Author Archives: feeling entropy

I was eating dinner with a lady friend of mine (a rarity if you know what I mean), when my mobile phone started singing. I pulled it out, hit silent, and stuffed the phone back into my pocket. The girl was impressed. “I can’t believe you didn’t answer that! Thank you so much”. I figured that I can talk on the phone almost anywhere and any time. Why then, would I talk on the phone while in the presence of an attractive girl that knew my name? –easy answer!

The ability to talk on phones anywhere and at anytime is very new to our society. The person who usually sits in wait for you to finish your jabber most often does so in your presence. The tables have now turned. The people in my presence are not the ones I talk to anymore. The people on my buddy list, address book, and mobile phone contact list are the ones I communicate on a daily basis. Not answering the phone is an easy, not so easy, thing to do.

I’m a huge fan of blogging. I’ve been actively pro-blogs since the year 2000. When I hear about blogs in the news one eyebrow automatically goes up. The same thing happened when I heard about Mr. Trump’s blog. It’s not just his blog, though it’s named “The Trump Blog”. Don has an entourage of writers who help in his two-line-entry blogs. As I’m reading this blog I think to myself, “oh dear, Trump will be podcasting soon, and maybe vlogging.” Michael Gartenberg said it best: “If Donald Trump is blogging, then blogging is about as mainstream as it gets”, also my initial reaction.

Is this bad? Heck no. I look at this as a half step in the right direction. If we could only do something about fixing Trump’s hairdo, now that would be a step and a half in the right direction.

Soon, all of the rock climbers I know are going to thank the kite flyers. A group of Squids (Squid Labs in Emeryville, CA) decided to put some sensors on their four string kite one day. The load sensors led to more sensors and a wire core in the rope. This is when they realized that rope isn’t just used to fly kites, and this technology could be used in a ton of different applications. The rope is smart, and tells you before it breaks, that it will break.

Hopefully with nano technology we’ll get this incorporated into fishing line. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hooked the big one, and broke my line. If only my PDA alerted me right before that “snap”, I would know to let up and allow free Willie do his thing before I start reeling him in again.

I hate [giggle] to be labeled as the scoffer of LIVEdigitally, but I told you this would happen months ago. Gizmondo has decided that it’s just not a heavy enough hitter to play with the big boys. The GPS, messaging, gaming device didn’t have a chance. Considering that the PSP and Nintendo DS just came out, and have been breaking tons of ground with different mods and hacks, this overweight, under featured cop off just wasn’t going to cut the butter.

If Kotaku and Gizmodo say it’s so, and of the time they’re not wrong. I have no questions about it. Farewell Gizmondo, you can join the dodo bird and the dinosaurs. But don’t be jealous of them, since they actually existed at one point.

DefCon is short for Defense Condition. DefCon is also the underground hacker convention, 13 years and going strong. It’s not that underground when it’s the first google hit when I type in “defcon”, but hey, that’s how computer nerds do it. So I have been reading a bit about this vegas geekfest and found that DefCon is a DefGo for me next year. One of these stories is a mix between Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an interesting DefCon perspective from a female point of view.

The second most interesting DefCon story is about 124.9 miles long! That’s right, a few guys got together and transmitted an unamplified WiFi signal from a mountain top in Utah to the Vegas outskirts. Two donated satellite dishes and some rental vans put these guys in the record books for longest WiFi link. I love how they pointed the dish at Vegas and picked up a broadcasted signal! They were surfing the web!

I love blogs. Blogs for breakfast, blogs for lunch, and maybe a vlog for dinner, I say. Finding an interesting blog is like those old 49ers finding a 1oz nugget of pure gold. Blogs take on many forms, shapes, sizes, and functions. According to BBC News and Technorati, a new blog is created every second. Bam, blog. Bam, blog. Bam, blog. That’s just mind boggling.

There’s some cool stats about blogs in this article, as well as some common blog knowledge for those 5 people in the world who still have to set up a blog. I’m so blog crazy that when I write on somebody else’s computer I automatically add the world ‘blog’ to their spell check dictionary! Is that rude?

I’m a Mac user. I’m a PC user. I’m not a Linux user, but I aspire to be so one day. Linux is an ‘open source’ software. This means that the public has access to the linux code, enabling those savvy enough to modify, add, or subtract to the operating system.

The term freeware comes in to play when talking about linux. Freeware is a term that contains two entities: free as in no monetary cost (usually described as ‘free as in free beer’) and free as in there are no restrictions for the software’s use.

This idea is great, and many computer geeks like me hope that someday all software will be freeware. But freeware doesn’t have to stop at software. Free as in ‘free beer’ could mean just that.

Carlsberg beer, a Danish brewer, has decided to make its beer recipe ‘open source’. This means that they’ll just give away the recipe. People can make, modify, and resell the beer. As long as the original recipe is credited, then everything is all-to-the-good. More things should be open source, and that’s where the Technology University in Copenhagen and Carlsberg are trying to go with this joint beer venture. Something about software and alcohol get me excited that tomorrow is the weekend!

I’m using a Nokia 3595 phone, with a very colorful fish theme case. But, before I got my hands on this $5.99 prize of technology, I had the T-Mobile Sidekick II. Email, instant messenging, games, web browsing, camera, you name it, and this phone had it. The Sidekick II isn’t even the most full featured phone either.

Phones are on the road to more and more features, and CamReader is ready to be a part of these new multi-purpose devices. CamReader is a technology that makes our sci-fi dreams become reality. Imagine scanning a document with your phone, or a barcode. Facial recognition would be great!

(fuzzy daydream effect with me staring into space) I just picture my sister picking up my phone, the facial recognition software identifies her, and then displays a message: “hey there brat, leave my phone alone!” Technology is great!

When you’re at work, staring at an excel spreadsheet, you should be focused on work. But we know the truth. Your fingers are typing, the mouse is moving, and the excel spreadsheet that you’ve been staring at for the past week is growing slowly. In the back of your mind, you’re wondering if gizmodo has posted any new content. You’re hoping that the cute girl you went out with last week has updated her blog (yes cute girls have blogs!) and if she mentions you in it.

You’re not allowed to surf the net at work (too much), so checking your favorite gadget weblog each hour just isn’t acceptable in today’s cut throat, slave driving corporate world. There’s ways around this problem, and those ways begin with the letters RSS. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is the technology that we’ve all been waiting for. Imagine, everytime Rocketboom updates their vlog, you receive a notice –just as you would receive a notice when a new email arrives- and can view that new entry in your email client, or RSS reader.

I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client for my RSS reader. There are fancy readers, but I’m not a fancy guy. When surfing the web, and you see these () little buttons, this means the site is ready to be RSS’d by you. Some apps let you drag and drop, some require a copy paste, be either way it’s super duper easy to “subscribe” to your favorite blog, news site, podcast or, other online syndication.

So why is RSS so unpopular? 1% of the internet population uses RSS. The 12-21 male demographic is the leading RSS group at a whopping 5% of the polled use RSS. Is it because we like looking at every page in our bookmarks, each time we get a chance to hit the internet? Do people just not understand RSS? Is there a need for a LIVEdigitally how-to-RSS article in the near future? I’m baffled? I’ve been using RSS for some time, and tons of sites offer simple syndication, so what’s the hold up? Let’s get RSS off the bench and on the court!