Tag: gadgets
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The Allure of Used Media
I was just reading today about some rumors surrounding the system that’s being called, for lack of a better name, the XBox 720. It’s supposed to be coming out in late 2013 or 2014, which is bad for a couple of reasons. One, if they screw the pooch and don’t get it to hit that…
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The Cult of Keyboards
As I approach the end of my 40th year, my body is falling apart. Okay, that may be an over-exaggeration, but every morning, it feels like another piece has been overextended or abused or mutilated, from the various discs in my back to the muscles and joints in my shoulders or arms or knees or…
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Life and death of the Game Boy
When the Game Boy first came out, I was infatuated with Tetris, still a new disease to me. I could spend any amount of money playing Tetris in 1989 or 1990, until I had nightmares about falling blocks and that stupid song stuck in my head. So when the Target stores started putting display units…
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The Death of Palm
In a serious WTF move yesterday, HP announced they were ditching their hardware manufacturing business, and abandoning their work on WebOS devices. HP just bought Palm a little over a year ago for 1.2 billion dollars. Their big splash was the iPad killer tablet, the HP TouchPad, which sold roughly as well as the Edsel…
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Strange Nostalgia for Lost Electronics
I get a lot of shit for the “museum of obsolete technology” I have in our storage locker right now, the electronic toys I’m paying $30 a month to not see. But I’ve pared down almost all of that inventory now, and it’s down to a single C-64 and 1541 drive, and a Sony Magic…
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I’d hate to be a piece of furniture in Steve Ballmer’s office this week
The Mac App Store launched Thursday, and Herman Miller stock went up two points in anticipation of all of the chairs Steve Ballmer has probably been throwing at people this week. There’s no way the sweaty-pitted Microsoft CEO isn’t beating his middle managers like red-headed step-children after the news came out that people downloaded a…
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iPad
I now have an iPad. Sarah surprised me with one for our anniversary, and I’ve only had a bit over a full day to play with it, but I think it’s a pretty damn revolutionary device. I had my doubts when it came out, especially because I already had a very capable iPhone for pocket-oriented…
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Computer inventory, fall ’10 edition
Okay, so I mentioned my computer count had grown over on my Facebook page, and Bill asked me a bunch of questions about what’s what, so here’s a quick rundown, in reverse order of age: Lenovo ThinkPad T410 – the new work machine, running Windows 7. Maybe this doesn’t count because it’s not mine, but…
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A cautionary tale of incompatible formats
In 1998, I got a new credit card in the mail and after thinking about how many photocopies I could make for $1500 or if that was enough to buy like one sixtyfourth of an acre in some deserted forest, enough to build some kind of treehouse-esque unabomber shack, I suddenly realized that I had…
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Requiem for an iPhone
Well, my must-last-two-years-according-to-AT&T iPhone 3G just crossed the magical Apple rainbow at nine months. It was working fine, but it started developing a crack in the back case, just above the dock connector. It probably could have lasted another year, but I figured I would make the trek to the Apple Store and see if…