tech
World's Smallest Combination Lock
From the Your Tax Dollars At Work Department: Sandia Labs had developed the world's smallest combination lock, and hopes to have a commercial partner lined up for distribution within two years, after they have completed refinement and reliability testing. Each of the six gears is only 300 microns across, about as big as a period in standard newspaper text. The lock will be marketed at the computer industry. (via Gibson via Sterling)
n3rd Cell Station
Jon Gales has spun off from his regular blog a new weblog devoted to mobile communication technology. Seeing as how I'm four months away from the end of my current mobile phone contract, this new site of his is of great interest to me...
On passwords
Thanks to JG & Co. at MacMerc for the link to a CreativePro story on safe password creation and usage. Good stuff here. Read and implement. (This means you, sweetheart.)
Newton still going strong
Yesterday marked the 5th anniversary of Apple's discontinuing production of the Newton, the forerunner of today's PDAs. Speaking of today's PDAs, some are still trying to catch up, in terms of features and speed, to what was offered 5 years ago in the Newton MessagePad 2100. To this day, the Newton's biggest shortcoming is still its size. Michael notes how Newton users are continuing to extend the life of the original personal digital assistant. I can't wait to reacquaint myself with Newton when a 2100 arrives in a couple of weeks, courtesy of a pal in NYC.
P800
More gear lust, this time courtesy of Steven and The Register. With our current mobile contract up in June, I'll be shopping around for the best plan, and a new phone. I've had my sights set on SonyEricsson's T68i, and may still pick that up, depending on P800 pricing in 4 months. Both the T68i and the P800 would allow me to dump my Palm and have just one device. Currently, my mobile is a low-end StarTac.
Stolen Computer Registry
Lose or have stolen your laptop--or desktop, for that matter? You can register the serial number with the Stolen Computer Registry. That great system you just picked up on eBay for next to nothing? Check it against the registry; if something seems too good to be true...
When you're really paranoid
The DVD/CD Shredder from Alera Technologies destroys the data layer on DVD and CD discs, making the data unrecoverable. Pretty much any size DVD or CD is handled, including 120mm, 80mm, and even Business Card size. It'll set you back $39.99. I've been saving quite a few CDs to send off to be recycled, and for the CDs that actually contain old personal data, this might not be a bad idea. (via Macintouch)
CRT-free household
As of this morning, our household is free of computer CRT monitors. Last night, we purchased a NEC 17" LCD for my wife's PC. With just a slightly smaller viewable area than the 19" CRT she was using, she now has more desk space, along with the LCD's crisper, easier-on-the-eyes view, and low power consumption. The NEC joins my Apple 15" LCD as the household desktop monitors. All other systems in the house--PowerBook G4/500, iBook/300, and IBM ThinkPad--are laptops.
Windows messages rewritten
Courtesy of Neil Gaiman, and like Neil, it made me smile: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Windows Messages, as if Rewritten by Scott, This Guy Who Bullied Me in the Second Grade.
To be honest, it made me, and a couple of my coworkers, out-and-out laugh.
iPod turns one
The iPod is one year-old today. On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs held a special press event to announce that Apple had produced the best digital music player in the world. My own iPod will turn one next month (thanks again, sweetie!). [via MacMinute]
No more AOL CDs campaign
Jim McKenna and John Lieberman have begun a campaign to send back 1 million CDs to snail mail spammer AOL. Just send Jim and John any AOL CDs you have received (yes, at your own expense), and when they collect 1 million of them, they plan to drive to AOL headquarters and dump the load at the front door.
AOL is not the only ISP that engages in this practice — AT&T and Earthlink are guilty, as well as others — but AOL is by far the worst abuser. Most people who receive the AOL CDs in the mail, or in a magazine, just toss them. The campaign is to simply ask AOL to stop sending out unsolicited CDs and contributing to more waste in landfills. Address info is at the aforementioned site.
More on the fake Microsoft switcher
John Gruber has uncovered the lies Microsoft is putting forth to cover its previous lie of a Mac user switching to Windows XP.
What’s so hysterical is not that the fake switcher was outed as a publicist working for a Microsoft-hired PR firm, but that she was exposed through examination of a Word document, posted on the original Microsoft switcher page. Yes, “Microsoft’s own crappy file format” is responsible for their being caught in a lie to cover the previous lie. As John says, “Everyone loves a story about people fishing personal data out of Microsoft’s own Word files.” And yet another reason to not use Word for your own, or your company’s, word processing usage. There are alternatives, people. . .
Microsoft switcher lies
Apple comes out with a kick-butt ad campaign called Switch, an ad campaign that utilizes real people who have switched from Windows-running PCs to Macintosh. Microsoft sees said ad campaign, notices that Apple keeps bringing out more and more people to appear in its tv ads. So what does Microsoft do?
It comes out with its own switcher story. Hmm, nothing at that link, eh? That’s because since it was exposed as a load of hooey, Microsoft took the page down. Fortunately, for us, Google has it cached, and just in case, here’s a screenshot; and the HTML source. See the nice lady who claims to be a writer that switched from Mac to Windows XP? She’s a model from a stock art collection. Notice on the Microsoft switch page, there is no name for this fictitious writer, either. Note on Apple’s Switch page that there’s a name for every face, and they are all real people. Where are Microsoft’s real people?
I’m not saying that people have not switched from the Mac to Windows; I’m just saying that apparently none of them want to admit it.
PGP 8.0 Public Beta
Earlier this year, the email encryption system known as Pretty Good Privacy was rescued from the nincompoops at Network Associates, and will soon be available from the PGP corporation.
The best news is that we will finally have an OS X-native version. You can try it out now through PGP’s public beta program. Highlights include: Full support for Mac OS X 10.2; full PGP Disk interoperability with PGP Disks created by all prior PGP Disk products for Mac OS, as well as with PGP Disks created with PGP Disk for Windows 7.0 and later; AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) support in PGP Disk; significantly expanded Unicode support; built-in support for Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage X; PGP encryption and digital signature features are accessible as a Mac OS X service from Cocoa applications and Carbon applications that support services; PGP features are also accessible from the PGP’s Dock menu, providing a second ubiquitous method for accessing PGP.
This may actually get me back into the crypto game. You may very well have to finger me for my public key soon!
FireWire film scanner
SmartDisk has announced two new film scanners, one of which, the SmartScan 3600, is FireWire based. Now I have something else to add to my wish list as I get more into digital photography.