Monthly Archives: May 2005

I just ordered a dual head video card in order to run two monitors at the same time. With two monitors I can watch a downloaded video file (legal of course) and work on writing another life changing post for LIVEdigitally.com. Being able to drag a window from one screen to another, and minimize the alt+tab pushing I normally do, will allow me to maintain focus for longer, and work faster. You think I had it all figured out.

I did have it all figured out, until PureDepth came along and blew my imagination out of the water with their Multi Layer Display (MDL). What the heck is a multi layer display monitor? It’s literally two monitors in one. The first LCD display is mounted 7mm in front of the 2nd LCD. Each display is independent, there is no software necessary to run this, simply a dual head video card. There’s a tad of 3d feeling to this, but virtual reality isn’t the goal of PureDepth.
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Searching the internet is not new news. Yahoo! and Google yadda yadda yadda… I’m sick of hearing Google this, and Yahoo! that. These search engines search websites that have been posted up oh the topic you’re looking for, and brings them to you. They use a historical database, a retrospective search, they search the past.

PubSub searches the future, and delivers your results however you want them. I set up a free user account and searched my name, an ‘ego feed’ deemed by the presenter. When something new hits the net, and involves my name, PubSub notifies me via email, RSS, instant message, or even a text message to my phone via SMS. Progressive searching they call it. This isn’t a crystal ball for the internet, but it’s about as close as you’re going to get to it. Just another one of the super neato burrito cool beans tools that I uncovered at today’s Under The Radar conference, held in Mountian View, CA.

I’m a man. Men are born with certain characteristics, we have short hair, we don’t understand why women take so long to get ready, and do not stop and ask for directions under any circumstances. There’s a sub genre of asking for directions that us men just won’t do and that’s call 411 (as menwe are also cheap, one call puts a $1.50 dent in our thin wallets).

UpSnap.com has swooped in to rescue all men*. The geniuses at UpSnap have taken something that is already ingrained into my life and found a way to make it better. You register your phonen number on their site, cleverly named www.UpSnap.com, and then you send a text message with your search information. They send you a text message back to you phone with a list of contacts based on your inquiry. So it’s basically 411 text messaging style. There’s one more aspect of UpSnap that really tips the boat for me, it’s free! The first search result is a paid slot which makes this service free for cheap ol’ me, the rest of the results are taken from a public database of listed numbers.
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Frequently, living digitally is about making the day to day things we use to do our jobs and live our lives better. Note I didn’t say bigger and better, since part of living digitally is also about making everything we have that works just fine as it is as teeny tiny as humanly possible. Not to get off on a tangent, (well not much of one) but I fully expect that one day I will learn to type 60-80 wpm with tweezers that hold special miniature dialing wands that tap keys on a miniature keyboard.

Tangent aside, the goal is for us to make everything better, and for the most part, we do just that with our technology. EXCEPT… when it comes to pirating.
If you look over the history of pirates, which is something I’ve done– albeit not very thoroughly since initially I just liked the hats pirates wear– you’ll notice a disturbing trend.
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I recently went to New York and now I wish I had read this Guardian story before I left.

The point of the story: How to have adventure in a city you don’t know equipped only with a BlackBerry 7100t and Nokia’s 6682. The Guardian writer decided to spend 48 hours in New York using bloggers as his tour guide.

After all, who knows the underground in’s-and-out’s of New York better than the city’s bloggers. There is a wealth of information on the Web and with an Internet enabled device no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, what’s to stop you from knowing where the place to be is.

It just goes to show all the different ways our little gadgets can change the way we work, communicate and even travel. Next time I go to a new city, screw the Lonely Planet’s Guidebook, I’m going to rely on a WiFi travel guide.

Leaving aside the legality/morality of downloading mp3s, I have one major beef: Teenagers or otherwise culturally unfamiliar sorts mislabeling artists.

Not all African-American female vocalists from the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s are Aretha Franklin. Similarly, there were women other than Janis Joplin and Joan Baez recording folksy, bluesy roots back in the day. (Not to mention Janis is not Joan and Joan is not Janis. If there’s a duet with Bob Dylan, it’s 99.9999% Joan, since they mostly lived on the same coast and slept together.)

No one other than Melanie Safka would have ever wanted to record “Brand New Key.” The worst I’ve found so far was Scottish, Christian rockers the Proclaimers one-hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” attributed to the Pretenders. Yeah, because female Pretenders front Chrissie Hynde sounds so much like a pair of young Scottish lads.

Except for honest-to-God concert bootlegs, the original ripper must have some sort of CD or source media with an album insert showing at least the artist’s name in front of him/her, and, I don’t know, maybe a little thing called Internet access. So, how does the mislabeling happen?

No matter how great our digital camera technology gets, one ancient rogue will ruin our pictures.

The ever dreaded closed eye shot. It could even make Paris Hilton look like she belongs in special ed. But now there is a way to always avoid it. A new camera developed at the University of Electro-Communications, on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan will forever rid your album of mid-blink photos.

The camera takes 15 shots in .5 seconds and special sensors can detect which pictures caught you mid-blink and which found your best face forward.

Yesterday I found some guy who held a phone and PDA hostage. Today I’ve found a company that locks your computer and then demands $200.00 in order to get YOUR OWN DATA BACK! That’s ouch.

Hackers are getting smarter I suppose. There’s adaware/spyware that sees sites you have visited, order to choose annoying pop-up ads or browser hijacks to websites that simply piss you off. Then there’s pesky viruses that contaminate files rendering them useless and force a hard drive reformat and complete loss of data. I don’t think either one is benefiting, cause there’s no way I’m ever going to purchase something off of a pop up add!!

But these guys got it right, hold the user’s pictures, spreadsheets, video files, mp3 library and all other valuable data for ransom! Instead of a virus protector, I want a ransom protector? Norton? Where are you on this?

Yes, we also read in paper

Clive Thompson – The New York Times
“Wiener was both brilliant and personally intriguing, an absent-minded professor straight out of central casting. As a character, he was larger than life; as a scientist, he was smaller than history.”

Publishers Weekly
“One of the central concerns of the current “information age” is the difficulty of ordering and making sense out of the glut of information that flies at us from every direction, at all hours, in increasingly creative and invasive ways. Wiener, the man who gave us the tools to create and nurture this age by founding the science of cybernetics, has fallen prey to that glut, with his legacy and impact largely forgotten and misunderstood. “

Let’s face it one of the greatest things about the Internet is the free, mindless entertainment it can provide. Especially when you are bored at work. Sites like the Cyborg Name Generator are so stupid that I question my intelligence for finding any joy in them, if only for brief and fluttering moments. But hey, if you get bored at work like me, check it out. It might make you want to stimulate your mind and get back to work.

Here is the cyborg name for LiveDigi.

Today Nokia launched their first non-phone product. The Internet Tablet has absolutely no cell phone capabilities. What it can do, however, is surf the Internet and let you perform basic Web functions like check your email.

You:But I can do that with a mobile phone.
Nokia Salesman: True but the new 770 Internet Tablet will let you surf the Web cheaper and quicker than your clunky Nokia phone and now for the low-low price of $350 you can get one of these Wi-Fi friendly Internet Portals for your very own to cut down on that expensive Internet cell phone bill.

Ever notice how long winded salesman are?

The new Internet Tablet is perfect for a home that has one computer, but several people fighting over who gets to use the Internet. It’s the new modern dilemma. In the old day’s brother and sister fought over the bathroom, now it’s who gets to stream movies. But with the Nokia Internet Tablet the younger (weaker) sibling doesn’t get a Charlie horse, just a smaller screen.