ZNF ‘Round The Web

Leaving comments across the blogosphere…

Senate OKs DTV Delay, Still Needs Money for Coupons
While I don’t favor a delay and have said repeatedly the entire transition has been a cluster on multiple levels, local affiliates being permitted to flip the switch prior to to June 12th might make things even more chaotic. I’m sure maintaining simulcasts incurs expenses of one form or another. And some stations will drop NTSC broadcasts. But others won’t. So the folks who have no clue what’s coming will now be even more confused when some stations come in and others don’t.

Back to the proposals, I think it’s likely we’ll see a movement to recycle vouchers quicker than the current 90 days – the program really isn’t out of money, but rather the funds are spoken for with cards that may never be redeemed. Heck, I was sent two cards. One went to Best Buy (to get a converter for my mom’s kitchen television), and the other went into the trash. And this latest proposal allows folks to reapply for coupons if theirs have expired.

Pandora adds ads, while Slacker gets a facelift
For more parity, it’s worth mentioning that the free tier of Slacker radio on the iPhone serves periodic audio ads as well. I believe after every fifth song. But I love my Slacker, and recently discovered they even stream uncensored comedy. If they could get a CNN Headline News and/or ESPN Radio stream going, they’d pretty much kill satellite radio for good.

Palm Responds to Apple iPhone Patent Warnings
Wow, that Palm III pencil drawing is nice – very artistic and detailed. I mean look at the ridges on the stylus. The current crop of patent filers must employ lazier artists or maybe the engineers are responsible.

Back to the Pre, prior to Palm’s big reveal I was not-so-secretly hoping they’d reintroduce the Palm V form factor. Man, I loved that device. I used it on business travel with a dialup modem accessory to read email and access a server. So slim and sexy (when the modem wasn’t attached), and the OS was always quite sprightly.

Tallying the Numbers: Web Video Rivaled TV for Inauguration Views
I think you may be on to something with web video page reloads during stalled streaming. Also, the same people could be visiting multiple sites. In fact, I checked out ABC, Hulu (Fox), and CBS for a few minutes each… Yet had the television on CNN HD for hours. (CNN.com keeps wanting me to upgrade my Flash player to the buggy v10. Ain’t going to happen. In fact, most of my online news is now coming from MSNBC.com.)

Road warrior’s delight- Adapt MPJ-101 pico projector
I’ve seen the 3M and Optoma pico projectors in person, and the licensed WowWee one as well. They pretty much universally suck. It makes a great proof of concept and is a neat trick, but until the projected image is larger and the lumens are much higher there’s very little practical use for these things.

SugarSync Adds Shared Folders to Cloud Service
Wonder how much of this is available on the Mac. Seems like the SugarSync OS X client software has trailed the Windows version. Since migrating to the 13″ MacBook a month or so ago, I haven’t reinstalled the software (I have an annual subscription). Maybe it’s time for another look. One of the things that irked me was if I make changes in iPhoto, like merging events, they aren’t reflected within my online albums. I was kinda hoping SugarSync would replace MobileMe galleries… in addition to Mozy and Dropbox.