IT Crowd.

Seriously, this has to be one of the funniest shows I've seen in ages. For anyone who’s ever worked in IT, you'll get a kick out of this video. Enjoy!

And so it begins.

I would expect this movement to gain more momentum over the next year.

Evolution of the printed word.

Simply put I couldn't agree more with this individuals point of view.

The article: Journalism evolving, not dying. An interview of science author Steven Johnson at the South By South West Interactive Festival

Bullets of interest:

- Newspapers are dying but journalism is evolving
- Newspaper industry; it is ugly and it is going to get uglier. Great journalists are going to lose their jobs and cities are going to lose their newspapers.
- The shift (death of newspapers) was foreseeable but ignored, resulting in changes that should have happened gradually over a decade being crammed into a year or two with some pressure from the global economic meltdown
-There is panic that newspapers are going to disappear as businesses. Then there is panic that crucial information is going to disappear along with them. We spend so much time figuring out how to keep the old model on life support that we don't figure out how to build the new one.
-News organizations should stop wasting resources on information freely available online.
- "Print editions are yesterday's news. If it is news, people want to hear it as soon as they can".

Touché!

Beard of Bees!!!

Iphone Rules!

Trips.

An old piece from slashgear that I came across some time ago. Needless to say, if I had 3 monitors on my desk right now I wouldn't be resting my arms on a sea of paper (most of which are one time print jobs for reference against work on my PC).

Triple-LCD setup boosts performance by over 35% claim researchers

While many people are still struggling to find the desk space (and money) for a dual-monitor setup, according to Fujitsu and the Fraunhofer IAO laboratory we should actually be squeezing three displays into our workspace if we want real performance improvements. Compared to users completing tasks on a single 19-inch LCD, those with three such screens linked together saw a 35.5-percent jump in efficiency.

A third group of testers had a 22-inch widescreen monitor, which increased their productivity over the single 19-inch group by 8.4-percent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the users themselves were reportedly more happy with their bigger, multi-screen setups.

Fujitsu are now looking to use the research in their product development. However, unless they’re planning a dual-sliding version of the Lenovo W700ds (now that we’d like to see) we’re not sure how that would differ from them saying “go on, buy another few monitors, please?”

Got Inventory?

Quickly scanning the blogs before I head out the door for work, I came across an interesting article in business week addressing just How Low Can PC Prices Go? Really this is just another example of industry over capacity (this time its in PC hardware) and consumer price deflation. Just like in any other industry that assumed the consumer would be king into infinity, the harsh reality is that consumer demand vintage 2002-2006 has left the building never to be seen again.

On a side note, I want a netbook (preferably the new Apple touch screen netbook please!).

When Jim Wahl bought his first computer back in 1995, it cost$2,500. In December, when the Dallas acquisitions manager bought a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) laptop for his daughter, he paid just $600. "[In the past], it was a lot bigger decision," Wahl says. "But now, the tires on my car cost more than my laptop."

Personal computer prices tend to fall over time, of course. But in the past few months, computer prices have plummeted much more sharply than the usual 5% yearly declines. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, the average personal computer's selling price dropped 14.3%, according to consultancy IDC. Only once in the past 15 years have PC prices declined at a faster rate—in the fourth quarter of 2001, as the Internet bubble burst, when they dipped 14.5%, according to IDC.

And the recent slide may be a precursor to sharper declines ahead. As consumers cut back amid the global economic downturn and the popularity of low-cost computers known as netbooks rises, the computer industry could see a big drop in prices. "We are not done yet," says Rob Enderle, president of consultant Enderle Group. "The drop is going to continue through the year." Matthew Wilkins, an analyst with researcher iSuppli, predicts that average laptop prices could fall a further 10% in 2009, while desktop prices drop 15%.

Read more here: How Low Can PC Prices Go?

2019

Working in finance has its downfalls. The never-ending cascade of all major market indices over the past year and a half play perfect illustration to that statement. During times of such doom and gloom, it is all to easy to get down on the future and what it holds for each and everyone of us. In the spirit of keeping the glass half full, lets fall back onto the creative minds at Microsoft to whom I say...if these things are in my future, everything is gonna be ok!

T-minus 10 years and counting.

Caffeine May Kill Some Cancer Cells

I’ve got to admit, keeping up with a daily blog post is harder than I originally expected. I feel like I am reading more on a daily basis than at any other time in my life. Since I have failed to relay any of the more interesting things as of late, here’s my attempt at filling the void.

Source: Caffeine May Kill Some Cancer Cells by Andrea Thompson.

A cup of joe a day may help keep skin cancer away: A new study shows that caffeine helps kill off human cells damaged by ultraviolet light, one of the key triggers of several types of skin cancer.

