Thinkature, ganked from Download Squad. I'm still poking at this, but so far it looks nice. This could really make online collaboration fun and interesting, which is obvious. The thing I keep thinking of is how well this could be integrated into something like Second Life.
This article is kind of interesting, if you think of it up against something like the OLPC project. 5~10 years after the $100 laptop hits third-world countries, are we going to start seeing massive crowd sourcing and futures markets along the lines of what Marc Stiegler described in EarthWeb?
I wanted to call this post "Yen and Wang," but thought might be read as pun made at expense of someone's ethnicity, so I won't make the joke, I'll just desribe. Ha ha!
I found this interesting article while trolling through a TerraNova thread about Anshe Chung. I have to agree with the Steven Davis here. Wang Yue Si's earned millions is much more interesting than Anshe Chung's "valued at" million. Plus, the fact that his earnings were in violation of the "Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law," just makes it sound like a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex plot.
I think InstantVideo ToGo is a Windows-only device, so it probably would be able to work with a Chumby. However, it's kind of interesting to note that USB-ready processors are hitting the market around the same as time low-end devices with USB ports. Right now Chumby might not be able to video of VoIP, but with a USB processor upgrade, who knows.
Chumby + OLPCities = a child's version of Second Life? I want a Chumby, and this is my pitch for one of their free samples. I want a Chumby to use as hardware for building graphical, social software. Touch screen interfaces, a soft and fuzzy physical case, and built-in wi-fi seems to make Chumby the perfect tool/toy for getting children interested in building virtual worlds and programming.
My email address is tuglyraisin [at] aol (dot) com. I have submitted to the Free Sample form, but, hey, it never hurts to get your plea in Google's search engine. :)
Here's a trailer for the upcoming, direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie. It's like they intentionally sucked all the fun out of Iron Man for Civil War because the needed extra for the movie.
Ganked from razorsmile: Lifebox. A friend and I bounced the idea around once that we could build such a thing out of his notes and chatlogs when he died. Maybe some people smarter than I will make this a reality in both of our lifetimes.
They finally got 512MB jumpdrives here at work, so I upgraded from my 128MB. Now that I have room, I'm trying to flesh out what I should load on here. The "idea" behind my carrying a jumpdrive is thus: to always have a basic software development platform (for Windows) with me where ever I go.
To this end, so far, I have loaded:
- Perl 5.8
- Python 2.4
- PHP 5.1, stripped down to be used mostly for GD with...
- Xitami 2.5
- SmallBASIC 0.9.7
- TurboPascal 5.5
I was pushing the limits with all that before, but now that I have room I want to install a decent text editor (Emacs or XEmacs), something with a compiler (FreeBASIC definitely, maybe MinGW), and possibly some kind of database server (maybe). The crucial aspect of any software I load is that it can't touch the registry; even the simplest key will break when you move from computer-to-computer.
Here are a couple of sites I want to check out more thoroughly: PortableApps.com, A Directory Of Programs Designed For USB Drives, How to install Linux on a USB drive.
Fictional superorganisms. Try finding that at your local library!
It hurts to file this under 'gadgets', because it's the kind of 'gadget' that could save millions of lives. The Emergency Water Station sucks water out of the atmoshere (I suppose it must be a little humid), for drinking water & runs on diesel for up to 7 days.
One must also wonder how fast it can produce... though humans can live up to three days without water before DEATH!
Now if SL would just finish their web-on-a-prim borwser.
If there's one thing I've learned from an unhealthy comic book obsession, it's this: never trust someone who agrees with you. I can't count the number of "Oh, man, comix is teh dark, yo" spewing writers I've bumped up against who's basic repetoir was to, you guessed, make comics dark. (I can actually count them, and it's like four, I think.)
Never trust anyone who agrees with you.
This applies to Hipsters too, I just kind of hoped it didn't. Now, thanks to an article Khamon showed me, I have lost all hope. (Mmm. The bitter, almond taste of defeat.)
Second Life is the future! We heart Second Life! That's what they say out of one side of their mouths.
Apple sucks because they remove features! Windows Vista pushes old people down stair cases for fun! That's what they say out of the other side of their mouths.
You can't say that two companies who offer broken services are evil, but the third company who offers just as broken a service is cool and awesome and woohoo! Actually, you can. And that's my beef with the whole "Second Life is an operating system" Kool-Aid the Hipsters are handing out.
They give speeches about how great software has evolved from the mainframe days, and then they go off an endorse a proprietary, centralized mainframe archetecture! Second Life, for all it's limited glory, demands you go back eleven computer generations -- P4 -> P3 -> P2 -> Pentium -> 486 -> 386 -> 286 -> 8088 -> Z80 -> 8080 -> DUMB TERMINALS -- to the day when your desktop system was a dumb terminal streaming data from a centralized server.
