Kewl Info

BigChampagne is Watching You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:04:00 +0000

In fact, they're tracking every download and selling the data to the music industry. How one company is turning file-sharing networks into the world's biggest focus group.

By Jeff Howe

Joe Fleischer twists restlessly in his Aeron chair and nods at the voice on the other end of the telephone. Tapping his fingers on his computer's mouse, he stares out the window of his Beverly Hills office at the new BMWs and battered Celicas inching down Wilshire Boulevard. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," he says. "Got it." Fleischer is talking to a client, an executive at one of the major labels who's working a band he's sure could go platinum, if only radio would give the group a chance. The band's first two albums earned it a fervent fan base, but to get bigger, its new single needs airplay, the all-important spark of sales. "Give me a story I can take to radio," the executive on the other end of the line tells him.

Fleischer hangs up, turns to his computer, and clicks through an online database. On his screen, he can see in astonishing detail when, where, and what Internet users are sharing on peer-to-peer file-swapping services like Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster. He searches for cities where downloads of the band's single are outpacing its exposure on radio. He likes what he sees. In Atlanta, sharing of the group's new album is up more than 1,200 percent over the previous week; in Houston and New York, 300 percent. So Fleischer checks to see how much airplay the track is getting on alternative rock stations in those markets. Very little, it turns out - less than five spins per week in each city. "Jesus," he whispers. In Houston, "KTBZ only spun it once, and it still got into the top 15 downloads. This is hot."

In the argot of the industry, what Fleischer sees is reactivity: the single most important quality a song can have. Basically, it means listeners can't get that tune out of their heads - they probably downloaded it after hearing it only once - and radio stations ought to put the track in heavy rotation. Usually, programming executives evaluate songs by call-outs, telephone surveys in which people hear a clip and give an impression. But that information isn't very helpful to labels, Fleischer will tell you, because it doesn't apply to album sales.

Fleischer is VP of sales and marketing for a company called BigChampagne, which has a better window into consumer demand. By matching partial IP addresses to zip codes, the firm's software creates a real-time map of music downloading. The company sells subscriptions to its database that let a user track one album for $7,500; bigger labels have annual deals for up to $40,000 per month.

He calls his client and gets voicemail. "Dude, you're gonna be stoked," he says. "I'll shoot you an email in a few minutes." In the office, Fleischer seems 39 going on 18, a Valley Boy with a baby face and a sly grin. He has music in his blood - his father was a studio musician who played with Frank Sinatra and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Fleischer himself is a band manager in his spare time. I ask how the label executive will use the data. "He'll give this to promotions," he tells me. "They'll call these stations and say, 'You need to bang this shit. You're barely playing it, and it's already in the top 15 among alt-rock downloaders in your market. You need to step on this at least 20 more times a week, and not while people are sleeping.'"

A week later I call Fleischer to find out how his client reacted. When the executive showed the data to the label's general manager, Fleischer says, "the GM came around his desk and hugged him."

According to on-the-record statements by many major labels, the scene I witnessed in Fleischer's office couldn't possibly have happened. But Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, says his firm is working with Maverick, Atlantic, Warner Bros., Interscope, DreamWorks, Elektra, and Disney's Hollywood label. The labels are reticent to admit their relationship with BigChampagne for public relations reasons, but there's a legal rationale, too. The record industry's lawsuits against file-sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance. "We would definitely consider gleaning marketing wisdom from these networks a non-infringing use," says Fred von Lohmann, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based cyber liberties group that's helping to defend Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa.

But even as the industry as a whole litigates, many of the individual labels are quietly reaching out to BigChampagne, turning file-sharing networks into the world's biggest focus group. In the beleaguered music business, this market research strategy that dare not speak its name is fast becoming the Nielsen ratings of the peer-to-peer world.

You can't blame the music industry for wanting to know more about its consumers. "For years," says Ted Cohen, a senior vice president at EMI, "the mantra of the record biz was, you don't need research. It was, 'This song sounds great, so just play the fucking song.'" Currently, radio relies on call-outs, and the labels rely on SoundScan, a subscription-based service that tracks album sales at the point of purchase and organizes them according to zip code. Neither offers any information on reactivity or what kind of fan is listening to what kind of music.

BigChampagne does. "It's fantastic," says Jeremy Welt, head of new media at Maverick Records, an AOL Time Warner label. "It actually shows us what people are doing of their own accord." And because radio is beginning to take BigChampagne seriously, Welt says, Maverick can use the figures to persuade stations to increase spins.

"The fact is, P2P is a likely distribution channel for our wares," says Jed Simon, head of new media for DreamWorks Records. "If we're going to be intelligent businesspeople, it behooves us to understand it." BigChampagne is happy to provide that understanding, even if it has to operate on the sly.

For most customers, Garland says, "we're the mistress." He and his colleagues once met with some executives from a major label on the street near the label's offices, just to avoid setting off gossip. But not everyone is afraid to be seen with BigChampagne. In March, the company signed a deal with Premiere Radio Networks, the subsidiary of radio giant Clear Channel that sells research products, including the airplay-tracking system Mediabase. The agreement gives the two companies access to each other's data and lets Premiere sell packages of information that include the BigChampagne product.

Radio stations need to measure reactivity even more than labels do, and Garland says the package has exceeded sales targets. Erin Bristol, program director at Clear Channel's Hot 107-9, a Top 40 station in Syracuse, New York, began looking at BigChampagne before the deal. "A lot of radio airplay is based on what other stations are doing, and that's silly," Bristol says, "because what's going on in New York or LA isn't necessarily indicative of what's going on in Syracuse." For example, she might not have added the Kid Rock- Sheryl Crow duet "Picture" to her playlist ("which leans rhythmic") until she noticed that local file-sharers were sucking down the song. "I threw it into my call-outs, and it was reactive, so we made it a subpower," a song that plays 40 to 50 times a week. Bristol says she was turned on to BigChampagne by an executive from Warner Bros. but asked me not to name him.

Have you ever watched file-sharing? I mean really watched file-sharing? I'm in BigChampagne's Atlanta office, where several of the company's dozen or so employees have gathered in the conference room to show off the firm's technology. Garland is filling me in on how he started the company, but I can't take my eyes off the green digits raining down on the big black screen behind him in a matrix of file-sharing. I interrupt him to ask the coders if they can freeze the display. One of them taps a few keys, and the blur atomizes into individual search requests. One user - BigChampagne's software doesn't retrieve actual IP addresses, only a cipher corresponding to metro area - wants to hear the Goo Goo Dolls. Another is interested in "endurance bondage-caning." "A lot of people," COO Adam Toll notes, "are looking for porn."

Garland spent much of his twenties working as a management consultant, dashing through airports and hotel restaurants telling people how to run their businesses. File-sharing was an obsessive hobby; he scoured nascent P2P networks for obscure Britpop. In early 2000, he quit his job and moved to LA. One night when he was out drinking with his friend Glen Phillips, former vocalist for Toad the Wet Sprocket, they began discussing Napster. Toad's heyday had passed, but that hadn't deterred fans from swapping warehouses' worth of the band's music. Phillips, who was trying to jump-start a solo career, "wanted to figure out a way to capitalize on that popularity."

Garland called Zack Allison, a friend from Rice University who was exploring distributed-computing applications. Allison built a program that sent anyone sharing a Toad song an invitation to join Phillips' mailing list, and they decided that if it looked promising they would start a business. "The opt-in rate was 20 percent!" says Zack's father, Tom. "A good opt-in rate is usually 2 or 3 percent." Dapper in a mild fashion, Tom Allison, 60, approaches marketing with a near-religious zeal; he spent 36 years working with Coca-Cola's marketing department, the Los Alamos of consumer research. When Zack called to tell him about their business idea, he realized the real money was in the data and agreed to serve as an incubator and de facto den father for the startup. In a nod to the music industry's dour situation, they took their name from a line in Peter Tosh's apocalyptic "Downpressor Man": "You drink your big champagne and laugh."

In the summer of 2000, Garland and the Allisons hired coders to build software capable of recording and archiving the contents list of shared folders and 50 million search queries a day, and Garland and Tom Allison began pitching their service to labels. At first companies demurred, figuring the courts were about to solve their Napster problem. But then scores of copycats sprang up to replace Napster - the research firm NPD Group estimates that 31 million Americans shared music from a P2P service in September 2002.

Tom Allison and I leave the company's headquarters and drive to a warehouse district on the outskirts of Atlanta. Here, in the dark basement of a brick building, BigChampagne's programmers monitor the software that tracks 50 million search requests a day. "They hate natural light," Garland says of his team, several of whom scowl vaguely at the intrusion.

Although the company's storage needs are substantial, the real heavy lifting, in both bits and man-hours, involves processing the data and presenting it through an easy-to-use interface. Search entries are never uniform ("Rhonda" vs. "Help Me Rhonda") and rarely literate ("Hepl me Rhoda"), and over the past few years the company's coders have fine-tuned a series of programs that clean and organize what they pull off the Internet into a form that can feed the database. BigChampagne's clients can pull up information about popularity and market share (what percentage of file-sharers have a given song). They can also drill down into specific markets - to see, for example, that 38.35 percent of file-sharers in Omaha, Nebraska, have a song from the new 50 Cent album.

What lets the service transcend trivia is the way it establishes correlations between artists. By recording the entire contents of users' shared folders, BigChampagne can determine that, say, 58 percent of people with a Norah Jones song also have at least one track by John Mayer. This lets the company categorize users by radio format, as well as provide solid information about what kind of listener is making a certain single reactive.

To some, though, the accuracy of that information is an open question, and even BigChampagne itself cautions that its service is better at determining trends than exact quantities of downloads. File-sharing is notoriously difficult to monitor, especially since the IP addresses used to track it don't always map to individuals. Jay Samit, former digital media chief of EMI (he recently announced he was leaving to take a position at Sony), says he's skeptical of any reresearch based on IP addresses. "It's like buying gifts on Amazon: Say I get Joy of Cooking for a friend - that suddenly changes my profile." The marketing plan he might employ for an "angry rock rebel" is very different from the one he'd use on a soccer mom, and "just knowing they're both in Tulsa doesn't help me." Because AOL works with dynamic IP addresses, Samit notes, the location of its users can't be determined. (The company says that AOL subscribers account for only 15 percent of its information and that it includes them in its national, but not local, data.)

After spending three years convincing the music industry of the utility of P2P data, BigChampagne now faces challenges from a number of directions. An LA company named Webspins is offering a similar service, and the two firms have since filed lawsuits against each other for defamation and unfair business practices. And in July, Billboard launched a new chart that monitors sales of downloads from legitimate services. Right now, by monitoring peer-to-peer networks, BigChampagne tracks nearly all the music downloaded from the Internet. But that will change as industry-sanctioned music services like Apple's iTunes gain more of a foothold.

In the meantime, BigChampagne is beginning to diversify. In May, Garland started talking to two major Hollywood studios (contractual obligations prohibit saying which). Over the long term, the entertainment industry will never stop worrying and learn to love file-sharing - but BigChampagne will help them learn to live with it.

Contributing editor Jeff Howe (jeffhowe@wiredmag.com) wrote about the music business in Wired 11.02

The 10 Lamest Facebook Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Do you really need to know about your friends' bowel movements? Or what sandal they'd be? It was a tough competition, but we chose the 10 lamest apps on Facebook.

Brennon Slattery, PC World

The 10 Worst Facebook Apps

By itself, Facebook is a bare-bones Web service--the liveliness comes from its users and from the oodles of Facebook applications that make going to this social network fun and useful. We at PC World love plenty of Facebook apps, but some that blink, flash, and serve no clear function have us scratching our heads wondering why they exist.

Others have us tearing our hair out or are just annoying. After all, what is the point of a Facebook application called Ploppy that broadcasts how our last trip to the bathroom went?

You have tens of thousands of Facebook applications to choose from. Of those thousands, here are the ten you’ll definitely want to avoid. (As already hinted, at least one pushes the boundaries of taste.)

Facebook Wall Candy Crap-letts

Pieces of Flair, Bumper Stickers, and Super Wall are all one of a kind, Facebook applications that the creators say are meant to promote self-expression via splashy graphics, videos, and interactive gifts.

In reality, these pesky pieces of junk inundate your home page with images of snowballs, green mugs of beer, crass quotes, and what are called LOL cats sent from your flair-loving friends. Once the less-discerning among your Facebook acquaintances start using Crap-letts, you may find dozens of colorful hairballs, so to speak, littering your profile.

Pirates vs. Ninjas

There are some great games on Facebook--Scrabble comes to mind. Then there's Pirates vs. Ninjas, a never-ending game where, in order to succeed and become a stronger character, you must virtually lasso (via Facebook invites) more of your friends to join the game.

That's what makes this game so insidious: The more friends you get to sign up, the more you advance in the game. This recruitment requirement will turn any successful Pirate or Ninja into a Facebook spammer.

Spamming friends for make-believe pirate swag? As someone said, "Arg, I think not, me hearties!"

Whopper Sacrifice

Before the Facebook app Whopper Sacrifice was shut down in January 2009 for "creative differences" between Burger King and Facebook, the app pushed the boundaries of good manners, if not good taste. Whopper Sacrifice asked participants to delete Facebook friends in exchange for free burgers from Burger King. A whopping 233,906 complied--and looked like jerks in the process. Whopper Sacrifice earns a Facebook raspberry for its contradictory nature: Facebook is supposed to connect people, not separate them.

Honesty Box

Honesty Box is a Facebook application to help those who apparently feel their friends aren't telling them the entire truth. The app allows you to ask any question you choose, and fellow Honesty Boxers can submit their answers anonymously. So now you’ll never know who answered your question, "Do you think I’m fat?" with the response "Absolutely YES."

Only gluttons for punishment would have the guts to hang this Facebook app on their Wall. For those who don’t think your 200-plus Facebook “friends” can sometimes be cruel, you’ve been warned.

Owned!

Owned! allows you to place imaginary monetary bids on your friends, and, in effect, "own" them for the highest dollar. You get no actual reward, and you don’t actually spend any money. If this app feels like a big joke, it kind of is. And we think the joke is on those who install it.

How Good Are You in Bed?

Based on a series of auto-generated questions such as how attentive are you to your partner's needs and how limber are you, the Facebook app How Good Are You in Bed? supposedly can determine your sexual value and self-worth.

