LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: July 2006

LD's Gone Mobile

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Quickie post here.  I’ve been a wee bit swamped recently to do much blogging (although I am reviewing new products from Gefen, the iRiver Clix, and MusicGremlin), but I did manage to incorporate a Mobile version of LIVEdigitally!  That’s right, check it out with any smartphone and you should be automatically redirected here (click on it for a preview).

The fun part was taking Alex King’s awesome Mobile plugin for WordPress then tweaking it myself.  Yup, I dusted off the ol’ PHP typewriter and did some work.  I’m still playing, but when I’m done I’ll make the source available for anyone who wants to try it out.  Edits so far:

  • Category-based browsing (the original only supports by archival date)
  • Related stories (thanks to this plugin)

I’d like to hear any feedback y’all have to give about how it works.  I primarily use a Treo 700w and PPC 6700 to view the site, so haven’t seen it in a crackberry yet…  Other features I’d like to add:

  • Search (I hear search is big…)
  • Pages
  • Links to my Flickr photos
  • Blogroll

Am I missing anything?  Write your suggestions as comments.

Who'da Think it? – 5

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Well after a long hiatus travelling the world searching for more stupid products, I have returned with a plethora of goods ready to knock your socks off. Some are electronic, some are not. I treked the globe from one pole to the other, trying to gain knowledge of various cultures and lifestyles unfamiliar to those that I have already been introduced to. However of everything that I learned during my voyage, the one most important piece of knowledge has nothing to do with any specific culture but about who I am. And that one piece of knowledge is this – it can be pretty damn lonely not knowing a soul in a strange place. But thankfully, this little ingenious piece of useless crap gave me some company (so I guess it wasn’t so useless afterall). Yes, this beautiful invention not only gave me a friend to grow with, but also prevented me from losing my keys. So without further ado, let me introduce…..pet trees!

yes these are geniune trees that actually grow inside their little capsule and eventually can be transferred to a regular pot where it will continue to grow into a regular size tree. All they need is a little water every couple of weeks and there ya go.

These things are cooler than Bansai trees because they can go with you wherever you go. I even think it’s safe to say that these nifty trees are the best damned invention since sea monkeys!! There are two options of trees for fulfilling your horticulture desires; Victo and Rance, or in layman’s terms the prickly one and the non-prickly one. I spent thousands of dollars on my journey yet it was a 10 dollar keychain that helped me maintain my sanity. Now if someone asks me if that is a cactus in my pants or am I just happy to see them, I can finally say it’s a cactus (or i could jut use that as a coverup).

Coming to you with another wacky and useless product, this is Merv.

Dentistry + MTV?

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Dental GogglesGet this – Ismo Karttunen, a Finnish inventor, came up with the idea to distract you with music videos from Christina Aguilera and Ashley Simpson (or anybody) while you’re getting your root canal. You just slip on the high-tech goggles and hopefully your mind wonders elsewhere.

From New Scientist:

Dentists testing the glasses in Finland asked patients to raise their hand if they wanted a local anaesthetic injection. Patients wearing the goggles went longer without pain relief than those with no specs, says Karttunen.

This reminds me of the 3DVisor though not nearly as cool I’m sure. According to the tests I guess this works – though I’m still going to opt for the N2O, thanks.

Anyone else think that dentist looks a little too excited?

The rain leads to the pour…

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After some industry comments that Intel is killing PC gaming, it looks like AMD is stepping up to save it.  Epic’s Mark Rein fingered Intel’s integrated graphics chips for being their standard for low-end systems.  Any PC gamer can attest: those things stink on fire.  Try to run a game on them and they crash and burn; try to upgrade with a decent — or even a low-end — video card and it will almost always have issues with the integrated chip.  They could pack a low-end video card instead and give people a chance to enjoy PC gaming.

Of course, Mark Rein (as Joystiq points out) works at a company devoted to the graphics gods; every system that isn’t a Quad-Quad-Quad-Quadtronic slab o’power is a system that won’t look as good on an Epic game.

Now, yahoo tells us that AMD is deep in to buy ATI, which blows the whole thing into low-earth orbit where it can heckle Intel safely.  Intel won’t be able to negotiate a position with either graphics company at the best price now.  If AMD decides to put a cheap, upgrade friendly card in every system Intel will have to go to Nvidia or go home.  AMD has been the choice for gamers for quite some time, but this could be the point where they become the choice for casual shoppers and then turn them into  gamers.

Add in Microsoft’s PC gaming push, which is a blog for a day when I own a digital camera to take pictures of their eerie shrine-building in local stores and marts, and it’s an interesting week for nerds coming up.

No HDTV for Miss Universe??

