Call for Whipped Cream
February 24, 2005
Andy has posted some good pictures from this week’s Call for Help taping in his blog.
Loading ...Polaroid and PMA
February 24, 2005
Here’s another video from PMA and DigitalCameraInfo.com. In this one I play with one of five remaining 20×24 Polaroid cameras. It was amazing!
PMA Second Day
February 22, 2005
Day two of my PMA coverage is up on DigitalCameraInfo.com.
In this one I cover the new 8-megapixel Canon Digital Rebel, the CoolPix 7900, and new cameras from Kodak and Pentax.
Live from Orlando, It’s Saturday Night
February 20, 2005
I’m in Orlando covering the big PMA digital photography show for digitalcamerainfo.com. I’ll be doing three video reports from the show. The first one is up now.
Please be gentle - We’re still learning about web video! (Requires Flash player.)
Hurricane Leo Hits Orlando
February 19, 2005
Friday Fishbowl
February 18, 2005
I‘m hopping a plane to Orlando this morning for the PMA conference. I’ll be covering digital photography announcements there for DigitalCameraInfo.com. Watch for my video pieces. Meanwhile, here are today’s top tech stories.
- Microsoft is planning to give away its new anti-spyware program, cleverly named Microsoft AntiSpyware. The beta is free right now, and according to Bill Gates at this week’s RSA security conference in San Francisco, it’s going to stay that way. Unfortunately, it only works for XP and Windows 2000. Gates also announced a new anti-virus product by year end and an update to Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2. IE7 will go beta this summer with improved phishing protection.
- Meanwhile, Microsoft is recalling 14.1 million Xbox power cords, saying that there’s a fire risk. The recall applies to Xboxes manufactured before Oct. 23, 2003. I’ll live dangerously.
- Former US cybersecurity and counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, also at RSA, when asked his opinion of the new Microsoft security products replied, “Given their record in the security area, I don’t know why anybody would buy from them.”
- Panelists speaking at RSA said that cryptography is good at protecting the content of messages, but can’t be counted on to protect content for very long. , Carter Laren, security architect at Cryptographic Research noted,
“Anyone designing content protection should design for failure and if it fails update it.” - The next two stories underscore Laren’s point. The SHA-1 hash algorithm, used for digital signatures (I use it to sign all my eamil via PGP), has apparently been cracked.
- According to the LA Times, Apple and Napster are taking potshots at their respective digital rights management technologies. Steve Jobs sent recording company executives an email Tuesday morning pointing out that Napster’s new all-you-can-eat music service, Napster-To-Go had been cracked. Napster CEO Chris Gorog replied with an email Tuesday afternoon that linked to a site offering a crack for the iTunes Music Store’s DRM. Gorog wins this round. All protected music is susceptible to the Napster-To-Go crack - it’s essentially recording the analog output as you listen to the song. iTunes FairPlay has been cracked fair and square by DVD Jon and software to strip out the copy protection is widely available.
- The New York Times is buying About.com for $410 million - that’s 23 time earnings.
- The creators of the TCP/IP protocol that powers the Internet won the computer industry’s Nobel Prize. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn were given the ACM Turing Award and a $100,000 prize.
- The European Parliament has rejected software patents and called on national parliaments to debate the subject for another year to come up with a better proposal. The EC now decides whether to accept Parliament’s recommendation.
Listen in Friday at 7:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles. Tune in Saturday at 7:40a Eastern for my weekly visit with John Donabie on 1010 CFRB Toronto. And, of course, listen to my show live from Orlando this Saturday and Sunday, 11a to 2p Pacific on KFI, Los Angeles.
Murray Wood Interview
February 17, 2005
I’m going to be on the Murray Wood show on Newstalk Radio 980 CJME in Saskatoon… right now!
UPDATE: The podcast is now up (album art included). Or listen in the player to my left.
Podcast Error
February 17, 2005
Something munged the KFI podcast and showed hour two of 2/13 as missing. It’s not. I apologize for the confusion. I’ve removed Feedburner from the loop. There’s no need to update your podcast client - the address remains http://leoville.tv/podcasts/kfi.
Update: it’s not Feedburner’s fault - apologies. It seems to have something to do with Coral - the P2P caching servers I’m using. A good podcast client should keep trying until it gets the file. Or download it directly from http://leoville-downloads.com/airchecks/20050213-2.mp3. As always, you’ll find direct links to my radio show audio at http://leoville.tv/radio/pmwiki.php/Main/AudioArchives - sorry about all this. Just remember podcasting is a new medium and there are still some kinks to be worked out.
