Welcome to Gahtan’s Technology and Internet Law Blog

While most of the commentary about Palm’s newly announced Foleo Mobile Companion appears to be negative, I think the device will be a welcomed addition. While a full blown notebook provides greater flexibility and functionality, I’d love to also have a cheaper device I can take with me to Starbucks or the back yard for taking notes, etc.

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Intel recently worked with a design firm to develop a concept notebook, codenamed the Intel Mobile Metro Notebook. It is ultra-thin (.7 inches), one of the lightest notebooks around (2.25 pounds), has a long battery life (14 hours) due to use of flash memory rather than a hard drive and a host of connectivity options (cellular, wifi and wimax). Smart-array microphones reduce background noise and enhanced security (finger print reader and a remote “kill” feature) round off the features. Of couse, not all of these are likely to make it into any commercial units since manufacturers will have to take cost into consideration.

From Business Week.

Blogger/Blogspot seems to be doing a better job this year in pulling down fake blogs (meaning, blogs that just copy random text from other blogs or from websites for the sole purpose of displaying paid placement ads). However, I’ve noticed that while these fake blogs may have been suspended or removed, their data is not also pulled out of Google’s Blog Search database. Better coordination needs to happen in order to improve the search results from Blog Search. There’s not reason why Blog Search should be displaying hits for a blog that was taken down months ago. Come on Google!

Google Analytics have been upgraded with some new features. Reports can now be emailed (or exported) on an ad hoc or scheduled basis. A custom dashboard can be created. And there are new trend graphing capabilities. All welcomed upgrades.

Yak4Ever offers free international long distance by calling a US phone number located in Minnesota. Unlike other similar services, it is necessary to first register a phone number and email address prior to using the service, and calls are limited to a list of 10 user-provided phone numbers. The specific subscriber is identified using ANI/CallerID and can then speed dial any of the 10 phone numbers by entering their speed dial locations. Set up is stated to take about 24 hours.

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According to Computer World, a recent sale of the porn.com domain fetched a cash price of US$9.5 million, the second highest price for a domain name sale. Sex.com was reportedly sold for $12 million in 2005 but was not an all-cash transaction.

According to PC World, Walmart is now selling Skype-compatible equipment and Skype pre-paid cards. The “Skype-certified” devices including products from Plantronics, Philips and Logitech. A three month subscription for unlimited calling to Canada and the US is available for $8.88. Seems like the perfect choice for someone who needs a short-term subscription in order to cover a vacation or business trip.

Free use of OneZone in downtown Toronto, provided by Toronto Hydro Telecom, came to an end last month. Users can now purchase access by the hour, day or month (CDN$4.99, 9.99 and 29.99 respectfully plus PST and GST - or about 30-50% less than the Bell/Telus/Rogers HotSpot service).