Friday, May 27, 2005

Court Reporter Steno Machines...



Via Gizmodo, I've always wondered how those things the court reporters type on work. You would think that with all of the technology today, they would have found a way to update these things, but I guess if it ain't broke then don't fix it.

This Slate story talks about how the Stenotype machine works. Interesting. Snippet:

It's called a stenotype machine, and it's also used for captioning television broadcasts and general office stenography. The stenotype works a bit like a portable word processor, but with a modified, 22-button keyboard in place of the standard qwerty setup. Modern stenotypes have two rows of consonants across the middle, underneath a long "number bar." Set in front of these are four vowel keys: "A," "O," "E," and "U."


Now, the other thing I want to know is how surveying equipment works. Those little telescopes, the reflectors on sticks... Can't you do all of this with GPS now?

Enjoy.

-aB

Friday, May 20, 2005

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Sony PS3 Officially Announced



This CNN story does a decent job of showcasing the new PlayStation, due out next spring. I've written here in this post about the Cell processor it will utilize, but this story goes into a bit more detail on the entire package.

Key Points:

  • 35 times the power of the PS2

  • More powerful than the current PS2, XBOX and GameCube combined

  • Utilizes Blu-Ray disks

  • Wireless bluetooth controllers - capacity to handle seven simultaneous controllers/players standard

  • Ability to output two different signals to two different TVs (standard or high-def)

  • Console will be initially available in silver, black and white

  • Supports 1080p high definition format

  • Supports interaction with the PSP handheld via wireless

  • Supports Sony's Memory Stick Duo format as well as SD and CF cards


Pretty neat stuff. I was expecting it to look a bit cooler than the pictures show. Not necessarily disappointed, but not quite the "wow" I was anticipating.

But the specs do wow me.

-aB

Internet Explorer Falling Further Behind, In Several Ways



The gang at IBM dealt a blow to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser today, announcing that they were making the FireFox browser available to their 300,000 employees. Snippet from Information Week:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues lose market share as more consumers and businesses adopt alternative Web browsers. Rival IBM on Friday became the latest company to embrace Mozilla's Firefox browser, making it available to 300,000 employees.

"IBM recognizes a bandwagon when it sees one," says Andy Jaquith, an analyst at the Yankee Group. "Besides, it's migrating its whole operation to Linux."

Firefox clearly has momentum. It has been downloaded more than 50 million times, and members of the open-source Mozilla project have provided funds for advertising to promote the browser. Firefox has features that aren't available in Internet Explorer. And some experts think it's more secure than IE, reason enough for businesses to consider it as an alternative browser.


CNN noted a few days ago that IE market share had dropped to less than 90% for the very first time. Information Week gave Firefox about 8% market share, and interestingly Apple's Safari browser 3% of the market (or virtually all Mac users out there).

This Information Week story announces that the new IE 7 will include tabs, a feature that Safari has had for years and a big differentiator for Firefox. Microsoft IE product manager Dean Hachamovitch realizes the mistake to wait so long for tabs as he explains, "I think we made the wrong decision here [not including tabs] initially, and we're making the right one now."

Sounds like the new IE 7 won't be in beta until this summer. I'd thought that they were shooting for a lot earlier than that. Another big feature in IE 7 that many are waiting for is the built-in RSS reader. I bet that it's going to get a lot worse for Internet Explorer before it gets better. Plagued with security flaws, slower speed and fewer features, Firefox is the best choice on a PC. Safari's still my favorite overall browser, especially the one built into OS X Tiger.

-aB

Friday, May 13, 2005

Finally An iPod FM Transmitter That Doesn't Suck



I am not a big fan of the iTrip, or pretty much any of the current stable of FM transmitters for the iPod. Their signal is just too weak. And unfortunately, I have to use a transmitter in my BMW to be able to listen to my iPod. (In my Infiniti, I have a cassette player, so I can use that adapter, but my BMW is the model year before they added the iPod functionality discussed at iPodYourBMW.com).

Well, I have finally found something that works. It's the Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus. It works.

It's not wireless like the iTrip, but it more than makes up for that with the quality. You plug it into the cigarette lighter plug, and it broadcasts a pretty strong signal on any FM frequency you want. Plus, it charges your iPod while it works (and it's a smart charge to prevent overcharging the iPod battery).

Another good thing is that it pulls the audio signal from the dock connector, rather than the top earphone jack, so it's a clean "line audio" signal. Nice.

It costs $80, so it isn't cheap. But it's definitely the most powerful of the transmitters I've tried. I put it on the same frequency as Star 94-FM here in Atlanta, and it blew that Star 94 (and it's great mix of today's top hits!) way back to Jessica Simpson-ville. And if that's all it did, it would be worth the $80 price alone.

