tyrion - ProductWiki

tyrion responded to the thread Scheduled community meetings

tyrion — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:47:20 -0500

December 10, 2007 at 5:47 pm

Saturday or Sunday are easier, I could stay up till 2/3 here on a Friday or Saturday night which wouldn't be too late for ye...

tyrion responded to the thread Scheduled community meetings

tyrion — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:05:42 -0500

December 7, 2007 at 5:05 am

19:00-21:00 GMT?

tyrion commented on 2 items

tyrion — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:34:51 -0500

1. commented on Sorapot Modern Teapot - November 21, 2007 at 6:34 am

"If the heat is dissipated to the metal handle will it be hard/hot to hold?"

2. commented on Nokia N95 - November 21, 2007 at 5:43 am

"I may be biased tword Symbian, but this Device looks very nice. One of the things I like most about it is third party application support (which the iPhone utterly fails at currently). You can hook up your Slingbox setup, or use ControlFreak to manage WinAmp over bluetooth, or use WirelessIRC for IRC+Twitter on the go. Add Python, native binary and PHP+MySQL web server support and you have an amazing development platform. I can see this taking off much more than the iPhone in application driven environments, stock traders who need to keep on top of the market and do everything they would do at their desk when in the loo, sales people in large firms who need to keep track off all their contacts, records, invoices, &c. when on the road, Project managers who want to keep abreast of SVN commit comments for their teams... the list goes on. Oh, and it's fantastic for gadget nuts (like me) too. Sure you have to charge it every day, but I've been charging my phone every night since my N-Gage. It does have 3G too, N95-1 for Europe and N95-3 for North America."

tyrion updated iRex iLiad

tyrion — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:30:33 -0500

November 21, 2007 at 6:30 am

agreed: "Can run open-source and third-party applications"
chose iRex iLiad over Sony Reader PRS-500
chose iRex iLiad over Bookeen Cybook Gen3

tyrion updated 2 products

tyrion — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:28:46 -0500

1. updated Nokia N95 - November 21, 2007 at 5:28 am

disagreed: "No support for 3G networks"
disagreed: "Lackluster alphanumeric keypad (non-QWERTY)"
disagreed: "Poor standby battery life (~1 day before requiring charge)"
agreed: "Expensive (~$700)"
agreed: "Great multimedia capabilities"
agreed: "Integrated GPS and mapping"
agreed: "Wi-Fi connectivity"
agreed: "High quality 5 mpx camera for photos and 30 fps video"
chose Nokia N95 over HTC Touch
chose Nokia N95 over Apple iPhone

2. updated Nokia N810 - November 21, 2007 at 5:27 am

chose Nokia N810 over HTC Advantage 7501
chose Nokia N810 over Nokia N800
agreed: "Adds a full QWERTY sliding keyboard"

tyrion updated iRex iLiad

tyrion — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:10:25 -0500

November 20, 2007 at 6:10 pm

agreed: "Able to browse the web"
agreed: "Built on Linux"

tyrion commented on Amazon Kindle

tyrion — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:34:49 -0500

November 20, 2007 at 5:34 pm

"This seems to be a very interesting concept that has one minor and one major failing. Minor failing: EVDO only. I'm not sure if offering EVDO only is the best option, it effectively means that you must use cell signals to use this device (from what I can see). Why can't I use my home Wi-Fi connection? In a rural area it may be easier to hook a $50 Wi-Fi router up to a cable/ADSL (or, god forbid, dial-up) modem than go hunting for a EVDO signal. After all, we read books most at home so it makes sense to have Wi-Fi on this thing. Second problem with EVDO is that you alienate all of us over here in Europe (or at least the parts I frequent). But from what I can see this is tied to contracts anyway, so that's out the door in any case. Major Failing: Closed platform What about the E-Books I already own? Any digital playback device should allow you to play back a file, regardless of it's source. And what's the point in having a device that can only browser Wikipedia (maybe edit / comment) and Amazon's site? The entire point of a device that has the potential of accessing the internet is to give it just that... access to the internet. All of it. It has the potential to browse, comment and contribute to something like ProductWiki here, why not let people use if for that? I think these guys are potentially scared of getting sued for allowing dubious content on this device (so they cut Wi-Fi and any other sync), and perhaps the cell companies wont allow them to use the device to browse the web untethered on their networks. If both of these are true they may have shot themselves in the foot by being too nice. On a positive note, there are a few things I like. The QWERTY keyboard is very appealing. I might not get a device with a QWERTY keyboard over a touch screen device, but I know many people who would. Having an e-book reader with newspaper and magazine subscription support is superb, these are media which should be taking full advantage of readers like this, and now they can. However, if we're paying for magazines and newspapers we should not be charged for blogs and E-mail. RIM do not charge per E-Mail (your carrier may charge for data transfer, but it seems like there is some deal here for a lifetime data plan or something). And 10 cents to receive e-mail? What on earth? That makes no sense, forward the E-mail as a text to your mobile. So, to summarise: Needs Wi-Fi (and UTMS if they want to branch outside North America) Needs to open up to third party applications (full web browser) Great to see Magazine and Newspaper subscriptions Nice to have a device with a QWERTY keyboard "

