Earthling

This best is about the idea of wireless photo transmission between your digital camera and your computer and/or printer.

Pictures tend to stay awhile on my digital camera. Rather than traveling the few feet from the camera to my computer, they take up semi-permanent residence on the storage card in my camera, often outstaying their welcome by weeks and months. I forcibly evict them every once in a while when I feel guilty for having them there. But if pictures are meant to be seen and/or printed, the sooner I can get them out the better.

So what has made it this way for me?

Continue reading "Best New Digital Camera Feature"

Posted by dave coustan at 1:53 PM |

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"Blog" is a charged word. I'm very pleased to be the first exposure that many EarthLink customers have to blogs. But because there's so much hype surrounding the word, I think many internet users are afraid of or turned off by the whole thing. I hear "I'm not a blog reader" or "I don't read the blogs" and I wonder what that really means.

Fundamentally, a blog is just a web site, no more, no less. Reading an entry on a blog does not suddenly make you a different person or smarter or more opinionated or funnier or hipper. It's just another search result in Google, just another choice for something to read. You don't quit reading other stuff. Reading something I write on Earthling doesn't suddenly make you "a blog reader." It just means you read something on Earthling.

One popular conception is that blogs are for ranting and raving and communicating extreme opinions to the masses. Over time, I'd like to highlight some of the other reasons blogs might end up being useful to you. Here's one:

Continue reading "Why Read Blogs: Staying In Touch"

Posted by dave coustan at 1:28 PM |

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These are a few of the web sites and articles that have landed in the "heh" tag of my del.icio.us bookmarks account in the past couple of weeks.

• The Advantage - This is a Sacramento-based Nintendo cover band. They only play music that has appeared in games for the original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) game console. Here's the band's official site, and a link to their mp3's. Looking forward to listening to their cover of the Contra theme song.
  
• Curry and Rice Girl - Friends and co-workers continue to prove me wrong about the lack of quality homemade video on the web. If Pasadena EarthLinker Joyce Li keeps sending me good stuff on a regular basis, I may have to officially change my tune. Got this homegrown music video yesterday. I assume it's self-parody, otherwise I wouldn't put it up here.
  
• Sony Asked To Clean Up NYC Graffiti Ads - This is a different kind of heh -- more of a "ha ha". You had to see this coming. Sony was offering cash for people who painted graffiti in public places advertising the Sony PSP(PlayStation Portable) according to their specifications. The New York City Council has asked Sony to rethink.
  
• Dr. Bronner's Soap Label Generator - Dr. Bronner's soap (official site here) was a popular item in college because it was cheap, multifunctional, cheap, and its labels offered hilarious shower reading. One of my favorites was always "Dilute! Dilute! Dilute! OK!" Now there's an online generator to create countless new passages of unintelligible pseudo-religious babbling.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:43 PM |

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This is a straggler post from last week's trip to Pasadena.

If you work at EarthLink and find yourself needing to make any changes to our myEarthLink pages, you go through a web-based service with a plain old name. Let's call it Bananaphone. Up until my trip, I knew Bananaphone as a URL in a bookmark, nothing more. For all I knew, on the other end, it could have been a steam engine connected to one of those old-time exercise machines with a laptop computer in front of it. I've used it several times, but rarely did I stop to think that there are real people and real machines on the other side.

Turns out it's these machines you see here, all lashed together.

Special thanks to Associate Software Engineer Eric Gelinas for introducing me to Bananaphone and its many splendors. It's sort of like an alarm clock in Eric's dark Pasadena cavern -- requests start pouring in at 9am East Coast time, and taper down as the workday ends in Atlanta.

If you're an EarthLink employee, next time you make a request that uses this service, pause to think of these four humble machines.

*Update: Entry edited to remove potentially sensitive names and protect the innocent.*

Posted by dave coustan at 1:43 PM |

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If you're in the habit of storing and sharing your photos online regularly, something like Flickr is probably the service for you. But if someone is holding a gun to your head and demanding that you share photos online now now now, or if you only share photos occasionally and want the quickest and easiest path possible to photo-sharing completion, you might take a look at Bubbleshare.

I think the practice of sending photos to your friends as attachments is a pretty clumsy way to go. The one advantage I can think of over web-based sharing is that the people you send an attached photo to have a copy of the photo in their e-mail account automatically. But lots of people are using web-based e-mail these days, so you can't assume that if the attachment is in their e-mail account, it's on their computer. They might still have to be connected to the internet to see it.

