Talk in the rumor mill keeps flying to the topic of Apple needing to release a Netbook to survive this economic downturn.  There have also been ongoing rumors that Apple will release a Mac Tablet - essentially a large version of the iPod Touch or iPhone.  These rumors could become reality if Apple decides to combine the two.

Apple has realized that almost 40% of its income now comes from the iPhone!  If it can create a Mac Tablet that is always Internet-connected, like the iPhone 3G, it would be a “netbook.”  In addition, Apple would be able to charge an extremely, low, upfront-price by having telecommunication carriers subsidize its Mac Tablet.  In these times, people are looking to cut costs, so a low-cost Mac with a built-in Internet connection would be an attractive item.  I suspect, Steve Jobs has this ace up his sleeve.  Success from the iPhone should make its way into the Mac line.  What do you think?

Share This

Check them out, side-by-side. 3oc, Inc. on the left, bgC3 LLC on the right.

Coincidence?  I personally think mine looks a little bit better :)  What do you think?

Share This

Share This

Share This

Spore is, without a doubt, the future of the gaming industry. That isn’t to say that it has its draw backs, but it is the first non-MMO that I have played to date that is so intertwined with the next evolution in gaming, user generated content. It has been talked about for years and some games have touched it, but no game, that I am aware of, has grasped it as fully as Spore.

I wasn’t sure how this would play out in the game. I’ve never really played any game that allowed me to design my character as extensively as Spore. Most game players are used to some level of customization in MMO’s and RPG games. While Spore doesn’t come close to a game like Second Life in the realm of user generated content it exceeds it by providing a wide range of flexibility and still offering a linear game path with increasingly difficult goals. Plus, it’s easy to play, my wife can play Spore, and she is not a gamer.

Spore is one of the first games to come out that has the ability to provide game companies with a way to combat privacy, but support the purchasers as well. User generated content could be an extremely powerful tool for games in the future because to get this data you need to contact centralized servers controlled by the company that built the game. This offers up several authentication options that games of the past just couldn’t offer. (I will be expanding on these in my third article about Spore).

Now I know that this game has raised a huge up-roar with the anti Digital Rights Management (DRM) crowd. But the arguments that are made against it only impact an extremely small margin of the potential user base. On top of that it would be easy for EA to release a patch that removes the DRM from the game entirely (something that has been done on many games already). I don’t find the issues people are having with the DRM to be a valid argument for not purchasing the game.

In the end sales numbers will probably determine if Spore has the potential to change the industry. While this has its own good and bad points I think companies that have games in the works should take note of what Spore allows the user to do, regardless of its success. There are many IP’s that could receive a huge boost by following Spores example (I will be talking about one of my personal favorites in my next post).

I give Spore a thumbs up to people that are thinking about purchasing the game. It is extremely fun, it is easy on machine requirements for those of you that haven’t upgraded in a while, and if you have a stable machine and are not reinstalling your OS every few weeks the DRM isn’t going to be a problem for you. If you do happen to have issues with the DRM, well, I guess you’re out of luck until EA decides to patch it out of the game.

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

August-08	2379	2609	3860      2008-08

Several notables:

• “Brittle Machines” is the most popular post.
• “What to look for when buying a used car” is the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox is the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google is the dominant search engine source.
• United States is the country with the most visitors.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

July-08	3169	3456	5236      2008-07

Several notables:

• “Facebook Valuation” is the most popular post.
• “What to look for when buying a used car” is the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox is the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google is the dominant search engine source.
• United States is the country with the most visitors.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

June-08	3541	3877	5734      2008-06

Several notables:

• “Google’s Trading Floor” is the most popular post.
• “What to look for when buying a used car” is the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox is the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google is the dominant search engine source.
• United States is the country with the most visitors.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

I just read The New York Times article, As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll.  While it is true that there is more significant and monetary damage that occurs when a web page or cloud computing servers go down than there used to be, it is not unlike its desktop computing counterparts.  When is the last time your desktop got hit by a hardware failure or software malfunction - virus, spyware, etc. - that detoured you and kept you from doing what you normally do?  What about a software or hardware upgrade?

Now, some of you out there are tech savvy.  By that, I mean, you keep your anti-spyware, anti-virus, firewalls, encryption, sniffers, defragmentation, web browsers, operating systems all up-to-date and maintained.  But, maintenance takes time, right?  So I would say, by moving that maintenance cost to the cloud can, and often does, save you significant resources.

However, I think the author of the article was right in saying that as Web traffic grows, we must consider trying to reach better uptime.  Businesses, organizations, and individuals are dependent on the Web more than ever.  So reliability will be just as important as performance increases as the Web continues to mature.  In fact, reliability may be more important than performance, as long as performance is decent.

