LG, a South Korean company, has revealed additonal details on their Blu-ray player which can also connect to Netflix for streaming movies, according to <em> The New York Times</em> on Thursday. The price is expected to be in the $400-450 range and be available in the fall.
DIRECTV and Dish Network have both announced plans to upgrade some of their transmissions to 1080p via MPEG4 and have compared that to “Blu-ray” format. However, the compression and data rates used raise the question of whether the picture really is “Blu-ray” quality, according to the New York Times on Thursday.
GEAR4 has announced its new range of protective cases for the iPhone 3G, including silicon skins, hard plastic shells, leather cases, and screen protectors. The X-Shield is a hard plastic case with leather backing, featuring protection via the hard plastic case and a high quality leather exterior. £29.99…
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Computer chip maker ARM recently struck an architecture licensing deal with an unnamed company, and many in the industry are speculating that company could be Apple
Apple released a minor update for its iTunes media player and management application late Wednesday evening. The stunningly scant release notes for iTunes 7.7.1 state only that the update “includes fixes to improve stability and performance.”
Written by lifehack
What does it take to succeed? A positive attitude? Well, sure, but that’s hardly enough. The Law of Attraction? The Secret? These ideas might act as spurs to action, but without the action itself, they don’t do much.
Success, however it’s defined, takes action, and taking good and appropriate action takes skills. Some of these skills (not enough, though) are taught in school (not well enough, either), others are taught on the job, and still others we learn from general life experience.
Below is a list of general skills that will help anyone get ahead in practically any field, from running a company to running a gardening club. Of course, there are skills specific to each field as well - but my concern here is with the skills that translate across disciplines, the ones that can be learned by anyone in any position.
The ability to speak clearly, persuasively, and forcefully in front of an audience - whether an audience of 1 or of thousands - is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. People who are effective speakers come across as more comfortable with themselves, more confident, and more attractive to be around. Being able to speak effectively means you can sell anything - products, of course, but also ideas, ideologies, worldviews. And yourself - which means more opportunities for career advancement, bigger clients, or business funding.
Writing well offers many of the same advantages that speaking well offers: good writers are better at selling products, ideas, and themselves than poor writers. Learning to write well involves not just mastery of grammar but the development of the ability to organize one’s thoughts into a coherent form and target it to an audience in the most effective way possible. Given the huge amount of text generated by almost every transaction - from court briefs and legislation running into the thousands of pages to those foot-long receipts you get when you buy gum these days - a person who is a master of the written word can expect doors to open in just about every field.
If success depends of effective action, effective action depends on the ability to focus your attention where it is needed most, when it is needed most. Strong organizational skills, effective productivity habits, and a strong sense of discipline are needed to keep yourself on track.
Networking is not only for finding jobs or clients. In an economy dominated by ideas and innovation, networking creates the channel through which ideas flow and in which new ideas are created. A large network, carefully cultivated, ties one into not just a body of people but a body of relationships, and those relationships are more than just the sum of their parts. The interactions those relationships make possible give rise to innovation and creativity - and provide the support to nurture new ideas until they can be realized.
We are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of times more information on a daily basis than our great-grandparents were. Being able to evaluate that information, sort the potentially valuable from the trivial, analyze its relevance and meaning, and relate it to other information is crucial - and woefully under-taught. Good critical thinking skills immediately distinguish you from the mass of people these days.
The bridge that leads from analysis to action is effective decision-making - knowing what to do based on the information available. While not being critical can be dangerous, so too can over-analyzing, or waiting for more information before making a decision. Being able to take in the scene and respond quickly and effectively is what separates the doers from the wannabes.
You don’t have to be able to integrate polynomials to be successful. However, the ability to quickly work with figures in your head, to make rough but fairly accurate estimates, and to understand things like compound interest and basic statistics gives you a big lead on most people. All of these skills will help you to analyze data more effectively - and more quickly - and to make better decisions based on it.
Nobody can be expected to know everything, or even a tiny fraction of everything. Even within your field, chances are there’s far more that you don’t know than you do know. You don’t have to know everything - but you should be able to quickly and painlessly find out what you need to know. That means learning to use the Internet effectively, learning to use a library, learning to read productively, and learning how to leverage your network of contacts - and what kinds of research are going to work best in any given situation.
Stress will not only kill you, it leads to poor decision-making, poor thinking, and poor socialization. So be failing to relax, you knock out at least three of the skills in this list - and really more. Plus, working yourself to death in order to keep up, and not having any time to enjoy the fruits of your work, isn’t really “success”. It’s obsession. Being able to face even the most pressing crises with your wits about you and in the most productive way is possibly the most important thing on this list.
It is a simple fact in our society that money is necessary. Even the simple pleasures in life, like hugging your child, ultimately need money - or you’re not going to survive to hug for very long. Knowing how to track and record your expenses and income is important just to survive, let alone to thrive. But more than that, the principles of accounting apply more widely to things like tracking the time you spend on a project or determining whether the value of an action outweighs the costs in money, time, and effort. It’s a shame that basic accounting isn’t a required part of the core K-12 curriculum.
Surely there are more important skills I’m not thinking of (which is probably why I’m not telling Bill Gates what to do!) - what are they? What have I missed? What lessons have you learned that were key to your successes - and what have you ignored to your peril?
The iHome iP99 is the first iPod clock radio and audio system I’ve tested that is certified by Apple and bears the, “Works with iPhone” seal of approval. I had high hopes since other clock radios either displayed an error message (more on this in a moment), made ugly noises when an iPhone was nearby, made ugly noises when an iPhone was nearby and ringing, or all of the above. So a clock radio speaker system designed specifically to work with the iPhone sounded like a winner to me. Alas, although the iHome iP99 has some very appealing features, “Works with iPhone” is a bit of a misnomer. While the iP99 does work pretty nicely with both the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, it has one fatal flaw that is a definite deal-breaker, at least for me.
Apple has added a wealth of features in iPhone 2.0 software to make it enterprise ready. While arguments linger on the suitability of the iPhone for enterprise and comparisons to the BlackBerry continue, for those IT managers who want to properly deploy the iPhone, Ryan Fass at Computerworld has launched a detailed series on Wednesday on the specifics of how to do just that.
Emerald Sequoia LLC has released the Emerald Chronometer, an iPhone app that’s a combination wrist watch and time tool for astronomers and time professionals and hobbyists. Features include multiple watch themes, local and UTC time, times of sunrise and sunset and more.
Apple elected to roll out MobileMe, OS X iPhone 2.0, the App Store and the iPhone 3G all on the same day, July 11. That’s a lot pressure, and the technical glitches in MobileMe and the new iPhone software may have taken away some of the emotional response that propels customers into new purchases, according to C|Net on Tuesday.