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Deep Jive Interests

Where Web2.0, Wordpress, Marketing and Blogging all Play.

So, I dont (ever) do reviews of hardware products, but I thought I’d hammer out a few words on a new piece of hardware that I picked up: the MSI Wind. Its part of genre of smaller sub-notebooks that were initially popularized by the Asus EEE. I decided to pick one up because I knew I’d be spending this month and next doing home visits around Toronto.

My previous laptop — besides being old and rickety — was also large (17″) and heavy (5 lbs). Coupled with the other stuff I have to lug around, I was looking for something small and light, recognizing that my needs were very modest. Light emailing, blogging, and hooking into the virtual office to update patient files.

I ended up going with the MSI Wind for my purposes. I tried the Asus EEE, but found that amongst the various models available in Toronto, the keyboards were tiny. Miniscule, in fact. The HP 2133 was another one I looked at, but it was a little more expensive ($700+) and came with Vista. Boo. Dell came out with their own super light sub-notebook, but it came out before I picked up the Wind, which does come with Windows XP.

If you want specs, you can check out this website, but subjectively I’ll just say that it has done the trick. Its about 2lbs and the size of a largish softcover novel. The si

In Android vs. iPhone, Will It Be All About The Benjamins?September 23

In advance of the release of the Android OS for the T-mobile today at 10:30 EST there are a ton of questions — most of which I will not be addressing in this post. One of them, however, seems to have escaped the attention of most bloggers and that is this: will the quality and number of the applications for Android at all vary because the iPhone has a way for app developers to easily monetize their work?

Rather, could Android software development suffer because it won’t be able to attract the same number of developers — who are now looking to make boatloads of cash via the iPhone apps store?

Correct me if I’m wrong folks, and Android may surprise us yet,but there doesn’t seem to the same kind of simple application where you click, choose, and download — which is tied into a singular payment scheme. True, one would think that this would natively exist with software for cell-phone companies that allow you to put everything onto a single bill (I think our Japanese friends have already sorted this one out) but this level of sophistication is something that I will certainly be watching for with Android’s release.

Why? Well, I’m sure that many developers are looking to contribute to the growing library of Android applications out the goodness of their own heart, I’m sure many of them are also writing wi

Has Omnidrive Deadpooled? (For Real?)September 20

I am a fan of online storage services, to the extent that I do follow things. Omnidrive is one of those services that I profiled briefly more than a year ago, and at the time I really liked it. In fact, at the Web 2.0 Summit in 2006, Venturebeat annointed Omnidrive winner of the Launchpad portion of the conference.

Well, it looks like Omnidrive has hit the deadpool.

Both Omnidrive *and* the blog for Nik Cubrilovic now forward to a page called Financial Amnesty, which I’m not linking to, because its on the dodgy side of sketchy.

Now, I have no idea if Nik and Omnidrive have been hacked, and perhaps that’s why there’s a redirect going to this site, but given how quiet Omnidrive has been in the recent past, and other whispers of its impeding demise, if this is the truth … well, it doesn’t appear to be any surprise.

Chrome’s “Resolving Host” Problem SolvedSeptember 17

Well, solved for me anyway. Sometime a few hours after it was released, Firefox stopped becoming my regular browser, and Chrome *did*. I know — I was kind of amazed myself, in spite of all the plugins I’ve been missing. At any rate, one thing I’ve begun noticing has been getting worse: its seeming inability to “resolve the host”.

This would lead to the browser essentially “hanging” and then timing out while it was waiting to fetch web pages. For a browser that I’ve been relying on mostly … well, to browse … this was becoming problematic.

Turns out there are a few easy solutions for this that you can try:

1. delete your cache

2. delete your browsing history

3. delete your download history

4. disable “DNS pre-fetching”

Personally, I skipped right down to #4, and once DNS pre-fetching *was* disabled, Chrome was as zippy as ever. As always use the above tips at your own risk if you feel like trying them out.

via: Google Groups

Google Acquiring Valve? Makes Total Sense. Here’s Why.September 17

Update: Of course the rumours were debunked. Ah well. It made for a tasty morning. :) On another note, it did whet our collective appetite for what Google would or could do with gaming. Third note: in spite of being Google, they are still Google, and their next acquisition, be it gaming or otherwise, might have the same effect as other “exciting” purchases: a wet blanket (ask fans of jaiku, grandcentral, jotspot amongst others).

Rumours are swirling that Google may be in the process of acquiring Valve, the company that is behind the monumental success that is the Half-Life franchise. Valve also owns Steam, the *only* distribution platform on PC’s with any great pull in the industry, with an install base of 15 million users.

Now, having personally used Steam since its early days (but not having used it for some time, I’ll admit), its one of those things that gamers love to hate. There are issues around reliability, amongst other things. But it deserves big props for being the only game in town, and really pioneering a way of selling and distributing games *online*. Full versions of it. And giving smaller indie