I'm Delta Taph (Real Name: David Wilkinson), and this is my mini-blog! I'm a 12-year old ProBlogger from Manchester, in England.
23rd December 2006
I've been busying myself getting ready for Christmas! Not long left now. I've also written a few posts for Profy which I'll post about here.
14th December 2006
Today I was on BBC Radio Manchester and the BBC website. That was really cool! I may also be doing a feature on sometime around Christmas. No word on timings or anything yet, but it sounds great! I felt it was easier to do than the Five Live interview last week, despite this one actually being live! It was great when the weather lady off TV came in. Kind of a shock too! But she's very nice, just like on TV. She told me I was 'brilliant'. Not complaining! =D
13th December 2006
I've just been busy gearing up for tomorrow morning's interview. I've got my notes and all written. I've been listening to Eamonn's shows, and he's really quite funny.
Here it is... I'm breaking the silence at last. I can officially reveal that Vaja, are about to launch a new range of cases! The 'Caddie' series, is great all round, not only for teeing off on the golf course. Like usual, Vaja are using the finest Argentinian leather, hand chosen for it's great finish, and natural aroma. I have it from an insider, that the product page will read as follows...
"Carry your gadget in style. The Caddie collection delivers an unique look and full access to main functions while keeping your device secure. Available only for Motorola Razr V3 & V3i, Palm Treo 700 series and iPod video 30, 60 & 80GB, this collection also includes a very stylish Caddie Leather Bag. Customize your own Caddie model by choosing among several leather colors and embossing your name or logo in the backside. Fully personalizable and made from exquisite high quality Argentine leather."
With any luck, these beauties will be in stock in the Vaja store within a month or so.
What a day! The launch of Vista, and I didn't even manage to push out a post! Well, besides this one. Anyhow, I can confirm that my Vista Ultimate copy will be arriving on the 12th of February. Please note that I've included a little snapshot above, because the bigger image is 1.1MB in size, and those of you (0.121%) who are using dial-up may not wish to see the whole thing. But click on it to see the full thing.
The 'Wow' starts now. In theory... But seriously, Vista is set to be a hit. I'm all for early-adopting it, and in my opinion, Vista will decide the future of Microsoft. I'm hoping to work more closely with the company in future. They still have a great time ahead of them, and us kids need to be educated better, how to use the software, tools and services provided by them in a more streamlined, effective, productive way. At the moment, the only thing the whole of my class knows how to do without fail, is 'Copy & Paste'. Even then, they have trouble rendering the text/images correctly in MS-Word because of some 'table' element in the layout. Shame on you! CSS helps us kids steal your content for homework better. ;) Nope... I'm good. I don't steal stuff.
Anyhow... Vista. Well, as I can't be bothered writing a post today (too tired!), I'll include a list articles below...
Anyhow, I've been a busy man with Techzi.net, and am proud to announce that we're very nearly ready! We have some bugs to iron out, we need to finish Wordpress Integration, Tag some 670 posts, set http://www.techzi.net/ to point to the same place that http://techzi.net/ is pointing to, and then we need to finish all of the individual pages on the site/blog/thingy.
Should be great! If I don't post for a few days, you know why. It'll be worth the wait!
When major supermarket chains go and launch £9 DVD Players, you know that the industry has moved on... And so it has. ASDA, UK-based retailer, are offering the new 'uber cheap player' to anyone and everyone.
"Asda, which is part of the American Wal-mart empire, has launched a major move into home electricals, as have Tesco and Sainsbury's. Around 80,000 of the Durabrand 1005 machines will hit the supermarket's stores. The development is indicative of savage price cuts on gadgets, where prices are now so low that they can be thrown away and replaced." via ThisIsLondon.
I must admit, I had no idea Wal-Mart owned ASDA... I must have missed something major there! O_o
In this picture, you can see an enthusiastic DevianArtist got their hands stuck in and dirty, creating their own, Web 2.0 styled MySpace homepage. It looks brilliant!
Just click for the full-size version. How snazzy is that?
Thrilling, I know... Here is an hour long History Of Tetris! I must admit, I've not had the chance or the time to watch it all, but the first half looks interesting...
A quick roundup of the 6 Apple 2006 PC vs Mac adverts. Even if you're a PC fan, it's hard to resist liking these adverts.
Speaking of PCs, I'm getting a new one for my Birthday. Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS, 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Due E6600, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, Office 2007, and a whole lot more... Weighs in at $3500!
Sorry about no posts yesterday... Something major happened, which quite frankly distracted me from everything else. I'm still a little shocked about it, and my heart goes out to the family involved.
Anyhow, it seems bLaugh have the right end of the stick on this one...
In an ever advancing technological world, one of the new things that has started to become very popular in the wonderful world of photography lately, is HDR. There's a great tutorial over at SIC. Pity the skilled photographer has never heard of Klingons though... Perhaps it's not all that popular over in Bangkok.
So it seems that bLaugh, the popular blogging cartoon, is currently down. DOOM ON YOU! But this seems to be something pretty major... All of the cartoons, are displaying in IE as 'little red Xs', which we all know means only one thing. Hosting problems, or the dreaded 'Server Maintenance' dudes! Well... This does suck. The latest comic out was the 'Modern Day Bully', which my daily e-mail from feedburner has pointed out. Else I wouldn't have realised... Check it! Doomed 'alt text', or in IE, a big, fat, red X! By the way, that's not a hot-link to bLaugh... All images there are down. 404 on the homepage too. Google cache is even having trouble rendering the site, because no external files 'exist'. It can't call images or style-sheets up as references, because they simply don't exist. bLaugh is gone... And we're hoping it's only temporary!
Your heard it first at Techzi.
UPDATE: Over 90 minutes later, and still no news from Chris, or any one from the website. We'll let you know when we hear some buzz.
SORTED:I woke up this morning to find the problem 'sorted' out. Glad that all that's been cleared up! Good going Chris, and according to MyBlogLog, you checked out my blog just last night. ;)
Could this seriously be the future? Will we all be talking about ID in the future, as in a well established LinkedIn account?
But seriously... LinkedIn would be more useful. Who cares if MySpace has a trillion users... It's not hald as practical as Xing, and other business related opportunities out there.
I've been eyeing up the Vaja Classic Jacket for MacBook's starting in sizes at 13" and going up to 17". They're looking really spiffy at the moment, and as and when I get myself a new MacBook, count me in with this swish looking leather case!
Using Vaja's own specially made fabric lining, the case protects against everyday bumps and scratches which are the usual side affects found with such sleek and portable cases. The Vaja logo, as usual, is inlaid with Sterling Silver 925, and optional graphical/text personalization can be requested, and will be laser cut to your standards. Why do I love Vaja? It's so you. You decide every aspect of your case, from the little tabs on the side, to the size of your inner pockets on the bags. To the type of Argentinian Leather hide used, and the colour combination requested, it seems Vaja do their best to cater for everyone's needs.
Another classic from bLaugh. Seriously, this content rocks! They have more ideas than a forest faerie canoing. That doesn't actually make any sense what so ever though. aka, They seem to have more ideas than me.
These past two or three days, I've not had much time for Techzi admittedly. What started off as a wild idea, has really impacted on me, and now I'm taking it as seriously as Techzi. This idea is big. This startup is big. This will be big. If any of you in the magazine/newspaper/printing/publishing industry are interested, let me know who you are, and where you work.
I'm teaming up with some of the biggest names in Blogging for this one. They're attacking my ideas and contributing themselves, and at the moment, it looks great.
By the way, I should really credit Tony Hung for the b5media logo. Don't be getting any ideas from it yet either... Nothing official has been said yet. Kinda... ;)
Social Spamming, as Timo Heuer, German Web 2.0 critique puts it. I'm strongly against Timo on this one. On his blog, he highlighted a conversation he'd had with 'X', a user of LinkedIn, who presumably asked to remain anonymous. Unless his real name is indeed X.
Upim: LinkedIn’s mission is to connect people and business partner and not to contact with someone you don’t really know… X: It’s not spamming though. It’s part of a business model. And I am making an effort to get to know all these people. And LinkedIn strives to connect people with similar areas of interest and create possible business ties. Upim: Spamming is a business model? X: It’s not spamming. Upim: It is X: It’s not Upim: Of course it is X: Another contact. =) It’s not. Read the LinkedIn homepage. They aim to connect people. I’m not spamming. I’m making an effort to connect. Upim: contacts are people you know… that’s my understanding of it X: And I’m making contacts. I’m making an effort to get to know these people. I’m making an effort to add them in the first place. I’m making the effort to connect. Upim: I would delete your invitation as fast as possible ;) X: Really? Isn’t the point of LinkedIn to connect people though? Got another acceptance. Maybe I’ll hit 200 before I go to bed. =D Upim: Maybe it’s a addiction to collect contacts? Web 3.0 = Web 2.0 + collections of contacts?"
