by jonathan | Sep 9, 2009 at 11:00 am |
technology
Sept 9th has made it, that means Apple will be announcing new products and giving the press a look at their progress. So far it looks like the event will be mainly about iPods and there are several indicators to new a iPod Touch and Nano. Will the most rumored tablet make an appearance? Check back and I will update this post with the goods. The event starts at 10:00 AM pacific / 12:00 PM central.
Updates:
Several new iPods were announced at the Apple event today. Also new iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9. Check out the full details after the break.
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I really enjoy taking photographs and when I get a chance to go out to California I try and get a few good panoramas. We also when whale watching and saw one blue whale and lots of dolphins. Those pictures might be up later as well.
no images were found
A few more after the break.
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The rumored price drop of the Palm Pre is here. Sprint says that their WebOS device will now be $149. This is of course the on contract price and includes a $150 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in rebate. If you did not jump on board back during the release you now have your chance.
However (in the spirit of the Apple press conference today) that’s not all. Sprint also announced their new Palm WebOS phone. The Pixi has hit the pages of Sprints press release. The device was rumored way back when the Pre was being released. Then it was through to be called the EOS and the first 3G version of a WebOS device. Guess it is hitting Sprint first but if WebOS phones are going to save Palm you can expect other carriers to join the party soon. The Pixi is set of release this holiday season.
More details and photos after the break.
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Sony has announced that it will be releasing a new Slim version of it’s PS3 for $299 this September. But where does this price cut put it with the competition. If we are to talk price then we must take into account the yet to be announced price shuffling of Microsoft’s.
The current PS3 now sells for $299 (80 gig), $299 (120 gig slim) and $399 (160 gig). There have been talks for a 240 gig slim model which could replace the current 160 gig.
It is well know that Microsoft is planning on cutting out the Xbox Pro for the well equipped Xbox Elite model while keeping the lower price. This puts the Xbox Arcade at $179 and the Elite at $299.
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by jonathan | Aug 15, 2009 at 11:29 am |
technology
Palm updated their App Catalog yesterday with three new applications. They include Blackout, Spades and Echo for Palm Desktop. Blackout is a simple game were you try and turn all the lights out in a grid. When you select a light the adjacent non diagonal lights change states. The graphics are simple but effective however the concept can get frustrating if you do not have a strategy. Spades is what it imply, the card game Spades. You can play with a computer partner, by your self, in mirror mode or suicide mode. The game plays exactly how you would expect it to and works well. The final app is called Echo for the Palm Desktop. This app syncs you address book and data book with the Palm Desktop software. The sync can happen over your local wifi adding to the convince. Echo is a 7 day trial and the full version is $29.99.
The Aperture | The Shutter | The ISO
This guide is directed towards people who know very little about cameras. Maybe you own a small point and shoot but do not know what all the manual settings mean. Or you want to know what the numbers are that flash up right before you take a photograph. This is for you. I plan to talk a little about the aperture in this guide and will talk about the shutter speed and sensitivity in future guides. Expect this is be very basic and nothing ground breaking. I will try and keep everything in plain English and include a lot of pictures.
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When I first started to design this site I did not pay much attention to standards or validation. I fired up my php / html editor and Firefox then got to work. When I got the basic template squared away I decided to check out what Internet Explorer 8 had done to my design. I was naive to think that Microsoft had retooled IE8 into a smart self helping browser. All of my floats were the wrong width, the text was much larger basically the whole layout was broken. I noticed that IE was rendering in the dreaded quirks mode. This started several rounds of Googling to find out if I was using the right DocType or maybe I was missing a tag or it could be any number of other items IE thought I needed.
Turns out that with IE8 came a brand new compatibility tag that would force the browser to use a specified rendering mode.
<meta content="IE=8(Insert browser mode here)" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"/>
This will force IE8 to specifically use the friendly and more standards compliant IE8 rendering mode. The fix works but this only targets IE8, all the people still using IE7 (upgrade please) will get the broken quirks mode. You may ask you self “Change the above code to IE=7 and all is good”. This will force IE8 to use the rendering engine of IE7 however IE7 will still do its own thing.
This is where the “House” epiphany moment happened. I found a web site that mentioned something about having a commented line above the DocType would make Internet Explorer do weird things. I took a look at my code and I had a commented line
<!-- Insert Header File -->
<?php get_header(); ?>
above my php line of code that inserted the header. I removed the commented line and all is well.
<?php get_header(); ?>
I do not even need the special IE8 rendering mode meta tag anymore. I could not believe that something so ridiculous would keep IE from rendering things in a standards mode.
by jonathan | Aug 5, 2009 at 12:53 pm |
gaming
The first round of titles for the Xbox ‘Games on Demand’ will be released on August 11th. The ‘Games on Demand’ section is part of the new dashboard update. If you are lucky enough to be in the preview program you probably know what I am talking about. If not the new section allows you to purchase and download full Xbox 360 games directly to your console. There are 21 titles in total set for this first round of releases. Prices have not been released but you can expect them to be “comparable” to the boxed versions. The full list is after the break.
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Nikon has just unveiled its new S1000pj camera, the first of its kind to have a built in projector. Imagine you have just come back from a vacation and you want to show your photographs off to your friends and family. Normally you have a few options, you can offload the images to a laptop, hook the camera up to a TV / monitor or have everyone huddle behind the small screen of your camera. Well now Nikon wants to add a fourth option. With the S1000pj you can turn on the mini projector built right into the camera and show off your images or video on the closest wall. Nikon says the projected image can be as large as 40 inches.
Is this the next big thing to hit compact digital cameras or is Nikon just taking a shot in the dark? Is this how Nikon will differ themselves from other companies like Canon and Fuji? I wonder if other companies are hard at work right now coming up with their own version of the projector camera. Whether it is a big hit or not I do believe that this is a feature that not many people saw coming. I also think we will not know how people will use or react to having the projector until it is in the reviewers hands for a few weeks. Nikon is hedging its bets by not making the camera just a one hit projector wonder. It has all the good stats of an excellent camera, 12.1 megapixels from a 1/2.3″ CCD, 5x image stabilizing zoom lens and 2.7″ LCD screen. Check out the video after the break.
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A trend that has becoming more popular is having a floating feedback button on your home page so you can take advantage of your visitors opinion. The button can link to a form where the user can express their thoughts about the site or a page that allows them to vote on what features they would like to see on the site. You can mimic the feedback button for your own site with a some basic html and css.
Sneak a peek at the final product. (I hope you like the red, white and blue.)
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