Wednesday 28 March 2007

The Future of Twitter, Dave Winer's Thoughts

I have been a long time follower of Dave Winer and an early adopter and scripter on Dave's product UserLand. However that was back in the day when I had time, money and much more...

Recently, I came across his handle on Twitter and have been following him since.

Today he posted on his blog at scripting.com some interesting thoughts on what the future of Twitter might be! The article itself presents some of Dave's ideas such as:
  • A world-wide command line
  • Twitter OpenSource Clones
  • External connectors
Over the past few years, I have been working on a lot of mobility projects. I think that a stronger direction in the mobility domain maybe a way to go for Twitter:
A more integrated location attachment to the Twitter (beyond TwitterVision), the idea being that when you are Twitting while moving around, a mobility tag automatically gets added somehow. This could be achieved through GPS location tools on PDAs or GSM/Cell Tower location detection.
In that same respect and as a follow through:
Maybe a close integration with Twitter and mobile displays or electronic displays to be able to display twitters based on the location where you are. That is to say and for example, when you walk into a certain area you get notified of other twitters in the area and what they are up-to.

So that's may basic thoughts on what may be some evolutions for Twitter...

Tuesday 27 March 2007

TGV 150 - Another Speed Record for the French Train System

With the recent inauguration of the new railway tracks for the TGV going from Paris towards the east, the SNCF (French railway company) and Alsthom expect to set a new world speed record for the train travel.
Operation TGV 150, where 150 again refers to a target speed in metres per second, is a series of high speed trials currently underway on the LGV Est, prior to its June 2007 opening. Operation TGV 150 is conducted jointly by SNCF, TGV builder Alstom, and LGV Est owner Réseau Ferré de France. The highest speeds are expected to be reached near kilometer post 190 on the LGV Est, between the Meuse and Champagne-Ardenne TGV stations, where the most favorable profile exists. Following a series of increasingly high speed runs, the official speed record attempt will take place on April 5 2007, with a target speed of 570 km/h. (Thanks WikiPedia)
The TGV is just an amazing overall feet of technology. As we say in french :- «incroyable»!

Time to Buy an XBox360? Elite!

So the rumor mill has been going on about a new version (xbox360v2) for awhile now, since December 2006 or there abouts.

More recently, both Engadget and Xbox360Fanboy have been reporting on recent information, «officially» or not, leaked from Microsoft. Engadget actually reports on what could be official specs from Microsoft that include a black profile, HDMi output and 120gb HD but unfortunately still no built-in WiFi or HD-DVD. While Fanboy has gotten its hands on some spy photos from the production line.

I just pray they keep the price to a nice number and that it is made quickly available in the EU so that I can finally check one of these out of the store! Huahhh...

MonkeyLeader VidCasts on PS3

My mate MonkeyLeader posted a couple of video-casts on his impressions of the PS3.

However, I am still not convinced about it yet. Maybe I just need to go and play some games on it (do I hear an invite Nige?). All but the great technology it includes (inc. the cell processor) and the cool integration of Folding@Home [ed. I think that using idle CPU time to better the world is a fantastic idea], I find it to be an expensive overkill - or possibly dude - but that is just my impression.

Monday 26 March 2007

Laptop Coolers!

I have unfortunately for the past 3 months been house and couch ridden. Luckily I have a laptop! I have however been feeling the crunch of the overheated CPU (even though it is supposed to be a Centrino Duo). No burn marks on my lap yet but it makes me wonder...

This led me to an article on the Crave Blog from last week. The article talks about some the different laptop cooling devices that fit underneath the laptop and protect both it and your lap or desk. I was actually surprised to see that the non-powered ones are just as effective or even maybe more effective than those that are powered by a USB port (downside of that being the additional drain on the battery).

Hmmm... May need to invest in one of these, something to look into on my next trip to the U.S.

Sunday 25 March 2007

Yeah and so... My rant on Justin.TV

Justin.TV has had a lot of blogosphere commentary and praises. If you are not aware, it is basically about:

Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even in the bathroom. Even on a date.

I have to give some kudos to the technological difficulty in achieving this! Let's be real, network connectivity for everywhere you go and are is not easy to achieve (and can become quite expensive).

However, I do have to consider this something of a WTF! I mean what is the ultimate purpose, document the day in a life? How long will it last? What can you real keep and archive and make useful? What kind of future commentary will this portray of today's society!

So once again a big WTF!

Saturday 24 March 2007

Welcome to FVTer's Blog

Hello!

This is my first post on blogspot.com but not my first attempt at blogging. I recently decided to go back to blogging.

A first step to this was to decide which service to use? Should I use this one (blogspot.com) or Wordpress (wordpress.com). Anyway, it is very difficult to decide as each service has some good point and some bad points. So to start off, I decided to open on both. And for the first month or so post my messages on both! Well see what happends...

So for Blogger, this new 2.0 interface is quite slick and very easy to use. The interface is considerable simplified. However the template editing is quite powerful and include sidebar widgets with javaScript so that I can have twitter badge, wijit or other.