Chairman of the FCC Kevin Martin

Eh…. Not really. Wow that was by far the longest title yet. Well so it happened today, we all new it was going to happen, the 700mhz frequency was approved today by the FCC . The 700mhzland has been long sought after frequency for the great distances it can reach. Since Google wants to melt there doughy little hands into every aspect of every market they said, “Hey lets buy a Radio frequency”. Don’t quote them on that, they probably said something a lot more sophisticated and in-depth.
Now all in all this approval really isn’t that bad, but only if the FCC keeps to its “Open Access” plan. But the FCC being a part of our government we never know who’s hand might get greased to push a vote or favor through. A total of 60 megahertz will be auctioned off, with twenty-two of them “open,” and another 10 set aside for a “national public safety” network. The auctioning off of the frequency is expected to raise as much as $15 billion for the federal treasury.

The auction begins sometime early next year, and so it begins…..

I wanted to give a little info out about Chairman Kevin Martin, and who he has worked for, and what he did in the past. Here is the excerpt about him from the official FCC website:

“Chairman Martin was nominated by President George W. Bush to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on July 3, 2001. He was designated chairman by President Bush on March 18, 2005. Chairman Martin was re-nominated for a second term as commissioner and chairman by President George W. Bush on April 25, 2006.

Before joining the FCC, Martin was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and was Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Martin was an advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He has also served in the Office of the Independent Counsel and worked as an associate at the Washington, DC law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Before joining Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Martin was a judicial clerk for U.S. District Court Judge William M. Hoeveler, Miami, FL.

Martin received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.”

Now Chairman Martin is no virgin when it comes to ethic scandals, does anyone remember the Bellsouth & AT&T merger?

I never try to mix politics with technology but sometimes they just mix , and a lot of the time it ends up in a negative manner. So that is why I am so skeptical of this “Open Access” plan. Now I am not saying Google even has the cash flow to play the game, if it stays open I hope they have the cash on hand. I just hope the FCC plays nice with everyone and does not play favors.

Can anyone give me a reason to not think like this?

The question I have for you all is, what works for the ladies these days? I have always hated buying flowers or candy and things that really can never be used ever again. So my question to YOU the female gender of today, what do women like these days? Well Phillips and Swarokvski’s think that women now want blinged out gadgets. Yes I just wrote blinged, not even sure that’s a word, or really what it means other then just stuff that shines and sparkles.

What I have done here is compiled a group of gadgets that I might think the ladies might like. I for see a future of women that no longer need flowers to feel loved, but gadgets, lots of gadgets.

Phillips and Swarokvski’s USB jewel encrusted pendant $79-$200. 

Color Motorola Pebl : $ depend on contract

Clique Hue HD webcam: $79.99 

ColorWare pre-painted IPhone: $649

One thing I think many men would agree on would be that if a women were into gadgets that the man would spend far, far more on her then he would if he bought flowers. You see I would feel better about buying a $200 jewel encrusted USB drive rather then $50 on some flowers that will die in 5 days. Plus you could throw in a dope ass mix tape on that jump drive.

So if the ladies could make some comments about these gadgets, and if any of these would actually interest you that would be great. So ladies lets make a push for gadgets, no more killing the earth with your greedy flower plucking, lets start a new gift giving trend…..GADGETS!!!

The last time we heard anything about Delorean was in 1982 when the last of the iconic Back to the Future mobiles rolled off the assembly line in Ireland. But today they are back a group of gear heads from Houston, TX. have bought the name and the right to make those stainless steel beauties once again. Granted they will only be making 200 of them from the original refurbished 2.8L V6. No one is really sure on the price yet but they are already selling refurbished complete cars for around $42000.

Now we all know it was never a great performer, but it was the envy of so many childhood dreams for so many of us. If I had a open spot in the garage and an extra $42000 to lay down I think I would probably buy one, but only if they installed the rope-a-light (flux-capacitor).

That’s a lie, I would really just buy a Lotus Exige.

Wow! I am really impressed with this app, so many options. I was just telling my counterpart Mr.Leblanc how much I am enjoying all of the new Live app’s. they have such a consistent flow to them, I love how everything is uniformed. No offense to MS but the yesteryears of Live app’s were not this good. But I understand things take time and patience, and I really think MS has pulled it off with this line of applications (Live Messenger, Live Writer, Live Mail). If you don’t know what Live Writer is all about here is Microsoft’s explanation “Windows Live Writer Beta is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog.” So in essence it is what FrontPage use to be for other web content, but strictly for blogs. Live writer supports Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services. It is a client side app so you can always edit content even if you are offline. So far so good! Here is the link to download this very effective beta app! Did I mention that it is incredibly easy to use.

The fight continues!!!

Well we here at TheGeekery are no porn buffs, or at least we don’t admit it. Some of you might be wondering why the hell am I going to write about the porn industry. Well lets face it, the porn industry is huge, according to forbes in 2001 the porn industry was a 14 billion dollar industry. Now it is an estimated 50 billion dollar a year industry. The porn industry is kind of like the illegal drug industry no one talks about it, no one talks about the profits, no one talks about the growth of that market.

Sony Corp. has started offering more technical support to the adult film industry in Japan, movie makers said at the Adult Treasure Expo 2007 in Chiba, Japan, and the problem of finding companies to mass produce their movies appears to be over.

