Ah, what a fun day so far! My folks decided to kick in with an early Christmas gift this year in sending me the cash to order myself a shiny new T-Mobile G1, a smartphone that runs on Google’s new Android operating system. I placed that order yesterday, and though I won’t receive it until November 10, 2008 (d’oh!), it’s at least paid for. My T-Mobile Dash, acquired early last year, will still be put to good use; since they were kind enough to unlock it for me (for free) last year and I’ve since flashed a newer (WM6.1) ROM onto it which continues to work, I’m just going to reset it (erase its brain) and give it to my buddy Shannon to use with her pre-paid cell phone plan. Its internet-based features won’t work (pre-paid plans don’t include internet connectivity), but it will still function as a standalone PDA-style device and it’s still a hell of a phone.

In other news (more interesting to the rest of you), Google open-sourced all of Android OS today. Seriously. Want to download the source code for the base firmware that will be running the first generation of Android phones? You can. Go click that link, and you’ll be downloading the source code yourself in short order. Dig through it a bit and you’ll be able to understand yourself why something behaves the way it does.

This is fan-freaking-tastic.

I’m already eager to get started brewing up apps for this thing on my own, but the community is busy churning out some seriously amazing stuff right now (like a shopping list manager that can scan barcodes with the phone’s built-in camera and comparison-shop online instantly on anything you scan, that can also automatically pop itself up with the right shopping list once the GPS sensor detects you’ve just walked into that store).

With this release, it won’t be long before we start seeing some truly astounding understanding of the platform and some amazing applications emerging for it.

Rock on, Google! This is a very cool move. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Gadgets Geeky

It’s been awhile since my Treo 650 has impressed me … it likes to crash occasionally, and after awhile, you tend to get used to how it functions (when it’s not crashing ) and it fades into the background like any decent convergence device should.

It acts like a cell phone (and a good one at that, with impressively long talk times and clear audio quality) when I make or receive calls. It’s a great notepad when I want to write down a quick note. It’s a perfectly serviceable alarm clock that’s dutifully woken me up on time every time I’ve asked it to.

Its web browser sucks donkey balls but (slowly) does the job in the limited moments I need it. I can tether it via Bluetooth to my notebook to get online where WiFi isn’t available, meaning I can use the vastly superior Firefox on my notebook when heavy browsing is necessary (heh — is that like heavy petting, without the hot woman being involved? ). Read the full story...

This is cool. Act quickly, because I think they’re closing the window on this either Sunday (February 4, 2007) or Wednesday (February 8, 2007) (edit: hey Willfe, ‘ya dumbass, Wednesday is February 7, 2007! ) this week.

Visit this page and sign up. You get a free wireless router. You plug this in to your existing network (it should even work with your existing wireless setup — presumably it creates its own network with its own ESSID and cooperates with other wireless systems). You get wireless if you didn’t have it already (it uses your current broadband connection). Read the full story...

[acidfree:1203 align=right size=200] I’m still a relatively “new” import here in Florida, so naturally I’m still learning the lay of the land and getting an idea just what kind of stuff inhabits the area with me. I was pleasantly surprised to learn there’s a nuclear power plant about sixty miles south of here. Apparently nuclear power accounts for 17% or so of all power generation done here in Florida; presumably because I live so close to the plant there in Saint Lucie my power here is generated by one of its reactors.

Naturally when opponents of nuclear power rear their ugly heads we are consistently referred to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the world’s worst, and the United States’ worst (respectively) nuclear accidents, to remind us how dangerous these reactors are and how much better we’d be with alternative energy production systems.

Let’s get it out of the way now and look at a list of nuclear and radiation accidents so we’ve got all of humanity’s glow-in-the-dark screwups out on the table. Amusingly, Saint Lucie Unit 1 is listed as having experienced a “significant precursor” back in 1980 with a 0.001% chance of causing core damage. Whoops

With that nastiness out of the way, though, we still have to examine the overall safety record of the technology compared to other power generation technologies.