Share This

Apple has multiple revenue streams.  The items that are most often noted are: Macs, iPods, and iPhones.  However, there are other things that contribute to Apple’s bottom line.  The diagram below gives an overview:

[Blue = hardware; Orange = software/services]

(more…)

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

May-08	2536	2870	4401      2008-05

Several notables:

• “Brittle Machines” is the most popular post.
• “GigaSpaces” is the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox is the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google is the dominant search engine source.
• United States is the country with the most visitors.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

Microsoft has several products that are monopolies and hold dominant market share positions:

1. Windows
2. Office
3. Internet Explorer

As the Microsoft Empire continues to march on we are beginning to see the chinks in the armor. In the past we have written about The Downfall Of The Microsoft Empire. As we begin seeing increased competition, let us examine which of these products are beginning to show the most wear and which one is mostly likely to fall first. (more…)

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

Apr-08	2646	3144	5624      2008-04

Several notables:

• “Brittle Machines” is the most popular post.
• “Facebook Valuation” is the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox is the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google is the dominant search engine source.
• United States is the country with the most visitors.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

The main bottleneck in computers today is not the CPU, but the mechanical hard disk drive (HDD). When an application mostly waits on the CPU to get things done, it’s called compute bound. On the other hand when it’s mostly waiting to get data in or out of storage, it’s called I/O bound. Because CPU performance keeps doubling and HDD performance doesn’t, today most systems are I/O bound. HDDs simply cannot keep CPUs fed with data fast enough. While storage capacities in HDDs have steadily increased, performance has languished — making it the system choke-point. It is one of the last remaining devices that has moving parts in a computer today. (Long ago, CPUs moved from vacuum tubes to solid-state transistors). The future of storage is solid-state disks (SSDs).

Here is an exclusive interview with David Flynn, CTO at Fusion-io, to talk about their ioDrive. It aims to alleviate the performance disconnect between computing and storage while staying within competitive price-points. (more…)

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

Mar-08	2299	2833	7213      2008-03

Several notables:

• “Brittle Machines” was the most popular post.
• “Facebook Valuation” was the most searched for keywords.
• Firefox continues to be the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google continues to be the dominant search engine source.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

Today, I made a bunch of changes to FishTrain. Hopefully, they’ll make reading the site much more enjoyable.

• Added caching.
• Front-page re-coded - slightly changed look.
• Pared down the number of categories.
• Updated sidebar.
• Updated number of postings per category.

The big one was getting caching to work. In the past it has been difficult to get caching to work with my hosting provider. This time, caching seems to work flawlessly. There doesn’t seem to be any disruptions with any of the services. I’m already seeing some major performance improvements. Hopefully this will help FishTrain survive spikes in readership — such as when we make it on the front page of major social news sites.

Also, I hope you like the slight changes to the front-page of the site. I think it is a little more reader-friendly. And there is more relevant information than before.

Anyway, happy reading.

Share This

FishTrain Job Listings are up. We have partnered up with Job-a-matic and SimplyHired. If you’re looking to hire, you can post a job and it will reach our loyal readers as well as the SimplyHired network — which has millions of job listings all over the web! Additionally, if you’re hunting for a job, we have a gold mine of job listings. Happy job hunting.

Share This

If you search the web for companies leading the current Radio Frequency identification revolution you will quickly run into a company called Digital Angel. Their broad array of RFID products delivers functional value to markets as diverse as livestock to the U.S. coastguard. In recent years the company has expanded through acquiring other companies such as Signature Industries which Search And Rescue Beacon Equipment (SARBE) and Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs). Its SARBE trademark devices are found on ships, aircraft and submarines of armed forces in over 40 countries. They have a civilian equivalent through subsidiary McMurdo which they acquired in April 2007.

Their subsidiary Destron Fearing is a leading manufacturer of implantable RFID microchips for use in identifying lost pets around the world. The microchip, a passive device (requiring no power source) about the size of a grain of rice, is implanted just underneath the skin between the pet’s shoulders. The pet’s identification number and owner information is then enrolled in a regulated database. If a lost pet appears in a shelter or veterinary office, it can be immediately scanned, identified and then reunited with its owner. Today there are 70,000 scanners in animal shelters and veterinary offices around the U.S., making it possible for more than 7,000 pets to be reunited with their owners each month. Helping this market expand even more quickly is the United States Department of Agriculture, which endorses microchips to identify pets and even advocates educating the public about microchip technology. Currently in the U.S. market, only 3% to 5% of pets have received microchips. With more than 100 million dogs and cats in the U.S. alone, the potential for market expansion is extensive.

In the ever-evolving quest to take implantable chip technology a step further, in October 2006, Digital Angel was granted a patent for an implantable RFID microchip that can determine glucose levels in the bodies of animals and humans. A functioning prototype of this device is expected in 2008. Other potential bio-sensing applications are being intensely explored, including monitoring pulse oxygen levels and blood pressure.

With these and other market-ready products available it is not hard to see how Digital Angel is nicely positioned to capitalize on the quickly expanding RFID market place.

Share This

With thousands upon thousands of social networks already launched, and more coming in the ongoing social network wars what are reasonable valuations? Is this irrational exuberance? Will the companies that buy them ever make their money back?

1. MySpace was acquired by News Corp for $580m in July 2005.
2. Facebook sold 1.6% of its shares to Microsoft for $246m in October 2007.
3. Bebo is being acquired by AOL for $850m, the announcement went out today.

