TechMan

China postpones the controversial 'Green Dam' web filter

Jody Farr — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:25:00 GMT

The Chinese government has decided to delay the requirement that computer manufacturers install their Green Dam filtering software.

BEIJING - China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Chinese Web surfers just hours before it was due to take effect.

The rule would have required manufacturers to include filtering software known as Green Dam with every computer produced for sale in China starting Wednesday.

A two-sentence announcement by the government's Xinhua News Agency said regulators "will delay" the plan but gave no indication whether it might take effect later. It gave no other details.

And it's all thanks to the drubbing they took from the cranky geeks of post-gazette.com's TechTalk. Or so they'd like to think.

Windows 7 available for pre-order

Jody Farr — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:17:00 GMT

You can buy Windows 7 at a substantially reduced price until July 11th. The Home Premium flavor of the OS will sell for $119 after the pre-sale but you can order it now for $49.99.

Some important points to keep in mind:

This is the price for an UPGRADE version of the OS. If you have any edition of Windows XP or Windows Vista currently installed, you are eligible and licensed to upgrade from that OS to Windows 7.
Windows Vista users will be able to simply pop in the disc and run the upgrade. However, those of us who opted to stay with Windows XP will be LICENSED to upgrade but THERE WILL NOT BE AN AUTOMATIC UPGRADE to Windows 7. The software will allow you to wipe your hard drive and perform a full, clean installation. Be sure you have a backup stategy in place so that you can restore your data after the process is complete.

We liked Windows 7 when we tested the beta and release candidate, and we're looking forward to seeing the production build.

Kermit's right...it's not easy being green

Jody Farr — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:38:00 GMT

Last year, I got the Green Fever. I insulated our attic, serviced the furnace, and replaced nearly every old-fashioned incandescent light bulb in our house with the new compact fluorescent models. Those were a hard pill to swallow at a little over $2 apiece, but I did it and felt really good about myself. I was being a steward of the Earth by saving energy, right? Al Gore himself would drop by any day to pat me on the back.

Those CFL lightbulbs seemed like a good idea. Sure, they're more expensive. But they only use about 13 watts (compared to 75 to 100 for the old incandescents) and have a life span of at least five years, so hey, I was actually saving money, right?

Wrong.

In the past week, I've had two of these new fangled units burn out. Both of them have a nasty black spot on the inside of the twisted glass. Thankfully that's all they did - if they had popped, we would have needed a HAZMAT team on the scene to collect all the mercury they contain.

So I'm through with these pieces of junk. As I threaded in a trusty old thirty cent 100-watt Edison Special, I swore to myself that I'd never again get taken in by things like these that almost sound too good to be true.

At least until these CFLs come with a ten year warranty.

Apple may be cool, but its more buttoned up than the CIA

Ced Kurtz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:51:00 GMT

The recent news that Apple's Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago, a fact that was kept from the public and investors, points up again that Apple's policy of being more secret than the CIA goes against the hype about it being the coolest company.

Military command for cyberspace

Ced Kurtz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:44:00 GMT

The Pentagon is setting up a military command to manage operations in cyberspace.

Don't touch your computer, just wave

Ced Kurtz — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:55:00 GMT

Catching up on posting the column from Sunday:

TechMan believes that the means we use to communicate with computers is the key to when they finally will be everywhere.

For a while, the betting money was on voice recognition. The user was going to be able to talk to a computer and, no matter how many beers he or she had consumed, the computer would understand what was being asked of it. Despite the lengthy dialogue between HAL and Dave in "2001: A Space Odyssey," voice recognition never caught on.

It seems clear now that the breakthrough sense is touch. Touch interfaces for computers are starting to pop up everywhere. Touchscreens first appeared in the late 1960s, and Apple's Powerbook 500, introduced in 1994, had the first mass-market touchpad.

At the beginning, a particular part of the screen had to be pressed, often with a stylus. This is called simple touch. TechMan bought an early PalmPilot soon after it came out in 1996 and it used simple touch. Numerous other PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) imitated the PalmPilot, but they soon fell out of favor due to difficulties with their interfaces and the rise of smartphones that could do the same things plus make phone calls. However, simple touch still is used on ATMs, kiosks and lots of other places.

Then came multitouch, (Apple Inc. has trademarked the term Multi-Touch, so TechMan will use an alternate spelling to avoid having to use the little trademark symbol) where any part of the screen is touch-sensitive. Multitouch also supports gestures, such as pinching to make an image smaller or swiping to go to the next screen.

