Oh no! Technology has taken over my life! There's no escaping it! What am I to do?
If these kinds of statements sound familiar to you, then you've probably been exposed to the frequent handwringing about the invasion of technology into our modern lives and how it's turning everyone into anti-social introverts who constantly stare at their phones and other gadgets.
A recent article in the Boston Globe took this idea even further with a piece titled "The End of Alone." In the article, the author discusses how new technology is making it basically impossible to enjoy or even have moments of solitude. The author essentially says that if Thoreau were alive today, he'd be busy at Walden Pond texting pals, updating his Twitter feed and checking his friends' Facebook status.
With the deadline for the digital TV conversion fast approaching and with Congress still working on an extension, there are lots of people complaining about the lack of coupons and the fact that some people won't get coupons in time to get converters before the analog TV signals go dark.
Of course, there is an equal number of people saying this is no big deal and that, at $60, the converters aren't that big of an expense, especially for those who can afford it and are just asking for the coupons because they can.
But to me the interesting question is, Are the converters really worth $60 or did the $40 coupon program artificially boost the price by, oh, I don't know, $40?
One of the many side-effects of this bad economy is that there are now many people out there who are starting their own businesses as either their main source of income or to supplement their income. And whether you are now a computer help consultant to your local community or selling gear at flea markets, you are going to have customers who will want to pay you using a credit card.
For the small-time business this can be a significant hurdle, requiring lots of upfront and regular monthly fees. And if one wants to take credit card information for face to face transactions, it requires either bulky equipment that needs some kind of network connection or the risky use of credit card imprint gadgets.
However, online merchant account provider ProPay has another solution. Their recently released MicroSecure Card Reader is a very small handheld device that can capture and encrypt credit card information from the field and then securely transmit this information to the merchant's online account whenever they get back to their computer.
Unless you don't watch any TV--or possibly live in a cave--then you know that in mid-February, traditional over-the-air television broadcasts will end and that consumers who rely on antennas to get their TV will need to buy either a new TV with a digital tuner, or a digital converter box.
To help with this change, the government took a small portion of the money it made from the spectrum auction and launched a coupon program to provide $40 to any citizen who needed to purchase a converter box (which tend to run from $50 to $60). Now, because of poor planning, some fraud and traditional government waste, the coupon program is running out of money, and many people who need converters won't be able to get coupons before the analog signals go dark in February.
Now there are plenty of consumer angles to this story, but the part I find interesting is its lesson in poor planning, a lesson that can also be valuable to developers and IT managers.
Like the rest of you I rely heavily on the Internet to get things done. And when I'm using the Internet, I like to avoid as many delays and hassles as I can.
This has led me to come up with several methods and techniques to get through sites quickly and efficiently. For example, I often download trial and free software from websites and these sites usually ask for an email address but will then directly send you to the download page without requiring an email confirmation. Usually on these sites, instead of using my real email address, I'll make up a random email address (for example something like fiohasfoihsaofiase890@dssdjkfghwe8932fnsd.org) and move on to my download without fear of annoying follow up emails.
I also often use the bugmenot.com service which lets me bypass logins on sites that I don't frequent regularly.
These types of shortcuts have made using the Internet much more efficient and hassle free for me. And they have also made me a violator of most of these websites terms of service. And, if a recent court decision isn't overturned in appeal, they also make me a criminal.
There are plenty of products out there that make it possible to create narrated walk-throughs of content, but most of these tend to be either static PowerPoint-style slide shows or video-based walk-throughs. What if instead of static images and files, you wanted to walk people through live Web pages, or even a mix of live Web pages and static content such as images and media?
That's the purpose of FlowGram's Flowgrams. Available at flowgram.com, Flowgram is a free beta Web service that lets users combine live Web pages and other content and create a shareable narrated walk-through.
Flowgrams are based on Adobe Flash technology, but users don't need any familiarity with Flash. Basically anyone who has created a narrated presentation or photo slide show can create a Flowgram.
One of the most popular products in video from the last year or so isn't an advanced, high-quality camera; instead it's a tiny, no-frills digital camcorder that makes it very easy to shoot video and share or post it online.
Pure Digital Technologies' Flip Video camera is about the size of an iPod, is inexpensive and uses a switchblade USB jack to make it very simple to connect it to a computer in order to access the video. Traditionally the focus for the Flip lines has been more on ease of use than on high-quality video.
But with the release Nov. 12 of the Flip MinoHD, Pure Digital Technologies is providing high-definition video while still maintaining the same (or even better) usability.
The Flip MinoHD looks exactly like the already existing Flip Mino device; in fact, the only visible difference is the word MinoHD on the back. The MinoHD has the same touch-sensitive controls on the back, the same small preview screen and the same big red Record button.
Internet censorship is something that is often discussed but rarely experienced firsthand, at least here in the West. For most of us, we can write about, read and look for anything that interests us on the Internet.
But this isn't the case everywhere. In some countries the people can only access an Internet that is heavily censored and blocked. And the censorship isn't focused solely on porn, gambling and other frowned-upon activities. The censorship often involves legitimate news Web sites, public organizations and even entire country Web sites.
The biggest example of this is what is called The Great Firewall of China, the system used by the Chinese government to control what Chinese citizens can read and access on the Internet. What is it like to have access to a censored and controlled Internet, where there's always a chance that a site you want to go to is blocked and inaccessible?
Click here to see screenshots With company budgets tightening up everywhere, more then a few common expenses are disappearing from plans. Typical casualties include employee training, product demo road shows and face-to-face briefings.
But the need to train employees to use new applications and products isn't going away, nor is the need to give detailed demonstrations of products to partners and potential customers. This, of course, makes screen recording products that can create rich demonstration and training videos more important than ever.
A longtime player in screen recording products is TechSmith, which recently released version 6 of their Camtasia Studio. Camtasia Studio 6 builds on the product's already good usability and functionality by adding several interesting new features, including the ability to create high-definition video presentations. And at a $299 pricepoint, Camtasia Studio comes in at less than half the cost of main competitor Adobe Captivate.
Camtasia Studio 6 includes several presets to help users create a video presentation geared for a specific format. These presets include options such as DVD, YouTube, iPhone and TechSmith's screencast.com service.
In the last few days there has been a lot of news about the legal battle between RealNetworks and the movie industry over RealDVD, RealNetwork's new DVD player and backup application.
But the big question outside of the legal battle itself (and for the record I don't think the MPAA has a leg to stand on) is, Is the application itself any good?
And the answer is, yes and no. From a usability and feature standpoint, RealDVD is probably the most user-friendly and intuitive application I've ever seen for copying and managing a movie collection on a PC. But the application has some serious limitations on its portability and the stability of the backups it makes, ironically all caused by RealNetwork's (failed) efforts to make the application palatable to the movie industry.
After installing RealDVD (which is currently only available for Windows) users can insert any movie DVD into their computers and RealDVD will query the Gracenote service to get related artwork and information about the movie. Users can then play the DVD or play and save it at the save time. In my tests saving a DVD took anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes.