(more…)

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

Feb-08	2239	2719	4510      2008-02

Several notables:

• 87.14% visits are by Google search engine source
• 79.04% visits are by Microsoft Windows operating system
• 52.34% visits are by Firefox web browser
• The majority of readers have high-speed Internet access

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here.

Share This

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

Jan-08	2306	2757	4597      2008-01

Several notables:

• iPhone/iPod touch accounted for 0.4% of visits!
• Firefox continues to be the leading web browser for viewing this site.
• Google continues to be the dominant search engine source.
• The majority of readers had high-speed Internet access.

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here. Since the site is still relatively new, the current cost for an ad unit is dirt cheap. However, as our traffic continues to grow, we will be able to demand higher prices. You can reserve an ad unit now and lock-in to our currently, ridiculously low-rates. Also, there are discounts for reserving ad units for extended periods of time. So cash in on this opportunity now.

Share This

Share This

I wrote a while back about the Downfall of the Microsoft Empire. In that article I wrote about all Microsoft’s competitors and how they were attacking Microsoft on all fronts. I digress, with today’s news that Microsoft made a $44.6B offer to buyout Yahoo, Microsoft may be the downfall of their own empire. That is not only a massive premium over the existing market value of Yahoo, but a futile attempt against Google. According to Compete.com, Microsoft is basically saying that each Yahoo customer is worth $1200. How long do you think it would take to recoup $1200 per customer on search advertisements? Exactly. And do you think that with a merger the customers are going to stay loyal to Microsoft or Yahoo Search? (more…)

Share This

Apple has some of the best products in the world. They have world-class hardware: Macintosh computers, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV; and world-class software: Mac OS X, OS X, iTunes, iLife, Final Cut Studio, Safari, etc. However, there are improvements I would like to see to their product line. (more…)

Share This

Bandwidth costs greatly impact profit margins of organizations that deliver enormous amounts of data. Several products and services that are immediately impacted by bandwidth costs are: (more…)

Share This

Companies that can make a comeback: (more…)

Share This

Ever worry about losing something valuable to you? Of course we all do. Now what if there was a way you could instantaneously track down whatever was lost or stolen? Welcome to the world of RFID –Radio Frequency Identification- the future of theft prevention. RFID is the latest by product in the ever evolving quest to shrink computer chips with tiny transponders that don’t require batteries and can be shrunk down to a very small size. The caveat is that unless you are very wealthy and well connected you probably won’t be able to access the technology. On the other hand, it is cost effective for large corporations that spend billions on security and still lose billions to theft and interestingly a large portion of theft from businesses is by employees.

Most of us have become familiar with RFID in toll passes and anti-theft devices for library books, cd/dvd tags but there is a new kid on the block. Now introducing a cutting edge company: http://www.noxdefense.com/ According to http://rfidwizards.com one of the more covert technologies they employ is ID-Dust, serialized dust particles that can be interrogated like a RFID tag. The NOX team can coat a person or object with it to track movement. ID-Dust can show if an item was handled or it can even be sprinkled on the floor. People unknowingly pick up the ID-Dust on their shoes as they travel through a dusted area. The software combines the video surveillance and RFID information to create an association between the ID-Dust and a person. The ID-Dust allows the person’s movement to be tracked around a facility without the person ever knowing he or she is being tracked. While a criminal can easily defeat the motion sensors, the ID-Dust provides covert security with instant alerts when someone enters an area, plus a complete history of exactly where each person traveled and when. A tag read in a particular location automatically triggers video recording and sends an instant alert to the security personnel’s mobile devices. Think video or images popping up on your cell phone.

While this is amazing can you imagine what the future holds when this technology is welded with say nanotechnology. Think molecular robot defense systems. Maybe I-Robot isn’t so far fetched after all.

Share This

Who would have thought that the third largest retailer in the world would go small instead of big? With Wal-Mart and Costco eating up the “Mom and Pop” stores, it is not a bet that many retailers would be willing to make. You may not have heard of Tesco, but the British retailer is no small potatoes. Third largest retailer in the world, they have a plan to popularize the mini-sized supermarket.
(more…)

Share This

There was a drop in traffic compared to last month due to the holidays.

Month	Unique	Visits	Pageviews  Analytics

Dec-07	3197	3813	6494      2007-12

Several notables:

• 94.59% visits are by Google search engine source
• 81.67% visits are by Microsoft Windows operating system
• 56.99% visits are by Firefox web browser
• 0.31% visits are by iPhone
• The majority of readers have high-speed Internet access

For more notables, check out the analytics above.

If you would like to advertise on our growing site, we offer sponsored, ad units here. Since the site is still relatively new, the current cost for an ad unit is dirt cheap. However, as our traffic continues to grow, we will be able to demand higher prices. You can reserve an ad unit now and lock-in to our currently, ridiculously low-rates. Also, there are discounts for reserving ad units for extended periods of time. So cash in on this opportunity now.

Share This