CHRISdotTODD

On Monday we learned about the new 3G iPhone : lower purchase price ($199 for 8MB version), GPS integration, longer battery life, and more. A lot of the buzz was around the lower price, but if you look at the total cost of ownership you will find out that it is actually more expensive. Over the 2 year plan with AT&T, you're going to pay an additional $10 per month for data ($240) and an additional $5 for SMS messages ($120). So instead of a total cost of ownership of $1815, you will pay $1975. For the additional features, the price is probably worth it. In comparing against other smart phones, the cost is competitive too. Gizmodo has a more detailed breakdown that includes phones from Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. Speaking of new iPhone features, Gizmodo also has an article that discusses the new video conferencing add-on for the iPhone. There has been discussion from the community over the missing, built-in video conferencing features, but as you can read about there is a l

3G 8GB: $199; 16GB: $299 Available July 11th in 22 countries 2.8 faster than iPhone 1.0 on the Edge Network. Longer battery life GPS integration SDK Push email, calendar, ... Live contact searching Word, Excel, PowerPoint Bulk delete and move Save email images Enhanced calculator Asian language support, including character recognition MobileMe ( me.com ) App distribution through cell network (less than 10MB), iTunes, WiFi, enterprise (intranet), ad hoc (up to 100 authorized phones) Tech Specs SDK / Apps article

Take a look at this video -- the early stages of robots joining together to make their own hardware.

Based on a review I read, I thought I'd give Xobni a try. As described on the Xobni home page, "Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that helps you organize your flooded inbox." Xobni installs a new right-hand pane in Outlook and tracks your contacts communications. When you view an email, prior emails, files transfered and other cc'd contacts display in the Xobni window. Xobni provides you additional information as well, such as the contacts phone number, the numbers of sent and received emails to the contact and how the contact ranks in comparison to your other email contacts. You can also see a graph of when the contact communicates with you (by hour of the day). And finally, Xobni has a search feature to help you find emails. The Xobni website covers the features in more detail . The reason I'm uninstalling Xobni as I have not found the benefit in comparison to the pain. Every morning when I start Outlook, it now checks for errors because it did not close properly th

Check out this 10 minute video that does a great job in putting the Internet and Net Neutrality in perspective. The big media, telcos, and cable companies are lining the pockets of Washington, so they can control the Internet medium like they already have with TV, Radio, and Newspapers. This will affect us all, whether you're a tech geek, an independent content producer, or just a consumer. Give this 10 minutes of your time, and then pass it on.

Update June 3, 2008 Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO, joined the TWiT podcast on Sunday (posted June 2nd) and talked about the DoS attach quite extensively. Jim's a real class guy; check out what he had to say about the DoS attach, BitTorrent, and MediaDefender. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Internet TV company Revision3 suffered Denial of Service (DoS) attacks from MediaDefender . What specifically did MediaDefender do to Revision3 servers? MediaDefender flooded the Revision3 servers with 8,000 requests per second. With that type of volume, the Revision3 servers couldn't keep of with those requests, let alone legitimate requests for Revision3 content. Revision3 has posted an article with the details . From the MediaDefender website, MediaDefender, Inc. is the leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry. We provide services that stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the Internet and Peer-to-Peer n

Not many folks try to row across an ocean; Roz Savage has already rowed across the Atlantic , and Sunday morning she left from the San Fransisco Bay to row across the Pacific. You might ask, "What does this have to do with technology?" Well, Roz is keeping us all informed of her progress using technology. If you visit Roz's website, you can follower her through a tracking console that shows her current location and where she's been. This includes a date-time stamp of her last report, her speed and course, and her latitude and longitude. Perhaps that's not for you... also on her site is daily blog posts. For others, well you can track her Twitter feed , subscribe to text alerts on your phone, or listen to her podcasts (look for it to show on TWiT.TV -- the first recording happened today). Now you know why I posted this on a tech blog. And if that's not enough, get a look at her boat , it looks pretty hi-tech too.