People are still freaking out because Microsoft plans to offer a ‘starter’ version of Windows 7 that has less functionality than the premium editions. Of course, no one will be forced to use the starter version. Home Premium will likely be an option from most netbook vendors, and many makers will continue to offer Linux [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Boy Genius Report is claiming the honor of having the first hands on look at the Palm Pre. Check out their brief comments, with more to come as they spend more time with the phone.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )According to the Hollywood Reporter, a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie is in development. This sounds like a winner, in our age of nostalgia, re-makes and re-boots. The TV series still has a big following, and the original movie is an under-appreciated gem (Paul Reubens’ death scene – awesome!). The plan seems to be [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Upgrading an old (but not that old) laptop’s hard drive to an SSD (solid state drive) can have a very dramatic impact on performance. More dramatic than I would have guessed, in fact. Check out the experiment at Laptop Magazine. A 120GB high speed SSD drive is going to cost more than $350, but [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Intel’s newest Nehalem-EX series server processor is tricked out with up to 8 cores resulting in sixteen threads (HyperThreading), and a massive 24MB of cache. The architecture supports up to 8 CPU sockets (64 cores, 128 threads!). Each processor package has 2.3 billion transistors. Systems should start showing up later this year, according to ZDNet.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is now available for download as a standalone installer, for folks who don’t want to wait for it to be pushed out via automatic updates. TechRadar has an in-depth look at what SP2 has to offer. Their verdict: “The must-have upgrade that finally makes Vista a joy to use.” Get [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Chances are your web cam or video capture device came with video capture software. But if you need a good, easy to use application, WinAVI Video Capture is worth looking at. The program is free, and it works as advertised. Encoding in a number of formats is supported, including AVI, WMV, ASF, DivX, Xvid, RM, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The U.S. Army will begin upgrading hundreds of thousands of PC desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista. All Army computers are to be upgraded by the end of the year. Copies of Office 2003 will also be upgraded, to Office 2007. Good news for Microsoft, possibly bad news for G.I. Joe. The upgrades will [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )There’s a Land of the Lost marathon on Sci-Fi today. This was possibly the best Saturday morning tv show ever, with smart writing and a more serious tone than you might expect. The scenery chewing by the young actors gets a little annoying, and the stop motion effects are not cutting edge, but the show [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Buy.com has the HP DV9999US in stock for $539.95 with free shipping. This is a refurbished 17 inch laptop with a gorgeous BrightView widescreen display (1440 x 900), Vista Home Premium 64 bit, 4 gb ram, 250 gb hard drive, AMD Turion Dual-Core Processor, DVD burner (with LightScribe), and NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M graphics with [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Zee Avi has a great sound, with a clear voice and easy style that needs no electronic enhancement. Think Nora Jones or Sara Bareilles…only different. Hmm, maybe you should just listen for yourself…
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Three new sci-fi series coming to BBC America. The BBCA continues to bring us some of the best sci-fi programming available (Primeval, Hex, etc.), and these upcoming shows sound pretty good. I especially like the tag line at the end of the Being Human trailer: A Vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The $99 PS2, Sony’s 9-year-old game console, outsold the much pricier PS3 in April, according to the NPD Group. At $399, the PS3 costs considerably more than both the WII and the XBox 360.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Here’s the trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie, starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title roll. It looks to be a great action flick, if a less than faithful treatment of the source material. Sherlock Holmes opens Christmas Day, 2009.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Randomly awesome Saved By The Bell video: Jessie Spano strung out on caffeine pills (hey, it was a Saturday morning kid’s show):
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )A few of my favorite TV shows were ‘on the bubble’ — in danger of cancellation. Some of them, at least, have officially dodged the bullet. Newcomers “Dollhouse,” “Castle,” and “Better Off Ted” will all be back this fall, as will entertaining veteran “Scrubs”. This has been an unusually strong television season, in my opinion, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )As I said in my previous post, Twitter automatically shortened a posted URL for me using the Bit.ly service. According to TechCrunch, they recently dropped the better-known TinyUrl.com service for Bit.ly, and rumors of a potential acquisition of the relatively new service are floating around. Bit.ly and TinyUrl.com are both good services not only for [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Testing the Alex King Twitter Tools plugin. I just want posts on Badooble to be cross-posted to the Badooble Twitter account, http://twitter.com/badooble. This plugin seems to do that well. It doesn’t use a URL shortening service, but twitter seems to take care of that for me if necessary – the url for this post was [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Telegraph Headline: Stealth bomber photographed breaking sound barrier Ok, the B-2 “Stealth” bomber is a wicked piece of engineering, but it is not supersonic. Maximum speed is something like Mach 0.95. Not sure how the Telegraph got things so wrong with the headline and picture capton. It’s a cool photo, though:
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )In-text advertising (such as the Vibrant Intellitxt ads), where double-underlined ‘links’ are actually ads that generate pop-ups on mouse-over, are annoying and intrusive. Especially for me, as I tend to move my mouse around a bit while reading a web page. Fortunately, disabling these things in Firefox is pretty easy. Just install the GreaseMonkey script [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Mininova has long been a go-to search site for p2p downloaders. Those days may be numbered, though. TorrentFreak reports that the site is experimenting with a new filter that automatically removes copyrighted material (almost everything, in other words): Just a few days before their court appearance, Mininova, the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, has [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Google is using rented goats to ‘mow’ grass and weeds. I need a few of these for my back yard, since it won’t stop raining long enough for me to mow! As for the environmental impact of switching from gas mowers to a herd of goats, I’m guessing it’s a net improvement – although goats [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )OTR.Net has an impressive list of old time radio shows available – all for free. Listen to The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Abbot and Costello, Milton Berle, Tarzan and a bunch of other shows you’ve probably never heard of. X Minus one is definitely worth checking out – it’s a classic sci fi series from [...]
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