Hardware Archive* dodoskido: Windows into Microsoft *

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Well, it's that time again boys and girls...get your credit cards ready. Here are the most interesting devices that have captured my very short gadget attention span:

The Amazon Kindle EVDO-powered ebook reader is a very interesting piece of hardware. The user experience is quite compelling and they almost get it all right. Yes, it's yet another thing to carry around, but if Amazon is successful, you won't have to carry dead trees around for much longer and you'll have access to their collection of books just about anywhere there is a cell signal (yes, it works off the slower and ubiquitous-in-the-US 1xRTT network for those of you in non-EVDO areas).

Would I buy it? I'm on the fence. There's a lot of very interesting technology packed in there, but they'll have to work out some of the kinks (most of them are in the business model rather than the device itself) before I have them ship me one. I'm going to hang tight until v2.0 (or 3.0) that allows for EVDO-powered library book lending and the like to come about. Nevertheless, I'm glad Amazon has taken the leap and I think it's a great gift for those of forward-looking, bookworms in your life.

The OLPC is yet another awesome piece of technology that is finally getting into people's hands. It's been a long time coming

Would I buy one? Yes, in a heart beat. I know, I know, I already have too much crap to carry around, but hear me out. This little gizmo is not really about me surfing the web and watching YouTube idiocy (although I would most likley be using the OLPC for this as well). No, this device is more about something that I believe a great deal in. It's about the ability of technology to transform societies and the world. Transformation can be good or bad, but in this case, I think the OLPC will be a force for good. Very very close to pulling the trigger on this little guy.

What's this little green thing? His name is Pleo and he's the hot little robot for the season. He's a little pricey for a toy, but who can put a price on hackable, robotic fun?

Would I buy it? I thought I would, but there really is no practical use for this except to have this thing befriend my rabbits and keep them company. While not practical, that would be very awesome, not to mention cute.

So which do I want the most? Probably the OLPC, but I'm not sure I would have enough time to really get into using it to make it worth my $400 bucks. I'll wait till they arrive on Ebay next year and scoop one up for cheap.

* GMAT Azamat *

GMAT Azamat
Originally uploaded by titaniumtommy.

Here I sit studying for the GMAT, but taking a break to reflect. So yesterday at work, we went to see Borat as a team and it was pretty insane. I mean the Mortgage Conference part was just all out madness and hilarity. Yeah yeah, I know I'm late to the Borat game, but I'm late to most games nowadays (I don't even have an Xbox 360 yet...no way in hell I'm going to get a PS3 anytime soon...tangent alert...tangent alert).

What's with Sony these days? They're totally missing the point I think. The ebook reader is cool technology, but instead of letting some who knows books do the selling (I dunno...say Amazon, maybe?), they open their own craptastic Connect store. Ummm, knock knock....excuse me? Remember Atrac (or whatever their failed one-off DRM "solution" was called)? I know we haven't all forgotten about mini disc and betamax yet, have we? Sony is great for making commodity electronics (the 'razors') but they seem to be hit and miss with creating media standards (the 'blades'). Who knows...maybe the blu-ray will take off? But seriously, who's going to go buy a disc when you'll be able to download phat 1080p (in WMV natch) for less duckets?

And lets not forget about the PS3...rather than trying to appeal to the mass market like Nintendo is doing and Xbox tried to but really didn't, Sony goes all out with a console that is more powerful than 4 space shuttles tied together with a flux capacitor and forgets that on the end, it's all about the games. Viva Pinata and just about everything Wii is going to be family oriented and get this "mom oriented." It's going to be funny when some Wii fanboy gets Pwn3d by his mom and youtubes it. Any who, I think Sony has gone way way overboard (did I mention the lame ads) on this one.

By the way, anyway catch the Xbox 360 Gears of War commercials with "Mad World" as the soundtrack to a scene of the game? Brilliant.

Sent from my Window Mobile 5 Pocket PC.

* Carbonite RAID Server *

Update to the backup situation: I've found the "flickr of everything else" in a company called carbonite.com. Their site and UI is a litte shall we say unpolished but over all it looks like a good service. It's only $5 per month for unlimited storage, but the problem is they only allow stuff that sits on the C drive. So here's my plan:

Build a Cheap and Fast RAID 5 NAS | Tom's Networking

Yep, I'm going to build a RAID 5 server that has about 500GB total storage. Then I'm going to use the server as THE Carbonite backup machine for my digital bits and gibbles. I figure it like this: everything goes to the backup server and the backup server has a C drive tha is a RAID 5 and connects to carbonite....

Hmmm...sounds a little too elaborate, right? Yeah...it is. But it may the good way to go until I can find the perfect storm of non-photo file backup solutions

11/ 1/06 20:46 permalink discuss

filed under Backup CoolTechnology Hardware (more tags...)

* Docakable DVD entertainment system with Gameboy Advance *

This is very cool and earns a 3.5 out of 5 stars (it'd get full marks if it had the DS brains in there):

More info...

10/ 7/06 23:27 permalink discuss

filed under CoolTechnology Games Hardware Nintendo (more tags...)

* Laptop Tofu *

Man, I've had to find out how reliant on my laptop I've become the hard way. Last week it was having trouble booting up. It would startup ok and then just kinda cold hard freeze. "Hmmm..." I thought. perhaps it was some spyware/virus. Nope Clean. Tried doing some wizardry with services at startup and the like...didn't help. More headscratching...I noticed that after it froze and I tried to restart, it wouldn't start at all and just have the fan going full blast and a couple of the LEDs lit up. I tried looking what this meant on HP's support site. Man was that a big mistake. If you think HP's in trouble, just look at their website. They can barely figure out a common font size let alone how to spy on someone properly. Seriously, I couldn't find a single LED error code reference anywhere. Talk about lame.

Anyway, I finally brought it into our awesome support dudes. These guys tear the machine apart and notice there is a small rectangle of crud that has managed to collect in the fan system. Hence...laptop tofu.

Now that the machine has a new motherboard and has been de-tofu'd, we're up and running again. Phew...that's better; life was rough without my little electronical sidekick for a week...

10/ 5/06 18:55 permalink discuss

filed under DailyLife Hardware (more tags...)

* Helmet Lighting *

IMAGE_00197
Originally uploaded by titaniumtommy.

Long days in the summer....Short days in the winter. It's simple really. With my new bicycling hoohaa, I decided to be proactive and try to figure out a solution now. I started looking on ebay and all of the outdoor stores online, but eveyrthing was just pricey. I mean they started in the 50s and headed north of 200 bucks! Ouch!

After a while of looking, I realized I bought some headlamp things a while back and they were bright as heck (blinding if you're up close). Anyway, I decided to see if I could strap these to my old bike helmet. It took a bit of doing, but seemed to fit well. They added some weight to the helmet of course (4 AAs to run the set after all), but that was expected. Then I figured I needed some back lighting to make sure I'm seen from behind. So I dug through storage and found some LED flashy things (what computer geek doesn't have random battery powered LED lights sitting around?).

The result is Starship Enterprise-ish lighting for my bike helmet. I think it'll definitely get attention (which is good for keeping cars from hitting me), but I minus points for making me look like a UFO (well bonus points in geekland, but minus points for the real world). Anyway, I think I'll keep it as it should keep me out of trouble (and it's a pain to undo).

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