Update: Flash! Update: Hot! HTC Hero Officially Launched With Sense, Flash, And Teflon – SoftSailor: HTC has unveiled a new smartphone today at an event in London. The HTC Hero has been rumored for weeks, and earlier today it was leaked on the HTC website minutes before the event. Well, nothing else matters now, as the HTC Hero is looking great, it runs on Android OS, and it features a new UI called HTC Sense.
This looks rather slick. I think I want, thus I need to "wife" the old phone. Better treat my phone well, then, she doesn't like scratches or dents...
Mac is just *nix under the covers, so this was a bit odd that these two popped up next to each other on Twitter: And I haven't changed anything, I'm Even Steven!
When I got my T-Mobile G1 I couldn't find anywhere around here with street view. Thanks to Thayer Ave I now know that Silver Spring is full on robot street view, and Bethesda they're just getting started. Here's the back of my house:
View Larger Map
Then a Miracle Occurs - Public Beta - Blog - Stack Overflow: stackoverflow.com is now live and open to the public, as a public beta.
I am very encouraged, what they've put together appears very well thought out and I hope will crush the "experts exchange" issue where you google a problem only to find out your answer may (or may not) be behind their curtain. Let's all make SO the new first source for those hard to answer questions. (And it wouldn't hurt, if you have an expertise, to subscribe to questions in your field of excellence and answer a few).
Anytime you have 7 hours to spare, that is.
Of course I didn't use the Anytime Upgrade but a free copy of Vista Ultimate that Microsoft gave attendees of the HEROES Happen {Here} conference (or however they typed it...).
And after those 7 hours? Had to reinstall audio drivers, reinstall Stardock Central, and download sob jobby to reset my Live OneCare because it couldn't identify me or turn on the firewall.
And for what? I'm not even sure what the difference between business and ultimate is. There is Bit Locker, though I doubt I'll use that, and there is Dream Scene, which amazingly doesn't seem to affect the performance of my laptop, but I'm sure it will get old quickly. There is increased media capabilities, but I don't have a TV Tuner card, so really what does that do for me?
This How-To provides step-by-step instructions for creating a Universal Wireless Repeater appliance: a device that you can place anywhere and it will wirelessly repeat the strongest signal, onto another wireless network (with or without security). This functionality is also known as Wireless Client Bridge, or Range Expander. Unlike WDS, once you have this appliance setup, it will work with any open network.
[ Universal Wireless Repeater - DD-WRT Wiki ]
Since the FiOS router they give you does the WiFi for you, I can flash my old Linksys and turn it into a repeater to help get the signal upstairs to my wife's PC. Just have to figure out where I packed it first...
Update: the Linksys that I had would only allow for the "micro" version that can't be a repeater. However, I was able to set it up as a Wireless Bridge which allows it to replace the WiFi dongle that Yaty had been using. Since you can boost the signal of the Linksys, it can much more easily reach the FiOS router and she reports that the speed is much improved. Once again, thank you Linux.
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market.
[ Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses ]
This leaves BluRay as the only High Def on a Disc format left in the game. I'm a bit surprised how quickly that went. I'm rather sure that there are still some Super Beta people out there who refuse to give up the ghost. What is the actually market condition that hammered the nail in HD DVD's grave?
-
-
-
Universal and Paramount rumors? -
-
-
Who really knows. What I do know is this means that Universal, Dreamworks, and Paramount will all be changing their tune to BluRay soon. And that means Back to the Future, Heroes, Shrek, Breakfast Club, and many other goodies coming to BluRay.
Props to KooshMoose for sending me the Kotaku link.
I highly recommend taking the hour or so and watching the whole thing.
In their rare joint appearance at All Things Digital 5, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates discuss their contributions to the technology industry, the qualities they most respect in one another...
[ VIDEO: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates ]
While looking for the character map in the accessory folder of Vista, I found a little gem that I just have to share. Vista now has a Snipping Tool that enables you to capture parts of the screen, highlight and draw on top of it and copy or save the results. Some would say it's about time and that there's about a million freewares that do this already, I'm just happy to have found it right there in Windows.
