SleepSmart looks like one of those eye cover thingy-mo-bobs my mom used to wear when she was napping. I never really understood them. I mean, your eyes are closed anyways, so how much light do you really need to block? But this one seems to have a real purpose. SleepSmart is really more like an alarm clock. It monitors your brain waves and wakes you up when you are in the lightest phase of your sleeping pattern. This way when you wake up you feel refreshed and not hung-over. No matter how good a nights sleep you got, a jarring alarm when you are in the thick of a dream is a crap way to start the morning.
What’s Your Type?
I was always baffled at the uncanny detail that video game manufacturers used when creating a game. I can reach back into my memory banks and pull out instances such as the day I bought Street Fighter II for the Super Nintendo Console. I remember looking through the character profiles (and after several minutes of awe over Chun Li’s measurements) I noticed that they even went so far as to include blood type.
Blood type! Wow, I don’t even know my own blood type, but I know Dhalsim, M. Bison, and E. Honda’s blood type.
Until today it just didn’t make sense, and I let it go. But in this article I realized that there is a significance to blood type. The concept was Japan born in 1927, and hit the pop culture in 1971. I don’t know my own blood type, but I’m guessing from this article that I’m type O, the outgoing / expressive / passionate type. Apparently type B’s are getting a bad rep for their “strong personalities”. Regardless, I’m scrapping that “what’s your sign” pickup line for the new “what’s your blood type” *eyebrows moving up and down*.
Printers: Not Just For Paper
World Changing, an excellent blog recently nominated for a Webby, made the bold claim today that the ink jet printer might end up being the most important technoligical innovation of the 20th century.
Wait….where are you going. No, keep reading, let me explain.
Scientists have used the same technology that spits ink out of your home printer to do all kinds of things including printing out human cells. That sounds utterly ridiculous, but its true. Burn victims can have made-to-order skin replacement.
Ink printers can also squeeze out plastics into solid objects too. “We’re rapidly approaching a time when useful objects can be printed out as easily as a photo.”
This is one of those unseen technological breakthroughs that could have enormous potential. I can’t wait to see the first printer hacks. Ohhh how gruesome.
Not A Record Deal, A Ringtone Deal
Dwango Wireless, one of the big wigs when it comes to mobile entertainment, has found an alliance in the Rap Olympics. You didn’t read that wrong, the Rap Olympics is similar to the freestyle competition that you saw when Eminem’s movie 8 Mile came out.
Where does Dwango Wireless and the Rap Olympics fit in with LIVE Digitally? On your mobile phone that’s where! The winners are offered a few different prizes but the one that caught my eye was the downloadable ringtones deal.
It’s so geeky that I love it, a few years ago customizing your phone was looked upon as nerdy, something that children and losers with nothing better to do did. (Can you see that I was tormented for that flashy red phone case I had). Given a bit of time for people to realize what was going on, and now it’s fun, everyone jumps in. Even the Rap Olympics want a piece, can’t say I saw that one coming.
There's Something Phishy Going On
Phishing, pronounced the way it looks, is when a thief or scam artist tries to obtain your personal, sensitive information. For example, bank account numbers, credit cards, social security numbers, passwords, or anything else that only you are supposed to know. They have very clever ways of deceiving victims into thinking they are a legitimate source and therefore getting you to divulge your private statistics.
It can come in the form of an email saying they are your bank, typically requesting you resend your password and account numbers. Another technique is sending confirmation that your information is correct, including your ATM PIN and card number, or credit card numbers with the code that’s normally on the back, along with the expiration date and the full name on the card.
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Hit Me On My Cell, At Recess
Mobile phones are not a luxury anymore, they are a must in this digital world we live in. that’s why I’ve been reading about the Firefly mobile phone directed towards children. This phone has the parental approved limited dialing and big cute buttons to phone mom or dad or home.
Safety for children is the marketing strategy used for the promotions of this phone, but I’m smelling different motives here. How many 8 year olds will find themselves with a flat tire on the highway in need of a mobile phone? How many 8 year olds do anything besides school, soccer practice, and video games? Where does the mobile phone come into play here?
I say that the mobile phone companies are mimicking the tobacco companies and “hooking them while they’re young!” That’s right, I’m calling them on it (pun intended, please just a small chuckle)!
They are trying to hook our youth, but I also personally feel that if I were the youth, I’d be screaming “hook me –up!”
PlusDeck
As a segway to my previous entry, “Old Skool,” I only believed in keeping that SONY Walkman of mine because I did not have another tape deck in the house. (That was a shot of reality as well, for my VCR is seeing its usefullness fading other than being a glorified digital clock.)