tyrion updated 2 products

tyrion — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:58:19 -0500

1. updated Amazon Kindle - November 20, 2007 at 4:58 pm

agreed: "No internet browser"
agreed: "Can't share books with friends"
agreed: "Limited to buying from the Kindle store"
disagreed: "plain ugly"
disagreed: "QWERTY keyboard is overkill"
agreed: "Blogs, newspapers, etc are limited to Amazon's choice"
disagreed: "Can also read blogs, newspapers and magazines"
agreed: "Lightweight, only 10 ounces"
agreed: "Wikipedia access"
agreed: "Screen uses real ink"
agreed: "Electronic paper technology is awesome, real ink and you can read outside!"
chose Amazon Kindle over Sony Reader PRS-500

2. updated iRex iLiad - November 20, 2007 at 4:56 pm

chose iRex iLiad over Amazon Kindle

tyrion updated 2 products

tyrion — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:26:17 -0400

1. updated Eva Solo Smiley Bowl - October 23, 2007 at 12:26 pm

agreed: "Sleek design"
agreed: "Has a place to put the discarded parts"

2. updated Nokia N810 - October 23, 2007 at 12:11 pm

added a link http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/86

tyrion updated 3 products

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:23:02 -0400

1. updated Nokia N810 - October 22, 2007 at 6:23 pm

edited the description
updated the features

2. updated SanDisk Sansa e260 4GB - October 22, 2007 at 6:12 pm

new pro/con: Will run Rockbox

3. updated Rockbox - October 22, 2007 at 6:11 pm

edited the description
changed category from to
added a link http://forums.rockbox.org/
added a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox
added a link http://www.misticriver.net/forumdisplay.php?s=67fc39d3a616cfd61452acabee89b643&f=125
edited the description
tapped as "have it"
tapped as "love it"
added the image: Rockbox loading screen on iRiver H340
added a link http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BuyersGuide
added a link http://www.rockbox.org/
edited the image: Gigabeat WPS
added the image: Gigabeat WPS
added the image: Example WPS
added the image: Custom WPS on iPod
added the image: Doom on iPod

tyrion updated 2 products

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:20:07 -0400

1. updated Rockbox - October 22, 2007 at 5:20 pm

new pro/con: Doom
new pro/con: Custom UI (skinning)
new pro/con: Does not support DRM crippled music
new pro/con: Supports Recording (certain players) to multiple formats
new pro/con: May shorten battery life (iPod)
new pro/con: May improve battery life
new pro/con: Supports Multiple Codecs
added the image: Rockbox
changed the thumbnail

2. updated Nintendo DS Lite - October 22, 2007 at 4:38 pm

tapped as "want it"
disagreed: "More expensive than the regular DS"

tyrion responded to the thread Are you going to switch to Vista?

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:27:13 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 4:27 pm

There isn't an very much in Vista which compels me to go out and buy it. ReadyBoost looks very cool but they dropped two of the the features I was closely watching, WinFS and the new shell (MSH or Monad).Most of what was upgraded in Vista is shiny stuff I'll turn off by default. I'm using XP at the moment, but It looks just like Windows 2000 / 98 because that's what gives me the most screen real-estate for the content I actually want to view. The ribbon UI in Office is another example of how Microsoft were busy wasting screen real-estate when they should have been creating a resolution independent UI.Overall I feel that people are finally seeing Microsoft for what they are, a bunch of pigeonholers.

tyrion updated Spore

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:40:41 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 3:40 pm

edited the description

"Added demo and changed date"

tyrion responded to the thread predictions: What's the future of wireless?

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:35:14 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 1:35 pm

