Techstars Blooper Reel

If you were following along with the always entertaining Techstars summer video series (and lets face it, why wouldn't you), this should bring a smile or two to your face.

The Founders | Bloopers from Megan Leigh Sweeney on Vimeo.

Techstars making Movies

Techstars 09 has started once again up in Boulder, and I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about the companies involved over the summer. To wet your appetite a little, the first in a series of videos is below, so check it out...

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Week 1 "The Selected Few" from Andrew on Vimeo.

Summer is nearly here

So what better time of year to bring out that old Solar Necklace you have sitting in your wardrobe, and keep your iPhone charged up for a whole day?

I'm wondering just how sharp the corner of those panels are, and whether or not you get the free sunscreen you're obviously going to need to avoid skin cancer after a couple of years of sunning yourself for a few extra minutes of battery life.

Remote Control Car

And it's a real car as well. Controlled by an iPod Touch. I think the thing I like most about this is the fact that the remote and the car aren't controlled directly - they each connect to the internet and then talk, meaning you could be on the other side of the world and really freak out the people back home. I just hope he's got some decent security on there as well, coz hacking into this would definitely be something fun if you had the technical skills.

Funny how timing works, but I started this book at the weekend, which also features remote control cars. Still only half way through, but it's a great book so far, and highly recommended (especially if you're a bit of a geek).

Smallest Fuel Cell

It's only 3mm across, and can send out an amp for 30 hours (which won't charge your iPod just yet). If you want to get more details on the next generation of fuel cells, check out the New Scientist article.

Smallest Mouse

allegedly anyway. However, it is guaranteed to give you cramp after 10 minutes of use. If you can't find enough room in your laptop bag for a decent sized mouse, you need another bag.

IT vs Employees

Courtesy of Tonks, this made me laugh and cry way too hard for the office (it was lunchtime though).

Kinetic Energy Isn't So Hot

What happens when you try out a fancy new system on your F1 car for capturing the braking energy and re-using it down the straight for a few extra mph's? Just watch the guy to the left and find out - guess it still needs a little work...

Adaptive Blue - SmartLinks

So I actually did a couple of updates to the site template the other day, and then of course ran out of time when it came to letting people know. Nothing major, but I did add SmartLinks from Adapative Blue.

These clever things take your normal links, and add a little box after them to provide you with some extra information (if you want it). As this is the first time I've tried it out, we'll see how it works with a few things below.

Music - I'm currently thinking of going up to Boulder (on a Monday night of all times) to see Kate Nash, coz I love her album.

Movies - We watched Michael Clayton the other weekend, and it kinda rocked. One of the best films we've seen this year.

Books - I started reading The Breakthrough Company last night (and I think set a new personal record for the number of books I've currently got on the go, but that's a whole other post).

Money - I'm hoping the Apple stock goes back up soon.

And finally (and not sure if this one does anything), here's my LinkedIn profile - it looks like they released a new user interface over the weekend, which is all Ajaxie. Which reminds me - I really need to make a bit more effort to put some details on there.

Anyway, see how that works for you - if you hate it, let me know. If you love it, you can tell me that too, but as always, I assume silence is complete apathy.....

Modular Phone - The Answer to all of our Prayers?

Sometimes phone carriers in the US just don't get what people really need (or they do, but they want some extra cash so ignore people) - a phone that works is obviously the number one thing, and then for me personally, I want to be able to have a couple of different phones for different things. Completely lost without email access on the road, I couldn't give up the full keyboard BlackJack II I now carry around, but when it comes to the weekend, and going out on the lash, I really would just like a little phone that slips inconspicuously in my pocket. I used to have a setup like that, with a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone for the weekends, but that gave up the ghost when I was back in England for Christmas.

