Me and Max last summer... 

Real time language translator
Today's cooler Digg.com posts include this real time language translator (written using AJAX). Just type stuff in and it translates it on the fly to several different languages. I'm sure it's not going to be long before something like this is pocket sized. One of the side benefits of having wi-fi everywhere, along with having your own mp3's and tv shows anyplace you are, will be things like this. Imagine being anyplace in the world, but still able to communicate with everyone in a reasonable fashion. As the world gets older, it definitely gets smaller.

Also thought I'd mention that I saw a commercial the other day for an Acura car that is using voice recognition to handle all sorts of tasks. I knew it was only a matter of time until this was in use. Voice recognition is something that is becoming more and more feasible as processing power gets faster. The idea of a central computer in your car that handles everything from temperature controls, to voip communications, to being a dj and playing whatever song you want from your home pc just by asking for it, is coming soon.

HEY GOOGLE!

First up, you guys kick ass. But here's an idea... why not use some of your fancy schmancy AJAX development skills and create a personalized google homepage module that lets me blog straight from the homepage? It's not like you don't already own blogger anyway!

Also, here's some very interesting links provided to me by Randy Brandhagen regarding one of the visions of the future of Google as predicted by Robert X. Cringely.

Part I
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117.html

Part II
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051124.html

In Search of the Valley trailers...

Ran across (via digg.com of course) this page that has some excellent 10 - 15 second clips of some of the big names in IT giving interviews for a documentary called "In Search Of The Valley". http://stage4.co.uk/film/teaser3.php . The sucky part is that they are encoded with quicktime, so I suggest picking up the quicktime alternative program if you don't have a quicktime player already installed.

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While I'm in the posting mood, thought I'd mention http://local.live.com. Once again, Microsoft is relying on someone else to do their R&D. For a company that spends more money on Research than any other company in the world, you would think they would be a little more innovative than to rely on netscape/apple/google to create something and then blatantly steal it. I'm not knocking MS too much, after all, if it weren't for them, I'd have a different career lined up. Local.live.com is part of their new "LIVE"! suite of web 2.0 knock-off stuff. Local.live is basically the web version of GoogleEarth. I know that Virtual Earth from MS has been around a long time, but it takes someone like google to actually make it cool, then microsoft realizes that they are desperately behind in the "cool factor" area and plays catch up. Local.live.com does have some nice birds-eye view functionality that google earth doesn't have yet. I'm sure in the next few years, you'll have fully rendered full 3d fly thrus from every angle in these applications. Till then, they'll both be trying to one-up each other.

While I'm in the psuedo-knocking mode of Microsoft.. I thought I'd mention that I was "selected" to beta test the webmail portion of Live.com. This site basically will replace hotmail.com at some point in the future. What's it like, you may ask? Well, take Outlook Web Access, make it slower, take away the filters and functions you already have with hotmail and Outlook, and call it Beta. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely an improvement over hotmail, but that's a bit like saying "I'd prefer to have my eyes gouged out with a cold knife instead of a hot one". I don't understand why they don't just put the code from Outlook Web Access as the front end to the hotmail mailboxes. The best part I can tell so far is that I can delete the spam, which makes up about 99.9% of my hotmail email, much quicker than I could before. I'm keeping GMail as my primary email app.

There's a new version of TWiT out.. as it's a Monday. I'm a few episodes behind, but hope to catch up this week. The latest one struck me as funny as Roger Chang knocks his employers (Gamespot). Jason Robbins and I actually got to meet Roger last week in San Francisco after winning a contest sponsored by G4. Thanks G4 for the tickets to San Fran and putting us up in the swank hotel. Unfortunately, your channel still sucks and I curse you for ruining the only good geek tv that was on. While your at it, make sure you check out Jason's Blog at http://jasonrobbins.blogspot.com.

The real reason for this post wasn't a rant, but rather to point out this hysterical article that they talk about on TWiT this week. It's a posting from craigslist.com

BTW, I'm posting this comment using Flock (the new "social browser" based on firefox). I thought it was supposed to make blogging easier?

Make your Own Christmas light extravaganza!

So you've seen the video of the house possessed by Trans-Siberian orchestra music with dancing lights that I posted a few weeks ago, and you're thinking to yourself.. "How Can I turn my house into something that makes Clark Griswold's look like a dog and pony show?". Well my friends, today is your lucky day. Here are the step by step instructions complete with links to the software you need. Unfortunately, I've read that the city asked Carson Williams to stop his show as it was causing traffic jams. Bah Humbug.
update: here's a link to another video made of the house with a different song. Almost more impressive than the first...

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Mental note from jason and i is cheapbeer.com taken? Like cheapgas.com but for beer complete with google maps

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

Bend over central

Bend over central

The rock

The rock

Sea lions in the city

Sea lions in the city

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Im winning this

Im winning this

Ya know what's great? API's. API's, more specifically web service API's, allow regular schmoes access to do really cool things with larger applications. I know I'm mucking up a lot of the terminology, but the concept is better seen than described.. HERE.. Just look at this.

http://coolgooglemaps.blogspot.com/

Excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes...
http://www.totallyabsurd.com/archive.htm

A collection of the dumbest patents ever filed.
Wow.. this is a truly hysterical site. I love the diagrams.

