Iomega (click of death) recently updated their line of eGo Portable Hard Drives (click of death) with 4 new colors including Ruby Red, Silver, Midnight Blue and Helium (click of death) in capacities ranging from 250GB up to 500GB, depending on which color you buy. They also come with (click of death) Iomega’s Drop Guard feature which protects the drives from drops of up to 51 inches, as well as (click of death) the Iomega Protection Software Suite which includes apps like McAfee Virus Scan, MozyHome and Iomega QuickProtect. The drives should be available sometime in June (click of death) and will range in price from $84.99 for the 250GB models and up to $134.99 for the 500GB.

P.S. Can you tell I’m still holding a grudge? Does it show? My therapist says I’ve made great progress, but I’m not so sure.

[ Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drives ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

The photo you see on top is a speeder bike ride-on toy created by Huffy in 1984 as part of a toy store sweepstakes. Not only does it actually look like the speeder bikes featured in the Endor chase scene in Return of the Jedi, but it also has a bit of retro 1950’s charm to it. In other words, I’d proudly ride one of those around, even today.

But the photo you see on the bottom is an updated version of the speeder bike ride-on toy created by an Australian company called ToyMonster. Not only is it completely lacking any of the charm of the original, but it barely even looks like a speeder bike. On the plus side it’s apparently faster and handles better than the original, but it’s yet another reason why I feel that today’s kids have gotten royally screwed in the toy department.

[ StarWars.com - The Return of the Speeder Bike Ride-On ] VIA [ TheForce.Net ]

Those of you who followed the Canadian iPhone 3G saga know that our country’s largest GSM provider (Rogers) can be… how shall I say… interesting to deal with? Well it seems there’s some confusion/concern once again over another anticipated smartphone, the Nokia E71. Over the past few days photos have been popping up showing the Nokia E71 available at Rogers stores across the country for the incredibly low price of just $49.99 with a 3-year contract and data plan.

But a friend of mine who went to a Rogers store this morning with hopes of picking up the E71 was told, after they had asked him for all of his contact info, that the price tags in store were actually misprinted and should have read $149.99. A pretty hefty $100 difference. And he was signing up for a data/voice plan that was considerably more than the $45 minimum as indicated under the price tag. What’s even more confusing is that the Rogers website lists the phone as being available for as low as $99.99, with what turns out to be with a limited time $50 mail-in rebate.

So what’s the deal Rogers? Why have stores across the country had this misprinted price tag for several days now? According to Canadian law you should be honoring the $49.99 price if you don’t see fit to update your in-store displays.

“Sale above advertised price – The Competition Act prohibits the sale or rent of a product at a price higher than its advertised price. The provision does not apply if the advertised price was a mistake and the error was immediately corrected. “

Have any of our Canadian readers had the same thing happen when they tried to pick up a Nokia E71 from Rogers?

While November 4th will most likely go down in history as the day Barack Obama won the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, it unfortunately will also be known as the day the world lost author Michael Crichton.

Like Arthur C. Clarke, Crichton’s novels often dealt with new technologies, though usually delivered as a cautionary tale. Whether it be cowboy robots running amok in Westworld, or dinosaurs taking over Isla Nublar in Jurassic Park. In fact when I was in high school I read Jurassic Park after seeing the movie (like countless others) and it was that novel that rekindled my love of books, particularly those from Clarke and Crichton.

Michael Crichton was 66 years old when he died, and while his family called his passing unexpected, he had been privately battling cancer.

[ US Magazine - Jurassic Park Author Dies Unexpectedly ] VIA [ Geekologie ]

Is anyone else starting to get the idea that the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing will be memorable, but not because of the sporting events themselves? According to the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the following items are prohibited at the Olympic Green venues.

