Tech for Lunch!

For those of you who have made the switch to Windows Vista, the long awaited Service Pack 1 is now available for download from Microsoft. It seems that, although SP1 is meant to fix bugs and make Vista a more stable environment, it also causes a few problems as well. This is to be expected whenever a huge patch like this gets released because it addresses many security related problems and when you close such holes, you may end up stopping some programs from running. Here are some of the programs that are known to be broken by SP1:

• BitDefender AV
• Fujitsu Shock Sensor
• Jiangmin KV Antivirus 10
• Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008
• Trend Micro Internet Security
• Zone Alarm Security Suite
• Iron Speed Designer
• Xheo Licensing
• Free Allegiance
• NYT Reader
• Rising Personal Firewall
• Novell ZCM Agent

Most of the programs are Antivirus or firewalls and it’s no surprise that a Service Pack will cause them to require a new version to be installed. Some drivers from Symantec, Intel, Realtek and AC are also known to cause problems and need to be updated to get a fully functional system.

You can get the complete information on this update from the Windows Vista SP1 page on the Microsoft website. You can get a complete list all the updates and fixes that are included as well as some more information on new functionalities and known bugs as they start showing up.

SP1 is available as a manual download for now and will become available in Windows Updates(and automatically download/install for those with automatic updates enabled) sometime in mid-April. The update ranges from 65mb from Windows Updates to 434mb for the full download for administrative installs.

We had an article not very long ago that discussed the importance of introducing your kids to technology at a young age. Parents know very well the importance of their kids’ safety on the internet and products aimed at this task have existed for quite some time. The inherent problem with many of these products, is simply the way that they approach the subject. Usually, a program gets installed on the computer and filters content and destinations using a blacklist which is updated by the product maker. But the internet and its “kid-unfriendly” content grow much faster for these filters to keep up appropriately.

This is where the newly launched Kidzui.com comes in:

“Built just for kids, the revolutionary new KidZui browser makes surfing the Internet fun and engaging for kids from ages 3-12. KidZui has all the sites and games your kids love and tons more. With the KidZui browser, your have access to over 500,000 websites, pictures and videos.” The idea behind this software, and the reason why it presents itself as being different and much more efficient than the others, is that instead of blacklisting the bad websites, it blocks everything and whitelists the good content. Everything gets reviewed by parents and teachers who are on the staff and they are constantly reviewing more based on requests, browser searches and current subjects. Everything is also categorized by age and by topic so kids can just browse through what’s available easily. Parents have the option of allowing sites which are not normally allowed by Kidzui and can also blacklist some sites which are approved by Kidzui if they need to. This could be useful if your kid is using a specific site too much, for example.

Here is a look at the interface which is very nicely done and colorful for kids to enjoy and keep coming back to. They should feel right at home and the browser gives them the opportunity to socialize with other kids who are using kidzui as well. Everything gets ranked and voted on by the kids so the relevant and most popular content will end up on the start page, making them easier to find and get to. Kids can set their own avatars and get points for being online and doing different things so they can show their personality to the world in a safe environment. They can share content with other kids, but no chat is enabled to keep things clean.

The introductory price is $4.95/month, but even at the regular price of $9.95/month, it’s a pretty good deal if you don’t want to have to check your kid’s every move on the internet. This is the only system that I know of which properly enables a safe environment for kids online. Kidzui comes in a PC and a Mac version.  Keep in mind that a lot of the competition is free so you may want to take a look at some other products if a monthly price is not your thing.

Several restaurant owners in Europe, Japan and the United States have installed new gadgets within their establishment. It is a touch screen, through which customers can pass their order.

The idea behind this concept is to encourage impulse buying. If, for example, a person is looking at a beautiful picture of a chocolate cake, it is quite possible that he/she will be tempted and won’t have to wait for someone to show up to take the order. Does the principle work? It looks like it does… A sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv, where such a system has been installed, reported sales up by 11%. It appears that customers who reserve tables now require that a touch screen has been installed. Two small companies offer such a system for restaurants. They are the Israeli society Conceptic and Japanese society Aska T3.

But very large companies have already thought of this, including Microsoft.  Remember when the company launched the Microsoft Surface System. It is a kind of table glass, which is actually a huge touch screen, controlled by the movement of the fingers. These famous tables will be installed over the coming months in hotels, bars and casinos. They allow customers to play computer games, listen to music … and order meals.

Some technology followers believe, “we live in technology, and no one nowadays, fears a screen”.