Ok..it's wednesday night at 7:12 PM and I'm still at work. Mostly catching up on all the diggs that I haven't gotten to read lately. If you don't already get the diggs.. you should. It makes you happy to be a geek. I was never much of a "slashdotter", but I'm loving www.digg.com. Great job Kevin and co. This post is mostly to tell you that you have to check out this video! CRAZY Xmas lights! It's awesome.

Test

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

AJAX ..All the kids are doing it!

I'm not a developer, nor do I play one on TV. But I have been reading a lot lately about all this AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that seems to be the rage. Its a way of using a collection of Javascript and XML to create the new wave of Interactive web pages (buzzwords being Web 2.0, Tagging, del.icio.us, yadda yadda). I need to give my good buddy and web guru Mike Shea a call to find out if it's all just a fad-ish type bubble, or if it is the way of the future. Lost? I suggest checking out the Wikipedia.. oh wait..there's another buzzword.

This is kind of a neat idea. I think it's kinda flakey, but the concept is cool. I hate to admit it, but I tend to be a little star-struck when I see celebrities. This webpage makes it easy to stalk em..
Now if someone set up a frappr or some keyhole stuff for Google Earth that did the same thing..

And you thought Mary Kay Laterno was hot...

I just read this article about the teacher in Florida that got 3 years house arrest for having sex with her 14 Yr old student. I know the jokes been told before, but sheesh.. why wasn't I this lucky when I was in school??

Remember those old "TROOPS" videos? I was thinking about them the other day and was wondering if they were still around someplace on the net. I think they are on http://www.theforce.net, but you need a subscription. With the release of Episode III on DVD, I'm surprised they didn't get another round of attention. I thought this spoof on G4 was pretty good, but not quite the comedic affect of Troops.

New Contact Info...

I've finally ditched my Indiana phone # for a local Phoenix one. Most of you that would possibly read this blog probably got the SMS Txt message with the new #. In case you didn't, here it is, and I'll post it on the sidebar for future reference.

Cell: 602.820-7380
email: brad@bradmyers.com
yahoo: bradmyers2000
aim: bradmyers2000
msn: magnus_2k@hotmail.com

Im crazy chair on the head man, now giv

Im crazy chair on the head man, now give me some candy

First rattler

First rattler

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Random thought of the day

Do the same handicap rules apply to the bathroom as parking spaces? Am I not supposed to use the "office like" stall?

Balloon fest

Balloon fest

If you haven't already heard about Sony installing root kits and claiming users needn't w0rry about the man behind the curtain, then you should check this out. I particularly like this article about using Sony's DRM against itself.

Black Friday is coming quickly. I'm gonna try to save my pennies until then so I can pick up some schweat deals. I just found a link to this site that has a lot of the black friday ad's listed.
http://www.bfads.net/bestbuy.html which I found linked from http://www.digg.com (check this site out!)
Here's another http://blackfridayads.com and another http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com

Reading thru my daily dose (and believe me..it's a horse pill of a dose) of tech newsletters, there was a mention of the CES show coming up soon. Particularly, there was mention of Apple possibly showcasing there "Intel Inside" macs at the show. I have wanted to attend CES for about 10 years now, and this year, my friends, I believe is the year! So..Who's with me??
Jan 5 - 8 (I'll likely try to go 6 - 8).

While looking around for a way to script the install of Terminal Services on a Win2k3 machine, I ran across a page at MS that lists some pretty interesting command line tools that I wasn't aware of. Some of the handy ones are: (run these from a cmd line).

c:\>Systeminfo - provides a nice list of lots of useful system information ...DUH!
c:\>RSH - Remote Shell ..kinda like the very cool psexec from sysinternals but requires the daemon to be running.
c:\>Eventcreate - useful in scripts if you want to put a line in the event log for detailing when you did something
c:\>sysocmgr - To install Windows components after the fact.. I think this is what I need to install Terminal Services after the fact in an unattended fashion.
c:\>driverquery - Think you got something blue screening your machine from a driver that you need to remove.. try this... very handy. Also tells you when it was installed. Maybe handy when looking for root kits.
c:\>w32tm - cornicopia of time troubleshooting information

As I've been getting back into super-geek mode, I've ran across some pretty interesting articles lately.

First off, you have to check out this guys Home theater set up. It's INCREDIBLE! http://theater.stevejenkins.com/gallery/complete/
Even Mike Shea would be envious.

Here's a link to Kevin Rose's new Brainchild website. It's sorta like slashdot, but a little more.. windows-ish. I'm liking it. http://www.digg.com

Looking for a free way to back up some content online? Check out http://www.moxy.com

If you aren't already listening to TWiT...then why aren't you?
More to come soon..

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Last night was the big Colts Vs. Pats game. I got to enjoy it at the clubhouse of my new apartment. Here's a pic of the TV's in the clubhouse..

My first post in over a year.. I think. And wouldn't you know it, after that long of a delay, I'm here to announce that I know what I want for Christmas this year. Sure sure...it's a little pricey, but I think I'm worth it. You can order it directly from Nieman Marcus.

I've also set up my blog on blogspot, and also set up my go@blogger account so I should start doing some more blogging from my phone, which if it works out well, will replace my bradmyers.textamerica.com site. I did notice that go@blogger already rejected my first attempt to send a pic because it was over 250 KB.

Lots of new stuff happening, and if inspiration hits me, I'm sure I'll write more about it soon. Cable modem gets installed tomorrow at the new place.. so I may have a better chance to blog more soon.

Till then..toodles