In accordance with national law, like elsewhere in the country, guns, grenades, gun powder, explosives, and other dangerous articles in this category are forbidden. In addition, everyday objects that may potentially affect security, such as glass bottles, hot water thermoses, coolers, and other such items used to carry things cannot be brought into competition grounds. No banners or other material bearing slogans are permitted. With the exception of strollers and wheelchairs, no supportive equipment is allowed. Whistles, horns, radios, walkie-talkies, speakers, drums, sticks, or sharp objects that may be harmful are also not permitted. Sports equipment, suitcases, large bags, and professional camera equipment will not be allowed into the Olympic Green.

While most of the stuff is common sense, it seems that security will not be letting visitors bring in professional camera equipment unless they’re brandishing press credentials. As someone who exclusively switched to a DSLR a few years ago, I would hate to have to rely on a P&S camera, particularly if I paid to travel half way around the world to attend the Olympic games. People have been speculating that the ban is mostly to prevent photographers with large lenses from blocking the view of other spectators in the stands, so why not just ban large lenses? It’s not like they’re hard to spot at a security checkpoint. Unfortunately it’s not like this rule is going to change with a week left before the games, so if you’ll be attending, and have managed to score yourself tickets to an actual event, it looks like you’ll have no choice but to leave your gear in your hotel room.

[ Prohibited items in Olympic Green ] VIA [ Crave ]

By Evan Ackerman

I’m way paranoid about my data. I’m not even sure that “paranoid” is the appropriate word, I guess, since I’ve suffered several primary drive failures in my laptop over the years, as have an alarming number of friends… Virtually all of the heavy computer users I know have had similar experiences. If this has happened to you, you know how much it sucks, especially if you lose things that can’t be replaced, like pictures or email.

After nearly having my computer die (again) last month, I’m trying to figure out the best way to keep my data safe. I can think of two options: online backup services (like IDrive), or a desktop RAID system (like Drobo). If any of you have experience or opinions on the matter, let me know what you think, after the jump.

Here’s my thoughts:

Ultimately, an online backup service would be the safest, since it protects my data from forest fires, rampaging llamas, small children, or just about any other natural or manmade catastrophe short of an alien invasion or global thermonuclear war. My data is safe because it’s nowhere near me, and I assume that it’s living on a redundant RAID system of its own wherever it is. The downside is that my data is nowhere near me. When I want to back something up, I have to upload it, and when I want to access it, I have to download it again. This could take a while and will eat up my bandwidth. I’d also be dependent on an internet connection, and I’d have to pay a subscription fee (although it’s cheaper than buying anything physical for the foreseeable future). The biggest problem I have with online backups are the space restrictions, even services offering “unlimited storage space for your backups” have caps of 50gb or so, which may seem like a lot, but really isn’t if you shoot lots of pictures.

The other option is a desktop RAID system. If you’re not familiar with the term, a RAID is a bunch of individual hard drives connected in such a way that one drive can perform as fast as two drives, two drives can automatically duplicate each other, or some combination of those things. So, in my case, a RAID would consist of two drives that are exact copies, so in order to lose data, both of them have to fail at the same time, something which has a very low probability of happening. The advantages are lots and lots of storage (I can use a pair of really big drives), expandability (I can always buy bigger drives), and speed and accessibility (it’s directly attached to my computer). The disadvantage is cost (a little desktop RAID box is several hundred dollars, drives sold separately), and most critically, since it has to be attached to my computer, anything that could physically happen to my computer can also happen to the RAID system.

And I guess my other option is to combine a whole bunch of different hardware and services to make myself feel safe… Say, use Flickr’s unlimited Pro account for my pictures, an online storage service for daily backups of important files, and then some hardware to mirror my drives every once in a while. That seems pretty expensive, though, and extreme even to me.

Anybody have any advice for me? How do you back up your important data?

This is one of those days that I hoped would never come. At the age of 90, Arthur C. Clarke passed away in Sri Lanka after suffering a cardio-respiratory attack. While he’s best known for the film/novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke had written over a hundred books in his lifetime and is often credited with the idea of using artificial satellites for communications and other applications.

