June 2008 Archives

The FTC gave the nod for Carl Icahn to purchase another 1.5 billion in shares of Yahoo. This would give him 59 million shares and 4.3 percent stake in the company. On July 3rd he will be ring leading the proxy battle in hopes for Microsoft to come back to the table with a buyout. In the meantime Yahoo stocks continue to drop, which makes it more important for Icahn to make this a quick battle. So why is the sale of Yahoo so important to Icahn?

The first thought is “Money”, which a lot of people are applying. I, however think it’s more than that. After all: Here is a man who doesn’t even use a personal computer. He has a track record of buying stock, then finding a way to dump it for a considerable profit.

He owns more than any of us could imagine. He owns the Stratosphere - one the tallest casinos in Las Vegas. Forbes has netted him as the 24th richest man at 8.5 billion dollars. Then again, with Bill Gates topping the list at 51 billion and Steve Ballmer at 14, a sale like that can definitely close the gap. After all, Icahn bought shares at twenty five dollars per, so thirty-three dollars would be a sizable return. That is, unless Yahoo falls under that price.

Maybe it’s all about the buying and selling? Just look at his dealings with BEA Systems and Blockbuster. In the past, it was TWA, Nabisco, Texico, Time Warner and a whole lot more.

Whatever the reason, we will have a big news day on July 3rd (the next shareholder meeting). Even if Icahn wins the proxy battle, he then has to re-convince Microsoft to come back to the table. If they do, he then has to convince Microsoft that Yahoo is worth more than $25 dollars a share, especially if Yahoo continues to drop in price. Seems like Icahn is in for a long arduous battle, but that also seems to be what Carl Icahn does best.

Geek News Central is proud to introduce AIM Call Out as a new sponsor here at the Geek News Central website and the Geek News Central Podcast.

I have been using this service now for a couple of weeks getting up to speed on it and here are the highlights of what I have found so far.

First What is it: AIM Call Out is a PC to Phone-to-Phone Service that offers some pretty awesome rates to over 200 countries. They also just reduced the calling rates in the past couple of days and the rates are even better.

How does it Work? Well it’s pay as you go calling, so you simply add a credit card to your account. No connection fees, you only pay the per minute rate for the place you’re calling There are three ways to make calls.

1. Call using AIM - enter your friend's phone number, grab your headset and get talking
2. Call with your own phone - the Web Connect feature is right on your AIM Call Out dashboard.  Enter your number, your friend's number, hit "call" and both phones will ring connecting the call.
3. Call with your SIP phone - now use your  SIP softphone, IP phone, Telephone Adapter or VoIP WiFi phone to make AIM Call Out calls

I was not a 100% up to speed on how the SIP Phone feature worked so I asked the folks at AIM for some info on setting up a SIP Device with AIM call out, and they also provided me a list of devices they have detailed set up instructions for.

One feature that I can see that is needed is AIM Call In and they tell me that is a feature that is coming soon!

Notice: AIM Call in is a Paid Sponsor of Geek News Central and the Geek News Central Podcast. We encourage you to try out their product.

We have a very interesting survey for you today the computer giveaway is just a few days away. This survey is unique in that I did not come up with any of the questions and some of them are pretty good.

Please Answer it least 25 of the questions to the best of your ability, listeners of my show, and those that are readers of this website will have a easier time.

The giveaway is on Wed so we will likely have a bonus round tomorrow. Thanks for participating.

Survey #6

Nvidia announced a new processor that can do it all - Play games, hi-def video or surf the web. The best part is it will still promote a long battery life. And the chip is no bigger than a quarter.

The Nvidia Tegra 600 and 650 processors are for portable devices that play a host of Multimedia options while maintaining a small size. Using the APX2500 application processor (which is used in smartphones), this chip will be be soon in UMPC, laptops and what is called an MID.

What is an MID you ask? It's short for a Mobile Internet Device. UMPC's are technically a MID, but they can fall out of the specification. MID are systems with screens between 4-12 inches and might have a touch-screen or keyboard, a connection (like USB) or wireless internet connection.

Intel coined the acronym in the spring of 2007 when they announced a prototype at the Intel Developer Forum. The MID contains the Menlow platform, which includes the Intel Atom processor (aka Silverthorne). The processor is 45nm running up to 1.86 GHz. The MID can work in a Linux and Windows environment.