We’re not sure what kind of person might want to advertise their How Good Are You in Bed? test results on their Facebook page. But if you have to advertise it, the odds are good that you may have cheated on the test--just a theory.

Compare People

Performing precisely as advertised, Compare People delves into the pit of superficiality and trivializes the friends you've collected by showing you two of your friends side-by-side and forcing you to find one of them superior. Who's the most datable? Who has the better fashion sense?

The questions keep coming and so do the bruises to your Facebook friends. The results of your comparisons remain private--which is fortunate considering you’d likely lose about 50 percent of your friends overnight if you did post the results on your Facebook page.

What Kind of Sandal Are You?

Based on five simple questions such as, "What's in your closet?" and "What color pedicure would you get?" and so on, the Facebook app What Kind of Sandal Are You? reveals, at long last, what breed of open-toed piece of footwear you are.

According to the app, this reviewer is Slingback Sandals--"classy and sophisticated, I dress to the nines wherever I go, even if it's in my Couture sweats!" This stuff is obviously culled from a space-age algorithm crafted by Harvard graduate scientists and the top social researchers in the world.

Question: What kind of person is a Croc?

Ploppy

Yes, there exists a Facebook app that tracks your bowel movements. Its name is aptly Ploppy, and it's probably supposed to be good old-fashioned potty humor. But this app excretes no joy from us when it comes to the prospect of informing people how we spent our time in the bathroom. We think it would be equally as stinky to know about our friends' … you know.

The Most Useless Application Ever

The ultimate ineffectual Facebook add-on is The Most Useless Application Ever. Yep, you heard right. The name of the app is The Most Useless Application Ever. Guess what it does? Nothing. It updates your newsfeed to indicate the app has been added to your stockpile--and that's it. When clicked, The Most Useless Application Ever cynically informs you with quips such as "Eliminated potential of usefulness." Perhaps, in its simplicity, it is, in fact, refreshingly honest. Or maybe it's just stupid.

1998-2009, PC World Communications, Inc.

Will Search Engines Become The Next Pirate Bay?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:32:00 +0000

by Justin Kerr

The pirate bay is taking on water at a frantic pace, and while an appeal in the trial is still likely, odds are pretty good that site may soon be brought down once and for all through a court injunction. Truth is though; the Pirate Bay brought this down on themselves. By picking up the torch that Napster and Kazaa dropped, they painted a huge bulls eye on their chest and blatantly taunted the movie and music industry by posting take down notices on the site, a sign of open defiance.

Though they may soon pay the price for these actions, it remains to be seen who the movie and music industry would consider to be “next on the list”. Tracker sites like Mininova, isoHunt, and Demonoid come to mind, but one searching tool rules them all, Google. Type any movie or TV show into Google followed by the word “torrent” and every tracking site, including many lesser known domains; spill their results for the world to see. In fact according to Google Trends, searches for the term “wolverine torrent” quadrupled after the movie was leaked onto peer-to-peer networks.

Google claims they are quick to remove offending content, but it’s a never ending battle. When one torrent link dies, dozens more take their place.

Can Google be held legally liable for this? It’s hard to say but with the Pirate Bay gone, we may soon find out! What do you think?

SMS Hack could Hijack Cell Phones

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

by Paul Lilly

According to mobile security firm Trust Digital, you're at a real risk of falling prey to an SMS attack while you sleep. Dubbed the "Midnight Raid Attack," because it's mostly run at night, a hacker who has the right toolkits and know-how could send a malicious text message to your phone capable of firing up the web browser and navigating to a harmful website. Once there, the site downloads a dirty executable to your phone intended to steal your private data, said Trust Digital.

"This is a completely real threat," said Phillippe Winthrop, a director in the global wireless practice at Strategy Analytics. "We will see these attacks. It's a matter of time."

Another type of attack has a hacker sending a malicious SMS 'control message' over the GSM network to a victim's phone using a WiFi network, like you might be using at a coffee shop. The attack turns off SSL on the victim's phone, allowing the hacker to sniff your exposed traffic and steal your email credentials.

Trust Digital posted a pair of YouTube videos demonstrating the above attacks, which you can view here and here.

An Inexpensive Anti-Piracy Policy That Will Work!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:26:00 +0000

by Tom King

Okay, how 'bout this for dealing with the problem of piracy against US ships. It's cheap, easy to set up and doesn't require a lot of resources.

1. Place two ships in the Somali corridor, one at each end.

2. Put a bunch of heavily armed seals on board both ships.

3. US flagged merchant ships swing by one of the ships as they enter the Somali corridor and pick up one heavily armed Navy Seal.

4. The Seal travels aboard the cargo ship for a small fee paid to the US Navy.

5. Somali pirates approach the ship, the Seal unlimbers a 50 caliber sniper rifle and picks off pirates as they approach and finishes by putting a few rounds through the bottom of the boat. If the pirates are more heavily armed, the Seal unlimbers an anti-ship rocket and blows up all of the attacking vessels.

6. The US Flagged ship continues on its merry way and drops the Seal off at the other Navy vessel at the other end of the Somali corridor. Ships going the other way pick Seals up and take them back up the corridor back to the first ship. No weapons go into foreign ports aboard American ships, so no problem with local authorities. Seals take their weapons with them.

7. Somali pirates go out, nobody comes back. After losing a hundred or so pirate ships, the Somalis begin to put two and two together and decide another line of work might be more lucrative.

How expensive would that be? One Seal would be all you'd need to take out one of those little boats. If they were attacking they wouldn't have hostages yet, so instead of needing 3 Seals to shoot 3 at once, you'd only need one to shoot 'em one at a time.

Sounds cold, but these aren't nice people and they do kill hostages. If you wanted to discourage them, you could shoot out the bottom of their little boats and let 'em swim home, but that might give them experience they could share to develop new tactics, which would endanger our Seals.

It's a tough call, but I think it would work. One Seal would be all I would need if I were a ship's captain and I'd certainly feed him well!

I'm just sayin'

Tom

-

---- That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe-making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. -Mark Twain

Best Free Linux Book: Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:47:00 +0000

by Carlos Dagorret

Website	www.ubuntupocketguide.com
Author	Keir Thomas
Format	PDF
Pages	152

This book is a concise companion for everyday Ubuntu use. It provides a good grounding in getting to grips with the Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 distributions.

Topics covered include:

Installing & Configuring Ubuntu
Learning how to use the desktop covering logging in, layout, virtual desktops, and useful applications
Understanding how user accounts and the filesystem work
Getting to grips with the command-line
Software management including an overview of Synaptic, working with repositories, and a basic overview of compiling from source code
Securing the system, including configuring a firewall, antivirus, and how to encrypt file and folders

RIM finally distributes BlackBerry System 4.5, enables Pandora

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:31:00 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III

The real reason people started buying Windows 3.0 wasn't really because of the wealth of new software made for Windows for the first time. Seriously, that wasn't the reason. By the time people learned about stuff like Lotus 1-2-3G and WordPerfect for Windows -- which were both going to change the world, if you'll recall -- they were already sold on Windows 3.0 for another reason: the smooth on-screen fonts. Because let's face it, Windows/386 looked like it belonged on an 8-bit computer, compared to Macintosh.

Late last night, the BlackBerry System 4.5 upgrade finally came through for users of those older-style units that actually look like BlackBerrys. In it, you'll find relief...in the form of the replacement of the thing that made the 8800s and older units look pale compared to the (slow) Storm, or the iPhone: the disgusting looking default system font.

Okay, so the font file itself is still in the system, but you won't actually use it or want it. The old system fonts looked like something spat out of a Centronics dot-matrix printer, circa 1978. I remember selling dot-matrix printers in the early days, including one of the first to offer a switch that converted you from "sans-serif" to "serif," or in that particular case, from "legible" to "illegible." Until today, we 8800 users had something called "BBClarity" (which at least meant, devoid of junk) and "BBMilbank," which looked like it belonged on one of those programmable highway warning signs, shouting, "BEWARE OF ZOMBIES."

The new fonts in System 4.5 -- BBAlphaSans and BBAlphaSerif -- are both pleasant, legible, and non-offensive. Most importantly, they actually enable the use of some applications that have been either available for multiple BlackBerry models, or waiting around until someone finally gave the word. One of those apps is the mobile edition of Pandora, the original programmable radio stream that learns your musical tastes as you listen. Having Pandora in my pocket is reason alone to own a mobile handset; my friend Angela can have her YouTube, thank you, I'll stick with my own channel of music made by musicians and not machines.

The Mobile Pandora isn't as conversational as the PC edition -- for instance, you can't go into your profile and load up all your bookmarks. You can get an explanation why you're hearing the song you're hearing, and this little feature alone shows you why the System upgrade was necessary -- on the old system, there's no way this information would be the least bit legible in a single alert box.

But this version appears to have been built with the understanding that Pandora users will most likely use their PCs to program their personal stations, not their BlackBerrys. And that's fine, because while we're working out in the gym or riding our bicycles or tuning out the noise of something else purporting to be music, you don't really have that much time to go poking buttons.

BlackBerry users take note: You shouldn't try to upgrade your systems using your BlackBerry Desktop Software for Windows until you've upgraded that too. The only way you can move up from version 4.2.x to 4.5 safely is to use Internet Explorer (not Firefox or any other browser, thanks to the use of an ActiveX control), and link to this address. Download the new version of the ActiveX control, which will then bootstrap a process that will enable you to download the new version of the Application Loader for your desktop. The old Application Loader will not work for this purpose, and you might find that out the hard way unless you upgrade this way. Then be sure to exit IE and unplug your BlackBerry from the USB cable for a moment (the software should tell you when), then reconnect it before starting the upgrade.

The upgrade process will back up your existing calendar, e-mail, media, and personal applications automatically, and will restore them after the new modules are loaded in and verified. The verification process, for some reason, is the longest stage -- be prepared to wait as long as 45 minutes. The process in its entirety could take an hour, maybe a little longer.

Not all your old applications may work in the upgraded system without being replaced. Most surprisingly, BlackBerry App World is one of them. You'll need to manually uninstall it, then reinstall it from this address.

You'll notice some differences right away, some thanks to the new system, others on account of smart users who truly appreciate the low value of farting apps. The catalog is much more pleasant to read, even if -- sadly -- some of the entries haven't changed all that much since App World's premiere earlier this month. The "before" and "after" pictures above tell the story. ("ECOE" isn't very self-explanatory, is it? It's a Ticketmaster application, so you'd think it would have been named something like "Ticketmaster Application.")

Nothing makes a smartphone user happier than not being embarrassed. So much applause to the folks at RIM who, while they've been busy concocting all sorts of new goodies for the Storm (I hear something called speed is in the works), they decide to throw us old-timers from '07 and '08 a bone every now and then.

The History of Pizza

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Carlos has some really great articles.
I don't eat Pizza but since most of you do you might find this interesting.

by Carlos Dagorret

This is the history of the most relevant food for human

Circa 1000 A.D.: Pizza gets its start when peasants begin baking leftover, covered dough.

Early 1500s: Spanish conquistadors bring tomatoes to Europe from the New World.

Late 1500s: The first known recipes for the production of mozzarella cheese begin popping up in cookbooks.

Late 1600s: Although tomatoes are feared to be poisonous, peasants in Naples are the first to add them to their pizza.

1830: Port’Alba the world’s first pizzeria, opens in Naples. The proprietor bakes pizzas in an oven lined with lava harvested from Mount Vesuvius.

1889: Naples chef Raffaele Esposito prepares a red, white, and green pizza of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to honor a visit by Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanna. He names the pie the margherita.

1905: Gennaro Lombardi opens the first American pizzeria: Lombardi’s pizzeria, which was located at 53 ½ Spring St. in New York City. (The restaurant would later move to 32 Spring St.).

1943: Ric Riccardo Sr. and Ike Sewell invent a deep-dish pizza and begin serving it at their new Chicago restaurant, Pizzeria Uno — creating a flagship for the future chain.

1945: Buying a slice becomes increasingly popular as WWII veterans return from Italy and spread the pizza gospel.

1957: The first frozen pizza — Celentano’s — appears in supermarkets.

1958: The first Pizza Hut opens in Wichita, Kansas. The first Domino’s opens just two years later in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Mid-1970s: Chicago pizzerias add a top layer to their deep-dish pie, creating the miracle of stuffed pizza.

Early 1980s: Pizza goes gourmet, with upscale toppings such as duck and Gorgonzola.

1995: Kraft introduces DiGiorno pizza, the first “self-rising” frozen pie.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Minicars perform poorly in crash tests, study says

By NEIL ROLAND, AUTOMOTIVE NEWS

A picture of Two versions of the Smart ForTwo are shown here.

Two versions of the Smart ForTwo are shown here.

Smart

Minicars made by Toyota, Honda and Daimler AG did poorly on frontal crash tests with mid-sized automobiles, prompting an influential safety organization to suggest consumers consider buying larger cars that have comparable fuel economy.

The Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit and Smart ForTwo all collapsed upon impact into the space around the driver dummy, according to the study released today by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Drivers in all three vehicles faced high risk of head and leg injuries after test collisions at 40 miles an hour, even after airbags inflated, said the non-profit group funded by auto insurers.

The study could prompt more debate on minicar safety as several automakers continue developing such vehicles for North America. Just last week, Stefan Jacoby, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said VW would consider bringing its European Up minicar brand to the U.S. in future years.

"Size still matters," Institute President Adrian Lund said in a statement. "Though much safer than they were a few years ago, minicars as a group do a comparatively poor job of protecting people in crashes."

Safer options recommended

The group recommended that consumers consider purchasing some larger cars that offer superior safety to the mini and micro autos.

It cited the VW Jetta diesel, the Toyota Camry hybrid and the Ford Fusion hybrid.

"Many cars just a little bit bigger get close to, or the same mpg as the mini and micro cars we tested," Institute spokesman Russ Rader said in an e-mail.

Smart called the 40 mph test and the frontal crash position "rare and extreme" in the case of the ForTwo.

The severity of the test collision "is unlikely to occur in real world crashes," Smart USA President Dave Schembri said in a statement. "Smart has a proven track record of safety with approximately one million cars on the road in 37 countries."

Customers drive small cars for reasons other than fuel economy, including value, parking convenience, and fun, he added.

