Geek Stuff category archive

Chew on this tidbit from Bizarro World:

Baidu Inc., operator of China’s most- popular website, said the cost of complying with domestic self- censorship laws is giving Google Inc. a competitive advantage in the world’s biggest Internet market.

Aside:

The article does not go into what concessions, if any, Google made to regain its license to do business in China.

Details here.

Via El Reg.

It’s a promo, but what a promo–viral marketing done right:

Some more information here.

Via GNC.

Eva Wiseman in the Guardian:

Mob (a near-future science fiction story) by Tom Scott from hurryonhome on Vimeo.

If the embed doesn’t work, go here.

July 25, 2010 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Geek Stuff | Bookmark this post

Via OhMyGov.

And they know where you are.

Hiring flacks to twit:

The explosion of social media analysts is happening at a rate so fast, even for the tech world, that organizations of any scale are having trouble keeping up. “Across the country, companies like Petco are going through a two-step process,” writes Felix Gillette of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “First, they scramble to hire social media officers. Second, they figure out what it is, exactly, that social media officers do.” For government and nonprofit groups, the experience is similar, though more likely to involve existing employees who are drafted to be the “social media guy” or “gal” at the office, rather than a brand new hire.

Reuters reports that Google is turning to wind energy to power its data centers.

This is a good thing.

In the Netherlands.

From the Guardian. Follow the link:

Thoughtfully, just as Jabscreen owners everywhere were running out of apps to compare – and, by extension, anything to talk about – the nice droids at Apple Castle gifted them a whole new branch of conversation: the launch of the Jabscreen 4, which apparently is miles better than a regular Jabscreen, although no one can really explain why. Its most impressive feature is this: simply by existing, it suddenly makes your existing Olde Worlde vanilla Jabscreen seem rubbish. How can you enjoy sliding the little icons around on your Jabscreen 3 when you know that if you had a Jabscreen 4, those very same icons would be slightly sharper? The answer is you can’t.

The Jabscreen 4 also functions as an HD video camera, which is ideal for capturing precious moments in your life you’ll want to treasure for ever. You could capture them on your existing Jabscreen, but they wouldn’t be absolutely pin-sharp, and that’s the important thing about memories: being able to make out individual nosehairs. Of course, by the time your HD Jabscreen 4 footage is old enough to qualify as nostalgia, you’ll be viewing it on a Jabscreen 20, so rather than enjoying the memories, you’ll be whining that it’s 2D and odourless and doesn’t let you walk inside the image and rearrange the furniture. Also, it’s full of gross nosehair. Everyone went au naturel back then.

Speaking of nosehair, the new Jabscreen has an additional camera on the front, so you can conduct video calls in which you and a friend stare at each other from an unflattering angle, counting the seconds till this misery ends.

Just as folks often speak without thinking, they twit without thinking. Probably not a good idea when you work for the Department of State.

Apparently, Buccaneer Petroleum just needs to twit more:

Some 75 percent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog — sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook — as more deserving of their trust than those that do not, according to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with market research firm Harris Interactive.

I wonder how many of the participants in this survey don’t twit.

No surprise here.

From El Reg.

When I opened the video, my friend asked whether an iPad can keep your coffee warm. (She also suggests that Iggy is declawed.)

Via Scientific Blogging.

MarketWatch reports:

From the San Jose Mercury-News:

Finally, the big moment arrived. Following a toast from executive director Steve Brudnick, the company’s president appeared on a big screen TV, and launched into a speech long enough to test the fortitude of even the most vibrant, vigorous, vital and, in some cases, virile residents. Now and forevermore, he said, their home would be called Vi at Palo Alto.

Vi.

If you want to stay there, read this first.

Vi is a powerful editor; I sort of know how to use it a little to do basic editing of text files.

Vi illustrates what a buddy of mine once said:

If the maker says the software is easy to use, it won’t do what you want it to do.

If the maker says the software will do what you want it to do, it will be difficult to use.

If the maker says the software will do what you want it to do and is easy to use, he’s lying.

If getting service at this firetrap is like using Vi, I’m staying somewhere else.

Frankly, I find this more than a little creepy:

Smart clothes could soon be helping their wearers cope with the stresses of modern life.

The prototype garments monitor physiological states including temperature and heart rate.

The clothes are connected to a database that analyses the data to work out a person’s emotional state.

Media, including songs, words and images, are then piped to the display and speakers in the clothes to calm a wearer or offer support.

Imagine, “And now, from UBS, the Underwear Broadcasting System, a rendition of . . . .”

Blogging, apparently, isn’t just for humans anymore. Or at least that’s what Sony seems to think, since the company recently displayed a prototype of a “lifelogging’’ device for cats at a technology show. The device, which is worn on a collar and includes sensors designed to track its wearer’s movements, can be teamed with Twitter to provide real-time feline updates of such exciting activities as napping, eating, and chasing after toys. A sudden change in the internal accelerometer might trigger a tweet along the lines of “I just jumped onto the windowsill.’’ Mattel is planning a similar device for dogs.

Two words. “Litter box.”