Tech Archives - Page 19 of 28

Random catch-up

I’ve been falling behind on blogging recently, I’ll admit. Here’s a quick list of stuff that has caught my eye recently:

WordPress is offering free blog hosting along the lines of blogger’s setup. Simply get in line at WordPress.com and await your golden ticket. I really love working in wordpress, and having someone else keep an eye on updates and general maintenance for me would make it even better!

Meebo.com is an amazing web-based meta-IM service. I’m really excited about all these “web 2.0″/Ajax sites we’re seeing pop up. My only real problem with Meebo is that its too easy to accidentally close the window and log off. But its still a great product for being so early in development. Its great to see real applications that are entirely web-based.

Speaking of Ajaxy sites, Netvibes.com is my new homepage. Its similar to Microsoft’s Start.com and Google’s IG, but better executed. I’ve never been able to stay logged into Google’s between browser sessions, for example. Plus, it lets you put multiple Gmail accounts on the page, something neither other service does. I can monitor my ‘real’ account and my spamcatcher at the same time! Netvibes could use a better, more relevant URL though… I keep having to look it up.

In library land, D-Lib has a great analysis article this month on the Google Print project. I admit a bit shamefully that I haven’t been following news on this topic as closely as I probably should. This piece was a good catchup.

Nintendo finally unveiled the controller for their next console, the Revolution. And the design is, well, revolutionary. There’s tons of potential for innovative, more fully interactive gameplay here, and I sincerely hope Nintendo follows through. I find myself more and more drawn to the innovative games over the newest hot shooters recently. The Revolution might be the one next gen console I invest in.

I also continue to really enjoy and learn from Digg.com. I’m trying to find a way to integrate my recent diggs into the site here, but I just can’t make it work with the design. Suggestions are welcome.

That’s all for now, I hope to be back more fully in the blogging swing of things soon.

And the award goes to…

…Xbox Live!

An emmy, even!

Microsoft’s online console gaming service won in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Technology and Advanced New Media.”

I suppose an emmy has to go to to one concrete entity – otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go to podcasting or some other general concept.

Nintendo DS

Last weekend I made a trip to the Unclaimed Baggage store in Scottsboro, Alabama. They gather up all the stuff people leave in their, well, unclaimed baggage at airports and sell it rather substantially discounted off of list price. Flickr pictures are here.

The big find of the trip for me was my Nintendo DS. It has some scratches on the outside, and is missing a couple of unimportant accessories, but the discount made up for it.

After a week of playing with it on and off, I’m extremely impressed. I know I’m a bit late on the bandwagon for the system, but I still feel it is worth talking about. I only own three DS games, and two of them are extremely innovative. This is largely due to the touch screen. The lower of the two screens is manipulated via a stylus, and this new method of control really revolutionizes gameplay.

Super Mario 64 DS is a remake of the Nintendo 64 Mario game with a few extra features. I never really liked the original, so wasn’t surprised when this one underwhelmed me as well. Thankfully, the new mini-games make extensive use of the touch pad and are worth a play. This game came with the system or I wouldn’t own it.

Meteos, my next purchase, instantly claimed hours of my life. The game is a twist on the old “blocks falling from the sky” puzzle style that Tetris made famous. This time you manipulate the blocks directly on the lower screen with the stylus. The gameplay feels more immediate somehow, really putting you in the middle of the action.

Today I celebrated my first paycheck by purchasing Kirby’s Canvas Curse. Unlike Meteos, which has an option to play via control pad, Kirby can only be moved around via the touch pad. The player has to draw paths for him to follow, and tap the little pink dude to nudge him along the way.

Neither of these games would be particularly remarkable, or even playable, if controlled via a standard control pad and buttons.

As a bonus, the DS is backwards compatible with Game Boy Advance games. I scooped up the original Super Mario Brothers game very cheaply. This back catalog is a big plus. And to top it all off, the system is wireless-capable. I don’t know anybody else to play against right now, but this fall’s highly anticipated DS Mario Kart game promises to be enabled for free internet play. Sign me up!

The Playstation Portable may hold the ‘sexy’ spot in the handheld gaming market, but the DS delivers a unique and fun gaming experience at more than $100 less. Kudos to Nintendo for trying something different.

As a disclaimer, Nintendo does have a high nostalgia value for me. I grew up on their consoles, and their consoles alone. It almost feels like coming home again 🙂

Meetro

I was excited to discover Meetro last night. But now… not so much.

