Saturday, October 29, 2005

Mimobots... crazy, cute USB Flash drives... from 256MB to 2GB.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Olive Symphony and Musica digital media boxes for your entertainment console. Unfortunately no AAC support, so I'd have to re-rip all my music. Damn you, Apple... why'd I have to drink your Kool-Aid!?!

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Now your pooch can ride up front with you... Honda WOW concept car with in-dash dog. But what about tunes? Woof woof. Growl growl. I guess.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Seattle's always quirky The Presidents of the United States of America make the first phonecam music video for their most recent hit song "Some Postman."

Apparently 12 phones were positioned at different angles to capture video of the band performing (at half speed to accomodate the poor recording quality). I think the phone model that's being used is the Sony Ericsson K750 with 2 megapixel camera. After capture, the video was transferred over Bluetooth to a Mac for editing. The music for the video was obviously recorded at a much higher quality than a phone could have captured.

Good stuff, definitely worth the 3 1/2 minutes it takes to watch and forward on to your geek friends.
ArsTechnica uses then abuses the iPod nano, and discovers that it will keep playing music even if you run it over with a car. In their tests, the display suffers only minor cosmetic damage when put through a series of "moving drops" (to simulate jogging / running / biking / driving) - they had to drop it from 9ft onto a cement sidewalk before it stopped working correctly. That should provide some solace to everyone that's experienced a cracked or scratched nano display, shouldn't it?

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Rent my DVR... well, not **my** DVR, but someone's.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

This looks pretty sweet... Harman Kardon Bridge iPod dock. Only $100, out for Christmas.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Since I'm sure it will be covered ad nauseum by every publication over the next few days, I'll keep my summary of the new Moto ROKR E1 iTunes phone brief... BORING!!

I'll take a 4GB black iPod nano please... same $249 price (actually 99 cents cheaper), no two-year service contract, lots more storage (1,000 songs vs. 100).

As expected, the ROKR E1 is just a minor update to the E398 - white instead of black plastic and an iTunes button. I've already got an E398... wonder if I can get the iTunes software for it?

It seems clear that Moto has several more iTunes models on the horizon. And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is working with other handset vendors as well. Hope some of those are more revolutionary than this one. I would love to see a Nokia Nseries model that supported iTunes, but I think an Apple / Nokia partnership of this nature is unlikely considering their similar brand aspirations.

A couple of specific nits about the ROKR E1...

Use of TransFlash memory format sucks. This format is not as widely used, so higher price per MB than miniSD and harder to find. Good thing Cingular seems to be including a 512MB card.

Although the ROKR E1 commercials make it appear otherwise, I'm a bit concerned that the product descriptions make it seem like you have to manually pause the music when a call comes in:

  • "Pause music when you need to take a call" - Cingular's site

  • "You can even pause the music when your phone rings, so you won’t miss any incoming calls" - Apple's site


This should happen automatically... incoming phone calls trump everything on a phone. Period.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Went to Bumbershoot yesterday to see The Donnas and Garbage, and was disappointed to find that they aren't handing out wristbands this year to get into Mainstage concerts in Memorial Stadium. That practice has been an institution for as long as I've been going to the festival. This year, they're handing out tokens instead... same purpose, but not the same experience.
Looks like the Nikon P1 and P2, the first digital cameras with integrated Wi-Fi will be duds as they only allow you to transfer photos to a computer with special software installed. Not much of an improvement over USB, and probably better addressed by Bluetooth.

Kodak's upcoming EasyShare-One promises to offer support for uploading photos directly to their Ofoto EasyShare Gallery online photo service... cool. The EasyShare-One features a 4MP image sensor and 185MB of internal storage and is expected to be out in October for $600.

Think Nikon needs to partner with Shutterfly, Yahoo, or Yahoo's Flickr asap. Wonder if the P1 and P2 are able to support that or if we'll have to wait for future models?

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

I was in no way involved in this shameful incident....

When somebody passes out drunk, you can’t deny that it’s funny to torture him a little — tie his shoelaces together, smear lipstick across his face, hide his car keys. Maybe it’s even funny to cut the guy’s pants open with a boxcutter. But to put swizzle sticks up his ass?

PervScan --> Man Assaulted with Swizzle Sticks
Nokia intros mobile search app for the latest Series 60 handsets: 6630, 6680, 6681. Props to them for delivering a rich client app and not just something you use through the browser... just a better user experience, especially given high latency of mobile networks and abundant on-board storage for caching past searches for quick recall. I assume they'll bundle this with most future Series 60 handets, including the first Nseries models (N70, N90, N91) that should be widely available (at least in Europe) before the end of the year.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Thursday, July 07, 2005

The iPod is now officially this decade's Air Jordans... a highly desirable possession worth killing for.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Just came across an ad in Rolling Stone for the Sony NW-E507 Network Walkman (1GB), which looks like a promising new Flash-based portable audio player.

