A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Power strips

20 January 2008

Why do all power strips have to be so ugly? I saw one in a downtown window that appeared to be a tower of cast stained concrete and it looked great. Why can’t you buy these anywhere? I am sick of the crappy plastic choices available. There is innovation to permit more transformers to plug in, and innovation to be more “green”, but why can’t these things look better? Is molded plastic really the only choice?

Viability of AppleTV and other movie receivers

16 January 2008

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - Long Term Viability of AppleTV – I wonder about this too. It seems like there are a kajillion boxes (for instance XStreamHD) and offerings (for instance Amazon Unbox) in this space. My gut tells me that this kind of service is going to get rolled into every settop box, dvd player, game console, just like DVR capability is getting rolled in. The need for a separate box is not apparent to me. I think this dynamic is going to kill off DVD players and their hidef ilk as well.

New apple stuff

16 January 2008

Rich likes the new Time Capsule. I may get one. Already ordered the new slim notebook. And the mac pros with the refreshed video card options look great. We are teetering on becoming a mac-only household.

Absolute Black TVs

16 January 2008

[Pioneer’s Kuro Plasma Will Deliver Absolute Black – Contrast Ratio Is ‘Officially Irrelevant’ Gadget Lab from Wired.com](http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/more-on-pioneer.html “Pioneer’s Kuro Plasma Will Deliver Absolute Black – Contrast Ratio Is ‘Officially Irrelevant’ Gadget Lab from Wired.com”) – I’d like this, I hate the grayish emissions from most of my screens.

Too bad for them that their black has already been trumped – new “blackest” material – “You could think of a material that basically collects all the light that falls into it” – oh my gosh we are manufacturing black holes now, I knew this nanotech stuff was dangerous.