edited a post
If you look at what the Freifunk guys are doing in German, and the way distributed networking is taking off (BitTorrent, Joost, &c.), I wouldn't be surprised if within a few years web browsing was much different. To give a rough outline, imagine if all web content was not only distributed but aware of its location. If I wanted to grab a copy of the NYtimes website I would grab it from the nearest source. Everything you download would be come a cache for everyone else. Instead of taking 15 hops around the globe to get a PDF I might be able to take two hops and get it from a PC/mobile/laptop in my town. This would certainly speed up content delivery for popular websites and would almost certainly render the Digg/Slashdot effect meaningless (as, like with BitTorrent, the more popular a file is, the easier it is to find).Another advantage of this system is that once the demand for fresh content declined all requests would route back to the server that originally hosted the content, so there would always be copy available and there would be very fast access when it was popular.There would of course need to be protection built into the system to prevent against man-in-the middle attacks and faked content. But if the P2P networks can solve this problem, I think it can be applied on a wider scale to web-browsing.One problem which I'm not sure how to solve is the issue of age. I remember hearing that the Wikipedia guys had a problem because their webservers were located in the US and their cache servers were in Europe (maybe it was the other way around). The reason they did this was to cut out the latency which appears when you send packets across the Atlantic. But having two copies of the same data meant it could become out of date. I can't remember how the issue was solved...If I (A) post this message now, someone (B, who is in, say Australia) logging into this server will see it. Now say you (C) update this page with your content after B has downloaded the page with my post. A little while later D (who is in B's town) wants to grab this page. He sees that it's going to take 5 seconds to grab the page from the original server, but there is a "fresh" copy only 0.01 seconds away (in B's cache). Now, does he make the decision to grab an "old" (say 30 seconds) copy or the fresh copy. If the fresh copy is grabbed, well, that's no different from now. If the old copy is grabbed, then D has missed out on the post you (C) made.I'm not sure how this can be solved, either we have stale content or dead webservers, neither is a good option.

tyrion updated iRex iLiad

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:43:38 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 12:43 pm

edited the description

"Added opening paragraph"

tyrion updated Winamp

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:22:03 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 11:22 am

agreed: "Extensive plugin support"
agreed: "Not a computer resource hog like WMP"

tyrion sent a message to Erik

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:18:46 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 11:18 am

"Not a problem, I played with one at FrOSCon this year, a company called Tarent brought along some Nokia 770's, some N800's, a couple of FIC Neo1973's (OpenMoko phones) and an iLiad. I played with all of them for hours and really liked them. The New1973 is still a bit rough around the edges (I crashed X on it several times) but the Nokia's were very nice, as was the iLiad. The application these guys were demonstrating was a Java thing which was aimed at middle management, each member at a meeting would have a device with their software on it (770, N800, Neo1973 or iLiad) and any changes that were made to the document (PDF, text, MS-doc I believe), whether it was a handwritten note, an edit to the text or adding some addition text, was pushed out to all the other devices in real time. I believe all the edits were archived in an SVN style manner on a server for later retrieval too. Their Java app required three things, WiFi, a touchscreen and an open platform. As it was an FLOSS conference all four devices they showed ran on Linux kernels (which really pleased the crowd). One of the things I liked about Tarent (http://www.tarent.de) was that they would tell us (the conference attendees) anything we wanted to know about their application, and the let us play with the devices as much as we wanted. As such I grabbed an N800 for a few hours, installed a shell on it and ssh'd into my server to chat with my friends (connecting to irssi in a screen session). The Tarent guys had no problem with this, I assume they knew that these things were going to be hacked to bits and decided to not try and stop it, but just to commit to some factory resets after the conference. Anyway, thanks for checking out my blog too, :) David Dolphin"

tyrion added tyrion Avatar 1.0

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:01:50 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 11:01 am

tyrion commented on Nokia N810 edited a comment

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:00:46 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 11:00 am

tyrion updated 3 products

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:14:26 -0400

1. updated iRex iLiad - October 22, 2007 at 10:14 am

tapped as "want it"
new pro/con: Superb feature set
new pro/con: Expensive
edited the description
edited the description
added the image: iRex iLiad
added the image: iRex iLiad
changed the thumbnail

2. updated Nokia N800 - October 22, 2007 at 9:59 am

agreed: "You can use a phone as a modem with the N800 to connect to the Internet through a cellular network."

3. updated Nokia N810 - October 22, 2007 at 9:34 am

tapped as "love it"
agreed: "Included storage is lacking (2GB compared to Touch's 16GB)"
disagreed: "No 3G network support"
tapped as "want it"
agreed: "Tons of flexibility and potential due to hardcore hacking community"
agreed: "Still one of the best screens (size/resolution) in the class"
agreed: "Integrated GPS is a fantastic addition"

tyrion commented on Nokia N810

tyrion — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:33:04 -0400

October 22, 2007 at 9:33 am

"I don't think this needs GSM capabilities, like the HTC Advantage, I feel it is far too big to replace a typical mobile phone. And, if you're carrying a mobile phone with you anyway then why not tether the 3G capabilities to this device via Bluetooth and you have a 3G connection for the device (how about the the SE W880i?). I also think that adding more wireless protocols/receivers to this would decrease the battery life needlessly. I don't mind if the device I use to browse the web dies but the device which I receive calls on cannot die (due to a flat battery). If they do add GSM support there will have to be a second physical battery. I will most likely get one, not to replace a mobile phone, but to replace a Laptop (most of what I use a laptop for is editing Google Docs, checking RSS feeds/podcasts and checking my mail)."