[ Atlas and more : PrtSc now useless... or maybe not. ]
OK, maybe not worth the price of admission, but it is the best clip tool I've seen. And Vista does have a couple of other enhancements as well...
Outlook is a bit of a dog, and I no longer have an Exchange server to work off of, so I'm trying to get an "outlook like experience" on my Lappy and Windows Mobile. And here is another piece of the puzzle:
Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.
For a long time I have been looking for a rock solid calendaring system. I’ve gotten too used to working for companies who have Microsoft Exchange (or, God forbid, Scalix) installed which allow me to edit and update a calendar from multiple locations and even sync it with my Mobile Phone. When I first heard of Google Calendar I hoped that I would be able to enjoy such benefits again, but I am not a great fan of web-apps, and prefer a nice, solid desktop client to do my email / organisation from.
[ bfish.xaedalus.net Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird. ]
Unfortunatly Thunderbird 2 is still at Beta 2, and since it's my main mail going through there, I'll be patient and wait for the v2 Golden Release. But, so I don't forget, I'm blogging this puppy.
Been using the Thunderbird for a while now, but this only came up today, each time I replied it put my reply at the bottom of the email and not the top, but it only started today. Searched all through the settings, and I couldn't find squat.
- In Thunderbird: Go to "Account Settings"
- Select "Composition & Addressing" for the account in question
- Check the checkbox in the Composition group that says "Automatically quote the original message when replying".
- Once the combo box below is enabled select the option "Start my reply above the quote"
[ Replies Append to Bottom in Thunderbird at Elliot Lee ]
That proves it, my old settings had been imported from Outlook Express, and it was smart enough to duplicate that behavior. I had removed and readded an account today, and it picked up the default, which is a crazy "reply after" that would force everyone to scroll to read the new part of the email.
We will devote our human resources and technology to create superior products and services, thereby contributing to a better global society.
[ SAMSUNG's Digital World - About SAMSUNG ]
OK, they fell a little short on this ideal with my HDTV. It broke. But I called the next business day, and they sent a local repair man to my house to swap out 2 boards in my TV at no charge to me, and it was fixed in less than 48 hours, and on a Sunday! So much better the customer support and dedication to their product than my prior experience with RCA or Sony. Samsung gets huge marks from me on this one.
I want to know why my phone is making a noise, and I want it to be different than everyone elses. That way I don't have to look to know what happened and that it is my phone for sure. If only there was a free internet archive of sounds. But wait...
The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!
[ freesound :: home page ]
The purpose of this list is this: given the name of a character set, find out a little bit about it.
[ Character Set List ]
Sure this guide won't tell you why [CTRL]+g is the character [BEL] in ASCII and on some machines will make a beeping noise if you echo or print it to a command window, but this is a great place to start when trying to understand why "text" isn't a good enough description for the file that you are trying to read, or why your "smart quotes" don't look correct in a web browser on another OS.
Grossberg brings up a good question:
So now that the old Pentium II box is my third-string computer, what should I do with it?
[ What To Do With Old Computers? : Joe Grossberg ]
In the DC area you can have Turtle Wings do the dirty work for you, and rest assured that you aren't polluting the environment.
Over 40 million electronic pieces become obsolete every year. These pieces are filled with materials that are hazardous to the environment such as lead, cadmium, lead oxide, barium and mercury.
We Pick Up and Recycle Electronics
- Pickup and removal of all unwanted electronic equipment
- Security cleansing and identity theft protection
- Certified data destruction
- Certification of recycling and good citizenship
- Excess inventory programs
- computers
- monitors
- printers / copiers
- mainframes / hubs
- cell phones / telecom
- fax machines / plotters
- stereos / microwaves
- battery back-up units, etc.
The site says that there is a nominal charge, but what price can we put on the Earth?
Someone's got to have done the work for me, right? I just want to have the ability to tweak my Today screen font color so I can read it against the wallpaper of the minute. Didn't take too long to find this:
TdyScheme Changer is a Pocket PC application to change the today scheme colors. It is also able to change the color of the taskbar and soft keys for Windows Mobile 5.0. It is also possible to remove the gradient effect of the bars and set the colors to black.
