Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Congrats to Michaelb – Winner of the “Big Intel News” contest!

Published on April 26, 2006 in Blog. 6 Comments

A couple of days ago, Intel made a major platform announcement – vPro, a platform for business workstations that’s basically a Conroe-architecture processor, and a chipset that supports Advanced Management Technology (AMT) and Virtualization Technology (VT). vPro joins Centrino and Viiv as Intel’s third named “platform”.

On the day of the announcement, there wasn’t much buzz in the blogosphere about vPro. I have my speculative reasons for why that might have been, but as an experiment, I challenged TinyScreenfuls readers to post their guess as to what the news was. I wanted to see who had heard of vPro, and I dangled the idea of a prize to get people to post. :-)

7 people responded, and after a random number selection process involving two of my coworkers, I’m happy to announce that TSF pal Michaelb is the winner!

What does Michaelb win? A swanky aluminum case for an iPod nano, 5G 60GB, Nintendo DS, or Sony PSP from my friends at CoreCases.com. Corey over at CoreCases is a great guy, and has always hooked me up with samples of the fantastic aluminum cases they make. Their case for the PSP is stellar, and I can’t believe they only sell it for $15. They could easily charge twice as much. Their iPod cases are equally great, and also a bargain at $25. So check them out if you’re looking for a case for one of the aforementioned gadgets.

Now, I just need Michaelb to get in touch to tell me which case he wants (iPod nano, 5G 60GB, DS, or PSP), and I will arrange shipping. You can post a comment, or email me.

Do you guys like the idea of contests like this on TinyScreenfuls? I don’t intend to make them a regular feature, but I occasionally get sent items for review/feedback that I don’t end up using, and would love to give them away to TSF readers. Let me know what you think in the comments.

WiFi on SD card: Eye-Fi!

Published on April 25, 2006 in Blog. 4 Comments

WiFi on SD card: Eye-Fi!, originally uploaded by scobleizer.

From Scoble’s Flickr photostream.

Does that do what I think it does?!

Acts like an SD card to the camera, but transfers the photos wirelessly?

That is an insanely great idea. How come no one thought of this before?! That would turn any SD-compatible camera into a WiFi enabled camera.

Robert, you have to give us more info on this. :-) Here’s Robert’s post on the demo of this he got, and here’s a link to the Eye-Fi site (careful googling that name – I got a lot of pr0n links when I went looking).

Availability: hopefully this year. Price? Around $100. Assuming there’s a way to get the photos to upload directly to Flickr easily (if not directly from the card, than in software on the PC), then Robert’s photos and blog posts just made you at least one sale, Yuval. ;-)

More photos here:

Spotty Site Availability

Published on April 25, 2006 in Blog. 1 Comment

Since some time last night, I’ve had a very hard time getting to any of my sites. Not sure what’s going on – I’m going to try to contact my web host (1and1.com) and see what’s going on. The problem I get is a long delay “waiting for tinyscreenfuls.com…”, then a timeout error. I’ve seen the same problem intermittently on my other sites hosted with them.

Has anyone else had problems getting here?

I have to say that in the few years that I’ve been with 1and1, this is only the second time there’s ever been a problem. Pretty good, actually.

The First Fortune 500 CEO Blogger

Published on April 25, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments

Debbie Weil wonders if Sun blogger Jonathan Schwartz, who is taking over Sun’s CEO spot after Scott McNealy stepped down, will be the first CEO Blogger at a Fortune 500 company.

Intel’s Paul Otellini has a blog, but he chooses not to make it available outside of the internal network. If he did, I guess that would make him the first Fortune 500 CEO blogger. Oh well. :-)

Intel’s Open Source Diva Danese Cooper on the Distributing the Future Podcast

Published on April 25, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments

O’Reilly’s Distributing the Future podcast, with Daniel Steinberg (who I met at Podcast Academy last year – very nice, smart guy), has an interview of my friend and Intel’s “Open Source Diva”, Danese Cooper, on the topic of Women in Open Source. She talks about what the Debian community is doing to recruit and support female developers. Check it out.

Interesting topic, and a chance to link to an Intel cohort. :-)

Big Intel News Today – What is it?

