Geek and a Half

January 9th, 2006 by Jake

Up until this point, Google Talk users have had to stick with a basic Jabber client if they wanted to opt out of using the Google Talk client. Enter Gtalkr, a web/flash-based Google Talk Client. It has all the features you’d expect from a Google Talk client, including the ability to view message previews of conversations in your Inbox, customize your own RSS Feeds, send out invitations, and search the Web (via Google, of course.) But, no, they need to add something more that will make people want to use this instead of their trusty Google Talk Clients, so there are a few minor differences that differ the two cleints.

The Flash client allows you to set yourself not only to “Available” or “Busy”, but “Away” as well, which in the classic Google Talk client is reserved for people who have gone Idle (the Orange blip). Another new, nifty feature is the ability to choose and upload your own avatar or Buddy Icon. What’s nice about this is that there’s no filesize limit on the avatars. I just uploaded a 1276×842, 187KB JPEG, and it didn’t complain, it just quietly went to work uploading, and when it was done, it simply resized it to fit the little 50×50 window above my buddy list. Another less important, but different feature nonetheless, is the fact that it tells your buddy when you’ve closed the window. Now, some people don’t like this concept, they see it as an invasion of privacy because it’s your right to close whatever window you want, and your friends shouldn’t be messaged when you do. Yet another feature I’ve just discovered (I’m messing around with it as I write this) is that it saves all of your conversations in a “Chat Inbox”, basicalyl the same thing as logging all of your conversations. I don’t know the extent to which it logs, but it seems to sort it by date, and per-window, meaning if I said “Hi” to you, closed the window, and you responded back saying “Hey”, it would mark it as two separate logs.

Gtalkr also sports a nifty little homepage which doubles as your workspace (the area behind your chat windows). It allows you to customize, kind of in a Windows Live Homepage kind of way, where it allows you to drag-and-drop your “windows” with your feeds and news headlines around the page. They even set you up with a default news feed from Digg.com. Nifty, but none of those homepages with feeds, news, weather, etc. have really appealed to me yet.

A really smart idea, I’m sure this will grow to become the next “AIM Express” of its type. I’ll definately use it when I’m on-the-go, but when I’m at home, I’ll stick with my trusty Google Talk client, thank you very much.

January 8th, 2006 by Jake

I recieved an invite fron none other than BigBlueBall.com the other day, and now I’m on it 24/7. It’s a great tool for instant messaging, and when WLMsgr and Yahoo! Messenger come together, it’ll make it easier for most, if not all of us. Before I say anything, here are some screenshots:

As you can see, it’s got a totally redefined look, a new name, a new face. You can also draw and send text the way Tablet PC users are used to. There’s the usual array of extra tools, as well…Video, Audio, Games, Activities, and a new concept (I think) where you share a folder on your computer and you can pick which buddies can access and get files from that folder. Kind of a variation of Hamachi, but I prefer the latter. In addition, they’ve added a “contact card”, where the front of it displays things like recent MSN Spaces blog posts, MSN Spaces pictures, status, and when you “flip” the card, the back has an editable text area. Interesting feature, something useful for buisness settings and people with large contact lists. It’s also fully integrated with Hotmail and Windows. Hotmail allows you to remotely sign on to Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger doubles as a mail notification program for Hotmail. Messenger will also display the number of new e-mails on my date-clock screen on my Logitech G15 keyboard.

Overall, it looks like a great program for someone who really enjoys all the frills of instant messengers. I’m still sticking with good old Google Talk, though, because of its simplicity.

As a thanks for reading my post, the first 5 people to comment on my article and provide a valid e-mail address will recieve a Windows Live Messenger invite from me.

January 1st, 2006 by Jake

Happy New Year! To kick off the new year, I’d like to share some new hardware being released this year. I stumbled upon this article reading about the new PS3 coming out (hopefully) this year.

Welcome to the future. Expect, very soon, to see prototypes for a new Blu-Ray disc, the format of games for the new PlayStation 3. This new drive will support full DVD�R/RW, BD�R/RW/ROM, the reading of DVD and BD discs, but unfortunately for most computer users, will not support the playback or recording of CD-ROM’s.

Personally, that’s heartbreaking. If I have something to give to a friend, it usually fits on a CD-R, which nowadays takes seconds to burn. Most of my music is on CD, as are my games and backups. I suppose you could have a separate drive for your CDs, but why isn’t it possible to just add it into the BD-ROM drive? Personally, I’d like to see it all in one place.

Then again, as one anonymous user states,



If you want CD support, don’t buy this one. It may be the first to market, but others will come out that do have CD support.
Even for the business market, it doesn’t make sense to exclude CD. There is way to much archived on CD out there to simply decide now the format is obsolete.

I’m not too worried, there is way too much for CD-ROM to just be excluded. The technology’s there, we just have to be patient for it to happen.

Source: PS3 News Coverage 24/7.