I've used del.icio.us for quite a time to organize the bookmarks I share between the many computers I tend to use. However, last month Hemant encouraged me to check out Blue Dot again. I'd checked out the site almost a year ago since learning an old team-mate of mine, Eric F., had joined the company but at the time it was still coming together.

Blue Dot is so incredibly better that del.icio.us that I've since imported my entire del.icio.us bookmarks. The UI is much better, simple permissions structure, the ability to add comments to links (essentially in a blog style) w/ auto-image tagging, improved community collaboration, RSS feeds for just about any view into the data.

The guys at Blue Dot really seem to get it and is already an extremely useful tool I use almost daily. Kudos.

Posted by ryans at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Spent the evening looking at security options now that my new ThinkPad laptop is up and running. Wanted to at least have a small number of encrypted files on my drive for PGP keys, frequent flier numbers, etc. and didn't want another license to DriveCrypt (which works great but gets pricey and doesn't work well with mobile media). En

ded up stumbling across Cryptainer LE which has a free version but only allows creation of VERY small (20MB) containers and 128-bit encryption. At least marginally useful enough for keeping a small container of sensitive files that can easily be transported on a USB disk to other machines. Previous versions limited to 100MB.

Looks like DriveCrypt (or the more expensive BestCrypt) is the only other reasonable solution today under Windows, unfortunately pricey and not a good option for travelers who may need to load secure contents on numerous machines.

Posted by ryans at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First gigapixel image using Bryce Canyon National Park as the scene, 196 stiched photos at 6 megapixels each, crazy! A 4GB CompactFlash card stores a single image.

Posted by ryans at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

6/2003 article on homebrew RAID systems
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/storage/brick/

RAID 2003 Hardware comparisons:
http://www.ebabble.net/html/raid_2003.html

Interesting upgrades:

They used a with a hot-swappable UDMA backplane, redundant 650W power supply.

RMC4D-S 18 bays 4U Single 550W Power Rackmount for $839

Chenbro has even newer cases with higher density! More drives in a 4U *AND* they offer a 5U case now w/ 24 hot-swap drives PLUS extra bays for FDD, CDROM, and boot HD.

Posted by ryans at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MobileAsses, one of the first applications enabled by camera phones. What people will come up with!

Of course, always having a camera in your pocket (even w/ crappy resolution) has more practical uses: capturing accidents, taking shots of phone numbers, keeping track of wine you've had at a party, etc.

Posted by ryans at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Greg Linden forward me an exhaustive list on various tweaks to improve wireless LAN performance/security.

http://www.tomshardware.com/network/20030502/index.html

Posted by ryans at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently AWS won't sell the T610, only T616 which doesn't work as well in Europe due to no 800 support (they use 850 due to a contract with another wireless subcontractor). T-mobile apparently will sell the T610 and will even unlock the phone w/ service. T86i seems like the phone to go with for now since the price has dropped and it's not drastically different than the T610 feature wise (the T610 is just much more stylish and has a more polished UI).

FYI, T-Mobile/Amazon.com has the T68i for $99.99 - $100 rebate if you sign up for service!

Nifty features include Bluetooth/USB, E-mail client, picture phonebook, SIM support, Java app support, MMS, games, browsing. Volcanic Red case is sweet.

Decent reviews:
http://www.howardchui.com/modules.php?name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=136
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/sonyericsson-t610-en.shtml

Great overview of what makes this phone the coolest:
http://clubsonyericsson.com/en/products_t610_review.htm

And a great overview of what sucks:
http://mobile.burn.com/review.jsp?Id=391

Posted by ryans at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)