Isaiah's Tech

This is my 150th post, even though it seems like i just finished writing my 100th post yesterday. Remember the one with Megan Fox? I've also recently got my 1000th view, which got me excited. Even though at least half of my views are from my friends, it's still an accomplishment. Anyways, let's kick it off with some more Miro.

I downloaded Miro this morning in the library and it looks like it's a pretty good service. It works kind of like the iTunes Store, where you can download stuff like Podcasts. The UI is very easy to navigate, even for a first-time Miro user, like myself. You have your left sidebar, which has a bunch of options and your feed headers. Unfortunately, since i don't live in the United States, i can't get any shows (like 'The Office' and 'Family Guy') on my Miro because its streamed off of Hulu. And for me, Hotspot Shield isn't working anymore, so i need to find a new alternative work-around. The quality of the video in Miro is excellent. But, i still think that the HD aspect of it could be improved. I've only watched a couple of videos, so far. Stuff from Onion News and some HD GeekBrief, mainly. I suggest that you try it out for yourselves, it's a decent piece of software and will only improve. Update: I've just gotten my third "Not Responding" message. It seems to occur after the video is finished playing or when i try to close the program.

Mozilla has released a pre-alpha version of their "Fennec" browser to HTC Touch Pro phones and to almost every Windows Mobile phone. It may be running slow and it may be buggy, but that's because it is a pre-alpha version. The Mozilla team has mentioned that they've pulled a lot of its features, including: plug-ins, soft keyboard input, and program or add-on updating. It's free, so if you want to take a risk and try Fennec out, then go right ahead.

Nathan Smith, a Los Angeles musician, has, supposedly, found treasure from the wreckage of the Spanish barquentine on Google Earth. He approached a couple of experts and they told him that this treasure could be worth up to $3 billion USD. But, get this. It may be on someone else's property. This case is actually headed to court, to see who gets the first cracks at this 'treasure'. No one knows for sure if there is treasure because, as of right now, no one has taken the time to dig it up. The court will settle who gets "first dibs" on the treasure.

In October, the Apple MacBook Pro's got the 45nm Penryn processors as an upgrade. Another source is saying that the new MacBook Pro's will have the Core i7 32nm processors in Q4 of this year. The 32nm processor is said to have a 22% performance increase boost over the current 45nm models. The Core i7 processors are part of Intel's Nehalem family.

If you're going to take a flight soon, take the Southwest Airlines. If you're lucky enough, you will get the plane equipped with free Wi-Fi. It will only be free for a while, since it is in beta. The guy in the picture looks like he's using his laptop in an uncomfortable manner. Personally, i don't do that. He should have just pulled the tray out, but i guess he's unique.

Miro 2.0 Download Link: http://www.getmiro.com/download/for-windows/
Miro Logo picture: http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?cat=11
Mozilla Fennec (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5151355/firefox-mobile-available-for-htc-touch-pro-windows-mobile-phones
Man Claims Treasure on Google Earth: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10161265-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Core i7's On The MacBook Pro In Q4: http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/11/core-i7-nehalem-based-macbook-pros-possible-in-q4-2009/
Free Wi-Fi on Southwest Airlines (and picture): http://i.gizmodo.com/5151340/southwest-airlines-in+flight-wi+fi-free-while-in-beta

The Kindle 2 was officially announced by Amazon today. The rumoured pricing and availability was correct. It will be released on February 24 for $359 USD. "The new model has a much more iPod-like aesthetic with an aluminum back, rounded curves and a much thinner design." Along with the new looks, the Kindle 2 has a 20% faster e-paper screen, 25% longer battery life and 2GB of storage. "It also has a new text-to-speech feature that reads books aloud through built-in stereo speakers." You will still be able to read your newspaper on this device for $6 USD - $15 USD a month and you can get blogs pre-formatted for your Kindle 2 for 99 cents each. Maybe my librarian will be able to purchase one this time around. People are also saying that the Kindle 3 should be an iPhone app. I don't this would be a good idea because not everyone wants an iPhone. Restricting the Kindle 3 to just iPhone users would be dumb. Kindle fans would also complain about how small the screen is.

Look at that sexy Blackberry 9300 Gemini. Barack Obama would sure love to get his hands on that. The Gemini looks like it will be one sexy Blackberry. Ever since the Bold came out, it has had the rights to that title. Anyways, this Blackberry will have a bigger screen, beefier processor, "a slightly more 'rounded' keyboard, and most importantly, quadband EDGE plus triband HSDPA." There is no word on the availability of this gem[ini], but i don't think that it will be available in the first half of this year.

If you use your laptop for dual-monitor purposes, this could be for you. These Lapfit monitors from Samsung will be beneficial to you. If you use your laptop as your primary monitor and a traditional LCD monitor for your secondary monitor, you may get frustrated, since your monitors don't line up exactly the way you want them too. You can use these Lapfit monitors to line up those dual-monitors together. These displays will sit at the same height as your laptop's display. The Lapfit monitors will come in 19 and 22 inch variations and will have a 10-30 degree tilt, a 1,360 x 768 resolution, 4ms response time and a 20,000:1 "dynamic contrast."

Samsung looks like it's a hungry contender for that top spot on the mobile list. Nokia has to watch out for Samsung this year because they've been stirring up all of the news lately. It looks like Samsung will start off by improving the TouchWiz UI to make it more "finger-friendly." This new TouchWiz UI was located on the S8300 slider, which i will talk much more about later. They will probably show the TouchWiz's latest version at MWC.

