I guess this cements the Aussie reputation for being down for a party regardless of the locale.
A group of Australians is planning to helicopter out to an iceberg off the New Zealand coast, camp on it while they carve out an ice bar, and then stage a party – complete with a DJ who will produce a music track.
Technorati Tags:
dubious, party
From the Nokia97Forum:
Some of the pluses of N97 over iPhone are:
- Full Qwerty keyboard (iPhone doesn’t have)
- 5MP fully functional digital camera with Carl Zeiss optics and several editing options(iPhone has 3MP basic camera)
- Camera dual LED Flash to take pictures in dark (iPhone useless in dark)
- FM Transmitter (iPhone doesn’t have)
- Stereo bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP) (iPhone doesn’t have A2DP)
- TV out, (iPhone doesn’t have)
- expandable memory with 16gb microSD card (takes total memory to 48GB!) – iPhone has only 16 or 32mb max with no expansion.
- Unlocked so will work on any carrier (locked to AT&T in US and in most countries, where not prohibited by law)
- Widgets so you don’t have to opens most used apps like Calendar, email etc., (no widgets in iPhone)
- Flexibility to self sign a lot of free applications and install (iPhone doesn’t provide this flexibility)
- Resistive touch screen so you can use it with your gloves on or with stylus in winter (you’ll have to use your fingers only with iPhone)
- better screen resolution at 640×360 (iPhone has 480×320)
- Removable battery so you can carry one extra or replace on easily(iPhone does builtin battery)
Technorati Tags:
apple, gadgets, iphone, mobile, n97, nokia, nseries
I never knew that this actually had a name but certainly did partake of it when I was in elementary school at the time that affordable digital calculators began to appear on the scene. Beghilos is the term for creating ‘words’ using a digital calculator.
Kids have been playing with the word-creating possibilities of calculators since they started to appear in the 1970s. It didn’t take long to discover that 0.7734 upside down made hEllO. One of the earliest attested examples from this period is 5318008, which when turned over spells boobies. If your display is big enough, you can enter 53177187714, which makes hillbillies; mine has only ten digits so I get illbillies (sick goats?) and the longest word I can make is 378193771 (appropriately, illegible).
And, in my case, there is no denying the conclusion of the post:
To be 37819173 to play this game in the 1970s, you had to be young, geekish and slightly bored.
Technorati Tags:
fun, gadgets, geeks, hacks, ideas, technology
I guess with tattoos and piercings becoming increasingly common, you have to look elsewhere for a new way to disfigure yourself. In Japan, this can be achieved through saline injections. Warning: the photos can be quite disturbing to some.
Picture the scene: five people, each with hideously distorted heads, tubes sticking into their faces. Reminiscent of a medical experiment gone hideously wrong, you’d be forgiven for thinking they had a gross infection or disease. They look like alien abductees, fresh from invasive research by their interplanetary masters. But these are Japanese club kids, otherwise known as bagelheads, deliberately disfiguring themselves by experimenting with saline inflations.
Technorati Tags:
badideas, random, strange
Here is a creative use of Twitter: creating a visualization of air travel by tracking tweets with the text ‘Just landed’. The original idea for this came out over beers as an alternative way to create transmission models to track things like H1N1 flu virus spread.
Technorati Tags:
innovation, mapping, twitter, visualization
Twitcaps is one of a growing number of sites that have glommed onto the Twitter rocket. In this case, twitcaps allows you to view photos that people on twitter are uploading/sharing. The fascinating thing is the variety of crap stuff that is being generated.
Sure you have plenty of shots of plates of food or beers with the predictable ‘I am about to eat this/drink this’ captions, shots of bands performing, shots of people mugging for the camera, pictures of pets. But its the shots of ‘here is my daughter born 4 weeks premature…’ or ‘this is the window that my grandma used to look out of all day before she died’ that really grab you. The captions also remind you how much of the content is generated outside of the US (or at least in languages other than English).
Technorati Tags:
photography, twitter, webtools
June is proving to be the hot month for new mobile phone introductions. Apple have announced the availability of a new iPhone model (the 3GS) as well as a 3.0 firmware upgrade on the 19th. Palm released the Pre earlier in the month, and Nokia a releasing the new flagship model N97 in the US on June 25th (though you can buy it now if you can get to one of the two Nokia retail stores in Chicago or New York City).
The Palm is a non-starter for me, just because their past products have always disappointed and the Treo was more of a PDA than a phone. I flirted briefly with the idea of jumping on the Jesus phone bandwagon, but my poor experience with an iPod Touch that I bought for my in-home music upgrade frustrated me enough to throw me that much further in favor of the Nokia N97.
I think it is going to be sweet to have the option of both touch interface and a full QWERTY keyboard in addition to being able to keep most all of the phone apps that I already have. The other bonus was I was able to pre-order the N97 from Amazon for a significant discount early in June — I now note that they are back to charging full price and the N97 is on backorder.
Technorati Tags:
apple, gadgets, iphone, mobile, n75, nokia, nseries, palmpre, upgrade
As I find myself using Twitter more for quick posts I have added a sidebar widget to display the last handful of devastatingly witty tweets that I have bestowed upon the world. If you’re in for the full punishment, you can follow me as (not surprisingly) rcampoamor on twitter.
Some of the tweets can tend to be a little more ‘raw’ that the blog postings, but I am sure you will figure that out if you have a look.
Technorati Tags:
blogging, twitter, webtools
How to make a business card disappear. Certainly more classy than just throwing it in the trash.
Technorati Tags:
fun, howto, video
Proving once again that the street will find its own uses for technology, the US military has adopted the iPod Touch as a war theatre handheld device.
