Back in Tech Bit 24 I mentioned Priceline as a low cost option for hotels, the negative being you don't know the name of the hotel until you "win."
I had recommended using two websites, http://www.biddingfortravel.com and/or http://www.betterbidding.com/, which are forums where the members post their winning deals. Finding the relevant data is a bit of a challenge.
The last article talked about various tablet options. In my opinion, the battle will be between the iPad and various Andoid tablets.
It wasn't surprising to see a plethora of tablets at this year's CES. Enough that low cost Android tablets seemed to end up being the theme of the show. How many? The estimates vary, but easily 80 to 100 new tablets were on display. And it seemed like one in every four Chinese or Korean exhibitor had a tablet computer in their booth.
Usually the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January ends up having a "theme." It isn't a theme given to the show by the organizers, but instead some product category that seems to be pervasive throughout the show. Last year it was 3D television. This year it was tablet computers.
While tablet computers have been around for almost 20 years, they have been primarily premium upgrades from standard notebook computers. In the past, tablet computers were targeted at business users. Medicine was going to be revolutionized by tablet wielding doctors and nurses.
The middle of January the expected, but much anticipated, announcement of the iPhone on Verizon's network finally was official.
I wouldn't rush right out to buy one.
Even if you've been waiting for an alternative to AT&T's well known network issues, the iPhone being released this spring has two problems. First, and most significant, it is only a 3G phone, offering no real speed improvement over the current iPhone. Second, apparently it gets less battery life than the AT&T version.
I live in my email client. Probably 85% of my written communications with the outside world are done with email. I'd bet it's the same for you.
I also do a little bit on social media, mostly LinkedIn with a little Facebook and Twitter thrown in. But I have many business contacts who are much more active on social media.
There are the standard four dimensions: length, width, height, and time, usually represented by x, y, z and t. Add your data and you have five dimensions.
Too many computer systems collect data without any additional information.
An example is a traditional warehouse management system. It might collect the quantity on hand, derived from quantities received and quantities shipped.
You’ve been to industry or association conferences. They are organized “top down.” The challenge for the conference organizers (the top) is coming up with topics and speakers that will be interesting and relevant to the attendees (the bottom). Not surprisingly, they frequently miss the mark, making the “meetings in the hallways” the most valuable part of attending.
In November I attended the Defrag conference (http://www.defragcon.com). It is a great conference to get me thinking beyond what’s new today and think about trends that might impact the next few years. One of the presentations is by Jeff Jonas at IBM about some really large databases.
The last Tech Bit I wrote about an easy way to opt out of a lot of email newsletters you might have subscribed to, often just to get to something else.
The reality is a lot of the web's content is only available if you register on that website to access it. Add in the amount of on-line shopping I do and that's a lot of forms asking for my name, address, email address, etc.
Plus almost every site where you register lets you pick a password, which you need to come back in the future.
If you are like me, you probably get a ton of emails that aren't quite spam but you don't want either. It seems like any time I want to get to something interesting I have to "sign up" for their newsletter first.
Most email newsletters come with a message at the end, usually in microscopically small fine print, on how to unsubscribe. It's actually required under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
