Just like medical journals, it seems like every new day brings some new report or another on the “state” of technology. Some reports are “nothing is secure, and you can never be secure”, while others take a more restrained “Apple owns everything” approach. I’m always sceptical when I hear of these things…
You may have heard earlier this month that Logmein has purchased the password management tool LastPass. The announcement itself contained some very important information about how this tool might evolve, especially if you look at what they aren’t saying. This is most certainly bad news for Lastpass users.
I’m always wary of “recent studies” (and the press surrounding them) because they really only exist to drive the public relations effort of one company by fueling the press for another. In these cases, everyone but the reader wins. When I first read of this RBC insurance study on distracted driving, I knew something wasn’t right. Then it hit me, their apparent conclusion was Canadians are basically ass*****.
You may remember my recent experience with food substitute Soylent. It was certainly a challenge to get my hands on it. My previous experience could have been better, but it went well enough for me to try again. Fast-forward to June 16th, and Soylent is finally available for Canadian customers.
A large number of people are moving away from cable television, and looking for lower-cost alternatives. They want the flexibility of seeing TV shows and movies on their terms, but also want a better selection than the cable television providers offer. This article is for you, cord-cutter. Here is what I consider the ideal path to killing that ongoing cable TV package.
You need to have a full desktop or laptop computer running Windows, OS X, or Linux attached to your television via an HDMI port. Other options just don’t provide the kind of flexibility that’s required in such a changing landscape. It seems like Intel was listening to me and created a small computer for this purpose. Can this device replace the “Computer attached to Television” scenario I recommend?
When I heard about Soylent, the food replacement product, my first inclination was to think of the many over-the-counter products (such as Ensure), and not the namesake movie. Given this was created by entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart, I was quite intrigued. It was clear that he was working on something to replace the need for food altogether. That’s an audacious idea, so I had to try it. What follows is some of my experiences with the product.
Windows Technical Preview 2 was released on Microsoft’s website and made available for download. Usually, this process is a challenge because we don’t always have the best and newest hardware available to test with; but I tend to find what I can in the lab to test as many features as possible. I took a bare-metal Dell PowerEdge server (with a RAID 5 drive setup), and installed off of a burned DVD.
OwnCloud, a file syncing service like Dropbox. Files are stored locally on the user’s computer, as well as on the Owncloud server. Since the files are stored in OwnCloud, you can have many clients running on several computers keeping these files in sync. Naturally, an OwnCloud server needs to be set up, and I thought it was time to build one.
I took the plunge on The Freedman Chair and backed the project on October 27th, 2013. The Freedman Chair was successfully funded less than 48 hours later. This presented me with the opportunity to chart the progress of this project as well as share my experiences both with shipping and the chair itself.