As a huge fan of Clarke’s work I’m sad that this day has finally come, but every time I introduce someone to his work I know his legacy will live on. I find it funny that if you were to go back and read a random OhGizmo! post from just a few years ago, the technology would seem pretty dated. But reading a tech-heavy Clarke book from 20 or 30 years ago doesn’t. He definitely had a gift for writing about technology, whether it be interstellar spacecraft or artificial intelligence, that emphasized the ’science’ aspect of science fiction.

[ BBC - Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90 ]

I originally bought my Asus EEE PC a few weeks after it was released to serve as a mobile blogging system. My full size laptop is about 4 years old now and while it’s still a perfectly usable machine, I had forgotten how ridiculously heavy it was. The EEE on the other hand is not only light, but it fits inside my camera bag meaning I don’t need to travel with a separate case just for my computer.

Unfortunately my love affair with the EEE came crashing down while I was at the NAIAS. Well to be honest while the EEE itself was fantastic, my issues were really software related. First off, the default Xandros install was my first time really using Linux, and while the user-friendly front end was easy to use, installing non Asus-approved apps and other enhancements wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. (Though there are many fantastic tutorials online already.) And while the suite of included software works fantastic if you just need email, web or office-type programs, the one piece of software that was really missing for me was a good image editor.

So before I even bought the EEE I made sure I’d be able to install a program called GIMP, which is an open-source alternative to Photoshop. Unfortunately I’d only ever dabbled with GIMP in the past, and while I applaud the developers for creating a robust image editing application they basically give away, GIMP is no Photoshop. To be clear, rarely a day has gone by in the past 7 or 8 years where I’m not doing something in Photoshop, and while GIMP can mostly match PS when it comes to features, there were just too many little things I couldn’t do, or behaved differently that drove me crazy. I’m sure if I stuck with GIMP for a few months I would get used to its workflow, but since there’s also a handful of PS specific plugins I can’t live without, I’m just going to stick with Photoshop.

So when I got back from Detroit I was really tempted to sell my EEE, but instead I decided to replace the standard Xandros OS with Windows XP, and so far I’m extremely happy with the results. The install process was ridiculously easy, and Asus even provides a DVD with all the Windows drivers you’ll need. The biggest challenge of course is the tiny 4GB SSD hard drive, but so far I have XP with all its updates installed plus a host of other applications I rely on, with about 700MB still free. And on top of that a 4GB SD card serves as a secondary drive.

All in all I still recommend the EEE to people looking for an extremely portable laptop, and I even think the Xandros OS is a great alternative to Windows if you’re just surfing the web or answering email. But for my needs XP is just turning out to be a better solution.

[ Asus EEE PC ]

When the Chevrolet Volt concept was revealed at last year’s NAIAS it not only made headlines in the major automotive publications and websites, but throughout the gadget and technology blogging community as well. Normally you have to stick a 32-inch LCD TV in the trunk of a car for it to be considered ‘gadget-fare’ but the Volt stood on its own as a great piece of technological innovation. And while there’s no doubt we’ll all be driving electric cars like the Volt some day, there are still some big hurdles to overcome before that’s a reality.

As much as I’d like to walk into a dealership right now and buy myself a Volt, it hasn’t officially been announced as a production vehicle just yet. While at the show I had an opportunity to speak to Tony Posawatz, the Volt’s Vehicle Line Director and Denise Gray who’s the Director of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems at GM. They both admitted that the biggest hurdle for the Volt to overcome was the current state of lithium ion batteries. A 20-hour battery life for an MP3 player might be totally acceptable, but if a larger version of that battery can only power a car for 3 miles, consumers just won’t buy it. And besides performance, there’s a long list of other issues that have to be dealt with on a battery designed to power something as large as a car. But GM has apparently been working hard with a handful of other companies to overcome these problems, and they’re confident they’ll be able to bring an affordable production version of the Volt to the masses in just a couple of years. (And by affordable I mean in comparison to expensive high-performance electric cars like the Tesla or Karma.)

