RIP JPEG2000
JPEG2000 has shrivelled and not quite died but certainly is not what it promised to be as a replacement for the JPEG image format. Here are the ugly facts: Graphics Support in the Major Browsers Web Standard IE8 Firefox 3.x Chrome 1. Opera 9.6 Safari 4 JPEG2000 No No No No No SMIL Dropped? 3.1 […]
Google Android to appear on Asus and HP Netbooks
Netbook Revolution Trigger – Asus EEE PC – here with 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, 1.6GHz Atom CPU There is an autodealer near Buffalo NY who fills the TV airwaves with the usual attention getting claptrap – This is HUGE, HUGE!!!! COME ON DOWN NOW for HUGE DEALS…” Well I never thought I would resort […]
Tracking Browser and Other Web/Mobile Stats for Free
Source: StatCounter Global Stats I must give credit where credit is due – I found this very helpful link at Digital Inspiration blog. But checking around apparently the data has been available for quite some time. The question is how accurate are the numbers – and I will admit to be looking as much at […]
Apple Parings
Slashdot has a great posting which acts as an antidote to the domestic “Gosh iPhone is Wonderful” worship from many US Gadgeteers and IT pundits. I repeat the essence here: “With a high level of technical sophistication, critical customers, and high innovation rate, Japan is the toughest cell phone market in the world. So it’s […]
Why Mozilla Counts
Mozilla counts in the Web World not just because of some of its pioneering Web development projects but because its Firefox browser really has Web muscle – browser market share. See the the tables below which show the increasing Firefox market share: The above results are from the W3CSchools Survey These results are from industry […]
Bespin – Start of the Browser Wars II
Mozilla are the people behind Firefox. And some users may know it for XUL – the XML based User-interface Language that Microsoft has copied and proprietized as XAML. Some people may know that Mozilla has also a major role in JavaScript having Brendan Eich, the designer of Javascript, on staff. So naturally Mozilla has been […]
Microsoft as Crusader for the Common Man
Oh the irony – Microsoft as crusader for the masses against an evil monopolist who dominates a market and puts arbitrary limits on users. The market ? Mobile Smart Phones. The Evil Empire? Apple. What is Apple doing that has users up in arms? Here are the details of the dispute: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, […]
What Microsoft’s Board Should Do
Microsoft’s Board of Directors are faced with some debilitating problems. The company has proceeded to devastate its Windows Brand in the past 8 years and the results are starting to breech the desktop monopoly fortress. The stock price that had been static for 8 years at $25-35 is now taking a downturn into the $15-19 […]
Linux Desktop Whimp II – Other Blog Views
In our previous look at Linux on the Desktop, the article describes how Linux tops Vista in 16 of 18 benchmark categories while besting Windows XP in 10 of 18 with two ties. Yet Linux a)has gained no market share in the Desktop PC market in the past year languishing at 1-3% depending on which […]
Kindle 2: The Book That Can Run Out of Power
Jeff Bezos is delivering the second version of his allegedly very popular Kindle (I suspect Amazon of Positive Impression Management equal to or better than Redmond in its hay daze, circa 1995). And I keep asking myself why I would want to buy a grayscale-only book (or even a book store) which runs only in […]
Linux, the Desktop Whimp?
