Posted on April 8th, 2008 by mike
Filed under: silly | No Comments »

so i just got my Dash GPS that all the cool gadget kids are raving about. i’ll perhaps attempt a review later. i did note something interesting - there’s a warning sticker about thieves on the device:

and yet the contents of the box include nice transparent stickers:

maybe they should have added to the warning: hide the device and its mounting arm, and remove stickers before leaving your vehicle.

also, the adhesive used to attach the thief warning sticker was so strong that i worried about damaging the touch screen while removing it. and covered enough of the screen that it was difficult to get one of the corners peeled up to get it out of there. and did i mention the residue that the adhesive left?

it smacks of a legal department driven, poorly designed and/or tested afterthought.

Posted on March 31st, 2008 by mike
Filed under: future, gadgets | No Comments »

so i read tim bray’s ideas about how to manage reading a large number of feeds, and those of the commenters, and it got me thinking.

why keep this one-dimensional?

every now and i again i’ll become dissatisfied with my organizational scheme in google reader, and i’ll throw out all my tags/folders/labels/whatever-they’re-called and start over. but i noticed that i kept switching between 2 major organizational schemes:

1. context

2. importance

usually when time is more compressed, i re-arrange based on importance. throw away the fun stuff, read the essentials.

when time is available, i group by “architecture” “gadgets” etc.

today i did both. google reader lets you assign any number of tags/folders/labels/whatever-they’re-called to any feed. so i left them organized by context, but added “recreational” to the ones that i can skip when time is short.

now when i’ve got lots to do (like shovel, and paint. ugh.) i open ‘recreational’ and mark all read. then i take bite-size pieces of the essential stuff when i can.

Posted on March 28th, 2008 by mike
Filed under: web | No Comments »

this guy is on the bottom of my compaq smartarray 5300 scsi controller.

Posted on March 2nd, 2008 by mike
Filed under: gadgets, phenomena, trivia | No Comments »

becoming a freelancer has taught me many things (some of which do not involve laundry and/or dishes).

the most important one is that you become your brand. every person who has a blog, a homepage, or uses a social networking site, should be thinking about that right now. you may not be famous, or infamous, yet. but someday you might be.

take for my first example, DVD Jon. you know, the kid who cracked the blah blah blah on dvds. he didn’t control his brand. whether he chose it or the media chose it, he will forever be “DVD Jon.” (e.g. the recent engadget article that gave me this idea).

it reminds me of the movie “Hackers.” Johnny Lee Miller’s character (been enjoying Eli Stone, btw^[1]) starts to try to explain his situation, his background, and his experience. he stops, and in a defeated tone, simply utters “i was ZeroCool.” and his peers in the room instantly got it.

Jon Lech Johansen has moved on to writing software that does other things to mp3s, iphones, etc. but you know someday, while trying to tell people about the software he’s written and the coding techniques and whatever else, will probably have to break down and say … “i was DVD Jon.”

[1] sorry ABC, when you have auto-playing embedded video+audio ads that i can’t pause or shush, i don’t link to you directly.

Posted on February 19th, 2008 by mike
Filed under: future, phenomena, web | No Comments »

ah, Microsoft’s online division. so proud. so costly. their readership can largely be attributed to forcing the MSN homepage into the default browser of corporate IT managed workstations. now, all they need to take on Google is a good search engine. wait, what?

i was watching the moderately-local news this morning, and the big lead-in to the (alleged) Microhoo! story was “Microsoft may enter the world of online search engines” by purchasing Yahoo.

now, i know it’s just a hack local newscast, but that’s also entirely my point. if a newsroom full of people, probably some who were actually issued the aforementioned IT managed workstations, don’t know about live.com (nee search.msn.com) or worse yet - don’t consider it even a participant in the “world of online search engines,” then there are 2 questions: 1. how much does it cost to keep the lights on @ MSN Online, and 2. can programmers work in the dark?

Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by mike
Filed under: business, web | No Comments »

… i said:

SPIDERS! SPIDERS! SPIDERS!

Posted on January 30th, 2008 by mike
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okay, stop it. just stop it.
engadget: Fujitsu’s LifeBook P1620 is lighter than (MacBook) Air

wired gadgetlab: Fujitsu’s P1620 Subnotebook Is Everything The Air Isn’t

first of all: write original stories. kthx.

second, you’re comparing a sub-notebook tablet equipped with an 8.9 inch screen, to a laptop that has a 13.3 inch screen. they’re not even in the same category. they’re barely in the same genre.

what’s next? the Nokia N800 weighs a tiny fraction of what the Macbook Air does! and it makes phone calls! haw!

Posted on January 18th, 2008 by mike
Filed under: gadgets, web | No Comments »