January 2009 Archives

Once you listen for it you begin to notice how often people say irregardless, which is incorrect and not a real word. I may not say things correctly all the time either, but this is a really easy one.

From answers.com:

USAGE NOTE   Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir prefix and less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

I am surprised at how often I encounter this expression in a seemingly educated country. Maybe that's just it. Seemingly educated.

After watching news about how the RIAA is recruiting ISP's to spy on their customers in order to prevent copywright infringement, I'm starting to see more of this happening around the world.

Even on Slashdot today, Irish ISP's have settled with their music Industry's equivalent of the RIAA. ISP's in Ireleand will first warn their customers and then disconnect them if they continue to involve themselves in illegal downloading.

As this practice begins to take hold around the world, there is going to be some defensive actions taken by many. I predict that people will either switch ISP's or there will be a new push to encrypt much of your internet traffic.

ISP's will employ deep packet inspection to validate the contents of information and use other tactics to identify trading of copywright material. Measures will be taken by others to avoid these offensive maneuvers. Users of the internet will always be one step ahead. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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Netbooks, Android OS, Palm Pre WebOS, 3G cards, GPS units, Kindles; They all want to be on the internet.

Laptops are getting smaller and turning into always connected devices with built-in 3G. Manufacturers cram cell phone technologies into GPS units in order to download realtime traffic info. You can download books anywhere you are with Amazon's Kindle and sprint's network. People are starting to put Google's Android OS into more devices: Android GPS, Movit Mini, Asus Android Netbook, Android everywhere.

What's happening? Computers are becoming smaller and cell technologies are permeating their way into all sorts of devices. The internet is becoming ubiquitous.

We will begin to see platforms and chipsets emerge that can be placed in any device providing a common framework for communicating over the internet.  Google has begun to do this with Andrioid and it's just the start.

What possibilities exist when the internet can be anywhere? Perhaps real-time heads-up traffic displays in your car. Maybe it's a small unit that always shows the price of gold for use in pawn shops. Maybe a pair of glasses with a projected display in one eye and face recognition to recall all communications with the person you are talking to. Maybe we'll have internet chipsets in our heads in 100 years.

Information will be in all places at all times. Soon enough, you won't need to download things any longer. The internet will be your hard drive.

The connection is made!

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So it's all about getting the content to the viewer. First it was blockbuster. Go to the store and get the content yourself. Then Netflix, where they send it to you. Now netflix is streaming the content to your computer. The PS3 and xbox will now stream your content to your tv. What's the next logical step? Skip all that mess and just push it right to your tv.

In the last few years, manufacturers have been putting Ethernet ports in their TV's to pull weather, stocks, and news. But at this year's CES, manufacturers such as Samsung have put flash players and simple browsers on their tv's so users can stream youtube and hulu. CBS, ABC, HBO, and others are now putting their episodes online. Just keep it simple and watch your tv over the internet.

In the next 10 years we are going to see the decline of cable companies providing televsion access in favor of your internet connection as your new cable.

We'll see televisions bypassing your computer and connecting straight to the internet to pull content directly. Everything will be streaming as broadband speeds increase.

These are exciting times as technologies continue to evolve!

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My music player of choice has been Winamp for over 10 years. I've tried others, but nothing ever sparked my interest or converted me. iTunes was never something that I liked despite its simplicity and ease of use. Maybe I'm biased, but I never liked that it installed so many helper services in the background just to run the application. No thanks.

Enter the era of Songbird. If you're familiar with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, you'll know how to use this app immediately. Just add your music and you're good to go. Considering it's currently version 1.0 and changes are still being made, it's a great app for searching, playing, discovering, and organizing your music.

I really enjoy the instant search. Just start typing and results automatically appear. The platform is extensible, so plugins are constantly being released. It will display song lyrics, post your played songs via rss, give you coverflow, show local upcoming concerts of your artists, display news and images of the artist playing, and even download suggested songs too.

It will even manage your iPod too, so you're not stuck with iTunes any longer.

Get Songbird!

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I'm usually a pretty easy going guy and can handle most anything, but this one gets me. I'm also surprised by how common it is in offices.

Imagine you're sitting in a quiet office just working away and you're interrupted by the sound of someone clipping their nails.

I mean, why do this at work? This activity is reserved for your bathroom while you are at home. Please keep it there and don't disturb those around you.

No clipping nails at work, ever!

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I was getting ready to go on my trip to the mountains for new years and thought I would charge the Zune for the drive up. After plugging it up, I noticed the startup screen froze at 100%. I figured I would leave it and let it finish charging. After a few hours, I came back to it and it had not even moved at all. I was pretty perturbed because all the normal ways to reset it were not working.

I was getting ready to leave on my trip soon, so I couldn't want to wait for the battery to die on it's own. I eventually decided that I would have to open it up and detach the battery, thereby resetting itself. This ended up working and I had a fully charged Zune for the trip.

So when I got to the cabin, I mentioned to a friend about playing some music from it and he asked me if I had heard about the crash with all the Zunes. I was blown away when he said that tens of thousands of Zunes all had this same problem.

I mean seriously. How can this really happen. I sort of expect things to freeze if it's running MS software, but every time it happens it makes me even more upset. Can they ever get it right?

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