Timo e-mailed me the full transcript, and truth be told, 'X' makes a far more compelling argument than Timo. In addition, recently I myself have done a bit of what Timo calls 'social spamming'. That said, it's really helped with a new top secret project I've undertaken. I'm dying to tell you what it is, and will make an official announcement in a later post.
She's got it all right... And it seems she's a rather popular YouTube actress... She hit you screens with the massively popular 'Lonely Girl 15 Audtion' you see below, and with 'Peephole', also below.
And the you have it... A girl with way to much time on her hands.
Photoshoppers... Get out your brushes. Nope. Apple haven't given a drop-bomb hint on a new product in the works, but 100Worth is inviting you to concept design what you believe the next Apple product might be. My personal favourite, somewhat reminding me of the other days fiasco, the iPottie. Or in the UK, should we call it the iPotty? International grammar... Mad stuff.
And of course, if Apple were to do a re-make of the original Rubix Cube, making it white and slamming on a few Apple logos would definitely sell a few million. Imagine the slogan... 10,000 different combinations. 9,996 ways to complete it. How fast can you do it? The Apple iCube. See sense in life. Ironic coughing attack over... But seriously, some of these designs are inspiring and thought provoking. Companies should throw competitions like this once in a while, offering cash prizes for the winner(s). Who knows? Maybe they'll become the next Apple? ;)
And before I go, the ingeniously named, iSmell. Click on all the pictures for bigger views.
Today, in an official Apple press release, it was announced that the iPhone is to incorporate some spiffy new features. I won't rant and rave like usual, but I'll let you check it yourself.
My favourite comment on YouTube? "This looks like a spoof to me" and another comment by someone either trying to be funny, or is just plain stupid. In it, they were discussing all of the features, and then asked why Apple said it was hard to use as a phone.
Some people these days! Good grief. When I were a lad...
Yesterday, I promised you I'd post a bit of the article I wrote at Profy.com...
ZCubes . Something I covered a while back very briefly. When covering it, I'd only gotten a feel for just a few of the portal's many features, and Parag Marthur, the company's VP of Product Management, invited myself and Svetlana Gladkova to join them, and find out more about the advanced features that ZCubes incorporates.
Currently, ZCubes full features are only available to those of you using Internet Explorer, and I know for a fact, that if Profy's readers are anything like my own, then most of you will be using Firefox. Well worry no more! When talking with Parag, it was revealed that Firefox will be fully supported sometime soon! We were told to expect it 'within a month' or so, and with any luck, we'll be able to report on it right here at Profy.
“Imagine a net with n dimensions. Web N.0 - Not just 1, 2 or 3. But n. Yes, that includes time. It is possible. It is clear that the face of the Internet is quite static, with minor dynamics introduced by primitive technologies like AJAX. Truly flexible Internet is created when you enter n dimensions of bit matter, organized by the whims and fancies of the user - not the creator.” Last time I looked at the startup, I loved the slogan, and still do. But having witnessed the raw power that ZCubes holds, with practicality, functionality, speed and design, I can now say, that I am a true believer. As, I suspect, is Svetlana, as she told me in a Skype chat that she guessed she will be "a fan of ZCubes" too!
So what got me so hyped in the 30-minute interview that has changed my mind so much? Various things, which when doing my initial review of ZCubes, weren't available, and I wasn't aware of. For example, using Google or Yahoo Image search, you can drag and drop pictures right into your ZCubes home page, just like you can with a real desktop! Except that with ZCubes, you can edit the image directly. You can apply effects, and add filters, such as 'Engrave', which applies a stone-like effect, reminiscent of Photoshop's distortion filters. You can also drag and drop videos from Google Search, YouTube, and many other online media websites.
We were also shown, how the ZCubes browser pane is synchronized to work flawlessly with the YubNub service. For example, if you wanted to directly search Amazon.com for a book on Web 2.0, you'd type in the ZCubes search box, 'am web2.0 book", and instantly, the Amazon Search results will be streamed into your window.
Infact, so much was discussed at the conference, it would literally take me hours to type it all up, and look at all of the features in-depth, so instead, I'll pick perhaps my favourite things. Fill Paterns. So what are these 'fill paterns'? Well, I'll do better than explain all about it, I'll even show you! This Fill Pattern has been used to fill in the inside of a shape. I've used the 3D Drawing tool to write the 'Profy' & 'Web 2.0' bits, but the shape was created by ZCubes, by simply entering the URL of the image into the side panel.
And there you have it. Only part of the ZCubes review, with more coming soon. Sourced from Profy, written by me.
It seems like these photos have been around for years, but only now, have any of the big blogs got wind of this! Engadget are reporting on what they claim is 'quite possibly the most badass iPod case ever'.
Of course, we've seen Gameboy Emulators for the iPod and such before, but never actually an entirely styled iPod mod. Check all of the spiffy photos at Flickr! via Engadget.
Just after the blogosphere has recovered from the plethora of hype concerning the Macworld 2007 release of the iPhone, some credible sources are suggesting that Apple is planning an event this coming February in which some exciting new details and information on the Leopard OS development will be released. Stay tuned... I've got a feeling something big is coming. Okay, perhaps not half as big as the jazz concerning the iPhone, but any new major OS launch has to be big, right?
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo & Vodafone. Not often of such big, and competing companies collaborating on such a major project as this. But it seems that the companies have teamed together, in the hope of creating a 'Code Of Conduct'.
"Technology companies have come under fire for providing equipment or software that permits governments to censor information or monitor the online or offline activities of their citizens. For example, last year, Google's approach to the China market was criticized over its creation of a censored, local version of its search engine. A Yahoo subsidiary was cited by human rights groups for working with Chinese police to identify political activists, who were ultimately arrested and prosecuted for posting anti-government opinions and information online. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights." [PCW]
Amongst the four afformentioned companies, a large froup of organizations will also be chiming in with their thoughts, opinions and ideas. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders are just a few currently known to be participating. via Engadget. Sourced from PCW.
The Nike iPod Watch. It's been in the news a heck of a lot lately, and it seems that just a few minutes ago, iLounge got themselves some exclusive photos and details on the gadget.
Owners of non-Nano iPods (or those of you yet to get an iPod), will most likely be looking forward to the launch of Nike's Speed+ watch, which will, according to Gizmodo, "save you the trouble of buying another iPod". On top of the Speed+ watch, it has been reported that Nike has three other watches in the making, to go along nicely with their new range of gadgets.
The first one, Nike's so called Flight+, will have a release date of May 1st, and will retail for around $129. "The volume and track controls are built into a 'rocking bezel' around the Electroluminiscent backlit screen". The watch will be available in two colors, each able to "play back the Nike + iPod voice feedback".
The second device retails for $50, coming in at just $79. The lower-end 'bracelet', known as Amp+, has a simple in-built LED display, which can either show the current time, or the status control for your iPod. Some sources also cite that there is a possibilty that an iPod shuffle control pad will come included, allowing you to "adjust volume, playback, or call up the Nike Sport kit stuff". Also retails on May 1.
The third one, Aero+, appears to be an exact replica of Flight+, except it is modeled and coloured to appeal more to the male audience that Flight+ doesn't grab. Aero+ is alot less feminine looking, and comes in two colors also. Same launch date as the others, and like Flight+ is also set to retail for $129.
My sincere apologies for not posting today, I've been very busy, writing an in-depth report on ZCubes. I attended an online conference today with the VP of Product Management there, and had lots to write about. Expect a fat juicy post tomorrow! Hope you can wait that long anyhow. =)
David signing out for tonight. I'm off to watch Battestart Galactica. I recorded last Tuesdays.
A great new Apple advert. I wish they'd elaborated more on all the different features though. I really have to go and get myself a MacBook Pro now... That said, Vista isn't all that bad. Infact, with readyboost, it's great! But Macs are still more user friendly.
And while I'm here, here's an old-time favourite.
They really have a talented team at Mac. Kudos to you! Pity that the same can't be said about Microsoft... O_o Or maybe that's just Ballmer.
Utter rubbish... I've been very pro-Microsoft lately, and am even going out my way to get myself Vista Ultimate edition, but this, is ridiculous. 'People won't buy the iPhone because it has no keyboard'. Steve Ballmer? Are you listening? Are you stupid!?!? Seriously... You will regret it when the iPhone becomes the best-selling phone in the world, and judging by the hype, the stats, and the people I know (Even those who don't have iPods! =O Shock horror!) are raving about the iPhone.
