The Register – Gateway has said it will buy low-cost PC maker eMachines in a bid to boost its market share around the world and in the US market in particular. [ The Register ]

The most amazing quote in the article for me was:

bq. Gateway hopes that the cost savings it expects to make by merging with eMachines’ operation, plus increase sales volumes – with eMachines’ PC sales covering its own decline in that arena, along with its successful push into consumer electronics – and the benefits of eMachines’ better margins will drive it back to sustained profitability sometime in 2005.

Since when do established companies buy relatively new economy plays for their better margins? Gateway’s core business must be hurting even worse than it seemed.

Professor Popsicle – A researcher known as “Professor Popsicle” has found humans can successfully spend days on end in the bitter cold. Gordon Giesbrecht has spent the past 26 days skiing the isolated, frozen expanse of Lake Winnipeg as part of his research for the University of Manitoba on how the body copes with the cold. [ Reuters ]

Reassuring to know that in the event of an ice age we all will be able to survive while trekking from deserted city to deserted city via snowshoe.

Disposable DVDs get thumbs-down from buyers – The disposable DVD concept has never been a popular one with most technology-oriented folk, who generally prefer the concept of ownership of their physical property over that of continuously renting it — for example, witness the reservations many have over the DRM restrictions in the iTunes Music Store. So it should come as a relief that a test-run of throwaway discs by Buena Vista Home Entertainment has come to a premature end, according to Wired. [ "(extlink)Arstechnica":http://www.arstechnica.com ]

I think the most disappointing thing about these disks is their cost. Having worked at Blockbuster, I think a lot of people would like the idea of a DVD they could buy, take home and open that week or whenever they got around to it, and not worry about late fees because it doesn’t have to be returned. Perhaps sold from a giant vending machine that stocked thousands of titles in little sleeves.

The key issue seems to be price though. $6 is too much. $2-3 and I think people would be snapping them up like hotcakes.

My Yahoo Beta Tests RSS Feeds – Everyone is buzzing about the fact that Yahoo is beta testing the addition of any RSS feed to it’s My Yahoo portal, a move that may signal an inroad to the mainstream. I didn’t want to comment on this until I had a chance to play with it; today I had that chance. Here are some of my observations. [ "(extlink)Shifted Librarian":http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com ]

It sounds more like Yahoo is piggybacking on RSS to make it easy to add any website to my.yahoo.com as a channel. Very similar to the way that RSS was originally used by Netscape, and the way it’s used by the “(extlink)uPortal”:http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/ project. Interesting because it makes it really easy for people to add you to their My Yahoo home-page and view your stories every time they go online, but I don’t see Yahoo wanting to introduce a “(extlink)Bloglines”:http://www.bloglines.com style web aggregator, especially considering their recent focus on paid services.

On the other hand, maybe Yahoo is considering a free trial version integrated into the start page with a higher priced premium one? RSS could potentially be a lot of eyeballs…

In Online Auctions, Misspelling in Ads Often Spells Cash – Such is the eBay underworld of misspellers, where the clueless and sometimes just careless sell labtop computers, throwing knifes, Art Deko vases, camras, comferters and saphires. [ "(extlink)NYTimes":http://www.nytimes.com ]

At last some ammunition for the strict spellers among us. Although, admittedly I don’t understand why Microsoft hasn’t built spell checking of text areas into Internet Explorer (like Apple did with Safari) I shudder to think what the level of my spelling on this blog would be without the benefit of the corrections. Still, it’s nice to see an affirmation of the necessity even in our technological world for strong fundamental skills. Continue Reading »

Flower Power Takes on Land Mines – A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years. [ "(extlink)Wired News":http://www.wired.com ]

Apparently the scientists have discovered a way to link flowers stress reactions to the chemicals given off by explosives. Amazing. I wonder if this means that soon we’ll be able to have flowers that change color when the level of mercury/radium/toxin of the day gets too high? Maybe you’ll check your flower beds before you go into the house to make sure everything is safe?

I just got a “(extlink)T-Mobile”:http://www.tmobile.com camera-phone (a Sony-Ericcson T610 to be exact) so I’ve been snapping some photos here and there. Here are some I took tonight under the snow.

Milledoler Hall and the rest of Voorhees Mall covered in snow. Continue Reading »

I like the new design for the PATH terminal. I think it has to do with a matter of scale. The angular crystal towers and giant latticework on the “Freedom Tower”:177 don’t appeal to me because they are large structures so the details fade out, and leave them looking blocky and unfinished. This terminal on the other hand is appropriately sized so that the delicate spires and elements look beautiful, since you can see them well and distinctly enough to appreciate them.

Apple has just unleashed the iTunes Music Store RSS Generator which allows you to build a RSS feed of new releases, top songs, featured items, etc. to read in your Aggregator. This is amazing. Like push except so much better.

Now all they need to do is support trackback pings on individual music pages, and bloggers will go nuts. Imaging if you could see a new song in your RSS reader, download it, then ping it’s entry with a review in your blog. Apple would secure the loyalty of bloggers for life, and imaging how much music that would sell.

NASA unable to communicate with Mars rover – The Spirit rover has stopped transmitting data from Mars, NASA mission controllers said Thursday, but there were signs it is still operating at a basic level. NASA scientists now have received a basic communication tone from the rover indicating it is alive but the solid flows of data that marked its first 18 days on Mars have stopped, said Richard Cook, deputy project manager, speaking from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. [ "(extlink)CNN":http://www.cnn.com ]

Sounds like more arguments for manned missions to Mars. Considering how expensive it is to get equipment there in the first place, having the ability to repair things on the planet would seem to make a lot of sense (and cents). At $300 million a probe, these things aren’t cheap, and if something goes wrong your repair options are very limited.