helience.com

OK. Now, to be fair, I haven’t tested the monitor yet. There could be many hidden benefits I’m not yet privy to–performance and power consumption being chief among the possibilities. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any of those boons when I review the monitor in a couple of weeks. For now, check out the slideshow.

So that long-winded setup brings me to the HP 2009m: a 20-inch, 16:9 monitor with a maximum resolution of 1600×900. As a rule, 16:10 monitors at 20 inches have a max resolution of 1680×1050. So with a monitor this small, what’s the real benefit in going to 16:9? Sure, high-def content (1080 and 720p) will fit better, but will there really be a huge difference in quality and in the experience you have?

I have a question: is having a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor (as opposed to 16:10) really all that beneficial? The answer is, “It depends.”

Now, I just got the HP 2009m in this week and, while it’s definitely pleasing to the eye, it doesn’t boast many improvements over the HP w2007 we reviewed a couple years back–unless you consider 16:9 on a 20-inch monitor an improvement, since the w2007 had a 16:10 aspect ratio and 1680×1050 resolution. On HP’s site, the newer 2009m costs $20 more. Are we really expected to pay $20 more (yes, a small difference, but still) for a lower-resolution monitor?

HP 2009m photos

(Credit:
CBS Interactive)

So, clearly, for certain screen sizes there are resolution benefits to 16:9. Also, with a monitor capable of 1080p (1920×1080) resolution, you’ll get to watch 1080p, high-definition content without it getting stretched or shrunk to fit the screen.

On the flip side, a 16:9, 24-incher’s max resolution is 1920×1080; however, a 16:10, 24-inch monitor has a higher native resolution of 1920×1200. To complicate matters a bit, Dell’s smaller, 16:9 SP2309W is a 23-inch display with a 2048×1152 resolution.

If we’re talking strictly about resolution benefits, the specific size of the screen matters greatly. For example, a 16:9, 21.5-inch monitor has a native resolution of 1920×1080, whereas a 16:10, 22-incher tops out at 1680×1050. That’s an extra 309,600 pixels you’d have at your disposal on the 21.5-incher. Gaming, movies, Photoshop–virtually all apps would benefit from more pixels. Yes, even porn. Or so I hear…ahem.

Have a great weekend!

In other news, Dell was all over the product rumors, with reports that the follow-up to the Latitude XT tablet is on its way, plus more leaked details on its rumored business-focused Latitude E Series. In actual product news, Asus announced a 15-inch multimedia laptop, while apparently a 13.3-inch HP Pavilion dv3000 will hit Asia in May.

We were feeling nostalgic at Crave this week; how else to explain our two backward-looking posts? First, Brooke Crothers takes a look at super-slender laptops (aka MacBook Air rivals) past and present. And Emily Shurr takes us on a photographic tour of the earliest portable computers. Enjoy!

Finally, our own Matt Elliott rounds up some of our favorite 17-inch laptops; be sure to let us know your favorites in comments on his post.

The continuous forward march of solid-state drives hit a speed bump this week, with an analyst making headlines by declaring that many flash-based drives are being returned for poor performance and outright failure. Dell, the company implicated in the analyst’s report, quickly denied that it was seeing high failure rates. Toshiba, unphased, announced a notebook with a 128GB solid-state drive for the Japanese market.

The field of small fries is starting to look a little crowded…

Small fries everywhere! A bunch of this week’s news focused on tiny laptops of the Eee PC variety: the Intel Classmate PC will reportedly hit U.S. and European retailers; photos of a possible “netbook” surfaced on Flickr; and we saw an Eee PC competitor for the Taiwanese market (release date unknown). Meanwhile, the tiny tablet-smartphone hybrid, the HTC Shift, became available for pre-order on Amazon; we have one in hand and posted a full review today.

Phew! There’s no indication of a slowdown, either, if reports of ultra-low-priced Intel Atom CPUs for netbooks are accurate. Bring on the smallies!

With the acquisition, Technorati says it hopes to help Blogcritics contributors make some money, as well as scale the property to give it more reach. “As part of Technorati Media, we’ll be able to grow the community and further improve our platform to attract new audiences,” Blogcritics founder Eric Olsen said in a release. “Technorati’s mission to help bloggers and people who read blogs is the ideal complement for us.”

Technorati Media, parent company of blog search site Technorati, has acquired Blogcritics.org. The newly purchased site is a user-fueled “online magazine” for bloggers that was already a member of the newish Technorati Media ad network.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Technorati has said that it plans to keep Blogcritics an intact, separate property.

Acquiring content properties, however, likely won’t change the fact that Technorati has been losing ground to Mountain View, Calif.-powered Google Blog Search and (to an extent) the search feature that Twitter built into its technology when it bought Summize. Technorati founder David Sifry has long since left the company, and he’s now at the helm of a new start-up called Offbeat Guides.

A Windows Mobile 6.1 software update has also been released for the Sprint Mogul, which brings support for Sprint TV as well. This adds to the EV-DO Rev. A boost, advanced GPS capabilities, and Task Manager tool that were distributed in a previous software upgrade. The WM 6.1 update is available for download here.

