tech: March 2003 Archives

We launched the Midnight's Children Multimedia Study Environment today - in preparation for the play and Humanities Festival this week. (The site will only be available to those of you physically connected to the Columbia network.)

I didn't have much to do with the site, aside from the QA process, but I've worked on many similar sites using the same ideas and back-end tools. It was interesting to watch a new team solve some of the problems and issues that I had encounterd on previous MSE's - there were some nice interface advances made in this particular project by the graphic designer, I think.

Here is some general information on MSE's, as well as a list of those we've done so far.

This has got to be the silliest Mac product ever. It's a translucent base puck for the Griffin PowerMate. What's the PowerMate? Why, a $45 metal button that rotates, linked to your Mac via a USB cable. A blue LED shines from beneath the base. What would you do with such a device? Apparently, change the volume on your MP3's.

Now, some claim that you can use it as a Non-Linear Editing jogdial, but there are plenty of other devices which do the job a whole lot better.

OK, so none of them have the cool blue LED.

I suppose if you'd gone ahead and blown $45 on the PowerMate, where's the harm in spending an additional $20 for the IceMate. It will apparently amplify the blue light through transparent or semi-opaque acrylic polymer, thus turning what was a subtle effect into a glowing distraction that will cast your face in a ghastly blue pallor. But sometimes I wonder about all this materials fetish in the Mac market. As well as the fact that, although there have been no updates to Internet Explorer for a few years now on the platform, and all development seems to have stopped on 3rd-party media apps in the face of iLife, these goofy accessories for accessories seem to command more and more mindshare.

Pretty soon, the only thing that will be selling well will be translucent holders for adaptors for stands for connectors for iPod engraving instruction booklet sheath mounting rivet carrycases.

Some interesting design studies of wearable PDA components, linked together through BlueTooth, from FrogDesign and Motorola.

It's hard to believe that multiple, interdependant components will be more compelling than a single, lightweight device, especially considering the hassle of recharging each one and putting each one on in the morning when you rush out the door. This is sort of the reason guys don't wear more jewelry.

Thanks to my boss, who brought in a vintage 1996 CD-ROM drive, I'm now happily upgrading my NeXTStation to OpenStep 4.2. This drive has no problem reading the CD-R that failed on the other mechanism, so I'll chalk it up to a dusty lens or some other age-related failure.

This upgrade is really just to prove the drive can read the disc for long periods of time; I have a much larger, quieter SCSI drive I eventually want to be the main drive for this system. At a whopping 4gigs, it will need to be carefully partitioned to avoid running into OpenStep's myriad limitations of 1 and 2 gigabytes, depending on the phases of the moon and which patch level you're running.

Ericsson introduced their new t68i replacement today, the t610. It's got the same Bluetooth, IR, SyncML and vcard/vcal support as my t39, which enable it to work with iSync and similar services, plus the gratuitous camera that everyone seems to be adding to their phones.

What I'm confused about his how this device is supposed to complement the P800. As far as I can tell, they're both bulky, java-based, camera-phones. The P800 has a touch-sensitve screen and a loss-O-matic removable keypad, but that hardly seems like enough of an advantage to outweigh the accompanying size, weight and price penalty.

It's interesting that you can now get a t68i for nearly free on Amazon, if you agree to a two-year contract. Of course, those phones are probably SIM-locked to a particular GSM provider, but since there are only two big ones in the US, I don't know how much of a problem that would be. I've always just my US-based SIM when I'm in Europe, as it enables people in the US to call me using the same NYC number they always do. Figuring out a foreign cell company's pricing structure and byzantine long-distance policies has never seemed worth the savings in making local calls within the country, at least for me.