Meetro is an IM client that interfaces with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN. But Meetro doesn’t stop there, and goes on to add their own IM service. The key is that the Meetro service is “location aware”. Enter your location’s address, and your buddy list fills up with people physically near to you. From there, you browse the users’ profiles to find those with similar interests. Strike up a conversation and voila, you’ve got a new friend to hang out with.

As a new transplant to the Huntsville area without a social group, this core functionality really excited me. An easy way to meet like-minded people!

However, Meetro has an achilles heel – nobody uses it. Or at least nobody in my area. At first I thought the client wasn’t even working – “within 1/4 mile”, “within a mile”, “within 5 miles”, and “Other Locals” were all showing zero results. I had to broaden the last category substantially to find anybody. The nearest person I’ve seen online so far is 146 miles away, and there are only five within 300 miles.

Which brings me to my point: I think there are simply too many options out there. AIM, Yahoo, ICQ and MSN have the market pretty locked up. How can a newcomer break in? Users established their preference long ago. Enabling Meetro to connect to these older services was a step in the right direction, but the key question is how to convince users that they need this extra functionality. They’ve gotten along just fine without it so far, after all.

Even when a user does venture into something new, how are they to pick an option? Google Talk? Meetro? Service XYZ? There are too many options for any newcomer to reach the critical mass of users necessary for success in a collaborative environment. A company almost has to be first to market, even if not the best – imagine if there were half a dozen capable alternatives to Flickr. They never would have gotten the user base necessary to justify continued development and improvement of service.

A site or service needs users to get users. I don’t tend to be an early adopter who sees this process firsthand, and so would be interested in a case study on how to successfully grow a user base.

Meanwhile, I’m crossing my fingers that Meetro catches on. But not holding my breath.

Xbox 360 – Taking my money elsewhere

Today Microsoft announced its price points and accessory list for the upcoming Xbox 360. I’m now almost certain I won’t be buying one. Here’s one of many stories on the announcement. “Major Nelson”, who heads up the Xbox Live program, has more details, but his site is getting hammered at the moment.

My current Xbox has given me many happy hours of gaming with friends and online. While I have no doubt that the 360 would do the same, in the end the pricing is just prohibitive for me.

In order to preserve some semblance of a low price point, Microsoft is going with two versions of the console: One at $399, and another at $299. Here’s what you get for the extra $100 that the cheaper version doesn’t include:

-Wireless controller instead of wired
-20GB hard drive
-Fancier A/V cable
-Remote Control for DVD playback
-Headset
-Ethernet cable

In all, really not a bad package for just $100 more. While expensive, I could still see myself possibly paying $399. But the killer for me is the accessory prices.

$50 for an extra controller? $20 for a simple snap-on decorative faceplate? But the biggest problem is the pricing on the wireless adapter. Playing games online with the 360 over wireless will cost you an extra $100. Simply outrageous! I recently bought a wireless router AND a card for my laptop for $70.

And in the end, those without the hard drive will be hurt. I’ve seen unconfirmed statements from people who work at Microsoft that the drive will be required to play online. If true, they are in effect buying a system that is crippled just out of the box.

So let’s say I want to play a game with a friend online at launch day. Here’s what I’d have to spend:
System – $399
Extra controller – $50
Game – $50 (estimated)
Wireless adapter – $100

Total – $599

Simply out of my price range.

Plus, Microsoft has fractured the market. Are game developers going to make games that use every ability of the 360, when they know that some system owners will be unable to play the resulting product? No, they’ll code to the lowest common denominator.

Just a few hours ago, Microsoft almost certainly had my money in their pockets. Now I’m in the “wait and see” camp, and leaning towards not buying it at all.

I’d reserved $350 in my budget for the purchase of a new system this fall. The Playstation Portable is looking much more attractive this morning.

For consideration: This kind of pricing structure is also going to put a damper on the library gaming programs that have been gaining momentum lately.

More widgets

Richard over at CISTI took the library widget idea seriously.

He got a colleague who is obviously better at picking up XML than I to pull together a catalog searching widget. There’s a couple other nice features too, such as direct links to hold requests and books checked out.

