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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Today at Macworld, in his keynote, Steve Jobs announced a number of items, but this is what companies like Netflix were expecting - and fearing: iTunes Video Rentals. According to Jobs, they have every studio (he listed Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, New Line, Lion’s Gate, Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Universal and […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This was previously announced in December, but now it has a real name: “Pepsi Stuff.”
Four billion (with a b!) specially marked packages of Pepsi products will have collectible points on them that can be “banked,” starting Feb. 1, on PepsiStuff.com - and later redeemed for purchases at Amazon MP3.
This was one […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
It’s all Macworld, all day long today, right? At Macworld, in his keynote today, Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air, the thinnest (he says, and it sure looks like it!) laptop in production.
It’s priced at $1,799 to start and will be available in two weeks.
Specs:
3.0 pounds, 0.16 -0.76″ thickness, […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Too bad it’s today, January 15th. Today being the day of Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld, this is going to get missed by many. But not by me: Happy Seventh Birthday Wikipedia (all right, I’ll admit it: they emailed me about it).
Yep, Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001.
In […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Is it sufficient to say “woo-hoo”?! Many have been jonesing for an Asus Eee PC with Windows XP for some time, not just in terms of the upcoming new models, but also because the first-gen Eee PC could supposedly support it as well. Wednesday, in an emailed press release, Asus outlined […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Apple is expected to announce a movie rental service at Macworld. Hoping to reduce some of the impact, Netflix is going to expand its streaming movie service, according to AP. Formerly users could only watch a limited number of hours based on their subscription tier, but beginning Monday, […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has completed its report (.PDF) on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, and the conclusions it reached shouldn’t surprise critics of Windows Vista and Office 2007.
In January 2006, Becta announced that it would conduct a review of Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Office 2007 […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
When California enacted its law banning 16- and 17-year olds from cell phone use while driving (it takes effect July 1st), I asked, “Why stop there?” While there is also a law on the books (starting the same day) which requires all drivers to be hands-free when using a cell […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
If you were annoyed by the hoops Sony BMG said you had to jump through to get DRM-free downloads of their music, you can rejoice. In a major coup, Amazon.com announced Thursday that by the end of January you’ll be able to download MP3 versions of Sony BMG music from […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Just a couple of days after sending the Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC )Refresh to their private beta testers, Microsoft on Friday made an RC Refresh available to the public. Just as with the earlier public RC, the download is small, making a change to the registry to allow you […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The rumors of Paramount dropping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray were dispelled - at least temporarily - earlier in the week when Paramount flatly denied it was leaving the HD-DVD camp. But a report in Daily Variety confirms that Universal’s commitment to HD DVD has expired. And with Paramount […]

Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2

Originally uploaded by sogrady

In spite of what Dave Rosenberg thinks, I do in fact read his blog, and after rereading his post I’m pretty sure that the first time I’d actually seen ElasticFox was over there. So when asked why, while on a call with him and his MuleSource colleagues this morning, I inquired as to whether he’d seen it yet, my response is simple: dude, that was before Christmas. Might as well have been a hundred years ago.

Anyway, if you haven’t had the opportunity to give the extension - or Amazon’s EC2 facilities - a look yet, I encourage you to do so. Especially with the barriers to entry continually lowering as a result of tools like ElasticFox. The complexity of the tools, after all, were formerly a significant obstacle to usage. In handing the Amazon crowd my award for technical innovation last year (really fighting this year’s probable choice), I was obliged to note their failings in the tool department:

Despite this award, AWS is far from perfect. I’ve criticized them in the past for the complexity of their toolset, and many if not most of those criticisms remain valid (although they do finally have an Ubuntu image).

ElasticFox, by itself, is clearly not the solution to the problem of interfacing with EC2. But it’s certainly part of it.

True, it’s excessively finicky generating key pairs and connecting to the generated instances via SSH, but it could get any easier when it comes to launching, rebooting, or terminating them. Nor could you ask for lighter footprint tooling; essentially, it’s just a bunch of CSS, JavaScript, and Mozilla packaging. A bunch of open source CSS, JavaScript and Mozilla packaging, notably. Apache licensed, for the curious.

Amazon is to be credited on multiple fronts here; first, for the underlying service that dramatically lowers the bar for hardware procurement and deployment. Second, for addressing an obvious need in improving the toolset used to interface with the underlying service. Last - and perhaps most importantly - for realizing that there’s little if any benefit for trying to exert total control over those interface mechanisms. Their economic benefit derives from the platform, not the tooling.

Why not open source the project, then? If no external contributions are forthcoming, who cares? No harm, no foul. But if someone external can substantively improve on the effort - even if it’s just a restyled skin - then they’ve made it more likely that users will chew up cycles on their platform at no or low cost. A better tool is a lower barrier, and a lower barrier means more paying users.

As simple as that logic may appear, it’s considerably less so for a great many in the software world. Trust me.

Up several levels, it’s also interesting to see an embrace of Firefox, rather than say Eclipse, as the tooling platform. The reasoning for the choice is obvious, and it would be asinine to argue that Eclipse and Firefox were directly competitive, but I do believe that we’ll see more overlap going forward than we have previously.

