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mehack

Raffi Krikorian, author of TiVo Hacks and occasional contributor to this site has launched a new site of his own called mehack. It’s along the same lines as TiVo hacking but goes beyond to cover how to hack just about any electronic device in your home or car, and covers news and equipment necessary to do the job right. [PVRblog]

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Best of Luck to engadget

Back in August of 2002 I helped found Gizmodo, the gadgets weblog. It was a labor of love, but never intended as more than a part-time freelance job. After nineteen months I’ve decided to take a risk and launch a new site that will let me do what I want: Blog about gadgets full-time. In partnership with The Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN), I’ve launched Engadget (www.engadget.com), where I’m already posting obsessively about everything exciting on gadgets and personal technology. [engadget.com]

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Under Construction…

under construction

Doing a bit of construction behind the scenes and looking to move this site to a new host very shortly. Not sure exactly when the domain switch will take place… I am still sorting out an import issue on my newer installation of moveable type at the future locale. Stay tuned… hopefully nothing will break down. I’ve got a very similar config going so my linkage from others and google will hopefully remain. Likewise with my email… fingers crossed!

This image is actually from right outside our apartment (though shot from the 20th floor). Lovely to wake up to … or nap to if you are a 3 month old.

Written while listing to — Bob Marley “ls This Love (Horns Mix)” from Songs Of Freedom (Disc 3) (1992).

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Thank you Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings!

Sure the real reason is to get confidence cooking in the company, but I am just glad they are seemingly going to produce this. I really enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia books as a kid and would welcome a live action version. I’ve recall seeing an animated version a long time ago and have heard a cool spoof on the radio during a winter episode of the Prairie Home Companion.

The Burbank, Calif., entertainment company’s Walt Disney Studios unit took out color ads scheduled to appear in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among others, announcing a deal to co-finance and distribute a live-action film based on C.S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy classics, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Such announcement ads typically are limited to Hollywood trade newspapers like Daily Variety.

The effort to show Disney’s commitment to a big new fantasy franchise comes as Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Eisner faces one of the biggest tests of his career. After a fierce three-month campaign led by former board members Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold, at least 30% of shareholders are expected to withhold support for Mr. Eisner at Wednesday’s annual meeting.

Monday, state pension funds in Ohio and Florida joined others in California and elsewhere in announcing they would withhold support from the longtime Disney boss, while the pension fund of New York City said it would support him.

The showdown comes after Mr. Eisner and the Disney board last month rejected an unsolicited takeover offer from cable company Comcast Corp. In a bid to appease shareholders, Disney board members have been talking to Mr. Eisner about the possibility of curbing his powers by removing his chairman title, according to people familiar with the matter.

Detailing its latest project, the studio said it hopes to make several movies from the novels written by Mr. Lewis, who was an English professor and Christian writer — in much the same vein as “The Lord of the Rings” and the “Harry Potter” series. The announcement came a day after “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” swept the Academy Awards, winning 11, and followed the huge box-office success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It also came after talks broke down to extend a lucrative and long-running distribution deal for Pixar Animation Studios’ computer-animated films.

Disney’s partner on “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Walden Media, bought the film rights to the seven-book epic in late 2001. The production company announced a year later that Andrew Adamson, director of the computer-animated hit “Shrek,” would direct the first film. [WSJ.com]

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Samsung Preparing i530 Palm OS Smart Phone

Samsung has announced a new addition to its collection of Palm OS smart phones. [Brighthand]

According to this site, it will run Palm OS Garnet 5.2. Its processor isn’t known at this time, but the i500 uses a 300 MHz Intel processor. The i530 will have 32 MB of RAM and an SD/MMC slot for extra storage.

The i530 will supposedly have a 324-by-352-pixel, 16-bit, TFT, touchscreen as its primary display. It will also include a smaller 96-by-128-pixel, full-color, OLED display on its exterior to display time- and phone-related information.

This will be a tri-band GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900) device. It won’t support EDGE but its current data capabilities will allow users to send and receive emails and SMS and MMS messages. It will also allow web surfing and WAP.

Reportedly, the i530 won’t have built-in Bluetooth short-range wireless networking.

The smart phone will, of course, run most Palm OS applications and it will support playback of MPEG-4 and MP3 files.

The resolution of its built-in camera is not yet known, but it is expected to be better than that offered by the i500.

The Samsung SGH-i530 will be available in late spring or early summer. The company plans to give one of these to over 22,000 VIPs, athletes, and officials at the Olympic games in Athens, Greece this summer.

Sounds like a great device though I wonder why no bluetooth… An interesting way to seed these as well by giving them away to the Olympics crowd. I guess we can expect to see quite a bit of Samsung advertising this summer.

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too cool

This is too cool…

this is a bit complicated, so hopefully i can explain this properly. if you read this site, you know i created a “portable geek gym” basically it’s a few mobile devices that i wear while i run. the next evolution of the features is something i’ve been working on for a bit location based play lists. what are they? well- imagine the songs on your music playing device changing based on where you are at, that’s what i made- for now i am using a pocket pc with gps to feed in the location data as i jog, based on that data my flash mx application will load in specific play lists and songs. as i run in areas that have steep hills i want hard rock, when i am running in the flat areas i tend to prefer hip hop. the screeshot to the right is ugly, but it’s just for testing. i’d like my car to play different songs based on the drive and roads i am taking too (working on that). [flashenabled | phillip m. torrone]

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Eastern Standard Tribe

I finished reading Cory Doctorow’s excellent second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe via Palm Reader Pro, which has some features that really seem worth the upgrade from free.

First – the book was great! I really like the kind of science fiction that is like 5 minutes into the future and in this case feels very real based on the situations of the characters and the world around them. Even though it is 2012, it might as well be tomorrow, if not yesterday. All the things you know about the world and how it works are very similar. The use of technology is not just for the sake of technology but threaded through in a logical way the way you might expect things to evolve in the time frame.

The Pro version of the Palm Reader software really adds some nice perks – mainly color. You might not think color would add much, but I found that by using a light brown/yellow colored background and brown type, the retinal burn from the black on white was not as severe which make the act of reading more enjoyable and easier to do over longer periods. I found myself reading in the dark the past few days while Hannah was sleeping and the change to color made a huge difference for me. In addition to color, you also get a dictionary/thesaurus, but they are not as comprehensive as you might like, though you might not have the storage on your device or expansion card either.

I would definitely recommend the book. You can read it for free electronically in most if not all formats and can certainly buy it as well from your usual sources.

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A Day On The Town

Today we took advantage of the perfect weather (60, no wind and very sunny) and headed uptown to check out Central Park. Hannah rode the train once again up to 59th Street and from there we decided to check out the new Time Warner Towers… Inside (the part we saw anyway) is really an upscale mall with some serious restaurants. We were found a place to eat at Dean and Deluca within the Borders on the second level and enjoyed some sandwiches and amazing double chocolate chip cookies. (We’ll have to get more of those cookies!)

After lunch, we crossed Columbus Circle again and headed into the park. We saw many strollers along the way though Hannah got a good nap in for most of the walk. We snapped a few shots and just casually strolled along. On our way out, we noticed the Central Park Zoo and the Tisch Zoo for Children, a place we’ll be sure to visit again when Hannah can really appreciate the sites.