The Tegra 600 runs at 700 mHz and the 650 runs at 800mHz. All three can encode at 720p @ 30 fps, but the 650 can decode at 1080p @ 24 fps. Memory speed is 166 and 200MHz and uses LP DDR memory. Most important, when idle, the chip uses less than 100mW and maxes at 2 watts when playing high end video. The chip helps support a longer battery life.

This will be a great item for any smartphone or UMPC. I am not sure how much I want to see 1080p video on a 4 inch screen, but I will have the opportunity to. Tablets, smartphones, UMPC's and embedded PC's will never be the same....

I wanted to do a live Geek News Central Tonight. Should be a lot of fun I will be bringing the camera alive at 7:45 Eastern 4:45 Pacific.

Shows over folks you can catch the recording on the Podcast which will be released within the hour.

Or Visit MyLifeOnline.TV

New Sponsor added to the show, hope you will try AIM Call Out link is in the sponsor section of the show notes. I did a live show tonight via Ustream.TV as well as I am on the East Coast. HP HDX Giveaway happens Wed June 4th

New Show Sponsor
AIM Call Out (Sign up for an Account Today and Give it a Try!)

Link to Complete Show Notes of the Podcast with all rich media Links

Please Support All Show Sponsors:
[Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days at GoToMeeting.com/techpodcasts. No credit card needed.]
[Save 10% off on any order at GoDaddy.com!] Use Code Todd
Special Promotion code 20% off on 1 Year Shared Hosting Plans use Godaddy Code Todd20

Twitter Me http://www.twitter.com/geeknews
My Facebook Profile
FriendFeed GNC Room!! (NEW)
Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

31 Days of the HDX Dragon Notebook Giveaway
27 May - 03 Jun www.hardwaregeeks.com
28 May - 04 Jun www.geeknewscentral.com
29 May - 05 Jun www.geekzone.co.nz
30 May - 06 Jun www.thetabletpc.net
31 May - 07 Jun www.gearlive.com
01 Jun - 08 Jun www.gottabemobile.com

HP HDX Giveaway Surveys Complete to Win!!
Click Here to take Day 1 survey
Click Here to take Day 2 survey
Click Here to take Day 3 survey
Click Here to take Day 4 survey
Click Here to take Day 5 survey
Click Here to take Day 6 survey

Where I live in Hawaii I have only 1 choice in broadband. That company is Time Warner. Today they started their trial in Beamount Texas where they are capping customers usage at 5gb and 40gb depending on the broadband plan you are on.

If you bust the 40gb level its gonna cost you a $1.00 a gig where wholesale price of bandwidth in the quantities they buy is about .07 to .08 cents a gig.

So lets do the math here. Lets say you use 40 gigs a month in traffic, that bandwidth cost Time Warner Cable about $2.80 my current monthly bandwidth bill with the Turbo service is $54.95.

Seems to me like their margins are pretty fat! In order for them to loose money on my account I would have to move 785 gigs a month. Comcast is currently considering a more reasonable cap of 250 gigs per month.

The way I figure it based on my usage last month which included a AppleTV and Vudu Box plus Amazon Unbox. 2 kids and 2 adults on the net was about a 100 gigs. Under the new plan my bill would rise to about $104.95 per month for broadband alone the actual cost to deliver that bandwidth is about $7.00

The executives at Time Warner are being criminal in their pricing plans. For people like me that have to deal with their Monopoly it pisses me off, and I will change providers as soon as their is a viable provider available to me.

Time Warner is a bunch of crooks!

Over the past 6 months I have spent a great deal of time in and around airports and sitting in their departure lounges. While I have been fortunate to have a Red Carpet membership that I pay for, and membership privileges in other Airline lounges through my AMEX Business Platinum what I have found in small airports that don’t have such clubs is pretty interesting.

I guess we all measure our pain level by the time it takes to get checked in and through security and while Portland has a reputation for being very slow at getting through security my experience mid-day today was fine.

As a traveler that relies on electronics to keep the business moving, one always works towards being able to plug the laptop in, versus going on battery. As I looked for a power plug today I spied a couple and thought eureka a open power plug.

To my amazement though the airport authority had inserted a plug like device into the outlet to prevent people like me from plugging in. Having been spoiled in airports like Ohare, Albuquerque and a host of other airports which have dedicated charging, and work areas for business travelers I found this simple act to be almost like the city of Portland Maine holding up their hand and saying go away business traveler.