Several studies have shown that people who regularly drink coffee or tea seem to have lower incidences of nonmelanoma skin cancers. One recent study of more than 90,000 Caucasian women found that with each additional cup of caffeinated coffee consumed, there was an associated 5 percent decreased risk of developing one of these skin cancers (decaf coffee had no effect).

The researchers go onto say:

"We are by no means recommending that people change their beverage habits," Nghiem said. It would take regularly drinking six cups of coffee a day to decrease the risk of incidence by just 30 percent, and tea has only half the potency of coffee, he added.

Interesting stuff...

JJ

Credit Crisis 101

Nice little summary of the Credit Crisis. For those that don't understand how many countries found themselves in the economic freefall of today, here is the primer. While Easy money and leverage walked us up the slippery slope, tight money and deleverage have turned cliff diving into a sport that most countries, industries, and sectors are clearly unprepared to handle.

Video by Jonathan Jarvis:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Preach on brother Rick.

It's nice to see some one grow a set and speak some truth on TV (watch the 3 min rant).

Targeted Sound.

Woody Norris shows off his invention dubbed "Hypersonic Sound". His creation effectively shapes and focuses sound waves, allowing for the precise targeting and delivery of sound. I highly recommend the below video. Its a bit long, but worth the time spent watching.

A sign of things to come!

WMC 09 - Sweet New UI's

Three different vendors. Three different OS'. Three sweet interfaces. Nice to see Sony using the PS UI. I'll let the videos do the talking.

Microsoft (WM 6.5),


Windows Mobile 6.5 Running on HTC from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

Garmin (Linux),


Garmin G60 Hands On from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

Sony Ericson (Symbian).


Sony Ericsson Idou's in landscape mode from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

Stimu-less.

Image courtesy of http://www.neoconnews.com/

Caught this article during one of my binge blog reading sessions. Apparently it’s making its way around through the fwd circuit, so it’s only a matter of time before it hits my inbox. Pretty humorous, but oh so true. Id be curious to what the United States holds a comparative advantage in nowa days outside of agricultural goods, and select capital goods (and since there is not type face for sarcasm yet, yes that was a sarcastic comment).

via: The Big Picture

Sometime this year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:


Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.


Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.


Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. No, they are borrowing it from China. Your children are expected to repay the Chinese.


Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.


Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.


Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:


If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.

If you spend it on gasoline it will go to Hugo Chavez, the Arabs and Al Queda

If you purchase a computer it will go to Taiwan.

If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).

If you buy a car it will go to Japan and Korea.

If you purchase prescription drugs it will go to India

If you purchase heroin it will go to the Taliban in Afghanistan

If you give it to a charitable cause, it will go to Nigeria.


And none of it will help the American economy. We need to keep that money here in America. You can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or spend it on prostitutes, beer (domestic only), or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the US.

Can you say Buy-America?

The slow death of print media.

Just a quick rant.

After a long day at work yesterday, I got off the elevator to find the hall of my apartment building littered with the 2009 Yellow Pages. Lets analyze those last three words one more time. 2009 Yellow Pages. Yes, I know what your thinking. There are still Yellow Pages?

Let me start with a question. When is the last time you opened a yellow pages to find information? My guess if your reading this blog, is 1982. What an enormous waste of resources (can you hear me shaking my bag of granola). My recommendation to Yellow Pages: encourage people to use their advertising dollars a little wiser and get their information put online, or if already there to kick it up a notch. I understand there is a segment of the population who can't imagine the world without yellow pages, and have it around just in case Armageddon kicks in, but seriously is Google that intimidating?

Anyway, since I can imagine the YP book will be floating around for at least another decade, all I ask is that: the company does a little demographic research and give this artifact to those that actually think they need it, throw it directly in the recycling bin instead of leaving it at my front door, or here’s a novel concept...create an opt out program!


JJ

Quotes for the day.

Two different Quotes, two different people:

"We are not going to put out the details, until we get it right"

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in response to his releasing the details behind the US governments latest attempt at rescuing the US financial sector.

"Massive responses with little explanation will probably make things worse. That is the lesson from this crisis so far."

From How Government Created the Financial Crisis, written by Economist John Taylor (The Taylor Rule).

From TAF, to TARP, to TALF, and whatever is next, the only thing that is clear to me is how unclear the US government has been in its dealing with its current financial/economic mess.

What a mess…

JJ

To Buy or Rent.

Interesting piece on the NYT: Is it better to Buy or Rent?

The above link takes you to a Buy/Rent calculator. Here you can plug in all the parameters appropriate to you and your region. Given that most major markets are seeing horrendous real estate conditions I would encourage you to relax (tone down) assumptions on price appreciation, and if your a good tenant then lets assume YOY rental increases are small at best. Scroll over the graph to see your results.

