Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Toshiba got its clock cleaned by Sony by supporting the HD DVD format over Sony's Blu-ray discs. But the next-generation video war really didn't have any winners. Even with HD DVDs out of the running, Sony can't seem to sell enough Blu-ray players to afford enough red ink to print a chart of how bad they're doing with the format; if it wasn't...
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It's hard to show tech-savvy consumers advertising. Your grandma might still be looking at every pop-up ad a rapacious Internet businessman can come up with, but between fast-forwarding past TV ad spots with your Digital Video Recorder, pop-up blockers in your browser, and the Do Not Call list, a lot of people are avoiding the vast majority...
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Google buys things. Lots of things. The companies that get purchased by Google are usually pretty excited about the prospect. Google's offices have the unstructured vibe that startup entrepreneurs love, and of course everybody likes money -- Google certainly has that. But it's starting to dawn on the startup businesses that Google might buy...
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In the recent past, parents who wanted their children to grow up and make something of themselves would urge them to go to medical or law school. Forget all that. Start urging your children to become independent console game developers. Take Johnathan Blow, for instance. He wrote Braid, a puzzle-solving romp through what looks like hand-painted...
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There was a time when many people would have bet on Gateway to become the largest direct retailer of computers in America, instead of Dell. They even opened up a few boutique retail outlets along the way. They had a funky vibe going with their black and white cow-spotted boxes, and the future seemed very bright indeed. ...
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In case you're not wise in the ways of aftermarket Velcro, Logitech now offers a cordless laser mouse, the V550, that clips right on the cover of your laptop. They call it the Clip-and-Go Dock. Logitech makes excellent aftermarket peripherals, and this looks to be another one of the little conveniences that are the bread and butter of their...
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"The devil made me do it" used to be the ready-made excuse you could trot out when you got caught being naughty. Society's views on personal responsibility have changed quite a bit since the devil was listed on everybody's rap sheet as an accomplice. The modern version is playing "Grand Theft Auto made me do it."Last month, the trio – all...
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If you're hungry for news about the future of Intel's pesky little rival, AMD, (we always are) then perhaps you'd go to their spokesman and flat out ask. If you're Business Week, here's the sort of answer you'd get: "AMD continues to look at multiple options that leverage our world-class manufacturing capabilities and relationships to achieve...
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Ken Brill at Forbes does a little arithmetic to examine the true cost of running a server, and the numbers are a bit of a surprise. Since we're in the midst of something of a boom in data center construction, shouldn't someone be figuring out what they really cost before they buy a bunch of servers and roll out the plans? Because of the weird...
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It's always amusing to read blog comments and hear just how unpopular Microsoft is. Of course a 90+ percent market share in their core business would seem to indicate a certain level of popularity, but apparently popularity is measured in a different way than simple arithmetic. It really doesn't matter if your average websurfer likes the guy...
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Telecommuting makes a lot of sense. Having information workers gathered into cubicle farms in a central location is so 1960s. The ability to quickly exchange information from remote locations, coupled with the high cost in time and energy to commute to the old office park, makes it increasingly popular now, and probably the de facto standard...
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Remember the good/bad old days of the first Internet boom, when AOL bought TimeWarner with all their imaginary money? Well, TimeWarner is trying to put AOL out behind the dumpster now and get on with their real, live, moneymaking business, and Web 2.0 investors are looking for a whole new generation of worthless widgets to lavish their millions...
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Touchscreen technology isn't really all that new, but the popularity of Apple's iPhone has whetted the public's appetite for putting their fingers on the screen and doing things. But the technology that makes tiny phone screens react to touch would be prohibitively expensive on a screen even as large a UMPC, never mind the typical desktop's...
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Market research mavens NPD went computer shopping, and came back with some info we've all suspected for a long time: Desktop or laptop, a Macintosh computer costs more than double a roughly comparable Windows PC machine. Since they compiled prices for three years running, they also saw which way the trend line was going. Average selling...
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Sony Pictures Television, like every branch of the Sony world, always seems to be swimming around in a pool of twenties. They arrive late, bring money, and buy whatever they like. They apparently like the semi-snarky vlog news site Rocketboom.com a lot; they've acquired the rights to distribute it in all media platforms. They plan on plopping...
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In an interesting ruling with far-reaching ramifications, a US Court of Appeals in New York has decided that Cablevision was within its rights to offer a network Digital Video Recorder service to its customers. Instead of a hard drive in every home, your set-top cable box would be able to use a cloud computer arrangement to view programming...
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Social music networks are like college. You all meet up there for a while, make friends, maybe a few enemies, share all sorts of things, and then scatter to other places and make new friends. The overriding constant is that nobody has any money in either place. Social.FM, which until recently was known as Mercora, was launched in 2005, and...
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Practical optical computing is like unicorn hunting to researchers. It promises all sorts of wonderful effects like superfast speeds and less waste heat. But messing about with photons instead of electrons posed challenges that seemed insurmountable, especially the limit on the size of the conduit needed to carry it. Researchers at the University...
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Since very few people on the visible side of the pornography industry are wearing any clothes, it seems like it would be a very casual business. But it's about as organized and avaricious as any business on the Internet, and it's getting angry. Many pornographers have banded together and formed the PAK Group, a sort of naked RIAA or MPAA,...
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Security researchers presenting information at next week's Black Hat convention are expected to demonstrate a particularly nasty method for stealing online credentials from users on any number of websites that allow users to upload their own pictures. The exploit will work by displaying what looks like a .gif picture, but contains a Java applet...
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Whoah there. That would be news. Santa Clara-based NVIDIA, makers of graphics processors that are near and dear to the heart of computer gamers everywhere, has been making quite a bit of news lately -- most of it bad. On the plus side, they were rumored to be working on a deal with Apple to supply a custom platform using Intel processors....
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Google, the owners YouTube, have purchased web startup Omnisio, a small company that allows users to easily stitch together videos and mash bits of text over the whole thing. It has the potential to make YouTube videos even worse, or oh-so-much better, depending on your point of view. As you probably guessed, we’re big fans of anything that...
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