Victor's introduction to technology was the Apple ][ his dad bought in 1979. Since then he's used Amiga's, Commodore's, Tandy's, even a PC and a Mac or two. While his primary machine is an aging iBook, he also
uses a machine with a removable drive system. On "Frankencomp" he runs a little bit of everything, Windows (and all the variants via emulation), Linux (just a couple of distros for now), coming soon: OS X. Victor's background includes 3d animation and filmmaking, and a little bit of web development. He's also seen software from the inside-out, having had just a taste of programming. His favorite artifact: a cassette tape with Applesoft BASIC on it, copyright 1979, by Microsoft.
Victor Agreda, Jr. -
Victor's introduction to technology was the Apple ][ his dad bought in 1979. Since then he's used Amiga's, Commodore's, Tandy's, even a PC and a Mac or two. While his primary machine is an aging iBook, he also
uses a machine with a removable drive system. On "Frankencomp" he runs a little bit of everything, Windows (and all the variants via emulation), Linux (just a couple of distros for now), coming soon: OS X. Victor's background includes 3d animation and filmmaking, and a little bit of web development. He's also seen software from the inside-out, having had just a taste of programming. His favorite artifact: a cassette tape with Applesoft BASIC on it, copyright 1979, by Microsoft.
SXSW is a junction of film, music and interactive folks with the iF! trade show floor reflecting that eclectic mix. We found a healthy smattering of music booths, some film schools and lots of web app companies. Big booths included Sony, Mapquest, Opera, Yahoo and O'Reilly while smaller booths from Axiom, Kyte and AIM provided a smorgasbord of interactive wares. You can see the full list on the SXSW site or just peep our gallery for a virtual tour.
Trade show floors often take on a circus-like atmosphere, with booths doing what they can to lure you to their wares. At iF! the "cool thing" was Guitar Hero. We counted no less than four booths with the ubiquitous guitar controllers and LCD screens (even if they were often unmanned). One booth broke with tradition and had Rock Band. Brave, no?
Our money for Most Fun Demo is on Bitstrips, a killer app for making your own comic strips online. Imagine mixing Mii-creation tools with Comic Life and you get the idea. Lots of fun, diverse and powerful, and stupid simple to use. Most boring? Well, hard to say because by the time we hit the floor a few booth attendees had left, leaving their booths sitting there, dejected and stickerless.
Log into Gmail today and you might see big red warning about Greasemonkey scripts. For those of you keeping score, Google has been spiffing up Gmail over the past few weeks, including a nice code overhaul, colored labels, group chat and AIM capabilities. Oh, and the tasty IMAP. Now it appears some scripts have become such a nuisance that Google offers a chance to "fix this" which we declined. Unfortunately, their help files have no specific info on Greasemonkey, so once you've dismissed this warning there appears to be no going back. What the "fix this" button does do is recommend you upgrade to Better Gmail 2.
The point of this post is to provide a handy list of software for Palm OS devices because many free apps are now hard-to-find. Commercial apps aren't, but I'm a cheap, cheap man. Follow along as I save you a bundle on hardware and software that'll put a powerful gadget in your pocket.
I wound up with a Palm T|X from my little brother who bought himself an iPhone (and the subsequent snobbery that comes with). It's been years since I used a Palm regularly, and the last one I tried was a WristPDA but was so hopelessly out-of-date that I abandoned it for a real watch (you know, that won't short out in the rain). My first PDA was, in fact, a PalmPilot Pro and was branded from 3Com. Those were the days, when Palm and Apple's Newton stood and chuckled at the nascent Windows CE platform. My how times have changed. The Newton is long buried (but not exactly dead), and Palm is largely in freefall. Why they spun out their OS years ago is beyond me, and it certainly hasn't helped their software situation any. Where Palm apps of every stripe once flowed freely there is now but a trickle, and every day that trickle gets slighter while developers move on to more robust platforms.
