It’s not a Teradactyl, but this company has patented a pizza box that you can tear apart to serve as a plates and a left overs container. Of course, you don’t need their patented perforations to do this (although you might want a box cutter). I’m not sure how “green” take out pizza actually is after being enhanced with a patented perforated pie-box, but it is a pretty clever way to get a little more use out of the box.
Friday July 31st 2009, 7:59 am
Filed under: technoporn
I was rooting through spam on one of my hotmail accounts this morning when I saw an email from Amazon announcing the Kindle was now $299.00. That’s at about the right price point for me to seriously consider buying one. When Sony came out with the Reader a few years back, I seriously considered buying one because it was seriously gorgeous. But ultimately it was just another gadget. You had to hook it up to a computer to download stuff onto it. I’ve got enough things that want to plug into my computer, thank you.
What’s really awesome about the Kindle is that you can download books wirelessly from Amazon. Meaning you can be sitting out on the beach, buy a book and start reading it, without leaving your chair.
You really can’t beat that with a stick. It actually took Apple’s iTunes + iPod stack and did it one better. (Yeah, the iPhone does the Kindle one better in that regard). For me the problem is still the fact that with these integrated systems, the consumer basically gives up their rights to everything. Which was rather well illustrated just recently when Amazon removed copies of 1984 from customer Kindles after they found out that the publisher didn’t have the right to sell them. You might have shelled out $9.99 for a book, but you don’t really own it.
Over on Boing Boing, Cory Doctrow posted about a high school student suing Amazon over this. Hopefully this will result in legal precedence preventing companies from messing with user’s digital content on devices that they supposedly own.
The New Yorker also has a good review that Language Log picked up on a few days ago. That reviewer’s judgment was that the iPhone was probably a better reading platform.
A couple of days ago this message floated through faceblah status updates:
FACEBOOK has agreed to let a third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top by the Log out link. Select Privacy, then NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Select the FACEBOOK ADS tab. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST To LET YOUR FRIENDS KNOW!)
Today I saw this advertisement on a picture:
Jason Espino featured in facebook advertising
So, it really wasn’t an email rumor after all. Facebook, the hot internet application of the 21st century has, in it’s perpetual quest for a business model that actually generates money, hit upon the novel idea of whoring out it’s users’ information to advertisers.
Ultimately, it’s your decision whether or not you want to let them do that. If you don’t want it, be sure to update your privancy settings.
Monday July 27th 2009, 1:03 pm
Filed under: computers
Just got back from a long weekend in Penna. It was a lot of fun. While I was out there I tried out my Flip video camcorder. I’ve had it for a while now, but haven’t really been using it all that much. This morning I started downloading some video to the work laptop (Dell Vostro 1510) while I went to Executive Conference Room 1A for an early morning meeting…
When I got back to my desk, I had this wonderful message about the Flip software having encountered an error. So I closed out of it and tried to go back to the drive in Windows explorer. It couldn’t find the drive anymore. I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
Just for S and G, I plugged it into the USB port on the right-hand side of the computer. It works again.
I’ve run across this behavior in USB devices more often than I care to admit. It’s especially annoying when $1000 Speech Microphones will suddenly stop working. The two things we generally tell people as a first step in trouble-shooting these devices is to try plugging it into another port and/or rebooting the PC.
USB, the not so Universal Serial Bus…
I’m on a posting binge this morning. I caught up on some old Planet Money blog posts, and I saw this one TED presentation.
The speaker was introducing gapminder.org, which is a new online service to visual trends in the types of statistical data that governments and NGOs have been ferreting away since the 1960s. The idea is to be able to see the changes that have happened, and challenge many of the myths that define how we think about the world. This stuff is seriously awesome.
Tuesday July 21st 2009, 7:13 am
Filed under: fun stuff
Do’oh!
10. Bring the color blue into your life more often. There’s a good reason you won’t see many fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: Believe it or not, the color blue functions as an appetite suppressant. So serve up dinner on blue plates, dress in blue while you eat, and cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.
