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Get Off Of My Cloud
Microsoft is belatedly stepping into the cloud computing arena - with it's 'Azure' platform set to debut along side Windows 7. Planning to take on already established over-the-net services from the likes of Amazon and Google, Azure will offer services such as storage and program access - as well as allowing developers to build their own apps.
And, mildly off-topic, while Adobe might have an online version of Photoshop up and running, they've been beaten to the post for an Illustrator-style app by Sumo.
28th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Piece Of Ass
Here's a match - your face and your ass. Turns out chimps take a tush over a mugshot any day.
27th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Portable Earth
The Earth is now available in the palm of your hand. Google have released Google Earth for the iPhone - using the tilt feature of the phone to adjust your viewpoint. More info on CNET.
27th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Search
Gmail preview on Android
as you'd expect, sounds like Gmail's neatly integrated w the Anrdoid phone
23rd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Tokyo Jogging
I haven't got a Wii, I don't jog and the website is less than instructional - but I imagine if you did want to use a virtual Tokyo to go for a virtual jog in this might be pretty cool.
15th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Eno Apps
Brian Eno apps for the iPhone popping up: a bootleg version of Oblique Strategies and his own Bloom here's the promo blurb:
Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom's innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.
"Bloom is an endless music machine, a music box for the 21st century. You can play it, and you can watch it play itself." - Brian Eno
11th Oct 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Too Drunk To Email?
Google's come up with a way to solve that late-night email rant... Now, what about a drnk n txt solution? (or even a drunk dialling bail-out?). Mosie over to Wired for some more details.
8th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Google Streetview
Just when the Google Maps / Earth combo couldn't really get any better, they go and introduce Streetview. While the previous mapping technology pulled in a lot of existing data and re-formatted it for Joe-public, streetview involves Google driving cars with 360 degree cameras on the roof down every street in a city. The images are mapped onto the correct co-ordinates, giving a keyhole view into the actual street.
While some of the US cities have been available on the system for a while, things are really starting to take off as it becomes a more widespread technology. Despite some sensitivity backlash, Japan is now online, as well as France and Australia - and after jumping over some privacy hurdles, London is coming online soon.
Here's Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, the Hollywood sign, George McFly's house (actually in Pasadena), Shibuya crossing in Tokyo and my old flat in Melbourne. There's already dozens of strange sightings, as well as lists of best-ofs...
God know how Russia will embrace it.
6th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hack Like The Wind
Interesting article at PlanetX64 about installing Apple's operating system on the tiny MSI Wind Laptop, for mega-portability surfing.
6th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
News Flash: Steve Jobs Doesn't Have Heart Attack
Not sure what Paxman would have to say about this iReport.
3rd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Tech Watch
more little boxes for you to think about: Nokia's 5800 is their first touchscreen w "unlimited" music access, and the new DSi console from Nintendo comes w music/camera abilities
3rd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Beware The Cloud?
interesting warning on cloud computing from GNU man Richard Stallman
30th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
BBC Downloads
It looks like the BBC might be continuing is tech-savvie growth and launching a music download store, making its vast collection of radio sessions and live performances available online. They already release quite a few things on CD, such as Led Zeppelin sessions, Beatles sessions and even less commercial stuff like The Wedding Present and The Cocteau Twins - often from Peel sessions.
24th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Unleash The Android
Google's first Android mobile debuted today. Looks pretty good so far, and will hopefully drive down prices and drive up uptake on smart phones.
23rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Broaderband
In case the recent introduction of airplane WIFI wasn't enough for you, you'll soon be able to keep in touch with your Facebook buddies from outer space, thanks to the development of delay-tolerant networking protocols. You wouldn't want to miss out on that Chinese Democracy leak, now would you?
22nd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Perez Hilton
Wired have an extensive article on the rise of celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, charting his rise from struggling actor to coffee shop-based uber-blogger. Not exactly the template chimpomatic has been aiming for, but an interesting read.
19th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fact Checker
Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee has stepped in to back up Puskas' stance that sites (including us) are doing an irresponsible job of covering some news and promoting a fair amount of gossip, unchecked fact and idle speculation.
After last week's powering-up of the L.H.C., it is being reported that the world has not been sucked into a black hole and life goes on. While I was genuinely interested in the story, it may be argued that the semi-serious tone of much of the reporting on the matter could be over-looked and many people were expecting trouble. With Berners-Lee suggesting some sort of ratings guide to gauge how reliable sites might be, I would suggest that anything written on chimpomatic should be rated 'pinch of salt'.
18th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Google Phone Details
more on the Google Phone- on sale next month in the UK apparently
18th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Digital Cinema
Digital cinema has really been picking up steam recently, with major movies (Star Wars, Collateral, Miami Vice) now being shot and distributed in digital formats, rather than on film. Oakley Sunglasses founder Jim Jannard's set up Red Digital Cinema is 2005 and their camera has now developed into a fully-fledged product. Taking much of the thinking behind the top-end digital cameras, the relatively cheap ($17,500 for the main camera) records RAW data on a Super 35mm sized censor, at up to 4096x2304 pixels (4 x the res of current HD).
