I just recently bought a used (but like new) Palm Z22 PDA off eBay. It was a deal at $50 less than the market price! Anyway, I have heard some good things and some bad things about this PDA, so I thought I might shed some light on the digital organizer, and its pros and cons.
The Design: I love the design. The organizer is just the right size and weight at 2.7? x 4.06? x .6? and 3.4 ounces. The Z22 is relatively light, and most of the PDA is taken up by its 160 x 160 color touch-screen. The mini-USB connector is at the top, and the power button is on the side. The location of the power button may be a slight disadvantage, because several times I've meant to hit a button nearby, and without thinking, I turn the power off. The stylus is stored in a hole in the upper right-hand corner of the Z22. It can be a bit of a hassle to remove the stylus from the storage hole, as I have to insert my fingernail into one of the grooves to remove it, but this is just a minor inconvenience. The Z22 contains two buttons that can be used as shortcuts to programs, a direction-pad, and a graffiti-area, which I will explain later. There are four icons next to the graffiti area that are also shortcuts to different functions and areas, like find, the main menu, hot-sync, and the select menu.
Battery: Most of the time my Z22 is left plugged in, and when it's not, it runs on its battery for a very short time, but from what I've seen, the battery can lost a pretty long time.
The Directional Pad: Personally, I use the stylus more than the directional pad, but from the few times I've used it, the directional pad is extremely responsive and easy to use. However, because the Z22 is supposed to be compact, the directional pad might seem tiny to some people, who would struggle and hit the wrong buttons while trying to look at their calendar.
The screen: The touch screen is extremely bright. One time, when I got up in the middle of the night to write down one of my ideas, I turned on my Palm, and was blinded by the bright light! This may bother some people, but the brightness of the screen can be adjusted, along with the color scheme of the PDA. The touch screen is also extremely responsive, and can be calibrated for you in particular through a reset of the PDA.
Graffiti: Graffiti is a function in Palm PDAs that allows a user to write something in a specified area of the organizer, and the operating system (Palm OS Garnet 5.4) will read what they wrote and change it into text accordingly. The black graffiti area on the Z22 is below the touch screen, and is divided into three areas. The left area allows users to write lowercase letters, the middle allows uppercase letters, and the right area allows numbers. This is a good idea in theory, but to tell the truth, the Z22 software does not recognize what I am trying to write most of the time. All letters must be written a certain way, and it takes longer to write with Graffiti than with the on-screen keyboard.
Software: The Z22 comes loaded with a bunch of software, and even one game. The calendar program provides an extremely easy way to plan out one's day, and can display your schedule in four different ways. The task program is like a checklist of things for you to do, and you can even check them off like you would in real life. It allows a user to organize their things to do by priority, with numbers one to five. NotePad is an easy-to-use program that allows the user to draw on screen and save the contents.
HotSync: The HotSync program allows the user to copy the contents of their calendar, task list, and more on their computer to their PDA, and the reverse. It is very simple to use with Palm's free Desktop software. All you have to do is press the HotSync icon on your Z22, wait approximately two minutes, and everything is complete.
Overall: This is the first PDA I have owned, and I love it. For more advanced users, I might suggest buying something else, because there is no SD card port on the Z22 and the software available for it is very limited. If all you need is to plan your day and manage an electronic checklist of things to do, then the Z22 is for you. But if you plan to be gaming or using a PDA for advanced business applications (like word processing), then the Z22 is not for you.
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
For those of us constantly switching between computers applications that work on all these different machines is a valuable tool. Many different file formats means that all PCs that are used need to have the same programs, two similar programs that accomplish the same tasks may have two incompatible file formats.
PortableApps.com is working to solve this problem. The volunteers work to make Open Source applications portable. These applications easily fit onto a flash drive, IPod, portable hard drive etc. All that needs to be done by the end user is plug it in to the PC that is in use.
What else is everyone going to put onto their 320 gigabyte portable hard drive, their 16 gigabyte flash drive or their 32 gigabyte IPod Touch?
