Monthly Archives: July 2005

Gizmodo thought it was a hoax, and so did I. The Optimus keyboard is just too good to be true. Granted keyboards have evolved just about as much as the horseshoe crab, this optimus just blows my mind. Remembering quick keys is a problem of the past. Switching programs couldn’t be easier. Farewell Alt+Tab.

I’d want to put icons of my friend’s faces on the keys, so when I feel like visiting their websites I can just punch their key. Get it, punch their key, a picture of their face, punch their face!

I walk the streets of San Francisco daily, and am always magnetically drawn to the glimmer of the white headphones. The iPod head phones. Usually I will simply see headphones attached to entertained ears running into a pocket or backpack of some sort. The question that pops into my mind each time I witness this is, I wonder what they’re listening to. Is that 15 year old girl holding a 512 shuffle or a 60BG iPhoto? On a rare occasion I will get to see the iPod, be it on a belt clip, or the person’s need to change songs. More times than not, the person whips out an iPod Mini. The popularity of the mini is much bigger than I’ve ever expected. The second observation I’ve made is that there are virtually no naked iPods. The first thing to do upon the purchase of an iPod, is to get a case for it. iPod is the new Barbie as far as I’m concerned, it’s got more accessories and do-hickeys than Barbie ever dreamed of.

We have been giving away one of those accessories for readers who left comments, Slappa’s Shockshell case. I personally haven’t had a chance to touch and feel the case, only read about it online. Gizmosforgeeks has a review of the Slappa Shockshell here. Looks like they enjoyed it, hopefully you will.

Faster is better. More choices is better. The roses can be recorded, downloaded, or streamed and smelled later when we have the time, say on the bus or in the bathroom. Who has time to stop and smell them right now? I tell ya who, Carl Honore does, and he says you do too. The TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference held in Oxford was where Carl gave his speech about slimming down our choices and slowing down our pace. I’m betting that from the beginning to the end of his speech, at least 50% of the audience had received an email, text message, phone call, or IM on their phone, laptop, pda, or other communication device. Come to think of it, I do not stop to smell the roses, because I don’t like to smell roses all that much. I’m going to change this cliché for my personal purposes and say, “you need to stop and smell the new car interior once in a while”. Hopefully that new car will have navigation, Sirius radio, iPod integration, and a 500watt stereo system with 11 speakers.

McAfee is telling us that Trojans are on the rise. I’m not talking about the USC football team here. Trojans, viruses, adaware, spam, spyware, they’re all the same to someone who just wants to check email and surf the web. Hackers are hacking and it seems to be hack season according to McAfee. They’ve claimed to have found a 63% increase in machines using backdoor techniques to control unsuspecting user’s computers in 2005 from 2004.

I may be skeptical, or hold a personal grudge against anti-virus companies, or both, but I wonder how their stocks and profits have been in 2005 from 2004. There’s always theat one question in the back of everyone’s mind, you know the question, I don’t have to explicitly write it out. Anti-virus’s are the computer talk taboo for some reason. If you actually say what you think, you just may end up with a virus!

Technology streamlines our lives, and makes the things we dislike go by faster, while prolonging the things that we do like. I’m assuming that confession is something that most people do not like. I am not catholic, so confession is confusion to me. however, people are now sending SMS text messages to their priests and hoping to be forgiven for their sins.

“The nation’s Catholic faithful have been told that when it comes to confession, sending a text message reciting your sins is no longer permissible in seeking absolution.”

I guess some people just don’t have time to tend to their sins in this fast paced world?

Target (as I pronounce it Tar-Jay) is stocking shelves with the new Firefly phone. 8-12 year olds will get to call mom and dad via their own cute and fun phone. There’s parent safety features and prepaid minutes that come along with this $99.99 investment. I feel that insurance is a must have when it comes to this. When I was 8 years old the only thing I didn’t lose was my superman cape and underwear.

ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3 was created in 1992. The technology: decrease audio filesizes by a factor of 12, while maintaining high quality. Three years later, via a mass email, this Audio Layer 3 stuff was named ‘MP3’. This was the birth of the MP3.

The Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG) Audio Layer 3 has dominated the internet since it’s arrival. Phenomenon such as the iPod and Napster owe their existence to the birth of the MP3. I take my hat off to you Mr. MP3. It is you who has revolutionized the digital world and I thank you for it, congratulations on a decade of success.

Call me on my computer, I don’t want to waste my mobile phone minutes while I’m at home. Since I don’t have two phone lines anymore (land line and mobile aka cell phone) my precious minutes shouldn’t be wasted on frivolous conversation before the 9pm barrier. Vendex International must have been having the same issue, so they bridged the gap between mobile phones and Skype. You’ll need a GSM phone, and Bluetooth to download the software. Skype and mobile phones are moving closer and closer together. Communication just gets cheaper, and that’s good for my social life!

NASA crashed into a comet if you haven’t heard, and that action created quite an interest for people on their computers. Tomorrow, July 13th, NASA plans to launch Space Shuttle Discovery. We’ve definitely come a long way, I remember watching Kevin Arnold of The Wonder Years watch space shuttles take off on a black and white, wood encased Television set. Now here we are, streaming live feeds of comet crashing to hundreds of thousands. Tomorrow I’m going to contribute to the expected millions of page requests, let’s see if NASA can handle it.

The computer chip seems to follow a certain law. Simply put, the capacity of the computer chip doubles every 12 months or so. This is called “Moore’s” law, named after some old dude who was president of Intel at the time he said it.

While that rule has held (more or less) another area of the modern computer has been left sorely behind. The mouse and keyboard interface. I’m 23 and I feel carpel tunnel coming in already. What gives? Where is the doubling of efficiency every year or so of that stuff? Cells improve every 6 weeks, would it really kill people to find a better way to make a keyboard (and I don’t feel that mid-way arch design either).

Computer techies should really look into doubling their efforts in developing touch-pads like the one below called the Tactapad. First off, they look pretty cool, a mix of Matrix, Johny Mnemonic and other sci-fi films staring Keanu Reeves, but also because it looks like (with improvement) it could prove to be more comfortable than a rounded object named after a small mammal.

People like Sergey Gridasov really chap my hide. This guy went and registered the domain names: googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com. He did so a bit after Google.com was registered by the company that we all know and use. Had he been making parody sites, or something of benefit to the community, I would have deemed Gridasov a funny guy. Instead he was trying to spread Trojan horses and spyware to his mistaken visitors. Type in google.com incorrectly and you may end up with a Trojan horse! I’m glad the judge ruled in Google’s favor this time in court.

Before I went out and bought a new shiny iBook, I should have looked into going back to high school first, high school in Arizona that is. A rather small high school (350 people) decided that it would be a good idea to give each student a computer instead of outdated and beat up textbooks. When I first got textbooks back the, I’d thumb through the book in search of written notes like “turn to page 106 to read the funniest joke ever”.

The ‘real world’ working environment is based on computers, I don’t see why each and every school has a computer for each student. Arizona is either ahead of it’s time, or their school administrators are huge Apple fans.