In the last week, I've had many unknown people try to follow me on twitter.

Yes, my twitter feed is protected, so I don't know why people are trying to follow me. It's not like I've had a lot of people @admiralak me, and my club-admiralty analytics (the only other twitter link that comes to mind) doesn't show a ton of activity happening.

I wish twitter would allow people to put a description in the follow box - sort of how one adds a friend on facebook. This way I know how you found me. Most people's blogs don't tell me anything about why they are trying to follow me.

Tags: technology, microblogging, twitter, weird

Dr. Mario was one of those games that was bundled (as far as I recollect) with gameboys in Greece sometime in the mid nineties and thus it was one of those games that most people had a lot of time to play and were eager to loan it out in return for some other more exciting game. Thus, I borrowed it from one of my friends to see what the game was about and hopefully be entertained.



Dr. Mario is a puzzle game. In a medicine bottle there are a number of bacteria (different colors) and Dr. Mario throws pills at you. The point of the game is to march the color of the pill with the bacterium in order to eradicate it, and the doctor doesn't make it easy for you (why Dr. Mario, I didn't know you were such a pill pusher!)



People who enjoyed Tetris, and other puzzle games, would enjoy Dr. Mario. It's certainly a good game to play while commuting to and from work. Beyond that, Dr. Mario was nothing special.

Tags: video, video games, games, gameboy, entertainment, nintendo, puzzle

Continuing my series of reposts of mailings that I find interesting about the future of the newton from the NewtonTalk list, here's one from Carlos Santiago. I've added some comments and personal views in code format

Carlo's Post:
I was prompted by the 2010 timeframe barrier I'd heard about but I made the switch after v2.0 of the system software which had abilities much better in regards to email than the earlier version; at 1.x it most mostly an ipod but the 2.0 software brought it close to a pda but 100% and no where, anywhere close near a Newton.But I then sold off my iPAQ and BT GPS unit as we also gotten a Garmin GPS which made the switchover possible.

It took a while for me to make the switch, mentally, everything important I had on my 2100 and PDA. Key apps there I vitally needed and used.

• cut-n-paste! poor man's inter-app messaging
• Newton notes; still no clear replacement
• Newton calendar; Pocket Informant on the PDA made that platform a good transition but the Newton was the gold standard so it'll be tough to replace
• Newton inter-app slip messaging; but things are slowly improving within key apps
• PDA Pocket Informant; a PIM that's coming this month!

I'm not a twenty something wanting a gaming only device (but not that there's anything wrong with that! - these folks in part fueled Apple in recent months and this platform after all) but needed a PDA which approched Newton status. My iPod isn't a Newton but I'm finding less is more in some areas.

What I like:

• speed; I now juggle 6 email accounts; evan google and yahoo along with work, etc.
• apps availability; I often buy apps I like hoping support will spur further advances; most feature 'free' subset versions which is vital since all sales are final - and tied to you; you can't resell.
• web browsing - full screen and fast; however in recent months some sites take to dumming down their site when then see an iPOD; wrong approach; some offer a choice of classic or iPod site view; much better
• GREAT - f-n-GREAT (so far) app s/w provider support; I think they see the future ahead of most users and are running in droves to the unit; I can only hope some exNewton titles make it here.

I have all of my email accounts (except for my Hotmail account) on my iPod Touch and it's great! On my N800 I don't have everything. The again, I purchased the device for web browsing, not email handling. I only have my mobile me account on the N800 since I can't use the browser to check the mail. Hotmail, yahoo and gmail are all easily accessible on the maemo browser.

What I dis-like

• small sceen resolution with BIG UI interface controls means display real estate is an absolute premium; most apps either waste space or feature too much whitespace. There are some PDA style apps which try to cram too much info but I think within the next year the UI and developers will come to terms and deliver great apps - my hope anyway.
• poor apps sometimes crash the unit; recent I took to emailing one developer on their latest update and was totally floored at the response; *GREAT* had a new, fixed, app in a few days. Oh, and this app was *FREE*

I really would like to see some category for gag apps. I don't care that people are making fart or bouncing boob apps, but it really makes it hard to look for good apps when the gag apps are taking up so much space.

