As always, I had tons of gadgetry on display at the Portland Podcasting meetup last night at Urban Grind.
I just got the Optimus Rhyme CD, and it rocks. Nerdcore hip hop will reign supreme!
Monthly Archive for July, 2005
Interesting:
They’re accepting pre-orders now. For $49, I might pick one up if/when my stock iPod remote ever gives out.
But I have one big complaint, and it has to do with recording. The iPods have, in hardware, the ability to record very at very high quality - up to 96KHz. But the only way to get at the functionality is to install Linux. The existing mic/recording accessories, like this one, and the iTalk from Griffin, record at a very low quality - 8KHz - which is suitable for voice notes, but not much else.
So the iFM has a built-in mic, and probably records at a miserably low bitrate. Why, oh why, not include a line in/mic jack, Griffin? In fact, there’s already a jack on the unit, if you’re going to be able plug your headphones in and use it as a remote. Had you done so, I’d be falling all over myself trying to get my credit card out of my wallet and order one of these.
As it stands, until I hear otherwise (once it’s released), this one gets a big “meh” from me…
Technorati Weblog: Announcing Technorati Mobile
Niall Kennedy brings word that Technorati has launched a mobile-friendly version of their blog search service:
Technorati is one of the blog search engines you can use to find out what the blogosphere is saying about a particular topic, person, or link. Great for keeping an eye on who’s talking about you, so you can respond to the conversation.
A special 1 minute podcast recorded during the Portland Podcast meetup. You can download the MP3 file directly (right-click, save as), or subscribe to the TinyPodcast RSS feed in your favorite podcast aggregator to get the show delivered automatically to your computer and MP3 player.
Since I was doing this live as a demo, of course I screwed something up. I mistyped the filename when I uploaded it. I’ve fixed it now, so everyone who was getting “file not found” errors on the MP3, please try again. I cry your pardon for my mistake. 
Oh, and Brian and I are going to record a full TinyPodcast today, so don’t think this is all you get for the week. I wouldn’t do that to you. 
Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed!
I’m an MSDN Universal subscriber, so naturally I snapped up Longhorn Beta 1 when it was released yesterday, and IE7 this morning. Expect impressions on both over the next little while. Just to set expectations, I’m not a developer - just an geek. I’ll be trying interesting stuff, especially as it relates to digital media, photos, podcasting, mobile devices, etc.
IE7 so far is, well, underwhelming. The menus and button layout is different, what I guess is the new Longhorn standard. But nothing that you couldn’t achieve in IE6 by dragging stuff around. Tabbed browsing is there, but I’m dismayed that I can’t right-click on a folder full of bookmarks and choose “Open in Tabs”, or set a group of tabs to open as my Home page. Still some work to do there. Feed detection works for RSS feeds, but apparently not for Atom feeds. It doesn’t find the atom.xml feed for this site.
I don’t have much to say about Longhorn yet, because I’m having trouble getting to install in a Virtual PC. The 2.5 GB DVD image isn’t recognized as a bootable image by Virtual PC. Daemon Tools makes short work of that, mounting the image as a virtual DVD drive, but I’m having problems getting it to recognize and install on the virtual hard disk. Bleh. EDIT: Got past it. Had to restart the VM after letting setup create a partition on the VHD.
Stay tuned for updates, and let me know if there’s anything within reason that you’d like to know.
I love the O’Reilly Hacks books. They’re always packed with great, useful information. This is one of the latest versions, with tons of cool digital video tricks from Joshua Paul, Phillip “pt” Torrone, and many others. I can’t wait to try some of them out!
Expect to see the results in future installments of TinyPodcast Video Edition.
My Amazon order showed up last night. They had the best deal - 43% off, and I wanted to have a dead tree version to be legit about the ebook versions I’ve been playing with.
Now that Yahoo bought Konfabulator, making it free, I gave it another shot. These are the widgets I’m currently using - grouped up in the upper right hand corner of my screen.
View this image at Flickr, and mouse over each widget to see a Note describing what it is. They’re all freely available from widgets.yahoo.com.
PDA and Tech Deals for 7/27/2005 - 7/30/2005
People are always asking me where to find great deals on my Dell Axim X50v VGA Pocket PC, and I usually tell them to watch deal sites like GotApex.
I just noticed two killer deals on the X50v over at BargainPDA:
- Dell Axim X50v (VGA, 624MHz, etc.) + Bluetooth GPS Bundle for $397 with free shipping
- Dell Axim X50v (VGA, 624MHz, etc.) for $297 with free shipping
These are the best deals I’ve ever seen on the X50v. Remember, this is what I consider the top of the line Windows Mobile device out there - it matches the $650 iPAQ 4700 series feature for feature (speed, VGA, wireless, dual slots, etc.) for less than half the price.
I paid $370 for my X50v when I bought it earlier this year, and I never though I’d see it drop so low. Below $300!
What are you waiting for! Go get one!
Oh, and if you’re interested in helping out TinyScreenfuls, drop me an email and I can generate you an affiliate link where I get a (tiny) percentage of your purchase. I’m not going to go to the trouble to post the link here, but if you’re going to get one, and want to throw a few bucks my way, let me know.
A shot of the new iPod playing one of the few Enhanced Podcasts out there - Adam Curry’s Podfinder. Notice the marks on the scrubber bar - the art and description change as the show hits each mark. You can also jump back and forth between the marks within the podcast. Neato.
I want to do a video demo of this functionality soon - keep an eye out for it.
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
