Google's wonderful Docs suite (browser-based alternatives to the core Microsoft Office apps) now lets you work on your documents while offline.
Check out this Google Docs Blog entry and the little video. It looks pretty easy...can't wait to try it out.
My employer consolidated the management of cell phones and plans, forcing me to abandon my Treo 650 for a Blackberry 8830. Yeah, I know. The Blackberry vs random other brand mobile phone here comparison post is way too overdone. You don't need me to tell you the differences.
This isn't one of those posts.
At first I got ticked. It's not just the money down the tubes or the time invested. It was a bit like being dumped. It's been a few months, and I still miss using my Treo.
Some of my remaining Treo co-workers haven't been forced to move yet. But as some make the move, most seem to be expressing similar concerns and reach out to the Treo group to vent and support.
It may be obvious to you, but I'm still not sure why I (and other folks) get so attached to some of these devices.
From CNN comes a video story about a California mom who used her three young daughters (ages 10, 9, and 5) to help her sneak stolen clothing out of a Sears.
From the story on the KXTV.com website, it sounds like this mother has been previously convicted of theft and been a prior subject of investigation by Child Protective Services.
You know, I like to see people enjoying quality mother-daughter time as much as anyone, but this makes you wonder what can be done to help prevent children from being raised by such unfit parents.
"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient.
There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
- Bill Gates, Time Magazine, January 13, 1996
You gotta hand it to big companies; they just keep finding new ways to be sociopathic.
The latest example is Wal-Mart. Yes, the big, yellow happy-face is suing a brain-damaged ex-employee. According to CNN (paraphrased):
Eight years ago, Debbie Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home.
Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank's long-term care.
Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank's medical expenses, but in 2005, Wal-Mart's health plan sued the Shanks for the same amount.
And then, as if these people need more bad news, their son was killed in Iraq and Jim Shank was diagnosed with colon cancer. He even had to divorce Debbie last year in order to maximize her Medicaid payments.
You have to read the full story to get all the details. But I particularly enjoyed the Wal-Mart spokesman's response to why the Shanks couldn't keep the money they won in the lawsuit against the trucking company:
"Wal-Mart's plan is bound by very specific rules. ... We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank's case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan."
Translation: We'd sell our own mother for a dollar.
This is corporate greed exaggerated to unfathomable proportions. If this had been the plot of a movie, people would be complaining it was too far-fetched. Yet, it's all true.
In an interesting coincidence, Bob sent me a link to a video showing the virus-like spread of Wal-Mart across the US from its 1962 origins in Arkansas.
I was going through my phone's photos and uncovered a few that I meant to post but just never got around to it. So here they are:
What time is it?
Time to get a new clock.
In the absence of correct punctuation, maximize redundancy.
Pigeon Forge, TN (shocking, I know)
When Mother Nature just isn't enough
Best "mind your child" sign ever
The Blue Manatee bookstore, Oakley Square (Cincinnati, OH)
I was Googling around for something completely unrelated and came across a thread on a gaming site asking if anybody had signed boxes of Doom. It reminded me of a business trip to Dallas I took in early 1995. As a big Doom player at the time (oh how I loved those lunchtime frag-fests on the office LAN), I figured a side-trip to visit iD Software was definitely in order.
So the colleague I was traveling with and I looked up their office in the phone book (seems quaint, I know) and drove over. We went up to the second (or third) floor of a nondescript office building where they had a suite. I asked their receptionist if I could buy a boxed copy of Doom; I thought that saying I had a copy of Doom I bought at iD would be a nifty memento. She said they only had copies of Doom II on hand, so that'd have to do.
I mentioned that I was on a business trip and had come from Cincinnati. This fact, that I had traveled from another state, seemed to impress her, and she offered to have the designers sign the instruction manual. Of course, I said that'd be great. So she ripped open the box, took out the manual, and proceeded to walk around the office having people sign the credits page (see below).
