Where To From Here?

You may have noticed that things around here are a little funky.

They have been from the start, actually – the very first post was about how Steve Jobs thinks that computers are like a bicycle for our minds, and I said that that was the direction that this blog was going to take.

From there, we meandered though the plains of “infrequent and random posts”, the introuduction of the “is/are AWESOME!” semi-meme (pronounced meem, as in meeem, Martin P and co), and then on to what we now call the “Press This” infatuation – where I cross-post a random article that I find interesting from the World Wide Web.

Yeah, that’s all good and well, but I don’t want to be yet another one of those carbon-copy bloggers that post random crap all over their blog.

So, I’ve come up with a few ideas as to where this blog is heading next:

  • Press This will still be used.
    I’ll still cross post things occasionally – things from obscure corners of the web, things from obscure websites that the people reading my blog won’t necessarily be familiar with.
  • I’ll continue to post posts with links. Lots of links.
    Live I’ve been doing, posts will lots of links will stay. They’ll somewhat replace those Press This posts that were littering the blog… Sure, pictures are nice, but sometimes you just have to share it all, you know?
  • From the Book of Face
    A new section will be introduced, where I post things from Facebook. This will contain mostly explanations of my Facebook status updates, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
  • Fun@Work, Fun@Uni
    So, Uni 2009 looms ahead. Just like the currently single-post Fun@Work, Fun@Uni will endeavour to bring you the best moments from Uni life. From the stresses of assignments, to the joys of meeting new people (/sarcasm), every “lulz moment” will be recorded for your pleasure, right here.

As for the “infrequent and random posts”, as well as the “is/are AWESOME!” posts, don’t worry – they’ll stay.

Got suggestions for what else this blog needs? Shout out in comments below, and I’ll endeavour to hear you out.

16 Links: The Engadget Edition

So I just had the task of trawling through all the Engadget posts that I missed while I was away (some 43 pages of posts). I must say, Endgadget has turned into something that doesn’t quite cut the mustard for me. Maybe I’ll have to start subscribing to Gizmodo – maybe they’ll have a better SNR. 20 out of 440+ isn’t so bad! /sarcasm.

In any case, there are a hell of a lot of links, so I’ll just get right into it:

DIY Screw-Nut Rings
Corny? Undoubtedly. Geeky? For sure.

DIY Prosthesis in Tasmania
A post on Engadget, about Tasmania! Woot!

DARPA’s 1.8 Gigapixel digicam
Whatever happened to “less is more”? Then again, this is DARPA we’re talking about…

Cell Phone Reunion
iPhone is bad-ass. Owning one doesn’t make you so.

LaserPup
Lazors fire! PEW PEW PEW!

Recompute – the cardboard PC
Cool design. Recyclable exterior.

Windows 7 SKUs
Wait – how many versions?!

Tokyoflash’s Heko watch
Again, this is the watch I’d be wearing. If I wore watches.

Seagate’s 2TB HDD
Lots of data (to lose).

Western Digital’s 2TB HDD
But this ones’s GREEN-er.

Days to 1 million
How long did it take to each smartphone to hit 1 million units sold? FYI, the iPhone 3G took 3 days.

Gigapixel image of Obama’s inaguration
Because we need a mega-close up, okay? You can buy one of the devices, too!

Canon doesn’t suck
No, they do not. For those of you that don’t know – no, Canon do not make vacuum cleaners.

Windows 7 Beta Impressions
It’s good, actually. Better than Vista, and better than XP.

Apple vs Palm
A good read, if a little long.

That’s it!

Go away – I don’t want your comments anyway. 😉

Malaysia 2009 – Part III

24 Hour McDonalds Delivery!

24 Hour McDonalds Delivery!

So – while I was in Malaysia, I needed some way to access the internet ocassionally, to check email, Facebook, and so on. There wasn’t any at where we were staying, so each week or so we would take the car and drive down to the local McDonalds. Luckily, they had free Wi-Fi that anyone could access and use. I didn’t feel like being a douche and steal their Wi-Fi without buying anything, so a trip to McDonalds usually involved a small snack as well.

