So one of the benefits of doing “The Lab with Leo” was getting in contact with lots of people who ship out gadgets for review. Now I’m doing the odd review for Freyburg, the first of which is the Linksys WRT600-N. First things first….I have NEVER, until now, installed a router where everything just worked. Every single router I’ve used, whether from Linksys, D-Link, or otherwise, has given me some form of incompatibility grief. Even my dad’s Airport wouldn’t talk to both his new iMac and his old iMac. The 600N, however, had no problem finding my Macbook Pro, my girlfriend’s Macbook Pro, our Xbox 360 (a sticking point with many other routers) and even my iPhone (though even though it connects, it goes by the old name and not the assigned name I gave the router).
It works as advertised…it’s considerably faster than my old wireless G router, with streaming and downloaded video starting almost immediately and a noticeably faster browsing experience. You can attach a hard drive to it for network enabled storage, though I haven’t bothered to do so yet. Given how easy the rest of the routers functions were to set up, I’m assuming it’ll be pretty painless as well. Linksys also announced new Mac setup wizards for their routers, which should make things easier for the install-challenged. I didn’t have any trouble installing it by hand, but some Mac users might, so the new installation software is probably a wise move. The original price of the router was $279, but that price seems to have gone down to $150 to $180, depending on where you go online to find a unit. Overall….a win!
Chris absconded to Las Vegas this week for liquor, gambling, and other licentious pursuits, so it was left to the other two pillars of RFS to hold the fort, which they barely managed. The subject at hand? “Turn Left,’ which served as not only this season’s “Doctor Lite” episode but also as a fantastic return to the series for Billie Piper, not to mention a sterling performance by Catherine Tate. The usual digressions and drivel-making were of course present, but without our tall co-host’s derisive sneers and seething hate, it wasn’t quite the same.
This one’s more ranting about the proposed Canadian DMCA. Also, on a technical note, it looks like video hosting sites don’t ike something about the end credits, so I guess I’ll have to tweak that for further episodes.
The Canadian DMCA has just been tabled by the House of Commons, and from what I can tell (gleaned from Michael Geist’s excellent blog post) it’s a complete and total ruinous mess for the future of electronic media in Canada. Let’s, just for a second, get past the spectre of evil pirates stealing content from hard-working, impoverished studios and record companies. This bill makes it illegal for anyone to transfer music they bought off a CD and onto their own iPod. It also makes it illegal to unlock an iPhone or other locked digital devices, to the tune of a $20,000 fine. So the fact that I’ve been carting around said iPhone for the last six months is apparently more important than the fact that our representatives in Parliament consort with gangster molls or that the Alberta tar sands are an ecological disaster area. No, people downloading the latest Coldplay album is what our law enforcement services should concern themselves with.
The real irony here is that the studios are the authors of their own destruction. If these laws are actually enforceable, all that will happen is that people won’t bother to watch copyrighted material anymore. The means of production are cheaper than ever, and more and more people are watching amateur video, citizen journalism and other user generated content. The drive for self-preservation will actually accelerate the decline and fall of big media, by its own hand.
And the potential damage from this bill doesn’t just affect individuals. Companies in the business of moving and storing content, like Domain7, have already expressed concerns (check their news section for their take on the bill).
…this one about “revirginizing” your iPhone. Which many people, including myself, may be doing soon in order to run the saucy goodness that is the iPhone 2.0 firmware, rolled out today at the World Wide Developers COnference as part of the hoopla surrounding the 3G iPhone.
Yes, pigs are currently cruising through a very, very cold Hades, because Apple is finally releasing the iPhone in Canada, and not only that, it’s the new, improved, 3G iPhone. Due July 11th at Apple Stores, Rogers and Fido outlets, and presumably online. Of course, the potential fly in the ointment of all this mobile love is the big question of what precisely Rogers will charge for an iPhone-centric data plan. I’d like to think the larger opportunity of a game-changing product like the iPhone would jar Rogers to their senses and force them into an unlimited plan for $50 or less…but I’m not holding my breath.
Apple also rolled out Mobile Me, a revamp of the moribund .Mac service which prove to be quite useful (because .Mac certainly wasn’t), and the much awaited App Store, which promises to bring much the same creativity and device-extending goodness as the….uh, jailbreak community has for the last year.
Will I get a new 3G iPhone? it all depends on what Rogers does in terms of a data plan. There’s no point in having always-on connectivity if within a month I’m broke. But if they come to their senses and offer a reasonable rate, I’m most likely in.
While the traditional model of aid for developing countries is to dump a big pile of money into the lap of sometimes questionable governments, it turns out that the key to ending poverty might be to decentralize, lend smaller amounts of money to a larger group of people, and distribute cell phones amongst the poor. That’s subject of Wired founder Kevin Kelly’s blog post, which points to research indicating that democracy is more likely to sprout up when money, resources and communication tools are given out on a many-to-many model rather than a hierarchical, authoritarian approach. I recently had a chance to interview someone at Kiva.org, a microfinancing site, and he reiterated that not only do micro-loans do tangible good but the poorest beneficiaries of the loans are the most likely to pay back their debts.
At any rate, its interesting to see the Internet peer-to-peer model spreading to the developing world at the micro level. At the macro level, as noted in Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World,” developing nations like India and China re already reaping the benefits of outsourcing, connectivity and a global marketplace.
Ah, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. Back in 1982, this was my first taste of computational wizardry, expressed through the glories of 32k Extended memory, 8 colors on screen (at once!), tape drives and poring over BASIC manuals. And amazingly, there’s still a user community out there using these beasts. I still have my CoCo tucked away in a closet, along with my Powerbook 100. What was your first computer?
Besides being my go-to source for books and other knowledge, Amazon has also built up an insane amount of infrastructure, and they’ve turned the IT world on its head by using it as a “cloud” that smaller sites can draw from rather than maintaining their own infrastructure. Wired elucidates.
