Technology · MaisonBisson

Small Video Cameras

This fiddling with video has me looking for small cheap video cameras. 123 Security Products has some, but Pine Computer has them cheaper. Better yet, they’ve got a 203CA sub-mini video camera with interchangable lenses for $25. The standard 4mm lens has only a 78 degree view angle, but an available (+ $15) 2.5mm lens […] » about 100 words

Home Theater

There are bigger problems in the world than my home theater, but that’s not what this entry is about. I’ll get back to political ranting in a while, but for now — now that I have » about 700 words

Virtual KVM Solutions

Folks are increasingly aware of screen sharing apps like VNC, but what about solutions that allow you to control multiple computers with a single keyboard and mouse? Back in the day, there was an interesting MacOS 7 hack that would send mouse and keyboard input from one computer to another (after some very easy configuration), […] » about 300 words

“So computers were worthless ten years ago?”

Jenny, The Shifted Librarian, related a story that show’s her son’s innate understanding of Metcalfe’s Law. Here’s a completely truncated quote:

“…Before you were born, there wasn’t really an internet or the web or email. There was a very basic form for people in the military and at universities, but there were no web sites to visit and no web games to play.”

“So computers were worthless ten years ago?”

Jakob Nielsen has a way-old Alertbox posting on Metcalfe’s Law in Reverse, the effect of cutting a network into pieces with intentional barriers to campatibility, linking, and usability.

Sweet Deal On Home Theater Projector

The Sharp PG-B10S projector isn’t the best out there, but it rates pretty well according to ProjectorCentral.com. Their stats show it to be a 1200 lumen, 800×600 projector with a 400:1 contrast ratio and a long lamp life of up to 4000 hours. The ProjectorCentral.com user reviews suggest it has a good picture with great […] » about 400 words

Beware The Cheap PC; Beware The Company That Advertises Them

I’ve been saying for years that there’s no such thing as a cheap PC, but now a class action lawsuit against Dell is claiming the same. According to ArsTechnica:

It accuses Dell of bait and switch tactics along with breach of contract, fraud and deceit in sales and advertising, and false advertising. The computer manufacturer is accused of advertising low-priced computers to consumers, but when consumers try to to buy the advertised machines, they find they are not available at the specified price.

Two examples cited by Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, the law firm filing the suit, include:

One plaintiff received a different, lower-quality PC that the one he had ordered, and had difficulty getting Dell to take care of the problem. Another was billed $1,352 for a laptop and printer advertised for $688 on Dell’s site.

Maybe this explains Apple’s reluctance to get into the cheap PC space, but the Mac Mini seems to be doing the right things at the right price.

Picture Phone Threats: They’re Not What You Think

In a story that couldn’t have been much better timed, ArsTechnica is reporting on a camera system from that reads license plates and automatically looks up vehicle registration details. With some glibness, the article claims: “You just drive around and point the camera — it’s that easy!” Though, it does note: As previously unconnected networks […] » about 600 words

(Re-)Programming The Sony RM-V60 Multifunction Remote Control

In case you find the batteries dead, and the programming lost, Sony’s instructions for configuring the RM-V60 multifunction remote control are online. You’ll have a heck of a time finding them, however, what with all the lousy ePinions and NexTag listings getting in the way. Ignore those. Codes for all the rest of Sony’s remotes […] » about 100 words

Macs vs. PCs: Tables Turned?

Yale Daily News reports on how Windows is increasingly being pushed aside by MacOS X and Linux. According to the article, Yale Information Technology Services’ registration records show that nearly 20 percent of University students and 33 percent of faculty choose Macs over Windows PCs. This is quite a change from the late 90s, when […] » about 400 words

International Symbols

Enterprise Language Solutions has an interesting brief by Yves Lang on how to use symbols and icons in localization. Cultural differences challenge the design and implementation of icons and symbols for international use. What is meaningful and natural for one group may be ambiguous, unintelligible, or arbitrary for another. Fundamentally, communication is subjective, as a […] » about 300 words

Feature: Privacy in the 21st Century

This is the story that gives me an excuse to name Paris Hilton here at MaisonBisson. Here’s a fact of 21st century life: pieces of our life that, taken one by one, are seemingly insignificant are being gathered and indexed by a handful of companies that re-sell that data to phone marketers, the CIA, and […] » about 800 words

Google Maps Rock, Hacking Them Rocks More

People are going wild over Google Maps, but I honestly didn’t get too excited about it until I saw Glen Murphy’s Movin Gmap project. It’s a Python script that reads location data from a connected GPS and pans the Gmap to follow. Upon seeing this hack of Gmaps, I went looking for more. Hack a […] » about 200 words