'Apple is selling zero phones a year.' Genius this guy... Think he's realized they've not launched yet? "He lies right out his own ass on numbers regarding the Zune, saying it has 25 percent of the high-end MP3 player market (over $250)." Too right... And Steve Ballmer, can you say to me with a straight face that you truly believe that you will ever overthrow the iPod? Please... People will buy the latest iPod, because it is the iPhone... People will buy the iPhone, because it rocks! Apple have the upperhand by far when it comes to design, and the best Microsoft can do, is give us photos of toilets... Sheesh!
In addition, Ballmer raves about how 'expensive' the iPhone is... Reckon he's seen the spec sheet? For what it does, it massively eclipses all the other current MS offerings by far, on the bang for buck ratio, the overall appeal, and the general snazzyness factor.
Heck... I'm still up for Vista thought. But keep the Zune out of it! My mobile devices all belong to Apple. The best thing about it from Bill Gates' point of view? He's still making several hundred dollars a second. Perhaps I should stop writing, and starting begging him... I know he's on my Skype list somewhere... Ah yes! Right above Colbert Low, and below Amit Agarwal. Sourced from CrunchGear.
Microsoft have indeed, unveiled their very own eToilet. Full compatibility with the Zune is promised, and the toilet packs in a powerful array of additional smart loo features not usually found.
The in-built thermostat warms the normally cold toilet seat, a delay-mechanism prevents flushing while in the shower, and the toilet's composition gauge will make helpful, dietary suggestions, based on the makeup of the brown stuff that goes into it's basin, and for those of you that forget, the toilet automatically puts down the lid when you're finished.
Bill Gates, speaking at an invite-only party at CES in Las Vegas, said that "Americans spend an average of two weeks per year in the bathroom and as part of Microsoft's efforts to continue to make inroads in the home, we fully plan to capitalize on that time."
So what does he mean? He means a 21" touchscreen monitor infused into the toilet lid! The lid simply flips round, and viola! There you have it. Your own in-loo entertainment hub. No word yet on whether this thing runs Vista yet though. From what I can see, it's XP on the photo. Sourced from CrunchGear. By the way, I've got a hunch that this thing may be fake. ;)
Just when you though that 1060P might be good enough, Westinghouse came out ans spoiled all the fun. Despite there being no 2160P Double-HD content available, the company is marketing the 52-inch monster at 'designers & professionals'. The $50,000 price tag kind of suggested that it wasn't marketed at everyday Joes. I'd be crashing the Techzi budget if I said I was going to buy and test one of these TVs, so I won't even get my hopes up.
That said, until some 2160P content gets released, I'm not really sure what use the TV would be, or how you could test it lives up to it's "Uber" branding. We all know how hyped Westinghouse got about their TVs, but according to Gadgetell, at CES, they barely got a mention. Weird, huh? Perhaps they thought people would prefer a 120-inch Full-HD TV that they can see the benefits on, rather than a 52-incher costing more, which has no current benefits.
Last night, once I'd left my PC to do homework, 11-year old blogger, Timothy Williams, wrote a post on Techzi, asking for money. He stated that he wanted to 'get rich quick' and was hoping that you guys would willing to give him money.
At Techzi, we have a moderation system. Our writers make posts, then save them as drafts, for me to moderate and post if I see fit. Unless there is some really hot news which one of our writers think is a 'must-post-now' article, then it should be saved as a draft.
Not what Timothy did! Without my knowledge or consent, he wrote the post, asking for money from you guys, and to me, from what he'd written, it sounded like I was endorsing it. I assure you that neither myself, Techzi, or any of the other guys here were affiliated with that whatsoever. Timothy's post, and account have been deleted. Whether this will be a temporary measure, it remains to be seen, but once we move to Wordpress, I have decided that ALL posts will be moderated to avoid any incidents like this.
I hope the few thousand of you who visited Techzi last night weren't put off by this, and we apologize profusely. Timothy abused our trust, my trust, and attempted to gain financially from it. He knew the rules... He broke them.
I'm waiting for him to come back online now to see if we can sort something out. That said, I have to admit I'm rather worried about both my blog's reputation with you guys, and what lasting effects it will have. I'm not sure if any of you guys donated to Timothy or not, as I deleted the post from school, where I noticed it, and where flash wasn't installed. Sorry about all this!
On a side note, Timothy succesfully dropped our main feed subscribers by 21 in less than 10 hours. Congratulations man... You've done me proud.
I dare say that message containing the words 'Apple' and 'Linux' are marked as spam amongst the 620,000 other odd messages he receives every day. Dilbert doesn't care though, and manages to make a very funny scene out of it. But seriously guys... I think Bill Gates is better than he seems.
In other news, Robert Scoble said this about me... 'You write extremely well for a 12-year-old. I was reading your blog and not realizing your age. My son just turned 13 and he doesn’t write this well.' Cool, huh? That said, I turn 13 this coming February. Anyone got any suggestions on what I could ask for? Anyone feel like giving me anything? ;) Feel free to drop me an e-mail at David [at] Techzi [dot] net
It was ages ago that I showed you the USB Rechargable batteries. Now finally, ThinkGeek have them in stock! Yay for USB batteries! From the product page:
"Rechargeable batteries are great! They power all our favorite gadgets. Without them, we'd be tossing all these alkaline batteries and their caustic chemicals back into the environment, and that's a recipe for bad times.
The problem with rechargeables is the myriad plugs, ports, sockets and bays you need to have around to keep them filled with electrons. Oh, the battery's dead, but where's that dang recharger? Sound familiar? Then, one day, an enterprising geek built the charger into the battery. Not just any charger, mind you. They used a standard USB port built right into the battery.
Now, when your batteries are flatlining, pop the cap, and jam 'em into your nearest ubiquitous USB port. Whether it's on your computer, laptop, monitor or powered USB hub, all you need is 250mA of juice from your universal serial bus, and a little patience. In just a few hours, you'll have 1300mAH of power!"
So as you can see, very good stuff. Head on over and check them out yourselves!
Two little tid-bits of car-related geek news. For those of you who have the money, Toshiba have released their concept 'Bat Mobile' car, that is apparently one of the most eco-friendly cars ever designed. "The eco-friendly prototype has a modular polycarbonate body, which allows you to change the look of the car according to your fancy. Top-it-all, the chassis of the car is also recyclable." The Honda Extreme is a dual-cockpit design that looks set to take the world by storm. Check it out!
And it seems there will be no Aston Martin for Bond in his next film. A Bond Fan Site, has it direct, that instead, Bond will be driving the equally as classy Jaguar XF. Sweet stuff! Sourced from BornRich.
Technically, I did write this article, but I wrote it for Profy.com... Here goes anyway. I found it an interesting one, so I do hope it's relevant/enjoyable.
Read/Write Web just published a very interesting article, on the top domain names of 2006. It was interesting to see who made it into the list, and the incredible amounts they sold for. In actual selling value, in first place came Cameras.com, fetching $1.5million! Second place, came Blue.com, Bike.com & Wrestling.com, with just a third of that $1.5million, each of these domains still cashed in for a whopping $500,000!
But this makes me wonder... What makes a domain name worth it's chips? Is it something easy to remember, that sticks in people's minds? Is a single word, which people may randomly type in, in the hope of finding something relevant to the word? Is it something short, or is it something with a meaning?
In the test, the Domain Name Values Weekly site quizzed thirty experts, on the subject of the buying and selling domain names, and asked them to find out the Top 20 Domain Transactions of 2006. According to Read/Write Web, the main criteria "wasn't most money paid, but best long-term value (4+ years)". So here are the results.
If you're wondering what the numbers in the brackets represent, it's the number of first place votes that the panel of experts gave each individual domain name. Of course, some of the commenters at R/WW have pointed out that the list isn't actually correct. Apparently, Voka.com sold for a humoungous $3million along with Wiki.com, who also sold for $3million. 'Wii.com also has great potential. I heard that sold for something like $200k - $500k'.
It just to show, that even after the .com bubble burst, there's still room for snazzy names in Web 2.0. That said, most Web 2.0 websites pick a simple word 'Tech' for example, and add on a few random letters, 'zi'. Which is exactly what I did, and Techzi was born. The bubble may have burst, but domains aren't going to stop trading hands any time soon. Written by David Wilkinson for Profy.com.
We proudly present to you, the non-existent iPhone Shuffle! Thanks Gizmodo. And no... It seems that the fake photoshops have not stopped. Ah well. We can live in hope. But now we need a new Apple product to speculate, make fakes of, and create hype around the rumour mill. Anyone got any ideas?