The NW-E507 is $50 more expensive than a comparably-sized iPod shuffle, but goes shuffle three better with an FM tuner, a cool-looking OLED display, and jog-dial navigation. Apparently supports WMA playback, but probably does not support DRM-protected music from Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo!, etc. (and definitely not iTunes) - you want to buy music digitally for this guy, it's Sony Connect for you... blech!

Monday, May 16, 2005

The final 2.0 release of MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search is now available for free download. I'm not sure I've ever said this about a product before, but Windows Desktop Search may actually change your life!

Disclaimer: I've never used any other desktop search tool for Windows, including Google Desktop. I use Google all the time for Web search and consider it superior to MSN for that purpose, but I've never been able to get their desktop search tool to install on my PC. I used and really liked the Lookout plug-in for Outlook for several months before I transitioned to the MSN tool.

I've been using the beta of MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search since a day or so after its public release, and it's completely changed how I organize email and files on my work computer... basically I don't organize any more! I only move email on a handful of specific topics to personal folders, and files either go on my desktop or the root level of My Documents.

I've long struggled to find the optimal hierarchy for saving email and files, but now I don't have to worry about it because Windows Desktop Search is always available and works very well. And it's great to be able to quickly transition from a desktop search to a Web search with one click - very helpful when I'm searching for images or specs of the latest smartphone.

Now, the product is not perfect. First, it's not as tightly integrated in the OS or applications as the Spotlight feature of Mac OS X Tiger. I'm sure something very similar will appear (next year!) in the Longhorn release of Windows, but it's debatable whether Microsoft will do as well as Apple at getting all the small things that really matter right. Second, you can't save searches for quick re-use later. Third, only in limited instances does it auto-filter search restults as you type (I believe Apple's iTunes was the first widely-used app to offer this).

That said, for what it does offer, MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search is an incredible product. I highly recommend it to anyone that uses a Windows PC.
Interesting article in The Seattle times about the design process for Xbox 360. I was especially intrigued by the four-quadrant chart the team used to frame its thinking on the appropriate design aesthetic: mild to wild and architectural to organic. Whereas the original Xbox was wild and architectural (like a Hummer!), the Xbox 360 is apparently mild and organic (like a Porsche 911!). I'm definitely excited to get my hands on it!

Sunday, May 15, 2005

I'm fired up about a post I just read on Russ Beattie's blog about why Yahoo! adopting Windows Media DRM for their new music service is a bad thing.

I agree with him on the ultimate outcome (Microsoft wins, Apple loses), but totally disagree that this is bad for Yahoo! or for consumers. Yahoo! and consumers, as well as PC and consumer electronics manufacturers, all benefit (read that "revenue") from the ubiquity of Windows Media technology far more than Microsoft. The reason that Microsoft will beat Apple is not because they are evil but because Microsoft has a better media strategy and they execute it well.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Is there an official home for those cute little RSS images you see on many blogs that link to the feed URL? I'd like to add one to this site - and I realize I can just steal one - but a few quick Google searches didn't turn up anything so I'm curious.
On the subject of Amazon.com RSS feeds, I also found two other sites that let you create feeds for specific searches, like this one for top-selling CDs.

If you're interested check out the Amazon RSS Feed-Builder at onfocus.com and the Amazon RSS Feed Generator at oxus.net.

It's also worth mentioning Moreover's RSS News Feeds creator, although it doesn't allow you to create Amazon.com RSS feeds.
Want to integrate your Amazon.com Wish List into your Web site or just want to make it easier for friends and family to know what you want? xanadb.com shows you how to create an RSS feed of your Amazon.com Wish List.

Here's what I want and what my wife wants.
Cool... Amazon.com Dashboard widget for Mac OS X Tiger. Allows you to search 15 product categories on US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Japan sites. Of course has "Click to Buy" link, but missing "Click to Add to Wish List" link.

Friday, May 13, 2005

360 to the left
I can get an Xbox 360 over there? Today? Cool!

Happened to be on Flickr a few minutes after reading up about the new Xbox 360 and noticed this photo under Everyone's photos on the home page.
It's finally here - well most of the specs are official at least - after months and months and months of hype... Xbox 360: always connected, always personalized, always in high def. Sweet!!
Someone needs to create a Mac OS X application that makes it easy to create nice-looking blog posts related to Flickr photos. The default formatting of posts created using the Flickr Web site are no good for me and I assume many others. I tried - and failed - to use MarsEdit for this, but MarsEdit still would have required lots of manual HTML editing. I want point > click > publish simplicity. I should really post this on the FlickrIdeas forum and/or create the app myself.

