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Archives: tech
- Free Wi-fi
I'm not sure how I feel about the concept of free wi-fi in coffee shops and bars - sure, we all like “free”, and I'm always careful to order refills and tip the baristas copiously. But, it can be impossible to get a table, because of wi-fi squatters. This afternoon, I'm sitting at Fall Cafe in our new neighborhood, and looking around at the other tables - each with a laptop - and I see a lot of empty cups - these people have been sitting here for hours. As you can see from the new signage in the window... - Pownce
Anybody got a Pownce invite? Pretty please? UPDATE: All set, thanks Rich!... - Movable Type 4 Beta
Well that was fun - I tried to upgrade to the new Movable Type 4 Beta, and it completely hosed my MT database tables. Luckily for once, I backed up everything, prior to taking the leap - so we're back up running now. It might be a good time to finally switch over to WordPress?... - SXSW: Day 1
4 restless hours of sleep, and 1 Jetblue direct flight from BOS to AUS, and I found myself in Austin. Checked into the hotel and met up with the EchoDitto folks, and other friends. There are like 4 Jasons, 2 Justins, a John (me) — so it gets confusing. 70 degrees here, 55 or so at night. This festival totally takes over the city. Met some cool people last night, and the first panel this morning was cool — i started in “why XSLT is sexy”, but bailed for “emerging social and technology trends”. Next up, “How to Bluff Your... - �Security�
Windows is driving me insane at work — all of these little security fixes that get in the way of productivity. Last Friday, I installed the latest Windows updates and rebooted at the end of the day. When I get to work and log in on Monday morning, I get this security warning every time I click on a zip file: Internet Explorer This page has an unspecified potential security risk. Would you like to continue? Um, yes, permanently. It only repros (so far) for ZIPs on network shares and mapped drives. I’ve got Win XP SP2 & IE7… any... - Windows Live Writer (Beta)
I’m posting this from inside Windows Live Writer, a newly released “weblogging” application by Microsoft. It’s a slick little windows app, with support for publishing to Movable Type, Wordpress, as well as Live Spaces, by default. Paul Stamatiou has an extended review, but here are some of the features: WYSIWYG Authoring Spell Check Photo Publishing Map Publishing, (via Live Local) Compatibility with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others) Also, like most good WYSIWYG editors, it allows you to toggle over to HTML code view � (taking a quick look at this post, I see that it writes pretty clean code). Note:... - Adobe Flash Player 9
Product Manager Emmy Huang writes in the Adobe Development Center: As we looked at our goals for Flash Player 9, however, we realized that it would be too limiting to continue to evolve the existing engine. We wanted to create a watershed moment in the history of Flash Player, and to deliver it we needed to be able to innovate without constraint. As a result, ActionScript 3.0 is essentially a full rewrite of the ActionScript engine. ActionScript 3.0 executes in a new, highly-optimized virtual machine known as AVM2, which we built for efficiency and performance. Although AVM2 will be the... - Diesel Sweeties
I love Diesel Sweeties … I prefer to name my computers and devices after imaginary girls who would never go out with me.... - Google Romance
Hey, single people! Find your soul mate, with Google Romance: Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search�, see search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we’ll send you both on a Contextual Date, which we’ll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you’re looking for. Be sure to take the tour, and read the FAQ.... - Hosted Gmail
This is fantastic - I’ve setup Hosted Gmail for our old domain, suckahs.org, and it’s working fantastic. I wish that I could use this at work, rather than Exchange/Outlook. There are some nice account manangement functions, and you can create 25 accounts for free. They even allow you to upload a custom logo in place of the standard Gmail logo. Go sign up.... - Lockdown
