As Steve Jobs predicted at MWSF 2003, this year truly was the Year of
the Notebook. Unfortunately, it was not the Year of the NoteBook for
Apple. Despite the revision of 12- and 17-inch models, a completely
reworked 15-inch model and Aluminum replacing Titanium completely in
the PowerBook line, Apple was one of the few leading portable computer
vendors to not record sequential growth in the third quarter. The
overall notebook market broke the ten million unit barrier in the
third quarter,...
Grok Headline matches for Mostly the Year of the NoteBook
It’s Not Hip to Be Square – Widescreen Notebooks Fastest Growing Segment in Retail Notebook Sales -Widescreen notebooks now account for 48% of all notebook sales-
It’s Not Hip to Be Square – Widescreen Notebooks Fastest Growing Segment in Retail Notebook Sales -Widescreen notebooks now account for 48% of all notebook sales-08/01/2004 03:30 AM According to a recent study by Current Analysis, unit sales of
notebooks equipped with a widescreen 15.4-inch display have steadily
continued to climb throughout the first half of 2004. As of June 30,
the widescreen market accounted for 48% of all notebooks sold,
compared to only 15% in December 2003. The growth represents the
highest share yet for the widescreen models since its introduction in
the spring of 2003 and demonstrates widescreen systems are selling in
greater numbers than its traditional square counterparts. [PRWEB Aug
1, 2004]
Sony's profits slide 23 per cent for year; expects bounce this year
"From the shore, they look like tiny dots slowly making
their way out past the breakers. They're the software vendors
positioning themselves to catch the Enterprise RSS wave. My, that's a
lot of tiny dots...." [MoonWatcher]
RSS was big in 2004, but next year is going
to be something else. It's killing me that I can't say more, but I
know of two major library vendors that will make big announcements
about RSS in 2005. It's going to be a fun year!
1 year performance video - please watch for one year
turbulence.org/Works/1year/performancevideo.php track this
site | 4 links
Chinese New Year - 2002 is Year of the Horse
Chinese New Year - 2002 is Year of the Horse01/22/2004 10:20 AM ¨§‡ … ˆ ˆ… †Š†Œ€Œ‡§ ¨§Œ §„ †ˆ .. Chinese New Year - 2002 is the Year
of the Horse .. Welcome to 4700 .. Monkey ..
4700
Wow. What a long time it has been since I last posted to
plasticbag.org. And what have I done in the meantime? I've been back
to Norfolk to see my family, experienced the wonders of Christmas,
seen Return of the King,
watched ten hours of videos with my little brother, watched the snow
come down and get washed away, struggled through lots of music
television, had my first frank conversation with my little brother
about being gay, opened and given lots of gifts, battled back to
London via bus and train, gone back to work for a few days before
late-night driving off to Cornwall for New Year with a selection of
friends and friends of friends wherein was had much late-night
drinking, (indoor) swimming, fondue-ing, walks in the wet and the
dark, eating of beef and roaming around. Since I last posted I've
travelled about eight hundred miles in total, including trips to
Penzance for shopping, Newquay for boots and Bath for Sally Lunn's. I've driven
through Indian Queens, passed by Splatt and circumnavigated Pityme. I've also read a lot of The Social Life of Information (more
on how much I want to burn that particular waste of headspace later),
thought a lot about Tivo and Social
Software, played a lot of Knights of the Old Republic and both
been bought and bought for others some of the most wonderfully
entertaining porcelain cups I've ever seen. All in
all, an eventful and entertaining couple of weeks.
Next up is trying to get my head together to start a new project at
work (interesting one this - should have really positive, interesting
and coincidentally weblog-friendly effects on BBC Radio sites), trying to
assemble my thoughts for a conference at Olympia in a couple of
month's time, trying to work out whether to propose a participant session for this year's ETCon (which I'm
still hoping I'm going to attend), while apparently also trying to
score maximum points on self-created, self-destructive and highly
non-fun-for-all-the-family games like, "How quickly and effectively
can I alienate everyone I work with?", "Be an arse!" and "How fat,
weird and bearded can one man become?". What did you guys get up
to?