[ Mobile-SG.com :: Vicott's Pocket PC Applications ]
And free is hard to beat.
A picture's worth a thousand words
With contact pictures in Gmail, you can pick ones for yourself, see which ones your friends have chosen, and set certain pictures to show up for specific people in your Gmail account. Best of all, you can even send picture suggestions to your friends. Learn more
We're in the process of rolling this feature out to all users, so keep an eye out for it in your account!
 
[ About Gmail ]
I concocted a scheme where I would subscribe to flickr feeds with enclosures and use the folders that it creates to seed the Microsoft Power Toy Wallpaper Changer with those photos for a fun, constantly changing wallpaper. Clearly I spent too much time thinking about it, and not enough time searching for someone else's application that already does this for me:
John's Background Switcher periodically changes the background image on your computer (like every hour or every day).
[ John's Adventures: John's Background Switcher ]
Integrated right in the application is:
You can use Flickr (almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world) - you can choose to select pictures by person, tags, sets or just plain random and there are a host of options to narrow down the pictures and increase the quality of those chosen. You never know what you're going to get next!
I recommend the Flickr Group Domokun Lovers.
In a meeting today someone mentioned the need for a calendar of sorts. I immediatly thought of a Life Hacker post I had seen recently about MonoCalendar:
If iCal existed for Windows, I would recommend using that before MonoCalendar. On the other hand, since it currently does not exist for many systems, it is an alternative to consider, and furthermore it is an alternative that is Free Software.
[ MonoCalendar ]
Until Vista arrives, this is likely the best we'll see.
TiVo announced a while back that I'd be able to take my TiVoed programs "to go". What does that mean? Not much, apparently. I only have 1 TiVo, so I can't transfer between them. I don't have a laptop, so I guess I can use the desktop software to watch TiVo on my PC, but that's not going very far. I don't wish to burn things on DVD enough to purchase their partner's DVD burn kit. I really just want to download the video to my PSP or Yaty's iPod.
Enter DirectShow Dump:
DirectShow Dump is a debugging App that allows you to extract (into a file) what the output of a DirectShow filter is. It is easy to use, employs asynchronous I/O for optimal performance and can batch-process files.
[ DirectShow Dump ]
Since the TiVo series 2 can copy video to my PC and store it as a modified MPEG-2 file, with some sort of DRM encryption, but allow for playback through WindowsMedia 10 and "DirectShow", it wasn't too difficult to pipe that to an unencrypted file (not too difficult for me at least... ;)). Then I sync that file via my PSP Media Manager, which I purchased before realizing that PSP Video 9 existed, and voilà! I truly have TiVo To Go!
Shame on you. This is a must read. (Unless, of course, you don't read fiction, or specifically science fiction. Or are scared of computers. Or don't like awards. Or are creeped out by the Internet.)
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same.
[ William Gibson - Official Website ]
There are likely dozens of ways to gain access to another computer across the Internet. The sort of thing you wish to do when home or at work when you need to use the other PC. Some cost money, others are hard to use, etc. etc.
I've been thinking, for a while, that it might be nice to gain access to my PC, but it's on cable broadband, behind a few NATs or so, and probably costs money or some such.
Then, just yesterday, a business issue arose that it would have been darn handy to have that access. And I thought, well I better get some AccessMyPCFromAfar.com account, or what-have-you.
Enter: Hamachi (courtesy Steve Sajous):
With Hamachi you can organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication.
Hamachi is fast, secure and simple. It is also free.
[ Hamachi: Stay Connected ]
All I can say is:
I love it when a plan comes together
[ Hannibal ]
Still don't have the phone, but I have a list of goodies to install, including this:
As the name suggests is does conversions - it supports four types of conversions, each with up to 10 categories. Currency Measures - 1 inch = 2.5 Centimetres etc Temperature - Celsius <-> Fahrenheit
[ "Convert It" for your Smartphone ]
John Dowdell has posted a bit of a rant about web interfaces and "his" data. He laments that every site has a different interface, different user flow, and different set of hurdles for him to work around:
Each of these sites had their own interface conventions, their own unique way they wanted to expose their range of services to the world. This site pushes links through JavaScript so I can't keep tabbed windows open. That site uses session IDs so I can only work in a single window. This third site wants me to choose a number of stops before I can see any offering. One requires a flight before you can see hotels. Some list hotels by which they'd like to sell most, others list them by distance, another lets you choose ranking. Each site had its own unique interface for me to come to grips with before I could use their service.