Spokesmen for Honda and Toyota did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

All three mini and micro cars had performed well in more typical crash tests with vehicles smashing into a barrier.

While these tests showed how well the small cars matched up against each other, they didn't reveal their safety performance in crashes with larger cars, Lund said.

In the latest tests, the Toyota Yaris crashed into a Toyota Camry, the Honda Fit collided with a Honda Accord, and a Smart ForTwo crashed into a Mercedes C Class.

In these collisions, the driver dummies in the smaller cars faced "intrusions" on their space from windshield pillars, instrument panels, toe boards and steering wheels, Lund said.

"While head-on collisions at 40 miles an hour are rare, it's these crashes that often cause serious injury and death," Lund said.

The medium-sized cars fared far better in the tests.

Analysis of fuel economy

A look at fuel economy confirms the Institute's claims that some larger cars get results comparable to those of the mini and micro models.

The 2009 Yaris gets fuel economy of 29 mpg in the city and 35 on the highway, according to Environmental Protection Agency results published on Department of Energy Web site www.fueleconomy.gov.

The 2009 Fit gets 28 mpg in the city and 35 on the highway, while the Smart ForTwo convertible gets 33 mpg in the city and 41 on the highway, according to the site.

Among the larger cars recommended by the Institute, the Jetta diesel gets 29 mpg in the city and 40 on the highway, while the Camry hybrid gets 33 mpg in the city and 34 on the highway.

According to a Ford spokesman, the 2010 Fusion hybrid gets 41 mpg in the city and 36 on the highway.

In 2007, the death rate for minicars was substantially higher than those for larger cars in both single-vehicle and multiple-vehicle crashes, the Institute said.

The death rate was almost twice as high for one- to-three-year-old mini cars in multiple-vehicle crashes as the rate for very large cars, it said. In single-vehicle crashes, the death rate for minis was more than three times as great as for very large cars.

The Pirate Bay loss: What it could mean

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:10:00 +0000

It's not just about copyright infringement. It's about using the media as a political tool.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The four men behind the Pirate Bay torrent sharing site were sentenced to one year in prison and fined 30 million Kronor in damages this morning, after having faced charges from the Stockholm District Court of "promoting other people's infringement of copyright laws."

The court's statement to the media said, "By providing a Web site with...well-developed search functions, easy uploading and storage possibilities, and with a tracker linked to the Web site, the accused have incited the crimes that the filesharers have committed."

But the war of ideals in the Internet age rages on, and the real victor in this could be the political Pirate Party.

Daniel Goldberg of ComputerSweden traces the beginning of the Pirate Bay's struggles to March 2005, when the Economic Crimes Bureau and the National Police began to review law enforcement practices in the field of internet software piracy. It wasn't until nearly a year later that the Pirate Party entered the political arena on the platform of copyright and patent reform.

By politicizing the Pirate Bay's trial, the Pirate Party secured a guaranteed outlet for evangelism and party-building rhetoric. For example, calling today's sentence a miscarriage of justice, the head of Sweden's Pirate Party Richard Falkvinge has organized large-scale demonstrations for tomorrow in Stockholm and Lund.

Meanwhile, he says that membership in Sweden's pirate party has "gone vertical at ultrasonic speeds." More members have signed up for the party in the four hours following the trial than have in the last three years of its existence.

"As it is right now," said Falkvinge, "the 'Young Pirates' will be Sweden's largest youth organization when the clock strikes midnight on Saturday, and will probably have more members than the Liberal Party."

Today's ruling and the process of appeals could add significant muscle to the Party as the June 4-7 EU Parliamentary elections approach. There, the Pirate Party's Christian Engström is making an all-or-nothing bid for a seat. The Party is funded only by member donations, has no paid employees, and needs at least 100,000 votes to secure a seat among the 785 Parliamentary representatives in Brussels. The last time the party ran in 2006, it only had 35,000 votes.

If the Pirate Party joined the EU's Parliament, it would be another leftist group to balance out the current right-leaning majority. It would have to contend or ally with majority groups the European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialist Party, which hold 249 and 209 seats respectively.

But really, what does all this have to do with file sharing?

At this point, very little. Think of the impact a major drug bust has on the consumption of illegal substances: While it puts a crimp in the supply chain, the demand is starkly unaffected.

Peter Kolmisoppi, also known as Brokep said on Twitter today, "Stay calm - Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing what so ever. This is just a theater for the media."

True. The Pirate Bay was not taken down, and the group is expected to appeal the ruling, which could spin out the hearings as much as another three years. So it has been a media theater indeed, but one that could successfully help the Pirate Party into Parliament, however small an accomplishment that may be in the end.

Windows XP Performance Tweaking guide

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:57:00 +0000

1. Stop the ‘last access update’ stamp

Every time a directory on an NTFS drive is accessed by Windows XP, it updates that directory and every subdirectory with a time stamp to indicate the date of access. In folders with a lot of subdirectories, this can add considerable overhead to whatever your PC happens to be doing.
This process can be disabled through the registry:
Open REGEDIT and Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\System\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\FileSystem.

Create a new DWORD value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’ and set the value to ‘1′

2. Disable the 8.3 naming convention

Windows XP uses two different names for each and every file on your system. One is the name that you see in explorer and in the command prompt, and the other is an MSDOS compatible 8.3 (8 character title followed by a ‘.’ Then three more characters to indicate the type of file) name. If you are intending to run DOS only software, or connect to pre-Windows 95 computers, you will need this second set of names. If not, you are simply wasting resources.
To disable the 8.3 naming convention:
Open REGEDIT
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem
Change the value of the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation key to ‘1′
Note that some popular programs, including Norton Antivirus, use the 8.3 naming convention.

3. Keep Windows operating data in main memory

Windows XP contains several tweakable memory settings in the registry, one of which is the DisablePagingExecutive registry key. This controls whether the operating system will transfer its essential driver and kernel files to the ‘virtual memory’ (the page file on the hard disk). It defaults to allowing this.
Obviously, transferring portions of the system to hard drive memory can considerably slow things down, and it appears that Windows XP does this periodically, whether or not the system is actually low on physical memory (RAM). If you have 256MB of system memory or more, try this registry tweak to force Windows to keep its operating data in main memory:
Open Regedit.
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Se ssionManager\MemoryManagement.
Select the DisablePagingExecutive value to ‘1′

4. Obtain the newest drivers for your hardware

This may seem a bit obvious, but keeping your system’s drivers up to date can give both your performance and stability a boost. Video card manufacturers release updates especially often, and these can often give “significant boosts” to gaming performance as video card in question is “optimized.”

Don’t neglect the other components of your system either. Your motherboard manufacturer may have released newer versions of its Input/output drivers for your board, and sound cards and other peripherals can also benefit from newer software.

5. Move the page file from system drive

The page file is the area of a hard drive which Windows reserves for use as virtual memory when there is more data than can be stored in the actual physical memory of the system.

Page file access is extremely slow as compared to standard memory, since the hard disk, as a mechanical device, is slower to read and write information than the purely electronic memory. There are still some ways to optimize your page file use so it is a bit less of a burden on your system, however.
One of the best of these methods, provided you have two physical hard drives, is to move the page file off the disk which hosts the Windows system files. This ensures that Windows is not constantly accessing the disk for the system files as well as the page file.
To do this in Windows XP:
Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘properties.’
Select the ‘advanced’ tab.
Under ‘performance’ choose the ’settings’ button.
Select the ‘advanced’ tab again and under ‘virtual memory’ select ‘change.’
The virtual memory window allows you to select and change the allocation of hard disk space to be used as virtual memory for your system. For best performance; if you have two physical hard disks of roughly equivalent speed, remove the page file from your system disk c: and place it on the other drive.

6. Create a ‘permanent’ page file

Make the minimum size of the page file the same as the maximum size. This saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file, and does not lose you any extra space, since the ‘maximum’ size the page file can reach is the amount of hard disk space that is reserved by the OS.
Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘properties.’
Select the ‘advanced’ tab.
Under ‘performance’ choose the ’settings’ button.
Select the ‘advanced’ tab again and under ‘virtual memory’ select ‘change.’
Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the ‘initial size’ of the file the same as the ‘maximum size’ of the file.

7. Optimize your page file size

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. As a simplified guideline. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

8. Enable UDMA/66 mode on IDE Channels

Even if DMA is enabled on IDE channels, by default UDMA/66 mode is disabled. You can improved disc performance by enabling it.
Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigating to:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\ {4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000].

In right pane look for a key by the name “EnableUDMA66″. If it is there, set its value to 1 if it is not already set to 1. If not, add a dword entry by the name “EnableUDMA66″ and set its value to 1.

10 How to improve on shutdown time ? Close apps automatically & quickly at shutdown

Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP

and look for AutoEndTasks. On my computer default value is 0. Change it to 1. Thats all. Further more you can reduce the time it takes for Windows to issue kill directive to all active/hung applications. In doing this only constraint that you should make sure exists is that HungAppTimeout is greater than WaitToKillAppTimeout. Change the values of WaitToKillAppTimeout to say 3500 (since default value for HungAppTimeout 5000 and for WaitToKillAppTimeout is 20000)

11. Speedup boot up sequence by defragmenting all key boot files

Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction

In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set it ‘Y’ for enable. This is the way I have it set on my computer. This will help speedup boot time.

12. Create your own customized legal notice at Windows Startup
This tip won’t make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon.

In right hand panel look for two fields by the name legalnoticecaption and legalnoticetext. Modify legalnoticecaption to what you want popup window caption should read and change legalnoticetext to customize whatever message you want.

13. Disable Remote Registry

This service allows your registry to be edited from a remote computer. It is most likely the case that this service is not needed, not to mention a possible security risk for people concerned about their system security.
To turn it off, go to Start > Run and type services.msc.
Set the startup type to““Manual” or “Disabled” for XP’s “Remote Registry”or 2000’s “Remote Registry Service”.

14. Visual Effects

Both Windows 2000 and XP have all sorts of fade and other fancy effects turned on as default. All right, so they look pretty, however, they can really bog down systems.
Under XP, in the Control Panel, go to System >“Advanced” tab and under “Performance”, click “Settings”. The two I suggest to uncheck here are “Fade or slide menus into view” and “Fade menu items after clicking”. You can turn off and on any effects you want in order to find a good balance between visual effects and performance Hit Apply and OK after you’’re done.
In 2000, Right click on the desktop, click “Properties” and go to the “Effects” tab.

15. Turn Off Terminal Services

If you are experiencing slow shutdowns, one tweak you can try is turning off Ternimal Services. If you do not use remote desktop, fast user switching, remote assistance or the terminal server, then proceed with this tweak.
Go to Start > Run and type services.msc /s.

Find “Terminal Services” on the list and double click on it (If it’’s not there, it isn’’t installed). Change startup type to ““disabled”” or ““manual”” and click OK.

16.Winodws Sharing

It’’s fairly common nowadays to have more than one computer in the house on LAN so they can each connect to the Internet. It’s also common to share and transfer files between the computers. When you try to access one computer from another, there is often a significant delay while trying to connect. This is because your computer will check the remote computer you are accessing for any scheduled tasks. The more there are on the remote PC, the longer it takes to connect.

To avoid this delay, go into regedit, and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer
\RemoteComputer\NameSpace.
Delete the {D6277990-4C6A-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} key and reboot.

The next time you try to access the shared files on a remote computer, you will probably notice your computer gets there faster.

17. Disable Windows Messenger

To stop Windows Messenger from loading, there is a registry tweak you can try out. If you use MSN Messenger, it can be run without Windows Messenger. If you install MSN Messenger after applying this tweak, the tweak will be reset by the installation and it will need to be done again.
First, if you have it open, close MSN Messenger and make sure it is not open in the system tray. Open up regedit and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Mes senger\Client.

Create/modify these to DWORD values: “PreventRun” set to the value of 1; and “PreventAutoRun” also set to the value of 1.

If you are experiencing a slow down opening OE as a result of the above tweak, try this:
Open regedit and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID.
Find the key {FB7199AB-79BF-11d2-8D94-0000F875C541}
and under it select the folder IniProcServer32.
In the right panel of regedit double-click on the “(Default)” entry at the top and completely delete the value data it contains. Now do the same for the LocalServer32 folder as well.

18. Delay When Opening “My Computer”

It is a sure thing that you have sat in front of your monitor more than a few times and waited for ““My Computer”” to load. There is a simple fix to eliminate the wait time.

Open up “My Computer”, go to Tools > Folder Options and select the “View” tab. Uncheck “Automatically search for network folders and printers” and hit OK. Now try opening up “My Computer”. Notice a difference?

19 Disable anonymous NetBIOS connections

Some computers are vulnerable to a NetBIOS attack, where a hacker uses a rather simple method to connect to somebody’s computer. From there, the hacker can essentially do more to that person’s computer than that person can do. It is a good idea to do this tweak if you are not behind a firewall. Must be familiar with the Windows registry.
Open Regedit (go to start > run and type in regedit and press enter)

Navigate to the following folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControl/SetControl/LSA

Right-click a white area in the left pane.

Select New > DWORD Value.

For the name of the value, type “RestrictAnonymous”.

Double-click the name of the value.

For the “Value Data” field, type 1.

Press OK.

Close regedit.

Note: The settings will change when your computer is restarted.

21. Check your hard drives with scandisk

With time and heavy use, a myriad of data problems and physical problems can develop and mar the performance of your hard drive, not to mention cost you precious space. While defragmenting the drive can help restore much of the performance you might have lost, there are other issues such as lost clusters and bad sectors which the defragmentation utility cannot touch.
Because of this, it is a good idea to run XP’s built in error checking utility on your drives once in a while. This utility will scan your disks for errors and optionally attempt to correct them.
Open ‘my computer.’
Right click the hard disk you wish to check and select ‘properties.’
Choose the ‘tools’ tab and under ‘error checking’ select the ‘check now……’ button.
Check both options. You will need to restart the computer to do the full disk check.
Your disk will be fully checked for errors upon reboot, but be aware that this can take quite a while.

