I’m sitting here in New York, using my 250GB external Western Digital Passport external hard drive, and a few moments ago, I received a press release touting the company’s newest product: “WD My Passport Essential.”

You may recall that I bought a 250GB Passport in early December, after giving up on waiting for the delayed 320GB internal drive. Both the 320GB internal and external drives are now shipping.

So, I’m wondering, “What’s the difference between a WD Passport and a WD My Passport Essential”? According to the release,

“Redesigned to complement WD’s popular My Book family of external drives, the drives introduce a sleek new form that feels good in your hand and fits neatly in a pocket or purse. Available now at select retailers and at WD’s online store (http://www.shopwd.com), the new My Passport Essential USB Drives feature a beautiful glossy black finish and put almost a third of a terabyte of digital storage in the palm of your hand.“

First off, the WD Passport that I have already has a glossy black finish. So, what else is different? Let’s check the specs for the 320GB versions of both.

WD Passport WDXMS3200 (the old one)

Performance Specifications
Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) 480 Mbits/s (Max)

Physical Specifications
Capacity 320 GB
Interface USB 2.0

Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.590 Inches (Max) • Length 5.110 Inches (Max) • Width 3.14 Inches • Weight 0.23 Pounds
Metric
Height 15 mm (Max) • Length 129.78 mm (Max) • Width 79.78 mm • Weight 0.1048 kg

WD My Passport Essential WDME3200 (the new one)

Performance Specifications
Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) 480 Mbits/s (Max)

Physical Specifications
Capacity 320 GB
Interface USB 2.0

Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.590 Inches • Length 4.967 Inches • Width 3.130 Inches • Weight 0.231 Pounds
Metric
Height 15 mm • Length 126.15 mm • Width 79.5 mm • Weight 0.1048 kg

So, it’s the same hard drive, same interface specs, same bundled software, same shiny black plastic for the case, same thickness, and same weight. However, the case is now 3.6mm shorter and 0.3mm narrower. That, I suppose, is what makes it “essential.” Oooh. Aaaah.

Speaking of Microsoft TechEd — I was surprised to learn this morning that Microsoft has split it into two separate events.

That’s right, there’s a “Developers TechEd 2008” from June 3-6, and an “IT Professionals TechEd 2008” from June 10-13. Both are in Orlando. Bill Gates is keynoting the former, and Bob Muglia is kicking off the latter.

(Okay, this isn’t really news: Microsoft revealed this decision in November. Somehow, I missed it. My bad.)

That’s a real nuisance, of course, for anyone whose interests span both domains. Microsoft says that there will be some IT stuff at the developer event, and developer stuff at the IT event, to benefit such attendees. Doesn’t that make you think about Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups?

I had intended to attend TechEd to cover it for both SD Times and our new launch, Systems Management News. But which TechEd? Not both, that’s for sure. Two weeks in Orlando is overkill… not only for me, of course, but for companies that sell products and services into the Microsoft ecosystem. However, many in the industry are going to have to spend big $$$ to have a presence at both events.

This year, other must-attend Microsoft developer events include Mix (March 5-7 in Las Vegas) and the Professional Developers Conference (October 27-30 in Los Angeles).

That’s a lot for any developer to handle.

Magazines tend to pile up at my house, so that I can read them during my too-frequent business travel. Jettisoning a well-read magazine mid-trip is truly a pleasure.

It’s not a pleasure, though, when a feature story starts in the front of the magazine, and then you must jump to the back of the magazine to finish the story. You return to the front of the magazine to begin the next story, then jump to the back again to finish it, and so-on.

Jumps (where stories run non-linearly) are a “reader disservice” by a magazine’s editors and art directors.

As someone who has been in the magazine business for a long time — more than two decades — it’s always been my goal to minimize jumps in the publications I work on. Alas, Wired (and I took three recent issues with me to read) just loves jumps. Argh!

In “the old days,” jumps were sometimes necessary because only some parts of the magazine were printed with a four-color (4C) process, and other parts were printed in black-and-white (BW). It was common to start stories with opening artwork on 4C pages, and then jump them to the BW back-of-the-book.

Today, very few magazines, at least in the mainstream publishing world, are printed with BW pages. Nearly everything is 4C throughout. So, why still have the jumps?