If these futurists had any sense of the future, they'd be building their Creative Commons communes in OpenCroquet, Panda3D, or Garry's Mod; systems that can be distributed, run by individuals, and won't be locked down by one centralized group of people. Prokofy Neva says this is a bad thing and that I "just want to make a pirate ship in [my] basement."
Prokofy's wrong about that being bad, but (s)he's right about the last thing. I do want 3D technology so readily available that I can run my own pirate ship in my "basement" -- though I don't have a basement. So, from here on out, and anyone who wants to join me is welcome, I'm a Basement Pirate.
The website will be up shortly.
I am getting a Wii. I am so getting a Wii. And depending on how things go, I might have to get a DS to go with it. This is the platform any smart console developer would choose to build an metaverse atop.
WiiConnect24 -- as the Animal Crossing people note -- makes building persistent worlds possible. The Photo Channel is the perfect place for customizing textures, and the Mii Channel is no different than making avatars. All you need to do is make some branded (Harry Potter, maybe) version of Croquet available for the Wii, because the Wii controllers are perfect for developing Squeak/SmallTalk-ish software.
Suffice to say, I'm getting a Wii.
I'm a big fan of widgets, despite the fact I don't use them. They seem like a great idea: discreet software programs, specialized for web interaction. Given the monolithic problems of monolithic software, they appear to be an ideal solution -- if you could strip down an operating system so it wasn't monolithic, that is.
My problem with widgets is two-fold. First off, screen realestate: I run in 1024x768 mode, and I just don't have a lot of space on there for things floating around. In the near future, when HD screen and better video cards (or widescreen laptops, like I use at work), this problem is likely to not be a probem. Given a second screen, it wouldn't be a much of a problem.
Secondly, touchscreen: so many widgets have small interfaces, it seems like a waste to have to click on them. I wish they were more like my Zire. I could just tap the widget, and have it do something. Maybe in the future as TabletPC's, SmartPhones, and Zunes take over -- iPod's aren't touch-screen -- take over, we'll start seeing TabletHD's. 42" screens that we can touch to control, so you can walk interact with your screen as well as your keyboard and mouse.
Ganked from Download Squad, the Google Code Jam winners. Now, here's my question: what does their code do? I can't seem to find that.
This one is new to me. I'm sooo getting one. Found via GluedTube: Every important video on the net in one page.
Have you ever seen a comic with control flow? You have now: Pointy Dog and the Infinite Canvas.
A lego Stargate, powered by an RCX -- found via jwz. The cool thing about this is you could probably operate a Stargate with an RCX. The DHD's are nice, but manual dialing is possible if you properly charge the rings.
Fresh to the pages of YouTube the new Heineken Ad showing its love for the new Bond movie "Casino Royale".
Most people will enjoy this purely cause Daniel Craig isn't in it.
Wake the hell up junkies.
New teaser clips from the upcoming "Hot Fuzz" from the makers of "Shaun of the Dead".
Teaser 1 Teaser 2 Working Title Menu PageThe boys over at NeoGaf have apparently gotten a hold of the initial wave of Sony's E-Distribution games including the "Geometry Wars" clone "Blast Factor".
Read more here.
Amazon EC2 has just been announced, and a fortunate few have gone on to get into the Beta. It looks kind of interesting, especially in conjucture with the Amazoon S3 service. In theory you can have a remote computer that web-acessible, and that's cheaper than paying for a fully dedicated (or shared) system. It's an interesting concept, and I'm wondering if it'll be useful.
My curiosity about this is the on/off feature. On the one hand, it's a bit like renting supercomputer or computer cluster time, you get access to the power without having to buy the hardware. (Why buy the cow when you can rent the steak?) But other services and protocols like the World Computing Grid, BOINC, and Digipede kind of already fill in their market, don't they?
I have no doubt something like EC2, in the future, will be as popular and common as web hosts are today. I just wonder if you can truly have (or want) the kind of service their offering located in one place.
This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, but someone recently pointed me at Rick Cook's series of books about Wiz Zumwalt. If you like magic and if you like software -- and liking Dilbert-esque comedy doesn't hurt -- then The Wizardry series is for you. The first two books, Wizard's Bane and Wizardry Compiled, are free on the Baen web site.
I give them six stars out of five!
Need to see what's new today for Mac? For Linux? For your mobile? In Games.. Firefox versions.. In blogging.. In devices.. Windows.. Online media.. In VoIP.. In gadgets.. Web trends.. Search.. In Hardware.. In Data? Yeah, same here.
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