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
To address charges by the European Union that different pricing in the U.K. violates E.U. rules, Apple has announced it will be lowering pricing in its U.K. iTunes Store to match the already standardized pricing in the rest of Europe, but … there’s that word “but” again.
The wording of the press […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Amazon.com has launched a software download section in their software store. While the product selection is small - meaning, limited to TurboTax products - the fact that they built a software downloader application means that this is not the end of the story.
Install the downloader (in the sidebar on […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The Financial Times has a report that if true, would send HD-DVD into the same abyss as Betamax: it states there is a clause in Paramount’s contract with the HD-DVD group that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner backing Blu-ray, and that Paramount is “poised” to […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Friday Warner Bros., the last “on the fence” studio, announced its decision to drop HD-DVD at the of end of May and focus on Blu-ray only. Fallout, as well as some crowing, and even some veiled threats, has begun.
First the HD-DVD Group issued a short, terse press release in response […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
In a major blow to the HD-DVD camp, Warner Bros. announced Friday it will be dropping HD-DVD later this year, and will produce high-definition titles in Blu-ray only. Warner had been the only studio supporting both formats.
According to the press release, Warner Bros. will continue to release HD-DVD titles through […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
As I wrote earlier, installing Office 2003 SP3 also meant you were blocked from using some file formats. Microsoft had a workaround, but for most people this meant editing the registry. You would have thought they would have learned from the earlier IE6 mess what public reaction would be […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
According to a report, Sony BMG is about to become the last of the top four music labels - or should we say, the last holdout - to drop DRM. The first signs of this will come in the form of the Amazon/Pepsi 1 Billion Song giveaway, according to Business […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
You’ll recall the issues Mac QuickBooks owners had in mid-December, when a bug could cause QuickBooks 2006 owners to lose their Desktop folder when updating the product. Intuit believed they had fixed the issue with a patch issued on Dec. 29th, but it appears they missed one little thing.
According […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Less than six months after Intel and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation buried the hatchet, with Intel joining the OLPC board as its 11th member, the partnership is over. The reason was apparently continued friction over the Classmate PC, which was a source of friction between the two groups […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
According to Net Applications’ December 2007 market share data for operating systems, MacOS has hit a new high in terms of usage with 7.31%. At the same time, the iPhone OS hit a high of .12%. These were up from 6.80% and .09%, respectively, in November.
Check out the iPhone […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
February 17, 2009, is the last day that broadcasters will transmit analog signals. For many of us, this will mean nothing, as those with cable or satellite TV won’t need to worry about this … only those receiving signals over-the-air (OTA) whose TVs don’t already have a digital tuner.
Those TVs […]

• Chris Hedges on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC
  fundamentalism in any form terrifies me. maybe not as much as plagues or supervolcanoes, but close.
  (tags: america books christianity chrishedges pulitzer newyorktimes ideology fundamentalism right intertolerance rationalism fascism religion)
• This Could Be Next: Craigslist Integrates Social Networking with Listings « American Shelf Life
  i’m seeing more such convergence these days, but Amanda’s right: this mashup would be compelling, like Housingmaps taken one step further
  (tags: amandamooney mashup social-networking craigslist flickr google linkedin)
• Reliever Dan Naulty from 1999 World Series team spills ugly truth on steroids
  see his apology and acceptance of responsibility on page 4, in particular. good to see someone owning up to the damage he’s caused via steroids and PEDs.
  (tags: dannaulty steroids peds baseball yankees)
• Ted Leung on the Air » Blog Archive » Photo thoughts
  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a nicer/newer camera, just be aware that you aren’t going to turn into Ansel Adams when it arrives.” - i am living proof of this unfortunate truth
  (tags: tedleung photography gear quality)
• Reuters AlertNet - No proof airport security makes flying safer-study
  “Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.” - i’m not exactly shocked at this news. it’s security theater, nothing more, to assuage the easily impressed
  (tags: security airlines research via:simon)
• I.B.M. Buys In-Memory Database Company - New York Times
  “The IBM acquisition may be seen as a setback for MySQL, since it marks the loss of independence of another company that makes a high-performance transaction engine for MySQL’s database.” - eh, we’ll see. need to talk to IBM and MySQL about this one.
  (tags: ibm mysql solid opensource inmemory timesten)
• Seeking Role Models And Finding Human Beings - New York Times
  “We are all too infatuated with our deities, but Clemens is not the point here, nor is Bonds, as obnoxious and dishonest as I think he is. Tuck the kiddies in at night and tell them this: Nobody is perfect.” - Neyer’s right: best steroid piece yet
  (tags: robneyer georgevecsey newyorktimes morality steroids mitchell ethics rolemodels)
• Fastball, slider, changeup, curveball—an analysis — The Hardball Times
  really thought the slider would have more horizontal break, on average, than it does. but apart from that, fascinating example of what baseball lovers can do with more data. he who has the most data, wins.
  (tags: baseball data volume pitch-f/x johnwalsh hardballtimes)
• Dell XPS M1330 User Review
  “Whether it’s due to the more complex manufacturing processes required for the M1330 or because Dell has been rushing systems in an effort clear out the backlog, fit and finish is decidedly weak for what is a flagship system.” - why i haven’t bought
  (tags: dell xps m1330 laptop)
• Why Giving Away Your Code Is Not Dangerous | iface thoughts
  there are a lot of economic problems with this argument, but there’s value in the example nonetheless
  (tags: code opensource programming value)
• No bluffing on this deal - BostonHerald.com
  “As documented in The Inside Track last week, Ramirez’s game-used spandex popped up on eBay. The winning total from 40 bids? $160.” - great, my old phone, camera, and accessories together went for less than Manny’s spandex
  (tags: mannyramirez boston redsox ebay)
• Inside the Box » Blog Archive » ThinkPad X Series
  “I have one question: Why has the display not been improved since 2000?” - same question here: not buying the “no reliable suppliers” argument. it is good of Lenovo to be so transparent, though. LED backlighting needs to be added.
  (tags: lenovo x-series thinkpad hardware led backlighting)
• Inside the Box » Blog Archive » Solid State Hard Disk Drives
  why Thinkpads don’t have SSD as an option. like LEDs, strikes me as a bit of a smokescreen for the conservativism of their largest customer base, but that’s admitted in the comments. if an X were available w/ LED backlighting and an SSD, i’d buy one now.
  (tags: thinkpads ssds storage lenovo)

