Joe Hutsko

I'm surprised by the sadness I feel as I write this post -- my last as guest blogger for Machinist. I have my own blog, which I guess qualifies me as a blogger, but I never appreciated what it means to truly blog until I started writing here.

While my blog is more an after-the-fact catchall to point to stories I've written for other publications, Machinist feels like a living, breathing creature that people visit to partake in a conversation about personal tech.

Like a virtual zoo of sorts, it's been a place where visitors have petted, poked and occasionally pissed on what I've had to say -- all of which I've enjoyed immensely.

Personal technology is exactly that -- personal -- and that's how I write about it. Blogging here has been one of the most satisfying stints in my two decades of writing.

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Above: GameTap; below: photo of American McGee by Spicy Horse

GameTap this week launched a new serial game series, Grimm, by veteran video game creator American McGee. Asked about his uncommon name, McGee once said, "My mom smoked pot. She was a hippie. I'm not sure how else to put that."

Playing games that bear McGee's dark design touch -- most notably Quake, Doom and the sequels that followed each -- can have similarly mind-altering effects, capable of scaring the bejesus out of players to the point of making them jump out of their seats.

Not so with his new series, which McGee says is less about horror and more about humor, as he explains in the following Q & A.

JH: American McGee, welcome. Your new serial, Grimm, serves up twisted takes on beloved fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Jack and the Beanstalk." The best tales are of course the scary ones. How young were you when you discovered fairy tales, and which scared you the most?

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Aliph

As a pathological multitasker I generally speak on the phone only when I can do something else at the same time, like walk the dog, shell fava beans or bike to the beach. Of course, I'm wearing a Bluetooth headset during these activities, which means trading hands-free freedom for not always coming through loud and clear on the other end of the line.

I owned Aliph's original Jawbone (before losing it to an incident with the washer-dryer), and it did an excellent job of canceling background noise like wind and traffic. So I was enthused when the company sent me the new Jawbone 2 ($130) -- sexily smaller, lighter and armed with a more comfortable leather-wrapped ear loop.

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Designed for Facebook by Susan Kare

Some of my friends call me crazy for spending money to send them Facebook gifts -- those extra-special icons that say you care because you're willing to spend a buck, the digital analog to buying a Hallmark Card. Were they free they might mean less -- to say nothing of certain organizations like Komen for the Cause that benefit from gift profits.

I got reacquainted with one of the gifts' designers, Susan Kare, by way of Facebook to catch up on what she's been up to since designing the original Mac's icons, her work on Microsoft Windows and those pesky sheep that get thrown around on Facebook -- which, I am happy to report, are not Susan's fault. (Phew! This moray eel I planned to throw at her goes back into the kitchen sink.)

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I was about to delete a recent press release in my in box when I paused at the words "Antivirus" and "iPhone." Sent by Intego, which sells antivirus and firewall programs for Macs and Windows, the release announced that the latest version of Intego VirusBarrier is the first-ever antivirus and anti-malware program to eradicate digital doo-doo from iPhone and iPod touch devices.

This brings up the point that smart phones are really just miniature computers and just as vulnerable to digital dangers like viruses and spyware.

After reading the release my first thought was: "It's about time." Especially now that iPhone and iTouch can (legally) run hundreds of downloadable applications.

Sure, Apple vets the apps for nastiness before making them available, but everyone knows super-sneaky stuff can slip below the radar and go undetected. At even greater risk are users of jail-broken iPhones and iPod touches who download and run uninspected apps from scores of sources. Reality check: I jail-broke my iPhone before 2.0 and had no problems with apps I downloaded and ran, but nevertheless I believe it's only a matter of when and not if before a malicious virus or malware attack takes a bite out of the iPhone's (and Apple's) clean and shiny image.

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A recent BBC story about Hollywood's changing ways on the digital-distribution front mentioned that some titles on Apple's iTunes Music Store are exempt from the usual 30-day waiting period after the DVD release.

To find out how -- and when -- Hollywood makes digital-distribution decisions, I contacted spokespeople for three players in the direct-to-device downloading business: Vudu, Microsoft and Netflix.

"Vudu gets all their content from the studios," said Tara Wagner of SutherlandGold, which handles Vudu's public relations. Wagner said Vudu has deals with all of the major motion-picture studios and more than 27 independent distributors. "When the studio releases a DVD into the video store, it's available the same day on Vudu right from your living room. There's also something called the HBO hole -- movies not available on any digital services because they fall into the HBO hole."

