Technology

I’d heard that that OCLC was opening up WorldCat, their huge bibliographic database, to Google. It seems to be online now.

If you happen to Google some very complete search terms for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (look for the WorldCatLibraries URL), you’ll find a link to the public WorldCat record. Interesting, but I wonder where this will go.

In fairness, this news is about six months old. Jenny reported it in December.

Nikola Tesla arrived in Colorado Springs on May 17, 1899. He was met at the train by patent lawyer Leonard Curtis, and was taken by horse and carriage to the Alta Vista Hotel, where he would reside while in Colorado. Tesla was greeted at the hotel by a group of reporters, one of whom asked him why he chose Colorado for his operation. Tesla replied, “I might as well tell you the truth, I have come here to carry on a series of exhaustive experiments in regard to wireless telegraphy — I come here for work.” The reporter asked if he was going to “flash [his] message from Pike’s Peak to Long’s Peak or another mountain of Colorado?” The question appeared to irritate Tesla who tersely replied, “No, I am here to work. It is not pleasure. I am very busy and life is short and there is a great deal to be done.”

Text taken from this history of Nikola Tesla. We should all know more about Tesla.

A link from WiFi Networking News points to QSR Magazine, the trade mag for the quick service restaurant industry (think McDonalds and Taco Bell). The connection here is that McDonalds plans to offer wireless access in 13,000 locations. With McDonald’s off the market, WiFi hotspot operators are looking to hook the next big fish, and that’s why WiFi Networking News is linking to QSR’s Top 50 Chains list.

Some technologists would speak about how we’re moving ever closer to the time when we have ubiquitous hi-speed wireless. I’m more interested in the fast food.

The list of top restaurants helps me identify the places I need to go next. White Castle. What-a-Burger. Steak ‘n Shake. I’ve been missing out on American culture. Yeah, I’ve been to Carl’s Jr. and In-N-Out Burger, but there are so many others.

Then look at QSR’s industry outlook paper, Food Fight. It’s from 2002, but is loaded with insider gems like the debate about serving beer. This stuff is even cooler than Beverage World.

You can burn DVDs of your home movies (and you probably ought to, just for backups), but what if you want to make a movie library to match your computer-based music library? Watching video on a computer is no more fun than listening to MP3s on the computer’s tinny internal speaker. The solution may be one of a new generation of products that link the TV in the living room to the computer in the office.

Elgato’s EyeHome, does just that (reviewed by GiantGinkgo). Like the D-Link Wireless Media Player (both products appear to be sourced from Syabas), it allows you to browse and view movies, pictures, music, and the web in a small set-top box connected via ethernet or WiFi.

NewsMap displays current news in an explorable two dimensional space. Headline sizes appear to be weighted based on the number of related stories. Like PlumbDesign’s Visual Thesaurus, it’s a truly new use of computer in the display of information.

Vonage is starting to look like the ma-bell of VoIP. It’s not that there isn’t competition — there is, but they just don’t have the profile that Vonage has. It looks like Vonage has picked up the early adopters, now they have to start converting others.

The market seems to have three fields: computer-to-computer only, software client with POTS bridging, and hardware client with POTS bridging. I don’t much care about the computer-to-computer systems, AIM and iChat take care of that well enough. I need to call phone numbers on the standard phone network and I want a real phone number for people to call me back on.

Mobitus and Nikotel seem to be in the software to POTS business. SIPPhone claims “use your normal phone” and provides a telephone adapter, but it’s a UK number (which could be cool). Broadvoice so far distinguishes itself by offering the first WiFi VoIP phone that I’m aware of.

I got excited about WiFi VoIP a little while ago, but I really wish I could get the Palm SIP software to work on my Clie TH55.

The font designing folks at Chank have a nice list of free fonts to pick from. Sure, they’re not the fonts you use to design flyers for the church social or nursing home holiday dinner, but that’s sort of the point. Isn’t it?

Anyway, they also link to nerfect where you’ll find other cool designey things.

I saw a link for a Palm-based GameBoy emulator, then was stunned to read about an Atari ST emulator for Palm. A quick Google search later, and I found an Apple //e emulator too!. It’s the old-timer in me, but I really enjoyed the games on those old systems.

More info on the Apple //e emulator for Palm are at Palm Info Center and FreewarePalm. PalmEmu links up a number of emulators for Palm.

[UPDATE]: There’s a review of Palm-based emulators at The Gadgeteer. Thanks to MyPalmLife for the pointer (look there for more info too!).

The ClieSource Forums are an excellent source of info. It turns out that installing the movierecorder.prc (version 1.3) from a UX50 onto the TH55 allows it to record movies. The problem is getting that file….

Isn’t Google great? If that doesn’t work out for you, try searching at the Palm User Message Board, where you might just find it.

Here’s the trick: you can’t just install the app via Palm Sync. You’ll have to copy or sync it onto the Memory Stick, then copy it to the internal storage. Happy video!

[UPDATE]: I found more info and a better source for the movie recorder here.

For example movies shot using the Clie TH55, follow the links in this story about Cliff’s Piranha.

• The PublicIP ZoneCD is a bootable CD implementation of NoCat’s NoCatAuth. NoCatAuth configuration help is available from AmsterNet and Blyx.
• The LEAF Project intends to create Linux-based firewall-in-a-box solution that has uses for wireless.
• LinSpot is a commercial hotspot-in-a-box software solution.
• NoCat, LESS Networks, Portland Community Wireless, and Newbury Open.net are active community wireless operations.
• O’Reilly Wireless DevCenter has loads of news. Rob Flickenger of NoCat has authored a number of articles a couple books there.
• PBS’s Bob Cringely has a few interesting and relevant columns including: using 801.11 equipment to create wireless WAN links, serious cross-country wireless links, how to build your own DSL network using dry pairs from your local telephone company (when wireless just won’t cut it).

The Lexar 256MB Memory Stick arrived. It sucks. It’s not really a 256 MB stick, it’s 2 x 128MB, and you have to flick a little switch to choose which 128MB you want to use at any moment. Let me be more clear: you can only use 128MB at a time, and you have to eject the card and flip a switch to select the other 128MB. I don’t know if it’s returnable, but I think I’ll try.

I did find that Nick Coday records and encodes videos for Clie. They look pretty good, but file sizes are larger than I expected. I still don’t know how to encode my own videos into a compatible mp4 format, and Nick’s vids won’t open in QuickTime on my computer. They error with “an audio elementary stream descriptor is corrupted/expected type=0x65736473 (‘esds’); found type=0x00000000 instead.” They play on the Clie anyway.

Unrelated to videos, Mapopolis makes an interesting looking map application that works with or without GPS. SuperUtility allows you to delete read-only and protected files from your Palm. The iGo Pitch Solo is a universal Palm and Pocket PC presentation adapter that plugs in via USB.

Just ran across 24-7media.de. It’s a cool site. Their Flash design is top notch and I really like the metaphor. Does it work? Yes, in the limited context they’re using, it works well.

Best of all — or most disturbing, who knows — is the soundtrack. Composed by Yuko Ohigashi, it’s haunting and mysterious.