On Campus - Friday, October 2, 2009 13:30 - 9 Comments
How To Make NYUHome Less Frustrating
Despite the general lack of community-building college activities at NYU like big sports, being in everyone’s business, and going to the same frat house to party every weekend, we do have some things in common. We all love the Hayden lady. We all love cheap food ($1 slices, falafel, chicken over rice). And we all hate NYUHome.
Earlier this week, I got particularly fed up when Albert told me for the third time that my elapsed login time (11 minutes) exceeded the maximum allowed (10 minutes). So I sent a laundry list of complaints to ITS, filled with snark about how NYUHome mirrors NYU’s bureaucracy in a digital format.
To my surprise, I got a professional, useful response two days later. Here are some of the insights. Continue…
Entertainment - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:47 - 12 Comments
The Microsoft Courier Has Come to Change Our Lives
When it comes to tablets, the tech world rumor mill mostly churns out speculations focused primarily on the hypothetical Apple Tablet. But it seems as if Microsoft just totally blew everyone out of the water.
The Microsoft Courier, which Gizmodo released a preview of yesterday, offers us a glimpse into the future of technology, and potentially our entire lives. Combining the portability of a notebook with an easy to use touch screen interface, it can also be written in with a stylus, has a camera attached to the back, and is overall one of the coolest devices I have ever seen. I have no doubt in my mind that this will be the future of computers. With one sleek blow, it renders several old school products obsolete: the paper and pen (good for the environment!), clunky textbooks, assignment books and planners, even the Kindle.
Entertainment - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:02 - 0 Comments
Geeking Out at the Gizmodo Gallery 2009
Giz Gallery 2009 from NYU Local on Vimeo.
Footage and editing by David Aragon
Above is a video David and I shot at the Giz Gallery, an event thrown by Gawker Media’s tech blog Gizmodo, which showcases some of the coolest and most innovative gadgets in development today. Continue…
National - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 13:07 - 7 Comments
This is the Way the World Ends, Not with a Bang But a Blackberry Outage
Igniting post-traumatic stress disorder in all Gmail/Blackberry users who experienced the Gmail fail a few weeks ago, it appears that RIM, the company that owns Blackberry, is currently experiencing difficulties, causing e-mail and internet service to be spotty on devices in North America.
I noticed my Verizon Blackberry stopped receiving e-mails and Facebook notifications around 11am this morning, and subsequently rushed to the Verizon store where they fixed it for about five minutes before it stopped working again. The store owner, who was only mildly creepy, gave me his e-mail address in case the problem persisted. Thanks to tech blogs, I figured out the problem before he did, but he sent me this anyway: “It seems that RIM is having some issues and hopefully they will fix it by the end of the day today,” he wrote. Continue…
On Campus - Friday, May 1, 2009 9:00 - 10 Comments
NYU Computer Science Students Make Awesome iPhone Apps
This semester, NYU’s Computer Science department offered the class “iPhone Programming,” where students learned to write code in order to create working iPhone applications that could even be sold in the App Store. The course, taught by Professor Nathan Hull, looked cool even before the students’ projects were announced.
My favorite is Michael Hill’s iHungry. Rather than browse recipes or go grocery shopping, you just punch in the ingredients you have in your cupboard and the app suggests recipes that use the food you have. Extra cool is the “pantry” feature that lets you keep a list of the staples you keep in your kitchen (e.g. butter, eggs). Then you can just add a “primary ingredient,” shake the iPhone, and get a recipe to make with your pantry items and the extra one. So, for example, punch in “apple” as your primary ingredient and you might “be shown a recipe for caramelized apples because in your pantry you had brown sugar and butter!”
More sweet apps after the jump. Continue…
National - Friday, April 24, 2009 14:35 - 0 Comments
Apple Stops Shaking Babies
Baby shaking. Sure, we’ve all thought about giving that crying thing in the subway a nice jiggle-jiggle, but have you ever bothered to think about what’s best for the baby? My guess would be, not shaking the baby.
Apple, always making sure that “there’s an app for that”, decided to try and curb the baby-shaking urge by approving the publication of a much needed baby-shaking simulator on its iPhone App store. All the fun of shaking the living hell out of an infant, without the messy cleanup of figuring out what to do afterwards! But it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. The Sarah Jane Brain foundation (did they really need to make it rhyme?), a foundation which seeks to combat baby-shaking, went to Apple and complained that the app was offensive, and Apple agreed and removed the app immediately. Continue…
National - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 15:29 - 3 Comments
New Twitter Application Attempts To Rip Off Perfectionists
There’s a breaking development in the field of new ways to Twitt your favorite tweets! Are you a perfectionist? Are you one of those kids who actually bothers revising your papers over and over until they’re just perfect? Then you’ll love the newest useless Twitter application for the iPhone: Birdhouse!
Birdhouse is a notepad for jotting down tweets for later revision. It doesn’t show any of your friends tweets, incoming messages, or any other of Twitter’s features that involve other people. Nope, Birdhouse is all about the most interesting person on Twitter… you! How much would you say this self-obsession is worth? $10? $20? Nope! You can jot down your 140 character messages (which your minuscule brain clearly does not have room for) for a mere $4! Now who’s ready for some revising?
At least the intro video is pretty funny.
National - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 6:00 - 2 Comments
Kindle’s Read-Aloud Feature Stirs Controversy
Question: How do you get a nerd to go outside?
Answer: Screw with their gadgets until they protest.
Yesterday at noon there was a rally outside of the Authors Guild headquarters on 32nd street demanding that Text-to-Speech functionality was restored to the new Amazon Kindle. The Authors Guild had previously threatened to sue Amazon over the Kindle’s ability to read text aloud to you. Executive Director Paul Aiken wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” The Guild claimed that by reading the book aloud, Amazon was creating a derivative work. If that isn’t absurd enough, Amazon buckled, allowing the Guild to dictate which books were allowed to utilize the miniature Stephen Hawking housed within every Kindle. Continue…
National - Friday, April 3, 2009 16:18 - 1 Comment
DWT: Driving While Twittering
As New Yorkers, very few of us have to deal with driving. The unbearable pain of only being able to focus on one thing, the road ahead of us. The loneliness of the wide open highway. The fact that for a few moments, you might have to be by yourself, without constant communication with the outside world. But no more!
Gearlive.com has received a tip that, while driving, we’ll all be able to Twitter. Continue…
National - Monday, March 30, 2009 12:08 - 1 Comment
New Gaming Console Promises HD, Streaming Games
Could this minuscule set-up be the game console of the future? I’d say definitely. The real question is if it’s the game console of the near-future.
What you see above is the OnLive set-top box, announced last Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Once the OnLive box is plugged into your TV and a broadband Internet connection, you’ll be able to buy any game available on the service and stream it straight to your TV. This will also be available on almost any PC or Mac that can stream video, from a $3,000 desktop rigs to your standard hand-me-down craptop.
