iRobot, makers of the popular Roomba vacuum robot, have announced that they will be releasing Scooba before the Holidays to vacuum, mop, and dry hard surface floors.

My brother, Derek, is an acknowledged expert in crime mapping (see his web site: CriminalBehavior.org; and his book: Spatial Aspects of Crime), so I pay attention to things like crime mapping software. Google recently released Google Maps and now you can see week-delayed crime stats for Chicago visually via …

I know it's been a long time since the Feds and Microsoft finished their row over Microsoft's monopolistic practices, and I understand that the Court of Appeals "let Microsoft off" with a slap on the wrist after basically reducing Thomas Penfield Jackson's original decree null-and-void. However, I'm thinking that it …

As they say in the Circus, "And now for something completely different!" According to this article from Reuters, Portugal is going to be the proud recipient of the world's first production power generation plant to use tidal power. Ocean Power Delivery, a company based in Edinburgh, Scotland and owned partially …

Don't bother trying to do any anonymous surfing in the library in Naperville, IL after the beginning of the summer. As a matter of fact, don't borrow your friend's library card either, because it won't work. Starting in June, the library will be replacing their library card+PIN security system …

So, you're probably wondering why it took so long for me to write this, aren't you? Well, I was taken a bit by surprise by the fact that I actually thoroughly enjoyed the third (sixth) installment of the Star Wars trilogy (the second, er, first one). I did find out …

In a major coup for NetFlix, Walmart has bowed out of the mail-order DVD rental business by entering into a marketing relationship with NetFlix. According to a BusinessWeek article, BlockBuster, the other main competitor, may be looking at raising prices or leaving the market altogether in order to cut costs …

OK, after a couple of weeks out, Carol and I are back in the country and had a great time in Scotland (although the next trip out of the country will likely not include driving 1973 miles on the wrong side of the road in a country that believes in …

Computer reseller TigerDirect (link intentionally left off so that the Google spiders don't think I'm here pushing their site ranking up) has filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple which id detailed in this MacMerc article (including PDFs of the court documents). Frankly, the timing looks like nothing more than …

According to an article from Wired, the State Department is indicating that they may be considering more secure methods for adding RFID capability to the US Passport. The current frontrunner is an idea called BAC (Basic Access Control) that will require reading of a key from the inside of the …

Coming "soon" in Longwait, er, Longhorn (the next version of Microsoft Windows--due in December,2006) will be Metro, Microsoft's free-licensed printing file format intended to go head-to- head with PDF and PostScript (the venerable, and completely free, de facto standards from Adobe), according to an article from ComputerWorld. I'm not …

It appears that T-Mobile has realized that it's better to educate customers than to try and pull the wool over their eyes. Recently available is Personal Coverage Check that provides realistic (even pessimistic) coverage information to the street level. Those of you who know my address or are familiar with …

I gotta hand it to Symantec. Despite their blunderous and fearmongering assessment of the pending onset of tragic and multiple Macintosh viruses (no doubt aimed at rescuing flagging sales of their Macintosh products), they seem to be keeping their word on leaving the SecurityFocus free to editorialize as they wish …

Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the last few weeks knows that Apple's releasing Tiger this Friday, with an event at each of their stores (starting with the new Birmingham, England store to kick the event off). Meanwhile, Microsoft is slowly readying Longhorn (the next major revision of …

OK, this is really esoteric, so if you're not a Macintosh OS X Server administrator, just go ahead and skip it. I decided to get the 10.3.9 upgrade and Security Update 2005-003 out of the way today before leaving to go out of the country. Of course, I …

If you're a networking geek (and I know some of you are), you may be interested in this deal from WildPackets (Mahboud's company) for EtherPeek in all of its various flavors. Now, for $99 you can get a pretty darned nice packet decoder and capture product with a GUI. True …

There is an absolutely brilliant animation, obviously done by somebody in Europe, on software patents. With the exception of the (gasp!) photographic representation of Richard Stallman (of the FSF, with whom I generally do not share views). But, the point is still valid that software patents are (in their current …

Somebody put together a nice summary for the Apple finance information from the last report.

As is customary, the internet is rife with April Fools day jokes on April 1. Anyone who doesn't have a strong stomach for a (mostly bad) joke, should probably stay off the net until April 2. Personally, I don't tend to post anything on the "Pages" on April 1 that …

Well, the folks at Gizmodo are now showing us a picture of the pop-up ads that are being/will be presented by TiVo during fast forwards, and they're huge. They take up a quarter of the screen. Unfortunately, the center quarter of the screen. Ouch!