October 31, 2004

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Ipod Killers for Christmas I
Ipod Killers for Christmas II
Ipod Killers for Christmas III
Ipod Killers for Christmas IV

11.23.2004 Update: MP3NewsWired.net has update their IPOD Killers series with IPOD Killers for Christmas IV. The VAIO U I long for gets a mention.

Apple has 92% of the mp3 player market. Somewhere else I saw 55% quoted. But there are some compelling alternatives on these pages.

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October 26, 2004

Oh Oh Oh Oh!

All my photos and all my music! Bye Bye mini! IPOD Photo!

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Always In the Know

For years, I have subscribed to multiple mailing lists to stay up to date on things that interest me...web design, web artists in nyc, Legolas' hair color...

Getting hundreds of messages in my in-box never scared me, I felt I was always up to date with the latest latest, and I heard about things before they were reported on the news.

Now I have a whole new obsession...and I am late to the game on this one! RSS aggregators. I have known about aggregators like Amphetadesk for years, but apparently in the last year or so the content that people are making available for syndication in finally compelling enough for me to opt in. Oh, and there's NewsGator, which lets me read the web sites I subscribe to in Outlook, AND I can read the few Usenet newsgroups which still interest me, all in the one program I use to organize my life. (I am saving my Outlook rant for another day)

What this means for me is that instead of surfing to the thousand or so web sites that interest me every day, I can subscribe to their RSS feeds, and get updates in Outlook about the latest article or news. This includes content from the New York Times (registration required to see link), BBC, and my favorite web logs. All I have to do is right click on the the RSS syndication link on a site that interests me, and my software knows to go grab the latest info every hour. I am sooo overwhelmed! And such a voyeur!

NewsGator offers a free online service for consumers who want to get their RSS fixes online, it's worth trying out. We will be making this and other columns on Trigger available via RSS once we figure out how to do that.

Related Links: WWAC

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October 24, 2004

Shiny Like Me

There are lots and lots of gadget review sites, but most of them are so manly. Engadget, for example has the newest thing if you are a tech loving boy, like this 22 megapixel Hasselblad digital SLR with a built in 40 GB hard drive.

Engadget's influence is huge. Add a few Engadget reading geek bloggers, and now no one in Seattle can buy the new Audio Vox phone. (Want one! I think I really really need to watch the latest Stargate episode on my cell phone!)

ShinyShiny, a blog created by London tech writers Katie Lee and Charlotte Ricca-Smith, is a different sort of tech site. I didn't know what what was missing from my laptop accessories until I got a look at the Sushi USB key . Or maybe I would rather have a monitor-handbag.

Seriously, if you work with computers and haven't discovered the wonderful world of usb flash drives, you need to take a look. I bought my first one more than a year ago, and paid almost $200 for 512 MB of storage.You can get 1GB of flash memory now for under $100. I now have 3 miniature drives, one for carrying client work, one for carrying Windows patches, anti-spyware and anti-virus programs for troubleshooting client computers, and one for personal and business files. Forget about floppies, burning CD's or e-mail files to yourself. The drives are cross platform, so I can sit next to my designer while he works on his powerbook and I work on my Vaio. (Sony, true to form, has already discontinued my model, so here's a picture of my little lap toy. It's smaller than it looks, in fact its smaller than this picture.)

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