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I spent the holidays with my sister, a former scrub nurse, and was treated to a parade of what I call “new wives’ tales”: Drink more water. Don’t use salt. Turn on more light to read or you’ll go blind. In fact, as Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll of Indianapolis’ Reginstrief Institute write in the British Medical Journal, many of the “facts” that even medical professionals assume to be true have no backing in the literature. Take the one about reading in dim light. Our great-grandfathers relied on candles and lanterns, yet myopia has increased in the last century. Maybe it’s all just to keep romance alive as we’ve become fatter and more sedentary.  Or take the one about the turkey. People fall asleep…

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Developers are puzzling over recent clues blogged by a few Microsoft employees regarding a new “Emacs.Net” tool the company is building. Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division (the folks who developed the Windows Communication Framework, a k a “Indigo”)  is hiring developers  to build a product that team member Doug Purdy described as “Emacs.Net.” Purdy hinted that Microsoft will divulge its Emacs.Net product/strategy plans at the company’s Professional Developers Conference in late October 2008. Emacs is a text editor used primarily by the Unix community (though versions of Emacs that work on Windows systems already exist). Richard Stallman is credited as the father of Emacs, the name of which was derived from “Editing MACRoS.” “Emacs is a text editor where a lot…

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Now that we’ve had some time to tinker with the new digital cameras that were unwrapped during the holidays, some of us are ready to throw in the towel. Whether just you can’t figure out how something works (Manual? What manual?) or you have a more serious issue and need to update firmware or find out how to get warranty repairs, your first stop should be tech support from the camera manufacturer. All camera vendors offer some sort of support site online–some more helpful than others–where you can find FAQs, PDFs of user manuals, driver and firmware downloads, and more. The better sites have big knowledgebases that you can search or forums you can post questions to for support….

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Jaron Lanier’s broadside against “open source religion” in Discover Magazine was well-timed. The turn of the year, and the evident turning of an era, offers a great time to see the success, and possible excesses, of the open source ideal with fresh eyes. Lanier first came to prominence through virtual reality, which has become both more and less than he anticipated, through the interplay of commercial and open source models. Lanier’s VPL Research, created to commercialize his immersive 3D technology, went nowhere fast, and its patents were eventually acquired by Sun. Yet non-commercial development kept his ideas alive, and elements are seen in such things as flight simulators and Second Life. There’s an interplay between entrepreneurship and shared research, in…

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In the Talkback section of my earlier post on XP versus Vista adoption (Who’s choosing XP over Vista?), several commenters pointed to a PC World Techlog post by editor Harry McCracken that they believe contradicts my conclusions. Here’s what Harry had to say: On January 30th, Microsoft released Windows Vista to consumers, who have been adopting it in ever-growing numbers. But those numbers have been creeping along rather than rocketing: As of now, Vista … is used by 14 percent of visitors, while 71 percent use Windows XP… How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first…

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I got middle-seated again- in the back row - courtesy of Delta Airlines.  Not only that, we sat on the tarmac for 2 hours waiting for the “traffic” to clear (heh?).  So I got thinking about some of the things in life that irritate me….. Being middle-seated - in the back row LinkedIn invitations from people I don’t know, or will ever have the need to know Being middle-seated - in the back row Bacardi (ugh) Victoria Beckham Basketball…the first 59 minutes Bowflex infomercials Being middle-seated - in the back row People who talk incessantly about themselves Stale coffee in airports Hotel room service charges Bluetooth headsets Just being middle-seated Taxis with no A/C Taxis that smell Being middle-seated The…

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Here’s an easy prediction to make. In 2008 the media will gin up a “war” between Red Hat and Ubuntu for “control” of Linux. It’s already started. The latest distribution of Red Hat Fedora, Fedora 8, is called “an assault” on Ubuntu at MadPenguin. If by assault you mean potentially better, worthy of comparison and interesting, then please sir may I have another assault? The new Fedora 8 has improved support for notebooks, for gamers, and for programs like PulseAudio. These are good things, and it will be interesting to see how Ubuntu raises the bar in 2008. But we are still talking about open source code here. Open source improvements are not proprietary, they benefit everyone. That’s the idea. Another way in which…

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In short, no there wasn’t a big virtualization story in 2007. In my view, there were many. The market for virtualization technology is dynamic and growing. I’ve been watching well over 100 different companies or communities that have been trying to push things forward. Interesting announcements appeared concerning every layer of virtualization technology. It’s hard to pick out a single announcement I’ve seen go by and just know that there will be a “yes” answer to the question, will this announcement will be seen as a critical step five years from now? In any case, I’m looking forward to the exciting events that I just know will happen in 2008. Have a great New Year!

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Another year has passed us all, and 2008 beckons tomorrow. For those not out and about this New Years Eve, here’s a few places you can join the experience online:
Video Streaming Sites
Sites such as Ustream, Kyte, Justin.tv and others will have many users live stream the new year from where ever they are.
Twitter
Twitter will provide [...]

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With the known release of Intel’s Penryn processor coming at the beginning of January we know all too well there will be laptops to come with that announcement. Sony has helped out by leaking a new VAIO TZ2 to their own website and Amazon.com has leaked the VAIO SZ7.
The VAIO SZ791 will apparently be the [...]

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