What was even more surreal was having John Carmack give us a tour of the offices. He showed us a game they were developing (he didn't tell us the name, but it turned out to be Quake) and then he had to rush off to an interview and photo-shoot with a gaming magazine they were having there that day. Seeing the the software engineers photographed holding swords and laser guns and wearing Viking helmets was quite a sight (if anyone knows the name of the mag or has a copy of this issue, please let me know). I remember looking out the office windows and seeing Carmack and John Romero posing outside in the parking lot beside their twin Ferraris (one red and one yellow). I think a took a picture of that...I'll post it if I can find it.
Anyway, it was quite a neat experience. Here's a shot of the manual the team autographed (signers include Jay Wilbur, John Romero, Kevin Cloud, John Carmack, Dave Taylor, and Sandy Peterson):
A lot of devices have electro-mechanical controls that can degrade over time. Take the pair of Kilpsch ProMedia 2.0 PC speakers I've had for a few years as an example.
Recently, the volume knob started introducing lots of static/noise whenever it was turned, sometimes throwing off the L/R balance or even dropping out the volume altogether. More fiddling would fix it, but it was annoying.
At this point, most people would simply replace the speakers. But I really like these; they sound utterly fantastic for a 2.0 setup. So I set about finding a fix.
It turns out that the 1-2 punch of CAIG Laboratories DeOxit cleaner followed by DeOxit ProGold contact preservative (which I got from RadioShack.com) was just the trick. After cracking open the speaker with the controls, I spritzed the cleaner into the potentiometer and worked the knob back and forth. Then, a few minutes later, I spritzed in the ProGold to help protect the contacts, and worked the knob a bit more.
A half-hour later, I reassembled the speaker, plugged everything back in and it's perfect. The volume knob is now silky smooth and there's no sign of drop-outs or static. For $15, this sure beats trying to replace some fantastic speakers.
Apple's iPhone and MacBook Air have come to represent cutting-edge, state-of-the-art consumer electronics. We're approaching the iPhone's first birthday and Wired magazine is still calling it "handset of the moment -- maybe even the next few moments."
And the MacBook Air was popular enough last month to single-handedly account for 20% of Apple's notebook computer sales. Any way you slice it, that's impressive.
So what is it that keeps me from getting excited about these products?
I don't think I'm biased for or against Apple. We have a Mac Mini in the house and I'm always happy to see strong competitors in the personal computing space. So I don't think it's any sort of systematic unwillingness to accept Apple's products.
I'd like to think it's the technology. Sure, the iPhone and the MBA are pretty. The iPhone has a user interface that's somewhat innovative, and the Air is very, very svelte. But beyond that, I see more sacrifices than benefits.
The iPhone is a keyboardless EDGE handset with no expansion card slot. To me, that's three strikes right there. I feel like I need a real keyboard; I use the stink out of my Treo's EVDO connection and would dread going back to EDGE speeds; and, as far as I'm concerned, SD cards are the new floppy disk (i.e., ubiquitous). And then there's the issue of the non-user-replaceable battery. Ugh.
Similarly, the MacBook Air is rife with trade-offs: you don't get a removable battery, internal optical drive, Ethernet port, or VGA output (all things I rely on pretty frequently). Yes, it's light, but not markedly more so than many other laptops (for one, my 12.1" Fujitsu subnote weighs less). And don't get me started on the decision to hamstring it by including just a single USB port!
So, is it me? Am I somehow missing the real benefit of these devices? I'll admit, I've always been a function-over-form kinda guy, so is it that obsession with features that is blinding me to the design, or some other source of value entirely?
Or, am I more normal than I think, and it's it just that the media and a significant part of the digerati who write about this stuff have different utility functions than most of the rest of us?
I'm a techie that spends most of my days in the the software world. I sometimes deal with litigation concerns. So this little news update caught my eye, "Verizon settles open source software lawsuit." It seems that a hardware device manufacturer, Actiontec, supplies a FiOS router to Verizon and the device had shipped with some code that it didn't properly license. The code in question was some software, called BusyBox, which is released under an open source license (in this case, GPLv2.)