Anyway, it was on one of these particular trips that I discovered that that particular McDonalds offered 24-hour delivery. 24 hours! Delivery! McDonalds!

Needless to say, I was pretty impressed. If you woke up at 3am and wanted a burger, or some curly fries (only available during Chinese New Year), then all that stood between you and your deep fried goodness was a phonecall.

Of course, I never tried out the service – but still, impressive, no?

Comments below.

Previous entries in the Malaysia series can be found here:
Part I – Don’t Sweat It
Part Ia – Keeps Getting Better
Part II – Dactyl

7 Links I Know You’ll Enjoy

Continuing with the theme somewhat, here are 7 links I know you’ll enjoy. I’ve put them here for your satisfaction, but really, they’re just here so I can get them out of my webbrowser and make room for more news that I missed out on. I’m under 2000 RSS items (I started at 4000), so progress is being made! Enjoy.

So, in the list we have:

  • Dynomighty Mighty Wallets
    These things rock. I already own a tri-fold dot-matrix wallet which gets questioned frequently in public, and to stand out more, I’m going to get some more. They make great gifts, but really – if the Australian dollar wasn’t so sucky at the moment, I’d buy them in  a heartbeat. They’ll have to wait, however.
  • Glow Grafitti
    I’m no grafitti artist, but glow in the dark spray paint? That’s like any childhood dream! I found this on the internet – thanks Boing Boing Gadgets – a while ago, lost the link, but then found it again, so here it is for posterity. There’s probably nothing cooler than glow in the dark grafitti. Again – a little exxy at $59 a can, and when you convert that into Aussie dollars, well, it hurts.
  • Uma Doodlebook Frame
    A tradition photo frame (read: non-digital) with a twist – you can create your own borders simply by drawing them. It’s got 80 pages, so you can create up to 80 custom borders for any of your pictures. Again, how cool is that? I rekon I’ll just stick one photo in it, and then use it as a scratchpad for notes and stuff.
  • iTunes Music Store – the web version
    Yeah – again, props to df.net for this one – this one’s cool. It’s essentially a webbrowser-based version of the iTunes store. It’s a pretty good rendition of the actual store, but you need to open itunes to buy stuff from it anyway, so yeah. Handy if you don’t have iTunes on your current computer, or need to browse something quickly at the library or whatever.
  • Windows Shutdown Crapfest
    I had no idea Windows developement was this convoluted. It’s actually amazing that they manage to ship products at all, considering that they’re “the left hand cannot see what the right hand is doing” approach with regards to all their code. No wonder Vista was so bad – here’s to Windows 7, the start (hopefully) of a new era in Microsoft computing.

Update – here’s your seventh link, folks.

  • Palm, Google, and Apple

    Unlike Siegler, I think the large number of recent Apple employees now working at Palm on the Pre suggests that the relationship between the two companies is cold — ice cold. What I heard last month at Macworld Expo is that Palm has a standing offer for engineers at Apple to jump ship, with a starting salary of 1.5 times their current Apple salary.

When you’re done perusing the links – give us your comments below, yeah?

Facebook and PayPal join OpenID…so?

The Facebook Connect experience is simply better than that offered by OpenID, and from a competitive standpoint, Facebook has an opportunity to be the standard identity provider for other websites.

via Facebook Joins OpenID Foundation; So What?.

Just when I thought it was pretty much dead – both Facebook and PayPal have now joined the OpenID foundation.

If you’ve never heard of OpenID before this, you gotta be living under a rock. OpenID allows you to “sign in” to websites using just your OpenID login – so you don’t have to do the whole “registering” process which each and every website you come across.

In practice, it only works if sites have OpenID access enabled – and it would work far better if it were made as a standard, such as HTML and CSS. That way, every web site that allowed you to login would also allow you to login with your OpenID.

Sure, we’ve enabled both Facebook Connect and OpenID login over at freshbytes, but I don’t really see the point of Facebook joining especially since it has it’s own Facebook connect implementation of secure login.

And PayPal? Well, it really does go to show that PayPal still has some clout. Needless to say, it’s imperative that the OpenID security right on this one – and from past experience, OpenID is a little clumsy to use, compared to something like Facebook Connect…

Comments below.