It might be hard to tell but this guy’s car is filled entirely with newspaper! He is leaning on the car reading the Post standing in front of the driver’s seat — the ONLY area not covered by newspaper!
DIY Bottle Cap Tripod
Thanks to a pointer at Gizmodo you can now make a Bottle Cap Tripod yourself… This is a great addition to the link I pointed out the other day (actually so did many sites) which enabled you to purchase one…
Have to hit the Hardware Store later and give this a shot!
Yahoo does cam-photos
Seems to work with all the major carriers…
Yahoo now lets people upload pictures to its photo-sharing site from camera phones. [picturephoning.com]
IPv6 added to root DNS
ICANN has added IPv6 support to its root DNS servers. The 128-bit address fields will ensure that IP addresses will be in strong supply for years to come. [Ars Technica]
5-megapixel phones
WOW!
Korean handset makers are looking to introduce 5-megapixel phones within this year. [picturephoning.com]
Bottle cap tripod
Looks like a great addition to any travel or day pack… small and quite functional.
Here’s a hack-cum-product aimed squarely at the well-hydrated camera geek. The US$9.99-$14.99 Bottle Cap Tripod turns any 28.5- to 30.5mm-mouthed water or soda bottle into a tripod. [MobileWhack]
Bluetooth helps the disabled
As a tech enthusiast, I am often focused on adopting things for pleasure… Today though I awoke to a new view. I just passed a women in a wheel-chair wearing a motorola bluetooth headset and instantly got it. For her it was much more than a toy or convenience…it made the phone actually usable.
I think it will be interesting when the tech is easy enough to market based on benefit, rather than simply cool factor.
Salling Clicker
I’m always amused (perhaps too easily) when the bigger sites discover something you’ve known about for a pretty long time… Salling Clicker is an amazing tool to use if you’ve got a bluetooth connection between your Mac and either a Palm or mobile phone. Version 2.2, which was released yesterday and that I happily beta tested allows for additional controls and even lets you remote command your Slim Devices server… rock on!
Justin Ried of TheFeature has good things to say about a neat-sounding application called Salling Clicker that turns a Bluetooth device into a remote control for your Mac.
One of the really amazing features is that you can see not just ordinary information about the track you’ve got currently playing in iTunes – artist and song name, track length, etc. – but also the album art, directly on your mobile device. [Boing Boing]
Wi-Fi (Listings) on Your iPod
Not sure how much I’ll get to use this right now, but certainly good to have handy for when it might matter…
Bay Area Free Wi-Fi Wireless Hotspots has a downloadable listings of San Francisco Bay locations: wiPod is a little database that you can download to an iPod to be able to scroll through and see free locations throughout that region. [Wi-Fi Networking News]
Business at Kinkos sucks
It’s taken over an hour to unsuccessfully send and receive a few faxes at an absulutely silly premium per page! My mission is far from over… have to try Mailboxes later on. Argh
Some new toys to consider…
If you’ve been waiting for the Treo 600 on Verizon, today is your lucky day… It’s finally available for consumers (business customers had it waiting last week). There’s even a special wireless sync which will give you always on email, though I believe it’s the type that requires a PC (not Mac) be on at all times to redirect the mail coming in. I wish more carriers would offer a hosted solution, but Verizon is not my carrier anyway…
Today is also the officially launch of the next generation iPod. It’s a tad thinner than the current model, boasts longer battery life and uses the same click wheel of the iPod mini. If you don’t have an iPod… or have an old and lagging one, you’ve got to be psyched about this. Me… I can’t possible justify another iPod when my 40GB 3G one is all good for now.
Olympic Partnerships
Just watching the Olympic trials at the moment and wondering why ATT wireless has an exclusive to the mobile alerts and Olympic updates.
The Olympics are a universal thing and something that (other than broadcast rights) should not be controlled by any one company. Perhaps it’s just my perspective as a former swimmer, but I still hold the Olympics in a pure eye. I’d can’t imagine that people are going to suddenly switch or even sign up for ATT just because of the SMS features for the Olympic Games.
car meet building
Cell Phone Magazines
Celeb Gossip, Extreme Sports and Sports News can all be delivered as magazines to your mobile… what you were expecting magazines about mobiles?? I looked around on their site, but it seems to be a B2B play for the time being so you’ll have to have a carrier who enables this for you.
