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September 26, 2005
cool - AdSense is location sensitive
this is interesting - Google must use Quova or something like that to serve up different ads based on where the user's browser is.
here are some ads that are served up in Chinese on my regular old english blog...
Posted by Steve at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
great W800i photo (praying mantis)
praying mantises are bad ass. i found this in a park yesterday, and tried to pick it up - it immediately attacked me.
i would note, that mantises are not usually found in the Chicago area, but have been pretty easy to find the last few summers. and you don't believe in global warming?
Posted by Steve at 09:36 AM | Comments (516)
September 19, 2005
more on music phones
a few days ago i posted about testing phones for being a combined phone/mp3 player/camera, and i must say i've pretty much settled into using the Sony Ericsson W800i. it's just generally a great phone, and the only thing i miss from my nokia 6880 is mobipocket reader. it's the first phone i've been really recommending to a lot of people in a long time. that said, it's a little pricey to import right now, and in the UK these things are going for £49 with a contract, so maybe we'll see these at T-Mobile US or Cingular at a reasonable price in the future, but i wouldn't count on it - i've heard that TMO US has all but thrown out SonyE/// from their handset manufacturer list, and they'd need to produce another model for the 850Mhz band for Cingular, who also seems pretty happy with their RCKR exclusive. I'm using the W800 with Cingular Blue in Chicago, and haven't had any reception problems as of yet.
anyway, a good camera is important to me, so it's pretty much put the audiovox smt 5600 out of the running, despite it's ties to yahoo! music unlimited.
of course, just last week - orange released an update to this windows mobile phone branded as the Orange SPV C550.
there's a good albeit somewhat cranky review of this phone at TrustedReviews, who incidentally i am trusting more and more these days, that points out this phone still isn't quite up to snuff with a few things (specificlaly memory card still under the battery!) but you will noticed that they did bump up the camera spec to a 1.3 Megapixel - which think will be enough to get a few people to upgrade.
Posted by Steve at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
google blog search
haven't we all been waiting for this moment for a long time? an interesting approach to blog search. results in both atom and rss. gotta think technorati is sweating a bit.
it's interesting when you do a vanity search, you see the things you have written instead of the blogs you have been mentioned in. this will all get continuously tweaked, i am sure.
Posted by Steve at 08:04 AM | Comments (4)
September 10, 2005
get a FeedBurner sticker
here. es todo.
Posted by Steve at 03:12 PM | Comments (116)
September 09, 2005
Access buys PalmSource for a song
Valuations are a funny thing. And so subjective. Access buys PalmSouce which I get - Access has been trying to get onto US handsets for years - first powering all the Sprint PCS Vision phones, and then by deploying a third party browser on things like S60 handsets and the PSP.
What i don't get is only for $324 million. Wow is that all PalmSource was worth? How many pre-IPO google employees could have bought PalmSource individually and had their own personal puppet show?
Didn't NewsCorp just buy MySpace for $580 million?
i know if you dig in there's reasons behind both these valuations, but wow, $324 mm seems really low.
Posted by Steve at 07:51 PM | Comments (201)
testing phones for digital music (no ROKR)
first of all, the ROKR - big yawn. the *only* thing cool about this phone is that is has Apple DRM decoding included. that's a key feature however, and will sell many phones. a version 2 of this phone might be better.
at any rate, the two phones i have been trying out are the SonyEricsson W800i, the so called "Walkman Phone" and the Audiovox SMT 5600 (Same as the Orange SPV)
(images cribbed from orange UK )
Both of these phones can support a 1GIG memory card (in fact, you can put a 2GIG card in the W800i) - a memory stick Duo PRO with the SE, and mini-SD with the audiovox.
Here are the pros and cons of each so far, both as a music player and in general:
SonyEricsson W800i
pros
- comes with some great sounding passive noise reduction headphones. similar to the Shure ones that cost $200
- copying audio files to the device as a USB mass storage device, the phone's audio directory automatically syncs these
- external controls - play/pause, volume up/down on this phone. you do not have to use software to contol the music
- a 2 MegaPixel camera that is really good
- good integration of the music app. as new songs play, they pop over what you are doing unobtrusively. if the phone rings while listening, you can take the call with the headset, and then resume. it's slick.
