a drop of waterArchive for the ‘Tech’ Category
Ipod Charging and Playing Adapter
When Apple released the Ipod Touch 2G, the Iphone 3G and the Ipod Nano 4G, they switched up the charging system from a 12V source to a 5V source (removing the last reminant of firewire support in their connector). Unfortunately this rendered many charging and playing connectors in cars, speaker docks, etc., half functional, since the newer ipods would only play and no longer charge while connected.
I’ve been waiting for a speaker dock that supports the new design, but haven’t found one yet. I recently ran across an adapter made by Scosche. I don’t own it myself, but the reviews on Amazon seem to recommend it. Looks like this would be a good option if you are looking to play and charge the new Ipods at the same time on an older device.
Pokemon Platinum and StarCraft II Amazon Pre-order
Pokemon Platinum is planned for release on March 22, 2009 according to Amazon. I played quite a bit of pokemon in elementary schoool, middle school, high school and post-college. I probably won’t get it though since I need to get my life in order for StarCraft II.
There is no release date yet unfortunately, but at least we are making progress after 2 years since its announcement!
Yay Gmail Stickers!
Our free gmail stickers came today! Now, where to put them…
Associative Word Geometry Applied to Internet Searches
Every word has an association with every other word. The associations can be strong or weak and negative or positive. i.e. Love has a strong positive association with romance and a strong negative association with hate. One could theoretically assign a point in an n-dimensional space (where each dimension is a type of association). By plotting each word in a search string in this space and finding planar intersections, a search engine could return a set of results of higher quality based on the users search. The advantage of this algorithm would be that it factors in the associative relationships of words by all users in order to interpret the intent of a single user.
How to Buy at Mac
Apple computers are gaining market share on college campuses like crazy. With their in store support (Genius Bar), optional (but well worth the money) 3 year warranty upgrade, their default suite of software productivity solutions, and their strategic marketing, Apple is poised to jump into the mainstream market share as the current collegiate-apple-fan graduates and becomes the majority of the technological work force.
Apple has made its product releases “events” that are cultishly followed by live feed and wildly rumored about on fan websites. The interesting part is that once their new products are released, the older generation of products are substantially marked down, creating bargain deals for those who are at peace with the reality that 1st gen products typically have bugs and issues, while the tried and true nth gen products of the outdated product line are stable and dependable.
Here is an example:
Previous generation: Apple MacBook Pro MB133LL/A 15.4-inch Laptop (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive on Amazon for $1444 (After Rebate [AR]) when just a week ago, it was around $1999.
Now, obviously if you were to buy this, then you wouldn’t have the newest and the best and the fastest and the shiniest, but you are also stretching your dollar by buying the previous product model. What I mean is, let’s say you sell this laptop a year from now for $1000. This would mean you “rented” this laptop for $444. On the other hand, if you were to buy the newst model Macbook Pro, you would pay something around $2100 (retail in CA for the “low” end MBP barring any discounts), and probably sell it for $1300, resulting in a “rental fee” of $700. As much as I like to have the newest model with all the fancyness, I must remind myself that waiting usually pays off.