And neutral items...

• it's not a PDA let alone Newton. In the 2.1 s/w release Apple heard first hand that some folks actualy rely on their units for something other than on demand music purchase and play. Given the wider, non-game app availability, I suggested they spend a bit more time in QA; they appear to be.
• yes there's no stylus; it's up to the app the make the UI transition to gesture based input. it's funny to see HWR attempts etc. on this unit. IMHO those apps just don't get it (aka those don't dogs won't hunt It's hard but you do need to rethink things from scratch.

Would like to see items

• Newton notes; folders, outlines, todo, style sheets, etc. partridge in a pear tree...
• universal platform issues; cut-n-paste, messaging, 'back' ability. Each app execution replaces rather than pushes current apps. You can return to the former app after pressing the home button and navigating to it but I'd like to see a 'go back' button or gesture to do this. That would go a long way to addressing inter-app slip passing as app design all feature a fast save state ability you pick up just where you left off.
• built-in camera
• speaker (2nd gen unit already has this)
• dump AT&T in favor of generic provider support; this is part of larger soap box to have all cell phone carriers compete by using a U.S. then world-wide cell phone network topology and technology; we'd then see real competition vs. the fiefdoms we have now.
• overall h/w improvements; 3rd party storage & batter upgrades - don't try this yourself

Overall I'm happy I made the switch; but miss my 2100.

I agree. I still have my 2100, I don't use it and I miss it. But I am happy to be using an iPod Touch and N800 instead

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, N800, Nokia, ipod, touch

Well, along with the Y2K10 issues, there's been a lot of discussion about redefining the Newton. I came across this post by Michael, and I have to say I agree with a lof of his comments.

This is very interesting because this is exactly what I have been thinking for a while.I have long thought, the future of the Newton was in becoming a series of enhancements and applications to assist a chosen platform to provide those features which the Newton had (and differentiated it) which no longer seem to exist. (Keep in mind that different users will see this as a different mix of items)

I agree. The features that the Newton had that differentiated it for me (beyond the Apple Geek factor) were the addressbook, calendar, mobile office suite and my multilingual dictionaries. Oh, the large screen too.

In my case, I have recently purchased an iPod Touch to use as my basis for this.

I went with a Nokia Internet Tablet (N800 Model), plus an iPod Touch more recently.

My reasoning for this is pretty simple:1. The iPhone / iPod Touch SDK is FREE!

I don't care about developing, so this isn't a factor for me

2. The Developer community is alive and kicking and considering the size of the user base I have a good chance that something will be developed which may deliver what I am after or that something I develop will be useful for other users and therefore make the development effort pay off.

This is true for both maemo on N800 and the Mobile OS X on the iPod Touch. I have almost more functionality than I had on my Newton!

3. It's from Apple and syncs well with my iTunes Library on my Mac ( and the Address book and iCal and MobileMe).

This was, and is, the most important thing to me. My Media syncs perfectly with my iPod Touch, and all my calendars and contacts are synced. Yes, even the ones in Greek! My major problem with the Newton was the lack of Greek support, even though the OS was fully unicode. Initially this was not a problem since most of my contacts were non-Greek. I could literally count on two hands who my Greek contacts were. With the rise of the internet and social networks I've reconnected with many of my old friends, and it is easier to keep in contact with new ones making Greek support all that much more important.

4. It already had FMTouch which is a 3rd party Filemaker Database Engine so I can take my existing Databases and Sync them to "MyTouch" ( yes I was lame enough to call it that and you can guess my iMac is called) and carry them with me. Something I always wanted for my Newton but never quite had

.

