Feb 28
via tuaw.com
Research indicates that in North America, Apple’s Mac OS X is gaining traction, while the Windows share of the OS market is shrinking ever so slightly. …
Feb 28
Some of you may remember this accessory from back in the day when Apple made the first shuffle that looked like a white stick of Wrigley’s gum. The accessory/piece of art is called iBelieve and is basically a T-shaped cap that turns your first-gen iPod shuffle into a Cross you can wear around you neck.
via tuaw.com
Feb 26
via urlesque.com
On its own, a real life clown car is funny enough. Especially if it’s a Beetle. But when those clowns get caught red handed (and red nosed) zipping through a speed trap, well that’s downright newsworthy. …
Feb 26
via news.cnet.com
The music industry is in a major state of crisis and some up and coming acts are reluctant to dirty their hands with social networking. …
Feb 26
via engadget.com
Created by an obviously obsessed (and über-talented) Ghostbusters fan, the Nintendo Wii Proton Pack is a fully functional device that beautifully complements the Wii version of the Ghostbusters video game. …
Feb 26
via tuaw.com
Business Insider’s The Wire is reporting, rather humorously, that AP sources have the scoop that the Associated Press is working on its own iPad app. It will reportedly be a paid subscription news app that generates content from the AP and more than 1,000 member newspapers and broadcasters. … (go to “via” link for more)
Feb 26
Feb 25
If you’re on your home computer while reading this, glance down at your mouse, your trackball or your trackpad on your laptop. Since the Mac first rolled out in 1984, this has been the standard way to interface with your computer. You move your pointing device, and the pointer on the screen moves at the same time.
Once upon a time, this metaphor for working on a real desktop was needed. Until the mouse, the most-used method of interacting with computers was through a keyboard and arcane text commands. Mice took the computer and the way we used it to a much higher level. Suddenly, normal people who didn’t speak UNIX could interact with computers. The Web became popular, and you know the rest.
But when you watch science fiction, that’s not how people interact with technology in our dreams. In our imaginations, we touch screens. Or, as in “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise, we touch screens that almost seem to be thin air. In Star Trek, we talk to the computers. “Computer, on screen.”
The mouse was a much-needed crutch, but now it’s days are numbered. In the future, we will touch actual files and folders and computers will recognize what we say and do what we tell them in conversational English (or Spanish, French, etc.). This technology already exists in many basic forms. Look at the iPhone, the iPad and almost all new smartphones. And voice recognition also has come a long way. Dragon dictation software is on my iPhone. If I speak relatively slowly, it makes almost no mistakes in recognizing everything I tell it, down to the names in my contacts list.
A report has surfaced that Apple may be looking at installing touch screens on Macs.
This excites me. Not because I think it will be that useful – at first. But because it signals to me that we may soon be ready to take that next step in the evolution of technology.
Recently, Bill Gates denigrated the iPad, saying the future was more i the form-factor of a netbook for things like digital reading. Has he even tried to read something on a netbook or a laptop with a full-sized keyboard? I’ve tried to do that while laying down on my bed, and I either had to have the thing sitting on my lap – a long way from my eyes – or I had to balance it on my chest or stomach. It’s just unwieldy. The iPad/Kindle form-factor is much friendlier for casually interfacing with technology. It’s like holding a book. Only it does so much more. And if you notice, in most science fiction, that’s how imaginations hope we will use computers.
The clock began ticking on the traditional PC almost the minute it was designed. The end may not be tomorrow – or even next year. But in another 10 years, I guarantee we’ll look at today’s standard desktop PC in almost the same way we look at typewriters today.
Feb 25
Feb 25
via newser.com
(NEWSER) – The thrill of the libido, the agony of panty rashes may soon be a new highlight of the Olympics if pole dancers have their way and make the acrobatic gyrations an Olympic event. Others are hardly convinced, but the founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association believes Olympic recognition is merely a matter of time. Pole dancing takes just as much work and skill as, say, tug of war, which was once an Olympic event. Besides, pole dancing has the “wow factor,” one practitioner tells AP. … More through the “via” link.