What price are you willing to pay to keep your camera and equipment protected from weather, water, or your own misfortune? Camera Armor’s Seattle Sling waterproof bag tagged at $149.95 seems very fair, especially for those who carry thousands of dollars worth of gear.

The waterproof dry bag also features four adjustable dividers to keep your lenses, batteries, flashes, etc., all safe and cozy, regardless of what’s going on outside. Speaking of the outside, the exterior of the bag has straps for larger equipment, like tripods.

The Seattle Sling is available now.

The bag’s zipper-free design includes a sealed, air-tight dry bag inside along with strong clips so the bag stays put, but still gives you easy access.

The other thing I look for is for the event staff to be even remotely interested. The check-in people were nice enough, but several times I was shocked by roving squads of Dow Jones staff who didn’t talk to the attendees and were overly gregarious.

And it could have just been me, but I really felt like they were looking at the presenters like we were lepers. I’ll chalk that up to low self-esteem but it wasn’t a friendly vibe from the staff.

Generally, I can’t recommend that startups bother with this event. I am sure there is value for someone, but it wasn’t me.

Taking my poor presentation skills as a given, my experience at the Dow Jones Venture One conference yesterday was really lame.

The other issues:
-The company presentations were only 10 minutes long, but there was no moderator for the attendees to know who was who.

-There were 2 rooms going of company presentations AND they ran a “power-panel” type of thing at the same time. I had several people come up and tell me they missed my presentation because they were at something else.

The main thing I look for is a program that meets the needs of the attendees and gives the speakers a fair chance at getting their attention. I think that this event was a failure at both.

Not for a moment would I expect Steve Jobs to suddenly leap into this market and alter the meaning of downloading for ever.

Henry David Thoreau explains things so well.

For years, critics might say, adult (movie) producers preyed upon the strengths of some and the weaknesses of many.

Technology has pushed the world in many new directions and suddenly people not only can just do it for themselves, but distribute it themselves too.

“There’s a battle with pirated or free material on the internet,” he told Wired. “Much like the music industry, adult [movie] producers are trying to figure out how to stem free or pirated content.”

They are simply saying to the adult (movie) producers: “We’re just as good as you.”
Or as bad, depending on your artistic and moral perspectives.

Aren’t you?

I am told by those who frequent free online adult (movie) entertainment that the quality is constantly improving. From a very base low. Um, I mean, low base. I think I mean both.

(I am as grateful as you that Wired added the word ‘movie’ in there.)

And now, in a business sense, they are beginning to experience the pain associated with being a bottom feeder.

And the pillars of the pornographic community (I am not sure if they have a Facebook group) are beginning to admit that it isn’t just the economy that is squeezing their bottom lines.

It’s funny, in writing about this stuff I’m wondering whether to offer any links. Ach, no. I am told by my handlers that readers here are far ahead of me, technologically speaking.

I am indebted to Wired for raising something very painful.

Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News (a group thing that protects, so to speak, trade interests) identifies the web as a source of commercial agony.

They sought to do it as cheaply as possible and to produce too many adult (movies) that debased rather than uplifted.

In part because of Mr. Fishbein’s hideously unAmerican belief that he and his members should be able to stem something that is free.

Despite Mr. Fishbein’s plaintive cries, this is not such a parallel with the music industry.

The hauteurs and auteurs of pornography are feeling the pinch.

But I know many would see this as one of the web’s great moral victories.

(Credit:
ktylerconk)

The last time Dell had a deal on the Canon Digital Rebel digital-SLR camera, it was the 8-megapixel XT model for $382. Now you can get the 10-megapixel Digital Rebel XTi for just $319, in your choice of black or silver. Woo!

That price is for the body only; an extra $100 buys you Canon’s 18-55mm lens. Like the XT and the original Rebel before it, the XTi is an extremely popular camera, as evidenced by CNET’s review. I promise you Dell will sell out of these in no time, so if you want in on digital-SLR goodness for one the lowest prices I’ve seen yet, act now.

