Monthly Archives: February 2002

general February 28, 2002 posted by

Now here’s a rich one. Guy Kewney, erstwhile UK technology columnist of note and long history, has his own Web site – and it’s….gasp….not a blog. No get up, brush yourself down and take a few deep breaths. I know it’s hard to believe, but it looks as though it’s just a normal newsy, well written tech bits site. Check it out for yourself if you can take the shock, Kewney.com.

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general February 28, 2002 posted by

Another small indication as to how clued up the Indian software and technology business is getting is the Imahima service. The word means ‘are you free now?’ in Japanese and the servikce was apparently started up by Indian Neeraj Jhanji who is a Japanese resident. It’s basically an i-mode and WAP mobile phone IM system, which lets you see which of your buddies is online, who is close to you and what their mood is. 500,000 people are currently using…

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general February 27, 2002 posted by

I have always loved small, elegant and non intrusive software applications and now I’ve found a site where there are lots of them gathered in one place. Tinyapps carries everything from tiny thumbnail creators to floppy disk based operating systems and most of the downloads are free. Check it out.

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general February 27, 2002 posted by

Driver Detective from DriversHQ is a free utility to help you keep your Window’s software drivers, VXD and DLL files up to date. I suggest that it is used with the traditional amount of caution. Thanks to MajorGeeks for the link.

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general February 27, 2002 posted by

Apparently it’s all the rage for geeks to clean their gear in the dishwasher. Not only keyboards, but even more sensitive things like disk drives . Well if they say so, it must be right. Right?

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general February 26, 2002 posted by

Can you use P2P technology to help one another with questions and problems and the like, as opposed to just swapping files around? Check out the site at P2PQ and see what you think. The idea is that you post a long question and someone somewhere who’s on the network answers it if they know the answer. Weird? Maybe. Or maybe amazing. While we’re on the subject of P2P, this site has a whole bunch of P2P services which look…

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general February 26, 2002 posted by

Wow, speaking of intellectual property rights, it looks like the fight is now on in earnest, at least in the US. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse site has been set up by what looks like a passel of lawyers and the EFF to help people understand what their rights are when faced with corporate online bullying over copyrights and the like. We need more of this kind of service (any Europeans out there with a mind to help out?). :-)

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Free Software February 26, 2002 posted by

A couple of nice little utilities for MP3 users from Mpesch3. 1by1 is a quick and dirty and very tiny (19K) playlist player. Just fire it up, point it at your directory (or even a whole disk) and it will play the MP3s. It even has an audio enhancer. ‘Triffic, this is destined to become my standard player as I’m tired of bloatware. Is this the smallest MP3 player ever? MP3DirectCut is an MP3 manipulation utility. You can use it…

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general February 26, 2002 posted by

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law school, is one person who is being very vocal about the misuse and abuse of current copyright legislation. This essay – an excerpt from his book, The Future of Ideas – is an excellent take on the dangers of over protection, contrasted to the benefit of allowing a more liberal expansion of the rules. An excellent read for anyone interested in the future of intellectual property rights.

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general February 26, 2002 posted by

Multi service IM chat clients are just like buses, you wait around for ages and three pop up at once. IM Anywhere is one worth taking a look at, although unlike Trillian and Vista it won’t handle ICQ buddies. Still it looks like it could be useful if for some reason the alternatives don’t work (although it is an AT&T product, so who can say!). Happy chatting! Thanks to Meryl’s Notes for the link.

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general February 26, 2002 posted by

Ben has his BlogCast service working. What is it? Streamed audio blogs from around the world aggregated at one point and served to you, sir, in one Real player stream. It’s not going to threaten the BBC anytime soon, but it is very cool technology and just could be a pointer towards the future of private Internet broadcasting.

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general February 25, 2002 posted by

Now here’s interesting. According to a report from Asia Biz Tech, the worlds top ten DVD makers have announced an agreement to standardize on the next generation of DVD recordable devices. This implies that at last there will be one single DVD-R standard worldwide. The new discs will hold 6 times more than current DVD 4.7GB, which should make for nice long record times too, but we’ll have to wait and see if that represents single sided or dual sided…

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general February 25, 2002 posted by

Fancy creating PDF files? Not too keen on buying Adobe Acrobat to do so? Then how about the free PDF995 program? Thanks to Chris Pirillo for the link.

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general February 25, 2002 posted by

Forget about your Segway, could this be the personal transport of the future? Probably not, but it looks interesting anyway. The Wheelsurf is based around a scooter engine, does around 40 kph and costs around $3800. Not sure whether it’s in production or prototype, but it sure is a weird mode of transport. Mind you the prototypes on this page look very cool. Thanks to ZZZ for the heads up.

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