David Lee's List: Technology

• The VX-1E tops out at 62 mph, and though we probably wouldn't want to ride it among the zombiecages on I-80, that kind of speed is more than adequate for getting around town. With a range of 35 to 55 miles, you'll go days before you're searching for a socket.

      

  The VX-2 is smaller and more compact, with a max speed of 30 mph and a range of 40 to 50 miles. Just the thing for riding around campus.
• $5,000 for the VX-2 and $8,500 for its big brother

• There’s a never-ending sea of news sources, and if I just plunge in headfirst, I’ll probably get overwhelmed in minutes.
• The community of users at sites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller and Delicious rank stories in order of importance
• NewzNozzl pulls top news stories from the above-mentioned social bookmarking sites as well as Mixx, Propeller and Newsvine to create a prefiltered flow of hot news items.
• Addictomatic, Yahoo Buzz or BuzzTracker
• hop over to one of my personal favorites, BuzzFeed
• For a more tailored approach, RSS subscribers like Google Reader, FeedDemon and Bloglines have long offered ways to collect content from blogs and news sites and put them into a simple combined list of stories that you can check in on periodically.
• it’s easy to overindulge on news subscriptions
• RSS filters like ReadBurner and RSSMeme are applications that pick out the most popular links from RSS aggregating sites like Google Reader.
• LinkRiver is another spin on an RSS filter
• Tabbloid, created by Hewlett-Packard, rounds up as few or as many news feeds as you like and cobbles them together into a makeshift newsletter or tabloid format, then delivers it in PDF format via e-mail at the desired frequency, either daily or weekly. Feedbooks, an e-Book platform, also offers a version of a digitized newsstand that can be delivered to a laptop or mobile device not only in PDF but also in formats compatible with a Cybook or a Sony Reader.
• don’t fear Twitter
• desktop application like Twirl

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• For an operating system that took five years to create, Windows Vista’s reputation went down in flames amazingly quickly.
• customers beg, plead and sign petitions to bring back the previous version
• a lot of things are faster
• Microsoft intends to keep the same system requirements for Windows 7 that it had for Vista
• less bloated
• Battery life is supposed to be better on laptops
• Microsoft’s primary strategy has been to put out something mediocre, and then refine, refine, refine, no matter how long and no matter what it costs

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• This list is not for geeks. It’s for IT professionals of a certain age, who don’t spend every waking hour online but need to keep up with the latest innovations on the Internet.
• This list is not for geeks.
• 1. Linked In
• Google Apps
• this real-time messaging service is taking off in IT circles
• Twitter provides an easy way to keep your staff and co-workers informed about where you are and what you’re doing.
• Twitter for the office

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• Silicon Valley may be one of the few places where businesses are still aware of the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist who wrote about business cycles during the first half of the last century. He said the lifeblood of capitalism was “creative destruction.” Companies rising and falling would unleash innovation and in the end make the economy stronger.
• fell for the first time in history in the last quarter of 2008
• the steepest decline since 1985
• Acer pushed Apple out of the No. 3 spot behind H.P. and Dell as sales soared 55 percent.
• the revenue of VMware, one of the leaders in this cost-saving technology, to an estimated $1.88 billion last year from $387 million in 2005

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• The Sectéra looks like most P.D.A.’s, and operates like one when in normal mode. But a press of a button on the front of the device engages “classified mode” (for added effect, the screen background turns red when this mode is activated)
• It operates on a Windows Mobile platform.
• each unit costs $3,350. It is unclear if its price drops to $19.99 with a two-year contract, but it seems unlikely.

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• Any movie, any time. Is that too much to ask?
• Netflix comes close. It’s got the “any movie” part covered, since it stocks virtually every movie ever released on DVD — about 100,000 titles.
• now any Netflix member with a plan of $9 or more can watch unlimited streaming movies, for no extra charge
• Netflix instant movies became a TiVo feature. An Xbox 360 feature. A Blu-ray DVD player feature (LG and Samsung). Even a feature built right into the TV sets themselves (LG and Vizio, starting this spring).
• There’s genius to this master plan; everybody, apparently, wins. Consumers get a better on-demand movie deal than they’ll find anywhere else: $9 a month, unlimited.

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• And as cellphones change how we live, computer scientists say, they are also changing how we think about information.
• Google started a location-aware friend-finding system called Latitude in 27 countries early this month
• A full-blown map-based, location-aware mobile world would entail rethinking basic American notions of privacy.
• Today the vast majority of cellphone users in the United States still use the devices primarily for just one function: talking. About 10 percent of cellphone users take advantage of map features
• 24 percent of those interviewed wanted GPS mapping capabilities on their next phone, but only 19 percent wanted an Internet connection
• neuroscientists have discovered that people who have occupations that require them to maintain complex mental maps of the world, like London taxi drivers, have an enlarged hippocampus

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