The first multitouch display was developed in 1982 at the University of Toronto, but it wasn't until 1999 when a company called Fingerworks brought out the iGesture pad and the TouchStream keyboard. Apple Inc. bought Fingerworks in 2005.

In 2007, using Fingerworks technology, Apple brought out the iPhone, the first phone using multitouch, and the iPod Touch. Fueled by Apple's juggernaut marketing machine, multitouch took off and has been accelerating ever since.

Multitouch phones have been pouring onto the market, including the Storm from BlackBerry; the G1, also known as the Google phone; and the recently released Palm Pre.

Also in 2007, Microsoft brought out the Microsoft Surface, a computer embedded in a table with a large, flat, touch-responsive top that uses small cameras as opposed to finger pressure or heat to sense touch.

And even larger touch surfaces are being developed. You may recall seeing CNN's "Magic Wall," used by John King to report on the presidential election. It comes from a company called Perceptive Pixel.

Meanwhile computer makers have boarded the bandwagon. Asus includes a multitouch touchpad on its EEE PC 900 netbook, and Dell has a similar device on its Inspiron Mini line of netbooks. HP makes a TouchSmart line of desktops that have touch screens.

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, due on the market before Christmas, will support multitouch. Microsoft and others have invested $24 million in N-Trig Ltd., which will make hardware that takes advantage of Windows 7's multitouch support.

But what's coming next could really make using a computer almost second nature.

At the recent E3 gaming show, Microsoft demonstrated Project Natal, a device consisting of a camera attached to software which senses movements and sound. It allows gamers to have full-body interaction with computer games without a controller. When such devices hit the market (and we don't know when that will be), it could take the need to touch out of multitouch.

Interestingly, in November at the Intel Research Pittsburgh lab on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, TechMan saw a similar gesture-controlled game featuring Tetris projected on the wall and a player controlling the falling blocks by waving his arms.

So in the future, when you want to communicate with your computer, you can just reach out and touch it. Or maybe just wave at it.

New bill will regulate and/or discourage internet usage metering

Jody Farr — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:08:00 GMT

I'm not a big fan of government regulation, however, since this will be regulating regulations, maybe I can make an exception.

US Democratic Congressman Eric Massa on Wednesday introduced the Broadband Internet Fairness Act, a measure to monitor and regulate capped, tiered Internet services. The bill would require any provider switching from a typically unlimited plan to a usage-based system to be scrutinized by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and would ban any service plans that the FTC deems "unreasonable or discriminatory." Providers that ignored any imposed bans would be subject to unspecified punishment.

Broadband providers are complaining that providing the service gets more expensive all the time, and their answer has been to provide tiered plans (Time Warner) or monthly caps to usage (Comcast). Hopefully this bill will work as intended and not stifle innovation in home internet connectivity or drive the price up.

Source: Electronista

Charging your phone...without wires?

Jody Farr — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:17:00 GMT

Nokia has come up with technology that converts radio signals into electricity, and at the moment it's just enough to keep your phone from going dead. A fantastic idea, and I'm surprised it took this long to figure out. After all, we've been converting electrical energy into radio waves for over 100 years.

While "traditional" (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia's system isn't finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems -- all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone's battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there's no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It's the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale.

Right now they're only able to pull 5 milliwatts of power from the air but that will improve over time. Estimates are that the technology will be available to the consumer in three to five years.

Can't wait until they figure out how to power an electric car in the same manner.

Digital TV transition is tomorrow...are you ready?

Jody Farr — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:25:00 GMT

Tonight at midnight, TVs across the country that are still tuning to analog airwaves will display only snow. Don't say you haven't been warned - the networks have been playing commercials for over a year to remind folks of the original date, and you got a reprieve in February when the Obama administration felt that people just weren't ready.

But I'm sure that none of our five readers are going to be without their daily dose of television tomorrow. If you've been watching this space or listening to the Tech Talk podcast, you've probably long ago tired of us mentioning this event at every turn.

If you run into someone who has been living in a cave and isn't aware of what's about to happen to their Seinfeld reruns, tell them there's still hope. You can send them to www.dtv.gov to get more information about the switch and what they can do to avoid missing any programming.

The $32 printer reconsidered

Ced Kurtz — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:37:00 GMT

A few days ago I posted about a $32 printer that ended up costing $52 after having to buy a USB cable and an ink cartridge. Thinking back on that, it occurred to me that it is pretty amazing that you can buy a working color inkjet printer for $32. I remember 25 years ago when I bought my son a printer to go with his Apple IIE. It was dot matrix, no color, no graphics and cost in the vicinity of $500.