We are moving!

Hi,

I have moved the blog , so scoot on over to http://geekspin.wordpress.com/ , its now called "Geekspin".

Update your feedburner feed to point to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Geekspin

Cheers!
Conrad

Geek Spin Podcast #5

A LATE upload, after some bandwith issues.. enjoy

The Musically inclined Apple Cast!

MP3 can be found here.

Hi guys, great to see you back!! Sorry about the damn Archos harddrive whine you'll hear every few minutes .. gotta work on that!

I have a music heavy podcast for you tonite, I play 4 songs by some great bands as provided by the podsafe music network.

Songs:

All songs released under Fat Wreck Records

Decendents/Cool to be you

MxPx/Lonesome Town

Chixdiggit!/Geocities Kitty

Descendents/Nothing With You

I tell you about the Tech Podcast Network live events, the k7.net free voicemail service, Backpackit , online workspace.

We Talk about the new apple goodies:

New G5
The new Powerbooks
Everything you wanna know about the 5th Gen iPod

Cheers!
Me

Subscribe to out feed , hit the feedburner link on the right hand side of this page!

Geekspin #4

Geekspin #4

Mon, 11 Oct 2005

After a long period of silence, I'm back with another riveting installment of my late night ramblings!

Download the MP3 here...

We play in with a great rock track, Uncrowned - Queen of New York. Thanks to the Podsafe Music Network

I apologise, talk about homefront developments, mention the ZA Show and introduce you to Ancestor, the new podcast novel by Scott Sigler.

I play a promo for podsafeaudio.com

News Covered:

Yahoo launches podcasting support

One laptop per child, details on its proposed $100 laptop.

Robofish

Apple Announcement, 12 October. Think Secret.

MySQL getting attention.Ken North.

Stanford wins $2m Dollar Arpa Grand Challenge. 132 miles in under 7 hours. VW Touareg R5.

15 to 20 launch titles for xbox 360 on November 6

Intel launches dual core server platforms.

Panasonic announces Blu-Ray by early 2006.

Play out with another podsafe song .. Brother Love - Summertime

Apple announces iPod Nano + ROKR phone.

Hot off the presses today is the announcement of the new iPod player that seems to be a replacement for the mini (which has disappeared of the site) as well as the long awaited Motorola ROKR E1 iTunes phones.

Read about the nano here ..

Nano: The good ..
1) Super bleeding edge 4Gb solidstate flash technology.
2) Color screen
3) Super slim + tiny
4) Just plain sexy
5) Did I say tiny?
6) I want one

Nano: The bad ...
1) It causes the instant demize of a whole market of compact HD based players. awww.
2) The put the audio jack at the bottom. umm...
3) How are you 'sposed to read that little screen?
4) Why not support the alternative colors that where so popular with the mini?
5) WOW!! Why so pricey? You can get a 20GB photo for $50 less? Guess thats the price
you pay for bleeding edge tech.
6)What up with the name? C'mon apple Creative already have a Zen Nano, see it here

Read about the ROKR here ...

ROKR: Good
1) Its a phone AND and iTunes based mp3 player .. wow..
2) um ...

ROKR: The bad
1) Its very definately a Motorola, no Apple design influence. In fact I'm sure its a
rehashed E398, which I
actually think looks better in its black.
2) Its too basic dude, nothing special
3) Only supports like 100 songs out the box.
4) The iTunes support allows only random auto MP3 populating (like the shuffle), or
manual USB based MP3 populating. I guess that cause of the limited storage space
:)

oh well.

Tags: iPod Nano,ROKR



Oh well.

Blog search

So you wanna find a blog specialising on Rhododendrons? Or maybe you just wanna read some general Apple, or Microsoft news. But how to find these niche blogs? Before the only solution would have had to be a google search or maybe a tag based search on something like technorati.

Not anymore, technorati has launched a blog search. As a claimed weblog owner you can now add up to 20 tags to describe your weblog.

Will be enabling it and checking it out.

Read more here http://www.technorati.com/weblog/2005/09/44.html

Via Scoble

Tags: technorati, Tags: blog search

Scoble goes to google - a parody

Ok this is old but, Haha!

Scoble posted a link to this South Park derived sketch on him visiting google.

Pretty funny.

Link to sketch here..