Now, I am far from 100% satisfied with the platform.I have some minor annoyances with the following:1. Address book:  It doesn't support Custom Fields ( which I'm not sure was a Newton feature out of the box or an extension ) so all my Custom Fields from the Newton were lost

The iTouch does not fully support Greek, so even though I can get my contacts on there, I can't easily get to them! The system is built for latin based alphabets
Custom fields don't bother me as much as I don't use them

2. Calendar: Seems to be missing a few things as well. I'm not sure I actually need them but I guess time will tell.

Having used iCal for the last 3 years, whatever is missing, I haven't missed

3. Notes:  This has to be the most useless Notes App ever made! You cannot set the title of the Note it is simply the first line of your Note so I am forever having to put the title there. There is no Landscape Mode. It doesn't support Checklists or allow you to put them in Folders ( or at least Groups like in Address book ) and I cannot seem to Sync them only Email them!

This IS a major annoyance. The Notes app is useless. I used my newton to take many, many notes. In meetings, in the classroom, at work. It was great! My iPod Touch is awful at taking notes. The N800 has a program that is somewhat comparable to the Notes app on the Newton, but it's slow.

There are of course features missing:1. HWR - There is a program called WritePad which gives you HWR via finger which works really well and I would love to work out if they are using Inkwell or a Home-spun HWR Engine; they are producing apps for this as well and their Notes App looks interesting but it is missing Checklists which I feel is a must.

You know, I would love HWR on the iPod Touch, but truth be told, I almost never used it. Initially I used it a lot, and it was great on the Newton. However as I met and recommended with my friends from Greece, I started taking notes in a mixture of Greek, English and something in between. The Newton did not recognize this. In class, I would take notes of words in German and Italian, but the dictionaries would not always recognize the words. The notes app on the newton worked well for monolingual people, but in my case it didn't fit my needs. Ink-notes were more useful.

2. Find - There is no Search feature so I can't simply search on a Clients Name and get a list of all my Visits from the Calendar and the Address book entry which I used quite a lot on the Newton.

Ditto!

3. Copy and Paste - Such a simply feature which could be implemented just like the Newton is missing. But I have yet to have missed it.There is probably a lot more that could be said.

I have missed copy/paste on the iPod Touch, but I always have my N800 to fall back on, so if I need to copy something to/from the web browser into/from another app, I use the N800

At this point I have gotten the touch to the point that for the first time since I owned a Newton it is actually sitting on my desk at home and not being carried to and from work each day. I think the potential is there but it will need some Apps built to provide the "missing" bits. For me, the first step will be the Notes App. I hope to start working on building such an App in the next few months.

One thing that I really miss from the notes app on the Newton, that I wish were implemented on the iPod Touch OS is the different kinds of notes. I want to-do lists (and have the synced with mail/ical). I was graph paper. I want plain paper to draw on. I want shapes and different size marker tips. Yes I can get all those in three separate apps (kinda), but the notes app on the Newton did all this.

Tags: technology, apple, Newton, opinion

I could have sworn that I wrote about this before...but just in case I haven't, here's Burn Notice. Burn Notice airs on USA, and it's available for Free on Hulu. The story is about a CIA agent who's essentially given the pink slip (fired, made rendandant, call it what you like), but he does not know why.


If he were just fired, that would be one thing, but all of his assets and bank accounts are frozen, so as the intro says when you've been burned, you've got nothing, no credit, no job history and you're stuck in whatever city they (the CIA) decides to dump you in.


In his quest to figure out who burned him and why, he's got Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar as sidekicks. Bruce Campbell plays a retired special forces soldier who's got no money (and probably an alcohol problem), and Gabrielle plays a former (current?) trigger-happy girlfriend that was part of the IRA.


It is a pretty interesting series (even though one of the Engadget HD guys doesn't like it).


I think you should have a look.

Tags: entertainment, television, burnNotice, USA, spy

Along with the Y2K10 bug I saw a lot of people playing the blame game concerning the cancellation of the Newton platform, and thus leaving this Y2K10 time bomb unfixed.

People are quick to blame Steve Jobs because the Newton was not his creation. Valerio Mitritsakis has a great answer to the steve-blame (and I agree with it):

A bit off topic here, still I've had a thought I want to share with  
you. Most people attribute the decision to kill the Newton to a  
revenge of Steve Jobs against Sculley.