This enables the users to use the same, familiar applications with formats that are always compatible.
The website hosts popular programs such as Mozilla Firefox (Portable), Mozilla Thunderbird (Portable), KeePass(Portable), and the anti-virus program ClamWin AntiVirus (Portable).
The developers have even developed their own menu. The menu is similar to the Windows Start Menu and it is completly open source. This enables easy access to all of the applications that are stored on the portable media.
There are also many other sites that host Portable Software, just search Google for "portableapps" or "portable applications" (without the quotes). but if you want all free, Open Source software PortableApps.com is the place for you.
The PortableApps Menu is a must have for anyone who wants their apps when and where they need them.
Note: I am not affiliated with this website in any way, I am just trying to spread the word about a convenient way to carry your apps with you.
Questions or Comments? Post 'em Below
In last week's tech tip we covered how to layout the Windows taskbar to make better use of the quick launch bar. (Click here to read last week's post.) This week we will begin discussing some cool things we can do with the new found space we created for the quick launch bar.
Quick note: For those of you who are submitting questions for me to address in future tech tips, I am receiving the questions and will try to address some next week.
In this week's tech tip we are going to cover Outlook shortcuts. Now I know many of you are thinking, "I already have an Outlook shortcut." You may well indeed but these are no ordinary shortcuts I am referring to. The Outlook shortcuts I am referring to will reduce dreaded mouse clicks! Let's get started.
If you read last week's tech tip, you probably noticed some of the shortcuts that I have on my quick launch bar and wondered what they were for. OK, maybe not, but none-the-less I am going to show you what three of my quick launch icons do. Three of the shortcuts on my quick launch bar link directly to functionality within Outlook. In other words, instead of launching Outlook the program, they launch components within Outlook like a new email, task or calendar entry for instance.
Click here for an example image.
The easiest way to create these shortcuts is to find a preexisting shortcut to MS Outlook on your desktop, then right click on it and select copy.
Click here for an example image.
Then right click on the desktop and select paste from the context menu.
Click here for an example image.
This should create a duplicate Outlook shortcut that we can modify without affecting the original.
Click here for an example image.
Now, right click on the duplicate shortcut and select properties.
Click here for an example image.
Now comes the fun part. (Try to contain yourselves.) We can add what is called a "switch" to the end of the command line and get some pretty cool functionality. The valid switches are:
/c ipm.activity to create a journal entry
/c ipm.appointment to create an appointment
/c ipm.contact to create a contact
/c ipm.note to create an e-mail message
/c ipm.stickynote to create a note
/c ipm.task to create a task
NOTE: There IS a space between the /c and the ipm.
Click here for an example image. and another Click here for an example image.
Using this method you can create several shortcuts to launch each of the Outlook components directly without having to first launch Outlook.
Now we need to change the icon for the shortcut so we can visually see which shortcut to click in order to launch the respective Outlook components. To do this, click on the change icon button on the shortcut properties window and select an appropriate icon.
Click here for an example image.
Next, right click on the icons and click Rename. Rename the shortcuts to represent what each will do. When you are finished you should have something that looks like this, depending on which shortcuts you created.
Click here for an example image.
Double click on each of the shortcuts to make sure they launch the intended Outlook component.
Click here for an example image.
Lastly, you can click, drag and drop these new Outlook shortcuts to your newly expanded quick launch bar. With these new icons on your quick launch bar you will be teching like a pro and saving up to 4 clicks each time you want to create a new email, task, appointment, etc.
Click here for an example image.
Happy Teching,
Ryan Williams
Ask Me A Tech Question
http://www.techbetter.com/question.aspx
View & Subscribe To My Tech Tips
http://blog.techbetter.com
About Me & TechBetter
http://www.techbetter.com/aboutme.aspx
In the old days if you had something to say you'd sit down at your desk and write a letter to the editor. You'd walk the letter over to the mailbox fully realizing that you had a one-in-a-thousand chance of having your letter printed.. That was then. This is now.
