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Japan Today is reporting today that the on-again and off-again pending launch of SED TV is off again, at least for the time being. The problem appears to be that Nano-Proprietary Inc who is one of the technology patent holders, refuses to extend intellectual property rights to Toshiba, who happens to be Canon’s partner in SED Inc. Nano-Prop is suing Canon saying that Canon is in violation of their license agreement – lawsuit details available at this website (PDF alert).

Not good for TV fidelity aficionados, but the legal system must be served.

Litigation May Force Delay in Toshiba-Canon TV Plant - Japan Today, Jan 1 2007

Posted in General ~ 2 Comments

The gadget formerly known as the iPhone seems to be the most unannounced product of all time. And despite the fact that no product details are known, many are expecting an Apple-branded cellphone to be a flop or to be a so-so performer.

 The Register says it all in their article entitled “Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly” – their reasoning: its mainly because of the price.

The Wall Street Journal on the other hand takes a more equivocal approach and suggests that a $300 cellphone from Apple might well sell 18 million copies over the next 2 years. However they say phone might also eat into iPod sales and they warned that the handset market has many players and is very competitive.

Waiting on Apple Cellphone Call - Wall Street Journal, Dec 22 2006         

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In my last post I discussed a number of the steps we take to try and keep spam out of your mailbox. I just wanted to take this opportunity to further expand upon the use of RBL lists. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in mail2web.com ~ 4 Comments

ith all the recent fanfare from Microsoft about Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 the release of the latest version of Windows SharePoint Services flew in under the radar of most people. Read the rest of this entry »

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CNet staged another Prizefight recently – this time challenger Zune when up against the current MP3 champion the iPod. At stake the title ‘World’s Best MP3 Player’. CNet’s Veronica Belmont played referee in a 5-rounder. 

The contestants were evaluated on the basis of their design, interface, compatibility, features and performance. The Zune won the interface round, but lost out to the iPod in the areas of compatibility and features. 

The final score from CNet: iPod squeaks past Zune by a score of 20:19. This verdict is similar to, but somewhat less generous than the 18:14 margin assigned by the London Times in their recent article “Test Bench special: Zune v iPod“.    

Prizefight: Apple iPod vs Microsoft Zune – CNet TV, Dec 14, 2006

Posted in Music Players ~ No Comments

This holiday season I’m not going to be coy about what I want. I want a PalmOne Treo 750v. It’s the latest Palm device out and like its predecessor, the PalmOne Treo 700, it runs on Windows Mobile 5.2 and not the Palm OS. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in mail2web.com ~ No Comments

A Music Recommender System works like a search engine for music but on a personalized basis, with collaborative filtering, drawing on social networking, network analysis and Fourier transforms so as to select songs that you are likely to like and then to play them for you on streaming radio.

One of the newer MRS’s out there is musicovery – it’s got a cute interface, is a bit on the slow side and seems to have a limited but good repertoire. The competition for musicovery includes such established players as the social last.fm and the elaborate Pandora.  

A good but introspective retrospective of the music discovery industry can found below…

Better Than We Know Ourselves – Pitchfork, 05-22-06

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Just when it seemed that flash memory was going to be the next big thing, IBM and some of their henchmen, er business partners, up and announce some advances in phase-change memory, which seems to directly challenge flash in the computer memory market. Their version of PCM memory, according to IBM, is non-volatile, 500x faster than flash, uses just half the power of flash and is much smaller.

IBM’s approach to PCM employs the usual suspects of germanium & antimony, but adds a secret sauce of ‘other elements’ … sounds delicious. No word on possible cost.  

Promising New Memory Chip Technology Demonstrated by IBM – IBM Press Release, 11 Dec 2006

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The New York Times questions the raison d’etre for the International Space Station in a new article that suggests that the ISS is a kind of technological dead-end not unlike the Zeppelin. The International Space Station will end up costing about $100B, is currently less than half-built and will require 15 more space shuttle flights to complete (depicted) – missions that would have to occur before the space shuttle is decommissioned in 2010 to make way for the planned Moon base.

ISS defenders cite the need for more research into the effects of microgravity on humans and the test-bedding of new technologies. Others disagree – apparently even NASA director Michael D. Griffin is of the opinion that the current focus on the shuttle and on low Earth orbit will come to be seen as a strategic mistake – see “NASA Official Questions Agency’s Focus on the Shuttle”.

We’re on board with that – in fact we suggest (as if we know of what we speak..) mothballing the ISS or selling it to Virgin Galactic for use as a space hotel, skipping the moon and going directly to Mars, as per a modified Moon/Mars Mission Statement.

Destination Is the Space Station, but Many Experts Ask What For - New York Times, December 5, 2006

Posted in Aerospace ~ 1 Comment

Vladimir Kramnik, the current (human) world chess champion has just been beaten by Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer program. Fritz won 2 of the 6 games held in Bonn Germany, with the other 4 ending in a draw.

Before the match, Kramnik prophetically stated: “The day will come when we will no longer have a chance against computers. If I indeed manage to beat Fritz in this match it will probably be the last time that a human being wins against a computer“. Former champ Anatoly Karpov agrees and is quoted as saying (Cyrillic alert – try FreeTranslation.com) that his preferred remedy to the inequality inherent in human-machine matchups is to level the playing field by providing chess players with access to the same databases used by the machines, and to allow humans additional time, about 30-35 minutes more per game.

Said Kramnik afterwards: I’m “a bit disappointed”, vowing a rematch in a year or 2.

Fritz operates at about 8 million moves per second, which is less than that of Deep Blue, but, one surmises, more than Kramnik.

Chess champion loses to computer – BBC, 5 December 2006

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