RIM Tries To Reboot Itself By Naming New CEO

Early this morning, it was announced Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as the co-CEOs of RIM and were replaced by COO Thorsten Heins. Balsillie and Lazaridis will still be on the board though. A pair of videos from the new CEO then appeared on YouTube. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:

What do I think of this change? There’s really nothing to see here as all RIM has done is rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. RIM is still a sinking ship that has no new products based on the new Blackberry OS until the latter half of 2012 and is seeing its market share erode as RIM users migrate to Android and iOS devices. Until they fix those issues, it doesn’t matter who’s at the top of the food chain at RIM.

I will wish Heins good luck though, because he’s really going to need it.

SOPA and Protect IP Halted In Congress… But The Battle Isn’t Over

I guess this week’s blackout on the Internet got the attention of lawmakers in the US. The National Post is reporting that both SOPA and Protect IP have been halted:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for January 24 “in light of recent events.”

Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, followed suit, saying his panel would delay action on similar legislation until there is wider agreement on the issue.

You’ll note that the bills have only delayed and not killed. That means that they could come back in some other form. Those who oppose these bills will have to be vigilant and hold US lawmakers to account.

Megaupload Shutdown…. Anonymous Hits Back

The file sharing site Megaupload was raided by the FBI yesterday and was effectively shut down due to the fact that they facilitated illegal file sharing. Now this angered a lot of Internet users, but the hacker group Anonymous went one step further. They launched an attack on the websites of the Department of Justice, the FBI and Universal Music Group, among others using a distributed denial of service attack.

A video was then posted to YouTube which you can watch below:

You’ll also note that the group mentions SOPA and Protect IP. Clearly they aren’t happy. I’m guessing that we’re going to hear more from them.

 

Review 2011 Ford Focus SEL Sedan

One of the reasons why I haven’t been updating this blog as frequently as I usually do is that I’ve been traveling on business frequently. Often when I travel I have to rent a car. On my most recent trip I lucked out in terms of getting my hands on a Ford Focus SEL sedan. Now the SEL variant is one of Ford’s upper trim levels, so I was kind of surprised that it was sitting at a car rental place in a US airport. But I went with it as it didn’t cost me an arm and leg to rent and it came pretty much with everything I like to have in a car. That includes 6 airbags and stability control. Another thing that I liked is that it had a very European feel to it. It was firm but not punishing. That’s great because previous Focus models have been dumbed down for North Americans. But let me expand on that. It looked like an European car and drove like one. The handling was very impressive. No doubt helped by a feature called torque vectoring which used the brakes to make sure the car stays on the path that you want it to go. It also had a fair amount of get up and go as it had a 160 hp engine. However that get up and go was surely impacted by a rather crappy transmission. Ford decided to use what’s called a dual clutch transmission for the automatic variant. This setup has two clutches. One for the odd gears and one for the even ones. The idea is that this type of transmission can make lightning quick shifts and save gas at the same time. Well, Ford got the fuel economy part down right as I used way less gas than I normally would on a four day trip in the US. However, the transmission shifts were slow. Compared to some VW products that I’ve driven with dual clutch transmissions, that was very disappointing. In fact some Google searches found that I am not alone in feeling this way as Consumer Reports hit them pretty hard over this. The other thing that I found problematic is the MyFord Touch system. It didn’t work for me as well as I expected it to as I had to do too much with my voice to do pretty much anything which in my mind defeats the purpose of having a voice activated system in your car. Maybe if I had a few more days with it, I could become more comfortable with it. I’m not sure, but I do know that I wasn’t impressed with what I used.

So would I buy one? Honestly, I think that I would buy the hatchback variant over the sedan. Also, I’d either take the manual transmission, or wait for Ford to address the issues with their dual clutch transmission. And I wouldn’t get it with MyFord Touch. Which is too bad, because the car handled well and I really liked that.

Sorry Ford. Right now the Focus is a pass for me.

Tech Firms To Protest SOPA Tommorow

I haven’t covered this much on this blog, but SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act and it’s sister the Protect IP Act have drawn the ire of Internet users in the US. The idea behind these bills is to stop piracy on the Internet. But many argue that it will infringe on First Amendment rights, censor and will cripple the Internet. As a result, there’s a lineup of tech companies who are against this and are going to be protesting tomorrow against these bills. Google for one will be doing something on their home page to protest. Wikipedia is going one step further by going dark tomorrow to protest. Word on the street is that Reddit and Boing Boing will take their sites down for 12 hours starting at 8 a.m. as well.

Frankly speaking, these bills need to die. If America really wants to kill one of the few industries that are making money in these tough times, cripple free speech, and be no different that countries that they criticize, then they should go ahead. But if they want to prove that they are the land of the free and the home of the brave, than these bills need to die and die quickly. Americans, tell your friends, tell your family, and most importantly tell your elected officials you feelings on these rather crappy bills before it’s too late.

