Monthly Archives: April 2005

Google, which is not to be confused with Wal-Mart, has launched yet another new feature. Now you can search your own search history! Launch the beta program My Search History here, to try it out.

But don’t try it out until you are ready to live with the fact that Big Google is tracing your every search. They say they have enough storage to trace your personal searches for years to come.

I can see how this feature could be helpful. Click a calendar date and bam, you are shown all your searches. It basically lets you expand your marked sites to the nth degree. But I can also understand privacy activists concerns.

Tuesday Congress passed a law citing up to 3 y ears of prison and up to $250,000.00 in fines for those movie pirates who make prerelease movies available for download.

Is it April first still? 3 years in prison?
After 10 seconds with our internet search crutch, Google, (searching: “three years in prison”), I found many cases a bit more worthy of three years in the big house. A football coach who molested his 10 year old player, a custodian who attached a teacher, and a hacker who accessed top secret documents from Swedish Telcom Co. Ericson.

The punishment must suit the crime. I fear that soon I’ll be reading about P2P sharers getting there left click finger chopped off for stripping the DMR off their audio files.

Navtech has a new technology. Well, it’s not exactly new. The mapmakers for search engines have incorporated property listings with their maps. Associated with Google and Craigslist, you can search all over America for housing in your hood. With colored tear drops that locate where current listings are available, it gives the user an easy view of properties in relation to where they are located within their cities.

Posting both for rent and for sale, it is a useful tool to see where your future home could be. Data can be sorted by location, price, rent / buy and listing date. When you click the link, it gives a little more info in the dialogue box that pops up and previews any pictures that are related to the property as well as links you with the current Craigslist listing.

One problem upon first experience was some of the listings were out of date. I clicked on multiple listings with one search and I ended up with a pretty poor ratio of actual listings that were still valid and or not canceled in Craigslist.
It’s a great start, and when it comes to property searching, pictures definitely paint a thousand words.

In a strange move Bush wants to let you edit DVD’s. Congress passed a law that will allow you to edit sex scenes in a DVD in case you are offended by such material (aka: don’t want your kids to see it), and Bush is expected to give it the green light. Seems like a bit of a double standard, since I’m not allowed to make copies of said DVD, but I can erase scenes if I’m afraid a guest I invite over might be offended by the uncut version of Debbie Does Dallas.

The news comes right on the heels of a Pew survey that says, shockingly enough, a majority of Republicans are concerned with elicit entertainment, while a majority of Democrats are worried about government censorship. Go figure.

Hollywood will probably try and fight back. Good luck to them. I’d hate the inconvenience of babysitting for a friend and having the racy scenes of a Disney movie I’m watching with them taken out.

Cell phones can do more than just call people. Soon, you might be able to do smart shopping by using your phone to price check your groceries. Lavasphere is a mobile ticketing and barcode reader system, which essentially turns a camera phone into a bar code reader.

I know some people who like to know where their food is coming from. Take a picture of the barcode, check it on the web and find out for sure.
As for me, I ain’t no hippie vegan, so I could care less. But, price checking through the barcode system, now that’s something I can dig.

Peace and Love

It may be a bit out dated now, but years ago when I purchased cable and submitted chunks of my life to MTV reruns Tom Green had a TV show. The Tom Green Show was the quality stupid entertainment that MTV thrives off of. Tom does not have his own show anymore, but he’s not in hiding. Tom is an avid blogger these days, inviting the world into his life to tell the story he sees each day. The story is more along the lines of what his DV cam sees, as Tom Green has what is also known as a vlog.

There’s a mathematical proof to express what a vlog is:

Web + Log = Blog

Video + Blog = Vlog.

Simple math never hurt anyone.

Vlogs are the up and coming thing according to the Seattle times. Vlogs are pushing boundaries of the web, entertainment, and lifestyle. I hope to just find a cute girl who has a vlog!

Adobe Bought Macromedia recently, that’s a pretty big thing to happen, 3.4billion big. If you want more information on this big ol’ story I’d suggest using our buddy Google, I’m into the vlogs!

Since XM and Sirius radio have linked up with different auto makers I’ve decided to see what the fuss is all about.

Monday at 3:20pm I whipped out the Sirius Radio Sportster along with the ‘Car Docking Station With Car Antenna’ (CDSWCA) for installation into my Honda. I’ve installed stereos and amplifiers in cars before. I didn’t call upon any of the acute skills acquired when installing car audio systems for the Sirius CDSWCA easy install.

