Gary Boone, PhD

Safe Shower Temperature Gauge tells you when you’re in hot water

Neat idea, but perhaps not the right implementation. This device tells you the temperature of your shower before you step into it. At $20, it’s not expensive, but it’s competing against free–just sticking your hand in the water… This might be a good application of ambient interfaces. Instead of an LCD temperature display, imagine colored LEDs that changed the color of the water. Then you could tell at glance from across the bathroom whether the temperature was right…

[via Engadget]

Todd Dailey has a nice little how-to up on his blog, showing you how to restore the shine to your iPod nano with a $4 can of Brasso. He has step-by-step pictures and then end results looks so amazingly good that he adds this note: “Holy. Crap. I feel the need to assure you that these are actual unretouched photos of the final clean nano. The same one that I showed in the ‘dirty’ pictures above. As you can see, the Brasso got rid of every single scratch. My nano looks completely, totally brand new. Again, believe it or not these are actual ‘after’ pictures! Im very, very impressed. If you dont get these results, get back to work on the nano with the Brasso. Im confident that with enough time you can remove any shallow scratch.”

Of course, if you don’t want to spend the $4 on the Brasso, you could always just flip the hold switch on the nano and rub your nano obsessively with your thumb as you listen. The natural oils of your hand combined with the friction from your skin will eventually rub out some of the minor scratches. That’s the method I’ve been employing anyway.

[via MAKE] 

New iPod nano = very cool. Coverage/notes/sites:

Photos of nano guts, with excellent Janglish translation of Japanese website:

iPodWizard’s nano forum

Make’s hacks

Collection of reviews from PC World

Detailed review from iLounge with photos

WSJ’s Mossberg’s review with specs

The new Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 solves several problems of its predecessors. They were a little too angled; Microsoft said people had to relearn how to type. Worse, some older versions remapped the function keys to common tasks unless you hit a new F-lock key. The problem is that the keyboard always powers-on to with the F-lock off. If you didn’t remember to hit F-lock, you may accidentally do the wrong action. There’s a hacky fix, though. The new version includes utility buttons, is wired so you don’t have to change batteries or worry about interference, and leaves the Page Up group and arrows in their expected positions.

[via Everything USB]

From SamsungHQ: "Samsung’s YH-J70 HDD-based digital audio player is now available for purchase in the United States. Samsung is selling the 20GB version of the YH-J70 factory-direct for $299.99 USD - and online retailer Ebuyer.com will be selling the YH-J70 for $250.94, once they receive their initial shipment.

"The YH-J70, available in 20GB or 30GB capacities, features line-in and voice recording, video playback, photo viewing, USB On-the-go, FM tuner, games, and a 1.8" color display. Supported music formats are currently MP3, WMA, and Janus WMA. The YH-J70’s Li-ion battery provides up to 25 hours during audio playback (7 hours for video)."

Purchase Samsung’s YH-J70 here.

YH-J70 Product Page.

Compare the specs:

• Creative Zen Micro (5GB): 3.3" x 2.0" x 0.7", 3.8 oz
• YH-J70 (20GB): 4.0" x 2.5" x 0.5", 4.8 oz
• iPod Mini (6GB): 3.6" x 2.0" x 0.5", 3.6 oz
• iPod (20GB): 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.63", 5.9 oz

It’s a little smaller and lighter than an iPod. I find the iPod a little large for a jeans pocket. The Zen Micro is a good size.

News Leak: Microsoft Keyboard and Mice

News of a new Microsoft keyboard and a couple of MS mice was leaked today, and we’ve got a brief overview of the latest of MS input devices. Bear in mind that none of them have been released yet, so prices and availability are still unknown.

First up, is a new Microsoft Natural keyboard for all you Carpal Tunnel afflicted folks out there. The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 still has that split keyboard and the curved key bed, but now it features a zoom slider, five programmable “favorites” keys, forward/backward keys in the center of the keyboard, hotkeys, and other standard function keys.

[via Gizmodo]

In Tag mania sweeps the Web, Jon Udell asks if tagging is ad or a real breakthrough in information management and answers, “both.” I’d have to say, “fad.” Tagging just means adding labels, such as categories, to data. For example, you can label a photo with the names of the people in it as well as the date and the event type. The value is that you can later search on these tags to pull together groups dynamically. In contrast, you otherwise would put your photos into folders–if you didn’t put them in the right folders, they’ll be hard to find or reorganize later.

The problem is that tagging is essentially foldering–it’s just putting the pictures or data into multiple folders. You still have the same problem: if you didn’t choose the right folders or labels, you can’t find the data later. There are many, many, possible labels you can put on photos–if you don’t put them all, you can’t search for them later. Want to pull all of the photos containing someone wearing a red hat? Can’t do it if you didn’t label all of the red hat photos…

The online sharing of tagged information, a la flickr and del.ico.us, is cool because it leverages the efforts of others in a “harmony of the commons” way. But it only works if people use tags consistently. I suspect the apparent value of the new online sites is that they filter so much information that they appear to be successfully organizing information. But do we really know? Yes, we can construct a feed of C# stories. But we have no way to know how many useful C# stories have been missed. There’s value to seeing the C# stories identified as interesting by others, unless you don’t share their interests and they skipped the story you really would want to see.

The danger is that tagging is like a huge flea market. At first, you’re impressed; wow, they have everything! But after a while, you leave disappointed. Wow, there was a lot of other people’s junk. An occasional gem doesn’t make the system efficient. Ultimately, we need systems that find information you need. Tagging may be an short-term proxy that provides human collaboration, messy and inconsistent though it is, to provide some occasional improvement over manual web searches and surfing.

Looking for a blog posting client. Desired features: 1) it should be wysiwyg. 2) it should be able to easily edit previous posts. 3) it should be able to drag text and images from a browser into the editor. 4) if I drag and drop an image from the web into t a new post, the program should download the linked image, save it locally, then ftp it up to the server. The reason is that if you post an image as a link to some other site, then your blog will break when the original host moves or deletes the image. 5) spell checker, preferably while-you-type.

NewzCrawler (v1.8.0, $24.95): wysiwyg. Can edit prior posts easily. Just double click on one in the normal list view. Cannot drag and drop images and text into editor, but can paste. Fails to translate linked images into ftp’d images. You can drag an image into the BlogThis! editor. The image will appear with a link to the local path to the image, such as the IE cache if you drag from IE. But when you post, the live image src points to your local disk! Oops. No spell check.Note, however, that NewzCrawler is a terrific blog aggregator and reader.

BlogJet (v1.6.0, $39): wysiwyg. Can edit prior posts. Can drag and drop into editor. Fails to translate linked images into ftp’d images. Spell check, but not while you type.

w.bloggar (v4.00.0191, free): Not wysiwyg. Can edit prior posts. Cannot drag and drop into editor. Fails to translate linked images into ftp’d images. Spell check, but not while you type.

 Nice review of several clients here.

Moon Tourism Just Around The Corner

Space Adventures, a startup out of Arlington, VA has reported to the New York Times that it is working on an agreement with Russian officials to send two tourists on a 10 to 21 day long space trip that will orbit the moon. The round-trip ticket will cost a cool $100 million dollars and will send the passengers with a Russian space crew. Read More  | CNet

Spammers on the Run

ericald writes “An interesting update from Blue Security, the group that introduces the Blue Frog initiative to fight spam, claims that during the past few days at least one spammer had frequently deleted domains he owned as a result of their system. In another update in their blog they report they have already recruited over 21,000 users. It’s about time spammers start feeling the heat! I’m just surprised they show results so soon.”