I actually have an Actiontec FiOS router in my house.
It seems that we're hearing more and more cases of parents, guardians, and especially "the mom's boyfriend" convicted of "child endangering."
Take this story of three moms charged with child endangering; one of them is only facing jail time after endangering her second child (her first child was killed in her home in 2005).
Let me get this straight: the courts said "you're a bad mom" and put her on parole for four years for endangering her child (letting it be killed), yet had no oversight over this new kid? That seems pretty short-sighted.
To relate it to drunk driving, which seems to carry similar penalties, imagine that I'm convicted of driving my Camry while intoxicated, so the court says I have to install a breathalyzer-style monitoring system in it. But, if I buy a new car, there's no such requirement. That seems to be the same sort of approach the courts take regarding child endangering.
So here's the question: How do we prevent people who put their children in harm from harming future children they may have? A related question is what do we do with all these kids who get taken away from their bad parents when there aren't enough foster homes and adoption parents to go around? Short of forced sterilization (which I think would be a hard sell for most people), I'm stumped.
We just got a Logitech Squeezebox Duet, the new low(er)-cost competitor to the rather amazing Sonos wireless music streaming system, and I thought I'd post some shots of its debut at our house.
We got the Squeezebox primarily to replace the SMC Networks EZ-Stream SMCWAA-G that no longer seems to want to work properly (I constantly have to unplug it and plug it back in repeatedly when starting it up before it will recognize the network and respond to remote control signals). But then sometimes even a bargain is worth less than what you pay for it.
At $399, the Squeezebox Duet certainly isn't cheap, but it's still $200 less than a comparable Sonos setup. Plus, unlike the Sonos, the Squeezebox benefits from Slim Devices' (which Logitech acquired in late 2006) rabid developer community, so there's tons of nifty extensions and add-ons.
Click on the "continue reading" link for more pics and some initial reactions in lieu of a full review.
Microsoft has had some embarrassing setbacks lately across its product range. Based on poor sales, the company has had to reduce prices on a variety of its premier offerings.
Late last year, Microsoft started a fire sale on its Zune line of portable media players. Granted, that was in part due to a new model coming out, but you don't see prices on successful products like iPods cut that dramatically at the end of the product life cycle (a sure sign Microsoft overestimated demand on its first-generation device).
Earlier this month, Microsoft's premier product line, the Windows Vista operating system, had prices reduced by as much as 25% to help spur flagging sales (corporate sales of Vista have been far short of what Microsoft expected). Even Microsoft has been critical of Vista.
And just today, Microsoft announced that prices for the Xbox 360 would be slashed in Europe to undercut the Nintendo Wii. Competing with the steamroller that is the Wii has to be tough...doubly so if your product is more expensive and similarly (now) lacks the capability to play HD media.
It makes you wonder why Redmond is going after Yahoo!, at a cost of almost $45 billion, when so many of its core products seem to be doing so poorly.
"No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit."
- Sir Frederick G. Banting
Canadian physician
My daughter and I decided that we wanted to play cars. She was there in her fairy princess outfit running a Hot Wheels car along the floor and it occurred to me that we didn't have any track! When I was a kid (in the 70s), Hot Wheels track was about as ubiquitous as Lego pieces and army men, so it seemed imperative that we go procure some track immediately.
So, we went out to the store and I was shocked and dismayed at how Hot Wheels has devolved over the years. Sure, they offered several track kits, but none of them actually had much track. They had these complicated, automated moving ramps and claw things that picked up the cars and smacked them into each other. The most track I could find in any set was a mere 14 feet! Plus, they didn't sell just track...the only way to get some was to buy one of these kits.
This pales in comparison to how it used to be, when you were able to buy sets with tons of track AND you were also able to purchase separate "Track Packs" of 10-20 pieces and those little purple connectors.
So, I checked eBay. Of course, tons of people were selling old kits like what I remembered. The problem was (a) they were charging an arm and a leg for them (one guy wanted $40 for 40 feet of track), and (b) the shipping charges were even worse (another $20 for UPS ground?!). I'm sorry, but $60 for some Hot Wheels track is just ridiculous.
