God, Technology, and Things That Make Us Want to Move to the Moon
Friday, June 27th, 2008
I’ll be in Guatemala for a few days, working and building houses in and around the Guatemala garbage dump. I’ve drafted some posts that will slowly be delivered throughout the week. Perhaps you can expect some pictures when I return. We’ll see.
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
Today I discovered this cool new product from Polaroid. Just recently Polaroid announced that they’d no longer be making cameras that support instant photography. It was a huge disappointment to tons of photography junkies, and moms everywhere let out a short sob. It looks as though they’ve made good on their reasoning, though. They were under the impression that a market for instant photography doesn’t exist in this new digital age. To meet the needs of this generation, Polaroid has now created a product they’ve titled “PoGo.” The concept is that a person can send an image from a cell phone or digital camera via Bluetooth or USB to the PoGo, which will then proceed to print the image. The hope behind this, I guess, would be that it would be a simple process that can be done relatively quickly.
Just as interesting – if not more – to me, however, is the Zero Ink (Zink) technology that allows this printer to use no ink cartriges. The idea behind this is that crystals can be activated to display certain colors. Expect to see another post on this soon.
The PoGo will be the first product to use the Zink technology. It’s set to release July 6th. Keep an eye out for it.
See also: www.thenewinstant.com/
HT: Photojojo via Twitter
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
The other day I wrote about being friendless on FriendFeed. My situation is much the same. Despite even more searching, I can’t find anyone I know (personally OR electronically) that uses FriendFeed. I’m currently subscribed to 6 people, and each of these people is relatively famous to the point that thousands of other people are subscribed to them, as well. Anyway, I’m considering trying out Jaiku. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m going to. I have an invite from Phillip Zannini in my inbox, so I figure it doesn’t hurt to try it. I’m pretty sure the user base there is a little large. Based on what I’ve heard, at least, it sounds like Jaiku’s more popular. I’ll keep you posted on my findings.
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Yesterday I started playing around with FriendFeed. I’m not exactly sure where I got the idea, but I thought it looked fun. I haven’t really heard much talk about it, but it seems like it’s pretty cool. The concept behind it is that you can add friends and follow their activity on all of the different social networking services that they are signed up with (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. etc. etc.). It’s a great idea and the execution isn’t half bad, but the problem I’m having is that I don’t have any friends that use it. In fact, I’ve got 450 friends on Facebook and none of them use FriendFeed. I’ve subscribed to a few people whose names I recognize, but other than that I’m sorta lonely. I suppose I could use the “Imaginary Friend” feature that FriendFeed provides (it allows users to add the account names of their friends in order to track their information without them actually signing up), but it’s just not the same. I’d recommend checking it out, regardless, especially if you’re down with the social networking. Oh, and be my friend.
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Today I was browsing the web and again found a link through Lifehacker to a cool website. This Mac-only application allows you to insert websites or web apps into an embedded application which runs on your desktop as would any other application. It’s called Fluid, and I’d definitely recommend you checking it out. To test it out, I created a menu bar extension that ties in the iPhone versions of Facebook and Gmail as well as Hahlo‘s service for Twitter. So give it a shot, and let me know what you think!
HT: Lifehacker