August 2006 Archives

Are you tired of dropping your paycheck at the pump these days?  Yeah, well...I am too.  Ya know...recently I purchased two new vehicles.  I was seriously considering a hybrid, especially something like a Prius.  Problem is that it was too small for my needs.  I also wanted an SUV for the wife and kid.  There just wasn't anything on the market that was decent, and to make matters worse, you had to pay a pretty steep premium which in the long run, for those don't hold on to their cars for long, it came out as a losing proposition.

So what about all those predictions that every car would be electric by the year 2000?  What ever happened to all those cars GM was testing?  That's a great question.  My buddy Digital Bill, over at the Wizards of Technology, and I were having a little chat about this very thing tonight.  He clued me in to a few interesting sites I wanted to share with you.  I think these will open your eyes just a tad bit and make you wonder why the hell we are having to pay close to $4 /gallon for fuel these days.  All I can say is that I'm ticked off as hell.  We really need to start questioning our elected officials as to why we are in the current state of fuel crisis when we have had the ability to change things for over a decade.  I know the answer...GREED.  The question is what are we going to do about it?

You can start by checking out these sites:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/
http://www.stefanoparis.com/piaev/acpropulsion/eBox/ebox.html
http://www.pluginamerica.com/
http://www.stefanoparis.com/piaev/pml-mini/pml-mini.html
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=1084

Technorati Tags: Automobiles, EV Automobiles, Green Energy, Hybrid Vehicles, Politics, Video

Keeping up with the killer video's...any good nerd will know where this one came from.  ;-)

Here's a post that just doesn't need any words....behold my friends...

For you aviation and Navy nuts out there, here's a movie you won't want to miss. For those of you living in San Francisco or visiting on August 17th, 2006 - you can get a sneak peek!

Speed and Angels is the true life story and feature-length action documentary about two navy officers chasing their dreams to become fighter pilots. The film follows them during the most dangerous parts of their training and as they go to war, where the realities of being a fighter pilot test their limits.

The film includes epic aerial footage in stunning HD—including the last ever F-14 Tomcat dogfights—and rare naval archival and wartime footage. Thanks to unprecedented access granted by the navy, Speed and Angels gives an inside look at people's journeys as fighter pilots as it has never before been seen.

Based on the original concept of producer F.A.Chierici, Speed and Angels is directed by Peyton Wilson.

Looks like a great documentary and I am definitely getting the DVD.  What Navy airdale veteran wouldn't want to add this to their collection? Brings back a whole boat-load of memories (no pun intended).  ;-)  More information and goodies are available at the Speed & Angels website.

Technorati Tags: Aviation, NAVY, Military

No, I'm not talking about MY life online, this is SONY's latest and greatest geek gadget, mylo (My Life Online).  This is the device that many of us wanted Apple to announce at yesterday's WWDC Keynote, yet it took Sony to actually give us what we wanted.  This device has the potential to be another iPod with todays digital generation, but it's not quite there yet.

The mylo is a wireless broadband personal communicator.  Unlike it's closest messaging competitor, the T-Mobile Sidekick, this device works on WiFi rather than a cell providers signal.  That's good and bad.  Good, you can do things like instant message your buddies, surf the web, and even make phone calls via Skype for free.  The bad news, you can ONLY do it on WiFi.  No WiFi and you are out of luck.  From the initial looks of it, the mylo only supports messaging via Skype, Google Talk or Yahoo.  So where's the AIM support?  Got me, but you'd think that they would support one of the largest messaging networks on the planet.  They also seem to have forgotten about MSN (both chat and email).  That in itself is a major product-killer.

The mylo is also attempting to jump into the iPod space by providing you the ability to load up your music, photos and video.  Unfortunately it falls WAY short of the iPod in these areas.  The screen is smaller, it only plays a few music formats (Apple's AAC isn't one of them), and probably the single biggest drawback is Sony's insistence on utilizing their memory stick format, rather than a hard drive in the device.  By using the memory sticks, they once again fail to provide adequate storage space for things like music and video, which is one of the biggest downfalls of the PSP.  When will Sony learn?  And to add insult to injury, if you want to take full advantage of being able to xfer video to your device, you need to pay more money for Sony's Image Converter 2 software.  That's just about the most retarded move I have seen yet.