However "colorful" (to put it mildly) Steve\s character is (from what  
we read here and there) he is no fool. What I believe happened with  
the Newton was that when Apple faced bankruptcy and called back
Steve Jobs in 1997 as a CEO it needed a few things in order to move on.
1st and foremost to focus on the key areas it was best at which were Creative
Pros (DTP, Design. Prepress) and Education. The next important thing it
needed was a commitment for the development of one of the most
renown application suites, Microsoft Office.

However the deal was something more than that as it included a patent
cross licensing plus some serious cash and more stuff.

This brings us to what I think happened with the Newton. Apple agreed  
with Microsoft to kill the Newton so that they would have the handheld  
marked to them selves.

In the light of saving the company, killing the Newton was a small  
price to pay and kept Apple out of the market for a decade until 2007  
when they introduced the
iPhone...

Of course it is totally possible that all of this exists only in my  
mind as I do not have any connection whatsoever to Apple and I could  
not have any insight on this matter.

Tags: apple, technology, Newton

Super Mario Land 2 was a departure from a regular mario game for me. I had not played Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES so I was not familiar with the platform/RPGish element that Nintendo already had for the Mario series.

I borrowed this game from one of my friends and I was immersed in the world! This game was frikkin' awesome! I think it's one of the few games that made me space out and really visualize myself in the world.

So what did I like about the game? Well, pretty much everything.
The graphics? - awesome!

The world? - awesome!

The stages? - awesome!

The power-ups? - pretty good!

The music? - well, OK, the music I don't remember!

Wario as a final boss was not too hard, and not too easy. I was actually able to beat him without breaking much sweat.

The on thing that I liked in SML2 over SML was that I could save my progress. One of the major projects with SML was that I needed to play from start to finish, there was no in between! With SML2 I could play, complete a stage, save, and put the game away until another time.

This game was gold!

Tags: mario, entertainment, video, video games, games, gameboy, nintendo, great, awesome

Well, the NewtonTalk list has been buzzing lately about the Y2K10 bug that is going to plague Newtons come next year. So what is it? It's similar to the Y2K bug (or oversight depending how you look at it) that was a headache on our computers not so long ago.

Here is an explanation from Andrei:



The basic issue is that the time calculations that deal with time containing
seconds work with integers, and as of January 5th, 2010 the number of
secondsthat have gone by since January 1, 1993 is greater than an integer
canhandle.

The Newton uses two formats for dates, number of minutes since January 1,
1904 and the number of seconds since 1993. It appears that the problem lies
with the functions dealing with the date in seconds, the date functions that
deal with years, months, and days have plenty of space left.  It looks like
the value is stored in a 29 bit value. All hell should break loose at second
2**29 which would be January 5, 2010 at 18:48:31.

The system routine TimeInSecondsToTime() returns an unexpected value.
If you give it the largest 29 bit value it gives a correct answer, but if you give
it a 30 bit number it screws up.
But the routines that handle date conversions handle the later dates.

Tags: technology, Newton, NewtonOS, bug

Earlier this month I went to visit my dad, and per chance I picked up a box with old memorabilia which included old apple ads from magazines like MacUser, MacWorld and MacAddict (as well as a few full issues!)

I found this ad for an Apple Newton 2100 which is awesome (and it made me want a Newton even more, even though as a high school students I could not afford one).




for a larger image click here

Tags: technology, ads, Newton, apple, PDA, macaddict

The invisible man is another scifi channel series that is free on Hulu.


Now, it's not a series that I would characterize as "must see", but rather I would characterize it as "if you don't have anything better to do, and want to see something that doesn't suck, but it's also not excellent, see this".


The main character is a professional thief who gets caught because he is also Mr. nice guy. In jail he gets a visit from his brother who wants to use him as a guinea pig for invisibility experiments, and as payback he gets pardoned. Good deal, right?


Well, things go wrong, and he now works for the company, with no end in sight. He does have a goofy sidekick, and the humor is a bit sophomoric, but all things considered the series is not that bad.