Today when you have something to say you compose a song, upload it to YouTube, the Internet Archive, or Blip.tv, and then submit the song to Digg. Maybe your item will rise to the front page of Digg and maybe it won't. But here's the kicker. The people who decide whether that happens are not two people sitting in some newspaper office someplace. They're several thousand people sitting at their computers ? just like you are.
Now that Digg is getting more web visitors than the New York Times, it makes a lot more sense to submit an item to Digg than it does to send a letter-to-the-editor to the New York Times. To rise to the front page of Digg, the multimedia item you submit has got to be good ? meaning it must be creative, authentic, meaningful, relevant, and proportionate.
Here is what such multimedia might look like. Two years ago the New York Times published an article that the digital divide is no longer a concern because African Americans are now on the Internet. I took offense at the article because of the harmful generalizations inherent in the piece. In my free time I take donated computers to people who don't have them, and let me tell you, there's a lot of folks out there who don't have them.
And so I created this two-minute multimedia, Whiskey in Your Jar, using Camtasia Studio and a public domain folk melody. I retained the chorus of the folk song and substituted my own lyrics for the verses. I then presented the lyrics right beside the article as I sang the song. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I uploaded this multimedia to the web for free.
Here's a rich irony in the above story. I wanted to share this multimedia with the author of the above-mentioned article. So I went looking for his email address. Couldn't be found. He is one of the reporters at the New York Times without a public email address.
A digital divide? Yes, the digital divide is alive and well right there at the New York Times. Reporters writing about the digital divide are not reachable for feedback about what they're written.
With that kind of irony, I couldn't help but create this spoof YouTube video, chosen as a YouTube Editor's Choice in April, 2007. And I thank PCWorld.com for giving me this forum to blog in. The conversation has begun here. How long will it take for the conversation to begin elsewhere? Two years? Five years? Ten years?
It might begin elsewhere after the elsewhere is no more.
The blogger has been working to bridge the digital divide for 20 years in the Washington DC-area. He loves Macs, adores Linux and likes Windows. Reader responses welcome in the comments below or at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com
I'm not going to say I'm an eBay expert. Yes, I have lost auctions before. But every time I lost, I learned something new, and now I always watch for bargains, and await the best time to bid.
But I am going to say that this is not an introduction or tutorial on how to use eBay. eBay is pretty straight-forward, and very easy to use. You do not need some book to teach you how to use eBay, and you definitely don't need to pay someone to list something on eBay for you (unless you have no time at all to do it yourself, or don't have a camera or scanner).
So, with that being said, I'm going to tell you a few tips and tricks that I've discovered in my experience of using eBay, which has been for eight or nine years. Let's begin.
#1. Do not bid as soon as you find an item on eBay. This just jacks up the price! If the price of an item is $3.00 with one bid, and you bid $4.00 as soon as you find it, that person who bid before might come along and bid $5.00. Now, you have to bid $6.00, and you might have been able to win the item for only $4 if you waited to bid.
#2. Try waiting till the last few seconds/minutes of an auction to bid. This is perhaps the best strategy I've discovered. This is also commonly known as ?sniping.? How does it work? Well, let's say that Joe in Montana (the current high bidder) is watching an auction that he has already bid on. He is very nervous that someone will outbid him, but as the last few seconds/minutes arrive, he is sure that he has won, and he thinks no one else is even looking at the auction. Now his guard is down. You quickly bid in the last 30 seconds, and win the item for fifty cents more than the price that Joe had bid. Personally, I like to wait until the last four minutes, bid a bit lower than what would be the highest price I'd pay for the item, and then in the last twenty seconds, I bid my highest bid. This allows me to see if I have a chance of beating another bidder, because:
#3. Many people bid at very low prices. Why do they do this? I dunno, but I find this is common among people who do not use eBay very often, and have very few transactions on their account. For example, disc jockeys might not be experts at eBay. I've found this to be true when buying records and DJ equipment. Let's imagine that DJ Fred has his eye on a record with a starting price of $5. He is willing to go up to $10 on this particular item, but he only bid $5.50. Why? I dunno, but this gives you a better chance of winning your item. To find out if a bidder might bid at low prices, always:
#4. Check their feedback, along with ended auctions that a particular member has bid on to see exactly how much they might bid. Also, if the person has a relatively low feedback, like 21, they are probably relatively new to eBay. If the person has a relatively high feedback, like nine gazillion, then they are probably an eBay master, and you must watch out. Checking the feedback of a seller also helps to determine if an auctioneer is legit or not. If the person has all positive feedback, then you are good, but if the person has a lot of neutral or negative feedback, bid wisely, as the auctioneer might try to rip you off.