Continue reading "How To Share Photos In A Hurry"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:52 PM |

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Spending a few days in EarthLink's Pasadena offices was a bit like visiting long lost relatives. We had something in common, but I didn't know exactly what to expect, and I'm sure they felt likewise. Are they the weird cousins or am I? I guess we both are. It turned out to be an excellent trip, and I'm indebted to the kindness and hospitality of everyone I met out there.

Creepiest part of trip -- finding out they drink this stuff like water out there.

Maybe it was just because I was hanging out with insane Frenchman Chris Holland, but the phrase I kept hearing in our Pasadena offices was "insanely useful."

Continue reading "What's Going On Out West"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:07 AM |

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You should now be able to add a Googletalk contact to your Vling buddy list, and send them a text message. The team is working on ironing out a couple of issues, but I saw it working last night in Tom Hsieh's office. Kindly remember that Vling is still in beta, and as such does not yet have the full EarthLink blessing of a finished and released product.

If you're wondering what the rigamarole is about, here's the previous entry about Googletalk and Vling interoperating.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:37 PM |

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I'm working on uploading some of the photos I've taken at the Pasadena offices today. You can find them in this photoset on my Flickr account. Feel free to leave comments there.

Posted by dave coustan at 12:23 PM |

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Quick note: If you're wondering why the blog's hair has such bounce and sheen today, it's because I'm on the road, and hotel shampoo will do that to you. I hitched a ride out west in the back of one of BellSouth's internet delivery service trucks.

I'm in Pasadena, meeting some of the folks at EarthLink's offices here and working on a couple of projects. My schedule will be a bit off but I'll do my best to keep new stuff coming.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:48 AM |

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The battle over Net Neutrality continues.

Thanks to Earthling reader John Foltz for pointing out a Marketwatch(registration required) article that suggests BellSouth may start charging content providers surcharges for moving their files over BellSouth's network. The idea is that when you buy a music file or movie online, they'd like to add a charge to the company you buy it from to pay for their moving the file to you. The article quotes BellSouth CTO Bill Smith as saying selling access to content is "the shipping business of the digital age."

Huh?

Continue reading "Are There Content Surcharges In Our Future?"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:29 AM |

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Google just announced that they've opened up access to part of Googletalk, their instant messenger client, so that it can talk to Vling, EarthLink's instant messenger client. Google and EarthLink have created a federation of companies that believe in letting our messaging systems interoperate with each other. We've invited all other instant messaging systems to join, and we hope that today is the first of many such announcements.

What does that mean?

Up until now, if you were a Vling user, you could only see and communicate with people on your buddylist who use Vling. Very shortly, if you are a Vling user, you will see and be able to send messages to people who use Googletalk as well.

Continue reading "Googletalk And Vling Can Now Play Nice"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:00 PM |

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There's a "short form" definition of the Jewish Passover ceremony which indicates that the tradition is not complete until you mention three things:

...it is reported that R. Gamaliel said, "One who has not said these three words on Passover has not done his duty: 'pesach [passover],' 'matzah' [unleavened bread], and 'maror' [bitter herbs]." Source: JewishEncyclopedia.com

There's a similar rule about coverage of CES2006, which states that your job can not be considered complete until you've mentioned convergence, place-shifting, and disruptive technologies. I still have one more show-related thing to write about after this one, but let's just polish the holy trinity of CES off in this entry to be safe.

Continue reading "Slingbox: This Year's CES Darling"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:35 AM |

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My main focus at CES was thinking about how all of the new technologies on display would all impact the regular joe consumer. To that end, I spent much of my time at the smaller Sands Expo, where some of the scrappier technology companies had their wares on display. You don't see the Sonys, Samsungs, and Microsofts at the Sands; it's mostly small, hungry companies hoping to break an idea out into the mainstream.

It was evident at CES that there's a flood of research, development, and marketing dollars going towards convincing us to upgrade whatever we have, whether it's telling us we need HD television, high resolution DVD technology, a next generation gaming console, faster internet, or eighteen portable devices. That made it all the more refreshing to talk to Howard Becker of Comet Video Technologies. Comet is focused on bringing video applications to dial-up users, and their tag line is "Highest quality live video for lowest bandwidth applications."

As video technology gets better and better for broadband home user and high-bandwidth cellphone networks, doesn't it make sense that some of the advances along the way might help enrich the low-bandwidth video experience?

Until broadband is cheap enough for everyone's budget and available everywhere, dial-up will continue to be the only option for many. There are some internet applications that are simply not available to dial-up users. Companies like Comet are trying to make this gap less severe. Their tel to cell product helps bring video monitoring to the dial-up crowd. It lets you send live video out through your dial-up connection to your cell phone or laptop computer. If it works as claimed, you could use it to remotely monitor your kids or pets, or as part of a home security system -- all without upgrading your internet connection.