Still, what amazes me is how great Palm hardware is, and how you can really do quite a bit with it-- if you know where to look. So I've distilled my own adventures in Palm down to one handy little guide, full of useful apps and tips to get you started. You can find a decent deal on ebay for nearly any modern color Palm too. Don't be afraid to buy a unit with dead battery and buy a replacement battery. Do be afraid to buy something monochrome and without Bluetooth. I find the T|X is a sweet spot-- no laggy hard drive like the LifeDrive, an SD slot, Bluetooth and WiFi, and the ability to go fullscreen and landscape. If you crave tiny, check out the smaller Tungstens that slide open. Currently you can get an opened T|X on ebay for less than $150.
When acquiring this little guy I had three primary needs: 1) PDF Reader 2) Image browser 3) Quick note capture with alarms
See what works and doesn't, plus all the cool extra things I found after the jump.
Pandora is a music discovery service we've covered before. It goes beyond "regular" internet radios, who largely base their taxonomy and discovery services on rather flat databases and sterile genre/artist/album nomenclature. At best, you might get web-based social suggestions, like what built MySpace and makes Virb sing. Pandora utilizes the research and ongoing classifications of the Music Genome Project to suggest songs similar to the ones you already enjoy.
The Music Genome project is a story in itself, but Pandora uses real, live musicians to dissect songs and analyze their pieces and parts, organizing that data in such a way that, frankly, makes it a little scary to use Pandora regularly. Once you "seed" a radio station with an artist (something you can try on their homepage for free without even registering), subsequent songs are based on the style of that original artist (and the random song chosen by Pandora from said artist). You can give a simple thumbs up or down to indicate your song preferences as each new song plays.
A provision in the DMCA allows Pandora to play these songs, almost every released song out there. They really make an effort to grab the long tail and most of their songs, once you start just listening, are not well-known. You can't rewind or even go back, due to the restrictions of the DMCA, but you can order the songs from Amazon or iTunes as you listen. All together, Pandora is a remarkable service for a "simple" internet radio service.
But a ruling from an obscure, 3-person panel from the Library of Congress threatens the existence of Pandora, and every other internet radio service out there. The plan from the Copyright Royalty Board is to increase the fees to internet radio operators so high that they will effectively be out of business. Paying $.0008 a song might not sound much, but if you consider the millions of songs per day served up by Pandora alone, it becomes a very large bill indeed.
There is an appeals process, and those threatened are taking action. However, it might require legislative action. Ultimately it is puzzling why the RIAA (proponents of the onerous charges) would threaten a nascent industry in such a way. What's to gain? Web radio has no doubt spurred online music purchases, much as the radio generated (and continues to generate) wads of dough for the music biz.
We sat down with Tim Westergren, the man behind the Genome Project, and the founder of Pandora. In our interview, Tim explains the basic situation, and where some logic might prevail (we hope).
Earlier this year we had a little contest where we gave away 3 shiny copies of Vista Ultimate. Our three lucky winners have had some time to bathe in the cooling waters of Vista, and this past week we heard back from two of them: AJ and Shannon. How did they feel about Vista?
AJ wrote: I must say, that eye candy just added another definition in the form of the snazzy aero effect and other visual goodies. But that's just where the sadness begins for me as I honestly couldn't find anything truly worth a "wow" factor in the functionality of the operating system compared to my MCE 2005. So much so that those totally in-your-face (or shall I say in Microsoft's face) TV commercials where one dude is the Vista and other Apple look like Simon Cowell-ish "brutally honest" 30 second reality shows. I got a kick out of the one where this Matrix-y bodyguard acts out Vista's new "Allow or Deny" function which truly starts treating your every move, pretty much, like you just poked a finger into a bubble boy's shell.
So for me, I give it lightning fast two thumbs down.
Shannon broke it down: Pros Eye candy-- in my opinion Windows Vista has a great look and feel, everything from the redesigned start button to the sidebar to the glass-like windows of the aero.
Integrated and instant search-- the redesigned start menu offers an instant search that allows you to find applications and files instantly I've found this to be an invaluable addition to windows.
Admit it, you're addicted to text-messaging, right? Well someone is, because lately I've been bombarded with ads proclaiming a national epidemic of texting and related fees. Won't someone think of the children! Well maybe someone has, or maybe all this is just silly. Why not send a bunch of text messages for free? I mean, that's what the web is all about, right? Free stuff? As in beer?