I will have to agree with the frustration. I would love interfaces to be more similar, and I would love to have my favorite bits from each site available on the others. However he then cries a rallying cry:
It's my data -- I want my record under my physical control as much as possible. I don't want to spend more time decrypting your interface than I do in determining what I want. The website/webapp paradigm failed me this week.
[ JD on MX: My data! My interfaces! ]
But, JD, don't you see that it is their data, and they have full control over their data. He is the one who wants that data. That puts them in full control. His interface solution would either require him to code 1/2 of the cool features that he wants (which the average person isn't going to do) or require the purchase of someone else's software (and then software assurance to keep up with changing web services). In addition, the other 1/2 of the cool features will then be available or not across dozens of web services that all work extremely different. This shift in paradigm hasn't relieved the inconsistency, only pushed it to a different layer.
And the data? The data about what a flight costs, the data about what deals are going around, the data about who's interested in what, all of this data is very important to the business that have them, and only on a need to know basis. Why not share all of the data for free? Because not only can JD share it, so can their competitors. I can set up a site where I ensure that my prices are always $5 cheaper than my competitors. I can then guarantee the lowest price. These are the sorts of things that businesses spend a lot of time determining, and have been long before computers, but why spend money to help your competition get the leg up on you? And at the same time ensure less to differentiate yourself from others? No matter what the technology, or how much people want their "web 2.0", business will drive those sorts of changes, and business has little to no incentive to deliver Mr. Dowdell his vision of the future.
I'm constantly Synchronizing things, and I think I've finally found a tool that will help with a large part of that chore:
SyncToy is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP that provides is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories.
[ SyncToy for Windows XP ]
And I think Mak wants them to be more similar. One item in particular that c# has is the ability to have multiple events fire off of a single event through delegates. While javascript will never be c#, recent additions to javascript get it a bit closer with addEventListener. Unfortunately we live in a world where people aren't all using cutting edge browsers, and it will take time for that language improvement to be supported by all. In the mean time? Borrow good hack techniques like this one from Simon Willison (via Joe Grossberg).
For a script ... to be properly reusable, it needs to behave nicely in the presence of other scripts. This means that assigning a callback function directly to the window.onload handler is out of the question as doing so will over-ride previously assigned callbacks from other scripts. The correct way of adding a handler to an event without over-riding other handlers is to use modern event attachment method, which sadly differ between IE/Windows and other browsers. Scott Andrew's addEvent function handles the differences for you but comes with one major and rarely discussed drawback: it fails silently in IE5/Mac. If you care about the many Mac users still on OS9, you need to support that browser.
[ Simon Willison: Executing JavaScript on page load ]
I like this code snippet. I've used this technique before, but never as a generic function that could be reused. With a bit of tweaking this could easily be extended to handle other events (though the window's onload is usually the only one that everyone's fighting for) or allow the ability to specify if the added event comes before or after all current events (just in case you need to jack something in as the #1 thing to do).
Employees can get a licensed copy of Microsoft Office desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio Professional, to install and use on a home computer.
[ Home Use Program ]
However you have to wait until March of 2006 before these bennies go into affect.
Props to mssmallbiz
I already use a few of these, but many look like products or sites that I won't know how I did without once I start doing with...
Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine. Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week. For me, util means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray. If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb.
[ Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List ]
The few that I don't see:
The last one mostly for WindowBlinds, because I like my Windows to constantly look new, but it actually has quite a few handy tools that come with it:
You have a table, with an identity, that, due to the nature of your application, deletes and inserts many rows on a regular basis. It crossed your mind that at some time the key will grow to the largest integer and then what? You tell yourself that SQL will of course handle that for you , or at least it will never come up since 2,147,483,647 is a large number.
Well, today it happened to me.
