forbetaorworse

spytap: drintelmann: Olympus Pen Augmented Reality Demo Very...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:18:02 -0400

drintelmann:

Olympus Pen Augmented Reality Demo Very nice use of augmented reality. One of the first that I’ve seen that is actually useful.

Well this is fucking rad.

Also, please file under “things your parents couldn’t have dreamed of” or “we live in the future.”

My head just exploded all over my desk.

newsweek: This is pretty great. (h/t Lindsay) (context)

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:26:08 -0400

newsweek:

This is pretty great. (h/t Lindsay)

(context)

2000 iMac vs. 2010 iPhone

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:50:00 -0400

2000 iMac Operating System - Mac OS 9.0.4 Processor - 500 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128MB Memory Graphics - ATI Rage 128 Pro, 8MB of memory (8 million triangles) Screen - 786K pixels Data Transfer Speeds - 1.3-12.5 MB/s (DVD-ROM-1/100 Ethernet) Storage - 30GB Hard Drive Dimensions - 15.0 x 15.0 x 17.1 inches Weight - 34.7 pounds 2010 iPhone 4 Operating System - iOS 4.0 Processor - 1 Ghz ARM A4 CPU, 512MB Memory Graphics - PowerVR SGX 535, uses system memory (28 million triangles) Screen - 614K pixels Data Transfer Speeds - .04-20MB/s (3G-WiFi) Storage - 32GB Flash Drive Dimensions - 4.5 x 2.31 x .31 inches Weight - 4.8 ounces

via Ars

Sorry this looks like shit in the tumblr dashboard.

spytap: vubui: macsmiley: (via adamsdayoff) How to take a...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:03:46 -0400

spytap:

vubui:

macsmiley:

(via adamsdayoff)

How to take a screenshot in Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone, and… um… Android.

I’ll just leave this here…

(via ericmortensen)

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:03:47 -0400

(via ericmortensen)

Facebook Calls All Hands Meeting On Privacy

Wed, 12 May 2010 18:07:55 -0400

Facebook Calls All Hands Meeting On Privacy:

soupsoup:

Facing increasing pressure from the media and users, Facebook has called an all hands meeting tomorrow afternoon, at 4 PM Pacific, to discuss the company’s overall privacy strategy according to sources inside the company.

Facebook: an admittedly lazy attempt at perspective.

Thu, 06 May 2010 21:39:56 -0400

Lately I’ve been taking a break from this blog to work on my musician stuff. I’ve been sort of living under a rock as far as tech news goes. Normally, I would be reading into just about anything that even remotely interests me in the tech world, but lately I’ve just been too busy living in my own head to really find out what is going on beyond the twitter posts. That was until I posted a snarky comment about people bitching about facebook privacy settings. Call it crying wolf, but all the past bitching about changes to the UI and petty crap on facebook sort of de-sensitized me to the latest real issue. If you don’t know what issue I’m talking about, check out the twitter account, and soon-to-be website that @AlanaJoy has propped up: http://twitter.com/FacebookProtest.

This is total bullshit. I hate facebook for a number of reasons at this point. Most of them are petty, but among them are the flood of useless apps that are allowed to run amok (sheds an interesting light on Apple’s “closed” platforms doesn’t it?) and the horrible UI choices that were made in place of well thought out and visually pleasing concepts from people outside of facebook (see: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/facebook-design/).

Privacy, on the other hand, has never been something that really mattered all that much to me on facebook. I’ve been using it since around 2004 when I started school at Berklee College of commercialized dribble (music) and it was college only. Moving away from the college students only crowd was something I was hugely pissed about, but it was a trivial thing and I went about my business. Later, they almost lost me again when they introduced apps. Not because I don’t think they should allow apps, but because this is a NETWORKING site and not a place to digitally diddle yourself using apps that promote narcissistic endeavors and games that are pretty much life-sucking time vampires. Don’t you think the apps for a tool (yes, kids, a tool. Not a toy) like Facebook should be productive and collaborative as opposed to well..stupid? Like, say.. if google wave and buzz, instead of being a separate and therefor mostly useless entity, were built into your networks of friends for idea sharing and concept building? Wouldn’t that be a powerful tool in social networking for startups and creatives? Sorry. I Digress…

My point- I’m getting to it.

My point is that until recently, when I added family to my Facebook friends, I never touched privacy settings. The concept of finding privacy on the internet seemed like finding a music connoisseur at a Nickelback show. Sure they might make the claim, but do you really believe them? I mean come on. Ok, so that was a bad analogy, but I’m sure you kinda see what I’m scratching at.

So before you grab your pitchforks and go overboard, put a few things in perspective. Consider the fact that to a degree, sharing demographic info could be a good thing. Specially catered ads could make the ads one hell of a lot less annoying and introduce you to some really cool things. The controversy doesn’t lie so much in the concept of the privacy changes, it lies in the way that they are obscuring the opt-in/opt-out switch. Is this whole issue just exposing the glaring issues in Facebook’s usability? Is it malicious or is it just that we never noticed how awful the usability in such a widely used platform is? Shouldn’t Facebook be equal to the ease of use in an iPhone? My mom or dad would know basically how to use an iPhone, but need me to really sit with them and break down exactly how Facebook functions.

So, before I fall asleep, I submit this to you- Are we Fox News-ing this issue? Are we fear mongering about privacy issues that never really bothered us that much before or are we just finally fed up with Facebook’s convoluted layout? Which are you going to push for/bitch about this time- A new layout or a new feature? Keep in mind that I’m not condoning the things that facebook is trying to do. I’m just taking a step back and trying to figure out what this means to us and the future of social networking.

