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A $46,600 camera for a good cause

In collaboration with Leica, auction house WestLicht Photographica is looking to fetch $46,600 for a first-series production Leica M8 digital rangefinder. While it is not clear if this camera was the very first unit assembled in its maiden year of 2006, it has the serial number 3100000.

Hardcore fans of the German company are going to have a field day trying to outbid each other in a furious war on June 7 in Vienna to lay their hands on this ultra-exclusive camera. The prize will come in the original M8 box with a certificate of authenticity signed by Leica'… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 735: Ind_na Jo__es

Paramount is dropping sounds out of your movies; Canadian customs guards might be rifling through your laptop for ripped CDs; and aliens are real. See, now, it sounds like today's show is all made-up stories, but the first two things are true, and the last one is...well, I don't know, I guess it might be true. There's a guy in Denver who says he's got a video. YouTube it!

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 735

Comcast hijackers say they warned the company first http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/comcast-hijacke.html http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007034.html… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 732: Make family, not phone

An amusement park in the U.K. thinks you'll have more fun if they confiscate your smartphone. I think I would not go to that amusement park. I don't care if they say I'll have more fun-- I don't trust them with my iPhone. Also YouTube and Viacom are spatting again, and Brazilian beetles might lead to photonic computing! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 732

Why Friday audio sucked

What we just learned about Windows 7 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9952067-56.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9951638-56.html

First pictures from Mars Phoenix lander … Read more

Keep your data safe at the border

There is no right to privacy at international borders. For those of us with laptops, this presents a pretty major problem: How do we get through U.S. Customs with our beloved portable devices, without having Uncle Sam peeking at every e-mail we've sent, every MP3 we've listened to, and every "home movie" we've made?

The obvious solution, encryption, is not enough. Non-Americans have no right to enter the U.S. Don't want to hand over your encryption keys? No problem--but you will be put on the next airplane back to your home country (… Read more

Matzah shortage offers valuable lesson

SAN FRANCISCO--Every year around this time, many Jews spend a week eating just one bread product: a bland flatbread called matzah.

The yearly ritual is designed to recall the unleavened bread eaten by our ancestors as they fled Egypt without time to prepare proper food provisions.

For modern Jews, the culinary challenges of Passover are relatively minor. Despite some kvetching over things like how to trying to bring matzah to work in fewer than a million pieces, the Passover ritual is not that difficult. In big cities, Americans have access not just to plain matzah, but also to all kinds … Read more

Shopping for PCs, the Brazilian way

SAO PAULO, Brazil--Enter the midrange Extra department store and it is easy to find the PCs--they are right in front, just as customers enter the store.

What's harder to find is the total price of said machines. Sure, there's a price sticker next to each machine. But the featured price is not the total, but rather the monthly payment, when the price of a computer is spaced out over 10 to 20 months.

It's not a trick. It's just that for the folks who shop at places like Extra, Casas Bahia, and other stores, that's … Read more

In Brazil, PC buyers accentuate Positivo

SAO PAULO, Brazil--At a high-end computer store in Brazil, you'll find the same kinds of Dell, HP, and Sony models you'd see anywhere in the world.

But in the department stores where Brazil's middle class do their shopping, a homegrown brand, virtually unheard of outside of Latin America, dominates: Positivo.

Positivo has the lion's share of Brazil's retail market, accounting for nearly a third of retail sales and selling more than a million PCs last year. At one key retailer, Casas Bahia, Positivo's desktops are the only ones on the shelves. Overall, Positivo says … Read more

Microsoft shakes up emerging market unit

SAO PAULO, Brazil--Microsoft on Monday shifted the leadership of its emerging market unit, placing former unified communications chief Anoop Gupta at the helm.

Orlando Ayala, the Microsoft executive who had been leading the unit (and with whom I had been traveling with in Colombia) is shifting to a new role inside Kevin Turner's sales unit, while Microsoft veteran Will Poole is retiring from Microsoft this fall. Poole, who had been heading the unit with Ayala, is a former top Windows executive, while Ayala had been sales chief and head of the midmarket group at Microsoft, prior to joining the … Read more

Taking PCs apart--and sending them back to school

BOGOTA, Colombia--In one corner of a massive warehouse, workers pick through bins of computers, keyboards, and mice, painstakingly cleaning each part.

There's a special room where peripherals such as mice go for washing and another where they go for drying. Once the hardware is reassembled, often with a few new parts added to the mix, the first set of testing takes place, to make sure all of the hardware functions as it should.

In another area, the newly rebuilt systems get their collection of software--Windows 2000 and a several-generations-old version of Office. Then the machines go through another round … Read more

Dodging cows, not bullets in Colombia

CORINTO, Colombia--It was easy for the kids at the rural school to see I had arrived.

Even if they didn't see the van carrying myself and Microsoft executive Orlando Ayala, it was hard to miss the 20 or so soldiers that accompanied us in a convoy.

The military escort was not just a sign of the esteem that Ayala is held in--though the Colombian native is something of a favorite son here--but rather an indicator of the danger that remains in the area in an around Corinto. Though its just 30-some miles from Cali, the area is not far … Read more