Archive for the Technology Category

diggNation Meets South Park

Posted in Apple, Design, Entertainment, Technology on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by rasterbator

Hi all you diggNation freaks!

sp_digg.jpgUsing the online South Park creation tool, I whipped up Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the diggNation set! What beer are they drinking?!

First, I went to one of the latest video podcasts from diggNation. I stopped at frames with certain facial expressions of Alex and Kevin. Then, one by one I created the characters, background, couch (had to seem two together since it was cropped), table and laptops. I had to add a drop shadow to the characters because the bottles were blending into the background. Anyway I thought the diggNation fan base might enjoy the image. Go to the online studio and make your own South Park scenes (link to original story on digg if you want to make your own SouthPark characters). All base images created with online studio at http://www.sp-studio.de/

If you want to check out the story and comment on digg.com, click here. Not a digg user? Sign up today at digg.com

Update: The story made the front page of digg.com tonight! Also it is number one for number of hits in digg’s Design section! Thanks for all the comments and keep pushing the story so the image can appear on a diggNation podcast in the future!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The story diggNation Meets SouthPark at digg.com has made it to the diggNation 64 episode. Thanks to all of you who voted for my story!

Blogged with Flock

Apple Unveils Box Codenamed iTV

Posted in Apple, Design, Entertainment, Technology on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by rasterbator

tv screenWhat you will not read here is a general news byte, rewriting Apple’s press release. What you will read here is why this has the potential to be the most revolutionary product from Apple. Ever.

On September 12, 2006, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced an upgraded iPod® line, iTunes® 7, and an upcoming product codenamed iTV, a first in Apple history since products are usually announced and then immediately available at the Apple Store online (or later that same day). The presentation shows the iTV to be self-powered, 802.11 wireless (no specification given yet), with options for composite video in or HDMI, the new standard for HDTVs. Steve Jobs goes on to explain the iTV’s purpose for playing media — stored on your Mac or PC — wirelessly. He presented a slide of the hardware diagram, showing the modem, 802.11 access point, Mac (or PC), iPod and now iTV. What he didn’t show was the software pieces of the puzzle. In my opinion, this will be the real story.

There is a bigger picture at work at Apple that’s not being discussed… yet. If your television can now play movies from your Mac or PC wirelessly via the iTV, then shouldn’t QuickTime on your Mac or PC now be able to play television programs wirelessly via the iTV? And if the device does work both ways, wouldn’t it make sense to have remote access to all of your media — movies, trailers, music, podcasts, etc.via the Front Row interface? And if Apple does eventually sell an iPhone that syncs to your Mac or PC, wouldn’t it also make sense to have an app on it that could call into your network and view your media, say an app called QuickTime Mobile?

Take a look at Slingbox™ from SlingMedia. Do you see any reason why the Apple’s iTV couldn’t have the same functionality, and more? QuickTime Player and QuickTime Remote on your Mac or PC? QuickTime Mobile on your iPhone?

The only hardware piece of the puzzle missing from Steve’s diagram is the iPhone. But the software diagram is what I look forward to seeing when this product finally makes it to market.

Blogged with Flock

Flock: Are You Experienced?

Posted in Apple, Blogroll, Technology on Friday, August 25, 2006 by rasterbator

Flock LogoFlock is a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, get search results as soon as you start typing in the search box, and much more.

Okay, enough with the spiffy marketing copy already, although every bit of it is true. But before I talk about the Flock Experience, a quick history lesson for youngsters.

The first browser I ever used was Mosaic. I still have the Mosaic HTML book released by O’Reilly and Associates which included the Mosaic installer on floppy disk. Then came Netscape Navigator, and the browsing experience improved dramatically. The landscape is littered with browsers that are now extinct, and some that should be extinct (IE). Why mention this bit of history? Because it set the stage for what became Firefox today, and the Flock browser is based on Firefox code.

So why should you try Flock when you are perfectly happy with IE, Firefox, or Safari? Because Flock includes several expansions to improve the user experience — especially those in the social networking class — that Firefox doesn’t have.

Once Flickr or Photobucket account is set up in Flock, uploading images is a snap. You simply bring up the Photo Uploader tool, drag and drop images, tag them and upload. It’s that easy. And if you want to view all your photos quickly, you can use PhotoBar, which allows you to scroll through thumbnails of all your photos. But that’s not all. You can also view your friend’s photos and groups that you subscribe to in the same manner. Wicked. Blogging is also a snap. Simply bring up the tool, type a quick article and upload. Done!

