Tech Tok

Panic, the creators of “Transmit” and “Audion”, have released Coda, a new web development IDE. It has a slightly steep price at $US 79.

They’ve licensed the SubEthaEngine from the Coding Monkeys, so multiple people can collaborate easily on a web site. I think this was an excellent idea. Small developers should be helping each other out like this more often.

The IDE includes a terminal you can put into pane in the IDE. It knows how to ssh to sites and upload all your files. It looks pretty nice!

Well, it’s only in China for now, but still: US $300 for a Blu-Ray drive is pretty good.

Combine this with people figuring out how to install drivers allowing the $300 Xbox HD-DVD player to work on their Windows machines, and it gets even more interesting..

I’m thinking that by the holiday shopping season at the end of 2007, we’ll be seeing a lot more players (and consequently movies) being bought. I suspect my prediction about rental movies switching to HD will be abeout a year later than I thought. Oh well.

I read the below today on my hardmac.com RSS feed [link]:

[AMD] is now offering the cheapest desktop 3.0GHz dual core processor (3600+) for US$73. By cutting prices, AMD intend to compete with Intel for desktop CPU

I realized that, if I could buy that CPU and plug it into my existing motherboards, I would be spending 3x$75 today, no problem. We have 3 machines with AMD Athlon 2400 chips in them that could do with a speed boost. However, they are all “Socket-A” motherboards, and the current CPUs from AMD won’t work on them; they require “AM2″ sockets on their motherboards.

Not only that, but the new motherboards use a different kind of video card (PCIe) from the ones we have (AGP). Our RAM (400 MHz DDR1) is also no good. We need Dual-Channel 533 MHz DDR2.

So, to upgrade the CPU I would have to buy:

• $200 - a new motherboard
• $200 - new memory
• $200 - new video card
• $75 - new CPU

The prices are rough estimates, based on what I usually end up getting. There are cheaper motherboards, cheaper and more expensive video cards, but that would be the ballpark.

So my $75 upgrade turns into a $675 new machine. So no, I’m not going to upgrade any time soon.

Let this be a lesson — to AMD, at least.

March 2007 best month ever for Toyota hybrids

Treehugger.com has a story about Toyota hybrids making a dramatic sales jump at the beginning of this year.

Now, it could be that Toyota is doing better compared to its rivals, but my take is that this reflects growing sales of hybrids overall.

Why the sudden uptick? Hmmm.