This Blog Could Do With Some Cat

— from gigglesugar

A Third Low-Cost Subnotebook?

First the Asus EeePC. Then the Everex Cloudbook (well, when it arrives).

Now MSI (Micro-Star International) says it will do one too.

The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry is getting competition.

That article puts the EeePC in price perspective:

Let’s take a moment to ponder how cheap that is. This full-featured laptop costs $69 less than the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch. It’s $100 less than an Amazon Kindle e-book reader. The most expensive configuration for the ASUS Eee PC on Amazon.com is $499.

And also makes a good argument as to why we’ll probably never see a Foleo II:

Palm, Inc. hates Asustek because the company has made a fool out of them. Palm announced in May its Foleo mini-laptop. The device was slightly bigger than the ASUS Eee PC, but less capable and twice the price. The Foleo focused on connecting to the Internet through Palm’s own line of giant cell phones. While many think Palm “killed” the Foleo, they in fact only killed the idea of shipping with a Linux-based OS.

In his blog announcement, Palm’s CEO vowed to come back with a Foleo-like device that runs the same proprietary OS that powers Palm’s next-generation of cell phones. By the time Palm gets around to shipping something, the market will be saturated with millions of ASUS Eee PCs on the low end, and thousands of Apple and Dell units on the high end.

Well, I think he’s being a bit optimistic with that Dell comment. Although perhaps Dell can add features that would appeal to corporate users. Apple, of course, would be relatively safe as it creates products that allow a premium price. Besides, an iPod Air with a touchscreen would be in an entirely different category than these subnotebooks.

What I think is going to happen here — at least for a while — is some of the same excitement that used to surround PDAs. Asus opened with Flash storage, Everex raised with a 30GB hard drive, and now MSI is planning to raise both with the latest processor. Asus and Everex have also mentioned touchscreens.

Yeah, this is going to be exciting.

I Do Like Me A Good Screed

And this is a good one!

Pundits Pounce On Apple in a Contest of Epic Idiocy

Has the great nation of America become so enraptured with the current craze to dig oneself to the bottom of the stupid pile that even the tech industry has resorted to adopting Neanderthal chest beating and excrement slinging whenever presented with a challenge to how one currently looks at the world? Is there anything really impressive or attractive about feigning a capacity of intelligence two orders of magnitude lower than one was actually gifted with at birth? When did masculinity become inextricably linked with the idea of being a mouth breathing meathead unable to adapt to use modern tools?

The blame may lie with Tim Allen and all the cocaine he did before aping it up as a tool on “Home Improvement,” but let’s rise above the mistakes of the past and move forward as intellectuals. That means you, tech media.

Daniel Eran Dilger takes nothing from no one. He even accused demigod Fake Steve of being a Microsoft/freetard tool!

Peak iPod: Has Apple Reached Its End?

Update: Due to a duplicate filename, WordPress got confused.  Some people were seeing the latest-generation Shuffle, while some were seeing the original white stick model.  All fixed now.

I was thinking about this well before I started reading a book about peak oil this morning. But it did goad me into creating this post.

This is the iPod Shuffle:

Where can it go from there?

This is the iPod nano:

Where can it go from there?

This is the iPod Classic:

Where can it go from there?

This is the iPod Touch:

Where can it go from there?

Of the four versions of iPod, it seems to me that three of them can’t go any further. Perhaps more storage can be added, but do people really want or even need that? And if Apple were to come out with Shuffle and nano models that could store more, would they retain the earlier versions and lower their prices to compete against units such as the Sansa Clip? Apple could gobble up more marketshare that way.

The iPod Touch is a new unit. There is still a lot that can be done with it. Apple could even discontinue the Classic and force people to the Touch.

But of the four models of iPod, have three of them reached their peak with nowhere else to go? Does this make Apple vulnerable? The iPod has been driving much of Apple’s revenues and profits. What happens if three of the iPod models have reached their end?

01/28/08 Reading

The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel by Stephen Leeb

Just started it this morning. Synchronicity: he also cites the Asch experiment I mentioned yesterday.

If you click on his name, however, it leads to a site that looks like a label for snake oil.

Escape, Lack Of

Transition Towns, Walkable Cities and other Pretty Places for a Nightmare Future

If you remember to plant your commons gardens, build your windmills, and support your local farmers you also need to remember your concrete barriers, your razor wire, and your guns. If you live in a place where the lights stay on after everything else goes dark, you have painted a blazing bullseye on yourself.

Lots of good reading at Shotguns and Sweetpotatoes: The Thinking Man’s Guide to the End of the World.

Reference: Michael Ovitz

There’s A Mike Sucker Born Every Minute

So now Michael Ovitz is bringing his “I see into the future” carnival act to the digital crowd who, unbelievable as it sounds, is still impressed with his one-time moniker as “The Most Powerful Man in Hollywood.” You have to wonder if these prospective partners (see invitation below) know that most of Ovitz’s past partners from Hollywood, Broadway, Wall Street, Madison Avenue and sports (to name just a few areas) despise him now. Or that billionaire Ron Burkle is suing Ovitz for refusing to live up to his financial obligations in various Internet ventures. I guess there’s a sucker born every minute where Mike is concerned[.]

Oh right. He’s still famous for this.

Something Is Wrong With YouTube

I’m encountering a lot of embedded videos that don’t work properly. But if I hit the Menu button, copy the YouTube URL, and then go to YouTube itself to play the video, all works well.

This has been happening for at least the past two weeks on a variety of sites — and it’s never happened before.

Anyone else finding this?

Quantum Biology

‘Telepathic’ Genes Recognize Similarities In Each Other

Genes have the ability to recognise similarities in each other from a distance, without any proteins or other biological molecules aiding the process, according to new research. This discovery could explain how similar genes find each other and group together in order to perform key processes involved in the evolution of species.

This new study shows that genes — which are parts of double-stranded DNA with a double-helix structure containing a pattern of chemical bases – can recognise other genes with a similar pattern of chemical bases.

This ability to seek each other out could be the key to how genes identify one another and align with each other in order to begin the process of ‘homologous recombination’ — whereby two double-helix DNA molecules come together, break open, swap a section of genetic information, and then close themselves up again.

I think this is related to that: The Bees Who Flew Too High.

Spooky action at a distance lives!

Music: Free Or Not Free?

There’s an argument going on about this service called QTrax that allegedly will offer about 30 million music files for free via its proprietary P2P filesharing software.

QTrax says it has found a legal way to pay the labels.

The labels are saying Not so fast, pal, we don’t have any contracts with you!

Meanwhile, TuneSquare is still going. It allows people to listen to independent and unsigned artists and bands, who get a cut of the advertising that’s displayed.

Something has to change somewhere, somehow…