Technology

I recently added a 43 Places page to the site. 43 Places is yet another website that’s under the Robot Co-op umbrella. You can track where you’ve been and where you want to be, something that many people were doing with 43 Things. However, as it wasn’t designed for destinations, lots of duplicate goals were registered at 43 Things. For example, you might have “See Germany”, “Visit Germany”, “Go to Germany”, and so on. 43 Places is much more exact and allows for places within other places be entered that way (such as having Fenway Park in Boston). ...

I’ve been subscribed to Your Mac Life‘s podcast for some time now. I subscribed a long time back before I knew what to subscribe to. Basically, there was a single show, which was a rant by Shawn. It was all right. Now, after I noticed that another show never made it self available, I did a little digging and found out that they didn’t because they made all their money on Audible, charging just about $4 a show, or $45 for a year’s subscription. Saying that he didn’t want to change their business model is a fine justification. That’s cool. ...

Looking through my del.icio.us inbox I came across a link to the Gizmo Project. Basically, it’s a nice face for the SIP protocol, similar to Skype (though Skype doesn’t use SIP). Skype has always served me well (though I’ve admittedly only played with it). It’s a good OS X citizen, sporting a great interface and utilizing some neat OS X software like Growl. However, you have to pay for the voicemail service. You don’t have to with Gizmo (an interim name). Gizmo has both a Mac and Windows version. A Linux version is in the works. ...

In yet another landmark decision, the Supreme Court has ruled against Grokster. Now, upon first examination, I thought this was a very bad thing. However, reading the Groklaw article on the ruling has put some of my fears to rest. In fact, the Sony decision isn’t infringed upon. From the decision: We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promotion its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. ...

Earlier this week, my El Gato EyeHome arrived. It doesn’t come with any AV cables. So I had to march down to Wallyworld to pick up some cables. Then the fun began. I had a few choices when it came to cables. There’s composite, S-video, and component video outputs. For audio, there’s component and optical. Now, if I had the right equipment, the right connections would be the component video and the optical audio. Optical audio: isn’t that an oxymoron? I don’t and I need the most flexibility, so I went with the component video and audio. Note that there is no RF coaxial output, so if that’s all your TV has, you may have to route it through a special adapter box or through your VCR. ...

So, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I’ve finally gone ahead and ordered an Elgato EyeHome. Dealnews alerted me about a deal to get a D-Link 5-port switch for $10. That was a good deal, so I ordered it. Now, I’ve been looking for a good deal on a switch to attach to my DWL-G810 wireless bridge. Right now, it’s only attached to my Playstation 2. It only has a single ethernet port and because I’m too lazy to switch the cable over between the two devices. ...

Growl is an awesome piece of freeware that supplies a universal event notification system. Sounds complicated, but basically, it gives applications alternate ways to tell you things. One of the new features in the 0.7 version is the ability to send these events to networked computers via Bon Jour. For example, let’s say you have a downloading application that issues events upon completion. However, you kicked that download off at your desktop and you want to use your laptop. You don’t want to babysit your desktop to know when it reached completion. ...

One of the neatest things I’ve found lately is the proliferation of websites to manage aspects of your life publicly. Seeing as I’m not totally privacy paranoid, it’s a fun hobby. I recently discovered All Consuming which was created by Erik Benson. It’s a neat way to track books, music, and movies that you’re reading, listening to, and watching respectively. Robot Co-op, the company that runs 43 Things, bought it up. This means that the two services will soon be intertwined. 43 Things is one of the sources on Tag Central but unfortunately All Consuming is not because they don’t supply RSS feed for their tags. Hopefully that will change. ...

People that are big into blogging will recognize Dave Winer as a hugely important figure. However, like many great people, he suffers from an ego problem. Wired ran an interview by Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing fame with Adam Curry, famous for various reasons, but currently because of the wildly popular Daily Source Code podcast. In response to which, Dave Winer threw a fit. You know when people are taking the mature approach to an issue when they say things like: ...

I recently added a link into the supplement about AOL giving free email to AIM users. I saw Slashdot cover the same story and one comment gave information about how to access it. Naturally I had to try it out for myself. Now, as far as I’m concerned, Gmail has the ultimate interface (I still have plenty of invites if you want one). So honestly, my expectations for AOL’s new mail service weren’t that great. However, the question is if it’s better or worse than the other webmail providers, such as Yahoo or HoTMaiL. ...