General

Every post will receive this label.

There are 416 posts filed in General (this is page 39 of 42).

Intercrack

The Post-Gazette has an article today about how the internet can be addicting. While their evidence is largely anecdotal, the lifestyle changes we’re seeing thanks to the online world are really mind-boggling when you think about them.

Sound schmound

My laptop randomly decided it didn’t want to play sound anymore tonight, and that Norton would not work anymore. I fiddled with it for a few hours just now, restarted a few times, all to no avail. Couldn’t even remove Norton. Then in despiration I restarted once more while I dug out the XP cd, ready to reinstall XP. Of course, this time it booted up just fine and dandy.

So much for sleep at a reasonable hour…

As a result I didn’t get to start on the photo project today unfortunately. Coming soon though, I swear.

Flickr

I have these ideas running through my head of some sort of massive personal photo project via flickr.com. More on that tomorrow probably, but the site itself look very cool and very del.icio.us-ish.

Speaking of iPods…

Figure I should comment on this “iPod shuffle” that’s exploding on the scene.

I’ll admit, when I first heard the words “$99 iPod” I was tempted. But the lack of a screen really hurts it in my opinion. With no way to pick my song other than rote memorization of track order, well it’s just not gonna work for me. My Muvo TX is about the same physical size, and manages to fit in a small screen. And it only cost me about $90.

Admittedly, the Muvo only has 256mb, compared to the 512 that the $99 version of the iPod shuffle offers. But I can’t help but think if Apple really wanted to include a screen they could have, without bumping the price up too much. Screens have been a pretty standard feature on players for years now; removing it seems like a step backwards, especially for an mp3 player giant like Apple.

Also the marketing on the shuffle really makes me laugh. They’re trying to turn the lack of a screen into a feature somehow. From the official site:

“The trail you run every day looks different with an iPod shuffle. Daily gridlock feels less mundane when you don’t know what song will play next.”

I do love the warning at the bottom of the page: “Do not eat iPod shuffle.”

Techbrarians

Tame the Web has a great article up, summarizing 12 tech-related issues and practices librarians should be on top of. I’m to to speed on most of them, and I find the idea of iPods in libraries particularly intriguing.

A few years back the library I worked at experimented with offering audiobooks on 64mb Rio 500s. It didn’t really catch on and the Rios were tossed in the bargain bin at the annual book sale (and thus one became my first mp3 player). I tried out the audiobook service the library offered on them, and the sound quality was the real issue for me. I don’t know what bitrate was used, but it was artifacting all over the place. With an iPod though… the extra storage space really opens up doors for such a loaning program to be successful (including a car adapter would probably help as well). The only stumbling block might be what to do when a patron breaks an iPod accidentally… replacement charges would be rather high.

I also love the idea of libraries creating custom browser toolbars. I wonder how hard that is to do, cause I’m tempted… Or even to figure out how to add a library system’s catalog to Firefox’s plugin type search engines. Hmm, thinking to do!

End of an era

I don’t know how I forgot to mention this, but Dave Barry wrote his last column on the 2nd.

He’s been a consistently funny writer and I’ll miss having his new stuff to amuse me each week.

TechTV RIP

Info via Slashdot:

G4/TechTV announced yesterday that they are dropping the TechTV from their name, and will be known solely as G4.

I never really watched much TechTV before they were bought by G4, due to the lack of satellite/digital cable we had at the time. But what I did watch at friends’ houses was always interesting and fun. Intellingent stuff for intelligent techies. G4 seems to aim more for the lowest common denominator.

One of their new shows is going to be “Girls Gone Wired”, “a digital beauty pageant featuring the hottest 2D and 3D women on the planet.”

Worse yet, for some reason G4 has decided to start extensive coverage of “Formula Drift” racing, whatever that is. Within a few years they’ll just be a Spike TV clone.

I had really looked forward to the day when I could afford cable that included TechTV, cause I’m a dork like that. Guess it’s not to be.