Posted by dave coustan at 9:23 AM |

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Due to a bonehead mistake on my part, my regularly scheduled blog entry went *poof* before I had the chance to publish it. While I work on recovering it, I thought I'd give you some of the links from the "heh" tag in my del.icio.us account. What the heck, it's Friday and you should be shirking, not learning.

• Domain Pizza. Don't know if I'd trust them with my domain registration, but if I need any sweet moustache advice, I know where to turn.
  
• Online Time Travel Pharmacy. For all of your online time travel medication needs.
  
• Standing Committee 24 Photo Gallery. The Ramsar Convention on the Wetlands appears to have a decent sense of humor. I enjoyed the captions.
  
• Sketch Club. One of the best ideas I've seen for a group blog. "After lunch, Sketch Club identifies a person of interest, usually for their unique or distinct characteristics. The subject is briefly studied without drawing. Once back from lunch and back at the drawing board, the subject is drawn from memory."
  
• Strange Stickynote Appears. Watch a mystery unfold on Flickr before your very eyes.

Also, a quick road map. Expect a couple more posts about stuff I saw at CES -- including Slingbox, Comet video, and CESCamp. That will all wrap up soon so you are not bored to tears and resentful. Then after all that, it's back to regular stuff early next week. Requests? drop me a line.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:31 PM |

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The shower control at the Golden Nugget hotel

It wasn't at the Consumer Electronics Show exactly, but it was in my hotel room. Consider this an open letter to anyone who stays at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas in the future.

If you saw this thing in your shower, would you think to pull it, or twist it? You'd twist it, right? Looks like it works like a door handle. Turns out you're supposed to pull it. Twisting is for temperature control and losers.

My first morning at the Nugget, I wrestled and wrestled with this thing before my sleepy brain convinced me that there must be no water coming in to the room.

I called the front desk, and it was immediately obvious they'd heard this before. They were very polite in pointing out the proper way to use their shower control handle, and I remarked that I bet I'm not the first person whose placed a call like this. The desk attendant chuckled and said that she'd had many such calls.

That night in the press room I was chatting with another CES attendee staying at the Nugget, and she confided in me that she had had similar problems with her shower.

My friend Doug suggested we start 43showers.com, a social networking site that would allow you to upload pictures of hotel shower controls and descriptions of how they work. If somebody's willing to build it I'll spring for the domain name.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:29 PM |

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As if CES wasn't confusing enough, there are two movements in the world of web video right now. One is broadcast content being put out on the web for you to buy and view on your computer, iPod, phone, etc. -- like at Google and Yahoo -- and the other is the world of personal video production and sharing. This post is about the latter.

We all seem to have plenty of time to shoot video, but editing what we've shot? Apparently not so much. It irks me that internet video has gotten so much attention lately, when most pieces you'll find online are almost unwatchable.

I bet if you counted the number of video clips appearing online on video sharing sites like Revver.com and YouTube.com, there would be very few pieces that had a single edit in them. For the most part, people are just hitting record on their camera, letting it run, and then throwing the clip online. If the lack of editing is a deliberate choice, fine. But most of these clips could probably benefit from some type of editing.

There's great potential there, but it's not being used for much yet.

When you talk about online video, many are quick to mention Lazy Sunday which made the rounds a couple of weeks ago and even popped up on the Arts section front page of the New York Times. It was actually a video segment produced for broadcast on Saturday Night Live and then distributed later via the web. Talent aside, it doesn't count as "web video" unless you are talking about stuff produced specifically with the basic tools, time commitment, and technique of the average web user.

On the recommendation of fellow CESCamper Chris Pirillo, I checked out muvee, software that does the editing for you. It's an interesting solution to the problem, though it's better for some things than others. More on that shortly. But first, how did we get to this point where everybody shoots but nobody edits?

Continue reading "More From CES: Why Does No One Edit? You Should Edit."

Posted by dave coustan at 10:00 AM |

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There were a ton of lame products at CES, from iPod sharpeners to bluetooth paperweights to "computer machines." I've narrowed the field down to just a few.

The much-anticipated Dorit OS

You can't tell from the photo, but this was one of the most popular booths at the show. I tried to get an interview, but as you can see the developer of Dorit OS was busy the whole time fielding calls from the bigs on his cellphone. It was a pretty gutsy move to present such a sparse product booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center main hall.

Two more below.