It's a good thing to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, if you've got nothing else to do.


Also check it out on amazon - The Invisible Man: Season One

Tags: entertainment, television, hulu, scifi, humor

I found this the other day in my RSS inbox - interesting read:

The UNIX shell has been around for more than 35 years now—through evolution and enhancements—and is still going strong! It all began in 1971, when Ken Thompson of AT&T Bell Laboratories created the first UNIX shell named (appropriately) the Thompson shell. Fundamentals of the Thompson shell, such as redirection of data, exists in shells used today, although the shell lacked some important built-in functions that UNIX users use every day, such as pipes (|), the ability to write shell scripts, and if conditional statements.

As a result, the Thompson shell was replaced with the Bourne shell, or sh, in 1977. The Bourne shell, created by Stephen Bourne of AT&T Bell Laboratories, became the default shell for UNIX version 7 (V7). The shell took a huge leap into the future for UNIX. Now, users could write shell scripts; store and export information in variables; control file descriptors; control signal handling, for loops, and case statements; and so much more. Even though the Bourne shell was created more than 30 years ago, it is still widely used by many current UNIX systems and is the default shell for the superuser—root—on many UNIX systems today.

Over the past three decades, there have been changes and improvements to the UNIX shell. As a result, several different shells have been created. Figure 1 illustrates the family tree of a few of the UNIX shells. This figure is by no means complete, but it shows the major shells from which other, minor shells have been derived.




Read more here

Tags: technology, unix, shell, history

After the punishment suffered by the original Sonic game on the game gear, I went back and got sonic 2. It's like super mario on Nintendo systems, you gotta have them all!


Sonic 2 played like the original sonic, so once I had beaten the first sonic game I was in the groove, and I was able to play this game without the same level of frustration that I had with the original sonic. Of course I also had a power adapter for my game gear which made things much, much better.


This game wasn't really memorable, unlike the first sonic game. It was really more of the same, with the exception that you now had a cute, cuddly, fury sidekick named Tails that could fly.


I would play this game again - if only to remember why the heck I played it in the first place!

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

Here's another time waster... Here's mine foverocity.myminicity.com - click to join my city

Picture of my mini city with 114 residents

Tags: technology, waste

Here's a funny Joy of Tech comic strip that goes into the subject

Tags: technology, humor, att, SMS, telephony

Farscape was a great series on the Sci-Fi channel before Stargate came into the picture. I remember the series being pitched as Star Trek's naughty twin, or something along those lines.

The story follows John Criton, and astronaut from earth who is supposed to perform some farscape jump, go farther than any man has gone before and come back. Well, things go wrong. He does go farther than any man has gone before, but he can't come back! To add insult to injury he is placed smack dab in the middle of a conflict.

In the end he is on the run, on an organic space ship, with a bunch of other (alien) characters who've escaped their political imprisonment. He is looking for a way home,and they are trying to not get caught again. The series follows Trek's 'alien a week' theme.

The series was quite enjoyable. It is a little different to get into if you've been watching trek, but give it a few episodes! You won't regret it.

Check it out on amazon - Farscape - The Complete First Season

Tags: television, entertainment, scifi, farscape, starTrek

I saw the following mockup recently on a number of websites.

Of course it's a fake, but it's rather interesting.

What I like about it is the front facing camera for video conferencing, the keyboard and joypad buttons, and what looks to be a higher resolution camera with good optiocs on in.

Would I buy one of these? Well, if I didn't have to buy a data plan, sure!

As I've said before I agree that the iphone needs some game controls (a pad and buttons) because the touch screen + tilt control aren't always convenient (anyone try playing Cube?)

Tags: apple, iPhone, technology, telephony, gaming

I must say, I am REALLY disappointed!

Recently the 1UP network was bought by UGO. UGO went in and gutted the company! Got rid of the EGM publication and a lot of the excellent 1UP podcasts. There goes 80% of my video game podcasts that I listened to.

I am not a happy camper!!!

