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Hip Hop Tots

A 33-year-old J. Walter Thompson copywriter named Daniel A. Cohen is overhauling “Western civilization’s canon of nursery rhymes” and setting “it to hip-hop rhythms,” reports Robin Finn in The New York Times. He’s now selling his disc, called “Bust a Nursery Rhyme” at Wal-Mart, among other places. Sample this: “Humpty Dumpty got out of bed, Humpty Dumpty shined his egg head…Humpty Dumpty climbed to the top, Humpty Dumpty felt the beat drop.” Source: Reveries.com

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Audi to incorporate Bluetooth in their cars

Graham Hayday from Silicon.com reports on Audi’s plans to incorporate Bluetooth into some of its cars.

CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) will be providing the German company with its BlueCore silicon technology. The Audis will be the first cars to be offered with Bluetooth-enabled GSM car phones and cordless handsets. The vehicles will be rolled out in countries supporting the GSM network in Europe and Asia from December 2002.

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Freeware discoveries of the day

A great free WiFi network scanner was recently released called iStumbler. I had been using MacStumbler which is cool too though not as slick as iStumbler. You get a much cleaner picture of what you are looking at with each base station discovered including warchalk icons for security.

Another app, I may just be behind on finding but seems to work quite well is called Acquisition. It’s a gnutella client for OS X and has a simple but elegant interface. Check it out if you are like to search around…

Lastly for the day is RadioFree, also from xlife, the maker of Acquisition. It lets you record internet mp3 streams into files, you can burn or transfer to your iPod.

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Future Handspring devices keyboard only

How about a hint on when…

The Register

Product manager Will Rees told us that Handspring was looking at smaller keyboards and improving one-handed operation for its next generation, but that there wouldn’t be a return to the pen-only PDA.

“We took out almost every instance where you need to use the pen,” said Rees.

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Replay it again, Sam

Salon.com Technology | Replay it again, Sam

Craig Newmark epitomizes the kind of person electronics industry marketers lovingly refer to as an “early adopter.” His modest apartment in the friendly San Francisco neighborhood of Cole Valley is decked with many of the gadgets that the industry is hoping most other people will think of buying in a few years’ time. In his living room, there’s a widescreen TV surrounded by a half-dozen silver audio and video devices, the most important of which are his two ReplayTV units. One is an older model he purchased a few years ago, when he first heard of PVRs; the second is a ReplayTV 4000, whose broadband connection and automatic commercial skip caused 28 media companies, including Viacom, Disney, AOL Time Warner and their subsidiaries, to file suit against Sonicblue last October. They charged Sonicblue with engaging in an “unlawful plan … to arm their customers with — and continuously assist them in using — unprecedented new tools for violating plaintiffs’ copyright interests”

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Cool tools for your Sidekick…

While I don’t have one just yet, the idea that I can move my contacts and calendar info from desktop to device is very compelling. The link for the software to move your contacts is here I found it in the readme for the iCal bit mentioned below. At $99 as mentioned earlier today this baby is looking good. I have read about a pending sync app, which is due probably in Q1 ‘2003 according to folks chatting on the Danger discussion groups. That would make it ideal.

iCal to Sidekick 1.0b: “This script exports iCal events into a file that can be uploaded to the T-Mobile Sidekick Desktop Interface. Source code is included. [d/l]” Source: AppleScript Info

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iApp Power Play

O’Reilly Network: iApp Power Play [Dec. 03, 2002]

I realized that many creative people have been influenced by Apple’s consumer marketing that aims to keep things simple in order to appeal to the greatest number of potential customers. But the iApps are better than that. Beneath their tantalizing GUI lurks powerful tools capable of producing professional quality media, especially when used as a group. So let’s take a look at how to get some serious work done with this trio of digital media programs.

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OS X and the dismounting of network volumes

I have noticed that when I forget to dismount a network volume, and then reconnect in a new location, my computer will remain on hold for quite a few minutes trying to reconnect. This is more than a little frustrating… I wish the system would realize sooner that the computer is just not there.

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NFL.com can handle your blackout fix…

Not exactly the most ideal, but certainly better than nothing… You can listen to a live radio broadcast of the game you want, plus have a live stats page updated semi-regularly (it seems to run a bit behind) to keep you in the game when you can’t be watching. I wish I had discovered this earlier in the season!

NFL.com If you happen to tune in during a commercial break, you will only hear silence until the game returns live…

Go Eagles!

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What a week…

Things started out strong but turned quickly on Tuesday and have been tumultuous and emotionally challenging for my wife and me through today. We are both completely exhausted, though she more than I am as she also endured the physical stress of surgery today. I am totally spent and very glad to have the weekend to decompress through. We have been working out some serious emotions due to the loss of what had started weeks ago as a fantastic new beginning in our lives.

Soon enough I suppose, but certainly not the way anyone could have planned. There has been an amazing amount of support to have come through from family and friends for whom we are extremely grateful.

This week will certainly be remembered and not forgotten.