The iPod isn’t the only multifunction handheld on the market, but among soldiers it’s the most popular. Since most recruits have used one—and many already own one—it’s that much easier to train them to prepare and upload new content. Users can add phrases to language software, annotate maps and link text or voice recordings to photos (“Have you seen this man?”). Apple devices make it easy to shoot, store and play video. Consider the impact of showing villagers a video message of a relaxed and respected local leader encouraging them to help root out insurgents.
Technorati Tags:
apple, gadgets, ipod
The title of this posting is a reference to a statistic in an article called That Muslim in the White House. It relates to a statistic that is tempting to apply to poll results:
Here is another fact: About 11 percent of adult Americans have an IQ score of 81 or below. This is the region of the IQ distribution curve traditionally labeled “dull” at the top and “defective” or “idiot” at the bottom, with various and variously colorful tabs in between.
What conclusion shall we draw? Some of you are tempted, aren’t you? The proper answer is, None; but in practice how people interpret facts depends heavily on their preexisting attitudes toward and opinions on sundry matters.
There is probably an easier answer: the considerably more than 11% that think that Fox News is news and parrot the right wing hatred coming from Fox and ‘shout radio’ broadcasts. I am confident that the tempting 11% is well represented in there as well.
Technorati Tags:
dubious, ideas, news, statistics
Today is the 20th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web (not to be confused with the Internet). Apparently, today is also the 15th anniversary of Linux. I wonder how pervasive Linux would be had the WWW not preceded it. It seemed it was the world wide interest, adoption and coding that made Linux what it is today. Well, I suppose the same could be said for the Interwebs as well.
In any case, raise your glass for two of technologies finest. And note that Microsuck ‘innovation’ had nothing to do with either of them.
Technorati Tags:
ingenuity, innovation, internet, linux, technology, webdev, webtools
Dear Republicans: stuff a sock in all of the phony ‘outrage’ over the economy and the stimulus package. Seriously. Your time for outrage was when 2.3 Trillion dollars went missing from the Pentagon or when $9 or was it 50 BILLION (no one knows for sure) went missing from Iraq or the illegal no-bid contracts to Cheney’s henchmen let alone the cost of the war in Iraq itself. Why didn’t we hear a peep then? Was it because it was the Republicans who were benefiting at the taxpayers expense?
Once we stop handing out money to the banks so they can pocket it rather than make the loans they committed, we should at least this time around we’ll have something to show for the money spent.
If we had a serious press corp in the US they would be asking these follow up questions every time one of the right wing mouthpieces started spouting forth their talking points. I want to hear them answer. They won’t because they won’t be asked. Oh, an someone please remind the right that saying anything bad about the President is ‘treason’.
Technorati Tags:
dubious, economy, politics, propaganda
Every found the need to get a group of people together online somewhat spontaneously? If so, then you see the obvious utility of tinychat . I can see this being an awesome tool to use in conjunction with twitter to facilitate group interaction without losing one side of the conversation.
Technorati Tags:
chat, tinychat, twitter, webtools
Finally, Google have delivered a (task) list that is basic but usable and includes the option for mobile access and annotation. If you have an existing gmail account, you just need to go into the ‘labs’ options to enable it.
While on the go, you can reference your list (and add to it) by going to http://gmail.com/tasks . And most importantly of all, it gets two thumbs up from my wife who has been wanting a usable mobile list for some time now. It fact, the new google task list was declared the best thing since fish grew legs!
Technorati Tags:
gmail, google, googletasks, tasks, webtools
I came across some video of the US Airways 1539 crash. With as zoomed back as this camera is, you actually barely notice the plane hit the water and probably wouldn’t notice at all if you weren’t looking for it. The other thing that is pretty amazing is the zoom ratio and resolution of that video camera.
Still find it amazing that everyone walked away from that.
Technorati Tags:
crash, usairways, video
I recently blogged about how I decided to ditch my long-held mobileme email address from Apple. It just so happens that that email address is the one that I had used with the Apple on line store (duh). Apple, in their infinite wisdom decided to make it very difficult for you to change from using a .mac email ID to a non-Apple one. Impossible in fact.
When I went to the Apple online store to order a new copy of iLife, I wanted to make sure I changed my email address (which is what Apple also uses as your ID) to my new address. No can do. Here is the completely lame message that I was presented:
This change is not allowed. This account name was originally set up as a .Mac account and upgraded to MobileMe. An Apple ID has already been automatically set up for use with this member name. You can access this Apple ID by using either .Mac or MobileMe addresses (e.g. membername@mac.com or membername@me.com), but you cannot change the Apple ID. If you would like to use a new account name, please create a new Apple ID.
That is swell, but when you leave .Mac, you can’t change your email address and have to create a new account. As an added bonus, there is no ‘logout’ functionality on the Apple store site. So you have to start another browser, create a new account (re-keying all of your info), then go place the items you want to order in your cart again, then, finally, check out. Very, very crappy user experience Apple.
Technorati Tags:
apple, badideas, shopping, suckage, webtools
As an unlikely response to my previous blog posting, Apple has seen the light and is now offering (or will soon, it is hard to tell) all of it’s music DRM free. Oh, and thanks for the 30 cent vig on each tune to re-buy a DRM-free version of what I already have and paid for once.
Apple also announced individual track prices as low as 69 cents — we’ll see how many tracks actually are priced at that level. Overall, I think that I will still look to Amazon first for my music download needs.
Technorati Tags:
apple, ideas, itunes, music
Not really sure of the value of this, but it is a bit fun to type in names and see the result.
Technorati Tags:
fun, visualization, webtools
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