Using U3 to create portable programs; We need a broadband policy

* Gearhead: Using U3 to create portable programs * Backspin: We need a broadband policy * The past 7 days on Gibbsblog

Gearhead: Using U3 to create portable programs

Last week we began a discussion of U3, an emerging standard for controlling and managing applications stored on a USB, flash or thumb drive. This is a very cool idea that creates portable programs – in the sense that they can be carried on physical media from one machine to another and be run with or without being installed. When they exit, they leave no data behind.

To read this week’s Gearhead in its entirety, click here.

Backspin: We need a broadband policy

The Internet has become a foundation of our culture and our businesses, and it is hard to recall how we did things such as shop and bank and read the news and keep up with our friends BI (Before Internet). But on a national scale the Internet still isn’t as pervasive and as effective as it could be or as we thought it would be by now.

To read this week’s Backspin in its entirety, click here.

The past 7 days on Gibbsblog

Corporate Remotivation

You know those hideous “motivational” posters that corporations put up in their offices as if a picture with some “go team, go” sentiment will change the way their employees think? If you loathe this kind of crap as much as I do check out of Despair.com.

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Google Gobbles Writely

I wrote about Writely in a recent edition of my Network World Web Applications newsletter and my enthusiasm was well-founded: Google just purchased the company this week for an undisclosed amount.

Don’t bother trying to sign up, new accounts are not being offered although existing accounts still work.

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Time Sink #5 Update

Here’s what Keith Dawson, renowned publisher of the now defunct and sorely missed “Tasty Bits from the Technology Front” newsletter, has to say on the topic of Pingu vs. Yeti which I covered in this post:

Pingu vs. Yeti has been around a loooong time. In late 2003 / early 2004, when I was losing large chunks of time to the game, I remember visiting a site that linked to dozens of ripoffs and improvements on the original game — I assume that the source code had somehow escaped into the wild. The original developers, meanwhile, kept churning out new creative variations on the Yetisports theme.

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Time Sink #5

Click on the polar bear or yeti or whatever the hell it is to make the penguin jump and then click again to swing the bat to hit the penguin across the ice. I got 288.3 … timing is everything.

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Remote Progamming TiVo, a Must Have?

Roused by the clock radio switching on NPR this morning I mentally clawed my way into consciousness to hear a news item on TiVo and Verizon offering a new service that allows you to program your TiVo through your Verizon cell phone.

Being groggy and half asleep at first I thought that I had dreamed this but, nope, that’s exactly what is being offered.

Now I’m awake I am staggered at how much positive press this stupid idea has received …

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More on Apple’s New Products

Further to last week’s Gibbsblog item about the last Apple product launch here’s an interesting article on iPod garage titled “Is Apple trying to take over the iPod accessory industry?”

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Biggering Department: Welcome to the New, New AT&T

Yesterday, AT&T Inc. announced that it intends to acquire BellSouth Corp. This will likely be OK’ed by the FTC and I will now have to deal with the beast for my landline, DSL, and cell phone as well.

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Pew Internet Project: Home Broadband Adoption in Rural America

On February 26th the Pew Internet Project released a report titled Home Broadband Adoption in Rural America which concludes that “Rural America trails rest of nation in home broadband use, but gap has narrowed in past two years.”