Otherware
NOTE:
Gearblog has morphed into Gibbsblog. All new postings, same great Gibbs. Come on over!
Virtual plague decimated inhabitants in virtual world
September 23, 2005
If, like us, computer games just don't get your blood pounding you will probably not have heard of the hugely successful, massively multi-player online game (MMPOG) called World of Warcraft run by Blizzard Entertainment. WoW is a fantasy environment --...
Via BoingBoing: Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked
July 29, 2005
BoingBoing item, "Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h: window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all'" quoting an article on The Inquirer Bottom line: Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter: javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all') [This] turns off the trigger for...
Update to Gearblog: "Camel racing robots. Honest."
July 21, 2005
Way back in May we discussed the trend of the inhabitants of Qatar to use robots instead of tiny children as jockeys in camel races. Check out the New Scientist article with a photo of a robot camel jockey!...
Mind over machine and Murphy's Law
July 19, 2005
A fascinating article in Wired discusses the work being done at Princeton in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program to measure the effect that humans might have on machines. Surprisingly, it seems that at least statistically, we do! See the...
Why did the chicken cross the lab?
July 12, 2005
We are, as Dave Barry often says, not making this up. Researchers, possibly with some interesting personal problems, at the Mixed Reality Lab at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore have created a haptic vest for a rooster (no, really) and...
Broadband in gas
July 06, 2005
Sounds like a tasteless joke doesn't it? But, nope, Broadband in Gas (BiG) is a real technology and a pretty clever one at that. When we talk about the last mile we always think of telephone and cable but other...
Enabling more efficient theft with TiVo
We knew that TiVo was supposed to be capable of doing a 30 second skip (great for zipping through the commercials) but we assumed ours didn't have the feature (not unreasonable when you consider just how many features DirecTV disabled...
Lawn mowers and Web sites
May 21, 2005
The reason that many Web sites are hard or unsatisfying to use either comes down to naivete or ignorance. The problem is that they often ask you to follow a non-intuitive path through their site to get what you want...
Starwood understands opt-in
April 06, 2005
Reader Greg Martin sent the following to Backspin: "I received the [message below] from Starwood Hotels (owners of Sheraton and others) I was dumbfounded. After sending me email for 2-3 years as a member of their rewards program, they are...
Eye candy #0001 - Play
March 04, 2005
Go here -- click on "Watch this movie" and watch to the end (thanks to Jim Sterne)....