LynuxWorks Announces Consecutive Year Over Year Growth and Profitability; Company’s Fourth Quarter Success Fuelled by Growth in the Military/Aerospace Market
Research And Markets - The Western European PC Market Has Continued To Go From Strength To Strength In The First Half Of 2004, Capitalizing On The Recovery Of 2003 To Record An 18.3% Shipment Growth Year On Year
Notebook. 0.105/02/2004 10:00 AM A logbook manager for Gnome.
Hog Bay Notebook 3.5
Hog Bay Notebook 3.503/22/2005 09:54 PM Organize your thoughts and get things done.
"The Notebook"
"The Notebook"06/25/2004 09:02 AM Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are swell, but Nick Cassavetes' paean
to 1940s small-town America is just a load of hooey.
64 Bits and AMD, A Year Later http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Computer- Processors/64-Bits-and-AMD-A-Year-Later/
NoteBook 1.2 And NoteTaker 1.806/03/2004 09:11 AM If we wanted a complex notebook app, we'd wait and use the one that's
coming in Microsoft Office 2004. Since we prefer elegant, capable
simplicity, we're all over NoteBook.
By Tom Lassifer, MacAddict (via MyAppleMenu)
As a
back-to-school special, this $600 ECS-branded notebook from Wal-Mart
isn't half bad - 14-inch screen, Athlon XP-M 1600+, Wi-Fi (b), and
DVD-ROM. Add a little extra memory to boost up the 128MB stock setup
and you've got yourself a pretty decent little machine for browsing
porn and downloading term papers. Plus it comes with a legal copy of
XP Home, so you'll only have to go to jail for five years when you
blow that away and install XP Pro (don't quote me on the legal
specifics).
The Birth of the Notebook03/22/2005 04:59 PM Mark Frauenfelder:
Chris Null has written a great article about the early history of
portable PCs for Mobile PC magazine.
Inspired by the IBM 5100 and Xerox's Notetaker -- a 48-pound
machine with a keyboard that folded over the display -- Osborne's
eponymous computer was cobbled together from the cheapest parts he
could find. The Osborne 1 hit the market at $1,795, with dual floppy
drives and a 5-inch CRT. Flip the keyboard over the front, latch it
on, and your 24.5-pound computer was ready to go wherever you needed
it. Osborne had amazing success with the product, but it was fatally
crushed by the birth of Compaq in 1983, which copied the Osborne
carefully while adding one killer feature: IBM
compatibility.
UPDATE: Stefan says: "I actually worked on
an Osborne in the early '80s. The college SF club
had one. We used it to lay out the schedule and generate individually
numbered tickets for our SF convention. I recall using the included
BASIC to create a program that would generate a Superbowl betting
grid.
"One of the big selling points for the Osborne was the software.
The
company pioneered the concept of bundling. In addition to the CP/M
operating system, you got WordStar, a spreadsheet, a flat-file
database
program and so on. It even had a nice app for reading and writing
PC-format disks.
"The computer itself was, frankly, a piece of shit. The monitor was
52
columns wide; when your typing reached the end of a line the display
shifted left. It was terribly susceptible to static shock. You learned
to save your work every few minutes in dry weather, because resets and
lockups were a regular occurrence."
Update: Hog Bay Notebook 3.5
Update: Hog Bay Notebook 3.503/23/2005 01:03 PM The notepad, outliner, and information organizer adds multiple views
on a single notebook, a three pane interface, more built-in columns,
and much more.
Lindows sub-notebook
Lindows sub-notebook02/21/2003 01:09 AM Wow. I'm very impressed. The just-announced Lindows sub-notebook looks
quite impressive and the price is right. I smell a review coming for
Linux Magazine......
The future of the notebook?04/12/2005 05:21 PM From technological and design point of view, the notebook has never
ceased to be a source of surprises. From futuristic colors to ultra
high tech designs and ultra shock resistant cases the notebook has
tried them all. In the last time, it looks like the searches have
stopped and that there are two trends that dominate the notebook
industry. The first one considers the notebook the replacement of the
desktop and consequently the producers fit their computers with the
latest 3D graphic chipsets and a lot of multimedia options at the
expense of battery life and weight.
