journal: think

Report: Internet to experience traffic jams by 2010

By Nick, November 20, 2007

Some years back, President George W. Bush was quoted as saying, “Are the highways of the internet becoming more few?” Despite his seemingly nonsensical quote, George W. may have been onto something, sort of. According to a new report, commuters on the Information Superhighway could be facing serious traffic jams by 2010.

The reason? Too much data traffic, not enough capacity, and not enough added capacity to keep pace with growth. Hmm, sounds like the freeways here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

One example given is YouTube, which was generating 27 petabytes worth of traffic per month as of mid 2007. To put that in perspective, 1 petabyte is 1,024 terabytes, or over 1 million gigabytes. Most desktop computers sold today have hard drives in the range of 250-500 Gigabytes, and only higher-end desktops are pushing into the terabyte range. So yeah, that’s a lot of traffic generated by a single site. Just to think, three years ago nobody even heard of YouTube.

What does this mean for you? If these predictions come to pass, without a major increase in capacity, you can expect to spend more time waiting for your Myspace profile to load. That means, of course,…
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10 easy ways to become a greener geek

By Nick, October 15, 2007

Today is Blog Action Day, where thousands of blogs worldwide are teaming up to raise awareness of environmental issues. I’ve been kicking around this article idea in my head for a while, but I figure that today is as good as any day to actually write it! Here are some simple simple ways to be more environmentally friendly with your computer and technology purchases. Some of these may be pretty obvious, but a refresher course never hurts.

Recycle

In many areas there are periodic electronic waste recycling collections. Also, check with your local city or county governments for any other computer recycling or reuse programs. Alternately, do a google search for such programs in your area. Some cities, such as Alameda, California, may have web sites set up with environmental information. Also, be on the lookout for cell phone and ink cartridge recycling programs.

Purchase with recycling in mind

Some computers, such as the current generation iMac, are designed with recycling in mind. In this case, the iMac makes heavy use of aluminum and glass, two highly-recyclable materials. Do what you can to check how recyclable the computer you’re interested in is.

Reuse when possible

Perhaps you have an older…
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Site news: Cast of Geeks returns for second season

By Nick, October 11, 2007

Cast of Geeks, the Deep Thought podcast, returns for season number two! In this episode we discuss the RIAA, iPhone lawsuits, gaming geekery, Leopard, and more.

Cast of Geeks is a (now) bi-weekly podcast where we discuss news and issues surrounding the tech world, as well as hold interviews and present other features.

Listen to this week’s episode - AAC “enhanced” podcast - 31.2 MB/67 minutes

Do you like what you hear? Subscibe to the podcast feed. Also visit our podcast page for a listing of all previous episodes. Lastly, you can visit our page on iTunes.

Do you want to contribute? Send an email to

Yahoo! Mail Beta is Beta No More

By Liam, October 9, 2007

Yahoo last week begun quietly transitioning their new AJAX-based webmail interface from beta status. This is going on while Yahoo! is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Yahoo! Mail, the initial user interface of which was still in use up until recently. Yahoo! is the third webmail provider to rewrite their interface in AJAX, behind Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail, and the second to create an interface that behaves like a desktop email client, behind WL Hotmail.

Users who wish to go back to the old interface may do so by clicking "Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic..." under the Options menu.

Deep Thought’s Take: Well, it’s good to see Yahoo! finish with this project for now, unlike some people (Google.) As for the interface itself, it is certainly full-featured, if a bit sluggish and ad-heavy. That’s the price to pay for unlimited storage of email messages, I guess.

More Info

Is Yahoo! dropping the beta from Yahoo! Mail Beta?

Yahoo! Mail

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How would you improve Microsoft’s services?

By UnnDunn, October 5, 2007

Larry Hryb (AKA Major Nelson), Xbox Live’s director of programming, recently posted an interesting question on his blog about what Microsoft doesn’t ‘get’ when it comes to designing and implementing new services.

This is the comment I made in response to that question. Let me know what you think.

I think Microsoft’s main problem is they think too logically and not emotionally enough when developing new services.
I like Microsoft’s products because of this (I’m an intensely logical, pragmatic person,) but I also recognize that a lot of people don’t like them for the same reason.
Take Zune and the Zune Pass for example. Pay a little bit every month, get access to millions of songs. But if you stop paying, you lose access to those songs. I love that kind of service; it’s totally logical and it makes sense to me as a great, cheap way to indulge my eclectic musical tastes. But lots of people hate it; all they see is that you pay and pay, and in the end you come away with “nothing”. That’s purely emotional, because you don’t come away with “nothing”, you come away having had the chance to listen to tons of great…
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