Comcast buys Plaxo

Yessir. We knew Plaxo was looking for a buyer. Comcast comes as a bit of a surprise, though. Plaxo says that your Google contacts will continue to sync, and here’s why they think it all makes sense:

Plaxo’s Personal Card: Comcast to Acquire Plaxo; Pulse to Become Central to Creating Unified “Social Media” Experience Across the Web, the TV (and more)

Plaxo and Comcast have been working together for the past year on a number of initiatives. Plaxo is providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center (slated to launch later this year), and we are also now hosting all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users. Our partnership has already more than doubled the reach of the Plaxo network, bringing the total number of accounts to nearly 50 million.

Together, we intend to deliver on a vision of making “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early-adopters. For example, you should be able to securely post family photos online in Pulse, and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV. And you should be able to discover new shows to watch, based on what your friends and coworkers have recommended.

A Fine List of Mac Freeware

Here is a cleanly organized list of free Mac software. Best of all, it seems to cover the best-of-breed in every category … and contains a few surprises.

Access Google Docs from OpenOffice

I haven’t tried it, but it might come in handy.

Linux.com :: Connect OpenOffice.org to Zoho Writer and Google Docs with OoGdocsIntegrator

Do you fancy Web-based word processors but aren’t ready to leave OpenOffice.org? You can work with your Zoho Writer and Google Docs files from the convenience of OpenOffice.org Writer, courtesy of the OoGdocsIntegrator extension.

Google buys into WiMAX

So how is this? Google herds Verizon into buying and opening up the 700MHz band and then finds itself with some cash to spend on plan B … to wit … WiMax in the form of Sprint and Clearwire which are merging and teaming up with a cast of dozens:

Sprint and Clearwire merge next-gen wireless businesses, goes by Clearwire - Engadget

the new outfit will be called Clearwire, even though Sprint will hold around 51-percent of the firm, while existing Clearwire shareholders will own 27-percent and the new investors will hold 22-percent. New investors? Ah yes, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks will collectively invest $3.2 billion in the new company, but that figure is “based on a target price of $20 a share of Clearwire’s common stock,

But from a previous post, I think we can see why this part of the wireless strategy was plan B all along …

Sprint, Clearwire set to announce $12B WiMAX deal with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Intel, and Google? - Engadget

it’s a pretty big boost for WiMAX, which was looking pretty sickly lately. Still, asking consumers to have faith in Sprint and Comcast and Time Warner Cable is pretty ballsy — between the three of them, they’ve probably burned everyone in America.

VMware Fusion 2.0 beta 1

Hot on the heels of the VirtualBox update …

VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

The above video gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1’s top new features, including:

* Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
* Improved networking and printing
* Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
* A refined UI for settings and VM management

VirtualBox out of Beta for Macs

The Best of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on One PC: Sun xVM VirtualBox | Speeding Computer

There are a number of different excellent commercial products such as VMware, BootCamp or VirtualPC. However Sun Microsystems has just updated their free and open source virtualization package, the Sun xVM Virtual Box 1.60.

The new version is a major upgrade featuring over 2000 changes including full support for Mac OS X in addition to Windows and Linux distributions.

Assigned to the Help Desk?

Here’s a great little glass half-empty/half-full article about being assigned to the help desk. The quote presents the two opposite viewpoints. I figure both cannot be simultaneously correct. It must be that some companies know how to run a help desk. Others don’t. Your viewpoint is likely to be influenced by which environment you find yourself condemned to.

Your help desk career: Dead end or launching pad?

In particular, help desk technicians who work in “stovepiped” IT organizations — that is, companies where systems analysts, network managers and other IT professionals are segregated from one another — can go 10 to 15 years without being promoted into IT infrastructure, business analyst, systems administrator or other types of roles, he says.

A new breed of IT pros begs to differ, maintaining that a job on an IT help desk can open doors to other IT career opportunities. Help desk technicians, these proponents say, gain valuable experience working with end users throughout the enterprise and learning what makes the business tick.

Introducing the memristor

Introductory physics courses are about to get harder.

Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

A group of scientists from HP Labs has finally built real working memristors, thus adding a fourth basic circuit element to electrical circuit theory, one that will join the three better-known ones: the capacitor, resistor and the inductor.

Researchers believe the discovery will pave the way for instant-on PCs, more energy-efficient computers, and new analog computers that can process and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.