So the cat's finally out of the bag. Google is developing it's own phone opearting system with something called the "Open Handset Alliance" with some big names, including Broadcom, Intel, Samsung, Sprint and T Mobile. Why is this so revolutionary? Because it's an open platform. That means instead of getting a locked down soon to be open iPhone, you go out and by a RAZR or a Dash, or a Blackberry, or whatever and load Android onto it and do whatever you want. No restrictions. T Mobile and Sprint have jumped on in the US. I don't see any Canadian carriers they're yet, but I suspect I will in a while. Aliant, and probably Rogers. I don't think that Telus will be they're because they love to lock down they're phones. I would love to use this when it comes out early next year. If it enables all functionality without haveing to be locked down, I'm all for that.
This is awesome! l and I can't wait to get a cellphone now.

 Today is April Fool's Day, the where people pull some of the most innovative practical jokes on people. Indeed, some can be quite elaborate. Take for example Mr. Leo Laporte, Chief TWiT. He posted both on his Vox blog and on the TWiT main site, that TWiT would be bought by G4. Let me tell you, when I saw that, my heart stopped. But then I read the post and my fears where put to rest. Read this post and find out what the "offer" was. Another is a "gadget" from ThinkGeek. Check it out. I especially love the Ninja Comments. I considered pulling on my entire family through the use of computers, however I completely forgot about it, so it went undone. It involved changing the path of the internet shortcut so that it would shut down the computer when you clicked on the shortcut. I considered doing, but completly forgot about it, so, maybe next year.
    Google in particular is famous for it's April Fool's Day Pranks. Previous Pranks included a Google Dating Service and several others. This years', I actually believed for about 5 minutes until I read it over and realized how ridiculous it sounded. Google TiSP would put a Wifi singnal down your toliet to pick up a Wifi signal from a Fibre-Optical cable running in the municipal sewer. Uh-HUH. Right. Sure. The other is "Google Paper" which I can't seem to find right at the moment. It's also quite funny.  What a good April Fools Day. I can't wait for next year.

 So I checked out one of the latest entires on the Team Vox Blog abut how there know integrating a new service called Clipmarks which intagrates with Vox. I don't mean to bash Vox as a platform, but there isn't a whole lot of services out there that Vox does not play nice with. Aside from iFilm, YouTube, Flickr, iStockphoto and Amazon, it's nice to see Vox play nice with some new services.
    Here's my first test of Clipmarks with an article on the X-Prize and Google.

Have you ever Googled your own name? How did you feel about the results?
Submitted by elen.

Let me just say this: There are a lot of dead people from the 18th and 19th centuries with my name. Well that's before I put quotes around the search  and I get my old Blogger Blog and a few articles from my Newsvine Column (which I have not updated in a few weeks.) If I don't put quotes around my name, I get a bunch of guys from the early 18th century down the U.S.
    And I HATE cheap ethernet cable. So I come downstairs after waking up this morning, turn on the computer and guess what? The internet is down. So I go through my regular checks of checking all the connections. Nothing wrong there. I shut down the entire network, not that either. So then it comes to last thing before I call  (Evil) Aliant Tech Support. I unplug the modem and plug it back in again. Nothing. So then I try pieces of individual cable. Aha. There's the pro

blem.  Apparently the piece of ethernet cable that runs between the router and the modem is kind of funky, so it was acting weird. I fixed it, which was a relief, because living without the internet is like living with water. For me at least. At the very least, it's somewhat annoying, not having instant access to information and communication. One of these days I'm going to have to get around to replacing that piece of ethernet cable so things don't explode on me.
    See last time this happened was in May. I came home. At that time we only had 2 computer hooked up to the internet as opposed to the 4 we have now. There was the laptop and the main desktop. My sister and her friend where using both of them for one thing. Which was unfair, because I had work to do. So out of anger, I unplugged the router and told her that, If I couldn't have it, no one could (I know, I sound extremly selfish.) When the entire thing got resolved, I went to plug the router back in and got the dreaded "This connection has limited or no connectivity. Translation: The Internet was screwed. I'd had this happen to me before and we had to go to Dell Tech support to get it fxied because Aliant just read off of a sheet and did nothing to help us. This time it wasn't a hardware issue. A few night's previous, we had a lightning storm and through some strange happening, a bolt of lighning hit something and friend the modem. After going a week without Internet (It was like not having air to breathe.) and dealing with the crap that is Aliant we finally got our internet working again. In the information age, having internet is a necessity. Even if I miss it for just a day, I feel like I've missed something.