You would think that cities across the country would get their airport departures areas hooked up so that business people would enjoy traveling through their fair cities. While portland has quaint rocking chairs from L.L. Bean for people to sit in they definitely have issues with people plugging in their laptops. The question Portland should ask is why? 

Todd brought up an interesting point in a recent podcast. What gas cost will it take for people to make real changes in their driving habits and fossil fuel usage? Obviously $4 a gallon gas in the U.S. is not it. Todd posited that $14 or $15 a gallon gas would do it.

However, some recent studies are showing that people are paying attention, and they are making changes. Beginning in March, travel by car began to decline, and in my local metropolitan area, mass transit ridership has gone up by about 6%. That is a small figure, in the big scheme of things, but it is a start.

I live in a semi-rural suburban area of the St. Louis metropolitan area. My part of the country is filled with giant pickup trucks and SUV's. At the QuikTrip every morning when I stop for my daily Diet Coke, I find myself parked amongst pickup trucks whose hoods are taller than the roof of my tiny Toyota wagon. I know they are getting 12 or fewer miles to the gallon. My mileage this morning was about 35 mph when I filled up, and that was mostly urban driving this time.

I look at those big trucks and SUV's and wonder why they are still driving them. How can they afford them? How many home equity loans are they taking out to put $100 worth of fuel in their tanks, fuel that even a few months ago was $1 less per gallon? I know my husband and I are struggling, even with smaller, more efficient vehicles, to come up with that extra money for gas every week.

We've even done something we never thought we'd do. We are carpooling several days a week. We work in the same suburb 11 miles from home, just slightly different hours. On days we drive together, we leave a bit later than I usually do, and stay later at my J.O.B. to accommodate his getting off later. He gets to work earlier than he wants. It is a slight inconvenience, but it is saving us $20 or more a week just to commute together three days. $20 doesn't sound like much, but when you have a family of five, that $20 pays for a whole lot of milk. Or someone's prescription. Or gives us back some of our disposable income that we are losing to higher gas prices.

Ideally, we all want to see alternatives to fossil fuels created. There is no doubt that at some point, we will be out of oil. If we aren't making plans now to use something else, we're all going to be walking to work. But in the meantime, we have to learn to conserve, to use less.

What price per gallon will it take for you to make changes to your driving habits?

Comcast announced they will also be running a "Test Market" to try and curb the bandwidth hogs from eating up traffic, so everyone can have an enjoyable internet. Chambersburg, PA and Warrenton VA will be the first test areas, with Colorado Springs to follow later this summer. Each test will last only 1 month.

The idea will be slightly different than Time Warners' bandwidth cap. Anyone who uses a large amount of bandwidth for long periods of time will be throttled down during peak hours. They will not have a limit, but they will be limited.

Comcast plans to implement this to it's 14.1 million users by the end of the year. The Company says they will keep their customers up to date on all they are doing. They will be sending Emails and updates on the website when areas get affected.

Although this is a better solution than a cap, it's still counter-productive to those who legitimately use bandwidth. If the infrastructure is being taxed, then it may be time to upgrade infrastructure.

It might be a better idea for Comcast to actively go after file sharing programs and the methods they use to pass data. When you download a file, you take pieces from "Seeds". Each seed is a different file-share point, usually another computer that downloaded the item. Therefore, when you download a file, you then become another Seed, unless you remove the file or stop the program. Users are able to set the program to limit upload/downloads, but when you install a file sharing program like utorrent, the initial setting is open-throttle.

Currently, Comcast is under fire by the Federal Communications Commission for possibly blocking or delaying certain forms of file-sharing traffic. By changing the terms of internet usage, the company could continue to delay file-sharing without repercussion.

Hello, Geek News Central Ohana! I wanted to introduce myself before posting any articles up. My name is James Connors. I’m a student at the Boston University School of Management where I study Business Administration with dual concentrations in Finance and Management Information Systems. But you want to know who I am.

I am a technologist at heart. I am an early adopter. I am a teacher and a student. I am a podcaster, blogger, and geek. When I’m not saving Boston University’s networks, I enjoy exploring Boston, hiking in the woods, and volunteering for the US Air Force Auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol, as a Search and Rescue officer.

My goal for contributing to the GNC community is to bring a younger point of view on some of the newest technologies and trends as they come available. I know there are other younger listeners here because GNC was what made me decide to start College Tech Central. College Tech Central is a podcast where I try to make technology more accessible and easy to use for college students and young professionals.

I look forward to interacting with all of you but if you want to see more of my writing, you can find my personal blog, my travel blog (I’m abroad for 6 months at the moment), and of course, the CTC website. Happy Blogging!

I want to thank everyone for participating in the contest for the HP HDX Dragon we received over 25,000 responses to the surveys. The announcement of the winner today does not stop the giveaway. You will want to tune into the Podcast to win all summer long.

The winner of the Geek News Central HP HDX Dragon Notebook and a boatload of software a estimated value of $5000.00 goes to Wagner Cervera of Chicago Illinois

Congratulations to Wagner!!

Big thanks to the HP and the folks at Buzzcorps for sponsoring this great contest!

Todd talked a bit in #379 about Toshiba potentially releasing a new high density DVD replacement option very soon after the much publicised dropping of HD-DVD. Most of the commentary has been negative about the move. I reserve my opinion though. Toshiba management may very well be dumber than a box of hammers, there are some compelling reasons why this could be a well thought out move though.

I have said before that Blu-Ray has not won anything, HD-DVD just lost. Right now plain old DVD is winning by an extremely large margin and Blu-Ray is not going to close the gap in the short term. I also cannot stress enough that the battle will not be won in the home theater, it will be won in the PC. If you want high def now feel free to buy a Blu-Ray player but I would not recommend buying too many movies as there is a decent chance you will be storing them with your laser discs (Look at the Blockbuster ad on this page for an alternative to buying.) So why might Toshiba be making a smart move?

- Sony owns Blu-Ray. This is not an open standard, any manufacturer must pay Sony and they so not have a history of playing well with others. This does not bode well for competitive pricing in the future.

- HD-DVD was tuned for movies rather than data storage. Once it became obvious it could not win in the movie space it became too expensive to keep going. Some of the protection technology like AACS have license fees that would need to be maintained and the production costs for that technology probably had bad economics.

- Having better backwards compatibility with DVD in the new standard will help to drive PC adoption of that technology.

- For name brand manufacturers going Blu-Ray is a double edged sword. While it allows them to play in the current high def market their ability to innovate in their products is limited by the closed technology. This makes it hard for them to compete with Sony.

- The upcoming DVD upscaling technology helps DVD to hold its dominant position in the market until the dynamics of the market shift more into Toshiba's favour.

DVD has not been replaced yet, and for Sony to capatalise on their current good position they will need to radically open up their technology to other companies. If they do not other standards will continue to be put forward and the one that provides the best PC data storage experience will eventually dominate the market. Sony does not have a good history of doing this. This move may not be as bone-headed as it looks.

I was just toodling around on Engadget and ran across a shortie about AT&T increasing smartphone and 3G by 20%. Since I don't use either service, I almost passed the article by. But it said AT&T and I have AT&T at home and have looked at the Laptop Connect plans they have, although I'm just too cheap right now to spend the money on it.

But this statement caught my eye:

"What's more, AT&T says those speeds are only a taste of things to come, with it promising that peak data speeds will eventually reach 20 Mbps as it switches over to HSPA+ between 2009 and 2010."

I have a bruise on my butt from falling out of my chair. I can't get that kind of speed out of a high-end wired DSL line to my house. And this will be wireless? Color me stunned. Either I've not been paying attention, or there has been a major shift in the infrastructure plans of big companies like AT&T.

I guess I should wait for the other shoe to drop, and see how much this is going to cost when it does become available.

Congratulations to Henry of Chicago who was out HP HDX Dragon winner. I am back in Hawaii with a great show for you today. Major rant on Time Warner!

Please Support my Show Sponsors!:
AIM Call Out (Sign up for an Account Today and Give it a Try!)
[Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days at GoToMeeting.com/techpodcasts. No credit card needed.]
[Save 10% off on any order at GoDaddy.com!] Use Code Todd
Special: Free Go Daddy Standard SSL Certificate with the purchase of 12 months or more of web hosting (must add both to the shopping cart) Code: geekssl

Twitter Me http://www.twitter.com/geeknews
My Facebook Profile
FriendFeed GNC Room!! (NEW)
Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

31 Days of the HDX Dragon Notebook Giveaway
30 May - 06 Jun www.thetabletpc.net
31 May - 07 Jun www.gearlive.com
01 Jun - 08 Jun www.gottabemobile.com

Link to complete shows notes with all reference Links!

