I don't know if this is the same as 'ratified' but at least it means that people can start implementing it! This will mean more competition in our Market. In the US verizon will really compete with AT&T and T-Mobile because devices will be portable. Sprint is still doing their WiMAX thing - which isn't bad, but I won't be going to Sprint to my mobile needs.

In Canada this means that all carriers will be using the same technology, so Bell, Telus and Rogers will now see real competition because the handsets will have the potential to be unlock and brought with you to another carrier

The future looks bright! (now if data package prices were to fall...)

Tags: LTE, technology, GSM, telephony

OK, Babylon 5 is not great, but if you are patient, the story line is worth it.

I started watching Babylon 5 in high school after a debate with a friend of mine on which one was better: Babylon 5 or Star Trek: The next generation. I thought that to make a better decision, I would have to watch Babylon 5. I did and I was hooked!

I recently watched all of Babylon 5 from season 1 to season 5, plus all the movies, and the sense I have of the series now, is different from the sense I had when I was in high school (10 years ago). This is a function of two things:

The first is that I started watching Babylon 5 during season 5 (which was good), and I really did not pay attention to the previous seasons that kinda sucked. I put up with them in order to get the back story.

The second was that I was in high school.


Babylon 5 as a concept is actually not bad. The story makes sense. The alien races are great and they really show they work as paradigms of the different natures of humanity. The main conflict is great. Where the series falls short is the absolutely horrible writing of J. Michael Straczynski (JMS).

JMS wrote ALL of the episodes and the subsequent movies, and his bad writing stigmatizes the whole Babylon 5 universe. His writing is just awful! There was also little thought on how the series was going to end.

Season 1 was a good setup for the conflict ahead (bad writing aside)

Seasons 2 thought 4 were good in terms of dealing with the conflict and giving us a climax for the end of that conflict (the shadow war)

Season 5...fell on its face! Really! What the heck happened? Season 5 stunk!

Then...there were the movies... I think you should check out IMDB and the different user ratings for the movies because those speak volumes, and I actually agree with most negative remarks.


Now should YOU watch Babylon 5? Well, if you don't mind cheesy, korny, and really bad dialog, you should. The sci-fi plot, or at least the underlying ideas are pretty good. The execution (and writing) is what sucks!

If you have little patience for bad writing...then perhaps you shouldn't

At this point I think that The Next Generation is better than Babylon 5. If you want to see a space station sci-fi drama you should check out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Tags: entertainment, telephony, scifi, babylon5

I gotta say, this is pretty cool (although possibly useless).

The first MacOS that I used, on an iPhone is pretty cool.
On the the desktop I can play games of yesteryear.
On the iPhone...I don't know...

This feat is compliments of vMac Mini

Tags: iPhone, ipod, classic, emulator, cool

I read this article today in the incoming section of my Google Reader.

// Begin quote //
One particularly revealing moment in his discussion is his day 60 post in which he describes a series of questions that he poses to his graduate students to get at the "fundamental things we do."

The Question and Conclusions

Can doctor still be a doctor without a hospital? They usually answer -- of course. Can you be a lawyer with out a courthouse? Again -- affirmative. Now the money shot -- Can you be a librarian without a library? Dead silence.One would hope that the questions prompt a discussion and don't just end in "dead silence." Although John doesn't tell us what the discussion, if any, was, he does give us his conclusions: possession of "material" might have once been central to the purpose of libraries but, in the digital age, possession is much less important part of what libraries do.

// End quote //

It is quite an interesting read, so you should have a look at the article, if you are in the library field at least.

My take on this:
Yes, there will be a place for librarians (I call them Information Scientists) in a place where there are no libraries (as we see them today).

The first thing here is that library school does not teach you specific skills, unless you so choose to focus on reference or cataloguing, thus your skills of information sleuthing are already transferable o not only other information jobs, but also to this upcoming reality of more virtual information hitting the library.

