Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Product Innovations that are ... NOT!

Pur Water Purifying Fruit Flavor Cartridges Are Both Fantastic and Horrible

As if drinking regular water isn't enough for kids these days, Pur is introducing Pur Flavor Options, which is a fruit cartridge you can stick into their Pur water filter systems. The upshot? Now you can flip a switch and get filtered fruit-flavored water from your tap, which has the taste of water you used to rinse actual fruit in but none of the health benefits of water. Yum!

(Source: Gizmodo)

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Microsoft: Vista sells nearly 40 million licenses in first 100 days

what they DON'T say is that all/most of it was purchased by OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo ($1.3 billion software deal announced May 10th) etc. Anyone check with end users? Anyone know of an end user who has actually upgraded or is planning to upgrade to Vista (i.e. actually buy it?)? Posted May 16th 2007 5:04AM by Thomas Ricker

In case you're keeping track, nearly 40 million Microsoft Vista licenses have been sold in its first 100 days. According to Billy G, 78% of all sales made since the January 30th launch had been for the software's premium versions. Not bad, in fact, pretty damn impressive leaving little doubt that this is Microsoft's most successful OS (measure by rate of sale) ever with record profits sure to follow.

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TapeFailure Review Video by CenterNetworks

Read more at CenterNetworks...
http://www.centernetworks.com/video-review-of-tapefailure-watch-your-users-use-your-site

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

United States Patent: 6173267

United States Patent 6,173,267
Cairns January 9, 2001

Method for product promotion
Abstract

A method for providing fulfillment in a promotional contest includes providing a card in a product package marked with an internet address and a password. The purchaser of the product contacts the internet address and inputs personal information and the password to learn if the purchaser is a winner in the contest. If the purchaser is a winner, the card is sent to the company to verify the winning status before sending the prize to the purchaser.

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TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack

United States Patent 7,216,235
Platt May 8, 2007

Drive/host locking system
Abstract

An authentication system for securing information within a disk drive to be read and written to only by a specific host computer such that it is difficult or impossible to access the drive by any system other than a designated host is disclosed. While the invention is similar in intent to a password scheme, it significantly more secure. The invention thus provides a secure environment for important information stored within a disk drive. The information can only be accessed by a host if the host can respond to random challenges asked by the disk drive. The host's responses are generated using a cryptography chip processing a specific algorithm. This technique allows the disk drive and the host to communicate using a coded security system where attempts to break the code and choose the correct password take longer to learn than the useful life of the disk drive itself.

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