Female Android

As if out of a science fiction novel, the Japanese produces this.

regex filename renaming

Marc found a script that rename file names based on a regular expression.

Yahoo Widgets and Konfabulator

Yahoo purchased the Desktop widget utility Konfabulator which is a javascript runtime engine that allows small programs written in Javascript to be run as independent applications. Not being a Mac user, I'm not as familair with the history of Konfabulator and whatever dispute there seem to be with Apple who also has something similiar. Originally, only for Mac platforms, there is also a windows version available that competes with a similiar product from Stardock. Instead of charging $19.99, Yahoo will now release the product for FREE.

The new download location for Konfabulator (now called Yahoo! Widgets?) is at: http://widgets.yahoo.com/

I tried out Konfabulator and some of the widgets do look nice. Their level of usefulness is still questionable at this point (a lot of simple clocks, etc) but I can see some interesting things that can be done when integrated with the Yahoo APIs. This does move away from dependency on the browser which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The one thing I don't like as much about these type of things is the memory usage. Each widget seems to take up as much as the next and as much as the main Konfabulator process.

Random catchup

It's been pretty busy lately so I have not had much time to update the blog. Frankly, I haven't encounter many interesting articles recently to really blog about. There was the contraversay with the "secret sex code" in the latest GTA game. If a game that lets players recharge their "health" through a visit to the corner prostitute didn't already have an "adult" rating, what's the big deal that there was a secret code to unlock pixelated acts of sex? The public reaction to this is probably overblown, but I do wonder what the programmers were thinking? Don't bite the hand that feed you, people. At least just make your own private version to show off to your peers if that's what it was about.

In related gaming news, the son of a Microsoft manager got his hands on his dad's Xbox360 and proceeded to take pictures of him with it and posting them on a public forum thereby completely breaking the NDA his father signed. It's safe to say that the father is no longer employed. What were both father and son thinking?!?

Seeing two images on one screen.

This is pretty cool!

Goodbye, OS/2

I remember when OS/2 Warp first came out and the excitement about it. I don't really know why, but the initial excitement didn't translate into sales or adoption. Despite it never living up to its potential, OS/2 still managed to hang around for over 10 years (nearly 20 since OS/2 1.0?). Sadly, the end is near as IBM has officially announced the last day of this OS.

Yahoo SMS, Slash what?

Yahoo released their own SMS search service for mobile devices. For those who are using Google's SMS service, this will be very familiar.

On a slightly different note, the further decline of Slashdot is evident in the growing frequency of uninformed comments by its readers. One example is when Yahoo launched its Mindset Search Beta and one reader quickly posted about how he did not like how he would have to download it and install software on his computer. The irony is that Mindeset is web application and doesn't have any software download unless the reader is refering to having to install a web browser so he can surf the web? Often there are comments about Goggle Search vs Yahoo Search and it is clear that many readers of Slashdot are not very well informed or up-to-date about current technologies. There are comments about how Yahoo uses Google's search engine (these people are a years behind the times) and comments about how Yahoo's search result are not as good as Google's (these people are many years behind the times). The truth is that the two search sites will not return the exact same results, but when people actually takes the time to do a comparison of the results they will find out how close the gap really is between the two. However, this isn't about G vs Y, my comments is actually about Slashdot.

While the "Slashdot" effect is still in play, it's questionable whether sites who gets this effect are now getting the type of traffic they desire. Technology sites all want greater traffic and have buzz spread about them, but as is often said, "quantity isn't necessarily better then quality."

Initial D Movie

The live action movie based on the popular anime/manga Initial D was the number 1 movie in Hong Kong beating out the likes of Star Wars and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Now if they only had Angelina Jolie in that movie, it'd be unstoppable!