Web Designer and Developer
Matt
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Posts by Matt
Gateshead Millennium Bridge Rotation
Jun 9, 2008
Here’s something pretty amazing. The Gatehead Millennium Bridge is located in Newcastle/Gateshead, England and goes over the Tyne River. It was designed by Wilkinson Eyre and was built and lifted into place on November 20, 2000. It cost about $14M to make.
It features six 450mm diameter Hydraulic rams which rotates the bridge 40 degrees to let ships sail underneath and pedestrians cross over top. It takes about four and a half minutes for the bridge to go through one rotation cycle depending on the wind speed. The bridge won many awards and is just fun to watch (If not in person then on video).
Amazing Car Jack balloon
Jun 9, 2008
This is one of those I should have thought of that! inventions. Using all the resources available when a person has a flat tire, the exhaust air jack uses exhaust coming from the tailpipe of your car to blow up a balloon that will lift the car from the side. I would feel safer changing a tire with something like this over a standard jack because I’d be more comfortable with the larger radius holding up the car in hopes it would be less likely to fall on me. Nice job! Where can we buy one? Here.
Optimus Maximus Keyboard let’s you customize your keys for $1,564
Jun 9, 2008
The new Optimus Maximus Keyboard is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a keyboard. Instead of keys with letters printed on them, each key on this keyboard features tiny 48×48 pixel OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays. The keys can be customized, rearranged and colored however you please.
May not seem like a great idea right off but this could be quite useful. You can change the keys to read better for FPS games like Quake 3. You can customize keys to have letters in different languages and even have keys be shortcuts to your favorite programs. The keys can also be updated depending on the application. For example, in the picture you’ll notice the GMail key actually shows you that you have 9 messages waiting for you!
The current price is $1,564 (Shakespeare’s birthyear) as this is very new and expensive technology.
Blu-ray vs HD-DVD: The optical disc battle has been won!
Jun 6, 2008
There was a battle brewing for the past two years between Toshiba backed HD-DVD and Sony backed Blu-ray. Both were fighting for the rights to have the Hi-definition standard optical disc. DVD has a great sharp picture for standard 4:3 televisions but as the world adapts Hi-definition television, the demand for hi-definition video increases. Yesterday Toshiba announced they have stopped producing their HD-DVD format due to lack of sales and the competition of Blu-ray.
Going back to early last year, both formats were very competitive with Blu-ray having the slight advantage largly in part to the PlayStation 3. HD-DVD was able to stay competitive with cheaper player prices. Then in September, Paramount announced that it was backing HD-DVD exclusively in an 18-month contract reportedly worth $150 Million. This threw a monkey wrench in Blu-rays plans to be the consumer’s format sooner rather than later.
With Paramount going exclusively red, Blu-ray fought back with cheap disc sales. They offered a series of BOGO sales that helped them stay in front leading up to the holiday season. Toshiba continued to try to get HD-DVD into homes with cheap prices. In fact, prices dipped so low at one point that Wal-Mart had HD-DVD units for under $100 during a weekend. This strategy was somewhat successful in moving HD-DVD units. Like the PS3, holiday Blu-ray disc sales continued to be strong, outselling HD-DVD on an average of 2:1.
Blu-ray ended up winning every week of 2007 in disc sales ratios. HD-DVD however had big plans for CES (The Consumer Electronics Show). a week before the start of the annual show in Vegas, HD-DVD reported that there would be a special two hour press conference the first day of CES. There were many rumors floating around that Warner Bros. was going to follow Paramount and go HD-DVD exclusive. However two days before the planned event, Warner shocked the industry by announcing a deal they struck had with Blu-ray to go exclusive starting in May, 2008. Although denied, the deal was rumored to be worth 500 million. HD-DVD cancelled their press conference and was in the hiding for most of CES.
In the following weeks HD-DVD slashed player prices to try to compensate for the studio loss. However it was too little too late. In early February, Netflix announced they would be supporting Blu-ray exclusively in their Hi-def disc rental business. Later that week, Best Buy released a statement saying that they will be recommending Blu-ray to their customers. Then last week the final blow happened when Wal-Mart posted on their official blog that they too would no longer be supporting HD-DVD in the months to follow. The news was too much for Toshiba to take and they decided to stop production of HD-DVD.
So Sony has bragging rights and may soon have deeper green pockets if Blu-ray continues to get popular. Next up for Blu-ray is to try and compete with DVD. The battle may have been won but the war has just begun.
The Future of the Internet
Jun 6, 2008
Ten years ago, no one would have thought that the internet would be what it is today. People practically live online by doing everything from banking to trading stocks to ordering food on the internet. I don’t see this going away but I see the interface and the way we view it changing dramatically one day.
Away will go the method of opening up an internet browser to view the internet. I predict that one day a new computer will only run the internet. There will be no other programs needed on that computer and just about everything will be web-based. It seems to be already headed that way now.
Further down the road I can see the internet stepping away from personal computers and laptops we carry around with us. How will we view it then? Everywhere we go will be hooked up. There will be monitors on our shopping carts to assist us at the store and personal shopper helpers (PSH’s?) we carry around with us at other stores.