A Windows Vista Readboost Optimized USB drive? Count us in. There's un-deniable evidence that the technology works, and is worth it's chips, so anything that can enhance it further is definitely on my must have list.
That said, I'm hoping that a rig with an Intel Core 2 CPU, a Nvidia 8800 GPU and 2GB of high-frequency DDR2 RAM will hold up Vista nicely anyhow. If not, for $99, I can pick myself up an optimized drive myself. But if I was going to a LAN party, there's another USB drive tailor made for me, and oh! Look! A 16GB drive too. Sweet stuff! Sourced from Gadgetell.
Not that I'm a fan of listening to music in the bath, but the new Submarine Radio from I Want One Of Those looks set to become a big hit worldwide. Now you can listen to classics such as 'The Sardines', and 'Yellow Submarine' (Quite literally!), in style! That said, the last 'bath radio' I purchased, decided it would conk out when I flipped it upside down and forced it under water. They advertised it as 'splash resistant'. Hmph! No matter. Coming from a reputable re-seller like IWOOT, means you can buy in confidence. *AHEM!* The Sub runs off two Triple-A (AAA) batteries. Sourced from OhGizmo!
There's no denying that we've seen some wacky fridges in our time at Techzi. Fridges with 20" monitors in-built, fridges that stream your RSS feeds on demand, and fridges that really can't make their mind up whether they were born to be an in-kitchen entertainment system or not. Yanko (Hey! Sounds like a yoghurt brand!), claim that their new design will be the future.
"It is a fridge design, combining with a tree branch shape storage system and several single fridges, which tried to bring the memory of tree house in our childhood to the kitchen in daily life. One fridge has holes and pattern on the door as a fruit shelf. People can pick up a fruit from a tree. Another is like a bird house. Doors can slide away when a hand is placed in front of it. It's funny how one can draw out an egg from a bird's nest. There is also a special device designed at the foot of the door, when people step on it, a wheel with small motor will slide the door open."
Above you can see the new Dell CES Concept design. via Engadget.
We've been left wondering these past few days. Did Dell fire the imaginative designer that brought us the 'Black Monitor 1', 'Black Monitor 2', and 'Black Monitor 3', after images of the beautifully designed and crafted Dell 2702WFP monitor, and then the new Dell CES Concept design emerged? Both portray exceptional quality of material, and design, and both look fitting to suit a modernized, unique environment. Until we get confirmation that the concept is actually going ahead though, we'll be left experiment with 2707WFP, seeing how far we can push it till it cracks.
And that's about it... If you'd like to check out the afformentioned 'Black Box' range, check out the horrific designs on Google. A simple search should reveal the most shocking results. Check it. It's a CRT! =O
Image ironically hosted by Dell. And yes. I hotlinked. Thanks lads!
10 layer HD media? Yes ladies and gentlemen, we have it, and we owe it all to Ritek. Available in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray flavours, these delicious discs offer up to 250GB of storage... Not bad a for a few inches of... Well... Whatever these new fangled discs are constructed out of. Who knows... Perhaps corn? Back to the point, Ritek have really pulled a rabbit out of the hat with this one.
According to Engadget, we should all go and "Forget single-layer media, that dual-layer stuff that was all the rage last year, and even the triple-layered discs that got announced just days ago." Sourced from Engadget.
The Blackberry Pearl was one of the most celebrated gadgets of 2006. TMobile have finally done us the favour of leaking some pictures of what the white version will look like. I have to admit, not what I was expecting, but spiffy none-the-less. The white pearl just doesn't seem the same to me though... I'm sticking with the black one, until the iPhone of course.
The Nintendo Wii is taken for a spin and made portable... Now you can play your Wii on your DS! If your TV gets broken by a flying remote or something... Hmph.
At least you could do it, if the guys showed you how. No matter, someone is bound to post a video on YouTube, which will inevitably get Dugg by 2000 people who'll never end up carrying out the hack. Weird. Sourced from Technabob.
The iPhone is still hitting the headlines, and now, thanks to CBS News, we can present to you a world-exclusive video of the beautiful device in action.
With over 725,000 views already, this thing is showing how hot it is! Sourced from Technabob.
One US dude goes a little over the top... I like the way he decided to use the metaphor, but it sounds like he spent a little too much time thinking up this one.
Two versions of this video were available on YouTube. Both had pathetic self-advertising promotions at the end. This one was shorter. Enjoy!
Not much to say about this really, except that my good friend, Mark Seremet has, landed himself over $50,000,000 for his startup, Wallhogs, which I reviewed on Profy not all that long ago! Check the deal info... All I can say is that Mark is one smart guy!
He sold his startup for the worth of a quarter of Digg's value. Mark, you never cease to amaze me! Who is Mark? Well, founder of Take Two Interactive. The people who created the legendary Elder Scrolls, and Grand Theft Auto series. You know what I'm talking about now.
Anyhow, Mark was one of the two $500 donators in the Techzi Fundraiser, held the other day. More info on that coming soon... In the mean-time, cheers mate, and good luck!
UPDATE: I feel rather stupid... Wallhogs wasn't sold at all. =P
R2D2, perhaps one of Star Wars most loved characters, has just made his big break in the Gadget world. Though it's likely that only die-hard Star Wars fans (I'm looking at you Chris!) will want to pay over the odds for this home entertainment thing, I can see it making the top 20 wackiest Gadgets '07 this year.
All that said, it's not that wacky when you compare it to little wooden nuns, who when thrown at walls, sing songs, but there you have it. So what can this fella do? Well, slot in a DVD, and R2 will project the movie (80" 'n' all!) onto a surface of your choice. No widescreen though. Bummer, 'eh?
What else though? Well, for starters, an iPod docking station, a USB 2.0 connector and wirelesss FM audio are just a few other features that lil' old R2 packs in. Of course, as Ubergizmo point out, $2500 could be better spent buying a 32" HDTV (Here in the UK, you can get yourself a 42" for the same price! =O), a hybrid BluRay/HD-DVD player and an iPod dock, for much less.
Of course, doubling as a hoover would have given it that little bit extra, but heck. No hoover.
Specifications: • Image Sensor:LCoS • Resolution: 800 x 600 • Brightness: 1200 lumens • Contrast Ratio: 500 to 1 • Aspect Ratio: 4:3 • Signal: S-Video/Composite • Memory Slots: SD/MMC, Memory Stick, Smart Media • iPod compatibilitiy: iPod 3G, 4G, 5G, mini, photo • Millenium Falcon remote control included
So like we said... No hoover. UPDATE: Sorry... You Americans didn't know what a 'hoover' was. Mad! A Vacuum Cleaner!?! Still not making sense? Try Wikipedia.
Don't get me wrong, there's been plenty of things to write about today, but I've been very busy.
So I just had to go and pick the tackiest thing of the bunch. Ubergizmo noticed some truly hideous designs over at CES, and posted a few of them on their blog. Admittedly, I'm rather fond of the one below, but the sequin studded 'girly keyboard', the tacky plastic 'camouflage keyboard' and the plastic wood keyboard really did fail to impress.
No word on who made these yet though, just a handful of 'creative Chinese designers'. Go figure...
Dell have done a rather nice little package here, hiring professional airbrush artist Mike Lavalee, and commissioning him to create two unique masterpieces. The two Dell XPS M1710 laptop's will bear WoW's two new race's the Blood Elves and the Drainei, handbrushed by none other than the Lavalee artist him self.
The money raised through the auctions, will go to benefit World Harvest, a humanitarian relief agency.
The WoW Burning Crusade Expansion pack launches on the 16th January. Stay tuned! It'll be interesting to see if one of these lappies sells for more than my house is worth.
Due to the nature of the auction, expect it to soar way into the high thousands, into the high hundred thousands if Dell get lucky. Afterall, what sells better than anything WoW related now a days? We're all obsessed.
I'm not in the habit of writing negative reviews, but if Sony absolutely had to launch a Gold coloured PSP, couldn't they at least make it look decent? Instead, we have the same old shell, made tacky by the cheap gold finish. Pity really...
I wish I could have made it to MacWorld 2007, or CES for that matter, but of course, with school 'n' all, I couldn't make it, much to my disappointment. No matter though, for the good ol' Internet has kept me as well-informed as anything as to what's been going on. Who stole the show? No surprises... Apple, with their iPhone! You didn't know? Well, if the 101 fake leaked pictures hadn't already suggested, the iPhone is a touchscreen wonder, that is currently topping my Feb 15 Birthday list. At least it would be, but in Europe this beauty has a launch date of Q4. Elsewhere it's June... So unfortunately, not for my birthday.