Thanks Zooomer & OpenID… I signed up for you this morning, and Google suspended my Gmail access: Lockdown in sector 4! Our system indicates unusual usage of your account. In order to protect Gmail users from potentially harmful use of Gmail, this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours. If you are using any third party software that interacts with your Gmail account, please disable it or adjust it so that its use complies with the Gmail Terms of Use. If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according to the Terms of Use... - Microsoft Live Betas
I was just sorting through the 500 spam messages in my Hotmail inbox, and noticed that I received both a Mail Beta and a Messenger Beta invitation. Mail looks nice and simple, and the drag-and-drop functionality is showy. But, it only works in IE6/PC, and it’s sluggish as hell. I wasn’t able to select & delete more than 10-15 spam messages at a time without it timing-out. SIGN UP HERE Messenger got a face lift, and they added some VOIP functionality. The “Shared Folder” feature sounds interesting, but I don’t know anybody else with the Beta, so I haven’t... - FeedLounge
Casey was talking about FeedLounge a while back, so when the beta finally launched, I plunked down $5 for a month subscription, mostly out of curiosity. They seem to promise you the world, but I’ve found FL delivers what it promises - a hosted, Ajaxed-up RSS reader, complete with Google Reader-esque keyboard shortcuts. Incidentally, I’m a big fan of Google Reader, because it facilitates speedy consumption of a lot information… learn a couple of keyboard shortcuts, and you can quickly read through your favorite websites on your lunch-hour. However, it’s nearly impossible to manage subscriptions once you’ve imported that... - Airfoil 2
Rogue Amoeba released version 2.0 of Airfoil, one of my absolute essential mac applications. If you own an Airport Express, and are less than impressed by iTunes’ transmitting capabilities, plunk down $25 now. The first version of Airfoil let you transmit audio from any application, but this new version has some great new features: Support For Multiple AirPort Express Units - Send audio to multiple units Audio Effects - New effects built into Airfoil allow for enhancing audio with a 10 band equalizer, volume adjustment including volume overdrive and balance controls Full Applescriptability - Control Airfoil with AppleScripts And,... - Google Kwanzaa
Happy Holidays, from Google. If you search for certain end-of-the year holidays, you get festive borders [photo] on the Google results page, (look between the results and text ads) Kwanzaa Hanukkah Christmas Are there more?... - AT&T Wireless -> Cingular -> AT&T?
So, having been forcibly converted from AT&T Wireless to Cingular, I read this today: Well, you can say goodbye to Cingular. SBC, which closed its merger with AT&T last week, decided that after spending untold millions promoting the Cingular brand for its joint venture with BellSouth, that they�re going to drop the name and start selling wireless service under the AT&T brand name. Why? On the day we read about GM shedding 30,000 American jobs, I’m having a hard time understanding just what the hell U.S. Big-Business is up to. Somebody is making money on all these shenanigans, but... - Google Reader, revisited
Google Reader is now my only RSS reader. Sure, it was slow and clunky when it first launched. But, there has been some performance improvement, and the adddition of some new functionality. For instance, you can use your mouse’s scroll wheel to quickly skip through the list of posts. Also, they’ve added some additional keyboard shortcuts - “v” opens the source page, (although you can’t hold down CTRL to open in a new tab), while “n” and “p” allow you to scroll through items without loading the content, which speeds things up considerably.... - Mapped FTP drive
There was a great “how-to” article on Engadget yesterday: Map a drive to your FTP server. Now, tweaking that CSS file is as easy as right-click, and Edit.... - Flock
Flock has indeed landed, today — they released a Developer Preview this afternoon. In fact, I’m publishing this very post from within the browser. Initial impressions — why can’t I select Movable Type text formatting? I know this is a beta and all, but this is kind of a deal breaker for me… apparently MT is giving them some troubles: WordPress and Blogger work pretty well. There are some problems still with Movable Type. We haven’t tested any other blogging platforms I haven’t done much with the del.icio.us integration yet, but so far this doesn’t seem very revolutionary. John Oxton... - The Poisoning of BitTorrent