The followers of the second trend consider that mobility has to be the
key feature of the notebooks, and therefore a weight bigger than 1.5
kilograms is regarded as blasphemy. It doesn’t matter that such a
notebook is starting to look like a keyboard that has a LCD attached
to it and that producers are giving up on every component that can add
to the weight of the notebook: optical devices, supplementary
batteries, or high capacity hard disks; the components are still
available but only in the form of docks.
Notebook Ergonomics, Usability03/06/2004 01:55 AM Using a notebook as my primary system is proving great for keeping
everything I need with me at home or at the office. (Yes, the infamous
iBook, though I don't expect that to hold true much longer.)...
Sony's VAIO X505 laptop may be slightly smaller than
the new Samsung Q30, but I know which one I'd rather have: the one
that doesn't require me to carry external Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and memory
card reader adapters to squeeze out that slimline package. The Q30
does have an external DVD drive, but considering how infrequently I
use the optical drive on my laptop anyway, I'm fine with that. The
Q30's 12-inch screen has a 1,280 by 768 pixel resolution, which is
nice, although the Achilles' Heel for some may be the laptop's lack of
a PC Card slot (something the X505 not only has, but relies on).
The unit Trusted Reviews got their hands on is a Korean import, but
Samsung is planning to release the device at least in the UK, if not
the USA (I'm fairly positive we're getting it).
With new notebook, Dell says 'game on'02/13/2004 10:34 AM The PC maker launches the Inspiron XPS, a notebook designed for game
enthusiasts. It's hoping the high-priced machine will appeal
especially to those willing to go to extremes.
JVC Enters Notebook PC Market04/26/2004 02:31 PM Audio maker JVC announced its first notebook PC on Monday, which the
company will begin shipping in June. Grok Description matches for Mostly the Year of the NoteBook GrokA matches for Mostly the Year of the NoteBook
ZeroShock sleeve available for 15-inch PowerBook
ZeroShock sleeve available for 15-inch PowerBook12/10/2003 04:14 PM Shinza.com, maker of a wide variety
of high-tech gadgets for those constantly on the go, will soon add to
its line of ZeroShock Notebook Sleeves with a larger 15-inch version
designed to accommodate oversized laptops like Apple's aluminum
15-inch PowerBook G4.
Hotspot Helper01/16/2004 11:01 AM MediaTracker is offering a low-cost way for venues to manage their
hotspots: The management software, ControlAP, costs $149 and can
support several platforms and both external APs plugged into a
computer or an internal wireless card. Because the software is Java
based, it can be run from a handheld with a wireless card. "It's a
do-it-yourself mechanism to control hotspots," said Dario Laverde,
MediaTracker's founder. "The initial target is cafes and small store
fronts." The software enables a captive portal Web page where end
users can sign in or see a welcome page if the hot spot is free. For
now, a cafe may decide to offer 30 minutes of free use, then require
customers to approach the counter where they pay the barista for
additional use. A cafe could also ask customers to buy another coffee
in exchange for additional use rather than set a price based on time,
Laverde suggested. An employee authorizes additional use from a
computer behind the counter where the ControlAP software can be
integrated with existing point-of-sale software. The next version of
ControlAP will support credit card billing. The software logs traffic
and allows a cafe to block URLs or users by MAC address. It can be
used to manage wired connections, too, so a cafe that may have some
wired computers available for customers can manage those together with
users of the Wi-Fi network from the same tool. Laverde says that
thousands of people have downloaded the free version of the software,
which is meant to serve as a trial version because it limits
simultaneous users to five and offers stripped-down features. The full
version of the software was just introduced this week. MediaTracker
isn't alone in the market chasing independent cafes that don't want to
partner with any of the larger hotspot operators, but it does offer
some unique differences from its competitors. Surf and Sip, for
example, offers a hosted hotspot management solution that either costs
$50 per month if the hotspot is free for users, or 25 percent of
profits for a paid location. Sputnik offers a robust solution for
managing hotspots but is designed for the small to medium-sized
hotspot operator that has multiple locations. AirPath Wireless also
offers a hotspot management solution but seems to be targeting larger
hot spot operators--Sprint uses AirPath's solution. NoCatAuth is also
an option but appropriate mostly for technical folks....
