Jeff on Tech

Now you can scan text and photos from the Internet and put it on your morning toast! Good grief, what could be next, talking washing machines?

With Simplify Media installed on your Mac, PC, or Linux computer and on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can stream your home iTunes library to your mobile device wherever you may be.

It will work over EDGE, 3G, or WiFi and promises what might be the holy grail for mobile audio devices -- practically unlimited storage.

The picture on the left is my iphone streaming music from my home computer.

Engadget posted an article today about our friends across the sea in England. Seems they get so distracted text messaging with their cell-phones that they are walking into things.

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Does no one care about fair use anymore?  Wake up America.  Your rights are being reduced right in front of your eyes.  The RIAA now wants to make you a criminal for copying songs off the CDs you purchase to your own computer.  What's next, copy machines? 

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Fortune smiles on those who wait.  There is finally a way to use an external USB drive as primary storage for the Apple TV.  And since there are also instructions on how to enable ssh without opening the case, you shouldn't have to open the box and void your warranty.  Thank the group over at Apple TV Hacks.  The bounty they offered finally got the desired result.  O.k., now it looks like I'm finally going to have to buy an HDTV.

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Microsoft may move more slowly than other companies, but you can count on them catching up very quickly.  Just ask the dozens of companies they have left in their wake.  Their modus operandi is to allow a sector to mature a little bit, see what competitors are doing, copy the current best of breed and add their spin on it.  The first versions of what they release may not do well, think IE 1.0 or todays Zune, but eventually they correct things and get them right.  This strategy does not always work, but wins more than one might think.

Enter Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer who announced at their Financial Analysts Day that Microsoft is "hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business."  You can translate that as we are being killed by Google's online service and ad strategy and its time for us to jump in before it's too late.  Kevin Rose of Digg has just announced on their blog that they will be partnering with Microsoft to serve up ads on Digg (Digg Partners With Microsoft).  In addition, Microsoft is playing catch-up in other areas as well, releasing their competitor to Flash Video, Silverlight.

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Synchronica, international provider of mobile synchronization and device management solutions, announced that Mobile Gateway 3.0 supports over-the-air synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the newly launched Apple iPhone.  This will allow mobile operators and service providers to offer mobile synchronization to business users and prosumers, enabling them to receive corporate email on their iPhones without having to ask their IT manager to open the firewall or install additional software.