People sometimes ask me “How do you keep up with new technology?” and seem surprised when I reply “I read web sites.” How can they be surprised? I mean web sites are easy to publish and most of the ones that I choose to read update on an daily, if not hourly, basis… there’s no printing involved, no time to market – you change a file on a server and *bam* the page is instantly available. Maybe it’s what I read that’s key…
One of the sites that I read often is FurryGoat.com – since it’s run by a friend of mine (Steve, being the inspiration and blame of this very blog) I usually know what he’s posted before it hits the site (thanks to E-mail and IM, which is faster than the web!), but because it sends up there anyway, I’m a reader. A site that I get information for the Pocket PC world is more of a Usenet type forum, with other Geeks like me posting and flaming respectively, and that’s Brighthand. You’ll also find me reading HowardForums for help – and offering help – on my phone-of-the-day, which in this case is the Samsung S105. iPod specific news comes from places like iPoding. For international tech news, I use InfoSync, which usually gets updated during the overnight, and covers all types of Geek news. Lastly, for domestic software, hardware and all around GeekGossip, I use NeoWin.
See, I had planned to talk about NeoWin before, but as they’ve been open for over two years now, they’re in a period of transition… stay open and handle the onslaught of users, or call it a “day” move on to other hobbies? Consequently they’ve been up and down for the last couple of months, but it seems like they have a new home are going to stay running, at least for the shorter term… this is a great thing. Like I said, they cover all types of stories and seem to be non-biased to any one OS or machine type. They cover Linux, they cover Microsoft, they cover Mac – and they are opinionated as well. When something sucks, they will say it sucks regardless of who made it – this type of news is invaluable.
Lastly, iPoding had some interesting news today, and that was with regards to the “now-famous” Switch’r Ellen Feiss. Seems that someone (the Brown University school newspaper) finally interviewed her, about her sudden fame. I’m not sure if this woman is a stoner type or not, but she’s definitely not aware of her success or GeekFame that has gone along with the Apple campaign. When asked “Did Apple compensate you for the commercial at all?” Ellen responds with, “I’m not actually sure how much I got paid because it was in installments, and the whole contract was dealt with by my parents, so I’m not actually sure. Oh, and I got an iPod. Its like the coolest thing ever.”
Ellen, you are the voice of the next generation.