At least 1UP FM has been reborn as Rebel FM

Tags: entertainment, technology, annoying

Sad, but true!

Tags: technology, social, society, bigbrother

SONIIIICCC!!!!! The bain of my existence, for a very, very long time! Sonic game with my game gear, and for the longest period of time it was my only game. The problem of course was that I did not have the foresight to buy an A/C power adapter for my game gear so my batteries kept dying just as I was making progress.

I think I finished the game three years after the original purchase due to both the difficulty level of the game and the fact that the game gear sucked the juice from the batteries faster than an alcoholic drinks beer at happy hour!

The game was enjoyable, and because it was my first color handheld game, it hold a special place in my memory. Both as the game that aggravate me immensely, and the game that I eventually beat after having been immersed in its wonderful graphics goodness. If I still had sonic, I don't know if I could still have the patience to play it to completion.

Tags: video, video games, games, gamegear, sega, sonic, aaargh, entertainment

We've seen SNL spoofs of Mac products, but how often do you see a BBC spoof?

Here is the Mactini - the smallest mac in existence

Tags: technology, humor, BBC, apple, macintosh

One of the reasons I didn't buy an iPhone is that I don't need wireless broadband, at least I don't need it at $30/month. I have WiFi at home. I have WiFi at work. I have WiFi around town (believe it or not) in most areas that I frequent (thank you OpenNet!).

The only place I didn't have WiFi was while I was commuting to and from work. Well now that seems to be taken care of. By the end of the summer my 25 minute commute to work will be WiFi enabled! This means I can check up on Facebook and LinkedIn, perhaps even my Google Reader while commuting!

Now all I need is free WiFi at North Station for when I wait...but then again do I REALLY need to be that connected?





Here's the service announcement:

Wi-Fi Commuter Rail Connect
Based on our successful pilot program on the Framingham/Worcester Line, the MBTA is proud to offer its commuter rail customers first in the nation FREE Wi-Fi service via the MBTA′s Commuter Rail Connect initiative.  Beginning December 2008, wireless routers will be installed on coaches throughout the entire commuter rail network.  Once completed, all 13 lines will feature at least two coaches on each train set that will be Wi-Fi enabled.  The program is expected to be completed by the end of Spring of 2009.  Until then, approximately 30 coaches per month will be installed.  These coaches will be “turned on” as soon as they installed allowing riders to access the Internet via a laptop or other wireless device.  The newly Wi-Fi enabled coaches will be distributed throughout the commuter rail net work based on operational needs.
We hope you enjoy this FREE service.

Tags: transportation, MBTA, wifi, networks, free

Startgate Atlantis is the spinoff series to Startgate, on the SciFi channel.


On earth a gate is discovered which takes people to another galaxy. The trip unfortunately is one way because the power required for this trip is massive. An expedition is organized and they head to the other side. What they find is an ancient city, a massive floating ancient city - thus Atlantis.


The main antagonists in this series are the Wraith, a vampire like species that feeds on humans, essentially draining their life force. There are smaller enemies, and just like the regular stargate you do get to meet new civilizations almost every episode.


It's a pretty good series, but it only has five seasons - I wish it had more. You can catch the last season of Stargate Atlantis on the SciFi channel on Fridays if you are reading this now. If you've never seen SGA before, check the series out at your local library or amazon (Stargate Atlantis - The Complete First Season).

Tags: scifi, television, entertainment, stargate

Well, decided to take some of that birthday money and get myself a new iPod, so I went and bought a new iPod Touch. This device is amazing. I like to call it "PDA 2.0" because it does a lot of stuff that PDAs did way back when, but also is a great media player (which is what I use it for, mostly).

So what would I change about the iPod touch? Some things are software based, and others hardware based. Here's a quick rundown.

