ben lowery

From Florin
Lazar’s WebLog, a link to a piece
on grey market items and the crazy prices you sometimes find from online retailers. 
I’ve dealt with similar vendors for computer parts in the past, and my only
advice is to do some research on whomever you’re going to buy from first and
if you have any doubts at all, order from a reputable vendor instead.  The extra
money is not worth the headache of unusable rebates, void warranties, and no customer
support. 

 From jwz & Wired:

“Adobe Systems acknowledged Friday it quietly added technology to the
world’s best-known graphics software at the request of government regulators and international
bankers to prevent consumers from making copies of the world’s major currencies.”

Scott Hanselman picked up on the new MSN Direct watches by Fossil and posted
his review. It looks pretty neat, if extremely dorky.  It’s a watch
that uses the FM band to send and receive information that you subscribe to. 
Things like stock quotes, weather information, and other random stuff.  It integrates
with Microsoft’s Passport and can integrate to some degree with Outlook. 
Neato.

Saw this via Gizmodo: Alex
Salkever compares the miniPod’s introduction to Spinal Tap’s famous
“it goes to 11” scene.  I have to say, I completely agree. 
I own a 10 gig iPod and when the battery
dies, I’m not sure what I’m going to replace it with.  It certainly
won’t be a miniPod, especially at that price.

 It’s good to know I’m not the only one who finds the lack of editorial
excellent a problem.

Like everybody else, I was checking out the
new MSN home page and I clicked over to the
tour. And right there as their top headline in the sample web page, it says, “Wierd
items of the future”.

Ahem. It’s spelled w-e-i-r-d.

And on all of the MSN properties, like local
city guides, you can see MSN’s new motto: “More Useful Everyday”.

Um, another spelling error. That should read “More Useful Every Day”. When used as
a single word, “everyday” is an adjective, not an adverb. Like “An everyday event”.

I’ll stick with My Yahoo,
thanks the same. At least they know how to spell.

[The Old
New Thing]