Author: Dr. Bill

OK, I am not sure if I believe this one. If it was April, I am sure I wouldn’t! This claims to be a car that was made by printing it on 3D printers, then gets 200 mpg highway/ 100 mpg city. Ummmm… you guys wouldn’t be pulling the ol’ Doctor’s leg, would ya?

Meet the Urbee Hybrid, The World’s First 3-D Printed Car

“Hybrid cars usually feature snazzy, high-tech designs, but few can compare with the Urbee — the first car to be manufactured entirely by 3-D printing. Developed by Kor Ecologic and Stratasys, the Urbee was created with an additive manufacturing process, whereby engineers add layers of printed material until finally arriving with a finished product — in this case, a whole car. As Fast Company explains, the car’s entire exterior (including the glass) was created from 3-D prints, with the help of Stratasys’s Dimension 3-D printers and a Fortus 3-D Production System.”

Okaaay! Sounds a little TOO wierd!

Kinda. Users can “approve” or “bundle” web site hits from Blekko.com’s searches. The site, “launched” on Monday, is kinda like a new version of the old DMOZ. In fact, it is done by the same group. Interesting. Will it replace Google? Doubtful.

Blekko Aims to Slash Away Shady Search Results

“Blekko, a new search engine that launched in beta Monday, uses a wiki-like model to deliver results. Volunteers work to categorize the Web by creating slashtags for topics and weeding out malware and spam sites. For searches that don’t fall within a slashtag category, Blekko uses its proprietary ranking algorithms to deliver relevant results from its Web crawl, which covers 3 billion pages.”

According to Baseline Magazine, “Younger employees’ use of social and collaborative technology actually lags behind that of older workers, according to a new survey from Citrix Online.” Interesting! So, us “Baby Boomer” geeks are more sociable than our younger “Gen Y” counterparts! Wow. Guess they are anti-social! Maybe it is because we remember social interaction with other humans before we were linked only by machines. Though some of us (like the Doctor) are more comfortable with machines (computers) than hooo-mons!

Surprising Trends in Social Media

“Younger employees’ use of social and collaborative technology actually lags behind that of older workers, according to a new survey from Citrix Online. The most enthusiastic adopters of social tools are older Baby Boomers, defined in the survey as those 55 years or older. These workers are texting and networking online in far greater numbers than their younger counterparts. The survey also focuses on generational attitudes about meetings and other workplace topics, and measures American attitudes against those held in other nations. ‘The workforce is more dispersed and mobile than ever,’ says Bernardo de Albergaria, vice president and general manager of global marketing and ecommerce at Citrix Online. ‘There is some tension with the findings between the way people actually work and the communication methods they think are most effective. Things are in flux.’ Forrester Consulting conducted the survey for Citrix, overseeing an online survey of nearly 800 information workers evenly split among the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Australia.”

I have Vudu on my Visio Blu-Ray Player at home. It is pretty cool! In fact, my Player came with $15.00 in free rentals, which I have to use before the end of this month! So, I had better get busy this weekend and watch some stuff! Anyway, the Boxee Box looks cool… but, I am leaning toward the Roku box… more on that when I finally get one, or the other! The bottom line is, the future is Streaming Video on the Internet (IPTV!) You have heard it here on the Doctor’s Blog for years!

Right Place, Right Time: Vudu streaming movie service hits Boxee

“Streaming video on demand service Vudu will be available on all forms of Boxee in November, the company announced Thursday. This partnership will put a Vudu client on both the D-Link Boxee Box and the Boxee media center software for PC and Mac.

The service offers 480p, 720p, and 1080p HD movie rentals, and gets many movies in conjunction with their DVD launch. Though the service first launched as a standalone set top box back in 2007, it eventually became a video solution embedded in TVs and connected Blu-ray players.

Vudu’s shift to being an embedded service looks to have been timed perfectly, and it is now available on products from LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Vizio. In early 2010, Vudu was acquired by Wal-Mart, cementing its place in the burgeoning for-pay video streaming market alongside Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Blockbuster.

Now, with a place in the Boxee Box, Vudu finds itself again in the right place at the right time. Set top boxes that stream content ‘over the top’ (OTT) of an internet connection are hot items right now, and Boxee will be competing with Google TV and the Logitech Revue set top box, Apple’s newly redesigned AppleTV, and Roku’s streaming media player, now sold in retail through Netgear.”

So, there has long been a “fuss” among Linux wonks about “KDE?” or “Gnome?” Well, Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) say, “Unity!” The new Unity interface is built on Gnome, but it is different! Interesting choice, Canonical!

Ubuntu drops GNOME in favor of homegrown Unity UI

“The ‘Unity’ user interface that debuted in Ubuntu 10.10’s Netbook Edition will be standard on the next version of the Ubuntu Desktop Edition as well. Ubuntu Desktop 11.04 will replace the Linux distribution’s default GNOME desktop environment in favor of the multitouch-enabled Unity interface, says Ubuntu sponsor Canonical.

Making the announcement at a keynote Oct. 25 at Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Fla., Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, said Ubuntu Desktop 11.04 will swap out the GNOME user interface in favor of the Unity interface that is now available on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition (UNE).
‘We conceived some work a time ago focused on netbooks that we want to bring to desktops,’ Shuttleworth said.

Canonical introduced Unity, the multitouch interface, this month with Ubuntu 10.10 (‘Maverick Meerkat’) UNE. Unity gives users 3D graphics support and better touchscreen enablement. The desktop/laptop version of Ubuntu 10.10 still has the long-standing GNOME 2.2 interface by default.”

I have finished an “upfit,” and “re-branding,” of the Dr. Bill.TV web site! It is the new “go to” place for Dr. Bill -The Computer Curmudgeon videos! It would be REALLY great if you would consider subscribing to this feed for the new, re-launched show! If you go to the site, you will see lot’s of ways to subscribe at the bottom of the main page. Enjoy the geekiness!

Dr. Bill.TV Web Site

More stuff coming soon on the next Netcast! Stay tuned!

Also, feel free to “spam” your friends with email about how strange, silly, and high tech weird the Dr. Bill Show is!

Limewire has been shutdown. And, I must admit, I am not disturbed by that. I have cleaned up tons o’ PCs of my friends that, after using Limewire, became severely infected from bogus crapware that came through Limewire! After a four-year legal battle… they have been ordered to close up shop.

Limewire shut down after four-year patent infringement battle

“After an arduous four years in and out of the courtroom, battling the RIAA over copyright infringement accusations, peer to peer file sharing service Limewire has finally been shut down. The RIAA’s suit against Limewire was part of a sweeping initiative to curb the trade of copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer networks. In 2005, the group sent cease and desist letters to the owners of major p2p services including Kazaa, WinMX, i2Hub, eDonkey, BearShare, and LimeWire. The orders demanded the services ‘immediately cease-and-desist from enabling and inducing the infringement of RIAA member sound recordings,’ but gave the services the option to discuss ‘pre-litigation resolutions.’ Most services complied, such as Kazaa, which offered a $115 million settlement. The RIAA eventually had to haul Limewire into court. ‘Despite numerous efforts to engage LimeWire, the site’s corporate owners have shown insufficient interest in developing a legal business model that adequately respects copyrights,’ the RIAA said at the time. After a protracted court battle, US District Court Judge Kimba Wood handed down her summary judgement in favor of the RIAA last May. As it turned out, the RIAA’s legal team presented Limewire’s ‘smoking gun’ in court back in 2008: e-mail communications that showed the service was built with the illegality of file sharing taken fully into account. Today, the service was shut down.”