Stephen’s Untold Stories

This looks pretty intriguing. Looks to be a free online portal. Anyone used it yet?

Edu 2.0

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I know that some of you out there are still using Photoshop. I actually mostly use Photoshop Elements these days, but here are some good resources for its big brother.

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I am still a huge fan of the Google Calendar, and Mashable has come through once again with a great collection of tools that can enhance your experience.

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It looks like some spiders have been busy in Texas. (Click image for larger version)

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This is going to make my life much easier. Thumbalizr is a web site that allows you to enter a URL  and create an image file of that page. No more using the Print Screen button!

The following screenshot was made using thumbalizr, and I was able to tell it to customize the image to a width of 550 pixels.

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This is really depressing. Autopatcher was a great site where you could download Windows updates. It was great because you could download an update file and then burn it to a CD or put it on a flash drive. If you needed to update multiple computers, this was an incredibly helpful tool. Well, Microsoft has ordered the site to be shut down after four great years. A sad day for techies, indeed.

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This is what it would look like if you printed out the English version. You’d probably need an extra ink cartridge or two.

Using volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 pages), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters, ≈ 6MB per volume. As English Wikipedia has 4.4GB of text (October 2006) ≈ 750 volumes. Note that this is a conservative estimate, as it doesn’t include images, tables etc. which take up more surface than the text which describes them. Keep in mind that’s 4.4GB of truth!

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Mashable has a list of 30 pretty good themes for Firefox. Okay, some of them are hideously ugly, but most are pretty decent.

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It’s cooled a bit, but it’s still pretty hot!

• Race fans test-drive WiMax
• Latest iPhone Update Boosts Wi-Fi Reception, Users Say
• Broadband thief used his laptop outside a Chiswick home
• Ubiquiti and C.I.S.A.R. Set World Record with 304km 5 GHz Wi-Fi Link
• First year of Google WiFi
• WiMax coming to Nokia devices?

I started watching games in 2004, and I can’t imagine a baseball season without it now. I wonder if Mark Cuban is aware of this.

And I can’t believe I’m doing two baseball posts in one day.

It was five years ago today that the Next Big Thing in baseball consumption was introduced, and once again it was the national pastime that paved the way for the technology and reshaped the average fan’s life. On Aug. 26, 2002, exactly 63 years after that first televised Major League game, the Yankees withstood an Alex Rodriguez homer and beat Kenny Rogers and the Rangers, 10-3, at Yankee Stadium. The YES Network’s full broadcast was streamed as a live Webcast for free exclusively at MLB.com, meeting immediate excitement, probably slowing worker productivity a bit and most definitely leading to the ultimate curtain call.

To commemorate that historic first and the five years of technology excitement that followed, MLB.com will provide a free live Webcast of today’s series finale between the Yankees and Tigers from Comerica Park in Detroit.

Since that inaugural Webcast, baseball fans have accessed more than 1.2 billion streams of live and on-demand multimedia offerings on MLB.com, representing more than 50 million hours of viewing time for baseball games on the Internet. In 2007, MLB.com will stream more than 12,000 live events, including every game on the Major League Baseball schedule as well as thousands of events for its various partners.

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I remember getting cable TV for the first time back in the early 1980s, and just about the best thing about it was being able to watch the Braves play practically every game. I know I can still see the Braves lots of other places now, but it always just felt “right” watching them on TBS.

When Ted Turner purchased the Atlanta Braves in 1976, one of the few things he knew about baseball was the fact that it would provide nightly programming for his television station WTCG — which appropriately stood for Watch This Channel Grow.

Turner’s vision to beam WTCG — which would grow into superstation TBS — across the country revolutionized the cable industry and, at the same time, reaffirmed the belief that baseball truly is America’s pastime.

Despite the fact that the Braves were one of the worst teams in baseball during the 1970s and throughout much of the 1980s, they appropriately became known as America’s Team. Fans far and wide knew they could come home most every night to find Pete Van Wieren and Skip Caray bringing the Braves into their living rooms.

“It was a national broadcast,” said Van Wieren, who, like Caray, has been a Braves broadcaster since 1976. “But it was a national broadcast about a local team from a local perspective. We weren’t trying to be neutral. We were Braves broadcasters, and, when the Braves did something good, we would react that way.”

For 30 years, TBS has showcased the Braves to a national audience and allowed fans in remote towns like Storm Lake, Iowa, to adopt the Braves as their team. But, like all good things, this revolutionizing programming is nearing its end.

With MLB.com and satellite providers providing the opportunity to watch any and all games throughout the course of a season, the Braves are no longer the only game being shown in nearly every town throughout the United States.

Looking to capitalize on the advertising dollars that they can gain by running old movies or “Seinfeld” re-runs, TBS has decided to end its affiliation with the Braves. The station will begin airing all Division Series games this year and beginning next year, their regular season broadcasts will consist solely of a Sunday Game of the Week package, which will feature all Major League teams, not just the Braves.

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I always enjoy reading Mark’s blog, but he is way off on this one. Here’s a sample:

A lot of people are all up and upset about my comments that the Internet is dead and boring. Well guess what, it is. Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don’t rule forever. That’s the reality.

Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes,highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I’m sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions “dead and boring”. The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.

Some of you may not want to admit it, but that’s exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago.

Hey Mark, I can only speak for myself but my Internet experience is VASTLY different than it was 5 years ago. Here’s how:

• 5 years ago I had never read a blog.
• 5 years ago I had never posted to a blog.
• 5 years ago I had never participated in a Wiki.
• 5 years ago I had never participated in a vibrant online community.
• 5 years ago I had never read an RSS feed.
• 5 years ago I never had kept an online calendar.
• 5 years ago I had never surfed the Internet on my phone.
• 5 years ago I had never made a telephone call over the Internet.
• 5 years ago I had never watched a live baseball game online.
• 5 years ago I had never taken an online course.
• 5 years ago I had never created an online course.
• 5 years ago I had never created an online learning portal.
• 5 years ago I had never used an online spreadsheet program.
• 5 years ago I had never purchased music online.
• 5 years ago I had never posted a video to the web.
• 5 years ago I had never configured a wireless access point.
• 5 years ago I had never used a web analytics service to track the web sites I maintain.

Those are just the things I came up with in a quick 2-minute brainstorm. I am of course only speaking for myself, but I know plenty of people through my work and personal life that weren’t doing most of those things 5 years ago.

This field is getting pretty crowded. Anybody tried this one yet?

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Ha!!

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It shouldn’t be long before Google has an entry in this list. While you’re waiting, enjoy this collection!

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It’s still hot, and we need lots of rain down here! Anyway, another good week for wireless news.

• Solar Sensors Could Monitor Bridges Wirelessly
• Sprint Earmarks $5 Billion for WiMax Network
• Keeping Your Public Wi-Fi Sessions Secure
• Pocket Wi-Fi Radar: For Your Friendly Neighborhood Wardriver!
• British Rail Passengers to Get Free Wi-Fi
• Microsoft Says Test Shows Vacant Airwaves Usable
• D-Link claims fastest 802.11n gear

VoIP stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.” It is basically a way to make telephone calls over the Internet. Vonage and Skype are two of the most popular providers of this type of technology, and many businesses have switched to IP phones. Here is a list of some great resources if you’re interested in trying it out.

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Here is a great article about the oldest and largest virtual school in the country. Georgia’s virtual school is still a bit new, but it is gaining in popularity.

As a seventh-grader, Kelsey-Anne Hizer was getting mostly Ds and Fs and thought teachers at her Ocala, Fla., middle school weren’t giving her the help she needed. She was ready to give up.

But after switching schools for eighth grade, Kelsey-Anne is receiving more individual attention, making As and Bs, and is enthusiastic about learning–even though she has never been in the same room as her teachers.

Kelsey-Anne transferred to the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School (FLVS), one of the nation’s oldest and largest online schools. At least 2,700 full-time and up to 52,000 part-time students in grades six through 12 get lessons over the internet from teachers scattered across the state and nation. The students, from Florida and 35 other states, communicate with their teachers and each other through chat rooms, eMail, telephone, and instant messaging.

“It’s more one-on-one than regular school,” Kelsey-Anne said. “It’s more they’re there; they’re listening.”

Virtual learning is becoming ubiquitous at colleges and universities but remains, in many ways, in its infancy at the elementary and secondary level, where skeptics have questioned such factors as its cost and its effect on children’s socialization.

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Moveable type and Wordpress and two of the most popular blogging platforms. I have used Wordpress for quite a while, and I have not had any problems with it at all. If you are considering using one of them, take a look at this very thorough comparison.

• MovableType 4 vs. Wordpress 2.2

David Pogue has a great article on how the wires continue to disappear. By the way, David will be the keynote speaker for the GaETC conference in November. (I’m proud to be the chairman of the podcast subcommittee!)

Here at the Pogue Purely Hypothetical High-Tech Mutual Fund, we recognize that although you can’t predict the future of technology, a few calls are easy to make. Right now, for example, there are certain industries we avoid investing in — like analog recording tape, landline telephone service and wires.

Yes, wires. If you hadn’t noticed, they’re disappearing at an alarming clip. The cord between your home phone handset and the phone body? Gone. The wire between your cellphone and clip-on earpiece? Gone. The cable from your laptop to the network router? Gone.

Bluetooth, of course, is a wireless signal that was specifically invented to eliminate cables. It is designed to connect gadgets that would otherwise have to be hooked up with wires: cellphone to earpiece, mouse to PC, palmtop to printer and so on. Bluetooth’s maximum range is about 30 feet, and it draws very little battery power — a crucial feature for use in cellphones, headphones and so on.

But different gadgets have different requirements for Bluetooth. Some send files. Some conduct phone calls. Some access an address book. Each feature like this is called, geekily enough, a Bluetooth profile.

The Bluetooth audio gateways, like the Motorola and the Kyocera, exploit one of the most interesting profiles. It’s called A2DP, short for Audio Distribution Profile (not that that full name is any more helpful).

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