Category Archives: General

Technology advances bring great things. People can work faster, more productively, and have more fun doing it (sometimes). But you can’t progress 100%, there’s always a bit of regression and today I found truth to that. A man was caught holding a mobile phone and PDA for ransom. Granted it’s much better that he kidnap these items instead of a 9 year old daughter, but still people, what are you thinking? He was caught, and now faces charges. I wonder if he sent pictures of the PDA tied up, or those magazine cut out notes saying “if you ever want to make a phone call again, give me a million dollars!”

Last week quite a bit happened. E3 (the biggest video game conference) was held, and numerous nifty unveilings occurred. Nintendo and Sony gave announcements of new cool must have toys for the near future. Another huge occurrence last week was the Revenge of the Sith. Star Wars lives on, and with we have resurfaced kooky fans.

USA Today has built a small website dedicated to the 3rd prequel from Lucas. I think that my favorite is the storm trooper Elvis. What a combo! I be there were a few storm troopers in the original Star Wars trilogy that had sideburns like this guy does, hence the storm trooper Elvis just may have existed. The site has other factoids and a “Are you one with the Force” quiz. Uh huh baby (in an Elvis voice)

I’ve had fantasies about being able to blog from wherever I am. Blog from the bus, blog from the dentist office waiting room, and even blog at grandma’s house (where you know there is no internet much less a computer). So what, laptops have been around since I was in diapers, blog from a laptop at any of these locations you say? No sir, blog from your phone I say!

Customers of 3 (the UK’s first mobile blogging network provider) has got it right, and I’m jealous. Blog from your phone, upload pics and videos to your blog all simply by mobile phone. My blog would be updated 78,978,907.6 times a day if I had the capability of blogging and posting pics/vids all from my phone. Entry example 1: “look at how good I parked my car!” entry example 2: “hey she’s cute, what do you think?” entry example 3: “do I have anything in my teeth?”. I imagine getting those three posts published in a span of 7 minutes or so.

I say this needs to come to America sooner than later. Or maybe I should just move to the UK.

The war on internet piracy is about as dramatic as America’s ‘War On Drugs’. P2p filesharing is nothing new, but there’s constantly new spins to this concept. BitTorrent made a huge splash in the downloading pool for pirates. Produced as a “free speech tool” BitTorrent would rely on ‘trackers’. Web sites would host these trackers which were simply small files needed to download any specific file. These sites that host thousands of trackers are sought out and shut down by anti-pirate groups.

Evolve or Dissolve is a cliché that I rip off now and then, and BitTorrent has done the evolution this time around. The beta-version of BitTorrent does not rely on the need for trackers anymore. This tracker elimination is a huge wave that rocks the boat of the anti-pirates.

I can’t say I’m for or against either of the sides on this coin. I feel that this situation is similar to when your brother and sister start fighting, you just sit back, lay low, and see who wins.

Yesterday I went to see the new Will Farrell movie, ‘Kicking and Screaming’. While walking to the theatre from the ticket booth I noticed a line of people sitting on the floor playing card games, PSP, and even children with plastic light sabers hopping about. “Star Wars is out, that’s right!” I thought to myself, and wondered why I hadn’t seen something on the internet about a bootleg download running around.

Today I visited TechDirt and my vision came true. Star Wars Episode III is on the net and shiver me timbers there’s people pirating it as we speak. No need for alarm, I’m certain that anyone who downloads the movie has either already seen it, plans to buy the DVD, and has invested thousands of dollars in Star Wars paraphernalia already.

I used to sit in lectures and play ‘snake’ on my Nokia 3390 phone. I could pass a few boring minutes of anthropology with my trusty Nokia game. I could have brought in my old Nintento Gameboy for a round of Tetris, but the fact of carrying a game only addition to my already full pockets was too far of a stretch for me. Today I don’t find myself buying a PSP or Nintendo DS simply because I’d need a purse to carry everything that I have. I do carry a mobile phone around with me everywhere, and according to some, that’s a game console in itself.

