Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Six Degrees of Internet Addiction

A Forbes headline said Internet Addiction was just added to the DSM. I was skeptical so I skimmed Wikipedia and found a DSM critic named Carl Bell. I googled Carl Bell and the first hit was a guitarist in Fuel. I never heard of Fuel before but IMDB says they did the soundtrack for Daredevil. I vaguely recall Daredevil from 2003 but Joe Pantoliano promoted the film on David Letterman. Joe Pantoliano was also in the 1984 movie Mister Roberts with Kevin Bacon.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Technobabble

Anybody who has to do tech support for their friends and family will LOL at this video.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Favorite Apps

In an effort to reclaim memory on my Xperia Arc, I recently did a hard reset on my phone and went through the trouble of re-installing only my most essential Android apps.  Here in alphabetical order are the ones that I re-installed immediately.

ACast - By far my most used app.  It's a "podcatcher" app and I listen to podcasts more than just about anything else.  ACast is not user friendly, but it is free and it gets the job done.  It has some pretty important features like a home screen widget and limits on when to download episodes (e.g. "only while charging on WiFi").  Most importantly, it works well with my favorite Bluetooth headset (Sony Ericsson MW600).  If it was a little cheaper I might actually buy the "pro" version just to eliminate the ads, but for $4 I'll put up with them.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Pult.io

This is hard to describe, but it's one of the coolest services I've seen recently. Point your PC browser at pult.io and your phone to the same address. Then you can control your PC from your phone and command it to show pictures and videos from various on-line services.

Friday, February 24, 2012

William Frantz is Closed

I noticed today that the Wikipedia article for Ruby Bridges has a picture of the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Ruby and the school are famous for marking the end of segregated education in the South. Sadly, the school was heavily damaged during hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 and has never re-opened. If you look closely at the picture of William Frantz Elementary School from 2010, you can see that it is completely enclosed by a chain link fence. Apparently vandals had been breaking into the building and stealing the copper from the walls.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Qualcomm Snapdragon Speed

Qualcomm keeps cranking out faster processors. The first benchmarks on the MSM 8960 look pretty impressive. Read the full Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (Krait) Preview story at AnandTech.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Broadcasting from Barcelona

Next week I will be doing a live broadcast from Barcelona, Spain during Mobile World Congress. Come back to this page on Monday, February 27th at 6:00 PM in Barcelona (that's 9:00 AM on Monday in San Diego) and talk to me live. See the full story at QDevNet.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Hockey Robot

Canadians aren't especially known for their scientific innovations, but who else would make a hockey robot?  I love it.  Clearly we just needed to provide the right incentives to Canadian scientists.  What else can we combine with hockey?  Genetic engineering?  Nuclear power?  Let's get these hosers in the game.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/canadians-teach-darwin-to-ice-skate-play-hockey