- the provided adaptor allows you to use your own headphones
cons
- this pop-port-type connection thing. no native USB connector, no standard headset jack. the pop-port wire does have a standard 1/8" jack about midway down. why not put this on the phone?! (this is also a pro though). if you lose this cable, though, you are screwed
- incompatible with every other Sony Ericsson charger (this is a con for me, as i have invested lots in SE charging solutions)
- the memory card fills up fast with 2 megapixel photos
- not really compatible with any online music store, unless you un-DRM your iTunes tracks, and then convert to AAC
- the email app is weak
Audiovox SMT 5600
pros
- well, the best thing about this phone is that it is compatible with Yahoo! music subscription content. it also plays MP3 and other windows media audio (and video)
- the sound is pretty decent with the provided headphones
- this phone uses a standard headset jack (but not a headphone jack). that means the headphones can be replaced and converted to a standard 1/8" headphone jack
- the email app on this phone is pretty good.
- active sync works WAY better than the nokia sync applications i've been using
cons
- one annoying thing is that when syncing new tracks to the phone, you have to have to manually "sync" the libary with the file system. after doing that, you have to set windows media player 10 to look at the memory card again vs. the phone memory - even though you can't sync audio files to the phone memory
- sucky, sucky, VGA camera
- no memory card at all included with this phone
- c'mon, no one likes using a Microsoft OS, do they?
Verdict:
if you aren't tied to a particular music subscription service, or are pretty adept at converting your library - you gotta go with the W800i. if you are really into Y! music unlimited, and don't care so much about the camera - look no further than the Audiovox SMT 5600.
for a much better review, see mobile burn's review.
Posted by Steve at 08:55 AM | Comments (1)
Impeach Bush test results
wow, according to measuremap, i got 12 visitors in 8 hours from technorati by spamming one of their most popular searches and pinging them. imagine if i actually put real content in my description.
ipod nano. ipod nano. ipod nano.
i think tag spamming is going to be a huge problem. something technorati and delicious (i'm not going to bother with their wacky domain) will have to figure out. most of the skeptorati i talk to think delicious will fail because of this. skeptorati are the techhy types that hate everything else *they* aren't doing. you know the type...
Posted by Steve at 04:57 AM | Comments (12)
September 08, 2005
Impeach Bush
this is only a test (although i probably agree with the sentiment). i noticed that "Impeach Bush" was the second highest technorati search today. i found that interesting, but more than that i wanted to see if technorati would index this blog. we shall see. i also saw AdSense ads for that keyword. funny.
Posted by Steve at 08:37 PM | Comments (7)
September 05, 2005
fox river from batavia
i had to get a Sony Ericsson W800i for a project. wow, the camera on this thing just pretty much blows every cameraphone i've seen away.
more to come on this phone.
Posted by Steve at 10:49 PM | Comments (6)
yep, RealMedia still sucks
i haven't had a real media player on any of my machines for years. it was always pretty much a virus in my opinion - you couldn't get rid of it if you tried, and it infected all parts of your machine.
for some stupid reason, i thought i would try it again for the ease of downloading movies and being able to watch them offline using their Starz and RealMovies service. It's gotta be easier than BitTorrent, right?
what was i thinking?
first of all, installation was a nightmare. when you logged into starz, it actually triggered a login into real player, which i had yet to install. second, when i did then install the player, it of course required a reboot. oh yeah, it also requires internet explorer, which i never really use, except for special occaisions like this.
okay great, it's a trial, but you have to take my credit card. i get that.
let's try to download a movie. connecting to Real network....
"Sorry the service is unavailable"
what?
read the FAQ. oh, of course, i have to log out and then log in again.
okay, whatever.
let's try downloading a movie. sure, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. oh, right, you have to check if i'm 18 or 21 or something because this is unrated. ok fine. how do they do that? you have to have me enter in a valid credit card again! you just took my credit card! I did it anyway... "Sorry, this service is unavailable right now"
RealMedia - you suck ballz. you always have, and you always will.
back to BitTorrent.
Posted by Steve at 08:53 AM | Comments (3)
September 02, 2005
Bluetooth connectivity now in Dodge sport pickups
I don't cross-post to my different blogs much anymore, but it's worthy of note that Bluetooth connectivity with your car's audio system for making phone calls has come a long way since I started covering it here. Most makes and models now have a solution here, or at least have announced plans for integration.
It's now even made its way into pickup trucks!
Posted by Steve at 07:49 AM | Comments (19)
September 01, 2005
more RSS readers and aggregators sending user info
it's great to see Rojo, Pluck and Google Sidebar are all passing the number of subscribers now upon a feed request so that the newly redesigned FB can show more up-to-date stats. Of course MyYahoo!, Bloglines, and many others have been doing this forever.
Newsburst...please?
Posted by Steve at 08:29 AM | Comments (3)