Headworx

G oogle has recently become a synonym of leading edge both in business and technology. And there has been a good reason to expect new development and ideas come from them. So I was really surprised when this new and exciting concept came from Alexa . A lexa, an Amazon.Com company, on December 12, 2005 made its search infrastructure available to developers. This is very significant move that changes the perception of what can be done with Internet search. So far we have been able to search within the already prepared index. With Alexa crawlers, we can build custom indexes with custom attributes. As an example Alexa shows an image search application that lets users specify image-specific attributes like camera make and model and aperture settings and other. These attributes are not usually available in image search indexes (like Google Images ). The applications for the web search platform are limited only by creativity of their creators. You could imagine programming the crawlers to g

I bought my first digital camera relatively late. It was Minolta Dimage F100 in July 2002. At that time I did not believe electronic pictures could come close enough to analog film. But a few hours later, after I "developed" my first photos with HP Photosmart 100 printer, I understood the game was over and I would never use my film camera again. The quality of the 4 megapixel shot was stunning, with vivid colors and no visible grain. I even made a 30x40 print of the Seattle Motherboard (taken from the Bank Of America building) that still hangs on my wall. And more important - the flexibility of electonic photography, with instant preview, at home photo processing, ease of archiving killed the film. I have not bought a newspaper for several years now. Instead, my house is covered by WiFi and I've been experimenting with a variety of "electronic readers" for a long time. Laptops are a natural choice for their universality, but they never come close to the eas

I t has been two weeks since the Teleputer landed in Kraków . I must admit I have not had much time to explore all of its features and conduct many in depth tests. On the other hand I've been using the JasJar just as an ordinary user. Checking and writing my emails, browsing the Web and playing some games. Speaking of games - judging by the popularity of the device among my family members, the Bubble Breaker itself (the one that comes with Windows Mobile 5) may justify the decision to purchase the Teleputer :) A s I wrote before, the JasJar comes with Skype Internet telephony client preloaded. I tried to play with Skype as soon as I configured the device, but the application simply would not run. Two things changed, however, over the weekend. First, I noticed there is a new firmware version posted on the i-Mate site . After downloading and installing the update, I was able to start Skype, but I simply did not have time to test it. Today I have noticed, Skype presented a new version

I s this the killer application for 3G? Probably not, as for the foreseeable future the killer application for mobile phones will be voice... Anyway GLM, or Google Local for Mobile is something everybody should install on their handsets. Simply open your web browser on your phone. Then navigate to http://www.google.com/glm/ . Select your carrier then select your phone make and model and download / install. GLM is your beloved Google Local service at your fingertips whenever you need it. S o first of all, it is a mapping service. Type in an address in almost any form, and it will bring you a map showing the location you look for. Then it is a routing service. Select two addresses (GLM remembers your last entries, so you don't have to enter repeating places manually) and GLM plots a route between them, highlighting any points you should be aware of. You can zoom in, zoom out, pan the map and even... tadam... tadam... tadam... swithch to a satellite view (the screenshot on the right a

L ooks like the i-mate JasJar review has attracted new visitors. Hey, you are all welcome, toy spotters and gadget gurus. N ow we not only have the majority of traffic from USA and Poland, but people coming from all over the world. Canada (yes! finally Canada!), UK, Italy, Spain, Australia, Sweden, Israel, New Zealand, Dennmark, Holland, Russia, Iceland (what a wonderful place!), South Africa, Yemen... A nd we can slice the United States to see individual states. With New Jersey leading, we have California occupying a second place and New York on third. No Washington in the first ten, looks like Redmond is busy developing Windows Mobile 6, or they blocked Google destinations on their firewalls... A ny webmasters here? Do you like these charts? Go and get them for free at http://www.google.com/analytics/ . I guarantee you will spend long nights slicing and dicing your visitors.

D ecember 2nd, 2005, The Teleputer Has Landed in Kraków. I've been waiting for this moment. Good it happened friday afternoon, after office hours, since my day at work would have been wasted. George Gilder's vision materialized by HTC in form of an i-mate JasJar. "...small handheld device, that resembles a cellphone, and as a matter of fact incorporates a cellphone, (...) that also has a touchpad on it and effectively all your mp3 songs and also is a camcorder.... So the cellphone really becomes your computer." Although the JasJar's screen is not a Microvision (yet) and it's camcorder is not a Foveon (yet), this device fits the definition of Teleputer as close as possible. F irst, its small. Much smaller than I originally thought (see a comparison with an iPod on a picture below). Essentially it fits in a palm of your hand. Then it's powerful. 520MHz Intel/Arm PXA270 processor and 192MB of memory (64MB RAM and 128MB Flash). With an incredible clarity of