Mozilla is looking hard at questions regarding a 64-bit Windows build of Firefox. This is progress. This is good.
A year of shopping locally
A man at the library handed my wife a card this morning. He and his wife are shopping locally for a year in St. Louis, and writing about it.
Great idea!
Don’t take free software from a stranger
And there’s this. Some people are taking popular free, open-source software, planting malware in it, and distributing it to unsuspecting people.
Read more
Maybe this is the difference between US and UK journalists
I’ve always wondered about the difference between US and UK journalists. I’ve always noticed a difference, but never quite figured out what it was or why. This CNN editorial is good insight.
There’s a certain irreverence and snarkiness in the UK press that you don’t see often in the States. The linked is an opinion piece and what she’s saying is theory rather than provable fact, but my experience matches hers. Read more
Help someone plug a computer into a TV, become a criminal
Digital video is confusing. You get some clear advantages, since signal degradation becomes a thing of the past, but if you’re not someone who works in video for a living, it’s difficult to keep it all straight. And standards are a problem. You can’t just assume that two devices will work together because they’re both “digital.”
One of the problems is physical incompatibility. Some devices have Displayport ports. Some of them have HDMI ports. The solution is easy: get a cable with an HDMI connector on one end and a Displayport connector on the other. Problem solved.
And now the guy who sold it to you is a criminal. (You aren’t necessarily. Possession isn’t illegal, just sale or manufacture. So don’t sell it at your garage sale in 2019.)
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Microsoft sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses; what does it mean?
Steve Ballmer announced today that Microsoft has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses, but anywhere from half to two-thirds of PCs are still running Windows XP and need to get with the program.
He also continues to insist Windows 8 will ship in 2012, which really makes me wonder why those XP users need to switch now. December 2012 is 17 short months away, and XP support runs until 2014. I see little need to rush out now and buy Windows 7, use it for 18-24 months, and then turn around and buy Windows 8. If XP is fulfilling users’ needs, what’s the hurry? Unless Windows 8 is going to be late, as bad as Vista, or both. But none of that can happen, right? (Note: It’s not 2014 anymore, so if you haven’t upgraded from XP, you need to.)
I’m sure the Windows 8 Police will be along to haul me away shortly for insinuating such things. But until that happens, that 400 million figure lets us do some other interesting extrapolation. Read more
Google jumps into the e-reader game
On July 17, Google and Target are introducing the Iriver Story HD, a $139 e-reader. And the more I think about it, the more I think Google is really serious about being a player in this space. The analysts who are dismissing it as a me-too, too-late product miss one key thing.
Integrating WordPress 3.2 with Twitter
Rich P. tells me all the cool kids use Twitter now. And that some people, instead of using RSS feeds, want to get blog updates from a Twitter feed.
I’m about four years late to that party, but I’m not ready to become a total curmudgeon yet. So I signed up for a Twitter account–I’m siliconundergro, or is that #siliconundergro? Or @siliconundergro?–and spent a little while figuring out how to get WordPress to talk to it.
How to use WordPress’ drafts feature to your advantage
In 1994, I was a rookie columnist for my college newspaper. My predecessor, Judd Slivka, had stepped aside to become sports editor. Judd asked me one day how my new gig was going, and I observed that ideas were coming to me faster than I could write them. “Write them down,” he urged me. “You’ll need them later.” And he was right. It took about a month for me to learn that ideas come in waves and droughts, and survival as a weekly columnist depends on stretching those waves far enough to cover the droughts.
And bloggers face exactly the same challenge. Otherwise, they run out of ideas and become people who post something only occasionally, and, eventually, not at all.
Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario C552US
The Presario C552US shipped from the factory with a 1.6 GHz Celeron M single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Basic.
It’s the most miserable computing experience I’ve seen in a very long time, if ever. I don’t know how they ever sold a single one of these machines, performing like that.
Fortunately, there’s room to improve it.