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Arithmetic overflow error converting IDENTITY to data type int.
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Arithmetic overflow occured.
My "fix" was to reseed the table and change the datatype to bigint, I wonder how long until 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 rows have been inserted and then deleted?
Certainly this may not be news, but it's the first I've noticed. Looks like it runs a bit faster, likely due to the fact it has been compiled for the chip and OS I'm actually using and not running in some sort of legacy mode.
Make your Pocket PC The ultimate Islamic resource tool ... Arabic Holy Quran with tashkil, English translation and recitation ... Athan and recitation ... Hadith in Arabic, Prayer table, Prayer schedule , Hijri Calendar and Hijri to Georgian conversion, Qibla according to your location and position of the sun ... Today Screen [plug-in] to display the prayer time and date in Hijri and to control the Azan voice.
[ Pocket Islam PocketPC ]
This may even fix some of the issues I've noticed with scheduling on the device, reminders and adhan (azan) didn't always work, perhaps that's all worked out now.
Or can it?
The agreement between Sun and Google also kicks off further collaboration between the companies on projects like OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that is the world's leading suite on the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux--and the leading alternative suite on Microsoft Windows.
[ Sun Microsystems ]
I've used OpenOffice and I think it's ok. Get Google involved, and Microsoft better start innovating.
Found a new Windowblinds skin I like, and I think a new artist with it. danillooc resides in Brazil and does great skinning work:
Not quite:
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said that it developed the "save as PDF" feature in Office 12 using the open, freely available PDF standard published by Adobe. Under the open specifications, Adobe allows other software developers to create PDFs without paying a licensing free.
[ Microsoft's Office upgrade to support PDF files - Boston.com ]
When you buy Office 12, you'll have the ability to create PDF files of your documents without having to use PDFCreator. Still, that's one less thing to install. And you can guarantee that all of your employees will be able to create these files. And since it's been siphoned through to PDF, no more worrying about the comments you may have left embedded in the document...
And the comments are the manual:
A real engineer only resorts to documentation when the keyboard dents on the forehead get too noticeable.
[ Tip #1 - the super star : vim online ]
Did I mention that I ♥ vim?
I found an interesting article that was posted last year on USA Today, the author attempted a real world comparison of VW's diesel technology vs. Toyota's hybrid technology:
Prius is comfortable, a festival of technology and unquestionably cleaner-burning than the VW can be today with only high-sulfur diesel fuel available. But the real-world mileage of pleasant-driving Jetta was better than that of Prius, and diesel fuel typically was 16% to 20% cheaper than unleaded gas.
Jetta lived up to its one-tank billing. Prius did not.
And on top of that the only drawback that he seemed to find vis à vie the VW was environmental impact:
While the fuel price advantage on this trip goes to the diesel, the environmental advantage goes to the hybrid. The Jetta spews out six times more sulfur particulates than Prius, which can run almost emission-free when using low-sulfur gasoline available in California but almost nowhere else. Federal regulations require phasing in of low-sulfur gas and diesel the next few years, which will improve the emission performance of both gas and diesel vehicles.
[ USATODAY.com ]
Since it's been over a year from the article being written, gas prices have gone through the roof, federal guidelines about the amount of sulfur in diesel have begun to go into affect, and bio-diesel is much more prevalent than ever.
After literally 3 minutes of extensive searching, I found this:
Anonymous (2001) is a TrueType version of Anonymous 9, a freeware Macintosh bitmap font developed in the mid-90s by Susan Lesch and David Lamkins. It was designed as a more legible alternative to Monaco, the mono-spaced Macintosh system font.
[ Anonymous(tm) ]
And with that? I'll stop looking...
It seems like there is too much to read on the Internet, but I'll keep trying anyway. This looks interesting, so I'll blog about it, and hope to return and read it in depth.
The Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH) is a collaborative effort of IT industry leaders aimed at providing a reference architecture for universal strong authentication across all users and all devices over all networks. Using open standards, OATH will offer more hardware choices, and lower cost of ownership, and allow customers to replace existing disparate and proprietary security systems whose complexity often leads to higher costs.
[ OATH | benefits ]
Props to my Pops
|