Sony, give up on dominating formats

Now that Sony's Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (backed by Microsoft) are competing to be the dominant new format, let's take a moment to look back at all of Sony's failed attempts to dominate format.

Betamax, though some would say was a superior format, lost out to VHS.

MiniDisk, though was a wonderful idea, took way too long to create a playable disk. It never broke through the dominance of compact disks (CDs), and eventually became obsolete as MP3 players blossomed.

Let's not forget about UMD's, which apparently are doing alright in non-US countries just didn't cut it here.

And what about MicroMV? I know nothing about it, but I'm trying to make a point.

So if I had to make a prediction about Blu-Ray, I'd have to strongly vote against Sony.

Wikipedia, knowledge tyrant?

Microsoft got slammed by Wikipedia recently since they attempted to hire someone to edit their entries within the infamous open community encyclopedia. Microsoft claims that the wikipedia entries had misinformation. They also claimed that repeated attempts for them to try to convince someone at Wikipedia to fix the entries have been ignored and they were attempting to hire an independent source to find those mistakes and correct them.

Wikipedia has a community of volunteer moderators to do these things, the fact that Microsoft would hire someone to do the changes makes it an immediate reason for the Wiki staff to try and stop them.

My question is if Wikipedia isn't becoming a bit of a Tyrant. At what point do we start questioning the content that appears on Wikipedia? It only takes a handful of moderators to despise a company or product to allow perhaps slight inaccurately information to exist.

Stephen Colbert attempted to try this during one episode where his word of the day was Wikiality. He attempted to change the african elephants page so that it would say they were no longer threatened to be extinct (Ironically, this is all documented on Wikipedia). His point was that if enough people believe it to be true, then it must be true.

So when will enough people believe in Wikipedia that even false information on there will be perceived as true? As of now, I believe Wikipedia is doing their best to remain objective -- they always require citations from sources on the internet -- but how long before it becomes so big that it's out of control?

I'm not saying Microsoft wasn't trying to be shifty, but Wikipedia needs to be watched.

The Apple iPhone

If you're an Apple fan, you probably know more about the iPhone than I do. I actually have my reservations for a product that hasn't been out of the internet news headlines since its debut at CES.

First off, there's the whole lawsuit with Cisco, who actually has a product named iPhone already out, and has owned the name iPhone since 2000. Apple was actually in talks with striking a deal with Cisco, but ended up just calling their product the iPhone too without actually settling. A case of a powerhouse bullying another company around? Or vice versa?

And don't give me the argument that Apple should be able to keep their name because everyone knows their products have that same naming convention. If that was true, the WWE would still be known as the WWF.

Then there are the articles that are saying Apple is signing their own deaths since the audience that shows interest for the iPhone will probably already own an iPod. Read something like that here.

And really should it be that hyped? It can surf the web, play videos, play music, make you coffee and help you decide what clothes to put on in the morning.

But what if I just want a phone?

To me, the iPhone is too bulky to use as a regular phone. I also don't like open faced phones. I also just like my phone being my phone.

What about battery life? Everyone always complained about the ipod's battery life, and that was just for listening to music. What's going to happen when suddenly it has to be active for every thing? Will it actually be able to make phone calls or will it always be dead?

I've seen people with side-kicks that always have to carry around a charger with them, because they use their phones for everything beside making phone calls.

So enough with the hype, let's just get our hands on some iPhones and figure out what it will really be good at, what it will be bad at, and what devices we'll still have to carry around even with an all-in-one iPhone.

Whining hard drive won't boot your comp? Try this.

If one day you turn on your computer and it starts making a sound like there's a kitten being crushed inside your computer, chances are your hard drive is dead or dying. If you're lucky and your OS starts, start backing up your files immediately. If you're unlucky like me, your hard drive is probably dead and didn't even give you a chance to say goodbye to your files.

