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Fuzzy Time is a recent meme in the blogosphere - some design firm built a mockup of a clock that told the time - sort of. Instead of an exact time like 5:16pm, it would show “Five Fifteen” or “Quarter After Five.”

This sounded kind-of cool, so I built an HTML version of this clock. (Open in it’s own window, then resize the window to about 2 or 3 inches wide)

The app has a pretty decent list of time variants. Each minute it scans through all the time variants, chooses the ones which apply now, and then chooses a random one of the candidates to be displayed as the time. The whole source for the thing can be seen if you “view source” - check it out, and let me know if you come up with some time variants I haven’t thought of!

It’s nice to run this clock in a window on your desktop - and to do that, check out Bubbles! Bubbles lets you run HTML applications as though they are PC Desktop apps.

For more fuzzy clocks:

• http://store.artlebedev.com/office/verbarius/
• http://code.google.com/p/fuzzyclock/

Check out this story! Scientists watching how water beetles skim across the surface of a lake have been able to duplicate this behavior in a tiny robot. The robot can skim across the surface at a very high rate of speed, considering it’s size.

Stefan pointed out a really cool you-tube video the other day. Johnny Chung Lee has used a Wii controller to create a multi-point interactive whiteboard. The hardware is really simple. He’s simply created a couple of pens with LEDs at the tips and switches mounted on the side of the pen. He then simply points the Wii controller at a screen where a projector is displaying his PC desktop. The Wii controller connects to the PC using Bluetooth. Johnny has written some code on the PC to tie it all together, and the result is astonishing!

Check it out!

I recently picked up an Asus eee PC, a tiny wonder of a PC. $399 at www.pccyber.com here in Ottawa.

The eee features:

• 7 inch screen,
• Full keyboard,
• 512Meg of RAM,
• 4Gig silicon hard disk,
• 900 MHz Intel CPU,
• 802.11g wireless
• 10/100 LAN jack
• 2 lbs
• Runs Linux,
• Ships with 40 applications, almost NONE of which I would classify as bloatware,
• 3 USB ports,
• VGA Port,
• Camera!,
• Built-in mic and speakers,
• SD Card reader,
• Can run Windows XP - ships with DVD that includes all necessary drivers.

What’s Great:

• The size. It’s awesomely small and fun.
• The weight. You can carry this everywhere.
• The apps. Great selection (Open office, Firefox, Skype, lots, lots more.)

What Sucks:

• The battery life does not appear to be the 3.5 hours that some people are reporting. I find it lasts about 1.5 hours, under normal use (browsing). So, carry the charger.
• The sleep mode (slamming the lid shut) seems to use WAY too much power. The battery drains way to quickly in this mode. I’m used to my Mac, which I NEVER power down. With the eee, I find I have to shut it down instead of closing the lid. Not too big a deal since it boots in less than 30 seconds.
• The charger is nice and small - but doesn’t appear to have the oomph to charge the machine while it’s in use. If I leave it going, and plugged in - then unplug it from the wall, it’s quite common to see the battery only at 80%. It charges fully when shut down, and plugged in.
• It doesn’t appear to remember wireless LAN’s as well as I’d like. I basically want it to automatically log onto my favorite networks at home and at work. I’m having to select the network manually right now. It appears that there are options that can make this easier, but I haven’t had time to play with that yet.

Let me tell you that this is a really amazing little PC. It’s cute, small, yet usable. I can actually recommend this PC for students, kids, and adults who aren’t married to Windows. The charger is very small (which is good, ’cause you’ll want to carry it with you…). This is a great PC that you can toss in a bag and use at hot-spots, or while travelling. A great backpacker’s PC! My co-worker Jacques dumped his Dell laptop a couple of days after buying his eee!

Found a list of the first 100 domain names ever registered (here). It’s interesting to see the pickup rate increase from 85 - 87 - 87. And, interesting to see who got in there first. And, what the heck is STARGATE.COM doing there??? Where’s SEX.COM??

