Online Observations

A step in the right direction

Here’s something real cool. But before I tell you what it is, let me ask you: how many devices do you have that get charged through a USB port? I thought so. Almost everyone today has one device or more which use USB to charge. And yet, we don’t have the ability to charge directly from the wall without using a special adapter.

Well, that is changing. Take a look at the following picture:

Yup, it’s a wall socket with two USB ports built-in. And this device is a near reality and is currently pre-ordering for less than $20.00. Here’s the link to the manufacturer’s site which explains the specifications and gives some more information about the socket: http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=458. I love it when technology moves in the right direction.

Google is experimenting with Gigabit Internet – WOW

This just came in. While Google has been discussing better bandwidth access with the US government agencies, it decided to take it up a notch by announcing an experimental gigabit internet access in Unites States for offer for up to 500,000 consumers. This is amazing, it really is. From their blog:

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Well, I wish some of this high bandwidth stuff would come into India. Anyway, it would be interesting to see what people come up with for these type of bandwidths speeds. Google is hoping to see some innovation. So are we.

Connect your camera to the Internet

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Eye-Fi. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have always been a fan of the Eye-Fi product. Let me first describe what this gadget is all about. We all have digital cameras these days, and each of these cameras uses a memory card. The Eye-Fi card is a wireless enabled memory card. It basically converts your camera into a wifi device, which can connect to your computer or to the Internet wirelessly through a wifi Internet connection. I could go on and on, but probably the best way to explain what this card does is to show you a video of how it works. Take a look at the video below:

 

Now that you understand, imagine how useful this can be. I am always misplacing my USB card reader, and looking around for it whenever I need to transfer photos. With an Eye-Fi, you don’t need a card reader anymore. Actually, there are a lot more advantages than this. One of the biggest advantages of modern camera phones (such as the iPhone) is the ability to take a photo and upload it seamlessly to the Internet for instant sharing. The biggest drawback is that a camera phone usually takes poor photos. With an Eye-Fi card, you can take your photos from your camera which is good at taking photos, and then upload the photo to the Internet seamlessly from your camera itself.

The card comes with a software which you can install on your computer to configure how you want the card to work. It allows you to setup automatic backups and organization of your photos.

With the Eye-Fi card you should be able to avoid all the nagging reminders from friends and family for sharing your photos, simply because it becomes so effortless to do it. The Eye-Fi is only available in the SD/SDHC format, and that is probably the only bad thing about it.

A great place online for all your tools and utilities needs

If you are a person who has to provide IT support to your friends and family, then I have found just the thing for you, but before that, answer this question – how many times have you asked a family member to go download AVG and have them come back to you asking where to download it from? Yes, I though so. Well the person who has put together this site (hang on, I will reveal the name in a second) has had an even worse experience. His family member accidentally downloaded spyware when he asked her to AVG from FileHippo.

So, he decided that he had had enough, and he put together a site where he will start storing all utilities that you would ever need, so that he can provide safe links to his family and friends for downloading software. And he made it public so that others can benefit from this store as well. Allow me to introduce MSunderground – an add free repository of useful tools and utilities (and here’s the link to the incident with his family member).

This is the “promise” of the site: We want to provide the easiest means possible for people to get the software they need. Without ads, flashy banners, and built in adware.

And he intends to be free forever for this service. But if it becomes popular, all these files have to be stored somewhere, and all the bandwidth has to be paid for, and so he has a link where if you like, you can donate to the cause. I hope many people donate to him so that he can meet the cost of hosting and bandwidth for this great site.

And I wish that this site becomes larger than all those stupid money-grubbing download sites.

Seriously awesome and cool drinks

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.

Although this is a sponsored post (disclaimer above), this is one of those things that I would have blogged about anyway had I got to know about it earlier. Jones soda, which allows you to customize the packaging of the soda that it markets, has come out with a Dungeons and Dragons series of their soda bottles. Take a look at the soda bottle to the left, wouldn’t you like to get your hands on one of these bottles? I would love to see them in my refrigerator.

And looking cool is not the only thing that Dungeons and Dragons Jones Soda is good about. Take a look at the flavors: Potion of Healing, Sneak Attack, Dwarven Draught, Illithid Brain Juice, Bigby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer, and Eldritch Blast. Can you even imagine what these taste like?

Let me try – Sneak Attack will be a drink which starts off mild and you would think, hmm.. this doesn’t taste like anything, but then suddenly as you are thinking that, comes and after taste that takes your breath away, and you want more… heh heh, probably not, but it would be cool if these drinks were something like this – magical.

Anyway, I think they are still very cool, and the names are perfect. This set of bottles is perfect for gamers and fans of the genre. As I said, I would love to have some of these in my refrigerator. Each flavor has a bottle which is potentially a collector’s item, with distinct graphics on the labels. Follow that link to check out each one of them.

If anyone’s tried any of these flavors, let us know in comments what they taste like. If not, then try to guess what each one tastes like (not wild guesses like I did, on second thought, go crazy). Anyway, if nothing else just visit that site to look at the really cool bottles, and have a great day.

Zemanta is coming of age

Actually, Zemanta is pretty mature now, IMO. I have covered Zemanta before here and here. When I gave it a try, I stopped using them because they were not relevant, and they didn’t have a Windows Live Writer plugin. They are better at both these things now. I am writing this post from Windows LiveWriter and I have the plugin for Zemanta installed on it that allows me to enrich my blog post using their suggestions. For instance, I definitely wanted to insert a logo of Zemanta at the beginning of their post, and it has rightly presented me with a number images, out of which one of the options is the Zemanta logo which you see displayed right there in the beginning of the post.

There are several nifty things that Zemanta allows you to do. If you create a login on their service, it allows you to save preferences in it. One of the preferences is that you can specify “My Sources” which causes Zemanta to make suggestions from only your sources – these can be your blogs, your flickr accounts, and more. This is fairly useful, IMO.

One more thing that is nice is that if you are a Zemanta user, then content that you create finds its way into the Zemanda related posts recommendation engine, which means that it will be suggested to other bloggers who use the tool, causing them to link to you which is great for generating traffic, which is nice. There are other nice things such as you can get statistics on their website about how much your content has been linked by others and more (I will write more on this when I get a chance to use this feature).

Here are some related posts that Zemanta has suggested to me:

Zemanta Gets an Update

Blog better and quicker with Zemanta

Off Topic: Zemanta – a Tool for Bloggers

All is not pretty though when you use Zemanta. For instance, the images that it inserts into the blog post are hot-linked to the source. So the image is actually being pulled from the server where it is originally hosted – even if it has the right licensing for it to be used in a post, a lot of people don’t like any hot-linking. Not sure what Zemanta can do to avoid this, but as a blogger you may want to get some manual work going.

Another issue is in the Windows LiveWriter plugin – in here, if I use the Zemanta bar to insert a link or something, I can’t Undo is. By that I mean, Ctrl+Z doesn’t undo the insertion. I have to manually remove it. Very annoying.

Still, I think its a great tool and a great service for bloggers.

Here’s a new way to play Guitar Hero

I love the folks behind Microsoft Research as they are always doing something super cool. Take for instance this new interface that they are developing called the “Muscle-Computer Interface”. This allows them to detect control input by sensing the movement of your muscles in your arm when you do something with your hands. I could never explain it well, so you better watch this demo video. Essentially, you will be able to play Guitar Hero without the Guitar.