http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090113-sales-tax-holiday-may-be-over-for-amazon-other-e-tailers.html
The most important thing to understand here is that this is only round 2. We have a long way to go before this problem is solved.
Basically there is no commercial relationship between amazon and their referral agents, this ruling will get overturned eventually otherwise non internet out of state companies are all going to get caught up in this supposed 'internet only' tax.
I guarantee that amazon would prefer to kick out all NY state based referral agents first before they lose the price advantage they have over retail stores.
Cheers,
Dean
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Set top box upgrade - woah whats with all the new features?
If you have a time warner 8300hd set top box you should take it back today asap.
It's sneaky but time warner now have 8300HDC set top boxes available but they haven't told their existing subscribers that these are available.
All you need to do is take your box in with the remote and they'll issue you a swapout with the new remote.
There are a ton of new functions in the 8300HDC's, they range from far better tv guide and recoding functionality. Even things that you think would be easy to reverse engineer into the old boxes like having the year of the movie or the series and episode number for series.
The gui is a little bit slower in responsiveness and they have lost the search by actor name function but the other advantages are way cooler.
....now the only thing they are missing is multi-room functionality, remote box control (setting up recording etc from a browser), remote content viewing functionality for viewing on a laptop etc (al la Slingbox), content reformatting for uploading content to ipods etc..... lol small steps huh.
Cheers,
Dean
It's sneaky but time warner now have 8300HDC set top boxes available but they haven't told their existing subscribers that these are available.
All you need to do is take your box in with the remote and they'll issue you a swapout with the new remote.
There are a ton of new functions in the 8300HDC's, they range from far better tv guide and recoding functionality. Even things that you think would be easy to reverse engineer into the old boxes like having the year of the movie or the series and episode number for series.
The gui is a little bit slower in responsiveness and they have lost the search by actor name function but the other advantages are way cooler.
....now the only thing they are missing is multi-room functionality, remote box control (setting up recording etc from a browser), remote content viewing functionality for viewing on a laptop etc (al la Slingbox), content reformatting for uploading content to ipods etc..... lol small steps huh.
Cheers,
Dean
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Blogger export
The Google "Do No Evil" mantra isn't dead, it's great to see from time to time that Google deliver on their promises.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10140622-2.html
Google on Friday released an open-source project, Google Blog Converters, intended to help people move their blogs from one service to another.
This will help you move blogs not only 'to' blogger but also 'from' blogger to other blog providers.
I think it's a huge vote of confidence in your web services product that you can offer data portability....... the challenge has been thrown down to other web 2.0 providers, are you willing to let your customers choose to take their data with them freely as well?
Cheers,
Dean
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10140622-2.html
Google on Friday released an open-source project, Google Blog Converters, intended to help people move their blogs from one service to another.
This will help you move blogs not only 'to' blogger but also 'from' blogger to other blog providers.
I think it's a huge vote of confidence in your web services product that you can offer data portability....... the challenge has been thrown down to other web 2.0 providers, are you willing to let your customers choose to take their data with them freely as well?
Cheers,
Dean
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Wrestler
Jodie and I saw Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler" on the weekend, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125849/
Wow absolutely amazing. This movie without doubt has to win an Oscar for Mickey Rourke.
This is absolutely the best movie of the year (which is an amazing statement as we saw Milk with Sean Penn last weekend http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/ which was equally amazing but The Wrestler knocks it out of the park in a way that wont be replicated).
Without giving the story away, The Wrestler is about an aging wrestler looking at the abyss that is his future and wondering where it all went wrong.
I think the dread that Randy The Ram is facing will be lost on some in the audience, there was a moment where i heard some people in the back row laughing, in a scene where he was realising his body was breaking down and he didn't have a choice left in what his future held.
It's not only Rourke, there is an amazing demonstration of acting where Marisa Tomei shows the entire spectrum of emotions just using her face, from confident to the collapsed fragility of an aging stripper checking out the various 'marks' in the room and realising her time has come and her body cant earn her a living anymore.
Jodie and I were left sitting there as the credits rolled up, frozen with fear like a deer in headlights, this is a must see movie.
If you aren't old enough to have vivid personal memories of multiple scenes in "Nine 1/2 Weeks" then some of the movie will be lost on you, but if you have ever wanted to 'do it' in an open elevator loft then you are certainly going to be at that age were the chill of your future is traipsing at your feet.
Cheers,
Dean
Wow absolutely amazing. This movie without doubt has to win an Oscar for Mickey Rourke.
This is absolutely the best movie of the year (which is an amazing statement as we saw Milk with Sean Penn last weekend http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/ which was equally amazing but The Wrestler knocks it out of the park in a way that wont be replicated).
Without giving the story away, The Wrestler is about an aging wrestler looking at the abyss that is his future and wondering where it all went wrong.
I think the dread that Randy The Ram is facing will be lost on some in the audience, there was a moment where i heard some people in the back row laughing, in a scene where he was realising his body was breaking down and he didn't have a choice left in what his future held.
It's not only Rourke, there is an amazing demonstration of acting where Marisa Tomei shows the entire spectrum of emotions just using her face, from confident to the collapsed fragility of an aging stripper checking out the various 'marks' in the room and realising her time has come and her body cant earn her a living anymore.