Chernobyl was, of course, the biggest nuclear disaster in human history — a bad reactor design coupled with inadequate safety procedures both combined with a group of engineers and technicians working under immense pressure … that led to the reactor lid literally blowing off from the top of the reactor’s core, the reactor’s fuel catching fire and melting, and oozing all over the place, venting a whole bunch of radiation into the atmosphere. Whoops. The plant didn’t use containment buildings so when the sucker exploded (yes, it actually exploded — the techs screwed up their tests that badly), hot balls of free-floating hostility shot everywhere. Read the full story...

A couple days ago I happened to see an advertisement for a new cell phone that can play music videos and MP3s, in a supposedly seamless way, without extra apps or hackery. Presumably there’s a shiny charge for each piece of “media” you download and play/listen to, naturally in a DRM-encumbered format, but it makes me wonder a different question:

Why are these companies developing new useless features like “playing movies on a screen less than three inches in size” or “playing music on a crappy built-in speaker or through crappy earbud headphones” when they’re having such trouble with less impressive features like “doesn’t drop phone calls,” “gets better reception,” “doesn’t crash when browsing a web page exceeding 150KB in size,” “can automatically switch between dial-up networking and regular bluetooth service as needed”? Read the full story...

I posted an entry earlier today straight from my Treo 650 on a new network, and briefly explained what has changed, but since that little phone is a complete bitch to type anything lengthy on, I figured I’d take the opportunity now that I’ve got a full 101 key keyboard handy to dive into things in more detail. That, and I wanted to expound on the changes I’ve noticed so far now that I’ve switched networks with my phone. Read the full story...

I am officially amused right now, posting this entry from my Cingular-branded Treo 650 (directly, using Opera, not tethered ), on T-Mobile’s network.

The switch cost nothing today, was done in 10 minutes (with phone provisioning happening in under 1 minute, including internet), and saves me almost $40 a month. Cingular, you can officially bite me. This one’s jumping ship.

Well, I felt pretty smug today after voting in the elections, then noticed it was pretty much pointless as the “changing of the guard” I was hoping for didn’t look like it was going to happen. Then I look at the latest results and notice the Democrats have won the House and that there’s only two seats left undecided in the Senate, and they’re dead even there. Lots of Republican state governors also handed over their seats to Democrats.

Guess my vote wasn’t so wasted after all.

I got a brief chance today to play with the new server Sun shipped me. The sucker is noisy … definitely very noisy. Plug it in and you get fan noise from both power supplies, then the server management board realizes it has power and kicks on the main system. That’s when the real fans and blowers start. It sounds like a jet firing up its engines. Read the full story...

Something very fun showed up yesterday. I get to keep it awhile before the company who sent it to me wants it back (unless I enter and win their contest that lets me keep this sucker).

I don’t have much time to play with it tonight, but I did at least power it on and make sure it works. Here’s a tantalizing little tease … there is much more to come

will@phoenix:~$ ssh -l root 192.168.2.125
root@192.168.2.125's password:


Sun(TM) Integrated Lights Out Manager

Version 1.0.7

Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Warning: password is set to factory default.

-> 

You may begin drooling anytime now.

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.
— Henny Youngman

So I’ve owned my Treo 650 for over a year, and throughout the duration of my ownership of this thing, I’ve had varying experiences with assorted software for it … ranging from “annoying” to “time to throw this thing through a window.”

It turns out there is some decent software out there for this bloody thing. I need to start experimenting with how to publish actual “articles” in Drupal instead of just blog entries (so I have content to link to that isn’t just a reverse-chronological blog-style system), so I can write up a proper Treo 650 article like the one on the old site, with proper updates. For now, though, I’m pleased to report I’ve found a slew of free software (i.e. you don’t even have to pirate the damned things) that have officially impressed me for my Treo 650: Read the full story...