I personally think that this is a good thing because it will get qualified individuals into the library field without the MLIS (masters in Library and information science). As has been written by me and other on lisnews and alatechsource on the subject of librarianship, the profession needs to be more inclusive in its hiring practices and who it elects to call a librarian. People without MLIS degrees have a lot to bring to the table, for the profession and the patrons it serves, and this new information reality has the potential to change libraries and the profession for the better.

Tags: work, education, libraries, librarian, pondering

A week (or so?) ago there was an insanely great parody of social networks on the IT crowd (a british sitcom). The social network? FriendFace! Have a look at the YouTube clip of the ad for FriendFace.

Also have a look here at the company's (employer) response to friendface

Tags: parody, entertainment, television, social, networks

Back in middle school there was a lot of game trading going around. Friends used to buy games that they would like to own, but would often lend these games out to their friends. Tiny Toon Adventures was one such game. I think I traded F15 for it one lazy summer and I spent time with this excellent platform game.


In this game your character (Plucky, Buster or Hampton if I remember correctly) tried to stop Montana Max from thwarting Babs' dream of making it big. Now what a platformer has to do with helping babs' realize her dreams of stardom, who knows. What I do know is that the game was very entertaining, and I actually played it a number of times to completion while it was in my possession.


If you have a classic game boy, and happen to stumble upon this game, I recommend giving it a try.

Tags: video, video games, games, entertainment, gameboy

Merry Christmas to all!

Tags: wishes, holiday

Maybe this isn't that exciting to people using Windows, but I just got my invite to participate in the Boxee alpha for MacOS.
I've played with it for a couple of days now and it seems pretty interesting! I wonder how I can get hulu on it...

Tags: apple, boxee, beta, test

Keen Eddie was a great show that was axed before its time (luckily The Complete Series is available on Amazon!). The show follows a New York cop who messed up and as punishment he was shipped off to England and was made an attache to scotland yard (if I remember correctly).



The store is really about a New York cop in England, and this theme (american abroad) has been explored in the past, but Keene Eddie was simply b~r~i~l~l~i~a~n~t!!!

Eddie owns a dog named Pete, who is extremely ill-tempered. Eddie attempts to leave him in quarantine at the airport when he arrives in England but Pete is rescued, by claiming Pete is a police dog.

Pete chews on everything and frequently destroys TV remote controls and cellphones. He also has strange sexual appetites, from Fiona's (Eddie's partner) cat to a fur coat to sleeping humans. More than once, he has aggressively cornered visitors at the apartment and forced them to stand motionless for hours until Fiona or Eddie come home. Eddie is just such a great dog!

I really wish they would add it to hulu so it could be viewed for free.



Check out IMDB to learn more.

Tags: television, entertainment, FOX, comedy, england

Now in general, I don't follow etiquette books. I feel that some of the rules are antiquated. Maybe I am going through my rebellion stage. Anyway. I ran across this article on social media etiquette. I skimmed through it, and surpassingly I agree!

Have a look for yourself. My three biggest pet peeves:

Facebook
Using a fake name as your Facebook name.  I can’t tell you how many people have added me and their last name is “Com” or “Seo.”  I’m not adding you unless you can be honest about who you are.  Once upon a time, Facebook deleted all of the accounts that portrayed people as business entities or things.  I wish Facebook would employ the same tactics yet again, because I’m not adding a fake identity as a friend.

Tagging individuals in unflattering pictures that may end up costing your friends their jobs.  Avoid the unnecessary commentary also, especially on your childhood pictures that portray your tagged friends as chubby and not so popular.  Further, if your friends request to be untagged, don’t make a stink of it.

I don't want anyone posting photos of me - period. Doesn't matter if they are just me sitting and having a coffee. If I want that particular photo of me on facebook, I will post it myself.


Twitter:
Streaming only your blog’s RSS feed on Twitter.

Tags: technology, etiquette, annoying

Streets of Rage for the Game Gear was one of those games that was supposed to be a substitute for going to the arcades. The dynamic of the video game is very much like Double Dragon or Final Fight, both games that I loved, the latter having played in the arcades.


