Where Is Your Online News REALLY Coming From?

There's a growing interest about the ways in which people are gathering their daily news and information online. Apparently, these days, it's possible for your irascible neighbour to have a serious effect on the news which percolates to the top of the rankings and headlines that are fed to your browser. As the politics of change evolve under the influence directional forces employed by economic superpowers, the Internet is apparently becoming more democratically diverse every day. Witness the populist context of Digg and del.icio.us. Compare them to the Big Four of Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo.

Digg demands that users remain patient during the process of slogging through relevancies, irrelevancies and the broad absence of editorial consistency or quality, while also doing the work of actually clicking on links in order to express approval or support for specific news and information items. Digg is essentially a technology news & information web site that gives editorial control to the Internet community by allowing users to submit links for review. Rather than an editor doing the review, users essentially do it by also clicking (digging) the link, thereby deciding which links go on the home page. When a user submits a story to one of the top level categories, The story is filed into the "digg" area of the category. Other users on the site read the story, and may click the "digg this story" link. As an article acquires diggs, its ranking improves. Based on its popularity, Digg removes the story from the staging area, and promotes it to the home and category pages. More . . .

Computer Upgrades Don't Have To Be Endless

Dave Lee is a technology nut. If it's a computer, or related to computing, Dave will look at it, use it, take it apart and learn all about it. Dave has a pedigree too. He's the former Treasurer and VP of the Toronto Atari Federation which was, during the late 80's and early 90's, among the largest computer user groups in the world. Dave began life with the command line, graduated to 8-bit computing and programming, then moved through all of the forays into TOS/GEM, Amiga, Mac OS and ultimately (in 1995) Windows. Along the way he did a stint in the recording studio business, organized computer shows and exhibitions and generally got into lots of technology action.

The beauty of the simpler times for computer technology nuts in the 70's and 80's was that choices were comparatively limited. Computer stores were few and far between until 1985. The true computer technology nut had to know his way around the electronic surplus store bins. Radio Shack was still highly regarded. The true computer technology nut had to be very comfortable with a soldering iron. The true computer technology nut had to know a bit of programming.

Things changed in the mid-90's. Technology went mainstream and resulted in some serious polarization between disparate groups of technology nuts. Now there are the old hands (and millions of new converts) who are always looking for deals on plug 'n play components to assemble the most efficient and cost effective systems, and the 'Modders who spend almost as much time on cool case configurations as they do on outrageously priced high-end hardware and performance enhancements. More . . .

E-mail? Spam? The Dividing Line Is Disappearing!

Communication. The fundamental need for humans to interact, exchange information, transfer knowledge and socialize is based almost exclusively on our ability to communicate with one another. The technological revolution during the 70's and 80's brought with it the tools for humans to communicate interpersonally, almost instantaneously across vast distances. Forget about up-to-the-hour radio and TV news. E-mail now spreads the word faster and earlier than traditional new media mainly because you've got e-mail staring at you in your office, at home, in your hotel room while traveling—anywhere there's a network connection of some sort.

Years ago, the only time we needed to communicate while away from home was: a) when we started feeling guilty because two weeks had passed since the last phone call to our parents, and b) when we started feeling guilty because two weeks had passed since the last phone call to our kids. Nor was the cost of long distance phone calls particularly amusing. Now we go away on vacation and actually ask if the hotel has a 'net connection in each room, whether our cell phone will work in the area, and if the hotel charges a fee for receiving faxes. Above all else, the 'net connection is of paramount concern. Can't live without e-mail, not even on vacation.

The problem is that I hate e-mail. I receive as much or more than anyone I know. I'm in the research and technology review dodge for Pete's sake—I couldn't avoid e-mail even if I wanted to. I just hate it. The main reason is that it's no longer fun and quick. My Inbox is littered with hundreds of spam messages every day. Every day. Something has to change. More . . .

They Tell You It's Safe—Don't Listen To Them—It's NOT SAFE

On March 11, 2005 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took action against MaxTheater, the company behind SpywareAssassin, a so-called "anti-spyware" product that has been blacklisted by Spyware Warrior since July 4, 2004. The product, SpywareAssassin, is actually not what it claims to be. In its complaint, the FTC specifically named several of the more deceptive and unfair practices that are employed by these kinds of programs including:

• Falsely claiming to have scanned users' PCs remotely and detected spyware
  
• Using high pressure sales tactics through pop-ups and spam to compel users to buy its application, SpywareAssassin
  
• Selling an "anti-spyware" product that falsely detects spyware on users' PCs
  
• Selling an "anti-spyware" product that fails to remove a substantial amount of spyware from users' PCs
  

Here's the link to the Spyware Warrior web site. There's an awful lot of this sort of nonsense going around.

You've seen it too. Surf to a web site, a pop-up appears telling you that your computer might be infected with spyware and that you should "click here" to test your computer. Don't think it's scary? Think again. More . . .

The Digital Camera Revolution -or- Why I Love My Nikon D70

Inasmuch as film photography for the masses (read: you and me and everyone we know) is riding down the ramp to eternal ignominy, procrustean scribes will nonetheless wax poetic about their yearnings for tradition, lost 'soul' and how all the new stuff just isn't the same as the old stuff. It's true too, although it doesn't matter a wit in any case. That the observation is true also in no way mitigates the usefulness of the newest digital technology embodied in the latest cameras. In defense of Procrustes (mythology—look it up) himself, the effort of making fit the digital enemies has resulted in a strange event: the film traditionalists are moving inexorably and en masse to digital. "Can't teach and old dog new tricks?" Nonsense!

I love my Nikon D70.

No film. No crappy One-Hour Photo prints (I should have always waited the extra two days anyway). Instant gratification—I can see how bad (or how good) my shots are while I'm still in a position to take better ones. No slide film either with its one week or two week waits for the results. No scanning with the requisite and unavoidable degradation evident even when using a $1,500 desktop flatbed scanner. Above all else, the D70 is not only digital, it also looks like a really classy and expensive 35mm film camera.

And therein lies the proverbial rub. More . . .

Intel vs AMD vs . . . Dell? CPU Wars!

The latest scoop from the busy kitchens at Dell Computer, courtesy of IDG News, PC World and others, is that Dell has (slightly) reversed itself and told all the financial gurus that it will, in fact, not be using AMD processors in any Dell server products in the near future after all. Well boo-hiss to that. At the end of this piece I'll tell you how Dell's decision (and similar decisions by Gateway and other server makers) affects your home, SOHO and small office desktop.

The stated (and deduced) reasons for Dell's retreat from AMD are obscure. As a matter of fact, since December 2003 Intel was forced to copy AMD's philosophy of bringing 64-bit extensions to the x86 processor, scrap two future processor cores, and fix several manufacturing and design glitches across a wide variety of products. Big boo-boos on Intel, and not the kind of organizational and technological planning screwups that customers (read: Dell) tolerate mildly. So why is Dell still 100% loyal to Intel? Must be something in the coffee.

As Intel messed up its product roadmap in the shadow of AMD's clearly more aggressive and forward-looking development, Dell's attitude appeared to be one of contentiousness, apparently forcing Intel to fully re-evaluate its direction, processes and quality controls or suffer the ignominy of serious financial losses at the hands of a single customer. At least, that seemed to be the veiled threat. Could be just coincidence. More . . .