-aB

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Is Music Industry's DualDisc Too Late?



Bought my first DualDisc music CD tonight. It's Dave Matthew's new "Stand Up." Good album.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the DualDisc format, it's a regular CD on one side, and a DVD on the other. One disc - just two different sides sandwiched together. This means that there is no writing on either side - the name of the album is written on the plastic center of the disc.

It's a great idea and captures a lot of the points that I brought up in this post way back in July 2004. It was a rant to the RIAA and the music industry that they needed to do something to convince people to purchase albums again (as compared to stealing/pirating them or legally purchasing music online).

I commented about what the dance/electronica music genre was doing - with cool packaging for their CDs, bonus CDs and sometimes even DVDs included with the album.

Read my old post here if you want to see what I said.

Well, DualDisc does a lot of these things. The jewel box is different from a regular CD. It's curved on one side and has a button on the front that you push to open the box. Cool. The first discs have decent liner notes, and the CD/DVD has good content on it. Not only does the DVD side feature videos and other extras, it also includes a surround sound 5.1 mix of the same album that's on the CD side. So playing it at home (or on new car with audio DVD players like most of the new Acuras).

Well it save the industry? I don't know about that, but it is the first actual tangible music CD I have bought in months. It's been iTunes for 95% of my music for the past few years.

-aB

It Isn't The Frisbee Dog Nationals, But It's Still Funny



I'm a big fan of the Frisbee Dog competitions, a Frisbee + Dog competition where the dogs (and their masters) do all sorts of crazy tricks. Every year at the Dogwood Arts Festival in basically my front yard at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, the dogs go at it. I love it because the dogs are having fun, the owners are having fun, and the crowds can't help from loving it - watching all of the craziness.

Well, this isn't the Frisbee dogs, but it's still pretty funny. This week over at Georgia Tech, the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open was being held. The compeition ended with a bunch of programmed Sony AIBO robot dogs playing soccer. Snippet from CBS News/AP:

Hugging the sideline, the robot dog waddled down the field and hit a ball with its nose. The ball bounced off the goal post.

It was one of the University of Texas' last chances to get back in the game, which it eventually lost 2-0 to the reigning European champs from Dortmund University in Germany.


Robot dog soccer is one of five games that teams of scholars competed in during the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open, held Monday at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The aim of the three-day competition, which ends Tuesday, is to develop software for better robots with the long-term goal of fielding a robot soccer team good enough to play a human team by 2050.

The compeition was close, but the team from Dortmund University in Germany won the match.

Read the entire story here.

-aB

Monday, May 09, 2005

Mac OSX Tiger's Dashboard Compromised



Via Slashdot, this post discusses a slightly dangerous and quite annoying vulnerability for Tiger's new Dashboard feature, the Konfabulator-copying new OSX eye candy that I've discussed here. Snippet from Slashdot:

If you're running Safari on OS X Tiger and go to this website, a 'slightly evil' Dashboard widget will be automatically downloaded and installed and can't be removed without manually removing the file from the Library folder and rebooting the computer. The widget is called Zaptastic and is a demonstration by the author of how easy it is to exploit Dashboard for nefarious purposes. The essay, released under the Creative Commons License, goes on to describe the many ways users can be taken advantage of...


The Web site discussed is Zaptastic. DO NOT go to that link if you're using Safari on a Mac with Tiger installed, unless you want to delete the downloaded widget yourself. It's not a necessarily "evil" widget, as the author's main purpose is to demonstrate the vulnerability.

Hope Apple fixes this soon. The whole idea that you aren't supposed to be able to delete widgets once you download them is rediculous. While if you can navigate down to the Widgets folder in your Home > Library, it does require a restart or two to truly clean them up. And Apple's help documentation says "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order."

Boo, Apple. This is awful. I hope they fix this (as well as several other things) in 10.4.1. How did this get through testing?

-aB

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Got Multiple Monitors? Meet Mandolux.

Found a wicked site tonight. Mandolux.com. It's from a guy named Mando Gomez who's a photographer that has created desktop images for people with multiple computer monitors.

At home, I am blessed with two honkin' 19" LCDs on my main computer. It's awesome - dragging windows onto both screens and truly being able to multitask.

Now, I've cropped and placed some of my own images onto my screens, but for those not fortunate enough to have their own, check out Mandolux.com. The archive section of the site has plenty of cool images to use.

P.S. I would show you some images from Mandolux.com but Mando gets a bit upset with bandwidth hogs.

-aB