Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to watch the Olympics on the Internet

The simple way to watch the London Olympics is to just turn on your cable or satellite-connected TV and watch the NBC Olympics coverage on conventional television. If you want to watch the London Olympics via the Internet, though, things get complicated.

First, NBC’s “Live Extra” Internet Olympics coverage requires that you have a cable, satellite or telephone company TV, such as AT&T Uverse,  subscription that includes MSNBC and CNBC. If you get your TV purely over the Internet or over the air (OTA) with an antenna, you’re out of luck. You’re also not going to be watching the Olympics live over the Internet if you have a basic TV subscription that doesn’t include MSNBC or CNBC.

Think you’re ready to go? Not so fast, buddy. If you’re lucky, you’ll be “automatically” validated without needing to login in. Chances are though that you’ll need to jump through NBC’s Olympic hoops first.

How to watch the Olympics on the Internet. More >

July 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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Apple working on Google Glass rival?

Oh sure, you want to know about the latest iPhone 5 rumor or if Apple really going to come out with an Apple TV that’s not just a little black box, but what’s more exciting still is that Apple’s taking out patents on wearable computers, ala Google Glass.

According to Patently Apple, a site that tracks Apple’s patents, Apple has been toying with the idea of wearable computers since at least 2006. Indeed, wearable computers are far from a new idea. I first played with them in the 90s. But those were niche devices. It wasn’t until Google showed off with Google Glass in June 2012 at Google I/O that the idea of a heads-up computer display in your glasses captured the publics’ imagination.

Apple working on Google Glass rival? More >

July 26, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Blessings of Open Source for Small Business

Portland, OR: You may not think of yourself as an open-source software user, but if your business has any kind of a Web presence, you owe thanks to open source. That was one of the messages that Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, delivered at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), in his keynote speech, “The Clothesline Paradox: How Sharing Economies Create Value.”

In particular, O’Reilly said that open-source software creates great value for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). “An economy is an ecosystem,” O’Reilly said. “If you take more out than you put in, the economy fails,” citing such infamous figures as Bernard “Bernie” Madoff and Charles Ponzi. Still others, such as Internet and open-source pioneers as Vint Cerf, Linus Torvalds, and Dennis Ritchie,  understood that “We all do better when we all do better.”

The Blessings of Open Source for Small Business. More >

July 26, 2012
by sjvn01
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Twitter apologies

In a blog posting, following Twitter’s Thursday meltdown, Twitter VP of engineering, Mazen Rawashdeh, apologized for the social network’s failure.

“We are sorry. Many of you came to Twitter earlier today expecting, well, Twitter. Instead, between around 8:20am and 9:00am PT, users around the world got zilch from us. By about 10:25am PT, people who came to Twitter finally got what they expected: Twitter.”

So what happened? “The cause of today’s outage came from within our data centers.

Twitter apologies. More >