greg hughes - dot net

Our world, it is a-changin' ...

The folks over at audioblog.com have recently released a beta of their new videoblogging browser-based service to their users. It's super-sweet, and works great. Nice job!

What will this kind of capability mean down the road for personal Internet broadcasting and media in general? Only time will tell, but the possibilities seem endless.

Of course, videos of me talking to inanimate objects about the technology itself from my kitchen are not exactly great examples of effective content planning... But hey, it's a geek-out kinda thing, ya know?

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and in this part of the world, the day after that holiday is traditionally known as "Black Friday." It's the day when gazillions of crazed people (the kind who can actually function early in the morning) get up even earlier than usual to drive to a store and get in line to gash open their faces and arms as they break through glass doors at thousand of businesses stupid enough to open at 4am.

Uh, yeah. Anyhow, it's a huge holiday shopping day here in the United States, and pretty much marks the start of the big holiday buying season. And we all now the holidays are about that: Buying stuff. Although I seem to recall something about a baby and a barn and wise men and angels. I must be confused.

But I digress... It's called Black Friday because - in theory - it's a huge day for business, it's when many retailers move from red ink to black on their ledgers, meaning it's the point at which they become profitable for the year.

Here is the important part: The web site Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com is a great place to go to see what deals will be available at your favorite stores. You can plan ahead, and make your own list of items. You think the Sunday and Thanksgiving papers are good? Check out http://bf04.com/ - it's cool, and it's digital.

(And no, this blog entry is not paid-for. I just saw the link at Eric's site and decided people here might be interested, if they are crazed enough to wake up that early and risk bodily injury. I'll be traveling. Thank goodness, otherwise I might be tempted.)

A word of caution for Black Friday newbies: Watch out for the ladies trying to get at the socks at Fred Meyer. They're freakin' crazy.

Recently I described how, due to unexpected circumstances that unfolded over the past week or so, I had to find a new vehicle. Well, I did my research, made up my mind, and bought one.

I decided to go the Big-Ass Honking Truck route. A Dodge Ram truck. With a Hemi. With heated leather seats. With cup holders. And with Bluetooth.

Yeah, I said Bluetooth. Built straight into the truck.

That's right, my Big Ass Honking Manly Ranch Truck has the ultimate geek-out feature: Bluetooth built into the rear-view mirror (cabin microphone, computer and two push-button controls) and the stereo system (for high quality audio output to the speakers, text menus that compliment the female voice that prompts you to speak your commands, and more computer stuff). So, I have complete speakerphone voice-recognition and command control of my mobile phone.

I'm talkin' geek-out in a big way, heheheh... It's awesome.

The system is called U-Connect, and Chrysler has taken it from being an add-on knock-off style option to a fully-integrated system. It's all part of the car's fine fit and finish. In fact, if no one told you it was there, you'd probably never notice it til the phone rang and the system switched the audio from your in-dash stereo system over to the phone.

U-Connect is very cool. Friendly voice prompts walk you through the menus, and voice recognition software allows you to set it up, pair it with your Bluetooth phones (yes, you can use multiple), create speed dial voice entries, and all the other nifty stuff you'd expect from a relatively high-end piece of software and hardware that does the Bluetooth boogie. And the audio is very good, even when driving down the road. It's really quite cool, and on top of that it's extra safe - two small buttons on the rear-view mirror and your voice are all that's needed to make the system work.

Oh, and the rest of the truck is great, too. Did I mention it's got a Hemi? Woah, dude, a Hemi... Heh... Sweet...

Yeah, sure, the gas mileage kinda sucks, but everything else about it is awesome. As much as I drive, comfort and convenience matter these days, so I am glad for the extras. It's the best of both worlds: Geeky and Tough. So, it's all good.

West Burnside (in Portland, Oregon, where I live) seems to have a recurring problem with sinkholes magically appearing under the pavement. Typically they are huge. They can easily become potholes. Big-Ass Honking potholes if not caught in time.

And in classic Portland fashion, we can blame the problem, like all the other problems in the city, on the sewer system. Butt, of course we can.

Well, it looks like there may now be a solution to the problem of massive caves of poop water, oh ye engineers, and high school kids are the inventors:

Engadget: "Some high school students near Boston have figured out what has eluded transit agencies for hundreds of years: they have come up with the Road Iron, a device that detects and repairs potholes before they have a chance to form. The device looks for cavities below the pavement and then drills in and fills them, fixing the problems before they occur...

[Read more here]

I probably should have pre-ordered, but hey, I already played early, so I can wait. I think... Heh...

Mark Tuesday, November 16th down as the only day in the history of G4techTV that they did something (potentially) right. Let's face it, that network pretty much sucks now.

BUT, credit where credit's due... On Tuesday evening, they are doing nothing but "Half-Life 2 Day" on their channel:

We took a crowbar to G4techTV's schedule to cram in as much Half-Life programming as we could. The result: on November 16th, you can catch special Half-Life and Half-Life 2 segments on many of G4techTV's fine shows, including an entire episode of Icons devoted to the Half-Life phenomenon.