Update: Sorry, everyone, looks like the deal is gone already. Hit the Comments and let me know if you were able to snag one before Dell jacked the price up!

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

On Wednesday, Black Hat officials opened their Call For Papers (CFP) site to paid attendees registered for this summer’s Black Hat USA 2008 Briefings and Trainings.

In February, speaking at Black Hat D.C. 2008, director Jeff Moss said his idea is to make the redesigned Black Hat Web site more interactive between speakers and attendees. The first improvement is to give future attendees a voice in choosing what speakers and presentations they’d like to see. Black Hat USA 2008, to be held August 2-7 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, is the first conference to offer this function.

Moss said in an e-mail that the “ratings will help us create the show you want to attend, and even help focus presentations as they’re being created. We are excited to see what kind of information we learn about what interests our delegates and what kind of talks meet their needs best.”

At present, the Black Hat CFP lists more than 80 submissions. The submission period will continue through May 1, when final selection will begin.

Approved talks will then be programmed into a dozen topic-based tracks, including Zero Day, Zero Day Defense, Application Security 1.0/2.0, Bots and Stuff, Covert, Deep Knowledge, Forensics & Anti-Forensics, Hardware, the Network, New Hotness, Over the Air (OTA), Privacy and Anonymity, and Turbo Talks. A new track, Un-Track, will be an opportunity for attendees and presenters to talk after a session, and was tested after sessions in Washington, D.C.

Moss also hinted that future improvements to the Black Hat site may include online forums.

Xobni gives you a useful scorecard for each person who e-mails you. (Click for full image.)

Update: Charlie Cooper and I discuss Xobni in today’s News.com podcast.

The e-mail helper app Xobni exits its private beta period Monday morning. Compared with the previous version of the app I tried (see “Handy e-mail helper”), Xobni is now faster and more stable, and thus more useful.

A refresher: Xobni integrates into your Outlook installation and shows you more about your e-mails than Outlook can itself. For each person who sends you e-mail, it shows you who else they communicate with a lot (their de facto social networks), and it finds their phone number from inside their e-mails. It also shows you all conversation threads you’ve participated in with the person, and all the attachments they’ve sent you. You can drill into message threads (very useful), and it has a snappy e-mail search engine built in (nice, but redundant).

Unlike many other Outlook add-ons that I’ve tried, this one seems to add its functionality without dragging down Outlook’s performance, or worse, crashing it. It is useful and it doesn’t get in the way. There’s no reason not to try it. And it’s free.

Xobni is neat bit of programming, and Microsoft likes it so much it tried to buy the company. But Xobni walked away from the deal, CEO Jeff Bonforte told me. (Microsoft can’t seem to buy anything these days.) At first I thought that was a bad decision, since Xobni is hardly a must-have product. It improves Outlook a bit, sure. But the company is going to need more than this handy little plug-in to become a real business. Microsoft was an easy exit. Why didn’t Xobni go for it?

Xobni also extracts e-mail threads. (Click to enlarge.)

Here’s what Xobni has up its sleeve: Xobni the app runs on Xobni the platform. This platform has hooks deep into Outlook. The platform is what enables Xobni to graft a viewing pane into Outlook, something other plug-ins can’t do. It can also integrate into Outlook’s default search bar (it doesn’t, yet). The platform is what gives Xobni access to all the message data that it uses without bogging down the Outlook host app.

Xobni plans to do two interesting things with the platform: first, write hooks into other e-mail apps (like Yahoo Mail and Gmail), and second, make the platform available to other vendors. So, for example, if Salesforce.com wants to write a plug-in that tightly integrates its CRM data into Outlook or whatever e-mail app its customers are using, Xobni’s toolkit could make that work. Salesforce presumably would make money from such a feature, which Xobni would profit from as well.

It turns out that Xobni is not really an Outlook plug-in company. Rather, it’s a company that makes a platform to abstract the difficult-to-write-for-Outlook, as well as other less-broken e-mail services, and that allows the creation of new products that integrate e-mail data with other apps. That’s good, since the business of painting incremental features onto Outlook is a bit shallow. The fundamental platform business is less visible to consumers, but it might actually make some money.