The Windows Mobile 6.1 updates have been slow to roll out to current Windows Mobile smartphones, but looks like today is the lucky day for Sprint
HTC Touch owners. Available for download from HTC’s Web site, the software update doesn’t just bring the latest mobile operating system. You also get upgraded to EV-DO Rev. A; advanced GPS with support for Sprint Navigation; the Opera Mobile Web browser; and a full onscreen QWERTY keyboard. Hey, not too shabby. And remember, be sure to back up all your data and files before you download that update, otherwise it all goes bye-bye.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks) Update: July 21, 2008, 11:42 a.m., PT: This post has been updated with information about the Sprint Mogul software upgrade.

HTC Touch for Sprint

(Sources: WMExperts via Boy Genius Report)

UPDATED: 6 p.m.

That’s a one word summary of Microsoft’s statement Sunday rebutting Google’s statement earlier in the day that said Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo could raise antitrust concerns.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that Yahoo is considering some type of tie-up with Google, potentially something smaller than an all-out acquisition. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt phoned Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang on Friday to discuss how to avoid a Microsoft takeover, either by offering money or guaranteed revenue in exchange for Yahoo outsourcing its advertising to Google, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. A Google spokesman said the company had no comment on the report, and Yahoo representatives could not be reached for comment.

“The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising,” Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith said in a statement. “The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet.”

Smith argues that Google already has three-quarters of the paid search market and about two-thirds of U.S. search queries and 85 percent in Europe.

Nu-uhhh.

Guillaume Lebleu has written an insightful analysis of how to determine how or if to open source one’s software. Basically, he suggests that one should segment a market into those able or interested in paying money for software, and open source accordingly:

By elaborating on the simple notion of “why giveaway something you can charge for”, I developed [a methodology] to help me discuss the decision with my colleagues. The idea is to not view open source as an all or nothing strategy, but rather as a marketing technique to segment your market and maximize revenue, except that in the open source case, the revenue is mostly intangible.

commentary

He then proceeds to move beyond the overly simplistic “Don’t charge small companies, do charge big companies” methodology to introduce a third component: Those who have no budget to spend but can provide other value. It’s a useful thought, and one that jibes well with Fabrizio’s contention that one should not upsell a community.

As MySQL is demonstrating, more thought needs to go into open-source licensing models for commercial open-source vendors. It’s not just a matter of selling support.

I bet you just can’t wait.

And still there is no sign of the one thing the world needs most: a picture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s Argentinian lover.

So I prefer to think of this as a technological exercise, a mixed martial-arts battle of the search engines.

The people have googled. The people have binged.

It is a little sad that the media is pitching its large and very moral tent outside Ms. Shapur’s Buenos Aires apartment. Somehow, affairs of the heart don’t always seem the most appropriate subjects for public conjecture. It’s just that they’re so deeply exciting that we cannot prevent our more fundamental instincts from taking over.

According to Fox 5 in New York, “maria belen shapur photo” was one of the top searches on the Web of intrigue Thursday. And according to Google Trends, “mark sanford mistress photo” rounds out the top 10 Google searches at the moment. Yet no trace has been found of the governor’s taste in clandestine lovers.

(Credit: CC Mark Licht Notions Capital.com/Flickr)

Will Google have it first? Will Bing’s decisive algorithm slap its more vaunted rival across the chops and proclaim triumph? It may only be a matter of milliseconds. But in the search business, milliseconds count.

commentary (Credit:
Lighthead Software)

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu. The menu now has a sub-menu for deactivating Caffeine automatically after a number of minutes.

Verdict? It’s awesome. Get it now. It’s not open source, but it is freeware.

It’s super easy to use and does one thing extremely well:

Ever in the middle of a presentation and the
Mac screen dims or your Mac goes to sleep? Yes, you can go in and edit your preferences to avoid this, or you can get Caffeine.

Ecomodder.com, which launched in December, is host to hundreds of members who use the site to share ideas. Their cars might not look like hot rods, but these ecomodders say their modded cars are saving them a bundle on gas.

(Credit:
Michael Turner)

The car shown here looks a little “Back to the Future,” but it’s an example of an ecomodded car–in this case a 1992 Honda Civic. Its owner, Michael Turner, spent $400 on materials at the hardware store. But he says he gets up to 74 miles per gallon in the summer. A Civic from that era might normally achieve an average of 33 miles per gallon.

Check out some other ecomods in our photo gallery over at CNET News.com.

Frustrated with automakers’ inability (or refusal) to build more fuel-efficient
cars? So-called ecomodders are taking matters into their own hands, tweaking their cars to get better gas mileage. Ecomodders take common parts from junkyards and hardware shops to make their cars more aerodynamic.

“We carefully manage access to confidential information of any sort, and very few Googlers have access to what we consider very sensitive data. This is in no small part because there’s very little reason for us to provide that access–most of our processes are automated, and don’t require much human intervention. Of course, the limited number of people who are granted access to sensitive data must have special approval,” he wrote.

Douglas Merrill

He said that the company is developing its own security software, particularly to address areas such as large-scale computing and automation.

On the Official Google Blog, Douglas Merrill, a vice president of engineering, spelled out the company’s philosophy, processes, and technology that the company employs for security.

(Credit:
Google)

Google described on Tuesday how it secures the mountains of data that it handles every day, saying that it has highly automated processes and employs the best and brightest in Web security.

Google’s processes are set up so that sensitive personal information can only be viewed by exception, Merrill said.