1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9. 03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM
11. 19-Mar-1986 IBM.COM
12. 19-Mar-1986 SUN.COM
13. 25-Mar-1986 INTEL.COM
14. 25-Mar-1986 TI.COM
15. 25-Apr-1986 ATT.COM
16. 08-May-1986 GMR.COM
17. 08-May-1986 TEK.COM
18. 10-Jul-1986 FMC.COM
19. 10-Jul-1986 UB.COM
20. 05-Aug-1986 BELL-ATL.COM
21. 05-Aug-1986 GE.COM
22. 05-Aug-1986 GREBYN.COM
23. 05-Aug-1986 ISC.COM
24. 05-Aug-1986 NSC.COM
25. 05-Aug-1986 STARGATE.COM
26. 02-Sep-1986 BOEING.COM
27. 18-Sep-1986 ITCORP.COM
28. 29-Sep-1986 SIEMENS.COM
29. 18-Oct-1986 PYRAMID.COM
30. 27-Oct-1986 ALPHACDC.COM
31. 27-Oct-1986 BDM.COM
32. 27-Oct-1986 FLUKE.COM
33. 27-Oct-1986 INMET.COM
34. 27-Oct-1986 KESMAI.COM
35. 7-Oct-1986 MENTOR.COM
36. 7-Oct-1986 NEC.COM
37. 27-Oct-1986 RAY.COM
38. 27-Oct-1986 ROSEMOUNT.COM
39. 27-Oct-1986 VORTEX.COM
40. 05-Nov-1986 ALCOA.COM
41. 05-Nov-1986 GTE.COM
42. 17-Nov-1986 ADOBE.COM
43. 17-Nov-1986 AMD.COM
44. 17-Nov-1986 DAS.COM
45. 17-Nov-1986 DATA-IO.COM
46. 17-Nov-1986 OCTOPUS.COM
47. 17-Nov-1986 PORTAL.COM
48. 17-Nov-1986 TELTONE.COM
49. 11-Dec-1986 3COM.COM
50. 11-Dec-1986 AMDAHL.COM
51. 11-Dec-1986 CCUR.COM
52. 11-Dec-1986 CI.COM
53. 11-Dec-1986 CONVERGENT.COM
54. 11-Dec-1986 DG.COM
55. 11-Dec-1986 PEREGRINE.COM
56. 11-Dec-1986 QUAD.COM
57. 11-Dec-1986 SQ.COM
58. 11-Dec-1986 TANDY.COM
59. 11-Dec-1986 TTI.COM
60. 11-Dec-1986 UNISYS.COM
61. 19-Jan-1987 CGI.COM
62. 19-Jan-1987 CTS.COM
63. 19-Jan-1987 SPDCC.COM
64. 19-Feb-1987 APPLE.COM
65. 04-Mar-1987 NMA.COM
66. 04-Mar-1987 PRIME.COM
67. 04-Apr-1987 PHILIPS.COM
68. 23-Apr-1987 DATACUBE.COM
69. 23-Apr-1987 KAI.COM
70. 23-Apr-1987 TIC.COM
71. 23-Apr-1987 VINE.COM
72. 30-Apr-1987 NCR.COM
73. 14-May-1987 CISCO.COM
74. 14-May-1987 RDL.COM
75. 20-May-1987 SLB.COM
76. 27-May-1987 PARCPLACE.COM
77. 27-May-1987 UTC.COM
78. 26-Jun-1987 IDE.COM
79. 09-Jul-1987 TRW.COM
80. 13-Jul-1987 UNIPRESS.COM
81. 27-Jul-1987 DUPONT.COM
82. 27-Jul-1987 LOCKHEED.COM
83. 28-Jul-1987 ROSETTA.COM
84. 18-Aug-1987 TOAD.COM
85. 31-Aug-1987 QUICK.COM
86. 03-Sep-1987 ALLIED.COM
87. 03-Sep-1987 DSC.COM
88. 03-Sep-1987 SCO.COM
89. 22-Sep-1987 GENE.COM
90. 22-Sep-1987 KCCS.COM
91. 22-Sep-1987 SPECTRA.COM
92. 22-Sep-1987 WLK.COM
93. 30-Sep-1987 MENTAT.COM
94. 14-Oct-1987 WYSE.COM
95. 02-Nov-1987 CFG.COM
96. 09-Nov-1987 MARBLE.COM
97. 16-Nov-1987 CAYMAN.COM
97. 16-Nov-1987 ENTITY.COM
99. 24-Nov-1987 KSR.COM
100. 30-Nov-1987 NYNEXST.COM

While we were down in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago I picked up a Sony PRS-500 Reader. I’ve been wondering about these for quite some time now - wondering if it can really be used as a replacement for a real book - wondering what its

The reader comes with a cover, and USB cable to connect to a PC, as well as a charger.

