Gecko Bloggle

Check out this crazy-looking laptop foldy flippy laptop camera keyboard screen doohicky.

The new Samsung P9000 – with optional nunchucks*

“This new device from Samsung is an abomination before God. Somewhere in Duder-onimy, God said with a fury that a laptop shalt not lie down with a cellphone as a cellphone lies down with a PDA. This is not as God intended, read your Bible. Also, you’ll find no mention of the platypus, likewise an abomination.”
– Crunchgear

All I wanna know is this: Does it make the same noise my Motorola phone does when you close it? I’d like to see that if it makes the same “schwuklackie” noise, only times three.

More pictures and specs available at Engadget

*No, not really. That’ll be in the P9000n.

For any of the folks out there who use their Blackberry, PalmPilot, Treo, or cel phone (ouch!) to surf Teh Intarwebs, you’ll find that this blog now detects your miniature screenage and adjusts accordingly, throwing out all the pictures and flash-based doohickery.

…and no, it doesn’t look any different from a “real” browser, so don’t ask.  Livejournal readers?  You’re going to be vaguely confused by this post, so just spin on, Holl.
Want your WordPress-Based blog to do this, too?  Tough.  Try this link.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/02/the-coolest-video-youll-see-this-year/

Someone crammed 1,000 cars into a physics engine. It’s sorta freaky beautiful, and I wanna know what kinda hardware was running that demo (which looks much smoother in the screen that the above pic may lead you to believe).

I don’t know how long they’ll keep it free, but www.hullo.com has released a beta of their foray into the VOIP arena. You can give it all of your phone numbers (I’m just waiting to see if they start spamming me with marketing calls or something), and you can dial out to land lines for free (for now, at least).

The UI isn’t TOO attrocious, either:

One major difference in the way it works though:

BOTH parties are phoned by the system when you place a call.

So, if I’m calling you from Hullo, I punch in your number in the program and hit connect.

My phone rings. I answer.

Your phone rings. You answer.

See what’s different?

The computer doesn’t handle the VOIP traffic – it only deals with the call management. We BOTH get to use our “real” phones.

It also does neat things like let you switch from a call at your desk to a cel without having to do the “let me call you right back” thing.

Very cool. Free, for now.

No more wearing those goofy-looking headsets.

Oh, and the Caller-ID comes from Quebec, so this might not work in all areas, but it is pretty neat for now.

Via the cool and wonderfully mind-expanding We-Make-Money-Not-Art, where I go almost every day.

Animatronic Taxidermy

“Poekie, battery operated.”

You heard me. You probably also heard me go “BLEEAIGH!” when I thought about it for a minute.

From the site (WMMNA) ’cause I think they summed it up best:

Because taxidermy can never be too creepy, Dutch (and super talented) designer Erik Klarenbeek has created Poekie. The battery-operated stuffed cat is fitted with a mechanism that re-creates the animal’s breathing and purring.

via We-Make-Money-Not-Art

This article about Valerio Spolentini’s project, called V-Scratch talks about this university student’s simple idea for video/audio scratching using a very simple layout.

A turntable with a record on it (any record with a paper label in the center, I assume).
A laptop (for the audio/video sources).
An audio mixer (but I’m not sure you’d REALLY need this)
Speakers
LCD projector (if you’re doing video)
and here’s the kicker:
an optical mouse attached to the turntable in such a way that it “sees” the record turning underneath it

The only other setup I’ve seen before now that did anything even close to this was FinalScratch by NativeInstruments, using specially crafted timecode-producing records.

I can’t wait until the HackADay people get ahold of this, and figure out how to do it, or even better: the guy either makes this an open-source project, or sells it direct to users, ’cause I’d flip him $50 for the software, if it works for mp3s and mixing.

Someone out there wanted the Internet’s help buying a G5 (at .25c per person, he got up to his $5,000 he needed).

How’d he do it?

By promising to BLOW UP HIS CURRENT Mac (a G4).

Now I’ve got to go find out how much Tannerite costs.