But while the Volt and other hybrid vehicles will no doubt be a big step towards reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, there are still millions of vehicles on the road that exclusively rely on gasoline. It would be great if everyone was willing to just trade in their cars for a hybrid or electric model right now, but that’s simply not going to happen. So dealing with those legacy vehicles is probably the biggest obstacle when it comes to weaning the world off of gasoline.

The most popular and plausible solution to the problem seems to be the use of E85 as an alternative fuel. E85 is basically just a way to refer to fuel that is composed of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, and converting a traditional car to run on E85 is far easier than converting one to run on electricity. But since ethanol has been traditionally produced using products like corn, many people have feared that increased production of the fuel will in turn affect the food supply in the US.

So at the beginning of this year’s NAIAS, GM announced an interesting partnership with a company called Coskata who have developed a new process for creating ethanol from a wide range of waste products including plastic, wood, tires and other organic sources. The patented process uses just 1 gallon of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol (compared to using 3 or 4 gallons for corn or plant based ethanol) and the production itself emits 84% less greenhouse gases than the production of gasoline. It could also result in ethanol fuel prices that are considerably cheaper than what we’re paying at the pump right now.

And while GM has invested in Coskata as a sign of good faith, they have no intentions of taking over the company or selling the fuel in the future. However they do realize that in order for E85 vehicles to catch on, there has to be a greater infrastructure throughout the country (and the world) to not only produce the fuel, but also distribute it to gas stations. Drivers will be more accepting of E85 if it’s as widely available to them as gasoline is now. Coskata claims they’ll have their first commercial-scale plant making 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol by 2011 and while their claims are nothing more than great PR right now, both companies seem very excited and determined to make it work.

Admittedly, it would be great if all these innovations could be running and available as of tomorrow, but the auto industry has long since been dependent on fossil fuels, and moving away from this dependency will unfortunately take some time.

But what about right now? I have to admit it was a bit odd sitting at the press conference for the Coskata announcement in a huge booth, surrounded by massive TV screens and a lighting grid that would rival any broadway production. While the announcements from all the companies about their eco-friendly initiatives were great, the elaborate booths and over the top stunts made you wonder if they were really gung-ho about the whole ‘going green’ idea.

Now don’t think I’m specifically picking on VW here, this is just one of the photos I took that had a good view of the overhead lighting in the booth. And as someone who’s worked on TV and stage productions, I know this type of lighting isn’t exactly energy efficient. Another thing I unfortunately didn’t notice until I got home (and Joel Williams from Life Goggles mentioned it on his blog ) was the complete lack of recycling bins at Cobo Hall. With all the pop cans and water bottles that were given out during the press days, you’d think there would have been more of an effort made to recycle the empty containers.

So while I’m not saying that the auto manufacturers should forgo the fancy lighting and eye-catching booths, I just think it would go a long way in the eyes of environmentally conscious consumers if the exhibitors did things like switch to LED lights, built their displays out of recycled materials or even put out easy to find recycling bins. In fact if they went out of their way to publicize a green booth I think it would generate just as much good PR as the green vehicles themselves.

One last thing I want to briefly touch on concerning the NAIAS is the whole bloggers vs. journalists debate. At trade shows like CES or the once great E3, bloggers are treated just like any other members of the press. (Give or take.) But from my own experience the NAIAS in Detroit hasn’t quite accepted the blogging community just yet. Now I don’t know the exact reasons behind this, I’m sure a lot of it comes from pressure from the automakers who are exhibiting, but besides the social media group invited by GM, I saw very few other bloggers during the press-only days.

