Headworx

I continue to enjoy my holidays, traveling across the United States. I remember twenty years ago when I went to Australia, the only piece of electronic gear was the Sony Walkman, with six audio cassettes and a pair of alkaline AA batteries. And then I bought a small AM radio to stay in touch with the world. No cell phones, no Internet at that time. I also remember a GPS leaflet by Magellan, stating prices "starting" at $19k for a device capable of displaying coordinates on two line character display. Times have changed a lot since 1989. Actually today I have just realized I carry four GPS devices with me: The Garmin Nuvi 250, with City Navigator North America map on a SD card, sticked to the windscreen. Very simple, reliable and faithful gadget. I rely on the CNNT map everyday and use it to help finding various points of interest along the way, including gas stations, grocery shops and lodging. Then there is the Garmin Colorado 400t. It has a very detailed US Topo map built i...

So I am back to the USA now... and believe it or not, this time it ain't business trip - just vacations. But interestingly this trip has put even more pressure on me to prepare mobile computing environment for the family to use on the go. I know this may sound weird, but among various pieces of equipment (such as a tent and sleeping bags), we are bringing not less than two laptops, two mobile phones, two digital cameras and everybody expects we will be on line as usual. For that reason I've brought with me the Apple Airport Express wireless router to be used in places where a wired Ethernet port will be available. But honestly I do not expect WiFi to cover camp sites in national parks :). So we also have to rely on cellular data. In Poland where I live, we have quite a price war between the four MNOs, that results in quite interesting offers. For about $15 a month we can have virtually unlimited mobile data delivered over EDGE (rural) / HSPA (urban) networks. With 24 months con...

Some of you may wonder what the title means... Well... these are the names of three rising giants of the next generation electronic gaming battlefield. I laughed last week when I read somewhere the current game consoles will stay for next three years... Really? In the ever accelerating world full of innovation and with its event horizon shrinking, how anyone dares to predict something developed three years ago will stay for the next three unchallenged? Well... May be they are right, may be neither Sony nor Microsoft is able to reinvent gaming platforms... Actually this is quite likely, as progress very often comes from small challengers who bet everything on one card and have nothing but venture money :) to lose... So... Faithful readers should at least be familiar with Otoy, as I mentioned it and it's father, Jules Urbach, a number of times. Actually it was Otoy - related news last week that prompted me to touch base on the new developments in gaming. With rendering algorithms mi...

A while ago Google launched the Latitude service. As usually, I rushed to download and set it up on my BlackBerry. But then soon I realized I was not going to use it... The reason? They moved a bridge too far in the area of privacy (or lack of it...). What Latitude does it allows you to share your physical location with selected friends. At start this model did not look attractive for me. I did not feel comfortable exposing my physical location. Even to a couple of good friends of mine. Later on Google implemented a few changes in the Latitude, on of them was ability to share just a city you were in, instead of your exact whereabouts down to a couple of meters. But it still was not right... I was not sure why, not spending too much time contemplating why I was still not willing to turn the Latitude on. And then I've come across Glympse . I have to admit I do not use Glympse either, but for a different reason - it is officially available on the Android platform, while a BlackBerry ...