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Stephen Brandau | February 26, 2008
Lots of Progress has been made with Dean Kamen's prosthetic arm I previously talked about. This footage of "the Luke Arm" is especially impressive.
Inhabitat, an environmental issues site, has a great video of Mary Lou Jepson, one of the XO developers, explaining how revolutionarily green the laptop is.
Anyone who edits html will love this tool, which allows you to enter in your code and refresh a second frame which shows you the output.
Inhabitat, an environmental issues site, has a great video of Mary Lou Jepson, one of the XO developers, explaining how revolutionarily green the laptop is.
Anyone who edits html will love this tool, which allows you to enter in your code and refresh a second frame which shows you the output.
Stephen Brandau | February 25, 2008
Confused what the big deal about this whole 700mhz auction is? Engadget provides a good explanation as to where the band comes from (soon to be decommissioned TV signals) and what it could be used for. (Cell phones, wireless internet, etc.) While I was originally rooting for Google or another company with 'open' aspirations for the project, it looks like there may be other, more cost effective alternatives like launching a super-fast internet satellite. It only cost Japan $480million; at that rate Google could launch ~10 of these satellites for the price the 700mhz frequency is expected to fetch.
Stephen Brandau | February 12, 2008
Did you notice anything new today while opening your Gmail? I'll give you a hint:
Reader is now officially integrated into the Google navigation bar at the top of all Google app pages, joining the ranks of Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calender, Photos, and of course their web search. I love Google Reader and hope this change will encourage more people to start using it.
UPDATE: It looks like they've taken the link down from the Gmail page, but have left it up on the Reader page. Too bad that's what I took the screen shot of.
Reader is now officially integrated into the Google navigation bar at the top of all Google app pages, joining the ranks of Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calender, Photos, and of course their web search. I love Google Reader and hope this change will encourage more people to start using it.
UPDATE: It looks like they've taken the link down from the Gmail page, but have left it up on the Reader page. Too bad that's what I took the screen shot of.
Stephen Brandau | February 6, 2008
[Photo from justusjonas' flickr set]Ever since the first notions of individuality hit humankind, we've been trying to build ourselves into better people, one at a time. This trend was identified and as soon as people figured out solid methodologies from which they could improve their lifestyles, the self-help industry was born. Books like How to Win Friends and Influence People became sensations as people saw real noticeable positive changes in their interactions with others. The self-help industry has hit an odd point in its history, primarily due to the internet, and I think it's one that parallels the music industry in many ways.
The music industry has seen 3 things happen, almost simultaneously and symbiotically: The amount of [quality] music made has increased. The amount of music demanded has increased [with larger storage capacities and easily available music]. The perceived value of music has dropped. And the industry [meaning the record labels] has completely ignored these new facts. In response to the established industry's stubbornness, numerous artists are signing with smaller labels and exploring new methods of distribution which focus more on artist compensation. These new strategies are notably less lucrative than those of the megastars of yesteryear, but they're much more realistic considering the
So how does this apply to the self-help industry? While more conventional, profitable self-help enterprises still exist and remain popular, such as The Secret, the criticism such all-in-one guides catch is enough to turn most would-be self-improvers away. See, it's real easy for me to post a self-help tip on the internet. If it's a good tip, it's real easy for that tip to get shared and spread like wildfire all over the internet. There are tons of people improving their lives every day and sharing their secrets with everyone online; Assuming their tips are of value, authors usually get some recognition or at least an increase in page views.
Unfortunately, page views aren't money. If they were, scantily dressed girls on myspace would be quite a wealthy demographic. See, the self-help industry can no longer profit in the way it used to. It's just too easy to get all those great tips on the internet for free: much in the same way music is easy to get on the internet for free. The self-helpers, luckily for individuals looking to improve their lifestyles everywhere, aren't as stubborn as the record industry. No, they've realized this isn't some exclusive game, and they don't know all the facts. So where do you go for the cutting edge self-help? Well, it's no longer called self-help. Instead things like Lifehacks and Lifestyle Modification have gained immense popularity on the internet.
The contributors to these movements seem to relish more in helping people and driving discussion than profiting off of it. It's an exciting, rapidly growing phenomenon from which I can only imagine good things coming.