What’s good?

It is a really well built, fine piece of electronics.

The screen really is good - you can basically read off this screen just like paper (sort of like reading a magazine printed on non-glossy, pulp type paper. I’ve used it indoors, outdoors, on planes, at night with a book-light, and it’s been easy to read at all times.

It’s NOT backlit - so you have to get into the mindset that this thing really is a replacement for a book. You don’t expect books to be backlit… It works OK with the three models of booklight I’ve tried it with.

The menus and UI are OK. I’d really like some more feedback as to where you are in a book, something more visual than 100/932.

It is really cool to carry around dozens or hundreds of books at once. I tend to flip between reading that I *should* do for work, and reading purely for enjoyment - it’s nice to have a bunch of content with me. It is REALLY nice not to have to lug around hard-cover books!

What Sucks?

The web site and application that you use to load books onto the device really suck. It’s SLOW, poorly designed, and lacking in content. Why don’t people who run sites like this simply sit down in front of Amazon or iTunes and figure out what these people do right, and copy it?

YOU CAN’T BUY BOOKS WITH A CANADIAN CREDIT CARD. This REALLY sucks. I’m faced with getting my friends in the US to load up my account with $$$ - and then sending them money - or trying to get a US credit card, or a single use card or some other contortion. I’m sure there are all kinds of licensing reasons for this, but still, this ain’t no iTunes.

It’s slightly odd the way the screen refreshes. The e-ink that’s used has an extremely slow refresh time, so you can’t do anything really interactive like a mouse cursor. The UI accommodates this quite well.

Update: I tried plugging the reader into my MacBook Pro - the Mac detects it, the reader goes into “USB” mode - but the reader does NOT show up as a device in the file system. You can see the device in the USB Device Tree - but you can’t copy files to or from the device. Rats again Sony.

Tips and Tricks

Right now, there’s a $150 “special” on for the device. You’re allowed to purchase $50 worth of new books, and $100 worth of “classics” - which is 50 public domain type OLD books. This allowed me to load up the device with content - without a US credit card. I just entered a 90210 address…

Update: I’m having a friend in the ‘States sign up on the Connect.Com web site - and send me gift certificates. I think this will be the easiest way to get content into the device from the Sony store.

You can get content from sources such as FictionWise - choose the non-DRM’d content in PDF format and you’re OK. If there’s a choice, choose the largest font size PDF. So, I should be OK for content till I get the credit card business figured out…

I’ll keep using it over the next few months and report back!

Update Aug 31, 2007:  I’ve read a number of books using the device now, and I’m still happy with it. It is so nice to not have to read and travel with a heavy book. It works great with booklights for spousal happiness. I still wish I could get newer books through the Sony Connect service…

Google has added a terrific new feature to Maps - when you create a route from: xxx to:yyy you can then drag the blue line that signifies your route - to add way points, or change the routing. It’s really well done - a fine example of an online application REALLY working like a desktop application.

The UI is very nice as well - super intuitive - but a bit hard to discover without being told about it. Google has put up a nice video showing how to use the feature, and some example routes to play with.

See more at LifeHacker

Every now and again you run into great technology - it doesn’t happen often, but you recognize it when you see it. For example:

• Original Macintosh
• iPod
• Macbook Pro
• Movado Watches
• Panic’s Coda
• SkiData Parking Hardware

OK, that last one seems a bit out of place, but bear with me for a minute here…

When the Ottawa airport was expanded in 2001, they built a parking structure that uses the Skidata parking control system. You can tell these things are different when you drive up - the bright orange, cute, and fantastically designed device is right there - with a nice big button for obtaining a ticket.

And, the same device is there when you leave - just hand back your ticket, then it takes your credit card, then it issues a receipt - ALL USING THE SAME SLOT! Nice!

The Ottawa Airport is expanding the system - adding machines where you can pay using cash or credit cards.

So, why do we like this device?