The contents of the CDSWCA were as follows:
Sirius Holster, External Antenna, Cigarette Lighter Adapter, Mounting Arm, Alcohol Swabs, 6 Screws, an FM Out Antenna, and Instruction Manual.

After a thorough read through the small instruction manual that accompanied the CDSWCA I started to mount the external antenna to the outside of my car. The antenna comes with bottom side adhesive, as well as a nice strong magnet to keep the channel grabber secured to your vehicle’s external shell. I opted to mount it on the trunk and hide the wire up through to the center console.

Next up, where to mount the holster? Since this is not a permanent install on my vehicle, I attempted to find a would-be permanent spot on the dash for informational purposes. The mounting arm has 4 degrees of freedom, allowing the holster to be placed on most surfaces at almost any angle. Adhesive accompanies 2 screw holes for dash fastening purposes. I decided that the cup holder would make a comfy temporary home for my temporary Sirius radio.

There are two ways to connect the Sirius radio to your car stereo: FM transmit, and line out. The FM transmitter emits a signal for your car’s FM stereo to pick up and playback as it does with radio stations (the popular iTrip does this exclusively for iPods). This method requires finding a frequency that is open and tuning both your car stereo and the Sirius radio to that same frequency. The line in feature requires an auxiliary input built into the car stereo itself.

My Factory car stereo comes equipped with the option to add an external CD changer. P.I.E. makes an adapter that turns the CD changer input on my stock stereo into an auxiliary input.

I connected the line out on the Sirius Radio to the P.I.E. adapter which leads into my car stereo and two of my three connections were in place. What’s left you ask? Power.

Connecting the cigarette lighter style power cable yielded a warm amber glow on the Sirius screen with scrolling text and a doggy with an antenna tail (Sirius Logo).

Within about 10 mins of use the audio from the Sirius stopped. Silence fell over my car and I had no idea what I did to kill the sound. After surfing a few channels with only blurbs of audio I decided that we needed a reboot. Unplugging the power and re plugging remedied my anti audio issue and I was commenced rocking out to Disney Radio.

I will try the Sirius Radio with the Line In feature as well as with the FM Transmitting feature for a proper feel on how the two compare to each other.

More to come! Stay tuned folks. Same Bat time, same Bat channel, same Bat URL, not the same Bat corny ending. Continue reading →

A new Pope has been announced with the release of white smoke. But I think we should take some time to appreciate how technology made this Papal selection different from any other. While voting machines were not an issue, technology added subtle nuance to the unfolding of events.

For example, secrecy of the Cardinal gathering was an issue for the first time ever. High tech gadgets threatened the security of the meetings.

Camera’s technically weren’t allowed while the late Pope’s body was on display, but pictures were taken with cell phones, and I believe nobody went out of their way to scold picture takers.

Also interesting was watching the release of the smoke. A traditional as old as the Popehood itself was broadcast on the Internet nonstop through MSNBC’s Papal Smoke Cam. All things must change, and even old rigid institutions like the Church have to adapt to new times.

While the USA is on it’s trek to bring porn to mobile phones, Saudi Arabia is not only talking about fining 100,000 riyal, up to 12 years in prison, and to top it off… up to 1,000 lashes. Lashes? I’m assuming that we’re talking about the -shirt off, tie your hands, and whip you in the back a thousand times- type of lashes.

Saudi’s don’t approve of women being uncovered in public: heads, torso’s, legs, elbows, (I suppose hands are ok). Since this rule is in place, the capturing and distribution of such vulgar obscenities will not be tolerated. Mobile phones with video and photo capabilities make the transfer of such material much harder to

I wonder if it would be possible to send porno shots to your enemy and then turn him in for having illegal images on his handset!

So I’m assuming this Israeli person, now hopefully at rest, really liked his or her cell phone. I hope so, cause it looks like they will be spending eternity under the image of one.

As my fellow blogger said below, “Where’s the humanity?”

It does make for a great photo though. Sad, but great.

Computer Aided Hunting (CAH) as I like to refer to it, has been outlawed. Anyone who carries a concealed laptop or mouse with them without proper permits will be given the death sentence!

Maybe I have over exaggerated a bit. “Virtual Hunters” who remotely control guns via the internet may become extinct sooner than later. HR 1558 is the bill that, if passed, will outlaw this real life version of Duck Hunt.

I have questions here that don’t have answers. Why are the computers hooked up to real guns that shoot real animals? If you’re at home on the internet, is the difference if you really killed a deer or if you hit an image of a deer in a game that looks realistic? Does someone go out and gut, then hang, the carcass in preparation to send it FedEx to your residence?