[tech junkie]

Kindle vs Nook (vs iSlate)

A few lucky early adopters have already received the Kindles down here in deepest darkest Africa, but as much as I want to get my hands on an ebook reader immediately, I'm going to try to fight the urge until there a few more killer devices available locally. The Barnes & Noble Nook was recently announced and will be available soon in the USA, but no word yet on availability internationally. I'm pretty sure that they will want to distribute the device as far and wide as possible, especially if t...

Top 5 (almost) local tech podcasts

OK, so only two out of the five are local. Over the past few weeks I've been searching for the best local and international technology podcasts. I'm tired of listening to the same fools drone on on our local radio stations. Cape Talk isn't bad and some of the presenters are pretty sharp, but they hardly cover technology at all. Their 3 minute "Hard Drive" slot every afternoon is pretty useless, but I understand that it may appeal to their less tech savvy listeners. For my trip into work and ho...

QOTD: Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali: "'My toughest fight was with my first wife.'" (Via Quotes of the Day.)

How to clean your Apple Mighty Mouse

The little scroll wheel/ball on my Mighty Mouse gets lazy every few weeks and only lets me scroll in one direction. Sometimes only up, sometimes only down. Side to side never seems to be a problem. A simple fix I learned about to solve this problem meant I didn't have to keep phoning Digicape to complain about repeatedly being sold bad mice... Simply turn your Mighty Mouse off (by sliding the cover at the bottom closed), turn the mouse upside down onto a piece of paper and move the mouse a...

Geotagging for everyone

For people like myself that are stuck with a digital camera that was built before anyone had even thought up the term "geotagging", there is finally a solution that will enable you to have location information for all your snaps. There are a number of original manufacturer and 3rd party solutions available for a handful of the higher end cameras, but most of them are quite expensive and are most certainly not readily available locally. This device requires you to sync your computers time w...

QOTD: Fran Lebowitz

Fran Lebowitz: "'All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.'" (Via Quotes of the Day.)

O’Reilly continues awesomeness

I have a number of O’Reilly books myself and I must admit, when their spines are all nicely lined up, they look awesome on my bookshelf. They are now running a promotion that allows you to download an electronic version of any of the paper books that you own for only $4.99 each. I will almost always want to own the paper version of these books, but having a portable version that is searchable makes access to the information I need extremely convenient. Promotion ends at the end of October, so...

Windows 7 looks expensive and confusing

I just finished reading an article on MyBroadband where they have listed local pricing for the different Windows 7 options from a variety of brick and mortar and e-tailers. Firstly, I had no idea that there were so many options to choose from, again. Did M$ learn nothing with Vista ? There is no way the man in the street is going to have any idea what the difference between the different options are. You'll realise that you are getting more when you buy the "Ultimate" version, but witho...

Toshiba Dynario fuel-cell: the battery revolution

I must have missed the initial announcement of this technology so I actually did a bit of a double take and few searches to make sure that someone wasn't trying to pull a fast one. It's legit. Basically you can recharge any device that makes use of USB for that function. I guess you could power it directly as well. When your cell (we call them batteries) starts running low, just whip out a little bottle of concentrated methanol and fill the 14ml fuel tank to keep on going. Basically like r...