Easy Memo

Onward my lieges...

• You Have Got To Be Kidding Me...

We are doomed...well possibly. According to this article there is a 'Chaos Cloud' of sorts that destroys anything in it's path. Well actually distorts and twists and jumbles all matter so either way you look at it you get the same answer. While you should always take the "OMGZ WE'RE GONNA DIEZ!" theries with a grain of salt it really does make you think. But I'd take more then a grain with this story, just because if you look to the left of it you see it's found under Entertainment News & Gossip. I mean, come on, Entertainment? The end of the world is entertainment? I guess the world won't end this way after-all.

• Hungry?

Well if you are, don't get drunk and decide to eat your Cellphones Memory so that people can't "Steal your information." cause guess what buddy? Now you can't get your own information unless you think it will come to your brain magically. I just don't want to know how that'll go through the intestines and then out the other end...Or even if it does...Crazy people and their alchohol....

• Big Future Ideas

This site tells about the finalists to the innovative contest: 2005 Next Generation Design Competition. Some of these ideas are mediocre while as others are really crazy awesome. I really do suggest you atleast check over lightly some of the finalists ideas. It would be nice to see alot of these in action...Check it out.

• Oddness In Vision Roundup

Here are a couple of odd videos on the web, the first, an odd/just plain wierd video from Conan O' Brian and the Second a parody of the old NES Mario...with a HUGE mario. Check them out...but their wierd. Don't say I didn't warn you.

• Almost Forgot...

If you've been having an itching for an intricate little mouse or even if you don't want one at all. These are beautiful in a category of their own. Check it.

You know what would be really easy to write? A memo to your boss with one word. I would entitle it "The".

Metal Moss

So sorry to all of those who read my blog (yes I'm talking to you bots aswell) It's just that schoolwork and school have been CrAzY lately, hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come, I'll try to post as many times a week as possible, we'll have to see though....

• Wow. Nintendo Has Guts.

The Nintendo Revolution's controller was FINALLY released to the public and just plain wow. It already has skins and other mock ups and it has only been a few days since the announcement. This is by far the most innovative controller I have ever seen for a console system. I just can't wait to seen what type of add-ons Nintendo AND third-party developers will come up with, because as you can see there is a port on the bottom of the controller for them (Joystick etc.). Now I don't only want the Revolution for the downloadable content, but also for the controller too! Check out the english version of the Keynote here, they get to a video on the controller at 28:50.

• Future Feeder Shows The Future Innovation

This site, called FutureFeeder has a crazy amount different, innovative ideas, albeit it is a just a blog per say it has some awesome stuff. It seems to be updated more then daily. Just reading the titles from the past few posts we get; Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry, InVision Guide to a Healthy Heart, Realtime Mobile Landscape and so on and so forth. I'm going to be keeping my eye on this one...

• Windows Vista Loving...

Well, I wouldn't really call it "loving" but you know...First off, there is supposed to be seven different versions of the newest OS (slated for late '06). To me that is just crazy, I know people that still get confused between Home and Proffessional, nevermind "Ultimate", "Premium" and "Enterprise" editions....Crazy...Second off, I'm sure you know about Apple OSX's Widgets, if not, go get edumacated! Well, it seems that Microsoft just HAD to jump on the band wagon and do the same exact thing! Well, except they call it Gadgets....Gadgets? Widgets? That is three letters...wow, can't say it will be a bad addition to Vista it's just that it seems like such a "Copycat" move...

• A Days Funny

If you guys/girls remember the iTunes 5 release I talked about last week this is a hilarious story to go along with it. Just for backround before you read it here we go, Apple's iTunes originally started out with an aqua colored interface (borders etc.) Then came Brushed Metal (who plays the key role in this story) and until just recently Brushed Metal ruled the interface. With iTunes 5 there is a brand new silvery steal color. Now without further adue here is the link. If it doesn't seem funny to you then maybe.......maybe.....maybe your crazy. Or you just aren't in a humorous mood or you don't have a sense of humour or...[/blah blah blah]

If moss was strong like metal, would it be edible? And if it was edible, would you turn into the Metal Man or Metal Women superhero of tomorrow?

Cutskies

Alright I was pretty busy yesterday so you don't get a full post...Sorry!

• NES On The Web!

Have that itch for the oldy games? You can play Duck Hunt or play Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers is in Japanese, to get in to play click on the Green Button, then the Blue Button, and then the top right Red Button. From there control your character using the Arrow Keys and the shift or space to jump. Pick a tube and launch into the Mario World. Duck Hunt is pretty self explanatory...