The game allows the user to pick from one of two characters, and once you do, you can start your mission to clean up the city's dirty streets. The game is pretty straight forward, and it was enjoyable to play. It was a bit on the easy side (I beat it in a week as far as I remember), and I played it a few more times after beating it, but the replay factor is really low.


This is one of those games that I wish I could have rented.

Tags: video, video games, entertainment, gamegear, games, sega, beatEmUp

I know, this news is a week or two old, but wow!
I was thinking that my next phone would be an iPhone but...Nokia REALLY upped the anti with this one! IF this phone has Triband HSPA (or even better quadband) I may go for it if I have the money.

I wish that people start working on S60 touch apps now so we can get all those iPhone like apps out . There is no capacitive touch display on the N97 (so no multifinger gestures) but that's OK. Maybe someone can get me one for my birthday

Tags: technology, Nokia, telephony, s60

Firefly is a series that you SHOULD have heard of before (if not, have you been living under a rock?). Firefly is yet another example of an brilliant series that was axed before it's time.


Essentially there's been an intergalactic civil was between humans that are part of the 'empire' and those who are not (to use Star Wars terms). The separatists lost, and things did not turn out all that well for them, or the universe for that matter because the empire is corrupt (what else is new?).


The story follows captain Reynolds and his band of mercenaries that pick up odd jobs to get money. Most of their jobs are illegal cargo runs, but they are sticking it to the empire so it's OK. The series is 13 episodes long and a theatrical film is available that ties up the series. Both the series and the film are available for free on Hulu.


The Complete Series and the film are also available on amazon (for those interested) ~ I know they're on my wish list


If you have a weekend where you're doing nothing, I suggest making some popcorn, getting some pizza and beer and having a Firefly marathon! You won't regret it!

Tags: television, entertainment, firefly, whedon, scifi, FOX

Recently I started creating a wiki for a project I am working on. I looked over some of the wiki providers and ended up settling on using wikispaces. Now one of the things that I like about wikispaces is that it has both a WYSIWYG interface for people to use once I make it public, and I can use the wiki markup when I am going my own work.

This past weekend wikispaces started supporting Safari for the WYSIWYG so I decided to give it a try (again), and I remembered why I dislike the WYSIWYG so much: it creates unreadable code!

When I went to the plain text editor, after I had created some content with the WYSIWYG editor I was face with many silly and superfluous tags. I spent some time getting rid of these span tags and cleaning up the code, but wow!

I know that a WYSIWYG editor is easier for the lay person, but have you ever tried to troubleshoot something like this type of problem: "this font looks a little different than this one, I wonder why..."

No WYSIWYG until I make this puppy public...

Tags: technology, wikipedia, syntax

All I have to say is LOL!

I recently watched this episode of the Simpsons on Hulu (I no longer watch FOX's sunday night programming live). If you haven't seen it, head over to Hulu and have a look. The Apple parody is simply awesome!

Here's an excerpt:

Tags: television, entertainment, simpsons, apple, parody, ipod

I waited 'till the 13th to post this even though I got the email on December 1st.

In two days, December 15th, one microblogging service is bitting the dust, Powce.

I liked Pownce, I liked it a lot. You could do things with it that you can't with other services, like attach media, show calendar events.

To the right are some of the last Pownce messages created on the service.


Here are a few thoughts on it from the Financial Times

Pownce, a social media service that has failed to gain traction, is to close down this month after its team and technology were acquired by the blogging company Six Apart.

Pownce caused an initial flurry of excitement among Web 2.0 aficionados when it launched in June 2007. It was given a certain cachet by Kevin Rose, who co-founded it and had already co-founded the popular Digg news site.
As recently as August, Leah Culver, another co-founder, was featured on the cover of MIT’s Technology Review, which said Pownce was one of 10 web start-ups to watch.

