burnaby t wallace

So I was in the Manhattan store groping an iPhone. I have to admit, I was on the fence about whether or not to get it. I had so much internal conflict. So much…

It doesn’t have a to-do list.

But it’s so cool, and my fiancee said that she will write a web-based application that acts like a to-do list.

But the battery isn’t user replaceable.

But it’s so cool…I mean, it has gyroscopes that flip the screen and stuff.

But it locks me into another two years with Cingular.

Uhm, yeah…but that’s two years of always-connected sweet out-of-the-pocket Google goodness, for $20 a month. I mean really, you blow that on one sushi sitting.

It’s unproven in the syncing PIM information with multiple systems.

You got me there. But the Apple employees cheered me on and gave me high-fives and stuff. I felt so loved by Apple.

So…do I know what I am going to do?

Shoot–when I went to the NYC to sneak a peek at the HTC Advantage (or even the Touch), the friggin’ store was closed. Maybe it’s a sign.

Wow…seriously, touching the iPhone was so cool, I don’t think I’ll ever wash my hands.

Even after riding the subway and touching the rails.

I love you schnookums. Please let me get an iPhone. :)

OK. So I actually have an opportunity to get in on this madness…

I am in New York and can fall in line at the Manhattan Apple Store. What am I doing instead?

I am walking all over Manhattan to find the HTC Touch or Advantage–a far superior phone. Then I’m heading over to MoMA and possibly the Guggenheim.

It has been a few months since I spoke about this last. I discussed with a few people about how I think that Blu-Ray is going to dominate. The statistics are coming in, and YES…it looks like that is indeed what is happening. Blu-Ray is certainly out-selling HD-DVD. To add, Crunchgear states that HD-DVD is going to reach its demise this year.

Sadness.

To add, buy a PS3 (or any Blu-Ray player) and you get five free titles.

See–just because Blu-Ray doesn’t support porn doesn’t mean it’s not going to survive.

I am off to New York but again. I’ll be there for work–for over a week. Is this traveling thing getting old? Not really. I have to admit, though, this close to my wedding, it’s getting pretty stressed out.

When I get there, I’ll keep you nice folks posted on what’s going on.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: newyorknew york

Only a select few of my readers will actually understand what that headline means.

I like to consider myself an audiophile. Everything that outputs audio has to sound good. Taken a ride in my car? Enjoying the rich warm audio of the Alpine system, are ya? Watched a movie in my house? The timbre of the instruments or the typical Michael Bay explosion surrounded your head, didn’t it? No? Well, you suck.

Anyhow, audio quality has long been something I have not skimped on. It’s the reason why I don’t really listen to FM radio (or, ohmygoodness, AM). No FM modulation, here, people. I am serious about audio. Imagine my sadness when the unit I wanted for my vehicle was only available with 2V of power to head to the off-board amplifiers? I was sad.

Well, take that audio anal-retentiveness and apply it to the computer.

Even as a young teen, I remember saving up all my allowance to get an optical board interface so I could record the music I had on my computer to my minidiscs. I even held on to the Athlon XP board amidst being surrounded by the 64-bit processors out there because the board that I was using had audio features not available on any higher performing board. Ah, good ol’nForce 2.

Well, I finally made the jump to the more powerful CPUs and motherboard, thanks to Auzentech. They made a sound card that tickled my fancy, and allowed me to convert my audio using an off-board processor–digitally, no less. Ultimately, my PC audio journey has forced me to move from a Creative Labs product to C-Media.

Some background.

Creative Labs products typically give the user more performance as the software (read: games) usually hands off a few tasks for the sound card to process. Plus, Creative Labs invented the EAX standard and EAX 3 (and above) is exclusive to them. C-Media has a processor that can take a stereo signal and convert it to multi-channel. On top of that, it allows that multi-channel signal to be sent digitally (over SPDIF) to an off-board processor. Unfortunately, it had a performance hit as much of the processing had to be done by the host CPU.

Why this is so cool, and what the acronyms mean.

Well, Auzentech is now coming out with a card that mixes all the great features of both companies (thanks to Creative Labs allowing third parties to license their technology).

The new sound card, called the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 takes the EAX environment technology, with the X-Fi processor (that means the ability to use Crystalizer technology, which restores detail to compressed audio) and adds Dolby Digital Live (DDL) and DTS Interactive, both technologies that can convert stereo to multi-channel, on the fly.

This is big, folks. Auzentech is doing something that is pretty unprecedented here. The pricing has not been announced yet.

You can read more here.

Technorati Tags: dolby digital ddl x-fi soundcard dts audiophile computer

So after getting a few things done this past weekend, and healing over a few things, I can now focus on the biggest thing to happen since being born.

The wedding.

Remember to RSVP, folks. Remember to RSVP.

Next, we visit the florist. Then, (if they would get back to us) the photographer and the DJ. And now the money starts to pour out of us. Everything seems to be due this week.

So many people are coming down–from all over the world, too. It’s going to be very busy.

And those look like the presidential seal on his socks.

Smart cars look like it’s going to be a big hit. This time next year, hundreds of people are going to be looking for a parking spot, thinking they found one, then almost smash into a Smart car tucked deep inside a spot between two SUVs. Oh yes…I am looking forward to that.

