Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Artline’s USB Pen
Apr.01.2010
Finally, a pen that remembers everything you write. Find out more here.
3DTV is Here
Mar.30.2010
I received an email from Best Buy today: 3DTV is here.
From a home theater perspective, there is simply not enough light with the current technology to make the experience worthwhile. Which means that new display technology is required to present a 3d “experience”.
The Toronto Star covered this latest trend from an electronics industry bent on very rapid product obsolescence:
“3DTV is the next major milestone in the industry’s never-ending quest to make the experience as breathtakingly real as possible,” says Carmi Levy, a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst. “It’s easy to see why so many moviegoers are eagerly anticipating being able to bring the 3D experience home as well.”
While Levy concedes the technology is “exciting,” he questions if entertainment seekers are ready for the upgrade. “Consumers are tired. They’ve just finished upgrading from tube-type CRT TVs to HDTV flat screens,” explains Levy. “They’re budget-weary from the recession, too, so asking them to pop three grand to replace their two-year-old plasma screen won’t sit well with most folks.”
Will the consumer embrace 3DTV? Like this perspective, I’m not even sure I like 3D at the movie theater never mind trying to create a similar experience at home.
Backup Complete
Mar.29.2010
Situation normal. I attended the final stages of the backup until midnight last night. It took several hours for all my working set photography files to go back into their respective places.
And I wanted to run through the new machine to make sure that everything was fine. The new environment is exactly as it was just before the machine failure on Saturday afternoon. Exactly. I only lost about an hour’s worth of work. Not bad.
There is also a nice new iMac in the house.
The oldest Mac I have is a tower in the studio. Hard to believe that it is going into its 8th year of service and still running just fine. We have two old power-based iMacs. They have been running for about 6 years. I was running a 2-year old iMac in the office until the drive began to fail on Saturday.
I knew that I would be needing to add at least one machine sometime in the next 12 – 24 months. The old power-based iMacs are still good machines but they are starting to show signs of age. And the studio machine will need to be replaced at some point.
We’ll get the drive replaced on the 2-year old iMac and then retire one of the old power-based iMacs.
Hard drives fail. And it was good to know that the combination of Time Machine, Migration Assistant, Super Duper and Dropbox all worked flawlessly. I only used Time Machine and Migration Assistant to bring back my environment but it was comforting to know that I had a full volume backup from the previous day on tap.
The Time Machine backup was current to one hour before the system down.
Pretty impressive.
Happy Camper
Mar.28.2010
Although my old iMac is quickly fading — I could not complete a final full volume backup — I remain a happy camper.
I am on a new iMac and within just a few hours, I have almost all of my system back and running.
All applications work perfectly. All data is back with two exceptions:
1. Photos. There are so many of them that it will take several hours to bring them back from backup.
2. Yesterday’s financial transactions. The start of all the distress happened while I was updating my financial information.
The miracle of up-to-the-minute backups and the Migration Assistant. I thought for sure that I would have all sorts of issues reinstalling applications. However, the Migration Assistant not only pulled them all back but it also brought over all of the supporting files. Everything came back appropriately licensed and ready to go.
The only hiccup. Windows.
When I brought Windows back up on the virtual machine, it detected a different hardware configuration. I had to transfer my activation to the new install.
Not so bad. It took about 10 minutes over the phone.
A bit of a crazy week-end and not what I had in mind. But I am feeling so much better now that I have my digital life restored.
Thank heavens for a disciplined back up routine.
Machine Failure
Mar.27.2010
I was working on our finances. Quicken 2010. Windows 7. VMWare Fusion. Excel.
Each week I update our spending activities and our investment portfolio on Quicken. I then update a few different spreadsheets. And I switch between the virtual machine and Mac OS X.
Today was different though. When I had finished updating in Quicken, I brought up a spreadsheet in Excel. And both worlds, Windows 7 on the virtual machine and Mac OS X, basically froze. For the first time since I bought this machine over two years ago, I had to perform a hard reset. Power off and then power on.
I could tell something was amiss when the boot-up sequence took almost 10 minutes. Oh oh.
I spent the next 7 hours trying to make things right.
My first reaction was to blame Microsoft. After all, I was running Microsoft Windows and Excel when the Mac choked. Mumbling about the tendency for Microsoft software to crash generally, I focused on the virtual machine. I thought I would bring up Windows 7 and see if everything was still okay. However, Windows 7 was slow to load. Much slower than usual. In fact, it was so slow that I was unable to load Windows. Despite numerous attempts. Each time, the machine basically became non-responsive.
Things were not looking good.
I then looked at the Mac environment. Was everything okay there?
I ran disk utility. Errors on the startup disk. Get the Snow Leopard install disk. Reboot the machine. Run disk utility. Repair the startup disk. Repair disk permissions. Reset the SMC. Reset the NRAM and PVRAM. Restart.
10 minutes to boot. This is not good.
What could be wrong?
Repeat the same set of activities several times. First act of madness. Repeating the same set of steps led to the same outcome. The machine was taking forever to boot. And now, any app I selected was slow to load. Photoshop would not load at all. It crashed when launched. That had never happened before.