• The iPhone

The iPhone is apparently SUPPOSED to be not that great. Although I can't say for myself it is certainly what many are saying, search around, you'll find it. This article tells what Jobs may really be up to...We'll have to wait and see...

• The Lazy Get Lazier

This gadget lets you use hand motions from your seat to change channels on the TV, as well as fast forward and rewind in movies, exact hand gestures are still getting worked out for other features though, it looks neat.


In other odd and half-significant news "Bush took full responsibility of federal hurricane faluires" and NerdTV Episode 2 was released, but you have to do some fooling around with the URL to get to it as they haven't updated the site yet...

Until later days...You guys got cutskies on a lengthy post (Cutskies = Screwed over) Have a nice day!

Scroll Trial

I've managed to scratch together a post for today, so here we are.

• Healing Spacecraft

This is a really cool long-term goal that NASA has and 0ne that has already started to be developed. The goal? Develop a sort of "Smart Skin" for spacecraft, it'll have the ability to locate damages and then repair them by itself...Now that would be just plain cool. And if you think about it, imagine the applications it could have on earth! After a hail storm and half of your shingles are ruined, they repair themselves, trouble kids throw a few stones at your windows leaving cracks, self-repaired by the next morning. Not to mension it would cut down labor significantly!

• IPTV ... Techie TV At Large

Remember a little while back when I was ranting and raving about IPTV of different sorts? Thought so, well here is a site that lists a whole bunch of shows out on the 'net that you can download and watch. Out of the many that are listed here I only watch MacTV, NerdTV and DigitalLifeTV...and I have yet to watch 3 of 4 shows from DigitalLifeTV. Anyways check it out if your interested if not...just don't...

• Do You Look For Politeness In A Phone?

Well if you don't already (which you probably don't) you may want to look into it in the future. Although polite isn't neccesarily the term I would use it still seems like a cool idea...What is this 'oh so great' idea you ask? It's a phone that analysis driving conditions and then reroutes and lets through calls depending on them. This is supposed to limit driving distratitions on the road. Although not fool-proof (as the user(fool) could put everyone in their address book on the 'Always Allow' list.) It still seems like it could work very well. The lead developer of the project has this essay up Warning: PDF File! It looks to be interesting (As I haven't the time to read through it right now.) Check it out today...or tomorrow...or next week. Maybe.

• Hybrid In A Different Sence...

If you didn't know, Sony is pushing the UMD disk format on the PSP and trying really hard to get movies available for it. Now, to sell a few extra (hundreds of) copies they are bundling a highly successive game "Wipeout Pure" with it but adding "Stealth Addition" to the end and adding an extra track to the game. So you get not only Stealth the movie but the game aswell, this is a new type of hybrid and it's probably going to be the future of movie licenses.

If you are buying a new mouse with a scroll ball, why not give it a trial run...it might be minty...or maybe linty.

Funky Bottle

Well, I'm back, not that I haven't been since Thursday night, it's just that now I'm back in the full swing of things and I can finally post. So here we go...

• Apple Music Event

First and foremost the Apple Music Event from Wednesday. This was an EXTREMELLY interesting event. They released the iPod Phone, a Motorola ROKR with iTunes capabilities. They retired the iPod Mini for the the new iPod Nano. It's as thin as a pencil and includes a color screen and flash memory, but best of all, it comes in black! And to round it out, they released iTunes 5. All in all this was a really big event. Now if only it would let me watch the feed of it all the way through....Also, Engadget has an interesting post about all of the past iPods....
Edit: It seems all I have to do is post about it in my blog and it just works. The feed is working for me now.

• Aiding Imagination

For those of you that remember being little and playing with your toys, imagining they could make each other blow up...and then change the rules so that you would win every single time...This new technology makes it so that you CAN'T, dissapointing I know, but still very cool. It uses real toys that you move around and then projects them into a environment that changes in real time. Very cool, check it out...the video too.

• Virus, Virus, Virus

Virus', everyone gets them right? Or if they don't, they block/hold them off with Firewalls, Security Centres etc. But why on earth do they somehow get through even if you sometimes do have all of those programs running in the backround? This article, titled The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security goes across, you guessed it, the top six dumbest security ideas out there and a way that we could all avoid them. It's mostly geared towards security software vendors but it's an interesting read none the less.

• More Easy Interaction

Another form of easy interaction can be found here. It lets you control media (such as a home entertainment system) by tapping or making motions on a flat surface such as a table. The same company makes a whole bunch of different interaction technologies, but I have yet to take a good look at them so I can't really say much. Check out the video here for the media control system (aka the Audiosensor)

• Gorillas, Gorilla's, Gorillaz

Just because I love the band Gorillaz I'm posting about this article. If you don't know about Gorillaz they are a band that has never really been seen in person. They are shown as animations and there for can't really perform live. But they will supposedly be touring and performing as holograms on stage. Awesome.