O’Reilly Radar is reporting that HBO is “poisoning” BitTorrent downloads of their hour-long drama Rome: HBO is now obstructing the downloads offered by other people. BitTorrent downloads are peer-to-peer, but the peers are introduced to each other by a tracker (“you’re looking for Rome Season 1 Episode 2, talk to 127.0.0.1”). HBO runs peers that tell the tracker they have all the chunks of the show, but then send garbage data when a downloader requests a chunk. The downloading client can detect that it’s garbage and will try another peer for the chunk, but the end result is that it... - iTrip LCD
I’ve had the iTrip LCD for a couple of weeks now, and I am very frustrated with it. I’ve used the regular iTrip for a couple of years, and it perfomed about as well as can be expected from an FM transmitter. However, when I recently broke it, (the connector somehow bent and detached, causing some wires to disconnect), I decided to buy a new one. When I saw the LCD version, I ordered this instead. My setup in my car is exactly as it was with the original iTrip, (2000 Saab 9-3, 3rd-Gen iPod, with flat EQ and... - Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
It’s a pain to build web sites that behave properly in Internet Explorer — and, if my IE7 beta any idication, it will continue to be a pain. But, Microsoft just released the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar Beta. Some of the many features are: View HTML object class names, ID’s, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys. Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags. Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links. Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text. Immediately resize the browser window to 800×600 or a custom... - Google Secure Access client
Jeez, Google is branching out in to all kinds of new businesses… the latest is a venture to provide the world with a secure WiFi connection, especially usefule in public places. Dubbed Google Secure Access, it provides a free VPN connection to Google. Some observers are already questioning Google’s commitment to user privacy, which gives pause — but, I for one, would love such a service. Too bad the download is available only for WIndows.... - Office 12
Microsoft unveiled its new user interface for Office 12 earlier this week, and they seem to have departed radically from past releases: …we set about rethinking the UI from the user�s perspective, which is �results-oriented,� rather than from the developer�s perspective, which tends to be �feature-oriented� or �command-oriented�… instead of having to learn how to make something shadowed, or what the aspect ratio is or the percent gray, you just say, “Oh, I like that one,” and you pick it, you click it and get it in your document. It�s more visual. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access are due to... - Rollyo
Rollyo is cool — sign up to beta test.... - Walkman
Not to be outdone by Apple yesterday, I saw that Sony is once again rethinking it’s Walkman brand. I admit that the design is far more compelling than Sony’s previous offerings, but a monocramatic, low-res screen? C’mon Sony!... - Have a Mint
I just ordered and installed the new site stats package Mint, which was launched today by Shaun Inman. It’s been eons since I had a reliable site stat tracker, and this package looks as good as the hype. RIP, Refer.... - Gmail Notifier
Rejoice! Google released a OS X version of their Gmail Notifier application. GCount was great, but often broke when Google made changes to the Gmail service. Since then, I’ve tried Dashboard widgets like GPeek, but it’s annoying having to hit F12 to check for mail. Can’t wait to install it and check it out. UPDATE 9/12/2005: Apparently Google did build the mac application with support for plug-ins… To get Growl notifications, check out this Gmail+Growl script... - Google Desktop Beta
I’m on vacation this week, but here I am on monday morning, remoting into my work computer to install and test out the new Google Desktop Beta. It includes a Dashboard/Konfabulator widget functionality called Sidebar — which puts information on your desktop — Gmail, local weather, news, and even recommends cool links based on your own browsing habits. Also, I’m excited for Quick Find, a Spotlight/Quicksilver-like launcher functionality. I’ve been using AppRocket on my work PC for some time now, but it always seemed sluggish. Time to uninstall that app. Then there are the search improvements… the new version comes... - Meteor Showers this Weekend