Much better quality and humour than one would usually find in a video of this genre.

Yamipod is Yet Another Manager for your iPod. I’ve seen a few managers out there, but this one seems to have it all, and it’s portable, so you can actually copy it onto your iPod itself. Available for Windows, OSX, and Linux.

I thought, “Yeah, right,” and downloaded the app to see what was what. It’s 12MB, so that’s not too huge. Opened it up without the ‘pod plugged in, and it told me to plug in my unit (hehe… he said “unit”).

…and it worked…

Just loaded up my library, and away it went.

There’s a column for Artist, one for Album, and a third for Playlists. Under that, the “raw” contents of my iPod, with the Title, Album, Artist, Length, Bitrate, Lyrics (?), Track#, and Size listed and sortable.

Oh, and it plays tracks too.

Now, I’ve got iTunes installed on this deck, but don’t know if that’s necessary or not. I’ll have to try it elsewhere, and see what happens.

Play tracks? Sure, with the built-in player. Aparently, yeah.

Copy tracks to the iPod? Yep. While playing audio? Uh-huh. Copy tracks OFF the iPod? That too. Synchronize your iPod with a directory somewhere (maybe called something crazy like, oh, I dunno “iPodBackup”)? Booya.

Here’s where it starts getting crazy: Download podcasts via RSS? Create/remove/edit your playlists? Submit those played tracks to Last.FM? Automatically remove duplicates? Yes!

Export yo-…

Never mind, just go get it, and flip the guy some Paypal bucks or something. This a beautiful piece of programming, (maybe the GUI could be a little prettier), and the ONE PERSON who wrote it deserves some kudo$.

So I got a pair of funky Logitech Wireless iPod Headphones (with remote on the ear), graciously given to me by a person at work (who knows someone from Logitech), and loved loved loved them. They felt good, they sounded great (and much lighter than my monstrous Koss UR30s).

Wore them during my daily commute to/from work (I walk for about 30min each way, which is just about right for the 2600 podcasts and the latest – or eldest – tunes in my library), and had them for about two weeks before I noticed that the fit didn’t seem quite as tight as when I got ’em. After wearing them for another day or two, I took a look at the neck band, and noticed a hairline crack on the inside of the band. This is what I saw:

Now, two weeks later, the crack has managed to migrate to the other side of the band, too, and now I’ve got headphones that would (if I were to wear them) literally be held on by the wires inside the neckband. Now, I’ve seen sport style headphones before, but the major difference seems to be that there’s no reinforcement on the back of the neck point, which would create the largest amount of stress on the plastic. I’m also guessing that these Logitech phones aren’t made with the most supple of plastic, which gives you a nice tight fit on the side of the head (for folks who are missing the top parts of their ears, I guess), but means that the majority of the stress in on a part of the headphones that has 1) no reinforcement and 2) no give.

I’ve been Googling some other folks to see what they think, and it looks like I’m really REALLY not alone in this.

I’ve also seen some interesting ways to work around the brittle plastic that makes the neckband of these things.

I’m thinking coat hanger, bent around to make the shape of the band, and then duct-tape/gluing them in place, or trying to disassemble them entirely, down to the earpoint, and essentially Frankensteining another (cheaper, more durable) neckband onto them.

Still, I LOVE the sound on them, but it’s just so sad to see them snap so easily after some fairly mundane use.

And besides, it was really fun to put ’em on Ripley and then use the iPod in my hand to essentially turn him into a remote-control dancin’ machine.

Is it just me or is the “USB Memory Drive In A {fill in the blank}” phenomenon getting a little old?

Seriously: $41.77 (plus shipping for another $14) for A 128MB USB Memory Drive in A Plush Crocodile

I could probably buy a small stuffed crocodile for about $4.00, and cram a $20 dollar USB drive down its throat.

I have no problem with the USB drives that look like other things (like Swiss Army Knives, or Watches), but c’mon.

I have a feeling the Beanie Babies folks are behind this, somehow.