Feel free to play around with all the different parameters to get a gauge of all the results possible.

Random Factiod of the Day

From Matt Buchanan over @ Gizmodo: Print Is Doomed, By the Numbers

"It would cost the Times about half as much money to send every single one of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead of a physical newspaper each day." Over three months! [SAI]

Isn't the digital age great?

As featured in the UK publication News of the World this last Saturday, the Olympic Champ, Michael Phelps was captured hitting a bong @ at a University of South Carolina party. You can't be too careful nowadays. With everyone and their mother packing a 2mp camera on their phone, and most 15-40 something’s rocking a Facebook or Myspace pace, it doesn’t take to much to bring someone down a few notches.

This picture is definitely on par with that of President Obama’s twenty something chief speech writer having this picture show up on a Facebook page (see below). Classic!!! It’s good to know we're all human.

High Speed Far East.

It’s been a while since my last post. But between that last post and this morning, I have decided its time for me to move to Korea. Since it will probably be a decade or longer until I can expect my local ISP to provide something remotely close to this service @ a reasonable price, for now all i can do is sit back in envy of what the Koreans will be getting.

While in Korea download a 120-minute film in just 12 seconds!

Korea is to acquire the world's fastest wired and wireless Internet service at 10 times the speed of the current service by 2012. The government and the communications industry plan to invest some W34 trillion over the next five years in the project. The Korea Communications Commission finalized plans for Internet services at an average speed of 1 Gbps through fixed lines and 10 Mbps through wireless. One Gbps allows users to download a 120-minute film in just 12 seconds. The aim is to give users seamless access to large-capacity, high-quality convergence services such as IPTV.

Although the super-speed internet will be available mainly in large cities, fixed-line
subscribers in smaller towns in Korea will also have access to 50 to 100 Mbps Internet service allowing them to watch IPTV programs without a hitch.

The Demise of Rom Media.

Found a great article by Devin Coldewey of Crunch Gear: Nine (questionable) reasons why Blu-ray will succeed.

I couldn't agree more with Devin. Using my own experience as a proxy and adjusting for the fact that I am a little ahead of your average Joe, I would expect Devin's assessment to play out over the next half decade. With streaming services like Huluu and Netflix really taking off this last year, major networks distributing their TV content free online, peer 2 peer sharing (s.a. bit torrent) becoming the de-facto/unstoppable file sharing standard, and storage size on the cloud and SSD's growing at an exponential clip, it will only be a matter of time before the major production houses wake up and smell the coffee. With major infrastructure build outs expected on the network side, the capacity for a user to dl a 10-20 gig 720/1080movie in 20 minuets or less will be the catalyst that takes this from being a blog post to water cooler digest. While I could go on and on, let me join in the chorus to bid farewell to ROM technology, you won’t be missed.

There’s a lengthy article over here written by a well-meaning but perhaps slightly self-deluding Sony apologist, detailing nine reasons why Blu-ray will succeed. It’s worth checking out, but it’s pretty clearly the view from one side. So take a look and then come back and see if you agree with our tempering of that laudable but unwarranted optimism.

Ready? Then let’s begin the deconstruction. Let’s take it step by step.

[Note: just so we're clear, I am
disagreeing with the points suggested in bold.]

1. Digital downloads will not eliminate the need for discs anytime soon.“Soon” is a relative term, and it’s not a question of if but when. That lends a certain doomed air to the whole Blu-ray setup; it’s like buying a ticket for a ship that everyone knows is sinking, but no one knows how fast. Sure, a lot of people have crappy connections now and streaming video isn’t as high quality by a good measure, but that gap is constantly narrowing and it’s not all going to be streaming anyway. A high-def movie with perfectly good compression takes up perhaps 10GB. That means you can fit 50 on a $100 hard drive. That sort of proposition is finding more and more willing participants.

2. Having one clear standard is a big advantage.

Kind of true. But the benefit of a versatile platform (a PC or set-top box) is that the “standard” isn’t: it can change without affecting end users. Re-encode your library to be smaller, or download a new version with better image quality. Push a firmware upgrade with better noise reduction. Download a new player that offers more and better features. We’re no longer setting hardware standards like before; we had standards for videotapes, and it would have been nice to have them for things like memory cards, but now we’re beyond the physical restrictions that were the main reason a “clear standard” was
advantageous.

3. Blu-ray isn’t going to be replaced by another disc format anytime soon.

No, it’s not going to be replaced by another disc format, but it’s already being replaced by another storage format. Hard drives are cheaper per gig, more convenient, and already in half the devices we own. The optical drive is on its way out; a new disc format would be like a new extra-long-play VHS tape in 2000.