Six Apart said it would be merging the Pownce team with its Vox blogging service. The main Pownce website will close down on December 15.
The service allowed private messaging among friends and file-sharing. It was compared to the micro-blogging service Twitter, but was harder to grasp than Twitter’s simpler 140-characters-or-less messaging concept.

Om Malik, the well-known tech blogger, told The New York Times in July last year: “I love [Pownce] and use it constantly, I like it because it lets me share a lot of different things with the networks of people I really care about.”
Yesterday, he blogged on GigaOm: “I used the service for a few months but then lost interest, and so did many of my friends.”

It seems Pownce was just one service among many micro-blogging ones and lacked distinct features that could have helped it become mainstream, or even hold the attention of dedicated social networkers.

Commenters on another service, Friendfeed, pointed out on Monday that Kevin Rose himself had spent more of his time on Twitter than his Pownce creation.
“That’s like the CEO of Pepsi being seen drinking Coke, if you can’t stand behind your product, how do you expect us to?” said one.




Personally, I wans't sure about this, but I tranfered all my content to Vox for the time being...
Goodbye Pownce, you were a good service.

Tags: technology, pownce, rip

I had not played MK II very much in the arcades before I bought time game. Having just returned from Greece I did not spend much time in the arcades, so it seemed to me that a game gear game was a good compromise.

I was very happy when I went to the toys are us and plopped down some of my hard earned money to get this cartridge. I came home and put it in my game gear around 5pm. By 10pm I had beaten the game.

It would be sufficient to say that the game did not live up to my expectations. Just like Alladin it was way to easy! While I was able to play other characters and see their endings too, the replayability of this game was almost non existent.

Too bad my local movie rental place didn't rent game gear games. I could have save my money and bought a better game...

Tags: video, video games, games, gamegear, sega, mortalKombat, beatEmUp, sucks

I love the PhD comic strip!
I can relate...

Tags: phd, humor, comic

Well Linux is now on the iPhone (woohoo!)
I am not a crazy linux fan, but I think this is cool!
Now I wonder how long it will take to port android to the iPhone



iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Tags: technology, linux, apple, iPhone, android

I was bored a while back, when there was no TV, and I started watching a series on Hulu called the Dresden files. I think this show was originally on the SciFi channel.


The series has as a given that there is such as thing as a wizard, and Dresden is one of them. You're born with the gift, although I never really worked out if this gift was because wizards were a different species (like the Harry Potter universe) or if there was something else going on.


In any case, there is a council that determines the rules by which wizards live by, and Dresden is sort of an outcast. He's got a sidekick, a wizard he calls "Bob" who practiced black magic (a no! no! according to the council) and as punishment he was made into a Ghost and forced to live forever in non-corporial form near his skull.


The series is actually quite entertaining, and it's a bummer that SciFi didn't order more seasons of this series. I would have been interested in seeing more.



The series is free on Hulu - go have a look-see.

Tags: entertainment, television, scifi, magic, wizard

So now that Microsoft has acquired danger, what will they do with the device and its OS? Well yours truly has a suggestion for Microsoft (not that they listen), as to how to best exploit and expand the platform!

Section 1: Device Hardware

Hardware needs to be improved, no doubt about it. First thing that Microsoft needs to do is to make quadband GSM and quadband HSPA a standard in all danger devices so that they have a global reach.

Secondly they finally need to add WiFi to all of their devices. WiFi is now a staple of pretty much all smartphones, and if Microsoft wants to capture the younger users AND maintain them and not see the SK as juvenile, they need to add wifi.

Third, they need a touch screen on the device. Dialing the device is a pain in the butt. With a touch screen this is taken care of, and it opens the door for more innovation.

Fourth: add GPS. Location based services are a must have for an always on-device like the sidekick

Fifth: use dedicated media/video chips to improve media playback and battery life.

Sixth: Number of devices - just have two, the classical form factor and the Slide form factor. No need to dilute your market. Special editions are OK.

