Jul 02
Jun 18
I was really pleased to find a few controls added to the audiobook (and podcast!) iPod controls in last night’s iPhone 3.0 update.
The small “30″ with the arrow moving in a circle takes you back 30 seconds; quite handy when you’ve missed something that was just said.
The “2x” is a speed toggle; clicking it multiple times will change between double, normal and half speed. Prior to this, you had to take a trip onto the Settings app to change it. Handy!
Lastly, you now get visual feedback when you scrub back and forth in a track. The way this works is hard to explain, but it works like this: if you grab the play head and start dragging it to the right, you move forward in the track. This is fine for relatively short tracks, like a five minute song, since each pixel only represents a few seconds on the scrub bar. On longer tracks (take a two hour podcast, for example), each pixel then represents a huge chunk of time and it becomes very difficult to skip back a few seconds (though the new 30-second skip alleviates that need!). Apple’s solution is for you to keep your finger on the screen, but to move it lower on the screen, completely off of the scrub bar; the lower on the screen you go, the finer the control you have! Fantastic! This used to work in past versions, but it wasn’t as well implemented, and had no UI.
Jun 05
I’m reading this article at ComputerWorld.com. So far, it’s a good history of what is the basis of so much amazing software
<3 :’)
May 12
Harmony PS3 Adapter next to an iPhone (Photo source: Engadget)
I just read on Engadget HD that Logitech’s finally releasing their official PS3/Harmony adapter!
Pretty much every device I care about in my house is controlled through my Harmony 890: 360, TVs, stereos, lights, my bedroom fan… with one exception. The PS3’s Bluetooth remote was the stumbling block; the 890 speaks infrared and radio frequency, but not Bluetooth.
Once I get this thing ($60, available this month!), the PS3 will feel less like a gimmick/toy. I suppose it’s a little unfair, since the 360 already controls fine w/ the Harmony, but watching HD-DVDs on that thing (w/ the optional drive that you had to buy seperately) always feels juvenile because of the 360’s intentionally youthful UI. The PS3’s Cross Media Bar (XMB) shows a lot more restraint, maturity and elegance. Even the startup routines and sounds on the PS3 are more refined, avoiding the 360’s playful and cliche’ “I’M EXTREME!” attitude. Wrap it up with a sleek, jet black piano finish (don’t forget the quiet fans!) and you’ve got one secksie beast!
Let’s face it: Bluray is still so new to most people that it’s a treat for me to share the new tech w/ them. Showing off your man den is a long standing tradition. Today, tech is a huge part of the man den. When you have a universal remote that bends all of your commands into one button press, deftly turning on all of your different devices, dimming your lights to just the right level and switching everything into GO! mode… you look like a tool when you have to pick up a Dual Shock to press play.
Apr 23
I’m just pasting this in: I was just telling Steve and Gray about it.
traffic was unusually slow:
i saw some lights ahead & tons of cop cars along the opposite side of the highway
on my side, i saw a news truck: the kind w/ the satellite mast
then i saw a white toyota truck on the right side of the opposing lanes
the driver’s door was wide open, and the truck looked like it’d kind of …. settled there. not crashed, but settled.
it was about 3 car widths off the road
angled about 25 degrees away from the road
about 100m back…
in the middle of the highway
the driver was laying there, on his back, covered in a sheet
his feet were both pointed outwards: 180 degrees away from each other
it was unnatural
there was some viscera strewn about
the cops had that side of the highway completely blocked, and were diverting traffic off at the exit prior to the mess
Update: here’s a story about it. Apparently the truck was his, and he was walking on the road when someone hit him and left the scene.