Geolocation Tagging Photos

There’s a new version of Jeff Early’s GPS Photo Linker, which allows you to combine tracks from your GPS (time and position data) with your photos (time and image data), so you end up with a bunch of photos with embeded GPS coordinates. Jeff notes: Apple has confirmed that MacOS 10.4 will support the GPS […] » about 300 words

Fast Sofa…iMac G5 Fast

There are a lot of folks who will tell you how “wrong” it is that Apple integrates the monitor and computer in so many models, so I guess there’s a bunch of them that will tell you the same thing about how Bluebroc is integrating the a sweet-looking couch and an iMac G5. “You’ll have […] » about 100 words

iPod Giggles

iPod Giggles » Paul Bourke, of the Astronomy department at Swinburne University of Technology, has developed an iPod stereoscope. His system uses a pair of iPods in an old-style stereoscope viewer to display stereo-matched photos. » Somebody at Iaxb has come up with some renderings of a giant iPod shuffle sitting around the house like […] » about 200 words

Folksonomy Is My New Love

Okay, I’m excited about folksonomies. My introduction to tags was at Flickr, where I’ve been amused at how they help connect people, photos, and concepts. Then Jenny Levine at The Shifted Librarian started talking about them, with David Rothman at TeleRead echoing and expanding many of her points.

That was about when I found Many to Many, where I read about Technorati’s tag project (plus documentation).

Wanna see it in action? Take a look at “dogs” in Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati.

Sort of related: Touchgraph.

Cold Weather Operations Force PowerBook PMU Reset

Batteries don’t work well in the cold, and with the -20°F nights we’ve had, I think I can say it’s been cold here lately. I woke my PowerBook from sleep in sub-freezing temperatures this morning and got a few minutes of work out of it before it put itself to sleep again. I popped it […] » about 400 words

Using Your Mobile Phone As Modem

I’ve been following cell-carrier wireless data options here at MaisonBisson (here and here), but I have to admit that I don’t actually use any such solutions. I live and work (and usually travel) in range of ethernet and WiFi, so I might get a pass on this but the real reason is laziness. Engadget has […] » about 300 words

Feds Go Beyond Carnivore; Artists Embrace Carnivore

DefenseTech reports that the FBI has given up on Carnivore, the electronic snooping application that it used to force on ISPs serving suspects. It seems that the folks in dark suits are now using commercial software instead. This probably has no effect on artists — yes, artists — who use an open source app inspired […] » about 100 words

Microsoft: Bad For Browsers; Bad For Air Travel

I just discovered This Is Broken and couldn’t help but explore the archives.

First I discovered Brill.com‘s weird search results. The problem is that a search for bond funds returns a list of stories that have little to do with financial news. It looks like somebody has entered a bunch of bogus stories in their database. They might have been hacked, but I’d be more suspicious of a disgruntled employee. The saddest part is that the problem was reported on September 22, 2004 and they haven’t fixed it yet.

Then there was a story about the risks of running Windows in mission critical environments, like air traffic control. This Techworld UK gives the details on a Microsoft problem that left 800 planes circling the skies of southern California without any communications or ground control.

It seems that the system absolutely cannot run more than 47 days without rebooting, and when a novice engineer missed a scheduled preemptive reboot, the system went down without warning.

Isn’t anything that threatens the safety of the flying public akin to terrorism?

Browse Happy

Browse happy, by the The Web Standards Project is urging people to give up on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Their solution? Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari. » about 100 words

Mac OS X Performance Questions

I was a little bummed to find my CPU busy all morning yesterday. And though I still don’t understand exactly what was causing it, it seems no longer to be a problem. A lot of people don’t know how to see what their Mac is doing, to see what it’s busy with. Here are some […] » about 300 words

Palm News & Goodies

Gizmodo mentioned the new Garmin iQue 3600a GPS Palm for Pilots this morning. There’s a long write up about it at MyPalmLife, but the Gizmodo story linked to Palm247. Once there, I found a link to instructions on putting the Wikipedia on a Palm. Well, you’ll need a 1GB SD card, but that’s okay, right? […] » about 200 words

Mac Mini vs. Cheapo PCs

Charles Jade at ArsTechnica has written both a Mac mini preview and a MacWorld Expo show walkthrough. The expo is about a lot more than the Stevenote, and Jade does a fine job walking us about the show floor. Also entertaining is an OSViews story on the Mac mini that concludes the mini is far […] » about 400 words

The Mac Mini is _Small_

I said the Mac mini was the reincarnation of the Cube last week, but Gizmodo has posted a picture of the two, um, together. We all knew the mini was small, but this shows how reall small it is. The Unoffical Apple Weblog has a list of things people are planning to do with their […] » about 200 words

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