22. Force XP to unload DLL files after closing a program

Dynamic Link Libraries, or DLLs, are files containing data or functions that Windows programs can call when needed by linking to them. Every piece of windows software will include instructions to the operating system as to which DLLs it will need to access, and XP will cache these particular files in memory for faster access.
The trouble is, Windows XP keeps these DLLs cached after the relevant program has closed, wasting memory space. While DLLs are generally tiny, enough of them can make a dent, so it’s worthwhile to implement this registry tweak, which will force Windows XP to unload DLLs used by a specific program when that program halts.
To do this, first run REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer

Create a new key named ‘AlwaysUnloadDLL’ and set the default value to equal ‘1.’

23. Disable the themes service

If you are not a fan of the appearance of Windows XP, there is an easy way to turn it off and go back to the more traditional Windows style. Simply disable the ‘themes’ service to restore a classic windows desktop appearance.

To do this, right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘manage.’

In the computer management windows, expand ’services and applications’ and select ’services.’
In the right hand window, highlight the ‘themes’ service. Right click it and select ‘properties.’
In the ’startup type’ dropdown box, select ‘disabled.’

24. Remove the desktop picture

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. If you are more concerned with performance than looks, remove your picture and go with a blank, colored background.
Right click on an open area of the desktop and select ‘properties.’
Select the ‘desktop’ tab and in the ‘background’ window, highlight ‘none.’ Press ‘ok.’

25. Reduce recycling bin reserved space

By default, Windows XP reserves 10 percent of each hard drive to store deleted files in the recycling bin. This is a bit excessive. Actually it’s a lot excessive, unless you habitually delete files a gigabyte in size or more. Fortunately, there is an easy way to reduce the amount of hard disk space that is reserved for the recycling bins on each drive.
Right click on the recycling bin and select ‘properties.’
Choose the ‘global’ tab.
The slider shows the percentage of each drive that is reserved by the recycling bin. Reduce this to a more appropriate amount, like 2-3% or more depending on the size of your drives. The larger the drives, the smaller the number you should use. If you wish to configure each drive independently, check the ‘configure drives independently’ button and adjust the slider to the desired amount in each of your hard disk’s tabs. The advantage to doing things this way instead of using the ‘global’ setting is that you can see the actual amount of space on each drive that is being reserved.
Note that files larger than the recycling bin’s capacity on a given drive are deleted for good. Windows XP will warn you when this condition occurs.

26. Enable write caching on hard disks

If it is not already selected, enabling the hard drive write-back cache setting on each of your hard drives can improve their performance by making the transferring of data between the drive and the memory more efficient. The only reasons not to enable this setting would be if the drive in question is in a hot-swappable drive rack, or if you expect your PC to be shut down incorrectly (I.E. not through the windows shutdown procedure) often.
To enable write caching right click on my computer and select ‘properties.’
Select the hardware tab, then ‘device manager.’ From the device manager window, expand ‘disk drives’ and highlight your hard disk. Select ‘properties’ then the ‘policies’ tab.
Check the ‘enable write caching on the disk’ box.
Repeat the above steps for all hard drives in your system.

27. Defragment your hard disk(s)

When an operating system writes data onto a hard drive, it will generally attempt to place the data on the drive as sequentially as possible, in order to facilitate faster retrieval of the information. Over the operational life of the drive, various factors can cause data to become scattered, or fragmented, over the surface of the drive.
This does not mean it cannot be read, since the file system retains a table which links each cluster (the smallest unit of storage available on a hard drive) of data with the other clusters on the disk that contain data for a particular file.
Fragmentation does slow down drive access considerably though, since the drive has to constantly seek for a new disk location to piece a file it is reading together from the fragmented clusters, rather than just being able to grab it off the disk in one continuous stream of data. Factors that can cause fragmentation include incomplete uninstalls of software, system crashes while the disk is in use, improper shutdown of the operating system, etc.
Defragmentation is the process of reassembling the data on the disk into coherent and sequential order, making disk access easier and faster. If your drive has gone a long while without being defragmented, you may find that this process restores a lot of zip to your Windows install. All recent versions of Windows include a built-in defragmentation utility.
To access this utility in Windows XP, go to ’start\programs\accessories\system tools\disk defragmenter.’
To begin with, you need to analyze your hard disk(s) to see if defragmentation is needed. Select a drive and hit the ‘analyze’ button. This could take a little while depending on the amount of data on the drive.
Once the analysis is finished, you will have a graphical representation of your disk’s level of fragmentation. See the pic below for an example of a highly fragmented drive (red indicates fragmented files).
Windows will also inform you if it recommends defragmenting the drive. You must have 15% of the drive free in order to fully defragment it. Anything less will result in only a partial re-ordering of the files. You may need to delete a few things to obtain this free space.
To defragment the drive, select it and hit the ‘defragment’ button. Note that depending on the size of the drive and the level of fragmentation, this can take a long time. It’s a good thing to leave overnight, since you should not run anything else while doing the defrag.

28- Turn off the indexing service

Windows XP includes a new feature called ‘indexing’ which constantly creates and updates an index of files in your PC. This index is mainly used for speeding up file searches. The indexing feature is largely useless unless you find yourself using file search a lot, and it sucks up system resources, so it is recommended that you disable it for performance purposes.
To turn off file indexing go to Control Panel\Add/Remove Programs\Windows Components. and uncheck ‘Indexing Service.’

29- Increasing Options In Add/Remove Menu

by default none of Windows XP’s ‘built in’ programs are visible. it’s fairly easy to change, though… just open the file X:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf (where X: is the drive letter where Windows XP is installed) in Notepad. You should see a section of the file something like this:

[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7
NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7
iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7
com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7
dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7
IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7
TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2
msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6
ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7
fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp4 0ext.inf,,7
AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7
IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7

This is a list of all components installed at the moment. I’ve taken the example of MSN Messenger - the program entry called ‘msmsgs’, third-last line. You can see the word ‘hide’ highlighted - this is the string which tells Windows not to display the component in the Add/Remove Programs list. Fix this up by simply deleting the word ‘hide’ like so:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

To this:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7

Now, after restarting, you should be able to see MSN Messenger in the Add/Remove Programs list. If you want to be able to quickly view and remove all components, simply open the sysoc.inf file and do a global find and replace for the word “,hide” and replace it with a single comma “,”.

30 - Accelerate Your WinXP by Speeding Diskcache

Diskcache plays a very important role in WinXP. However, the default I/O pagefile setting of XP is conservative, which limits the performance. Some better values for different RAM are given below.

1. run “regedit”;
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit];
3. modify the value in Hex depending on the size of your RAM:
RAM: modified value(Hex)
64M: 1000;
128M: 4000;
256M: 10000;
512M or more: 40000.
4. reboot.

Though some good tools (such as “Cacheman”) can do this, it is an interesting experience for you to work it out by yourself and let your XP fly.

31 - Clean your prefetch to improve performance

This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer notablely. My suggestion is: open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files,reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month.

32 - Improve NTFS Performance

Reserve appropriate space for the master file table.

Add the “NtfsMftZoneReservation” entry to the registry as a REG_DWORD in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem. When you add this entry to the registry, the system reserves space on the volume for the master file table. Reserving space in this manner allows the master file table to grow optimally. If your NTFS volumes generally contain relatively few files that are typically large, set value of this registry entry to 1 (the default). Typically you can use a value of 2 or 3 for moderate numbers of files, and 4 (the maximum) if your volumes tend to contain a relatively large number of files. However, be sure to test any settings greater than 2 because these higher values cause the system to reserve a much larger portion of the disk for the master file table.

Reboot after making changes.

33. Creating a Bat file for shutting down and starting up services

You want to free up as much of your memory as possible for gaming? I will show you how to VERY quickly turn off all the services you don’t need for gaming.

First browse to your C drive in windows explorer. Right click and select new text document.

Name it netstop.txt

After this rename it to netstop.bat

After this right click the file and select edit
Now we’ll need to figure out what services we need to stop.
Hit Start –> Run –> Type: services.msc

Have it sort by status to show you what is currently running. You’ll want to take a look at what’s running and then reference blackvipers site to figure out what it means.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Now go back to your open window of netstop.bat

Every service you want to stop should be on its own line. I’ll provide you with an example of what I’m choosing to stop. Yours will vary so please don’t just copy and paste this into yours.

NET STOP “Automatic Updates”
NET STOP “Computer Browser”
NET STOP “Cryptographic Services”
NET STOP “Diskeeper”
NET STOP “Distributed Link Tracking Client”
NET STOP “DNS Client”
NET STOP “Error Reporting Service”
NET STOP “FireDaemon Service:FAH”
NET STOP “Help and Support”
NET STOP “IPSEC Services”
NET STOP “Messenger”
NET STOP “Network Connections”
NET STOP “Norton AntiVirus Auto Protect Service”
NET STOP “Print Spooler”
NET STOP “Protected Storage”
NET STOP “Remote Access Auto Connection Manager”
NET STOP “Secondary Logon”
NET STOP “Security Accounts Manager”
NET STOP “Server”
NET STOP “Shell Hardware Detection
NET STOP “System Event Notification”
NET STOP “System Restore Service”
NET STOP “Task Scheduler”
NET STOP “Themes”
NET STOP “Upload Manager”
NET STOP “Windows Management Instrumentation”
NET STOP “Windows Time”

After you put all of the services you’d like to stop in the file save it, close the editor and double click on netstop.bat

it may take a couple minutes to take down all of these services if the list is rather long. When you would like to start them back up you can either restart your system or

create a netstart.bat and copy your contents from netstop.bat and everywhere that says STOP replace it with START.A rather easy way to help you gain a bit of extra power good for benchmarking too.

20. Disable the boot screen

This is a nice way to speed up your boot time.
Click on Start and right-click “My Computer”.
Click “Properties”.
Click on the “Advanced” tab.
In the “Startup and Recovery” box, click “Settings”.
In the “System Startup” box, click “Edit”.
On the end of the line with Windows XP in it, add “/sos”.
Your line should like similar to the following (although it may not be quite the same):
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=”Micros oft Windows XP Home Edition” /fastdetect /sos
Go to File > Save (Click on Save).
Go to File > Exit (Click on Exit).
Click OK.
Click OK.

The autor of the guide is “HotDog”, i was sent by email.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-014 - Critical

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:31:00 +0000

This security update resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities and two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer or if a user connects to an attacker's server by way of the HTTP protocol. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, running on supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000; Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 running on supported editions of Windows XP; and Internet Explorer 7 running on supported editions of Windows Vista. For Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 running on supported editions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, this security update is rated Important. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses these vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Internet Explorer searches the system for files to load, performs authentication reply validation, handles transition errors when navigating between Web pages, and handles memory objects. For more information about the vulnerabilities, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

Link : MoreInfo & Downloads

Conficker Eye Chart

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Conficker Eye Chart

How to interpret:

If you see this above:	It probably means this:
	= Normal/Not Infected by Conficker (or using proxy)
	= Possibly Infected by Conficker (C variant or greater)
	= Possibly Infected by Conficker A/B variant
	= Image loading turned off in browser?
Any other combination	= Poor Internet connection?

Explanation:

Conficker (aka Downadup, Kido) is known to block access to over 100 anti-virus and security websites.

If you are blocked from loading the remote images in the first row of the top table above (AV/security sites) but not blocked from loading the remote images in the second row (websites of alternative operating systems) then your Windows PC may be infected by Conficker (or some other malicious software).

If you can see all six images in both rows of the top table, you are either not infected by Conficker, or you may be using a proxy server, in which case you will not be able to use this test to make an accurate determination, since Conficker will be unable to block you from viewing the AV/security sites.

Come One, Come All! Earth Day in Central Park‏

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Invite Your Friends!

Special Earth Day Offer!
Endow A Sapling in Central Park
To celebrate Earth Day, the Central Park Conservancy is planting a selection of 450 saplings in the Park, including dogwoods, oaks, river birches, and ironwoods. Endowing a sapling is a great way to celebrate a birth, Mother’s Day, an anniversary, a graduation, or to honor a special person.
Learn more about this special promotion!

Will Windows XP Outlive Vista?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:40:00 +0000

by Andy Salisbury

While Windows XP has proven itself to be the biggest contender to Microsoft’s (almost) flagship OS, Windows Vista, it could very well outlive it and perhaps come to compete with Windows 7.

According to recent reports, Microsoft recently granted HP and exclusive OEM license extension for XP all the way into the depths of 2010. This would line it up to go side by side with Windows 7 on netbooks, and provide healthy competition in that sector. With this number in mind, it will make Windows XP almost nine years old before it finally stops shipping.

It’s not expected that HP will ship PCs with Windows XP on them other than netooks. A massive 96 percent of the netbook market is running off of Windows, and an overwhelming majority of this is XP.

Still, netbooks aside, Windows XP is still the global majority leader with a market share of 62.85 percent. Windows Vista rolls in at second place with a 23.42 percent share.

At Radio City, Paul and Ringo together again

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:43:00 +0000

BY GLENN GAMBOA
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr sang "With a Little Help From My Friends" into the same microphone as part of their most significant collaboration in decades last night at Radio City Music Hall.

The former Beatles, who also performed by themselves, played three songs together -- with "Cosmically Conscious" and the finale "I Saw Her Standing There," backed by an all-star band that included Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Donovan, and Beach Boy Mike Love - to cap the "Change Begins Within" benefit organized to raise funds to teach Transcendental Meditation to 1 million children around the world.

Though McCartney and Starr have appeared together only a handful of times since The Beatles disbanded in 1970 and performed together even less - most recently in 2002 at "A Concert for George," a tribute to the late Beatles guitarist George Harrison -- they seemed at home together, even vamping to see who would get the most applause.

Starr has said that a full Beatles' reunion would be too painful after the murder of John Lennon and Harrison's death from cancer. However, he and McCartney did join forces last night to support the director David Lynch, whose David Lynch Foundation is trying to further the cause of bringing meditation to children. McCartney credits Transcendental Meditation, learned from its founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, as "something to stabilize us at the end of the crazy '60s."
The McCartney-Starr collaboration was the biggest of the night's big-name pairings. Pearl Jam's Vedder and Ben Harper teamed up for a fiery, passionate version of Queen and David Bowie's classic "Under Pressure." Crow and Harper delivered a gorgeous version of Harrison's "My Sweet Lord."

It may have been comedian Jerry Seinfeld, though, working solo, who drew the biggest non-Beatles ovation.

"Don't meditate on me," said Seinfeld, adding that he has meditated for 37 years. "I've got some jokes to tell here."

