CHRISdotTODD

Business Week has released their top 20 and bottom 5 tech products of 2008 -- how do your picks compare to their picks? The top of the list is the iPhone App Store. As I mentioned in a prior post, this is not the first App Store, but perhaps the most popular. Though I do like the concept, I find it hard to be released at number 1 with the restrictions Apple places. The Blackberry Storm beat out the iPhone. Having not used the Storm, I can't give it a fair comparison. I do know that I like my iPhone much better than my last smartphone, a Blackberry. The MacBook Air made it an number 5. Here's another one I don't agree with. I doubt many Windows-to-Apple switchers would be happy with this as their first Mac product, with its missing connections and under-powered performance. It may be a fine product as a netbook, but at the price point, it's only for those with disposable income. Perhaps switching palces with number 10, the Sling Catcher would be better. Chrome, Firefox,

If you're a Sprint or Cogent customer, relying on them for your Internet connectivity, you're probably already aware of this article from Scott Woolley of Forbes. In late October, due to differences between these companies, Sprint severed the Internet backbone connection between them. The result was customers on both sides not being able to reach all parts of the Internet. The feud goes back several years, with what appears that Sprint is being a bit of a bully. It is common practice for the Internet backbone carries to exchange traffic between them for no cost. The rationale is that it benefits both companies' customers and the traffic is even enough both ways where there is no profit to be made by one company or the other. In this case, "...Sprint stood to gain $1.5 million or so in annual revenue, which would add .004% to the company's $40 billion in annual revenue." (Note that this was based on Sprint's billing justifications; there's nothing to s

It's not uncommon during birthdays and Christmas to get new electronic gadgets and have the need therefore to throwout the old gear. Before you throw them out, consider the toxic metals that you may be adding to our landfills. Instead go to Earth911.com and find a recycler near you. In addition to electronics, you can search for locations that will take paper, metal, hazardous materials, plastic, and more. So the next time you need to dispose of electronics or other materials, start with Earth911.

Many stores have plans to close some or all locations after the Christmas holiday. Before you buy that gift card for little Johnny, better check out whether they'll still be around.

TIME has put together a great list of innovations for 2008 . Here are just of few of the 50 that TIME lists. #4, Hulu.com . The TV and movie site from NBC and Fox. A good site, but not worthy of making it to #4. In fact, I'm not sure it's even worthy of being on the list. #9, the Internet in space. Though it can't operate the same way; it requires confirmation of each packet being sent from every router. #20, Spore, the "Everything Game." A disappointment for many users, both in game play and in the DRM used. #30, the Internet of things. Now your toaster and refrigerator can have their own social network. #32, Facebook for Spies. So that spies (CIA, FBI, NSA, and others) are no longer left out. #36, a new ping-pong server from German Dimitrij Ovtcharov -- yep, a ping-pong serve made the top 50. #38, Instant replay for baseball. You think I kid... these actually made the list. Intermixed with these innovations are some really valuable innovations too, such as: #6,

Perhaps some help from the Procrastination Flowchart would be in order. I learned about this back in September, but I'm just now getting to it. Hmm...

If you're not familiar with Twitter , it is a micro-blogging tool, where users can only post 140 characters at a time. The low character count was determined based on the ability of phones to SMS, with caps ranging from 140 to 165 characters per SMS message. As a Twitterer, you can post information on what your doing, a new website you found, or short news blurbs. Other people can follow you on Twitter, and see your posts as you make them. The "goodness" I am referring to is the use of Twitter by the AMBER Alert system. Sign up as a follower of amberalert and get informed of any new AMBER Alerts. I'm actually quite surprised amberalert doesn't have more followers -- less than 500. According to TwitDir , President-Elect Barack Obama ( BarackObama ), the leader with the most followers, has 133,482 followers. Couldn't get at least 5% of those followers to follow amberalert? Did you know that in 2007, there were 13 to 24 AMBER Alerts issued each month? In total,

I found on the Discovery website , originating from The Futurist magazine, the Top 10 Forecasts for 2009 and Beyond . Here's an exert and some opinion. Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030. Here's some facts: Our ISPs can (and some do) record every movement we make on the Internet (including email); Google is everywhere and capturing everything; our employers are tracking our network and email usage; and we're already capturing and documenting our lives through social networks and photo & video sites. On top of that, places like London have cameras on every corner and are recording every phone call too. It is just a matter of time before everything is recorded -- I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a reality as soon as 2020. British authorities have placed great faith in CCTV as a crime control device, installing an estimated 1.5 million police cameras along the country's streets, buildings and mass transport systems. Still shots taken from vi

It was 39 years ago today that the first transmission over the new ARPANET occurred. Here's scans of the actual documents that logged the first attempt, which crashed after sending "lo". We've come a long way since those early days of developing the packet switching network we know and love as the Internet. Happy Birthday Internet!

Seems letter writing is dead -- not according to Letterfu. Letterfu.com contains several page templates that you can use to send a letter without using an envelope. The steps are easy: Find a design template you like Print it Write your letter (on the back) Fold per the printed guides Address Add a stamp Mail If Letterfu intrigued you, then you might find one of these other paper folding sites of interest. Paperfolding.com is all about origami, from the history to easy lessons to complex origami art. A Paper Folding Project contains instructions for a single design from Paul Haeberli. Folds.net has a collection of links (some broken) to folding instructions for various origami. So give Letterfu and letter writing a try. Perhaps letter writing isn't quite dead, yet.

