Archive for 
Podcasts on TVs and Tablet PCs - MP3s
The first MP3 was recorded by Ponzi with Jeff Ubois of Archival.tv - you can listen to it now. With all of this video being recorded, where is it being stored? Great questions.
The second MP3 was taken from a phone call between HP and ourselves, specifically in relation to our experiences with the borrowed HP tx1000 Entertainment Notebook PC. You can hear us talking to the team, providing constructive feedback for their future.
The third MP3… hasn’t yet been recorded. :)
media recordingPirillo’s Picks for 03/31/2007
I send my picks to 140,000 subscribers every day - join them by sending an email to picks@lockergnome.com. If you blog and encourage others to subscribe to the list, your site will be placed in the queue to be featured in an upcoming Pirillo’s Picks!
HP Pavilion tx1000 Entertainment Notebook PC
It’s not very often that hardware manufacturers send us hardware to review (largely because we don’t ask for it). Since AMD is a reigning sponsor for our programming, they connected us with someone over at HP to lend us a tx1000 - which we’ll have to send back in a few weeks. Still, this was our first true “Tablet PC” - even after using UMPCs at our wedding.
Well, instead of giving ‘er a typical geeky review - I let Ponzi play with it for a bit. She’s anything but a geek, but she loves to bring technology into the home (specifically, her kitchen). So, here’s the phone call between a product developer, public relations coordinator, Ponzi, and myself. I have a few complaints about the product, but some issues are largely held against every PC OEM. Oh, and here’s what we were laughing about towards the end of the discussion:
Jeff Ubois is Archiving TV for the Future
Ponzi just so happened to have our recording equipment with her when she attended a party held by our friend, Dave Winer. One other guest happened to be none other than Jeff Ubois - who is working to archive every single broadcast, past and present, for our own future:
archive, tvTelevision remains the most powerful medium in our culture, but we have almost no memory for it: it is a transient, ephemeral, and therefore unaccountable medium. This site exists to accelerate the transformation of television into a medium that has a history, one that is permanently preserved, searchable, and accessible.
Advances in computing and communications mean that we can cost-effectively store broadcast, and provide access to a video collections via the Internet to students and adults all over the world. By working with existing institutions and funding sources, and creating new ones, we can provide universal access to this portion of our culture within the current worldwide library budget, just as we have done that with other media.
New Barenaked Ladies Videos
There are naked ladies in my bathroom!
Ha! Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking specifically about one of my favorite bands, Barenaked Ladies - although they’re not really in my bathroom. Still, they’re in someone’s bathroom - and they’ve recorded a handful of hits (forevermore known as ‘The Bathroom Sessions’).
What’s your favorite BNL song?
And before you watch any of ‘em, I should remind you that I interviewed Steven Page a while ago. Click to Read the Full Post »
Wireless Power
Is it just me, or is this invention a game changer?
It may sound futuristic, but Powercast’s platform uses nothing more complex than a radio–and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device’s battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.
Fewer wires? Fewer proprietary power cables? Fewer batteries? Fewer headaches? OMG. Finally, a piece of technology that nobody will be able to live without.
Actually, even though I’m looking at this link today (March 30th) - the page title is “Powercast’s technology cuts the electric cord - April 1, 2007.” Is this an AFD joke that was published before AFD?
batteries, electricity, powerHow not to use a Gun
What’s wrong with people!? I have absolutely no problem with sane adults having the right to bear arms (legally), but there’s something beyond disturbing about this video. Is this some sort of bizarre militia indoctrination? The child’s brain hasn’t even developed to the point where critical thinking is possible! No, no, NO - this is just plain STUPID.
I’m all for protecting our freedoms and everything, but why on earth would you ever do this to your child? The NRA should be up in arms (literally) over this gross display of lunacy. Would someone please point out what’s right about this?!
Someone, please - tell me this isn’t real.
constitutional rightsI’m in a JibJab Cartoon!!!
From What We Call the News…
There was a time not long ago
when each and every day
at six o’clock each evening
you knew news was on its way
from anchors of integrity…
It’s all downhill from there.
Then along came cable
and the ratings race ensued
Great legends found themselves replaced with…
Oh, just watch the video already!
It gets really, REALLY silly around 1:24. Extremely silly:
Yeah, it’s yours truly (along with two friends, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch). It’s an honor, all around. My life is now complete.
jibjab, parodyPirillo’s Picks for 03/27/2007
I send my picks to 140,000 subscribers every day - join them by sending an email to picks@lockergnome.com. If you blog and encourage others to subscribe to the list, your site will be placed in the queue to be featured in an upcoming Pirillo’s Picks!
OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office
This afternoon, Ponzi asked me to install Office on one of our laptops so that we could use Excel and Word on it. Easy enough to do, right? All I had to do was find the CD, right? Well, I couldn’t find it - and I’m pretty certain all of my Office activations have been used up, anyway (especially now that I no longer have access to an MSDN account).
As I was digging through my software drawer, I started to think… do I really need to use Microsoft Office - or will OpenOffice do just fine for desktop productivity? Let’s think about this for a moment. OpenOffice.org is free software:
- you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any license fees
- install it on as many PCs as you like
- use it for any purpose - private, educational, government and public administration, commercial…
- pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.
Writer, for the most part, is like Word - and Calc, for the most part, is like Excel. That’s all I really need on this laptop. Guess I can kiss Microsoft Office on ancillary machines good-bye? Forget about limited editions and 60-day timeouts, man. I don’t know if I could live my life on the desktop without Microsoft Office at this point (especially with Outlook playing such a pivotal role)… what about you?
microsoft office, office softwareTENSION BREAKER!
Had to be done.
Then again…?
Nah, it definitely had to be done.
Well, I’m not sure…?
Nah, I’m sure we need a tension breaker tonight.