Howard Stern was serious in his appearance, explaining how meditation saved his mother's life, though he also enjoyed the moment.

"I grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island," Stern said. "If you would've told me that one day I'd be on the same stage as them, I wouldn't have believed you."

Wikipedia Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:19:00 +0000

by Carlos Dagorret

We live in a rapidly changing world and the information we need are scattered all over the web. Wikipedia simplifies our quest for information as it allows everyone with access to the internet to add and edit articles. Whether you are looking for information related to an event that took place hundreds of years ago or something that just took place, Wikipedia is your one stop information hub. Although simple and easy to use, there are a few tools that can help you take your Wikipedia experience to the next level. From analyzing internet trends based on the popularity of an entry to using a special browser created for Wikipedia, these five tools will help you get the most out of this amazing service.

Analyze Trending Topics

Wikirank is a service that allows you to see the trending topics on Wikipedia. It is based on the actual data usage from the Wikipedia servers. Wikipedia has become a major source for online information and with the help of this service it is much easier to track the hot topics. It also lets you see the most read articles in the last 30 days, allows you to compare articles on a graph chart and embed it on your website.

Dynamic Version Of Wikipedia Entries

Wikipedia-roll is a dynamic way to browse articles on wikipedia. The box on the left provides information related to the topic and on the right you can see a visual roll that shows all the topics related to the article. It presents the article visually in the form of a timeline but based on topics. To read more about a topic related to your search, click on that particular topic on the roll and the information appears in the box to the left.

Analyze Most Edited Articles

Wikirage is a service that tracks articles that have been edited the most in Wikipedia. It allows you to see top 30 pages that have been edited in the last hour, 6 hours, one day, three days and 30 days. Some people might not find a use for this service, but if you want to find an alternative to traffic data for judging trends, wikipedia edits can give you a peek into what is hot on the internet.

The Wikipedia Browser

is a Wikipedia Browser for fast and eyefriendly browsing through the free encyclopedia “Wikipedia”. Gollum gives you access to nearly all Wikipedias in all languages. Further more Gollum gives you some special features which allow you to easily customize your work with Wikipedia. To use this browser visit Gollum and click the button on the right that says “Start Gollum Browser.” Available in 32 languages.

Combine The Power Of Google And Wikipedia

Googlepedia is a Firefox extension that allows you to find relevant Wikipedia articles along with your search results on google. With this extension you can have the best search engine and the best encyclopedia on the web help you get the information you need with a click.

Free Medical Books

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Over the next few years, many important textbooks will be available online, free and in full-text. The unrestricted access to scientific knowledge will have a major impact on medical practice. FreeBooks4Doctors! is dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical books over the Internet. If you wish to be informed about new free books, you may subscribe to our Book Alert.

See also the daily presentations of news books and the 3-Star-Books.

You think when you go to sleep, you just, well, sleep?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:14:00 +0000

by Carlos Dagorret

Sleep, as it turns out, is far more complicated than we thought. And the brain not only doesn’t turn off, but appears to help keep itself healthy.

We’ve all heard of REM — rapid eye movement — discovered by the late physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman at the University of Chicago in 1953. Scientific American has the story:

During REM sleep, our brain waves—the oscillating electromagnetic signals that result from large-scale brain activity—look similar to those produced while we are awake. And in subsequent decades, the late Mircea Steriade of Laval University in Quebec and other neuroscientists discovered that individual collections of neurons were independently firing in between these REM phases, during periods known as slow-wave sleep, when large populations of brain cells fire synchronously in a steady rhythm of one to four beats each second. So it became clear that the sleeping brain was not merely “resting,” either in REM sleep or in slow-wave sleep. Sleep was doing something different. Something active.

Discovering REM sleep was the first clue that sleep didn’t just help keep our bodies healthy, but our minds as well. And while many studies have been conducted on sleep since 1953, it’s only been in the last decade where we’ve begun to appreciate the complexity and importance of sleep for our minds. In 2000, researchers discovered that people that received more than 6 hours of sleep during an experiment helped improve their performance on tasks designed to tax the memory.

The key came in the discovery that participants didn’t just require REM sleep to improve their performance — they needed all that other sleep time too (what scientists call ’slow-wave’ sleep).

The long article also provides a nice description of our current understanding of how memory works:

To understand how that could be so, it helps to review a few memory basics. When we “encode” information in our brain, the newly minted memory is actually just beginning a long journey during which it will be stabilized, enhanced and qualitatively altered, until it bears only faint resemblance to its original form. Over the first few hours, a memory can become more stable, resistant to interference from competing memories. But over longer periods, the brain seems to decide what is important to remember and what is not—and a detailed memory evolves into something more like a story.

The researchers also discovered that sleep helps stabilize memories — sleep changes our memory, “making it robust and more resistant to interference in the coming day,” as the article notes.

But wait, sleep does more! It may not just stabilize our memories, it may actually help our brains process the memories, keeping the bits we need for long-term memories (especially the emotional components), and dropping the extraneous details that would clog our limited storage capacity:

Over just the past few years, a number of studies have demonstrated the sophistication of the memory processing that happens during slumber. In fact, it appears that as we sleep, the brain might even be dissecting our memories and retaining only the most salient details. [...] Instead of deteriorating, memories for the emotional objects actually seemed to improve by a few percent overnight, showing about a 15 percent improvement relative to the deteriorating backgrounds. After a few more nights, one could imagine that little but the emotional objects would be left. We know this culling happens over time with real-life events, but now it appears that sleep may play a crucial role in this evolution of emotional memories.

But wait, sleep does even more!

Even more recent research suggests that sleep helps our brain to process the information of the day and solve problems.

The upshot is that sleep is far, far more important than most of us realize and few of us appreciate. We miss it and think nothing of chopping off a few hours here or there. But the emerging research suggests that when we cut out sleep, we may be actually harming our formation of new memories for the recent past, and our ability to perform up to our usual standards. The researchers sum it up best:

As exciting findings such as these come in more and more rapidly, we are becoming sure of one thing: while we sleep, our brain is anything but inactive. It is now clear that sleep can consolidate memories by enhancing and stabilizing them and by finding patterns within studied material even when we do not know that patterns might be there. It is also obvious that skimping on sleep stymies these crucial cognitive processes: some aspects of memory consolidation only happen with more than six hours of sleep. Miss a night, and the day’s memories might be compromised—an unsettling thought in our fast-paced, sleep-deprived society.

Read the full (albeit long) article at Scientific American: Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter

Why You Get More Love When He's Got Less Money

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Glamour's dating columnist, Jake, says that in lean times, men try a lot harder. Guys can't hide a bad personality quite as easily without opera tickets or bottle service every night at the hottest club. We say, "Bring it on."
By Jake

My grandma grew up during the Depression, with no money. Instead of dates, she and her friends went to someone's house, cleared out the furniture, turned on the radio and danced. "If you liked a boy, you made sure he was invited," she told me.

I remember thinking that seemed so cute and old-fashioned. Yet with the way our economy's going, the days of moving a couch to bust a move may not be far off. And while everyone's feeling the pinch, men are taking a hit in more than our wallets. It wallops a guy's ego when he can't pay for a share in that amazing summer beach house, or if the only meal he can buy you comes in a cardboard box. At the same time, the economic slowdown could ultimately be good for guys and the women who date them. I predict that ...

Dates will get more interesting

The most romantic thing I ever did (according to female friends) was in college. When I discovered that the woman I liked had had a terrible high school prom, I threw her one in my dorm room, complete with a sign declaring her queen of the dance.

Compare that with the effort I made to plan a more recent date: Google concert tickets, type in credit card number, hit "confirm." If I know the charms of a sweet, thoughtful gesture, why do I opt for the quickie, grandiose one? Because like most guys I live in fear that a woman will label me a penny-pinching lame-ass. It's a shame, too, because pricey gestures are generally no-brainers (I mean, who hates a bottle of Dom?), while special-yet-cheap dates demand that you really think about the lady who's going to be out with you. With less scratch to throw around, men will have to be more creative and considerate. I think you're gonna like the results.

He'll get more interesting too

My buddy Brian is a banker with a beautiful girlfriend. For several years, they've shared his lavish lifestyle — sleek apartment, private-club membership, theater subscriptions, you get it. The thing is, Brian just got laid off. Suddenly having to watch his spending has him completely rattled. "I had a harsh realization," he confided to me. "I hide behind money instead of working on my personality." He said he felt especially unnerved when it came to his girl: "I wondered if I was good enough for her."

Never one to sit back and hope for the best, Brian got busy. He's learning how to cook, reading The Economist, putting more effort into this fascinating new couples activity called conversation. "Now that I've had to drop the facade, I like myself more," he said. His girlfriend seems to agree.

He'll quit lying with his wallet

Part of feeling like a man is having the ability to pay. So when my ex Claudia and I were going out every night, I was banging my chest with macho pride as I covered the checks, but secretly I was going under. I was determined to be that guy. After all, it's a compliment when a woman wants to spend time with you. What was I supposed to say — "Great, but it's gonna cost you"?

My silence, however, cost me plenty. While trying to build something real, I was being dishonest, pretending to have Trump-levels of cash. So did I confess? Not quite. Instead, Claudia moved to Europe, and we broke up before she knew who I really was. That won't happen again.

Here's one last insight that should help you ride out the recession with a smile: Now that they can't woo you with their wallets, men might actually work a lot harder to ensure that you're having a good time. So next time you're disappointed about another DVD-on-the-couch date, move it straight to the bedroom and ask for adequate compensation. Go ahead, be greedy.

More from MSN Lifestyle Site Search: For additional articles on love and money, click here.

Jake is a real, live single guy dating in New York City.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs an RIAA?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:48:00 +0000

by Howard Wyman

The Recording Industry Association of America started off innocently enough. It began with technology, and finding ways to help us use it. By the late 1940s, a variety of materials and over a hundred different methods were being used to manufacture and calibrate the sound imparted to gramophone records—which affected durability as well as how the machines read the sound—and resulted in records that needed to be played at different speeds, that lasted different lengths of time, and were of different levels of fidelity. In what seems today like a strangely non-capitalistic move, rather than conduct corporate espionage against one another to gain the secrets of each in order to create a single best product and dominate the industry, the various companies collectively decided upon a need for standardization in the way gramophone records were produced. They pooled their tech-savvy, coronated polyvinyl chloride as king plastic of the record biz, and, in the early 1950s, threw their combined weight into the establishment of the “RIAA equalization curve” as the de facto global industry standard for how sound is carved into the grooves of a record to achieve the best fidelity, longest running time, and least wear upon the needle or the plastic itself. It had nothing to do with public persecution, alienating music fans, or ruining lives, as it’s most famous for today. In fact, it empowered fans, made it easier for them to consume music from a variety of sources, and therefore improved the professional lives of artists and companies as well. What went wrong?

If one takes the trade group’s altruistic self-description at face value, one could chalk its descent up to human nature, as if the RIAA’s sole original intention was to please people and help artists, and then something changed. The RIAA didn’t invent the idea of “gold records,” after all (that was RCA, pre-RIAA, in 1942). In 1958, however—hot on the heels of the instatement of the curve—the RIAA trademarked the term, and became the official organization to monitor and celebrate sales. The reality is that the potential was always there, and it was only a matter of time until the closed-door nature of technology would be unlocked and result in a large enough dip in sales to expose the ugliness inherent to the RIAA’s enormous power. Yet even with the advent of file-sharing, the RIAA’s snowballing freefall into the no-holds-barred defense of the record industry’s bottom line has been staggering to behold, culminating in to one of the most reviled public industrial entities of modern history, embroiling itself in mean-spirited lawsuits against children, the elderly, handicapped, widowed, computerless, homeless, and in at least one case, even the deceased.

Recently, in what many have taken as the rare silver lining in the midst of the current global financial crisis, the RIAA announced that just shy of 30 percent of its staff has either resigned or been laid off, and will not be replaced. It’s possible that all its costly litigation has taken a toll on its resources over the years, or perhaps the universally negative press was enough to win some dissension in the ranks. They would prefer us to believe that it’s no more than a symptom of the recession, although the question might not be a matter of “what went wrong” at all. In the context of subverted justice as served by the RIAA, this restructuring could very well be symptomatic of what went right.

In their rigorous defense of profits dressed up as artists’ populism in the past 10 years, the RIAA’s arsenal of legal eagles really proved its mettle—enough for its stars to get poached by other organizations that enjoy a posture of representing “the people” while in effect only furthering the interests of the entrenched powers that be. Specifically, team players like Don Verrilli, who trounced Grokster in court for the RIAA in 2005, and Tom Perrelli, whose firm slurped $1,000/hr from the RIAA coffers for its services in attempting to force ISPs to reveal file-sharers’ identities without judges’ permission, have both been appointed to the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. Verrilli’s other achievements include arguing the famous charge against Jammie Thomas in the RIAA’s first case to be tried before a jury, which came very close to resulting in the Native American single mother of two being skewered with a $222,000 fine. Perrelli, meanwhile, was also the music-lovin’ lawyer to convince the US Copyright Board to essentially kill free internet radio by mandating insurmountable, retroactive per-play fees for songs. And yet, the RIAA’s ascension doesn’t stop with these two champs. There’s also David Ogden, who, back in 2002, helped defend the Mickey Mouse Protection Act (more officially known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) in the landmark case of Eldred v. Ashcroft. Ogden was appointed to the Number Two post in the DOJ, answering only to the guy that defended Chiquita Brands International in the civil case that followed the corporation’s pleading guilty to arming, funding, and setting loose a terrorist militia to guard its fruit plantations. (Real “man of the people,” that Eric Holder.) Perrelli, as Associate Attorney General, is the Number Three guy, which puts Verrilli in a tie with Neil MacBride (another fierce copyright enforcer from the business software world) for fourth place as a pair of Associate Deputy Attorneys General.

Given what a vocal, net-stranglin’ supporter of the RIAA our VP Joe Biden has always been, the nature of these appointments is not terribly surprising. The Obama/Biden campaign didn’t rake in over eight million dollars of entertainment industry donations just for being cool, after all. Biden does want to tax and filter the internet, and did sponsor an RIAA-backed bill that would restrict “taping off the radio” as it were, regarding songs from internet and satellite radio sources. He sponsored another that attempted (yet thankfully failed) to make it a felony to use personal devices to undo DRM. Most tellingly, in 2002, Biden signed a letter that urged the DOJ to make the RIAA’s ultimate dream a reality—to spend taxpayers’ money and waste government time to prosecute P2P file-sharers.