The company also have a 3k handycam sized model "Scarlet" forthcoming for $3000, and a 5k camera "Epic".
As well as all that, the camera can shoot up to 120fps for slow-motion, which overcomes a huge advantage that film always mainstained over video. Check out the Red Users group on Vimeo for some examples.
Peter Jackson filmed a short (Chasing The Line) to test the system, and more recently Steven Soderbergh shot his Che Guervara project (Guerilla / The Argentine) using the system.
If none of that floats your boat, you could try Letus, which cleverly allows you to use lenses from your 35mm camera on a standard video camera. Cheap(er) and cheerful.
17th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
IMDB Mobile
There's no official mobile version of IMDB, but Nolan Brown's iPhone optimised site is a pretty good option. It's stripped down and fast, so sometimes worth using even on a desktop browser.
Meanwhile IMDB's main site continues it's WEb 2.0 update, centering the content. Boom!
15th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
How the Soviets Drilled the Deepest Hole in the World
The title says it all.
12th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Wi-Fly
Another barrier smashed! You can now check your email every two minutes when you are flying, thanks to onboard WIFI installation on 15 transcontinental American Airlines routes. AirCell is providing the tech for AA, beaming up signals from the ground which can apparently lead to a sometimes slow connection. The alternative system uses satellite transmission and an onboard dish for a more weather-independent system.
I'm flying AA pretty soon, I'll drop you a line mid-air and let you know that it's working.
12th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Periodic Table of Videos
Nutty Professor Martyn Poliakov (brother of film director Stephen Poliakov) and his team at Nottingham university have made YouTube videos for all the elements in the periodic table. The videos were made the videos over a period of 5 weeks and it's worth noting his haircut about halfway through (still nutty-professor bushy).
The videos have had an amazing response - 1.9 million hits so far.
The team seem to have a great time doing the experiments - particularly the guy in the green overalls - but you also learn some quite interesting things, such as how Victorians were poisoned by having arsenic as the green dye in their wallpaper.
Have a look at www.periodicvideos.com, but start with the introduction below.
11th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Genius 8.0
Blah blah blah. Not much to note in yesterday's Apple launch. New Nano iPods, 120GB across the board for the 'Classic' and an update to the iPod Touch - which is clearly the direction Apple wants to be taking the pocket-sized player.
The big news for me is iTunes 8, with it's new 'Genius' playlist feature. Once the program has indexed your music, you can highlight a track in your library and automatically create a playlist of similar music. Boom, instant mix-tape without the hours of agony.
So far it's been working pretty well - as noted in the attached playlist, based on Pavement's Gold Sounds.
10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
ConC.E.R.N.ed?
As noted previously, C.E.R.N.'s Large Hallidron Collider is being powered up for the first time today. It's already running as of 08:43, but the real danger is expected later this morning - when the actual collisions start happening.
The best-case scenario involves the discovery of some major scientific data. Worst case sees an apocalyptic beam of light appear out of the Indian ocean, before the climate of the planet nose-dives and we are sucked into a black-hole - presumably not likely to emerge at the other end.
10th Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Tune Up
Got a sloppy, mis-labled, shabby iTunes collection? Put your feet up and let Tune-Up clean things up for you, finding missing artwork and adding missing titles. It's Windows-only at the moment and it isn't free either - for more than 500 songs it's $11.95 a year.
In fact, head over to Doug Apple's Scripts and you can probably cover a lot of these bases yourself, lazy bones.
9th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Simplify Media
Simplify Media is a little program to let you access your music from a remote location. Once authorised, the program can load up your iTunes/Winamp/Rythmbox files on a distant computer or phone and let you stream away. There's a few hurdles (bandwidth, drm, connection availablity) but overall it works surprisingly well.
5th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
New Pods
New iPods are expected to be announced next week (September 9th), as well iTunes 8.0 and rumours of a possible iTunes music subscription service which for $130 a year would allow your to listen to about half of the tracks on the iTunes store. Presumably this kind of offering would tie in with the iPhone / iPods too - allowing you to call up new music wherever you are. Apple have been resistant to this model in the past, so it'll be interesting to see if they have changed their stance.
Nokia's "Comes With Music" service makes a similar offer, and is launching in the UK shortly.
3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Chrome Dreams
Google are stepping into the browser wars later today, with a beta release of their own Internet Browser - "Chrome". It's based on Apple's WebKit engine and will be running all the latest tech under the hood - such as client side database storage and HTML 5 specifications. They've designed a fancy-pants comic to showcase it, which you can check out here.
Download the beta here (Windows only). It work fast and smooth, but is a little on the Fisher-Price tip.
UPDATE: Read Wired's thorough back-story on the development of the browser here.
2nd Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Play-as-you-go
The iPhone will soon be available on pay-as-you-go for all you boys on the corner that need a burner. The phones will cost £350 (8GB) and £400 (16GB), but that includes unlimited WIFI and 3G browsing for the first 12 months ....which seems like a pretty hefty concession. On top of that you get bonus minutes or texts for every £10+ you spend per month.
Available September 16th.
2nd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Incoming!
I doubt you will have reacted quickly enough for this, but there's a missile heading across Google maps. Zoom out to determine the target...
