Monthly Archives: October 2006

Save the (Plastic) Pink Flamingo

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I just heard on CNN Headline news that the factory where the tacky, yet uber chic, plastic flamingos are made will close by November 1st.

Don Fatherstone (yep that’s his real name) , the owner/inventor of the plastic flamingos says the Union Products plant will be closing due to rising manufacturing costs.

A very sad day for kitsch lovers everywhere.  I sure hope I can find a few boxes to stock up on!

Since I grew up in south Florida, a backyard cookout just doesn’t seem the same without the tacky little creatures peppered about the lawn.

Sure, It’s pretty likely some overseas manufacturer will start(?) producing cheep knock-off flamingos soon, but without Don’s signature on the tail feathers, it just won’t be the same.

RIP Pink Flamingo 1957-2006, gone at a still spry 49.

More Coverage:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl…

http://improbable.com/2006/10/20/pink-flamingo-eme…

Personal Google Search Engine – Google Co-op

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Lot’s of buzz today about the newly announced Google Co-op engine which lets you create a custom engine tailored to your website(s).

Pretty cool concept.  I was able to create one for EdHolloway.com in less than a minute.  You can try it here – Search Ed Holloway.com

You can also create a custom search engine constrained to a set of sites and keywords you may regularly search, a programmer for example, could create a search engine to their favorite coding sites, and have the ability to search just this subset of the Internet, without having to manually filter out unwanted results.  It will be very interesting to see what sorts of sites start popping up around this technology – http://www.realclimate.org and JumpUp.com are two that Google is already highlighting.

Give it a while – cool stuff!

 

More details and coverage:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/eureka-your…

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=36…

http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticl…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/23/google-custom…

http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-6128807.html

Fujitsu 1610 Tablet PC – Hands on Preview

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I had the chance to spend a few minutes with a (pre-production) Fujitsu 1610 Tablet PC this morning.  One word – Awesome!

It has a similar (if not the same) feel and form factor as the 1510, with updated hardware AND a PC-Card slot (a MUST have for EVDO/EDGE, and a big issue for the 1510).

I had a chance to run our application on the unit, and the performance was snappy and just as good as any full size tablets.  I was a little concerned about the screen-size and and passive/touch input, but things ran great and were very usable.  I also tried to play a full screen HD video to get a feel for graphics performance, that was good as well, with a few minor jumps and skips – but I’m told this will be much better with the final software drivers.  I should have an eval unit soon, and will be sure to do more testing, and photos.

If you are in the market for a small form-factor convertible tablet you will definitely want to check out the 1610 when they become available(very soon).

For more specs and details on the 1610 (and eveything else mobile), be sure to check out the coverage at GottaBeMobile.com 

Tablet PCs, Ink Blogs, and Education

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I had a nice note yesterday from an Ink Blog user who is using it as an education tool.  She teaches a graphic communication class, and has been creating blog entries, in ink, showing various page layoutsfor her students to review online.

When I wrote the plug in, I would have never imagined it being used for education, but after seeing Romy’s use it just makes perfect sense!  What a great way for educators to quickly and easily post information for students to review – a picture is worth (at least) 1000 words!

Installing Vista RC2 on a Virtual Machine

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Vista RC2 (build 5744) poked it’s head out yesterday on the Microsoft Beta sites.  This build seems easier to install on a VMWare virtual machine than previous builds, and performance is very usable.

The only gotcha I had, and why I’m posting this, is that if I ran the install from a VMWare or Daemon Tools ISO CD emulator, the install needed a driver, which, of course, I did not have.  After messing with this for 20 minutes, I decided to just burn it to a DVD and try installing from that.  Worked like a charm.  There may be some other ISO mounting tools out there that will work for this, but burning it to a DVD was the quickest solution for me.

Now off to try it on a M400 Tablet and the Q1 UMPC!

40% Better Search Results than Google?

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In all my free time, I decided to whip up a better search engine than Google, I named it EdOOgle.

Try it out and let me know if your results aren’t at least 40% better than Google.

 

This, of course, is just a cool little hack someones thrown together – it still uses Goolge for the search, it just replaces the logo with whatever you want.  Just go to the site and change the name to whatever you like.  This has probably been around a while, but I just saw it, and thought it was worth sharing.

All this being said, if anyone wants to fund EdOOgle, please get in touch 🙂 heh.