Update:I just realized you can accomplish this on the Flickr site by going to your blogs page and customizing the layout settings. Five built-in layouts to choose from, and if you have HTML and CSS skills can set up the layout exactly like you want it. I'd still like to see this incorporated into a rich client app for Mac OS X that doesn't require any code editing.
Anyone know if it's possible to view and upload to Flickr photostreams in MarsEdit for Mac OS X?

I've tried inputting settings manually with both "Other Blogger-compatible" and "Other MetaWeblog-compatible" selected in Software drop-down of site edit window with no luck.

For RPC URL I've tried...
http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?
feed://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?
If you've figured out how to make this work please let me know by posting a comment.
MSN... I'm putting you on notice on this blog like I already did on my Space... I won't blog on Spaces until you support posting with external editors, like my personal favorite MarsEdit for Mac OS X.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

James & Fortson carry Radmanovic
Great line from morning DJ yesterday referring to Jerome James and Danny Fortson carrying injured Vladimir Radmanovic off the court during Sonics game 1 loss to the Spurs on Sunday: "That was about their only good play all day." That's about right.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Just noticed the third beta of the Opera browser for Windows Mobile-based smartphones was released last week. It's been in public or semi-public beta for at least six months; not sure why they're taking so long to get the final release out.

This beta is still not as feature rich as the Series 60 version, but it's based on a much newer rendering engine and certainly performs well in terms of page loading speed. I think much of it's speed is due to built-in support for the Opera Mobile Accelerator proxy service. If I had to pick a favorite feature I'd say keypad shortcuts, but I really hope they add page tags and jump-to-text features from the Series 60 version.

While I'm certainly biased, I think the Internet Explorer browser included with all Windows Mobile-based smartphones generally provides a better user experience - up/down smoothly scrolls page and navigates links, don't have to double select form fields, no three-level-deep menus. I also like the flexibility of having three vs. two layout styles to choose from: single column, desktop, and default (resembles desktop with no horizontal scrolling). Opera's single column view just doesn't work great on all sites.

It will be interesting to see how strong demand for Opera on Windows Mobile is once the final release is out. I don't see very many people paying $29 (plus another $18/year for use of Opera Mobile Accelerator service) for a product that duplicates a built-in feature that works well and will only get better. Even at sub $1/unit OEM pricing (I have no idea what they really charge) I think it will be hard for them to prove the incremental value it adds. Or maybe I'm completely wrong.
I've been playing around with the new RSS features in Safari 2.0 that comes with Mac OS X Tiger, and noticed something interesting... none of the default bookmarks in the Shoping or Tools and Reference collections are RSS feeds. And there are only a couple feeds in the Kids and Travel collections.

Why haven't major sites like Amazon.com, eBay, Expedia, WebMD, and Monster.com caught the RSS fever!?!

I can think of dozens of ways these sites could leverage this technology to keep their users up-to-date on topics (or products) of interest: new CD and DVD releases, Wish List updates, new items up for auction, special travel deals, health and wellness tips, job postings, yadda yadda yadda.... as has already been proven by numerous first tier media outlets, RSS doesn't have to be just for geeks that want to spout off to other geeks.

Am I overlooking some big hurdle that makes it impractical for these companies to adopt RSS?

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Opera CEO bails on promise to swim from Norway to USA after raft accompanying him on his journey "suddenly punctured in open sea." What a load of BS.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Opera 8 downloads surpassed 1M in 4 days... track Opera CEO swim from Norway to USA. Even if this is real - and it would be too disastrous from a PR perspective not to be - there is no way he swims the whole way unless he takes lots of rest breaks on a boat along the way. Which means his trip could take several weeks or even months.

Friday, April 22, 2005

This guy is crazy!! Earlier this week the CEO of Opera Software made the following promise...

“I will swim from Norway to the USA if download numbers of Opera 8 reach 1 million in four days.”

Results will be revealed on Monday, April 25. They apparently hit 600k downloads in 48hrs, so I think he’s up for a long, cold swim.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

I can't wait... upcoming video games revive great movie characters with the real stars that made them famous: Al Pacino as Tony Montana, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, and Sean Connery as James Bond.
A few interesting updates on world of Symbian from latest SymbianOne newsletter...

Sony Ericsson Java Platform Strategy

CodeWarrior update from Nokia

Symbian C++ Tutorial blog

Series 60 fails US usability tests

Thursday, April 14, 2005

This would be terrible... disappearance of juniper plants in UK threaten gin supply. I'm also aghast that gin isn't considered hip.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

PDAs are getting really boring... if the Tungsten E2 is the most exciting thing palmOne can bring to market. Nothing to see folks, move along. Wake me up when the LifeDrive ships.