I also see a wearable device similar to sunglasses that tell people different things about different areas. For example if someone is looking at a building and wondering the history of it as well as what they sell inside, the wearable device will know you’re looking at it and download the info directly to you. If you’re at the store and interested in an item, the device will give you product reviews, a detailed description and even if you ever bought it before. There will be many possibilities for this technology.
While I enjoy the internet and everything it provides for us today, it’s fun to think about what we may see tomorrow.
Sony Walkman nwz-a728blk Digital Media Player
Jun 5, 2008
I was doing some research on MP3 players other than iPods because I wanted to see what else was out there. I wanted something with at least 8GB flash memory that was a video and audio player. I’m a huge fan of Sony products and decided to pick up the Sony Walkman nwz-a728blk.
Here are some of the features of this media player:
- 8GB Built-in Memory
- High Quality Video Playback at 30 frames per second
- Battery Life: Up to 36 hours audio and up to 9.5 hours of video playback
- 2.4-inch QVGA LCD screen: 320×240 display
- Portrait and landscape picture and video modes
This unit contains 8GB of flash memory (7.5 available) and sports a 2.4? LCD display. Sony claims that the unit can handle up to 36 hours of playback on a single charge which I can’t confirm because I haven’t played it for that long without charging it yet.
The software that the unit comes with is not as good and easy to use as iTunes but it does the trick. Once you get all of your files on to the unit, you will see that the button layout functions may be different then what you’re used to. There are seven buttons; up, down, left, right, play/pause/enter, back/home and option/power off. The home screen features nine options; Shuffle, Search, Rhapsody Channels, Photo, Music, Video, Settings, Playlists and Now Playing.
The button placement looks nice and the buttons feel solid. Aesthetically the unit is beautiful like with most Sony products.
The interface may not be as pretty as coverflow but it’s effective and looks nice. Only about half of my album cover art got transferred over from my computer. The music sounds great on this unit. More then ever I was able to make out more words on some songs while listening to them on this player.
Video mode works well. If the video file is MP4 then you’ll probably be able to view it on this unit. You can choose either vertical or horizontal layout while enjoying your favorite movie or TV show. I prefer horizontal because you get a bigger picture.
The earbuds that come with the unit are high-end. There are three types of included attachments for you to use depending on your ear size.
Overall I would say that this is an impressive unit from Sony and I’m happy with the purchase for around $150. This is a decent alternative to iPod but the Walkman line will need some work if they really want to compete with Apple.
Creative Zen 8GB MP3 Player
Jun 5, 2008
After looking on Slickdeals one day a couple weeks ago, I found a great deal on a Creative player. The price for the 8GB version was around $84 plus a small tax fee for a refurbished 8GB Creative Zen MP3 Player. I decided to pull the trigger and buy the unit which I finally received a couple days ago. The unit shipped from California.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was the build quality of the unit compared to my iPod and Sony unit which I purchased recently. The creative player didn’t feel as solid although it’s just as light. The buttons feel a little cheap compared to my other players metal feel. Also when you push the buttons they make a clicking noise which is slightly annoying. The power switch is on the side and is more difficult to use because it’s not a button but a switch that needs to be held for a second. This can be seen as a good thing as it would be much more difficult to accidentally turn on the player.
Once the unit is powered on you will see the units flashy graphics and easy to operate menu. The menu is totally customizable in the ’system’ menu which is nice.
There are seven main features of the Zen:
- Microphone (lets you record things with built in microphone)
- FM Radio (old-fashioned radio!)
- Memory Card (view items on the built in SD card reader)
- System (adjust system properties)
- Pictures (view pictures)
- Video (watch videos)
- Music (listen to music)
- The microphone is something I’ll never be using but is a decent feature to have.
The FM radio is something that frankly I didn’t think I’d use but actually love. I get 30 stations (some better than others) in my area and it’s nice to hear random music once in a while rather then listening to the same 400 songs over and over.
The memory card is a very nice feature. I haven’t taken advantage of this yet but I can essentially double the memory of the unit for about half the price of what the unit cost and fill it up with movies for long trips.
The system has many features which can be changed by the user including info, video, audio, display, clock and more.
The pictures feature I don’t really use. Pictures aren’t very exciting when there’s video and the screen is too small to see much detail in the images.
The video looks average on this unit. The unit is 320 x 240 pixels and honestly the video looks a little blurry to me. However, videos are still very watchable on this unit. This player doesn’t play the popular MP4 video format that iPods do however the CD comes with a converter that works quite well and is quite fast for converting software.
The music is what I spend most of my time listening to. You can sort by artist, album, playlist and genres. The music quality is average. The supplied headphones are horrible though and add echo to the sound. I ditched them and used some 3rd party iPod headphones I had as a spare. The music sounds much better with them.
Overall I’m happy with this unit due to the large amount of features available. The key features that this has that many other players don’t are the FM radio, built-in SD card slot and microphone. However this unit does fall short in a few areas. It’s a bit thicker of a unit compared to iPod (probably due to the extra features) it’s not too thick but the difference is noticeable.
The button placement feels a bit akward and there are too many of them. The shortcut button is nice but the dedicated play/pause, back and info buttons are not necessary and could easily be incorporated into 5-button directional pad. Creative claims up to 30 hours of continuous audio playback. I got a refurbished unit so maybe my battery isn’t as strong but I notice about half of that amount of juice. I feel that the extra features outweigh the negatives of the unit.