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  10 last-minute gifts for geeks

  Publié: décembre 19, 2009, 9:24am CET par Joe Wilcox

  By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

  It's the last shopping weekend before Christmas and perhaps you just don't know what to give that special geek in your life. I've prepared a list of 10 gifts, none of which might make your holiday list without a little prodding. I intentionally picked gifts I would want to give that you might not think to give. If you've got other, hopefully better, ideas, please share them in comments. A list of 10 suggestions isn't enough.

  1. Panasonic Lumix LX3K -- Earlier this week, Amazon had this compact digital camera for $398.95 but sold out. Adorama lists the camera for $499.95, but the price drops to $398.95 in the shopping cart. B&H Photo offers the LX3K for the same price. Four hundred bucks is simply an excellent price for what is one of the most versatile compact digicams available -- and it's suitable for novices or pros.

  2. Microsoft TechNet Plus Subscription -- For $349 ($299 upgrade), subscribers can get, presumably for evaluation purposes, all major Microsoft desktop and server software products. It's a good bargain with Windows 7 just released and Office 2010 coming next year. The $349 price is for downloading software. The subscription with DVD software shipments costs $599.

  3. Etymotic Research HF2 Earphones -- Available in black from Amazon for $128.94, these binaural earphones and microphone are designed for mobile handsets, including iPhone. I personally would prefer Bluetooth earphones, but this wired set offers much -- frequency response of 20 Hz -16 KHz, 16 ohms impedance and 35- 42 dB noise isolation -- for a value price.

  4. Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited -- OMG, 5,000 titles are available with stunning graphics and fluid page turns that give sense of being part of the action. For $59.98 a year, it's one of the cheapest geek gifts to give this holiday.

  5. Phase One Capture One 5 -- One of the best photo RAW editing software applications is available in a new version this year. While Capture One 5's workflow options fall short of Adobe PhotoShop Lightroom 2 (v3 is in beta) or Apple Aperture 2, it offers excellent RAW editing, particularly noise reduction and manipulation of dynamic range. Standard version is $129 or go Pro for $399 (Mac/Windows). Windows users might also consider exceptionally good, competitive alternative SILKYPIX Pro ($249) or v4 ($149).

  6. Amazon Prime -- For the geek who is chained to his or her computer and who frequently orders everything online, there is Amazon's Prime service. You pay $79 a year and get free two-day shipping on everything Amazon sells (but not affiliates) or overnight shipping for $3.99 per item. Big selling point: Four different Amazon accounts can share one Prime. So if you've got four roomies that's 20 bucks a piece.

  7. Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905 -- These noise-cancelling headphones sport several wired (including 3.5mm) and wireless connections. Specs include eight noise-cancellng microphones, 15 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response and 32 ohm speaker impedance. The microphone is a bit glitchy for phone calls, but for listening the audio fidelity, noise cancellation and connection options are excellent. Available from Amazon for $219.99 or $169.99 after $50 mail-in rebate.

  8. AT&T U-verse -- I've used Comcast, Cox and Verizon FiOS, and none delivers quite the bang as U-verse, which runs Microsoft's Media Room software. The IPTV service offers a clean, easy-to-understand program guide, loads of HD channels, DVR sharing with other set-top boxes in the home and recording of up to four channels simultaneously -- two in HD. I've had U-verse since February 2008 and highly recommend it. Drawback: Service is only available in about 22 states. U-verse 200 package with Internet and one DVR is $102 a month.

  9. Financial Times or Wall Street Journal (online editions) -- Geeks who want a more global perspective (and everyone really should have one) need look no further than either the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal. These two financially-oriented dailies have morphed into first-class general reporting papers. Quality isn't cheap. FT Premium, which includes mobile editions, is $299 for one year. WSJ costs much less: $103 annually. Kindle editions are available for both: $9.99 a month for FT; $14.99 a month for WSJ. Both dailies offer some free online content, but expect that to change -- at least for WSJ -- in 2010.

  10. WowWee Cinemin Swivel Pico Projector -- This DLP projector is tiny, measuring 120mm x 52mm x 22mm and weighing 170g (For non-metric Americans that's 4.7" x 2.1" x 0.9" and 6 ounces). Resolution may only be 480 x 320 with a 3:2 aspect ratio, but what do you expect from something this small? Battery life is 135 minutes, just long enough to get through a regular movie and hopefully any slide presentation (two-hour meeting is more than long enough). The WowWee Website warns that the Cinemin Swivel is sold out and orders won't be fulfilled until next year. But Amazon still has stock, priced at $305.93.

  Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
  
  
  
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  'Operation Chokehold' shows the social media mob has influence

  Publié: décembre 19, 2009, 2:21am CET par Joe Wilcox

  By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

  "Operation Chokehold" has come and gone, with no sign it even put AT&T in a headlock. But with so many people complaining of service already so spotty, could anyone really tell the difference short of network failure? For AT&T, there is little victory in surviving the coordinated, customer-driven denial-of-service attack. The publicity has done damage enough, and, as I blogged yesterday, everything is different now for companies looking to manage their brands and customer relations.

  Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, called for Operation Chokehold -- a coordinated effort by AT&T users to overwhelm the network with heavy data requests -- at 3 p.m. ET today. Lyons started backpedaling on December 16, perhaps after realizing that Operation Chokehold had become a serious movement, with a Facebook fan page and buzz spreading across social networks, blogs and the news media.

  Today he blogged: "This was meant as a joke. My blog mixes fiction and non-fiction, and the item on Monday was fiction...But some people took it seriously and now the joke has taken on a life of its own...This may be cathartic, but it is pointless. A few thousand people are not going to make a dent in a wireless network. If you participate, you'll most likely be wasting your time."

  Perhaps the joke is on Lyons, and he's not laughing. It's often difficult to separate Fake Steve Jobs' sarcasm from Dan Lyons' anger -- clearly at AT&T, if no one else. The more recent backpedaling posts smell of fear, that Lyons started something he couldn't control. Hey, that's how it is with mobs. The moment you yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater or "Lynch the bastard!" before a cornered man, the mob rules. Mob psychology sets in -- yes, even on the InterWeb.

  Netizens selecting a Smaller Worldview

  That's because behavior long observed about traditional media has transferred to the Web. Contrary to popular conventions about the Web opening minds, people are more likely to read information or participate in social groups that reinforce what they already believe. Example proof point is a recent study conducted by Ohio University professors Jingbo Meng and Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, from which they published paper: "Looking the Other Way: Selective Exposure to Attitude-Consistent and Counterattitudinal Political Information."

  The researchers conducted two sessions -- with 156 and 221 college student participants, respectively -- presenting online news information for review. "We found that exposure to attitude-consistent messages exceeded exposure to counter-attitudinal messages and that the proportion was remarkably consistent for article choices and exposure time," the professors write. In plain speak: The participants generally choose to engage news and information that reinforced predisposed attitudes.

  "Selective exposure" is not a new concept. Social psychologist Leon Festinger proposed in his 1956 and 1957 books When Prophecy Fails and Theory of Cognitive Dissonance the concept of "cognitive dissonance" -- the idea that people feel uncomfortable with contradictory viewpoints and settle on a single one. Festinger's work, which Meng and Knobloch-Westerwick repeatedly reference in their paper, is foundational to the concept of selective exposure -- that people associate with arguments or ideas that support their own beliefs.

  Marketers, politicians and propagandists have long exploited selective exposure in their campaigns. But who would have thought people would selectively expose themselves (no sarcastic comments, please) to some information and not others on the massively informational World Wide Web? Betanews commenters wag "fanboy" as an accusation, but on the Web many people are just that. They seek out news, information, people and social groups that support what they already believe -- what reinforces their self identity. Whatever political, religious or cultural view people seek, they can find it on the Web. Mac users seek out Apple blogs, news sites and communities; Windows users do the same. Look at the number of Facebook fan pages or how many like-minded people gather on one forum or newsgroup but not another.

  Timeless Damage inflicted on Brands

  Then there are the disgruntled, like dissatisfied AT&T customers who seek out places to vent and share their frustrations. Until this week, they were leaderless. Then Fake Steve Jobs made a proposal that gave them leadership, direction and a goal -- even after he attempted to relinquish his leadership role. It's a social media mob psychology and itself a power for companies like AT&T to reckon with. The social media mob has the power to tarnish a brand, to undo what millions of dollars in marketing generated in good feeling.

