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General

Wearable, natural user interface tech presented at TED

by Philip Sellers March 21, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

A co-worker, Jamie, loves watching presentations for TED.com. TED.com bills itself as the site with “Ideas worth Sharing,” may of which were presented at the TED conference. And I’ve seen some wonderful presentations. And he’s shared may of those wonderful ones with me.

This week, he sent me a link to a presentation from a MIT lab led by Pattie Maes. This presentation shows off a computer with an interface much like that seen in the movie Minority Report. This is pretty exciting technology. I’d venture to say, this may be as game changing as the iPhone has been to cell phones and the current generation of portable computers. This is pretty cool and although, I’m not sure about the “Sixth Sense” billing that she gives to it, I think the practical application of this is very cool.

March 21, 2009 0 comments

General

Liquidation rip-offs

by Philip Sellers February 9, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

This is going to be short post… part of my New Years resolution to be more postive… I’ll warn you, this one is just a rant. Its just one of those things that irks me.

We went to Circuit City this past weekend, again. Its only the 3rd time we have been in the Myrtle Beach store since it announced its closing. We were searching for a deal, which has been hard to find, even in their liquidation. I finally bought something – I bought a new multi-function printer for home. Our printer/scanner/copier at home is getting pretty long in the tooth and its ink finally dried up last week. I’d heard that the printers at CC had finally been marked to 25% off. The last time I went in, they were a pathetic 10% off – and that was off of some jacked up price that someone pulled from their nether regions. Finally, at “25% off”, the price dropped to $10 below what NewEgg, Best Buy, Sam’s Club and everyone else has been selling this particular HP printer for…

I realize this has been widely reported, from every news outlet in the country, but let me just say it. Those prices at the liquidation sale (Goody’s Family Clothing, Circuit City) — They aren’t deals people – they are rip offs. You could buy most to of the merchandise cheaper the day before the liquidation was announced. I know its not really news, but its still a sad state of things.

But I’m not sure what I’m more sad about – that people fall into the one-million-gazillon percent off syndrome where anything on sale is a great deal and I must buy 3 – or the corporate greed still exhuding from corporate America even during a liquidation. Let me explain. Put anything on sale, no matter how much you mark it up, and there are people who will buy it – because its a “great deal” or “it was on sale.” Are we really that gulliable America? Secondly, you’re a business that is failing. You can’t make it on your own two feet. You weren’t selling it at your “everyday low low price”, so why come in and raise prices just to “mark it down” to a price above your everyday low price… It makes no sense. How much does it cost a company like Circuit City to keep the lights on and pay employees, rather than simply do a true going-out-of-business, sell the merchandise at a real discount and wrap things up? Its a dying cow, put it out of its misery… I’m sure they’d make more money that way, but what do I know, right?

February 9, 2009 1 comment

General

Guest blog entry

by Philip Sellers February 4, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

I was invited to write a guest entry for Matt Simmon’s Standalone SysAdmin blog while he’s on vacation. My entry about patch management in virtual environments appeared today… http://standalone-sysadmin.blogspot.com/2009/02/software-patching-is-other-benefit-of.html

February 4, 2009 2 comments

General

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

by Philip Sellers December 29, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

I wanted to wish any readers a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It was a fantastic Christmas in my household and I can’t actually believe that its behind us now. I also can’t believe that we are leaving 2008 and heading into 2009 in less than 60 hours. Where has this year gone? Let alone, where did this decade go?

I’ve been very preoccupied with some things going on at work, so I have had little time to make any posts here, but I hope that as we approach the new year, that I will be posting more frequently and about a wider variety of topics. I guess you could say that is my blog resolution for the new year. I have come across some very cool programs recently that I am excited to be blogging about soon, including a peer-to-peer backup solution which I think has a lot of potential. Til then…

December 29, 2008 1 comment

General

Best Buy aquires Napster? What are they thinking?

by Philip Sellers September 16, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Chalk it up to things I don’t understand, but Engadget reports the Best Buy is aquiring Napster for $121 million. Read for yourself… I definitely don’t understand why Best Buy would want to get into this business. Partner with Rhapsody, yeah maybe, but buy Napster – what are you thinking?

September 16, 2008 0 comments

General

Google Chrome first impressions

by Philip Sellers September 4, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Its been a couple days of using Google’s new browser Chrome here in the office. For the most part, I run my Gmail and Google Reader in it and it works great. For other sites, like Facebook, its not doing quite as well.

To start with the positive, the browser’s minimalist design is very nice. I like the fact that I have a lot of web real estate inside the browser, instead of a lot of buttons, toolbars and real estate devoted to controls. Overall, the design is functional – in line with Firefox, Safari and IE 7 – with tabs to separate your browsing/applications. The other design feature is the special about page which shows your most often visited sites. I think this is a nice, no-typing-necessary innovation to get you exactly where you go.

The browser’s speed is probably its biggest asset. For instance, my local daily’s website has awful load times in all other browsers and its noticeably faster loading in Chrome. I also see nice improvement rendering pages on other sites I visit often.

The browser is still in beta, but I’ve found it to be somewhat incompatible with Facebook and other non-Google, heavy Web 2.0 applications. Somewhat surpisingly, MobileMe’s public Gallery has problems in Chrome (mine never loads for some reason), but the me.com suite of applications work pretty well. I find it a little surprising since Chrome is based on WebKit, like Apple’s Safari. I’ve found Safari really stable with me.com.

One major feature is the isolation of each tab as a process. This allows a single tab to crash and close, without losing the rest of your session. Its understandable why Google would want this functionality as its pushes into web alternatives to desktop applications. I constantly have 4 of 5 tabs open in a browser and its a big inconvenience when your browser crashes and you have to relogin to every single site or application. This functionality will help to stablize their platform and push it more mainstream.

Other bloggers are pointing out many of the flaws, and it is just a beta software, so I expect a lot of streamlining and refinement, but overall I’m inpressed with the initial version released.

September 4, 2008 0 comments