#5. Read the description of the item carefully! It amazes me how many people just skim through the description of an auction, and when the item comes half broken, the blame the seller for not saying that it was broken in the auction title. Well, they probably said it in the description. Read carefully and slowly!
So there you go. Those are my top five tips on using eBay. Bid wisely!
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
A good strategy - and a way to keep from paying too much for an item - is to use the automatic bidding feature. I always set that to bid up to the maximum amount I'm willing to pay for an item.
I don't win every item I want, but I have never paid more for an item than I desired. It's too easy to get caught up in bidding fever and pay too much.
Enough! with! the! exclamation! points! already!
How about for your next article you post something that may have some alternatives to eBay? I have found that eBay isn't what it used to be. There have taken away the protections for seller and opened the door for more scam buyers. We don't sell as a business and used to enjoy watching the auctions. Now we have to worry too much about getting ripped off to make it worthwhile. They seem to look like it as if shoplifting isn't stealing.
Bored? Gaia Online and Puzzle Pirates provide great gaming distractions curb boredom online.
Gaia online is an anime inspired social networking site that offers you much more then the basics. Gaia offers games, a market place to buy sell and trade for items and gaia gold, an interactive living environment for your avatar and chat room. You can customize your own avatar and buy different hair styles and clothing with gold you get from playing games (such as fishing, slots, racing, puzzle and word bump) posting comments on friend?s profiles and just about anything you do. The cute little characters become your own as you can also design their car and organize their house. Gaia also offers a cinema where you can watch movies like Space Jam, the Matrix, Night of the Living dead and more. Its more then just a chat room, blogging, social networking or gaming site check out what Gaia has to offer.
Another fun place to waste your time online is Puzzle Pirates. Warning it is pretty addicting! Join a crew or fight against other pirates with strategic puzzle solving games.
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
Nowadays it seems like everyone has at least two phones that they use, a cell phone and a home phone. Many others also have work phones added into the mix. Giving out and remembering two or more phone numbers can be a real hassle. To fix this a great new free service called GrandCentral has debuted as a Beta.
GrandCentral, recently acquired by Google, has everything anyone would need to make everything about phones easier for both the caller and the recipient.
The free service gives it?s users one phone number that can be used to ring up to six phone numbers at one time. All a caller needs to do is call the one new number and all registered phones will begin to ring all at once.
With it's own voicemail system, instead of checking three diffrent voicemail boxes the user only needs to check one, central voicemail box for added convenience and ease of use.
Some of the features that are included with this service include: Greetings, RingShare? Call Screening, Notifications of Voicemail via Text Message or E-Mail, and Caller ID. The ring share feature allows the user to select a custom ring that the caller hears while waiting for the person to answer the phone. Call Screening allows the user to force those callers who do not have a Caller ID to enter their phone number to complete the call. All of these features add convenience and personalization for the callers who may otherwise need to remember 3+ numbers, now all that needs to be remembered is one, simple phone number.