Why are you talking to yourself?
Am I hearing voices again?
I had Death Threats in High School
Okay, so the blogosphere is going apeshit today over Kathy Sierra’s situation - which has to do with anonymous hate and abuse:
I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers.
This isn’t new, folks - far from it. Kathy is just one out of (certainly) millions of people who suffer at the minds of psychotics. And without trying to minimize this particular situation, I’ve gotta tell you - this sounds like high school to me. Literally. Granted, I’ve had just as many death threats ONLINE - but they didn’t just start last week.
I received death threats in high school all the time - ALL THE TIME. Only, I didn’t have to deal with anonymous Internet cowards [back then] - I had to deal with real-world bullies who weren’t happy unless they struck fear into me. Death threats are just as serious in high school as they are in the world beyond.
There was this one guy at Southeast Polk (let’s call him “Charlie”) who decided that he didn’t like me - he didn’t like me for whatever reason. I looked like an easy target? I was too short? I looked like a nerd? I couldn’t dress properly? I acted like a moron? Who the hell knows. I swear, it was his mission in life to make my life a living hell in high school. I did my best to avoid conflict, which only seemed to fan the flames for him.
I didn’t want to leave my house, either. I didn’t want to go back to school, ever. I didn’t want to see this guy in the hallways, and I certainly didn’t want to be in the same classes as him. Did I bother to mention that he was much taller than me, likely MUCH stronger? Did I bother to mention that if he really wanted to, he could have beat me within an inch of my life? Did I bother to mention that?
Did I bother to mention all the other fucking torment I went through in fucking high school just because I wasn’t [insert anything here]? Did I bother to mention that it didn’t start or stop with “Charlie?!” Now, I’m not trying to minimize Kathy’s situation (which I appreciate, wholly) - but I am rather surprised that everybody’s up in arms about it all of a sudden, as if this was an isolated incident that was limited to the blogosphere or to women in general?
No, unless you’ve ever stared straight into a real bully’s eyes - you have no fucking idea. I’m not talking about teasing (which is another matter, entirely) - I’m talking about “I’m going to fucking kill you” bullies. Unless you’ve received death threats (online or off), you have no fucking idea how this can make you feel. These situations used to be limited to locality, but now they’re all over the place - all over the Internet.
This isn’t new, my friends and enemies - and this will never, EVER stop happening.
It really doesn’t make much difference whether the person intends to act on the threat… it’s the threat itself that inflicts the damage. It’s the threat that makes you question whether that “anonymous” person is as disturbed as their comments and pictures suggest.
It’s worse when you know who that person is - or if they’re not all that anonymous in the first place. I’ve dealt with my fair share of bullies (both before and after high school) - and in a few cases, was able to weather the situations long enough to seek some sort of resolution with the other parties.
I’m still not quite sure what pulled me through - especially the day I finally confronted “Charlie.” He shoved me from behind, and instead of walking away - I pushed him back. My life could’ve ended at that moment, were the rumors true. I would’ve been severely injured based on the fact that this guy didn’t like me.
Freedom of speech–however distasteful and rude the speech may be, is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.
I’m not a woman, and I’m not going to pretend I fully understand Kathy’s situation, but she’s absolutely right about this potentially destroying a life. It’s not just the anonymous blogosphere - it’s a microcosm of what’s happening in meatspace.
The outpouring of support for Kathy has been substantial - but a lot of it seems to be knee-jerk / reactionary. Kathy is *NOT* overreacting to her situation in the slightest, but I do believe that the rest of us simply aren’t putting it into perspective.
The problem isn’t with the blogosphere - it’s with the human race.
bullies, teasingPlease, port Beryl to Windows or OS X?
You know, there are very few things in Linux that have ever made me jealous… but this quote from the Beryl project made me jump out of my chair:
Beryl is a combined window manager and composite manager written in C using OpenGL to provide acceleration. It is designed to be highly flexible, extensible, and portable, all the while keeping in mind that the users know how they want their desktops to act better than we do.
Wow. Maybe Linux is the user’s ULTIMATE operating system after all? Eat your heart out, Windows Explorer and OS X’s Finder. Beryl’s developers have the trump card. And for emphasis, let me add bold formatting to the most important part of that positioning statement: “…the users know how they want their desktops to act better than we do.”
Is it possible, even remotely, to port Beryl to Vista and/or OS X?
And if that doesn’t make you want to try Beryl, maybe something in its growing feature list will trip your trigger. The best Microsoft can offer is a CPU-devastating DreamScene (and even that’s only available for Vista “Ultimate”). Compiz or Beryl, they’re soon to be one-and-the-same.
3d desktop[VIDEO] Noise Cancellation Tech from Microsoft
I had the opportunity to attend Microsoft TechFest the other day - placing me smack dab in the middle of a researcher’s zeitgeist. One of the more interesting conversations I had was with Jasha Droppo - you have to see it to hear it to believe it. If you’ve ever dealt with background noise in audio and/or video files, you’ll really appreciate what Microsoft Research has developed.
From the patent:
A pattern recognition system, such as a speech recognition system, takes an input signal and attempts to decode the signal to find a pattern represented by the signal. For example, in a speech recognition system, a speech signal (often referred to as a test signal) is received by the recognition system and is decoded to identify a string of words represented by the speech signal.
Watch the invention in action on YouTube or download the MP4.
[VIDEO] How to Check for a Battery Recall
Check to see if your laptop battery has been recalled:
- HP Battery Recall
- Lenovo Support & downloads - Battery recall
- Apple Battery Exchange Program
- Dell Battery Return Program
- Sony eSupport - Electronics
- Toshiba Battery Exchange Program
- Gateway Exchange Program
And if you’d rather to show your friends what they need to do, watch the video on YouTube or download the MP4.