After further investigation, it appears that Coral received a 404 (file missing error) from my server when it first requested the file. The 404 was cached and propagated to all the other Coral servers. Michael Freedman, Mr. Coral, is going to fix it so servers only cache 404s for five minutes from now on. We’re helping to make Coral better! Now to figure out why my server 404ed Coral in the first place!
Tuesday’s Takedown
February 15, 2005
Time to take a look at the world of tech.
Socrates was sentenced to death in 399. Galileo Galilei was born on this day in 1564. Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1812. Susan B. Anthony in 1820.
- Michael Malone, in a commentary last week for ABC News, declared that it’s the beginning of the end for Microsoft. And he makes a lot of sense. It’s stuff I’ve been saying and thinking for some time now.
- While you’re at it, check out Hakon Lie’s tirade against Microsoft. The CTO for the Opera browser says even Microsoft’s own interoperability statement discriminates against Opera.
- The RSA Conference opens today in San Francisco. To once again underscore Microsoft’s commitment to security, Bill Gates will keynote. The biggest computer security conference of the year brings 11,000 security experts and 275 companies to Moscone Center. Last year, Gates (incorrectly) predicted the death of spam. This year he’s expected to announce new anti-virus and anti-spyware products from Microsoft.
- Yesterday the last insider lockups at Google expired, meaning as many as 176.8 million shares worth around $3.5 billion could come into play creating hundreds of new millionaires at the company. The stock, which opened at $85, has been as high as $211 closed at $192.99 Monday, up nearly 3%.
- It’s a landmark for music on the Internet. Jazz composer Maria Schneider took home a Grammy on Sunday for her album “Concert in the Garden,” without selling a single copy in a record store. Her music was produced with financial help from fans and sold exclusively online. She spent $87,000 making the album and has already made her money back.
- Last month everyone was talking about SBC buying AT&T, now Verizon has agreed to buy MCI for $6.7 billion, reducing the number of big phone companies to four: Verizon, SBC, BellSouth Corp. and Sprint Nextel.
- Internet phone provider Vonage said it’s asked the FCC to investigate allegations that a “major” broadband operator is deliberately blocking Internet phone calls - they won’t say who it is, though. I figure it’s either a phone company that doesn’t want the competition, or a cable company that’s offering its own VoIP services. That doesn’t narrow it down much, does it?
- Apple has announced a 2-for-1 stock split. Its shares have almost quadrupled over the past year due to the success of the iPod. Shares climbed further yesterday after a very positive report from a UBS analyst on prospects for the Mac mini and iPod shuffle. The analyst, Benjamin Reitzes, also predicted new, higher capacity, iPods later this year.
- That’s what plucky little Mac rumor site, Think Secret, has been predicting. Undeterred by an ongoing lawsuit from Apple, the site says the fifth generation iPods will have 80GB drives and silver enclosures to match the Mac mini and Powerbooks. There will also be upgraded 5GB iPod Minis, probably just in time for summer vacation.
- The movie companies announced a new form of copy protection for DVDs. The existing technology, CSS, was cracked in 1999. The new Macrovision RipGuard will prevent copying by most existing DVD ripping tools - so far it hasn’t been employed on any DVDs.
- But there is some good news for downloaders who have been quaking in their Aerons ever since the MPAA was awarded LokiTorrent’s server logs by a judge last week. A LokiTorrent partner says that the logs are useless - and no torrent site does more than register the download of a .torrent file, not the movie itself. Something that is, as yet, still legal.
- Mainstream media is taking on the bloggers. Conservative blogs were instrumental in taking down Dan Rather over the memogate scandal earlier this year and CNN News Executive, Eason Jordan, is the latest casualty. Jordan resigned in the face of a firestorm created by bloggers who jumped on off-the-record and still unpublished remarks by Jordan at the World Economic Forum. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Columbia Journalism Review have decried this trend, calling the bloggers “salivating morons” and a “lynch mob.”
Cherry Blossoms
February 14, 2005
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Radio Leo (press play)- TWiT 142: I Like Big Pockets
- Daily Giz Wiz 566: Magellan's Eagle Creek Travel Alarm
- Munchcast 30: Mom's Home Cookin'
- Jumping Monkeys 45: Dr. Ruthann Russo
- Windows Weekly 58: Mission Accomplished
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 453
- Daily Giz Wiz 565: Snappy Video Snapshot
- Security Now 143: YubiKey - Sponsored by Astaro Corp.
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 452
- Daily Giz Wiz 564: The Socket Pocket
Flickr Photos
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Swag