So, I had an epiphany. Hot Wheels should harness the power of the web to recapture people's imaginations. Currently, the only interactive feature Hot Wheels has is an online personalized database of all the cars you've collected. Whee. No, what I have in mind is a bit more invigorating:
The Hot Wheels Track Set Online Design Studio
Imagine a browser-based tool that lets you assemble parts of track sets that Hot Wheels sells into your own custom track setup. You could drag and drop all the 2-foot pieces you want, add a couple of 90-degree banked curves, toss in an inline accelerator, put in a full loop, and then reconnect back to where you started. The system would automagically calculate all the connectors you need and give you a price quote. Then, if you decided to purchase it, Hot Wheels would assemble your custom package and ship it straight to you.
An interesting extension of this would be if you could take advantage of some of today's gaming technology and actually test out different configurations by running virtual cars through your newly designed track. Finding out that you need a bit more elevation drop (and thus more track) for your design to work would be quite useful to ensure that people aren't disappointed by what they've designed. Plus, Hot Wheels could give each person a list of cars they own that is compatible with the track they've designed. Furthermore, imagine if you could share the tracks you've designed with other people; think Cafe Press for Hot Wheels.
I don't know about you, but I think this would rock. With all the quality issues Mattel has had recently, they're going to have to differentiate themselves on some other dimension, and offering customized Hot Wheels track sets might be just the ticket. Plus, think how much added press and brand-building could be accomplished by an online tool like this. Seems like a decent idea to me.
Wow...I didn't realize that I've been doing this for five years now until just a few days ago. Seems like those humble beginnings weren't nearly that long ago.
I'm not really sure how you're supposed to celebrate the fifth birthday of a blog. Suggestions are welcome. In the interim, here are some notable lessons from the past five years:
1) If you post a complaint about a big company, the comments can get out of hand.
2) Some things that look interesting actually turn out to be interesting, while others don't go very far.
3) People don't follow directions.
4) Sometimes blogging is totally cathartic, but pressure to produce can sap the enjoyment right out of it.
5) It seems like a lot of people yearn for the TV of their youth.
6) Sometimes my predictions are pretty on-target; sometimes they're way, way off-base.
7) Comment and trackback spam sucks.
8) And finally, I admire those out there who can run consistently high-quality blogs (unlike this one). The effort needed to keep churning out excellent content is far from trivial, and to do it well requires gobs of both skill and sweat.
I'd like to thank Mitch, Ken, and Sam for their help in the early days of GearBits. It was fun blogging as part of a team. Maybe Bob's recent arrival will return some of that youthful exuberance.
Sound absurd? It apparently didn't to a Florida woman who pulled into a car wash to turn a sprayer on her 2-year-old daughter (CNN.com) to punish her. According to the car wash owner, the water pressure is sufficient to strip skin from bone. Thankfully, the little girl wasn't injured.
But get this: the mom is 5-months pregnant.
If she can't properly parent her current child, why should she be allowed to have another one without some form of training and/or certification that she's fit to do so?
I've been thinking a lot, lately, about what drives us to do what we do. I don't mean extreme acts of aggression and violence, like murder-suicides or throwing puppies off a cliff; research into mental illness is ongoing and I'm sure they're making progress. No, what I'm talking about is what drives us to strive for the new, the creative, the innovative, the special, the different, the excellent...I think you get what I'm after.
Sociologists and psychologists have identified a few drivers: social desirability, peer pressure, perceived performance expectations, and so forth. All those concepts rely heavily on external pressure; our views of what other people do and how they see us cause us to behave in a certain way.
But what about inherent drive? What about a personal impetus that wells up from deep within one's psyche? What about an innate need for creating something new, different, better?
I don't know if I have that, frankly. But sometimes I feel utterly compelled to veer off my rationally-constructed to-do list and do something spontaneous, in search of a moment of pure...what is it...pride? Is it pride? I hope it's not that shallow.
