Monthly Archives: November 2004

WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup

November 30, 2004 – 1:20 am

Handtops.com has published a WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup. The five models they reviewed include:
Smart ID WiFi Detector - WFS-1
PCTEL WiFi Seeker
Kensington WiFi Finder Plus
Hawking Technologies WiFi Locator - HWL1
Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter - HS10
My favorite, and it’s not based on any experience with any of these products, is the Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter. It’s [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)



The War On Fair Use

November 30, 2004 – 12:26 am

Somebody somewhere, probably a lawyer in the entertainment industry, has a list titled “rabid fair use advocates” and David Rothman is near or at the top. Not that I mean that as a criticism, or that Mr. Rothman would take it as such. It’s just a likely fact. Today, however, I’m playing a game by [...]

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property | Comments (1)

ENCompass for Digital Collections and Resource Access

November 29, 2004 – 9:58 am

We’re looking at ENCompass for Digital Collections and Resource Access here. It’s an expensive product, but has a lot of interesting and useful features.
Some sites we looked at in the demo today included New Zealand National Library, UT Dallas, and Alabama Mosaic.

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (1)

Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962

November 29, 2004 – 4:01 am

I had a long conversation with my brother about communist Russia last night. It’s not really an area I can talk about, execpt that I’d recently read enough to make me look semi-smart. My reading was of Samuel H. Baron’s Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962.
Review From Library Journal:
Baron (history emeritus, Univ. of [...]

By Casey | Posted in Books, Movies, Music | Comments (0)

Robert Berger’s WiFi Will Beat Up Your WiMax

November 28, 2004 – 4:45 am

From WiFi Networking News: WiMax Hype, 802.11 Reality
Wi-Fi will out evolve and deliver connectivity at costs dramatically lower than WiMax. WiMax / 802.16 is just starting on its path to evolution, has a much smaller base of innovators and chipset growth volume. Wi-Fi is already far along on its core learning curve, has an easy [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)



iPod Integration Kits Proliferate for Home and Car

November 27, 2004 – 2:21 am

MacNN reports the Sonance iPort will ship later this month, which must mean next week. Anyway, the iPort is a wall mounted dock that hides all the cables — audio, firewire, dock, others — in the wall. The MacNN story includes nice pictures of the unit, including the beauty shot and a view of the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (6)

falljuahinpictures

November 27, 2004 – 2:19 am

fallujapictures (soon to be at falljuahinpictures.com) posts pictures too sad or scary to appear in most newspapers or even on this site.

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)

Geolocation Stumbling Block: GeoURL Host Down

November 26, 2004 – 9:41 am

A an old John Udell piece at InfoWorld hints at GeoURLs, but the GoeURL site is down, and has been for a while. The concept sounds interesting: you mark pages with coordinates, then use GIS to map those pages to geographic locations, finding pages and people of interest along the way.
To join GeoURL, you add [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Copyright Czar Cometh?

November 26, 2004 – 9:33 am

David Rothman at TeleRead echoed the following:
“Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar.” - Lawmakers OK antipiracy czar, via CNET.

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property | Comments (0)

Sealing History

November 25, 2004 – 2:30 am

Democratic Underground published a May 5 2004 story about Bush administration efforts to replace the national archivist.
the national archivist is the keeper of the nation’s records - the archives. The National Archives control what information gets released to the public - and what does not.
With so much power over how what history we see, the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)

Liberty Vampire

November 24, 2004 – 6:03 am

jokir Flickr’d this, writing:
“GREAT work — Alex Ross is one of my favorite artists…Plus - it pretty much nails what’s up in the world, right?”
Ross’s website has mostly shows his comic book art and superhero imagery, and it took some time to find a reference to this piece. Apparently it was for an [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy | Comments (2)

WB Says You’ll Pay

November 24, 2004 – 1:49 am

Here’s the irony: an academic writes a paper that references and quotes relevant prior work, and is commended for the work. But, a journalist working on a book that quotes elements of pop culture risks a copyright infringement lawsuit if he doesn’t pay for his quotes. The fact is, “fair use” is not protected, and [...]

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property | Comments (1)

U2 Cozies To Apple

November 23, 2004 – 6:00 pm

I’ve been warm and lukewarm on U2 for a while. I can’t deny that they’ve done some great stuff, but I’ve failed to appreciate some of it. Take the band’s previous work, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, for example. It seemed like a sad attempt to capture a younger audience, and was out of [...]

By Casey | Posted in Books, Movies, Music | Comments (0)

The Kinkos Conspiracy

November 23, 2004 – 6:24 am

Engadget raised my fears a bit when they announced your laser printer will give you away:
It was big news last month when a couple of researchers at Purdue announced a way to trace documents back to their original printer or photocopier, but it turns out that Xerox and most other laser printer and copier makers [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Click Fraud

November 23, 2004 – 6:21 am

ArsTechnica has a story about new Google lawsuits. The company is getting sued by a porn purveyor for copyright infringement and is suing another company for “click fraud” — fraudulent clicks to Google’s Adsense advertising links. Having recently taken on Adsense links here at MaisonBisson, I couldn’t help but pay attention. The Ars story leads [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)