Category: Technology & Gadgets

Sounds like PS3 with Blu-Ray will have competition, with an XBOX360 with HD-DVD and Halo3 in the same time frame… Excellent.

So, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some collusion between the Christmas gift guide writers. It seems that some of the things consistently show up on all lists, between WIRED, Men’s Health, and other magazines. For instance, a rather obscure item (which is, incidentally, one of the only things I’m marginally interested in from these lists) has shown up on at least four lists. This item is the SD USB card from SanDisk. Although a great invention, it’s not particularly earth-shattering (it ain’t no iPod).

Well, I’m trying to decide whether I want an XBOX360 or can settle for the D-LINK DSM 520. I do torrent quite a few shows (mostly paid for on regular satellite), so I want to be able to stream them from my PC (out in the office, a separate building) to the big TV in the living room. I can’t seem to wait in line outside Walmart or Target to actually get one of the XBOX360s, so I’m thinking I may wait until Halo 3 comes out (simultaneous with the release of the PS3 from SONY), and then get one, in the meantime get one of those D-Link boxes.

There’s really only one format used on torrents: .AVI with MPEG4 encoding, which both *should* be abled to read over the Windows Media Connect interface. Advice? Let me know.

For reference, the XBOX360 is about $500 for the one I would buy, and the D-Link box is about $220. Currently, eBay prices for an XBOX360 hover over the $700 mark.

Kind of cool sounding, this GP2X handheld uses LINUX and comes bundled with a MAME machine, but not quite as cool as the Nokia 770.

http://www.gizmoproject.com

Looks like I found a good competitor to Skype (and vonage). Gizmo is a SIP client for PC, Mac and LINUX that seems to be very interoperable, and doesn’t have the nasty EULAs that Skype has. Moreover, with SIP support (standard), it can be used with a variety of SIP hardware to provide non-computer access.

My new work laptop is a SONY VGN-T350 laptop. It has Bluetooth, 802.11g (WiFi), and a really cool feature called WWAN, which is just a built-in GPRS/Edge modem. Unfortunately, the device comes locked from SONY on the Cingular system. I followed the excellent instructions on this page for unlocking it.

There was one big glitch during the unlocking process, when I gave them my IMEI number, they couldn’t find it in their database. It took nearly a week of regular calls for them to escalate this, and finally they gave me the eight digit NCQU (or NCK) number to unlock it. SONY doesn’t care WHY you want it unlocked, I assume because Cingular didn’t subsidize the laptop like it does cell phones.

There’s a few other interesting points that weren’t mentioned in this guy’s excellent article. It is possible to use the Cingular Connection Manager (and SmartWi), without the original Cingular SIM.

For a Cingular generic SIM (not the one that came with the SONY):

Make a custom profile:
Service Type: Packet
Dialed Number: *99***1#
Access Point Name: [leave it blank]
Username: [email protected]
Password: CINGULAR1

For a T-Mobile internet-only SIM (in North America, $30/month, with a Reno 775 area code):

Make a custom profile:
Service Type: Packet
Dialed Number: *99***1#
Access Point Name: internet2.voicestream.com
Username: [leave it blank]
Password: [leave it blank]

Here’s a few gripes I’ve been having with this otherwise excellent laptop:

1. Often I get messages saying “GPRS” is trying to dial, and could not detect carrier (no solution yet).
2. The T-Mobile SIM on EDGE seems slower than the Cingular SIM on EDGE for at least two locations I’ve tried. I’m using the speed test on this site. My results around the Boulder/Longmont area are 166 kbit/s for Cingular, 100 kbit/s for T-Mobile
3. Man, that antenna sure is UGLY
4. I hate the battery-hanging-off-the-back-at-an-angle-look
5. Memory install on the T350P (only 512MB ) was a b*tch. Following the easy-to-follow instructions on doing this was NOT easy, at least for me. It turns out in their picture, they want you to push down on some little “tabs” in-between specific keys. I ordered 512MB of SimpleTech PC2700 memory for $100.87 including shipping at BITS.com. This is SONY VGP-MM512I [SimpleTech SON-S170/512]. Make sure you seat the memory properly, with no gold showing….

Some morons thought it would be fun to hack my blog, defacing the “main page”. It just cost me an hour to fix it, although I did upgrade the software running the blog engine.

Hopefully, these people will get bored and move on to other productive endeavors like running in traffic.