Fax Machines Will Never Die

NY Times Article (requires Free registration)



Each morning, Rodney Eddins, an accountant in Orlando, Fla., checks his fax machine first. Then he turns to his answering machine and his e-mail.

"IF any of Rodney Eddins's accounting clients want his undivided attention at work first thing in the morning, they should shun e-mail or his telephone answering machine. Instead, they should send him a fax.

"The first thing I look at when I arrive is the incoming tray of my fax machine," said Mr. Eddins, a certified public accountant in Orlando, Fla., who has had his own practice for a decade. "If there's paper there, I feel like I have to look at it." Only after he sorts through the morning's faxes - though most on a recent day were ads like one for a workplace deodorizing service - does Mr. Eddins log on to his computer and listen to his phone messages."

Guess the fax will never really go away. I know I have one sitting next to me right now. It only comes to live when something about low home refinancing rates or gardening service comes in.

Read the full Article @ The NY Times (requires Free registration)

Yahoo! Increases Storage for Free Accounts

Almost a year after Google's Gmail service started public testing, Yahoo has matched the 1GB of storage it offers for free email accounts. Yahoo on Tuesday said it plans to once again boost its free email storage limit — this time to 1GB, the same amount offered by archrival Google.

Beginning in late April, Yahoo will upgrade free users to the new storage limit of 1GB, up from its current 250MB. The company said it will take about two weeks for all Yahoo Mail users to see the boost.

Yahoo's storage upgrade comes a week after Google started offering Gmail accounts to random visitors of its home page. This has led to heightened speculation in news articles and blogs that Google plans to open Gmail's doors to the public on 1 April, a year after it launched in its current test form.

Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice-president of communications products, said in an interview that Yahoo Mail's storage upgrade was not in response to Google's latest moves. Instead, he said Yahoo is "paying attention to what users are doing and how they're using their in-boxes".

Since Gmail premiered last year, free email has changed. Popular Web mail services such as Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail had offered strict storage limitations to their in-boxes, and required people to pay extra for additional space.

Shortly after Gmail was released, Yahoo announced plans to boost its storage to 100MB from 4MB, and then upgraded it again to 250MB in November. Subsequently, Microsoft said it would implement its own storage boost to 250MB.

Besides the 1GB of storage, Yahoo Mail will offer antivirus scanning. The service currently uses Symantec's Norton Antivirus to detect viruses, but prohibits people from opening the attachment instead of ridding the file of its infection.

Yahoo!

MythTV - A Good PVR Source

Thanks to XtremeRightWing's comment on my last posting I was able to find MythTV.org
Its a great source of information for homebrew PVR projects. I have not been able to try it yet as my time is spent preparing for a law school exam, but it looks really good. Also he pointed out FreeVo

Both sites look great for more PVR (person video recorder information). Wish me luck :-)

Want TiVo? How about Building Your Own PVR?

I have been a loyal TiVo user for over a year now. Called a while back to cancel my premium subscription because my Toshiba SD-400 Series 2 DVD/TiVo Combo works great without it, but was convinced to stick around at the loyalty rate of $6.99 a month. At least I can still access my TiVo2Go and media network options. But, I have always thought about using my computer to make an even more powerful PVR which could not only record shows, but also replay all types of media and music without having to put up with the bugs in my TiVo device.

So I did a quick image search for TiVo and came up with a site that hosts articles, forums and discussions about building your own PVR. Maybe my time to switch has finally come.

http://www.byopvr.com/

Cingular Discountinues Ogo Communicator

Launched by Cingular and ATT&T as a cheap messaging product designed to "capture" the youth market, the Ogo never really took off. It provided unlimited text messaging and e-mail from AOL, MSN and Yahoo! along with SMS text messages. However, it could not do voice calls, was relatively expensive and not well supported. I am not really surprised that it did not compete well against devices like the Sidekick and Treo which although cost more were also much better and capable devices.

Amazon Sells ViewSonic Device From The Future

News From Yahoo!

Extra zeros on Amazon.com's listing for a ViewSonic Tablet PC drew a blizzard of bogus "buyer" reviews of a system so powerful that one claimed "the singularity used to power this device is unstable" and another wrote "I was able to create my own flux capacitor to travel back in time."

Although the listing's technical details have been corrected -- and the page claims that the ViewSonic TPCV1250S-1303 "is currently not available" -- for a while Wednesday and Thursday, Amazon had the Tablet PC's AMD processor as a "10.0 GHz" Athlon and its hard drive as a "30,000 GB" IDE model (3 terabytes).

All for the low, low price of $2,200

Full Story Found @ Yahoo!News

Transperant Backgrounds Very Cool!

Check out the picture above. Its not a Photoshop trick. Its real. The new craze of the day is to create "transparent" backgrounds for computers. Check out a few very cool pictures of these backgrounds @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/sets/180637/show/

This is done by taking a picture of whatever is behind the monitor (much easier to do on laptops as the LCDs fold down) and then placing these as background images. Some editing was probably needed as well as a very good eye and something cool to display in the background. Since I use a dual monitor setup on a boring computer desk there is no reason for me to attempt this, but if I ever get a cool Mac then I will give this a go.

Quick Question About Amazon Ads

Does anyone know why Amazon Associate ads do not display correctly when used in Blogger posts? If so please leave me a comment with why and/or how to fix it or e-mail me oliver[dot]louie[@]gmail[dot]com <-- just reformat to remove the [], sorry I know its messy, but keeps the spammers away.

