paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
June 2004: PAUL SMITH - Summer time, and the living is eBay.
What will they think of next?
I was sent a .PDF file (is it better to send one than to receive one, I wonder?) of an interesting new product the other day. The USB Mini Fan is described as a PC powered, 3-bladed, 1.5m cabled impulse buy. Which is a roundabout way of saying that if someone paused for a moment in thought, they’d realise what a tin-pot bit of frippery it is and put it back down on the (presumably very slowly shrinking) pile. On the other hand, the hot weather is coming/here, nature abhors an unused USB port, there’s one idiot born every minute and unlike an American at least it’s small and unobtrusive. Indeed, it has a flexible swan neck and, to quote the blurb for a moment, “The foam blades produce a refreshing breeze that not only feels great but looks (sic) great too.” Oh my god, I can feel it happening! I’m being sucked in…
Sensible Pants
There are two sorts of people in the world. Those who queue up at the gate and pay their entrance fee, and those who nip around the back and try to jump over the fence. Both approaches have there pro’s and con’s but in the end it comes down to what is the Right thing to do. And how much barbed wire there is. This is a morality tale that many software/DVD pirates might want to reflect upon before rushing out to buy one of the new generations of Dual Layer DVD recorders. These record up to 9.4Gb (as opposed to 4.7Gb of single layer units) per side, which means there’s none of that burgering about with DVD-shrink or DVD X-copy software to add compression to a retail DVD title before burning it onto a disk for your mate, mates or anyone with a fiver in their pockets. Expect them to be popular, especially with a trade price of around £90 and a retail of £130ish.
Disc-o Inferno
The CDR format is still alive and well, mostly because of music burning (it’s a back-up to play in my car, honestly officer) and, I suppose, duplicating data. Don’t laugh, it’s perfectly possible! Anyway, new media suitable for over-burning is proving popular, and is supported by Nero and others, if not every domestic/automotive CD Player. 90min/800Mb and 100min/900Mb discs from the likes of Zero Defex give scope for more backed-up data (ha!) and more tunez for your quid.
‘eBay richer than the Catholic Church’ shocker
Well, maybe they are, and maybe they’re not, but certainly the online auction site (like it needed an introduction) is a success story of the web like few others. On the other hand, what happened to Microsoft during the Internet revolution? Had someone popped out to tea? With the exception of Explorer and MSN, where are they? No big ISP presence in the UK (I wonder how much AOL Time Warner make?) and no ‘must visit’ site (like eBay) suggest to me they were caught napping. It’s not really news, but it does make me smile. Thus: :-D
Paul Smith is still 'resting'. Job offers to info@snapsandbytes.co.uk please
513 wordy words Dale. Any problems please let me know mate. Paul