Griffin is pretty famous for their iTrip but the had some pretty cool and innovative products at CES this year. We caught up with them at Digital Experience.
The product that drew us in was the Aircurve which is an Acoustic Amplifier for iPhone. We were quite shocked to hear the quality of the audio coming out of this very simple device. Very inexpensive at $19.95 as well.
The Folks at Eclipse seem have that extra edge when it comes to automotive car entertainment systems. The standard car radio has left the show floor and we now have interactive media centers with built in GPS systems and a whole lot more. Check out the Video.
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Apparently Monster.com has been hacked into and Millions of profiles have been compromised. While they didn’t get items like credit cards, they do have enough information to send you convincing emails to try and scam you out of money.
But the most disturbing news is that this is the second time this month the company’s data was compromised.
Heartland Payment Systems – the company that handles Monster.com transactions – was also hacked into. Once again, nothing major like credit cards, but they could easily mess with your resume.
For those of us trying to find employment and have resumes on Monster.com, you might want to check your profile and make sure nothing has been changed. Change your password and make sure it’s not the same one you use for your email.
Most important, if you get some ‘Official email’ that asks you for items like Social Security Numbers, investigate before you reply.
Cox Communications has announced that they are going to test a traffic shaping, er, Internet Congestion Reduction Tool, in Kansas and Arkansas over the next few months, with hopes of deploying their traffic shaping, er, Internet Congestion Reduction Tool to all users by the end of the year.
It was discovered that Cox was using the same type of traffic shaping technology as Comcast, who is currently under FCC rulings to cease any and all traffic shaping. Cox must have been paying attention, because they reduced their use of traffic shaping starting in August 2008 and completely discontinued it in January 2009. They have replaced it with their new tools, which are supposed to “give priority to Internet traffic it judges to be time-sensitive, like Web pages, streaming video and online games.” In addition, the software restricts the delivery of file downloads and software updates if the network is congested.
The whole traffic shaping thing notwithstanding, why are we seeing this lame issue still being touted by the cable companies? Delivery of bandwidth is supposedly what they are all about. There should be no “congestion” if they have been upgrading infrastructure with their profits the way they are supposed to. Demand for bandwidth is not going to decrease, but only increase, and the way these ISP’s are dragging their feet about upgrading their infrastructures just boggles my mind.
But back to traffic shaping. Cox is not explaining how they will be determining “priority” over “non-priority” network traffic. What may be a critical download to one person (an emergency software update, for instance, or download of virus updates, or downloading files you are torrenting to yourself from another location) may not be critical to Cox. And what Cox thinks is high-priority (like games) may not really be all that critical to the user (this Mom is already throttling game-playing on the home network for various reasons).
I don’t need anyone telling me what’s important, and what isn’t. Just open up the pipe and let me have my stuff. It’s what I’m paying you for, after all. You should take some of that money I keep throwing at you and improve your infrastructure to meet the demand, instead of spending money trying to figure out how to throttle my bandwidth. The demands aren’t going away. Time to accept that and figure out how you can fix it. Trying to cut it off isn’t the answer.
With so many people out of work and looking, using any online resource they have available, it is important to know that Monster.com has been hacked twice in the last six months. Users names, birthdates, contact information, and passwords amongst other information is now in the wrong hands.
I have had a profile at Monster.com for many years, although I haven’t had to look for a job in more than 8 years. I don’t think I’d visited the site in maybe five years. But this morning I did, making some critical changes to my profile, and changing my password. Anyone reading this who has a profile at Monster.com should do the same thing, as soon as possible. A “mandatory” change will be required soon when you log into Monster.com, but if you’re like me and hadn’t logged in in five years, well, that “mandatory” thing won’t work.
Another alternative is to cancel your account, if you can. I am a “free” member, so there is no cancellation option. But for premium members, cancellation is possible. I don’t use Monster.com at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I might not need it later, so I’ll leave it as is for the moment. But then again, if they can be hacked twice in six months, then I have to wonder about their overall security of my information, and whether or not that is a liability for me as a user.
I have seen a number of mentions of a new thin client terminal by a company called Pano Logic. Their claim is to be the “future of desktop computing”, to which they are focused more on the corporate than the home desktop. Thin client is essentially where corporate computing began, with all compute power centralised and users running from dumb terminals.
There have been multiple attempts to resurrect the theory, Sun being one of the more recent attempts. Terminal services are common in most organisations, although the terminal sessions are almost always run on full desktops rather than on specialised terminal devices. While most of the PC vendors launched specialsed terminal versions in the early 2000’s all dropped them when the market did not materialise as expected.
Pano has added a few things to the model. Their box has no moving parts at all and the client is completely embedded in the firmware. They also have some graphical redirection IP embedded in which allows them to offer a 1600×1200 desktop. They have also packaged the whole thing into a small and attractive case. If you take a look at your site you will see that they definitely get good marks for industrial styling.
I feel though that this product is likely to suffer the same fate of previous attempts at resurrecting this market. PC’s are just too cheap, and users like to have local storage. Once the cost of the monitor is removed, a corporate PC typically runs well under $1000 and with current SOE images can be treated as essentially a commodity component. For most organisations the cost of desktop support is in the applications not the hardware.
A technology more likely to take hold is a new one from Citrix that allows any computer to easily run a corporate desktop. Essentially it means that rather than using your employer supplied notebook, you could use your own at work. Your company would give you an allowance to fund that device. Also when you connected to a VPN service from your home computer, you would get the complete service of your corporate login rather than restricted services.
With the hypervisor ready platforms that are available today switching between personal and corporate images would be quick and seamless. I talk with many corporate IT groups in my day job, and a large number of them are looking at ways to do just this. Rather than manage a hardware SOE they want to be able to purchase whatever is easiest for them. With notebook users they are also sick of meeting all the requests for the latest trendy notebook. As these requests often come from executives and senior management they are often hard to ignore.
While the Pano system does have a few advantages for the IT department, never underestimate the power of users to determine what the standards end up being.
Economic times are very tough at this time and I am sure many of my Ohana of Listeners (Family of Listeners) are looking for work and I have a plan to help out.
The Geek News Central Podcast Audience is very close to a 125k and each of those listeners know a lot of people. So I have decided to encourage my audience members to send me an email with their skills, and what kind of a job they are looking for, whether they are willing to relocate etc.
I will take a number of those submissions each show and read or paraphrase them to the audience in the hopes of making a connection and helping people find each other.
My Ohana of Listeners has supported me for 4 plus years now it is my turn to try and help them in any way I can. If you are not a listener of the show I encourage you to subscribe and be part of the family. Details on how to get your skills heard can be found on the show.
Note: Photo above Taken by Ryan Ozawa during my 24hr Podcast
Todd..