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First Dell, then Apple, now Toshiba

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TOKYO, Japan (AP) — Toshiba is recalling 340,000 laptop batteries worldwide made by Sony Corp., the latest in a series of problems for the company.

While the latest battery problem causes the laptops to sometimes run out of power, no injuries or other accidents have been reported, Toshiba Corp. spokesperson Keisuke Omori said Tuesday.

She declined to provide the number of reported problems.

The defect is not directly related to the problem behind last month’s recall of Sony batteries by Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., which cited concerns that the batteries could overheat and catch fire. [Link]

A very good article written by Rob Carrigan at News&Tech on what newspapers may still be missing on the web.

Focus on Weeklies
by Rob Carrigan [Link]

There may be some truth to the notion that newspapers just don’t get it when it comes to understanding new media models. Three areas of neglect stand out.

The first, and perhaps the most pronounced, is failure to treat newspaper content as data, and then to manage it as a database.

http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2006/10-06/nt/10-06_carrigan.htm

In general, I am not a big fan of Dashboard widgets. Most of the time, I just forget they’re there.

xCuts is a Dashboard utility that puts a full reference of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts at your fingertips in the Dashboard. They are organized by Category, Scope, and Object, and even contains a category for Windows switchers!

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/xcuts.html

from MacOS X Hints for October:

Savvy OS X users might already know that option-clicking on a Finder window’s close button (the red dot in the title bar) closes all open Finder windows. But what if you want to close everything except the frontmost window? That’s possible too.

The Easy Way In the window you wish to keep open, press Command-shift-G. This makes the Go To Folder sheet appear. Now press Command-option-W—this is the keyboard equivalent of option-clicking on the close button. When you press this keyboard command, all Finder windows except the currently active one will close (OS X won’t let you close a window with an active sheet). Now just press the escape key to dismiss the dialog box, and you’re set.

The Multiple-Personality PCToday, your choice of operating system is a critical one; for tomorrow’s computer it won’t matter nearly as much. [Link]

Metadata (Greek meta “after” and Latin data “information”) are data that describe other data. Generally, a set of metadata describes a single set of data, called a resource.

Example: you have a photo on your computer called “john.jpg.” The metadata about the photo can tell you where the photo was taken, who “john” is, what date it was taken, and other information. When you share the photo with someone else, the metadata travels with the photo.

A tag is a keyword or term used to classify content by means of a folksonomy. Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by the author/creator of the item — i.e. not usually as part of some formally defined classification scheme. Tags are typically used in dynamic, flexible, automatically generated internet taxonomies for online resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock and Mozilla Firefox 2.0x). For this reason, “tagging” has become associated with the Web 2.0 movement.

Think of tags as “snippets” about any article. Tagging articles make it easier for people to find it on the net.

From NAA: presstime magazine

“In 2000, newspapers were struggling to find a fast, automated way to move print content to the Web. Boy, were those the good old days.

Six years later, newspaper executives have to contend not only with traditional online content but also video, audio, podcasts, video podcasts, text messages to cell phones, and Web site content optimized for small cell phone screens.”

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An eight-part survey taken during ‘05-’06 revealed:

• 57% said English will not crowd out other languages on the internet.
• 58% said people who don’t participate in digital communications networks will form their own cultural group that self-segregates from “modern” society.
• 56% said while online virtual reality will foster workplace productivity, it will lead to serious addiction problems for many.
• 54% said autonomous networked technology will not move beyond human control by 2020.
• 78% - identified building network capacity and the knowledge base to help people of all nations use it as the first or second priority for the world’s policymakers and technology industry to pursue.

On a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the internet for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term elections. That corresponds to 19% of adult internet users, or 13% of all Americans over the age of 18.

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