 Looking around the tech news world after I got back from cleaning this morning, and found this on /. AMD has released details of it's much awaited 4x4 chip. Codenamed the Quad Father, the chip will run at clock speeds of 2.6 and 3 Ghz and have a dual socket motherboard with all kinds of goodies on board including Quad SLI and 12 SATA connectors. I think it's clear that AMD is aiming this at the gaming community. I mean, who, except gamers will use Quad SLI? I don't s

ee anyone other than that using it and the 12 SATA connectors, could be used to put in a massive RAID for people who do video editing, but I think this platform is a direct shot at Intel over the "Core 2 Qudro" platform it's due to unveil in November. I think gamers will use those 12 SATA to put quite a few Raptor drives in there to optimize there gaming performance. I like AMD's  codename better than Intel's. I mean, who call's something "Core 2 Quadro"? It's like what Intel tried to do back in 90's with trademarking the 386 and 486. You can't trademark a number you idiots. Anyway enough rambling about that.
    Last night I decided to install a new piece of software called Democracy Video Player. Basically it's an open source video play er that allow you to put all your YouTube, Google and Yahoo video's in one place as well be able to subscribe via RSS, to IPTV shows like Dltv, systm,thebroken and others. It's really a nice program with a channel guide and a really nice interface. The only peeve I have with it, is that it takes a huge chunk of mem usage. More than Firefox and iTunes put together. At one point it was almost up to 400 K of system memory, that's almost half a megabyte of memory and that probably shouldn't happen in the final version. (Current version is 0.91) I would recommend this to anyone who watches a large amount of video netcasts (to be politically correct.) If they would fix a few bugs it would a perfect app. And here's the best part: It's all Open Source. So if you more techno savvy than the average user, you can go under the hood and tweak things if you want. Anyway, that's all for now.

Looking around the 'net tonight after I finished all the work I needed to get done for tomorrow, I found an article on Cnet about Microsoft and staying the course with the Xbox division. Last year it counted a $1.26 billion dollar loss as the highlight of the year But this is Microsoft. It's a land where everything is possible....That is, if you play within the rules. Rules at Microsoft, just to name a few.

1. Open Source is Bad. It promotes the idea that people can actully do things on there own. Anyone caught using Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird, the GIMP or any other Open Source program will immediately be either shot or tortured for 48 hours (i.e. have Balmer yell "Wiindows Windows Windows Windows...." at your for 24 hours straight and then see him collapse and go to the hospital to have surgery on his vocal chords.)
2. Anyone caught using a Mac will be subjected to the above torture.  Macs are the spawn of satan. Also anyone caught using an iPod will immediately be sent to there cubicle to rot forever by Balmer.
   
3. DRM is your friend. DRM protects our big nice cosy relationship with the big companies like Sony, BMG, Universal, EMI and others.
4. Anyone  caught with a picture of the following people in there procession will be made to kiss the feet of Steve Balmer and Bill Gates 48,000,000,000,000 times. Or however long it takes you to die or your lips to fall off, whichever comes first.
   Eric Smechit, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, the Mac Guy from the "Get a Mac ads",Linux Torvalds and any one who is associated with Open Source community.