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Miss Universe Logo (standard definition version)I think I read about 1080 articles (or was it 720) on how impactful HDTV World Cup broadcasting was.  Missed em?  Here are a few good ones to get you started: What’s on HDTV, Engadget, CIO, HDBeat, and Daily Wireless.

So I was flipping through my 18-odd HD channels I receive here in Comcast San Francisco land, and noticed the Miss Universe pageant, and I figured it was at least worth a few minutes of my time.  I was amazed to see that it was actually a standard definition broadcast of the event! 

In good old fashioned TV Guide fashion, JEERS to NBC for this!

NBC logo (standard definition version)

I took a few fun minutes in Photoshop to replicate my impression of the quality of the video.  All the images you are seeing are intentionally lousy looking.  Just like the footage of the event.

A Miss Universe model (standard definition version)

Of course, I’m not changing the channel just yet…

2nd strike?

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Like I mentioned previously, it seems like World of Warcraft is setting up a great situation for some new games to come and swoop up its market share. With six million subscribers paying about 12 dollars a month to play this massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (whoo!), the best guess estimate is that World controls half of the MMORPG market. A huge part of that appeal has been the simplicity and ease of entry, but another part has been the huge amount of story and setting that the easy-entry gameplay let old Warcraft fans explore and new WoW fans discover. With the latest mind-numbing bit of stupidity from WoW, we’ve got a good picture of what future content will look like for fans of the game’s setting: rubbish.

Without getting into the technical details of the changes to backstory and classes — WoW fans should already know, and everyone else shouldn’t care — the big concern is how this will change the numerous MMORPGs currently being developed. Games are being pushed out under the approachable “WoW model” instead of the previous godhead of the design environment, the punishing “Everquest/Final Fantasy XI model.” Will games that are borrowing from Warcraft’s model forgo well-thought settings with asymetrically balanced sides, or will they take this as a chance to outshine Blizzard at its own genre (if not game)?

Hopefully other developers will take this chance to show that ease of gameplay doesn’t have to reflect easy design, the route Blizzard seems to have chosen. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the video game industry, the PC game industry in particular, reacts to the route that Blizzard has chosen.

Unless you're an elephant

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To avoid those moments of sheer panic that occur whenever you discover you’ve left something important behind, consider attaching one of theseto your bag/PDA/dog/toddler and put this in your pocket. The Mini Reminder transmitter will alert the receiver to start making a vibrating, beeping racket if you move more than your specified distance away from it. I need this thing. How many times have I raced back to a restaurant to admit sheepishly that I’ve forgotten my bag on the back of that chair? Yes…the one you’re sitting on…thanks.

via SCI FI Tech

Die, computer, die!

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For those moments when your computer is lagging so badly you’d like to take a hammer to it, or when the realization that it just ate your term paper creates a deadly longing to chuck the whole damnable thing out the window, there’s a way to end it all. Presenting the Self Destruct Button USB! Three easy steps to total annihilation and…four extra USB ports. OK, so it won’t really kill your PC, but it looks like it will! Maybe someday you’ll really mean it, but for now function gets along with form in this sweet trigger-happy sort of way. The big red button will be available for desperation pressing starting the end of this month.
via SCI FI Tech

My gadgets should learn a thing or two

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I have a lot of gadgets.  MP3 players (got an iRiver Clix to check out too!), cameras (still need a new one…), convergence products, media servers, media players, etc, etc, etc.  Not a single one of them can learn a thing from me, and I don’t understand why.  Before you get too skeptical on me, let me be clear: I am not talking about “learning” as in artificial intelligence (AI), I just want them to have a few behavioral modifications.

My first example is my new Harmony 880. 
Works great, about 90% of the time or so.  Every now and then it misses a command, or in some way gets ‘off’ with the living room.  The nice thing about the product is it has a Help button which basically steps you through the sequence of remote commands necessary to perform the function you are looking for.  So, if I click “Watch Moviebeam” (this is an ‘activity’ much like a macro), the Harmony turns on the Sony receiver, Syntax LCD TV, Moviebeam and my DVD player (which is wholly unnecessary, but I can’t figure out how to remove this step), switches inputs on my Sony receiver to the correct audio input, switches inputs on my Gefen 4×1 HDMI switch, and switches inputs on the TV.  Awesome.

But when I first started, it could never get the Gefen to switch right.  So I clicked Help, and followed the on-screen ‘yes/no’ options until it worked.  Eventually I went back to the Harmony setup application on my PC and found I could ‘slow down’ the commands to make it more reliable (which did in fact work like a charm). 