What started with Biden taking office and continued with these subsequent appointments might well be entering its endgame with the latest news of the RIAA’s downsizing (in addition to similar news regarding layoffs at the Motion Picture Association of America). The RIAA has steadily made significant headway in transforming its lust for cash and control into actual, federal policy to be enforced not by ugly, expensive industry lawsuits, but by the government itself. In the meantime, the layoffs have spurred some speculation that the industry group plans to merge with its European counterpart (the IFPI, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). Should that prove to be true, one might further speculate that the resulting anti-piracy/pro-copyright/net-deregulating landscape could very well take the form of this international body of electronic investigation, sanctioned and enforced by the Obama administration and other industry-friendly governments, protecting the interests of the state as well as those of big business, and doing so at the expense of individual rights to freedom, privacy, expression, and communication. Eh. We’re already fed, clothed, and otherwise unhealthily sustained by the sweat of the Chinese—might as well model our internet policies after theirs while we’re at it.

Where Are They Now? 25 Computer Products That Refuse to Die

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:59:00 +0000

These tech products and services may be forgotten, but they're far from gone. How have these geezers managed to hang on for so long?
Harry McCracken, Technologizer

Old computer products, like old soldiers, never die. They stay on the market--even though they haven’t been updated in eons. Or their names get slapped on new products that are available only outside the U.S. Or obsessive fans refuse to accept that they’re obsolete--long after the rest of the world has moved on.

For this story--which I hereby dedicate to Richard Lamparski, whose “Whatever Became of…?” books I loved as a kid--I checked in on the whereabouts of 25 famous technology products, dating back to the 1970s. Some are specific hardware and software classics; some are services that once had millions of subscribers; and some are entire categories of stuff that were once omnipresent. I focused on items that remain extant--if “extant” means that they remain for sale, in one way or another--and didn’t address products that, while no longer blockbusters, retain a reasonably robust U.S. presence (such as AOL and WordPerfect).

If you’re like me, you will be pleasantly surprised to learn that some of these products are still with us at all--and will be saddened by the fates of others. Hey, they may all be inanimate objects, but they meant a lot to some of us back in the day.

Hardware Holdouts

Dot-Matrix Printers

What they were: The printer you probably owned if you had a PC in the house any time from the late 1970s until the early to mid-1990s. Models like the Epson FX-80 and the Panasonic KX-P1124 were noisy and slow, and the best output they could muster was the optimistically named “near letter quality.” But they were affordable, versatile, and built like tanks.

What happened: Beginning in the early 1990s, inkjet printers from HP, Epson, and Canon started to get pretty good--their output came far closer to rivaling that of a laser printer than dot-matrix ever could. And then, in the mid-1990s, inkjet makers added something that killed the mass-market dot-matrix printer almost instantly: really good color. (I still remember having my socks knocked off by the original Epson Stylus Color when I saw it at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1994.) There was simply no comparison between even the best dot-matrix printer and a color inkjet.

Current whereabouts: Nobody ever thinks about dot-matrix printers anymore, but they haven’t gone away--my local Office Depot still stocks them, in fact. That’s because they have at least two valuable features inkjet and laser models can’t match: Because the dot-matrix printhead hits the paper with a hard whack, they’re perfect for printing multiple-part forms, and their use of tractor-feed mechanisms rather than dinky trays lets them print thousands of pages without a paper refill. Consequently, small businesses everywhere refuse to give them up. It won’t startle me if there are still Epsons productively hammering out invoices and receipts a couple of decades from now, assuming we still use paper at all.

Harry McCracken , PC World's former Editor in Chief, blogs about all aspects of technology at Technologizer.com .

Hayes Modems

What they were: Dial-up modems from the company whose founder, Dennis Hayes, essentially invented the PC modem in the 1970s. The commands he devised became such a standard that all dial-up modems use them to this day. Hayes dominated the modem business for years--it was as synonymous with the product category it pioneered as any tech company before or since.

What happened: Well, dial-up modems don’t matter as much as they once did, in case you hadn’t noticed. But Hayes’ decline and fall dates to well before the death of dial-up: The company stubbornly kept prices high even in the face of much cheaper competition, and thought its future lay in making ISDN modems, a market that never took off. It declared bankruptcy in 1994 and again in 1998, and was liquidated in 1999.

Current whereabouts: In 1999, Zoom Telephonics--the company whose dirt-cheap modems played a major role in crushing Hayes--bought the Hayes name. It continues to market a few Hayes-branded modems. But it’s a pretty obscure fate for a once-mighty brand--I didn’t know it was still extant at all until I checked.

MiniDisc

What it was: Sony’s format for pint-sized recordable audio discs, introduced in 1992. The idea was that it combined the best qualities of compact discs and cassette tapes into one high-quality, portable package that could contain up to 80 minutes of music.

What happened: MiniDisc found some fans--it was popular in Asia, and among musicians. But it never gained much support from the music industry, so few prerecorded albums were available. And within a few years of its introduction, it found itself competing with digital downloads. While Sony introduced NetMD, a MiniDisc variant that supported MP3, the company made it remarkably unappealing by adding copy protection to your tracks as you transferred them to disc. Why would you choose NetMD when a multitude of players, such as those from Diamond and Creative, let MP3s be MP3s? Good question!

Current whereabouts: In 2004, Sony upgraded the MiniDisc format with Hi-MD, a higher-capacity, more flexible standard that was backwards compatible with MiniDiscs. It garnered some admiration among audiophiles for the high quality of its recording capabilities. But as of 2009, only one Hi-MD device remains in Sony’s lineup, the MZ-M200. It’s aimed at musicians and journalists who need to make recordings on the go. The moment it disappears, we can officially declare MiniDisc dead.

Monochrome Displays

What they were: The black-and-white CRT that most businesses and many homes used with computers from the 1970s through the late 1980s--and they worked just fine, since most DOS applications made little use of color, and early Macs didn’t support it at all.

What happened: Graphical user interfaces, multimedia, and games all made universal use of color inevitable, but it took a long time before it truly conquered computing. Well into the 1990s, lots of folks who wouldn’t dream of using a black-and-white display with a desktop PC still toted monochrome notebooks. But today, even a $200 netbook has a perfectly respectable color display.

Current whereabouts: You don’t want a monochrome display. But if you did, you wouldn’t have trouble finding one--even Dell still stocks them. They’re still out there in large quantities, being used for electronic cash registers and other unglamorous but important text-based applications. And hey, monochrome is making its own unexpected sort of comeback: My brand-new Kindle 2 e-book reader has an E-Ink screen that does 16 shades of gray, and nothing else.

Hercules

What it was: An extremely popular line of graphics cards for IBM PCs and compatibles. Hercules first appeared in 1982, the year after the IBM PC was launched, and was known for its high-quality text; it was as synonymous with graphics in the 1980s as Creative’s Sound Blaster was with audio a decade later.

What happened: When fancy color graphics replaced spartan text displays, Hercules continued to be a prominent brand for years, though it never dominated as it did in the early years. But in 1998, it was bought out by competitor ELSA, which then went bankrupt and sold the Hercules brand to French tech company Guillemot. (In researching this article, I’ve come to the conclusion that one sale or merger is usually bad news for a venerable brand, and a second one is usually near-fatal.) Guillemot continued to make cards under the Hercules name for several years. But industry consolidation in the graphics biz was ongoing and brutal, and in 2004 it ceased production of them.

Current whereabouts: The Hercules name lives on, but in an array of tech gadgets that doesn’t include graphics cards: Guillemot uses it for notebooks, Wi-Fi and powerline networking gear, sound cards, speakers, iPod accessories, laptop bags, and more. I wish them luck. But it’s a little as if McDonalds stopped selling burgers to concentrate on tuna salad, Philly cheese steaks, BLTs, and Reubens.

Personal Digital Assistants

What they were: The handy-dandy, pocketable gadgets that started as organizers in the early 1990s and blossomed into full-blown computing devices, from the pioneering Apple Newton and Casio Zoomer to the enduringly popular Palm PalmPilot and Compaq iPaq lines.

What happened: By 2005 or so, stand-alone PDAs were rendered almost entirely superfluous by their close cousins known as smartphones, which started out big and clunky but eventually did everything a PDA did, and a lot more. Despite occasional attempts to reinvent the PDA--such as Palm’s ill-fated LifeDrive--almost nobody chose to purchase and carry a phone and a PDA.

Current whereabouts: I’m not sure when any manufacturer last released a new PDA, unless you want to count the iPod Touch as one. (And come to think of it, I can’t think of a strong argument against calling it a PDA.) HP, which acquired the iPaq line when it bought Compaq, still sells four aging PDAs under the name. Palm, meanwhile, maintains an eerie ghost town of a handheld store, which still lists three models but says they’re all sold out. Amazon still has Palm PDAs in stock, though, so they’re not quite dead. Yet.

Packard Bell

What it was: A PC manufacturer (named after a venerable but defunct radio company) that dominated the retail home PC market in the early 1990s.

What happened: Numerous products in this article fell on hard times in part because of crummy business decisions by their owners, but no other one did itself in so quickly and so self-destructively as Packard Bell. Its computers were cheap in part because they were terrible, and backed by subpar customer support. When rivals such as Compaq started selling reasonable computers at reasonable prices through retail stores, Packard Bell started to founder. The decision by NEC to take a controlling interest in Packard Bell in 1995 seemed bizarre even at the time; in 2000, the last Packard Bells disappeared from U.S. store shelves.

Current whereabouts: Lots of places--just not stateside. The brand name never died in Europe, and after a couple of further changes of ownership, it ended up as an arm of Taiwanese PC giant Acer in 2008. It now makes laptops, desktops, displays, MP3 players, and desktops. And if it ever returns to the U.S. market, it’ll be a more impressive comeback than anything Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens has managed.

Amiga

What it was: A remarkable line of personal computers, introduced by home PC pioneer Commodore in 1985, that delivered powerful multimedia and multitasking years before they became commonplace on PCs and Macs.

What happened: Well, you could fill a book with the details--and hey, someone did. Commodore had superb technology, but did a terrible job of developing and marketing it. You could argue that Amiga would have petered out no matter who owned it--even Apple flirted with death as DOS and then Windows overwhelmed other alternatives--but Commodore’s decision-making sure didn’t help. In 1994, it declared bankruptcy and stopped making computers. The Amiga name went on to change hands at least four times over the next decade, sometimes being used on hardware, sometimes being used on software, and sometimes just disappearing.

Current whereabouts: Amiga, Inc, the current owner of the Amiga name, uses it on middleware for set-top boxes as well as games and other applications for cell phones (you can buy an Amiga tip calculator). It also says it’s still working on Amiga OS 4.0, a product so long in the making that it, like Harlan Ellison’s science-fiction anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, is best known for how long it’s been promised without ever appearing. As a former Amiga fanatic, I hope it does ship someday--there’s no way a new Amiga OS wouldn’t be cooler than an Amiga tip calculator.

Floppy disks

What they were: A form of removable storage, in 3.5-, 5.25-, and 8-inch variants, that started in the 1970s as a high-end alternative to saving programs on audio cassettes, then segued into serving as a handy complement to hard drives.

What happened: Until the mid-1990s, floppies remained essential. But then the Internet came along and provided folks with file downloads and attachments--faster ways to accomplish tasks that had long been the floppy disk’s domain, without floppies’ 1.44MB capacity limitation. (Higher-capacity floppies arrived at about the same time, but never caught on.) Much higher-capacity storage media like Zip disks and recordable DVDs nudged floppies further towards irrelevancy. And USB drives--which provide a gigabyte or more of storage for less than what I paid for one 72KB floppy in the 1970s--finished the job.

Current whereabouts: Floppy drives are no longer standard equipment, but they certainly haven’t vanished--in fact, you may have a computer or two around the house that sports one. New 3.5-inch drives and media remain readily available, and you might be able to find 5.25-inch ones if you hunt a bit. (8-inch floppies I can’t help you with.) Which leaves only one question: Under what circumstances would you opt for floppies over something like a $10 (or so) 4GB USB drive that holds 2750 times as much data?

Zip Disks

What they were: Iomega’s extremely useful, cleverly marketed high-capacity removable disks--introduced back in 1994, when 100MB qualified as high capacity. They were never as pervasive as floppies, but they must be the most popular, most-loved proprietary disk format of all time.

What happened: The same things that happened to floppy disks, only more slowly--and complicated by the malfunction ominously known as the click of death. When cheap CD burners made it easy to store 650MB on a low-cost disc that worked in nearly any computer, Zip started to look less capacious and cost-efficient. And then USB drives--which offered more storage than Zip and required no drive at all--came out. Along the way, Iomega launched new disk formats such as Jaz, PocketZip, and Rev, but they failed to recapture the Zip magic.

Current whereabouts: Iomega seems to be doing fine as a manufacturer of storage products of all sorts. It still sells 250MB and 750MB Zip drives, along with Zip media going all the way back to the original 100MB disks. I confess that I never owned a Zip drive myself--but I’ll still feel a twinge of sadness when they finally go away.

Z80 Microprocessor

What it was: The 8-bit microprocessor, dating to 1976, that powered an array of early personal computers, including the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Osborne 1, the KayPro II, the Sinclair ZX80, the Exidy Sorcerer, and many others. It was also inside Pac-Man arcade games and ColecoVision game consoles.

What happened: Progress! Among the notable things about 1981’s original IBM PC was its use of a powerful 16-bit CPU, the 8088. In time, 16-bit processors gave way to 32-bit ones, which have been superseded by 64-bit models like Intel’s Core 2 Duo and AMD’s Phenom.

Current whereabouts: Everywhere--but invisibly so. It’s been more than a quarter-century since the chip’s time as a personal-computer CPU ended, but it never stopped finding useful life in industrial equipment, office devices, consumer electronics, and musical instruments. Zilog, the Z80’s inventor, still makes ‘em. Anyone want to wager on whether the Core 2 Duo will still be around in 2042?

