Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
We're getting to be nags here at HotHardware news about this facet of computer upgrades, but once again, it's proven to be true: Bigger monitors make people more productive. Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different...
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Things seemed settled. Blu-ray, the high definition format favored by Sony, finally overcame the competition offered by rival Toshiba, HD DVD, and the next-generation format wars were over. Not so fast, says New Medium Enterprises, who are touting an alternative to Blu-ray they call the versatile multilayer disc. VMD has the one attribute...
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Japan's Pioneer Electronics is giving up on manufacturing their own plasma panels, and will simply buy them from other manufacturers and market them to consumers. The market for the panels is intensely competitive, and Pioneer has been bleeding red ink ever since it purchased the plasma manufacturing operations of NEC Corp in 2004. As...
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Stop me if you've heard this one before. Powerful more-or-less user-run news aggregator Digg.com is apparently for sale. But unlike the last handful of times you heard that, this time four potential buyers have been identified, and are performing due diligence towards an actual sale. Perhaps you've heard of two of them: Microsoft and...
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I don't know which I dread accidentally clicking on more: A PDF link (Adobe) or a Quicktime video (Apple). But unless you live under a rock, you're looking at Flash video every day on the Internet. Steve Jobs doesn't seem to be; he's publicly announced that Flash is unsuitable for the iPhone in any of its current iterations. Adobe countered...
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Maybe it's just me, but the unexpected words "ready for download now" referring to a Microsoft product seem... unusual. Microsoft was outlining the features and interoperability of its next generation web browser at the MIX show in Las Vegas yesterday, and shocked a lot of developers by announcing it was ready to download right away as Beta...
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Yet more search engine news: Online search site Ask.com is laying off 40 people and running up the white flag in its quest to challenge Google for market share. They've decided to concentrate on their core users, who they have identified as women in their late thirties in the Midwest and Southeastern states, according to their new chief executive...
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In a mildly comical turn of events, the people running Yahoo are apparently trying to patch together a merger with AOL as a sort of "poison pill" move that would make them unavailable for purchase by Microsoft. That seems unlikely, since Google owns a substantial share of AOL, so would likely run afoul of regulatory agencies as a de facto...
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In 2004, Jeremy Jaynes was the first person to receive a felony conviction in Virginia for sending Spam. He got nine years in jail. His case has made its way through the state court system, losing all the way; and now in a closely divided decision, The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that the only Spam Jaynes will be allowed to enjoy...
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Microsoft has developed a rich media platform to compete with Adobe's Flash, called Silverlight. Nokia has decided to sign on to use Silverlight on some of its smartphones and Internet tablets. Microsoft no doubt sees that browsing the Internet and virtual devices will eventually eat into their desktop supremacy, and would like...
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Paul Revere was always very cutting edge. He used the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston and his lantern as something like the world's first cellphone tower, calling the revolutionaries to arms with his "one if by land, two if by sea" signal. Now the church continues to keep up with the times by installing LED lighting inside to replace...
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Jimmy Wales has broken a lot of ground in his day. The founder of Wikipedia has turned the online collaborative encyclopedia into a household word. Wales was contacted by Canadian political commentator Rachel Marsden about defacement of her Wikipedia page, and apparently one thing led to another. In another first, he's announced the breakup...
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The high-definition format war's over, of course. So it's Blu-ray or nothing now. But as manufacturers start including Blu-ray drives in your notebook computers as standard equipment, get ready to see your batteries drained like a frathouse keg.For now, the laptop manufacturers that have offered Blu-ray drives have also avoided revealing the...
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Microsoft sells the vast majority of its Windows Vista operating systems pre-installed on new machines. In a bid to expand the customer base of Vista users to include people still using the XP OS, plus new adopters like those that build their own PCs and need to purchase an OS at retail, Microsoft has announced a fairly steep price reduction...
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Verizon is touting what they refer to as "Any Device, Any App." They want to settle on a universal wireless technical specification that any maker of wireless devices can use to offer their goods for use on any network. Verizon asserts that the smartphone market in America is less robust than elsewhere because hardware from various **cough**...
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Security firm Finjan has uncovered a criminal online supermarket of usable FTP security credentials for some of the largest and most prominent companies in the world. Oh yes -- and some government agencies. The crime ring that holds the information is selling the information to DIY malware entrepreneurs who can upload all sorts of exploits...
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The iPhone isn't cheap, and it's really not cheap when you factor in the two year ATT Wireless contract that is a non-negotiable part of your purchase. That could change. The US House of Representatives is holding a hearing today regarding legislation that would require carriers to allow you to bring your device to their plans...
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HotHardware told you yesterday about Sony and Sharp teaming up to build a tenth generation LCD factory in Japan. But Sony already has ... had a partner to produce LCD screens: Korean electronic powerhouse Samsung. What happened to make Sony fall out of bed with Samsung and team up with Sharp? Is it really just a Japanese thing?Against a backdrop...
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Lance Ulanoff can't help noticing that the social networking site Facebook has more than a passing resemblance to AOL just before it went down like the Titanic: disgruntled users, ill-advised and unsuccessful attempts to monetize traffic, and inflated user rolls kept artificially high by the difficulty of removing your account from the service....
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Apple recently went superslim with their MacBook Air notebook, which they famously demonstrated by slipping it into an interoffice envelope. Now they're following it up with upgrades to their more conventional MacBooks and MacBook Pros. They've utilized Intel's 45 nanometer scale Core 2 Duo processors for the heavy computational lifting with...
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Chris Anderson at Slate takes the long view on the effects that ultra-cheap bandwith, processors, and storage will have going forward, and comes to the conclusion that to make any money in the Internet economy, you'd better give whatever you've got away, and make money from ancillary items or services. And as consumers get used to the concept,...
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Adobe is today releasing their new AIR software development system, which will allow end users to achieve their own personal information cloud that straddles their digital journey across the desktop, the Internet, and various smart devices like phones. Adobe sees AIR as a major advance that builds on its Flash multimedia software. Flash...
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