Category: Stuff

iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Anyone out there looking to buy me a present well here is cool little item. I have an iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) like many of you out there and like most of you have found it is kinda annoying having your earphones getting all tanged up. I like you also like drinking beer so this cool combination of an iPod case / beer top opener is a great idea.

Links
Bevy iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Urban Gnomes - Vitamin

Vitamin produces a range of very different house decoration items. One of my favourites is the common garden gnome for the urban yuppies out there (like me) - see image below. Other cool items are a flower pot that is self watering with a medical IV drip or even a floor lamp that doubles as a floor sweeper.

Links
Vitamin Home Page

Periodic Table For Visualisation Techniques

Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler have produced a really cool periodic table of all the different types of visualisation methods. I have had to use many of these when developing presentations in my day to day work so even the simple collection of all these methods in one place is extremely useful. If you mouse over each of the elements a little example of the visualisation method is displayed. Also linked below is a copy of the paper about the table's development.

Links
Periodic Table
Paper About the Table's Development

New Wind Turbine

Two of the biggest problems with current solutions to wind powered electricity generators is the noise and size of the wind turbines. This has meant that until now all the wind turbines have been located in remote areas where the noise and size are not an issue. However, a new wind turbine design is claiming to have designed a new wind turbine is smaller and creates less noise through a radically different blade design.

I am for the use of alternative energy creation systems as we can not continue using fossil fuels at the current rate for my longer. Hopefully this is one more step towards a better way of generating energy into the future.

Links
Loopwing Product Page

Pandora: Customised Music Playlists

Pandora is a great website that utilises the Music Genome Project (MGP) to create customised music playlists based on the music that you like. It starts by first asking you the name of your favourite music artist. I entered “Moby” and it then went away and created a playlist of music that has similar characteristics to the music created by Moby. Some of the artists it came up with was Kosheen, Juno Reactor, Prodigy and Kascade. The best thing is that it streams the music from the web page. This is a great web application to expand your music knowledge and discover other bands that you will like but would never have found without someone else recommending it.

Links
Pandora Home

I love Firefox

Ok so I am a complete convert and am using firefox for everything (home and work) and have also converted both my wife and mum (sort of). Well this is a great little video that summarises the browsers war for me.

Links
Wheee! Video

Matt's Blog

One of my friends from IBM has a great blog and if you are really into anything geeky then this is the place for you. One of the reasons why I have been looking at it lately is due to some of the great links to VOIP (Voice over IP) providers and additional information. If you are interested in using VOIP (like me) and are lost where to start have a look at Matt's blog.

Links
Matt's Blog

People Love Lego Too Much

Here an article on the top 10 strangest lego creations. The image to the right is just a taste of the different creations, it is also my favourite of them all.

Links
Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations

New Site Link Images

One of my friends wanted to link to my new site so wanted some images to link to so I have created a few. They are shown below with the URL to the original image if you want to link to it as well.

http://www.egg-tech.com/images/egg_site_link_small_banner.png

http://www.egg-tech.com/images/egg_site_link_centre_banner.png

http://www.egg-tech.com/images/egg_site_link_tiny.png

egg-tech Site now up and running

Well I have been able to move everything over to the new egg-tech.com site and it seems to be working perfectly again. All that remains is for me to put in the redirects from the old site for all those out there who are to slack to make the updates in their RSS clients and web browsers :) .

Links
egg-tech Homepage
egg-tech Blog

New Domain Name: egg-tech.com

I have a new domain name now. Therefore over the next week or so I will be moving this site over to www.egg-tech.com. I will make sure that there is a redirect in place from the labf.org domain so that people can still find me. I will also post another article when the migration has been completed. The reason for the domain change is because Mof who was hosting labf.org has decided to go for an online website hosting service rather than do it himself as it ends up being cheaper and gaining better service. So we are now moving everything over to Dreamhosts, who have unbelievable prices. So what will you see as the user, well the first is the new domain name egg-tech.com and secondly it should be much faster and I will be able to do so much more. See you on the new domain.

Links
http://www.egg-tech.com/
Dreamhosts Web Hosting

Monitor for Sale

Ok so I am a geek and this is the first time that I am actually selling something on eBay. I just put it down to being slack. Well anyway if there is any of you out there who wants to get a great deal on a 19“ CRT monitor, which is in perfect condition then end on over to my eBay listing. The listing is nothing flash and really I just want the monitor out of my house as it does not look good around all my other LCDs and shiny gadgets :). I am not doing postage on this item because it is too big and heavy so local pickup only in Adelaide (Australia), sorry to all the interstate and international readers. Heck you might even see me start selling some of my other gadgets that I no longer require or have upgraded.

Links
eBay Monitor Listing

MMMMmmmm Coffee

If you have wondering where I have been, well I have been traveling around Australia (Melbourne and Tasmania). There were two purposes of this trip, first to go to my friends wedding, and second to walk to overland trail in Tasmania. I will post lots more information about the overland trail in the next few days. However, while I was in Hobart we visited a great little coffee place that roasts their own beans. The coffee is absolutely brilliant, they even have their own website. But when I was in Melbourne visiting family friends one of them is absolutely crazy about coffee machines and showed me the website for the E-61 Rocket. This has got to be one of the nicest looking home coffee (semi-pro) machines that I have seen around. A few months ago I went to a Coffee Barista course to learn how to make the best coffee, since then I have become a complete coffee snob and only want coffee from the best places. The worst part is that I now know it is just not possible to make a really good coffee using one of the cheap coffee machines, not even the $600AUD machines (which is what I have). Do not get me wrong you can make a pretty good coffee on one of these cheaper machines but if you really want to make seriously good coffee then you are going to need a machine like the E-61.

Links
Oomph Coffee
E-61 Rocket Website

C/C++/Java Board Game

Finally a way to teach kids how to program at an early age. I have a few friends who have kids and I have been threatening that they should teach them how to program so that I can get them to come and work for me. This is generally in retort to them pronouncing that they have the smartest kid on the block. Well now with the C-Jump board game you can teach your kids how to program in a fun and learning environment.

Links:

C/C++/Java Board game

VisionStation

I soooo need to get one of these for work :) It is called a VisionStation from a company called elumens. It would go nicely alongside my 2x 19“, 1x 23” and 15“ laptop LCD screens. We have a much larger version called FOCAL at work that uses 6 polarised projectors on a large 4m concave screen that looks pretty good but these VisionStations look much more practical to have around the place as FOCAL requires special hardware and a whole room. Imagine using these as video conference facilities or attached to a robot on the other end, the possibilities are endless.

Links:
VisionStation Product Page

Ouch

One of my friends sent me a scan of his elbow just after he dislocated it playing volleyball. Apparently it was as painful as it looks.

Furgles CD Holder

These guys have to be the cutest CD cases I have seen for a while.

Links
Furgles CD Cases

XMLTV for Adelaide, Australia

I have been using a program called TVxb to download TV Guides and create XMLTV compatible XML files for use in a number of other programs. Until recently this has been working although my source provider changed so I have to recreate the settings file. This new file can be found here and works for all free to air TV channels for Adelaide, Australia.

Links
TVxb.ini - TVxb INI file for Adelaide, Australia
TVxb Home Page

Aerial Photos.... on a carpet

Ok this is really cool, an Artist has decided to create a carpet with Aerial photos as the pattern for a Sacramento Airport. Probably not the best place to have it as I know I would be walking slower than normal looking at the floor, which would slow pedestrian traffic flow and create the hazard of walking into things. This is still sooo cool.

Links
Artist prints “flying carpet” for airport

Mac Sudoku

A few of my friends absolutely love trying to work out the sudoku puzzles. If you are unfamiliar with this puzzle it is essentially a grid with 3x3 squares and each of these squares contains another grid of 3x3 squares. in each of the small squares is a number and the puzzle starts with only a few of these completed. The idea is to fill in every square with a number with the following constraints:

• A row or column must contain on one instance of each number from 1 to 9.
• Each of the large 9 squares must have one instance of each number from 1 to 9.

Well now you can play these games on your mac with MacSudoku. I personally can not see the fascination in the game but I know lots of people love it, some are even creating their own programs to solve them automatically.

Links
MacSudoku Home Page

Experimental Flash Animations

If you think that Flash can not do anything interesting or that is can only be used for the millions of animations out there well you should have a look at this site. This guy has used the embedded programming language in Flash called Action Script to create some amazing examples of what can be done. Includes real time warping of images, bezier curves that react to the mouse and much more.

Links
Lifaros Experimental Flash Gallery

I am Back

Sorry for no blog entries for a while but I have been moving between States in Australia so that has taken up all my time and I have only just been able to get back onto the Internet. Stay tuned for more wondering mac, gadgets, Internet development, Enterprise Architecture and other cool stuff from around the world.

Sidenote

Here is another great little mac utility that allows you to store and quickly access notes. One the biggest problems that I have with the Apple Sticky notes is that they are all over the place and get in the way. Sidenote is much better as it stores all your notes in a nice drawer that hides itself at the side of the screen. This is one slick application and well work a try. Skip down to the download link and give it a go yourself. If you can not even wait to download the application here is a screenshot.

Links
Download Sidenote

Hitachi Microdrive Technology Explained

Hitachi have tried to explain how they are able to get the extremely large hard drive sizes on their new microdrives. However, there is a twist, they have done the explanation as a flash animation and a song. Funny to watch while still slightly informative.

Links
Hitachi Storage Animation

New Photos: Kira

I have just posted some new photos of my pet dog called Kira. Kira is a Weimaraner with a little Kelpie to add to the mix. Really this is my wife's dog but hey she is kinda cute (both my wife and dog :) ). I have posted the photos as lots of my friends have been interested to know what she looks like, which is very hard to describe over the phone as most of my friends are located all over Australia. Well here are the photos:

Links
Kira Photo Library
Photo Library Index

New Feedburner RSS Feed

I have added a new RSS feed provided by FeedBurner to my site. This reduces the load on my site and also maintains some statistics for me so please use rather than the direct RSS feeds.

Rainbow: Old Childrens TV Show

This is absolutely wonderful. Rainbow is an old TV Show for kids. Apparently according this this website this video is from the original script. However, it is completely full of innuendo and completely hilarious to any adult out there who understands the references. Please note although not explicit the content may offend some sensitive people out there.

Links

Rainbow Video

Pierced Nose Glasses

Like many of my friends I wear glasses and without them I am as blind as a bat. To start with I do not have any piercing but if I happened to have one through the nose or willing to go through the pain to get one (which I am not) then I too could have a pair of piercing glasses. No I am not kidding, some guy has thought up and actually made a pair of glasses that don't have arms and stay on your face by being attached to a piercing through the nose. The site has a complete transcript of an interview with the maker and lots of photos.

Links
Pierced Eyeglasses

Google Suggest

Google has released its new Google Suggest capability that tries to automatically complete your search string based on what others have previously searched for. The suggest happens quickly with it updating suggestions in realtime as you type in your search string. It also works on any browser (above screen capture was on Camino). I love google and the new stuff that they keep coming up with, keep up the good work google.

Links
Google Suggest

Kudos for Me :)

I received an email today from an editor at the Biz/ed site informing me that they have used one of my photos on their site (click here). They found the image from the Stock.xchng site where I have a few images uploaded. Stock.xchng is a great site that allows people to share stock quality photos for others to use for free. Many photographers only ask for notification of people who use their photos. This is the second notification of people using my photos within a week and I am pretty happy.

Links
Biz/ed Site
Stock.xchng
My Page on Stock.xchng

Digital Sundial

This is absolutely amazing. Someone has successfully designed a sundial that displays the time in digital (ie. with actual changing numbers). The only way to really understand is go to the website and have a read.

Links
Digital Sundial

External Firewire RAID drive

I use external firewire and USB hard drive solutions all the time to more data around or backup data on my systems. Here is a new Firewire enclosure that provides RAID solution in a very G5 Mac looking case with excellent cooling capabilities. The drive uses Firewire 800 to provide the high speed data access to the drive. The drive is being marketed for video and audio professionals but is also perfect for any geeks out there who want the best hardware money can buy, you know who you are!

Links
G-Raid Site

DVD Cases

If you are packaging up videos or what a different case for your software you can't go past the cases for sale at JewelBoxing.com. I am amazed that they can create a whole site just about cases but there is actually quite a lot of content describing the product and how it works. There are also quite a few very nice examples of people using the JewelBoxing products. I am interested in this to potentially package up some of the software that I am writing in my spare time.

Links
JewelBoxing.com

Brie VS Camembert Cheese

While programming today on my new TVGuide for OSX I felt a little hungry so my wife and I nipped down to the local shops to get some food. We ended up deciding on cheese to fill our tummies. While looking at the shelves of cheese we choose to go with a Brie cheese, but wait, there is also Camembert. This got us thinking about what is actually the difference between the two cheeses, this is how our little experiment started.

Purchasing a Brie and Camembert from the same brand name we went home to try and see if we could taste the difference. RESULT: “no observable taste or visual difference”, therefore it was time to hit Google to try and find out what the difference was. After an exhaustive search of the Internet, 3 minutes later, we came to the conclusion that there is actually NO difference other than that originally 260 years ago when Brie and Camembert were first created it came from two different regions in France, Brie and Camembert. This leads to the names, also as these cheeses were from two different regions there would have been a slight difference in taste because they would have different cows and grasses to feed the cows, which can influence the flavour of cheese. However many of the Brie and Camembert we eat today do not come from Brie and Camembert so really it is all a marketing scam so they can sell the same product twice. No longer can they fool us, the jig is up.

Gmail Address Import from Apple Address Book

Want to import your Apple Address book into Google's Gmail service? Here is a great blog article that contains a simple Perl script that converts VCard files (what Address book exports) into a CSV list with the name and email of your contacts. It is extremely easy to use:

1. Download the script from here.
2. Open Apple Address Book.
3. Select all your contacts.
4. Drag contacts to your desktop. This will create a file called “vCards.vcf”.
5. Open the Apple Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities directory).
6. Change the directory to your desktop (“cd Desktop”).
7. Type “perl parsevcf ./vCards.vcf ./gmail.csv” (this assumes that the script you downloaded in step 1 and the Address Book vCards file are in the same directory).
8. This will create a new file called gmail.csv on your Desktop that you can now upload to Gmail.

Links
Gmail Perl Script Conversion Blog

“Rich” Web Clients

I am a keen advocate for “Rich” internet clients. By “Rich” I do not mean Java Applets, but web pages that provide a more complete user experience without having to request new pages from the server whenever the user clicks a button or link. There are few different approaches that provide this type of functionality including XUL (Mozilla Platform), Macromedia Flex and traditional JavaScript and DOM. Many web developers do not exploit the powerful capabilities provided with JavaScript and DOM. A recent example of this type of “Rich” client is Google's new Gmail capability that uses JavaScript and DOM to create a very quick and snappy user interface. By using JavaScript Google has been able to only send the basic requests and data transfers rather sending whole page changes back to the client. This of course takes quite a lot more client-side JavaScript development but does create a very powerful user interface. If you are interested in more information about the Gmail Agent API have a look here.

The Mozilla Platform is a more developer friendly approach as you define your application's interface in XUL and then link it together with JavaScript. However this approach requires your users to use a Mozilla-based browser (Mozilla or Firefox).

For the most interactive “Rich” client experience that will work on any browser Macromedia Flex is your product. Flex is based around a similar concept of Mozilla by defining your interface using XML documents and then linking it together with a scripting languages (Macromedia ActionScript). The difference is that Flex's client is built inside the Macromedia Flash player (available on almost every platform and browser), which allows for highly dynamic and pretty user interfaces. Flex is deployed using a J2EE server and can communicate back to the server by making Web Service calls or exchanging Java objects.

Gmail's approach works on all browsers but is technically much harder to implement. Mozilla's approach works well but requires a Mozilla-based browser. Macromedia's approach provides the best of both worlds but is not free and requires extensive server support. So if you are a web application developer please consider one of these options and provide a more advanced experience for your users.

Links
Mozilla Web Site
Firefox Site
Gmail Agent API Article
Macromedia Flex Site

GMail and OSX

Are you using GMail and Apple OSX well then this is for you. GMailStatus is a little program that appears in your menu bar and checks your GMail account for new messages and displays the unread amount. To make it even better GMailStatus also supports Growl notifications, which I blogged about earlier. Now for the best stuff, screenshots:

GMailStatus Menu Item

GMailStatus Preferences

GMailStatus Preferences

Wikiverse: The faster Wiki Encyclopedia

I really like Wikipedia but the problem is that the dynamic site can be very slow to use, Wikiverse fixes this by providing a static site that is synchronised with the dynamic site. If you are unfamiliar with Wikipedia it is a very large (greater than 1,000,000 articles) open source encyclopedia. Wikipedia works by allowing the Internet community to create and maintain the articles creating a very large editorial community. If you wish to just browse of search the encyclopedia then I recommend using Wikiverse as it is much faster without all the dynamic content.

Links
Wikiverse Site
Wikipedia Site

MC Escher Drawings Come To Life

Here is a site where they have taken the wonderful drawings of MC Escher and tried to turn them into 3D physical representations.

“Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world's most famous graphic artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be seen on the many web sites on the internet.” - from MC Escher Official Site

These physical manifestations are created by using a 3D printer and a 3D computer model.

Links
3D Escher Drawings
Official M.C. Escher Site
Wikipedia Page on Escher

Lamp that reacts to your presence

The Funferde blog has an article about a lamp that reacts to whether you are in the room or not. While you are around it will turn itself on and stand upright but as soon as you leave it will droop over and turn itself off. The is only at concept stage but it a really interesting idea of having funishings that actually move and react to your presence.

Links
Funferde Lamp Article

Installing Baldur's Gate II on OSX 10.3.5

I have had Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn for quite some time and just decided to install it on my new Powerbook G4 17“ running OSX 10.3.5 and found that the installer would crash with an error that you do not have the correct permissions. This is happening because at some stage Apple has locked down the permisions on the root directory of your hard drive which is where Baldur's Gate wishes to install itself. This is how you fix the problem so the installed once again works:

1. Open the Terminal Application (found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder)
2. In Terminal type the following (each line is a command and must be followed by pressing ENTER):

cd / sudo mkdir ”BGII - SoA“ [enter your password] sudo chown [username] ”BGII - SoA“

1. You will need to enter your short username (same as your home directory name). This will have created a directory that Baldur's Gate can be installed into.
2. Install Baldur's Gate like normal.

This will create the directory required and set the right permissions on the directory so that Baldur's Gate can installed correctly into the folder. You might also want to download the latest patch for the software also.

Links
MacPlay Home Page - makers of mac version of Baldur's Gate II
Patch Download

New iPod Case

Unlike many of the other iPod cases that I have seen on the Internet this one stands out for me because of the amount of thought that has been put into its design. The Prie Podwallet contains a number of really cool features like:
- storing credit cards
- storing notes and coins
- room for headphones
- special holder to wrap cables around and also acts as a strengthener to to the wallet's spine
- holder for an additional battery that can power the iPod for extended periods
- oh and room to store your iPod safely with a window so that the iPod controls can be accessed externally.

There is a nice gallery of the features on the website.

Paper Boats, Thats nothing

Well I can not even make a paper boat properly, I therefore have no hope of creating this paper dragon. This is one of many pieces on show at the Origami Convention on at the moment.

Links
Origami Tanteidan International Convention 2004
Paper dragon photo

The Next Generation in Computer Games Is Coming - Half-Life 2

At the recent Siggraph conference Viktor Antonov presented a series of Powerpoint slides containing images of the new Half-Life 2 visuals. These have to be seen to be believed as there is incredible detail and lighting effects to make one of the most immersive games I have ever seen. The most incredible thing is that these images are generated realtime using some of the most advanced commercial graphics cards. Many of the images are of such high quality that they rival those created in many computer generated movies where it takes hours to just render a single frame of video. The best way to understand is to view the images for yourself.

Links
Half-Life 2 image slideshow

Australian iTunes Store Rumoured

The new Internet ISP called Unwired has hinted that its newly forged relationship with Apple means that an iTunes music store will open up in Australia. Unwired is a new type of ISP that has started deploying a completely wireless Internet access for users in Sydney (to start with). As part of this wireless rollout Unwired is offering special deals on the Apple Airport Express hub. Unwired plans for more than 100,000 customers in Sydney by August next year. Further wireless network deployments are planned for Melbourne and Brisbane in the near future.

Links
Apple Airport Express
News.com.au Article - Unwired aims for 100,000 in a year
Unwired hints at iTunes link
Unwired Website

Streaming Internet Music

With the advent of larger Internet connections and many users now owning broadband connections we are starting to see home music players that can stream MP3 music straight over your Internet connection as an Internet Radio Stream (Phillips Players). For those of you who do not have one of these streaming Internet players it is possible to listen to the music from your computer with such programs and WinAMP (for windows) or iTunes (windows and mac). iTunes has a number of Internet Radio Stations already defined in the program but there are also a number of websites that contain a list of radio stations. The two largest MP3 Internet Radio stream sites are SHOUTcast and Live365.com. These two sites allow you to browse or search through a VERY large list of Internet Radio streams to find what you are interested in. Live365.com is a commercial site that wishes you to pay for advert free radio streams, however you can still listen to the streams for free and it is the same as listening to normal FM commercial radio. The extra feature that Live365.com has is that it pops up a window in your browser that displays the current song and the past 2 songs.

You may have noticed that I qualify that these streams are MP3 streams, as you can also find Internet Radio streams that use other audio formats. IceCast is a site containing software to create your own Internet Radio stream. IceCast can stream any audio format that it understands which includes OGGVorbis (for more information about OGGVorbis go here) and MP3. The IceCast stream list therefore displays Internet Radio Streams that are either using the MP3 or OGGVorbis formats.

Yes I know that there are other sites out there that offer Internet radio streams but I believe that these are the best and will keep you amused for hours. Happy listening.

Links
NullSoft SHOUTcast
Live 365.com
IceCast Stream List
Vorbis Website
Phillips Broadband Internet Audio Players

Virtual Reality Environment That Allows You To Walk

University of Tsukuba has developed a prototype system that allows a person to physically walk through a virtual environment. Most traditional virtual reality require the user to stand completely still and then use with hand gestures or control nobs to navigate through the virtual environment. Because there is no physical feeling of movement it makes these virtual environments feel a little fake. University of Tsukuba has created a new gadget called the CirculaFloor that consists of a number of moveable platforms. The moveable platforms are able to move independently across a flat floor so that there is always a platforms where you place you foot. By constantly moving these platforms it is possible to walk over these platforms but staying in the same physical location. Each platforms is able to move in any direction so that the user can also change direction and walk in any direction.

I believe that this is quite an impressive invention and will allow for much greater immersion when using virtual environments. There is a quick video (22Mb) that shows the CirculaFloor in action. For viewing the video it seems that the first prototype version is a little slow, forcing the user to only take small steps, but I am sure this will be fixed in production versions.

Links
CirculaFloor Website
Video (22Mb)

When is a sink not a sink?

I did not quite understand what I was seeing when I first saw the pictures of the HF01 sink by Thoms & Nilsson. The HF01 uses a solid stone slab as the sinks basin, but instead of being concave it is completely flat allowing the water to flow straight over the edges to the drain at the base of the bases stand on the floor. The first thought that came to mind was why would you do this, the Thoms & Nilsson website answers this question. According to the makers with the advent of mixing taps it is no longer necessary to have a basin to mix the water to a comfortable temperature allowing for the unusual design of the HF01.

Links
Thoms & Nilsson Website

Wooden Swiss Stamp

The swiss have done it again by making a very beautiful wooden stamp. The stamp is 0.7mm thick and made from 100 year old pine trees felled from the north of switzerland.

Links
Swiss Post News Release

Identification via your skin

The EE Times is running an article on a technology that allows for data to be transferred via your skin. This can allow devices to send information between each other as long as they are both touching your skin. This could allow for you data on your identity be easily transmitted to a car lock, or secure door or ship details between to an external device. According to the article they have been able to transfer data at 9600 baud which is faster enough to send enough data to move identity information. They are comparing this technology with RFID or bluetooth although I believe that these technologies are to be used in different applications so can not be compared directly although it does open up some interesting doors.

Links
EE TImes Article

Motorola and Apple join to bring iTunes to a mobile phone near you

Apple and Motorola are working together to develop a new generation of Motorola phones that will support the transfer of music between iTunes on both mac and PC and you phone via USB and Bluetooth. This partnership completes the monopoly that apple has in the music device arena with their Internet music store, iTunes music software, iPod portal player and now with ubiquitous mobile phones. Apple has been likened to Microsoft with their windows operating system to Apple in the music industry, although unlike Microsoft the apple implementation work and work well.

The new Motorola phones are not to be delivered until early 2005 but will provide a new level of capability and connection for the complete Apple platform. One thing I do hope to happen from this partnership is that Motorola learns to develop easier and more elegant user interface designs, an area that Motorola has been notoriously poor in the past.

Links
Apple Press Release
Motorola Press Release

Free Stock Photos

I have found this great site called stock.xchng that allows photographers to share photos between each other without having to pay royalties for the photo's use. I have created my own account and can view my photos here. As I have only just created the account it seems that any new photos uploaded must be vetted so you may not see any photos in my profile just yet.

Links
Stock.xchng Website
My Profile on this site

Spiderman Meets Lego

You have got to see this. Lego has teamed up with Sony, the maker of Spiderman 2, to create a short video clip of Spiderman 2 all in lego.

Links
View Spiderman/Lego Video

How to implement a DMZ

Lockergnome has a great little article describing how to implement a simple DMZ for securing a corporate LAN. Demilitarized Zones (DMZ) are used to secure corporate or home networks so that malicious users on the internet can not hack into you local systems while still being about to expose your public web sites, FTP servers and game servers.

Go to article

New Scientist Magazine RSS Feed

Probably the best science and technology magazines on the market is New Scientist. Well after sending an email suggesting that they should provide their news as an RSS feed (XML Syndication) I received a response saying that they already had one that was not well publicised. For all you science geeks out there hese is the RSS feed:

http://www.newscientist.com/syndication/news.rdf

Thumb-Wrestling will never be the same

The humble game of thumb-wrestling may never be the same for me. A group called Monochrom has designed a war to thumb-wrestlle with lots and lots of people at once. If you have never heard of thumb-wrestling then you really need to get out of your cave, in essence it is where two people lock their fingers together exposing their thumbs. Then without unlocking their hands the players trying and force their opponents thumb to the bottom and keep it there. This is all there is.... well until now. Have a look at Monochrome's Massively Multiplayer Thumb-Wresting Site for more information on how to play this once simple game with multiple people. Monochrom even go to describing different networks of thumb-wrestling games. There are photos of networked games and how to hold your hands. Have fun, but remember it is all in good fun so no fighting.