General
List of best Web sites
PC Magazine has compiled its annual list of its editors’ choices for the best Web sites of 2008. There is also a list of their choice of the top 100 undiscovered Web sites. Of course, these lists are subjective and each of us probably has a different list. But the lists are interesting and informative; [...]
Moment of sanity at the Patent Office
As previously noted, Dell has been trying to trademark the term “Cloud Computing”. The US Patent and Trademark Office has now made an initial ruling that Dell can’t trademark “Cloud Computing” because it’s already being generally used. MacWorld reports:
In denying Dell’s application, the USPTO included dozens of news stories and other material supporting its [...]
Get a live person to answer your questions
I imagine we all know the frustration of having a problem with a product or service and being unable to find an actual human being to deal with our problem. Some companies don’t seem to have any humans working for them and others make you go through a very convoluted series of phone menus and [...]
Joining man and machine
As I have said before, making predictions about future technological developments is generally off the mark. But as long as you don’t take the conclusions too seriously, speculation on the future of technology can be an interesting form of amusement. Intel is observing its 40th anniversary and is playing the game of looking into the [...]
Blue screen of death at the Olympics
Most regular users of Windows encounter the infamous Blue Screen of Death at one time or the other. Even Bill Gates got it when doing a big presentation once. Now it has occurred at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics. PC World reports:
Anyone who has ever touched a Windows PC can tell you [...]
Information about information overload
I knew that the amount of information thrown at us these days is enormous but I hadn’t realized it had gotten to the point where there was an Information Overload Research Group. According to CNet:
This week, the Information Overload Research Group, a new nonprofit dedicated to researching and solving problems caused by the constant flow [...]
New free newsletter
A few years back, email newsletters were common and there were a number of useful computer-related ones. Various factors, including the deleterious effects of spam on email, the rise of blogs, and consolidation, have greatly reduced the numbers and very few computing newsletters are left.
One of the veterans of computer newsletter publishing, Jack Teems, still [...]
Our broken patent system
Off and on I have commented that our patent system, like so many other things in our society, is malfunctioning. Now a book, Patent Failure, has been written and Ars Technica reviews it:
Anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the technology press in recent years knows that the patent system is out [...]
Newsletter merger
The number of computer-related newsletters continues to shrink. Another of my favorites is merging with Windows Secrets. First it was Fred Langa, who subsequently retired. Now Ian “Gizmo” Richards is joining his Support Alert with Windows Secrets and is becoming senior editor. Windows Secrets will now have a circulation of over 400,000.
One billion PCs and counting
Reuters reports:
The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed 1 billion, with strong growth in emerging markets set to double the number of PCs by early 2014, research firm Gartner said on Monday.
Mature markets accounted for 58 percent of the first billion installed PCs, but would only account for about [...]