Seems like Toshiba really knows how to celebrate an anniversary. Today, they are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first mass-market notebook Computer: The Toshbia T11. It weigned in at 9 pounds and some of its specs were:

• 4.77 Mhz Intel 80C88 processor
• MS-DOS 2.11
• 512 Kilobytes of memory
• 3.5 floppy drive for 720K disk writing.

Wowser!

Well here on celebration day they've announced not only a new Tablet PC-the Tecra M4, but a the return of the Libretto with the Libretto U100 and a new Portege R200 in their ultraportable line.

There are links everywhere to info on this today, here's one from CNET.

http://news.com.com/Toshiba+unveils+new+notebooks/2100-1044_3-5678102.html?part=rss&tag=5678102&subj=news

Here's a link to a press release with more fun facts on the 20th Anniversary. Great reading for historical perspective.

Toshiba Celebrates 20th Anniversary of First Mass-Market Notebook Computer; Introduced in 1985, Tosh

I remember those 9 pounders and it's great to see some of the specs from back then. The release of three new computers to celebrate is certainly a cool way to tout your history.

Now, let's hope they can do something to improve customer service/tech support by the time they mature to 21!

Give a listen to James and Kevin on the latest techAddiction Podcast.

Quote

ThePodcastNetwork :: The techAddiction Show

Layne has clever post looking into the possible hidden meanings in Microsoft's new media blitz on What Is New. Check it out on the link below.

Quote

What Is New in Tablet PCs? - "Start Something"

Hope we aren't ripe before out time.

And here's a llink to something that is starting on April 25.

http://www.startsomethingpc.com/

One of my favorite tools, Onfolio officially released version 2.0 today. This is a great piece of software and fills many of my needs. The RSS implementation is excellent and I love the Newspaper viewing of my RSS feeds. If you do any research, do any web browsing and want to save and squirrel away the nuggest you find, this is a prgram that deserves a look. I highly recommend it.

Quote

Onfolio

I have no affiliation with the company or the product other than being a satisfied user.

Check it out.

Quote

ThePodcastNetwork :: The techAddiction Show Podcast

So, MSN Spaces came out of beta last night with quite a few improvements. Interesting timing as I've been investigating other blogging solutions as I wondering if I shouldn't split up the topics I cover here, mostly Tablet PC's and Theatre. Gives me more food for thought.

Not sure how I feel about the "improvements" yet, but I know I'm not thrilled with the Volvo ad at the top of the page. Wave of the future? Hmmm?

Get it here.

Quote

ThePodcastNetwork :: The techAddiction Show Podcast

This is a story of unintended comic circumstances, multitasking and momentary panic relieved and resolved.

For the last several weeks I have had intermittent blue screen problems with my Dell Dimension Desktop that so far have been unresovlable with the help of technical support and my own trouble shooting. So, I set this afternoon and evening aside to do a complete reinstall of the system. It was past time to do so anyway.

I got prepped and prepared and was using my M200 Tablet to follow Dell's check list along the reinstall path. Everything was going fine, no problems. At the same time I plan on doing some other computer work on our GM's computer. So I plan on going back and forth between the two stations and also checking in on the load in of scenery going on down in the theatre. A typical multitasking night at the theatre.

Earlier in the day one the theatre's board members had dropped by for a brief meeting. A week or so ago, he accidentaly backed into my car and broke one of the signal light reflectors. After our meeting he was going to take my car to have the part replaced. He did so and headed home.

About an hour later, he called and said he left his cell phone in my car. I went to the car and sure enough it was there, came back in and called him back. He said he would swing by and pick it up. I set the phone on my desk, which during the reinstall process is covered with an assortment of disks and other things.

All continues smoothly with the reinstall for about an hour or so and I hear what sounds like a post beep code. I figure that it might be the desktop as I hadn't reinstalled any sound drivers to that point. Fast forwad, sound drivers installed and the beep is still there. Meanwhile I'm going back and forth between my desk and my GM's desk and also being called to the stage.

I start to get a bit concerned. Then I notice that the sound seems to be emanating from the M200. Panic begins to set it. Great, I'm reinstalling my desktop and now it looks like my Tablet is headed in for service.

Thinking that it might be the power supply failing I unplug the unit and let it run on batteries for a bit. The sound continues to appear randomly. When I go to plug back in the AC adaptor, as soon as I connect it to the M200, the beeps ring out loud and clear.

I'm a bit devasted. I'm sure there is a problem with the M200. I get on the phone to Toshiba tech support and while I am giving them my information the cell phone starts to ring.

Feelling like a complete idiot, I explain this to the tech rep, let him go and at that moment our board member shows up to claim his phone.

