http://www.andrewlih.com/blog USC professor Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:55:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Great blue sky weather greets attendees today coming to Austin, TX for South by Southwest 2010. The interactive, film and music festival has gained the reputation for being the most interesting conference around for creative folks of all stripes. Ties and suits are frowned upon here, while Chuck Taylor sneakers, scruffy ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2010/03/13/sxsw-2010-day-1/ Ever wonder why the weekly ad circulars for Best Buy and Radio Shack use valuable space for promoting expensive HDMI cables, right next to $1000 flat screen TVs and BluRay disc players? The not-so-secret secret -- cables are one of the highest margin products in electronics retailing, with markups of ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/23/nbc-la-review-cables/ Today's Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog has a piece about Ron Livingston's lawyers filing a lawsuit against an anonymous Internet user, in an attempt to identify who's been editing his Wikipedia article to add rumors that he's gay. The best legal description I've found is at the Copyrights & Campaigns ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/16/ron-livingston-growth-and-wikipedia/ While most gadgets are "Toys for Boys," I reviewed one that you can share with your spouse. Literally. The iHome IP88 is an iPod clock radio alarm and speaker system setup for his/her iPod charging. While the sound quality isn't spectacular, it is nice to have a compact, functional way to ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/11/nbc-la-review-ihome-ip88/ This week on NBC LA TechRaw I review the Panasonic LUMIX DMC-ZS3 which has the trifecta of what I'm looking for a compact point and shoot: Wide angle and long zoom lens (25mm to 300mm in film terms) 720p high definition video, optical zooming works while recording (!) Beautiful optical quality (Leica lens) It ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/11/nbc-la-review-panasonic-lumix/ The Wikimedia Foundation has responded to the recent press attention started by the WSJ piece about Wikipedia participation on the decline. The main takeaway from chief data analyst Erik Zachte and deputy director Erik Moeller is that the decline has happened since March 2007, but the number of participants seems to ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/11/27/wikimedia-response/ Today's WSJ has an article by Julia Angwin and Geoff Fowler: Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages and the associated Digits blog post. It's one of the best reported stories so far on the dropoff in numbers in Wikipedia (and it's not just because they quoted me). The article taps all ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/11/24/wikipedia-in-the-wsj/ Last night I joined CNN's Campbell Brown to comment on China, Google, and Green Dam software. I'm glad she asked more than the usual basic questions when it comes to filtering and censorship. See the link or the clip below (which may not work in Safari on Mac): http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/11/19/cnn-appearance-with-campbell-brown/ In my latest Tech Raw device review, I conclude the Apple Magic Mouse is like a high heeled shoe: beautiful if a bit impractical. I'm getting more used to this low profile, nearly flat mouse but it's a heavy aluminum and plastic unit that still falls short of a real three ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/11/05/nbc-la-review-apple-magic-mouse/ Today I did a video review of Apple's Magic Mouse for NBC News Raw (video to be posted later), but here's a more detailed overview. Apple's had a bad modern history with designing mice. It stemmed from Steve Jobs's stubbornness from the 1980s to avoid a second button on the original Mac ... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/11/04/review-apples-magic-mouse/