Posted by Jeremy Scott | 2 Comments
The TSA Would Like To See You Naked
Do you remember the security X-ray screeners in the movie Total Recall, where the passengers filed through a corridor and on the outside… security personnel could see their skeletons as they passed through?
Those are now a reality… sort of.
Ten US Airports are getting the machines, with a total of 30 screeners planned across the country by the end of 2008.
The controversy, of course, is that in addition to any guns or other contraband, these machines also apparently show off the passenger’s naked body. The ACLU thinks that’s unacceptable:
“People have no idea how graphic the images are,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.
Okay, is there anything the ACLU finds acceptable? Isn’t it their mission to abhor and challenge pretty much everything?
But seriously, they have a point here. How many of you, by show of hands, want the TSA screeners to see you naked? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Oh, but they won’t know who you are:
While it allows the security screeners — looking at the images in a separate room — to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.
Right. Because they can’t see my face as I’m walking into the machine. Somehow I don’t see the fact that the faces are blurred making Americans feel better about being so exposed.
The images are also not stored in any way, but are erased once the passenger is cleared through the checkpoint. So that’s good, at least.
Look, not to be graphic or anything, but I really don’t care if the TSA wants to see me naked. I’m all for doing whatever it takes to help make the skies safer. And I’m no Adonis–it’s their loss, really, if they have to put me in one of these things.
But millions of Americans are going to cry foul.
Thankfully, the TSA is saying that travelers have some options:
Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines. “The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down,” she told AFP.
Sweet. So if I don’t want strangers to see me naked I can choose to let strangers put their hands all over me. Excellent choice. I believe that’s what’s called a Catch-22.
Anyway, now that the TSA is blogging, you can head over there and leave them some feedback on this new development.
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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment
Windows XP Devotees Organize Protests & Petit...
XP users are a passionate bunch.
While not yet at the discipleship level of, say, Apple fans, the XP-loving crowd is getting more vocal and organized by the day.
You see, Microsoft is set to discontinue the 6-year-old OS in June of this year, and it will then no longer be available for purchase (off the shelf or pre-installed on new PCs). For those not yet ready to embrace Vista, the looming retirement for XP is cause for concern.
Vista has been plagued by bad reviews, from experts and users. The biggest complaints are about Vista’s steep hardware requirements (it’s got more bells and whistles, so it needs bigger and faster hardware to run), incompatibility issues with some common software (such as the occasional crash of IE when trying to open an Adobe PDF file), and the annoyingly frequent security warnings.
For some XP fans, those adjustments are just not worth the switch. After all, they say, XP has been one of the most reliable and secure operating systems Microsoft has ever produced. It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument.
Of course, once XP goes away, so will a lot of the official Microsoft support for it, such as security patches and system updates–but Microsoft has already said that support and updates will continue for XP through April of 2009.
The movement’s unofficial leader is Galen Gruman, who started the website SaveXP.com. The site has an online petition that asks Microsoft to extend the life of XP (something the software giant has already done before). So far, over 140,000 people have signed the petition.
But Microsoft, so far, has no comment on the issue, except to issue a standard-sounding quote that says they:
“…will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.”
The SaveXP folks make a decent point about the majority of Windows users still running XP. From the article:
Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP.
Gillen said efforts like Gruman’s grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers’ demands should carry more clout.
“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.
Well, that’s all well and good… but if 69% of PC users are still on XP… then where are their digital signatures on the petition? 69% of Windows users would come out to a number in the tens of millions–140,000 signatures then represents a sad minority.
So are XP users simply not aware that their favorite operating system is about to become extinct? Have they not heard about this petition? Or could it be that they are maybe just… ambivalent? Unconcerned?
The current target for the release of Microsoft’s next OS (Vista’s successor) is 2010, so this battle over XP and Vista is likely to end soon enough either way.
But plenty of XP fans are fired up right now… hoping to keep it around for those next two years until Microsoft can release another–hopefully better-received–OS.
My two cents? I recently bought a new Dell laptop, and chose to get one with Vista pre-installed. So far… no complaints.
I learned how to turn off the nagging security warnings (and yes, they are annoying… until you turn them off). I haven’t had any crashes of any programs or files. Sure, I bought a machine that can handle the hardware requirements (and then some), so maybe I would have more issues with a tinier processor or a lot less RAM. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed Vista.
The visual bells and whistles that the added hardware makes possible are quite slick (preview images on task bar mouse-overs, sweet transparency graphic effects, etc.).
I think Vista was a bit more of a mess when it launched last year, for certain. But now that we’ve passed the Service Pack 1 landmark, the Windows updates and patches will only make it more secure and more efficient.
So while I may be in the minority, I’m not ready to call Vista a waste of time. I would even go so far as to recommend it. And I loved XP–loved it! But after six years, and with Vista improving by the day… maybe this is a case of people just not wanting to change.
I would love to know what some of our readers think… those still using XP and those who have made the switch to Vista. Please feel free to let us know what you think below. And if you’re still an XP devotee, then by all means… go let your voice be heard.
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Adobe Releases Free Online Version of Photoshop: ...
Photoshop has been the gold standard of professional photography software. Several years back, they expanded their brand’s reach by releasing a scaled down version (for a much cheaper price tag) called Photoshop Elements.
Now Adobe is gunning for even more by releasing Photoshop Express, a free online version of Photoshop.
Aimed squarely at the core audience for already-established free photo-editing software like Google’s Picasa, Photoshop Express is a web-based application that uses Flash as a platform.