With the iPhone, along came a tiny Bluetooth headset, which looks set to outsell the Microsoft Zune within it's first 48 hours of launch. That said, before Apple went and stole the show with MacWorld, Bill Gates didn't do an all that bad job of delivering a keynote speech to thousands of tech-hungry ravenous press vultures and ProBloggers alike at CES.
Moving back to the iPhone though... What do we know so far? It has spiffy looks (Just check those pictures!), it has a spiffy OS, (OS X to be precise! WOW!), and a whole tonne of spiffy specifications to accompany the spiffyness. What am I on about? A 11.6 MM device... (That's thin by the way... VERY thin!) with a 3.5" touchscreen (WOW!), up to 8GB of storage (Can I christen this thing the king of all things ubery?), automatically engaging WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 mega-pixel camera, quad band GSM radio with EDGE, and of course, only the best Internet connection going!
For those of you wondering, Job's iPhone's number is 408-996-1010, or so the big screen behind him at the conference said... Visual Voicemail is another cool feature that caught my eye, along with the menu system on the phone. Why do I bother mentioning it? You know what Apple are capable of, and they've delivered alright! The calls section somewhat reminds me of the latest Skype interface, except it looks far more polished and professional.
Widgets on a phone! How cool? Very self-explanatory though. Apple have chosen to partner with Yahoo! Widgets on this one, (Previously Konfabulator if my memory serves.) In-built Google Maps. Does this mean GPS? Safari web browser? Dude! This is sweet stuff, combined with full, rich-HTML e-mail.
Built in Yahoo! Mail too. Free 'push' IMAP e-mail. Why not GMail? Well, perhaps it might have been, had Google simply stripped the service of it's beta tag.
Who made a surprise appearance this time? No, not a rock singer, but Google CEO, Dr Eric Schmidt. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! also made an appearance. It's unclear to what extent the two rival search companies collaborated on this project, but I'm guessing it can only be good news. Both search companies may have had chance to discuss more unified methods of refined searching. Let's What for the Yahoogle! launch any day.
Oh... And Apple Computers Inc are no more. Now to be known simply as Apple Inc! This phone is state of the art. Forget Samsung. Forget Sony. Forget Blackberry. (Could it be? *GASP!*) If any one company wants to compete with Apple, they seriously have their work cut out. Apple are brilliant. Design. Power. Simplicity. Apple my friends, are the future.
I was going to refrain from blogging this one, till I came across I day when there was nothing to write about. But with iPhones and such, it doesn't seem that this day will be coming anytime soon, so here it is. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, A Whole Lotta Nothing! Courtesy of bLaugh. As per usual. :D
One thing that really is annoying me, is the use of the GoDaddy logo everywhere on the bLaugh comics these days. Oh well, I can live with them, if only for the sake of a little bit of fun. But thanks to Google's magical, mystical choosing powers, they partnered me up with eNom for the registration of Techzi.net - How thoughtful of them.
It's that time of year that just seems to catch you by surprise, and be one of the most hectic times ever. This year, with mountains of homework, the re-launch of WP Techzi (http://www.techzi.net), Google down-time, and a whole host of other things... It's also the time of year again, where I like to burn money in the sales, and this year I've been looking at Computers. With the money I've accumulated from blogging these past few months, I reckon I can get myself a pretty decent PC with the money I've got, and when I heard about the HP Supa-dupa Touchsmart Ultra PC Thingy-Ma-Bob, I just couldn't look away.
I'm not one for pre-built PCs. I like to customize my own PCs to meet my standards and specification, but as a second PC, or not a PC I'd use for simulating nuclear explosions at any rate, the HP looks about as good as they get!
"The TouchSmart IQ770, features a fast, dual-core AMD Turion 64-X2 TL-52 CPU, 2GB of DDR RAM, a 320 GB hard drive and a SuperMulti DVD burner with LightScribe capability. The system comes with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed. Also included are a wireless keyboard and mouse, and built in WiFi and Bluetooth network interfaces."
That's not bad at all for an all-in-one, but of course, we have seen better. Not by all that much though, and like I said, if you're not planning on doing some heavy video encoding or nuke simulations, you should be alright for a while on this rig.
"The TouchSmart’s robust media capabilities include NTSC and ATSC tuners for both standard and high-definition (yay!) over-the-air television broadcasts. But the real unique feature of the show is the touch-sensitive 19-inch widescreen LCD screen (1440 x 900 resolution). This allows many of the features of the TouchSmart to be controlled without a mouse or keyboard. The system also integrates a 1.3 megapixel web cam, microphone, stereo speakers, and an 8-in-1 memory card reader."
Okay... I know what you're thinking. But 19" is tiny! Yeah? Well this thing packs enough HD punch anyway to make up for a slightly smaller screensize. With all the extra nifty features packed in, I'm seriously considering buying the Touchsmart. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to competitiveness of pricing. I do like the idea of a touchscreen PC though... Perhaps I can see if anyone can get me a prototype model. =D
This will be a turn-around for the record books. But it's all fixed I tell you! All of it! But really... How can this be?
Sony's SIXAXIS controller, which caused quite a stir in the gaming world, not because of it's "sheer ingenious", but because it actually sucked, has gone and landed itself an Emmy for Technology and Engineering. Sure... It takes alot to stick a label on a PS2 controller and declare it next-gen, but what were they thinking?
I dunno, but it's obvious from the press coverage that Sony pulled some pretty big strings to land themselves this one. Perhaps the Press Release actually meant 'Wii Mote', not 'SIXAXIS', and 'Nintendo', not 'Sony'. It's a mistake easy enough to make... Apart from the fact one technology clearly sucks, whilst the other does not.
As a Wii-user, and having tried the SIXAXIS, I can tell you which one is more deserving of an Emmy, no doubt about it. It took my mate Chris over 16 hours to drag me off Wii Sports. This whole thing is whacked up. Will CES go the same way as E3? We hope not... But Engadget are sharing our view on this one.
Blu Ray v2. No, it's not called HD-DVD, but is actually codenamed 'Sapphire'. Unfortunately, they were only given the most brief of mentions at Sony's CES Press Conference, and we're hoping to find out more juicy details soon.
All we do know is that the two current models are reported to have some pretty fancy-sounding features, that will hopefully include a better loading time. According to Engadget:
"Named Sapphire 1 and 2, we don't know what makes them different from each other, but the only features listed are 1080p24 output, and support for x.v.Color, Sony's term for the xvYCC expanded color space."
So I'll just go with them on that one. It will be interesting to see what new features they both incorporate, because without some slightly more impressive stats, I see no reason to particularly favour these beasts yet. Of course, one year on from now, at the beginning of 2008, we'll all be using BLU-HD-RAY-DVDs and be running them on Tri-boot systems with Mac Os X, Windows Vista, and whatever spiffy open source OS Linux can throw at us by then.
I'm proud to have a Timo Heuer, a Web 2.0 journalist with us here on Techzi today. You may be seeing a bit mor eof Timo in the coming weeks, along with the relaunch of Techzi, and a few other fresh faces.
I've invited Timo in, to ask him to talk in-depth about Web 2.0, him, and Web 2.0 in Germany. I'd imagine the aspects and opinions on the matter would be rather different, but was I right?
Timo. Tell my readers a bit about yourself, and how you got into the exciting Web 2.0 arena.
My name is Timo Heuer and I am a German 15 year old blogger. I think blogging brought me into the Web 2.0 scene, how I call it. I'm very active in the German Web 2.0 scene and know many people - it's very nice to chat to them. At the moment I'm doing some several things... Of course, I have my weblog (http://heuer.sajonara.de) and I do some journalistic things like writing for the Readers Edition as a citizen journalist. That's a German project recently sold. And I'm advisor of some Web 2.0 applications: Vagabund.biz for example. It's a service I call "Social Yellow Pages". You can write reviews about restaurants, attractions etc. There are strong competitors like Qype in Germany and Yelp international, but I think Vagabund has some cool new functionalities. I call myself a Web 2.0 guy. In the future I hope to do some investments in new start-ups. My only investment right now is an investment fund for new energy.
That's cool. I asked you here today to talk about Web 2.0, because you're closer to my age than most of the other Web 2.0 experts out there. As a 15-year old, you must have some pretty different views on Web 2.0, online media and such. What do you think the future of the net lies in?