I suggested she tell her brother about it, and she refused, saying that she didn’t want to lose him forever to the virtual world. Money aside, if I’d told her just how much fame he could amass as a pro gamer, maybe she would have had a different reaction.

"ProdigyX" has mad drumming skills.

(Credit:
WCG Ultimate Gamer)

To wit, at a worldwide gaming tournament in New York Saturday, Robert “ProdigyX” Paz set the official Guinness world record for “Highest Aggregate Score in all 84 Songs of Rock Band 2.”

Paz–a 22 year-old pro gamer from the Bronx who already owns four other world gaming records and took second place in SciFi Channel’s Ultimate Gamer show–played his ion drums for over six consecutive hours, earning more than 10.5 million points. The achievement will be chronicled in the Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer’s Edition.

He accomplished his feat at the Samsung Experience during the 2009 U.S. Invitational, part of the World Cyber Games.

In addition to Rock Band 2, gamers competed in several other popular games at the two-day event, including, Virtua Fighter 5, Starcraft: Brood War, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Gears of War 2, Hero: World Tour, FIFA? 09, and CounterStrike 1.6.

The WCG 2009 grand final will be held November 11th to 15th in Chengdu, China.

So, perhaps in an attempt to prove how significant computing is in modern life, she auctioned her virginity on a German Web site.

However, unlike Natalie Dylan, the American who claims to have secured bids of $3.7 million for the privilege of deflowering her (although no deeds seem either to have been signed or done), Alina did not attract offers in quite the same region.

The best bid she managed to secure came in at 8,800 pounds, or just over $13,000.
The bidder, a 45-year-old Italian man, came through at the last minute by doubling the leading price.

Which was charming of him, so much so that Alina has now chosen to reveal details of how the deal enjoyed closure.

You will be moved to hear that she did, indeed, enjoy it. She was flown to Venice to meet her fairly decent proposal.

The Daily Mail quoted her as describing her first impressions: “At the arrivals lounge, a man came over, smiled, handed me a box of chocolates and said: ‘Welcome to Venice.’ He looked much younger than 45, short, but nicely dressed, with dark hair, green eyes and a kind smile.”

(Credit: CC Zoonabar/Flickr)

So it all started, as memorable days should, with a pleasant surprise. Alina admitted she was hoping for something of a “Pretty Woman” scenario.

The man took her site-seeing in Venice and didn’t happen to mention whether he was single, married or just a little odd. He had booked them into a five-star hotel for the consummation of the transaction.

As for the act itself, well, Alina says they had sex just the once (after all, he was 45) and apparently had breakfast the next morning “just like any other couple.”

Oh, and for breakfast, Alina had a morning-after pill.

Forgive me if I didn’t mention it, unprotected sex was part of the deal. Of course, the gentleman had a certificate to prove that he was STD-free.

May I leave you with one final twist to a story that neither Danielle Steel nor Mills and Boon nor Stephen King would have dared even to outline?

Alina would like to see her benefactor again. And she promises that if he agrees to see her, she won’t make him pay. I think she means “not for the sex, anyway”.

Isn’t it lovely how the Web can sometimes create the perfect conditions for romance to have a chance?

(Credit:
Yahoo)

It looks Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may be right: Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings won’t have much of an impact on the takeover fight between the two companies.

As CNET News.com’s Stephen Shankland just reported, Yahoo beat Wall Street earnings expectations for its first-quarter profit by 2 cents. First-quarter revenue rose to $1.82 billion, from $1.67 billion in the same quarter a year ago; excluding so-called traffic acquisition costs, revenue was $1.35 billion, up from $1.18 billion. Net income, excluding $401 million from the Alibaba initial public offering, was $141 million, down $1 million from a year ago. But that was enough to beat Wall Street expectations of 9 cents per share.

Yahoo also repeated its revenue forecast for the year– $7.2 billion to $8 billion–and raised its cash flow guidance for the year.

