Forget the fact that I spell like a third grader and talk like a first grader. If you haven’t heard, I started writing for examiner.com on a freelance basis (you can see my articles here). This doesn’t really pay anything to speak of, but the last article I wrote put me in the top five contributors for that site yesterday. If I can repeat such a phenomenon, I might think about expanding to other writing projects.

We do have another Just_A_Site project that could be worked on called JustAReviewSite, but right now it is on wordpress (like this blog) and I don’t think I want a cookie cutter site for that type of content.

John and I also have another project in the works that I am not ready to talk about that much. It is not really going under the Just_A_Site family of sites. It is going to be a semi-performance-art type of endeavor. I don’t know how long it will take to design and build, but it will be comedic in intention.

Just decided to pen a few of my thoughts today. No news or funny or anything.

YouTube – Good-bye Twitter – from Miley.

So I have kids of a sufficient age that I cannot avoid being aware of Hannah Montana. As sad as that is, it came as an even greater surprise that Miley’s bad attempt at rapping came across just about every geek or tech blog/podcast that I regularly consume. Of course me mentioning it further just propagates the news-worthiness of this particular item. Therefore, in Gumpian fashion, that’s all I have to say about that.

Onto actual news.

The Peek Pronto offer on Engadget

If you didn’t know, the T-Mobile Sidekick has been experiencing a heinous outage that’s going on a week from what I’ve overheard in a T-Mobile store (and doubly confirmed by Cali Lewis in GeekBrief #643). Engadget reports that Peek will give disgruntled T-Mobile Sidekick users a free Pronto in a move they fittingly described as a “sucker punch”. But does the Pronto look familiar? Black PDA-sized device dedicated solely to email? I remember selling these back in 2000 at a CompUSA. It was called a BlackBerry. As I recall, those things are still in use, only as cell phones. Who thought that it would be a good idea to take a BlackBerry and remove the cellular calling features and application expandability so that it only handles emails, just like it did ALMOST A DECADE AGO?

Oh, wait.

It has a color screen. And the service is ONLY $20.

If someone is seriously using the $20 service fees being lower that a $55 basic BlackBerry cell plan that includes cell minutes and data access, they need to be reminded that the difference is really just the cell plan and the BlackBerry still does SO much more. If they aren’t planning to have a cell phone, though, I could see where the device might have enticement. But what type of lifestyle do you live in which instant email access is essential, but cellular access is not? I may want to change my lifestyle. I would personally love to have my primary contact over email. Less talk, more type would be glorious. To bad most people insist on verbal communication to ensure the subtleties contained within are available to reinforce their message.  Sarcasm is treasured beyond all in some circles I associate with.

Sidekick users (and any others who might come under a similar offer), DO NOT be swayed by the lure of a free device offering a sub-standard service. Microsoft will get the outage fixed soon. If they don’t, you can keep you text, email, and PHONE service intact with another smart-phone, not a glorified circa 2000 Blackberry and a prepaid cell.

Study: Blu-ray Hits Mainstream In 2010.

Has Blu-ray not already hit the mainstream? You can already get a Blu-ray burner for your PC. The Sony Playstation 3 already has a built-in player. How many households already have a PS3? In addition to the PS3, aren’t we already on the third generation of Blu-ray players? I say tvpredictions.com is a bit behind the times on this study. HD-DVD has already succumbed, leaving Blu-ray as the premium option for the home theater. While I may not have a player myself, it is not due to the availability, it is due to the total upgrade cost of my system (or what I like to call Nintendo Entertainment System. Old school, baby!) versus the lack of gainful employment. You can’t exactly call me mainstream in the home entertainment area. I’m more like swirling in an eddy downstream.

I just saw this and had to add my views.

-Mike

Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet – Microsoft courier tablet – Gizmodo.

If you came back from the potential awesomeness that was contained in the above link, here is a serious question:

Why have tablet PCs never caught on?

I want one so bad it hurts sometimes, but I am a huge geek. The iPhone took off even bigger than the original iPod did. Common depictions of the future show natural interaction directly with a display as being natural progression. This would make it seem that the next big thing should be a touch screen laptop or tablet PC.