You know what would be cool. If a bottle could dance real funky-like. Imagine the beauty.

Buffer Food

This will be my last post until at least Thursday, but most likely Friday. Since I will be out of the city in about half an hour and won't be getting in until later Thursday night. So here's the latest....

• Flood Control

You most likely have already heard about the flooding of New Orleans from the hurricane Katrina...If not...You MUST be living under a rock, with a connection only to this blog...and that would be horrible. But the unfortuanate tradgedy is not what this blog is about, there are others. What this part of the post is about is this article here. In light of recent events the New York Times have the article up that tells about the many way that different countries are preventing floods, some of them are really quite inventive. Check it...

• Physics Fun!

This is a really cool and really neat little engine. It downloads easily to the desktop and all you have to do is unzip it, no Install nothing. It lets you build objects and then make them move to your hearts content. It does have a few limitations, such as not being able to rotate parts straight up and down. I thoroughly enjoy playing with it to see what I can create, so far I've got what I call a "hopping horse..." (which I have pictured to the right) but some of the other things that the creators have made and that are are included are really amazing. You can see some of the pictured on the site. The best part is that around 10 samples come along with the program. The only downfall of it is that it doesn't come with a how-to manual to my knowledge, meaning you'll have to learn it all yourself. Note: Most likely will not work with Windows 95/98.

• More Anti-Violence!

More and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon to create new ideas to stop car accidents, and this isn't a bad thing at all. This is the latest from Toyota, some of their newest cars will have a sensor that tracks where your eyes are looking, if you look away it beeps, and if you continue to look away it makes the car start to break...Interesting, interesting indeed. Just make sure the person behind you isn't to close on the free-way.....

• iPod Speculation
  

You can tell that this isn't real but none the less it's still neat. And also if you thought there was no way Apple would release a video iPod tomorrow at their iPod media event, think again, partially down the page you can see the prizes, the listed grand prize? iPod Video. Most likely the contest officials are either cRaZy or they just let it slip...but then again the rules DO say that the Video iPod will be selling for $800 (under "Winners") which is a cRaZy insane price for an iPod, even if it has video capabilities...maybe video games capabilities, now that, would be nice. Unfortuanatly I won't know what the event was about until Thursday night...

When videos take a long time to buffer, bring food, and eat it, don't slow down the buffering by surfing the net.

Until Thursday/Friday...So long...

Drag Magazine

Tuesday, back to school, up early again...more blog post, on we go...

• The Easy Switch

This is a really interesting way of stopping your vehicle from releasing all of those green house gases and switching over to uses hydrogen as fuel. It lets you easily convert your existing vehicle to run on either hydrogen or gasoline simultaneously. Although it isn't available yet it will come with a kit to pump your own hydrogen, making it virtually free to do so. It uses a few different methods of doing things to make everything run smoothly. Here are a few more details that add to what the page first I linked showed. Check it out and if you do currently have a vehicle, maybe consider doing this yourself when it's available.

• Magic Translator

This is the newest a company called Eintech Co., Ltd. It's a translator that can translate from eight different languages, including English, Japanese, Spanish and Korean. It can pronounce 32,000 different expressions in all of the 8 languages it can translate. It's a neat tool to have if your on the road traveling to different countries, or if you are interested in learning proper pronunciations of the foreign languages you are studying. The best part about it? It's also an electronic dictionary, MP3 player, calculator plus much more.

• NerdTV Today/MacBreak 2 Weeks

As you may have read yesterday NerdTV has their first episode available today for download, although I haven't watched it yet (As PBS has yet to update the download page...) I hope it's going to be great. I also suggest you guys check out MacBreak which comes out in exactly two weeks from today. There is also DigitalLife TV out there, aswell as a large amount of others, you just have to look for them...IPTV is truly the new way of watching TV...

• Stop The Violence!

And by violence I mean accidents of course, and by accidents I mean car crashes. This article here talks about the new ways that car manufactures could be taking to help prevent crashes in the future. Things from vibrating seatbelts and foot petals to using smells to keep you concentrated. It's really quite interesting to see how we could prevent future accidents with something as simple as vibration.

Dragging a magazine along the floor seems pretty stupid, and it is...That is all.

Chop Limbo!

Labor Day for us Canadian folk...Or maybe it's for other countries to...I honestly have no idea. But as always, we must move on.

• NerdTV Starts Tomorrow!