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In the Op-Ed "OPEC 2.0" in today's New York Times, Columbia law professor Tim Wu contends that "the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth," and "if we aren't careful, we're going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel."

Which got me thinking about voice and data plans, and the price of a gallon of that most precious liquid in the world, water.

A few days ago a worker knocked on my door to inform me my water was going to be shut off for failure to pay the bill. What bill? The one my landlord forgot to mention was my responsibility. I opened an account, which isn't very interesting, I know, but what is noteworthy is how my awareness shifted from not thinking about how much water I use to suddenly caring about it.

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Intrigued by the HP 2133 Mini-Note's ($750) compact size, light weight and slick design pluses like an aluminum case and ultra-bright screen, I decided to take one for a spin.

Wary of the slightly shrunken keyboard (92 percent of full size), I was impressed to find I could touch-type at full speed with no noticeable stumbles. Not so nice is the touchpad with buttons on either side instead of below. Hitting the left one requires an unnatural twist of the wrist, and tapping the right button had me twisting the other way around. Can you say carpal-tunnel magnet?

The 1.6 processor running Windows Vista was zippy enough for Web browsing and Word, but adding Outlook to the mix slowed things down considerably, and switching between apps was especially laggy when new e-mail messages streamed into my in box. (Other OS options include Linux and Windows XP.)

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The new Das Keyboard Professional ($129) landed on my doorstep with a distinct clack. Make that clickity-clack, and loudly at that. Because it's equipped with mechanical key switches, closing my eyes and typing on the Professional is like going back in time to the original IBM PC keyboard.

Eyes wide open or squinted shut, it makes no difference when seated before Das' other model, the Ultimate, which features blank keys across the board -- a kind of techno tough love for those who want to learn to touch-type with no chance of peeking when stuck on a letter or symbol.

For this touch typist, typing hasn't felt -- or sounded -- this good in decades, though I doubt co-workers in open office environments would feel the same.

Which do you prefer? Noisy or quiet? Comments welcome.

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Like most people I know I type in what I'm looking for with zero forethought and wind up clicking through pages of near hits and misses.

Smarter search results are just a few easy keystrokes away -- the hard part is remembering to use them.

Here are the top three tips for smarter searches:

1) Surround exact phrases with quotation marks, such as "been down so long it all looks up to me," to turn up exact matches.

2) Use "or" to find Web pages containing some but not necessarily all of what you're looking for, such as MobileMe or "Mental Meltdown" or "Remember to Breathe."

3) Use the minus sign to find pages that don't include certain words or phrases, such as cuil -sex -drugs -rock-and-roll.

To recap: " and or and - equal smarter searches, provided you remember to use them.

Got your own tips and tricks for smarter searches? Please share.

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The new search engine Cuil launched Monday. Stories about it point out pluses like the size of its massive index (120 billion Web pages) and minuses like fewer total hits than what Google turns up when searching the same thing.

I can’t say what I think of Cuil until I spend more time using it, but I can tell you what Cuil thought of me when I searched for myself to compare Cuil with Google.

First, Google, which turned up "about 12000" results, with my blog JOEyGADGET appropriately topping the list (due in part to the fact that it's registered with Google's blog search service). Additional hits were reasonably timely and appropriate, including news of Boing Boing's serialization of my novel "The Deal."

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Olivier Laude

Doug Camplejohn

In a recent (and very interesting) post on his blog about security, MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan described how, in an effort to grab our attention, spammers are employing tabloid techniques to try to mimic what those rags do best: exploit human nature.

The way Doug Camplejohn, CEO and founder of Mi5 Networks, sees it, two humanly natural traits in particular are precisely what "the bad guys" target when trying to lure us to take the bait and click.

J.H.: I met you when we both worked at Apple and you were known as the "Quicktime guy." Since then you've launched Myplay, a digital music "locker," which was sold to Bertelsmann in 2001, and now you're running a company with a very James Bond-esque name, Mi5, which is England's equivalent to our own FBI.

D.C.: Right, they handle domestic security.

J.H.: From MP3s to more secure machines. What got you interested?

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I started and signed off my stint as Machinist guest blogger last week with stories about books, and didn’t intend to begin this week on the same subject, but here I go again. (I swear I'm not trying to secretly appeal to Salon as prospective book-beat reporter.)