If you read comics books from the late 1930s thru to the mid 1960s (think Archie, Batman, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Superman, Wonder Woman … oops, am I revealing too much ?), you undoubtedly recall the Charles Atlas Body Building comic book ads. The ads were of various size (see the full length one above […]
EU Has Got It Right
The US DOJ under the Bush Administration totally blew the Antitrust Decision with Microsoft. But that was the first sign of an endemic incompetence. Now the EU Commission in requiring Microsoft to preload Windows 7 with the Safari, Mozilla, Google, and Opera browsers as well as IE for a user option of choice (much as […]
Sturdy and Reliable
Business Week has a spot-on article about Obsolete Computers that Still Do the Job. Despite the misnomer – these computers are certainly not “obsolete” if they deliver continued value and efficiency as described in the article. This is sound advice that unfortunately goes up against the perfect storm of “newer is better”, “in gadgets we […]
Transparent and Accountable
These are the call words of the Obama administration and if you go their website – you will should be reasonably impressed with how much detail the Obama government has opened up on the Web. Update:With resignation of 2 cabinet appointees, Obama is finding out how hard transparent and accountable can be. I would love […]
Cloud Computing Drivers: AJAX Frameworks
It can be argued that JavaScript AJAX Frameworks are leading software development right now. This is not just UI Web development but the whole tenor of software being developed. Open, agile developing that is cross browser, OS, and database/web server platforms are the regular mashup targets of more developers. And the primary development software they […]
Pogue’s View on Vista 2 … uhh Windows 7
NYTimes tech guru David Pogue was one of the few IT commentators that dared to call Windows Vista a thing of beauty with perhaps some notable deficiencies. But even David failed to get the depth of the deficiencies – he completely missed the 30-50% slower than Windows XP and the revolting changes to the UI […]
Green Gadgets ?
Engadget has a great story about one of the most novel green gadgets that appeared at the CES show. I am surprised this was not at DODView – a pseudo Department of Defense exhibition where stuff == procurements for the $600 Billion US Defense budget get screened. Imagine having a power device that can run […]
Instant on PCs
Netbooks popularized by Asus with the Eee at $399 or less will become the formfactor for more access to the Cloud. And its now taking a new twist – Instant on PCs. These are Netbooks that can boot in 10 seconds or less. The very interesting fact is that Linux with preprogrammed, small taskbars is […]
CES 2009: Yahoo TV Widgets
We cover in our sister publication, PictureThat, the accelerating convergence in functionality and features between still cameras and video camcorders. Still cameras are borrowing much wider zooms, low lux performance, and image stabilization from video cameras while providing HD video recording capabilities with interchangeable lessons in cameras like the Nikon D90 or Canon Mark 2D […]
CES 2009: Touch Screen PCs
Asus is up to the innovation business in the PC marketplace – and it will be giving HP and nobody-else-so-far a run for the touchscreen marketplace. Its not fully multi-touch but at $499 an 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard disk and Windows XP with Asus. Seen at CES 2009 the Asus Eee […]
Overhyped Gadgets
Digital Trends by way of Yahoo has a list of the most overhyped gadgets for 2008. I really did not expect to agree with their selections … “one man’s delight is another man’s poison”. But I was surprised to discover that these products did all have a consistent trait – they were heavily promoted and […]
The Vista Performance Problems
This report from Nov 2nd 2008 is now updated on November 11th 2008 with results for Win XP using 3GB of memory plus Service Pack 3. Microsoft is presenting for its software developers, developers, developers a serious performance problem with Vista. Take the situation with Adobe and its CS4 line of products including the ever […]
WaSP:Playing by Redmond’s Rules
WaSP – The Webs Standards Project has been supposedly fighting for Web standards from the early 1990s. Now why do I say supposedly. Well for the Great Winter that was no updates to the IE browser and no updates in the use of Web Standards in Microsoft’s other Web based applications and tools like Visual […]
Lost in Space: No Magazines to Guide me
I am literally lost in PC or electronic Bling Bling space – here there are no ready guides and postings to lead me along like there was for 20-25 years of the PC revolution. The same may also be happening in the IT world. What precepitated this reactions was the attempt to find info onlinking […]
High Performance GUI II
I decided to return to the question of High Performance GUI and look more carefully at the idea of making a light/laser wand or mouse. This requires a bit of a transformation in thinking – the screen becomes not just a passive display but active responder as well to light wand signals applied directly to […]
High Performance GUI
Infoworlds Jon Udell raises the question of why high performance GUIs have not emerged. He bemoans the fact that computing is stuck in the KVM-keyboard-video-mouse mode of operation. That is certainly true but I have a lot of friends and colleagues that have broken out of that paradigm with touch screens, gestures, speech commands, light […]