Two geeks in the woods
What happens when two geeks go on a canoe trip for a long weekend? Well, they talk about geeky things for a few days and enjoy the spectacular outdoors. Mike is a good friend of mine and fellow Geek; he also runs the site Geeks In Training and his personal outdoors blog A Word in the Woods. Last weekend we took a four day canoe trip to the beautiful Algonquin Provincial Park, which covers 7630 square kilometers of pristine wilderness in Ontario, Canada. We got as far away from the city and our gadgets as we could, well everything except our iphones and camping gear, but more on that later.
Smartphone wars heat up – HTC Dream and Blackberry Storm
Everyone is wondering what HTC and Blackberry will have up their sleeves over the next few months. The Android powered HTC Dream will be unveiled at a press event in New York City by T-Mobile next week on September 23 and it is rumoured to be ready for release sometime in October. There is also a pretty interesting video of Android being shown off at the Developer Day in London, and it’s looking very polished.
Microsoft’s second ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld a hit?
Microsoft’s second ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld is out today. The first one didn’t do much for me, but this one is a lot better and after seeing it the first one also makes more sense as it kind of sets the stage for future installments. I’m now really curious to see where Bill and Jerry’s journey will lead them next. By the time this series is over I have a feeling we will be more attached to these two witty characters.
Spore Origins for the iPhone/iTouch, a beautiful game
It’s nice to see the list of big name games growing for the iPhone/iTouch, not that the independent games aren’t sometimes just as good. Game industry leaders like John Carmack have already said that the device is a very powerful hand held device for gaming.
Today I caved and bought Spore for my iPhone. I almost didn’t want to, given the outrage over the PC version of Spore and it’s draconian DRM protection, it’s just unacceptable and that’s no way to treat your paying customers. Again the legitimate users lose and the pirates get a DRM free version. Anyway, back to Spore for the iPhone.
Google Chrome – first impressions are the most important
Google Chrome was officially released today and of course being the Geek that I am I had to download it at work and at home and yes I am writing this blog entry from Chrome. Although I have not spent a long time with it, so far I like it, and for a first beta launch it is remarkably polished. This of course is nothing new for Google — they have a reputation of releasing extremely polished beta products. I also fully expect Chrome to be in beta for at least two years, but by then everyone will long since forgotten that it is a beta.
Google to launch a web browser – Chrome is here
The web is buzzing with news of a Google browser. The news was launched via a 39 page comic. The browser is called Google Chrome, and at last check the site was offline but rumour has it that it will be back online tomorrow. Google has also announced on their blog that they sent out the news a bit early by accident. Personally I think they may have just been trying to generate blog sphere buzz and it has worked
This is really big news and probably really bad news for Microsoft. Google has already released Gears a browser add-on which allows Google to jump start browsers ahead into more modern standards. Chrome will use webkit, the same engine that Safari uses, but it will not use the webkit Javascript engine. It will use it’s own, which should make apps run much faster and with more features.
Could this really be Google’s entrance into the desktop market? I believe the future of applications is online. Everything is headed in that direction. More and more people are accessing their apps and data in multiple places and on multiple devices, and right now the major player in that space is Google.
Update: Google Chrome – first impressions are the most important
More info at TechCrunch:
Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer
First Images of Google Chrome
No Joke: Google Introduces The Chrome Browser With A Cartoon
Rogers 3G iPhone network is one of the fastest in the world?
In a survey by Wired, Canadians may have one of the fastest 3G iPhone experiences in the world. There’s even a cool interactive map of the world showing the results. I guess in the case of Rogers expensive does mean better. That said, it always makes me chuckle when I see the extremely high download claims followed by ridiculous limitations, although the iPhone has admittedly made Canadian options better. Basically we have great speeds that allow you to instantly use up your bandwidth allocation and pay the telecoms big overage fees.
I have to admit that with the smallest 400 MB package I can easily surf, read email and chat every day without worrying about going over my limit. I could however easily surpass this limit if I did not stay away from YouTube and streaming radio, something that I don’t really need but none the less would be nice to have. Luckily for me, Toronto has a lot of WiFi hotspots. That said, I still look forward to the day that the big three have more competition, and that day is approaching quickly.
Another interesting tidbit is that many of the 3G connection issues iPhone users are facing are now being reported on the Blackberry Bold. This shows that the issues may be with the carriers and not the handsets themselves. As much as I and others love to blast Rogers, my Fido (Fido is owned by Rogers) connection has been fantastic, and I have only experienced one dropped call in the three weeks I’ve owned an iPhone. With the price I pay I would expect nothing less.
Twitter manga mania with FaceYourManga
It seems like FaceYourManga.com has gone mega viral, so viral that one by one my Twitter buddies are being transformed into their cartoon equivalents.
FaceYourManga is a site where you can create a manga / anime style avatar of yourself. The sheer number of options from the type of head you want, colour of skin, and other characteristics like beards, glasses, lines and sideburns leaves ample room for creativity. Only a few of my Twitter followers have converted themselves into cartoons, but so far they do look a lot like there real human counter parts.
Anyone can make one and within moments of completion your new avatar will be emailed to you. Be warned though that you cannot go back and edit your avatar once completed. This would be a nice feature and would probably make the site a little more sticky. This one drawback is why mine has brown eyes instead of blue.
Although this trend may be short lived, it’s kind of cool seeing all these unique cartoons of people you know showing up everywhere, so go try it out, it only takes a few minutes to create one.
Turning a Wii Remote into a Minority Report style input device and virtual reality
While writing and researching my post on the new Asus Eee stick game controller I came across the incredible website of Johnny Chung Lee, a Ph.D. Graduate Student of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
His entire website looks interesting and I plan to dig around some more when I get some time, but what really caught my attention was his Wii projects YouTube videos. These videos show everything from Minority Report style interaction to virtual reality all using a Wiimote for the underlying technology. Minority Report is a near future science fiction movie starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film was released in 2002 and featured a lot of fictional technology that many people said was within the realm of reality in the near future.
Minority Report computer terminal
Asus Eee Stick game controller and Wii like pointing devices
Ever since I bought a Wii I have been wondering why no one has hopped on the Wii like pointing device bandwagon. I rarely use my Wii but I love the Wiimote, I find it really excels at relaxed web surfing. What do I mean by relaxed web surfing? I mean laying back on your couch with a wireless pointing device and surfing YouTube or your favourite daily websites. The downside to Wii web browsing is the standard definition screen which makes surfing blurry and text hard to read.
