Men talk to Google not girlfriends

posted by Farookh at 4:00 PM Comment (0)

World Beard and Moustache Championships

http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/

-K



posted by Kaushik at 9:02 PM Comment (0)

The world's smallest Smartphone
The latest "hotness" (as someone referred to it) amongst the geeks in the Northwest is the new smartphone from AT&T - the Audiovox 5600. It is also known as the Orange SPV C500 (and others depending on carrier) and originally known as the HTC Typhoon. It is manufactured by Huawei Technologies of China (thus, the HTC moniker), a company featured in a recent Business Week innovation edition.

It is one of those devices that you just want to touch and feel (or fondle). It is tiny (around 2mm longer than the much raved about Ericsson T616) and packs a dual core 200MHz OMAP processor and 64MB of RAM. It is powered by Windows Mobile and has a mini SD slot, mini USB, decent battery life, Bluetooth, 640x480 camera (with video recording), 2.2" screen and good robust phone features.

I got mine a few days back and I can't stop playing with it, fondling it and customizing it. While it is synchronizing my corporate mail, calendar and contacts over the air, I can be logged into MSN Messenger while looking at the current and predicted traffic on 520 while listening to "Jump" by Van Halen through its stereo headphones. It plays Doom and Quake besides Solitaire and Snake and plays Windows Media - DRM'ed music and video and TV shows recorded on a Media Center PC. And did I say, it is a great phone as well.

The coolest use of this phone that I came across was as a talking GPS device that you can use in your car. All you need is software like Mapopolis and the Pharos Bluetooth GPS device to which your phone pairs with. You could leave the GPS device in your glovebox while your phone gives you directions. Drool!

One thing that annoys me is the RF interference it generates with speakers. I was told that this isn't anything to do with this phone but all GPRS devices cause interference with poorly shielded speakers. Oh well, my car speakers make sounds like an alien is trying to contact me. Maybe I need to buy a new car.

Disclaimer: I would have blogged about it anyway (like I did with the SpotWatch and VOIP), but I got the phone for free with the caveat that I promote it, so I had to do it to clear my conscience. ;)

posted by Farookh at 6:38 PM Comment (0)

A face that launched 1,000 pixels
NYT article on the production of the new Zemeckis movie - The Polar Express. I had seen the trailer and I thought it looks impressive. Reminded me of Linklater's Waking Life - another good experiment with digital production.

(aside: did you know that IMDB is owned by Amazon - I didn't until recently)

posted by Farookh at 6:00 PM Comment (0)

Wired's Creative Commons Music CD
I just received the latest Wired and was surprised to find a music CD (including numbers from Beastie Boys, Danger Mouse, et al) that is licensed under the Creative Commons License. So, I surf over to the cc site and find this link about Sampling Licenses under which the CD is released.

posted by Farookh at 3:39 PM Comment (0)

Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis
My phone can't do this. :(

posted by Farookh at 2:44 PM Comment (0)

What happens when we die? An excerpt from Francis Crick's unseen final interview. The site has a wealth of other trailers, Freeman Dyson on "Convincing Oppenheimer" is awesome! :)



posted by Amit at 11:08 PM Comment (0)

Kenneth Iverson — Computer Science pioneer, educator, father of the APL programming language, Turing Award recipient — died this week at the age of 83.

-K


posted by Kaushik at 8:49 PM Comment (0)

Hasselblad's 22MP DSLR
Comes with a 40GB HDD and each image is 132MB in size. Holy crap!

posted by Farookh at 8:27 PM Comment (0)

Flat-screen TV emits international distress signal: "An Oregon man discovered earlier this month that his year-old Toshiba Corporation flat-screen TV was emitting an international distress signal picked up by a satellite, leading a search and rescue operation to his apartment in Corvallis, Oregon, 70 miles south of Portland."

posted by Farookh at 12:08 PM Comment (0)

Segway | Concept Centaur

You folks probably saw this. A Segway with two more wheels. It should be fun though - do check the video.

posted by Farookh at 9:02 PM Comment (0)

FDA Approves Use of (RFID) Chip in Patients: "The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes."

posted by Farookh at 10:29 AM Comment (0)

CEO Bloggers

Amit D. Chaudhary

posted by Amit at 6:48 PM Comment (0)

Study links genes, male homosexuality
"Researchers at the University of Padua said the genetic components are linked to the X chromosome which is inherited only from the mother. But they are probably on other chromosomes and could partly explain male homosexuality."

posted by Farookh at 6:10 PM Comment (0)

Meta-Blog post.

Well, two sites about blogs.

BlogTree shows relationships in blogs, would be great to create this automatically. Try this one by the cluetrain author.

Bloglines allows one to keep their own blog subscriptions public, someone like me using a desktop (liferea) news reader, this was pretty cool. An example.

Amit D. Chaudhary

posted by Amit at 6:00 PM Comment (5)

Google to expand India operations
: "I'm very impressed by the autos here," said Mr Brin, after the auto ride in Hyderabad on Tuesday... "They are so versatile and easy to manoeuvre that I was actually thinking of getting one for the office," he quipped in a lighter vein.

posted by Farookh at 10:52 AM Comment (0)

MaxiVista - Dual Monitor - Multiple Monitors Software

Just came across this (one of my colleagues uses it). I haven't tried it, but it looks like nice. Unfortunately, it isn't free.

posted by Farookh at 10:33 PM Comment (0)

An entrepreneurship blog by Excite co-founder Joe Kraus
Not active in the last few days, but very informative as to what is there.

Amit D. Chaudhary

Snippet from Intro:
My name is Joe Kraus and Bnoopy is a blog about entrepreneurship -- thoughts, lessons learned, open questions. It's all stuff I'm thinking about right now in the midst of starting a new company. My background is that I was one of the founders of Excite. Then I co-founded DigitalConsumer.org and now, I've got a new project still in stealth mode.

posted by Amit at 1:53 PM Comment (0)

Toshiba Unveils New Flat-Panel SED TV: "The new TV uses SED - surface-conduction electron-emitter display - which uses beam-emitting technology similar to the old-style cathode-ray tube televisions, and delivers similar clear imagery but onto a flat panel."

posted by Farookh at 10:37 PM Comment (0)

BMW, Nelson Mandela edition: "In honor of the tenth anniversary of democracy in South Africa, BMW will be auctioning off ten special edition 325i's."

posted by Farookh at 7:45 PM Comment (0)

Topobo is an experimental building system developed at MIT's Media Lab that adds motion with memory to traditional building blocks. After 'teaching' the forms you build how to move, the blocks will memorize the movements and repeat them back, allowing you to create a kinetic sculpture with real motion.


posted by Amit at 11:24 PM Comment (1)

Saving earth from sheep burps

Belches from sheep, cows and other farm animals account for around 20 per cent of global emissions of methane. The gas is a potent source of global warming because, volume for volume, it traps 23 times as much heat as the more plentiful carbon dioxide.

To protect the planet from such ruminant effusions, a team of scientists has developed a vaccine against the archaean microbes that produce methane in sheep rumens. After two injections of the vaccine, sheep burped 8 per cent less methane in a 13-hour test.

Food additives can also reduce the methane belched by livestock. But they must be given daily, so they are only suitable for intensively farmed animals, whereas a vaccine could be given to all ruminants.

[Sorry, no link. Found this in the newsletter.]


posted by Anonymous at 7:30 PM Comment (0)