No Mac viruses

Windows people just refuse to believe this but here’s still another story. Apple’s Mac OSX is virus-free

Newspapers forcing Net registration

Have you noticed the growing trend by newspapers to force registration on Web users to access their content? What seems to be the pattern these days is that after collecting all sorts of personal info, they then sign you up for dozens of ad offers and junk newsletters, unless you take the time to opt out. In most cases, I’m betting most people just click out and go elsewhere. I sympathize with newspapers who are losing subscribers to the Net but I wonder, is registration the answer? Isn’t this going to send more people to the blogs?

Is PSP about to out-hip the iPod?

Sony sure hopes so. And even though I don’t play games, I have to say that the PlayStation Portable is one very cool gizmo. I think having movies to watch on a portable device is going to be much hotter than a lot of people think. We already know how popular gaming is. This unit brings a brilliant screen to play games, watch movies and look at pictures. And it does a fine job with MP3 music, too. It’s going to be huge and, I predict, the next must-have hip device for the look-at-me crowd. Sony Gears Up for U.S. PlayStation Portable Launch

Cell phone porn

Here’s an industry I didn’t even know existed: Mobile phone pornography. According to a Boston-based research firm, cell phone users spent $400 million last year downloading dirty pictures and movies to their cell phones. By 2010, it’s supposed to be a $5 billion industry. “Hold on… let me take this dirty picture on my phone.”

Seniors online use growing

The Pew Internet & American Life Project people are reporting today a steady increase over the past year in the percentage of older Americans who go online.
In its January 2005 phone survey, 26% of Americans age 65+ report internet access, compared to the 22% of older Americans described in a March 2004 report.
Lee Rainie, the project’s director, says as the population ages, more people who regularly used the internet at work will retire and the over-65 set will probably have higher rates of connectivity and report higher rates of “high trust” activities, such as shopping, making travel-related purchases, banking, and participating in auctions.

PSP to get movies

Looks like that hot new PSP is going to have some movies to watch on it after all.
Disney to Release Films for Sony PSP Game Device

Two out of five work days a bust

So says a new survey from Microsoft. Workers who responded to an online Office survey reported two days out of the workweek were a waste of time, with U.S. workers blaming procrastination as the top cause.Time wasters blow off two days a week.
Hmmm. Could another reason be that they have so many viruses and spyware on their WIndows machines that they can’t get any work done?
Just kidding.

Google X looks like Mac OS X

Have you seen Google X? It’s an experimental new interface for the familiar search agent that mimmicks the icon magnification feature in Apple’s OS X operating system.

TiVo cuts deal with Comcast

Or is it vice versa? Anyway, from the if-you-can’t-beat-’em, join-’em department.
TiVo to Make Customized Version for Comcast

First Phishing, now there’s Pharming

This using “Ph” instead of “F” is getting wearysome. Now there’s Pharming to worry about, something that involves tricking us to visit a Web site where you get Phished. Think industrial strength phishing.
Sound silly? It is, especially with stories like this one from Wired that keep shouting that the cyberspace sky is falling.

Mobile messaging trends

There’s a whole bunch of interesting tech stories today on the use of mobile phone messaging. First, this Reuters piece looks at the difference between European and U.S. mobile phone users, noting how much more popular mobile messaging is in Europe.
But messaging is growing fast here, too.
America Online is expanding its mobile services to work with more cell phone providers. They new features involve pictures, traffic and mapping information sent to cell phone through the AOL Instant Messaging interface.
But before you get too keen on AOL’s AIM, you may want to read this story about changes in the terms of service that seems to say the company “owns” any information users send. Though AOL clarified it’s position as word of this began spreading across the Net today to say it won’t be snooping on user-to-user traffic, there’s now lots of understandable skepticism.
Then, a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says about 134 million American adults have cell phones and 27% of them say they have used the text message feature on those phones within the past month. That represents 34 million people.
The study says most likely cell phone texters are in Generation Y (ages 18-27). Fully 63% of those with cell phones in that cohort are texters, compared to 31% of cell phone owners in Generation X (ages 28-39), 18% of cell phone owners among younger Baby Boomers (age 40-49), 13% of cell phone owners among older Baby Boomers (ages 50-58), and 7% of cell phone owners among those over age 60.
And as more evidence that messaging is hot, Research In Motion, the makers of the uber-popular BlackBerry, announces today a deal with Yahoo! to pre-install full-color, graphical Yahoo! Messenger clients on BlackBerry devices in the coming months. RIM is also working with AOL.
Young people, typically the 14-25 set, have led the charge in messaging. The demographics of BB users skew much older. But if they are now having it built into their addictive little CrackBerry machines, there ust be some strong indications that the trend is broadening.
Readers of this blog tend to be older. Just how much do you use mobile phione messaging? And how?

VoIP gets more mainstream every day

I wonder how many of us grasp the huge change that Voice over Internet Protocol technology is bringing to the way the world communicates. Businesses and consumers alike are flocking to the always cheaper and now almost as reliable as landline quality of VoIP. What intriguies me in the story of AOL’s new move into VoIP was a sentence in the following report that notes: “Customers will be able to use their existing phones by means of an adapter that links the phones to the customers’ broadband routers.” Things are moving fast.
AOL to Launch VoIP Within a Month

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