Adobe has released new versions of three products: Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects 6.0 and Adobe Audition (formerly named Cool Edit Pro 2.1).  According to this article: Adobe endorses Pentium 4 with video products Adobe is stroking its Premiere Pro, After Effects and Adobe Encore DVD because of the great collaboration between Microsoft and Intel on the chip, citing especially the hyperthreading technology. Consequently HP is saying that hyperthreading may not be all its hyped up to be. I remember reading a very technical piece (I will update from my bookmarks if I can locate) touting hyperthreading. Interesting move on Adobe’s part, hmm …

According to SeeSea at leenoga.com, I’m 100% full of shit. She made a cool graphic of me selling cow pies too LOL. Board flaming is becoming sort of a national past time, I suppose. It is kind of ironic in that thread that she started it looking for something “hard-hitting - opinionated - controversial” and when it was served up to her she cried foul. Hmm …

According to this article Nintendo of America’s VP of marketing George Harrison … has hinted strongly that Nintendo will not be rolling out any online strategy in this generation of hardware. Isn’t this obvious Nintendo of America feels this way when you visit your local retail store and good luck trying to find their modem!  (pictured) You can find the game Phantasy Star Online, which to my knowledge is the only game the Nintendo Gamecube has that is online ready. Probably George’s most silly quote is: “Right now, no one’s paying for subscriptions. The real test comes when you have to start coughing up $15 a month”  Doh? Will somebody get this guy a link to Everquest, puhlease.

Sony, Canon, Sharp and Victor Co. of  Japan plan to complete this new technology by September which will be a way to record and play high-definition digital video on cassette tapes (source: ABC News) We haven’t bought into the whole HDTV thing yet in our household despite the fact that more and more content is becoming available and the price of the sets and set boxes are coming down. Have you got an HDTV? Do you notice a huge improvement in quality? Those plasma sets look sweet, but boy are they expensive.

Pakistan doesn’t want porn sites on their soil, and as reported in this inquirer story “Telecoms officials in the country estimate that around 60 per cent of the country’s million-plus Internet users access porn sites.” So 6 out of 10 Pakistanians are surfing porn? I don’t pretend to know anything about the Islamic religion, but it seems to me that any supreme being, God, would be far above passing judgement on self-gratification. The Pakistanian government refers to porn as ”corrupt and evil”. Hmm, I guess I wouldn’t be buying stock in sex toys for sale in that country …

This just in (source: Washington Post), the hacker defacement did indeed turn into the fart in the wind that I predicted on Friday and then again this morning. Quick, somebody call Miss Cleo and get me on staff. Seriously, is there anybody out there really who thought that a serious hacking challenge would be choreographed as this one was?

Compulsive computer disorder is the subject of this NY Times article: The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? Charles Lax sounds like he needs some serious AFK time; some computer laxatives. A good reminder to unplug once in awhile. This quote: David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, multitaskers actually hinder their productivity by trying to accomplish two things at once.  If that isn’t disturbing, then it continues: Mr. Meyer has found that people who switch back and forth between two tasks, like exchanging e-mail and writing a report, may spend 50 percent more time on those tasks than if they work on them separately, completing one before starting the other. 

What are other bloggers saying?

1. Enneagram Connections Weblog: “But what is the price of this habit of mind, particularly in our data-drenched culture?”
2. “So while it may be true that it’s *faster* to check your email once and then write the report, it doesn’t accomplish the same thing at all.” from Crescat Sententia

I know that as I write this I only have about 10 things going at once, but then who doesn’t work that way online? Do you believe these head shrinker’s studies or dismiss them as just one isolated study? I’ve heard the argument that a study can be made to say anything at all depending on who’s framing it. Hmm.

More folks are getting on the portable scene, according to studies (source: startribune). Baker said that the average price of a laptop in a retail store dropped to $1,294 in May, down $75 from April and down more than $250 from a year ago. May was the first month in which the average retail store price of a laptop dropped below $1,300, he said.. It’s about time that laptop prices start becoming more affordable. I think this wi-fi scene is very exciting and holds great promise and this has a health benefit too: get more computer users outside. We don’t need to be inside sucking up monitor emissions 18 hours a day.

I had wondered why something like this hadn’t happened sooner: computers being used to calculate soft walls for pilots who try and fly into no-fly zones. In the aftermath of Sep 11 this is an intelligent direction for programmers and scientists to focus on. Of course this doesn’t stop terrorists from taking out the computer. Or does it?