Scobles original link here

Hmmm , space elevators , fluffy bunnies ...

Read on slashdot ...

1) Vista Beta compared to Tiger
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/31/1415208&from=rss
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_beta1_vs_tiger_01.asp

Have a gander at a review of Vista Beta 1 with a "chicken and egg" type theme.

2) Nintendo registers insane (*sic*) patent
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/30/1645253&from=rss
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,935,954.WKU.&OS=PN/6,935,954&RS=PN/6,935,954

Nintendo has patented an "insanity" system for video games where characters are affected by the situation they are in there preparedness and general state of mind so as to affect the reaction on input etc. Yikes, a character that refuses to move and cries for his mommy cause you didn't do enough training ...

3) Sorry waiter, there seems to be a worm on my Zen!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/30/0118252&from=rss

So for the technology blunder of the week, it seems that some 3700 Zen Neoon mp3 devices have been shipped including the W32.Wullik.B@mm work. Poor bastards.

Read on Engadget ...

These 2 items via engadget today that caught my attention,

1) 1GB CF Round up
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000857056563/
http://www.pcstats.com/artvnl.cfm?articleID=1842
Ok .. so you wanna buy a highspeed 1gb CF card, but which one to get? The answer .. its doesn't really matter! Read this review and discover that unless you have a very top-end DSLR it wouldn't really matter much. Mid-range cameras like the Canon S500 really didn't show a difference. Of course if you are into bragging rights you would want the king of the test .. the Sandisk Extreme 1Gb .. which I happen to own :).

2) Archos Gmini 500 released
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000243056485/
http://www.generationmp3.com/index.php/2005/08/29/1299-exclusivite-gmp3-photos-et-specifications-de-larchos-gmini-500
So Archos has released yet another repackaged Gmini .. I gotta tell you I don't know why they insist on doing that. You know I own the Av400 and its a great damn device, the only problem is that it lacks hard drive capacity. I honestly believe that while its good to have a small mp3 player, when it comes to video devices a large screen is a must and PVR (pocket video recording) is super important. The perfect device would be one that retains the AV400 form factor, BUT with a much larger screen. The AV700 misses the mark cause it seems TOO big. Really is there a market for a Gmini device? Also .. where is the Xvid capibility? And I would kill for some good management software, I don't like synching my device like an Ipod , cause I use it as a portable drive as well.

Openoffice

Read a somewhat opinionated review of openoffice (which I also use casually) at http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1705 , none the less its a good indication of what to expect in version 2.0 and shows just how far the product has come.

via SlashDot ..

Tag: Openoffice

More on google tonight..

Slashdot reports on a possible plan buy google to develop a cheaper alternative to the current internet in order to provide high bandwith applications more cheaply. Yup, sounds about right to me. What would be interesting is how the implement the last mile delivery .. could it be Wifi? I hope so.

On another note Cringely is on record as pinning the google development as peaked at the moment, and is calling the rapidfire google developments like the dark fibre buyout just an expensive smoke and mirrors game so that google can shape the world around them a little. For example, release a chat client based on open standards ... boom everyone else runs to do the same. Interestingly he calls Apple the biggest threat to the current way. Ok ,ok .. that particular theory is a stretch, but have a look.

Tag: google,apple

More Apple-Intel developments.

Slashdot has more information on the Apple-Intel saga. Seems like they have arranged for some low end PowerPC chips throughout 2008, are they just hedging their risk as the article says?

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/12492493.htm

Tag: apple

Skylab Van.

Some people just have too much time on their hands. Have a look at a bonafide geekness extravaganza. A van kitted out like skylab ..

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/28/if_the_vans_aorbitin.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mumbles/sets/838784/

The google master plan

An interesting take on the google plan, sounds scarily similar to skynet ..

http://gigaom.com/2005/08/26/google-the-ultimate-deflator/

Can you imagine trusting one company namely, google, with ALL your data and applications and becoming solely reliant on one source for all of this? I dunno if they are going with the whole client server route they are gonna need to have one helluva fantastic great fallover/backup system. Not to mention .. how will they guarantee 100% uptime. 99,9% just wont do ..

via geeknewscentral

Tag: google

Engadget - 1985

Wow! Boy have we come a long way! The only thing I really associate with is the NES! :)

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000430055334/

engadget 1985