How to Become a Hotspot Guide
How to Become a Hotspot Guide04/23/2004 08:23 PM Looking to become a hotspot? Jiwire has published an in-depth guide:
There's no question we get more frequently at Wi-Fi Networking News
than from individual venues or small chains of locations that want to
install Wi-Fi service but don't know quite how to start or how to
evaluate offerings. This Jiwire piece offers very specific advice and
direction on making primary decisions--free or fee? on your own or in
a network? turnkey or solutions provider?--and then who to turn to....
Anyway, this
posting is because i have made a new UK Hotspot finder site that finds
the nearest Wi-Fi Hotspots (Commercial and Free) to your
postcode.
At the moment, Wi-Fish.com (the name of the site)
is UK-Only because of the search algorhythm...
SBC is Hotspot Hero?
SBC is Hotspot Hero?07/26/2004 12:37 PM They're late to the game, but they're ready to party: It's a funny
thing. When SBC Communications first announced their FreedomLink plans
last year with plans build 6,000 hotspots over a couple of years, it
seemed like yet another announcement of large numbers with no track
record. Cometa was still on its 20,000 hotspots prediction and had
only a handful. McDonald's hadn't decided its partner and was in
limited trials. Wayport seemed stuck on hotels. And T-Mobile stayed
focused--as it still does--on a few ubiquitous chains. In the space of
a few months, SBC has moved from last man in, to practically first
mover. Let's review: The UPS Store. They will install Wi-Fi in
thousands of UPS Store outlets, which are places that business people
already congregate. This will probably also necessitate a change of
thinking for that mailing and business operation so that they can make
it easier for people to work for periods of time in their stores.
Wayport managed services. They hired Wayport to build out their
FreedomLink locations instead of creating a new division with no
experience in house. Wayport's Wi-Fi World and McDonald's. They're the
first telco to sign up to resell Wayport's McDonald's network, which
will ultimately be several thousand stores over the next couple of
years. Wayport/McDonald's supplier. They're also providing DSL and
other connectivity to many of the McDonald's that Wayport is
disconnected, which is part revenue, part branding for them as part of
the Wi-Fi World co-marketing model Wayport is pursuing. Airports,
airports, airports. They have roaming agreements now for their
FreedomLink users onto Concourse, Wise, Wayport, and (reportedly)
Sprint PCS's airport locations. There are only a handful of major
airports not represented by those networks: SFO and Boston Logan are
the two that come to mind. Pushing Wi-Fi into homes. SBC is selling
3,000 Wi-Fi routers a day to their home DSL users. This will drive
adoption by their users of Wi-Fi. People without Wi-Fi will buy
adapters or new systems because of the ease of sharing. Pushing
hotspots subscriptions to their DSL subscribers. It's a coming, and
it's going to be good--SBC keeps saying in its press releases that
they will offer FreedomLink at a substantial discount to their DSL
subscribers. $10 per month for unlimited use? $8? $15? Who knows. But
it's an audience they've already got and they can offer them
nationwide service with several thousand locations...
Hotspot Camera
Hotspot Camera01/05/2005 06:47 PM Did Kodak just build 802.1X into a camera? Kodak will release a
camera in June that can upload photos via T-Mobile hotspots. The
software to enable this uploading isn't due until fall, for some
reason. The new Easyshare-One sounds like a combination of Apple iPod
Photo, PDA functionality (for wireless and previewing), and digital
camera. It comes with a trial for using T-Mobile's service. I'm
guessing that this camera's fall software release will leverage the
802.1X authentication that T-Mobile has added to its North American
venues. 802.1X is both simple and hard. If Kodak preloads unique
accounts, or allows people to set this up through PC or camera back
software, there's very little complexity. The 802.1X supplicant in the
camera can manage the connection. The camera will retail for $600 plus
$100 for the optional Wi-Fi card. Terms of the free trial service and
monthly pricing are yet to be determined. It's a direct shot across
the bow at cellular operators who are offering poor upload speeds on
their high-speed network. Given that T-Mobile has articulated a long
delay in their 3G rollout plans and don't want to clog their GPRS
networks, this seems like a perfect symbiosis for Kodak and
T-Mobile....