But the absolute best part is that this provides a jumping off point for other library widget developers! The best way to learn any kind of web programming/scripting/etc is to have existing source code to look at and play with. Thankfully, Konfabulator’s widgets do not hide the source XML. I’ve already modified the CISTI widget to work on a basic level with the UAH catalog.

And then I noticed that Stephen, who actually coded the CISTI widget, made it even more accessable! In the widget preferences, the base URL for catalog searches can be changed! I spent 2 minutes playing with the UAH catalog to find the correct formatted URL, and voila! Instant access without even touching the underlying XML.

I hope Stephen doesn’t mind – I’m going to see about modifying the graphics and other features to make it more specific to UAH. I’d been trying to teach myself how to make widgets based on Konfabulator’s documentation. Seeing Stephen’s code makes so many things fall into place!

update: I’ve hit a snag… UAH’s catalog uses sessions. So once a session times out no more searches can be done without logging back in, even as a guest. I’ll have to put in some thought on how to get around the problem.

Retro Computer News

CBC, a Canadian news channel and web site, has a large archive of old news video clips online. Two in particular made for interesting viewing on this lazy Sunday afternoon:

October, 1982: “Kids and their computers”
Kids begin to learn computer skills in school and elsewhere. How great that a public library was offering computer classes to pre-school kids that early! Heh, I just realized that when this story aired I was merely a few months old.

October, 1993: “A network called ‘Internet'”
It wasn’t even ‘The Internet’ yet, just ‘Internet’. In ’93, the world was just starting to take notice. CBC did a pretty good job of grasping some of the big issues the Internet would spawn later in life – permanence of information, social groups, irrelevance of distance, legal issues, etc. A lot more even-handed and accurate than network news reports of tech stories tend to be today.

I found the latter story via Digg.com, and browsing from there led me to the former. I’m finding lots of great links on Digg recently, and am working up a better method to distribute them than using tons of posts.

Linkage

My posts have been slow lately, I know. So, here’s two cool links I can across today:

Wired.com has a nice primer on RFID. On that note, is there an accepted pronunciation for the term? I say it “arfid” but have also heard the acronym spelled out. Also related, John C. Dvorak in episode 16 of This Week in Tech had a fun idea to combat RFID privacy concerns: Put a piece of tin foil in your wallet.

Secondly, the social bookmarking/tech news site Digg.com led me to a fascinating document on TheSmokingGun.com. The post is scans of four typed pages detailing Nixon’s contingency speech in case Armstrong and Aldrin died on the moon, as well as related notes. Very eerie reading.

Podcasting revisited

Well, I have it about three weeks. I’m putting the podcast idea on hold. A couple of people offered to contribute early on, but there isn’t a big enough pool to get regular shows together. No hard feelings, I understand we don’t have a lot of free time. Should anyone get interested in the future, I still offer to play MC for the whole thing!

Podcast roll call

I’m new to the podcasting world. In the pre-iTunes era of podcasting, I only listened to two: Open Stacks and This Week in Tech. iTunes was the killer app for me – its so easy now for me to subscribe! I haven’t quite figured out how to provide links to the podcasts in iTunes, but they can all be found by searching Apple’s podcast directory inside the program.

Here’s my annotated and growing list, in alphabetical order:

ABC News Shuffle – Two reporters’ perspectives on major news of the week
CNN News Update – An hourly news summary from CNN Radio
CommandN – Amber Mac and Mike Lazazzera from Canada’s Call For Help tv show make web picks of the week and cover a bit of tech news. Note, this is a videocast.
Diggnation – Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht of Digg.com discuss the top stories on the site each week.
iTunes New Music Tuesday – Snippets of new music for sale on iTunes each week. Song selection is a bit of hit or miss for me, so I often end up skipping portions.
KFI’s Tech Guy – Leo Laporte, formerly of TechTV, podcasts his weekly California radio shows one week after they air.
OPAL Podcast – Online Programming for All Libraries. The gaming show was particularly interesting!
Open Stacks – Greg Schwartz, the Godfather of librarian podcasting, runs a library commentary ‘cast.
Science @ NASA Feature Stories Podcast – Someone at NASA reads major press releases. Its blatantly obvious that the speaker is reading from a page, but the content is still interesting.
This Week in Tech – A whole bunch of former TechTV hosts get together and shoot the breeze each week.
Xbox Live’s Major Nelson – “Major Nelson” is in charge of Microsoft’s online gaming Xbox Live community. A great insider perspective.