In his story in Monday's New York Times, Andrew Adam Newman reports on the death of cassette audiobooks at book publisher Hachette, whose author lineup includes big names like James Patterson, Robert Ludlum and Nicholas Sparks.

Unlike the relatively quicker leap music and movies made from tape to shiny disc, audiobooks have been slower to go for one very good reason: They're as easy as opening to a dog-eared page to pick up where you last left off.

Skipping forward and backward by chapter is possible on all CD-based audiobooks; however, only CDs that bear the "Audiobook Compatible" logo offer the ability to resume the story where you left off when the player was turned off.

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After a week of nearly nonstop writing I'm looking forward to unplugging and unwinding on the beach with a book I hope offers a perfect escape: "Hold Tight" by Harlan Coben.

It was chosen as one of Salon's suggested summer reads and Louis Bayard's review cites the perfect formula for my kind of thrill ride: family strife, Internet cabals and parents who install spy software on their son's computer to unlock secrets, all of which make the book a no-brainer choice for me (though whether I'll go with the hardback or the e-book and risk dropping my iPhone I have yet to decide).

Other high-tech-flavored books on my summer reading list include the novels "Circumference of Darkness" (Jack Henderson), "An Ordinary Spy" (Joseph Weisberg), "Spook Country" (William Gibson) and the nonfiction title "Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise From the Basement to the Big Time" (Michael Kane).

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Iqua

Very un-vampire: A teeny tiny solar panel keeps the Iqua headset charged -- as long as you stay in the light.

A Bluetooth headset with a built-in solar panel to extend talk-time life, a biocompatible cellphone case made of recycled tires from Colombian banana trucks that shares the profits with a developing country, and mobile phones with calling plans that contribute 1 percent of charges to progressive nonprofit groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the ACLU and others.

That's the mission at Credo Mobile, the new go-green, do-right-by-human-rights cellphone company. Owned and operated by Working Assets, the mobile virtual network operator reports contributions of more than $60 million to its roster of liberal nonprofit organizations. A glance at the Credo's nationwide coverage map shows mostly dark green (which equals "best" coverage) from coast to coast, and though Credo is mum on which mobile operator network it piggybacks off of for its own feel-good repurposes, a Google search revealed Sprint PCS to be the one.

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What better way to round out my weeklong gig as the Machinist's guest blogger than with a bit of news that brings us full circle to my first post of the week.

In a move that may help it catch up to the Amazon Kindle's library of titles, Sony yesterday announced it will begin supporting an e-book format favored by a wide group of publishers, including big houses Penguin Group, HarperMedia and Simon & Schuster. Existing Sony Reader Digital Book owners can download an update for the device now, and new versions of the Reader will ship with support for the new format.

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With no clue what "knol" meant, I turned to Wikipedia, which, in its entry for Google's Knol, states: "The term knol, named after a 'unit of knowledge,' refers to both the project and an article in the project."

Curious to see what Knol had to say about Wikipedia, I visited knol.google.com, searched on Wikipedia, and came up with nothing.

Ditto for searches on two genius inventors I'm fond of, "Edison" and "Alan Kay." I did have some success with a search for "XBox," which had no entry itself, but was referred to in an entry for video game Devil May Cry, authored by a fascinatingly bearded contributor who goes by the name of Chewy.

ZDNet blogger Garett Rogers ends his post ("Google Creates a New Market and Wreaks Havoc on Another"): "Unfortunately for Wikipedia, Google has the means to pay authors for their contributions. I wonder what’s stopping someone from ripping off all Wikipedia content and profiting from it?"

Perhaps, but unless you write Knol entries for "Britney Spears" or "Linux" and similarly big-hit Web wonders, it’s doubtful the pennies paid by AdSense will turn many contributors into millionaires.

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As with my first guest blog post about eReader for the iPhone, my discovery of the new WordPress app for the iPhone presents an opportunity to talk about not only it but also other smart phones and add-on programs and mobile sites that allow people to blog by phone.

I downloaded the WordPress app from the iTunes store, typed in my WordPress blog user name and password, and typed out this short post. Adding the image was easy, but choices for where to place it were limited to one -- the bottom of the post. Posts can be saved as drafts, private, pending review or published, and categories are selected by scrolling through and checking the ones you want.

I've bitched about this before, but it still hasn't been fixed: When the will the iPhone get a feature found on every smart phone in the world -- cut, copy and paste? Considering it took Apple an entire year to add another feature found on every mobile phone since creation -- the ability to search contacts -- I won't hold my breath.

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