Finally, add a front camera for video chat and video calling.


Section 2: Software


The first step for Microsoft would be to make a more generic OS similar to what other smartphone operating systems do and then add themes and customizations to the device, but make it so a customization does not impede the customer's ability to take this device from one carrier to another

The second thing they need to work on is full unicode input and localization of the OS. While the sidekick is available in English, German and probably Dutch, it needs more local support to be rolled out globally.

The third thing is Exchange support. In the mail client support exchange fully, just as if it were a windows mobile device. This will make it attractive to the enterprise.

Add a bit of social flair to it: social networks are all the rage today, from facebook and myspace to linkedin and friendfeed. How about being able to log into your social networks, and microblogs and get a feed of what your contacts are up to?

Add a blogging client: Do you use blogger? LiveSpaces? Live Journal? Wordpress? No matter what you use, a blogging client should be available to use out of the box.

Add better media capability: video and music playback, as well as youtube, vimeo and hulu (just a thought) should be standard on this device.


Section 3: Services

One of the great things about the sidekick in the early days was that the internet and IM was patched through a danger server which optimized websites for the sidekick browser and kept a messaging service running, so if you were offline with your sidekick (a dead-spot or something) people could still IM you and you would get the IMs when you came back into service. This is something apple is trying to do today (with the IM bit).

This is a good idea, but it is implemented poorly. At the moment the carrier has control of that service, not Microsoft, which means I can only use my sidekick on T-mobile, not at&t, not rogers, not on cosmote when I travel to Greece.

Microsoft needs to decouple this from the carrier so a sidekick can run on any carrier, but still sees the benefits of messaging services (and possibly streamlined websites, although I prefer the real web experience of an iPhone to that of the blackberry and sidekick).

The other function of this server is to keep your contacts, emails, photos and PIM data backed up on the cloud. Again, when this came out in 2001 it was revolutionary, these days Apple and Google have joined the game in the consumer arena. Microsoft should decouple this PIM/media functionality from the carrier and tie it into their Live services (and if they feel up to it support syncing to google and yahoo). This means that now anyone can purchase a sidekick, and a plain jane data plan and with their live account they can use the device to its full capability.


Section 4: PR

The sidekick and the danger OS suffer from juvenile disorder. A grown man (even if the software were available) could not be caught with a sidekick because it's deemed to be a kid phone. Microsoft needs to fix this in order to make the device accessible to to a wider demographic.

Tags: opinion, microsoft, dangeros, sidekick

Mortal Kombat came out in the Arcades when I was in middle school. Many kids used to skip some periods to go to our local arcade to play MK in all of its arcady glory (those were the days).

I bought Mortal Kombat for the gameboy in order to capture some of that arcade magic on the gameboy, with mixed results. I remember having a ton of fun playing MK on the gameboy, and that is what matter.

Sure the graphics were...not that great, and the controls were stiff (at best), but I did manage to complete the game with a number of characters and I was entertained while beating the game. The difficulty of the game wasn't too easy, and it wasn't too hard - it was just right.

The one thing that left me a bit disappointed with the video game was that the endings were not at all arcady. I found the endings to be a little bland. Oh well, it was only an original gameboy game.

Tags: entertainment, video, gameboy, games, video games, beatEmUp, mortalKombat

I found this graphic on wewantapplegreece.com, and it's quite funny (but I am sure it's all Greek to you)

The iPhone was released in Greece last August, but there is neither an OS localization available nor a Greek keyboard for people to input text in Greek. This image makes fun of that.

The Mac asks What's going on here guys?
The PC responds: This guy had the bright idea of buying an iPhone 3G because he saw somewhere that "really soon" there will be an update of the firmware to enable support of the Greek character set, and we've been waiting for three months now...

I am warming up to the iPhone, but no Greek means no purchase for me

Tags: iPhone, apple, technology, humor

This is an oldie, but a goodie.
What would Microsoft do if they were in charge of designing the iPod packaging?