Is it just the excitement of not knowing what will happen? Perhaps. In a normal day, most of my time lately seems to be spent on activities where I know the outcome. A reviewed journal article. An attended meeting. An emptied dishwasher. A made bed. Maybe it is the potential for escaping the mundane that drives these fits of irrational and unplanned exuberance.
But why not just read something new and interesting? What drives us to create when we could otherwise consume? What motivates our inner sense of satisfaction that comes only from producing something that has not existed before?
I am curious about this. But I have no answers tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
Today's youths will spend most of their lives using their phones as their primary means of communication. Txting will likely continue to be a popular medium, yet many fear this will cause a decline in this generation's literary consciousness.
Perhaps we just need to adapt the forms to fit the medium. As an exercise, I have attempted what I think are perhaps the first examples of poetry in iambic txtameter. This new form uses iambs (or metrical feet having the pattern da DA, as in "request" and "corrupt") and is constrained by the 160-character limit of common text messages. How one organizes the 160 characters depends on the number of iambs in each line, but it would seem to make sense that each line should have the same number of characters (just to make it challenging). Here are a couple of examples:
With 5 iambs (40 characters) per line:
Forego the mission and behold the truth!
You cannot hide inside a church of youth
There is but one objective we can claim:
To coexist, with neither fear nor blame.
With 3 iambs (20 characters) per line:
oh wht a dreary day!
teh sky is very gray
ono! it strts 2 rain
and i get wet again!
this sux i am so mad
i really hate my dad
he took away my fone
and now i feel alone
No, they're not good poems, but maybe the format will catch on. After all, if all some budding poet has on him is his phone when the muse strikes, this may be the most he can do with it.
p.s. Yes, I suppose you could go with trochaic txtameter as well...knock yourself out. :-)
It's my great pleasure to welcome a new voice to GearBits: Bob Nonnenkamp. Bob's a good friend, a technology wunderkind, both professionally and personally, and is gifted with an eternally inquisitive spirit, so he tends to think up and try lots of cool stuff. The hope is that some of it eventually makes its way here to GearBits.
So check out his author bio and keep an eye out for Bob's posts; I'm sure they'll be interesting.
My sister just informed me that Gary Gygax, co-inventor of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died this morning. When she told me (txted me, actually), along with the sincere sorrow I felt (this guy was my hero when I was 10), two questions popped into my head.
First, how did he die? Was it a vicious kobold ambush? An undetected poison needle trap? A villainous evil mage with an axe to grind (figuratively speaking, of course; mages don't use axes)? I've looked and I still can't find a cause of death. Surely the great DM wouldn't have passed away of natural causes!
Second, how did I not know this? I'm a connected individual; I eat and sleep RSS feeds around the clock. It makes me wonder whether I'm watching the right sources for something this important to have slipped through.
I think I may have to dig through my box of original D&D (and AD&D) stuff tonight, just to get a whiff of the ol' magic and fondle my d20s one more time.
Thanks, Gary...your vision, talent, and effort changed my life...for the better.
As an engineer by training, it's my duty to make sure my kids are exposed to the fun of hacking their world. Combining hacking and art makes for an activity fun for both generations, so I'm generally on the lookout for fun art/science projects. An instructable (I'm an avid instructable fan) entry had a great idea -- light doodles! To have fun drawing in the air, all you need is some colored lights, a dark room, and a digital camera.
Well, it is a little more complicated than that. If you don't have some colored LED lights (like car keychain lights) handy, you can follow this instructable to make some of your own. I bought some cheap assorted LEDs and other parts off eBay to make mine. I had tried using an incandescent flashlight, but the poor results bored my kid. The LEDs are easier for small kid hands, and multiple colors add to the fun.
Next, I had to pour through my digital camera manual to figure out how to set (a) the delay and (b) a long exposure. The exposure setting was hard to find! My Canon SD100 can be set for 15 seconds. After that, it's pretty simple. If you need more tips, read this instructable for advice on taking the pictures.