There has been a bit of a gap between the connected PC browsing experience and the Mobile user experience in terms of web applications. Most applications which are available in a “mobile” version make use of standard web technologies, html, css, etc.. to be usable by mobile users on cell phones or other mobile devices. The gap that remains is for flash applications which are not very well supported on mobile browsers on Windows Mobile.

Microsoft will be licensing Adobe Flash Lite for the Windows Mobile platform. This means that we should be able to view flash applications on mobile browsers equipped with this technology. Adobe Flash Lite is capable of rendering almost the same things as the standard Flash player that’s on your computer, but there are some differences. One of them, is the inability to run Applications created in Flex, but I hope that’s just for the current version.

There are already 300 million flash-enabled mobile devices in the world, so this has nothing revolutionary about it, except the fact that from now on, Microsoft Windows Mobile users should be able to enjoy flash enabled websites as well. Web developers may have to create mobile-specific versions for users to get the most out of their experience because screen sizes and heavy animation are sometimes a problem for mobile browsers, but at least, they will be able to develop using the same technology.

Apparently, this is a very smart move by Microsoft because they have Silverlight on the way, but it’s nowhere near ready to be deployed on Windows Mobile yet.  So this way, they add support for flash and prevent possible antitrust lawsuits for pushing only on Silverlight technology on Windows Mobile.  Time will tell which of these two platforms will be the best choice for mobile users, but Adobe will have to make sure that Flash Lite keeps receiving updates and supports the newer versions of flash applications.

I’m always a fan of merging technologies because they are usually a great way to facilitate user tasks and make something available to a broader audience. This one is about a little website that everyone must have heard of: Youtube. Each month there is an average of 66 millions viewers who flock to youtube.com to watch 2.6 billion videos. That’s about 57% of all video viewers on the internet, which is estimated at about 116.7 million according to Nielsen Online.

The second technology involved in this news snippet is another well known broadcaster: TiVo Inc. “Founded in 1997, TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO), a pioneer in home entertainment, created a brand new category of products with the development of the first digital video recorder (DVR).” The company has an approximate 30-40% market share in the DVR market, so it’s a fairly large audience to be able to reach and the TiVo box removes the requirement for a computer to watch Youtube videos.

The basic idea behind this move is to be able to broadcast Youtube videos to a larger audience, by removing - or at least, extending - the boundaries of the internet. Youtube videos are already available on some cell phones and via Apple TV to users who are not sitting in front of a computer. By the end of this year, TiVo users should be able to watch these videos directly on their television. This should be available to users of the TiVo Series 3 boxes, which also includes an HD model.

Although I’m not a TiVo user, I think it’s a pretty cool idea and this technology merge will allow many new users to get busy wasting a LOT of time watching Youtube videos. It’s like an addiction - Once you start watching, you just can’t stop and Youtube keeps suggesting more interesting ones to watch!

We have been hearing about Hulu for quite a long time now and we had yet to see what is had to offer.  Well, the site is now officially opened to the public, as of March 12th 2008.  They had been in beta since October 2007.

Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection from more than 50 content providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more to deliver premium programming across all genres and formats, television shows, feature films, and clips. Watch full-length episodes of current primetime TV shows such as The Simpsons and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Nip/Tuck, and others. Hulu also offers full-length feature films like The Usual Suspects, Ice Age, Three Amigos!, and The Big Lebowski as well as clips from films such as Napoleon Dynamite, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Devil Wears Prada and many more. Hulu is free and ad-supported — available anytime in the U.S

Just like many other web sites that offer services of this sort, the content is only available to US audiences.  That’s an easy problem to get around if you want to set yourself up with a proxy server.  I have tested this succesfully.

Hulu looks very interesting and I hope their content becomes available to a wider audience, but in the mean time, what they have to offer may be the beginning of a new wave of media content availability on the internet.  We’ll need to wait a little bit to see how much engagement they will get from viewers and if the studios will continue providing updated content to keep viewers coming.

There is a rumor running wild right now that Facebook will launch their own integrated chat client into the very famous web site. They are currently testing the client to see how it all fits into the interface and get the kinks out of the way as much as possible. The bulk of the IM Client is built on the popular Jabber engine and this should make it easily compatible with a bunch of other applications and help it grow popular very quickly.