So, the fact that a company is bringing out a modular phone (called modu), with a core piece nice and tiny that makes the calls, and then being able to bolt on different bits as needed, sounds pretty cool. Normally you'd just blow something off like this, but the guy who runs this company invented the usb memory stick, and sold his last company for almost $2 billion - which means he's probably quite smart, and has lots of money. So, here's hoping - DVICE sum up all the reviews so far if you want to check it out.

When is a TV too big?

Never, obviously ;-) But in trying to work out how this will fit into my living room, I realized it would probably involve a sledge hammer, followed my a little building, and the room next to the living room magically becoming smaller (or building a new extension out onto the deck).

Still, I can dream (which is a good job, coz reality is never going to get this big boy into my house, no matter how cheap plasma's ever become).

CES and Cars

Gadgets and cars at the same event? Sounds like heaven to me, but having seen a couple of the pics from the show, it looks a little like overkill in certain demo cars.

Take the car to the left for example - are you even going to get past level 1 or 2 on the volume meter before your ears start to bleed? And do you have to be a midget to watch the screen?

Anyway, more pics of various cars and their LCD screens here (and this one wasn't even a finalist for the worst placed screen placement).

Macworld is going to be BIG (maybe..)

So this week is CES, where all the technology companies around the world, apart from Apple, release their latest and greatest on the world. Next week, at MacWorld, there's going to be one of Steve's famous Keynote speeches, which everyone is in full speculation about as no-one really has any idea about what will be announced.

However, with the release of updated Pro and Server machines this week, Gizmodo is speculating that next week must be pretty big - if they can release upgrades the week before their "official" release date, they must have something pretty big lined up for next week.

Here's hoping for the mini laptop with touchscreen, cheap enough price for me to go and buy, and a 32 GB (or more) iTouch. Or something like that anyway.

Mouse Magic

Not really magic as such, but the first new mouse innovation I've seen in a very long time that looks like it might actually be useful.

Google Maps Does it again!

Raises the bar I mean - this is pretty cool (even if you're not really a techie), but when you get directions on Google Maps now, if you don't like the route, or decide you need to stop off somewhere first, you can just grap a point and move it in pretty much real time - the route will recalculate everything and serve you up your new directions/distance/drink of choice.

When it comes to map stuff, it takes a lot to get me excited, coz I tend to deal with it pretty much every day in some form or another. Today, I'm excited. Go try it yourself...

It's a Sad Day...

I'm not sure when it happened (maybe starting to code when I was 9 had something to do with it), but today I realized I actually was still a sad techie at heart (and thereby proving my wife's ascertations). Anyway, I realized this because I just read a page on a new file system, and smiled the whole way through. How sad is that?

Anyway, due to one of the Sun guys releasing a little info early about what OS X Leopard is using for it's file system, I ended up on the page below. If you're as sad as I am, you can check it out, otherwise I would suggest moving on swiftly.

What is ZFS? at OpenSolaris.org

MacBook Pro Updated

They're oh so pretty. And now even faster (who thought Apple moving to the Intel platform was a bad idea?).

So, performance boosts, more memory, bigger hard-drives, faster graphics card and slimmer and lighter to boot. Now if only I could work out how to afford one of these things (and justify it in my head that it's worth it, despite having a work laptop and an iMac in the house).

Techie details are here if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Breaking - Google Buys FeedBurner

Looks like this was just announced, although there had been a few rumours floating around, but Google went out and purchased Feedburner. The official announcement is here, and their VC view of the deal is here.

I use both Google (who doesn't these days) and Feedburner, not that it makes much difference, but I guess all my blog underlying technology is now on the same platform (written in Blogger, feed by FeedBurner - the little orange badge thing over on the left, and compulsive blog reading courtesy of Reader). Google, you complete me (actually, that's not true, until you decide to give me free computers, super fast fios like speeds of wifi everywhere I walk, and a chocolate digestive)

Spot the Difference

AOL's new home page, Yahoo's not so new home page ....

Digg Update

Such was the controvesy among the users, that people power did actually work, and Digg have gone back to not interfering with their site.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.