You create an account and upload your photos. From there, you have some basic editing tools at your fingertips such as cropping, color adjustment, red-eye reduction, and much more.
You can also then create a gallery and export your edited pictures to that gallery for all the world to see. In this way, Express is a lot like Flickr or PhotoBucket or any other photo-sharing website.
It’s a crowded marketplace, so Adobe has their work cut out for them. After all, any Windows user can already perform most of the same kinds of basic picture edits using Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which comes with the Microsoft Office suite of programs.
But Adobe has their brand name going for them. Everyone knows of Photoshop. And now, what was once an expensive and complicated software for the elite has a new younger brother that is trim and simple and, best of all, free.
So I tested it out for you. I created my account, and uploaded a few photos. The main photo on this post is one of the results of my edits. I tried to use as many Photoshop Express features as I could on that picture, but if I’m honest… a lot of them weren’t terribly useful. The main feature to rave about is the “color pop” control. You can see that I’ve made everything in the photo black and white except for the jellyfish. That’s a nice touch, I think, and not something I can do easily with some of the other basic photo-editing suites.
I did feel like the Flash interface really slowed things down for me. There’s a lot of wasted time spent waiting around for sections of the site to load, and that was aggravating. Maybe I just have a slow connection today… but I doubt it. Flash elements are notorious for slowing down a site’s performance.
Overall, though… for something that’s free, you can’t beat it. And since the project is still in beta (testing mode), you can be sure that customer feedback will help fine-tune things quite a bit. So the end product will likely be even better.
Oh, and here’s the original photo for my example above… almost a shame I chose this picture, because the original is pretty darn good to begin with.
Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Dual Monitors, Bigger Monitors, Increase Employee ...
If you’ve ever been to our offices, then you’ve certainly seen the two-monitors phenomenon in action. All but one person in our office uses a two-monitor computer set up.
I must admit, somewhat sheepishly, that I am that lone single-monitor user. However, I do have a large wide-screen display that has greatly increased my on-screen “real estate.”
A new study shows that two monitors do much more than just making you look cool… seems they help your productivity as well. Sweet. In fact, they can help you complete tasks up to 52% faster than your one-monitor peers. Actually, it’s not the adding of a second screen itself that increases productivity… but, rather, it is the increased size of your on-screen real estate. So simply buying a bigger monitor would help.
From the article:
“The study concluded that someone using a larger monitor could save 2.5 hours a day.”
Wow. That’s a number that could easily justify the added cost of a new or bigger monitor. Our employees find that the increased productivity comes from having multiple programs open and readily available at the same time. Your Outlook inbox, for example, open on one screen… with Quickbooks or Internet Explorer open in the other. Hopping back and forth between the two is beyond simple, and the time you save from not having to minimize and maximize program windows adds up quickly.
Microsoft also has an excellent “how-to” article on setting up a dual-monitor work station.
So the bottom line is this: dual monitors–even just bigger monitors in general–are not just for power users anymore. More and more companies are seeing employee productivity rise dramatically from the two monitor set up, and the trend is picking up serious steam.
Obviously, if you are a Keystone customer, we would love to talk to you further about our own dual monitor set ups and help you place an order for the right monitor additions for you and your employees. Let us know if we can help.
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 4 Comments
BlueRay Has Killed HD DVD Dead
Remember all those HD DVDs you spent the last 8 months buying, because everyone said that HD DVD would win the format war with Blu Ray? Yeah, they’re basically worthless now.
Okay, maybe not worthless. But definitely worth less. Cue the violins.
Blue Ray is now the king. BlueRay has killed HD DVD dead. First degree murder. Blue Ray is the big winner, as Toshiba has announced they will cease production on the HD DVD players. Toshiba was the major backer of the HD DVD format, with Sony backing Blu Ray. Over the last couple months, more and more battles went Blu Ray’s way. Movie studios like Warner Brothers announced they would only produce their films on Blu Ray and retailers like Wal-Mart decided to only carry the Blu Ray format.
Most consumers had held off buying either, choosing to wait for the dust to settle and a real winner to be declared in the format war before jumping on board the high definition DVD bandwagon.
Now the choice is simple.
Expect the $5 bin at Wal-Mart to soon be filled with any remaining HD DVD titles they have yet to burn off. Blu Ray disks, though, will likely continue to be expensive for now.
From the article:
“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”
I can’t claim any insider knowledge on this one. I haven’t waded out into the high definition DVD waters just yet. Hey, I’m old enough to remember how Betamax owners felt when VHS won out. And I definitely had a few friends get burned in the whole Laser Disc fiasco. So I will forever be a cautious and patient embracer of technology.
That being said, I’m pretty pumped about this news. Not that Blue Ray won, but simply that one of the two formats won. Now, with a clear victor, we the consumers can breathe a bit easier. Prices will slowly begin to fall for Blu Ray stuff, and the format itself will probably get even better. And you know Sony has to feel good right now–they were behind the infamously failed Betamax format back in the 1980s.
Of course, this win by BlueRay will have an impact in the video game console battle as well. Sony put the BlueRay player in their Playstation 3, while Microsoft went with the HD DVD player in the XBox 360. Oh well. Something tells me that Microsoft has enough going for them that they’ll weather the storm.
Of course, in just a short time, most everything is going to go digital. And we won’t buy our movies in any physical format whatsoever. We’ll buy them in the form of downloads. It’s already happening, actually. While Blu Ray may have scored a victory today, it will sadly be a temporary one. Soon enough, all formats will lose out to the digital download. And frankly, I’m alright with that.
Anyway, go buy your Blu Ray players, people. It’s safe now.
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