The Internet is flooded with websites, more bad than good. Just the shear number of sites, even if they were all good, makes it difficult to find those sites that are relevant to you right now. With that in mind, I thought I would share some websites that I recently found, that I believe fall into the "good" category. The Best Article Every Day Day-to-day the articles on this site do not typically go together, which is the power of this site. It exposes you to new things all the time. Take for example the article from October 16 , 2008 -- it's about 28 different free file storage websites. The article on the 15th of October has 78 ways small businesses can save money. Quite diverse, both offer value. NirSoft NirSoft has countless software utilities from password tools, to network tools, to browser tools. Definately a site for geeks. How to Clean Stuff Maybe your microwave smells like burnt popcorn. How to Clean Stuff has a way to clean up that smell. Maybe your son came

What would it be like if your life was like Facebook or another social network? You might find acquaintances from long ago showing up at your door. This first video helps you see what that might be like. The first video is from some blokes in England, Idots of Ants -- they are Benjamin Wilson, James Wrighton, Elliott Tiney and Andrew Spiers. This is just one of many videos available on YouTube by the Idiots. If you have a tech job, many others likely do not understand what you do. Of course you spend most of the day playing computer games. And when your non-technical colleagues have technical problems, they are all the same problem, caused by the same thing, requiring the same fix. In this case, it's because the website is down. I hope you enjoyed these video shorts as much as I did.

With all the buzz around Microsoft's latest ad campaign, prior videos are re-appearing. Thanks to Digg, I found this video with Christopher Lloyd as Microsoft kicks-off TechEd 2007. I found most of it quite funny. "Oh, Biff..."

Goodreads is a social network for those who like to share what they read and find new books to read. I joined Goodreads and was able to easily add a dozen books that I've recently read, and provide my rating and review for each. The site is very easy to use. It's easy to find books to add that you've read and books that you want to read. Goodreads is also easy to find other readers with similar interest and ratings on books that you've considered reading. With goodreads, you can start your own book club or join an existing one. The groups can even go a little off-topic, such as there is a group for folks to rate and discuss recent movies they watched. You can also find over 4000 authors who participate on Goodreads, as well as some author interviews. If that's not enough, you can also test your book smarts with general book trivia or triva only from books you've read. Now I'm seeing some value out of social networking... MySpace to keep in-touch with my fa

If you enjoy reading, you know that the cost of getting new books can add up quickly. For the commuters who listen to books, purchasing new audio books is nearly prohibitive. If you fall into one of these groups, you might find Project Gutenberg to be a great resource. Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Imaging going to a never ending bookshelf to pick your next book to read. Project Gutenberg is a volunteer organization working to make every public domain (copyright-free) book available in electronic form. Unfortunately copyright law has changed since Project Gutenberg was started. While a book used to be public domain 28 years after written, the law now says the author must be dead for 50 years. Nevertheless, there is quite a collection of interesting books available -- 25,00

I recently found a chart that lists common electronic gear and the power and money spent while they sit idle. For plasma TV owners, you far outpace anything else at $160 / 1452.4 kwh annually ($0.11 p/ kilowatt hour). Many of these devices can be plugged into a power brick, and when not in use the brick can be turned off, therefore not consuming any power.

The Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, released an advisory on Thursday July 24, 2008, encouraging people to change the way they use cell phones as a precaution against cancer ( PDF ). Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer. Dr. Herberman in particular cites concerns over children using cell phones, "Do not allow children to use a cell phone, except for emergencies." This was the first item of 10 precautionary guidelines to help you reduce the possibility of cell phone induced cancer. Other guidelines include using a Bluetooth headset or speakerphone over putting the phone up to your ear. Also worth noting, as mentioned as guideline 10, different phones have varying power levels that affect how much radiation is absorbed by the body ( SAR ). Guideline 10 encourages users to use the lowest possible SAR rated phone you c

When you are not using your computer or game machine, what are they doing? Just for the cost of electricity, you can contribute to worthy causes such as protein folding or searching for ET. Organizations from Stanford ( Folding@home ) and Berkley ( SETI@home ) have small programs that you can download for your computer, that will only run when your computer is idle. Folding@home and SETI@home are able to do this through using Grid Computing technology. The Folding@home project started in 2000 with assistance from Intel, Google, and others. What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. So with the help of the Folding@home project, researchers are able to process data faster t

As we have all been struggling to keep up with the rising gas prices, one service Internet service has been developed to help you find the lowest price in your area. That would be GasBuddy.com . GasBuddy has any easy interface (despite the busy distractions): click your state and enter your zip code - that's it. You can also find the average price for gas in each state plus Washington DC. Here in Oregon, we're currently averaging $4.268, 45th of 51. The lowest average goes to Missouri at $3.854 and the highest goes to Hawaii at $4.552. With the gas temperature map , you can see the range of gas prices within your state (or for the country). And finally, you can view the trend of gas prices for up to 3 cities over the last 6 years.

I have always wondered what the story was behind "Lorem Ipsum" used as filler text on website mock-ups. Well there's a website that has the story, http://www.lipsum.com/ . Website builders will often use this Latin text to give the previewer a feel for what a page will look like once the content has been added. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC,.. Visit Lorem Ipsum at lipsum.com and learn the entire history. Also from the site, you can have it generate your own Lorem Ipsum text to put in your next website mock-ups.