This happened to me about two weeks ago. In my search for trying to find out what exactly happened, I stumbled across a forum post where the guy mentioned an odd trick to temporarily salvage the hard drive. I dismissed it, partly not wanting to take the chance, and partly because it just didn't sound right. (This is when I would link you, but because I only read it in passing, I didn't think to save the link).

The poster said to freeze your hard drive. Crazy right? After I bought myself a new hard drive and a couple external cases in order to properly back up my important files, I decided to give it a try. The hard drive was dead, I figure a little freezer burn wouldn't make things worse.

In order to ensure that it would stay moisture free, I threw the hard drive in a zip-lock bag. I left it in the freezer over night.

Since I had the external cases anyway, I plugged mine into one of my empty external cases. I would suggest this to you if you try this as well. I'm not sure what kind of window for thawing you have, but an external let me plug in the power and parallel cable within half a minute of taking it out of the freezer. You might want to wear gloves too, I almost gave myself freezer burn.

Give it a minute as it tries to start up. I guess mine was so completely frozen that at first it didn't even spin, so I thought I completely killed it. After that, it spun, the whining squeak was gone and Windows recognized it as a proper plug and play device. I pulled off my files with no problems.

I also turned it on and off a couple times to see how temporary this freezer fix was. It worked every time and as of now, it still works completely fine. Obviously, I don't trust it at all because it already died once, but I'm using it to store unimportant files in order to free up space on my other drives.

Of course, I can't guarantee any kind of success with your hard drive, but if you do have important files, freezing your hard drive might be worth a try.

Good luck.

Update: In order to further test the HD, I left it off while I slept and left it on all morning while I went to work. I wanted to simulate real computer usage. The hard drive died again when I got home for work. So basically, you have about 24 hours to do what you need to do with your frozen hard drive.

Five Door Hatchbacks - Bring on the SUC

It seems like all the car makers are doing it. I give the nod to Toyota for being first when they created the Matrix followed by the Scion series. Those ugly box cars like the xB paved the way for the trend this year.

Every car maker has one now, and take a deep breath, here is a sampling of what I mean: The Honda Fit, the Nissan Versa, the Toyota Yaris, the Chevrolet Aveo, and the Dodge Caliber.

All five door hatchbacks, all equipped with measly engines barely breaking the 100 horsepower mark, and all having price tags that start below $15,000. They are the new cars for young adults ready to break into the driving world. They sit at least 5 people and have room to spare.

This is the second attempt at appealing to the younger crowd. The first was the whole boxy car wave led by Scion, cars like the Honda Pilot, and even the Hummer. Of course, with the exception of the Scion lines, those cars were expensive, and ultimately, not a huge success. Plus, boxy cars are ugly. What they did have going for them was an extraordinary amount of interior space, perfect for carpooling and long drives.

This second wave has some of the same principles. Plenty of space for people and plenty of room left over to store belongings. In this particular case, all five people could fit weekend travel bags in the trunk. When not being used to cart people off on some weekend getaway, the cars are great for errands and chores. More importantly, they allow college students to pack the car with everything in the dorm when it's time to go home.

Coupled with a low price tag, very high fuel efficiency, and just enough zip for the young generation to enjoy (even though the engines are small in these cars, the cars themselves are very small and lightweight, which gives it a good power to weight ratio when not under load).

So what should these cars be called? Toyota promoted the Matrix as a CUV--Crossover Utility Vehicle--when it first came out. Obviously, these cars are smaller and cheaper than the Matrix. Plus, crossover vehicles can include a variety of other cars. Many sporty SUVs like the Nissan Murano are considered crossover utility vehicles. They are basically SUVs with a much lower stance, more aggressive styling, and interior space that's a little more than a car's, but much less than a true SUV's.

If that's the case, are these new genre of cars just considered Five Door Hatchbacks? How about Sports Utility Cars? And as humorous as the letterings make it (really, you have to pronounce out the letters like you would with SUV), it rings true to the intention of these new lines of cars. I personally want an SUC.

update: Here is car and driver's comparison test with the five SUC's that I mentioned above, plus others that I didn't mention http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/10925/15000-cheap-skates.html