Tech Petting Zoo

So I’ve gotten a lot of questions regarding the tech petting zoo. I’m not sure how much of this is proprietary info, so I’ll try to avoid going into too much detail…

Basically, there’s a center at my firm’s HQ which is solely dedicated to state-of-the art as an art form. They update it quarterly so that the absolute latest gadgets and new technologies are there for employees to try out. For instance, they have one of the new iPods. They have one of those tables Microsoft showed off last year with a fully-touch interface. They also have other, less notorious technologies like adaptive multidirectional/monodirectional sensors.

Basically, it’s a whole room of awesome.

Incidentally, I got my first assignment today. I can’t really talk about orientation, etc… But I’m liking this firm. A lot. Here’s hoping I still like it when I actually get work to do.

Quick thought… Babylon 5 poses a powerful quandry to its audience. On the one hand, there are the Vorlons - bastions of order, embodied by the question, “Who are you?”; and the Shadows - sowers of chaos, who wish only to know, “What do you want?”

To the Vorlons, who one is cannot be answered by titles and affiliations, but only by truly understanding one’s place in the universe. That’s right, the only acceptable answer is, “I am a cog in the machine, a p

Boy - they wouldn’t be happy with the Japanese. Last I checked, it’s standard practice in Japanese culture to define oneself by organizations and affiliations rather than personal characteristics… Some champions of order the Vorlons turn out to be…

Link Soup

Who doesn’t want a cell phone that transforms?

Man I wish that worked here…

From Fark, check THIS case out. Complete with the pictures mentioned in the story, and a Wikipedia article about the incident. Creeeepy…

Nice

It’s officially spring break, and hopefully (one of my friends is sick…) I’ll be heading to sunny Puerto Rico! Guess that means I’m not finishing the site’s coding too soon… It’s been almost a whole year since we started, and it’s STILL not done. Is that typical of me? Hm…

News, etc…

So life has been a little more busy lately. Should be a little more free in the next few weeks, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish the coding on the site and post a little more.

Today in the news there are two things I’d like to share…

The first is the Modu. In a rather stagnant cell-phone market it’s good to see someone making something original and creative. I might actually buy this - I’ve always kind of preferred to carry something slimmer and sexier, now I can have a work phone and a personal phone without having two phones!

The second link needs no explanation other than, “Wait… Polaroid still exists?”. Apparently they have a whopping 150 employees!

Later peeps.

And let that be a lesson to all you iPhone users!

Check out this link.

WOW are the airlines behind the times. Gee - could that be related to why they’re ALL GOING BANKRUPT?* Sounds like someone’s been a protected industry for a little too long…

(*Excepting those two or three who’re staying afloat…)

I’m all for Transformers branding…

… But what IS this? Granted, it’s supposed to be a phone… But what’s up with the twisty part at the bottom? Where are the keys?

What the hell?

Next-Gen Phones…

Click this link for another example of why the US makes me cry about the fact that I have to deal with its cell phone providers.

In Japan, my 3500 yen a month (about 28 dollars maybe?) got me unlimited e-mails, 40 minutes of calling (more than I needed in Japan - trust me), and something like 5000 text messages. There was a 3100 yen cancellation fee, a 3500 yen activation fee, and a nice new-model phone (albeit one without the “latest” features - still better than current US features) cost me 1 yen. The charger cost me 980 yen, which sucked, but they threw in an alarm clock, 2 cotton puffs, 2 packets of tissues, 2 packages of band-aids, 2 cell-phone straps, and 2 packages of Q-tips. Any thing incoming - calls, texts, e-mails, you name it - was free.

In the US, I have to pay $39.99 for 600 minutes a month (more than enough…), with some ridiculous “night and weekend” variance which activates at inconvenient times tacked on for little apparent reason, and I have to pay $4.99 a month for 400 text messages (incoming OR outgoing), and another $5.99 for the privilege to use their ridiculous “web browser”, which can’t even check my e-mail like I wanted it to. The only upshot this time is that, after 3 weeks of wrangling at them, I managed to get a nice phone for “free” with a $50 rebate. I might point out that the interface on this phone, unlike that of my Japanese phone, is ridiculously counter-intuitive, and the camera is 2nd-rate.

I miss Japan.

The next-gen phones in the link above… Especially the one that looks like a glass pebble… Wow. Just wow. I mean - I have no idea how well the interface works, but if the ease with which the iPhone seems to work is any indication, touch interfaces are the wave of the future indeed. I’m especially liking the use of a touch interface to replace the dialing pad because of the ability to swap out that pad for more useful interfaces when you’re not calling someone.

My only reservation, really, is about whether the touch pads will be resilient enough to handle the abuse people heap on their phones. The people I know who have iPhones are treating them like a new porsche - that is to say, they’re only driving them when they have to, and they’re doing their best not to scratch them - and as a consequence it’s hard to see just how resilient they really are…

Filed under “Not gonna happen…”

Dear readers,
Kudos and a shout-out to the first person to buy me one of these for a house-warming gift?

Optimus Prime, please. Always been an Autobot man…

On a related note, my cell phone will finally be arriving come (supposedly) next Thursday. Those of you who require the number will be informed.

That is all.
-E