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posted on 4/1/05 by Martin Grider
The PSP can play mp3 files natively, that means you can just drag mp3s onto the memory stick and go. But the 32 meg stick it comes with is obviously not enough to get anyone to want to use it that way. But the games come on Sony's new Universal Media Disks (UMDs). Sony claims this is an "open" standard, so that other companies can release movies and such on their own. All that needs to happen now is for some company to release a commercial UMD media writer. At anything less than $50, a writer would (I imagine) skyrocket sales of the PSP for those of us who want a gaming system that could also, potentially, play our mp3 collection. Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/4/05 by Sharyn Morrow
Last week's news for nerds included Scott Moschella's hacking of the Gimp. His intention, "to make the Gimp accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there" (and, maybe along the way, converting a Photoshop pirate into a Gimp user). This is huge. Especially for those like myself, who are long-time Photoshop users (on Mac and/or Windows) but have long flirted with an all-out switch to Linux. It could give me the best of both worlds, a familiar interface to work with while using an open source application. For any other takers, it is currently available for Mac OS X 10.3, and was recently ported to Linux too. Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/8/05 by Martin Grider
Even without the recent press comparing Yahoo to Google, I would have liked to think I do a fairly good job of keeping abreast of the latest features of both. I am unashamed about my infatuation with google, and Yahoo was my favorite portal way back in the far gone days of Netscape. Certainly both companies have been the johnny come lately in one web-based service or another, but you've got to wonder how long Yahoo Research has been working on their new Yahoo 360, which I hate to point out looks a lot more like friendster or myspace than it does like livejournal or any other blogging service. In comparison, Google Maps launched a feature recently that allows you to switch from street maps to satellite pictures with a single mouse click. My jaw to dropped at the bar this evening when I heard about it from a friend. Google Labs finds an equivalent in Yahoo's recent Yahoo Next, both portal pages linking to various "beta" features and services from their respective corporations. One site that takes a very simple visual approach to comparing the two search engines is worth linking in particular. (If you follow one link in this article, do this one... it's particularly fun to egosurf.) Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/11/05 by Matt Gray
Haven't posted for too long; here's some linkage for your enjoyment.
My Googlephilia is insatiable, and I just saw a Slashdot article about buzztracker that piqued my interest. Why not map the news? buzztracker.org aims to do exactly that. It's interesting to move backwards through the archive and examine the geographic "hot spots" with respect to time.
Purdue's 18th national Rube Goldberg competition has been won by... Purdue (also according to Slashdot). Stories are available here and here.
...lest it become part of the final site. A post on BoingBoing describes that very phenomenon: apparently, a web designer was tired of using the standard lorem ipsum text. His solution? Write paragraphs of the most prolix and overstuffed prose possible, and voilá, the copy was used on the site.
Finally, check out this guy's digital retouching work. Amazing!
Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/12/05 by Martin Grider
The StarTribune reports that the city of minneapolis is hearing proposals to turn the city into one giant wireless hotspot. They say the end user could log in anytime and anywhere for somewhere between $18 and $24 per month. I have a few questions about the service, namely, would the monthly fee be per computer, or per user? Also, the article says that, "the city hopes to incorporate into it all Internet hot spots already operated by private businesses such as coffee shops". Is the implication that those "free" hotspots will go away? (This might piss off a few people.) Overall, this is a fascinating prospect, but I want to hear a few more details before I get really excited. Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/18/05 by Sharyn Morrow
Over the weekend I came across a new app that I could have way too much fun with: "Comic Life for OS X makes digital comics a snap. Use Comic Life to create high quality comics for posting on the web, including in movies or printing out for friends." I'm with Phil...it would be fabulous if Flickr integrated this sort of functionality, so that anyone (not just OS X users) could make comics from their digital photos. Continue Reading | 1 Commentposted on 4/18/05 by Michael Koppelman
This is kind of techie, but I wanted to point out something cool about the fact that Macs have Unix under the hood. I needed to bring my laptop in for a minor repair. I backed up my home directory to a fire wire drive. A home directory is a Unix concept that Mac OS X has embraced. Then on my iMac I just symlinked the backup copy of my laptop home directory in place of my home directory on my iMac:cd /Users mv lolife lolife.old ln -s /Volumes/bd1/Mike/lolife .As a result, when I logged into my iMac I instantly had all my mail, all my bookmarks, all my preferences for all my applications, all my documents, etc. It was as if I was logged in on my laptop. Symlinks are a Unix trick that we Unix geeks are very familiar with. What I thought was cool was how useful it is when combined with a desktop environment like Mac OS X. I don't know if there is an equivalent concept on Windows. I suspect there is. Continue Reading | Add a Comment
posted on 4/26/05 by Andy Wright
I'm not sure why the concept of Arianna Huffington's forthcoming celebrity group blog reminds me of "Battle of the Network Stars" from back in the '70s and '80s. Remember those shows? Where you'd see if The Dukes of Hazzard and the guy who played Buck Rogers could really do well in intense physical challenges? As a young boy I would watch with anticipation to see who was worth their salt and who was a complete poseur. And maybe therein lies the connection. Back then, BNS blended genres of Entertainment and Sport. Nowadays, there are forces at work to blend blogging with advertising, with entertainment, and so on. And while I expect great things from contributors-to-be like Cronkite, I watch with anticipation to see just how deep and substantial an all-star 'celeblog' will be. UPDATE: I just found out that Pamela Anderson has a really cute blog already! Perhaps Ms. Huffington should look here for inspiration. Continue Reading | Add a Commentposted on 4/26/05 by Meghan Wilker
Finally! I feel validated by the results of this research. Too much email is very, very bad. One of my biggest peeves in life (and in particular with advertising agencies) is the disease I call "Forward-itis." This is where people just randomly forward stuff and say things like "Read below." Now, if I truly need to "read below," I don't mind. I like being kept in the loop. But, if there is only ONE nugget of information in a long-ass email, then do me a favor: pull out the nugget and skip the rest. I feel like the convenience of email has made us lazy. Forward-itis is one example, but there is also this total lack of personal responsibility to take action until we have an email telling us we should. When servers go down (and I'm guilty of this as well), we all pretty much go home. We've been trained to think we can't do our jobs without email, when in reality email should be a tool that supports our jobs -- not the engine that drives them. I'm just sayin'. Continue Reading | 1 Commentposted on 4/28/05 by Matt Gray
Every day, I'm amazed by at least one thing I discover online. Today, it happens to be a brief guide to creating fake fingerprints from the Chaos Computer Club in Germany.
Why do this? According to BoingBoing, biometrics are required at Disneyworld, the Statue of Liberty, and even tanning salons in Arkansas. How effective is this technology? Should its users be concerned over privacy and identity theft issues? Absolutely.
Read the guide—in ten years, perhaps everyone will wear protective sheaths over their identifiable digits.
Continue Reading | Add a CommentApr 2005
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