These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things: Technology

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So as I said in the introduction I am a tremendous geek, and one of my passions is technology. You can't really be a geek without having a bit of the old gadgetry addiction. From processors and microchips to software I love it all. It is my intention to share with you some of my favorite gadgets, but also to show some of the things coming down the line and things that are still in research.

Things like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egAl6sNMaqE

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Oh goody! Technology time! Today I am running a special on themes For my movie I discussed the impact Star Wars has had on my life, and then in my RSS feed today I discover this little bit of Star Wars nerd-gasm. The Wesco Darth Vader Tie Fighter USB web-cam (boy that's a mouthful).

http://www.wescolimited.com/3058/produc ... b-cam.aspx

This bad boy clamps to the top of standard LCD monitors, includes a mic and has a couple of LED lights underneath it to simulate lasers firing. Sadly there are very few other specs to discover. Even sadder is that I'm itching to order one

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So here we go, some vindication for the Vista haters around here. It appears that 35% of enterprise class customers are opting to downgrade their Vista installations to good old XP.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/ar ... he_vi.html

The article says that major manufacturers like HP are using a licensing loophole to ship with a Vista license but really have XP installed.

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Okay, today's tech topic is just downright cool to play with. About 18 months ago I was talking with some folks at Microsoft labs and our discussion lead to a 3D mapping project I was working on, and that talk led to me working with a very early version of Microsoft's Photosynth. Things have progressed greatly since I last saw the project and it has finally released to the public.

Photosynth is an application that takes normal pictures and stitches them together to make a 3D representation of an area. Go here (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1219279 ... lenews_wsj) and check out the article and video. This is some awesome stuff.

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So I'm always on the look out for ways to simplify the mass quantities of gadgets that I carry in my pockets daily. I have a cell phone, an MP3 player, a portable hard drive and a laptop that I carry with me all the time, so it gets more and more important to reduce the things that I carry to save time and weight.

To that end I've found a phone that can replace the MP3 player, the cell phone and possibly even the laptop. The new object of my tech desires (and one that I'm probably not going to get for a long, long time) is the HTC Dream, running the Android operating system. Learn more about it here: http://htcdream.com/

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So we are quickly approaching the analog broadcast cut off date in February 2009. What this means is that if you still use an antenna to get your video signals and do not have a digital television set, you will be unable to get any signals.

This brings me to my tech talk today, Wilmington, North Carolina switched their local broadcast system over to all digital, and there were very few major issues. Either most folks are using cable or satellite, or the message has gotten out and people were able to get a converter.

Just a heads up, convert or stop getting TV.

http://www.wect.com/global/story.asp?s=8971338

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So many of us here work from home and maybe don't have a whole lot of need to show a presentation while on the go, but if you are like me and have a regular office job requiring travel and giving presentations then this will be of interest.

Toshiba has just announced a new projector weighing just 100-grams and measures 10 x 4.5- x 1.7 centimeters in size.

Video of projector in action:
http://video.golem.de/audio-video/1608/ ... -2008.html

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Not too long ago I mentioned that the new HTC Dream phone, running the Google Android operating system was likely to be my tech desire for the near future. I expectd that future to be further out than this, but it looks like I can start drooling over the real thing come October 17th. Sprint will start showing the first pre-production model next Tuesday, and supposedly it will go on sale for $199 mid-October. Too bad I still have another year on my current contract.

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In one of my past posts I discussed the high number of Windows Vista customers that were downgrading their operatting systems to Windows XP devices, and it sounds like Microsoft may actually be listening as they are probably extending their XP availability out to July 2009, from the original cutoff date of January 2009.