A Hotspot on Every Corner
A Hotspot on Every Corner07/29/2004 08:25 PM Details are sketchy, but New York City may allow six telecom firms to
pay up to $25 million per year to install wireless transmitters on
18,000 lamp posts: The article is full of sturm und drang about health
effects, but the real story is that the city is trying to counter its
dead zones without tearing up the streets. It's unclear precisely what
kind of transmitters these will be, but you can bet your boppy that
the goal will be wireless backhaul for the majority of the points
using mesh or simple point-to-point. This endeavor could bring
massively improved voice, 2.5G/3G cell data, and Wi-Fi into a city
without ripping up all the roads once again or putting giant cell
antennas on every last building. The companies include well-known and
never-heard-of-'em: the New York Post says they are two cellular
providers, Nextel and T-Mobile, three non-cellular companies,
ClearLinx Network Corp., Crown Castle Solutions, and Dianet
Communications. The sixth, IDT Business Services, will provide
telephone service via the Internet. [link via GigaOm]...
free hotspot lambeth rd se102/10/2004 03:00 AM as said before by others, bought 11g network card, plugged it in, free
access. around junction of kennington rd & lambeth rd, lambeth se1
City to become wireless hotspot
City to become wireless hotspot05/19/2004 06:13 AM Anyone in the centre of Cardiff will be able to surf the web or pick
up e-mails on their laptop under a new broadband scheme.
Hotspot Problems Universal
Hotspot Problems Universal01/19/2004 01:59 PM A Malaysian user of the state-run operator's Wi-Fi service has trouble
getting on: Then he gets no help from customer service. It seems that
getting technical help when trying to connect to a hotspot is
problematic anywhere you go. Ultimately, the writer finds more luck
using free hotspots....
Need to be able to locate Wi-Fi Hotspots in a hurry, perhaps
JiWire’s Portable Hotspot Locator is just the tool that you
need. The Portable Hotspot Locator enables you to search for and find
Hotspots quickly thanks to the ability to search by State, city and
even Location Type….
Hotspot Users Survey
Hotspot Users Survey06/24/2005 10:01 PM A group at the University of Virginia wants some answers from hotspot
users: They're compiling a study in which they're recruiting folks who
regularly use hotspots to fill out a very brief questionnaire....
Which Hotspot Networks Still Stand?
Which Hotspot Networks Still Stand?05/19/2004 01:26 PM With the slow rundown of Cometa's clock starting today, which
companies remain standing?: I do have a little ego, and my article in
Feb. 2001 in The New York Times was the first comprehensive piece
written in a major publication about the nascent Wi-Fi hotspot
industry. Several companies were striving to raise funds into the
mouth of the dotcom collapse, which claimed bloated business plans or
too early attempts to capitalize on a technology that only a small
number of laptop users had access to. While researching the story in
Dec. 2000, I spoke to the chief marketing officer of the Aerzone
division of Softnet. Three days after I spoke to him, Softnet pulled
the plug because they couldn't raise the funds to perform the build
out that they'd contracted with airlines and airports to handle. The
firms I interviewed for the article were Wayport, Surf and Sip, Global
Digital Media, AirWave, SkyLink (not quoted), and MobileStar. Let's
start in reverse order. What's clear from examining each of these
firms is that execution and timing mattered as much in 2001 as they do
today: controlling costs and building out a robust network in the
right place can only go so far: users who pay are still required.
MobileStar: While initially well funded, MobileStar had extremely high
run rates. I's technical standards were top notch, but expensive, and
expenses ran far ahead of any potential revenue. They went bankrupt
late in 2001 and had their assets purchased by T-Mobile HotSpot. The
company reportedly went through as much as $90 million in investment
income while producing no more than a couple million in revenue.
T-Mobile has continued to use its brand name and high-level
partnerships to run what is generally considered to be an excellent
network that's overprice for day use, but not far out of scale on
their unlimited monthly plans with one-year commitment. Sky.Link
Internet Plus: A promising Canadian firm with hotel and airports
service, the company disappeared abruptly a few months after my
article came out. It resurfaced briefly with fewer locations before
taking a final plunge. Its history and disappearance are a mystery.
AirWave: AirWave was a small San Francisco Bay Area set of hotspots in
restaurants and coffeeshops that decided that the software they'd
written to manage access points was a better product than the hotspot
business. In 2002, they exited hotspots, spinning off their locations
to...