My daughter, who's 3 now, and I have discovered that we enjoy making board games together. She enjoyed Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders, but tired of them quickly. So, we decided to try and make our own using stuff around the house. After two pretty successful (i.e., she still enjoys playing them a few months later) games, we attempted our most ambitious one yet: The Zoo Game. It's fun, cost all of $8 to make, and, after spending two hours putting it together, we've spent several hours playing different versions of it. So, I thought I'd document it here in case anyone else with little kids wanted a starting point for making their own game.
Constructing The Zoo Game
The Zoo Game is your basic roll-a-die-and-move-around-the-board-trying-to-accomplish-things type of boardgame. The theme is, obviously, a zoo, and the general objective is visiting the animals in the zoo. Here's a photo of the board as we constructed it, set up and ready for play:
Around the periphery of the board are the animal cards. We made 4 cards for each of the 10 animals at our zoo (you can have as many or as few animals as you like) by cutting 3"x5" index cards in half. Each animal card has on it a sticker of the animal it represents (we bought two packs of animal stickers for $1.99 each...yeah, Michael's is expensive, but they have everything). I tried to make the animal cards look like Polaroids (R.I.P.), to suggest that we're going around the park taking pictures of the animals, but you can give them whatever treatment you like. We're planning on writing things about the different animals on the backs of the cards -- things a toddler would like, such as the names of the babies, mommies, and daddies (e.g., Elephant: Daddy = Bull, Mommy = Cow, Baby = Calf).
Above the top of the board is a stack of "Zoo Cards" -- I'll explain those later.
No note was left.
I just stumbled upon a site that looks like it's been around forever (how'd I miss it?): WikiHow. It bills itself as "The How-To Manual that You Can Edit."
My first encounter with WikiHow -- the random link that introduced me to the site -- was this entry: How to Organize Empty Food Storage Containers and Lids It basically recommends the same sort of system we've adopted here at our house, but gives pictures and step-by-step instructions. Very nice!
So, anyway, check it out and see what new stuff you learn. And then give some of your knowledge back by editing it.
I've always been curious about those noise-canceling headphones you see all the business guys wearing on planes. Do they really help that much? Are they worth the expense? After grabbing a set of ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint headphones from Audio-Technica, I can answer definitively "yes" and "yes."
The ANC7s are over-the-ear (or "earcup") headphones (as opposed to in-ear- or earbud-style phones) and they do a bang-up job blocking out noise. Even without the active (i.e., powered) noise-canceling circuitry enabled, the ANC7s do reduce environmental noise. But when you flip the switch to ON, man, it's like a veritable cone of silence has descended over you (Google if you don't get that reference). The specs say they reduce ambient noise up to 20db or 85% (I've no idea how the conversion works, so don't ask); I can tell you that 20db (or 85%) makes a heckuva difference. After a couple of recent 4-hour flights, I was noticeably more relaxed and less stressed than I usually am after such a flight, and I attribute that to the use of these headphones.
The ANC7 has some nice design features as well. For starters, the cord is removable, so if you only need noise canceling (i.e., you don't want them plugged into an audio source, such as when you want to sleep on a plane), then you don't have to futz with a cord. The ANC7s come with a semi-hard case, too. The case has an interior accessory pocket that stores the audio cord and included full-sized (1/4-inch) stereo and airplane (two-prong) adapters (a nice touch, Audio-Technica!). The ANC7s are powered by a single AAA battery (1 included) and I got about 15 hours of mixed use (noise-canceling only and noise-canceling + audio) from a new cell.
Unlike the Bose models (which generally run $299 and up and don't offer any better sound quality than these), the ANC7s can be used as unpowered headphones. Sound quality without noise-canceling turned on isn't great; it sounds a bit muffled, but it'll do in a pinch. However, with the noise-canceling enabled, the sound quality of these is very good; they almost give my open-air Grados a run for their money, and that's saying a lot.
So, if you travel a fair bit, or perhaps work in a noisy environment with white noise you find distracting, plunk down the $120 or so for a set of these and prepare to be amazed.