It’s an important step for Blu-ray Disc. HD DVD has already taken over the U.S. adult film industry through its lower costs and ease-of-use. People in the industry say they’ve received plenty of help from backers of the format, including Microsoft Corp. and Toshiba Corp. But Blu-ray is different. Sony and one of the biggest movie makers in the world, the Walt Disney Co., object to pornography, and Disney maintains a policy against having its own movies replicated by any company working with adult movie titles.

“In Japan, there are some problems. Companies cannot press Blu-ray discs because they cannot touch adult-related contracts,” said Kiyotaka Konno, director of administration at Assist Corp., a Japanese company that authors and replicates DVDs for the adult industry in Japan. “So we asked some makers in Taiwan to do the work, and then we import the discs back to Japan. The Taiwanese company was able to obtain a pressing machine from Sony and will start mass production in August.”

The adoption of Blu-ray Disc by the Japanese porn industry could make all the difference in the format war. The adult film industry has long been a first mover in using new technologies, and many analysts say the industry played a key role in making VHS the winner in the video cassette fight against Sony’s Betamax video tape standard years ago. Blu-ray Disc, also a Sony technology, is now vying with HD DVD to be the high-definition disc of choice in the 21st century.

Now because I love HD DVD, and I am planning on purchasing an HD DVD player, so I am going to ask all of our Canadian porn moguls to the north to start stamping those HD DVD’s out. Don’t give in to the Blu-side.

Honestly their were no purposeful puns in this article…

IOGEAR has just released the GHDMIAS4 4-port automatic HDMI switch, which uses four of your favorite HDMI inputs and pulls them down to one output. It has automatic sensing to switch to an input when a new source is turned on, or you can use the remote with discrete buttons. The switch supports 1080p and HDMI 1.3, is HDCP-compliant, and ships now for $189.95, including a bonus 6-foot HDMI cable. All I can say is my TV only has 2 HDMI slots and I really need about 2 more. But the price point seems a bit high. Their are numerous companies that make these HDMI switches way under the $150 range, like the HM-501 5-PORT HDMI SWITCH. It comes with all of the same specs and has one more port, but I might shell out a couple extra bucks for the name. Overall seems like a nice new product from IOGear.

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will start developing with 10 automakers an operating system for automotive electronics.

The decision will be announced this week, a ministry source said. European auto makers are in the process of developing a commmon OS for automotive electronics.

Japanese companies, which have been developing their own operating systems separately, will begin joint development of an OS, aiming to create a global standard in this field.

The ministry will commission the task of developing the OS to JasPar–Japan Automotive Software Platform Architecture–a joint venture comprising leading automakers and auto-parts makers and, electronics firms, including Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Honda R&D Co., Denso Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

The ministry plans to seek more than 1 billion yen in funding for the project in its budgetary request for fiscal 2008. The joint venture aims to have a prototype OS completed in fiscal 2009 and to market it in five to 10 years.

In an automobile, various electronics control devices are used, including those controlling fuel injection, brakes, air bags, power steering and power windows. An OS is the basic software for operating these devices.

OSEK, the operating system developed by German firm Bosch, the world’s leading auto-parts maker, is effectively the automotive version of Windows, with about 70 percent of the world market share.

Meanwhile, BMW, DaimlerChrysler and other European automakers are jointly developing a next-generation OS and are expected to complete a prototype in 2008.

While the number of electronic control devices installed in a typical automobile stood at about five in the 1980s, more than 30 such devices are installed now, with the number exceeding 100 for some luxury models.

The cost of electronic and electrical parts is said to account for about 20 percent of the overall production cost of an automobile. For a hybrid-type model, which requires a complex control system to switch the power source back and forth from the engine to a motor, electronic and electrical parts account for nearly 50 percent of the production cost.

I am currently having an WordPress/K2/Theme/CSS issue in regards to users who are viewing the site in Internet Explorer 7. If you look under a blog post title and who the blog post is under you’ll notice there is no space between the name of the blog poster and the word “at”.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this issue I’d love to hear from you.

Currently this issue does not exist for Firefox users.

The first release candidate (RC) of Microsoft’s Silverlight 1.0 has hit the web and this weekend I decided to take a closer look. I fiddled with it a few months ago but got too busy to pick it up again until now. Tim Sneath has the low-down on Silverlight 1.0 RC1. From a heads up by Somasegar, I installed the latest Expression bits (Expression Media Encoder and Expression Blend 2.0) and started playing with my first Silverlight project that works.

I took the teaser video for The Dark Knight I posted about yesterday and decided I wanted to “present” the teaser to readers using Microsoft Silverlight.

Check out The Dark Knight Teaser Trailer presented with Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 RC1.

I used a combination of Microsoft Expression tools to do some basic stuff. I used the Expression Media Encoder to encode and create the Silverlight project and webpage, I used Expression Web to edit the HTML webpage by adding my own text and title, and I used Expression Blend 2.0 to add text to the actual player itself. You can use Expression Blend to do far more advanced things like creating your own player with  Expression Design. I then uploaded the bits to the site and there we go! Was pretty easy.

My next move is to experiment with my own recorded video content with my HD camcorder and possibly creating my own player.

I was incredibly surprised on how easy it was to create and upload video presented using Silverlight. I could never figure out Flash and how to use Flash and with Silverlight I was able to figure it all out in a matter of minutes.

When viewing the video, you will be prompted to download and install Silverlight 1.0 RC1 which allows you to view the video in Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you are on a Mac and using Safari, you should also be prompted to download and install Silverlight 1.0 RC1 as well.

I’ll be spending some time tweaking the site this weekend so if you experience/see some weirdness, its probably due to me messing around with stuff. Just an FYI to our readers.