Stephen Brandau | February 5, 2008
There are an enormous amount of free services on the internet to help you with day to day tasks. Until they get copied or bought by the larger internet conglomerates, these services will remain scattered around the internet in between common use by the general population and total obscurity. Here are a few of those services; I hope you find them useful.
FatFingers.com lets you search ebay for incorrectly listed items by searching for typos similar to the search term you use so searching for television will turn up results like telervision, allowing you to catch those auctions which frequently go without bids.
Blackle.com gives you access to Google search on a black background, saving very small amounts of energy individually, but according to the running total you can thank Blackle for "444,478.143 Watt hours saved." I imagine they'd save quite a bit more energy if only they could expand their black background onto the rest of google's services.
Some time last year I came across TradeTricks.org which compiles tricks of various trades for public use. The site has gone without an update since September, but managed to work up quite a list of tricks before then.
MissingMoney.com will tell you if you have any outstanding accounts receivable in your name. While I wasn't lucky enough to have any in my name, I was sure to inform some of my family members they had money waiting to be claimed.
FatFingers.com lets you search ebay for incorrectly listed items by searching for typos similar to the search term you use so searching for television will turn up results like telervision, allowing you to catch those auctions which frequently go without bids.
Blackle.com gives you access to Google search on a black background, saving very small amounts of energy individually, but according to the running total you can thank Blackle for "444,478.143 Watt hours saved." I imagine they'd save quite a bit more energy if only they could expand their black background onto the rest of google's services.
Some time last year I came across TradeTricks.org which compiles tricks of various trades for public use. The site has gone without an update since September, but managed to work up quite a list of tricks before then.
MissingMoney.com will tell you if you have any outstanding accounts receivable in your name. While I wasn't lucky enough to have any in my name, I was sure to inform some of my family members they had money waiting to be claimed.
Stephen Brandau | February 4, 2008
In case you missed it, January 30th was International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. While this probably isn't the primary reason for Myspace's falling membership numbers, it's certainly symptomatic of some deeper problems. After deleting your account(which is quite a task in and of itself), if you find life too hard without constant social coddling from myspace, you can always be likethis guy and call directory assistance 10,000+ times just to hear that human on the other end of the line.
On the Facebook front things look a bit different. Although its technical implications are questionable and its practical applications are unclear, Facebook has extended their application platform to the web, making it easier to put FB applications on any site. It's funny that this comes alongside the news that Facebook is rejecting its app-based startups after enticing them to code with dreams of $250,000 checks.
On the Facebook front things look a bit different. Although its technical implications are questionable and its practical applications are unclear, Facebook has extended their application platform to the web, making it easier to put FB applications on any site. It's funny that this comes alongside the news that Facebook is rejecting its app-based startups after enticing them to code with dreams of $250,000 checks.
Stephen Brandau | January 24, 2008
Yesterday Last.fm announced they have made their entire music catalogue available for streaming. This is big news after it's become clear the record labels weren't going to change their distribution strategies, themselves. From the announcement: "With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be." Although the service just launched, there's quite a bit of music already on the site ready for you to listen. I suggest one of my favorite albums, Mignonette by the Avett Brothers.
While the service shows a lot of promise, it's got a lot to fix. Quickly I've already noticed the autoplay feature doesn't seem to work with albums; in other words you'll have to continually click the play icon for each subsequent track in an album. The last.fm player also doesn't feature a pause button, something absolutely necessary when it comes to internet-based music players.
Currently it seems the industry is still planning on selling tracks for the same old prices, but once iPods come standard with wifi access, it's going to be hard to get anyone to pay that sort of money when they can easily stream any song they want to right into their headphones.
While the service shows a lot of promise, it's got a lot to fix. Quickly I've already noticed the autoplay feature doesn't seem to work with albums; in other words you'll have to continually click the play icon for each subsequent track in an album. The last.fm player also doesn't feature a pause button, something absolutely necessary when it comes to internet-based music players.
Currently it seems the industry is still planning on selling tracks for the same old prices, but once iPods come standard with wifi access, it's going to be hard to get anyone to pay that sort of money when they can easily stream any song they want to right into their headphones.
Stephen Brandau | January 23, 2008
While some ISPs have caught some heat for "traffic shaping" when it comes to peer-to-peer traffic, the public still seems largely unconcerned. The BitTorrent protocol, while commonly used for illegal piracy, in and of itself is an extremely useful tool. Like with all peer-to-peer technologies, the file is not directly downloaded from a server to a user. Instead each user downloading the file gets a piece, and then those pieces are swapped between users until all users have the entire file. This relieves the primary host of the file from bandwidth burdens normally experienced with direct downloads.