So, even if you scrapped the network like me, you might be interested in checking out what they have to offer on Tuesday.

News is that Half-Life 2 will be released tonight at midnight Pacific time. W00t!

I had the privilege of play-testing a pre-release version of Half-Life 2 for a little while up in the Seattle area while visiting a friend who works for Valve. He sat next to me and watched how I played (not very well I think, heh) and what all I did. Since that release candidate version, they have worked out bugs and - I am certain - created a completely awesome game. For obvious reasons I have not written about that experience, albeit short-lived, here.

It was awesome when I play-tested it, so I have no doubts people will enjoy the new game. Great characters, great story, great new physics, super graphics, and just a general WOW factor.

Midnight... That's just 28 minutes away from the time of this writing. Woo hoo!

Spaceweather PHONE is a geek's after-hours gem, a nerd's nirvana. Subscribe for a small monthly fee, and you'll get phone calls and accompanying emails to notify you when an event is about to happen that you'll want to step outside and watch in the night sky.

I linked through to this site last week when Doc Searls wrote about the Auroras that were taking place and linked to spaceweather.com. I had just taken some pictures of the event near my home. I signed up for the phone/email notification services a few days back, and sure enough, tonight I got my first call and email at about 5:20 p.m. - The International Space Station was about to pass overhead:

Nov 14, 2004: Space Station Flyby Alert

The International Space Station is about to fly over your location.

It will reach a maximum elevation of 61.6 degrees at around 06:14 PM.

To be on the safe side, go outside 5 minutes early and watch the sky for 10 minutes. If the sky is clear, you'll see the ISS rise in the WSW and move across the sky to the E.

Note: To be sure you can see flyovers, Space Weather Phone only sends alerts for visible flyovers that are above 45 degrees elevation.

And here is a recording of the phone call: swp-station.wma (43.23 KB)

If you're an astronomy or science geek, or maybe you're interested in evening and night watching with the family, here is what you can get notified about:

Space Weather Alerts:

• Aurora warnings (early notifications)
• Geomagnetic storms (in progress)
• X-class solar flares
• Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar wind gusts
• The Interplanetary Magnetic Field changes
• Solar radiation storms

Backyard Astronomy Alerts:

• Space Station Sightings
• Moon and Planets
• Meteor Showers
• Comets
• Other Unexpected Events

So - Geeks and Nerds who want to see the night sky's events, there ya go. Enjoy.

You knew the day would come, and Windows Mobile will continue to get better and better:

Engadget: A full 48.1% of all non-smartphone PDAs sold in the third quarter of this year run on some flavor of Windows CE (mainly the Pocket PC operating system), while Palm-powered PDAs accounted for only 29.8% of sales, a pretty significant decline from the same period last year.

Windows Mobile is cool, on PDAs and SmartPhones. The hardware gets better and better. The multitude of touch points and common apps between the Windows desktop OS versions and the mobile platform OS make Windows Mobile an integrated and usable system, and therefore valuable to end users. On top of that, they've done a very good job making it look and feel nice. It's got the electronic bling, if you will, that other handheld operating systems are at least partially missing.

Freebord is just plain free-kin' cool.

Go to this site, look at this video (high|low) and check out the online store.

If you are or have been a skater, and if you're a snowboarder, your jaw will drop. Wow. That's cool.

"If you're going 50 miles an hour, you're not scared, because you have the confidence, you know you can slow down for a car, or a stop sign, in like two seconds."

Switch, float, brake, turn. On pavement.

Sweet. Watch the video. You'll see.

"Every kid walks around his neighborhood and looks at looks at every street in the neighborhood, and now its a snowboard run."

Now I really want to play with one of these things. Not like I'd be able to stay up on it or anything, but I'm just as big on cracking my head open on the pavement as your average 17-year-old. Bring it on!

(found via Giorgio Baresi)

I have to make an unplanned vehicle purchase sometime in the next week or so, and I will be heading out of here in a few minutes to start looking around at what's available these days. I have no idea at this point what I am interested in.

But maybe someone who reads this will have some ideas of their own they want to share.

What I need and who I am:

I'm a guy who lives in the woods with a house at the end of a long gravel driveway. It snows up here. I drive around 80 miles a day going to and from work, and in the past I have used my SUV to pull a trailer.

I am not an anti-SUV person, and you won't be able to convert me to the hatred side of the force on principle. I am open to looking at what ever works for me (in other words, I am willing to be "for" a vehicle type, rather than being opposed to it).

I sometimes transport as many as four other people in my car. It has to be safe. After recent experiences, I'd say it has to be super, super safe (as Bill Gates would say). Let's just say I am glad/lucky to be alive and leave it at that.

So anyhow - If you're a Consumer Reports nut, have recently shopped for vehicles, or otherwise have some knowledge, experience, or opinions that you think would be valuable to me in my vehicle search, either email me (use the little envelope thing in the copyright message at the bottom of this web page), comment here where others can see (I will get an email instantly with your comment), or if its Saturday afternoon, you can even try calling my cell phone (hey, call even if you don't know me, it's all good) at 503-970-1753. Let me know what you think.