1. Need a built-in iSight and Camera, and give us iChat
The form factor is great, and the ubiquity of WiFi means that you can use your iPod touch as both a text-chat communicator for various services like AIM, Yahoo and MSN, and as a voice/video chat communicator for the aforementioned services. In addition, if a microphone is included we can finally use Skype on our iPods

2. Bluetooth with A2DP
Bluetooth is a great technology. You can transfer files back and forth between many different devices, you can attach devices to your iPod and build around those additional services. A2DP is also great for wireless headphones (which I would really love to get)

3. GPS
OK, GPS is not a *must* but it is definitely a want. The Nokia Internet Tablet has it, and it has preloaded maps with the possibility of turn by turn directions. A built-in GPS and collaboration with Garmin and TomTom would make the iPod not only more useful, but also compete with GPS-only units. With Apple's DRM what this means is that TomTom and Co. can work on better versions of their product for PDAs but still get paid for their effort (apparently S60 and WinMo versions are highly pirated)

4. Camera
Now this would be cool. Apple isn't into the digital camera business, but think of all the uses that such a device could see if there were a camera in it.

5. FM receiver + Transmitter
I listen to FM radio - I do! I think that the FM receiver, with RDS, would be a good addition to the iPod Touch. In addition, an FM transmitter would be nice to be able to listen to our audio through FM (no need to shell out another $50 for an iTrip)

6. HWR!
I know that the current software has handwriting recognition for asian languages (Chinese and Japanese if I am not mistaken). I would love to see HWR for English (and other languages). The HWR on the Newton was legendary. It's time to get this on the iPod/iPhone software!

7. Copy/Paste
This is a sore point with some users. I think it's important to include this functionality so you can copy some info from a browser, let's say an address, and paste it into another program...let's say the addressbook!

8. Flash & Java
I know that Flash isn't really optimized for the mac, and even less so on the iPod/iPhone, but this is something that is necessary. A lot of streaming sites exist, other than YouTube, and there is no access to that content unless you've got Flash and/or Java. My blackboard (Learning Management System) is almost useless on the iPod because I don't have java, so I can't check my class discussions on the iPhone (which is OK because I do that on my N800 when I am on the go...but it would be nice to have it on the iPod)

9. iPod-wide search & the assistant
This is something from the Newton world. This would be a search that searches all the local content (and the internet if you are connected) for particular info. So if I want to search for Bob Jones, it will go through the addressbook, calendar, to-dos (oh yeah, I want a good todo list too), podcasts, songs, videos, etc. and give me all the info about Bob Jones that I have. The assistant would be something like the newton assistant where you would be able to write "appointment with John Johnson at 2" and this would create a new appointment for you, with John as the participant and it would ask you for additional info if it needs it (like day, end time, etc). Linked data is a good idea!

10. iOffice
Just because I like decimals, this will be the last one. Any good PDA 2.0 needs office support. Something to open and edit word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents (as well as common open office formats and other formats). This could be a paid app, but we need to have it

PS: Yes, I would love themes, but sadly I think those were buried along with MacOS 9

Tags: ipod, touch, apple, improvement

Some New Year's PhD humor for you

Tags: phd, comic, humor, technology

I picked up this game back in the early '90s when it came out. I was in middle school, the teenage mutant ninja turtles were big, and I was visiting relatives in the USA. What better game to add to my collection of gameboy games?


The plot is rather simple. If you've ever watched the (old) animated series, you know that April O'Neil is in trouble, Shredder and Krang are the evil doers and you must save the day!


In the game you go through several stages (six if I remember correctly), to save your friend, and you are given control of the turtles, so in total you've got four tries to finish the game.


The game play was not that hard when I was a kid, I imagine it would be easier now. I managed to finish the game within months of buying it -my batteries kept dying and I did not have backups - so my gaming was sporadic.


The replayability was so-so. If you felt like going back through the levels so you can face off with Rocksteady, Beebop and the gang, then you could be entertained hours on end, even if you had finished the game once. If on the other hand you felt like 'been there, done that' - then it wasn't all that replayable.


The game was great from the perspective of a middle schooler. Now I don't know if I would enjoy it as much today, if you exclude the nostalgia factor.

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

Happy New Year to everyone out there!

Love, peace, health and happiness to all

Tags: wishes