The M7600 and the i8910 will be what i talk about next. The DJ / rapper phone will come with Bang & Olufsen audio, which i know nothing about. Along with a microSD card slot, it will also include a: "2.8 inch AMOLED touchscreen, 3 megapixel snapper with LED flash, HSDPA, GPS capabilities as well as DivX support." Up next is the Acme i8910, also from Samsung. This will run on S60 5th Edition and will have 780p HD video recording. It has an 8MP camera (with only a disappointing LED flash), "GPS, Wi-Fi and DivX support." It also has an HDMI port somewhere. Look for them both at MWC.

I've saved you the best phone for last. Samsung's 'flagship' phone. Behold the Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH. Besides being uber for having caps in its name, the S8300 has features that will disappoint only a few. The S8300 has a 2.8-inch OLED touchscreen, 80MB of storage with a 2GB card supplied (expandable to 16GB, thanks to microSD), an 8MP camera with dual LED flash (I was looking forward to xenon), GPS, Bluetooth, the latest TouchWiz UI and an accelerometer. There is no claims of this phone having Wi-Fi on GSM Arena, but it must have it somewhere. Oh man. Wait for the big news about this at MWC and then i'll have a real story for you. This phone may be competing with the N97, but i still think it would lose.

Kindle 2 Officially Announced (and picture): http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/09/amazon.kindle.2/
Blackberry 9300 Gemini (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/rumored-blackberry-9300-gemini-appears-bold-gulps/
Samsung Lapfit Monitors (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/samsung-introduces-lapfit-monitors-in-a-fit-of-insanity/
Samsung TouchWiz UI (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/samsungs-touchwiz-ui-getting-a-mwc-makeover/
Samsung M7600 and i8910 (and picture): http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_m7600_appears_i8910_conifrms_hd_video-news-781.php
Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH (and picture): http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_s8300_ultratouch-review-314.php

I am finally finished my exams. After studying last night from 8:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., i wrote a successful Chemistry exam earlier this morning. Due to lack of sleep, i will probably take a nap after i make my 2 blog posts. Today, i am going to: re-design this blog, design my new blog and post on my new blog. I haven't found the right layout for this blog yet, so i may be changing it tomorrow, but we'll see. Anyways, i am finally free from exams and i can blog more often!

Are you too lazy to make a password for your home Wi-Fi connection? Is someone always stealing your Internet connection? If so, this is the fix for you! Yeah, it may sound like an advertisement, but you know what? People in my neighbourhood need to start putting some passwords on their Internet connection. I usually go over my 60GB download allowance every month, thanks to Rogers. So, sometimes, i just steal someone else's connection so that i'm not on my own Internet. Kind of smart if you ask me. Anyways, back to the main topic, since i'm going a bit off topic here. Some new emerging tech may make its way to the public. Researchers from the University of Tokyo have "developed an aluminum-iron oxide that blocks radio frequencies up to four times beyond existing anti-RF technologies. The paint puts out a magnetic field that resonates at the same frequency as the electromagnetic wave you're looking to block." Gizmodo also points out that it's not overly expensive, but at the same time it's not that cheap. According to their calculations, "Wi-Fi blocking paint would be $50 [USD] to manufacture." This won't be needed for me, since my password is pretty secure. I don't even have my own network password memorized. Luckily, i wrote it down... somewhere.

Lifehacker puts it best when they say, "Microsoft said that its Windows Live and Office Live services will merge into a single web portal, possibly dubbed [the name] Kumo." Is that good news? I guess so. The less tabs it takes up on my Start Menu, the better.

Are you tired of Japan exclusive PSP colours? If you are, then i suggest you stop reading this paragraph, since you can probably get the hint from the picture on the left side. Japan will be receiving four new "carvival colours." The four colours will be blue, red, yellow and green. These PSP's are just screaming, "Look at me!" In my opinion, we are not missing much here. Atlhough, some people will beg to differ. They are going for around $223 USD, with a more expensive model going for $279 USD. The more expensive model comes with a "4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo, PSP pouch, wrist strap and cloth bundle." That sums it up for the PSP news for today.

How good will Killzone 2 be? The only way we can really predict right now is from all of these Killzone 2 reviews. Oh, what's this? Xbox 360 magazine has just reviewed Killzone 2? This can't be good... or can it? So, the Xbox 360 magazine recently reviewed Killzone 2 and they surprisingly had some good things to say about it. At one point, they even mentioned that it beat Gears of War 2 in some aspects. The magazine had some more words for Killzone 2. "It's good. Really good in fact. This is the genre that has belonged to the 360 since its inception, but it finally looks like Sony has an Ace on its deck." Maybe Killzone 2 will live up to its hype, but only time will tell.

Wi-Fi Blocking Paint (and picture): http://i.gizmodo.com/5139315/new-paint-could-block-wi+fi-from-nosey-neighbors
Microsoft Kumo: http://lifehacker.com/5139145/microsoft-to-merge-windows-office-live-into-kumo
Sony PSP Colours (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/sony-adds-four-new-psp-carnival-colors-to-worship/
Killzone 2 Review From Xbox 360 Magazine (and picture): http://ps3.qj.net/You-know-Killzone-2-is-good-because-the-360-magazine-says-so/pg/49/aid/128369