Well… it has happened. Tapwave is slapping the mat and crying uncle. After spending a couple of years trying to get their Zodiac game-oriented PalmOS handhelds to take hold of the market Tapwave is getting out of the business. They had mentioned doing work for OEM partners, but as Engadget states, a statement on their homepage points toward bankruptcy. This is a true shame, as the Zodiac really pushed the envelope in a lot of areas for it’s class of products. Just take a look at what the PSP is now, and know that the Zodiac had many of the same features two years ago (though it obviously lacked the very impressive graphics hardware packed into the PSP).
Archive for July, 2005
Google has further expanded the features on their Peronalized Home page. A new “Add Content” link sits in the top left corner of the page. Clicking slides a sidebar out presenting you with quite a bit of new content to add to your start page. Two of the most important additions to me are Bookmarks and “Create a Section”, which allows you to add any RSS feed. The first feed I wanted to add was Engadget, which ironically, is one of the feed urls provided as an example. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the possibilities RSS integration opens up, but I’m instantly coming up with tons of very useful applications. I am getting increasingly excited as RSS becomes a heavily utilized way to move information from provider to consumer, and I expect it and subsequent RSS-like technologies to change the way we gather information electronically in the near future.
In a move that honestly took me by complete surprise, Yahoo has bought Konfabulator, an excellent tool for loading mini-applications onto your desktop while having them duck out of the way when not needed. For more information, check out the Konfabulator Information page.
I had messed with Konfabulator a few times in the past, but I could never justify the price tag. However, with the aquisition by Yahoo, the product is now free. This product, which was once Mac only, is also availible for both Windows and Mac. Now that Konfabulator is free on both platforms I’m wondering if people who run both Windows and Mac systems will ditch Dashboard on Mac and go with Konfabulator so that they may have the same widgets on both machines. I guess my real curiosity is whether I’m going to end up doing that. I’m installing Konfabulator on my Windows machine as I write this. When I tried it previously the software seemed to be crippled by an extreme ammount of overhead, and hopefully that has been addressed.
[Exciting Edit!]
Update! So I just installed Konfabulator and all of the widgets have been updated. Most exciting to me, is that the Picture widget, which rotates images on your desktop, will plug directly into your Flickr account. You can select to see your own pictures, pictures of all of your contacts, or pictures of your particular contacts. I, personally, find this very exciting. I also see this as a payoff from when Yahoo bought Flickr. Great to see good things happening.
So head on over to konfabulator.com and check the software out.
Link: Konfabulator.com
Via: Sinceretheory
Tags: Yahoo Konfabulator software widgets Flickr
As you may have seen floating around the web already, Numark is going to release a new mixing board that has two built-in iPod docks. The board will control playback on the iPods, as well as mix the sound coming from the units together while controlling some basic EQ bands and volume.
I hate to be derogatory, but this is kind of ridiculous. As the board gets audio from the line-out pins on the iPods connector, I highly doubt it will have the ability to change the speed of the music being played. This makes beat matching nearly impossible, which makes the whole point of “mixing” two songs just about pointless. I can accomplish a crossfade with two cables and a $4 pot resistor from Radio Shack… which is basically what this board gives you. Unless, of course, I’m missing something and the board actually has on-board memory that will sample the audio from the iPod and then allow you to shift it. Even then, you’re pumping lossy audio files through your (supposedly) powerful PA system, which isn’t a good idea in itself.
Basically, the only type of person who’s going to be laying down the cash for this thing is the same type of person who would feel the need to carry around 2 iPods in the first place. It just goes against the whole idea of DJ’ing. I know I’m saying the obvious, but this is a pretty blatant attempt by Numark to jump on the iPod ‘craze’, but they’ve missed the mark by introducing the iPod into a system where the hardware actually inhibits the function of the product, instead of improving it. And to that, I say… “iShame on you Numark… you should know better.”
Via: Engadget
My buddy Mesh has brought attention to what I see as an excellent tool for graphic designers, web developers, interface designers, artists, photographers, and a whole slew of other creative types. Colr.org is to colors what Flickr is to pictures (I wonder where they got the idea for the spelling of their name?). As time progresses, the users of Colr.org are collectively tagging every color we can reproduce. Do you want a color that’s about the shade of a pear? Search for pear tags and you’re presented with a myriad of appropriate hex values. As you look around and colors inspire you, you can add your own tags and help catalog the database.
I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but Mesh has been keeping an eye on it for a good deal of time now, so be sure to head over to his post for a much more informative write up on the site.
Link: Colr.org
Via: Sinceretheory.net