Apr

4

2008

(2) Comments

Sweet Skype Headset

09:02PM by Jim Frost

I admit it, I sat out most of the Skype revolution.  With landline and cellphone what more did I need?  Until recently, that is, when I needed to have a meeting with someone using Skype and realized that my old Microsoft gaming headset really didn’t cut it.  Enter the Logitech ClearChat USB.

Apr

4

2008

(2) Comments

US to Finally Achieve 3G Network Speed Parity [with Rest of Civilized World!]

02:22AM by Wayne Lam

It wasn’t long ago that the US wireless networks lagged the rest of the world in sophistication, reliability and speed.  That may soon change later this year as AT&T finalizes its 3G HSPA footprint across the country pushing wireless data speed to near 7.2Mbps limit. The conventional thinking throughout the last decade was that Japan was at the bleeding edge in terms of wireless data speeds with Europe and rest of Asia not far behind.  The Americas were in an unfamiliar position of a technology laggard in wireless telecommunications for much of the 2G wireless era. So why the big turn around? Simply put, the US wireless market matured and the industry evolved from small regional wireless players into a handful of powerful national carriers.  Also, the botched auctions of 3G spectrum in Europe and the slower-than-anticipated adoption of 3G service in Japan created the perfect opportunity for the US to catch up.

Apr

2

2008

(3) Comments

Freaky Cool Robot Dog

11:16PM by Jim Frost

If you’re like me you’ve been disappointed by the large gulf between the fictional capabilities robots in books and movies and the stilted, boring robots of the real world.  I want Robby The Robot, but I get an robotic vacuum cleaner.  But things they are a changin’.

Check out this video of Boston Dynamics “Big Dog”, a robotic pack-dog.  Once you get past the buzzy sound of the two-stroke engine used to power it, it’s freaky how much like an animal it is.  The robot’s balance, even on ice!, is incredible.  I want one!

I bet it has a hard time picking itself up if it falls down but it is clear that robotic technology is finally getting to the point where it can do really cool things.  It’s not all smoke-and-mirrors either, the development is being done a couple of towns over from where I live, and one of my friends has seen them out playing with it in a parking lot.  He tells me it’s every bit as cool as the video.

I welcome our robotic overlords!

Apr

2

2008

(2) Comments

Touch Me Baby (part III)

08:06PM by Jim Frost

In the last installment of my series on using an iPod Touch as a PDA I’m going to talk about most of the rest of its major applications:  Contacts, Photos, Music, Video, Safari, and Mail.  There were a few surprises, both positive and negative, that I discovered through use and experimentation.

Apr

1

2008

(4) Comments

Touch Me Baby (part II)

08:02PM by Jim Frost

Yesterday I went through some of my history with PDAs, a long-winded way of getting to the point of all of this: How does an iPod Touch do as a PDA?  Prior to mid-January Apple crippled or omitted entirely all of the PDA functions, presumably to keep it from cannibalizing the cash-cow iPhone.  Thankfully they came to their senses and put them back, although early adopters had to pay about $20 for them, which seems kind of rude to me but is apparently becoming par for the course for Apple.

So, the Touch is now a full sibling to the iPhone.  How does its PDA functionality stand up to use in the real world?