• The design is simple, cute and obvious.
• It’s easy to use. One big button to get a ticket.
• On exit, one slot to feed in your ticket, then feed in a credit card, then get a receipt.
• They’ve got really nice industrial design. The ticket unit, and the barrier device follow the same design. We know they’re connected.
• It works even in winter. In Ottawa, the devices even have a little winter jacket to augment their built-in heaters.
• The device is part of a system that includes wireless payment, and wireless connectivity between devices.
• It evolved from ski lift ticket systems in Europe - so it’s cool!

It’s one of those devices you look forward to using!

Well Done SkiData! US Dealer: TCSIntl

Here’s some brochures: skidata-parkingcolumnunlimited-450.pdf, skidata-apt-450-folder.pdf. Here’s an article in Forbes.

Panic has released an unbelievably beautiful application called Coda. This app is a terrific one stop shop for web development. The app includes:

• A web site manager based on their “Transmit” ftp engine,
• A great HTML editor,
• A preview pane - very nicely done,
• A CSS editor,
• A terminal window,
• A built-in online reference to HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP.

This is one of those apps that brings a smile to your face as you use it. Beautiful touches abound - from nice animations, to a very nice preview of each of the web sites that you manage, to shared editing based on the subetha engine, a really nice CSS editor, to the built-in books. Even their web site is beautiful!

This is an app that makes it worth switching to a Mac.

I recently picked up a Digital Picture frame at Futureshop. They have a couple of models, but we wanted one that would support CF cards as well as a ton of other formats.

The one we chose was the 10.4 inch Fidelity Electronics model DPF-1040F, that supports CF, MD, MS, SD, MMC, SM, and XD format media. The frame will display JPG images, and will also play back MP3 audio files. The box says that it plays MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 video - but we couldn’t make that work at all. It certainly wouldn’t play the video files recorded by my Canon point and shoot cameras - not straight from the camera, or after they had been saved as MPEG4 by Quicktime.

There’s a remote control included with the unit. It allows you to select files via an on-screen menu, select music, select videos, and choose playback options. It worked well.

The unit doesn’t come with any built-in storage - so remember to buy a CF card or whatever when you purchase it. Once the photos are saved on the card, the unit simply starts playing them when it’s powered on. For a nice touch, you can use the included remote to select “slideshow with music” and it automatically uses any MP3 files on the CF card for background music.

I ran into some issues trying to save a ton of images into the root of the CF card - so I ended up using a directory structure on the card. The picture frame handled this easily - it found the images and started playing them back immediately - and the on-screen file browser understands directories, and lets you browser through the tree.

The picture quality is pretty good - really surprising actually, considering that the display is only 640×480. The unit will handle images up to 12 megapixels - but I saved all images as 640×480 when I exported them from Aperture. The cross fades and other transition effects are really smooth.

This is a perfect gift for grandparents, or anyone who’s into photography.

This is a pretty cool idea! A white-board web site!

This is NOT photoshopped! Just cropped a bit.

I’m heading down to Orlando tomorrow for the VoiceCon tradeshow - I’ll be in the Mitel booth unveiling a bunch of terrific new software we’re releasing this month. Here’s the deets:

• Integrated Office Navigator and Integrated Office Companion - these two desktop applications work hand in hand with the Mitel Navigator phone and the new Mitel 5330 and 5340 phones. They are fantastic desktop applications that behave exactly the way PC based phone apps should - they are as near to invisible as you want them to be, utterly friendly, fast, and provide a ton of really useful features. At the minimum, the apps are simply a tray icon - or you can expand it out to be a desk-band application running in the task bar. The apps tie into Microsoft Exchange, Outlook and  Active Directory, to pull up your contacts with a couple of keystrokes of their name or company. They also tie into LCS or MSN Messenger for presence. If you want to call someone, type a couple of characters of their name, up it pops, click enter, and you’re dialing them! The apps have tons more features - pausing music when you’re on the phone, popping up contacts or MSN Desktop search on incoming calls, dialing highlighted numbers in *any* application, and on and on. VERY VERY cool applications.

• We’re also showcasing our new Intelligent Directory application, which runs ON THE 5330 or 5340 PHONE ITSELF! This amazing application allows you to access your Outlook contacts or your corporate Active Directory straight from the phone, with an extremely simple UI, full searching, customized speed dial list, automatic “most recently called” lists, etc. It’s a really fun application.