I have two visions, how the world can look in the future. The first is, that Web 2.0 is only a bubble. An argument against that is, that there are not many companies who go to stock exchange. And the big companies like Google and Yahoo! understand their mistakes in the New Economy and adapt. But there are also some arguments for a bubble Web 2.0. Most of the start-ups don't have a massive business model, such as YouTube. But if Web 2.0 is not a bubble, and I'm supporter of that statement, we will have a Web 3.0. I think Jajah and Jaxtr and the things they do will be very important in Web 3.0. But also Creative Commons and general Open Source will be very significant for the Web 3.0.
That's very true. We've seen Creative Commons massive effect on the blogosphere. It will most certainly be interesting to see how it shapes in future years. So tell everyone Timo, what blogs do you author, and how long have you been blogging?
I began blogging in April 2006, I think. Maybe earlier, but there are no sources for finding out. My first post was in my native language though. German. I switched to the English language after a few months, and have recently relaunched my blog again in German, closing the old one. I closed the old one... Furthermore I am at some other weblogs: Readers Edition and Sajonara, both in German.
I gather you've given quite a few Web 2.0 speeches in the past. What did you talk about, and can you briefly summarize it all?
The speech you refered is only available on video. It was about tagging and how would it looks like when you'd use it in the reality. It was quite complicated, so I won't go into it now, but yes. I have given Web 2.0 speeches before, as well as advice services.
What Web 2.0 services are you using now on a regular basis?
Tonnes (full list here). The most common I use though are: iKarma: http://www.ikarma.com/user/THeuer Jaiku: http://theuer.jaiku.com/ Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/upim/ MyBlogLog: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/upim/ Sevenload: http://sevenload.de/mitglieder/THeuer Vagabund: http://www.vagabund.biz/people/THeuer.html Viddler: http://www.viddler.com/explore/upim/ And many others...
Are there any German start-ups that you think will do well in coming years, and possibly expand further out, into Europe and beyond?
There is XING. It's like LinkedIn but more popular in Germany. I'm not allowed to make an account there, because I'm too young... But I think it has a great future. Then there is Sevenload, a video sharing site recently available for international. And of course there is Plazes.com, who describle themselfs "Plazes adds physical presence to the web. The Plazes website automatically detects your location and connects you to people and places nearby. See people in your area, discover other locations and follow the whereabouts of your friends." I know some other start-ups, but they are not from Germany. One is called Viddler. I think it's much better than YouTube. In the future it will make you able to add subtitles, although your video is already uploaded. That's a nice feature.
Yes... I reviewed Viddler a few weeks back. Anyhow. It's been great to have you here Timo. Thanks for that!
And there you have it. The 15-year old super-kid, Timo Heuer.
In a leaked memo from Mercury News, it has been revealed that Dean Takahashi can confirm the existence of an HDMI Xbox 360, with a whopping 120GB HDD included! Since the accidental leaking of the memo, it has been removed, as has the post on Team Xbox with a link to the article. How long will it be before Gizmodo are forced to remove it? How long before I have to remove it? According to Gizmodo, "Dean also talks about the use of the Xbox 360 as an IPTV set-top-box. The leak says Microsoft's IPTV services will have instant channel change, multiple picture-in-picture, broadcast shows, video on demand, and DVR functionality—gotta use those 120GB for more than just trailers."
So now we're looking at IPTV capale, fully equipped 120GB, HD-DVD wielding HDMI beasts? Wow... Microsoft did screw early adopters like myself. This kind of sucks... And stinks.
It just goes to show that CES is full of surprises. Despite the fact it's not even begun! This year some rather mad things could come up. In the other nights conference call with Gadgetell, we had a little joke over a Sony Car. Interesting to see if anything thatdifferent will in deed come up. Rumours are flying thick and fast. The photo you see above could very well have been a quickly snapped photoshop job though, for all we know. If The Xbox 360 v2 does indeed hit the shelves, I'll be expecting Microsoft to, at the very least, offer me a $200 off coupon.
I'm proud to announce a new guest blogger, here at Techzi. It's a face that many of you from the wonderful world of programming may know. Either that or you've noticed he's been featured on Robert Scoble's blog multiple times.
Who am I talking about? Yuvi Panda of course! He's an Indian blogger, who's an amazing programmer. He's the world's youngest MSP, and is an exceptionally talented blogger. It's a privelidge to have him here with us. I'll let him introduce himself in a later post, but for now, I'd like to present my product review of ChipIn. It's been written for Profy.com and is currently in moderation. Let me know what you guys think, okay? Here goes...
I just made $1000 in fifteen minutes using a startup that I’d never even heard of. I’m so glad that I stumbled across the little startup, because not only that, but it’s empowered me to do so much more. With the money, I’ve even managed to get my own domain name, Techzi.net! I was trialling ChipIn, in the hope that it would be suitable for a product review on Profy, and boy, it is. ChipIn is a very simple tool that lets you, the end user, collect large amounts of money for say, a ‘fund raising drive’. Just fill in the necessary information (e.g. PayPal e-mail/cheque information) and off you go!
Once you’re logged in for the first time, you’ll be presented with a page which ChipIn calls the ‘Dashboard’. The dashboard is the homepage for your ChipIn account, and lets you control everything to do with your account, from there directly.
You can create a new ChipIn project, update an existing one, claim your cash (if you chose to be paid via Cheque) and modify your existing settings. Whether it be your password, e-mail address, payment method, profile image or organization name (optional).
A second page, called My ChipIns, shows an analysis of all of your current ChipIn projects. For example, at the time of writing, the details that show up on this page for my fund above, include the percentage of my target donated, (29%), the name of my ChipIn, date the ChipIn is set to end (optional), amount raised, ($1,478), number of contributors (17) and quick links and options related to the ChipIn (Edit, end, view & update).
The third page, ‘My Widgets’, lets you quickly create a widget for any existing ChipIn project. Pick which fund you want proceeds to go to, a title, some information, which widget type you’d like to use, and a custom colour.
But how would I go about making a page then? Well, it’s really simple. Go back to your dashboard, accessible from the navigation tab at the top, and click the ‘Start A New ChipIn’ button. You’ll be required to input ‘What you are collecting for’, ‘The amount you’d like to raise’ (optional), ‘The date you need it by’ (optional) and how you’d like to collect funds. Choose PayPal or cheque from a dropdown box. Click the big orange button emblazoned ‘Start Your Event’, and off you go!
It’s as simple as that! And you never know if people may deem your cause blogworthy. I know from experience, that you can sincerely boost your donations if you do get a mention on a blog. By me on Profy.
Waterjets.org have pulled out all the stops in their latest project, embarking on a new generation of Modding & Gaming. In the two photos below you can see some of the mods that the team there had produced. Who needs laser cutting, when you can have a water cut this clean and this powerful? The Xbox logos are clean as could be, and the case isn't looking all that shabby either.
But why attack the beloved 360? Who cares. There are 10,000,000 others out there to keep us guys content. Anyhow, it was only a prototype testing model.
For those of you who actually wanted to know, the machine doing the dirtywork on these machines was the high-powered OMAX 2652. Just thought it was some pretty skilled craftsmanship. No other reason for posting here.
They must have known I'd only want the best. (Catch the sarcasm?) The Wordpress team have been busy these past few days, finishing off their Wordpress 2.0.6 release, and finally it's ready. It's classed as an 'Important Release', meaning that for security reasons, it's highly advised. So what's new? According to the WP.org Dev Blog...
* Security fixes, sealing various known bugs. * HTML quicktags now work in Safari browsers. * Comments are filtered to prevent them from messing up your blog layout. * Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.
For developers, there’s a new anti-XSS function called attribute_escape(), and a new filter called “query” which allows you filter any SQL at runtime. (Which is pretty powerful stuff!)
On the WP.org blog, they also announced that this was most likely the last release before WP 2.1 is released. If you're that desparate for it though, head over to the Beta Zone at WP and see what you can work out with the team there.
Simply move your hand under the light, and voila! Instant XRays. Very clever stuff.
I don't suppose anyone is going to enlighten me as to how this thing works?
UPDATE: According to some commenter on Digg, it's all done with fancy real-time infra-red absorption. Whatever that is... Here's a video which shows you what it is. Much better than my rants.
Woah... Cool stuff! My Alexa ranking has soared dramatically over the past few days, and now our re-direction URL (http://www.tech.co.nr), has an incredible daily ranking of 8,361, with an estimated reach of 290,000,000! In the rankings, this puts Techzi WAY ahead of most of the other blogs out there, including the Yuvisense blog. Stay tuned. Yuvi and me may have some rather interesting joint announcements to make soon. But anyway, the fact I am only just shy of Robert Scoble's Alexa ranking for today, is big stuff! Of course, I've already seen my number of hits dropping, but I'm confident that we can do well here. We've got a unique angle on a very popular topic. Why shouldn't people come and stay? We beat Robert's daily reach by 45,000,000 anyway, so that's made my day! Here's some graphs to content you for now anyhow.