    It might be the fact that I hate Microsoft with my entire being because of the entire supporting DRM thing or the WGA thing or the "3 different kinds of DRM thing" but whatever is, I reallly reallly really don't like Microsoft. I don't know about Vista yet, but I think it's just going to be a clone of Tiger. And Apple's putting out a new version of OS X this spring. And it will be better than Vista.
Xbox may be the only thing Microsoft has done right in the past several years. I haven't tried out the 360 yet, but the fact that Microsoft managed to get it on the market a year early is either a real blunder on Microsoft's part or a real stroke of genius. I'm split. That $1 billion loss is nothing to laugh at but from what I can tell the 360 has been quite sucessful in comparrison to what the current generation of Nintendo and Sony consoles on the market. Unless Microsoft makes changes in the way it manages thing, in terms of it's Windows division the way it manages things like Open Source and Mac software, the word "Microsoft" will be associated with the word "failure" in the next few years.

I have my free last thing today and that means that I'm allowed to get out early. Sorry I couldn't blog last night, but things where busy and I couldn't get around to do it. And it's someone's Birthday today. I'll give you a hint: We use it often and it's become a catchphrase. If you guessed Google kudo's to you. That's right, today, 8 years ago Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in Moutain View California. Once just the domain of web geeks, Google has become a household name with the phrase "Google it!" became a househould phrase, fueling G

oogle's popularity on the web. With the launch of Gmail over 2 years ago, Google has become even more popular. With the release of things like Google Calendar and Google Video, Google has become more popular still. Although some things do need to be improved. The interface in Gmail for one, as well as the fact that it's invite only. Another thing is Google Page Creator which looks like frontpage, and doesn't have very much power as of yet. But all in all, Google is a great company and the exact opposite of Microsoft of the 3 piece suit culture. Google allows you to wear almost anything to work and all the food is provided free of charge. They'll even send you out a car as far away as San Jose to pick you up and drop you off every morning. Now that's a company that cares about it's employee's. One day I would like to work for Google. But that's not likely to happen for a few years as you need a bit of qualifacation to get into Google.
But it's still cool.
    Today was interesting. This morning I couldn't find my key's and had to use my spare to get into my locker. Then at break I misplaced my lock (I dropped it in my bag, inside the locker.) and then I went to Canadian HIstory. Everything was normal. er, well not really, considering the teacher never showed up and the class spend 20 minutes sitting in the room doing nothing. All in all it was a pretty bland day. Tomorrow should be somewhat better as I get to leave early after I do the Terry Fox Run Walk in the afternoon.
*waits impatiently for new system of doom to get here*

Maybe that's what they call digg on the brain.....
Today I came home early because of my free block at the end of the day. As I mentioned above the other day, when I can, on my free blocks, I will post an entry on something that I've seen in the past several days. Today's subject: Tri-Lamb Material. Now what does this mean? Today, when I came home I logged onto Digg and saw a story posted titled "Nerd, Geek or Dork?" and I thought "eh, why not try it?" Ironically enough, my science teacher last, when the debate arose in his Physics class, he went online and found out what the three meant.  According to the al-mighty Wiktonary (I know...I'm a geek :-P) here are the three definitions.

nerd (plural nerds)

1. slang) A generally intelligent person who shows interest and aptitude in multiple, usually academic-related subjects (as opposed to geeks, who are only interested in one such subject). This definition is independent of social skills.
2. (slang) A person with a passion for a seemingly trivial and non-sports related pursuit, misunderstood by society at large but proud of personal achievements.
3. (slang) A Geek with social skills, who fits in well in most groups.

geek (geeks) informal

1. (colloquial) An unfashionable or socially undesirable person.

   Why do you hang around with them? They're just geeks.

2. (colloquial) A person intensely interested in a particular field or hobby, generally at the expense of broader social interaction. Often used with an attributive noun.

   I was a complete computer geek in high school, but I get out a lot more now.

   Most famous actors are really just theater geeks at heart.

3. (colloquial) An expert in a technical field, particularly to do with computers.

   My laptop's locked up again. I need a geek.

   Do you think you need a hardware geek or a software geek?

4. 
   

   dork (plural dorks)

   
   
5. (slang) A quirky, silly and/or stupid, socially inept person, or one who is out of touch with contemporary trends. Often confused with nerd and geek, but does not imply the same intelligence level. (Napoleon Dynamite is a classic example.