Software Survivors

dBASE

What it was: The dominant PC database software from almost the moment it first appeared in 1980, and one of the best-known pieces of productivity software, period; the flagship product of Ashton-Tate back when that company was arguably a better-known name in software than Microsoft.

What happened: dBASE IV, mostly. That 1988 upgrade was late and buggy, and Ashton-Tate didn’t move fast enough to fix it, ticking off the loyal developers who had made dBASE a standard. The company also spent a lot of time suing competitors, which is never as productive an investment of time and money as improving one’s own products. In 1991, Borland bought Ashton-Tate for $439 million, and acquired dBASE IV’s bad luck along with it--neither Borland nor dBASE fared well in subsequent years. And in 1992, Microsoft launched Access, a database that might have slaughtered dBASE no matter what. But dBASE was on the mat before Access ever entered the ring.

Current whereabouts: In 1999, dBASE was sold again, and its new owner, DataBased Intelligence, continues to sell it to this day. (It’s now called dBASE Plus, as if dBASE IV had never existed.) The company’s newsgroups are surprisingly active, showing that real people are still using dBASE to do real work. Not bad for a product that most of us wrote off as a goner early in the first Clinton administration.

Netscape

What it was: The browser (formally known as Netscape Navigator for most of its life) and company which, beginning in 1994, jump-started both the Web and the Internet economy.

What happened: Hoo boy. Microsoft, after not even bundling a browser with Windows 95 at first, decided to crush Netscape--which it did by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, giving it away for free, and, eventually, making it pretty good. (Along the way, a certain governmental agency expressed its displeasure with some of the company’s anti-Netscape tactics.) Netscape, meanwhile, went off on tangents such as developing a communications suite that didn’t amount to much and enterprise software that it eventually sold to Sun. The company sold out to AOL in 1998; AOL had so little interest in the browser it bought that it continued to distribute IE as its primary one. An ever-shrinking user base did continue to get new versions of Netscape, but in December 2007, AOL announced it was pulling the plug.

Current whereabouts: If you’re an optimist, you’ll focus on one wonderful fact: Firefox, which is based on Mozilla code that originated as an open-source version of Netscape, is a huge success. The Netscape name, however, is profoundly shopworn. In recent years, AOL has slapped it on a budget ISP (which still exists but doesn’t seem to be signing up new customers) and an imitation of Digg (now known as Propeller). Today. it’s mostly just a slight variant on the AOL.com home page with the Netscape logo repeated endlessly in the background. But did I mention that Firefox is doing great?

MS-DOS

What it was: The operating system that powered the original 1981 IBM PC. And then a bunch of clones of the original IBM PC. And then the vast majority of the personal computers on the planet.

What happened: The simplistic answer: When Windows 95, the first version of Windows that didn’t require DOS to run, came along, it rendered DOS obsolete. (Eventually--some people happily ran DOS and DOS applications for several years after Win 95 debuted.) More thoughtful answer: The moment that the Mac brought graphical-user interfaces into the mainstream in 1985, it was the beginning of the end of the drab, relentlessly text-based DOS.

Current whereabouts: DOS refuses to die. It seems to me that I still see it in use at small independent businesses such as antique stores and dry cleaners--the kind of outfits that don’t bother to change something that still works, even if it’s a decade or two out of fashion. It’s the inspiration for FreeDOS, an open-source project with a thriving community. And Microsoft still offers MS-DOS 6.22 for download to customers who subscribe to various volume-licensing plans. Why would the company bother if there weren’t people who still needed it?

Lotus 1-2-3

What it was: The world’s most popular spreadsheet--the first killer app for the IBM PC, and the spreadsheet that replaced the original killer app, VisiCalc. It was also the flagship program in Lotus’s SmartSuite, an office bundle that provided Microsoft Office with real competition in the mid-1990s.

What happened: A variant on the fates that befell WordPerfect, Harvard Graphics, and other major DOS productivity apps. Lotus thought that IBM’s OS/2 would replace DOS, so it focused its energies on that OS, then had to play catch-up when OS/2 went nowhere and Windows caught on like crazy. Starting in the 1990s, it turned its attention to its Notes collaboration platform, and seemed less and less interested in desktop applications--especially after IBM bought Lotus in 1995. That gave Microsoft plenty of opportunity to make Excel competitive with 1-2-3 and leverage its place in the Microsoft Office suite. By the late 1990s, 1-2-3 was a has-been; Lotus last upgraded it in 2002.

Current whereabouts: IBM still sells that 2002 version of 1-2-3, which it cheerfully calls “the latest release.” For $313, it throws in the other SmartSuite apps “as a bonus.” But it’s so disinterested in the product that made Lotus a software giant that when it recently introduced a new suite that includes a spreadsheet, it named that suite after a different old Lotus package--Symphony.

PageMaker

What it was: Aldus’s groundbreaking desktop publishing application, launched in 1985. Along with Apple’s Macintosh and LaserWriter laser printer, it made it possible for mere mortals to create professional-looking documents (as well as eyeball-searing monstrosities) for the first time.

What happened: PageMaker’s decline was slow and multifaceted. As word processors gained respectable graphics capabilities, casual users had less need for PageMaker, and QuarkXPress offered more sophisticated tools for professionals. Adobe, which had acquired Aldus in 1994, lost interest in PageMaker and built its own publishing app, InDesign, from the ground up. In 2004, it announced that it would cease further development of PageMaker.

Current whereabouts: Over at Adobe’s Web site, it’s still selling PageMaker 7.0, which dates to 2002. The price: $499. It touts it as “the ideal page layout program for business, education, and small- and home-office professionals who want to create high-quality publications such as brochures and newsletters.” Which is a darned odd claim to make about a program that’s incompatible with all current Macs (it’s an OS 9 application) and Windows Vista. Dig deeper, and you’ll find Adobe’s real opinion of PageMaker, which is--surprise!--that you should use InDesign instead.

After Dark

What it was: Berkeley Systems’ screensaver for Macs and PCs, introduced in 1989 and most famous for its iconic flying toasters. Ask anyone to mention a specific screensaver, and the odds are 99.9999 percent that this is the one they’ll mention. It spawned multiple sequels and spinoffs such as neckties and boxer shorts.

What happened: I’m not sure if I know, exactly, but I suspect the inclusion of fancy screensavers in the Mac OS and Windows and the availability of gazillions of free ones didn’t help the market for commercial screensavers. (I still treasure my autographed copy of Berkeley Breathed’s Opus 'n Bill screensaver, though--it includes a scene in which Bill the Cat shoots down flying toasters, which prompted a lawsuit.) Also, the theory that you needed a screensaver to prevent your monitor from burning in turned out to be hooey. Anyhow, Berkeley Systems’ last After Dark outing was something called After Dark Games, in 1998; it wasn’t even a screensaver.

Current whereabouts: Berkeley Systems is no more, but Infinisys, a Japanese company, sells a modern OS X version of After Dark. But not too modern: It doesn’t work on Intel Macs.

Harvard Graphics

What it was: The first popular presentation-graphics program, released back in 1986 when many of the slides it produced really did end up as slides. For years, it was the flagship product of Software Publishing Corporation, which was forced to run disclaimers explaining that the product had nothing to do with the university of the same name.

What happened: Harvard Graphics was far better than PowerPoint for a long time. Little by little, though, PowerPoint narrowed the gap. In the 1990s, being a only little better than a Microsoft application was a recipe for disaster--especially if your product was a stand-alone application that competed against one that was part of Microsoft Office. In 1994, SPC laid off half its staff; in 1996, it merged with Allegro New Media; in 1998, it released Harvard Graphics 98, its last major upgrade.

Current whereabouts: In 2001, British graphics software developer Serif acquired Harvard Graphics--cheaply, I’ll bet--and has kept it kept alive. But it’s on life support: Harvard Graphics 98 is still for sale, along with a few other variants. There’s no mention of when any of them last got an upgrade, but the fact that Windows Vista isn’t mentioned in their hardware requirements isn’t a great sign. Nor is the the lack of any reference to the Harvard line in the list of products on Serif’s own site.

Sites, Services, and Stores

AltaVista

What it was: A research project at legendary computer company Digital Equipment Corporation that became the first widely popular Web search engine soon after its launch in December, 1995.

What happened: Digital was a strange parent for a search engine, but it did a great job with AltaVista. In 1998, however, it was acquired by Compaq--also a strange parent for a search engine--which tried to turn AltaVista from a search specialist into a Yahoo-like portal. In 2000, Compaq sold it to dot-com investment firm CMGI, which later sold it to Overture Services (the former GoTo.com). In 2003, Overture itself was acquired by Yahoo. By then, AltaVista had lost most of its personality and its users--and Google had grown into a behemoth by being really good at the stuff that AltaVista had pioneered before there was a Google.

Current whereabouts: There’s still an AltaVista.com, but its traffic is minimal and it seems to be nothing more than a reskinned doppelganger of part of Yahoo (compare this AltaVista query to this Yahoo one). The site that started as a great piece of technology from one of the world’s great technology companies is now just a name. Sniff.

Webvan

What it was: A grocery-delivery dot-com service that was famous, at first, for the ambition of its plans, the enormity of their expense, and the impressive resumes of its management team. It was also pretty darn beloved by more than a few folks I know, who loved the quality of its service.

What happened: Spending more than a billion dollars to build cutting-edge warehouses turned out to be an investment that couldn’t possibly pay off quickly enough. After a string of other questionable business decisions (when its CEO was ousted, his golden parachute included a $375,000 payment--annually, for life), Webvan declared bankruptcy in 2001.

Current whereabouts: I didn’t realize until I began work on this story that Webvan.com still sells groceries--but only nonperishable ones--as an outpost of the Amazon.com empire. Strangely, Amazon has another site, Amazon Fresh, which specializes in delivering stuff that is perishable. Meanwhile, most Americans seem content to get their foodstuffs the old fashioned way, by trudging the aisles of a supermarket with a cart.

CompuServe

What it was: The . Starting in 1979, it offered message boards, news and information, e-commerce, and other Web-like features--long before there was a Web, and even before there was an AOL.

What happened: Well, the rise of AOL in the early 1990s left CompuServe as the second-largest online service, which was probably a lot less fun than being the biggest. Shortly thereafter, CompuServe had to deal with the Internet. Like other proprietary services, it became a not-very-satisfying not-quite-an-ISP. And as consumers flooded the Web, CompuServe’s once-bustling message boards started to feel deserted. In 1997, AOL bought CompuServe, and while CompuServe’s robust international network helped bolster AOL’s infrastructure, the CompuServe community dwindled away.

Current whereabouts: Like Netscape, CompuServe became a nameplate that AOL attaches to slightly embarrassing projects. It’s now a bargain-priced ISP and a half-hearted portal site; its boilerplate copy calls CompuServe a “key brand” and touts CompuServe 7.0 as “the newest version” without mentioning that it’s eight years old. (Weirdly, CompuServe’s home page also carries the logo of Wow, a faux-AOL that the company shuttered within months of its 1996 release--I can’t believe that anyone misses it or is looking for it.) For those of us who were CompuServe users back when its user IDs consisted of lots of digits and a mysterious comma, it’s a depressing fate.

Prodigy

What it was: A joint venture of Sears Roebuck and IBM that launched an extremely consumery online service in 1990--a more mainstream alternative to CompuServe before AOL became a phenomenon. Geeks sneered at it (some called it “Stodigy”), but it managed to sign up a sizable number of users in an era when the typical American had never laid eyes on a modem.

What happened: Within a few years of Prodigy’s debut, the Internet made proprietary services like it (and CompuServe, and Delphi, and GEnie, and, eventually, AOL) look like antiques. Prodigy started adding Internet features, and in 1997 it relaunched itself as a full-blown ISP. (It also shut down the original Prodigy service rather than fixing its Y2K bugs.) It did okay as an ISP, at least for awhile--in 1998, it was the country’s fourth largest. But in 2001, SBC (now AT&T) bought Prodigy and retired the brand name.

Current whereabouts: Down south! In Mexico, Telmex, the dominant telecommunications company, owns the Prodigy name and still uses it. Here it is on a video site, and on a portal that’s cobranded with MSN (!). And don’t hold me to this, but I suspect that there are still some stateside SBC customers who retain Prodigy.net e-mail addresses--just as I maintained a Mindspring one for years after that ISP was acquired by EarthLink.

VCR Plus+

What it was: Remember all those jokes about VCRs that permanently flashed 12:00? Starting in the early 1990s, the redundantly named VCR Plus+ (which was built into VCRs and available as an add-on in the form of a special remote control) simplified programming a video recorder by letting you punch in codes that appeared in TV listings in newspapers and TV Guide. (In fact, VCR Plus+ inventor Gemstar Development bought TV Guide in 1999 for $9.7 billion.)

What happened: VCR Plus+’s fortunes were dependent on the fortunes of the VCR. As the 1990s wore on, consumers spent less time futzing with recording tapes at all, and more time renting and buying tapes--and, eventually, renting and buying DVDs. By the end of the decade, TiVo and ReplayTV allowed TV fans to record hours of shows without dealing with tapes at all. Meanwhile, Gemstar founder Henry Yuen was fired after an accounting scandal--and then went missing.

Current whereabouts: VCR Plus+ is now owned by Macrovision, a company more famous for technologies that prevent people from recording entertainment than ones that help them do so. The codes are available on TVGuide.com and VCRPlus.com, and in newspaper TV listings. (Of course, in an era of 500 channels and on-screen guides, newspaper TV listings are even more anachronistic than newspapers in general.) But you know what? I’m not sure whether anyone’s still making VCRs with VCRPlus+.

Circuit City

What it was: A chain of consumer-electronics superstores with roots that went back to 1949. For a time in the 1990s, it was the most high-profile technology merchant in America.

What happened: Two words: “Best” and “Buy.” Plus misguided decisions like laying off experienced salespeople and replacing them with cheaper clueless newbies. Not to mention the fact that almost every major electronics retailer eventually falls on hard times and liquidates itself--it seems to go with the territory.

Current whereabouts: Up north! In the U.S., Circuit City is now a nationwide chain of large, empty storefronts, but its Canadian subsidiary, The Source by Circuit City, remains a 750-store powerhouse. (Confusingly--at least for us Yanks--the chain is the former RadioShack Canada.) Earlier this month, Bell Canada agreed to buy The Source; it says it’ll keep the name, but I’m guessing it wasn’t referring to the “by Circuit City” part. But even if it deletes it, Circuit City may not be utterly dead: The home page for its currently closed site says it hopes to restore some sort of online presence.

