Craig's Musings

Okay, this is pretty darned funny - SanDisk launched a site called "iDon't" as an anti-iPod marketing ploy. I went to the site, and was inundated with iPod listening sheep - my quick-draw Alt-PrtScn caught this:

You can't tell it is a SanDisk site, but when you click on "the alternative" you find out that if one of these applies to you:

• "iDon't follow"
• "iDon't do mainstream"
• "iDon't want to be like everyone else"
• "iDon't want to be a silhouette"
• "iDon't want to be an iTool"
• "iDon't wanna plan my life around my battery's"

then the SanDisk Sansa E200 series is for you. I know I for sure don't want to be an iTool, whatever that is. If only an MP3 player could save me from my iTool-ness. Amusing.

Posted by Craig at 4:35 PM | Permalink | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

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A few weeks ago, I bought a Slingbox - a funky looking but nifty $200 device that allows you to "placeshift" content from your cable box, satellite box, or digital video recorder. Last night, I finally got a chance to set it up (took all of 5 minutes, those Slingbox folks did a great job making this stuff easy to use) and connected it to one of my ReplayTVs. It is darn cool - from my laptop with an internet connection, I control my ReplayTV so that I can watch live television, recorded shows on that ReplayTV, and thanks to DVArchive, all the Replay shows that I've squirreled away my server.

Today I tried a new twist - Slingplayer Mobile and it is my current vote for New Hotness of 2006. Running on my handy Sprint PPC-7700 I have here at work, I was blown away - all of my recorded content, plus 250 channels of live satellite TV, anywhere I want. I got great performance on Sprint's EVDO network (minimum requirement was 112kbps of reliable bandwidth). I tried bluetoothing from my Dell PDA to my day to day phone so I could have the T-Mobile EDGE experience, and it wasn't quite there - I would get a few seconds that worked, then the video would break up. T-Mobile doesn't seem to quite have reliable 112kbps EDGE yet.

This experience had me finally get mobile video - what will win will not be not necessarily be the 50 or 60 channels of random stuff that is being offered, but personalized, on demand, what I want when I want it content. Mark my words!

Posted by Craig at 8:11 PM | Permalink

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It's been coming for a while now, but it's finally arriving this month - the HTC "Star Trek" phone, which will be branded by Qtek as the 8500. Expansys in the UK says they'll have it May 19th.

It's another music-themed devices from HTC, with built in music buttons. The cool accomplishment is the size & weight: 98.5 x 51.4 x 15.8 mm, weight 99g. It packs Windows Mobile 5, quad band, micro-SD slot, bluetooth and a 1.3megapixel camera. £306.34, full retail, early adopter penalty included - not bad at all.

I have been using smartphones from HTC since we (back when we was Action Engine) launched our software with Orange on the SPV back in fall 2002, and I ongoingly impressed with how they keep refining and improving their designs. Can't wait to try the new one!

Posted by Craig at 6:31 PM | Permalink

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About 2 months ago, Promise announced a 16 port SATA Raid Controller supporting RAID6, the SuperTrak EX16350. With the inevitability of terabyte and larger drives (750gb now shipping, $499 from NewEgg), RAID6 is a must have in my book. When one of my 400GB drives in my Vtrak 15200 fails, it takes about 24 hours for a rebuild to complete (and the drives are only 75% full). Imagine a mostly full terabyte+ drive - 3 day rebuilds or longer. And in those 3 days, with RAID5, if you lose a drive, your whole array is kaput. So RAID6 and its dual parity drives is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Now stick one of these controllers in a Vtrak, Promise!

Posted by Craig at 6:25 PM | Permalink

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My house in Thunder Bay was about 3 minutes from Lakehead University, which in January (wait for it) refused to roll out Wi-Fi because "jury's out" on the long term exposure to the EMF. Presumably cell phones, bluetooth devices, cordless phones and power transmission lines can't be far behind from being re-evaluated at LU.

Posted by Craig at 6:56 AM | Permalink | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

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When I went to high school in Thunder Bay, we had Commodore Pets with 8 or 16k of ram, a little chicklet keyboard, and a glowing white 40x25 character display. Fast forward, well let's say several, years, and my kids will get to hack open source legos before they even get 1st grade:

Hackers, Get Ready! LEGO Group Announces Open Source Firmware, Developer Kits for LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT

Cool!

Posted by Craig at 9:33 AM | Permalink

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Okay, I love this - you know you're in the mainstream when Shaolin monks are doing IM and using cellphones. What would the remake of the lines from Kung Fu be - something like:

Master Kan: Quickly as you can, snatch the cellphone from my hand.

[Young Caine tries to do so and fails]

Master Kan: When you can take the cellphone from my hand and text "what, no pebble?", it will be time for you to leave.

Shaolin monks enjoy cell phones, Internet

ZHENGZHOU, China: Most monks above the age of 18 on the Shaolin Temple's martial arts team use mobile phones and surf the Internet daily, their chief coach has said.

Head coach Shi Yanlu revealed the modern life enjoyed by monks in an interview with the Xiaoxiang Morning Post.

Shi said they also use QQ, China's most popular instant messaging service, China Daily said Friday.

A kung fu monk is given a monthly allowance of $25 by the temple.

Posted by Craig at 7:48 PM | Permalink

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