Archive for September 24, 2011

Review: Sennheiser MM 30i Headset

Posted in Products with tags on September 24, 2011 by itnerd

Besides being a smart phone, my Blackberry gets used as a music player. That’s an important feature for me as I travel a fair bit doing work for clients. The headset that came with my Blackberry was shall we say, less than impressive. So I went into my local big box store and walked out with the Sennheiser MM 30i headset. Now I will say right up front that this is designed for the iPhone. However it did partially work with my Blackberry. The volume controls didn’t work, but the center button that allows you to use the voice dialing function did. That was fine with me.

Now this headset is of the noise cancelling variety and it works quite well. They’re also in ear headsets that come with different sizes of rubber ear inserts so that you can find your perfect fit. The sound quality is great. From crisp highs to brain-rattling lows, they deliver the goods. If I have to make a call, callers can hear me clearly using the built in microphone. If they do fall down in one area, it’s the fact that there’s no carrying case for them. Sorry, that’s a bit lame.

Other than the lack of a carrying case, I like this headset and I recommend it to anyone who wants quality sound on the go. Remember they’re intended for iDevices but they may work with other smart phones. Your mileage will vary.

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The Lulz Are Done…. FBI Takes Down LulzSec

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 24, 2011 by itnerd

The FBI has managed to arrest two members of the notorious hacker group LulzSec, and to add insult to injury a third person is facing charges:

Cody Kretsinger, a 23-year-old from Phoenix, was charged with conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, according to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.

In another indictment, Christopher Doyon, 47, of Mountain View, Calif., and Joshua Covelli, 26, of Fairborn, Ohio, were charged with conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer, causing intentional damage to a protected computer and aiding and abetting.

The indictment says both men participated in a “distributed denial of service” attack on Santa Cruz County, Calif.’s computer servers in 2010, causing them to go offline. It alleges that the attack was carried out by the People’s Liberation Front, which is associated with hacking groups such as Anonymous.

These arrests add to the 16 arrests that happened in July. I think it’s a safe bet that the Lulz are done.

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Bing Bleeds Cash Says Microsoft

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 24, 2011 by itnerd

For most companies, when a business unit bleeds cash like a gunshot victim in Compton you dump it. But that’s not apparently how it works at Microsoft. Their search engine Bing has lost $5.5 billion since it launched in 2009. But much like the Cylons, they have a plan to stop the bleeding:

Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s director of Bing, believes that if Bing can change the way people think about search, sooner or later users will switch over from Google.

“Our challenge is that no one wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I really wish there was a better search engine,'” Weitz said. “That’s why, for us, it’s always been about figuring out how to accomplish more than we thought was possible with a search engine. Eventually, people will expect to do more with search, and if they can’t, they’ll be disappointed.”

I really doubt that will work. People are so used to Googling things that they would have to work extremely hard to change people’s search habits. The only good part about this is that Microsoft is swimming in so much cash that they can wait this out and see if they can win market share one user at a time.

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HP Dumps Apotheker As CEO And Names Whitman In His Place

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 24, 2011 by itnerd

It seems that the HP board has once again decided to dump a CEO. This time Leo Apotheker has been shown the door after only being on the job for about a year. I guess if your stock value nosedives by 40% under your watch, you’re likely not to have a job for very long. In case you’re keeping score at home, he’s the third CEO to be fired at HP. In his place comes Meg Whitman who you might recall was the CEO of eBay. Here’s what she had to say:

“So I actually understand this space relatively well,” she told Reuters in an interview. “What I bring to this table is leadership, management skills, strategic vision, communications and an execution orientation to deliver the result.”

Whitman said HP remained committed to completing a review of its PC division before the year ends, and expected to close the pricey $12 billion acquisition of British software maker Autonomy Corp Plc as planned.

Good luck with that. Here’s why:

HP’s shares closed down 4.8 percent at $22.80, wiping out much of Wednesday’s 6.6 percent gain.

HP is a disaster at the moment. I don’t think Whitman isn’t going to be able to rescue this company. She’s free to prove me wrong, but I don’t think she will. I think it’s a safe bet that HP with continue to flounder and continue to sink out of relevance in the technology industry as they really can’t get their act together.

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