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Are You a Geek?

Geek good. Dork bad.

It is funny how terms that were originally mean to be derogatory eventually are embraced by the group with the label. Sometimes the term flips 180 degrees and becomes complementary. Such it is with “geek” which now seems to be synonymous with “extremely proficient with” (as in “computer geek”). [mecurious]

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Cringely disrupts the phone company

I have actually been thinking about replacing my Apple Airport (Gray, second one) and Linksys Router with a single device and the Linksys WRT54G seems like the way to go for 802.11G capabilities at a price much lower than Apple’s Extreme base station. I’d heard of hacking the thing, but had no idea that the firmware you could load was this sophisticated… whoa.

If you have a WRT54G, here’s what you can use it for after less than an hour’s work. You get all the original Linksys functions plus SSH, Wonder Shaper, L7 regexp iptables filtering, frottle, parprouted, the latest Busybox utilities, several custom modifications to DHCP and dnsmasq, a PPTP server, static DHCP address mapping, OSPF routing, external logging, as well as support for client, ad hoc, AP, and WDS wireless modes.

If that last paragraph meant nothing at all to you, look at it this way: the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac’s wireless ISP. Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together and put out of business your local telephone company.

That’s what I mean by a disruptive technology. [PBS | I, Cringely]

Even if he’s stretching, it’s a very cool box, for not so much money and let’s you really take advantage of your connection.

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Shame on the Apple Marketing Department

So perhaps it’s not the worst offense, but it is quite surprising that I received an email with a 60 Day free offer to .sign up for .Mac as an existing customer! I don’t need and probably can’t even use the 60 day free trial to extend my account as the link bypasses my stored cookie.

I expect Apple to know better and to be able to perform some basic list segmentation against their customers… this is not the way to build loyalty for paid services. If you’d like to join, perhaps this is your chance to do it.

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SyncAgain!

Thinking about a Blackberry, but were hesitant as a Mac user… worry no more! This changes everything! SyncAgain seems to be the first Mac based solution for Blackberry sync and installation — including wireless updates!

Epicad, a wireless application software developer and services provider, is pleased to announce the upcoming availability of SyncAgain, the first solution to enable Macintosh synchronization with the BlackBerry wireless platform from Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq:RIMM; TSX:RIMM). SyncAgain operates wirelessly offering the synchronization of contacts, events and to-dos. SyncAgain also allows remote viewing and selection of Mac address books and calendar folders using the BlackBerry browser as well as installation of third-party applications on BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds. [O’Grady’s PowerPage]

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Shiira

Shiira is Japanese browser based on webkit and seems to be pretty damn similar if not the same as Safari. I would be hard pressed to point out any differences in the few minutes I tried other than these few details…

Keyboard Shortcuts for bookmarks in the bar don’t work
You can use your safari bookmarks directly without import, Shiira can actually read the file itself and loads things in as though it was native.

Other than that, I don’t read Japanese, so I have no idea what it says on the website. It feels like a Safari clone to me… If you want to surf different, yet like Safari, Shiira might be for you.

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Not much to report from CeBit or DMD

Sandro and I checked out the shows today with a free pass for CeBit and found the floor to be almost depressingly quiet. The main (actually only) highlight was a very quick hands on with the OQO 01. Sorry we talked about but honestly spaced pictures as we only had a minute or two to deal with it while the sole rep was packing up to leave.

It’s definitely slick! I was impressed with the feel, which is distinctly metal. The slider which reveals the keyboard has great tactile feedback and a satisfying click as it opens. It’s better than the feel of the slider on my T3.

Size is excellent and surprising. It’s only a bit larger than the Palm, but and while much heavier, it’s not really heavy, just solid. The screen is permanently exposed… so you’ll need to have a cover, screen protector or some way to shield it when it’s in a pocket or bag. The screen itself seemed quite nice. When the Windows XP system booted up, it was easy to read and very crisp. While we did not read much other than a clean windows desktop with some icons, it seems fair to say it would be a nice screen to read and work with frequently.

We really did not get to play much with it so I have nothing to say about the keyboard’s response other than it seems kind of flat like a Sony PDA, rather than a Treo or Blackberry. I guess people will have to get used to it like all things… There is a rubberized mousing device like the nipple on a ThinkPad, but flatter. There are two mouse buttons on the far left side which give you a left (top) and right (bottom) click.

Should be interesting to see how these sell when they are finally released this fall.. ahem. We were told OQO is trying to keep the price below $2,000 which is incredibly rich for a gadget, so I’d expect only those who need to have it to buy the early ones, outside of the mobile workers OQO has reported testing with now.

DMD was much more crowded and happening, but was not of much interest considering the sheer number of print and data vendors. I was kind of hoping for some more tech providers in the space…

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Entourage: Lock Errors

Still trying things…I’ve discovered a setting in Entourage which I thought might help others who are using or trying it in IMAP mode…

For some reason certain IMAP servers (like mine) do not like to have commands sent simultaneously and with this on, you’ll notice quite a few connection errors as I previously noted.

To deactivate this default preference… Go to Tools / Accounts and select your IMAP account(s). Then go to Options and uncheck the “Send Commands Simultaneously” box.

I discovered this through a google search which led me to a page at Purdue University.

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RSS Router

The idea as I understand it is this: your feedreader, like your browser and email app, is a hub of information. It makes sense to want to route information from the hub to other applications. You might want to store something in a database, send an email based on a news item, send a news item into an iChat session, and so on. Sending a news item to a weblog editor is just the first, most obvious application. [inessential.com: Weblog]

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Something Better Than The Orange XML Icon

It’s definitley time for this…if not exactly, someting similar that let’s syndication really take off on a much broader scale.

For RSS to be truly mainstream, subscribing to a web page needs to be a simple as printing. When I want to print a web page, I don’t have to go scroll through the page and hunt for a little orange “print me!” icon.

The icon is really useful only for people who already know how it’s used. If you told your mom [1] to “go to Reuters and subscribe to their page”, do you think she would be able to figure out that she’s supposed to click the orange xml icon? Or do you think she’d do better with a toolbar button/menu item titled “subscribe”? Now, for people who do understand what the icon is for, do you think it’s more usable to hunt-n-click, or use a single, consistent UI like printing? [Better Living Through Software ]

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WP Location Manager

One of the interesting features of WordPress is that it can track where you are when you post for GeoURL compatibility. This plugin lets you adjust it quickly while you are travelling…

The Location Manger is a utility add-on for WordPress 1.2, that allows you to save latitude and longitude pairs with a name, url, and a comment. [Weblog Tools Collection]

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Comcast: Telephony Everywhere

Comcast, the largest US cable operator with 21.5 million subscribers, said on Wednesday it will offer telephone service to more than 40 million households by 2006 (where it’s getting the other 18.5 million households is unclear). Comcast said it would begin an aggressive roll-out of VOIP, or Voice-over-Internet protocol using cable modems. [Daily Wireless]