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.
Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

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?

No matter how great our digital camera technology gets, one ancient rogue will ruin our pictures.

The ever dreaded closed eye shot. It could even make Paris Hilton look like she belongs in special ed. But now there is a way to always avoid it. A new camera developed at the University of Electro-Communications, on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan will forever rid your album of mid-blink photos.

The camera takes 15 shots in .5 seconds and special sensors can detect which pictures caught you mid-blink and which found your best face forward.

Yesterday I found some guy who held a phone and PDA hostage. Today I’ve found a company that locks your computer and then demands $200.00 in order to get YOUR OWN DATA BACK! That’s ouch.

Hackers are getting smarter I suppose. There’s adaware/spyware that sees sites you have visited, order to choose annoying pop-up ads or browser hijacks to websites that simply piss you off. Then there’s pesky viruses that contaminate files rendering them useless and force a hard drive reformat and complete loss of data. I don’t think either one is benefiting, cause there’s no way I’m ever going to purchase something off of a pop up add!!

But these guys got it right, hold the user’s pictures, spreadsheets, video files, mp3 library and all other valuable data for ransom! Instead of a virus protector, I want a ransom protector? Norton? Where are you on this?

Yes, we also read in paper

Clive Thompson – The New York Times
“Wiener was both brilliant and personally intriguing, an absent-minded professor straight out of central casting. As a character, he was larger than life; as a scientist, he was smaller than history.”

Publishers Weekly
“One of the central concerns of the current “information age” is the difficulty of ordering and making sense out of the glut of information that flies at us from every direction, at all hours, in increasingly creative and invasive ways. Wiener, the man who gave us the tools to create and nurture this age by founding the science of cybernetics, has fallen prey to that glut, with his legacy and impact largely forgotten and misunderstood. “

Let’s face it one of the greatest things about the Internet is the free, mindless entertainment it can provide. Especially when you are bored at work. Sites like the Cyborg Name Generator are so stupid that I question my intelligence for finding any joy in them, if only for brief and fluttering moments. But hey, if you get bored at work like me, check it out. It might make you want to stimulate your mind and get back to work.

Here is the cyborg name for LiveDigi.

Today Nokia launched their first non-phone product. The Internet Tablet has absolutely no cell phone capabilities. What it can do, however, is surf the Internet and let you perform basic Web functions like check your email.

You:But I can do that with a mobile phone.
Nokia Salesman: True but the new 770 Internet Tablet will let you surf the Web cheaper and quicker than your clunky Nokia phone and now for the low-low price of $350 you can get one of these Wi-Fi friendly Internet Portals for your very own to cut down on that expensive Internet cell phone bill.

Ever notice how long winded salesman are?

The new Internet Tablet is perfect for a home that has one computer, but several people fighting over who gets to use the Internet. It’s the new modern dilemma. In the old day’s brother and sister fought over the bathroom, now it’s who gets to stream movies. But with the Nokia Internet Tablet the younger (weaker) sibling doesn’t get a Charlie horse, just a smaller screen.

Are you tired of chipping in with the rest of your family to buy Dad a horrendous looking tie? Tired of the awkward moment where he’s forced to put it on and wear it to work while looking thrilled and saying “Yes, I never knew polka dots went so well with pin stripes”?

Then what you need to take a look at, is the “AMAZING Water Clock”. It’s a great replacement father’s day gift. In many ways, it might be an odd enough present that it is the equivalent of the horrendous tie, but this time your Dad is saved from wearing it in public.

It’s not just a water clock or even THE water clock. It’s the AMAZING water clock. And what is most impressive is that it is powered by water. Which is amazing. Hence the name, which I’ll say one more time since it’s fun… the AMAZING water clock.

What’s cool about this clock is that it runs on pretty much any fluid. So quite easily, it could be the amazing beer clock. Beware though, if you add too much beer, I’ve heard that up to 4 hours can pass and the clock has no idea where they went or if it was telling time during them. I reckon adding beer to the clock might be a waste of good beer anyway.

You can put coffee in the clock though it runs a little faster than average, or you can try plain old water. Beware the plain old water option if you get a girly AMAZING water clock, as it will retain water at least once a month and perhaps tell time erratically.

Bottom line, this clock is fun. Just please don’t put any coke in it. If you do, your clock is likely to become hyper and refuse to sound any alarm you set on account of the fact it’s afraid everyone is out to get it.

Technology Review covered Motorola’s next big ambition. To be the pioneers of nano-emissive display (NED) technology, replacing any need for LCD’s. They unvieled their prototype on Monday at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Boston.
Continue reading →