Questions or Comments? Post 'em below
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
The ultimate in efficiency (or laziness depending on how you look at it) is finding ways to reduce mouse clicks when working on your computer. I don't like clicking my mouse button any more than absolutely necessary. Clicking is simply too much effort, my finger gets tired. I want everything just one click away. Fortunately, we can reduce quite a few mouse clicks with this simple modification to the Windows desktop. Over the next few tech tips I am going to focus on optimizing your Windows desktop to reduce mouse clicks. Below is tip number one. "Expanding the quick launch bar."
The quick launch bar usually appears crammed to the right of the Windows Start menu and to the left of your open task buttons on the taskbar. The quick launch bar contains shortcuts to frequently used programs. However, most of the time only a very few of these icons are visible.
Click here for an example image.
My suggestion is to expand the quick launch bar so you can utilize it more prevalently. The first step in doing this is to enlarge your taskbar. It used to be that screen real estate was at a premium. Now days, however, with dual monitors and ever increasing monitor resolution, we can spare a little extra room for the taskbar, especially considering the time savings it will produce.
To expand the task bar, right click on the taskbar where there are no icons. This will pull up a context menu. If there is a check beside "Lock the Taskbar," then remove the check by clicking on "Lock the Taskbar." Otherwise, leave the "Lock the Taskbar" option unchecked.
Click here for an example image.
This will free up the taskbar to be moved around. The next thing you want to do is hover your mouse over the edge of the taskbar until the icon changes to indicate that you can move the taskbar.
Click here for an example image.
Once you see mouse pointer change, click and hold your left mouse button and drag the taskbar up one notch so that you now have two rows for your task bar.
Click here for an example image.
The next thing we want to do is move the quick launch bar so that it is on its own row and our open task buttons are on their own row. To do this, hover your mouse over the dividing line to the left of the quick launch bar until the mouse pointer changes. (Note that this dividing line only appears if the taskbar is unlocked which we accomplished above.)
Click here for an example image.
Once your mouse pointer changes, click and hold your left mouse button and drag the quick launch bar to the lower taskbar row.
Click here for an example image.
Now you have two rows on your taskbar, one for running tasks and one for the quick launch bar. Now right click on the taskbar again where there are no icons and open the context menu again. This time click "Lock the Taskbar" to relock the taskbar so you don't move things around anymore accidentally.
Click here for an example image.
As you can see, this modification gives you an entire row of shortcuts at your disposal on your taskbar where you can place any number of shortcuts. The beauty of this modification is since your taskbar is always visible, you only have to click once to launch any program of your choosing. Also, an added benefit is we can now see the entire date on the right side of the taskbar without having to click at all.
Click here for an example image.
Over the next few tech tips I will cover some really cool things we can do now that we have a dedicated row for our quick launch shortcuts. Each of which will save time, effort and most importantly, clicks!
Happy Teching,
Ryan Williams
Ask Me A Tech Question
http://www.techbetter.com/question.aspx
View Other Tech Better Tech Tips
http://blog.techbetter.com
About Me & Tech Better
http://www.techbetter.com/aboutme.aspx
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
i got my double task bar but I don't see any short cut icons just the running ones ??
I'm running Vista. Only shows time and day of week but not date?
Johnon, right-click on the taskbar where there are no icons. Put your cursor on "Toolbars". When the menu expands, click on "Quick Launch" until a chec kmark appears. That will bring up the shortcuts. You can delete ones you don't use and add others.
Thanks, Ryan, for a great Tip!
All the best,
Bill Hibbler
http://www.EcommerceConfidential.com/Blog
This week, I was wondering exactly how Flash movies and games remembered you, and how save files could be stored. I realized that this must be some sort of cookie, so I did some researching. I came across information on Local Shared Objects, or LSOs, which work exactly like cookies, allowing Flash movies to store 100 kb of data (or more, if you allow it) on a user's computer. These files are usually found at C:/Documents and Settings/[USER]/Application Data/Macromedia/Flash Player on a Windows computer.
To disable Flash movies from storing LSOs on your computer, you can go to Adobe's site to limit the amount of data that movies can store on your computer. You can also manage all your current LSOs.