Will that be enough to get Microsoft to up what it’s offering? Early returns say probably not. Yahoo shares were about flat in after-hours trading as a conference call with investors was just starting.

Message from Microsoft
One proxy solicitor had this to say about Ballmer’s comments from this morning, when he said that whatever happened with Yahoo’s results, “it doesn’t affect the value of Yahoo to Microsoft”:

“Ballmer wants to send a message to Yahoo investors, the market, and Microsoft shareholders that they have no plans to bid against themselves and plan to stay the course,” said Rachel Posner, senior managing director of proxy solicitation firm Georgeson Inc.

Microsoft is expected to be listening in on the conference call as well, sizing up Yahoo’s fundamentals, where its financial figures landed in relation to Wall Street’s estimates, and how sustainable its business appears to be.

But in addition to those topics, some of the key words that Microsoft would likely be listening for include any reference Yahoo might make regarding “strategic alternatives” or “strategic review.”

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang did mention in a statement that Yahoo was exploring “strategic alternatives,” but added it would consider only those alternatives that would “maximize shareholder value.” Yahoo had previously rejected Microsoft’s unsolicited bid as undervaluing the company.

The one-hour conference call ended with little discussion of the Microsoft takeover offer. News.com’s Stephen Shankland will take a look at that and other Yahoo issues in a post coming up in a bit.

One of the few Netbooks* I’ve actually used was the first Asus EEE. It was an amazing machine, small, cheap, light, sturdy and reasonably fast. It sparked my interest in the emerging new hardware category. But, it wasn’t amazing enough to get me to buy it. The keyboard and the screen were just too small.

The flood of subsequent Netbook models have all seemed to have a fatal flaw, to me at least.

Sometimes the flaw was the operating system. I can’t understand why every hardware company feels the need
to create a customized version of Linux. What’s wrong with the popular distros? Then too, some of these underpowered laptops ship with Vista, which, to me, is a mistake on multiple levels.

Often, the flaw is the price. A big part of the appeal of the original Asus EEE was the low price. HP is perhaps the biggest offender here, their Mini-Note 2133 KR948UT came out at $949 and just had its price reduced to $789.

Sometimes the flaw was the processor. From what I’ve read, waiting for the Atom processor was the way to go. This ruled out a slew of early models, but now there are many Atom based models to chose from.

In part the flaws probably stemmed from the hardware manufacturers not understanding their target audience.

In July, I attended The Last HOPE hacker conference where I was surrounded not only by techies, but by many ultra small, ultra light laptop computers. At one point someone sitting next to me was using an Asus EEE to sniff the WiFi traffic in the room. That machine certainly wasn’t running the factory-installed operating system.

Sometimes the flaw is the hard disk. I long for a laptop that can be bounced around while running without risking severe damage to the hard disk. In other words, I’d prefer a solid state hard disk (SSD) rather than a traditional rotating platter model.

But hardware vendors seem married to the idea that more storage is better than less storage. When the incremental cost is trivial, this may be true, but SSDs are expensive. Thus large capacity SSDs come with large price tags. Here too, I think they mis-judged their audience.

A Netbook class machine is often a second computer rather than a primary one. Thus, it doesn’t need gobs of gigabytes. Six or eight gigabytes would be fine by me. Anyone needing more storage space should be able to stick a memory card inside the machine. Those of us looking for a secondary machine shouldn’t be burdened with features meant for a primary computer.

I’m not the only one struggling to pick a specific machine. In Building the perfect Netbook CNETer Dan Ackerman says “… we found that none of these Netbooks hit all the benchmarks we were looking for–
some were underpowered, some had terrible batteries, and others simply cost too much for what should be
almost an impulse purchase.”

So where does that leave those of us trying to settle on a particular cheap, small, light-weight secondary computer?

On paper, I agree with CNET’s recommendation of the Acer Aspire One as the best combination of features and prices. I say “on paper” because I haven’t actually used one. The new Lenovo Netbooks may be even better, but they are not yet available.

The problem with the Aspire One is picking a model, each entails compromises. More on that next time.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.