Month: February 2006

• Losing an iPod on the subway

  Thomas Beller of the NYT tells a pretty amusing story of almost having the subway eat his iPod:

  The subway doors were still open. I was listening to a Chopin prelude, and I was moving fast. I took the last few steps in a giant jump, sidestepping a man in a wheelchair who was shaking a cup of change. The sounds of piano filled my head. I was going to make the train.

  Then I felt a brief tug on my ears, and silence. The iPod had fallen through a hole in my coat pocket and skidded across the platform like a bright white hockey puck. There was a sharp thwack as it slammed into the side of the subway car and fell into the crack between platform and subway, down to the tracks. The whole moment had the brisk finality of a goal in air hockey.
  

  (Read on)

  2006.02.12

• Brokeback Top Gun

  2006.02.11

• Japanese showcase true 3D display technology

  I saw this today at DailyTech:

  

  By creating plasma in open air with lasers, Japanese scientists are working on a true 3D display

  The Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced an exciting breakthrough in optoelectronics — a working three dimensional display. The display does not rely on any sort of optical illusion or disorientation. Instead, infrared lasers are aligned to converge and create small amounts of plasma. The plasma acts as a floating “dot” on top of the laser grid.

  I can’t imagine the number of applications this might have. Medicine, military, gaming and architecture to name just a few.

  I would also like to mention that I’m now obsessed with seeing this thing project an image of the Death Star or Endor:

  

  2006.02.11

• First look at Gmail Talk Beta

  First look at Gmail Talk Beta built-in chat feature for Gmail. This is only active in one of my Gmail accounts. More screenshots later..

  

  2006.02.10

• Beta-testing Internet Explorer 7

  Beta-testing Internet Explorer 7. Here are some screenshots and observations I’ve made so far.

  

  

  

  

  

  • Nice tabs. A lot like Firefox. Especially useful is the Quick Tabs feature (Ctrl+Q). Think of it as Expose for all your open tabs (see screenshots 2 and 4). This may be the primary feature as far as I’m concerned.

  • The layout is a lot more rounded – likely to make it look more seamless with Web 2.0/Ajax page designs.

  • Built-in RSS reader but in my build this feature is still very buggy.

  • Pages seem to load faster than in Firefox but this may be anecdotal.

  2006.02.07

• Some of the problems with using Gmail

  Blogger Justin Blanton looks at some of the problems with using Gmail. Among his findings:

  • Doesn’t take you back to the Inbox after replying to an e-mail. As soon as I send an e-mail off I want to move on to something else. Instead, I have to wait for the send to complete and then click (or use a keyboard shortcut) to get back to the Inbox.
  • After selecting emails and applying some action to them, they are not unchecked after the action has been applied. This, perhaps, is the most annoying thing about Gmail. I can’t for the life of me figure out the logic behind this (or the technical reason why it hasn’t been fixed). What the hell!?!
  • No ability to specify the width of the application within the browser window — it always expands to the size of the window.

  Justin is also a pretty impressive photographer.

  2006.02.06

• ‘Idol contestant (gently) fires back

  A few weeks ago music critic and betapundit reader jdmatthews of MusicalRamblings wrote a pretty raw critique of American Idol contestant (or rather, auditioner) Katrina Yauky. While ego-surfing one night, Katrina came across jd’s entry and wrote him a rather detailed and classy rhetort. She also sheds some light on the contractual process contestants undergo before auditioning. I found it to be revealing, but not hardly surprising:

  I will come to my defense only in that what you saw was an edited version of my actual audition. I actually sang three songs in an initial audition and was asked to come back an hour later and sing another! So, indeed, with how they edited the clip, I looked like a “half-cracked” airhead. Infact I got almost halfway into the ‘humpty dance’, sang ‘what’s up’ by 4 Non Blondes, and then sang part of an original song. When they asked me to come back in an hour…Simon actually asked me to lose the boots that you loved so much. I did, indeed, go back without the boots for the second audition and in a totally different outfit. My song and outfit in the second audition are what got me booted. So their reaction takes are actually from the second audition after I had sung four songs for them. Ahhh…the powers of editing. Honestly, would reality television be any fun if there weren’t any editing? I’m sure many of the other performers had similiar experiences of surprise while watching their performances that were likewise edited.

  Read Katrina’s email to jd its entirety.

  2006.02.03