Just days after ordering an iPod Touch (should arrive on Monday), I read this article about how the next Touch model will include a camera.
The lack of a camera was one of my beefs with the Touch (that and the lack of a video camera, the lack of an external storage card and the lack of a microphone).
Oh, well. I'm sure it will still be fun.
If you've updated to the new 3.5 version of Firefox, one of the new features is called "location aware browsing."
This means that your browser can tell Web sites where you are. Of course, the Mozilla community says you have to agree to allow such monitoring.
Here's what Mozilla had to say:
"Now Firefox can tell websites where you’re located so you can find info that’s more relevant and more useful (for example, getting directions or finding restaurants near you). It's all optional - Firefox doesn't share your location without your permission - and is done with the utmost respect for your privacy."
I gave it shot using Google Maps (click on the small dot under the directional arrows and above the magnifying bar. At home, the browser located me in the Rochester area (a circle about 40 miles in diameter). At work, the closest it could get was a broad view of Minneapolis.
But some are reporting down-to-the-street accuracy.
Check it out yourself.
If you had to pick one tech company to put a serious challenge to Microsoft's Windows operating system, what company would it be?
Google, of course.
The Mountainview behemoth took aim at Windows on Tuesday, promising an open-source OS to challenge Microsoft and Apple for netbook turf.
Google promises "speed, simplicity and security" with its new OS. Haven't we heard that before?
Anyone who knows me well can attest to my disdain for Apple products.
It's not that Apple doesn't make fine hardware and software. In fact, the opposite is true, Apple makes some extraordinary products. It's just that Apple charges such a premium for its technology that many of their devices are priced out of reach for most consumers.
Consider the iPhone. It is, in my estimation, a marvel of technology. Sure, it has some shortcomings -- a mediocre camera, the inability to have more than one app open at a time, no option for additional storage, etc... -- but it is a very slick machine that works in an intuitive manner. And, developers flocked to it, creating hundreds of interesting and sometimes productive iPhone applications.
But the thing is cursedly expensive to own. A new generation iPhone will set you back $199 if you sign up for AT&T wireless for 2 years at $65 per month. That's $1,759 before taxes!
So, what's a cheapskate to do? How about an iPhone without AT&T?
Enter the iPod Touch. It does most everything an iPhone can do, except make calls and take photos. The Touch can access the Internet via Wi-Fi, so whenever you're in a hotspot, you can check your e-mail, update your Facebook, etc. There's even a hack available that will allow Touch users to make phone calls over the Internet (with purchase of optional headset, since the Touch lacks a microphone).
After digging around on the Internet for a few days, I was unable to find a single device that compared in features to the Touch that didn't involve a wireless contract.
This is what I'd like to see: A Wi-Fi-enabled device that has all of the functionality of the Touch but also has a decent camera, the ability to multitask, a flash slot for additional storage and a microphone for making VOIP calls. Kind of like a smartphone without the requisite king's ransom wireless plan.
Does such a thing exist?
I couldn't find one.
So, I shelled out $214 for an 8 GB Touch. And, I'll probably pay the $10 upgrade fee (yes, a brand new device you have to pay to upgrade -- it's the Apple way!) so that I can use it with my Bluetooth headset.
Knowing my luck, some astute hardware maker will unveil an iPhone killer in the next few months, and I'll be kicking myself and, once again, cursing Apple.
There are a handful of free software programs that every person with a PC should not be without, but perhaps the one amazes me most is the Picasa photo organizer from Google.
Picasa, now in version three, is a godsend for people who shoot a lot of digital photos and need a simple way to keep track of them. My wife is a shutterbug extraordinaire (it's not uncommon for her to shoot hundreds of photos at one school event), and Picasa has helped keep me sane. I've got thousands of photos on several hard drives and Picasa keeps track of it all!
Sure, you could spend $70 for Adobe's Elements or more than $100 for ACDSee (both are very fine pieces of software), but why spend the cash when Picasa is free?
And if you're using the photo organizer that came with your camera or the one built into Windows, Picasa will blow you away with its elegance, ability and ease of use.
Picasa has dozens of features, but perhaps the most impressive is one that you don't even realize is there. When you edit a photo in Picasa, you don't actually change the image file itself. Instead, Picasa uses an .ini file to keep track of the changes and applies them when you view the image, print it or share it online.
The editing tools are exemplary for the novice shutterbug. There's even a one-click do-it-all button called "I'm feeling lucky" that does a fairly good job of color and contrast correction.
With Picasa and a Google account, you also get 1 gigabyte of online storage in Picasa Web Albums, which offers simple ways to share photos with friends and to post them on your favorite social Web sites.
If you upload an album of photos to Picasa Web Albums and the person you're sharing them with also has Picasa, that person can download the entire album to their hard drive and import it into Picasa with one click. Try doing that with Photobucket or Flickr!
