Miscellaneous

Google delivered some shiny presents to good little users a bit before the holidays this year.

In a surprise move, the search giant took its Chrome Web browser out of beta this week, in the hopes that business partners, such as computer makers, will bundle Chrome on their systems. Google launched the first beta version of Chrome in September.

However, Chrome is still rough around the edges to be a version 1.0 product. Also, although Chrome has been in development internally at Google for years, it's curious that the company would take Chrome out of beta when it'… Read more

I had business on the East Coast this week which kept me from heading out to California for Cisco's C-Scape Global Forum 2008. However, twitter offered me the opportunity to "eavesdrop" on some of the back-channel chatter at the event.  Unsurprisingly, there was apparently lots of talk about video and collaboration enabled by video.

Unsurprising because this has been a drum that Cisco's been beating for a few years now. And for good reason. Cisco makes networking infrastructure. Video consumes networking infrastructure. So, if you're Cisco CEO John Chambers, that makes video a very … Read more

I've been taking digital photographs seriously for a few years now--since I first purchased a Canon Powershot G5 (since upgraded). Along the way, I've run into a few things that really make a difference to my photography in one way or another. None are rocket science; a couple are just about breaking out of film-centric ways of thinking. But they're practices that make my photographs better or my life easier. (Of course, lots of other factors matter but many of these are common whether you shoot on film or a sensor.)

"Film" is free. This … Read more

Hewlett-Packard early next year will begin offering a new line of "Enviro" batteries for laptop users who want to upgrade to longer-lasting and more sustainably designed batteries.

HP and Boston Power have been testing the Sonata lithium-ion batteries for three years. The batteries were designed specifically for laptop use. After three years of use, the batteries will be able to keep 80 percent of their initial charge.

Laptop battery time typically starts to drop significantly after 150 or so charges, or cycles. Boston Power says that its batteries can be charged 1,000 times and get "like … Read more

On Monday, Microsoft launched Oxite, an open-source blogging platform.

However, the software maker was quick to underline that the product is aimed at developers and not intended to directly compete with popular blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Microsoft posted the Oxite code on its CodePlex Web site on Friday and made an official announcement on Monday. The software, described as an alpha release, is available under the Microsoft Public License, one of Microsoft's OSI-certified open-source licenses.

Oxite is a standards-compliant, extensible content-management system designed to support either blogs or larger Web sites, Microsoft said. The platform … Read more

The online video revolution has begun, and Cisco Systems says it has designed a new strategy complete with new products to help its customers meet the demand.

On Monday, the company, which makes devices that shuttle traffic around the Internet, will announce a new architecture and strategy to help its customers better handle video traffic on their network. CEO John Chambers will be pushing the new architecture and initiative at the company's annual C-Scape press and analyst conference in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday.

It's no secret that Cisco thinks that video is a big deal. The company … Read more

A little while back, a friend IM'd me with a problem. Their digital camera wouldn't read from its SD flash memory card. Naturally it was almost full of photos that hadn't been copied off to a computer yet. Bottom line is that I was able to recover just about everything. Here's how I did it.

First of all, I had her take the card out of the camera and mail it to me. I think that's generally good advice. (The taking it out of the camera part--not the mailing to me part.) If you have … Read more

Update 2:03 p.m. PST: Added NPD and Apple paragraphs.

Black Friday proved to be a relatively bright light in an economy largely characterized by dark, gloomy reports.

Overall, retail sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 3 percent from the same day in 2007, with preliminary estimates putting total sales in the U.S. at $10.6 billion, according to Shoppertrak RCT. (Shoppertrak derives its retail benchmark from a wide range of categories, including consumer electronics, sporting goods, apparel, and general merchandise.)

Web shopping saw an even larger percentage gain for the day, with traffic up 11 … Read more

The Netbook, take two: When Advanced Micro Devices said it wasn't going to focus on Netbooks, as Intel and its partners defined them, maybe it was on to something.

Intel is re-evaluating the Netbook market as possibly not The Next Big Thing. This from the company that makes the Atom processor and accompanying silicon that go into most of the Netbooks sold today.

At a recent Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference (streamed via this Intel page), Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said his company sees the Netbook differently now.

"We … Read more