November 05, 2002

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 20:11:58 GMT

In 1997 I attended the Palm Computing Developer Conference. This was around the time that they first started talking about Bluetooth. Last week they finally unveiled a Bluetooth capable handheld. Amongst other things, this completely indicates to me that Bluetooth is getting a little too old in the tooth to seriously consider as a viable networking technology. Anything that takes that long to start to get traction can't possible stay relevant long enough to be considered a serious contender. This week, Cyrix tested this theory with the introduction of its WirelessUSB technology that operates on the 2.4GHZ spectrum and boasts latencies that should make BlueTooth device manufacturers green with Envy. Did I mention that this means that no new device drivers will be required? Every single computer that sits within 50ft of me could be retrofit with this new technology in, oh say, 15 seconds. I'm betting on Cyrix with this one.
Posted by system at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 06:45:54 GMT

Enough with the self-imposed sleep deprivation. I was hoping to finish off my final thoughts on the Shanghai meeting, but the eyes are getting heavy and the info-mercial is over. I'll get to it tomorrow night.
Posted by system at 01:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

oBwifiblogreference

In some parts of the apartment, the WiFi tends to get sluggish. I've found that squeezing the Aironet card between my thumb and forefinger tends to help the packets find their source more readily. I guess that my body acts as some sort of wet antenna that improves the reception of the card.

Neat.

Posted by system at 01:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I gotta start wearing shades...

Interesting. An info-mercial for the online banking services offered by a major Canadian bank. Omigosh - they have a great feature called "I forgot my password" - wow. I wonder if they are giving away a George Forman Grill with every new account signup. As if that isn't cool enough, the commercial is chock-full of Star Trek Communicator-like noises guaranteed to keep *everyone's* attention.

Apparently it's very easy to use and allows you to access your bank balance from *any place* in the world that has Internet access. This web thing might just catch on. Just wait until some smartass gets everyone else to adopt a standardized machine readable data format that allows for some basic security. I'd bet my new George Forman Grill that it might actually get some traction.

Unfortunately, like most commercials, it's not totally realistic. I just watched a segment where two 40 somethings excitedly find out that they will be able to retire in just under ten years. Not a bad dream, but chances are pretty good that they, like most other Canadians, stuffed their RRSP with Nortel during the hey-day making their Freedom-55 plan look like a Freedom-92ish plan.

Posted by system at 01:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack