Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

I don’t always have access to my WordPress dashboard whenever I have an idea for a blog post, so I tend to rely on my tablet (which is always two feet away from me) and Microsoft’s awesome OneNote 2007 application to tag any cool thoughts or ideas that come into my head. As far as digital notebook applications go, OneNote is hard to beat. It support various levels of navigation; you can have any number of notebooks, each with its own set of folders/tabs; each of those can have any number of pages and subpages. It handles just about every content type under the sun, as you can embed audio recordings and files into your notes, and most documents support being inserted as a ‘printout’ so you can write directly on your PowerPoint slides or what have you. You can also use the built-in clipping tool to grab screencaptures of specific applications or parts of a web site, something I do often.

You might have also noticed that I occasionally post entries in ink. While my setup using Windows Live Writer and the ink plug-in isn’t quite as robust as Sumocat’s build 51 implementation (which supports making inked words into links),I think it makes for a nice change of pace from the massive amounts of text (and the occasional image). I think ink adds a more personal touch to posts, even if my handwriting is terrible!

Some other cool tools I’ve found include InkSeine, a Microsoft Research prototype geared towards searching(and organizing the results) with ink alone, the Physics Simulator (included in the Microsoft Tablet PC Experience Pack), and Crayon Physics, a puzzle/physics game that’s more-or-less perfectly suited to the input methods on a tablet.

Rather than tell you about the many hours I’ve spent researching multivariate displays recently, here are a few cool things I picked up on some of my daily web scouring expeditions.

After switching from Trillian to Pidgin about a year ago, I saw a new instant messaging program over on Lifehacker called Digsby. Why the switch? Digsby integrates both Facebook (meh) and Twitter (yay) into its UI! Plus, the Google Talk integration actually works (compared to Pidgin). It just came out of closed beta, so give it a try.

I decided that I couldn’t wait for Apple to release their official 3rd party application support for the iPhone and iPod touch, so I found a fantastic unlocking program that’ll jailbreak either of those devices in under a minute. It’s called ZiPhone, and it supports all sorts of unlocking variants for iPhones (just one for the iPod touch!). You can just jailbreak an iPhone/iPod touch if you just want 3rd party application support, or jailbreak, unlock, and activate an iPhone unit for use on other providers’ networks. It’s quick, extremely easy to use, and best of all: it just works.

If sharing music via Internet and LAN is more your thing, head over to Deusty Designs and check out Mojo. Available for Mac and Windows (beta), Mojo lets you view the libraries of other iTunes users on your friends list and download any songs that catch your ear. The Windows version only works over LAN right now, and it autodetects other Mojo users on the network (although with limited success in my case; Matt and I couldn’t get our copies to see each other). The Mac version is substantially more robust and functions over the Internet.

On the web browser front, we saw the release of Firefox 3 (Beta 4) from Mozilla in the past week or so. It’s the first time I’ve really sat down and tinkered with the new interface, and I have to say I’m impressed. The biggest change that I noticed is the new address bar UI: check out the size of the back button! I know I rely on it all the time for navigation, and since the forward button doesn’t see nearly as much use (from what I’ve observed), I’m liking the disproportionate sizes. The other cool feature is the web address matching in the address bar. Notice how it scans through your history and attempts to autocomplete addresses it thinks you’re trying to reach? Nifty! If you’re looking to try the beta without mucking up your Firefox 2 install, try the Portable Apps version.

Fox and NBC have a new video site called Hulu with episodes and clips from a fairly large selection of current and former shows (House M.D., all of Firefly, the list goes on). There are also a couple decent movies (The Big Lebowski). There’s no uploading here; it’s strictly a “sit back, relax, and watch” sort of affair. Some nifty extras like Lower Lights (dims the rest of your screen, leaving the video bright) and embedding support make this one of the best ‘official’ online video offerings.

Enjoy!

This is what happens when your school library closes at 1:00pm because of a snowstorm and you need a quiet, distraction-free place to actually work on your research papers. Our suite doesn’t fit into the quiet and distraction-free category, so I spent the afternoon turning my ThinkPad T60 into a Hackintosh so I could evaluate Apple’s MacOS X. The process took awhile, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get wireless and audio working, but the overall experience has been compelling enough for me to consider getting a Mac the next time I need a new laptop (which won’t be for quite awhile, but still).

Matt took a few photos of the installation process and UI, so here they are for your viewing pleasure!

Now I’ve got an Asus EEE PC running Ubuntu, a T60 running Mac OS X 10.5.1, and my X61 and desktop running Vista Ultimate. I think I need to sell some of these computers…