Regardless, thanks to @AlanaJoy for bringing the deeper issue to my attention.

(I’ll admit that I could be way off on this. I’d like you to explain what I’m missing. Also, I’m sure this is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors so go easy on me. I told you I was tired.)

Damn, Gizmodo.

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:29:12 -0400

newsweek:

marco:

Did you really need to publicly shame the poor guy with his full name and photo?

Don’t you think he feels bad enough already?

Did that really add anything to the story?

You just took a dark time in this man’s life — caused only by his negligence, not malice — and made it much worse. For what reason? Did you make anyone’s lives better by having done that?

Agreed. This poor guy’s got enough problems. Especially since there’s no larger purpose served in revealing this—it’s a product leak, not the Pentagon Papers.

This was total crap. Seriously. For all we know, the kid was a perfect employee. Giz just took a moment of weakness (it’s easy at the bar) and publicly shamed him over it. Shenanigans!

Shameless Self Promotion

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:38:25 -0400

Hey guys-

Obviously it’s been a while since I posted anything. Thought I’d let you know that I’ve sort of put this blog on hold until I’m done making this record I started working on last week. It’s one of those “I have to do this now and I’m not going to stop until it’s done” things. I do intend to get back to reblogging and posting computery bits and bobs eventually. I just have wanted to make something like this record for a while and I see my chance to get it done and be happy with it. If you’re interested, click over to “Magnets” and check it out. I’ll be posting changes, updates and related stuff as I add tracks to my small set of stupid songs. As always, I’m on twitter as @forbetaorworse. Thanks for following! -B

(via soupsoup) This is pretty fantastic

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:03:51 -0400

(via soupsoup)

This is pretty fantastic

Cloud app finally posts what the hell Cloud App actually...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:52:36 -0400

Cloud app finally posts what the hell Cloud App actually is.

..and I think it looks pretty fantastic. Check out the site and get excited with me.

staff: ben: I’m working on a TextMate bundle for creating...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:31:35 -0500

staff:

ben:

I’m working on a TextMate bundle for creating Tumblr Themes. It shouldn’t take me too long. When it’s done I’ll probably put it on github for all to enjoy.

Huge. Can’t wait!

…my god. It’s glorious.

Bicycling directions now available in google maps

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:53:37 -0500

Bicycling directions now available in google maps:

Hell yes.
(via ideasareawesome)

Click the “More” button at the top of the map and check the “Bicycling” checkbox. Very cool.

FaceBook Games Translated for PEople Who Don’t Care About...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:42:02 -0500

FaceBook Games Translated for PEople Who Don’t Care About Them
(via The Daily What)

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:09:50 -0500

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360.

Valve to Deliver Steam & Steam on the Mac

Thanks to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for the link to the Wired story that includes a great quote from Dan Connors of Telltale Games:

“We have games that run on the Mac and we have games that run on Steam, so our goal is to be there,” Connors said. “We think they’re going to do a great job with getting the Steam client over there and we want to continue to be a part of it.”

I imagine a lot of other game developers are going to be saying the same thing.

(via erice)

I honestly don’t play games on my mac. Not because there aren’t that many of them, but because I’m not 17 anymore and I have shit to do when I’m at my computer. Portal changes that. I can’t think of any other game I would even play on my Mac. This is going to be amazing

#Piracy Friday: The DRM Effect

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:20:54 -0500

(click here for the full size image)

mrgan: I mean, where to start. 1. The new version of Microsoft...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:28:16 -0500

mrgan:

I mean, where to start.

1. The new version of Microsoft Visio - which, in case you’re not cursed with a sucky office job, is a very popular diagramming app - includes a rip-off of Panic’s Transmit truck.

2. They didn’t just copy the icon, of course - they first ran it through the world’s worst autotracer (check out that front grill!)

3. All the other icons in the app are of this “quality”.

4. Visio also includes a groundbreaking feedback feature called Send-A-Smile/Send-A-Frown. It is of similar quality as well.

(via Cabel)

HA!!(is all I have to say)

#Music Monday: iTunes Sprucing

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:36:41 -0500

I highly recommend these applications that I’ve been using for organizing my iTunes library.

CoverSutra

This is a pretty great way to get control over your iTunes library with your keyboard. You can rate songs, change songs, change playlist, search songs and even scrobble to Last.fm. Snoop around with the preferences to get your keyboard shortcuts where you want them.

Get Lyrical

Automagically add the lyrics into the meta data for each one of your iTunes tracks. (bonus: if you tap the screen on your iPhone while a song with lyrics in it is playing, it will display the lyrics over the cover art. Neat!)

Pro Tip: I’m still sorta lazy from the weekend so going to the developer websites for better descriptions would be in your best interest. CoverSutra does a lot more than what I covered here.

dear diary, ~50% of the time (yes, really) i use the generic snow leopard option to burn a disc, it fails during verification, creating more coasters and wasting my time. when i use iTunes or the Toast Titanium 10 Special Pirated Edition, everything is cool. what the hell, generic burn folder!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:47:21 -0500

There are enough potential causes of this issue that I’d have to recommend just doing an archive install of your operating system. Sorry I can’t go much further than that. Also, sorry I missed this question for almost a week. I’ve been busy. I’ll try and get things going again today.

#WTF Wednesday iPad COLOCATION?!

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:43:01 -0500

Go here to sign up! Seriously!