Availing themselves of growing cell phone usage, three new magazines designed specifically for delivery via cell phone have just launched. [Adrants]
She Walks!
Tonight before Hannah had her bath, she took a few steps!! It was amazing…
She stood for a few seconds before taking a few steps and then crashing lightly into Ashley’s lap!
Hannah has been pretty demanding lately… wanting to use us as a human crutch to stand and walk about the apartment. Tonight though, we thought she might want to try going for it after having stood a few times on her own. Well… she did it!
(Hannah will be 8 months on Monday…)
I know I don’t post too many personal items like this, but as a proud father, how could I resist!
Roaming Free
An interesting piece over at Forbes…
Just as thrifty theater-goers can save a buck by smuggling in their own Junior Mints, so too are cell phone users finding ways to download their own phone upgrades without paying a big margin to their carriers.
The very same phones that give users the power to download new services also give them the flexibility to find other ways of getting new content into those phones. For instance, an avid text messaging fan in Britain who owns a Nokia 6600 can save money by using a service run by an outside company such as Fastchat, which provides unlimited text messaging for a flat fee.
Such fee-dodging tactics are about to become a major threat to the cell industry, according to a new study by Mako Analysis, a British research firm specializing in mobile communications. New operating systems such as Symbian Series 60 are capable of working with all manner of extra applications.
“A savvy user can use this open operating system to completely bypass a range of services that are normally charged for by their mobile operator,” the report says. [Forbes.com]
Of course these issues raise the question of who owns the phone… You pay for it and lock into a service contract in most situations, but people are finding ways around the walled gardens often created to control the experience. The control is part of a two-pronged approach to both make money as well as limit the potential service issues.
An advanced user should be able to choose services that are of interest to them, and often do, though at an increase in cost due to buying unlocked phones from third parties rather than directly from the carrier – who lock the phones. When a phone is locked it allows the carrier to pre-program content and content partners as well as assure that whatever settings they need to input are there for these services to work.
If you’ve ever read Howard Forums, Mobitopia (or lurked in #mobitopia), Mobilewhack, My Treo to name a few, you’ve seen that many people are independently dealing with things.
From a user perspective, I personally think we should be able to use compatible hardware on whatever network we like. It should force the carriers to offer quality services that users want rather than just pre-loading WAP menus with things people don’t even know about let alone use…
GMail Wiki
Gmail Wiki is a site I just discovered that lets the users create and manage content and tips on using GMail…
Flickr and the blog…
So some tweaks need to be worked out…
It’s great to post a picture via MMS or email to Flickr and have it show up in your blog feed, but I’d like some more control over the process like:
- The ability to add a category…
- The ability to also have the image and text appear on my actual site. I logged into Flickr after uploading a picture (the post prior to this one…) and decided to blog a bit on it, which is cool, but since it was already in my feed (per my Feedburner settings), feed readers are going to get it twice.
- Edit without sending a second copy of the image (I mistyped a title and noticed 2 posts rather than just the first one corrected)
Still great and very cool.
Looking Down the Lift in Beaver Creek
Looking Down the Lift in Beaver Creek
After reading a recent post by Gotham Gal on her mountain biking in Aspen, I recalled my own trip to Beaver Creek… Here’s a shot looking down the lift
Flickr splices into Feedburner
We are very happy to announce our partnership with the smart folks at Flickr [The FeedBurner Weblog]
What does this mean? It means that Flickr photos you are sharing can automagically get inserted into your Feedburner Feeds. I’ve just turned this on… so feed readers have probably just noticed a few extras.
Lately I’ve been snapping some phone-cam shots and MMSing them to a variety of services to check it all out – Flickr, Buzznet and T-Mobile all offer services that let you snap a shot with your camera and send them to a site (there are others like TextAmerica which I tried previously) they host for you. I’ve been running a moblog on my sidebar for a while now with images hosted by Buzznet, but the more I play with Flickr the more I like it. I am still working out a kink (fixed!!) with a feature on their service which lets you post directly to your blog… not sure exactly what the issue is, but it’s something with WordPress…
Still toying with things… may add the Flickr sidebar widget instead of the Buzznet one.. it runs in Flash which is interesting and offers some a more dynamic presentation of your shots.