Not good.
It was here that I began to suffer TUI symptoms — throwing up inside. I mean, most of my life is in this particular Mac. Tens of thousands of photos, all my finances, thousands of documents.
What could be wrong?
Well, I don’t really know. But I have a pretty good idea. It is either a pending hard drive failure or a failure on the motherboard itself.
Good thing I have lots of backup.
I have one external drive that runs Time Machine. Everything was backed up to the point where the machine started going south earlier today. And I do full system backups with Super Duper. As I write this post, I am running an emergency backup on another external drive. Just in case. Just to be safe.
I also keep some selected files in Dropbox.
All my photos are backed up to three drives including the one in the iMac.
Although it is going to be a pain to rebuild a machine, at least I don’t have to worry about loss of data. Hard drives fail. And the one I am running is only a little over two years old. Thank heavens I was fully backed up.
Privacy Commissioner and the Cloud
Mar.25.2010
The Privacy Commissioner is in the news:
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced today upcoming consultations with Canadians on privacy issues related to cloud computing practices.
“Businesses and individual Canadians are increasingly likely to make use of cloud computing technologies,” said Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. “And yet, they are often unaware that their activities could be affecting their own privacy. Our goal is to learn more about these issues, so that Canadians, in turn, can also become better informed.”
Hard to imagine anyone on the Internet not making use of the cloud these days.
Burton Group defines Cloud Computing this way:
The set of disciplines, technologies, and business models used to deliver IT capabilities (software, platforms, hardware) as an on-demand, scalable, elastic service.
Cloud computing is characterized by five essential characteristics:
- It uses shared infrastructure.
- It provides on-demand self-service.
- It is elastic and scalable.
- It is priced by consumption.
- It is dynamic and virtualized.
The Privacy Commissioner defines Cloud Computing this way:
Cloud computing typically refers to the provision of web-based services using hardware and software managed by third parties. The services, including online file storage, social networking sites, webmail and online business applications, are generally located on remote computers. They are available over network connections, regardless of the user’s own location.
You can provide a response to The Privacy Commissioner on this subject by email but you will find this warning on their site:
As we cannot guarantee the security of electronic systems or e-mail, we do not recommend sending sensitive personal information electronically at this time.
It’s The Right Thing To Do
Mar.15.2010
TJX, the U.S.-based owner of Winners and HomeSense stores, had a massive security breach which put the personal information of millions of customers at risk.
The company collected driver’s licence numbers, credit card numbers and transaction records from clients and held onto that information indefinitely.
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada highlighted this breach to the media in 2007. And made several observations:
- The security measures that TJX put in place relied on weak encryption technology
- Thieves were able to hack into the company’s database and use the information
- The TJX breach is a dramatic example of how keeping large amounts of sensitive information — particularly information that is not required for business purposes — for a long time can be a serious liability
The Privacy Commissioner also made one other key comment:
The message for retailers is think carefully about how you use personal information. …Think about what information you’re collecting, why you have to collect it, how long you should keep it and how safely it is stored.
Down here, in the US of A, there are some retailers that request photo id to confirm a purchase or to check-in at a hotel. This happened to me several times over the past week. Yesterday, we stopped by a hiking store to pick up a few items. About thirty dollars. I paid with my American Express card. And I was asked for photo id.
The cashier gave a very cursory glance of the id from about three feet away.
So I asked her.
“Why do you ask for photo id?”
“Well, so many people steal credit cards. We do this to make sure that you have a right to use the card.”
Great Smoky Mountains receives somewhere in excess of 10 million visitors a year. And this store is in the prime shopping area.
“How many times have you found someone using another person’s card?”
“Over the past ten years? Once.”
“Does the card company ask you to demand photo id?”
“No. It is our choice.”
The cashier, who I assumed to be the owner, went on at length to defend her need to see photo id whenever a purchase is made. She summarized her position by saying: “It’s the right thing to do.”
No. It is not the right thing to do. Demanding proof of identity is not a moral act nor is it a legal requirement. It is simply a discretionary “policy” that treats every customer as a suspect.
The card company assumes the responsibility to ensure the appropriate distribution of their product. They also assume the liability for fraudulent use of their product. If they have a concern that the level of fraud is too high, then they can take additional steps — like the recent introduction of smart cards where an individual must have a PIN as well as the original card to make a purchase.
To interrogate customers at point of sale to confirm their identity is an open invitation for identity theft particularly if that information is captured and retained.
I thanked her for her point of view. I also wondered whether, in ten years time, I would have a similar discussion with a retailer defending their policy to take a DNA sample for a thirty dollar purchase.
Social Networking
Mar.10.2010
This is how networking gets done at a social networking conference — Blackberry to Blackberry. Even over lunch.
Sixth Sense Technology
Mar.09.2010
One the speakers at the conference today made reference to a couple of interesting video clips including this one about the Sixth Sense Technology Project.
As a photographer, I thought his digital camera was “unique”.
I have collected pictures of some of the most stunning recording studios in the world and you can travel through the set by clicking 
