Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label gadgets

The New Paradigm on the Desktop

Anyone who has an inflated ego should just spend more time as an amateur prophet in the business world, politics, or any place actually. That said, Google's Chromebook seems more portentous than anything we've seen in the computer industry for years. I am willing to believe that, five to ten years from now, Washington state politicians will be frantically patching up a government bailout of Microsoft Corp., which will then be called Government Software. The future might be as dark for anti-virus firms like Symantec, or for regular PC manufacturers like Toshiba, Dell, and HP. In order for Google's Chromebook to supplant Microsoft Windows and Office as the desktop standard, there must be an enormous expansion in internet traffic. So the biggest beneficiary of the new paradigm might be the telecommunications industry.

Hanging Up on a Cellphone Bully

It's so rare to have a success in the gadget world that I want to brag up LG, the cellphone manufacturer, and Verizon, the service provider. I managed to lose my old LG cellphone, after a run of six years. It had even survived one trip through a washing machine. I'll probably find it under a heap of something someday. But I couldn't call the lost cellphone with somebody else's phone, because the prepaid minutes had expired. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that I could keep the old service plan (which no longer exists for new people) and the old phone number. And all of this was explained by a nice young man who spoke English as his first language. I had another cellphone success, of a different type. Unaccustomed as I am to finishing a nice mountain bike ride with a coffee and cookie at a local coffee shop, I did so today. It was so pleasant just sitting there, thinking about the perfect ride and weather. Just then a woman had the effrontery to intrude on this

Writing in the Smartphone Era

As long as I'm ranting against smartphones and tablets, I wonder if they are responsible for the poor quality comments on some of the blogs I follow. By 'poor quality' I don't mean that I disagree with their point. I just can't read their comment; my eyes and brain hurt too much. Perhaps the comment was pecked out by thumbs when the guy was waiting in his mega-saurus, king-cab, dualie pickup truck in the fast food drive-through; and the commenter hasn't gotten around to buying an app for spell checking. Then again, maybe he did get an app, except that it changes ordinary English prose to thumb-English: "R U L8?", "wut 4?," and the like. The rules of lower and upper case have gone out the window. An entire vocabulary of sub-English abbreviations flourishes. What the hell does LOL or IMHO mean anyway?! There is no more inexcusable form of sub-English than one made of abbreviations. Maybe I'm wrong to blame smartphones and their postage-

A Martian Goes Christmas Shopping

As a young lad I heard older men using expressions so out-of-date that I was embarrassed for their sakes. Usually the old expressions were agricultural in origin, or perhaps from popular radio programs of the 1930s or 40s. The expression, 'if a Martian landed tomorrow and saw that, he'd think...', has probably dropped out of the modern vernacular, perhaps due to the Space Age. That's a pity because looking at common things with an uncommon perspective is important. It's one of the great benefits of traveling. The archaic expression seems compelling during the Christmas shopping season. Since RV traveling meant dry camping or boondocking for me, for years I made coffee with an Italian espresso maker that worked on the propane stove. Finally I tired of cleaning it, or maybe the coffee didn't taste that good anymore. Before that I had used a simple plastic cone with paper filters. You might not believe it, but I've never owned one of those ubiquitous Mr. Cof

A Real Brownie for the Boonie?

A camping neighbor enjoys walking his Australian shepherd with Coffee Girl. He asked if I was interested in photography. That was a simple yes/no question, but I had trouble with it. When I started living in this RV park two years ago I was delighted to have a large field to run my dogs in. But as a former full-time traveler, it seemed boring and unnatural to do anything twice. To put my mind at rest I decided to bring the digital Brownie along and put more effort into looking at the small things that the change of seasons brings along. It has been a successful project. The neighbor offered to let me borrow his digital SLR Canon camera. He showed me a whole bag of lenses and equipment and a tripod. What if I dropped this camera! As impressive as this was on one level, it was repulsive too. When he tugged on the zippers of the side-pouches, I cringed. Using impedimenta like this would completely change the outdoor experience for me. It would be great for setting up near a bird nest or

Gadget Paradise Postponed

Or, Requiem for a Lightweight A few weeks ago the requiem was written for smartbooks. These were meant to be similar to netbooks (with a keyboard and a clamshell design) based on ARM's microprocessors instead of Intel's, and on Google's Android operating system instead of obsolete Microsoft Windows. The lower power would have meant that you could leave them on all the time, like your cellphone, which is also based on an ARM microprocessor. You can see why this would have been appealing. I was hoping to use one instead of a WINTEL notebook to do the usual things, such as surfing the web, editing photos, and printing. Was that really asking so much from the computer world? Apparently it was. Why would the computer industry want to cannibalize the sale of $800 notebooks with $250 smartbooks? The losers would have been WINTEL, Apple, HP, Dell, Toshiba, etc. Fortunately for the computer industry, Apple found a solution to this conundrum: it assassinated the smartbook with th

Hope for Historians

Just when I was ready to give up on reading history, an interlibrary loan came to my rescue: "Medieval Technology and Social Change," by Lynn Townsend White. It is probably considered by some to be a modern classic. Take a look at the Preface: Voltaire to the contrary, history is a bag of tricks which the dead have played upon historians . The most remarkable of these illusions is the belief that the surviving written records provide us with a reasonably accurate facsimile of past human activity. 'Prehistory' is defined as the period for which such records are not available. But until very recently the vast majority of mankind was living in a subhistory which was a continuation of prehistory. Nor was this condition characteristic simply of the lower strata of society. In medieval Europe until the end of the eleventh century we learn of the feudal aristocracy largely from clerical sources which naturally reflect ecclesiastical attitudes: the knights do not speak for

Why I Hate Apple Computer

Consumers have paid a price for obsessing over cheapness when it comes to electronic gadgets. It is the reason for the quality and durability being so low. One company that escaped the Cheaper-and-Cheaper Syndrome is Apple Computer. I'm happy for them and their employees. Even those of us who do not buy their products benefit indirectly from the countervailing force that Apple creates. We also benefit from their innovation, since every company soon jumps on board and imitates it. For instance, I have no interest in a keyboard-less tablet computer like the iPad, but I hope to buy a (keyboard-equipped) clamshell netbook with the trends that Apple is pushing: a non-Windows operating system, faster boot-up, an ARM (non-Intel x86) microprocessor that uses low power, and an all-semiconductor "hard drive." Consider the "apps" phenomenon that Apple has brought to the world. In the gadget racket this might seem like an innovation. Perhaps it is really just the reinvent