Egghead Software

What it was: A nationwide chain of software stores with an odd name and an even odder mascot (Professor Egghead, an Albert Einstein-lookalike anthropomorphic egg -- or was he a normal human cursed to live his life with an egg for a noggin?).

What happened: Like most tech retailers, Egghead eventually fell on hard times; in 1998, it shuttered its stores and went online only. In 2001 it declared bankruptcy and closed the site, too (bad publicity after hackers broke into its customer database apparently speeded its demise).

Current whereabouts: Even after the business collapsed, the Egghead name was worth something--$6.1 million, which is what Amazon.com paid for it in 2001. The e-tailing giant continues to sell software at Egghead.com. It’s basically the software section of Amazon’s own site, but it does sport an Egghead logo, just in case any loyal customers are out there who aren’t aware that Egghead folded eight years ago. Sadly, the Professor is nowhere to be seen.

You may enjoy these other Technologizer stories that focus on the history of technology:

40,000 strong against cancer‏

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Dear reader,

Help pass the 21st Century ALERT Act.

Our goal: 40,000 signatures.

That's one for every woman who will lose their battle with breast cancer this year.

Urge your senators to support the ALERT Act today!

Last week we witnessed an important milestone in the fight against cancer with the introduction of the 21st Century Cancer ALERT (Access to Life-saving Early Detection, Research and Treatment) Act (S.717), a critical bill that will strengthen cancer research, emphasize early detection, and improve cancer care for underserved populations.

Over 13,000 Komen advocates have already taken action to support this bill, but we need your help if we're going to reach our goal of 40,000 signatures – one for every woman who will die from breast cancer this year.

Add your voice to the call to action – urge your senators to pass the ALERT Act.

Members of Congress are heading home for recess this weekend, which means the real fight has just begun. Over the next two weeks our senators will lay out their legislative priorities for the year in their own states and we have a small window to make sure passing the ALERT Act is at the top of their lists.

The ALERT Act will reignite the war on cancer by putting an emphasis on:

Increasing access to early detection methods available today and encouraging discovery of the early detection methods of tomorrow;

Strengthening and streamlining the cancer research process to more quickly and efficiently discover and deliver the cures for cancer; and

Improving access to treatment for underserved populations.

Senators Edward Kennedy and Kay Bailey Hutchison have made passing the ALERT Act a priority for 2009, but we need to act fast to make sure ALL our senators know that passing this bill is OUR priority.

Click here to urge your senators to support the ALERT Act now and help us reach 40,000 signatures!

As a dedicated Komen advocate, you know the harsh realities of cancer. 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. 1.4 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year alone. And last year, cancer claimed the lives of more than 1,500 people a day.

It's time to unleash the amazing power of science, technology and medicine to discover new ways to detect cancer as early as possible – earlier than we can currently imagine. As we do, we must also ensure that everyone has access to the screening and treatment options that exist today.

Let's take advantage of the momentum that has brought the 21st Century Cancer ALERT Act this far. Click here to take action TODAY.

Together, we can achieve our goal of one day ending suffering and death caused by cancer.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Nancy Brinker
Founding Chair, Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
Board Member, Komen Advocacy Alliance

Guide to this week in NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:09:00 +0000

THIS WEEK'S EVENTS

For more of this week's events, or to select the dates you're planning to visit, click here

. To forward these events to a friend, click here

Through 4/5: The Wizard of Oz: There truly is no place like home as the greatest family musical of all time, the wonderful Wizard of Oz, twists its way into New York City.... (read...)

Through 4/6: The Sopranos Wine-Tasting Dinner: The Sopranos Wines, the line of fine Italian wines inspired by the hit HBO series, is partnering with New York's legendary Patsy's restaurant to offer a special Sopranos Wine Tasting Menu... (read...)

Through 4/12: The Orchid Show: Brazilian Modern: Beat the winter blues by immersing yourself among these magnificent flowers... (read...)

Through 4/13: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents ZING ZANG ZOOM: The world's most famous circus arrives at Madison Square Garden... (read...)

Through 4/26: 142nd Annual American Watercolor Society International Exhibition: The AWS annual is one of the premier watercolor exhibits in the world. Over 1200 artists from throughout the United States and 12 foreign countries submitted their work to a panel of jurors chosen from signature members of the AWS... (read...)

4/4: Tartan Day Parade: Award-winning actor Alan Cumming (Cabaret, X-Men) leads as Grand Marshal followed by dignitaries from around the world and thousands of bagpipers, Scottish-American organizations... (read...)

4/4-5/3: Hanami: Celebrating the Cherry Blossom-Viewing Season: Hanami, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's annual celebration of cherry blossoms, culminating in Sakura Matsuri (5/2-3)... (read...)

4/5-4/19: Macy's Flower Show: Experience the beauty of fantasies brought to life at Macy's 35th Annual Flower Show.... (read...)

4/7: Dora the Explorer and Her Cousin Diego Tell Stories at Top of the Rock: Dora the Explorer and her cousin Diego visit Rockefeller Center's historic Observation Deck for a storytelling adventure... (read...)

4/8-4/12: Dora the Explorer Live!: Everyone's favorite Latina heroine stars in her own live adventure, "Search for the City of Lost Toys"... (read...)

NEW ON CITYGUIDENY.COM

The More Things Change... Inside the New Yankee Stadium: For the upcoming 2009 season and beyond, the home of the most successful and storied franchise in the history of sport will be located in a new, state-of-the-art stadium just a home run distance away from Yankee Stadium... (read...)

'Spring'ing Forward On Big Apple Stages: Late March... Early April... The time is right to seize the seasonal high, to crawl out of hibernation and get one's theatrical groove on. Even Emily Dickinson couldn't resist declaring: "A little Madness in the Spring is wholesome." And if a frail recluse of a poet was able to give a symbolic thumbs-up to spring, imagine how easy it will be for theatergoers to shake off winter's chill with a warm and welcoming collection of new Broadway shows and stars, all leading up to -- drum roll, please -- Tony time!... (read...)

City Guide TV: City Guide Magazine is proud to announce the establishment of City Guide-TV, our on-site video listings of New York City's attractions, restaurants, theater, and shopping!... (read...)

Behind the Scenes: City Guide's Theatre Blog: Offering theatre-savvy blogees (locals and tourists) timely info regarding New York theatre -- including industry updates, gossip & links to other media sources.... (read...)

THIS WEEK'S THEATRE OPENINGS

For complete theatre listings, click here

. To forward these events to a friend, click here

.

Broadway

Mary Stuart (Previews began 3/30 for a 4/19 opening): A hit at both Off-Broadway's Second Stage and D.C.'s Arena Stage, this new six-person musical explores how one suburban household copes with crisis... (read...)

Rock of Ages (In previews for a 4/7 opening): The show is set to hits from such iconic rockers as Journey, Bon Jovi, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Asia and Whitesnake.... (read...)

reasons to be pretty (In previews for a 4/2 opening): Neil LaBute's comic drama about America's obsession with physical beauty has transferred to Broadway after a smashing Off-Broadway run... (read...)

Exit the King (In previews for a 4/2 opening): Oscar winners Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon star in Ionesco's poignant comedy about a megalomaniacal ruler whose incompetence has left his country in near ruin... (read...)

Off-Broadway

BRUNCH - The Musical (Previews begin 4/2 for a 4/9 opening; through 4/25): A new rock musical about the New York City restaurant scene from the eyes of those who do the serving... (read...)

THIS WEEK'S EXHIBITION OPENINGS

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4/4-9/27: Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson at the Museum of the City of New York

: An investigation of how Henry Hudson's epic third voyage of exploration planted the seeds of a modern society that took root and flourished in the New World... (read...)

4/5-6/15: Tangled Alphabets: León Ferrari and Mira Schendel at the Museum of Modern Art

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4/8-6/15: The Generational - Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum of Contemporary Art

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There is new hope for ending Alzheimer’s Disease

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Hope for Ending Alzheimer's

by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET
Updated 04/01/2009 ET

There is new hope for ending Alzheimer’s Disease.

That was the message I helped deliver last Wednesday before the Senate Select Committee on Aging (watch the video here).

But it wasn’t just my opinion. I was able to cite three Nobel Prize winning scientists and over 125 other neuroscientists who have proclaimed that with an Apollo moon launch-style national research initiative, it is possible to end Alzheimer’s by 2020.

This potential breakthrough is so important I want to share it with you. I believe we are on the cusp of an historic breakthrough. The best and brightest in the scientific community share this belief.

If you agree, I hope you will contact your House and Senate members today and urge them to support an Alzheimer’s Solution Project (learn more at HealthTransformation.net).

The Most Difficult Part of Alzheimer’s Has Been the Lack of Hope

I first became aware of the devastation of Alzheimer’s disease as a young college teacher. I was asked to teach a Sunday school class to the older members of the First Baptist Church in Carrollton, Georgia. I watched as some students in my class went from being totally alert and totally engaged to gradually and inexorably disappearing before my eyes.

For years, this fact has been the most difficult part of Alzheimer’s disease, both for those who suffer from it and those who care for them: The lack of hope.

Alzheimer’s has been described as a runaway train; once you or a loved one is on the track of decline, there’s no stopping it.

“It’s Like Caring For a Small Child. You Can’t Leave Them Unattended.”

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor serves with me on the congressionally created Alzheimer’s Study Group. Her husband suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Justice O’Connor describes the progression of her husband’s disease as “a downhill slide, there is no interruption in the process.”

When her husband is left unattended, he wanders off, not knowing where he is or how to return home.

“It’s like caring for a small child. You can’t leave them unattended,” says Justice O’Connor, echoing the burden faced by all those -- primarily family members -- who care for someone with Alzheimer’s.

Maria Shriver Has to Reintroduce Herself to Her Father Each Time She Sees Him

California First Lady Maria Shriver’s father, Sargent Shriver, has Alzheimer’s. Maria Shriver speaks painfully of having to reintroduce herself to her father when she sees him, and of the helplessness felt by a daughter or son who cares for a parent with the disease.

“No matter who you are, what you’ve accomplished, what your financial situation is, when you are dealing with the parent who has Alzheimer’s, you yourself feel helpless.”

Every 70 Seconds, Someone in America Develops Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s is a personal tragedy, but it is also a national crisis.

Last week I presented the Senate committee with these disturbing facts about Alzheimer’s disease, developed by the Alzheimer’s Association:

Alzheimer’s is a growing epidemic:

Every 70 seconds someone in America develops Alzheimer’s disease -- by 2050, someone will develop Alzheimer’s every 33 seconds.
5.3 million Americans currently suffer from Alzheimer’s -- one-in-eight Americans over 65 and almost one-in-two over 85.
10 million baby boomers will develop the disease.
The CDC lists Alzheimer’s disease as the 6th leading cause of death.
Today there is no cure, no disease-modifying treatment, and no prevention.

Alzheimer’s places an enormous burden on families:

Alzheimer’s is a family disease. 9,900,000 caregivers provide 94 billion hours of uncompensated care per year.

Healthcare costs for people with Alzheimer’s disease are three times greater than for people with other diseases.

Alzheimer’s places an enormous burden on taxpayers and our health system:

In 2005, Medicare spent $91 billion on beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s and other dementias and is projected to spend $189 billion by 2015.
Given the present trends, Alzheimer’s will cost Medicare and Medicaid a projected $19.89 trillion between 2010 and 2050.
Because people tend to get Alzheimer’s later in life, even a delay of onset has a significant effect in lowering costs. A five year delay would save $8.51 trillion over that same period.

A Rare Moment in History in Which Real Change is Possible

So much for the bad news.

Like I said, my message today to Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s and the millions of family members who are caring for them is one of hope.

I believe we are at one of those rare moments in history where the right elements are coming together to make real change possible.

We have progressed enough in our knowledge of the brain and how it works that, with the right resources and the right experts working together, we could see a fundamental breakthrough in Alzheimer’s disease within the next decade.

In just the past several weeks, almost 200 leading Alzheimer’s research scientists have endorsed the goal of developing the capability to prevent Alzheimer’s by
2020.

The Alzheimer’s Solutions Project: A Roadmap to Ending Alzheimer’s By 2020

Last week, the Alzheimer’s Study Group produced a groundbreaking report that lays out the roadmap to ending Alzheimer’s by 2020.

We propose a national effort, modeled on the Apollo moon launch project or the Manhattan Project, called the Alzheimer’s Solutions Project.

The Alzheimer’s Solutions Project has three pillars:

1) Prevent new cases of the disease. Even preventing the onset of the disease by a few years will yield enormous benefits.

2) Take care of caregivers by reimbursing 20% of health and social services.

3) Make Alzheimer’s a priority of Washington by establishing an Alzheimer’s Solutions Project Office in the federal government.

Americans Can Do Anything. We Just Have to Decide We Want To Do It.

This is a moment of real hope for Alzheimer’s. But I think it’s fair to say that the amount of hope we have is at least matched by the amount of effort it will take from all of us to realize this goal.

As important as it was to get this Alzheimer’s Solutions Report written, it is more important for you to go out and talk about it.

So contact your representatives in Washington and tell them you support ending Alzheimer’s by 2020. Tell them you support giving relief to the millions of Americans who care for Alzheimer’s patients.

Tell Washington you support an Alzheimer’s Solutions Project.

A world without Alzheimer’s is within our grasp. We just have to reach for it.

Your friend,

Newt’s Quick Links:

Tens of thousands of people are signing up to attend the April 15th Tea Party rallies across the country to protest high taxes and demand better solutions to get the economy moving again. Go to TaxDayTeaParty.com to find a rally location near you. And don’t forget to download your Tea Party Tool Kit at AmericanSolutions.com/TeaParty.

Callista and I, along with Dave Bossie of Citizens United, hosted the Atlanta premiere of Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny on Friday. Watch Greta van Susteren’s interview with Callista and me at GingrichProductions.com.

Bill Forstchen and I have written an op-ed on the danger posed by an electromagnetic pulse attack. Read it at Newt.org. Buy Bill’s book about an EMP attack on America here.

Dan Gildoff of US News and World Report wrote a story about our efforts to reunite the fiscal and social conservatives. You can read it here.