4. Prices for large-screen HDTVs will continue to drop.

5. Prices for Blu-ray players will continue to drop.

6. Prices for Blu-ray discs will drop to near DVD price levels.

Hope you don’t mind me combining these things, because they essentially amount to “The price of having a Blu-ray setup will continue to drop.” This is true, but it’s not just Blu-ray stuff that’s getting cheaper. As the price of storage and broadband connections drops as well, you’ll find that the increased appetite for Blu-ray devices will be matched by the increased presence of alternatives like set-top boxes and HTPCs. Imagine having an Eee Keyboard reading movies off an easily-set-up home media server and beaming it over wireless HDMI to your big screen. That’s what people see themselves doing in two or three years — they don’t want to do the same crap they’ve been doing since the 80s.

7. Sony will sell lots of PlayStation 3 game consoles. Wow, let me get some of that crack!

8. Sony can’t afford to have Blu-ray fail.

If all it took to succeed was the desire to do so, Napoleon would have conquered the world. He threw everything he had at it, as Sony will, but who’s to say when Sony will meet its Wellington?

9. Sony and its partners will figure out a way to have Blu-ray resonate with the public.

This is a bit of a leap of faith, and unfortunately I think it’s the same leap of faith people made with the PS3. They’ve tried and failed to make it “resonate”; it’s just not catching. DVD was clearly better than VHS, so it was eventually adopted. Blu-ray is clearly better than DVD, but situation is different because DVD had no agile, popular competitor like iTunes and its brethren. Not only is it too late to make Blu-ray or the PS3 resonate with the public, but the public is already resonating with
the seductive vibrations of all-digital media.

Don’t get me wrong, I like physical media. I like the boxes, I like the extra stuff, I like the objects. But high-definition video is made for a digital life cycle. It belongs on a hard drive, or in the cloud. I feel differently about e-books, for example; many books and magazines belong on the printed page, although that too is changing. But the optical disc establishment is being torn down and it’s about time. Blu-ray is the last stand and is making a good thing of it, but let’s not be unrealistic in our praise or
expectations; why polish the knobs on the Titanic? Why not look towards
something new?

Farewell Tribute to Great Moments in Presidential Speeches

Too Funny!

Some Salt with Your Coffee?

Before my day gets going….

From Time Magazine: Some Salt with Your Coffee? Taiwan's Hot Drink

Owner Wu Cheng-hsueh of 85°C basically ran with the idea I’d been mapping out in my head since my own personal discovery of coffee some 8 years ago (minus the salty coffee bit of course). Going to the source for Starbucks, and hiring gourmet chefs to design drinks that justify the million dollars I should be raking in…touché Wu Cheng-hsueh!

On a serious note, even though we all knew Asian governments wouldn’t let Starbucks run rampant circa USA 2000-2007, I’ll give credit where credits due. Can't wait to see the first 85°C store in my neighborhood and give this beverage a try.

Obama plans to keep his BlackBerry (Who bloody cares?)

Seriously, how many times does this story have to be reported on? In the last two weeks there have been countless reports about Obama and his Blackberry.

From Computer World: Obama plans to keep his BlackBerry:

January 16, 2009 (Computerworld) President-elect Barack Obama told CNN today he planned to "hang onto" his beloved BlackBerry, but did not explain how he would
overcome legal and security concerns.

First, this isn't news. Second, its 2009, who doesn't have a Smartphone? The man just wants to stay connected. Logical dictates that if everyday people need to stay connected for work, wouldn't it be important that the US President have the same capacity? Really there’s quite an easy workaround: Call the boys over at RIM, and tell them you want a custom berry for you and your entire staff. Since you have dolled out endless promo the past two weeks I’m sure they will bend over backwards to accommodate. You can then get a quick lesson on some of the tech solutions available to the commercial market that help assist in protecting valuable information. Two that pop into my head are finger print biometrics, and remote shutdown and delete. Both would be more than sufficient, and are being used to protect m-commerce ready phones world-wide. Bottom line, if someone really wants at you in today’s connected world, there’s always a way. No one knows this better than the US Gov't. That’s why they have the best backup solution...hired muscle.

First Post.

My inaugural post, a three day leader on another inaugural event...

It’s about time I scratched my blogging itch. It feels as if I have been talking about starting my own blog for the last 3 years. Now that blogs absolutely own the mainstream media, I am going jump in head first and see if I can keep up with the continual relay of news to those who care to stop here for a break.

The name of this blog, ‘7 Cups Of Coffee’ has nothing to do with the content you'll find in subsequent posts. The thought was quite simple. Me, I love coffee. I also love the internet and its vast availability of information. On a good day, I will polish off at least 7 cups of coffee. Really, just connect the dots. Coffee + Internet Connection = a lot of random reading. My job from here on in, to share as many of my surfing tangents as possible.

JJ