The search tool is unique in that it delivers results as you type.
Although I must say that my favorite tool is My News reader. I can check out all of my well-organized, RSS feeds in one convenient window. Oops! There are more than a few RSS reader app companies out there that don’t want you to try Flock. :)

In conclusion, the last item I would like to applaud is the clean interface. Everything works beautifully together. It is the best tabbed browser I have experienced. I can almost see Safari.app looking up at Flock.app in the Applications directory with a disgruntled smirk.

Flock is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, and is available in several different languages.

For all of those who enjoy the Flock Experience, I created a 3D desktop you can download from Flickr. And be sure to check out the Flock Art group on Flickr for more great art. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I have seen many tools to convert Firefox extensions to Flock extensions, but I was able to get GoogleBar for Firefox (available on the web from Google, but only as a web install, NOT a stand-alone installer) installed on my Mac without them (Google’s web site tell you that it does not work with your browser if you try to install it into Flock directly). I installed the GoogleBar into Firefox, and then copied the resultiing extensions folder to the Flock extensions folder. Then I was able to hack the install.rdf file by adding the follwoing code in the target applications section (from Flock wiki):

<!– Target Application – Flock –>
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{a463f10c-3994-11da-9945-000d60ca027b}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>0.7</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.0</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Voila! Sweetness. GoogleBar in Flock.

Apple’s New xServe

Posted in Apple, Technology on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by rasterbator

Intel BadgeApple Computer showed off its new Xserve server at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Photo of Xeon xServe with G5 Cluster node and xRServe RAID.

read more | digg story

Attention: Game Developers

Posted in Apple, Blogroll, Gaming, Technology on Thursday, August 10, 2006 by rasterbator

mac proNow that the Apple® Mac Pro has been released with two Dual-core Intel® Xeon processors, I wonder how long it will take for a certain sector to notice. This is the time for a revolution in the gaming industry. Games usually made for Windows PC can now reach their full potential: on a Mac.

Yes it is true that the new Macs that have Intel chips can run games in MS Windows (requires a license) using Boot Camp™ or Parallels™, but the ideal solution is for the games to be written for the OS X platform, and to take advantage of the processing power that the two Dual-core Xeon processors give you as a game developer.

Why isn’t there more discussion about this subject? The ultimate gaming system is no longer a high-end media PC, or a console like XBOX 360 or PS3. Oh no. It is the Mac Pro. Game developers: the power is yours for the taking.

Now go write some code.

In the comments section, please start a list of PC games you would like to see written natively for OS X. I will start it off with the obvious: Halo, Counter-Strike, and any other Steam games.

Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” Developer Improvements

Posted in Apple, Technology on Thursday, August 10, 2006 by rasterbator

Apache 2.0, Ruby on Rails and Subversion are included, and support for script-to-framework programming is available, allowing Python and Ruby scripting to access Mac OS X specific APIs, just to name an example.

read more | digg story

Leopard’s top-secret secrets

Posted in Apple, Technology on Thursday, August 10, 2006 by rasterbator

“So Leopard has secret features, eh? But why would Apple call attention to the fact that there are secret features? What’s Steve Jobs up to? Andy Ihnatko thinks he has the answer.”

read more | digg story

Parallels Working On 3D Acceleration For Desktop for Mac

Posted in Apple, Technology on Thursday, August 10, 2006 by rasterbator

Parallels spokesman Ben Roudolph has revealed that Parallels is working to support 3D acceleration in an upcoming release of the company’s flagship Mac product, Parallels Desktop for Mac.

read more | digg story

First Mac Pro Unpacking Pictures

Posted in Apple, Technology on Thursday, August 10, 2006 by rasterbator

One lucky guy has received Apple’s new Mac Pro already, and shared the unboxing with MacRumors.

read more | digg story

ReDugg

Posted in Entertainment, Technology on Thursday, July 20, 2006 by rasterbator

After a morning of going back and forth with support on the alleged offenses, I have been ReDugg! Thank God. I really didn’t want to use netscape.com because the site is not very user-friendly. So I am back on digg.com, and I made sure to let support know that Terms of Use had been abused by three other posters. Hopefully they took care of that this afternoon.  :)