For those of you that haven't heard of NerdTV, I suggest you read these articles. In summary it's a 1-Hour program that is distributed only over the internet. You can download it from it's site here and then watch it whenever you want. The creators are hoping to open up a whole new revoloution of the way we watch TV. This certain show though is for Nerds. It show cases talent in the computer biz and interviews many succesful(?) people. If your interested it will be available to download tomorrow.

• Double Take

This is a really cool piece of technology. It uses a LCD to display two screens at once when viewed at different angles. The company that has developed this technology (Sharp) has gotten their first customer, GM. They plan to use this LCD monitor technology in their vehicles so that the driver can whatch their GPS system while passengers can watch a DVD. Quite a neat use of it...While there are others who have their own ideas of how they would use it...

• iPod Announcement

For those of you that don't know Apple has sent out an invitation to the press that said the following:

1000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again.

So as you may have guessed they are indeffinatly talking about the iPod. Now there has been a little bit of speculation as to what it might be. Some say it will be just a small update such as Flash Memory for the Mini, others say it could be the Video iPod (iVod? vPod?), but the most likely idea is that of the iPhone. A phone that can hold music as well as do all of your phone functioning needs. The announcement is this Wednesday, so we'll have to wait and see.

• House-sitting Robot

This is a really cool robot that can watch over your kids, detect break-ins and even notify others if someone falls ill. Now it would be really nice to have a robot like this, especially for any moms out there. Because we all know that the human race is getting more lazier, not the other way around...Unfortuanatly this robot is only available in Japan, at least for now anyways. But what I really want to know is, how does it get up and down stairs?

• Pregnancy Tests....

And now for a bit of humor before I depart for today. This is what happens when you don't know what an iPod Shuffle looks like...

Chopping a limbo stick in half can be difficult or easy, depends on how thick the stick is.

Speaking Jocks

Sunday....That is all.

• 3-Demensionalize TV

3D TV? You say you've seen it before? Well sure you have, you can go to the IMAX or something and watch these specially programmed shows, and of course, if you want to watch 3D TV you have to wear those funny blue and red glasses...But not anymore, a company called Newsight (previously known as Opticallity) has developed a new type of 3D TV that doesn't involve glasses at all, what it does is use only two cameras which put the images they take in through a filter that divides it up into eight different images which when the eye takes in all these images they see one, unified 3D image. I am still not sure if you need a proprietary TV or not...

• Grasshoppers Can Be Brainwashed To

This is an intriguing read on how a small hair worm replaces proteins in the Grasshopper in which it is contained inside to brainwash it. It uses this ability to send the Grasshopper to a watery death. Check it out....I command you!

• Vids Of The Odd

This is a rather....well...odd page. It just a page of homemade videos that these two guys have made. It has videos that are interesting, mean or just plain stupid! The mean video that I've linked is quite interesting, although it is sad.

• Nerdy Humor

As you can tell weekends seem to be slow news days as this is yet another link to more videos. The site is called Troll XP. I haven't gotten around to watching most of them but from what i have seen they look good, especially the System Administrator Song and the video Every OS Sucks. If you need a nerdy laugh (perferably one that involves snorting) check this site out.

Speaking to jocks, especially ones that have no intellectual value at all is really quite interesting, you should try it.

I. Don't. Eat. Penguins.

Weekend blog-post #1....here we go...

• iPod In Motion

This is a new neat little piece of technology to add to the iPod. For those of you that don't know what the iPod is, first off wow that's crazy, second, go get edumacated! It is aimed at those listening who their iPod during the cold winter months...or those of you that are just plain to lazy to reach into your pocket to click the little buttons on your mp3 player (Me!). As always make sure to check out the demo videos, although this time you will need the DivX Player as they are encoded in the DivX format...

• Emotional Metal

Robots are one step closer to becoming the do-everything robot of the future. This new robot, developed in Japan, can smile and frown. The main feature of it is the fact that it can sort through foods and find what tastes 'good', you'll have to actually look through the article but what it basically says is that the robot searches over the internet to find mixed opinions about the food it is looking at, when all opinions are considered and there is more of a positive feeling towards the food the robot will smile, if not it will frown. Unfortuanatly I can't seem to get the video to work on my computer, but you can try it to see if you have any better luck...Edit: I finally got it to work, it just took awhile to load...

• Microsoft VS. Google...Again

Here is a....well...interesting read on the latest Microsoft VS. Google law suit...For those of you that don't already know, Bill Gates is not the CEO of Microsoft anymore, he has resigned back down to a programming post. The newest CEO is Steve Ballmer who has been with the company since almost it's beginning. The most interesting part of this article to me is the part about Steve Ballmer going crazy in the office, yelling explicits and vowing to 'kill' Google. Interesting indeed.