Moral of the story, stay away from clutter. The reinstall continues. The set is up and onstage. I'm feeling like a dork and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

Been playing around with the VOIP system known as SKYPE. This allows you to make free phone calls over the internet and for a decent charge you can connect to cell phones and landlines as well. Not sure if it is worth it or not, but we'll give it a go. So, if you're reading this and you are using SKYPE. Go ahead, SKYPE ME.

Ok, so it appears that the handy dandy SKYPE button doesn't work well with Spaces. Too bad. But if you're on SKYPE you can find me as warnertab.

This is interesting. According to this article techonology is being developed that will allow humans to transfer data through their skin. Now that's wireless!

It begs the question, What do you do for a firewall?

Here's a quote from the article and the entire article is linked below.

Zimmerman also believes that, unlike infrared or Bluetooth phones and PDAs, which enable people to "beam" electronic business cards across a room without ever formally meeting, body-based networking allows for more natural interchanges of information between humans.

Quote

Taipei Times - archives

Investigating further into the trading of blog shares, I discovered NotSweetWords, the blog of Brunhilde Esterhazy, who is the most active buyer and seller of shares for this site. Figured I would give her a link here. Although I'm sure some crazy conflict of interest rules and regulations will probalby cause her to dump all of the Wicked Stage shares and then I'll go bust.

Here's something new. At least to me. I was looking at the statstics page to see where traffic from this blog was coming from and stumbled on a link to Blogshares.

It is a site, where among other things, users can trade fictional (read not real money) shares for blogs based on their success or failure, using incoming and outgoing links as a gauge of success.

I was amazed, if this little corner of the blogosphere can attract that kind of attention, I wonder how some of the bigger fish (jkOnTheRun, Marc, Rob,--Scoble must be off the charts. ) do in the trading world.

Anyway, here's a link to the page that contains the recent trading history of this blog.

http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http://spaces.msn.com/members/wickedstage2/

Omar Shahine has hit on an interesting concept known as the Geek Tax. I think we've all paid this many times over.

Quote

Geek Tax

Apple goes to court to end trade secrets ending up in blogs and on the internet. Sounds a bit chilling.

Quote

MSNBC - Reporters ordered to reveal Apple sources

Back last fall/winter a study was released that claimed that heat from laptops could affect male fertility. The story went around fast. Lance Ulanoff at PC Magazine as written a column about it with seven suggestions to continue laptop computing and still multiply.

Quote

Compute and Still Multiply

Here's a snippet of some thoughts Lora put together about MSN Spaces. I could not agree with her thoughts more. Click on the link to see the full article.

Quote

Talking about MSN - Early adopters and "influencers"

My favorite MSN Spaces feature, and the one reason why I haven't killed this blog, is the photo album. I can browse through my drive, select the photo I want to upload, and snap, it's online.

It's not a perfect system. I wish I could display regular sized images better. :) But, it's faster than most of the blogging or content management apps I've used before.

Google has moved out of beta for their Desktop Search engiine and gone live with version 1. Wait a minute... has anyting from Google ever passed out of beta before or am I just imagining things.

Anyway, promises some improvements in the type of documents you can search for now, including .pdf's. We'll give it a try.

Guess that desktop search war has just entered another phase.

Today is a snow day here at Wayside Theatre, meaning that I'm pretty much alone in the office. So, I'm spending my time today moving some printers around and installing a new one for myself.

Last week our bookeeper's Laser went out and the Box Office report printer went out. Great week. I use my own gear for all my office computer needs and as a small not-for-profit theatre company buying any hardware is often a budget buster. So, I decided to take the plunge and get a new laser for myself and donate the other two units to the theatre and replace the problem machines.

I purchased the Konica Minolta 2430DL and I' quite pleased with the purchase. It's a nifty color laser with great black and white output and better than I expected color outpult. It now replaces two printers in my office so I'm hoping in the long run it will be a plus. The footprint is also relatiively small compared to other models I was looking at. Printing is also faster than I imagined, so all in all I'm quite pleased with the purchase.

I guess it was only a matter of time. Scoble points to a possible next wave of blogging: video blogs. Interesting stuff.

Quote

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
Is videologging the next big hype storm?

Maxathon (formally MYIE2) just released a new version (1.2) that inlcudes a RSS Feed Explorer Bar. Haven't had much time to check this out yet, but it seems easy to implement. If you stumlbe on a page that is syndicatable (is that word?) an icon appears in the status bar. You click on the status bar to add the feed to your list.

I'm still very enamoured of Onfolio's RSS implementation but this is a new addition to an excellent browser.

The browser wars continue!

www.maxathon.com