Pikatto

Crunch Gear has an absolutely ridiculous article on the confirmed–according to them–Zune Phone. It sounds like a bunch of bs to me. My favorite part of the article is this lovely disclaimer.

This is a lot of information, and the reader should keep in mind that any part, if not all of it could change, as from what we know, the Zune group is just being brought up to speed on the specifics of the device.

So everything in your article might be completely wrong? As far as I know that is called an unsubstantiated rumour.

Rob Enderle has once again shown his stupidity in “Companies Should Prepare for the iPhone," a story written by Poonam Khanna for IT Business.

He has been taken to task by both John Gruber of Daring Fireball and by El Macalopo of the The Macalope. The one point that neither Gruber or the Macalope address is an obvious one, which is perhaps why they don’t bother addressiing it.

How the hell does Enderle have any clue as to how secure or insecure the iPhone is? It won’t even be released for another 115 days and yet Enderle has already written it off as being too insecure to use with corporate networks. So, tell us Rob, what’s your secret for fortelling the future?

Bill Gates, sir, you are a damned liar!

See Daring Fireball for more.

An earthquake warning system is under development by Japan’s telecom giant NTT, which will give a short warning prior to an earthquake via its hikari fibre (fibre optics) network.

If this works, it will be an amazing achievement that will surely save lives. I wish this had been in place when Fukuoka had its first major quake in March of 2005.

The bad news is that this system is tied to NTT’s hikari fibre internet service, which is not available throughout Japan–we were unable to get the service in our old apartment in Onojyo–so this service will be quite limited.

It’s surprising that the government isn’t developing a similar system using a less limiting delivery method. Every city, town, and village in Japan that I’ve ever been to was equipped with loudspeakers to warn of fires, typhoons, and other emergencies. I can understand why NTT is not interested in using the existing loudspeakers as their delivery system, but why isn’t the government doing so?

Now that the technology exists which can provide warnings of earthquakes–at least in theory–shouldn’t that service be provided to every person in Japan regardless of where they live or how much their income?

For more of the details on how the system will work check out Pink Tentacle.

Here is a short commercial dramatizing NTT’s earthquake warning service on YouTube.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: Japan, NTT, Earthquakes, Technology

After having given up on getting a gmail account while it was still not open to the public I lucked out today. Thanks to Jim O’Connell I now have a gmail account. So far it looks pretty cool. I’m still a little leery about the scanning of messages and the privacy issues that ensue. I’m hoping to get a chance to play around with it and see what kind of mobile devices I can access it on. I’ll keep you posted.

Nobuko and I decided that it would be nice if we could surf the net from the kotatsu during the winter. I didn’t really want to run cables all over the apartment, but had decided that we would have to because Apple’s Airport was just too expensive.

I was lucky though, and while buying some ethernet cable at Best Denki I stopped and looked at their 3rd party routers. I found a router and wireless PCI card by Buffalo for under 20,000Â¥. I quickly returned the cable and purchased the router and wi-fi card instead. I was really happy at my unexpected luck of finding a router and card within our budget. This happiness evaporated as soon as I began to set up the network. (Continued)

I guess I won’t be using iStopMotion afterall. I left my firewire cable in the states, because I got tired of trying to convince my mother that it was mine not hers! I keep forgetting to replace it, so consequently I have no way to connect my video camera to my mac. Well, at least I don’t have to go look for action figures this weekend.

I finally saw a G5 and got to try it out today. Unfortunately it was the 1.6 Ghz model. I was really itching to get my hands on the dual processor model. It was still a sweet machine. I think the employees must have seen the mad gleam in my eyes as soon as I saw it. Before I could even think about taking off the door to look at that awesome design there were about three employees surrounding me. They probably thought I was going to pick it up and carry it right out of the store. To be honest the thought did cross my mind! I guess I’ve made up my mind as to what my next machine will be.

I’ve decided that I need a desktop machine. My TiBook just is not going to cut it as a server. I had decided on a dual G4, and had my custom configuration sorted out and was ready to purchase it when Apple had to go and release the G5. I really, really want the G5….but I don’t want to get burned like I did when I bought my TiBook. Don’t get me wrong its an excellent machine, I just bought it before Apple really had a chance to fine tune it. I need the desktop asap, so I can’t wait until the next revision comes out, whenever that will be. I guess I’ll probably wind up getting a G4, which means I won’t be able to afford a G5 for at least another 5 years. Sometimes it sucks having it so good!