Category Archives: General

By Ron Bell

8:25 a.m.: on the way to an early meeting with the new boss. What topics will she cover? Last week’s email bulletin comes up quickly on the handheld. While poring over lines of text, the jostling train commute becomes more tolerable, if a bit cramped: sharing space with a slim, sexy laptop and friendly, rather large person named Pat who works in the office down the hall. Wait — was the name Pat or Sandy? No matter, just nod and smile, we’re almost there.

8:28 a.m.: standing at the front entrance to the office building. A frigid shock of panic strikes: the notebook! Gone. Never realized the shirt collar was so bloody tight, the necktie a noose. Where does Sandy, no Pat, where does this person work: an office phone number, perhaps? Long forgotten. Wait, the cell phone address book, under “S.” No, that’s not it. Look under “P.” Ah, there it is. “Yes,” comes the ever-so-cheerful response, “I picked it up after you rushed out in such a hurry. But to ensure its safe and pleasant return,” the voice concludes sweetly, “we absolutely must spend a pleasant hour together for lunch.”

How often have you tried to remember an emotionally charged experience Continue reading →

Generally speaking, technology is my friend, providing me gadgets with which to play and a website to keep in touch with friends, family and fans. All such things, however, leave a trace of where you have been.

A while back, my “comedy” website (in quotes, because some didn’t agree) conflicted with my much more staid, professional day job. The result, I moved on from that job and actually that state and part of the country.

Next week, I start a new job, and learning from the past, I will do everything I can to obscure my digital path. If I write on my weblog, it will be through a Gmail account. If I check my own site’s email, it will be through forwards to Gmail or my cell or Palm. I intend to never actually hit my site from their servers (and, in fact, have blocked their IP address).

I’m curious, though, what other strategies people might have out there to keep “Big Brother” unaware of their digital space. Any ideas?

Apple’s iPod is all over the news each and every day. The most popular music playing device on the planet gets more news media than the most popular person. Today is no different.

Apple claims the iPod battery life to last 10 hours. But at the end of the day all of us iPod owners feel like unsatisfied house wives when the iPod quits at a mere 4 hours. Less than half of the claimed amount is just not acceptable, and Apple feels that they need to correct this problem. That’s why they’re offering $50.00 to those who qualify. You do need a receipt, and you have to run a failure test (honor system is implied on this one) that proves your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation iPod battery is in fact a failure. Where the hell did I put that iPod recipt?

I was told that people are like computers. We have biological hard drives in our brain, we perform computations (sometimes we’re incorrect –ask my algebra teacher), and we can crash every now and then. The next logical step is to integrate human computers [brains] and traditional computers. British Telecom’s futurology department projects that in 2050, we’ll be doing just that. “Download your brain to a computer” is what they are projecting. I wonder if this is for a complete system restore, or more of a swap out of operating systems. Can you reformat a human brain? Better yet can you overclock one! I can just see those propeller beanies coming back into style but with a 90mm PC fan mounted on the top to dissipate extra heat.

They also noted that Playstation 3 is 1% as powerful as the human brain, and Playstation 5 will be as powerful as our brains. But then I’ve heard we only use 10% of our brains, did they factor that in? I don’t know how comfortable I am knowing my console video game player is more powerful than me.

Happy birthday to an old favorite.

–Gamespot

Pac-Man turned 50 years old on Wednesday. And in doing so, Namco, Pac-man’s creating company was awarded a spot in the Guinness Book of Records as being listed the “most successful coin operated game” in history. Namco sold 293,822 units of the arcade machine during the seven-year period from 1980 to 1987. And since there, there have been numerous ports to home systems, 3-D versions, Ms. pac-man, and the list goes on and on… *wicka wicka wicka*..ok, its harder to type out the sound than I have first imagined…

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?