Another feature that just seems like a "Duh?" feature that is missing is a camera.  They went this far, why stop by failing to provide camera and video chat support?  The whole mylo concept seems great, and something that many of us would certainly want.  Unfortunately, it seems as if the product has been rushed to market.  It's missing apps and features that I think are essential to giving users that über geek device we are all seeking.  I think that with a little more thought and some feature and application enhancements, Sony could have a real winner on their hands.  If Sony's intent is to compete with the iPod, then they have some serious problems to overcome, formats and storage capacity for starters.  If Sony wants this to be taken seriously as a video device, they need to also think about bumping that screen size to at least PSP levels, and empowering users to do this by providing the software tools in the box.

Am I being a little harsh on Sony?  You betcha.  As an early-adopter and super geek, this is what I want.  I already have the iPod, a Treo, PSP and a Laptop.  How much more crap do you think I am going to carry Sony?  If you can develop the ultimate device that can replace the iPod, Treo and PSP and give me all of that in one device, you have hit the jackpot.  Combine these features into a UX-180 with a phat hard drive, and you hit total geek nirvana.  Until then, I guess we are all stuck wishing for the non-existant.  For a more opinions and a first look video, check out Gizmodo and Engadget.

Technorati Tags: Cool Gear, Mobility, Portable Audio, Portable Devices

Today starts the week-long Apple developer love-fest in San Francisco - the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).  This year, Apple's at it again with the ever so well-known arrogance that has become the norm in everything from their advertising to their conference banners.  Apple's latest poke at Redmond is the banner shown above (pics from Engadget).  But you know that wasn't enough.  Last year, Apple had a banner stating "Redmond, Start your Photocopiers."  This year they built on that with the following:

You have to admire a company that is so bold as to put it out there like that.  But then again, Redmond is sitting back laughing at Apple's market share.  So who's the winner?  I don't know, it will be interesting to see what Vista has in store.  But I can tell you this much, Microsoft has their work cut out for them.  OS X "Leopard" is showing some pretty promising and wicked things, and that's just what we know about.  There are some secret features that Steve would not discuss during the keynote.  Makes you stop and wonder.

The keynote didn't appear to be as exciting as others in previous years.  Quite frankly, it was boring.  The highlights are that Apple released some MONSTER desktops, now named the MacPro, which should just about be able to pilot you into the next solar system.  These Quad Xeon 64-bit machines are INSANE.  Aside from the ridiculous speeds, they finally added that 2nd optical drive bay and the ability to have 4 hard drives for a total storage capacity of 2 TERABYTES!  That's just insane people.

Ushering in a new era of outstanding performance — and completing the Mac transition to Intel processors at the same time — the new Mac Pro introduces the 64-bit Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processor to the Mac lineup. Running at up to 3GHz, it’s a state-of-the-art processor that — from day one — makes the Mac Pro one of the fastest desktop computers on the planet.

With the new build-to-order (BTO) options, there are more than 4 MILLION possible ways to configure your system.  Talk about an IT administration nightmare!  But hey - don't let it be said Apple doesn't give you choices.  Just remember, if you BTO a system - there are NO RETURNS!  Nice little gotcha that they don't make too obvious when you buy the system online.

Not to be outdone on the server side, there's a whole new breed of Xserves to play with.  A Quad Xeon 64-bit nasty one at that.

The Xserve packs phenomenal power and industry-leading capabilities into a high-density, 1U rackmount server that fits easily into any network environment. And this award-winning UNIX-based server just got a 5x (1) performance boost over the Xserve G5, thanks to quad-core 64-bit Intel Xeon processing. Additional features include up to 2.25TB storage, two eight-lane PCI Express slots, dual onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and a combo drive. With all this, the Xserve provides the stability you need and the performance you want, starting at just $2999.