Katie over at GigaOM wrote up a neat little roundup of some free SMS tools you can use to send out for free. She points out the usual caveats: these services could be used for nefarious purposes (spam), and often it costs the recipient some cash to get a message. So use it wisely or wind up on some silly national TV ad.
Google's own announcement was an eloquent introduction to a mighty shot off the MS port bow. The reaction has begun, and we'll be analyzing the impact of Google's first honest premium software service for some time. Here are a few blogs with their take:
What do you think? Is Google really getting into Microsoft's enterprise space? Is this phase one of a larger plan? Or will they be content to provide just this until they've chipped away at MS's entrenchment?
As far as marketing goes, good on Google for not calling it Google Office (which is what we're calling it anyway, right?). Google Apps Premier Edition sounds so business-ready.
My, what an interesting year we're having. First the Wow! starts, now the Wha? starts in earnest. It seems Microsoft might be arguing itself into a corner in front of the Supreme Court regarding software patents. How? Well, Microsoft uses a little bit of code from AT&T to make some speech recognition magic happen in Vista. The catch? they might not have licensed this code for use overseas. So AT&T sues, claiming MS violated the patent on the code itself-- saying they illegally copied it overseas, essentially. The arguments in front of the nation's highest court might finally settle the debate of software patentability. At issue is when source code becomes patentable or, if it ever is.
AT&T's position is that Microsoft is stealing the code, just as a copycat manufacturer might steal Ron Popeil's magic Hair-in-a-Can.
Not one, not two, but a bunch of 'em! Download Squad is proud to welcome several new additions to our roster. While we have retired a few of our smaller blogs, their loss is our gain. We're also welcoming a couple of new members to the Weblogs family. You may have noticed a few posts from them already, in fact. Here's the new lineup:
Russell Shaw, formerly lead blogger at BBHub, will be joining us with coverage of BlackBerry, Palm and Symbian.
Brian Liloia, from DV Guru, will be bringing a media and producer angle to things, among other online and offline tools.
Sheila Ward, also from DV Guru, adds her image and video expertise to the mix.
Grant Robertson, former Digital Music Weblog blogger has already been bringing his fresh perspective to all things media, consumable and creative.
Ryan Sullivan we found lurking around, leaving excellent comments and generally being clever with the Firefox knowledge. He'll be bringing the Firefox tips and add-ons here, plus anything else he can think of.
Emily Price was pulled out of the interwebs to bring her mad blogging skillz to bear on our little piece-o-the-web, and I see she's already been kickin' it old-school.
As you can see from the list on the right, this brings the crew to almost 20. We hope you enjoy the show! Please join me in welcoming our new blogging buddies, we wish them well.
Just a quick reminder: our giveaway contest where you can win a totally free copy of Windows Vista ends at midnight (Eastern Standard Time) tonight, February 2. After the clock strikes midnight, we'll do our magical gee-whiz randomizing business, remove the duplicate entries (you didn't think that was going to work did you?), and pick not one, but THREE lucky winners. We'll contact those winners via the emails provided, gather the appropriate meatspace info, and ship out shiny black boxes of Microsoft goodness. Of course, we'd like to check back after a few weeks and see how Vista is working out for these lucky folks, but we certainly won't require it.
As you can see, you can't leave comments on this post to enter. You'll have to go to our official post and add a comment. Good luck!
We have three hot copies of Vista, sealed and ready, and we're just itching to give them away. These aren't hot as in stolen, but hot as in fresh. While Engadget has been putting Vista through the paces (and then some), we're willing to send off these three little boxes of newness to three lucky individuals... Of course, we'd love to hear back from you, and we're even willing to do a little interview in a couple of weeks, just to see what you've been doing with this shiny OS from Redmond.
