January 27, 2010
Apple Introduces iPad
I do not like it.
Posted by Edward at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2007
The Cost of Monoculture
Here's the intro of Gen Kanai's blog entry that had me pretty much riveted during my lunch hour:
What would you say if I told you that there was a nation that was at the forefront of technology, an early adopter of ecommerce, leading the world in 3G mobile adoption, in wireless broadband, in wired broadband adoption, as well as in citizen-driven media. Sounds like an amazing place, right? Technology utopia?Wrong.
This nation is also a unique monoculture where 99.9% of all the computer users are on Microsoft Windows. This nation is a place where Apple Macintosh users cannot bank online, make any purchases online, or interact with any of the nation's e-government sites online. In fact, Linux users, Mozilla Firefox users and Opera users are also banned from any of these types of transactions because all encrypted communications online in this nation must be done with Active X controls.
Where is this nation?
South Korea.
Posted by Edward at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)
December 28, 2006
Wiimotes? Don't Have Any. PS3's? How Many Do You Want?
The Wii is fun. Very fun. Kids love it. Adults are swinging away in front of the TV while laughing stitches into their stomachs. Even the ladies, usually video game-averse, are asking to break out the Wii Sports Bowling game. Fun, fun, fun to be had by everyone. In fact, the only thing limiting the throughput of fun is the number of Wii Remotes, Wiimotes, you have at any given time. Folks are fighting over the next turn to play one Super Monkey Ball's fifty party games. So, over the past couple of days, while I've been off from work, I've been trying to get two additional controllers to max out to the four the Wii allows at a time. To my amazement I couldn't find one at the local Toys R Us, Target, or Wal-Mart. Further flooring me was the fact that at a Wal-Mart and Gamestop upstate by Woodbury Commns they had absolutely no Wiimotes but a few Playstation 3s. These once blue-hot consoles can now be found at more and more retailers just sitting there like lumps of coal. How ironic. The PS3 I tried to camp out to buy, that once sold at a considerable mark-up at E-Bay, that Sony was airlifting like food to the Sudan was sitting there like neglected Christmas leftovers. I guess everyone's been having far more fun with the Wii… Wii want Wii.
Posted by Edward at 02:03 PM | Comments (2)
November 19, 2006
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Part PS3 backlash, part nostalgia. I grabbed a Wii today at the Times Square Toys R Us. As it turns out it happened to be one of several thousand. Along the line Nintendonians were giving away Wii skullcaps, baseball hats, DVD's, and wristbands. Between my brother and myself we copped all of them.
Unfortunately, the whole experience hasn't been all rosy. My first attempt to connect to the internet via the Wii resulted in a firmware update that corrupted its ability to connect at all. The only remedy was a replacement Wii that was shipped to me via UPS 2nd Day Air. Supposedly, the replacement one is new, since the Wii's too new to have refurbs. I'd like to believe it, but there's no guarantee. Other than that we've had no problems. Screen burn-in does not seem to be a problem on our Pioneer plasma, remotes haven't become ingrained in the furniture, and we haven't broken our arms... yet.
Posted by Edward at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
Sun Opens Up Java
Sun finally launched Java into open source orbit.
Posted by Edward at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2006
PlayStation 3 Launch Camp Out
List of things to bring:
1. Hot Cocoa
2. Skullcap
3. Tarp/Tent
4. Blanket
5. Chair
6. iPod
7. Donuts to feed fellow PS3 hounds
8. Piss bottle for the van
9. Credit card
10. Baseball bat to start looting and rioting if after 12 hours of waiting I don't get one...
Posted by Edward at 03:19 PM | Comments (2)
August 23, 2006
Mac Pro: Looks and Brains and Cheap!?
Businessweek ran a cost/performance comparison between the new Mac Pro desktop and a Dell Precision Workstation. The Mac Pro comes out on top! Read More
Posted by Edward at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2006
Zillow.com
http://www.zillow.com offers free real estate appraisls with Google Map-like functionality. Now you can see how much your house is worth in comparison with the "Joneses"... Cha-ching!!!!!
Posted by Edward at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2006
Verizon FiOS
I packed a lot of actual productive activity during my first alternating Friday off. I visited the dentist after a year's absence and was summarily reprimanded with perhaps one of the harshest cleanings of my life... It seemed like the hygienist carved out her name on one of my molars. Then, I more or less launched this redesigned web site. Finally, I oversaw the installation of Verizon's FiOS fiber optic data service. The main factor for switching from Time Warner Cable's Road Runner was actually not the purported twice as fast speeds. It was FiOS's $15 discount over RR while still being potentially faster. $45 for internet service just seems prohibitively expensive, especially in this burgeoning age of ubiquitous wi-fi.
So far, the speeds have been pretty much as promised. Here are two samplings from Ookla's Beta SpeedTest:
Since I still have RR service I ran the same test with the cable data service:
As you can see, there are definite, measurable differences between the services. However, under normal usage - web surfing, e-mail, googleVideo - the difference is not as pronounced. Nevertheless, I'll be cancelling the overpriced Road Runner service today. Hmmmm... whatever will I do with that extra $15 per month?
Posted by Edward at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2006
What's This?
It's a Redesign!
For some inexplicable reason, I've been devoting what little downtime I've for the past week to redesigning my personal web site. For about four years, it has been the 100% Flash version I developed a while back ago in college. Perhaps it was this very long period of time that compelled me to fire up the good old Dreamweaver MX and kick some XHTML/CSS knowledge.
I've had the general look and feel that you see now sitting in a Photoshop file for about two years. Every now and then I'd take a peek, squint, ponder, then tweak a font here, move a few pixels there before closing out. Last Saturday, I reached closure on the design to keep from playing with it. I just dove into the markup and stylesheets and got completely engrossed.
It was just like the good old days when I got my first gig straight out of college as a Web Producer jockey. Man, the XHTML and CSS were just flying out of my fingers. It was a welcome break from the C# and WebObjects code I've been going blind on at work. Some CSS, refresh, squint, gaze, some HTML, refresh, squint gaze, smile. This was instant gratification. The whole process was analagous to my code, compile, execute cycle at my workstation but still felt different. Oh, it's that right side of my brain that had been left on the sidelines for a while. He was just happy as hell to be called back into the game. Hopefully he scored a winning goal for you guys. Enjoy!
Oh, by the way, there are still some visual bugs with the site as I track down all the necessary Movable Type templates. Please bear with me.
Posted by Edward at 09:08 PM | Comments (1)
May 19, 2006
Google Web Toolkit
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
Java Javascript Mapping from the gurus that ironically breathed life into Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest.
Posted by Edward at 01:03 AM | Comments (1)