Click for bigger pictures.
And of course, my all time favourite. Something that I'll treasure forever... The moment I beat Scoble!
And I owe it all to just a few people... Darren Rowse particularly! Cheers mate! It just goes to show what can happen when one big blog mentions you. A hundred and one others pick up on it, with more picking up on that. I'm pretty sure that if I was on my own servers when this ProBlogger Effect had kicked in, they would have crashed. Heck, let's hope they hold up once they go live. For those of you who said I wouldn't need to buy a server, if I get traffic anything close to what I got yesterday and today (TONNES!), then trust me. I will!
A rather funny little comic that I ran into over at bLaugh.
I'm kinda worried that my CV/resume will end up looking something like this by the time I'm 18, and looking for a real world job. But hey, who knows? I might never make it away from my monitor. Within 10 years time, I believe blogging will become a part of our lives so much anyway, it'll most certainly be a respected career path, and it's quite possible that University's will be offering causes and diplomas in 'Blogging'.
Yesterday, I told you about a 300 Terabyte HDD that Seagate are planning to launch in the not-so-distant future. But if I told you that by the end of this quarter we could be seeing mass production of 1TB HDDs, would you believe me?
Well, after Seagate's huge success with their 750GB HDD that was launched a few months back, it appears that Hitachi are desparate to get in on the action and cut themselves a slice of the profits.
It's incredible what a 3.5" HDD can pack into it now-a-days (and how much they cost)! According to news agencies, the hard-drive will be called the Deskstar 7K1000 and will ship at an estimated cost of $400 (£200). 40 cents a Gigabyte (20 pence per GB) isn't all that bad on the bang for buck ratio, and I'm seriously consider getting one of these when they launch. Perpendicular recording is something that Hitachi have never ventured into, and it will be interesting to see if it pays off. I can imagine alot of people who do mass video encoding could find a use for a HDD of this size. Of course, if you're an audio file, then you can cram a quarter of a million MP3s on instead. It's up to you. Sourced from Com.
Watch this space... I'll keep you updated. But we've acquired the domain Techzi.net! Out with the old, and in with the new, heh? This is all down to the generosity of you guy's donations! You'll get the credit you deserve.
You've probably seen this before and just fobbed it off with excuses. I don't blame you, for about 20 quid normally, you wouldn't buy it, but would you buy it for a fiver?
Read on then! It's quite amusing to see it moving, by using your computer. Even though I don't own an office, its entertaining to use it, and to watch it shoot everybody down with the click of a finger. You simply install the software on a disc, using the program, you can use the computer's on-screen control pad to operate the workings on the missile launcher. Delta wrote a review about this ages ago, but I got myself one too, but for alot cheaper than he paid. I love it's simplicity. Plug and play! Oh... After the install of course. Go get one now! Only £5 ($10) from your local M&S if they still have stock. If they're not in stock, you know why.
The excitingly named ISSCC 2007 (The International Solid State Circuits Conference) looks like some very interesting things are scheduled for the conference this year. After ArsTechnica and CNET both reported some very interesting things were going on in the CPU world, I thought I'd check it out. Intel are due to give a talk about their 80 core prototype 'Terascale' processor this February at the conference.
IBM - Power 6
It also seems that IBM have some new announcements to make about their POWER6 project.
"The POWER6TM microprocessor combines ultra-high frequency operation, aggressive power reduction, a highly scalable memory subsystem, and mainframe-like reliability, availability, and serviceability. The 341mm2 700M transistor dual-core microprocessor is fabricated in a 65nm SOI process with 10 levels of low-k copper interconnect. It operates at clock frequencies over 5GHz in high-performance applications, and consumes under 100W in power-sensitive applications."
From that, we can tell that we're looking at something pretty impressive, but it's a pity that they didn't exactly tell us anything new. Just the same old info that we'd already heard.
AMD - Quad Core Opteron
AMD are set to make an announcement that will appeal massively to hardcore PC enthusiasts too. There infamously overclockable Opteron CPU is reported to get a quad core makeover. When overclocked, it will be very interesting to see how it pairs up against Intel's Core 2 offerings.
If you thought Seagate Barracuda's 7200.10 750GB HDD was big, then this is going to blow you away! According to iTWire...
"Just in time be installed in the PS4, an Xbox 720, the Wii Wii, a TiVo for masses of HDTV recording, a computer running the successor to Vista or Mac OS X, Seagate wants you to store it all on a massive 300 TB hard drive."
No typo. Incredible as it may seem, by 2010, Seagate have predicted that each single square inch of the platter will be able to store a mindblowing 50TB. So what does this mean? In uncompressed format, you can store the entire Libary Of Congress on a single disc, and still have room for a couple of HD Movies. How does it work? Well, holographic storage is rumoured to play a big role. I know I'm supposed to be a Geek, or as 'A Day In The Life' kindly put it, a cutey, but I've never heard of holo-storage.
Can you imagine trying to do a full disc defrag on this baby? It takes long enough on the Seagate Barracuda 750GB... So I can tell you that I'm not looking forward to a massive 10-day wait whilst in moves my blocks of data into the right places.
I'm not even going to speculate on the price of something like this. There would really be little point. Technology will have advanced by '010, I couldn't get even close. But something that can store the equivalent of 6144 50GB Blu-Ray discs is pretty impressive stuff! That said, I can't imagine it being terribly cheap. Now we just need a Terabyte USB stick, so we can make Windows Vista Readyboost worth it's chips.
The last 24 hours have completely changed my way of thinking. Lots of incredible things have happened, that have made me think hard about what I'm trying to do with the blog.
I'd been working on a Wordpress layout for the blog for ages, (which is no where near ready!) and I thought that I'd launch a fund so that this blog could move over to Wordpress. I was expecting nothing. Maybe at most $5, or $10. Guess what? $1418 and counting! That's $401 just while I was sleeping.
I'd like to clear a few things up in this blog post though.
I astonished that tonnes of you think I'm a fraud... A fake. You say I'm not 12! I'm not sure whether to feel pleased at this or angry. I work my butt off, and what do I get? People claiming my Dad wrote all this stuff. Wanna know something? My Dad doesn't even know what Web 2.0 is! That said, neither do I... Does Web 2.0 have a definitive definition? Okay, he knows about technology, computers, programming and stuff, but I write everything on this blog. I don't have help writing it. This is all unique content written by me. This is not some "well planned scheme", a "scam", a "". I can't actually say I blame most of you though. I too would be suspicious.
Why do we need $5000? You're all asking that. Why $5000? We don't. We need about $3000 to pay for a couple of years of quality hosting, and a domain name. We need some more money however, to hire some freelancers to have a go over our new Techzi layour I've been working on. There are some problems, that for the life of me, I can't see what they are. Maybe it's because I'm not an expert at CSS, but I'm stumped, and although my Dad my be an expert in Java, he doesn't know CSS. He knows XHTML (He taught me!) and Javascript (Which I've never even attempted.)
Any excess money, will simply go into any extra costs we may run into. We'd like to buy ourselves some spiffy monitoring software called mint, and we'd like to hold a few competitions on the site, offering monetary prizes, if there's any money left over at the end.
So why am I not paying with it with my money I earn from blogging on other sites? With the money I earn from working at Profy, and a few other blogs, I'm savign up to buy myself a good new PC. They're not cheap you know! Anyhow, this blog isn't just mine anyway, even if I have written 99.6% of the posts here.
Any more questions? This might be suicidal, but here is my e-mail: wilki . david [at] googlemail . com - and please... No spam. No flame rants (I woke up to 64 this morning... Thanks you guys!)
In other news, the leaderboards have been updated. More coming soon. I'll publish them too.
I've never spoken like this on my blog, but... DUDE!
I've just received a VERY large donation to my ChipIn fund. $500! Far beyond anything I'd expected to get! It's all down to my good friend Mark Seremet from Repliqa.com!
Good grief... This is NOT a joke. I've just received (as I write this!) another donation of $500. This one from my other close friend, Michael Cheney! This is mad... This is superb!
Perhaps we're being overly-optimistic, we don't know. But here at Techzi, we've gone on a fund-raiser drive, to help us to launch the brand-new website that I was promising! You can check out the fundraiser page at ChipIn for more information, and to donate.
Here's some basic information you need to know before you donate...
My name is David Wilkinson, and I'm founder of tech news website, Techzi. The blog is great, and I've got my two friends, Timothy and Caitlin helping me out with it at the moment.
