Xbox 360 Reviews are not hard to come by, but can be hard to understand and difficult to maneuver through if you are not familiar with technical jargon. While most Xbox 360 reviewers are self-professed “tech geeks,” many gamers merely want to play a game and know what console to buy.
For this reason, I’d like [...]
No call center is complete without a predictive dialer. They allow agents involved in sales or marketing to make enormous volumes of outbound calls with the assistance of computer technology.
Using a set of algorithms, the predictive dialer can predict the number of calls which will be answered and the availability of agents. It does this [...]
Here’s the scenario…….
You’re planning planning ahead for a consolidation of your business phone systems including a potential move of your headquarters to a new building.
Currently your company has 300 employees and operates in 15 locations:
- 6 warehouse locations with business offices (~30 - 50 employees each)
- 1 small warehouse (5 employees)
- 2 business offices (~10 [...]
Although most people think only of the white or clear stones when they think of diamonds, the gems come in a large variety of colors.
The clear diamonds are the most popular and one of the less expensive forms of the jewel.
Other colors
The other colors, some of which are rare, also provide beautiful settings.
The most common [...]
Stevie T asked: Hey! I’m in the UK and have downloaded a few programmes that I can’t get here and would like to know how to upload British shows for friends in the States.
Would like to know how to do in HDTV which includes the sound as well as the great picture quality, does [...]
pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”FitPCSlim.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/FitPCSlim.jpg” width=”394″ height=”291″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”" //span/p pMiniaturised computers, while offering clear convenience from a portability point of view, have never really taken off. /p pThe Mac Mini looked pretty neat but didn’t exactly set the world alight, and on the PC side we’ve seen compact small form factor machines that are often used as media servers that again have limited appeal./pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/1eab1dc/mf.gif’ border=’0′/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0′trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/18/fitpc_unveils_worlds_smallest.htmllink=Fit-PC Unveils World’s Smallest PC: What’s It For?” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/18/fitpc_unveils_worlds_smallest.htmllink=Fit-PC Unveils World’s Smallest PC: What’s It For?” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/19345361574/f/9581/c/552/s/32158172/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/19345361574/f/9581/c/552/s/32158172/a2.img” border=”0″//a
We had just mentioned Scott Harrison a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080910/0408132224.shtml”recently/a as an extreme example of patent attorneys getting their own patents and suing. In Harris’ case, the a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071019/020936.shtml”trouble began/a when it was discovered that he (through a shell company) was even filing patent infringement lawsuits against some of the clients of his own law firm. He was fired and a lawsuit quickly followed. That lawsuit was a href=”http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/08/scott-harris-v-fish-richardson-litigation-is-settled.html”settled/a just last month, and Harris wasted little time a href=”http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/09/harris-mce-lawsuit.html” target=”_new”suing more companies over his patents/a. In this case, the patents in question involved a a href=”http://www.google.com/patents?id=x8QOAAAAEBAJ”system/a and a a href=”http://www.google.com/patents?id=w_gVAAAAEBAJ”method/a for making use of traffic data on a GPS system. He’s sued eight GPS makers, claiming there are “a lot of companies are infringing my patent.”
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Interestingly, he also notes: “When I thought of this and tried to put it into practice, it was pure science fiction.” That would seem to raise questions about the legitimacy of his patents. If it was pure science fiction, then it would suggest that he wasn’t able to put it into practice (and, certainly, he does not seem to be actively engaged in the market). If that’s the case, then he would have effectively just patented “science fiction” and is now suing the companies that actually figured out how to turn science fiction into reality. Since they’re the ones who made the leap (and took the risk in building the products and bringing them to market), why should Harris get to put a tax on them?
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It’s definitely been cool to see various musicians embracing aspects of the business models that we discuss around here concerning using free music to improve your business model — but what would be even more exciting is seeing an ecosystem of companies start to spring up in order to support and enable this type of activity (and, no, we’re not talking about a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080912/1514312256.shtml”MySpace Music/a). For a while we’ve seen platforms like Sellaband, ArtistShare and BandStocks, that help in some ways, and now we’re seeing a new generation of platform providers. Earlier this year, we mentioned a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080623/0154541476.shtml”TopSpin’s platform/a, which appears targeted at bigger bands, providing them with a platform for embracing these new models. And now, a href=”http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/09/17/so-this-one-time-at-bandcamp/”Mathew Ingram/a points us to the a href=”http://waxy.org/2008/09/bandcamp_launch/” target=”_new”launch of Bandcamp, which makes it easy for a band to set up their own website/a.