Arrived: Shure E2c Sound Isolating Earphones

My Shure E2c Earphones just arrived last night. Opening the package was a real joy as it was one of the few with the easy pull apart plastic. I have not really had an opportunity yet to try them out enough to post a review. After unpackaging them and trying them out with my iPod for a few minutes I can say that they completely blow the stock iPod earphones away! The sound is much cleaner and crisper even when the volume is much lower. Also outside sounds are greatly reduced and I actually hear things I never heard in the songs before.

More pics and review to come this weekend.

T-Mobile Gives Danger Deadline: Fix Security Or Else!

Text and Image From Gizmodo.com

A source near T-Mobile’s high level security teams has informed Gizmodo that the carrier has given an informal ultimatum to Danger, the company that produces the hit Sidekick and Sidekick II. The problem isn’t the device itself, but the security of the backend servers, which Danger also manages. If the security issues plaguing the platform are not fixed, says our source, T-Mobile intends to stop selling the Sidekick.

Although the security issues on the Sidekick platform are far from a new development, the Paris Hilton Sidekick Hack made it a much more prominent issue (and ironically, increased Sidekick sales). We’ve been told that T-Mobile has limited Danger’s access to T-Mobile customer data to a bare minimum in an attempt to mitigate any possible future leaks.

Danger could not be reached for comment, but it’s also the wee hours of the morning in California, so no foul. We hope to confirm this information as soon as possible, since it could affect not only Danger, but all users of the Sidekick platform.

Update: We’ve been informed that the date of the security ultimatum is July 1st, 2005.

F-secure Detected Two New Symbian Trojans

Images and Text From Phonemag.com

Warnging! F-secure Detected Two New Symbian TrojansDrever.A is a SIS file trojan that tries to disable Simworks Anti-Virus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Locknut.B is a new variant of Locknut trojan family, which disables phone so that it can be disinfected only with special disinfection tool.

Locknut.B is a malicious SIS file trojan that pretends to be patch for Symbian Series 60 mobile phones. When installed Locknut.B drops a binary that will crash a critical System component, that will prevent any application from being launched in the phone. Thus effectively locking the phone.

Drever.A is a malicious SIS file trojan that disables the automatic startup from Simworks and Kaspersky Symbian Anti-Virus softwares. Currently it is still unverified whether either of these softwares have protection against such attacks.

Apple To Take Bite Out Of Add-Ons

Click on Title For Direct Link



The logo may look pretty harmless, but once you find out that Apple is pushing this logo as their right to tax all iPod accessories then its much more than harmless. According to cNet news, Apple wants money "For the right to display the logo, Apple was at one point looking to get 10 percent of an add-on's retail selling price. More recently, the company has been seeking 10 percent of wholesale pricing, according to people familiar with the situation."

Its looking like the boom days all over again. Steve Jobs was at the helm of Apple, the original iMac debuted to great sales and Apple stock prices zoomed way up. Everyone believed that company was finally going to become a contender. Then the clones died off and market share shrank, never to be recovered as Windows PCs dominated the market and kept getting cheaper. Repeat in 2005? I think this might be the case. Why is Apple trying to tax innovation of 3rd parties who accessories make the iPod such a success? If Apple cannot even listen to its users and produce a 2 button mouse, why should they have the right to strong arm other companies into paying just because their products are designed to look and worked well with the iPods. Its like Dell saying that any black accessory made for PCs should have to be tax by them.

Ridiculous I say. Sad, very sad.

New Site Design Almost Ready

I have been trying out a new site design for the past week or so. It should be ready within the week. Nothing major here, just some new colours and reworked posting format. My hopes are that it will make the site easier to read as well as allowing for a smooth transition once I move onto my own domain and hosting.

View Traffic on Yahoo! Maps

Click on Title for Direct Link

Now you can get driving conditions, incident reports, and more.

Step 1: Click on the traffic "View" link in the upper right section of your Maps page.

Step 2: Your map will display icons that show:

• construction sites
• incident reports

It will also display color-coded indicators that represent:

• speed of traffic
• severity of each incident

Step 3. Click on one of the traffic icons and you'll see additional information about each reported incident including:

• time reported
• time resolved

Fashion Hot Deal

I usually would not post on fashion, but I was sent this site by a friend of mine. As I am always on the lookout for a hot deal I could not pass this up. Some great new fashions (at least that is what I am told by some girls I know) all at $15 per piece. The idea of set prices worked well in other industries such as surplus electronics and dollar stores so it should work well here too.

They store seems to have great eBay feedback also, so I assume they are trustworthy and actually trying to please their customers. A great small business story if all goes well.

http://www.fifteendollarstore.com

Jabra BT800 Mini-Review - I Can't Wait for Mine!

Erik Thauvin has posted a mini-review of the innovative Jabra BT800 Headset. Since I have this unit arriving in 1-2 days I cannot be more excited about it, looking out the window every few minutes during the day to make sure I do not miss the UPS man coming to my door. After trying to use a variety of Belkin headets I was solely disappointed with both the call quality and comfort of their products. When I went to return the headsets to the store I saw at whole stack of the same headset being returned. That says a lot in itself. On the other hand stores can't seem to keep the Jabra BT800 in stock. Normal wait times are a few weeks and you are lucky if you get one for lower than $110 these days. I got mine for $99, but after shipping and taxes it came out to $112.xx

Mini Review on Jabra BT800 Bluetooth Headset

English to British Dictionary

Ever wanted to know what the hell people in England are talking about? I mean we all speak English, but sometimes during my time in the UK I wonder what is going on around me. I mean I understand what the blokes in the banger next to me are yelling about, but do I really understand? Would you? Well worry no more my friends, BBC America to the rescue. They now have an online dictionary to help those less fortunate of us, who do not speak the Queen's English understand the language better.

BBC Dictionary