The BitTorrent protocol works by using a .torrent file and a torrent client like utorrent to assemble the file for you. It's easy to find .torrent files for a wide range of things, most of which are copyrighted, by using a search engine like google and searching for "torrent." The internet browser Opera features built in support for torrent downloading, so you won't need to use a torrent client.
The technology itself is in no way illegal, however because of its decreased costs associated with file sharing, it has become the protocol of choice for pirates of copyrighted materials. There are also legally licensed companies using torrent technology to distribute material. One such company is Vuze who uses an open-source torrent client to manage torrent files, provide users with high-res legally licensed content as well as give them the opportunity to put up their own content. BitTorrent opens up many opportunities for media distributors, but so far they've been mostly overlooked. Unfortunately if these technologies aren't utilized, and ISPs are allowed to modify their traffic, they will become a casualty in the war against copyright infringement.
The BitTorrent protocol works by using a .torrent file and a torrent client like utorrent to assemble the file for you. It's easy to find .torrent files for a wide range of things, most of which are copyrighted, by using a search engine like google and searching for "torrent." The internet browser Opera features built in support for torrent downloading, so you won't need to use a torrent client.
The technology itself is in no way illegal, however because of its decreased costs associated with file sharing, it has become the protocol of choice for pirates of copyrighted materials. There are also legally licensed companies using torrent technology to distribute material. One such company is Vuze who uses an open-source torrent client to manage torrent files, provide users with high-res legally licensed content as well as give them the opportunity to put up their own content. BitTorrent opens up many opportunities for media distributors, but so far they've been mostly overlooked. Unfortunately if these technologies aren't utilized, and ISPs are allowed to modify their traffic, they will become a casualty in the war against copyright infringement.
Stephen Brandau | January 22, 2008
It seems the final battles of the HD format wars are being fought, and Blu-Ray may be the victor, taking 93% of the market after Warner switched to exclusively Blu-Ray. Besides Warner's endorsement of Blu-Ray, the porn industry is expanding its Blu-Ray line. In previous format wars, such as VHS vs BetaMax, the choice of the porn industry struck the deciding blow. Additionally Sony's Playstation 3 sales have been steadily increasing since a $100 price cut made it one of the more affordable Blu-Ray players on the market, and with the announcement that a new firmware update will support Blu-Ray 1.1, there's not much HD DVD can do to come back.
On another note, regulators in the UK have recently given the all-clear for creating animal-human hybrid embryos. The embryos could be used to create stem cells vital to embryonic stem cell research, a field embroiled in much moral debate. While the majority of people seem to approve of the technology, religious fundamentalists see the technology as 'playing god' and it wouldn't be surprising if this all-clear doesn't silence opposition to the research.
On another note, regulators in the UK have recently given the all-clear for creating animal-human hybrid embryos. The embryos could be used to create stem cells vital to embryonic stem cell research, a field embroiled in much moral debate. While the majority of people seem to approve of the technology, religious fundamentalists see the technology as 'playing god' and it wouldn't be surprising if this all-clear doesn't silence opposition to the research.
Stephen Brandau | January 15, 2008
Happy Wikipedia Day! Today marks the 7th anniversary of Wikipedia. Over the past few years Wikipedia has shirked much of the negative notoriety it once held, prompting discussions about the end of traditional encyclopedias. Since its founding, Wikipedia was taken under control by the Wikimedia Foundation which has broadened the scope of publicly accessible wiki technologies with other useful projects like Wikitionary, Wikinews, and my personal favorite, Wikiquote.
Wikipedia serves as a great source of information. While it doesn't always cut it for academic work, and the most commonly visited pages don't usually have much practical value, you can often solve day to day problems with the right search on Wikipedia. It has also served as a fantastic log of human culture, and generally can provide you with relatively unbiased accounts of things you would otherwise never know about.
Wikipedia serves as a great source of information. While it doesn't always cut it for academic work, and the most commonly visited pages don't usually have much practical value, you can often solve day to day problems with the right search on Wikipedia. It has also served as a fantastic log of human culture, and generally can provide you with relatively unbiased accounts of things you would otherwise never know about.
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