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It was created by the guys who did Oddpost, which a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040709/1736254.shtml”became/a Yahoo Mail. Basically, it’s a system to make it incredibly easy for bands to set up their own website, streaming all their tracks (none of this 30-second-soundbite stuff), and then offer a variety of ways for people to download the music — either for free, for a set price or at pay-what-you-want. The site takes care of all of the encoding (you just upload lossless files and it creates a bunch of different options). Basically, it’s designed to give the bands a lot more options than just having a MySpace page. Also, the concept of sharing the music is a big part of it, as the songs come with embeddable players that can easily be placed on websites with a few clicks. And, for the band, it provides detailed stats, including how many people are downloading each track (including whether they completed the download) and where the songs are being embedded.
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As a critique, right now, all of the band sites I’m seeing on Bandcamp look generically similar, which may be a limitation. Also, you would think some community tools would be useful, as well as enabling other aspects of new business models beyond just selling music (such as buying tickets to concerts, or tiered support offerings). However, obviously the site just launched, so hopefully these types of improvements are in the plans. As an example, you can check out the Bandcamp page for the band a href=”http://themonolith.bandcamp.mu/”Monolith/a, or see the embedded player here:
center
object classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ width=”400″ height=”100″
param name=”movie” value=”http://bandcamp.mu/EmbeddedPlayer.swf/album=4168832345/”
/paramparam name=”quality” value=”high”/paramparam name=”bgcolor” value=”#FFFFFF”/paramparam name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”
embed src=”http://bandcamp.mu/EmbeddedPlayer.swf/album=4168832345/” width=”400″ height=”100″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” quality=high bgcolor=#FFFFFF allowScriptAccess=always
/embednoembeda href=”http://themonolith.bandcamp.mu/album/meet-you-at-the-monolith”The Sounding by The Monolith/a/noembed
/param/object
/center
Either way, what’s exciting is to see this infrastructure being built up to support bands embracing these types of models. For too long, people have complained that what we talk about is too difficult because bands just want to make music, rather than focus on building websites. Well, now they don’t have to worry so much about that part.
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The really sad part, though, is that the things that TopSpin and Bandcamp are doing are iexactly/i what the big record labels ishould/i have been doing five or even ten years ago to help bands embrace the opportunity of the internet. Instead, they continued to claim the internet was a threat, and have suffered because of it. Luckily, these days, if an old obsolete business insists on ignoring opportunities, others can step in and provide those services instead.
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Last week, we wrote about yet another problem with Sequoia e-voting equipment where the company was a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080912/1346342255.shtml”vehemently denying/a the problem was with the machines, even saying: “There’s absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No.” Of course, this came right after a report revealing how easy it was to a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080909/2333082218.shtml”hack/a their machines, as well as a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080404/085851751.shtml”numerous/a other a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061103/095309.shtml”problems/a with Sequoia machines. Yet the company consistently employs the same exact strategy: it couldn’t possibly be the fault of the machines.
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You may recall the story earlier this month about the Sequoia optical scanning machines in Palm Beach County that supposedly a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080904/0318472165.shtml”couldn’t reach the same vote tally/a if different counting machines were used. At least that was the original claim — but it was later changed when election officials admitted they had simply misplaced some ballots. Well, the latest report claims that the recount is now not showing lost ballots — a href=”http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=a07a3599-e75c-4c69-89a2-75e800ca8905″ target=”_new”it’s showing itoo many/i ballots/a. Fantastic. Election officials think they’ve traced the problem to the fact that some votes on Sequoia’s e-voting machine cartridges weren’t properly transferred, which kicks off Sequoia’s standard PR response:
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The company’s representative, Phil Foster says “the cartridge is fine. Why it didn’t read I do not know,” suggesting another human error made on election night.
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You know, when you keep saying that, and the problems keep occurring, at some point, people are going to stop believing you. Even if the problem really is human error every one of these times, people might begin to wonder why you don’t design your systems to iavoid/i such human errors.
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pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”remote chopper.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/remote%20chopper.jpg” width=”397″ height=”397″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”" //span/p pWe’ve been hearing quite a bit about futuristic remote controlled flying machines recently, ranging from those a href=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/08/18/uk_military_enlists_the_creati.html”controlled by humans from the ground/a to a href=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/06/16/brits_aid_in_first_stage_of_ro.html”pilotless drones/a. /p pNow we have what’s kind of a mix between the two. It’s a four foot long helicopter, uses artificial intelligence instead of weak pathetic humans to fly and recently did a circuit over Stanford University in California./p pbr / /pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/1e5f115/mf.gif’ border=’0′/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0′trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/16/more_power_to_the_robot_army_a.htmllink=More Power To The Robot Army: AI-Controlled ‘Copter Takes Test Flight” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/16/more_power_to_the_robot_army_a.htmllink=More Power To The Robot Army: AI-Controlled ‘Copter Takes Test Flight” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/18827526578/f/9581/c/552/s/31846677/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/18827526578/f/9581/c/552/s/31846677/a2.img” border=”0″//a