But truth be told, Blogger sucks at the moment. At Techzi, we're looking to buy a server and get our very own domain name, so we can run Wordpress, the spiffy blog tool that is rocking this planet. To do this, we need your help.
Being 12, it'd be hard for me to earn enough money to buy a decent server. Caitlin, also 12, wouldn't stand a chance either. And 11 year old Timmy has only about enough for a packet of fruit pastels. Hence, we run into a big fat problem.
Will you rise to the challenge and donate? Why would you want to?
Well, on the new site, a special page will be created, on which, each and every one of you donators will have your name listed, and if you wish, a link to your website.
Whether you donate $0.01 or $1000, you'll get a link back. The more you donate, the higher up on the page you'll be listed.
The link will stay there for all of eternity... (aka. the whole time the site is up!)
What will the money go to? For starters, monthly hosting fees and a domain name. A small portion will go into ironing out the cracks in our new layout, something which is completely different from the current, tacky layout.
Timothy has seen a bit of it, and he was very impressed, 'Just like a professional blog now are we?' was his first impression.
The amount needed is larger than most of you have claimed, and yes. It is. But it will pay for quite a long time hosting, I think you'll agree.
Either that, or we'll buy our own server with the money raised and host it from home. My parents best not mind the electricity bills though! MUHAHAHA!
Anyhow, if you feel like donating, go right ahead!
The drive ends on the 24th of July. The blog's first birthday!
UPDATE: It's not been long running yet, but I've already received my first donation! $7 from Sunil Varma, of SunilVarma.com! Nice going!
UPDATE: My good friend and fellow Blogger, Colbert Low has joined in too, with a generous donation of $10! The current total stands at $17!
UPDATE: Pooey. Gmail is down. Hopefully not for long! I'll find out if any more of you have kicked the new year off with a bang. In the mean-time, things are looking good!
Fellow blogger Ben, from OpenSwitch, had some spare time over the festive season, and made himself a rather snazzy Ubuntu Linux mousemat, emblazoned with the trademark phrase, 'Linux for human beings'.
Very spiffy, I think you'll agree. Nice one Ben! Who else noticed that he's using a Microsoft mouse and keyboard though?
Introducing, 'The Anchor' the next best thing if you can't get yoruself a KNEX scale model of the 'Empire State Building'. Designed, named and created by Timothy Williams, our very own special reporter. I'll let him explain more. It's pretty impressive stuff!
Timmy enters the building.
Hello! I have entered the building! I would like to state that this structure has fallen many times and nobody has been harmed. This structure's main feature is the lighting at the top. It's a pity K'NEX haven't made a set which is completely lit. That would be the cooler than being 500 odd meters up in New York. At approximately 7ft 2" it is pretty towering. Perhaps we could make it taller? We'll just have to wait and see! PowerPoint Presentation coming soon
Using the fancy new KNEX lighting kits, I've busied myself this holiday building that impressive structure and random creatures, which have cool 'Glow In The Dark' sticks too. I got this from New York City while I was over there, and may I say, it rocks?
UPDATE!!!!: We have officially hit approximately 8ft 6"
Lego. Ever so customizable, but with the next-gen Lego Mindstorms kit, 'customizable' just got a totally new defenition. Lego redefined. And so, why not make my first post for Gadgetell about it?
Recently, Lego has been trying their very best to appeal to the geeky crowd, as we’ve seen with their fantastic Lego Mindstorms set. But it seems that some fans were unimpressed, and took matters into their own hands.
We’ve already seen the incredible feats that can be performed with the newest Mindstorms NXT packages, but did you know that you can open up a bottle of beer using these spiffy little packs? It seems so as in this video above, you can see the home-built Lego beer opener. The device is slightly larger than conventional openers, and is also a lot slower. But this kind of enthusiasm could give birth to a whole new generation of home-created Lego devices. What next? Let your imagination decide…
January 1 - 2007. Wow. I'd just like to start by saying a big happy new year to all of you readers out there, and that it's nice to have you back, bright and early, readying yourselves for a new year. What are your new years resolutions going to consist of? I've not done mine yet, but when I have, I'll share the ones I think might be interesting enough for you guys to stomach. It's painful stuff, I know.
2006 was a big year for me though. I got into blogging, Web 2.0, and dug alot deeper into the Internet than I ever thought I'd get. I've made some pretty cool friends along the way, and I'd like to begin this year by thanking Colbert Low, for everything he's done for me. Without him, I wouldn't be working at Profy, I wouldn't have made half the contacts I have, and I probably would have ended up ditching this blog as a lost cause a long, long time ago.
But over at Profy, I wrote a review of 2006, and the way Web 2.0 has influenced our lives this past year. It's no up yet on Profy, but I'll post a bit of it here. It's not all of it, and I've missed out the bits about media and virality, but I'll post them at a later date, once the post goes up.
There’s no doubt about it, Web 2.0 has dramatically changed the way all of us interact in our daily lives, whether on the net or off. So what sort of things have we seen in the past year that have really made a massive difference online? Well, Web 2.0 has come out in the masses, flinging open new doors and allowing for mass communities to connect.
Social Networking
The likes of MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Facebook, MyBlogLog, LinkedIn and several other major networking websites have taken the world by storm. There’s no doubt that social networking is very popular, particularly amongst younger people. According to Alexa, MySpace is the world’s 5th most visited website. The thing is, social networking shows no sign of stopping, as within the last three months, MySpace has seen a 9% rise in visitors, that shows no sign of stopping.
But why has it all been so succesful? Well, here, I believe we’re going back to one of the so-called ‘principles’ of Web 2.0. Community, something that social networking relies on. The heart of ’social’, is community.
Social Bookmarking
Many major social networking websites have popped up, but there was no place for people to collectively share their favourite links and articles with the world. This is where social bookmarking came in. Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit are just a handful of the most popular bookmarking options open to people, made popular thanks to their ease of use. Many other startups have launched, aiming to mimic these bigger, more popular websites, all with no avail. Of course, how could I forget Slashdot? Slashdot is slightly different to the others. It’s a moderated system, that only shows the funnest, wackiest, weirdest, geeky, or most interesting technology related news to the masses. These cookmarking websites receive millions of hits each month, and many phrases have been coined to describe the effect that websites feel after being hit with the ‘Digg effect’ (Where a story is promoted to a front page, gets so many hits and crashes a server!) and the ‘Slashdot effect’, in which a story is published, and due to the sheer number of visitors it receives, the server collapses under the enormous strain of serving up a page to hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously.
Start Pages
Netvibes, Pageflakes and Goowy are perhaps the most innovative and popular start pages of the bunch. I personally don’t use a start page, but that’s my own preference. I know that world-wide, they’ve been massively popular, with streaming of feeds & news, instant access to e-mails, search, local weather forecasts, links to social bookmarking sites and more. Ironically as I write this post, Pageflakes is down for maintenance, but they promise to be ‘back within a few hours’.
Within the past month, start pages have expanded dramatically, pushing it ever further into the tangled net that is Web 2.0. Netvibes has become available in Greek, Turkish, Russian, Danish, Ukranian, Polish and Dutch. More new features have been popping up on all new start pages, and they’ve become so easy to use, that anyone can now use them, no specialized account needed.
Digg | Permalink | Posted by Davidat 4:39 PM.
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It seems like these photos have been around for years, but only now, have any of the big blogs got wind of this! Engadget are reporting on what they claim is 'quite possibly the most badass iPod case ever'.
R2D2, perhaps one of Star Wars most loved characters, has just made his big break in the Gadget world. Though it's likely that only die-hard Star Wars fans (I'm looking at you Chris!) will want to pay over the odds for this home entertainment thing, I can see it making the top 20 wackiest Gadgets '07 this year.
Dell have done a rather nice little package here, hiring professional airbrush artist Mike Lavalee, and commissioning him to create two unique masterpieces. The two Dell XPS M1710 laptop's will bear WoW's two new race's the Blood Elves and the Drainei, handbrushed by none other than the Lavalee artist him self.
Click on the spiffy picture to enlarge it...
This will be a turn-around for the record books. But it's all fixed I tell you! All of it! But really... How can this be?
Blu Ray v2. No, it's not called HD-DVD, but is actually codenamed 'Sapphire'. Unfortunately, they were only given the most brief of mentions at Sony's CES Press Conference, and we're hoping to find out more juicy details soon.
Yesterday, I told you about a 300 Terabyte HDD that Seagate are planning to launch in the not-so-distant future. But if I told you that by the end of this quarter we could be seeing mass production of 1TB HDDs, would you believe me?