The interface to the Facebook IM will be integrated directly into the user’s Facebook page and allow them to chat with all their friends on the site. I personally like the idea because I do not have all my Facebook friends on my MSN (or any other client for that matter) and this allows you to chat with people you might not have been able to reach previously. I know for a fact that many of my contacts on facebook don’t even use any other IM Clients and this will make my life easier (and make me lazier) when I want to reach them. Hopefully, there will be a good presence awareness mecanism built into it. I tried a chat client for facebook previously which did not do such a great job at that.

This is some really cool news for those of us who like to keep close with their social networks, but it could be a bit of bad news for other, already existing chat clients which are built on the Facebook framework. I don’t think the blow will be that severe, because there are so many chat clients out there, that war has not been won by anyone yet. I’m sure some other client will come by that will have all the features we wish were in the Facebook one.. and then Facebook will put out a version which will integrate all those nifty features :-)

The Husqvarna Company has just put on the market what appears to be the ideal mower. It cuts the grass automatically. That’s right! It does not need human intervention to carry out its task. The name of the device is the Automower.

“The new Husqvarna Automower™ Solar Hybrid is powered by innovative and groundbreaking technology that combines solar power and electricity.”

“This will take Automower to the next level with higher performance and further reduced environmental impact” says Bengt Andersson, CEO Husqvarna Group. He continues, “90% of Automower is recyclable, it eliminates the need for fertilizers, it is almost silent, has no exhaust emissions at all and delivers perfect results every time without you having to lift a finger.”

This mower is a bit like a small wireless vacuum for your home. This is how it works: You must first set the limits of your lawn by installing a wire around the yard. The mower detects the wire in question and then changes direction. You can even create pockets in order, for example, to protect flowers or shrubs.

But what is most surprising of this device is its charging station which is installed outside. This is more or less than a “garage” where the mower will rest at the end of a shift. If it senses that its batteries are beginning to run low, it automatically ceases to cut the grass and will return to its docking station.

It is not available in Canada yet, but there are dealers all over the world. You can use their website to find a dealer near you and to get more information on this cool new gadget.

The first time I used a flash drive, I thought: “Why don’t they just make huge storage with the same technology?”. Turns out it was already in the works and it has been for quite some time, but we are about to see the first real-world applications of this technology. Solid-State Drives, means that there are no moving parts in them and uses Solid-State memory. This has some significant results:

• Improved durability
• Quieter
• Uses less power
• Three to Four times faster read/writes than conventional drives
• No spin-up time
• Consistent performance on the entire surface

There are already machines that use this technology as an option, like the recent Apple Air notebook. In the beginning these drives will cost as much as four times the price of regular drives and probably won’t be available everywhere, but as time will go by, this will probably become the technology of choice because of its many advantages.

Personally, I will most certainly be interested in the 4x speed increase, but we will have to wait and see if the initial specs we have been given all come true. Current drive sizes are as large as 160gb and climbing.

I recently came across an article that discussed the possibility for the major players in targeted ads services to be able to display an ad with your name on it. It’s actually a pretty interesting matter because it ties in very closely to our privacy. The actual subject was all the information that gets gathered on each one of us while we are online. At first you think that the ads you see are only contextual, meaning that they match the content you are looking at on a certain page. But it turns out that the big players out there are capable, and have becoming increasingly good at spotting the patterns in your online behavior, personal tastes and interests. They can track all these things because they put the systems in place. They give you opportunities, which you can’t resist, to give them all the information they need to track you at all times.

Rest assured, if you are banking or doing other personal matters, they do not “see” all that in detail, but they do know you are somewhere on a financial service and probably also can match some kind of personal data to it to be closer to identifying you. Naturally, there are privacy policies and rules, usually even put in place by these companies, to prevent them from actually using that information directly. AOL and Yahoo!, for example, wouldn’t really want to do that just yet, but they say they have the technology to do it or something very close. Google say that they might be able to do it, but since their model is based on what I described above, (targeted ads based on page content) they aren’t aiming at that just yet. However, they do not have a policy against it.

Microsoft say that they have all the information to be able to do it, but they use a special algorithm to determine what ads get served based on demographics, content, etc.. and once that algorithm has gone through, they have no way of tracking your personal information back to you. The caveat here is that Microsoft does not consider your nickname or your first name as “personal information” ;-)

There have been companies who have already asked for this kind of advertising and that is why I don’t think I’ll be too surprised on the day I see my name or nickname appear on the ads I see on every page I visit. The debate on privacy is always a sticky one, and I’m sure we’re going to here about this some more in the future.