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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Thursday, May 30, 2002Going to visit my dad in the hospital shortly. On Friday he had developed problems breathing due to fluid build-up in his lungs, they stuck a bunch of new tubes in him and kept him sedated over the weekend. As of Tuesday he was still having trouble breathing but was concious.
The good news is that he isn't dead, is still expected to fully recover, has a month's worth of accrued vacation and sick time, and the Family and Medical Leave Act protects his job for twelve weeks.
Clinton got something right...
Dave had linked to me...
Frank McPherson sent a pointer to the Pocket Blog, it covers all things Pocket PC. I've decided don't want a Pocket PC. I don't want an iPod either. I want an all-digital Walkman that connects easily to my LAN, using 802.11b. $500. Anyone want to make one for me? I didn't think so.
But he took down the link when I pointed out that Pocket Blog is a Blogger API client for Pocket PCs, not a Pocket PC weblog. Doh!
Never look a gift link in the mouth...
infoSync: NTT DoCoMo picture phone.Handspring has launched two color Treo models, the Treo 270 and Treo 90. The Treo 270 is basically a Treo 180 with a color screen, $499 with contract or $699 without. The Treo 90 removes the wireless features and adds an SD socket (non-SDIO), $299. Coverage at infoSync, PDABuzz, and allNetDevices.
Why no SD socket in the 270?
Nokia's 9290 Communicator has finally launched in the US, coverage at The Register and PDABuzz. Direct price is $599 without contract. Single-band, doesn't support GPRS, specs don't say if the modem is analog or digital (Voicestream only supports digital CSD connections).
Too little, too late I think.
osOpinion: Cell Phones Gain 2600 Games
Users of Motorola V60i and V66i cell phones soon will be able to download classic Atari 2600 games and play them on their phones' LCD screen. Pong, Centipede, Breakout, Asteroids and other games from the early '80s are coming, thanks to a global distribution deal between Motorola and iFone.
They'll be downloadable for about $0.70 each, but the phone can only hold one at a time.
CNET: Bringing rapid-fire photos to digicams
While most digital cameras' processors leave you waiting between shots, start-up NuCore's chips let you fire off five frames a second. Pixel freaks, take notice.
My biggest complaint with digital cameras has been the cycle time between shots. Panasonic's DMC-F7 is the first to use the chip.
Web McDeb has a Ferret theme for Pocket PCs. I used to have Ferrets, the first was a stray that I took home and my family quickly peaked at three of the little buggers. They are addictive.The .NET Guy on job satisfaction:
Apparently, being busy is more important to me than super-sexy technology.
For me there is nothing worse for job satisfaction than too much idle time. While I was working in Europe, I had a ton of responsibilities and was always taking on new work, but the bulk of my time at the office was spent doing nothing. I was bored out of my skull.
I'll take being busy over anything.
allNetDevices: Kyocera Announces Pocket Cosmo Multimedia PDA.
Based on Tao Group's 'intent' multimedia platform with expected availability in July, featuring an original user interface and fast Java performance.
There's an Intent OS for the Zaurus SL-5000D, never got around to trying it out.
TSL: Will the Music Industry Hold Up Eminem as their Poster Boy?.It will be interesting to watch the numbers on Eminem's album come out. If the numbers are at all low, watch for the music industry to claim piracy, when in fact it might just be that folks are tiring of Eminem. I also think the now prevalent "singles over albums" mentality will play a part in all of this as well. Who really wants to pay for the bad tracks on his albums anymore?
Normally I stand firmly against the "sharing" of MP3s, but Eminem is a pox that is destroying the art of Rap. He is the Britney Spears of Rap. Props to Dr. Dre for finding the ultimate vehicle for marketing a Rap product to the white suburban youth market (Eminem's first single wouldn't have gone anywhere if someone hadn't laid it down over AC/DC's "Back in Black"), but now it's time to move on.
Please pirate Eminem's newest album.
Or stop listening to him.
Thank you.
allNetDevices: MMS Service for Palm, Pocket PC AvailableTrio of Xbox articles from CNET
Xbox struggling with math test
For the software publishing industry, video games are a numbers game. And for now, Microsoft is on the losing end. Game publishers say it's a simple matter of economics.
It's too early for this sort of article, the Xbox is only six months old. At the one-year mark we should be able to predict the loser, and I strongly suspect that it will be Nintendo (the US console market has never supported three consoles for any significant period, someone will cease production of consoles around the two-year mark).
The first add-ons that purportedly allow the console to play illegally copied game software have gone on sale, but analysts say they're unlikely to inspire a wave of copy infringement.
Mod chips have always had a limited audience, mostly they have been used by hard-core RPG'ers wanting to play titles that haven't been released in their home market yet (if ever). More interesting is the potential to run homebrew software, this is an important step for hackers in completely reverse-engineering the system and replacing the system BIOS. In six months someone will probably have produced an ISO that will boot in a stock Xbox and replace the BIOS with a hacker-friendly one.
Microsoft mulls Xbox-PC connection
An online survey conducted recently by a Microsoft partner indicates that the software giant is considering producing a kit that would let people use an Xbox video game console and a TV to access entertainment files stored on their PC.
Not likely to happen until component prices fall sufficiently for Microsoft to break even on a console sold with such a kit. So long as the Xbox is subsidized, Microsoft will be very cautious about creating compelling non-gaming features. This is why the Xbox doesn't have a good interface for playing ripped CDs.
