Monthly Archives: April 2005

Previously on LIVE Digitally we covered the ‘Sirius Radio Sportster’ and the ‘Car Docking Station With Car Antenna’ (CDSWCA) car integration. The install for our Sirius Radio went smooth as silk. The external antenna, holster, and wires all settled with no aggravating mishaps.

The first portion of the post-install review will take all data points with the mindset that the Sirius radio is connected to the car stereo via the Aux input. This seamless connection assures that the highest possible quality audio signal is being transferred to the car stereo amplifier.

What better means to test out a car stereo than to drive around the city?! That’s exactly what I did. I drove. I listened.

While driving, I noticed a very crisp and clean signal from the Sirius stereo. Every different channel I surfed blasted through my stock Honda deck and Pioneer aftermarket speakers with confidence. I usually jam along in the car with a CD or my 3G iPod (which explains why I have the aux input for the stock stereo). The Sirius sound was just as crisp and clear as a CD or the iPod.

I enjoyed Jazz, Classical, News, Hip-Hop, and Dance music with a very easy navigation interface. I was not given an instruction manual with the Sirius Sportster hand piece, but understanding the controls was no problem at all. Each station is given a 3 digit number, use the knob to scan each station in numerical order. For example the Electronica/Dance stations are given the prefix 06, thus 061, 062, 064, etc are all Electronica/Dance themed stations. Using the ‘category’ button I was able to jump genres with ease. Tap it once and the display shows your current standing without changing the station, tap again and you move entire genres.

I even set a reminder for 50 Cent’s song ‘Candy Shop’. As the song was playing, I quickly hit the menu button and maneuvered myself into the notify feature. Setting this made the Sportster notify me with a few beeps that station XXX was playing ‘Candy Shop’. With 1 button press I could jump to the song and rock out to my new favorite song!

More to come on the Sirius auto experience so don’t touch that dial (mouse button).

Combine a GPS unit with a mini computer linked up in your car and you’re a data point! The computer tells a server where you are and how fast you are going, thus painting a traffic flow map. With many different people acting as data points, the up to date information will allow the fastest route to be calculated on the fly. With this technology we can stand to wait a bit longer until Scotty is able to beam us up.

The pope has joined the digital revolution along with the rest of us. Although it’s not really a revolution it’s more of an evolution, our new pope has email! Let me tell you does he have emai. How would you feel if you opened an email account and within 48 hours there were 56,000 emails in your inbox?

I don’t think I’ve had 56,000 emails sent to me in my entire existence. I wonder how many he personally responds to? Can we say auto-reply!

Scientists have made the world’s smallest motor. In fact, the motor is so small a few hundred of them could fit in the period at the end of this sentence. This means you won’t want to install it in your humvee, but maybe you’ll fancy it in future nanotechnology that needs to swim around your body killing viruses and such. You can watch the motor run here.

As for the explanation. I never got past high school physics, so I’ll just have to quote a LiveScience article.

The motor works by shuffling atoms between two molten metal droplets in a carbon nanotube.

One droplet is even smaller than the other. When a small electric current is applied to the droplets, atoms slowly eek off the larger droplet and join the smaller one. The small droplet grows – but never gets as big as the other droplet – and eventually bumps into the large droplet. As they touch, the large droplet rapidly sops up the atoms it had previously sloughed off. This quick shift in energy produces a power stroke.

The technique exploits the fact that surface tension — the tendency of atoms or molecules to resist separating — becomes more important at small scales. Surface tension is the same thing that allows some insects to walk on water.

Most people will tell you that technology creates a social distance between people. We are stuck in our digital worlds so much we ignore all the people around us. Well this is perhaps true. But technology also allows people to stay in touch through ways they never could before. F+ R Hugs is a good example. Through a mobile network this shirt receives the input of heart beat, touch and body temperature from a long distanced loved one, sending it back to recreate the sensation of a hug.

How crazy is this? Hugs, from a shirt that is supposed to mimic someone else’s hugs. Sensors in the shirt find the vital spots that are touched in hugs and make it feel as if the person you love is right there, embracing you. How often does technology break the physical boudnary like this? I’d be interested in seeing more examples.

The “Thirty Inches of Glory”, as I refer to it, requires a dual link version of nVidia’s GeForge 6800 vid card since DVI can only handle the dinky resolution of 1,920 x 1,200. If that’s not getting your salivary glands pumping then imagine a desktop resolution of 2,560 x 1.600. My 12” iBook screen handles a 1,024 x 768 resolution… making the “Thirty Inches of Glory” about 2.5 times larger than my display.

The fantasy of being able to see each and every application simultaneously gives me goose bumps. And for all you die hard PC people, this baby was tested on a PC for lack of a G5 Apple machine. You heard right, the “Thirty Inches of Glory” swings both ways.

In most movies I’ve watched, the undercover ‘good guy’ gets unveiled by ripping his shirt open to reveal the wire. He’s been bugged! Those ‘good guys’ are usually smooth enough to slip out of any sticky situation the silver screen throws their way.