They’re certainly not necessary. Nearly all of my favorite leisure-reading magazines, from The Economist to BusinessWeek to The New Yorker, eschew jumps entirely. BZ Media’s own Software Test & Performance also runs without jumps. Granted, ST&P isn’t Wired. But there’s no reason why Wired has to (continued page 149)

So, I’m sitting with a friend, and she’s showing off her brand-new digital camera. When the topic came around to my five-year-old Canon EOS 10D digital SLR, she said (not in so many words), “It’s time to upgrade that ancient, obsolete device.“

I bought the EOS 10D back in 2003, when it was the first Canon digital SLR that could properly replace my Canon EOS A2 film SLR. The 6.3-megapixel resolution was quite adequate, and of course, it used my extensive set of Canon EOS “L” lenses.

However, the EOS 10D was not quite perfect. In particular, there were two features that disappointed:

• It lacks the 2.5% spot meter which my EOS A2 film camera had — and that was a tool I used a lot when shooting events, like trade shows. A spot meter lets you accurately expose an image based on a very small area, like a brightly lit industry executive standing on a dimly lit stage in a darkened auditorium.

• It has a 22mm light sensor that was much smaller than the 35mm film inside a “real” camera. Because of the small sensor, the camera can only “see” what’s in the middle of the field of view, making all standard lenses appear more telephoto by a factor of 1.6x. Thus, a 20mm lens acts like a 36mm lens, a 50mm lens becomes an 80mm lens, and a 200mm lens becomes a 320mm lens. That’s bad, if you’re trying to do anything wide, work a crowd or do scenery.

Otherwise, the 10D is easy to use, offers the fine-grained control that I wanted, and takes great pictures. I’ve never had a complaint about it. (There was a third item that annoyed me five years ago, but I can’t remember what it was. Obviously, I got over it.)

So, do I want a new camera? Only if it’ll solve those problems at a reasonable price. Sadly, none of the affordable models from Canon address the shortcomings of a five-year-old model. Sure, the new SLRs have higher resolution, with most being 10 megapixels. There’s a new Canon Rebel XSi coming out in April that has 12 megapixels. But otherwise… nah.

• All the Canon Rebel models (which are much less expensive than the EOS series) use a 22mm image processor. Same old 1.6x multiplier. They also lack a real spot meter. What they offer are really low prices ($592 street for a 10-megapixel Canon Rebel XTi body), an automatic mirror cleaner, and a little better software. The forthcoming 12-megapixel Canon Rebel XSi doesn’t do any better; it just adds a few more pixels and more gadgets.

• In the higher-end EOS series, the current model, the 10-megapixel Canon EOS 40D, does have a spot meter. Alas, it still has the 22mm image sensor, so it solves only one of my problems. Sure, it has lots of bells-and-whistles, like a much bigger LCD screen you can use to preview pictures, and tons of custom settings, but it also costs $1,149 street.

• The lowest-cost Canon SLR that actually does what I want is the Canon EOS 5D (their numbering is really screwy). Not only does it have 12.8 megapixels, not only does it have a proper spot meter, but it also has a 35.8mm image sensor. Ahh, finally a digital SLR camera that’ll use the entire image from the lens! However, with a street sticker of $2,099… nope.

So, if you see people happily taking pictures at a scenic viewpoint or at a technology conference, I’ll be the guy with an obsolescent Canon EOS 10D… and a pocket full of money not spent.

Now is the time of year when the editors of BZ Media’s SD Times begin working on our annual awards program, the SD Times 100. That’s where we recognize the greatest innovators and leaders in the software development industry – companies, organizations and individuals.

In the five years that we’ve been conducting the SD Times 100, the awards have become well established and respected by readers and the industry alike. We’ll be publishing the 6th SD Times 100 in our Jun. 1, 2008, issue. Reader nominations will open on Feb. 1, and will stay open through Mar. 1. (I’ll blog when the reader nominations open, and post a link to the online form.)

However, this year – inspired by comments by senior editor Alex Handy – we’re also going to ask readers to nominate the WORST OF 2007. That is, the anti-leaders and anti-innovators that affected the art of software development (and the software development industry) the most in 2007… the companies and organizations whose behavior and products were so bad that they significantly impacted software development, through tools, practices, platforms, policies, whatever.

The nominations for THAT singular dishonor are open NOW, and will remain open through Mar. 1. We welcome everyone and anyone to submit their nominations for the WORST OF 2007. Please link people to this blog post, so they understand the context (instead of just sending them to the nomination form).

To be honest, I’m not sure how we’ll publicize the winners. Maybe it’ll be part of the SD Times 100 report on Jun. 1, maybe it’ll be something different. We’ll figure that out later. Meanwhile, let the anti-nominations commence!

In reviewing my blog traffic logs, it’s clear that a lot of people are researching the Oracle/BEA deal. In particularly, my entry from last October, “BEA, Oracle market share” was off the chart.

