Beach Gardens store at 3942 Northlake Blvd., CompUSA challenges all comers in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast to put together a computer in the fastest time. There are spots for 10 people every hour to compete.
The winner from each heat will be invited back on Sunday for the final competition. The winner takes home a 32-inch Toshiba LCD TV.
The store will provide a cheat sheet of sorts. But we all know there are guys out there that do this as a side business to their day job. Already 100 people have signed up in advance.
My questions is: What’s the store going to do with all those newly assembled PCs?
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AT&T rolls out its Mobile TV in parts of Florida
AT&T Mobility is rolling out its Mobile TV service on Sunday for the first time in Florida.
Unfortunately, it won’t be in South Florida. Rather, the company is launching in Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and Gainesville/Ocala. But it can’t be too far off that we’ll see it here.
The service offers 24-hour access to television programming from CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CNN and PIX, a Sony Pictures TV unit that offers films from the studio’s library.
The cost starts at $13 a month for a basic version. Its “Plus” version includes unlimited mobile TV programming and unlimited mobile Web browsing.
Has anybody heard anything about the quality of the picture? AT&T introduced a couple of new phones, the LG Vu and Samsung’s Access, that ares supposed to give a clearer picture because of their large screens.
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Dell releases its latest top-end gaming machine
Dell’s latest desktop wasn’t inspired by its environmental group. It didn’t come from the folks peddling those pretty pink laptops.
The new XPS 730 comes from that caffeine-amped, Crysis-addicted crew hanging out on the fringes of Dell’s leading edge, and it goes on sale today.
To update its premier performance desktop, Dell added more computing- and graphics-processing power. The XPS 730 will support over-clocked and quad-core processors, and will carry and/or support some of the latest graphics engines. (For more specs, go here.)
The company also said it has tweaked its optional liquid-cooling system to pull more heat away from the new chipsets. It also retooled the cooling system’s pumps and fans to scale back when the PC is idling.
The air-cooled XPS 730 comes in silver and starts at $4,000. The liquid-cooled XPS 730 H2C comes in “victory red” or “stealth blue” and starts at $5,000. All models can be ordered with the X-shaped window into the guts of the PC.
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