Archive for February, 2009

Once again, it’s time to look for a new watch. I don’t know why, but I can’t get a watch to last more than a year if it’s attached to my wrist. Yeah, I am quite hard on watches, but Kenmar Watches makes it easy to find exactly the watches I would want to wear.

Whether it’s their Fossil watches, the Gucci’s, or my personal favorite, the Timberland styles, they have a nice assortment to look through. Their website makes it easy to choose too, because you can sort the watches by brand, style, price, or color.

My latest watch died a horrible death getting banged up while I was doing some yardwork. I totally forgot to take it off my wrist before I started working. I remembered real quick when I heard that ominous cracking sound as it was crushed.

Now I get to kick back and wait for my order to arrive. They offer fast shipping, which is good because I have no way of tracking the time until my new watch arrives.

Still no fees at Twitter.

Twitter will not charge organizations for commercial accounts on the microblogging service. “Whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone-individuals, companies, celebrities,” reads a blog post yesterday by Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders.

Everyone’s wondering how Twitter will ever make money. Charging for it’s use will definitely not make money. Thinking out loud makes people shudder.

Someone needs to double check their copy before they hit submit.

The headline reads: Report: Free Windows 7 upgrades to run until January 2009

Yet the article clearly states,

To encourage consumers to keep buying Windows Vista PCs this year despite Windows 7’s looming release, Microsoft Corp. will give away free Windows 7 upgrades to people buying PCs with Windows Vista until as late as January 31 of next year, according to a report.

Palm has pulled the plug on its Palm OS operating system.

Instead, the company will bet its future on its newly unveiled but still mysterious Palm webOS, built to power the new Pre smartphone, according to company CEO Ed Colligan, who spoke Wednesday at an investor conference in San Francisco.

The current Centro smartphone will be the last to use the Palm OS. “There will be no more Palm OS products,” Colligan said. “We will transition to webOS as our core OS, in addition to supporting Microsoft Windows products in the enterprise segment of the market.”

Oh great, more phones running Windows applications. Just what the world needs.

I have a hard time believing this one…

Did Apple ask Google not to put multi-touch capabilities on the Android-based G1? Rumor has it that Apple may have approached Google while the company was developing the G1 with HTC, and asked the search giant not to put gesture capabilities like pinching on the device. The news comes from an anonymous “Android insider” who spoke with Venture Beat.

Maybe they did ask them to wait, but the mere fact they asked would not be enough to compel Google to leave out such an important feature. I think perhaps Apple warned Google not to use anything that infringed on their patent. THAT would stop them.

We all knew this was coming, right?

The younger, slimmer, and smarter sister of Amazon’s (AMZN) sold-out Kindle electronic reader arrived on Feb. 9, at the same $359 price of its older sib. Gone are the angular lines and clunky silhouette that consumers and critics complained about when the first Kindle was introduced in November 2007. In their place is an ultra-sleek, tablet-like object with smooth, rounded edges and keys. But while the new object is gorgeous, tech experts say, its real beauty lies in its innovative service.

So, is it enough of a change to warrant upgrading if you have one of the first ones?

Just hours after Microsoft Corp. accidently launched, then yanked, a Web site promoting its new “My Phone” backup and sync service, the company restored the site and posted more information about the free service.

Late Friday, Microsoft restored the My Phone site, which said the service is “Coming soon.” In a separate announcement posted to several Web sites, the company said that more information about the invite-only beta would be given out at the GSMA World Mobile Congress, which opens Feb. 16 in Barcelona, Spain.

Heh, okay, it won’t really break it, but you will have to reboot it quite often.

Has there been a Tuesday, recently, when there hasn’t been a Windows update? What makes this Tuesday so special?

Microsoft will be releasing four security updates on Tuesday, including two that are critical affecting Windows, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Exchange Server, the company said on Thursday.

The critical updates affect Windows Internet Explorer 7, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows Vista, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007, according to the alert.

Two other updates rated important affect SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and Office. The vulnerabilities could allow for an attacker to remotely execute code on an unpatched system.

The road to Windows 7 for Vista-shy customers who want to jump straight from XP to the upcoming operating system won’t be an easy one.

Microsoft confirmed yesterday that Windows XP fans would be able to purchase a licence and media to “upgrade” to the new OS once it lands.

But this being Redmond there is a caveat: XP customers have to perform a clean install of Windows 7. This means wiping their computer hard drive’s data first, which doesn’t sound much like an upgrade to us.

Hmmm. A fresh install. Isn’t that what most Windows users need to do every six months anyway?

If you thought that Microsoft learned all its lessons with Vista, you’ll soon be disappointed. Despite the fact that the Windows 7 beta is getting mostly positive reviews, revelations that Microsoft plans to release six different flavors of Windows 7 left many in the tech world stupefied and wondering why.

Yeah why? Does the world really need six versions of Windows 7? Maybe they are doing it to make a statement.

Maybe, just maybe they represent something…

Windows 7 DOS (Starter)
Windows 7 3.1 (Home Basic)
Windows 7 ME (Home Premium)
Windows 7 NT (Professional)
Windows 7 XP (Enterprise)
WIndows 7 Server (Ultimate)

Dumb, I know, but so is trying to sell six versions of the same thing, at different levels of cripple.