  The mob's mark won't easily go away, because the Web is more timeless, less temporal, than other forms of media. Whether a month or five years from now, disgruntled AT&T users can Google "AT&T service interruption" and find blogs, forum posts, news stories, Tweets and Websites about Operation Chokehold and much more. They can reinforce their beliefs, magnify their anger and find community in people who share their gripes.

  Some people will call Operation Chokehold a failure because AT&T's network didn't fail. But as a movement of like-minded customers angry at AT&T, Operation Chokehold is a chilling success. Their voice was heard, and it won't be the last time. Lyons wasn't the only backpedaler this week. AT&T partly backed down on proposed data caps.

  The social media revolution started quietly, unexpectedly in 2006, with the launch of Twitter and YouTube and the public availability of Facebook. Many other cloud services followed, and some of the best are tied to iPhone or other handsets. The social media mob can gather anytime, anywhere and on anything. Some Betanews commenters will scoff at the idea -- and please do be opinionated in comments. It means that you don't have to be one. If Dan Lyons can gather a social media mob from what he calls a joke, how much more power or influence could there be?

  Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
  
  
  
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  Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 moves ahead, but more work to be done

  Publié: décembre 19, 2009, 1:14am CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

  By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

  Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 for Windows from Fileforum now.

  Betanews tests with the latest Beta 5 release of Mozilla Firefox 3.6 show some respectable performance improvements, in the race to catch-up to Google Chrome. One of those improvements -- the full impact of which we'll see over time, as Web servers improve their scripting to support it -- is asynchronous scripting. It's a feature added to the HTML 5 standard, and Firefox 3.6 will be the first browser to support it.

  Ironically, however, our tests this afternoon with the WHAT Working Group (WHATWG) working draft page explaining HTML 5 features, including asynchronous scripting, consistently crashes Firefox 3.6 on our Windows 7 test machine. To certify that the problem was limited to the beta, we tried the same page (which we've read before with no problem) with the latest stable Firefox 3.5.6. That browser also crashed.

  The page in question is a particularly long page with multiple concurrent edits, and a floating element along the bottom that enables reviewers to mark passages that may be in error and submit comments.

  At first, in our tests, Internet Explorer 8 does not crash, but that's not to say it's out of the woods. IE8 doesn't display the floating element, and the vertical scroll bar can often remain stuck for seconds at a time before releasing its virtual grip on the desktop. Asking it to search for text inline in the page results in what appears to be a hang, at least for as long as a full minute, before IE8 responds.

  The page's author is Google's Ian Hickson, but that's just coincidence. The fact that the leading alternative browser for Windows has significant difficulty rendering a large page with complex, collaborative content, shows that stability can still be improved.

  

  Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 crashes when loading a working draft page from the Web standards working group WHATWG.

  That's not to say Mozilla's testers haven't already done a stellar job. Over 1,500 separate bugs and feature additions were made to 3.6 since the initial alphas, and about one-tenth of those were fixes to Beta 4. A handful of unresolved bugs are pending, according to the organization's Bugzilla database.

  Preliminary Betanews tests on Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 running in Windows 7 RTM show some respectable performance gains, as Mozilla creeps into the territory blazed earlier this year by Google Chrome. Using our CRPI benchmark suite of 69 separate data points, Beta 5 scored a 12.59 in Windows 7, compared to an 11.12 for the latest stable Firefox 3.5.6. That means that Beta 5 is showing 13% improved performance over the current stable version, which is a little better than 11 times the performer of Internet Explorer 7 in Vista (the slowest browser we test, on the slowest platform).

  By comparison, the latest alpha version (not yet accounting for "public" comments, at least not officially) of Firefox 3.7 scored a 12.95 on the same tests. The very latest dev build of Google Chrome (4.0.266.0) scored a 20.56, while Internet Explorer 8's score remains mired at 1.54. Again, these are the Windows 7 scores, and do not yet take into account Vista and Windows XP performance.

  Our test suite, however, does not yet take account of asynchronous scripting. It's a feature that has yet to be seen in many Web pages and services yet, though Google is actually making some headway here. Last December 1, Google began offering an asynchronous tracking script for servers to add to their Web pages. In announcing the feature, Google Analytics team member Brian Kuhn credited Firefox 3.6 as the browser making this feature possible.

  Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 for Linux from Fileforum now.

  Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009