Archive for February, 2009

RnSK Softtronics Firearms new iPhone application “Bang! Bang!” simulates a real gun, complete with a safety switch, optional silencer, and an animated slide. When running the app you hold your iPhone like a gun and the motion of tilting the device forward makes it fire. It works just when you were a kid and you pointed your finger like a gun, except this has realistic sound effects licensed from an Oscar award winning sound effects company.

Rumor has it that it took several tweaks and a change to the App’s rating before being allowed into the iPhone App store. However the first app (of several models) has finally passed through and should be available early next week is available in the app store now.

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Like many others, I downloaded the beta of Safari 4 and am trying to get used to the new window layout.

One of the new features shows all your top visited sites as a grid of thumbnails. While on the surface it’s an interesting feature, it’s a bit annoying in it’s current state.  It also raises some interesting questions about things like “are advertisers paying for impressions for ads that are only shown on thumbnails?” But that’s probably a topic for a different post.

The feature also falls in line with a new trend at Apple – which is to take control away from the consumer and make certain choices for them. I originally thought of this Top Sites page as a cool way of keeping track of the main sites I want to visit each day. However, the way Apple sees it your Top Sites are explicitly the pages that you actually visit the most. Rather than giving you a list-view of sites and allowing you to drag pages into there from say, your bookmarks, all you can do is rearrange pages, and remove the ones you don’t want to see in your top sites. When a page is deleted the next most visited page is animated into place. It’s an annoying task to try to get specific pages on there. BUT NOW there’s currently no way to a secret way to manually edit those Top Sites.  (SEE UPDATE AFTER THE JUMP!)

SO! If you want tomorrowland.com to be one of your Top Sites you’ll need to start visiting us more often and convince the Safari 4 gods to make it one of your Top Sites.

But there’s more.. When I was trying to organize my Top Sites I accidentally deleted tomorrowland.com, which is certainly MY Top Site. So HOW do you get it back?

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I’ve had my iPhone since day one. My wife and I stood in line, shelled out full price times two, and have been using them ever since. By the way, you know you have a winner of a bride if A) she’s hot and B) she’ll stand in line with you to get an iPhone. Guys, if you find one of those you better do what you can to keep her. But I digress!

In the early days Apple didn’t let you do custom ringtones and it was fraking lame. Some tools and hacks emerged to create and install ringtones and other sounds, but somewhere over the past 20 months I sort of lost interest in ringtones. Out of sight and out of mind. That is until today.

So what’s up with creating ring tones now?  I realized that many people are still confused about it and think that you can’t do it. Well you can. It’s easy. And Apple even tells you how to do it. Here I’ve outlined the process a little better than they do and included a few tips on how to get a good ringtone.

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If you’re a Best Buy Reward Zone member you can get an 8GB iPhone on the cheap.  $150 for all Reward Zone members, and $100 for Premier Silver members, with a 2-year contract of course.  This is not a refurb but a brand new 3G iPhone.  The offer is good this week only and is only available in-store. Read the rest of this entry »

The upcoming Dell Mini 10 looks to be a great machine, and if my hunch is right it could be an even better hacintosh than the Dell Mini 9.  The bigger, higher rez screen and real (as in reasonably sized) hard drive will put it in a different category over the 9.  Plus the normal keyboard helps too.

UPDATE: Apparently my hunch was wrong. Several commenters have pointed out that the graphics card in the Dell Mini 10 is not compatible with Leopard. A real shame since from all other accounts it would appear to be a good candidate. None-the-less, if you do want to order one for a windows machine the rest of the post is still applicable…

The official launch of the Mini 10 isn’t for a week or two, but here’s a little known fact: Even though there is no pricing information on the website, and no online order form, you can order one today if you know how to do it.  Read on for details, specs, and pricing info…

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I think it’s safe to say that a large percentage of geeks and nerds have cats. Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with both my cat and my dog. On one hand they give you unconditional love. But on the other hand they can be extremely annoying, noisy, chew your stuff, puke on things (or on you), and then there’s the whole issue of where they do their business.

When I first got my cat, my wife explained scooping the litter box in the best possible light.  She described the task as being like a prospector sifting for gold. Sounds almost fun when you put it like that. But over the years I’ve come to HATE the chore. I’ve also acquired an allergy to the cat box – the dust and the urine. I am very sensitive to smells and certain scents will throw me right into a migraine. For the past few years I’ve been thinking that the modern house should have a bathroom receptacle for pets. Why can’t there be some sort of toilet for cats that flushes away the waste?  And for a while I’ve been fantasizing about designing and building such a device. Hey, these are the things I think about people! I’m a nerd, what can I say… Read the rest of this entry »

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has finally appeared on Dell’s website, although it’s not actually for sale yet. The big question is will we be able to install Leopard on it like we can on the Mini 9′s?

There’s already a ton a buzz and speculation going on in the forums. I’m sure once they start shipping they’ll be hacked within a few hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Less than an hour ago At 9:35 AM on Friday the 20th, I walked out my front door and saw this: Three contrails being left behind 3 very fast moving objects.  Is this what the apocalypse looks like right before the flash of bright light?

I live in a suburb of Las Vegas, which is near Nellis Air Force Base, some old nuclear test sites, and Area 51.  I’ve heard stories that casino hosts used to take their high rollers up on the roofs of the casinos to watch the nuclear testing. That sounds like a good idea – yeah, let’s do that.

But maybe these were just very fast moving jets. I managed to snap a few photos, but my camera couldn’t zoom in enough to get a detailed picture of the craft.  I can say that whatever they were they were moving extremely fast. They traveled across the sky, from the West to the East, in only about one minute. Hit the jump for more photos.

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In 1997 I had an idea for a website. My concept was to make a place where non-technical people could fill out a form and it would build a sub-site for them. I wanted it to be futuristic. A place or a land of the future, where people could have a digital home and connect with friends and family. My first thought for a domain name was FUTURELAND.COM, but at the time it was taken. So instead I registered TOMORROWLAND.COM. I’ve owned that domain name ever since. In 1999 I had a slight legal scrimmage with a certain theme park company, but my council helped me retail the domain name. The truth was that my use of the name TOMORROWLAND.COM was not in competition with a division of a particular theme park. No market confusion had happened up to that point – and it still doesn’t. I didn’t then and I still don’t get email at that address from people looking for something else. I get virtually no walk-on traffic. Like I said, I’ve had the domain name for almost 15 years – back before most people even knew what the web was. And for the record, TOMORROWLAND.COM, along with other web sites and intellectual properties, is owned by Bad Weasel, LLC.  It is, of course, in no way related in any way to any theme park or the gigantic mouse-run entertainment company.

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As I said in my post on Upgrading to 7.1, a few weeks ago I set out to upgrade my amplifier and speakers to 7.1 – hoping to keep it under a grand. Initially the amp I was looking at was the Sony STR-DG820 which retails for $399. I considered Sony because my Projector is a Sony and they were advertised to work well with each other. Luckily, I’m somewhat of an impulsive shopper and when Best Buy didn’t have the Sony on hand, I started looking at alternatives. 30 minutes later I was driving home with the harman/kardon AVR254. Read the rest of this entry »