Portable Raid 0,1 - ahh sweet desire

Ahh it's great to be a geek, the littlest things make you happy and there are always shiny new toys to make your heart go flutter.

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Addonics AE25RDESU :)

Basically imagine walking up to any pc or server connecting up your USB or eSata connection and sucking down the goodness knowing your content is RAID protected all for only $100 (not including the drives of course).

This Addonics device contains a hardware based RAID chipset so no need for drivers and can do Raid 1, (for protection) or Raid 0 (for speed).

There is even an optional caddie for stacking 4 cf cards instead of the 2 x 2.5" drives for quiet SSD but with bit level protection from failure.

Available now from Amazon AE25RDESU


Cheers,
Dean

Attack of the Stick Things

LOL - walking around New York this week is like watching "Attack of the Stick Things".

With New York Fashion Week staring on Monday you can help but notice all these 6ft tall sickly stick thin 17-21 year old models walking around shopping.

I know the camera adds 10 pounds or whatever but when you see these girls in person they look gaunt and like they are about to collapse any second.

With tropical storm Hanna hitting NY on Sunday maybe they'll all be blown out to sea.


Cheers,
Dean

Vivox SLim

There has been some press in the voip space over the past few days about the new Vivox SLim application.

Linden Labs and Vivox partnered to create SLim which is a discrete VOIP client that is meant to run alongside the Second Life viewer allowing it to communicate voice calls with others not necessarily running the Second Life application.


Vivox isn't really that big a deal, Mexuar implemented a 168k java applet using the open source Asterisk platform into Second Life about 18 months ago.

It enabled voice calls in both a many to many 'open voice' conference room but also the ability to make 'real world calls' onto the pstn network either outbound or even inbound using the Asterisk servers PRI's or Voip channels.

At one stage there was a mock up of a virtual cell phone you could use in Second Life to make calls or link inbound calls to your real world cell phone as well.


Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.cognation.net/

The first Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld commercial

lol love it - cant wait for the next ones to see where it goes.

Want to see something really funny, check out all the Apple Fan Boyz on Gizmodo trying to make sense of it.


Cheers,
Dean
P.S. really love that they used Bill Gates arrest mug shot for the ID card - crack up.

m.nciku.com

Hat tip to Mobile Mammoth for sending me the details on this website.

Check out http://m.nciku.com/

It's a great little site for English to Chinese words from your mobile phone with phonetic and multiple use definitions. Well I'm off for some Shi Wu' .... hope you found this of interest.


BTW anyone know of a site that extends the concept even further and offers multiple languages from a common landing page?


Cheers,
Dean

Working Hard For The Money

I snapped this picture on my camera phone as I was coming home from the NYC VmWare user night at about 9.30pm last night.

It doesn't really come across properly but there were about 15 delivery guys all standing around with food deliveries for the Deutsche Bank staff that had obviously decided to order in.

Not sure if Deutsche Bank runs an 'Asian markets team' out of their wall st offices and this is an every night event but was funny to see so many people doing deliveries and judging by how quickly people were coming down it must go on most of the night.

Is this a bad sign.... or a good sign for the global economy?

Either way good to see they are working hard for their money and with bonus season coming up soon maybe they are pushing to meet targets.

Cheers,

Dean

Corning

So you think you are working for some hot startup thats going to change the world right.....

Check out Corning, this company has changed the world at least 5 or 6 times ....and counting.

Cheers,
Dean

New Android App Store for mobile applications

Google released early details yesterday about their plans for Android Market, an online bazaar for programs that run on Android phones. Essentially an Android version of the iPhone’s popular Mobile App Store, it offers three key advantages over Apple’s offering:

It will follow the YouTube model of instant gratification: just upload and publish. Your content will appear immediately in the Market. By contrast Apple requires each iPhone app to be vetted and approved. Android’s multi-level security model will help protect your handset from malicious or just plain broken programs.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=641


I'm wondering when a 'cross platform mobile' application market will be launched?

Obviously there are more windows mobile applications than any other mobile platform out there just seems strange nothing competing with the iPhone app store has been launched.

Also I dont get why no one has setup the domain http://www.mobileappstore.net/

Seems like an obvious choice with
http://windows.mobileappstore.net/
or
http://android.mobileappstore.net/
or
http://iphone.mobileappstore.net/ etc etc.


Cheers,
Dean

The Dark Knight

Holy Kapow Batman !!!!

We saw The Dark Knight this weekend, I'm not a big cinema fan, I much prefer watching movies from the comfort of my home theatre with lcd projector and 110" screen.

However was wanting to see the latest Batman release and as it was still on thought why not.

IT was amazing - anyone on the planet earth not having seen this already should run not walk to go and see this now.

The Joker: See, I'm not a monster...I'm just ahead of the curve.

It was totally unexpected how good this was, Christian Bale walks and breathes the Bruce Wayne character so effortlessly and I dont know if the death of Heath Ledger makes The Joker an even sadder character but his role in this is almost equal to his delivery in Candy (one of the most honest gut wrenching fatalistic movies you'll ever see - it's on showtime this month for those of you on Time Warner cable here in New York).

The movie is long but the perfect length - the character development perfect and not rushed, the death of the girlfriend unexpected and sad.

If this is the level of movie the next few Batman releases delivers then this IS the new mega platform to watch.

Cheers,
Dean

pre finished or raw floorboards?

So as you can see in the other post I was in Lumber Liquidators today trying to decide on floors.

Out of the pre-finished floors I choose the Brazilian Redwood 3-1/4" prefinished timber. (the above photo is our sample palate- the tile is our kitchen back splash but in the 2 x 1 shape).

I know it will darken up over time and I'm fine with that.

1 of the GC's I met with last week recommended getting unfinished timber so that after the final paint/hardware installation etc they could come in sand the floors and then seal the timber.

His reasoning was that even though the floor will be papered for protection after the install that when they are putting the kitchen in etc or carrying in the appliances that things get scratched and with prefinished you can never get it to look right.

I'm confused....why cant you just sand and repair prefinished to match the rest of the boards etc?

Does anyone with real world experience and not here say have an opinion?



Thanks in advance,
Dean