• We’re also demonstrating some financial applications in conjunction with the Mitel Turret phone, and some really cool Educational (K-12) applications for the 5330 and 5340 phones, built on the Mitel HTML Toolkit application platform. The EDU app includes tons of features like  managing attendance, dialing students and their parents, and some really cool broadcast announcement applications and duress capability.

We’re at the show from Monday to Wednesday, and we’d be very happy to demonstrate our stuff if you happen to drop by the booth!

Check back for more highlights from the show.

After reading about a guy who programmed his Mac to take a photo and email it to himself every time his Mac came out of sleep, I decided this was a pretty cool hack, and set about doing it myself. I found a command line app called camcapture which takes a photo  using the built-in camera,  then I wrote a simple automator script to take the photo and email it out to my gmail account. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the automator script to run on startup. Turns out this is pretty easy as well - solved by a simple google search. Looking back over the photos, the overwhelming impression is how mad I appear in most of the photos! I guess it’s because I’m kinda pissed, waiting for the mac to start up, and for the wireless to come on line. There are a few images taken on planes, images on vacation, at our cottage, etc. It’s funny to see how bad the colour is in most of the images - and yet how good it is in some.  Here’s the first 200 images!

A year ago, we saw an awesome demo of Jeff Han’s multi-touch input system running on a desktop monitor. It was jaw-droppingly cool - and required viewing for everyone here at InGenius doing UI design.

A month ago, Steve demoed the idea of multi-touch input system on their iPhone. Cool.

Well, they haven’t been sleeping over at Perceptive Pixel. You HAVE to check out this video of their latest work. The screen appears to be 10 feet wide, there’s TONS of multi-touch goodness, and the thing appears to be running on some screaming super computer. CHECK THIS OUT!

Martin Frey, a researcher and artist in Berlin has developed a display that uses a ferromagnetic fluid and a matrix of electro magnets to create a display! And it plays the classic game Snake! Check out the video.

Really nice touch: you control the snake by tipping the display.

This is cool for many reasons but… one of the first programs I wrote on my cool new IBM PC in 198x was a port of the snake game I’d played on my Apple ][.  It’s nice to see this game revived not only in cel phones, but in new media like this!

Ottawa’s a great place, large enough to have all the amenities of a decent size city, but small enough that it’s not clogged by traffic - so commutes aren’t too long.

Blogging is alive and well in Ottawa. Some of my daily reads are based out of Ottawa, and are attracting attention round the world:

• Alec Saunders .log - all about VoIP, running a startup, and a bit about wine!
• Mitch Brisebois and Jobe Roberts SensoryMetrics blog - covering the fine art of usability in a mobile world
• The Eagle Blog - all about the tech staffing industry, and sales in general.
• Zachary Houle’s meme.ca - a bit of everything viral
• ReviewOttawa.com - Restaurant and Contractor reviews. (run by friends of InGenius)

Alec has a great list of Ottawa blogs up here.

Here’s a REALLY cool video created by Michael Wesch showing the evolution of writing - from the pencil to Web 2.0. Really nice work.

A startup in Vancouver Sxip, is a partner in a new offering with Microsoft, and Verisign to roll out OpenID, which is first being tried at LiveJournal. If this scheme gets adopted, it may mean a whole new world of information sharing between your trusted web sites and a whole new world of convenience and features.

Digital Identity is important in the online world. It’s important for validating logons, ensuring that you are you for online purchases, banking, eBay, etc. If a trusted online identity can be established, and shared between web sites appropriately and securely, a complete, cross-site shared identity profile can be created - so you can bring your eBay or Amazon “credibility” with you to new sites.

Microsoft built Passport years ago - which took off - ONLY for Microsoft. Nobody else really adopted the Microsoft scheme.

Dick Hardt, the CEO of Sxip gave a fantastic presentation on Sxip a few years ago - the film is required viewing for anyone interested in the Lessig presentation style…

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times (via SlashDot) about the 10,000 wee items orbiting earth now. China’s test of an anti-satellite system earlier this year added 800 particles immediately, and through more collisions, will end up adding another 1000 objects.
What’s the problem? It’s now harder than ever to fly into orbit. NASA and anyone else planning a mission must track all these objects and plan their flight to avoid them. This is getting harder and harder - and it’s getting exponentially worse as the objects collide with each-other and break up.
If this keeps up, we’ll end up trapped on earth! We’ll have to invent some sort of huge space vacuum to clean up Low Earth Orbit!