Robots should be useful...

I found this very in depth video on a new robot.

It rides a unicycle.

That's it.

I can't figure out why anyone would want want of these. I think it would be far cheaper and healthier to buy your own unicycle.

On my "cool electronic lawn mowing dog" scale, this gets a low 1.5, because it does almost nothing to further the dream of the electronic lawn mowing dog.

Cool Anti-"Pork" Website...

I was watching the Presidential Debate yesterday, and Senator McCain mentioned a website that lets you know what people in the Legislative Branch are adding the most line item spending items (a.k.a Pork Barrel Spending).

The site lets you sum up the amount spent in each bill by individual, state, party, or the entire legislative branch. The numbers are astronomical.

I recommend you look over what the people who represent you have been doing with your money.

Here's the link: Citizens Against Government Waste

It's good to have competition...

At long last, T-Mobile has brought out a good competitor to the iPhone.

It's called the G1. It's based on the Android OS by Google, and looks to have a good set of features that makes you actually want to use the darned thing.

It's designed to let you decide what you want to put on your phone, not what Apple wants you to put on your phone.

Oh yeah, and it's hundreds of dollars less than the iPhone.



If you want a lot more information, you can watch the press conference. It's boring, but it still has the most info on the G1 out there.

Wowee!

Well, you know I can't resist an entry about a cool robot.

This one is kind of like a Roomba, only useful.

It can wander around your house, has a camera that you can adjust the vantage point and allows you to command and get telemetry from a web browser.

It's called the Rovio, and it's really going to be quite affordable ($299 U.S.).

I'm one step closer to the Electronic Lawn Mowing dog...except this one doesn't mow the lawn.

For those who want a Mac, but not a "Mac"....

I saw this post on a product that allows you to attach a USB Dongle to your relatively new Intel x86 machine and install the retail version of Mac OSX.

I've always said for years that if Mac would sell OSX it would start to take a bigger chunk of the personal computer market.  But does Mac listen to me, nope!

Now their operating system will start to take more market share with or without there blessing:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/17/os-x-installing-efi-x-now-shipping-for-155/

The Japanese are smarter...?

The Japanese apparently aren't keen on the iPhone.  Apple has sold about 1/10th of what they've sold in the United States.

This makes me wonder if they're smarter than we are, have already cooler stuff, or just don't get the sublime nature of the iPhone.  I'm thinking it's one of the first two personally.

Here's an interesting article on how well it's been selling over there.

The Mathemagician

There's a web site that posts lectures called TED.com.  It's goal is stimulate ideas:

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design."

One of the lectures is by a guy named Arthur Benjamin.  He can do some pretty amazing math in his head. If ever you need someone to figure out what the tip should be, he's the guy for you.

I think this qualifies a really nerdy, but I'll post it anyway:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic.html

For more about TED you can read up here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/5

The numbers don't count, sort of...

I know it shouldn't matter who's got the most medals, but it's nice to have the most of something.

Olympic Medal winners at NBC Olympics.com!

This should be an event, too.

I don't know if there are any plans to add this to the Olympic games in the future, but there should be.

I can only think that these guys don't have any small children roving around looking for things to smash. At my house whenever I just stack two pillows on top of each other, my children knock it over like a heard of Godzillas.

So here's a link to some guys with kids older or more incarcerated than mine:
Lego Olympics

Really makes you want one....

Okay, I feel it's my duty to post really cool robots that relate to Star Wars.

Star Wars isn't even my favorite Sci-fi franchise, but there is so much cool stuff out there based on its lore.

This one I would have to say is the one of the best uses of R2D2's image.

Marketing actually makes a difference...

I don't like being the M$ cheerleader. But I've been using M$ stuff like Office, Windows, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc., for years.

For the most part I've been pretty happy with their stuff. Sometimes there are bugs, sometimes it's missing something that I'd really like to have. If it's bad I go looking for an alternative. Usually M$ catches up with the curve.

I found this site today, and wanted to say that sometimes a product is as good as its marketing.

The Anti-Vegan Keyboard

In a stunning example of luxury run amuck, Kazuharu Sakura crafts an amazing and somewhat strange keyboard.

If you get one of these, you'll never get to take your keyboard out into the rain:

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9970190-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

The man that inspired it all....

Long before Inspector Gadget and MacGyver, was Maxwell Smart.

Some think that James Bond had all the world going for him, but I think that really imaginative inventions were really from Agent Smart's arsenal of "electronic" goodness.

The gadget of his that started it all was the shoe phone.