Of course, we can see from their Zune boxing that they have gotten rid of some of the extraneous information


Now if only they got rid of all those crazy versions of Windows Vista and just sold the 'ultimate' version as the standard version...

Tags: technology, ipod, microsoft, advertizing, design, zune

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, BBC America had a series on called Life on Mars. The series follows detective Sam Tyler who is struck down by a car in present day Manchester, England and mysteriously wakes up in the the 1970s as a transfer detective to another police department.


His boss, Gene Hunt, is essentially an asshole cop who looks crooked but is actually trying to uphold the law. In the plot you've also got a couple of direct reports to Hunt that work with Sam. The humor in the series is derived when Sam brings modern investigation techniques to 1970s, and the rest of the force looks at him like he's got two heads.


Of course the underlying drama is that we don't know if Sam is in a coma and all of this is in his head, or if he did actually travel back through time. The ending I think is quite unique. The series had 2 seasons, and you can probably find it on the BBC's online store.


Highly recommended.

Tags: lifeonmars, BBC, television, entertainment, action

A while back I was reading this article over at the Internet Tablet School

It's been a while since I initially read it, so I went back to re-read since I had been thinking of the topic lately. The author's thesis is that Nokia doesn't want to compete with itself by offering two devices that do the same thing: the Nokia S60 touch interface phones (such as the Nokia 5800 pictured to the right) and the Nokia Internet Tablets.

The author further goes on to day that Nokia should put create subnotebooks like the Eee PC and put maemo on, abandoning the tablet factor, and that Nokia should focus on improving the functionality of maemo with regard to functions such as word processing and other office apps.


Now, I agree with two things:
1. You don't want to cannibalize sales of your flagship products (phones).
2. You should focus on adding functionality.

I disagree on the notion of getting rid of the tablet factor and making something like the Eee PC. Sub-notebooks are a pain to carry around. A tablet fits comfortably in your coat pocket, a sub-notebook does not. You don't need to put maemo on a laptop to clearly show who the intended audience is.


What should Nokia do?
Software wise:
1. Add a good PIM suite to your internet tablets. Contacts, Calendar, To-do and memos are a must and by doing this you will get people from the PDA market to switch over. While you're at it, make this PIM suite compatible with iSync and synv with Yahoo and Google as well.

2. Make office applications more accessible on Maemo. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are documents that people want to open and edit on the go.

3. Make mail for exchange available on maemo and integrate IM functionality into the OS (yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AOL). Pidgin does a good job, but this also adds one more app you need to run.

4. Get more support for web based clients, like the iPhone.

5. Get SMS, MMS, and phone applications on Maemo.

6. Make media playback easier on the device. Video podcasts don't play well on Maemo - fix this. Look at Canola for PMP inspiration (or support canola actively)


Hardware wise:
1. Integrate quadband GSM/Quadband UMTS (and if you're up to it, WiMAX as well). Will this cannibalize your S60 touch sales? To a small extent yes, but most people buy a phone for most phone related activities, and a tablet for extended internet activities. The tablets have more screen real-estate, and better processing power which makes browsing more pleasurable than on any phone.

2. Integrate your phone like and tablet lines. Make it easy to compose, send, and sync MMS, SMS from your tablet to your phone

3. Bring back the FM radio with RDS

4. Make tablets easy to connect to monitors and TVs for more real estate.

5. Take the N810 body and add some external buttons, so people don't have to slide out the keyboard to use basic navigation buttons

6. Throw in a 3.2 or 5MP camera.

7. Yes, do make wireless keyboard and mouse an viable option for maemo. There's nothing cooler than taking your tablet out, brining out a wireless keyboard and sitting and taking notes!



Nokia posits the N-series devices a multimedia computers. In my opinion it doesn't matter if you are running symbian or maemo. While current tablets can go online by tethering them to a phone, it's better and easier to keep the same form factor and add cell radios in them.

Tags: maemo, symbian, Nokia, future, opinion