• Marvel of Technology

Well, you know that all of the latest and greatest technologies have been developed when someone comes around and creates this. As you can tell by the video the creators obviously aren't very serious about what they made...interesting technology though...I guess. Note: You may need to download Quicktime to view the video.

And on a closing note, I don't eat Penguins...It's true.

Mouse In A House You Say?

Another day another post...the goods please...

• Miracle Mice!

This is a REALLY interesting and amazing article/study. Some scientists have created mice that can literally grow back all of their body! Except that is of course, the brain. Anything except the brain that the mice has you name and the mice grow it back, amputated limbs, holes in their ears, their heart or even any other internal organ. They can grow it all back. One of the best things about it is the fact that if you inject some DNA from the special mice to normal ones the other mice "normal" mice gain the same abilities as the special ones. This would make it EXTREMELLY easy to get this ability to the mass public if it was developed completely for humans, think of the abilities, the potential, and how many lives this could save...it's awe-inspiring....Best yet? No scars what-so-ever. Amazing.

• With Only Your Finger

This here is a neat new way of using everything with just your fingers....It projects lasers onto you fingers. When you move your fingers it tracks where you move them and how. It then displays it onto a screen. This can be used for handwriting in the air, finding out where a bouncy ball moves and creating 3D objects. I haven't finished reading the information on it myself, as it is a rather long read, so I can't say how exactly it works, judging from the videos that I've watched though it projects a laser onto your finger and a special camera tracts where you move. If you don't want to read the article (which you may not as it is a bit on the technical side) then I urge you to at least check out the videos, (located at the bottom of the page I linked....) alot of them are really cheesy but the ACM SIGCHI 2005 DEMO and the SIGGRAPH 2004 DEMO are much nicer and informative....the 2005 demo actually explains everything in english.

• Ozone Gets A Scratch? Give It A Bandaid

Well, it seems that there is alot of controversy over the Ozone layer these days, but at least it seems to be clearing up a little bit, well not clearing up, more like its depletion has been stopped...Well at least for the time being. Although, as the second article states, it'll be around another 45-50 years until it heals back to its "pre-industrial" state. Hm...I just wish the ozone could be given a band-aid, wait a couple of weeks and then be healed....I can dream can't I?

• 213 Laughs

This site, entitled 213 Things Skippy Can't Do is a great page for those who need to know what NOT to do in the military, or for those that just need a laugh. Check it out...

Does a mouse live in a house? Or a hole? Who knows...Maybe I'm just crazy.

Juice Fills The Cup

Ugh...school starts today...School starting = Writing up blog posts the night before, just as this one was. But now that that solemn note is over, on with the goods!

• Rrrrroll-Up The....Screen?

This new e-reader starts out very small (100mmx60mmx20mm to be exact) but then can expand to a fairly decent size for all of your e-reading needs. The cool thing about it is the fact that the screen bends and rolls up inside the device so that you don't have the bulkiness of the full screen to try and shove into your pocket. This, as it says in the article, is aimed at buisness professionals who don't want to sacrifice portability. Me? I just think that the idea of a bendable screen actually being used is neat. Of coarse this is based off of Phillips bendable screen the PV-QML...

• The Math Behind iTunes Shuffle Features

This is a neat and interesting read for everybody, especially those math buffs out there. It shows how iTunes "Party Shuffle" feature and how the iPod Shuffle decide on which songs you get to hear and in which order. For those of you that don't know, iTunes is a music player program, much like Windows Media Player. Check this out and if you have the math skills maybe even try out some of the equations presented to you yourself.

• Preventing Long-Term Injury

This is a long but very interesting read about what some companies in the US are doing to prevent serious injury to enemies in the war. This article focus' on one company (called Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems) and the products that they are working on, including guns that shoot REAL electricity and others that let you blind your enemy with an intense laser, plus more. Check it...

• Stop! No More Test Drive

For some unknown reason Apple has canceled their Mac Mini Test Drive Promotion. The same promotion that I blogged on two days ago...There isn't much more to say other then what the article linked does...

• IE To Firefox: The Plugin

This is a neat little plugin that makes that transition from Intenet Explorer to Firefox even easier then it already is, it turns your existing IE almost exactly to Firefox by adding advanced security, tabbed browsing and the integrated search box. If you still feel the need to stay on IE I suggest, no I tell you to get this plugin, if not for the tabbed browsing and integrated search, then at least for the advanced security.

Juice fills the cup....but this wasn't what I had in mind when I thought of the title...