Published on April 24, 2006 in Blog. 7 Comments

Intel announced some really big news today. On par with Centrino and Viiv. But I really haven’t heard much more than a peep about it in the blogosphere. So, I’m conducting an experiment:

Who can tell me what it is?

Post your guess, and a link to where you first heard about it in the comments. No fair looking at the existing comments or Googling – you’re on your honor. If this works out, I’ll do a random selection from among the correct answers, and you may win a little something. ;-)

Oh, the value of the “something” will be no more than $25, and Intel employees (who had BETTER know what the answer is! ;-) ) are ineligible. Contest rules subject to my mood and whim. All disclaimers apply, etc.

Apple releases 17″ Mac Book Pro *drool*

Published on April 24, 2006 in Blog. 4 Comments

The Apple Store (U.S.)

Image

Just like the rumors predicted, Apple released the Intel Core Duo powered version of it’s gigante 17″ Mac Book Pro. $2799, and it’s pretty much fully loaded. Only options are a bump from 1GB to 2GB of RAM for $300 (you can find a gig of RAM much cheaper elsewhere). You can also choose between a 5400 RPM 120GB hard drive or a 100GB 7200 RPM hard drive, no price increase. That’s a tougher call. A faster hard drive would speed up the machine, but also generate more noise, heat, and drain on the battery.

I really, really want one of these. :-) I played with Jaako’s 17″ PowerBook at Podcast on the Floor, and it wasn’t as huge as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I mistook it for a 15″ at first. I could live with it, for sure.

Ouch – Washington Post Rips on Intel’s Viiv

Published on April 23, 2006 in Blog. 1 Comment

Link to the article.

Has Intel overhyped this technology? I don’t know. As a techie, I can recognize the really cool stuff that’s going to be possible with a Viiv machine as part of my home theater, and I can’t wait to get one. And I think that a lot of non-techie people are going to be impressed with what they can do with Viiv once they get it in their living room, and all the kinks are worked out.

But the kinks are the problem, and anyone who has ever tried to set up a Home Theater PC knows that. So until there’s a shipping product that’s as easy to install and set up as a Tivo, Viiv is still in the “really high potential” category for me.

Whether that justifies all the marketing hype or not remains to be seen. But I think our timing could have been better. I makes me sad to see articles like this about a really cool Intel technology that just isn’t available yet. Maybe we’d avoid damaging our image and repuation like this if we took on Apple’s “don’t announce it until the day it’s available” technique. I know that’s not feasible, because of the number of partners and developers we have to work with to get something like Viiv ready to go, but still…

EDIT: I first saw this on tech.memeorandum, but it’s showing up now on Digg and Slashdot. Millions of people are going to read this that wouldn’t have otherwise (outside of the readership of the Washington Post and my blog). Millions of people are going to see that article and say “yeah, what the heck is this Viiv thing, anyway?”

How can Intel respond to something like this? A press release with more Viiv hype? No one would believe it. Point to some real world examples of awesome Viiv-enabled products? They’re not here yet. What if Intel just wanted to say “Hey, we know we messed up. We should have waited until we had a cool product to show before we started the hype around Viiv.” What channel could they use to get that message out? I guess it’s up to me, and the army of Intel bloggers around the world.

Oh, wait… ;-)

There are only a few of us. This is just one example of how Intel could benefit by encouraging its employees to blog – to have people that are known and trusted in the blogosphere to talk honestly about stuff like this. I’m trying my best, but I can’t cover it all. :-)

T-Mobile MDA and SDA, with my Samsung i730

Published on April 21, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments



T-Mobile MDA and SDA, with my Samsung i730, originally uploaded by JoshB.

Comparison shot of my Samsung i730 with a T-Mobile MDA (Pocket PC) and an SDA (Smartphone), both EDGE capable Windows Mobile devices. Not near as fast as the EVDO wireless on my i730 on Verizon, but very nice hardware, to hold and to look at. The screen on the SDA in particular is very nice, as you can see in this shot.

T-Mobile SDA Windows Mobile Smartphone

Published on April 21, 2006 in Blog. 2 Comments



T-Mobile SDA Windows Mobile Smartphone, originally uploaded by JoshB.

I was at the T-Mobile store in the mall the ohter day, checking out the great QVGA resolution screen. Text size set at smallest, Bloglines Mobile is still very readable. Nice.