Archive for June, 2006

Tom’s Networking web site just updated its comparison chart of small routers. They have some interesting information there.

Everybody knows that it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate yourself when you are fighting in a market like the Internet browser market (previously known for its fierce browser wars). At the moment, Internet Explorer (and its upcoming IE7 version) and Firefox are the most visible options.

Opera needs something more to differentiate itself. Not that Opera is an under-powered browser (on the contrary, it has a wealth of features that Firefox only includes with additional plug-ins), but market perception is what it is: tabbed browsing, mouse movements, fast load times and better HTML/CSS compatibility are just fast becoming commodities from this market.

Opera decided to use a very bold move for its newest version 9 (immediately available for download): They included a BitTorrent P2P client in the browser.

Some will say that this is bloating the product with a useless feature. Some P2P users will appreciate it, but wonder at why a browser should contain a BT client. Some P2P users will merely appreciate the move.

In any case, I recommend using the Opera 9 web browser. It’s a very good browser (I tested the beta version at length). Even if P2P and BitTorrent support is not your priority, I think it should be on your PC instead of Internet Explorer. You will appreciate the change.

It should be titled “SLR beginner’s FAQ” since this document is so good for so many people (not only Canon users). PhotoNotes.org presents a very nice list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Canon EOS beginners. It has to be recommended to every user new to single lens reflex camera systems.

What is nice is that despite the fact that so many users are looking at digital cameras (and that Canon has so nice digital SLR cameras), the questions and the answers really come from somebody knowledgeable in the whole photography field. They are so much better than other reference web sites that tend to go deep into the digital word of digital photography and forget about the photography word(the only really important word here).

Actually, the owners of these domain names did not think (or did not think twice before registering the domain name). Thanks to Happy Carpenter for bringing this to our delighted attention. But don’t click here if you are easily offended.

This is the great proposal of Evan Powell from ProjectorCentral.com. You don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a screen for your home cinema, but you still want to have a great screen for projection.

So, your new DLP projector needs you to read “Make a 100″ Screen for under $100“.

All old readers of this legendary American publication (which was the world’s most read computer magazine during years before falling down into a more common on line edition) will be happy to hear that CMP publications (the publisher) decided to accept Byte.com readership without subscription.

Champagne to celebrate the return to public life of Jerry Pournelle, Martin Heller and the others!

This is what Mail on Sunday tells us about the manufacturing of iPods from Steve Jobs’ company that is using advertisments asking us to Think different with the assistance of left-wing political idols as prominent as Gandhi or Chavez.

But the 200,000 Foxconn workers, one of the Chinese suppliers of Apple, would be paid only 50$ per month (which is low even for a Chinese wage).

The attack may not be supported by a lot of evidence for the time being, this may look like a very common practice in the assembly manufacturing sub-contracting industry, but Apple could (should?) feel forced to have the highest industry standard, knowing their political posture. In this context, Apple announced to MacWorld UK that they would be investigating the issue.

If you want to see photos of Paris by night, I have collected some of them on a specific page of my web site. They have been there or quite some time, but some people seems to have difficulty finding them again. So let’s help.

Eiffel tower - Tour Eiffel

This is the mere symbol of Paris: The Eiffel tower, more than two centuries old is standing there.

(Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the image).

The other photos.

This is the sheer number of web sites as counted in the beginning of June by Netcraft.

Do you remember the time when Altavista was proud to have a search base of 10 millions pages? The web is young and still growing fast.

It’s going to be a nice time for you all ready to buy a new computer (or a new CPU processor). It seems that Intel and AMD, out of ideas to compete directly, are preparing a nice little price war.

According to Bloomberg, Intel started it with an upcoming price cut that could reduce the cost of some components by 60% on July 23rd. It seems that this is a needed move to clear stock of ageing processors in preparation of the arrival of the newest technology: Conroe (Core 2 Duo - also known as dual core processor at a reasonable price). This would be a natural move to fight against the growing market share of AMD (in the recent months, AMD succeeded in jumping over the 20%-barrier, preparing to get one third of the world’s processor shipments).

But what could have been a major Intel stock clearance action seems to be prompting a slashing answer from AMD. This time, this is the Inquirer suggesting that AMD price cuts could go into the 50% area. And this should be happening on nearly all socket-939 and AM2 products.

Usually, the two processor giants take turns in cutting prices while new technology is moved out of the plants. Sometimes, a significant price slash is seen to improve local stocks or to clean up financial statements. But it seems that the thing is going to be a bit wider than usual and we could be facing several months of entrenched battle where both sides toss Press Releases at each other while trying to impress the public into buying more silicon. After our comments in a previous article on AMD, we think that this could lead to interesting rebates all over the place in the coming months. This Summer and Autumn may be very nice to the consumer in all of us.

If you are looking for a new computer, my advice is thus to wait a few days and to make sure that you buy only after the new price lists are applied into the distribution channels. Your CPU could be nearly half the original price. It’s worth it. The consumer is king of the CPU market now.

28th June, Google will initiate the operation of GBuy. There was a persistent rumour of the interest of Google to go foray into the PayPal market. It seems that GBuy will be a new payment system (exactly like PayPal from eBay), but it will also be connected to the global search engine. This could give some little advantages to the Internet users (some search results will be tagged as using GBuy - supposedly better or easier to use) or to the marketing people (linking search habits and consumer habits could lead to an as-yet-unseen marketing power).

Everybody expected eBay/PayPal to fight back (the best defence is attacking): Look for eBay AdContext, the new advertisment proposal by eBay (in direct competition with Google AdWords - used on this web site).

Things will soon become very interesting for the external observer.

When you started using your camera, you shot everything. Today, you are out of ideas, out of models. If you’re photo-bored, there’s still one trendy thing you can try.

You only have to… (more…)