Saturday, November 26, 2005
Elecom has come out with a new device to satisfy those people who really need Skype on the go. This is a 32MB USB drive that's preloaded with the Skype software. The memory allows storage of profiles and it also keeps track of more private information such as usernames and passwords without storing them on the PC. There are two versions, one of which is more expensive and features Bluetooth capabilities. This mobile Skype goes for $75 and up.
Skype on the move with Elecom's BT-MG Series [New Launches]
99 Useful Run Commands: this is helpful if you're a command-line kinda guy in a windows gui world
Depending on where you live, you shouldn’t have much problem keeping things cool about now — but if you’re looking for yet another way to draw your USB current for something, um, “useful,” the USB Beverage Chiller’s coldplate supposedly drops all the way down to 45°F. How effective that 500mA of raw USB juice is when there’s something placed on the coldplate, however, is another matter entirely.
[Via Mike’s List]
The few days since the official release of the Xbox 360 have given enough time to curious engineers to dismantle the thing and provide an entire cost analysis. Altogether, the parts cost for the Xbox 360 Premium is $525, over $100 more than its retail price tag. Now unless Microsoft is behind all of this eBay nonsense, then the company is definitely taking a hit on all of the units sold. I guess they expect to make it up with game sales, but this maybe shows a grim chance of the unit ever going down in price.
Xbox 360, where's the math? [DataFuse]
Cory Doctorow: 
This Turkish coffee table has integrated bookshelves beneath sliding surfaces; the books slot into vertical slots, like hanging files. Ingenious! Link (via Cribcandy)
If you’ve signed up for Google AdSense on one of your sites and are ready to expand onto a second site, do you need to ask Google for permission, or can you just start displaying AdSense code on the second site? The answer is that you can just expand your AdSense horizons without checking in, as long as you ensure that each and every site you use meet all the criteria of the AdSense program….
Direct and Related Links for 'Can I add new Web sites to my Google AdSense account?'
The LG LRM-519 Digital Media Recorder, a DVR/DVD recorder hybrid, gets up to two weeks of television programming data from the Microsoft Program Service.
Gifts for gadgeteers on the go, as well as homebodies.
Chinese Web logs are giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society the government is determined to prevent.
The New York Times
It looks like the long saga of the iTunes.co.uk domain is now over, as the owner has stopped trying to contest the ruling which handed it over to Apple. Neither side comes out looking that pretty in this battle. Ben Cohen registered the domain long before Apple announced their own iTunes product -- so it's not as if he were a typical cybersquatter. However, once they were offering iTunes, he used the domain to try to sell iPods and credits to iTunes, before pointing it to Napster's site. Doing that could certainly cause plenty of confusion -- and left him open to trademark violations. However, it's still not clear why he then had the domain taken from him as he had registered it completely legally. He could have gotten in trouble for the trademark violation, but why does that mean he should lose the domain completely? The registrar Nominet says he deserved to lose the domain because he took "unfair advantage" of Apple by asking for $50,000 to turn over the domain when they offered him $5,000. Isn't that just called negotiating? It's hard to see how that's taking "unfair advantage." If he had registered the domain after Apple announced iTunes, that would be one thing, but since he got it before, he should have every right to negotiate what he thinks is a fair price. He should be stopped from posting confusing content (trademark violation), but that doesn't mean the domain deserves to be just taken from him.
One common refrain that we all heard from lots of people after the Sony rootkit story became news was that people weren't going to buy Sony offerings any more. Of course, it's easy to say that -- but how many people actually follow through? At least when it comes to certain CDs, it seems to have had quite an impact. The artists whose CDs were outfitted with the rootkit quickly saw their sales plummet and it seems to be impacting a few other Sony BMG artists also. It sounds like those musicians are not happy. They're hearing about it from fans, and it's impacting their own publicity efforts -- even if they had no say in the decision to include copy protection technology on the CDs. So how long until a Sony BMG artist sues the label for damaging their reputation with copy protection?
A couple of interesting posts by Russell Buckley at MobHappy help demonstrate some of the challenges that "mobile search" faces. First, there's this growing assumption that mobile search is the same thing as local search -- which Russell points out is untrue. Instead, it's more about "need to know" content, which is similar to what I had suggested in a column last year, talking about how mobile search was different than internet search in that it needed to help you do something right away, rather than just provide you info. However, today, Buckley follows this up with a more interesting post which really defines the "competition" that mobile search players face. The general assumption is that there really isn't that much competition for mobile search, or that it's internet search. That's not exactly true. Instead, the real competition is asking someone for info. This could be someone around you, or it could be someone that you know and trust and can call. Mobile search offerings are still much more cumbersome than simply asking someone -- and that's a hurdle they'll have to overcome to really catch on.
The MPAA's deal with BitTorrent will do little to change the landscape for file swapping -- but it could create the best chance yet for a meaningful and legal P2P media-distribution system. News analysis by Xeni Jardin.
The creator of the BitTorrent file-sharing service appeared at a press conference with film industry executives and promised to ban users of the system from accessing unauthorized copies of copyrighted movies.