The "Leopard" preview is not too shabby.  There are some much needed enhancements and upgrades made to Apple Mail, iChat and Spotlight.  One of the newest features that will make a lot of people yell "Hot Damn!" is the Time Machine feature.  This takes automated backup to a whole new level.  You will now have the ability to literally roll-back files to previous states and even recover lost or deleted files from your system.  This will be a life saver for many people and especially IT departments everywhere.  Just as a little kick in Redmond's rear, Apple decided to make the Time Machine interface a little bit like the way Vista navigates through open windows.  Just remember, Time Machine is worthless if the drive fails.  You still need to think about backing up to external media or running an internal RAID 5 configuration with those extra drives you can put into the MacPro.

All-in-all, there's still quite a bit of work left to be done on Leopard.  It will be Spring '07 before we really see the final product, and with any luck, Microsoft might just be able to pump out Vista by then.  It will be really interesting to compare the 2 systems side-by-side.  For now, we'll just have to be content with Tiger and some fast machines.  Not too shabby.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, OS X

That's right boys and girls.  Virtual PC is no longer the only game in town for running Windows or Linux on your Mac.  I have written about VMware in previous posts and what we have all been waiting for is about to arrive.  VMware has announced a beta for their product on a Mac.  This is HUGE news for the Apple community.  Microsoft has not announced officially (that I am aware of) that they will be porting VPC to the Intel platform and that has a lot of people concerned to say the least.  Even we Mac folk need to run Windows from time to time, and now more than ever, we are starting to see more options like Parallels and VMware step up to the table.  I for one am excited about this and can't wait to check out VMware for the Mac.  I am really hoping it runs Vista once it ships from Redmond.  Don't miss out on the beta, go sign up ASAP!

Technorati Tags: Mac Tech Tips, OS X, Virtualization, Windows

Recently I traded some gear I wasn't using for a TomTom Go 700 GPS with Remote Control, in practically new condition.  I have to tell you folks, this was the best trade I have done in years.  The Go 700 was TomTom's flagship GPS until their latest edition this year, the Go 910.  There are some nice upgrades on the 910 like a bigger screen, hard drive and additional Plus Services, but overall, for the price I paid, the Go 700 is one heck of a GPS unit and quite a nice add-on to my car.  You can read some great reviews on TomTom's GPS systems, as well as many others over on GPSreview.net.  If you are in the market for a GPS or just like keeping up on the latest navigation gadgetry, you should definitely check the site out.

TomTom has some great extra "Plus services" that come along with the purchase of their units.  Many of the services require pairing the GPS unit with your phone via Bluetooth.  Unfortunately the list of compatible phones is less than stellar.  If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that my current phone is a Treo 650.  It's been a solid phone, minus a few problems in the beginning, and I am generally overall satisfied with the unit.  It also happens to be one of the most popular phones around, and you would think that most companies would try to make their equipment compatible with it.  As many of you know, that isn't exactly the case.  TomTom is no exception.  The Treo 650 is not "officially" supported on their site.  That's actually not entirely true.  I was recently able to hack the Go 700 and got it to pair up successfully with my Treo 650.  The trick to this was enabling the Bluethooth mode on the Treo 650 and turning "Dial-up Networking" [ ON ].  The phone WILL successfully pair up with the Go 700 (you might have to try a few times) and if you have a service plan like Cingular's MediaNet (I have the unlimited), then you will be able to connect to TomTom's Plus services and download updates, get traffic and many more services.  You will NOT however be able to connect to the Go 700 and use it as an external speaker/mic for the Treo 650.  Basically you won't be able to use *any* normal bluetooth features, like pairing it with your headset, while in DUN mode.  That's not such a big deal to me, it might be to others.  I thought it might be interesting info for any of you Go 700 users out there that might have a Treo.  This hack might even work on the newer Go 910 and with the Treo 700 series phones.

