Jan 29 2011

PSP2 / NGP

The original Sony PSP was a BRILLIANT handheld console – The power of a ps2 in the palm of your hand. Though it wasn’t without it’s share of drawbacks (my thumb is still aching from that miserable excuse of an analog stick), it brought real current-generation living room gaming hardware to your pocket. (just as the game boy did for the NES, and the game gear did for the genesis), and is still my favorite pocket video game system save my iPhone 4 (mostly because the iPhone already goes everywhere with me, and the iPhone has it’s own set of gaming problems like touch-screen only tactile controls / limited control options). Don’t even get me started on how much of a complete failure the Nintendo DS was (being hugely underpowered in both cpu and gpu, it really only allowed for casual / little kid games). However, the PSP has been out for quite a few years now and is starting to get long in the tooth.
Enter the PSP2 or Sony codename: Next Generation Portable (NGP)
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Jan 29 2011

Motorola Atrix

This 4g phone has more interesting features than I’ve ever known a phone to have. Not only is it an amazing android 2.3 phone with *very* impressive specifications (including a dual-core tegra2 dual core cortex a9 processor (basically 2 iphone 4’s on a chip), up to 14.4Mbps 4g network service (assuming you have 4g in the area), 1gb ram (a ton for a smartphone), 16gb internal memory (plus a microsd card slot) 4″ qHD display, 5mp/1080p full hd rear camera, vga front camera for video calls, fingerprint scanner, and a sizable 1930mah battery). But incredibly impressive specifications aside, the awesome doesn’t stop here… (please read on)

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Oct 21 2010

Vuzix new augmented reality glasses

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/vuzixs-new-augmented-reality-glasses-blend-virtual-and-physical-reality-2010018/

now why can’t someone come out with a socially acceptable version of something like this that i can wear to work without looking like a borg? also i think that it would take a fair bit of computer power to realize the potential of such glasses… the ultimate goal for me would be something akin to the gui presented in iron man.

Please click “read more” to continue
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May 9 2010

iPhone OS 4 Multitasking Debacle

Since the beginning, everybody and their brother has been looking for some kind of good multitasking solution for the iPhone. Unfortunately, it looks like there won’t be any good solution (by my standards) on this platform.

iPhone multitasking: past, present, and future. (please read on)
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May 4 2010

Seesmic releases new web-based twitter client

The Social networking company Seesmic has been working hard at developing various social network (mostly twitter) clients for various platforms including Android, Adobe Air, and Blackberry. Now they have released an AJAX powered web client! (click read more)
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Feb 19 2010

Downtime FAIL!

My sincere apologies about today’s bought of downtime… When I was updating my server this morning, I wanted it to go down for a reboot so as to use the latest kernel configuration that I just updated but instead of typing “shutdown -r now” to reboot the server, I wasn’t paying attention and accidentally entered “shutdown -h now”, which to those of you who don’t speak *n?x means that I asked the server to halt / power off… I haven’t been in the Cpgeek.org HQ all day (I was running the updates remotely from my day job) so nobody was around to turn the box back on… so yeah… my bad…

Feb 7 2010

Video Podcast?

As many of you know, I have been investigating doing a video podcast here for quite some time now, but have yet to get around to sitting down, coming up with some reasonable content to share, shooting, editing, and actually getting it done. it’s not like the task of getting it done is terribly difficult, I’ve just been pretty short on time and content as of late and also I would like to start off with a camera a little nicer than the iSight integrated webcam in my macbook pro. I just picked up a GFM DV-150 on woot for $30 last week which has pretty good low light shooting but is only 640×480 and has pretty low optical quality. I was hoping that I could start shooting with THAT, but it just feels too poor quality to make my viewers watch that… I’m thinking about perhaps picking up a used Kodak zi6, or perhaps looking at a real “camcorder” shaped camera that should provide things like optical zoom, image stabilization, variable focus, etc. but my price range is less than $100… if anybody has any suggestions for a camera, any content ideas for the show (what do you want to see, what kinds of questions do you have?), please hit the reply button now!

Jan 31 2010

My partial views on how some call the iPad revolutionary.

This is in response to http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html

it’s basically just growing pains. evolutionary computational ergonomics demands that new user interfaces be designed that simplify, obfuscate, or remove the lines between using a general purpose computer, using an appliance that does 1 task very well, and simply interacting with objects we’re familiar with in our environment. it’s a big step. it’s basically the difference between a blinking cursor in Apple BASIC and an interactive AI voice interface as you see on the 24th century star trek shows.

the way apple is currently accomplishing this is to implement Jef Raskin’s idea (awesome guy to know about) of having completely minimalistic but ergonomic full-screen interfaces for each thing you want to do making said interface tailored for that task and no other, and having some ergonomic way to switch between tasks. that’s pretty much the basic idea behind the iphone os.

I still don’t understand why people are choosing NOW to talk about all this stuff instead of at the introduction of the iphone some 3 years ago. All the iPad is, is a really big, moderately more powerful ipod touch with better battery life. it’s not really a game-changer, it’s the same technology, just a bit bigger and slightly more evolved.

Nov 25 2009

And now for something completely different…

Nov 13 2009

AlternativeTo

I wanted to talk about an AWESOME SITE I heard about on TekZilla (a cool IPTV show having to do with everything tech). It’s called AlternativeTo and it’s primary purpose is to find good, viable, alternatives to popular applications, both free and non-free across multiple operating systems. For example, if I were looking for a less expensive, lighter weight photo program than photoshop for personal use, I would go to the AlternativeTo web site, select my operating system (at this moment, Mac OS X), click in the search bar at the top of the site, enter “photoshop”, and then click on “Adobe Photoshop” in the list of apps with that keyword. from there it lists a whole slew of alternatives from the free, open-source GIMP, to the proprietary but beautifully designed pixelmator. AlternativeTo is GREAT for those times where you’re using a piece of software and think “i wish there was another piece of software that did this, but might be better suited to my needs”… I encourage everybody to check it out!