So, if you are looking for stats… there they are.

Today’s news: Oracle is eating BEA, while Sun is slurping up MySQL.

The bigger news story is that Oracle, thwarted last October, finally nabbed BEA Systems. The $7.2 billion deal (it looks like $8.5 billion in the announcement, but I’ve subtracted BEA’s cash reserves) is still a hefty chunk of change, even by Oracle’s standards. Still, did anyone doubt that it would happen?

For most of us, this huge acquisition won’t make much difference at all. While some BEA products might be subordinated to their Oracle counterparts, Oracle should be to be a good shepherd of BEA’s technology and customers. If anything, Oracle’s deep pockets might push some of BEA’s many initiatives harder.

What about Sun’s purchase of MySQL for about US$1 billion? That might be cause for worry for advocates of the LAMP stack. LAMP, of course, is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl — and is relied upon by both enterprise and commercial developers who want to avoid the high licensing costs of Oracle DB, DB2 or SQL Server.

Many of the world’s biggest Web applications, using lots of things at Google, Facebook and others, are dependent on MySQL. In many ways, MySQL was the strongest pillar of the LAMP stack.

The question is, how well will MySQL fare in Sun’s hands? While Sun is focused on open source software, it likes to go its own way. Certainly, MySQL will see investment, as well as tighter integration with Java, Solaris and NetBeans. When MySQL stops being an independent software maker, integration with Linux, or with competing platforms, will take a back seat. After all, Sun’s going to have to find a way to make money from MySQL in order to justify the investment.

Sun’s move will drive a wedge between Sun and Oracle. Traditionally allies, they’ve gotten along so well largely because Sun didn’t have an enterprise database of its own.

Because other two databases didn’t like Sun (because IBM competed with Sun’s hardware, and Microsoft competed with everything at Sun), Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy found many great reasons to play well together. That partnership paid off for many, many years.

But that was long ago, and clearly Jonathan Schwartz sees things differently.

I know that many publications in Europe view the separation between editorial and the industry as — shall we say — less stringent than many publications here in the U.S.

While of course there are exceptions on both sides of the Pond, it’s expected for vendors to pick up a European reporter’s expenses for visiting conferences, press events, and other junkets, for example. Just about everyone does it.

That creates problems, of course, for European companies trying to work with North American reporters… or for North American companies trying to figure out why European beat reporters are submitting expenses for payment.

With that said of course, I was surprised by the casual coziness expressed in this e-mail, which I received today, from the editor of a U.K. publication called Design Buy Build, which invites vendors to send information to be run, presumably verbatim, within their editorial content. If you’d like to have the editors print a color picture, there’s a fee for that.

It’s truly a different world.

Coincidentally, it arrived while I was serving as a judge for the Neal Awards, from American Business Media. One of the areas we must evaluate (as best we can) is whether it appears that a magazine or Web site’s editorial content is truly independent of industry or advertising pressures, according to ABM’s code of editorial ethics. Needless to say, Design Buy Build wouldn’t score very highly there.

Here’s the e-mail:

To: Public Relations Manager 16/1/08

We are currently setting our editorial feature pages within our Jan/Feb edition, which will be distributed at the end of January to our Unique circulation of over 50,000 key specifiers & purchasers within the whole building & design industry. Including: Architects – House Builders – Developers – Contractors – Interior Designers – Self Builders – Housing Associations – Purchasers within the Hotel & Leisure Industry, Health care, Local Authorities, Public Sector & Private Practices. 5,000 extra copies of this edition will also be distributed from our stands at Ecobuild, Futurebuild, Cityscape & The Natural Stoneshow.

I am hoping you can provide some of the following information, that we may feature within the editorial matter.

Latest Product Innovations, New Literature, or Case Studies
(Copy consists of either a colour image along with 80-100 words of text)

Supported by over fifty of the most respected building & design associations throughout the UK, including editorial feature articles from the NBAT, the leading technical writers within the industry, the publication also features a comprehensive look at the latest design innovations as well as updates in regulations, health & safety, education and C.P.D. amongst others, providing our readers with a publication that pulls together the many different resources available today, giving them an informative read that promotes the best in our profession. The latest issue can be viewed at www.designbuybuild.co.uk

Please email your latest information to (address removed)

Please also confirm if you would be willing to pay the £85 colour seperation charge to feature the image in colour.

Esther Schindler made me hungry! That’s what happened when I read her latest CIO blog post, “Is there anything developers won’t do for a pizza,” posted last Friday.