A Firefox extension is also available that allows you to manage all LSOs. Objection can be downloaded from MozDev.org.
However, I find that disabling cookies does not always work, and sometimes a list of sites I've been visiting is still on my computer under the same folder the cookies are stored in. So, I've made it so that when I turn on my computer, a BASH script using RMDIR is run that asks me if I want to delete the directory that the cookies are in, so all of the files are gone, and no one knows where I've been.
There are disadvantages to disabling LSOs. For example, games will not be able to create save files on your computer, and the volume on videos on YouTube will not be the same from page to page. In my opinion, this is just a small price to pay for privacy! Remember! PC World and I are not responsible for any data that is lost if you delete your LSOs!
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
Seriously this person just found this out? Is looking at tutorials and press announcements really research? SOL's are not a secret, they are a feature. It is what we trade to stay on one page.
I wonder at the state of things when anyone who can right click on a web page become a technology blogger and disappointed at the sites that post them, as if they were something useful. The article isn't a lie, but the words are misleading. Take "Threat" and "a small price for privacy" Nobody is sitting there going Vince Clark just watch Zack and Cody 12 times. I don't mind people writing about something they obviously know nothing about, but I do take issue of using "Bill O'Reilly" fear tactics to scare people and make it seem like they are the great saviors of our privacy and liberty without first getting a clue on how all this stuff works. There are threats out there, SOL are not one of them, not even close. My advice, don't be on the wrong side of the wall when the revolution comes.
../
SOLs ARE extremely secretive. I'm no fan of porn (in fact, I wouldn't mind it being removed from the net all together) but it's no secret that people like to hide the fact that they look at porn. They think that they are safe when clearing their cookies, but they're not! Yes, SOLs are a feature, but they also assume that the user has no problem with programs storing data on their computer. I, for one, do not like this, and I'm sure that there are others just like me.
I can do a lot more than "right" on a blog. And although you might think different, SOLs are a threat to the millions of people who have never even heard of them.
Esoteric programming languages are programming languages that are basically not meant to be taken seriously. Many of them contain functions to do things that many would consider useless, sometimes just for fun! Some of these languages include OISC, Thue, Brain****, INTERCAL, Whirl, HQ9+, and Ook! Because of its simplicity, I will be using HQ9+, created by Cliff L. Biffle, as an example of how esoteric languages work.
Esoteric programming languages are interpreted or compiled, just like regular languages, but are hardly ever (if they ever have been) used to write serious programs. Many contain only a few commands: from a single command to sometimes as little as eight. HQ9+ contains only four commands, which can be arranged in any order to create some of the strangest programs ever seen.
These commands include H (which displays ?Hello, World!?), Q (which displays the source code of the program), 9 (which prints all the words to ?99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall? to the screen), and + (which increases the accumulator).
What's the point of these commands? Well, programmers use to challenge each other to create a program that prints all the words of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall to the screen in the shortest code possible. Now, you can do just that in a single letter! And, you can also write ?Hello, World!? in the shortest code possible.
It also is extremely hard for a program to print its own source code out. I won't go into details, but even attempting this might result in a line of code going on forever! That is why we have the Q command!
When I create a text file with nothing but ?H? inside it, and run it through an HQ9+ interpreter, the screen will show the words ?Hello, World!? It's genius, right? Some might say so! It's fun! Try it!
When I enter in ?QQQQ?, the screen will display ?QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ?. Why? Because for each Q in the source code, the screen has to display four Qs! It's a bit confusing, I know....
You can visit Cliff's homepage to read about HQ9+ and download the source code of an interpreter. You can also try a browser-based interpreter. I have also recently volunteered to help test EsCo, an interpreter for many different esoteric languages, and has support for HQ9+. Remember, HQ9+ is only one of the many esoteric languages out there!
Would you like to be a Community Voices blogger? If so, please send a letter of interest and a sample blog entry (what you would post here if you were already a blogger for us) to forums@pcworld.com. We'd love to hear your perspective.
And now I die from overdosing on exclamation marks....