On paper, it sounds nice. It is inexpensive and uses less gas than most other vehicles. When the Smart tour came around San Diego, you had to believe I was going to be there.

Then I saw one in person.

I don’t know why–but it felt like a very large Coke can. I felt like I was sitting in a Coke can with a tiny engine in the back with barely any space for a backpack. Wow…and the people who were there–sheesh. They were absolute fanatics. One guy had a camcorder recording his tiny model Smart car in an artistic fashion with the real Smart cars bokeh’d in the back. I remember reading on the website that the Smart cars get mileage in the 40’s. That’s not bad…for a sedan. But I expected more from a car quite literally made of plastic (more on that later). It sits two people and has no space for a trip to Costco. My old Hyundai Elantra from years back sits five and can hold bicycles. It had mileage in the high 30s. To add, I overheard one of the reps talking about the car needing premium unleaded to get the best mileage. That means when you use the cheaper 87 octane, the mileage drops.

It was funny seeing these cars at a Mercedes dealership. I mean, you had these little $14,000 cars flanked by the $120,000 S-class 12mpg luxury beasts. You had cars that were intended for the efficient/earth-friendly folks swimming around its heavy solid tanks of gas brethren.

The Smart folks were nice enough to provide people with cookies, chips, and sodas. What was strange, however, was for a Smart car presentation, they didn’t provide any recycling bins. A little hypocritical? Maybe. At least they had Cool Ranch.

The cars themselves look a little scary to drive. Every panel on the car is made of plastic. People are encouraged to purchase additional panels so that they can match the car to the owner’s wardrobe. The engine is in the rear. The roof is all see-through plastic or removable, as is the case with the cabrio. It can sit a large man and a smaller passenger, as is the case with me.

Speaking of which, want to see a large man in a car barely larger than his own jeans? Here you go:

Really, it’s 0.8.99, something like that. Yep. I am using a beta of the new browser–before it really goes public (yay!). I am beta testing this guy and so far, it’s not bad.

I like the “My World” page–it’s better and cleaner looking than many home pages out there. And other than the Yahoo search, I consider it free from advertisements that plague many other portals.

I also like the bookmarks part. It’s easier to understand and use than the earlier releases.

The Web Clipboard is still something that I have yet to see in other products (with the exception of the Microsoft specific Office Clipboard).

Also, Flock looks better in Vista than Firefox does. I think it might just be with how the icons and reflection looks, but it looks more like a Vista app than Firefox currently does.

But what’s wrong?

However, I have to admit that much of the excitement that I initially had when I first found out about Flock’s web2.0 goodness (built in blog writer, integration with Flickr, the RSS feed reader) has gone. Why?

It’s not that Firefox has replaced it. Far from. I blame Google and Microsoft. The blog writer that Microsoft allows you to download is far and away the best blog post writer I could ask for–especially the new one. It allows me to not only write the blog, but to see how it looks in my blog’s theme before I even post it. Plus, it’s graphic editor is nicer, as it at least has one–which is more than I can say for Flock.

However, the big one is the RSS feed reader. The RSS reader that I used to swear by in Flock has been replaced with Google’s. With Google’s RSS feed reader, I can read some posts on one machine, then go to another one to finish reading the other blogs I haven’t completed reading. It keeps track of it. While not as streamlined, it’s consistent no matter what machine I am on. It’s also customizable with Greasemonkey. And it’s fast and with Google Gears, can let me read it offline. These are issues that may be too much to ask from a browser, but once you experience these abilities, it’s sort of tough to go back to any RSS feed reader built into a browser. To add, many pages that I would have normally bookmarked have RSS feeds now–making Flock’s cool bookmark feature less and less cool and making Google’s RSS reader even nicer.

The integration with Flickr is done well on Flock. However, as I have posted about not only on my blog, but on Flock’s blog as well, is the integration with the up and coming Zooomr. I use Zooomr–pretty much exclusively for storing my images online. The Media Bar is awesome, and I know that Flickr is among the top image repositories today, but if jUploader can upload to Zooomr, then why can’t Flock?

Lastly, while other browsers out there (with the recent release of Safari for Windows) there has been a movement for a cleaner browser interface. Browsers have been moving its interface real estate more and more out of the way and instead giving it up to the content. Flock doesn’t seem to get this. The browser buttons are big and don’t scale (at least in the beta release) too well to the smaller size. It’s weird, but it looks sort of like an old-school Netscape with rounder edges and reflections.

For example, here’s a screenshot of Flock’s top right corner.

Here’s what I can do with Firefox (and the Tiny Menu plugin).

Well, true, that I am using a plugin to get the Firefox looking minimal. I have tried it Flock, but it just doesn’t come out looking right.

Check:

I hope that Flock can work out the kinks. I want to experience browser excitement like I did when I just discovered Flock. I know that as web 2.0 is maturing, and it’s making the browser less relevant in certain things, while more relevant in others. Flock needs to embrace this and keep us posted.

I hope they can deliver, or they just might go the way of Netscape.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flockbrowser beta