It is apparent now, after the airing of New Family (the second installment in Microsoft's new ad campaign), that the object of the ads is to create a more sympathetic, approachable, and perhaps even more "human" Bill Gates. My only guess here is that he's being groomed to be the …

OK, I'm still confused by this oft-quoted figure from the McCain/Palin campaign that "[Alaska] produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." (Gibson interview with Palin, September 11, 2008, as noted on The Times). From my calculations, even when only Oil is taken into account …

A good analysis from Charles Miller of the popularity and purposefulness of the PC in the Get A Mac ads. The article recons that the same play is at work with the PC in the ads as was with the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons.

In some good news for consumers, the FTC has decided to get more serious about the Telemarketing Sales Rules that govern telemarketing phone calls. The decision is pretty readable, but the salient points are after the jump. The biggest thing here is the banning of all prerecorded messages in cases …

Andy Grove (venerable former CEO and Chairman of Intel), has published a proposal for energy change in the US that's quite a bit different from what most people are calling for, but makes some real sense. The article (from Portfolio.com via Wired) calls for a move to electrify transport …

A little known (but much loved by me) feature of every iPod (except the Shuffle) and the original iPhone was that you could charge the phone using the FireWire port on your computer. Of course, it's been quite a while since you could transfer data over FireWire, but you could …

Normally, I wouldn't post about an Apple security update, because they're relatively common and generally attack most of the issues within a period of time that everyone agrees is a bit too long. However, there was a lot of hubub about Apple's "delay" in getting the security patch out for …

There's been a lot of commentary over the last few months about Comcast and their filtering/traffic manipulation/smoothing/whathaveyou. In general, customers are up-in-arms about one of their one-to-two choices for high-speed internet doing things behind their backs to change the way the internet appears to them. However, there's …

According to an article from PhysOrg.com, MIT researchers have found a way to inexpensively use solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for use later in a fuel cell. This has a lot of promise! Read the details on the MIT site.

A good article from Ars Technica about the potentially weakening case for software patents and why it isn't the end of the world. Countering the fear- mongering piece by Duffy on the issue. For more of my thoughts on this, I posted an patent-related article on Cartographica earlier this month …

So, after reading through all this Vista stuff, I decided that I should blow the virtual dust off of my virtual Vista computer (thanks Parallels!), and make sure I had Service Pack 1 installed. Here are my experiences. Keeping in mind that most of you think of me as a …

Just for the record, I've checked out the Mojave Experiment website (as I said I would in my previous article about it), and my expectations were met. If you look at the feature set for Vista, this is what people are experiencing here... features of the os in a controlled …

Since the iPhone 2.0 release, more people are considering Mobile Me (the follow on to Dot Mac). For those of us with more than one computer, it's a very easy way to keep your contacts, calendars and other data in sync. However, there are some tricks for some kinds …

If you haven't already heard of the "Mojave" experiment, then you will--likely in the next few days. Microsoft, not please with the reaction so far to Vista, set out to attempt to bolster the new operating system's reputation by offering a "blind taste test" of the OS. What happened? Exactly …

Generally, I don't talk about the FSF (promulgators of the GNU "Free Software" license). The main reason is that I've spent most of my life writing software for a living and these folks are just plain wrong on how collaborative software should be done, in my humble opinion. However, this …

Michiel van Meeteren of Made by SOFA "fame" has issued a report entitled Indie Fever that stretches to over 100 pages of mostly text analyzing interviews that he made with a group of independent Apple software developers. I haven't had a chance to read it completely, although I did skim …

This past week, Carol & I were in Ireland for the OpenStreetMap State of The Map conference (small, but interesting). However, not everyone who was supposed to be there showed up. Apparently, Thales (large French aerospace company that makes Magellan GPS devices) had put in a €100M ATC system in Dublin …

Some of you may already know about XKCD, an online comic strip that is drawn 3 times a week with stick figures and alternating deep, obscure, or inane subjects. In this election year, it should be no surprise that somebody decided to run a campaign using XKCD-style stick figures. It's …

The Register had an article last week quoting Richard Whitt, senior policy director at Google saying that Google is creating a set of tools to allow users to determine if their ISPs are filtering their access to the Internet. This is going to raise the bar a little...

The Grand Junction Free Press has an opinion piece today called "Where have all the X-es gone?" written by Marjorie Asturias-Lochlaer (apparently a staffer at the paper, since I can't find any national credentials). Although definitely a lament, and not quite a screed, I'm thinking that the minority status of …