Late to the Party

Hollywood needs to wake up and smell the technological advances

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:40:52 +0000

An indie film called Ink got a lot of free marketing when it became a popular torrented movie.
It caused interest about the movie on IMDB to skyrocket, and
supposedly interest in the movie’s release on disc is high as a
result. Instead of the filmmakers whining about this and crying,
“Piracy!” they are grateful for the attention torrenting has built up.
I’ve never heard of this movie before reading this article, but I’m
definitely going to check it out now.

More on that Asus T91MT

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:38:15 +0000

Last night I posted about the Asus T91MT, already tempted by such an inexpensive convertible Tablet PC device. Well, earlier this morning, a Twitter buddy, Rodfather, just posted a link to an intro video for the Asus device that makes the T91MT even more tempting. Even though the video is clearly a simulation and doesn’t show how things actually work on the T91MT, I was impressed by two things in the video: 1) it seems that Asus has implemented palm rejection, which I didn’t think they would do in a netbook, and 2) there’s multitouch, and Asus has a kiosk-y UI and built-in apps that seem to make good use of multitouch. I like this trend of manufacturers putting a “skin” over the device’s OS to make things easier to use, or faster to boot up. Since the T91MT is going to be a Windows 7 netbook (the first one, IIRC), you will have both the ease of use of the “kiosk OS”, and the power of a full Windows OS (or Linux if you decide to change things up) for when you’re not just browsing or checking e-mail. Perhaps now I will finally get a netbook of my own. I’ll be watching the T91MT with great interest!

More on that Asus T91MT

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:51:27 +0000

My Tablet PC is now a Kindle!

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:24:19 +0000

The Kindle PC app (beta) is finally here. I had to load it immediately on my Toshiba M200 to test it out, and for a version 1.0 app, it's not too bad. There's a lot of wasted space on the screen with those gray margins on the left and right, but you can tap in those areas to go forward or back a page. Luckily for me, I can also use the M200's little joystick to turn the pages. This is going to be fun to use on a large and high-res screen (though the M200's screen seems so dim compared to my MacBook). Can't wait for the app to drop for the Mac. This app is another reason why a Mac tablet form factor would be an awesome thing to have.

ASUS delivers Eee PC T91MT to Amazon.com, completes world tour

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:04:38 +0000

ASUS delivers Eee PC T91MT to Amazon.com, completes world tour

by Richard Lai

posted Nov 9th 2009 at 1:11AM

It was only two weeks ago when the ASUS T91MT — the first-ever Windows 7 convertible netbook — dropped by Amazon’s German site, and now the Eastern wind from Taiwan has finally reached US soil. Amazon.com buyers are offered pretty much the same configuration as their European counterpart: Intel Atom Z520, 8.9-inch multitouch swivel screen, 1GB RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium. While there’s only one color option available for now, those who’re cool with white will be spoiled with a 32GB SSD — twice as much as the German version yet $200 cheaper. Any students out there going to pick one of these up for some improved note-taking before Christmas exams?
[Thanks, Bernard]

via engadget.com

Even though I use a MacBook as my primary machine, I still have a place in my heart for Tablet PCs. I know in the past people have pooh-poohed TPCs for various reasons, one of the major ones being their high price. This ultra-portable one from Asus has a great price. I hope some people (like students) buy these and realize how useful Tablets can be for taking notes, especially if you prefer taking notes on paper. Taking digital notes and having them be searchable can be a boon for students, especially because it’s easy to add sketches, diagrams, and other handwritten items that you can’t easily do when typing up notes on a regular laptop.

Guess the TV show

jezlyn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:21:58 +0000

Random shot of paused TV. Anyone know which TV show this is? Bonus
points if you know what episode it is.

‘Roid Week 2009

jezlyn — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:20:33 +0000

Editor’s Note: Hey, I don’t know if Posterous changed how it propagates pictures to other blogs, or if it’s the way I sent the pictures to Posterous in e-mail, but it looks like all of the pictures have propagated over here. Yay! Too bad WordPress doesn’t have a nice gallery mode like Posterous, but I’ll take what I can get.

This past week has been "'Roid Week 2009", meaning people were encouraged to shoot and post scans of Polaroid photos to sites like Flickr. Unfortunately since I was still recovering from my illness, I wasn't able to go out and shoot Polaroids this week. However, I did finally scan in the photos I took when we were in California back at the end of September, and they're posted on Flickr and Smugmug right now. I thought I'd post a gallery on Posterous as well. Hope this works! ~~NOTE: if you're seeing this post on Late to the Party, the whole gallery of pictures probably didn't propagate over, so go to the Posterous link to see the whole batch.~~

The first 6 pictures (if the gallery is arranged as I tried to upload them) were taken at sunset at Half Moon Bay State Beach. The next four pictures were taken in Japan Town in San Francisco. And the last 3 pictures were taken at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. All three venues were awesome, and we're definitely going to visit them again once we've moved out to CA.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Awwwww… Our kitties don’t sleep together much anymore now that they’re older, so when they do it’s super-cute. #fb

jezlyn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:59:57 +0000

via tweetie

Hey, All. Getting back into the swing of things…

jezlyn — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:25:28 +0000

Hey, Kids.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I was totally waylaid by the
flu or something earlier last month and am still recovering. For about
a week I had flu-like symptoms, and then the following week I got a
nasty cough that basically prevented me from getting any real amount
of sleep for several days. Only very recently have I been able to
sleep a significant amount through the night.

All of this illness totally sapped all my energy and made me feel
apathetic towards doing much of anything. My iPhone was the only thing
keeping me occupied during this time, as I wasn’t interested at all in
setting up my laptop, even though it’s a trivial thing to open the lid
and set it on one’s lap.

Even now I’m still slowly getting back into the swing of things, but
not totally feeling up to doing things like editing and/or scanning
pictures from our recent CA trip, or catching up on my oft-neglected
RSS feeds. So far following Twitter and FriendFeed have been as much
as I’ve worked up to the past few days. I’ve done some chores around
the house, but even light stuff like laundry and loading up the
dishwasher tire me out (more than usual!) more than I anticipate.

So please bear with me… Still working on getting better here. If
anyone has any Android 2.0 devices they can spare for a week or two,
I’d love to intersperse my recovery with some gadget reviewing.
(Well, it was worth a shot…)

Twitter Lists 2 RSS

jezlyn — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:33:12 +0000

Here’s something handy to have while Twitter clients don’t have list
support (totally looking forward to when they do).

http://thenextweb.com/appetite/2009/10/31/twitter-lists-2-rss-tin/