Stef passed on this information about meteor showers this weekend: The 12 th and 13th of August is the best time that you can see meteor shower this year. They are called Perseids, and you can expect to see at least 60 meteors per hour. According to NASA, the best time to see the Perseids this year is “between 2 a.m. and dawn on August 12th, if you get away from city lights, you could see hundreds of meteors. This is a good time to go camping!” NASA Feature NASA Press Release... - Poor Man's TiVo: BitTorrent & RSS
I know a lot of you cats have TiVo, but I thought I’d share my favorite method of downloading our favorite TV shows, sans TiVo… BitTorrent is awesome, as everyone knows… but, I hate having to continuously scan the tracker sites for the shows I want, and then, I hate waiting for them to download. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell your BitTorrent client what shows you want, and it would download them automatically? Why, yes. That is the point of my post. By using the java client Azureus, in combination with its RSS plugin, you can. I’ve... - Gmail Rich-Text
I got back from NYC last night, and noticed that not only has Gmail bumped up storage from 1GB to 2GB, but it also has Rich-Text formatting! Gmail Rich-Text formatting... - del.icio.us Inbox
del.icio.us Inbox seems to be down again… has anybody heard anything about its status?... - Backups, Part III
Hurrah! Continuing the saga, I was searching through the D�j? Vu help, I stumbled upon this little nugget of information: IMPORTANT: If you are backing up to a Windows server, you must use the ‘Connect’ button in the ‘Auto-Connect’ tab to mount the volume before you select the source and destination folders (in the ‘What’ and ‘Where’ columns). If you select the source and destination folders when the volume has been mounted by the Finder, D�j? Vu will not be able to find the destination when it auto-connects to the volume at backup time. No kidding. I did as asked,... - Backups, Part II
My scheduled backup didn’t go so well, the other night. Apparently, D�j? Vu copied the folder structure, but couldn’t copy the files. Obviously there is some kind of permissions issue here, but I’m wondering if this is due to the fact that I’m copying to a Windows PC… The app connects to the remote drive just fine, and I can manually copy files to it — I just can’t seem to get this to work, though. I’ll have to do a little more research (leave a comment if you have an idea!)… or else, on to rsync. UPDATE: Ethan suggests... - Backups
Having read a few recent posts from Andy Budd and Jason Kottke, I’ve grown suddenly worried about the prospect of losing my Powerbook’s data. For the past couple of years, I’ve manually backed up critical files to CD, but I was lucky if this got done once per year… After briefly flirting with DVD archiving (thanks for your help Jason), it was clear that this would be only slightly less annoying than CDs. And, web servers offer even less disk space… No, I decided that it was time to set up scheduled backups, to hard disk. First, I started with... - Firefox 0.8
Jon Hicks posted today about the "re-branding":http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/archives/000377.php of the "Mozilla Firebird":http://mozilla.org/products/firefox/ browser. Though I don't love the new name, "Firefox":http://www.bengoodger.com/weblog/archives/week_2004_02_08.shtml#000549, obviously lawyers have been involved. But, the new logo is what really caught my eye... It's truly an inspiring leap. And the pinstripe theme for OS X is beautiful as well. I'm still a "Safari":http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/ fan, but it's good to see another alternative.... - More proof that Google is broken
Google has decided that this site is the #1 result for super bowl jackson uncensored pic. Why? I haven't posted a bit about the "Superbowl fiasco":http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/02/02/20040202_200411_mattjj.htm (oops, now I did). There probably was a link on my aggregated "News Page":http://ned.suckahs.org/news.php for a few hours... but, Google isn't linking to that page, but rather the "referer":http://ned.suckahs.org/refer/ page! Thanks to weblogs, Google is nearly useless.... - W32.Welchia.Worm
It's worm week here at my workplace. The lastest little virus is the W32.Welchia.Worm, which has attacked our internal servers here, and spread like wild fire. The funny thing about this virus, is that it's purpose seems to be to clean up last weeks' mess, the MS Blast worm. The Welchia goes into a system, deletes the MSBlast virus, and tries to download a patch from Windows Update. How friendly! At least it's a friday -- maybe we can all get out of here.... - W32.Sobig.F@mm