“It’s not that I’m shocked that developers appreciate offerings of food. It’s that their desires are satisfied with such a simple answer. A steak dinner? Sure, that’ll get anyone’s attention. Pizza and cheap beer? Why does that work?” she asks.

Do not read her post before lunch.

(Hmm. Perhaps some developers are 20x more productive than others because they get better pizza.)

Mail server blacklists are insidious. Just about anyone can submit your e-mail address, domain or even IP address to a DNS blacklist (DNSBL). Once that happens, the chances of your messages getting through to people become pretty lousy. (A DNS blacklist is also known as a blackhole list.)

While certainly mail servers used by spammers should be on blacklists, how do the rest of us get there?

• Perhaps one of your machines been turned into a spambot zombie.
• Perhaps your mail server is configured as an open relay (bad, bad, bad!).
• Perhaps someone else using your ISP is a spammer.
• Perhaps one of your IP addresses was once assigned to a spammer.

What’s important is for you to find out if you’re on a blacklist. You should do this periodically. If you are on a blacklist, there are various resources available for getting yourself off again. But before you can do that, you need to know if there’s a problem.

Most corporate IT people only know if there’s a blacklist problem when one of their employees complains that his/her e-mail is blocked. However, you should be more proactive. If you host your own e-mail server, one free resource you can use is Blacklist Check, from MXToolbox, which checks your server’s IP address. If you don’t know the IP address for the domain’s MX records, they have a tool for that too, and another one for server diagnostics.

The company sells services to help you deal resolve mail problems. I’m not endorsing them; I’ve never even looked at them. However, their blacklist checker and other free tools are very useful.

I haven’t attended the Consumer Electronics Show in more than a decade… and keep forgotting how silly it can be. Fortunately, other journalists are ready to remind me.

David Colker blogged for the Los Angeles Times about the just-announced Taser MPH – the first combination MP3 player and stun gun. “The Taser MPH is not just a gadget, it’s a fashion statement,” he writes.

The stun gun’s holster, which contains the 1GB music player, comes in a fun leopard print pattern, as well as red-hot red and fashion pink.

If you connect an Apple iPod Touch to your stereo via an Apple Universal Dock, the user interface problems go away.

Not only are you charging the iPod (if you plug it into an AC adapter) and getting better audio using “line out,” but the remote control restores the tactile feel to the device. (I wrote about the lack of tactile feel when playing music.)

The Universal Dock that I have is the MA045G/C, purchased in June 2007, since discontinued. Amazon’s reviews are negative on the Apple docks, but I’ve been pleased. I can’t speak to any third-party docks.

I’m the proud owner of a 16GB Apple iPod Touch, given to me as a Christmas present by a good friend. I’ve been taking many notes about the device – which is an incredible technological marvel – but I can summarize my experiences over the past three weeks as follows:

What it’s great at: Being a WiFi Web browser and movie/video player

What it’s not great at: Being a plain old music player

My biggest beef with the iPod Touch (as a music player) is the lack of tactile response caused by the shift from a control wheel to the large touchscreen:

• With my “regular” iPods, I can change songs, start/stop the music and change volume without looking at the device. That’s great when I’m using it on an airplane or in my car. In my car, for example, my “regular” iPod sits in a cupholder. If I want to change songs or pause the music, I just reach over and push the button without looking.

• With the iPod Touch, you have to be looking at the device in order to manipulate the controls. That’s fine when you’re watching videos or surfing the Web, but it’s really a nuisance when you want to skip to the next song while you’re driving.

I am surprised that the flash storage is so slow. Updating its files (to load music playlists or new videos) is painful. It seems at least 3x slower than a conventional disk-based iPod. I’m also disappointed that the “Enable Disk Use” option is not available. (There are third-party hacks that claim to provide that functionality.)

When using the iPod Touch as a Web browser, the hardest part is typing. My hands and fingers aren’t especially large, but gosh, it’s difficult to work the virtual keyboard. The iPod Touch needs a stylus.

The software on the iPod Touch (I’m running version 1.1.2) is buggy. There seems to be a memory leak that causes album cover displays to occasionally get out of sync with the songs that are being played, and sometimes, the device stops plays songs right after you start playing.

For that issue, the solution seems to be to reboot the iPod Touch. You do so by holding down the Sleep/Wake button (that’s the one on the edge) and the Home button (that’s the one on the front) for at least 10 seconds, until the Apple logo appears. After I do that, the unit seems good for about a week until it needs to be rebooted again.

Overall: The iPod Touch is an incredible device, and I’m delighted with it. But it’s clearly a “version 1.0” product.