happenings

Podbrix

Been a big fan of apple stuff for a long long time. One of my first computers was an apple IIe. So when I saw this on podbrix I just had to have it. Hopefully it will be a solid investment.

can't wait to see it all assembled.

cya

The Homeless Coder

The homeless coder.

This is jones street in San Fran circa 1998 I think. I used to live near here on Turk and Jones in the tenderloin. Those were the days. I love his razorfish at. This guy used to use this signage when there were tech conferences in town. One time during Java 1 he had a sign that said he hates MSFT. I remember a bunch of us walking home from java 1 gave him a 50 for that. he was stoked.

good stuff...

Apple Store

This really made me want to take a trip to NY.

amazing...

The Protecto Phone

My friend Jesper and I used to talk about that someone needed to write an app for our palm or nokia phones that allowed you to tag certain entries in your phone book to make sure you did not call them at the wrong time. Meaning - you needed to put your phone into the local time zone and from let's say 1 in the morning until 10 the next day you would not be able to SMS or dial the contacts you had tagged. This is to keep you from one of two things. Calling someone "special" in your life while you are drunk and saying things that you might live to regret in the morning. Or it is to keep you from dialing the wrong person at the wrong time. Meaning you are off partying in Hong Kong and you dial your GF back home in the states. Both situations are bad but preventable-meaning don't go out and drink with your phone or buy the protecto phone. Given the spate of Palm, windows, and Nokia smart phones you would think someone would have written some apps to solve this problem.

Looks like LG is making this a hardware solution at this point.

cya

Podcasts!

I have had an iPod since they first came out and can never see myself living without one. Dealing with the eye thing the last few weeks I have taken to enjoying audio even more - both audiobooks and podcasts. Been through about 5 books and need to get the reviews up but been busy just catching up on life.

However I wanted to comment on Podcasts for a moment. I dig them for the most part but what I am not digging is how some podcasts seem totally not worth being turned into a podcast or how the person doing the podcast is just totally lame.

For example. MP3.com has the Great Albums podcast. Perfect. A great host who has a radio voice, interacts well with his guests, showcases good music and it just all comes together well as a podcast. Been listening every week and have found some great new bands because of it.

BBC, NYtime and NPR - all great podcasts. I mean these are radio/newspaper guys just giving me the content in a new format.

Wired news. Just sucks. What I mean is this. Most of their podcasts are just the columnist reading their column into a cheap microphone and offering it up as an MP3. It is so bad. The Sex Column is one example of the worst. She is a terrrible interviewer and she seems to take no advantage of the spoken medium. I am sure she is a good writer and columnist and she should stick to it. Guys like Imomus are cool and are using podcasts to their advantage so Wired News should keep it up but they should fix the broken ones.

In radio, for example, most disc jockeys or hosts, are on the radio because they have a good voice, know how to conduct interviews and know how to use their voice as a tool. Hence why some radio people are not on TV. They are not good looking and make for better audio only mediums. I think the same should be done with podcasting - just because someone can write a column does not mean they should be the one to read their column and deliver it as a podcast. Someone good at narrating or has a good radio voice should be the one to transform the column into the MP3 medium - not the columnist. Just like in Audiobooks the author is not the one reading the book but someone else is chosen who can bring the book to live via voice and who is pleasant and intriguing to to listen to. Most authors would tell you the same that they are writers not good orators.

I saw this same thing happen in the tech industry when it comes to conferences. A software compnay would take a brilliant engineer and have him speak at a conference about his code or specific expertise. Problem is most engineers are engineers cause they are good coders, great at solving problems and many times they make lousy speakers. I always found that engineers like this are great for panels or sit down like venues where they can interact with other engineers but not used as speakers for large audiences. I hope I have highlighted the comparisons well. Not sure though. What I am trying to say is podcats are cool but when voice is the medium, the person delivering the content needs to know how to use the medium correctly otherwise it is a waste of time.

cya

Interesting blog about Google

This is pretty much right on and how I have felt for a while about google. Gmail sucks but most people don't want to admit it. The new beta of Yahoo email, which they better officially get going on, is much better all the way around.

Frankly apart from the Google search engine, which I am finding to be less accurate these days, I have not used any of Google's services and don't find I need to. Google earth is quite cool but have seen little services on top of it that truly add value or that I must have. Sure - there are some real geeky things you can do with it, mashups, but let's face it - they are not a must have service. Like most of the real geeky web things they have very little real life value.

Anyway - this is good stuff. I hope Google listens since we want them to make it and truly change the face of the Internet and desktop computing.

25 Things I hate about Google

l8r

Testing out Flock

new web browser for the mac with a bunch of built in cool tech goodies. open source is pretty amazing.

check u later

Pocket PC Phones a plenty...

Geek from the street.... BKK style.

Having lived in Hong Kong, one of the most saturated mobile phone countries on the planet, over the last three years I was wondering what living in Bangkok was going to be like when it came to mobile phone craziness. For the most part I have been pleasantly surprised to see that Bangkok has the goods. Hong Kong being one of the major cities to roll out 3G for the masses was beginning to experience a lack of interest in what I call smart phones or PDA phones. Why you ask - cause the 3G voice prices were amazingly cheap and the handsets were subsidized. Plus all the operators were putting on the big 3G content push - in Asia this means girls, games and gambling. Well Bangkok is not Hong Kong because GSM is king, people love to buy/sell/trade handsets and as of late there are a lot of Smart Phones suddenly available.