I really don't know which one of these I fit into, according to the quiz,I'm what you would call a Tri-Lamb. I've half geek and half dork. That fits. My aunt is always calling me a dork, and I suppose I am a bit of one.
    I'm going computer hunting again and I found a computer that would be nice seet to have. It's a custom built PC and it's got some nice specs including an AMD 2 Ghz processor, 1 GB of RAM a PCI-E graphics card, DVD Burner, a fair size graphics card and enough USB to last me without a hub.
    Another interesting thing....If your sign in using your Google acount and use goole it keeps track of your searches. Not just how many you've done, but, when you've done them the patterns asscociated with those searches. So for example, this year my most searches where in May of last year. In the month of May I conducted 173 searches on Google. In contrast, my lowest search activity was in Jun, with only 23 searches. In terms of time I conducted my searches during all hours of the day with a record 68 between the hours of 4 and 5. And my most active day of the week for searching is Tuesday with 105 searches on average. Wow. I use Google more than I realize.
Just a few interesting tid-bits I thought I'd share with my readership.
Time to go weed the yard.

Noooo! *headdesk* I.hate.Microsoft.Hate them Hate them Hate them. See over the past several years I've been following a mod to

one of my favorite games, Command & Conqer Generals: Zero Hour. It's been almost three years and they havn't turned out the mod yet, however they where getting close and I was looking forward to it. Yesterday, the team informed the fanbase, on there site that they where being shut down by Microsoft for infringing on content from Bungie Studio's, which Microsoft owns.  But I mean come on.  But I mean, come on guys, the people who where making this whern't making money off of this, they where just doing it becasue they liked both Halo and Command & Conquer and they had a passion for technology. This  just justifies  my position that  Microsoft is the exact opposite of what the technology community wants. Company's like Google and Mozilla are what  the technology community wants in terms of  a software provider that doesn't break copies of software because it's not legit. One thing I can tell you is this: When I have my household, my family will be using either A) Linx or associated software or B) All Macs. No Windows software will be present in my houshold.
    I went out this evening and got a chance to use a Powerbook G4 for a few hours at a friends house. It's one of the older models with an 800 Mhz processor. I mean it wasn't blazing fast, but for what I was doing (browing around in Safari) it faired well. However it did freeze up and reguire a restart when I used Expose a few to many times. But it's still a really solid machine. And the Powerbook was only running Panther (OS X 10.3) and I loved it. When I get my Mac Mini early next year it'll have either Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5) running on it. Plus I'll have Front Row and a few other apps (Mac the Ripper, Audium X) that arn't availble on the PC (hehe suckers :-P) I'm counting the days.

Sitting down today I was reading an article in Saturday's edition of my local paper. It seems that a Federal agency Status of Women is under fire by some conservatives who want it to be dismantled. I'm all for equality (If I wasn't I would not be alive today.) But the point I want to get to is that in this article, the local paper cited a comment on a blog on the site. Now, blogs have been used extensively in the tech world. Sites like /., Digg, Neowin amoung others use a blog like interface to talk about technology news. They often site blogs from coperations (Google, Microsoft) use blogs to tell the community how projects are going. However there are some notable independent bloggers. Robert Scoble, who, for years worked for Microsoft as a technological evangalist, is now independent, however is still exerts a considerable amount of influense in the Blog-o-sphere. Other independent bloggers include Leo Laporte, John C. Davork (Bored, don't hurt me :-( ) are probably the most notable.

    If I have any Call For Help viewers in my readership, your going to want to read this. Amber McArthur, Leo Laporte's co-host on G4's Call For Help TV show is leaving for Toronto based City TV. The taping of 15 more episodes of CFH will take place in September, then Amber will be leaving to start her own show and become a reporter at CityTV. THis is good for me as I do not get CFH on my current cable subscription. I do, however get CityTV. And I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Lazzara took over for Amber, although, he's not the smartest person. I don't think he would complement Leo. Just from watching him on CommandN, he is the exact opposite of Amber and Leo. She will continue to produce her Podcast on the TWiT network, Inside the Net, as well as her vidcast with Mike Lazzara, and her brother Jeff in Halifax.

Just my two Cents

Virtunate