I think it would be very easy for Logitech to add a bit of intelligence to the Harmony.  Maybe after doing the same thing 3 times the remote could say “please dock to your PC for an update”, at which it uploads the info to the PC, and the PC application can have enough smarts to say back to me: “there is a problem with your activity, let’s try to fix it.”  It doesn’t have to be smart enough to actually fix it independently (although that’d be nice too), but it should be smart enough to track little things like this.   Extra points to tivoboy who seems to agree.

My second example is my Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS unit.
Nuvi - FavoritesAgain, a device I absolutely love (full review still forthcoming, sorry, too busy working to pay the SF rent) and use all the time (as does my wife!).  The Nuvi is absolutely great at getting us around town and the Bay Area, helped me go camping, helps my wife find her delivery locations, we love it long time (and we certainly do not leave it in the car overnight).  I really like setting ‘favorite’ locations (pictured to the right), for work, for home, it’s quite handy.  In fact, its versatility at finding locations is quite impressive.

What I don’t understand about it is the inability to learn just a few things.  Remember, the Nuvi 350 can play MP3s, audio books, show pictures, find nearby ATMs (and more importantly, Dairy Queens) and even pump gas and check the oil pressure for you.  But no matter what I do, it refuses to remember the fact that I live in San Francisco.  Every single time I enter a city name, I have to type in “San F” and then select from a list. 

Nuvi - enter cityHow about, after the 5th time I make that choice, it simply auto-saves it, and then give me an option to ‘Change City’ next time?  It even has the concept of a “home address” and knows I live in SF (can’t call it San Fran or Frisco, they hate that here…  I don’t know who ‘they’ is, but I know I will get whacked if I use those terms).  I’ve got two more ‘freebies’ for Garmin as well:

  1. If I click ‘detour’ give me the option to keep that detour.  Maybe it’s a closed road, or just a really bad route.  Better yet, if I deviate from a route multiple times, ask me if that’s a better way to go!  The manuals state very clearly that the Nuvi will not guarantee the best way based on city shortcuts and everything.  I totally understand and appreciate how much work that must be.  But why won’t it pay attention to my driving and catch on after a while?
  2. When I turn on Nuvi, I always fall into one of two behaviors:  I either wait 10-30 seconds then click View Map (this implies I am already driving), or I almost instantly click Where To.  How about, after 20 seconds of inactivity, it automatically goes into View Map?

Now I know learning isn’t easy.  I know AI is ridiculously hard (although improving every year).  But even Windows has some basic learning features, and everybody likes to rant on how hard it is to use.  Office automatically adds contacts. Word adds, well, words. 

I think the gadget guys need to take a few cues and have their devices do so as well.

Polite Thieves?

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My Honda CivicHere’s an interesting little story for you. A bit over a month ago, I walked to my car early one morning prior to my 45 minute commute (hate it).  Before I got in, I noticed something was… off.  I couldn’t quite figure it out, so I got in, and drove away.

Four inches later, I felt something very wrong with the wheel.  I thought, perhaps there was something under the car, causing a drag or something.  So I got out, looked around.  Didn’t see anything, got back in, and drove off.

Honda Civic with stolen tireFive inches later, I knew something was very wrong.  I looked closely at a wheel and noticed the lug nuts were loose.  A second later I realized the hubcaps were missing!  I recall thinking, “what is this, Detroit circa 1974???”  When I went to the trunk, I couldn’t find the jack kit, but I thought maybe we had accidentally moved it into the apartment.  Luckily another Civic driver pulled up a few cars away, and he let me borrow his to tighten the lug nuts.

Honda Civic with stolen tireI decided at first not to bother with insurance, figuring new hubcaps would just get stolen again. 

About a week ago, my wife took the car in to get the tires rotated.  When I took the car in the evening, I noticed a massive pull to the right. I asked my wife about it, she thought it needed to be ‘broke in’ a little bit (much like her shoes), but I assumed the rotation had messed up the alignment.

Honda Civic with stolen tireEarlier this week we dropped the car off for a wheel alignment, but the dealer informed us immediately that it was not an alignment problem.  The problem was the fact that the wheels were not the ones that come with the car!

The fact that thieves stole my tires is somewhat surprising, as I live in a decent residential part of San Francisco.

The fact that thieves stole my tires and left other tires in their place, not to mention the lug nuts, is just plain weird in my book.  Looks like I got hit by the most polite thieves around…

Honda Civic with stolen tirep>

A very bubbly site.

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Ok, I couldn’t resist linking this most excellent website. Well it’s not really a website, but a time killer if you will. If you had the chance to transfer anything into a website, what would it be? If you were like me, you were thinking..BUBBLEWRAP!! Yes. this link sends you to the land of virtual bubble wrap and could literally keep you busy for hours on end. I highly suggest playing around with the manic mode.