Marc Erickson

The address is:
Santa Claus,
North Pole,
Canada
And the postal code? Why it’s H0H OHO of course!
Check out Santa’s Corner on the Web!
There are other activities for kids at the site, including cartoons, fun and games, activities, craft suggestions, and recipes.
There’s also an email form here.
[tags]santa’s corner, write to santa, email santa, H0H OHO[/tags]

Charting another industry first for computing enthusiasts, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the AMD Quad FX Platform with Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture, the first dual-socket, multi-core desktop PC platform designed to take advantage of the latest enhancements in Windows Vista Ultimate. As the supreme AMD platform for megatasking enthusiasts, the AMD Quad FX [...]

OK, folks - both Chris and I are getting married next month and we want to put our weddings on a Webcam - me because I have family and friends who won’t be able to attend, and Chris just because he’s that kind of a geek. We asked Jake for help, but he hasn’t [...]

Robert McMillan of itWorldCanada writes:
After winning a US$11.7 million judgment against the Spamhaus Project Ltd., e-mail marketer e360 Insight LLC is asking a federal court to shut down the antispam service.
E360 has filed a proposed court order with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that calls on the organizations responsible for [...]

Chris Preimesberger of eWeek.com writes:
Thanks to new levels of competition in the market sector, storage devices continue to get smaller in footprint and less expensive - while offering increased capacity and more desirable features, such as auto-backup and encryption.
The latest example of this IT storage bonanza for consumers is Buffalo Technology’s new DriveStation Duo, which features [...]

Dennis Fisher of SearchSecurity.com writes:
A new information clearinghouse for data on phishing attacks is up and running, and unlike similar efforts at other sites, PhishTank includes an open API that enables contributors to submit and access data through various applications.
The new site is not only an archive of suspected and confirmed phishing emails, but it also [...]

Web3.0log reports:
Social news rave[s] about Browzar - [it] claims it’s a new secure browser leaving no footprints. After looking at it closer, I found out that it’s not a browser at all, and moreover, this software thrusts search via its own PPC-SE full of ads on user[s].
Yeah, it’s just [a] 264K addon to Microsoft Internet [...]

ThinkGeek reports:
Finally, WMD* at an affordable price.
Nobody remembers who started it. Perhaps that guy from HR lobbed a wadded-up piece of paper over the cube wall at you? It could have been one of those accounting dudes with the marshmallow-gun. It doesn’t matter, now. You are armed.
The USB Missile Launcher is the latest desktop [...]

The California Clean Tech Open, a competition in which participants created technology-enabled, environmentally friendly products and business models, announced its five winners this week in San Francisco.

Lucas van Grinsven of Reuters writes:
The format war around next generation DVDs may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough from a British media technology company.
Britain-based New Medium Enterprises said on Tuesday it had solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap multiple-layer DVD disk containing one [...]

Nestor E. Arellano of IT World Canada writes:
If you seek to create a consolidated e-government service network, coveting your neighbour’s IT assets may be a good way to begin, according to one high-profile American CIO.
Teresa Takai, CIO of the State of Michigan, said one way she keeps her network up to date is by [...]

Robert Levine of The New York Times writes:
During the last decade, the cost of recording and producing music and video has plummeted, giving amateur auteurs a chance at stardom. But at the same time, the expense involved in making video games has gone up: the development kits needed to create games for the consoles made [...]

A new wireless network design affords high performance at a fraction of the power, promising more powerful communications without the expensive infrastructure. Kate Green of Technology Review writes:

Like guerilla librarians defending the free flow of information across all borders, the Canadian creators of a particular software designed to bypass governmental censorship mean business! Nestor E. Arellano of ITWorld Canada writes:
The arms race over Internet censorship is escalating.
A new weapon is being developed to help dissidents gain free access to the Web.
A [...]

Joaquim P. Menezes of IT World Canada writes:
A resolution has been reached in a high-profile “corporate espionage” case with WestJet airlines admitting culpability today, apologizing to Air Canada, and agreeing to pay settlement costs totalling $15.5 million.
The amount includes a $10 million donation that WestJet will make in the name of Air Canada to children’s [...]

If you missed all the uproar last year about the Sony rootkit that was installed when a user played certain Sony BMG music CDs on his computer, Technology Review has done a cover story on it that reprises events very well. It’s in three parts:

Part One is here

Part Two is here

Part Three is [...]

Unfortunately, Firefox is like any other software - security holes are discovered by doing things with the software that the developers never comtemplated or never came up in testing. Firefox versions 1.5.0.2 and version 1.0.8 have been released to fix multiple security vulnerabilities that include the possibility of someone taking control of your computer. [...]

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Zed, CBC Radio 3, and Mobile MUSE, have partnered with the Vancouver International Digital Festival (Vidfest) on a unique contest for all new media producers with a love of the mobile medium.
Starting April 3, 2006, the Vidfest 2006 Content A-Go-Go Mobile Challenge invites digital media creators to upload their podcasts, short films and documentaries, animation, [...]

Remember when having a hard drive with a single gig was a big deal? Remember when it was hard to believe anyone would ever need more than that? Remember when it was hard to believe we’d ever need half of that? It wasn’t that long ago. And what about the needs of the not-too-distant future? [...]