MagCloud – a new (beta) service by HP Labs brings the magazine universe in a single place. It is social, it is eco, it is innovative. It is the virtual magazine newsstand. It is a service, that offers print-on-demand magazines to end users. The beta is so far only available in United States, Canada and United Kingdom, but they promise to expand to more countries soon.
MagCloud started as an HP Labs incubation project to evaluate new, online marketplaces for buying and selling custom and niche magazines with print on demand fulfillment. MagCloud is inventing new ways to bring consumers and publishers together in a web-based marketplace where choice, flexibility and print on demand are the cornerstones of the community.
Today is going to be a big day for technology. Two major technology events are going to happen at the same day – January 27th, 2010:
Sun + Oracle merger: At 9:00 AM PST (17:00 GMT) There will be an Oracle + Sun Strategy Update Webcast. It is entitled “Transforming the Way You Buy, Run, and Manage Your Business Systems”. The Sun acquisition by Oracle is by far one of the most significant transformations in the Enterprise segment, making Oracle an even bigger giant.
And then comes the most awaited event by the general public:
Apple: The long awaited announcement of a “major new product”, as dubbed by Steve Jobs, is going to happen at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT). All rumors in the tech circles point it’s going to be the public presentation of the mystical Apple tablet, called iTablet, iSlate or iPod Tablet Edition. There is no live feed from the event, but rumor has it there is going to be a video on Apple’s website as soon as it’s finished.
A friend asked me today: “Do you have a Facebook?”
My quick answer was: “Of course not, I am a geek!”
Then it made me think, what is it that makes geeks hate the new social networks hype? It’s not like we are unfamiliar or feel uncomfortable, come on, we create these things for breakfast! And there definitely is an issue with geeks and social networks – all my geek friends avoid them, at least the fashion ones. It does not matter where everybody is, I just don’t care if I get a thousand invitations to Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. And it is not like we don’t have social contacts also. It’s more like “you go into that fancy place and mingle with the fancy people. If you want to contact me, come where I am”.
So far so good. But then again, where am I? And most importantly, what makes it different from the other places where people communicate on the Internet?
I am on Twitter, I even have 2 accounts – one personal and one for the blog. I am on LinkedIn. I am on Jamendo. I may even be on some, or even most of the other social networks, but I am not really on them.
What is common between all of these places – they are not commercial. Even though Twitter is so popular, it is somehow clean. No marketing, no spam, no SEO bullshit. It got out of nowhere, some people were just having fun, others thought it is fun too. Another thing common is privacy – you are not bugged 20 times a day with invitations for mindless activities, fake causes and not embarrassed by someone, who thought it is very funny to share a picture of you when you had a bad day. Without asking you do you mind, or giving you any choice. And it is more personal too. You are not part of the crowd, it is like going out with friends.
What do you think about it? How is it for you? And don’t forget to share this within your social network!
There is a new service available for the people, who wish to have a full-featured desktop while on the road. The service is called AlwaysOnPC, and is in essence a virtual desktop, stored on a server that you can access anytime, and from anywhere.
As it is described on their website:
Introducing AlwaysOnPC, the world’s first personal cloud computer that works from any device, anywhere – including your iPhone™.
Your own online virtual personal computer loaded with a full set of applications and 2 GB of personal file storage. Accessible from an iPhone (other platforms tba) as well as any netbook, laptop, desktop, Internet kiosk.
The service includes an always-on PC with 2 GB of storage, available for documents, files, photos, etc. It is ideal for the travelers, who need to access their desktop remotely from different locations – a computer, their iPhone and soon-to-come other internet-connected platforms. It includes a variety of applications:
Internet applications – Firefox browser, Email client, Instant messenger (supporting multiple IM services, such as AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.)
Utilities (Contacts manager, Calendar, Text editor, Archive manager, Calculator, Dictionary, etc.)
Multimedia (Movie player (no sound for the time being!), GIMP – a full-featured image editor, etc.)
Games (17 board and puzzle games)
and even some heavy-duty programming tools including Eclipse and Glade interface designer.
Important! You can get a free registration to try it for 5 days, but in order to get the service permanent, you have to download the AlwaysOnPC app from the Apple AppStore (a one-time 29.99 USD) and login from your iPhone or iPod.
From Xform Computing.
Each year, the last Friday of July is a special day for a certain category of people. These are the (mostly) invisible people, that make sure our digital day is as flawless as possible. The people that support your computer, the people at the internet company that make sure you are online, the ones that support the servers, running your favorite websites. Pretty much all people, that make sure your bills are calculated correctly, your ticket is reserved online, your cell phone has service – the system administrators, or sysadmins for short.
Ten years ago, a special day was chosen to be the day of appreciation for these people – The SysAdmin Day. If you are happy with the geek that fixed your computer, or the internet connection of that new ISP – some congratulations are due.
To all tech people, who make our lives better by taming the technology beasts for us – Cheers, mates! May you never have to wake up early, or stay at work overnight! May all your data be safe, the rest is a matter of money :->
Mobile computers are everywhere now. Many people need to connect to networks (wired or wireless) in more than one place – at home and at work. One of the annoyances of current Windows interface is that you cannot easily store connection profiles – the way you can in MacOS X (called “Locations”) for quite a long time.
There is a workaround for that, involving a simple preliminary network setup + creation of a shortcut. I will briefly describe it here in 3 steps (you will have to repeat for each connection profile you would like to create). Here is how it goes:
[preparation]
Open a command prompt (click START – Run… then type cmd and click OK),
type md %windir%\netsettings (or copy it from here and paste it in the command prompt with a right-click) and hit Enter. Don’t close the command prompt yet.
Make all network settings for the current profile (e.g. Office) – go to Network Connections, select the appropriate connection (wired and/or wireless) and set IP-address, network mask, default gateway, DNS servers, etc.
Execute in the command prompt the following command netsh -c interface dump > %windir%\netsettings\office.txt
and hit Enter.
Create a shortcut on your desktop by minimizing all open windows, right-clicking on an empty place on the desktop and selecting New -> Shortcut…
In the new window that opens, type (or better paste) the following netsh -f %windir%\netsettings\office.txt
and click Next…
Type a name for the profile (for instance Office settings) and click Finish.
Repeat steps 1-3 for as many profiles you need to create, changing office.txt with home.txt (etc.) in steps 2 and 3. Give each profile shortcut a distinguishable name.
You can now switch between different network profiles by simply clicking the appropriate icon on the desktop!
Note that this approach creates a full network profile (including settings for all network interfaces – wired and wireless), so in rare situations you might need to create different combinations of settings. It is also useful to have a setting with all connections set to auto, in case you need to access networks in hotels, airports and other public places.
MagCloud – a new (beta) service by HP Labs brings the magazine universe in a single place. It is social, it is eco, it is innovative. It is the virtual magazine newsstand. It is a service, that offers print-on-demand magazines to end users. The beta is so far only available in United States, Canada and United Kingdom, but they promise to expand to more countries soon.
A friend asked me today: “Do you have a Facebook?”
And there definitely is an issue with geeks and social networks – all my geek friends avoid them, at least the fashion ones. It does not matter where everybody is, I just don’t care if I get a thousand invitations to Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. And it is not like we don’t have social contacts also. It’s more like “you go into that fancy place and mingle with the fancy people. If you want to contact me, come where I am”.
Mobile computers are everywhere now. Many people need to connect to networks (wired or wireless) in more than one place – at home and at work. One of the annoyances of current Windows interface is that you cannot easily store connection profiles – the way you can in MacOS X (called “Locations”) for quite a long time.