Don't get me wrong, Picasa is not Photoshop, and if you're on a Mac you'll likely be happy with iPhoto. But if you are looking for a capable, feature-rich photo organizer that just keeps getting better and better, it's tough to beat Picasa. And, it's tough to beat free!
A University of Oxford neuroscientist says social networking sites such as Facebook might be altering your brain.
From the Chicago Tribune:
So, we might all become blubbering idiots, but at least we'll have friends!
In my last post, I wrote about turning an old Xbox into a media center for my living room. And trust me, it is sweet!
But one of the main reasons for the project was to be able to watch Hulu on my television without having to lug a laptop into the living room and plug in a couple of cables.
Hulu, for those select few who haven't seen their creepy commercials with Alec Baldwin, is the hottest streaming video site on the Internet. It combines legal video content from multiple sources, ranging from current TV programming such as "24" and "Life" to archive episodes of series such as "Airwolf" and "Charlie's Angels."
But apparently Hulu's content providers had no intention of Hulu's users ever watching streaming video in their living rooms. TV? That is the province of the networks and cable.
So, bending to the threat of losing valuable content, Hulu began encrypting their video feeds, rendering their streams unviewable to those using XBMC, Boxee, MythTV and other media center devices.
It took XBMC's volunteer developers two days to sidestep Hulu's encryption scheme, but then Hulu changed it again. Volunteers hacked it once again, but the new hack won't work on XBMC for the Xbox (those on Linux, Mac and Windows can still get Hulu hotness).
I personally don't understand the business sense of excluding thousands of viewers based simply on the device they use, but Hulu's content providers must have some logical explanation for their disdain. How can they allow me to embed their video here, yet keep it off my TV?
So, I abandoned Hulu on the Xbox and replaced it with a Fancast plugin. Fancast also serves "The Adventures of Brisco County Junior" and the "A-Team," so I'm set ... at least for now.
My wife and I broke down and bought an original Xbox for our two sons several years ago.
The boys were ecstatic when they unwrapped their prize and saw the neon green X that promised worlds of adventure and teenage RSI.
But alas, like all technology, the Xbox was soon usurped. Microsoft molded a new, translucent object of desire, and the black plastic box was shoved into the corner, crowned with a tangle of old-school corded controllers encrusted with dust.
That's when I claimed it, dusted off its crown and once again made it king of our family room.
Using some straightforward soft-mod instructions from the ever-resourceful Gina Trapani at Lifehacker, I transformed the old Xbox into a Linux computer and loaded it with XBMC (Xbox Media Center) software. Instead of Splinter Cell and Halo, I was going to use the Xbox and my Internet connection to get "Family Guy" and "Battlestar Galactica."
While there's no sense recreating Gina's instructions (I'd never do it as well), I did stumble on a few things:
-- Getting the hack through IRC was an incredible hassle. My FTP client (FileZilla) kept getting booted when I navigated to the proper directory for the download. Since the "super-secret" FTP username and password work only once, I couldn't log back in. After hours of frustration, I learned that if I left FileZilla pointed to the proper directory, then asked again via IRC for a password (using the same name), I could start the download without getting kicked off. This took me hours to noodle out.
-- The latest build of the most popular XBMC distro is freely available at T3CH. You want to grab the "bleeding edge" version. (I started with the "stable" version, but soon updated it).
-- The Action Replay software that I received was buggy. The software presents you with three panels, which represent the three locations (memory card, PC and online) available for game saves or exploits. The Lifehacker instructions say to drop the exploit on the PC panel, then drag it to the memory card. I got the exploit into the PC panel by dragging if from my Windows desktop, but the software would not allow me to drag it from one panel to another. After considerable frustration, I simply dragged the exploit from my desktop onto the memory card panel and it worked!
-- The Lifehacker instructions say to "install the softmod" but they don't say where. The Xbox hard drive is partitioned into several drives. I guessed C:/ and it worked.
Once the installation was done, I went in search of scripts and plugins to extend the capabilities of my reborn wonder. I started with a plugin to stream video from the popular Web site Hulu, which hosts thousands of TV shows and movies.
I was disappointed when the plugin didn't work. I could navigate the directories, but the videos wouldn't play. I spent hours online looking for answers (documentation for this stuff is sparse to non-existent). I eventually just updated the XBMC software. Once the new "bleeding edge" software was installed, the Hulu plugin worked like a charm. I spent the next 90 minutes watching "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."
Spurred on by my success, I downloaded the Navi-X Media Browser, which essentially puts another media player inside XBMC. The Navi-X package includes scripts for dozens of online media sources, including YouTube, Adult Swim, Flickr and others. In my experience, some worked and others didn't, but there are more than enough to keep you busy for weeks.
Next up, I'm going to custom keymap my universal remote (I already have an IR adapter) so that I can shed the old-school controller.
All this for less than $30. W00t!
. Mp3
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