“People have a gaming machine in their hand whether they want a gaming machine or not,” says Greg Ballard, CEO of Sorrent, a mobile gaming developer and publisher.

I can see downloading games to your phone mimicking today’s downloading of ringtones, what do you think?

Mom always told me to keep the hair dryer out of the shower, I listened to her on that one. Richard Henry isn’t having it. He’s on a mission to stay underwater for 7 days in order to smash a previous record of only 5 days underwater. What do you do when you’re under water for 7 days solid?

Listen to mp3’s, play video games, read ebooks, and with hope watch DVD’s (if someone donates a player to him before he goes under). The scuba excursion will start in June and take place in Wisconsin. This should all take place about 15 feet under the surface… I was expecting 20,000 leagues but then I just watch too many movies.

It’s been three weeks now and I’m feeling a bit serious about the Sirius satellite radio. I have found myself parking my car, turning off the engine, and leaving the radio running in order to finish the song, talk show, or even a comedy sketch. I’ve done this even when I’m late to my destination because I feel that being 2 mins earlier is not worth wondering what was the end of that Richard Pryor joke or how E! True Hollywood Stories Alyssa Milano ends.

Sirius does a decent job with programming, I would have liked a bit more variety, but I’m one of those who always wants more. Drives from San Francisco to San Jose and back gave me a solid hour or so with the Sirius radio to see what it was really made of. The unit really warmed up after an hour of use, but performance was acceptable.

Click on the picture to see a video of Sirius channel surfing:


My Pros for the Sirius Sportster Satellite Radio: Continue reading →

In response to Microsoft announcing the newest release, Xbox 360, the internet has been a buzz. I have been lost in the buzz with numerous blog posts, articles, ficticious rumors, and hopeful feelings towards the new console. It’s all been said, the problem is that it’s being said everywhere as well. I have consolidated 36 of the most relevant posts I’ve come across regarding the 360 (get it, 36 links for the 360?)

Your one stop for the latest Xbox news:
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link 5 Continue reading →

Phones got it all these days. Playing music, emailing pictures, and controlling your TV with your mobile phone is old news. Can we pack more punch into this small do-it-all device? Navicore says yes. GPS on your phone is their game, and today they released it to the UK public.

This exciting technology is of course only available in Europe and I have seen no plans for them to move to the U.S. anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t already working on a U.S. version of something similar, I hope.

For 199.00 pounds Continue reading →

May 11-13 was the Connections Conference held in the beautiful city of San Francisco. This time around I was fortunate enough to make an appearance. Hotel lobby, paper pamphlets, and tacky carpeting greeted me upon arrival. There’s something really cool lurking very close to me, I can feel it… or maybe that’s the electromagnetic field I’m feeling due to all the new home networking devices hidden behind these now closed doors.

After three days of seeing just how many different home networking solutions are coming to market in the near future, I’m overwhelmed and extremely excited. I Overwhelmed: I want each technology for my lily pad, but can’t afford every single one. Extremely excited: I will end up splurging on a few of them, and that already puts a smile on my geeky face.
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Good movie compression is every movie/video pirate’s best friend. Divx is a huge player in the game of compressing videos. In my personal historical experience, they did for video what the mp3 did for audio. Video files were huge, and transferring them across the internet required days of uploading and then downloading. Making the files smaller while losing little to no quality was desired. Divx didn’t just dream it, they did it. Now there’s no question that the power of this codec (short for compression/decompression) can be used for forces of good as well as evil. Pornography for example was the most searched entity on the internet until the mp3 came along, if you consider that good use of video compression.*

I ran into the Divx booth at the Connections Conference and had to hit these guys up. They had nifty pens, sleek silver booklets, and some portable media players for our fondling pleasures. I was excited to talk to someone who works for Divx, as a geek stuff like this is equivalent to a high school basketball player chatting with someone who designs Nike shoes. It’s just cool, and she told me about Divx 6.0 coming out real soon.
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