There are two main places to check out phones and PDAs in Bangkok. One is Pantip Plaza and the other is Fortune Tower IT Mall. Pantip is bigger but has everything electronic and takes some dickering for a good price plus you get hassled by all the pirate CD, Video, VCD and MP3 vendors. Although for computer stuff this is the place to go. Fortune Tower is a little more focused on phones and of course tends to carry the latest in PDA Phones. My friend and I have been cruising over there the last few weeks to see what the latest is in Pocket PC phones. A quick rundown.

The last few weeks each of the stores has been battling for promoting either the new HP iPAQ 6515 Pocket PC Phone or the Lenovo ET 960 Pocket PC Phone. I am not able to get test models and I am not interested in either phone so I can only give you my impressions of the phones based on playing with them in the store. Based on these two phones I have no intention of trading in my Treo 650 anytime soon. But read on since the new Benq P50 is out. From what I can tell all these phones are running Microsoft Mobile Windows second edition.

The HP phone has been expected around these parts for a while and since the iPAQs are quite popular in Asia so some people I know haven been putting off buying a new phone until they see the new HP.  Let me say that I think this phone looks like it was designed by someone who use to work for Agilent building test and measurement devices. The phone just looks a little clinical - not something I wanted to have in my pocket. The features are there for the most part and HP has certainly come a long way but they just did not go far enough with this phone. First off it is just a crime that this phone is the size it is but without wifi. Kills me. The screen is slick and the keyboard feels good but you get a sense that there is not enough juice in the phone - it just feels sluggish. Including the Mini SD slot and the SD slot is super smart and allows one to use the SD slot for a wifi card and the Mini slot for memory but of course this is not optimal. Anyway - once I came to the conclusion that the phone did not have wifi and just felt too big I really did not dig further. Oh yeah - everyone seems to chat up the GPS capability of the phone and most vendors in Thailand are bundling the phone with mapping software for Bangkok and some other cities in Thailand. Yes this is way cool but jsut not enough to make up for the lack of wifi.

Yes the Lenovo phone is winning design awards and it is one sexy beast but sex appeal is not enough when one can only imagine that dropping the phone in a hurried rush while boarding the SkyTrain in Bangkok will spell certain disaster. It just looks fragile. Across Asia most people are comfortable with the Lenovo brand but when it comes to mobile phones only people in China are used to Lenovo. This is the first Lenovo phone I have seen outside of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Clearly this is the new IBM/Lenovo pushing their way outside the confines of China. I agree with the strategy but I am not sure this device will help that cause. I only bring this up because for the most part when you read about this phone it comes with the verbiage that this is a China only phone which is clearly not true. I did not play with the Lenovo very much because it did not feel like it could take day to day usage without falling apart. For sure you would want to keep this phone in a case which I never do with my Treo. Some of the buttons are even located on the beautiful rounded corners and they just look like that would not survive a fall. The phone is full of features but it is also lacking wifi and it also has a nubbin. The external antenna that some phones like the Treo cannot seem to engineer out. I have learned to deal with it but I don't like it. I will move on from the Lenovo because as one of the shop owners was telling me - everyone was waiting for the Benq P50 and they all felt it would be instantly more popular than either the HP or the Lenovo.

Cruising through Fortune Tower today was an eye opener. Lenovo banners were all but gone and HP was still alive in some of the big iPAQ shops but everywhere else Benq had taken over. It was astonishing. I must say that after playing with the P50 I was for the first time starting to feel like my Treo 650 was getting old. It was not anyone one thing but it was a combination of the better camera, the longer screen, the absence of the nubbin, the wifi and the form factor. Benq had really pulled it together for the first time out. Let me run down some specs:

Audio recorder and activation button
Speakerphone
1.3 megapixel camera with digital zoom and camcorder
Speech command compatible with activation button
5 way nav key and Touch Screen
Benq version of skype
Wifi
SD card - caveat. The slot is SD but the SD card is really a holder for a mini SD card. Not sure I get this but I guess it means you can use SD or miniSD but not at the same time.
Bluetooth
Storage slot for second SIM card - clearly this came from someone in China since roaming countries is not cheap so everyone has 2 or more SIM cards.

Guts:
Intel pxaRXx with wmmx
91 mhz
64 MB ROM/RAM

Software:
Build date for system is 6-21-05
SW ver 1.05
HW ver 1.00
Windows Mobile Second Edition ver 4.21.1088

The specs appear to be cutting edge in the Pocket PC Phone group and I have to say that with the wifi, the keyboard, the longer screen, the SIM card storage slot and the thickness - this is the Pocket PC Phone to get. Since my friend picked up the phone today I hope to play with it a little more and let you know what the day to day usage is like. The wifi works great - that we confirmed.

Thoughts...

Watched a killer techno DVD today and needed to copy it. I was like I must be able to do it but how?

Happend to see this in my email:

http://www.ripdifferent.com/~mtr/#download

done. copied a region free able to play anywhere DVD File.

Now I should be able to use my G4 bulit in DVD burner and disk utility software to output the DVD file back onto a blank DVD.

so cool...

more on the slingbox later...

What I need from Skype...

I need a USB dongle that uses something to connect to a wireless headset.

This dongle contains the Skype software which runs from the USB, my account info and works on windows or mac.

I carry the dongle with the headset. Plug into an internet machine and I am ready to go.

Wouldn't it be cool?

Don't think it exists yet but might as well ask.

fun fun