David Gessel
UAL 747s haz new pods
Very nice. Lie flat, ac, usb, 10BaseT. No place to keep your laptop during takeoff is an oversight.
There’s a custom interface for to connect an iPod to the entertainment system. The cable runs $30 and connects the audio/video outputs of the iPod to the IFE so you can listen and watch your video on the 17″ monitor. That’s pretty cool, but one can imagine some interesting moments with unedited films or pr0n.
- The pod should have room to keep your laptop and other stuff at your feet during takeoff so you don’t have to wait for the seatbelt light to turn off.
- The LED lights behind the seats are cute but useless – it would be better to have a couple of LED’s under the edge of the center table to illuminate a keyboard or magazine unobtrusively.
- The iPod interface is a cool idea
- UAL should run a contest like AC does for student films. The AC shorts are the best things on the IFE. But Canadians are pretty funny.
eXport Smart Cable In Flight Traveling Companion for iPod
Related only in that it was on my iPod and I heard it on the plane, the always amusing BBC NewsQuiz had a wonderful moment: “Survey results should be adjusted for stupidity. According to a recent survey one in three Britons believes the world is less than 10,000 years old, but adjusted for stupidity nobody does.”
Cool Tracking Technology
Instamapper.com was a pretty cool solution (until the end of 2012). Nothing radically novel in concept, but it does pretty much just work and with most devices with a GPS.
It’s a little different from Google Latitude, which has a social aspect (your friends) but no history. Latitude is built into Google Maps Mobile 3.0, so everyone will have this on their phone in a few days. That’ll be weird fur sure.
Amazingly I downloaded this app this morning at 3.0.0, by the time I’d told a friend about it the release was 3.0.1, and the last person I told got 3.0.2. I guess Google is excited about this one.
Rental Ford Escape
Narrator: In fact, George, Sr. had snuck out of the attic and gone to a local Ford dealership.
Car Salesman: The Bronco’s been discontinued. We’re trying to shed that whole fugitive on the run thing. This is the Escape.
George: What a fun name. May I test drive?
Sync Outlook and Google
UPDATE: GOOGLE SYNC IS FAIL!
Google sync just stopped working. I tried all the suggestions including multiple removal and reinstall and even installing the Gears Calendar (why not) to no avail. Then I tried Mobile Sync and I am happy again.
I’ve used Funambol’s outlook client to sync Outlook on one computer with Mulberry’s Calendar on another as part of a complex web of synchronization involving GCal, ScheduleWorld, Funambol, and GCalDaemon, which pretty much worked.
But I just discovered Google Calendar Sync and just in time as Funambol 7.0.7 did not seem to work with outlook 2007 reliably (probably wacky corporate calendar entries, but whatever). So I switched to Google Calendar Sync. It obviates ScheduleWorld and intermediates directly between Outlook and GCal. On the minus side, it only syncs to your primary calendar and my old system would sync to my calendar of choice thanks to ScheduleWorld’s cleverness. But it does work and it is very fast. It is odd that it doesn’t support multiple calendars though, everything else does.
DTV transition crash
This is too funny. The FCC sponsored a NASCAR driver to get the message out about the DTV transition on Feb 17 when millions of American’s will suddenly find their TV’s don’t work and all hell will break loose likely causing the collapse of society as we know it. Of course the car crashed in the first race. And the second.
Oh yeah, fitting right in
Flocking behavior in cars. Perhaps responsible for elevated smug levels.
Rental prius
It is so LA! Now how to put it in plug-in mode so I don’t have to refill. Battery is dead, but tank is full…
Engine start on this one causes more of a judder that I remember in the zip car ones, and only 10k miles.
79 and sunny. AC in January, good thing this little car is emitting less CO₂…
Gosh, why did my UPS fail?
Gee, those batteries got hot enough to melt the covers and pop the cases, I wonder if that could have been it? Thanks Mark, for the new factory surplus ups.
As Bender Says: “We’re Boned.”
There is a great article in this week’s New Scientist by James Lovelock about the state of Global Warming and “green” mitigation strategies. His view is not comforting, nor does he mince words. It is a great read and I highly recommend it.
I’ve had ongoing discussions with friends about how much of a scam carbon trading is and about what technologies have any viability from a system level analysis. James addressed many of my favorite subjects and he’s obviously very bright because I tend to agree with him (though the biochar sequestration idea is not viable on the wee amount of biomass created through global agriculture compared to the global system as a whole, alas).
The best part of the whole interview is James’ matter of fact assessment of a likely genetic bottleneck in the next century. He seems optimistic for the outcome as an evolutionary driver, which is a pleasantly cheerful way to look at near extinction of the human race, a substantial “cull,” as he puts it.
We’re Boned.
James Lovelock is interviewed in this week’s New Scientist.