Request Day...

I've recently had a request for something not tech or internet related.

Chrystie has requested to see the interesting pictures that I have of Preston.

Thery're really more of a look into the past. A view of the way we were, or rather the way Preston was.

They're not really even incrminating or particularly embarrassing. At least not that I can tell. But I've been holding to these pictures for a while now. They should be enjoyed by all.

Without further adieu:

This one is a two-for, because it also has a young spry Jason in it as well.

To Twitter or not to Twitter...

I actually finished my Twitter experiment about 3 weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to write about it until now. I bet you've all been on pins and needles.

Here's the poop:

Pros:
If you want to really get to know someone and how they really spend their time, this is definitely a good way to do it. If they're faithful to the motto "tweet everything", then you'll be able to enjoy the ins and outs of their lives.

You also have the ability to get the stream of consciousness of large segments of people. Be they friends or your target market. I liken this to the band with a loyal following of fans who might want to see an impromptu performance be it a local club or online web cast.

Cons:
If you don't have a piece of technology that you keep with you all the time, you won't really get the full effect. I found that the mobile interface was great with my smart phone. But my wife pointed out that if you weren't tethered by something that had ready access, you weren't apt to go out of your way to tweet about the minutia.

It's also quite hard to decide whether to tweet before you go do something or after. Is it important to get the play by play or the synopsis of the thing you just did?

There's also the concern about privacy. You have to be careful who's following your tweets. For example you want to tweet that you're going out for the night. If you've left enough info about yourself lying around you may have a complete stranger decide to steal your stuff, because he knows you're gone. (I know a paranoid viewpoint, but stranger things have happened.)

Also, the Twitter web site/backbone seems to get "stuck" sometimes. It seems to get bogged down and unresponsive during peak usage. Only I'm not sure when that is, because it happened sporadically.

In total:
I stopped using Twitter after the experiment, because I ran out of stuff to tweet about. Nobody really wanted to know when I went to the bathroom. However, the things I learned about the people I was following was pretty neat. It was eye opening to see the rhythm of their lives.

I would also like to give special thanks to Brookie & Janae. They were kind enough to test it out with me, and it made it a much more worthwhile experience.

Okay, so I've been a little remiss about posting. I've been a little busy.

But to make up for some of it, I found this extra good post.

If I had 3 months to kill, I'd sign-up in a heart beat:
NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in BedPublish Post

I'd like to build the world a printer, in perfect harmony.

I'd like the printer to print itself, a make another copy.

That's the song this company sings, let the world copy away.

A song of a printer that never goes away.

Facebook follies...

In my experimentation with Twitter I've created a Facebook account (gave into peer pressure). It's actually be a pretty good experience. I've found a lot of family/friends with relatively little detective work involved. It's like you're supposed to find people on Facebook or something.

It's also worthy to note that you can use Twitter on the Facebook page to update your whereabouts. I'll post something more in depth on both Twitter & Facebook in a short bit. I just want to make sure I give both sites/services a proper run through.

Hello All,

I've come across this service called Twitter. It's kind of like a way to mini-blog your life.

The idea is that you send 140 character (maximum) updates on your whereabouts, activities, and day dreams. People can "follow" you and you can "follow" others. And hopefully along the way people get to know you better by what you decide are important activities to twitter (not sure that should be a verb) about. Then you get to know what affects people in a daily unobtrusive way.

I'm trying to decide if it's technology that makes life better or noisier. I'm going to experiment with when and how to twitter and whether or not it's only useful for someone in high school.

In attempt to be fair about it, I'm going to try using it for 2 weeks and report back on the experiment.

Here's where I need your help. I would like to follow and be followed. It would be nice to have other experimenters try it out. And since following myself would be weird, I was hoping a few of you would like to see if it's worth the trouble to catalog your lives.

Below is a video that describes Twitter. At the very least it's a well produced and interesting video.

If you like it go to twitter and sign up. My twitter page is: http://twitter.com/hpractv

Afterwards I'll report the pros, the cons, and any meaningful observations. It's either a 2 week test run of an interesting idea or a cool way to get a play-by-play of people's lives that you care about, but don't get to hang out with all the time.

Another reason to go back to school...

You ever wonder where students come up with money to do these things?

I was always worried about where my next Whopper was coming from, or how I could get the gasoline in my car to magically reproduce so I could make it to class on time.

These students in Israel must be in a whole 'nother class of their own, if they can focus on these kinds of socially ground breaking technologies:

TAU student develops software that ranks facial attractiveness