BLOCKBUSTER Total Access click to activate coupon for $10 off your first month.

I can't remember the first time I used a computer mouse. I was switching between an Amiga and PCjr (the one with the chicklet keyboard). They both had mice and when I used it I thought "there is no way this will work". I pushed it aside and started typing.

The first time I really started to use the mouse was with a Mac Classic. I could move around the GUI with the keyboard but the mouse made it more useful. The keyboard, after that point, took a back seat.

One button to two - ball mouse to optical. Scrolling mouse, trackball, trackpoint, joystick and everything in between.

Now the new idea is a multi-touch screen. A picture of a future OLPC laptop a few weeks ago suggested not only the screen was multi-touch, but the keyboard side was also going to be turned into a touch-screen. The idea would be to turn your laptop into one big multi-touch for pictures, programs, music and games.

So it turns to the question, is this the final days of the mouse? Is this the final days of the raised button keyboard? Most important, with these touchscreens, how will that change your desk?

Laptops gave us portability. Heck, as I'm writing now, I am on the laptop instead of my desktop. I can sit in my living room, outside, at the coffee shop, in the car or a whole host of other places and get work done. My laptop is an important part in my production. Yes, I have even been in a bathroom with a laptop - although I wasn't doing what you might think.

My main desk is big. It's a corner desk - 6 foot long by 3 foot wide. The side desk is 4x3. I wanted a desk that could handle my computer and still have room for more than a keyboard and mouse.

The first thing that gave me more desk surface was the switch from a 19 inch and 17 inch CRTs to a 20 and 15 inch LCDs. I could put both my computers behind the monitors. The addition of a USB KVM switch gave me the opportunity to connect 4 machines without seperate keyboards and mice.

With multi-drive storage devices like Drobo and Iomega USB to Ethernet devices, I could easily stuff all my computer gear in another room and get rid of that big desk for something smaller. So who really wants a keyboard and mouse? Who needs a desk?

Even your work desk could possibly change without those extra input devices. You would need to be closer to the screen to move items around. If you need to type, bring up the screenboard and start typing.

Working with pictures and photoshopping would be much easier. I believe I'd use a stylus more than my finger, but I could carefully erase, mask or paint the lines I need. I could also do it in half the time than with a mouse.

The only downside is if there's a problem with the screen. You might loose those devices because the screen or touchscreen isn't working right. Try plugging in a mouse or keyboard AFTER the fact.

All in all we are seeing the machine condense and become more functional. There are some that will oppose the technology. I will even have to change some of my ideals. I like raised buttons and I never touch my LCD screen. Some people will not change. But how cool would it be if you open up the laptop, turn it 90 degrees and put it on a stand to use as a dual monitor? Just plug in a mouse and keyboard and work. And if you need the functionality of the touchscreen, then just use it.

Note to self: Better buy some stock in screen cleaner.

For the past month I have had one machine on my network that would not backup to the Windows Home Server. It has been driving me a 100% crazy. Well it turns out that Microsoft .Net 2.0 was the culprit.

Digging deep in Google I found an answer. It said to repair .net 2.0 well when I tried the repair attempt failed. Un-installing failed as well. I had to resort to brutal tactics and found a .net removal tool.

After deleting .net 2.0 the hard way and then reinstalling it the backup is working fine. I am a geek and burrowed my way through this but I can guarantee that a non geek would have never figured this out.

This is something Microsoft is gonna have to deal with. If it caused me pains it’s gonna cause others the same trouble. While I love my HP Windows Home Server this little issue has definitely made me look at how I am using it much closer.

USB will be getting an upgrade in 2009 as we move to the USB 3.0 standard. This will improve the speed up to ten times faster than USB 2.0. That is approximately 4.8 gigabits per second, or about 600 Megabytes per second (USB 2.0 runs up to 480 Mbit/s). It will even surpass current Firewire standards (The Firewire 800 standard can run up to 3.2 Gigabits per second).

Intel has been controlling the specification and so far is not giving the new technology to any competetor. An unofficial AMD source announced they are working on their own USB standard. It will be an "open" specification, but an Nvidia representative says it will also be "productized".

