Hardware Beyond the Hype
Street Tech pal Erin McKean of Oxford University Press publishes a cool e-list called “Erin’s Weird and Wonderful Word of the Day.” Today’s word is:
furciferous [fur-SIF-er-us]
an adjective meaning ‘like a rascal’. From a Latin word meaning ‘fork-bearer’, which, by analogy with the forked yoke put on the necks of criminals, also came to mean ‘jailbird’.
OUP also publishes an “American Slang Word of the Day” list. Both are free. Subscribe here.
Holy crap! Apple has released a statement claiming that, in the 48 hours that their ver 4.9 of iTunes has been in circulation, [Say this in your best Dr. Evil voice] ONE MILLION podcasts have been subscribed to. Impressive.
[Via Biz.Yahoo]
Whoever would’ve thought that the Web would get a command-line interface? Whoever would’ve thought that such an interface could be so gosh-dang useful?
Yubnub bills itself as a “social command line” for the Web. Users are allowed to assign command-line type abbreviations to Web addresses and Web-based apps. There are, of course, hundreds of already assigned CL codes, many of them in familiar command-line syntax (“ls” for a list of available commands, “man” for the “manual” to the site (okay, it’s a lame little FAQ, but still…), “who” for a “whois” search, etc). Then there are Web-centric commands, like “g [search string]” for a Google search, “login [site URL]” to return a bugmenot site password, “torrentspy [name of media]” to search for matching bittorrent files). This software gets seriously useful when you install the Firefox search box plugin for it.
Almost immediately after the announcement that Macs would make the switch to Intel chips, an Intel version of Mac OS X started making the rounds online. People began to install it on their PCs. Steve Jobs, who’s brought suit against people for less, doesn’t seem especially concerned. Naturally, there’s a theory about it.
One Free Minute is a cool-looking sculptural object that broadcasts your phoned-in rants, for up to one minute. You call the number, and if the sculpture is “live,” your rant is broadcast for all to hear. If not, it gets stored on an answering machine for later playback. Right now, the sculpture resides in “America’s demographically average city” Columbus, Ohio, but plans are in the works to take the sculptural mouthpiece on the road. Exercise your right to free speech (while there’s still time).
Interesting quote from “The Xbox Reloaded” (Wired): “Xbox 360 will introduce gamers to a world where they can create and maintain a persistent, evolving online persona regardless of which game they’re playing. A user profile, maintained at a Microsoft data center, will follow you around and track your progress from game to game. That way, if you’re a Halo 3 ace, you won’t get thrown into a multiplayer Splinter Cell session with a bunch of newbies. The Xbox Live network will also tie into real-world payment systems – à la PayPal – so players can buy, make, and sell virtual weapons, car parts, and clothes via micropayments.”
So it sounds like Microsoft is building a PayPal competitor, with Xbox 360 as a trojan horse to get it into living rooms.
We have email. I repeat, we HAVE EMAIL. We’re passing out the cigars here at Mission Control and there’s a lot of whooping and ass-slapping. Thanks again for your patience. Now we return you to your junkmail, already in progress.
Sorry this took so long. Hopefully this is the last snag in our moving process and it’s on to bigger and better things from here. Thanks for hanging in there with us.
So…we’re still waiting for our new…a-hem…improved hosting service to implement the fix to our broken email service. Until then, our lovely and talented (okay, he’s talented, anyway — what do you want from us, we’re geeks!) webmaster, Tim, has come up with a workaround. Click on the link below to read it.
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Honestly, we had no idea that so many people use streettech.com email accounts, many as their primary email. We’re flattered, and ya know, guilt-ridden as shit ’cause we broke your email pipeline.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE
We do NOT…I repeat, we DO NOT have email. You still have to change your local Hosts file as described in the link below to get ST email to work on your machine.
As mentioned earlier, we’re in the process of moving Street Tech to a new host. As a result, ST’s email service is currently unavailable. We really apologize for the hassle. As devout Netizens, we know what a drag it is to not have access to your email. We’re trying to get the bugs beaten out of everything ASAP. Please bear with us.
Please join me in giving a round warm of applause to Andrew Sasaki, Street Tech’s new Senior Editor. Andrew has been a member of the infamous “Street Tech Irregulars” for years, but now, he’s got a bigger part in the cast, at least he has a swankier title to add to the resume. So who is this Sasaki fellow?
Andrew is a systems manager in the Big Applet by day and a gadget geek 24/7. A true renaissance man, he’s been everything from a graphic designer and a video editor to a bartender and a radio DJ. He’s been a computer geek since the days of punch card and paper tape and a cybernaut since the dawn of the BBS (man, this d00d might be older than I am!). His interests in consumer electronics include photography and audio equipment.
So, from now on, please send all hate mail, computer virii, and cease and desist orders c/o Mr. Sasaki. We kid, we KID, we kid the new recruit!