Someone I know (who may work at mit.edu) is spreading the W32.Sobig.F@mm virus... it's not a terrible worm, but annoying to keep getting hundreds of emails in my otherwise spam-free work email inbox...... - Annoying Floating Flash Ads
I really like what Boston Common does-- collecting snippets from Boston-area blogs, and displaying them in aggregated meme-like fashion. I get a lot of hits from the site, and I appreciate the work Adam Gaffin does every day. BUT! Today, I noticed that Boston Common is now running floating Flash (Rich Media) advertisements from Travelocity. Hovering over the content! I find these things irritating, especially when it specifically delays your access to the information. I understand the need for online advertising, and revenue, but surely this is more of an annoyance than an effective marketing tool. Eyeblaster was, I believe,... - Beaver RSS aggregation tool
Well, I posted not long ago, extolling the virtues of FeedReader, but I've run into some bugs that drive me absolutely nuts. Take this for example. Everytime I restart the app, it tells me that my website has 276 new entries! That's because the app isn't properly saving or reading whether a post is marked as "read" or "unread". Sucky. I've installed all the common windows apps, and none of them comes close to the usable design & features of NetNewsWire for OsX... Apparently, I'm not the only one going through all this, too. Enter Beaver, a great new app... - W32.HLLP.Handy
So, to go along with the problems Suckahs has been experiencing in the past 72 hours, I've got a virus on my computer, and I'm spending my sleeping hours trying to clean it up. I need to purchase Norton Internet Security I think. What a mess.... - DSL
Neddy and Presley have DSL. Praise Vishnu that one of our many utilities is up and ruunning... fuck AT&T Broadband-- they've determined that our whole building is illegally wired, so they shut off ALL cable in the place. I plead ignorance.... - Spam Sucks or Bill Jones is a Fool
I got some Spam today from Californian Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones. This is the most politically insensitive thing he could have done. I'm not a Californian, and I'm sure not a Republican. Dick.... - We R Fam-il-y...
Somehow my instant messenger handle (whipsmart) is listed on this odigo page.... - Uproar phone
I've got this sprint pcs mp3 phone from samsung, but there isn't any support for windows xp! So i'm stuck with the same crap songs, forever. Kasima took it upon himself to build mac OS X drivers. I wish samsung would just get off their collective asses. Their techie support guy insisted that it does work, but jesus he's mistaken. THUMBS DOWN... - from wired: MIT's Media Lab
from wired: MIT's Media Lab is experimenting with a tool for indexing the most popular hypertext links across thousands of weblogs and has ambitious plans to turn it into a resource for the mass media. Launched last week, Blogdex is like a search-engine spider that visits about 9,000 weblogs a day looking for hypertext links. It extracts the links and ranks them by popularity.... - I have a Samsung pcs
I have a Samsung pcs phone that i have really liked-- but I will buy their new color palm phone... - Ok. you like Radiohead? and
Ok. you like Radiohead? and you have AOL IM? enter 'GooglyMinotaur' as your newest buddy-- and start talking to it. no really.... - Microsoft finally got their Messenger
Microsoft finally got their Messenger service back online, but I still haven't heard about that release candidate copy of windows XP I plunked down $10 for.... - Searching for DSL-- verizon has
Searching for DSL-- verizon has backed up installations in Allston-Brighton until October / November. And Earthlink claims that they can give it to me, but they keep canceling my order without giving a reason. This Broadband thing is a nightmare. C'mon! is all I have to say.... - the DSL can't be installed
the DSL can't be installed at chester st soon enough. it looks like it might not get installed until after mikey moves out. [which is slightly comical] meanwhile, RCN and cablevision should be moving in... will there be too much competition?... - i've got a new camera.
i've got a new camera. it is surprisingly small-- though not quite the "put-it-in-your-shirt-pocket" small......
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