Needless to say any bloggers who did make it in weren’t exactly at the top of the list when it came to scoring interviews with industry executives. So I’d like to thank GM again for giving all of us in attendance the opportunity to speak with so many people at the company. In fact the highlight of this year’s show for me was the private Q&A sessions GM arranged for us with both Bob Lutz (General Motors Vice Chairman) and Rick Wagoner (General Motors Chairman and CEO.)

Bob Lutz (General Motors Vice Chairman)

Rick Wagoner (General Motors Chairman and CEO)

As bloggers, these sessions were definitely a rare opportunity, and I think the group represented itself well with the types of questions that were asked. Basically none of that “What kind of car do you drive?” crap. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not blind to the fact that these interviews also provided General Motors with some great publicity in the blogging community, but the bottom line is that they went out of their way to give us access to a lot of people we normally wouldn’t have had a chance to talk to. No other car company at the show was as accommodating. (Well, Lamborghini did go out of their way to prevent Paul Stamatiou from sitting in the Murcielago LP 640 Coupe they had on display.)

In the gadget and gizmo community, a lot of people consider Joel Johnson’s interview with Bill Gates back in 2005 to be the point when technology bloggers (or really bloggers in general) started to be recognized as valid journalists. And while Rick Wagoner might not be as recognizable as Bill Gates is, I couldn’t help but feel that our Q&A with him was another step towards bloggers being taken more seriously in the corporate world. If you’d like to watch the bloggers interviews with Bob Lutz or Rick Wagoner I recommend checking out the videos of both events graciously provided and hosted by Matt Kelly at NextGear.

Disclaimer: In case you missed my original post, GM has requested that I disclose the fact they covered my airfare and accommodations for the show.

Over the last five days, a small tempest has been brewing in some tech blogging circles. I’m going to talk about it here because I’m indirectly involved. And also because, frankly, I’m somewhat pissed.

It involves our advertising agency, Federated Media (who also represent sites like Digg, BoingBoing, Techcrunch, GigaOm and others) and an inflammatory article posted last Friday on tech gossip blog Valleywag. The controversy revolves around allegations of bribery and ethical misconduct. Two camps have formed over this issue and pointed arguments have been flung back and forth for the past five days, with Microsoft caught in the crossfire. Some could say that I’m inherently biased here, as Federated Media represent us. Maybe. But I’m entitled to an opinion too, and if you care to hear it, keep on reading.

It goes like this. Federated Media has been experimenting for some time with a novel form of advertising they like to call “Conversational Marketing”. The premise is that advertisers, given the right circumstances, can and should be included in the dynamic between an author and his audience. They can then become “part of the conversation”. It’s a schmaltzy sounding principle but it’s pretty slick if pulled off right. If you really want to know more about it, you can read this (specifically the italicized portion a couple paragraphs down). Federated Media has been running these for a long while now, but one of its recent such campaigns with Microsoft suddenly made the world implode. More on this in a minute.

So, you ask: what does a conversational campaign actually mean? How does it work? Well, each author is asked to describe what some buzzwords mean to them: “People Ready” for Microsoft, “Human Network” for Cisco, etc. The text is then integrated into standard IAB sized banner ads. When readers click on those ads, they’re taken to a special companion site where they can read other author’s definitions, and vote for their favorite. And that’s it.

To be clear, authors are never asked to say anything nice about the advertiser. Authors are not paid to write the text, they are paid for the ads that run on their site with that text on it. However, the ads run in the same places as any other ads, they look like ads and on most sites, they are clearly labeled as ads; they just happen to have a little quote on them, written by the owner of the website. The authors are never asked to talk about the advertiser in their regular editorial space.

This was all fine and dandy until Nick Denton, from Valleywag, decided it was time to do a little link-baiting, and wrote an article titled “Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan.” That’s when the proverbial crap hit the fan. Denton writes:

The stodgy old media industry has a rule that newspaper reporters, and TV news hosts, shouldn’t trade on their public trust to endorse products. It’s become redundant: the reading public typically wants journalists to drop the pretense of objectivity, and wear their prejudices in public. But there are limits to journalistic endorsements, and Federated Media just crossed them. [...]

