2006 February

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
Yesterday Microsoft unveiled details on its upcoming Office suite. Formerly named Office 12, it is now Office 2007. Pricing, based on a document by Microsoft, appears to be similar to current prices. Office 2007 Standard and Office 2007 Professional will be $399 and $499 retail, respectively.
Read More [...]

I have been a huge fan of subscription music services - especially Yahoo Music. It makes no sense to pay by the song unless you truly love and have to own it for life, and subscription services have always offered the ability to own individual tunes or albums for less that the iTunes price. What’s [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
You can read the full 54-page PDF here. It’s part of a review of the effectiveness of the DMCA (reviews must be conducted every 3 years). Ars Technica and the Electronic Frontier Foundation both have analyses of the document, and it seems evident that besides applauding the DMCA, the [...]

Chief Gizmateer of RealTechNews writes:
2006 is shaping up to be a ‘dog” of a year at best for Google.
Read More about Google Here
[tags]google,realtechnews,chief gizmateer[/tags]

Dave Zatz of RealTechNews writes:
TiVo offered up a little more Valentine’s Day love for us yesterday when they released TiVo Desktop 1.9.2 for OSX. We went ahead and installed the brand-spanking new software. No new features as far as we can tell, but both Panther and Tiger are fully supported, unlike previous versions, for photo [...]

A lot of Web applications exist to help people find products and services to solve various needs. In this I include all e-commerce sites, all sites that basically market stuff, consumer review sites, yellow pages, and other directories.
Where they fail is that none of them can recommend the best solution to what you need. [...]

What attracted me to the this site today, besides the intriguing title, was its dedication. It states that it is dedicated to the discovery and sharing of information regarding strange and unusual phenomenon. Now if that doesn’t grab your attention, nothing will. I mean it’s “deeply” weird, not just weird, or a little weird, but [...]

Paul Gillin of “BtoB Magazine” is earnestly seeking non-tech company bloggers who are using weblogs for market research, specifically to collect research about customers and markets for an upcoming column. I know that there are companies whose blogs serve as market research - indeed, don’t just about all of these weblogs end up being customer [...]

Mark Evans of RealTechNews writes:
You had to figure Google had what it wanted in the Web analytics market with the purchase of Urchin but it’s now obvious it wasn’t enough amid news the search engine giant has acquired MeasureMap, which has been offering an alpha blog analytics service.
More about Google and MeasureMap Here
[tags]google,realtechnews,mark evans,measuremap[/tags]

Sharewood Picnic is my weekly collection of new media resources and tools. In it you find the best new media tools and picks I discover weekly during my daily research and explorations. The picnic gems I select are all tools and services that while small or still in Beta stage deserve definitely more attention and [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
You may recall our earlier article on Reduced Core Duo Notebook Battery Life. As we indicated then, TG Daily had managed to narrow down the bug to Microsoft’s ACPI driver.
Since then, TG Daily has continued to work with both Intel and Microsoft to isolate the issue. According [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
I’m surprised… surprised the U.S. didn’t say anything about this first, knowing our government. :-)
At any rate, because of the new built-in drive encryption features in Windows Vista, law enforcement officials may need a way around the encryption. Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University was testifying before [...]

Remember chewing gum in school and being told it would take 7 years to digest? There was always that moment when you had to think about it and decide if it was worth the risk - well, what a waste of time.
Gum is no problem on the innards.

[Yesterday was] Valentine’s day and most of the readers at RealTechNews are male, so for that speical someone in your life, here’s a guide written by a geek for geeks about how to listen to women. I am not sure I agree, and I don’t get why this advice is specifically for “geeks” vs. just [...]

In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work at CNET and founded the gaming side of CNET’s business which was then Gamecenter.com and is now Gamespot.com.

Jimmy Daniels of RealTechNews writes:
Microsoft has posted the second beta version of Windows Defender, formerly know as Windows Antispyware for download. The site says 25 million active customers.

One of the most warped bands (I mean that in a positive sense) that I have ever had the pleasure of listening to has not been live on stage for over ten years. The people who follow them do not just listen to the music, they embrace the lifestyle that it inspires. So if you’re [...]

This is one of those great “some companies really ‘get it’” stories, the kind of thing I love to hear about as someone riding the very tip of the technology rocketship (think Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and you’ll have my mental image exactly). Prentice-Hall Business Publishers have the same challenges that any company today [...]

The latest issue of MAKE has a great story: “Homemade electric vehicles.” It offers a peek into the growing world of DIY electric conversions. It seems that you can convert the average econo-car to all electric power with a range of 40 miles for around $7,000 US. That in itself is amazing, but when it [...]

Dave Zatz of RealTechNews writes:
MovieBeam, who just received a large cash infusion from Cisco, is relaunching in 29 markets this year.