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

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?

Mar

30

2008

(2) Comments

Touch Me Baby

11:27PM by Jim Frost

In my inaugural postings for JetDrop I’m going to talk about the iPod Touch, but before I get to that I need to feed you all some historical perspective.  I’m new around here so you don’t know me yet, and I’m in an ongoing learning experience about the JetDrop community too.  To that end I first want to talk to you about the history of Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, and over the next couple of days I’ll talk in depth about using the Touch as a PDA.