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
What’s “Naked DSL?” It’s DSL you can get without having to have phone service as well. With more people going totally wireless phone-wise, it’s a “tier” people want. And it was part of the conditions (.PDF) AT&T agreed to in order to get FCC approval of the BellSouth […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy today announced a requirement for ISPs to provide a “clean feed” for all homes, schools and any public PCs accessible by children. This follows up on a pre-election Nov. 19th Labor Party press release which first announced a proposed Cyber-safety plan.
Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
As if your traveling experience isn’t bad enough already, here come new battery safety requirements from the DoT. The new rules ban packing of spare lithium batteries in checked baggage, and go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.
New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that take effect on January 1 […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Here comes another tech grinch. There seems to be an abundance of them this year. In this case a Maryland girl received a strange note rather than an iPod.
“Reclaim your mind from the media shackles. Read a book and resurrect yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
In the case Atlantic vs. Howell, husband and wife Jeffrey and Pamela Howell have been accused of file-sharing over the KaZaA network. Their defense has been that although there are plenty of MP3 files on their computer, the files were not shared but were ripped from purchased CDs for personal […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Many accuse Microsoft of copying Apple, but is the reverse now happening? Say it isn’t so!
Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), when it works (and that’s the problem; it doesn’t always) is an anti-piracy measure that currently disables functions in the OS when a pirated copy is disabled. However, due […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Wal-Mart quietly closed its video download service on 12/21, so quietly that no one noticed it — perhaps because no one used the site in the first place.
The store first opened last November, though it didn’t really get moving until early in February. Ironically, the first line of the NY […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
It’s a sad day and the end of an era. Development is to cease on the Netscape browser, which at one time held the largest market share of all browsers, and was the first browser to gain mass popularity.
However, it had been evident for a while that this move was […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
iTunes, Wal-Mart, and Amazon’s “Amazon MP3” service sell DRM-free music downloads, but so far only from EMI (along with a “test” by Universal Music Group). Today Amazon.com announced it has beaten Apple (!) to the punch; it’s signed a deal with Warner Music Group to sell MP3 downloads, giving customers […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Privacy and Google: many people say they don’t mix, or at least, don’t mix well. Seems like every day we hear about some new Google privacy flap. Here’s still another problem, but is it somewhat overblown?
On Dec. 14th, in Google Reader Help and on the Official Google Reader […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Happy holidays to all. This, after all, a technology site, and despite the fact this is on YouTube, and you may have seen this already, I would be totally remiss if I did not let our readers see it here.
Also, it’s gonna be a slow news day! Thanks to […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Many kids today are selfish and think only of themselves (come on, be honest), but this kid has been doing good stuff his entire life. Tyler Strasser, 11, of Mount Holly, North Carolina has, since he was 3, collected toys every Christmas for the disadvantaged.
This year he came up […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Previously only available as a private beta to donators, a PlayStation 1 emulator for the iPhone and iPod has been released to the public. The version is 0.1.0 so it’s obviously far from done, but psx4iPhone is available now.
The developer, ZodTTD, indicates that although there will be public releases to […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This Forbes story is interesting, but what it doesn’t mention is as interesting as what it does mention. This MacBook is indeed #1 on the Amazon.com Computer Sales List (at the time of this writing), despite the fact that the #2 seller is (after rebates) priced nearly 50% lower, but […]

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Queen Elizabeth, who every year gives a Christmas Day message on television, is going to post the message on YouTube as well. Additionally, the Royal Channel has launched today on YouTube, the “Official Channel of the British Monarchy.”
While you might think someone of her age (at 81, she recently became […]