Second Wi-Fi Advertising Hotspot Network05/02/2004 03:37 PM FreeFi will overlay advertising on Wi-Fi free hotspots; The press
release claims FreeFi is the first Wi-Fi ad network, but it's only
narrowly the case: DotSpot launched in March and both builds out
hotspots and then sells advertising on them. The FreeFi site makes it
clear that FreeFi is a software gateway overlay. The FreeFi system
uses a Web-based advertising bar that apparently a user must agree to
open in order to gain access. It says it doesn't rely on spyware,
popups, or other annoying tools. (The FreeFi logo cleverly
incorporates the open Wi-Fi hotspot warchalking symbol.)...
T-mobile WiFi Hotspot
T-mobile WiFi Hotspot04/09/2004 04:00 PM I arrived here at Honolulu International a little earlier than I
wanted to this morning as my wife had to...
Put a Hotspot Search on Your Page11/04/2003 12:52 AM Like what you see at left? You can have it, too: The JIWIRE hotspot
locator can be added in one of two dimensions to your page by
following the link....
Oregon Gets Biggest Hotspot
Oregon Gets Biggest Hotspot02/10/2004 02:40 AM It's always worrisome to qualify networks as the "biggest" but in this
case I'd bet that eastern Oregon really does have the biggest hotspot
in the country: Yesterday, Boardman and Hermiston, Ore. turned on a
600-square-mile hotspot. The network came about through a
public/private initiative and was built by EZ Wireless. The network
will be used by the Morrow County Emergency Management and Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, the police force, and
citizens. Initially, it will cover 600 square miles which includes
four counties and seven cities, some in Washington. The second phase,
which should be complete this summer, will add another seven cities.
The press release isn't online and any news organizations in the area
either don't post the stories online or require subscriptions from
visitors wanting to read the stories online....
MCI's Hotspot Network
MCI's Hotspot Network03/23/2005 12:40 PM The attention that MCI has gotten from its expanded hotspot network
is bewildering to me: I cover the industry obsessively, and so I know
that MCI is just reselling locations available from Boingo and
Wayport. Still, there have been piles of articles trying to articulate
how MCI's hotspot plan fits into their rest of their operations.
There's a strategic goal there, of course, but the articles--not the
one linked to, however--often confuse the private-label reseller
relationship that Boingo has with MCI (and with Earthlink, Fiberlink,
and other companies without -link in their names) and Wayport with,
well, everyone, with MCI building out a hotspot network a la SBC or
T-Mobile. Although the IDG story linked to says that the service costs
$40 per month for unlimited Wi-Fi/broadband when added to a dial-up
and VPN account, it's unclear exactly how that works as MCI's Remote
Broadband Access FAQ states that wireless charges are in addition to
dial-up charges. Just another way in which it's hard to figure out
what, precisely, something costs....
Netopia Offers Hotspot Solution06/28/2004 12:59 PM Netopia joins a handful of other companies offering a hotspot-in-a-box
solution: Netopia's hotspot solution costs $300 for customers that
already have a DSL modem and an additional $40 a month for support.
Users, which could be a cafe or retail location, are given cards with
log on numbers that they can sell or give to end users. Netopia will
also sell customers Web site design and maintenance service. Sure and
Sip and AirPath are just two of a handful of other companies that
offer hotspot services to venues. These services are aimed at venues
that don't want to deal with supporting a network themselves. It's
unclear yet if the pricing structures set up by these providers will
fly in the market....
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: zeroshock 14.1" ibook fit p4 hotspot throttling -wlan -jvm shinza zeroshock 14.1"
Inspired by the IBM 5100 and Xerox's Notetaker -- a 48-pound
machine with a keyboard that folded over the display -- Osborne's
eponymous computer was cobbled together from the cheapest parts he
could find. The Osborne 1 hit the market at $1,795, with dual floppy
drives and a 5-inch CRT. Flip the keyboard over the front, latch it
on, and your 24.5-pound computer was ready to go wherever you needed
it. Osborne had amazing success with the product, but it was fatally
crushed by the birth of Compaq in 1983, which copied the Osborne
carefully while adding one killer feature: IBM
compatibility.
View: 
News source: 