2nd Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Moon Smash!
NASA has plans to crash land a probe into the moon's polar surface in order to test for water. The March 2009 mission will hitch a ride on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - and is all part of the build-up to get humans back to the moon by 2020 so we can get used to space travel and living on other planets, before we can then push on to Mars by 2030.
It always seems strange to me how much we worry about global warning and the rise of Carbon Dioxide in our own atmosphere, yet we're dead keen to get up to a zero-atmosphere rock and then on to 95.32% Carbon Dioxide atmosphere of Mars....
1st Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Email addicts?
Chimp HQ are moving towards this don't-answer-your-email-all-the-time position...
Links
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28th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Desk Space
Nice Flickr group up to round up contributions to Ping Magazine's desk project - providing a cross-section of desk spaces from around the world. But what is it with graphic designers and plastic toys?
27th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Microseinfeld
It looks like chimp favourite Jerry Seinfeld is pocketing $10 million to feature in $300 million effort to make Microsoft seem cool again. A strange choice, as Jerry is a mac guy if I ever saw one - but maybe that's the point.
Larry won't be making an appearance, leaving the straight-man role to Bill Gates himself ...although Jerry has worked with straighter straight-men before.
22nd Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Your New Superpowers
I can't see it myself, but invisibility just got one step closer.
21st Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Shapeshifter
Came across ZAMZAR yesterday - a pretty handy site for converting file types. Good for updating those old Word Perfect files you might have hanging around, but also capable of converting image types and even delivering web video (including You Tube) to you in the format of your choice.
20th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Battle Plans
It looks like Google's Android mobile phone system might be making a November debut, after the FCC has approved the first device, details of which are under wraps until November 10th.
19th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
David Byrne and Brian Eno are back in action together, with new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today hitting the airwaves ....today. The website has the details - with the whole album available for streaming via the site and purchase by download or CD, with Topspin providing the tech. Probably the first album I've come across on their platform that has interested me enough to make a buy.
18th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Matadownload
Matador are now on the download store bandwagon, with a comparable effort to the recently announced Domino store. They offer mp3's for $0.80 and more-or-less uncompressed FLAC files for $0.99 - or $10 for an album, including whoppers like the 49 track Crooked Rain re-release.
While FLAC is marginally more fiddly than the uncompressed WAV's offered by Domino, the current exchange rate makes Matador an attractive offer - nearing my suggested £5 for an uncompressed new release.
Talking of downloads, check out iTunes for a limited 12"/Download only Oxford Collapse 5-track EP - The Hann-Byrd, which can be had in iTunes' own DRM-free 256 kbps format for £3.16.
15th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Not Cuil
New search engine Cuil (pronounced 'cool' - meh.) has been getting a bit of press recently, but every time I've tried it it stinks - if it even works at all. Started by a bunch of ex-Google workers, it claims to be "The world's biggest search engine" and is currently searching 121617892992 web pages. Not a big deal if it doesn't give you the right answers, or just a load of irrelevance.
7th Aug 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Wordle
Worlde.com is a pretty handy tool for generating nice representations of internet content. Paste a URL or a page of text into the form and it orders recurring words from the site, depending on usage. We seem to be keeping it pretty balanced ....maybe a little too much tech.
5th Aug 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Lost in Space
After selling his company Paypal to eBay in 2002, entrepreneur Elon Musk set up his own low-cost space-delivery system for launching satellites and other payloads into space (don't any of these dot-comers have their own ideas?). Unfortunately three rockets in a row have now been lost, with the most recent carrying a distinct payload. Besides the three satellites on board, the most recent rocket was loaded with the ashes of 208 people - including Mr Scott himself (aka James Doohan).
4th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Digital Dominos
Boom! Domino Records has gone digital, with their own online download store. Files are 320 kbps MP3, but you can also get full quality WAV versions at the same price (79p per track). Being a nerd, that future-proofing issue often holds me back, so this is a great step forward.
While 79p isn't expensive I still think the prices need to come down enough to undercut CDs - else what's the point? The Last Shadow Puppets can be had for £6.99 over at Play or £6.99 at Amazon, while it comes in at £7.99 here...
31st Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Tunecore
The tide seems to be turning with internet music sales, as bands take control of their assets and start making the descisions themselves. Following on from our article about distribution platform Top Spin, check out Tunecore, which offers artists the opportunity to get their music onto all the major platforms (iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, eMusic, Amazon etc).
They charge incredibly reasonable fees per track/album, leading the the astounding fact that Trent Reznor must have paid Tunecore $56.61 to distribute his Ghosts I - IV album via Amazon.
Meanwhile, Amazon's MP3 store hits the UK soon, while Yahoo Music has gone the way of the dodo - potentially leaving music fans with a ton of unplayable, DRM 'protected' music.
30th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Jetpack To The Future!
that's more like it: Glenn Martin has lifted off a whole 3ft in his new jetpack. been waiting for these to come online by now
30th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
How Much For Your Internet?
Probably not the $1131.20 pcm you'd be paying for a basic connection out of the Beijing Olympic Village Media Centre. Yowzers.
28th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet