I've been using Twitter recently. I'm really not sure what the appeal is, but I enjoy it. I came across an article from The Daily Galaxy about how the Phoenix Mars Lander is Twittering from the moon.



NASA gets major points for this one. Not only for keeping with the times and embracing things like Twitter, but for the brilliance of it. They're not dully writing about how the Phoenix is doing, but they're actually writing from the perspective of the lander. When referring to NASA they talk about them in the 3rd person. Here are two examples:

"I'm sending about 116 Mb of data home each day (over 100 images plus other data), transmitting 128 kbps"

"Sci team is done with today's news briefing. They'll be back on the clock to start the Martian work shift at 9:30pm PDT. Mars time is rough."



Well played NASA, well played.

Photo: NASA
Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: space, technology, techy tuesday, twitter]

I honestly haven't used Vista too much, so there will be little to no Vista bashing from me in this post. With that said, you don't really hear many people praising Vista. I read an article from an ex-Microsoft employee who posted his perspective on Windows 7. Very interesting stuff.

A big issue is reworking backwards compatibility. It's important to keep it; people would flip out without it. Vista's method is to keep old Windows frameworks in libraries, and bring up the library as needed. This is pretty resource intensive. Windows 7 compiles this all into a Legacy Library, and can work from that, much more efficiently than Vista.



When will we get Windows 7? It was projected for 2010, but Bill Gates told investors that it would be around next year. Some analysts seem to have pretty low hopes for Windows 7, but I see this as moving from Windows ME to XP. Hopefully at least.

During all this I've been monitoring WSJ's All Things Digital conference via a liveblog from Engadget. It's been about 45 minutes now, and it's still pretty boring, they're just including semi-interesting clips from their conversations. It's just Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer reminiscing about old times. We're supposed to get a preview of Windows 7. Though, it gave me time to write everything up to this, so when they finally get to the preview, I have all this written. I'm watch Troy as I wait.



Good quote:
"Is Vista a failure? Is it a mistake?" Ballmer: "It's not a failure, it's not a mistake. Are there things we'll modify and improve going forward? Sure."
Gates is mum, smiling off into the distance.

Multitouch! Not surprising; they kind of had to include it, but it's still comforting to see them including it. Teamed up with the Microsoft Surface project. Real multitouch? Hopefully, since the Surface team is there. None of this iPhone multitouch. That's not multitouch, it's dualtouch. 2 isn't multi. You don't say a comic strip is drawn in multiple dimensions, or that you have multiple hands, you say 2!



Anyway, doesn't seem like too much of a preview. Once there's a video posted somewhere I'll link it here, and maybe write some more, but that's it for now.

Photo: Flickr
Photo: Flickr
Photo: Engadget

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: technology, techy tuesday]

Over on Raisu.net, Jailu has embedded a video of one of Microsoft's projects, Photosynth. I recommend you go watch it, or else this idea will seem nowhere near as impressive.



What you see above is "Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace) is one of South Korea's finest national treasures. Originally built in 1394, it is the largest palace of the Joseon Dynasty." That's the information that Photosynth gives about this 'collection'. Essentially they combine a ton of photos together and match them based on their orientation. You're able to zoom in, and if you want further zoom, you just switch to a photo that's was taken closer in. You can navigate with the arrow keys, or use your mouse to click on an area to select an image from there.



Above is a shot taken at Grassi Lakes up in Canada. The same idea applies. Here I left the panel on the left open for you to see. You're able to see a bunch of information about the collection. At the moment it's just information that Microsoft has provided, but as the video explains, when this is really implemented, the idea is that the program would search out metadata from all of the photos that compose the shot. As Blaise Aguera explains in the video, this could take data from Flickr - compile all of the images, then include data about the site from tags and descriptions. Alternatively it would search the web for these images, then take the metadata from surrounding text.



This is actually my favorite implementation. Photosynth is able to be used to take us on a tour through Gary Faigin's art studio in Seattle. Enough pictures were taken that you can go on a fairly seamless tour, and since the focus is on the art, you're able to click on some really nice, clear images of the art itself. This seems like a perfect application that galleries, museums, etc. could put to good use.

Again, if you didn't watch the video, here is the link again - watch it.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: art, technology, techy tuesday]

For this week’s Techy Tuesday, I will be reviewing a purchase I made a couple of month’s ago from Woot.com, the Razer Pro|Type Multimedia Keyboard with iPod Dock (but no, I did not pay this much for it). I bought it because I wanted a keyboard I could move around apart from my laptop, because it had a built-in iPod dock, and it had keys which could be assigned to macros; all in all, some excellent features.

The keyboard was pretty high quality, it felt nice and solid, although it was pretty big. Its size was due to it having macro keys on both sides of the regular keyboard, in addition to other useful keys, such as play/pause/rewind/etc. for use with a media player, as well as zoom/rotate buttons for image manipulation, as well as some nice shortcut keys.



Additionally, you could setup multiple profiles; the macro and shortcut keys would have different uses in different profiles. A really nice feature was that you could set the software to auto-switch to different profiles when different programs were loaded up. As you see in the picture above, there were pretty bright blue lights on it. You may have noticed that this review has been in the past tense; that is intentional. Enough with the positive aspects, time to show you its flaws.

The Macro Keys/Profiles:
Very nice idea, but poor implemented. There are a maximum of 8 keys per macro, and they go very slowly, without the ability to adjust the speed. An eight key macro would take about 2-3 seconds to perform. Profiles are nice, but without good macro keys, it’s not that great of a feature, especially when the profile switching can take up to 10 seconds to recognize a program is active.

Durability:
It’s a keyboard, so you shouldn’t really have to worry about it being mistreated. I treated mine well, but did it return the favor? I will use the keyboard itself to write this next paragraph.

Well, as you can see, hee ae some eos. You can' quie ead eeyhin ha I'm ypin, ecause no all o he keys work anymore. There is no real consistency - sometimes keys work, and sometimes they don't; you can see this in the past line. In fact, this is the best the keyboard has performed in a while, which is nice, but not so good for proving my point. I'll continue, and hope that the keyboard stops working, as strange as that may sound. Well, damn - I could go through and cheat by removing random characters, but I'd feel bad about that. Regardless, it's useless unless it can consistently type all of the characters.

The customer service blows. I sent them two emails. The first email, they responded to. I was complaining about the macro stuff that I wrote about above. They essentially said, yeah, that’s how it is; you can’t change it. The second email I sent was about the consistency that I spoke of above. That email is below:

Hi,

I saw that there is a two-year limited warranty on your products. I purchased a RazerPro Keyboard (the one with the iPod dock) in December and it has stopped working properly. Not all of the keys work properly (I am typing this from the laptop directly rather than the keyboard).

The following keys no longer function: b, f, g, r, s, t, v, w, x, backspace, 2, 4, 5. Possibly others as well. Occasionally some of those work, (and probably some others don't work at other times), however as you can imagine, this is no longer able to be used.

How do I go about getting this replaced?

Thanks!

They didn’t respond. My response to their lack of response is below. This also summarizes my review of their product.



I wish I had read more reviews. Maybe I can make this into a snake?

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: technology, techy tuesday, ranting]

In an attempt to make sure I do more work on Will and Beyond, I'm going to try and do a weekly column: Techy Tuesday. It will be up at some point on Tuesday every week. (East coast time.) I haven't decided on any sort of strict formula for this, and I don't think I will, but it will be techy related.

NES Hacking



Everyone remember their days of NES. Unless you're too young. Or you were deprived as a child. But really, if you didn't have any friends growing up who had one, you were too sheltered, where was your ambition?

Anyhow, the image you see is someone putting an entire NES system in a cartridge. See that indention in the middle? That's where you put the game - yes, a cartridge in a cartridge. The obvious question is what happens when you get two and put them in each other - maybe they make little Game Boys?



Now here is someone putting the NES in a controller. This one's cool because not only does it have a cartridge slot in the back, it comes with 70 games built-in to it. If you have any moral qualms with using emulators and ROMs, then go away stick with that first mod. I wish I had this kind of talent.

Geeky Jewelery



In case you're having troubles declaring your geekdom, here are a couple options. The first option will only work for men. (Because women don't wear cufflinks, right?) I'm not a fan of most cufflinks, I'm usually satisfied with just the buttons that come on the shirt, but for these Wiimote cufflinks, I'd make an exception. They look like they are really well done.



Finally, we have a pair of ethernet wedding rings. In case any of you are getting married, give it some thought. I pitched it to Micah to use these for his, but I wouldn't put money on it. Just imagine, as you kiss the bride, when you lean in, you could connect them, and your geekiness would be immortalized.

That's it. I'll work to get this up every week, and we'll see how this goes. If you have any suggestions (or especially if you want to write a column of your own), feel free to contact me. (webmaster @ the website name)

Godspeed.

[Comments: 2] [Tags: technology, video games, techy tuesday]