Jodie and I were left sitting there as the credits rolled up, frozen with fear like a deer in headlights, this is a must see movie.
If you aren't old enough to have vivid personal memories of multiple scenes in "Nine 1/2 Weeks" then some of the movie will be lost on you, but if you have ever wanted to 'do it' in an open elevator loft then you are certainly going to be at that age were the chill of your future is traipsing at your feet.
Cheers,
Dean
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Windows 7 beta crashes trial download infrastructure
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/cloud-computing-reality-check-microsoft-servers-buckle-in-anticipated-usage-spike-msft/page/1#comment-496a180614b9b9a600de88c5
Microsoft has been actively stoking interest in Windows 7 Beta, and they must have known interest would be high once they made it available. So what does Microsoft running out of bandwidth say about the reliability of Microsoft's forthcoming "Azure" cloud computing environment, which promises to solve the problem of usage spikes for others?
Two thoughts;
1/ Maybe Microsoft will learn to shrink their O/S size and that you dont really need 2.5gb for a great O/S.
2/ Does this mean that there is pent up demand for Windows 7 from people that have held off from upgrading to windows vista and that Windows 7 is going to be a smashing commercial success?
Cheers,
Dean
Microsoft has been actively stoking interest in Windows 7 Beta, and they must have known interest would be high once they made it available. So what does Microsoft running out of bandwidth say about the reliability of Microsoft's forthcoming "Azure" cloud computing environment, which promises to solve the problem of usage spikes for others?
Two thoughts;
1/ Maybe Microsoft will learn to shrink their O/S size and that you dont really need 2.5gb for a great O/S.
2/ Does this mean that there is pent up demand for Windows 7 from people that have held off from upgrading to windows vista and that Windows 7 is going to be a smashing commercial success?
Cheers,
Dean
Saturday, January 10, 2009
NJ PATH
I'm on the PATH train heading out to NJ..... mmmm warm heated seats never noticed it before - why dont we have these on the subway in NY?
Cheers,
Dean
Cheers,
Dean
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Superman's memory crystals
You know in the Superman movies when he flies back to his hidden 'Ice Cave' and there is this scene where he places these 'memory crystals' into a 'memory player' and retrevies huge amounts of stored video and data etc.
The great thing about memory data is that we have always known we are getting smaller and better and cheaper. It's only a matter of time before we have ridiculous amounts of memory storage on our handsets and laptop devices.
Considering that the price point for 1TB hard drives recently fell below $99 there is going to be a fundamental change in how we view data.
With the recent announcement of the SDXC standard we are very much one step closer to the 'Superman crystal' of memory storage.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/07/sdxc-memory-cards-promise-2tb-of-storage-300mbps-transfer/
It's insane how small these are when you consider that it is physically holding over 2000+ cd's worth of data.
Bring it on as far as I'm concerned - the more data the better.
Though concidering my recent purchase of a N7700 http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/thecus-n7700.html you could now have 7 of these SDXC cards in the space that a single hard drive takes up as a replacement...... (the N7700 has 7 hard drives and costs about $1400 including the 7 x 1.5tb hard drives).
Hmmm 7 of these as a laptop ssd drive.......
Cheers,
Dean
The great thing about memory data is that we have always known we are getting smaller and better and cheaper. It's only a matter of time before we have ridiculous amounts of memory storage on our handsets and laptop devices.
Considering that the price point for 1TB hard drives recently fell below $99 there is going to be a fundamental change in how we view data.
With the recent announcement of the SDXC standard we are very much one step closer to the 'Superman crystal' of memory storage.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/07/sdxc-memory-cards-promise-2tb-of-storage-300mbps-transfer/
It's insane how small these are when you consider that it is physically holding over 2000+ cd's worth of data.
Bring it on as far as I'm concerned - the more data the better.
Though concidering my recent purchase of a N7700 http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/thecus-n7700.html you could now have 7 of these SDXC cards in the space that a single hard drive takes up as a replacement...... (the N7700 has 7 hard drives and costs about $1400 including the 7 x 1.5tb hard drives).
Hmmm 7 of these as a laptop ssd drive.......
Cheers,
Dean
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Satyam - $1b in cash fictitious
Wow just caught this on CNBC Opening Bell - $1b or 94% of the companies cash is fictitious.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50616H20090107
Indian off-shoring is going to take a huge hit which is a shame as some companies are delivering great value.
I guess the value of 'trust' just went up.
Cheers,
Dean
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50616H20090107
Indian off-shoring is going to take a huge hit which is a shame as some companies are delivering great value.
I guess the value of 'trust' just went up.
Cheers,
Dean
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
I'm Baaack :)
Finally got the servers and internet connected in the new apartment.
Rock on :)
Cheers,
Dean
Rock on :)
Cheers,
Dean
Sunday, January 04, 2009
USA national debt
http://digg.com/politics/U_S_Debt_Set_to_Jump_2_trillion_This_Year_Due_To_Spending
And to think that during the Clinton years this almost got to zero and people started thinking about how the investment market would change without a national debt market.
What a difference a few years makes.
Cheers,
Dean
And to think that during the Clinton years this almost got to zero and people started thinking about how the investment market would change without a national debt market.
What a difference a few years makes.
Cheers,
Dean
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