One would have thought that tech opinion-leaders as influential as Om Malik and Paul Kedrosky would ration their credibility more carefully, and reserve it for companies and products for which they felt real enthusiasm.

The allegation here being that Microsoft paid these authors a lump sum to “endorse” them and that these authors would never have done so otherwise. That they’re being shills. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but that didn’t stop strongly worded opinions to start pouring in from all sides.

Here’s one example from Dave Winer :

It’s one thing to let Microsoft buy space on your site (it’s called advertising) and quite another to accept Microsoft money for words coming out of your mouth. Next month when we read something positive on these sites about Microsoft, how are we supposed to know if it’s an opinion, or just another example of being paid to say something supportive of Microsoft.

Or this gem, from Jeff Jarvis

So ultimately, this is a cautionary tale for all bloggers who take ads: You must set your own boundaries and not let them be pushed. When you do — whatever those boundaries are — that is the very definition of selling out.

The advertiser’s effort is to get more closely associated with us, our content, our reputations, our brands. They’d like get into our pants mouths. They want us to speak their names. Nicely. Or at least be near them, associated with them.

Well, here’s where I chime in: to all of you pounding on Federated Media for this, I say you’re either seriously flawed in your own reasoning or you’re pretending to ride the moral high horse to make yourselves look better in the eyes of your readers. I’m looking right at you Nick and Jeff. And here’s why.

Jeff, you said it yourself: the fundamental dynamic between the advertiser and the author is their desire to be associated with your image, your brand and possibly your voice. Well here’s a little dollop of truth: the minute you received your first penny in advertising money, you already let them do this. Somewhere in that article of yours, you say “My acceptance of advertising here does not constitute an endorsement of the advertiser. However, I will at times turn down advertising I find unacceptable.” Well, that’s (to put it bluntly) bull. You don’t get to rewrite the rules; I say that every time you do not decline an ad Federated Media sends you, it constitutes a tacit endorsement of the advertiser. You saying it doesn’t makes absolutely no difference. At the end of the day, your readers come to your site (or my site, or anyone’s site), they see ads from Cisco, Microsoft, Dice and countless others plastered around and in their subconscious, they think “If [insert author here] thinks its cool to have these ads up on his site, then these companies must be ok. Otherwise, he would have turned them down.” It’s a zero-sum game: if you don’t turn them down, they’re kosher.

What’s more, it doesn’t make one ounce of difference in the world whether Microsoft’s marketing agency (or Cisco’s, or anyone else) wrote the copy on the ad, or if you did. As Mike Arrington says:

It’s text in an ad box. I think people are pretty aware of what that means…which is nothing.

Let me reiterate. It’s an ad unit. You know what goes on in ad units? Advertising.

Shocking.

Very true. They are clearly labeled as ads. They are displayed in the same areas that ads are always displayed. To imply that there’s anything misleading in this whole process because your words are in the ad is to insult your readers; you’re implying they’re too stupid to know the difference between honest editorial, and an ad.

This entire issue is so darn simple, it baffles me we’re even having this discussion. If money changes hands, it’s advertisement. If not, it’s editorial. If the advertisement is clearly (clearly) labeled, it doesn’t bloody well matter what format it takes or even who writes and draws the ad. If it’s not labeled at all and appears in regular editorial space, then it’s unethical and wrong beyond words.

After having said all this, I will add that it’s a sad reality that there’s a good number of morons out there who may get confused and have some trouble telling the difference between an ad and editorial. I believe they’re a small minority, but in deference to them, I do believe there is some room for improvement on Federated Media’s behalf. As clear as things already are, they could be clearer. The relationship between all parties involved could, for example, be better explained. I believe the company is already working on this.

Also, for the record, I have not participated in a single Conversational Advertising campaign to date. I will in July.

Opinions?