I’ll be showing my support by not posting tomorrow. It’s the least that I can do.

Hey IT Nerd! How Do I Erase A Hard Drive So That Nobody Can Get The Contents?

In this age of identity theft, this is a concern when you go to sell or donate a computer. The fact is that the only way of ensuring that nothing can be read from a hard drive, you have to physically destroy the drive. Otherwise the best you can do is to use a secure erase utility to reduce the number of people who could get stuff off the hard drive to those with advanced skill and the tech to do it. With that in mind, I recommend a tool called Darik’s Boot And Nuke for the job. Basically you download a CD image that you burn to a CD, and then you use that CD to boot your computer and nuke the contents of the hard drive. What makes it secure is that it gives you the chose of nuking data with pseudorandom numbers generated by Mersenne twister or ISAAC. The Gutmann method, Quick Erase, DoD Short, and DOD 5220.22-M. Basically, the same sorts of methods that governments, banks and the truly paranoid use to erase drives. Again, if someone is smart enough and has the tools to recover your data, nothing is going to protect you. But Darik’s Boot And Nuke will make sure that number of people who can are a pretty small number.

Review: iSpeech Translator For BlackBerry

Another one of the free apps that RIM gave away to make up for their multi-day outage last year was iSpeech Translator. In short this app allows you to translate speech using your voice, or by translating e-mail or text messages. It works with Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.

So how well does it work? I tested it by translating simple phrases like “can you direct me to the subway” from English to Italian and having a native Italian speaker listen to the results. Assuming that it recognizes your voice (my voice worked well, but an associate with a heavy English accent didn’t do so well), it translates quite well. I repeated that with someone who spoke Mandirin and got similar results. So if you’re traveling and you need to ask for directions, this could be of value to you. There are two catches though. One is that you need an active data connection. Not a big deal. The second is that as I type this owners of OS 7 BlackBerries can’t use this app. Hopefully that gets fixed. Other than those two issues, I think this app is worth taking a look at.

If you have feedback of your own, leave a note below.

 

Rogers Launches Sportsnews For Sports Addicts

If you’re a Rogers subscriber and you’re totally addicted to sports, Rogers now has your new fix:

Just a quick note today to let you know that we have launched Sportsnews, which is a new sports cable service at no additional cost for Rogers digital cable customers. The service gives viewers a real-time sports fix including a large scoreboard, live twitter feeds from Sportsnet personalities, breaking news, sports trivia and more.

This is the first cable service of its kind in Canada and can be found on channel 999. Sportsnews is available in SD or HD.

Need to know more? Check out RedBoard. I guess this can add to those sports junkies who already have Rogers SportsNet, TSN, Setanta, among other sports channels. Now you’ll never get them off the TV.

2011: Year In Review

2011 was a very interesting year for the tech industry. But a handful of things stood out for me last year:

Biggest fall from grace: This one goes to RIM. They put out a tablet that nobody wants to buy without a deep discount. Their profits nosedived along with their stock value. Not to mention that their next generation products have been delayed until the latter half of 2012. Bottom line: Stick a fork in them, they’re done.

Saddest moment of the year: The death of Steve Jobs.

Most annoying tech trend: This one is a holdover from last year, it’s the patent lawsuit. Expect this one to continue in to 2012 and beyond.

Biggest rise of the year: iOS and Android phones have dominated smartphone market in 2011. They took up the slack left by RIM and expect that that to continue in 2012.

Most popular story on the blog this year: A story that posted about iPads being banned by the Russian government was the most viewed story on the blog this year. That’s a change from last year where Rogers Communications dominated the top five stories of last year with three.

Biggest threat to the tech world: I didn’t get around to covering this in my blog, but it’s SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act which if passed will infringe on First Amendment rights, censor and will cripple the Internet. If the US is smart, they will not pass this act. Unless they want prove how backwards they are.

I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store for the tech industry. Any ideas?

Bell To Stop Throttling Their Customers

If you’ve got Bell as your Internet provider, here’s an early Christmas present for you. Throttling of your Internet connection is about to come to an end:

Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will stop using equipment to selectively slow down file sharing applications on their networks starting March 1, the companies said in a letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Monday.

That will affect both the companies’ own retail internet customers and the customers of independent internet service providers who rent wholesale access to Bell’s network in order to connect directly with customers’ homes.

So why the sudden change of heart? Bell claims that they’ve invested heavily in their network. But there might be another reason:

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor with a special interest in the regulation of the internet, believes “Bell had little choice” but to end its traffic shaping, given CRTC rules that make it clear the regulator favours network investment and economic means to manage internet traffic.

The regulator had issued new guidelines in September for resolving customer complaints about throttling, including timelines for action by internet service providers. It said ISPs could face a third-party audit or even a public hearing if they did not comply.

So with Bell making this move, one wonders how long Rogers and Telus can justify throttling their customers. They’re going to have to do something quickly or face losing customers.