Technology

Gizmodo went gaga for Plus Minus Zero, a little electronics shop in Japan where “they hand-design a selection of products, then contract the production of the units out for a limited run.” The post includes a picture of one of their products, an LCD television that looks like one of those classic tube TVs from the 1960s.

Then Gizmodo linked to this radio control aerial photography discussion board with some great pix. The point I need to remember to make to Cliff is that all the photos were taken from electric RC planes, not the noisy and messy gas burning type.

A South Korean newspaper is predicting the death of email.

A poll conducted […] on over 2,000 middle, high school and college students in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in October revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said, “I rarely use or don’t use e-mail at all.”

It seems email just isn’t fast enough for these wippersnappers.

…it’s impossible to tell whether an addressee has received a message right away and replies are not immediately forthcoming. […] “The new generation hate agonizing and waiting and tend to express their feelings immediately,” said Professor Lee. “The decline of email is a natural outcome reflecting such characteristics of the new generation.”

Engadget, which tipped me off, asks “Do they even have postal service in Korea anymore?”

What about statistics? The country’s top webmail service saw a greater than 20% decline year over year this October, while the nation’s No. 1 communication firm saw SMS transmissions skyrocket over 40% up in the same period.

Thanks also to SmartMobs for the info.

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 order of magnitude larger base of innovators / investors and chipset growth volume. WiMax hype will sputter out to reality of a niche backhaul and rural marketplace, Wi-Fi/802.11 will evolve and grow into many more realms and dominate the Local Area Network (LAN) / Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) / Metro Area Network (MAN).

Berger’s conclusion is based on the history and development of earlier, wired networking technologies, where Ethernet is the clear winner. He reminds us that “Token Ring, then 802.12 AnyLAN VG, then ATM” were all once considered leading technologies that would replace lowly Ethernet, but didn’t. Today, 802.11 products are shunned by wireless carriers, but their spread and market dominance will be hard to beat by WiMax and 802.16.

http://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/2755

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 this kind of metadata to your homepage:

I got interested in this sort of thing (geolocation) a while back, and I haven’t quite given up.

Update: Bjørn is right, GeoURL is back and I should have updated this post ages ago. Look here for more about geolocation on MaisonBisson. …And Bjørn’s website is worth a look too.

Job ads reveal a lot about a company, what technology they use, what they’re developing, and what sort of culture they have. This one from Ludicorp/Flickr caught my eye:

Starting immediately, we’re looking for a great technical operations person. The ideal candidate can grow into a leadership role in technical operations and has broad practical experience on both the systems and networks sides.

Requirements:

• 5 years system administration experience with Linux and Apache (some network administration experience strongly preferred)
• Experience with both 32 and 64bit systems
• Experience with both hardware and software approaches for load balancing web serving and database traffic
• Experience in firewall administration and best practices for security<
• Basic network design and administration
• Current knowledge of hardware systems (servers and networking gear)
• Prior experience running mid-sized systems (>30 servers)

Bonus characteristics:

• Expertise with MySQL, Squid and/or ImageMagick
• Experience in storage clustering
• General programming and scripting skills (especially php, perl, java)
• Systems architecture/planning experience
• Experience dealing with vendors (negotiation, support contracts, etc.)
• Lifting heavy servers into cages
• Good screwdriver skills (e.g., tighten, loosen)
• Know how to wear a pager … with style
• Management/team leadership experience

iPodLounge has posted a lengthy buyers guide for the iPod and accessories. It’s a whopping PDF — they call it retro because it’s in magazine format. Whatever, it’s packed with details and includes comparison reviews.

Mac360 is offering up a chatty review of the iPod Photo. Tera poked around and found an odd “Photo Import” command lurking in the menus. Could this be the feature that allows camera users to import memory card contents directly? Tera couldn’t make it work, but couldn’t find any other answer either.

Finally Engadget posted a how-to about extracting audio files from iPods. “once you put your tunes on an iPod […] it’s a one-way sync unless you know the tricks for getting them off.” The guide has instructions for Mac and Windows users.

As postscript, I’ll mention that the In Car iPod stories are some of the most popular at MaisonBisson.

Picoserver:

Japanese firm Package Technology is coming out with a 42 x 23.5 x 61 mm box called the PicoServer that’s essentially a web/mail server with an Ethernet port and three sockets for sensors (one out, two in).

This could be a packaged implementation of the iButton TINI ICs from Dallas Semiconductor. Then again, it might not be. Either way, it’s interesting and convenient. I just wish they were cheaper than the $375 or so Engadget claims they’ll cost.

iVideo:

iVideo is the equivalent of iPhoto or iTunes for your video files. Items are organized using playlists and thumbnails, and can be double-clicked to watch.

I’ve wanted iPhoto to organize the short video files that I make with my Clie or Olympus digital camera, but it’s not happenening. This looks like it might work.

• Now that WiFi access is common, WiFi-dependant applications are starting to appear.
  

  providers are finding out that the key to encouraging usage of hotspots and the key to leveraging hotspots to boost business is by offering applications that customers can use.

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      <a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004343.html" title="Rest Stop WiFi Roundup">Rest Stop WiFi Roundup</a><br /> <blockquote>
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          Texas has signed a contract to install Wi-Fi at 105 locations by Oct. 2005, with service free for the first two hours. They’re hoping this encourages truckers and others to pull over a little more to catch up and reduce accidents, among other elements.
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          <a href="http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/oqo-model-01-reviewed-the-heavies-weigh-in-023395.php" title="OQO Reviews">OQO Reviews</a><br /> <blockquote>
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              …it seems that, while pretty cool, the OQO may not live up to the company’s hype.
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