Us normal spies aren’t always so lucky. We need fool proof plans that will work 100% of the time without a chance of getting caught. When the evil druglord rips my shirt open, I want him to see scrawny muscles and a couple of unwanted pounds around the love handles. This special agent is going wireless bug style.

It’s all possible with the Meganet VME Spy phone XP* (no relation to Windows XP). The phone looks, acts, feels, and functions just as your normal Siemens or Nokia mobile phone. The added feature is when HQ calls me and enters in a special code. The phone doesn’t ring, vibrate, or light up when the secret digits are entered in after the phone number. The phone simply turns into a listening device for the backup to hear.

“So let me get this straight, you set up the hit on both of the bosses. Then made it look like they killed each other?”

“That’s right kid, but you didn’t hear it from me!”

“Oh yes I did, and so did the FBI thanks to my Meganet VME Spy Phone XP! You’re going down!!”

*I hope that the phone doesn’t have the actual name written on the external case, that’d be a pretty easy give-away.

Divx media has always been pretty cool, easy to use but never took off in the tangilble media/ entertainment market. Remember the horrible idea of requiring people to buy discs, and only allowing the consumer to watch it 5 times?

Anyways, back on point, “X Software has created a unique software product,” said DivX’s Chief Operations Officer Kevin Hell. “Video Vault allows consumers to import, convert, and organise their video library using high-quality, highly compressed DivX technology and export those videos back on a wide variety of devices including DivX Certified DVD players, Portable Video Players, Wireless Media Servers and more.”

Why would you use this? Well, if you happen to have any movies, clips, etc that you want to take off of your harddrive and save them on the web, but the best part seems to be making it stream with a multitude of different devices. Will plugin’s be an issue watching your childs first softball game on your PDA? Well, they ‘ ensure compatibility with DivX Certified devices”

Sounds cool. Good for traveling salesmen that miss out on a lot of movies at home, and require the significant other to upload the latest movie online for them to watch..Save’s some dough!

It’s estimated that Craig Newmark’s creation (www.craigslist.org) is taking millions from classified sections near you. Many journalists haven’t even heard of Newmark’s list which is a very common knowledge classified area in the SF bay, the home of Craig’s list.

Craig found a niche, and I commend him for such. I also wish I had come up with the list idea myself. Craigslist is blazing fast due to the absence of advertisements. The revenue that keeps craigslist up and running flows from the jobs section. Pay to post an opening for a job, every other aspect of craigslist is free.

Yearly, Craig takes an estimated $50-60 Million dollars from would be news paper classified ads. Al, a business section columnist for the SF Chronicle says that since Craig has deprived the newspapers of this revenue, he needs to find a way to fill the void he created. I don’t think Craig owes anyone, nobody with a great money making idea find a way to replace the revenue that they divert. Yet the fact that Mr. Newmark’s reply was “I’m trying to figure out how to help” makes him that much cooler of a fellow in my book.

New Scientist had a great story today which, although it is lame to do as a writer, I am going to mimic because it was that amusing.

Artificial intelligence, as depicted in the Terminator trilogy, could one day reach Singularity. The point at which machines become smarter than us and perhaps even reach a strange state of self awareness beyond our predictablity.

To check on the state of things lets go to intellibuddy and chat with the latest goods in artificial intelligence to see if I can play a mental game of chess with them.

Me: I’m trying to write a blog about you.
Intellibuddy: Thanks for the kind remark, User.
Me: My name is David
Intellibuddy: Nice to meet you, David.
Me: so what do you think I should write about?
Intellibuddy: Hurrah! Are you asking me for advice?
Me: Yes, do you have an answer?
Intellibuddy: Specifically, what kind of advice do you want? I have over 42726 answers.
Me: Well, what should I tell people about you?
Intellibuddy: How about that. Have faith in yourself. You will know the right thing to say when the time comes.
Me: So are you self aware?
Intellibuddy: That’s cool. Yes I am fully self-conscious entity.
Me: prove it
Intellibuddy: It is self-evident.
Me: Descartes, very nice. But I often find myself in disagreement with his metaphysical proof of the existence of God, don’t you?
Intellibuddy: A deeper algorithm is needed to respond to that correctly.

Winner: Me

Here is a picture of what my Intellibuddy looked like. Cute, but not much between the ears.

Literally, they’re off. Children in the Middle Eastern Country of Quatar have been exploited as camel jockeys in camel races for far too long. Children have had stories of being sold or abducted and forced into the grueling life of a camel jockey. Some of the children are as young as 4 years of age.

An unmasked hero (un-named Swiss company) has swooped in and saved the day for everyone. Robots will take the place of the children jockeys.

A recent Quatar law bans the participation of any child under the age of 16 years and under the weight of 45 kilograms [99.2 lbs] in response to United Nation’s request.

I wonder if they will let the children remote control the robots? Regardless this story provides dual happiness for me:
Children aren’t abducted and starved for entertainment and gambling purposes. The sight of a robot riding a camel… you understand.