George Carlin has died of heart problems in the Santa Monica hospital last night. He was 71 and not nearly old enough. If you want to read the usual epitaph, you can read this article at the LA Times. George was one of the single most influencial elements in fomenting the early days of my cognizent life. When I was young, and living in Knoxville, TN. I would go to the UT library with my sister and while she was off studying, I was listening to Carlin in the AV department. He was very funny and sometimes very dirty, but even more importantly, he was a critically important look into the depravity, hypocrisy, and general stupidity of we Americans. Not that we were listening, of course. We were too busy laughing to realize that we were being made fun of. If I had to guess, I’d say that George wanted very badly for us to get our shit together and, “Be excellent to each other.”
The real deal is a tad larger than this image, but the Eye-Fi line of Wi-Fi enabled SD cards is small. Well, they’ve now jumped from just one to three available models. You can get the Skyhook geotagging version for US$129, the sharing version for US$99, and the basic uploading version for US$79. All models come with 2GB of storage space.
IDC has published a report that is suggesting that while the new micro laptop craze will be significant, it will not dominate the market as early interest is causing many to speculate. IDC is defining a very low cost micro lappy as a sub-$500 unit with a 7-10″ display, wireless support, and they ability to run a full OS and they reference the OLPC and ASUS Eee PC as examples. More can be read here.
Its been a tad slow, so lets get to some of the smaller items. QuickOffice has announced that they have acquired DynoPlex. QuickOffice is a Microsoft Office compatible software suite for various handhelds, and DynoPlex is a document management platform. A marriage made in mobile heaven? Very possibly, since DynoPlex just released a suite of tools to allow BlackBerrys to view and edit office documents.
The Cuban government has just released restrictions on its citizens having home computers. I don’t suspect it will take long for various vendors to start getting their little laptops down there. ASUS, you seeing a market for your Eee PC yet? Maybe not, since Raul Castro didn’t un-ban the Internet. The Communist government claims that the US embargo stops them from connecting to the cable. We’re friends with China and they’re communists! What gives, Bush?
It looks like the Psystar Mac clone isn’t fake, after all. At least there seem to be a few out there that people are talking about. Gizmodo and Engadget each have at least one. Guess they aren’t fakes after all.
[ADDED]The lawless rogues over at Gizmodo may be onto something. They’ve apparently been trying to contact Psystar and have been having a hard time doing so. I’ve also been using Google to research their history and can find none. Very, very interesting, no?[END ADDED]
If there was ever a reason to fight, Psystar thinks it has one. Personally, I don’t know the law, but when a company makes a product it is allowed to define how it gets used. Apple stipulates, not surprisingly, that Mac OS X can only be run on Apple branded hardware. Well, Psystar doesn’t like that much, so in an interview with Information Week’s Paul McDougall, a guy named “Robert” stated that Psystar would take Apple to court and challenge their EULA on the basis that it violates Antitrust laws governing monopolies. Robert declines to identify himself personally, which either means he doesn’t speak officially for Psystar or he doesn’t want Apple to target him for a lawsuit.
Robert goes on to say that Apple marks up its products 80%. Psystar is offering what it calls the OpenMac, which relies on open source EFI (the EFI replaces the BIOS) emulator to trick the Mac OS X installer into believing that the hardware is really from Apple.
While we don’t generally cover plain old handsets, the new Kyocera E1100 jumped out at me for two reasons. One, its one of the first devices to ship with AWS support. Second, it has a “breathing light pipe” on the front. This is the blue stripe down the front of the handset, shown to the left. In the vaguely hypnotic Flash animation, you’ll see that the bar (pipe?) actually pulses. I’m not sure if I like that. Regardless, this model will be available, iwth others, in Q3 of this year through carriers who still support cellular, PCS, and the new AWS bands, both 1700 and 2100.
Yes, its that time of year again when we gadget and gizmo freaks crawl out of the woodwork to see what the fabbers have in store for us in the new year. CES 2008 in Las Vegas will be kicking off next week and we, The Dojo, will be there to cover it in one form or another. Yes, this like will be like all of the others, I’m afraid, where I will not be able to attend. There is a slim chance that I will be able to make it by driving up there for the press opener, but that may not happen. If I am unable to attend in person, I will be covering all of the news through CES’ phenomenal news portal for members of the press. Regardless, you will get the news you want, when you want it. More to come…
If you’re looking to learn how to play the piano or just to get a cheap (as in inexpensive) MIDI keyboard which works on Windows or Mac OS X, then eMedia has the gizmo for you. At US$149, this 49-key interface seems like a good deal, and eMedia claims that the keys feel like a real piano. Not bad, if true.
All is quiet on the micro lappy front. There has been very little additional movement and some pundits are wondering if this was just a short fad. I, for one, don't believe so. Watch out. Intel's Atom and VIA's Isaiah will change the way we buy PCs.
George Carlin has died of heart problems in the Santa Monica hospital last night. He was 71 and not nearly old enough. If you want to read the usual epitaph, you can read this article at the LA Times. George was one of the single most influencial elements in fomenting the early days of my cognizent life. When I was young, and living in Knoxville, TN. I would go to the UT library with my sister and while she was off studying, I was listening to Carlin in the AV department. He was very funny and sometimes very dirty, but even more importantly, he was a critically important look into the depravity, hypocrisy, and general stupidity of we Americans. Not that we were listening, of course. We were too busy laughing to realize that we were being made fun of. If I had to guess, I’d say that George wanted very badly for us to get our shit together and, “Be excellent to each other.”![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Ok. I know there’s been a lot of hoopla over this issue. I’ll sum it up by saying that the Giz and Engadget have been hammering way too much at this one. The idea itself is very simple. 
The real deal is a tad larger than this image, but the 
[ADDED]
While we don’t generally cover plain old handsets, the 
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