Continue reading "Best Of The Worst Technologies At CES"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:26 AM |

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On Saturday I sat down with the folks at the Commodore booth at CES to find out what they are up to.

They launched three main products at CES, the Media Box, the Navigator Combo, and the Media Tower. The first two are consumer products you'll be able to buy at popular electronics retailers, and the third is a special type of in-store kiosk where you'll be able to download all sorts of content(ringtones, wallpaper, music, games) to your mobile device(phone, Sony PSP, PDA, etc.). The Navigator Combo is a handheld audio/video player, game system, and GPS mapping device.

The Commodore Media Box.

Since one of the running themes of CES was the idea of the "home media center" where you organize and store all of your movies, music, TV shows, and photos, I focused on their version, the Media Box.

Continue reading "A Slumbering Semaphore Flag Awakens - Commodore's Back"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:29 PM |

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My back, feet, wallet, and brain all hurt. The Consumer Electronics Show was an overwhelming experience. I met a ton of interesting people, saw some neat new products, and learned a great deal about what the next year in technology could look like. It's going to take me a little while to sort through all of my notes from the weekend, so bear with me as I spend the next couple of days writing up my findings. I did manage to accomplish most of my objectives except for one. A quick summary of some of the stories my writeup will include:

• I listened to lots of user scenarios from retailers and manufacturers about what they think is going to make us want to buy new stuff this year.
  
• I did learn about some new technologies, and found out more about what's already out there.
  
• I spent a lot of time with the Commodore people, and got the whole story from them about their comeback attempt.
  
• Looked for "worst.product.ever" candidates. Found a couple.
  
• Did NOT meet anyone from Engadget.com, but I did hear through secondary sources how they run their operation.
  
• Went to a CESCamp session, and am very glad I did. I met some extremely smart and interesting people and had better conversations there than anywhere else at CES. Not to mention the free pizza and beer.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 10:14 AM |

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I'm sitting at a CES panel discussion about broadband to the home that Mike Lunsford, EVP of Access and Voice at EarthLink, is participating in. I'll be publishing my notes about the panel as I go. The discussion is about how all of your home electronics and communication devices(phone, internet, broadcast television, dvds, etc) are all starting to need to speak to each other, and how the various involved industries are changing the ways they offer services and access to you.

I'll be publishing from time to time, and adding in better explanation and notes as time allows. Bear with me, this is my first live blog experience. It's like being in college again and having everyone look over your shoulder as you take notes. Eek.

Update: This was an interesting experiment for me. It's probably too much to digest as it is now. I'm in the process of preparing my digest of all of this so you don't have to read my entire pseudo-transcript.

Summary done. Click the link below for both summary and transcript.

Continue reading "Blogging Live About Broadband Services To The Home"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:09 PM |

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Not an hour after touching down in Las Vegas, I came in to contact with my very first social disease.

It was the Cabir worm, a cellphone virus transmitted through a bluetooth wireless connection to my phone. This was a first for me, and I've had a bluetooth phone for about eight months.

Continue reading "My Promiscuous Cellphone"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:58 AM |

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With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening tomorrow, rumors abound both about the show and about the tech/business world in general. On AM radio this afternoon I heard that Google might announce a new $200 computer, but Google already shot that down.

Another popular rumor is that Google will unveil the "Google Cube," a device that links your phone, computer, and television. Or maybe this is the same rumor as the Google Computer, hard to tell at this point.

This is a rumors round-up. Click the link below for more.

Continue reading "CES Pre-rumors"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:07 PM |

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On Thursday I'm heading to the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. As the name implies, this is the trade show for the consumer electronics industry; that is, manufacturers and retailers of things like DVD players, cameras, personal/digital video recorders (devices like TiVo), mp3 players, stereo and television equipment, computer hardware, and communication devices. I've never been before, but from what I've read, new products are announced and demonstrated, new partnerships formed, and new useless gadgets are pushed on anyone willing to listen.

The show runs from Thursday through Sunday. Thursday will be half travel day for me, so expect regular blogging from me tomorrow, light blogging on Thursday, followed by heavy blogging on Friday and Monday. Possible bonus coverage over the weekend. Depends.

If you watch any television or look at any news or technology-related web sites this week, odds are they'll be covering it. This is the time of year when CNN shows you the flattest flat screen tv, the new bluetooth-enabled coffee mug, and the new Sports Illustrated WiFi football phone. With all of that wall-to-wall coverage, what will I be doing there? Here are some of my goals and things to look for in my coverage:

Continue reading "On The Road This Week"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:02 PM |

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