The human mind is a complex collection of beliefs, understandings, convictions and predilections. Candidates for office spend huge sums of money trying to sway people's minds. But there's a limit to how much mindshare money can buy. People get tired of slick commercials. At a certain point they tune out the candidates' message and turn to listen to the viewpoints of people they know or admire.
In another age the people you knew or admired all lived near you. Today, geography has no bounds. Anyone connected to the Internet could be within the group of people you know or admire.
Enter YouTube, which makes it simple and free for anyone to share videos with a mass audience. If you're able to produce the video, YouTube will take care of the rest.
And so we see the very creative effort of The Black Eyed Peas musician will.i.am in the Yes We Can video, a flawless and powerful mashup of Barack Obama's New Hampshire speech. The rhythms of the speech become the rhythms of this song, viewed more than 2 million times within a few days of being uploaded to YouTube. The video was directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob Dylan, who had a thing or two to say about social justice issues in earlier times.
Let me tell you how much the Barack Obama campaign spent on that video. Nothing. It wasn't made by the campaign, but by supporters of the campaign. Money can't buy you a video like that. It was made by people who had something they wanted to say.
Another kind of YouTube endorsement video is the straight narrative kind, as seen by this video by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. You might recall Lessig as the inventor of the Creative Commons, a bold step forward for creative expression. Lessig is widely respected in legal circles and far beyond. He is one of those creatures you rarely see out in the wild: a lawyer whose integrity you respect.
So will YouTube have an effect on the U.S. elections? It undoubtedly will. Will the election turn on one or more YouTube videos? It might. Does it make it frivolous for a presidential candidate to be chosen based on some YouTube videos? No. YouTube is just another communications channel. You either tune into it or tune out.
I'm tuning in.
The blogger has been working to bridge the digital divide for 20 years in the Washington DC-area. He loves Macs, adores Linux and likes Windows. Reader responses welcome in the comments below or at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com
I think that the Internet will not be the deciding factor for the election. But it will certainly enable a new epoch of campaign tactics. Look at what Ron Paul has been able to accomplish without must mainstream support. There is an interesting study examining the potential impact the Internet could have on the final outcomes:
http://www.spartaninternet.com/2008
Sure it will affect the outcome. There is a good portion of voters that are mindless slugs. They buy in to the pre-election rhetoric, they refuse to do any kind of research for themselves, they put their vote behind their favorite [celebrity,religion,organization,etc]'s endorsement, in short, they let other people do the thinking for them. It's sad that people are too lazy to take a look at their own beliefs, compare them to the issues at hand and look at the different candidate's voting record when it comes to those issues. Enter Youtube which makes it even easier to brainwash the mindless droves.
I don't consider any media to shade my judgement on elections. Too much is manipulated by the publishers of the drivel seen on TV news, in printed media and on the internet. I will use a cross section of government releases and weigh them against what is published in any other media source.
PC World is looking for readers with something to say. If you want to share your opinions on today's tech news, share your tips and tricks, or just report stuff from around the web, the Community Voices blog is for you.
To join the Community Voices team, send a blog sample (what you'd write for us today) and a short introduction to forums@pcworld.com with "Community Voices" in the subject line.
More or less in order of your article:
1. The stylus may slightly inconvenient to pull out, but then that means it'll sit in its slot and not fall out accidentally.
2. You've got to invest a little time in Graffiti training. It's not all that hard, and I got myself doing the basic alphanumeric characters in maybe 15 minutes. The punctuation marks took a little more time. But once you've gotten used to Graffiti, you won't bring up the onscreen keyboard anymore.
As an aside, even if my own PalmOS has died, I still find myself writing in Graffiti
3. I don't know about its inability to do "serious" word processing or spreadsheet manipulation. I downloaded one of each, the names of which escape me at the moment, and while they're no substitute for OpenOffice.org, they suffice, especially for on-the-road computing.
I just wish Palm would come out with something to replace my TX that was not a phone.