HD DVD - Strike Out?

The battle between Blu-Ray (Sony) and HD-DVD (Toshiba) formats is almost over, especially with Amazon extending its support to Blu- Ray. This has been very similar to the VHS- beta war in the 1970s where the now familiar VHS tape format erased Sony's beta format out of existence.

This time, luckily for Sony, history is not repeating itself - Sony Corp's Blu-Ray format has clearly emergied as the winner. With many stores and online rentals such as Netflix backing Blu-Ray, we can all expect a Blu-Ray monopoly quite soon.

Top 50 websites

TIME magazine has come up with a list of the hottest websites in 2007. Out of the 50 websites listed, I've been to only 3! I stay on the computer for about 12 hours a day and I've been to only 3! They are, LinkedIn, INGDirect and StarWars. I haven't even heard of most of the others.

I know what I have to do for the next few hours this weekend...

Intel befriends OLPC program

Intel, an adversary for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program until recently, has agreed to join hands with Nicholas Negroponte to bring PCs to children around the world. When the OLPC program was launched, Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO, derided OLPC's 'XO' machine as just a 'gadget'. But Intel themselves recently launched a Classmate PC whose design is much more naive than its competitor XO, while selling it for a whopping $225 as opposed to XO's $100.

Intel has now not only agreed to be on the board of OLPC, but also support and fund the program actively. Intel now joins AMD, Google and Red Hat in this effort. The computers that will be reaching children around the world this autumn will, nevertheless, be made of AMD processors. Some suspect Intel's move as a step in pushing AMD off its pedestal.

I say, as long as the children around the world benefit, who cares about these brand wars.

Sun eats mobile signal

According to this Inquirer article solar flares can attenuate mobile signals significantly. And this does not mean if you go into a burrow you'll be getting signal bursts. The sun actually causes the signal-towers that face the Sun to lose signal for brief periods. And since the Sun attacks the hub, the tower, solar flares are apparently responsible for 8-20% of the dropped calls.

At least now the mobile companies don't have to take the blame anymore and better yet, they can blame a cause that does not have any solution, the Sun.

Did you mean GOOGLE?

Don't you sometimes find it irritating when a computing machine that is sitting thousands of miles away (Mountain View to be precise) mocks at you by saying "Did you mean salt" when you actually wanted to search for "pepper". Well, it is not that bad yet. But, try searching for "french military victories" on Google and click "I'm feeling lucky". Wasn't that funny?

The altruist Google lands Yahoo! as its first link when you try searching for "finance procter and gamble" and ranks itself fourth, which I found interesting. Is it so difficult to rig a webpage's rank, or are they just being altruistic and not trying to rig?

This New York Times article on Google touches on Google's efforts to tweak its search engine to up its own rankings.

But last year, Mr. Singhal started to worry that Google’s balance was off. When the company introduced its new stock quotation service, a search for “Google Finance” couldn’t find it. After monitoring similar problems, he assembled a team of three engineers to figure out what to do about them.

But I still think they can do better than 4.

Biography of a CD

I have seen CDs being used for more than just playing back and storing data/music. I've seen CDs being used as reflectors in cars, decorative items and sometimes even as frisbees. But today, CDs are most popular as a medium for storing and transporting music. Someday people will realise the multi-uses that they can be put to.

Given the history of the CD, I wonder how a 115m (sic) CD would have fit into record stores and homes, leave alone the first Sony CD player below.