Tech Buzz - 120907

Local tech news in a compact, digital format.

City Duped By New Court Technology
City officials are threatening a lawsuit against Maximus Inc, the company that was hired to supposedly make things easier for the municipal court system. Officials are giving the company until Thursday to come up with a plan to work out the bugs. The city has already dropped a cool $10 million into this flawed system.

Continental Allows Cellphone Check In
Continental has started a new passenger check in program that allows cellphones, smartphones and PDA's to be used boarding passes. The way it works is the airline downloads a barcode image to your device with all your information, the airline staff then scans your barcode and with proper ID allows you to proceed. The program is being tested for three months and if all goes well could lead the way for more airlines to go high tech.

Dwight Watch
What's Dwight up to? Local tech guru, Dwight Silverman has been reviewing the Kindle e-book reader. He has also been watching and reporting on the surging Macintosh tide as well as the recent news of CompUSA shutting down. Dwight also gives us the lowdown on this past week's Microsoft Patch Tuesday download.

RottenNeighbor.com Has Strong Houston Showing
Brant Walker, an Internet marketing employee from San Diego created the site, RottenNeighbor.com after discovering that the foul odor permeating his apartment was coming from his neighbor! Now thousands of people from all over the U.S. are letting the internet know about their rotten neighbors. Houston currently ranks fourth behind L.A., Chicago and New York in the number of reader-generated complaints on the site. If you rent, then this is a great tool before moving in to your next abode, but we don't want to imagine what this would do to your resale value if you own your home and are considering selling.

Local Blog Roundup
Grand Stream Dreams has a Super Sunday Linkfest with links to everything from Christmas lights to Windows power toys to Firefox downloads to registry recovery tips, a must read local blog and much more. GeekSpeak tells us about 10 different types of people. jkOnThePhone tells us why Verizon has been in the news lately. The High Score has info on some video game review drama and the At Home blog reviews the Window's PC game Crysis. The Help Line blog shows us how to demagnify Vista's magnifier and Dr. Mac chats up Leopard.

If you have a Houston Tech Blog or something Houston related that you would like to see in the Tech Buzz, drop us an email or leave us a comment.

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