The Evangelist

Worldwide Technology News

The Evangelist has always been an open forum for discussion, and commenting on articles has always been allowed. The format of a blog allows for the discussion of topics that you can first read about and get acquainted with.

It is our belief, however, that a blog is just one type of great forum for thought and discussion. There may be topics that you want to talk about in tech that aren't discussed here, and we realize that.

That's why we're opening the Evangelist Media Forums. The forums are still in the process of being fully set up, but they are fully-functioning, so please feel free to use them.

It is my belief that this will add another level of depth to the discussion here, and I do hope you enjoy it.

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I would like to wish everyone in observance a happy Easter.

May this time of renewal remind you of the promise of tomorrow.

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The Evangelist has from our first day been a part of Entecard.com, a community of bloggers who have come together to not only network with other bloggers but also expose our blogs to new visitors from other member blogs of the network.

Originally, the intent was to earn credits on Entrecard by "dropping" your card on other blogs with an Entrecard widget, by displaying advertisements from other bloggers, or by winning them in contests. You could also (as you can now) buy credits from Entrecard. Of course, people did try to sell credits, but these activities were prohibited. This meant that Entrecard was its own contained virtual economy. The more recent addition of the marketplace helped to cement this.

Of course, because Entrecard credits were created every time a person dropped on another blog or bought credits, inflation became rampant with so many more credits in the system. This resulted in higher and higher taxes on various transactions.

The good people at Entrecard have been trying, of course, to keep their economy afloat. Too high a tax on transactions would make certain actions prohibitively costly. Conversly, if they failed to tax enough, inflation would destroy their economy.

Because of these reasons, and to cover their own operating costs and be viable, Entrecard recently revamped their entire economy. This has meant that they are now accepting paid ads. With this, a new CashOut service will become available tomorrow, Saturday, April 10. This will allow Entrecarders to get paid for 75% of the value of the credits they cash in. The other 25% will at least partially go to operating expenses and growth.

These paid ads have caused quite the controversy, so I simply wanted to give this statement:

The Evangelist will be running paid advertisements. Many of these advertisements are for Entrecard blogs, and so we feel that, in running them, we are still supporting the community. Also, it is my belief that advertisers who pay in Entrecard credits will still get their money's worth.

It is my hope that the Entrecard community can see it in themselves to come together and support the community regardless of whether or not they choose to run paid ads.

It is simply a bit too late to change things back to the way they were. It is my hope that the two-widget system comes to fruition sooner rather than later. When the two-widget system becomes available, I will use it to run both Entrecard and paid ads, so as to support the community to the best of my ability.

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Intel has put out a press release on the future of their Atom processor platform.

Two new Atom processors were announced at the Intel Developer Forum, which was held in Beijing. One of these processors, the Z515, will be made for smaller mobile internet devices (which will likely be very popular in markets such as China). It will be able to run at up to 1.2GHz thanks to Intel's Burst Technology Performance Technology, which is a definite improvement over the previous generation of processors for this form-factor. The other new processor, the Z550, will break the 2GHz mark for the Atom processor, and do it within the less than 3-watt envelope. No doubt this will present AMD's Neo with some competition in the higher-end market.

Along with this, Intel will release their new Moorestown platform, which should reduce idle power consumption by ten times, a great improvement. It would seem that Intel will beat AMD to their own motto of "The Future is Fusion." Moorestown will feature System on Chip technology (which was codenamed Lincroft). This will mean that the processor, graphics, and other controllers will be integrated into a single package, which should be great for the next generation of small form-factor mobile internet devices.

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If you have been following tech news lately, you may have seen that Google has been under attack by a number of newspapers because of its Google News news aggregator.

From what I can gather from various sources these newspapers believe that Google is effectively "stealing their content" by aggregating it.

Looking at this, one should first consider that Google makes no money off of the service. It is just like many other Google services that Google provides with no other benefit to themselves but marketshare. Of course, they do make money when you go to parts of their site that contain advertising, but that's irrelevant.

Second, we should look at the fact that Google only reprints part of an article along with the headline from sources, and displays other headlines from other sources on the same topic right below. This means that Google is not showing an entire article on their site, but instead just a tiny snippet (which is not even a summary). This means that a person can read the snippet of material, and if it interests them, click on the link. This ultimately results in the reader ending up at a newspaper's website.

Newspapers may think that people are turning to Google News instead of their newspapers. The problem is that these days people are looking more and more for news from varied sources on topics that interest them, and not just the topics that one newspaper discusses in their papers and on their websites. It is my belief that, if it weren't for Google, almost none of the people that currently come through Google would view articles from these newspapers.

I can completely understand why the newspapers are doing this. Times are tough, and the newspapers need readers. But if the newspapers aren't willing to have their content aggregated, the fact is that many people may turn to alternative sources of media, such as blogs and independent news-sites. It's not as if this hasn't already started happening, at any rate.

I believe that newspapers can stay relevant. They simply need to encourage their readers to participate more, and provide new avenues to allow their readers to do this. Television news stations have already been taking advantage of this by allowing viewers to send in news stories and pictures they have taken related to news stories and the weather.

It's difficult to tell what will happen in this scenario. Google needs the news sources for its aggregator. On the other hand, the newspapers would be shooting themselves in their feet if they pursued this and Google chose not to pay up royalties to them for linking to their content but instead simply removed them from the site. At any rate, it seems that the current setup is extremely fair, and both Google and the newspapers benefit immensely. I would hate to see this relationship become unstable; I would venture to guess that the newspapers really have more to loose on their end.

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There is one more feature that I forgot to mention in the previous post.

I know that some posts here on The Evangelist can be long and take a while to read, especially the feature posts. I also believe that you, the readers, would probably enjoy being able to take my posts to go. That's why I'm launching The Evangelist To Go. With this new feature, you will see a link at the bottom of every post that says "The Evangelist To Go - Download Article Audio." When you click this link, you will be able to download a .wav file with the article read for you. This way, you can put the article on your MP3 player, portable media player, or other device. This feature will also be useful if you would prefer to hear, rather than read, the article.

You can test this new feature out using the link below. Feel free to state what you think in the comments by clicking the title of this article above and scrolling down to the comments.

The Evangelist To Go - Download Article Audio

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Toshiba has announced a new mini camcorder that will retail in the UK for 129.99 pounds (about $181.61 USD).


The camera is touted as being able to produce 1080p-quality video in an incredibly small package. It features a 4x digital zoom and a 2.5in LCD screen. In addition, it can function as a digital camera to take 5 megapixel pictures.

The camera has a built-in SD card slot, which will allow for a good deal of storage which can easily be transferred to a computer (as opposed to the harder transfer process from DVD and HDD Hard Disk Drive video recorders to computers).

While this product isn't as advanced as larger recorders, the device will be great for YouTube-style filming and other activities where lugging around a full-sized camera is difficult.