“How I Built a DIY Kindle” -Popular Science

Visit: http://coolnonprofits.org

I asked him why he didn’t just reset the phone like one does an iPod when it freezes.  He said he didn’t know how and that he had pushed and held every button imaginable.  I opened up Opera Mini (a web browser) on my Windows Mobile Smartphone, did a quick Google search and found the button combination which would reset the iPhone (press and hold the sleep/wake button and the home button for 20 seconds) all in the time before class started.  He executed the combination and thanked me graciously.

My thoughts on this little event? Apple does a good job on creating innovative user interfaces but sometimes I think they sacrifice functionality for looks.  I don’t think a removable battery would have made the iPhone less appealing but a great deal but who knows.  I just find it ironic that Apple prides themselves on UI design and yet their users have problems such as the one above.  Even more ironic is the fact that a windows mobile smart phone helped find the solution.  It just goes to show that while Apple products may look cool, if you want to get real work done you should go with a Microsoft product.

Unfortunately this simply isn’t true.  Recently at an event called PWN2OWN, hackers were given three days to hack three machines: a Mac, a machine running Windows (typically called a PC), and a machine running Ubuntu Linux.  On day two, the Mac was hacked and on day three, Vista was hacked.  The Ubuntu machine was not exploited during the contest.  There was a financial incentive for successfully hacking each machine which declined each day.  The hacker who exploited the Mac explained why he chose to attack the Mac first saying, “I thought of the three it was the easiest.”  The hacker who exploited the Vista machine agreed with him.

If expert hackers agree your operating system is the easiest to hack, that’s not a good sign.  In fact, it’s these very people who we should listen to when they talk about operating system security.  If a large group of expert hackers believes that OS X is an easy target for exploits then hackers will attack Apple computers more when given the choice.  More attacks means a great likelihood of exploitation and as this contest shows, your Mac isn’t as safe as you think it is.

One of my favorite aspects of many web 2.0 sites is simplicity. Good web 2.0 sites and applications make it easy to get what you want. I find it somewhat ironic that when I do a google search for “web 2.0 directory” all the results on the first page are rather disorganized and stylistically ugly directories of web 2.0 sites. I happened upon feedmyapp.com and found the experience much more enjoyable. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Incidentally, I was looking for a web 2.0 site with cocktail recipes when I found feedmyapp. Of the ones I found my favorite was: Cocktailbuilder.com.

Others:
http://www.weblixr.com/
http://www.extratasty.com/

Here’s how you do it:
1. When in Media Center, go down to Tasks, then go over to settings and press ok
2. Go down to TV and press ok
3. Go down to Guide and press ok
4. Go down to “Get Latest Guide Listings”, press ok and then click Yes.

That’s it, after the download you’ll be able to see the Internet TV option under TV and Movies.

The UI is pretty nice and intuitive. The content is somewhat lacking but this is understandable as it is in beta. I did experience a bug (hey it’s beta, that’s expected) while watching Arrested Development and then pressing the green button, then clicking on Now Playing, it didn’t take me back to full screen video even though its still playing – I got “Unable to display page”. You can use the back button to back out.

Thanks to The Green Button forums for the instructions:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/2/207078/ShowThread.aspx

News sources:

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/09/07/new-extenders-and-iptv-unveiled-for-windows-media-center.aspx

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/27/microsoft-launches-windows-media-center-internet-tv-beta/

Ever needed to combine or split pdfs quickly and easily? Well you can do both rather easily with PDFTK Builder, a nice front end to PDFTK - the pdf toolkit. Both are available under the GPL so they’re free to download. PDFTK Builder lets you combine pdfs, split a pdf into single pages, add a watermark to a pdf, or rotate pages in a pdf.

You can download PDFTK Builder directly by clicking here

or visit their homepage.

If you don’t already have something that lets you create pdfs, check out CutePDF Writer. It’s free and it works with Vista (the open source PDFCreator didn’t work with Vista last time I checked.)

Because of this new endeavor, I plan to use this blog as somewhat of a “meta” blog describing the process of setting up and running a blog. I’ll talk about the plugins I use and stuff like that.

I also hope this will inspire us here at ElephantStaircase to revamp our blog some and publish more content regularly about diy projects, entrpreneurship, modding, computers, circuits, and more. If you have any suggestions for content you might be interested in, feel free to let us know.

That said, sometimes, I’m not objective at all and simply want to fight for the guy who everyone bashes. I try to remain objective as much as possible and recently I’ve been using Google Documents. I still prefer Microsoft Office (yes, I’ve used OpenOffice) because I find it much easier to get things done, but there are some cool things that Google does.

1. Collaboration
I’m working on a business plan for my Technology Entrepreneurship class with two other guys. We can concurrently edit a single document and see all the pieces while editing. Previously, I’ve used a wiki such as MediaWiki running on an old desktop converted to linux server but the editting environment in Google Docs is much richer.

2. Backup/History/Revisions
Google provides a nice mechanism for seeing who made edits when and rolling back any changes you might want to get rid of. I could go on but I’m tired, forgive me.

3. Chat while editing
For some reason not yet in Google Docs but really nice to have in Google Spreadsheets, you can chat with everyone editing the document. This is nice for asking questions about something someone just changed or what have you. Ideally, voice chat would be the best way to communicate about a document, but if you’re in a lab or library this might not be an option. Additionally, if you have low bandwidth, voice might not be an option.

For a few college students on the same network however, voice is a great option. The three of us get on Skype and chat while editing the business plan or one of us gives an overview of a financial model he just made and clarifies any assumptions. All three of us can discuss what we think the numbers should be while we all play around with them to see what the effects would look like. It’s really an incredibly fun way to work. One of my team members commented that he thinks this is the future of how people will work and I think he’s right to some degree.

Maybe it’s because we’re all computer geeks that we enjoy sitting in our own apartments at our own machines rather than meeting at a cafe with our laptops but it did feel somewhat like working in a corporate environment. Everyone’s sitting at their own machine, yelling at each other or asking polite questions periodically. Right now we’re all located close to each other geographically but this summer we hope to spend some time working on the business even if we’re several hundred miles apart. I think the skype and google docs combo should work out nicely.

If you have a group project due sometime soon, work from home, or work with people in remote locations, I HIGHLY suggest you check out this combination and let me know what you think. Additionally feel free to post any comments about possible additions to the system.

-Ray