What does this mean? Simply put we might see "Intel USB" and "AMD USB" - and the remote possibility that they won't work with one another. The greatest part about the USB standard was that we could use it on any PC - whether Intel, AMD or other - on an Apple product or any other device that contains the standard.

It's items like this where universal standardization should be implemented. We don't need these standards "segregated but equal". It hurts production - especially for the independent companies that make USB peripherals. Will your Intel USB 3.0 Flash drive work properly on an AMD USB 3.0, or will it corrupt your data?

Opening the USB standard is key if we want to continue using it. No one company should be able to "hoard" the technology. After all, "Open Productization". Is that an Oxymoron, or what?

Well the more we go forward the more we go backwards. I predict a major revolt by users as another ISP contemplates bandwidth caps. These actions are going to cost a lot of companies money.

People simply will curb their bandwidth utilization as they will be scared of busting network limits. These companies continue to allow the United States to drop in broadband speeds as compared to the rest of the world. These companies have failed to invest enough in their network infrastructure to keep up.

The Internet Service Provider that remains brave and willing to stay with policy of old will win the admiration of people like me who are not happy with companies like AT&T and Time Warner who are going to put in place bandwidth limits. [Gizmodo]

I have been booking a great number of flights over the past six months. Usually I fly coach but on trips where I am going to only have minimal time on the ground at the destination I book a 1^st class ticket. Expensive but at least I get to sleep on both legs.

Tonight I was trying to figure out how to fit Podcamp Ohio into my schedule and decided to see if I could book a ticket on United (my preferred carrier). Found a flight easy enough but on the return leg they had me stuck in Economy.

The price of the ticket was definitely 1st class pricing yet I could not reserve any seat on any flight coming towards Hawaii that day in 1^st class. So I called the United Premier Executive desk and sure enough got some lady from India that only understood every third word I said. After 21 minutes on the phone with her. I hung up on her.

United may be in financial trouble but when a long term frequent flyer calls because they are having a rare booking issue the last person you want to get is some idiot on the phone.

Shame on United. Maybe its time to start looking for a new preferred airline!

The Time article generally reads like an idiots guide to the Captcha, there was an interesting point in the last paragraph that caught my eye. The Internet archive as part of their book scanning project collects a register of words that the OCR process cannot recognise. It farms those out to sites that need captchas. The owners of those sites do a translation for the archive and then use it on their site for their own turing test purposes.

This is a great example of business needs merging. The Internet Archive needs people to translate the words that the OCR can't. By farming these out to many of the sites that need to prove their potential users are human they get the benefit of eyes they cannot afford to hire. The sites then get use of an image that can be used as a Captcha, one that they know sophisticated OCR was unable to decode. Everyone wins. One of the great benefits of the Internet is how it eases the connections between peoples needs.

And a trip to the Internet Archive is always a good idea.

Geek News Central Podcast has been ranked the 6^th top podcast for the month of May 2008.  The only Tech Show in the Top 25, and we were ahead of podcast from Disney, CNET, BBC, ABC and AP. [Podcast.com]

In all the bad press of Twitter lately, here is a good reason to use it. The Mars Phoenix Lander is Twittering. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) set up the account to keep the legions of followers up to date. It not only gives updates but also answers questions about it's interplanetary soil-digging device.

Of course, you can get all updates on the Phoenix Mars Lander Page but why not set it up into your account and follow the action via the Social IM network?

Announced our 2 Godaddy Hosting Winners and the Survey 6 Winner plus a chock full show of tech news and information. GNC was Ranked 6th in May by Podcast.com Thanks for everyone's support.

Link to Complete Show Notes Click Here

Please Support my Show Sponsors!:
AIM Call Out (Sign up for an Account Today and Give it a Try!)
[Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days at GoToMeeting.com/techpodcasts. No credit card needed.]
[Save 10% off on any order at GoDaddy.com!] Use Code Todd
Special: Free Go Daddy Standard SSL Certificate with the purchase of 12 months or more of web hosting (must add both to the shopping cart) Code: geekssl

Twitter Me http://www.twitter.com/geeknews
My Facebook Profile
FriendFeed GNC Room!! (NEW)
Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

Well first it was bandwidth limitations now they are going to shutdown access to Usenet on their service. It is to early to tell if this is going to affect third party usenet services.

This is simply shocking and while many people have not a clue what usenet is, many rely on the service to participate in over 100,000 discussion groups.

Sprint and Verizon also are going to block access to some Usenet groups.