So all you have to do to enter? Leave a comment here on Download Squad, on this post you're reading right now. Naturally, there's a lot of rule business to cover. You can read all the details (legal mumbo jumbo) after the jump, but key points include: you must be 18 or older, contest valid in 50 U.S. states only, void where prohibited, leave only one comment per household, and no, you cannot bribe us. Since we're only giving away 3 copies, we'll only pick 3 winners. The contest closes on Friday, Feb. 2, just before midnight Eastern Standard Time. We'll contact you by the email (the one you use to either confirm comments or activate your password, so make sure you check it!), and get the mailing info once we verify you aren't a robot from the Apple people.
There's no shortage of CMS or "portal" building tools out there. Drupal is one I've come to trust and its feature set is hard to beat. But many require a certain amount of heavy lifting or at least tweaking to get running. Enter Geeklog-- a so-called "portal in a box," or to hear them say it, "The Ultimate Weblog System." I don't know about ultimate, but I will say the installation and configuration process is pretty darn simple. The most cumbersome aspect will be creating a SQL database (wish I had a nickel for every time I've said that). After you've got your database mojo, it's a straight shot to unpack and install and start working.
Geeklog is no slouch in the added functions, as there are apparently a large number of plugins and add-ons. It's not all sunshine and roses, as there are limited templates and the usual quirks and gotchas. Linux.com has an excellent review, and brief guide to getting started. Geeklog might not be everything you've been looking for, but if you want something quick and dirty (and at some point, don't we all?), it might be a good fit. I should mention they're working to improve the tool by using bounties: a small sum paid to developers (courtesy of sponsor AOE media GmbH) for implementing user-requested features. So with any luck, Geeklog will flourish in the coming months.
Well it might not be wireless and Zuneriffic, but Sharepod makes sharing your music on the iPod a whole lot easier. It enables you to copy music back and forth from your PC to your iPod. It allows you to bypass iTunes to load the iPod. It enables sharing over a network, so an entire dorm could see and copy your tunes. All of this, naturally is only applicable to music not purchased on the iTunes Store, as Sharepod won't crack the Fairplay DRM. For my money (or lack thereof), the nicest part is Sharepod is a simple .exe, and doesn't rely on wonky installers to do it's business. Simple, fast, easy and fun. What more (aside from the Fairplay cracking) do you need?
Blender is a pretty amazing piece of software. I remember when you actually had to pay for the thing! Well it's been a while since those days, as Blender has been free for a while now. Still, Blender takes a lot of getting used to. Not that 3ds max and Maya aren't difficult, but since they are commercial apps (no longer competing, sadly) they have had to polish their workflow and interfaces over time to stay competitive. But in the right hands, Blender can do almost anything. The trick, as always, is that learning curve. So it was with great joy that I stumbled upon a free intro book to Blender, one which also covers the game engine. It's a hefty PDF tome that'll take you from basics to games in a fairly short time, and well worth a read for anyone wanting to try their hand at 3d.
The point of this post is to provide a handy list of software for Palm OS devices because many free apps are now hard-to-find. Commercial apps aren't, but I'm a cheap, cheap man. Follow along as I save you a bundle on hardware and software that'll put a powerful gadget in your pocket.
Earlier this year we had a little contest where we 
Admit it, you're addicted to text-messaging, right? Well someone is, because lately I've been bombarded with ads proclaiming a national epidemic of texting and related fees. Won't someone think of the children! Well maybe someone has, or maybe all this is just silly. Why not send a bunch of text messages for free? I mean, that's what the web is all about, right? Free stuff? As in beer?
Google's own 
My, what an interesting year we're having. First the Wow! starts, now the Wha? starts in earnest. It seems Microsoft might be arguing itself into a corner in front of the Supreme Court regarding 
Not one, not two, but a bunch of 'em! Download Squad is proud to welcome several new additions to our roster. While we have retired a few of our smaller blogs, their loss is our gain. We're also welcoming a couple of new members to the Weblogs family. You may have noticed a few posts from them already, in fact. Here's the new lineup:
There's no shortage of CMS or "portal" building tools out there. Drupal is one I've come to trust and its feature set is hard to beat. But many require a certain amount of heavy lifting or at least tweaking to get running. Enter 
Well it might not be wireless and Zuneriffic, but 
