On The Geek News: Apple slashes the price of its top of the line MacBook Air by $500!

Apple Inc. has quietly reduced the price of its most expensive notebook by $500, cutting the cost of the upper-end MacBook Air to $2,598.

The MacBook Air, which Apple launched in January to some fanfare, has been sold in two configurations since then: with a traditional 80GB magnetic platter hard drive and a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, or with a 64GB solid-state drive and a 1.8-GHz CPU. Solid-state drives (SSD) are built from flash memory and, unlike hard drives, have no moving parts.

The price cut means that the SSD-equipped MacBook Air is no longer Apple's most expensive notebook. That honor has now passed to the 17-in. MacBook Pro, which continues to sell for $2,799 in its default configuration.

This is an exciting development as I've always wanted to own a MacBook Air, but even with the $500 price drop, it's still quite an investment.

However, the form factor and the sheer geekiness of the MacBook Air certainly appeals to me!

I guess I just need to manage my finances better, ha!

In Geekiness,
Benj

Robotic Snakes

I came across an interesting piece of news today, apparently, robotic snakes are being developed to crawl up pipes and other areas normally inaccessible to humans! Yep, it's true.

The Sintef Group, a research company based in Trondheim, Norway, announced that it's designing a robot based on, what else? The snake. I mean, I've heard of robots in space, like the Mars Lander, vacuum cleaner robots and robotic dogs but this is a first!

The 1.5-meter long robots, which are made of aluminum, are being designed to inspect and clean complicated industrial pipe systems that are typically narrow and inaccessible to humans. The intelligent robots have multiple joints to enable them to twist vertically and climb up through pipe systems to locate leaks in water systems, inspect oil and gas pipelines and clean ventilation systems.

Hmmm, they'd probably need to carry a shotgun and pizza if they're inspecting the sewers of New York....

A shotgun if they encounter rats...

And a pizza if they encounter Michaelangelo and the rest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! :)

In Geekiness,
Benj

Survey: More than 10,000 laptops lost each week at airports (YIKES!)

According to the Ponemon Institute, in a survey result released today, more than 10,000 laptops are lost each week (not each month!) at major US airports. Close to 10,278 laptops are reported lost every week at 36 of the largest U.S. airports, and 65% of those laptops are not reclaimed, the survey said. Around 2,000 laptops are recorded lost at the medium-size airports, and 69% are not reclaimed. The institute conducted field surveys at 106 airports in 46 states and surveyed 864 business travelers.

Further, according to the survey, travelers seem to lack confidence that they will ever recover lost laptops. About 77% of people surveyed said they had no hope of recovering a lost laptop at the airport, with 16% saying they wouldn't do anything if they lost their laptop during business travel. A whopping 53% said that laptops contain confidential company information, with 65% taking no steps to protect the information.

While the numbers seem too high to be believable, particularly since the survey was commissioned by a laptop manufacturer (DELL), still, the implications are pretty chilling if you're the IT manager or ISO assigned to a company whose employees lost these laptops. From a management perspective, the loss of the laptop itself is an acceptable but regrettable occurrence, however, the loss of the DATA is the one which causes IT managers sleepless nights and negligent employees given their walking papers!

As an ISO or IT manager, what can you do to mitigate the potential impact of the loss of these laptops (often with highly confidential information) contained in its drives?

1. Encryption - there are a plethora of industrial strength encryption solutions which allow users or the IT department to enforce encryption for the whole disk or selected volumes. An open source solution, TrueCrypt, is a very good encryption product for small or medium sized businesses who are particularly cost conscious. Thus, even with the loss or theft of a laptop, you're assured that the data is useless to whoever finds the laptop.
   
2. Tracking software - currently, some security companies are offering services and software to track the location of a laptop once it gets connected to the internet. This might be a worthwhile investment if there are a large number of laptops utilized by a company and the majority of these are brought outside the company premises.
   
3. Remote HD wipes - another security option is a a remote disk wipe which the owner can trigger once the laptop connects to the internet. This will ensure that all of the data is deleted securely from the lost laptop.
4. Plain common sense - as the saying goes, common sense isn't that common! Treat laptops like cash and don't leave it hanging around where somebody can snatch it up either by mistake or more likely, deliberately!

Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot 8.1 megapixel camera phone

My mouth was drooling as I saw this news item as I'm a huge Sony Ericsson fan! Wow an 8.1 MP camera phone... Geez, that's better than my digital camera which is only a measly 6 MP in resolution!


C905 camera highlights

- 8.1 megapixel camera
- Autofocus
- Image stabilizer
- Assised GPS for geo-tagging of photos
- Xenon flash
- Face detection. Auto focus on faces in frame
- Smart contrast for more correct exposure

C905 seems a little large, especially the depth. Dimensions are (height, width, depth) 104 x 49 x 18 mm which are actually a little smaller than the comparable Nokia N95. The navigation menu should be familiar for many as it is the same found in earlier Sony Ericsson phones including my now apparently obsolete SE P1i... :(

In any event, can't wait for this phone to come out so that I can get my grubby little hands on it. I'll be in Geek heaven, hehe...

In Geekiness,
Benj

Australian man sells his life for $382K on eBay...

Wow! This news struck me as definitely of the weirder variety. Apparently an Australian man, Ian Usher, 44, sold everything he owned on eBay for a little more than $382,000 in an online auction that ended yesterday. He was aiming for $500K but I guess he'll settle for the $380K, ha!

I mean how does that work? Mr. Usher just walks away from everything and everybody that he knows and never looks back? According to the news item, he plans to just up and leave everything, his apartment, his job, his friends and whatever assets he has...

And what does the buyer get? Obviously, the assets like the apartment and car and other tangibles can be ascribed a certain value but what does he got for Mr. Usher's life? As far as I know Mr. Usher retains his identity (it's probably illegal to sell it anyway!) so logically that wouldn't have been part of the deal...

Kinda makes you wonder what's the next thing that could be sold on eBay...

Hmmm, I kind of envy the man, leaving everything behind and getting paid for it sounds like a good deal to me.... sometimes, but the life that I have isn't that desperate... yet! :)

As long as I have my laptop, cellphone, PSP, PS3 and Wii, life's good!

In Geekiness,
Benj

Welcome to my little corner of cyberspace...

Geek news

Technology has always fascinated me ever since I was a young boy... My earliest memories of tinkering with robots (albeit the plastic kind), my love affair with Voltes V, Mazinger Z, Daimos and other anime-style robots in the Questor universe in the late 70's and early 80's have nurtured that fascination as well. I can still recall my first ATARI game and my first encounter with a MAC! :)

Right now, I'm in my 30's and guess what? I'm working as an IT manager (surprise!) and I'm still a geek!

I hope that with this blog, I can connect with other geeks and non-geeks and keep you guys updated on what's happening in technology, weird and interesting news and other interesting tidbits of information. I'll also share some proven tips in IT management and what's going on in my professional and private life and just plain have some fun, GEEK Style!

In Geekiness,
Benj