I am not yet a 100% sure if this means time warner is going to block access to third party usenet services, or if they are going to completely block access to Usenet by blocking Port 119 that the service runs on.

If the block access to Port 119 then this turns into a net neutrality issue among other things.

This stems from people using Usenet to share child porn which is horrible, but what is dangerous here is that they have decided to kill access to Usenet as a whole to stamp out what is happening in a handful of the 100,000 discussion groups. [CNET]

Well like everyone else I wanted to see what Steve Jobs had to say about the new iPhone. Like everyone else I am pretty excited to see them bring 3G to the phone. What I am not excited about is the AT&T exclusive.

The dilemma is pretty simple I have a large family with 3 phones all on the same account with T-Mobile. I get 2000 minutes a month, EDGE and 500 text messages for about a $100.00 bucks a month.

Because nearly all my wife's friends and a lot of people we know are on T-Mobile we get a lot of free minutes when we are talking to people on the same network. So I am in a real dilemma what to do.

Seeing the the new iPhone still has the same crapy camera and their is no Video for the device maybe I will just skip getting the new iPhone and get a phone that has a great camera and can do video like the Nokia N85. After all I want to participate in communities like qik.com but cannot at the moment because the iPhone has no pathway to do so.

Apple really blew it with the Camera and AT&T is not the mobile carrier I prefer to do business with. T-Mobile does not have 3G as their network is stuck in the ice age but their mobile phone plans are rocking and hard to beat.

Sadly If I were to switch my first choice would be Verizon but sadly Apple was to stupid to realize that by locking themselves to AT&T that they really missed the boat when it came to reaching all of us that would prefer to pick a better carrier.

For now my current iPhone running on T-Mobile will have to do, until someone comes up with a better phone. I think I will be waiting to see what Google can do with Android in coming months. We will see real innovation then!

In 2007 I purchased my first DYMO product, it was the LabelWriter 400 Turbo. Since that date it has been a permanent fixture on my printing table used for printing labels of all sizes.

When I was offered the chance to review and test the DYMO LabelWriter TwinTurbo, I thought that if the new machine lived up to the reputation of the unit I already own, then the write up would be a no brainer. Let me be the first to say that the TwinTurbo has lived up to that expectation.

Like all product reviews we do here at Geek News Central, we actually use the product for a minimum of three days in a real office environment. Because I have been traveling a great deal, the unit has been on my review table for about 3 weeks.

To add a special twist to this review, the goal this time was to get my lovely non geeky wife to use the label and postage print functions. My wife loves to buy sheets of stamps from the post office as a way to jazz up her letters, but in this day and age why go to the post office and waste gas when you can print labels at home but the challenge was daunting

With everything setup pre-loaded and about a 5 minute walk through on how to use the unit, I let her take charge and headed off to the east coast. After getting home I opened up the lid to take a peak at how many labels had been used and to my surprise she had printed quite a few.

Upon questioning her, she was pretty amazed that the US Post Office allowed people to print stamps in the first place this was a big revelation. She is originally from Japan and ships letters and packages to Japan quite often and was amazed that the software interface would print postage labels with the correct postage amount.

All told she shipped 7 medium sized packages and probably 30 letters. She swapped out label type to get bigger labels for boxes, and had no issues with the DYMO Printer. I was pretty happy mission accomplished on my end and this is a great testament to the folks at DYMO for making it non geek friendly.

Tonight I told her I had to make way on the gadget table for more review gear and packed up the unit for return shipping. She was not happy and asked me order her one of these units and find a home for it here in the office.

Looking at all the variables their are some considerations when considering one of these units. You will pay a small premium to print stamps at home, and you do have to buy stamp specific replacement roles. But it beats standing in line at the post office. Being the TwinTurbo has two print heads you don’t have to swap labels out. Setup takes about 10–15 minutes. The going price for the unit online is about $160.00 ,perfect for those with a small business or those that hate going to the USPS and want the ability to print nice clean shipping labels.

Software for both the PC and MAC is included! While I know this is a lengthy review. I want you to realize that if my non geeky wife fell in love with this unit, and those of you that love time saving devices this is product that you need sitting on your desk.

Disclaimer: DYMO LabelWriter TwinTurbo was provided to Geek News Central for this review no promise of favorable review was given. All review units here at Geek News Central are tested in as near real world conditions as possible.