If you don't have a portable GPS unit, you don't know what you are missing!  I wasn't really sold on the idea before.  I figured since I didn't drive out of my normal areas too often, it was a waste.  Well, how wrong I was.  If you have any kind of a lengthy commute, combining the GPS with the traffic services alone is worth the money.  The Points of Interest (POI's) is another great feature to have.  If you are somewhere and need to find say...the closest pharmacy, the Go 700 will take you to the closest pharmacy you specify.  The unit comes with an internal database of millions of POI's and you can add additional POI's by downloading them via the net, or through TomTom's website, as well as directly via the Plus services via that bluetooth connection on your phone.  Pretty darn slick.  And if you get tired of the voices that ship with the unit, you can add additional voices, available via a variety of websites out there.  My favorite co-pilot these days is "Yoda".  Yeah, you read right - YODA.  ;-)  "Right you must turn in - 400 yards!"  If you haven't had Yoda as your co-pilot, you haven't lived yet. ;-)

Technorati Tags: Cool Gear, GPS, Hacking, TomTom, Treo 650

So you've been surfing the web for what seems like decades and everything just kind of seems to look the same.  Yeah - I know exactly how you feel.  But have you been checking out what some of the hottest talent on the web is doing lately?  I bet you haven't, so here's a taste.  If you are a Dixie Chicks fan, then you are really going to love this site, if not - you are still going to love this site!  For the best user experience, you'll want to make sure you are viewing this site on a fairly spiffy machine.  Breakin' out that beige G3 won't cut it for this one.... The Dixie Chicks Underground

Make sure you surf through EVERYTHING.  Don't ignore the nav bar below the blog, don't overlook the map tp the left, it's a key part of the site.  Make sure to look for the Dope Squirrel (hint: look in the tree), and don't forget to take a ride on the jetski!

Technorati Tags: Cool Sites, Design

I'm sure many of you work in places where you might have some, lets say... "overly aggressive" administrators, or egomaniacal over-controlling managers / executives within your organization or IT department.  This is always a bummer to me because it just sends the WRONG message to your employees.  I don't condone surfing the web and wasting your company's time on looking at porn or other unproductive sites, but there are many legit websites that happen to get filtered out by these overly aggressive content filtering systems.  They tend to filter out sites like bisonium.com and techmeme.com because it classifies them as "discussion forums."  Well, there's some brilliant thinking if I have ever seen some.  Lets block news sites, forums and blogs where people might be talking about something useful.

So for those of you stuck in Content Filtering Hell, I'm here to restore your God given rights to freedom of information.  There are plenty of ways to accomplish this, but generally speaking, it all boils down to using a remote proxy service to conceal your activities and bypass content filters and firewalls within your organization.

*** DISCLAIMER ***

This is not intended for you to use this in any way which will abuse or violate your company policies.  Take the following with  grain of salt and be SMART about how you do this.  As a general rule of thumb, it's against most company policies to circumvent protective measures they have put in place, or to tinker with system settings unless otherwise told.  However, if you have your own personal computer or are in a public place with your laptop and find yourself needing access beyond the filters, this is for you.

A good primer and simple way to set this up can be found here: http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork.  If for some reason that isn't good enough, or you wanna really geek out hard, there are plenty of alternatives.  A few you can start with are by using widely available and free tools such as TOR, Vidalia and JAP.  These tools in conjunction with a little know-how, and some free open proxies throughout the world, should get you up and running in no time.  I wont bore you with all the details on setting this up, most of you will probably be able to figure that out using the websites I listed above, and the setup will vary according to your system.

I believe people should be treated as adults in the workplace.  Until proven otherwise, there shouldn't be restriction to the free flow of information.  There are always going to be cases where you need to censor content, but it can be done without disrupting the workplace and causing resentment among your employees.  Management needs to think wisely before implementing such Gestapo tactics.  Hopefully you don't work in such an environment, but as we all know...life isn't always perfect.  Rock on and HACK THE PLANET!  :-)

Technorati Tags: Big Brother, Censorship, Security, Tech Tips