I didn’t really write much today. That was due to the fact that I was my 4th anniversary. We went up to The Roof restaurant in Salt Lake City. It’s a gourmet buffet. It cost almost 100 bucks, but I tell you right now that it was definitely worth it.
I just went to openmoko.com to check out the Neo 1973. Not only is it an open-source phone, but they also made it very easy for you to modify the hardware of the thing. The part that was most amazing to me is that it has a 2.8″ screen at 640×480 resolution. Here are some of its specs:
It doesn’t feature 3G or WIFI unfortunately, so it doesn’t have any way to do high speed data transfer on the road, but it offers bluetooth 2.0, so users should be able to transfer data at high speeds when there a close to the computers. The advanced developer kit includes the following items:
So, if you have the hankerin’ to completely customize your phone and have total control, you should check out the Neo 1973.
I enjoy visiting gadget websites as much as the next geek, but I’ve got to tell ya, the rumors have got to stop. It’s amazing to me that rumors are taken as “almost” fact by some people. The funny thing is I could write something here like this: Apple is releasing an iPhone next month, with GPS, dual touchscreen, and 3G data connection. Indeed it holds much the same truths as the other rumors that fly around the gadget community. What’s the difference? Because it’s on Morrise.com and not Gizmodo, Engadget, or Macrumors. I guess there credibility lies in the fact that they sometimes, and I mean sometimes they get it right. I’ll tell you right now though, I could come up with a bunch of Apple rumors based on my “analysis” of various things I hear around the internet and I could make up some pretty good things too.
After the hype that accompanied the release of the iPhone Apple executives apparently haven’t taken a break from analyzing the bottom line. With the popularity of the iPhone anything else bearing that name would essentially sell itself, and that seems to be exactly what the higher-ups at Apple were thinking when they decided to come out with the iPhone Nano. The Nano promises to be smaller and less expensive, but with less-than-cutting-edge technology. That pretty much describes the phone I already have. Unfortunately, most consumers will consider buying the cheaper Nano just because it comes from the company that seems to provide us with the latest and greatest, and because it bears the Apple name. There have been no official reports on exactly what this new phone will include, but anyone who wants the prestige of the iPhone without the pricetag can just do what I plan to do, and put a apple sticker on their current phone. Studies show that will fool 7 out of 10 people anyway, giving you the high social status you crave!
Among the various podcast hosting websites out there is site called Podango. On the surface they appear to be like most other podcast hosting service. Under, however, they have a bit more under the hood then other podcast hosting platforms. Besides allowing you to post media, use remote players, and view statistics sits an API that allows podcasters to access their podcast information from any application or website. Based on the REST standard for APIs, the Podango API allows any Podango user to receive XML listings of their podcasts.
One of the best parts about the Podango API that sets it apart from other media hosting companies, such as YouTube, is that it allows you to upload content directly to Podango without even going to the site.
For more information about Podango visit www.podango.com
Every wonder where the Digg elite find there stories? Well, you can go and see where they’re getting their stories simply by viewing their stories, right? Well, technically yes, but you’d have to scroll through a ton of pages to see them all and that’s a lot of pages to remember. I’ve always wanted to know the distribution of where they are looking for the stories they submit. I have therefore started to build the Digg research tool. It allows you to type in a Digg username and see the exact count of where they are getting their content. It’s quite interesting to see and I think you can learn a lot from it. You can check it out over at sneegg.com/digg_stats.php
I was just Digging a story from Reuters.com and I thought up a great idea. I want to write a program that checks RSS really often and when they are different, it quickly loads up a page that allows me to Digg the new stories. That way, I get the latest stories in the quickest time possible. I’m gonna do it.
As you may have noticed, Digg has been one of my more favorite websites as of late. I do, however, have two things that I don’t like about Digg. They are easily visible from the top of Digg. The “Videos” link and the “Podcasts” link. I think that the root of Digg, which is news, is their strong suit. News works well because of its abundance. You can go to almost any website and find all sorts of news. Videos and podcasts on the other hand are not as abundant. The videos and podcasts that are popular right now are probably going to be popular for awhile, whereas news will only be popular for a short time. There are only so many videos you can watch before you pretty much seen all of the popular ones. The podcast section is of course biased. Notice that the Diggnation podcast is always at the top. Now, I mean no offense, it is interesting enough, but the best podcast out there? Not likely. If you’re really looking for a podcast that is interesting, it’s a better idea to check out the iTunes store. That’s were podcast originated from and that’s were you’ll find the best podcasts.
In conclusion, Digg should remove the video and podcasts sections from their site. I don’t think they add much to the overall experience of the site. I think if the demographic of Digg gets larger, they might be useful, but for now, they are not.
It seems to me that the biggest thing on the web right now is social networking. One of the more popular site out there is MySpace. MySpace allows people to create accounts where they can post pictures, music, or personal information. The reason why it’s a social networking site is that users can exist on a network. A network is a virtual list of users all tied together through the network. This allows them to easily see what the other users on the network are doing with there lives. Open-sourcing is a popular way to develop software. For example, this blog is running using WordPress, which is an open-source blogging engine. Open-source means that you can see the source code. Blogging and content management seem to be popular open-source projects. I really would love to make an open-source MySpace type engine. I think that if people had the ability to completely tweak their personal site, they would love it. If anyone would like to join in this project, please tell me and we’ll see if we can start something up.
Recently, as I was browsing the Firefox add-ons directory, I stumbled across a few interesting looking plug-ins that I thought I would try out. I downloaded and installed them. Being the curious developer type that I am, I decided to dissect the plug-ins to see what they did internally. One of the plug-ins in particular seemed quite innocent. It gave the browser the ability to highlight specific keywords on a page so that it would be easier to find them. Seemingly harmless, right? Well, after further investigation, I discovered something interesting. This plug-in, after clicking the highlight button, would replace all the Google AdSense ads on the page with different ads. I discovered this by using the Live HTTP Headers plug-in, another add-on for Firefox. It allows you to view the ingoing and outgoing http requests being sent. Every time I clicked the highlight button it would make a request to the Google AdSense server. Then, using the Firebug plug-in, I was able to profile the page and see what JavaScript was running. The plugin traversed the DOM, replacing the highlighted text and also finding the Google Adsense ads and replacing them with different ads. What does this mean? Well, either there was a mistake, which I doubt, or the person who wrote the plug-in is raking in a fair amount of dough. I’m pretty sure that this is against the Google AdSense Terms of Service, but was quite an ingenious idea while it lasted.
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