Here comes the PlusDeck2. www.plusdeck.com
It is a tape deck for your PC. But not only does it play your old worn out cassette tapes, it also can be used to create MP3’s of the old classics in your shoeboxes. It may not be the prettiest thing to be mounting into a drive slot on your PC tower, but its definately useful for people like myself that want to put my MC Hammer collection and one hit wonder cassettes onto my computer or Ipod.
The specs:
• Records sounds, MP3 files, and internet streaming audio from PC onto Tape
• Hi quality record/playback as Hi-Fi audio
• Convert cassette tapes to into MP3 files
• Full-logic controls
• Dub voice with mic on Tape.
• Tape Speed 4.75cm/sec
• Wow & Flutter 0.09%(WRMS)
• Frequency Response 30~18,000Hz
• Separation 40dB
• Signal-to-Noise Ratio 55dB
• Fits in open 5.25″ drive bay
Safe Route
My favorite pizza spot in San Francisco has a CCTV (closed circuit television) which I don’t mind. While I’m waiting for my pizza I look at the TV monitor which is facing right back down at me so I can watch myself wait. But, lots of people have issues with CCTV, especially when it’s monitoring public spaces. Often you are being watched and you don’t even know it. But, then there is iSee, a site which keeps dibs on all CCTV’s in urban areas and plans out a route for you to get to your destination unnoticed.
Overreaction, perhaps. Well, definitely. But what really interests me is that this information is on the web. Lets say I decide to restart the mafia. I can go online and mastermind a bank robbery without ever being seen, at least on the street. I doubt there is info on the web showing me how to avoid the CCTV’s in the bank. Oh well, scrawny geeks were never meant for crime anyways.
Data Thievery
ChoicePoint won in the Big Brother contest. Now it turns out they might have some competition. Yesterday LexisNexis announced that the initial 30,000 identities that were stolen from their data base about a month ago was really something like 300,000. I guess that’s why U.C. Berkeley has just been designated the leader of the new cybersecurity Consortium. So the picture below won’t stop identity thieves from hacking into data-mining companies like ChoicePoint, but the moustache on the guy on this box was so great I had to use it as an image.
If Only Our Memory Could Talk
Corsair has introduced their new Corsair XMS Xpert CMXP512-3200XL memory and it can almost talk. The PC3200 DDR modules don’t shy away from a slight overclock, but that’s not their forte. These modules have LED displays that enable the user to program exactly what it is that they want to see on the memory chips. This wouldn’t be worth the time and money for someone like me who doesn’t have a window, or a 100% acrylic computer enclosure, to view the guts of my processing tower. But there are tons of people who do in fact have that window and could get a one-up on those with regular old boring DIMM slot no-LCD-having memory modules.
Trusted reviews gives out the nitty gritty on these programmable displays of memory. Maybe it’s time for me to dust off the dremel, purchase some fiberglass, and start making a window so I “Live Digitally” can be displayed on my two 512 sticks of Corsair XMS Xpert memory.
Digital Dirt Biking
According to the Motorcycle Industry Council over 1 million dirt motorcycles were sold in 2004, this being the most recent in an steady upward trend since 1993. It appears that Americans have a new found fascination with off road motorcycles not seen since the 70’s. If you are among the masses that “Do it in the dirt” or even if you are toying with the idea of tearing up trails in the great outdoors, there is good news. Not only has the recent decade brought more numbers to the world of off-road riding, it has also brought some new innovations as part of our digital world. I am here to give you insight into some of these new innovations and take you from the back of “Pa’s” truck to the latest in dirt rider technology. So put on your Internet helmet and reading gloves and try to keep up, kid.
Autocom Auto-Volume Music System for Motorcycles
Nothing gets your blood pumping like a nice ride through the peaceful trails of our great nation, being at one with nature, breathing the fresh air, observing the wildlife and gassing it over every obstacle in your way with Slayer blasting inside your helmet, right? Well the gods of technology have smiled upon us with the Autocom Auto-Volume Music System. This little gem was originally developed for street bikes but it works equally well for the off road rider too. It adjusts the volume of your favorite adrenalin inducing tunes according to the amount of noise picked up in a cleverly disguised microphone in the headphone connector. So now when you are riding full throttle you are able to hear every note of that wailing guitar solo and when you come to a stop and need to communicate with others, your not fumbling through a backpack looking for a volume adjustment knob on a Discman.
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Old Skool
Are you a pack rat? Well gosh darnit, I am. Living in 686 square feet in some of the most expensive real estate in the universe doesn’t help the habit at all. As I was cleaning out my ‘beloved belongings,’ I came across my old SONY Cassette Walkman. Wow has time passed since I used you. I used to rock to Kenny Loggins and Debbie Gibson on this gem, now it was relegated to the bottom of an Office Depot fold together white moving box in the catacombs of my closet.
Memories…from the corner of my mind….Now my Ipod Mini is the new king.