While I will be making my own decision on a purchase, I think it would be great to get some ideas from others.

Triva Note: Most of the feedback I get through this site seems to come in the form of direct emails, along with a few comments left on the site's comment system (see the bottom of this entry and look for the  icon and click the link to leave your thoughts).

MSN launched the new beta version of their new search engine the other day, and I finally got around to playing around with it just a bit. There's some cool stuff in there. It seems to have a decent catalog of stuff to search through, although (no surprise here) it's not as complete as Google's directory. I appreciate the clean layout - it's very readable.

I like the new search interface, and the Search Builder tool (available from any search entry box) let's you do advanced searches without having to be a complete geek - nice for typical end users.

There are a few things it has that Google doesn't, though.

For example, it seems to understand when I ask questions in context. Or at least it provides answers to some questions - typically factual ones. Nice for high-school research projects and the like, or for trivia lookups. 

For example, I tried searching for the term "What is the population of the United States?"  Google provided some useful and well-chosen links to web sites (Census Bureau, etc.), but MSN Search came up with something even better - the actual answer to my question (click the image to perform the search yourself):

(click image to perform the search in your browser)

I also found if I searched for the population of Oregon or other locations, it worked just as well.

Population, well that's cool. What about other facts? I searched for "Exports of the United States" and got this:

(click image to perform the search in your browser)

Searching for other country's/states exports and populations and values yielded similar results.

And it's not just social studies - physical sciences, too:

(click image to perform the search in your browser)

I'll have to play around with what MSN search provides answers for - I am sure I just scratched the surface.

Google's popular "Calculator" functionality has long been touted as useful, and it looks like MSN has similar capabilities. One subtle difference, though, is that Google Calculator returns a page with just the calculator results followed by a link to perform the web search, where MSN returns the answer plus the web search results lower on the same page:

(click image to perform the search in your browser)

(click image to perform the search in your browser)

Also not surprising are the links provided to "Encarta Answers," since that appears to be the source of the MSN Search "answers" content.

Cool stuff. I have seen the MSN search indexing my web sites in my stats logs, and it looks like they've done a pretty good job on building an index of this web site, although they have not indexed the full content. Google's got a lot more.

It's also interesting to see how they list sites that link to mine.

But I like it. For the first time, I will likely use MSN's search as a regular tool for finding information, alongside others like Google.

If you're in the Portland Oregon area, have some computer equipment to get rid of, and are inclined to do good in the world, you owe it to yourself and your neighbors to check out Free Geek, a non-profit organization in Portland that will take your computer donations and do great things:

Free Geek was founded in February 2000 (and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in April 2000) to recycle computer technology and provide low and no-cost computing to individuals and not-for-profit and social change organizations in the community and throughout the world.

In the four years since its formation, Free Geek has recycled over 360 tons of electronic scrap and refurbished over 3,000 computer systems that are now in use by individuals and organizations in the community.

You can even drop by at Noon or 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday and take a tour.

Volunteer 24 hours at their facility and you can earn a refurbed computer with Linux on it. Donate computers of any type, in any condition - details here. They'll take old monitors, too - but there's a $10 charge, since they're like, nasty inside and all.

Ok, this is freakin' hilarious... If you're easily offended by things like fart jokes, click here and stop reading now. If you have a sense of humor that includes laughing at bathroom noises (in other words if you are like 95% of the people in the world), read on. This information is really about technology, not bathrooms or poop. Uh, yeah.

RoboDump is a robot. Sort of. And it poops. Sort of. Forever. A horrible, never-ending bowel movement complete with straining grunts, horrific gas, splashes, and pee sounds.

I snuck RoboDump into the men's room at the office. Unfortunately, today turned out to be the day of a board meeting. Whoops! It still went over well; the office was abuzz all morning with gossip about the guy in the bathroom. Several people theorized it was the CFO. The janitor commented to someone in the hallway that he wanted to clean the restroom but "this guy's been in there all morning."

I also decided to dress it in businessware to make coworkers less likely to try to talk to it... if it looks like a customer or visiting bigwig, they'll be less likely to offer help or ask for a courtesy flush.

Pictures and an audio sample are available at the web site, and you can comment at the blog... I can't help but laugh at this one... Hahahah...

The work that went into this marvel of electronic wonder was pretty extensive, and let me tell ya - I want one.

(found via singlenesia.com)

Thanks to my friend Scott, I made a few enhancements to my dasBlog weblog app that drives this site. I'll leave all of them active for a while to see how they work. If you have thoughts, feel free to leave them here as a comment on this post.

• As of a few minutes ago, I enabled GZIP HTTP compression for site content (which matters a lot more to me in the bandwidth-saving area than it does to anyone else).
• I also added an object to the comment pages here that requires anyone who wants to post a comment to read the text from an image on the page and enter the text on a text box. This will help reduce the comment spam that comes and goes on this site.
• Finally, I downloaded the latest dasBlog web core DLL as posted on the GotDotNet workspace, which enabled me to add a NewsGator ranking object to each blog post.