Thing is that they have been out for a long time already. The only huge advancement seems to have been multi-touch technology (the pinching motion to zoom a screen on the iPhone). Apple is bringing out a 10-inch tablet and Microsoft is countering with the book style, dual 7-inch Courier. The big boys are counting on interest to be there in the touch computing market. But will it be?

If you can type on one of the screens of the Courier, I could see it displacing a large portion of netbook sales, but otherwise I think both devices will fall short of expected main-stream acceptance. I believe this for the same reason that I have not bought my own tablet PC. The screen is too small.

Sure a lot of people are buying netbooks these days for a portable browsing solution. But the price that a 10-inch tablet PC commands puts it into the price range of a good laptop. When I’m looking at spending over $1000, I want to get something that has functionality beyond word-processing and web-browsing these days. Sure the Apple may play music, double as an eReader, or basicly be a large iPod touch, but is that really worth the price of a fully functional laptop? Even though I WANT one, I still say no.

What they need to do is make a 14 or 15 inch laptop with a multi-touch screen and full laptop specs. I would expect it to cost a little more than a standard laptop, but it would be WORTH it.

When the devices fail to get the mainstream interest they are looking for, they will say they don’t really care because they were just fleshing out the technology, but don’t be fooled. The tech is already in use and they are just not willing to make it useful to its fullest potential.

Just my two cents, though.

-Mike

I told you I would explain why I felt comfortable referencing Wikipedia as a valid source in a post on the use of the term Democracy (here).

Who seriously uses Wikipedia as a trusted source?

A ton of college students and Joe Schmoe. And who can blame them? It’s fast, free and easy.

But is it a good idea?

I believe the better question is: Are the alternatives really all that much more trustworthy? The fact is that WikiPedia is just like ANY reference source. You don’t REALLY know who wrote it (unless you ARE the one who wrote it, of course).

Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean “you don’t know who wrote it?” The fine people at EB wrote that good Ol’ encyclopedia for us! Who are you to say they’re wrong?

But who are you to say they are RIGHT? The fact is, encyclopedias are written by humans. Often written by humans without credit to the author. Is that author an expert on the subject? What were the sources used for the information? Even a BAD research paper is required to have sources in order to be accepted as a bad research paper. Otherwise, it may as well be a work of fiction. And this is my point. Most accepted reference sources don’t site THEIR sources or don’t even give writing credits. So the question is: Why should we blindly trust them?

Ok, so maybe I’m putting blind faith in classic sources. But why trust Wikipedia? I heard that they are just publicly written articles without any editing.

But therein lies the beauty of Wikipedia. It IS a set of publicly written articles. But who else would want to write an article about a semiempirical quantum chemistry method, developed by Roald Hoffmann (Extended Huckel method) but someone who was ACTUALLY interested in such an obscure topic. Not someone who is just simply assigned the topic. Not only that, but instead of no editing at all, the whole thing is edited by the public at large. That means that if someone who knows the subject BETTER comes along, they can change it. Yep, just like that. In addition to that, an article must have SOURCES to be valid. That means that if the subject is important to you, you can track down where the author got THEIR information and verify its validity.

So is Wikipedia the perfect source? Should I use it for ALL KNOWLEDGE?!!

NO!! Egads you are dense, mysterious inquisitive voice! It just means that you can verify that the article is telling a reasonable approximation of the truth. Maybe. Fact is, Wikipedia gets errors, vandalism, and attacks like many other sites and references. While the big guys in the encyclopedia world are quick to disagree that the error rate could be relatively close between their product and Wikipedia, there are studies that show just that.  The Wikipedia article that mentions this (reliability of Wikipedia) even sites the source and says that it was not a peer reviewed study.

You see, there is really no way to be sure of the source of your information unless YOU wrote it, but then it is not a reliable source outside of yourself. It is a catch-22 from which there is no real escape. I,of course, just don’t believe that a paper should be counted against due to Wikipedia being sited as a source yet not if some independent article or paper is cited when the party reviewing the work is not studiously following up on the sources for full verification. And by that I mean track down the bastard that wrote the source and BEAT the truth out of him (or her). Or at least read the damn source articles. It would be much easier to allow a citing to Wikipedia.