Nabi 2 :  7″ Tablet

Fuhu NABI NABI2-NV7A 7-Inch Tablet

One of the hottest items of the 2012 Holiday Season was the Nabi 2 Tablet by Fuhu and it is now continuing to grow with great success in 2013! My wife had me pick one up at Walmart on Black Friday for $129.99; that’s a big step down from the normal $199.99 price that held firm for months after the launch into the US Market. That retail price didn’t budge until just recently, when I saw up to a 10% decrease, putting this for as low as $179 at Best Buy and $189 with free shipping on Amazon.

Fuhu has since introduced a smaller, less expensive version that has a very child-like design for $99. However, on the other end of their strategy, you can now get the new Nabi XD in a 10.1″ screen with twice the memory for $249.99-$269.99, which is a great deal when looking at other comparable tablets on the market.  Fuhu is gaining market share and giving kids and parents alike a great value for their money in a one-size-fits-all tablet design.

Nabi XD 10.1″

Nabi XD 10.1″ (Sideview)

If you aren’t familiar with Nabi, it is known as the most powerful tablet on the market designed for kids and comes complete with front view webcam and great microphone quality for anything from home videos to video calls. So, how is it designed for kids? First off, the bumper case is enough to withstand many drops and throws across the floor, kid-style; I can personally attest to this. My son dropped his Nabi 7″ from table level and it landed on the floor with no damage. My daughter has sat on, dropped, and thrown it in a fit of 3-year-old anger. Obviously, with any touch screen, direct blunt force to the screen is going to be detrimental; other than that, it is designed to be dropped. The outer shell has a silicon feel and has great shock absorbency.

There are interchangeable bumpers available for purchase in different colors; but honestly, unless you have a huge problem with the color red, it probably isn’t worth a retail price of $29.99 to change it.

I’ve done full demos on the Nabi 2 (when the kids are sleeping) and run applications like Skype, Amazon AppStore, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and so much more. The key to the success of Nabi is that there are two modes built into the software: (1) Nabi (Kid) Mode and (2)Admin (Mommy/Daddy) Mode. Nabi Mode gives you full control over what the kids can play, access on the web (if any), and even lets you setup other parental controls to limit their usage. This tablet is powerful and durable in construction. If I was in the market for a tablet for myself to use on the road, I’d buy Nabi!

Customer Support is based online via forums, online manual, and Facebook. They do have support numbers, but I have yet to get through successfully without being prompted to leave a message for someone to call me back. If you are tech savy, this is ok. However, if you are expecting the phone service at the level of a company like Dell or American Express, you will probably get frustrated. (Please send me corrections if there approach to customer service has changed so that I can update this post.)

Tech Specs:

Many scenarios can be played out with Vine. Use it correctly, and you can build hype for a new product and drive record high sales. Use it wrong, and you just committed social media suicide.

Here’s how I see it

Marketers could use Vine for a release of a product. Picture it – Apple tweets a Vine of something resembling the long awaited iWatch, but only shows shadows and subtle areas of the watch including some never before features and other crazy things that only Apple may think of in its 6 seconds. Now, wouldn’t you be intrigued to see what the supposed iWatch looks like and does? I know I would, and coming from a company like Apple, it would be the most talked about Vine for awhile.

But, of course, that’s just one way.

Marketers need to have a vast arsenal of tools to capture and share everything that happens in the moment and take advantage of any little exposure they can get.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+; the list goes on. Vine is definitely in my arsenal of Social Media tools.

Is it in yours?

Click an image to enlarge it.

outside of the box

back

a cool looking “survival tin”

the game!

Lara Croft

map of Yamatai

iron on survival badges

lara’s climbing axe

the trademark pistol

kicka** shotgun :)

the recurve…I love this so much.

Lara, up close and personal. great details.

legs wrapped in bandages

hip holster for her pistol, and cuts on her leg

she can even hold the bow!

Lara and her weapons.

Back: survival tin. Left to right: soundtrack CD, Xbox Game, Lara figure, Xbox reward card, Lara lithograph, 2-sides poster. Front: badges

In this game Lara is, while still very attractive (and I’m female with a boyfriend, so that’s saying something lol), not anywhere near as sexed-up as her previous self. She’s not yet a “cool, collected, in control” heroine in this game, which takes place in the beginning of her archeological career before she was ever known as a tomb raider. I found it quite amusing, for in the very beginning you found Lara saying how she “hates tombs”. I am very pleased with the game, and I hope that future Tomb Raider games are just as amazing.

It all starts on the Endurance, a research vessel, where Lara and a small research team can be found in the search of the lost island of Yamatai, home of the Sun Queen Himiko. Himiko is said to have control of the sun, and she controlled everything the sun touched. But no one has been able to find it in centuries. On a hunch of Lara’s, they head into the Bermuda Triangle (they call it the Dragon’s Mouth). They get dragged into a storm and are thrown into an island. After almost drowning and going down with the Endurance, Lara is washed onto the shore where she finds her other team mates, who are higher up on the beach than she is. She calls out to them, but is knocked out by an unknown person and she then wakes up in a cave, tied up and upside down, surrounded with other corpses. Determined to not meet the same fate as the others, she swings her bound body into some lit candles, thus freeing herself and sending herself plummeting to the cavern floor, falling into a metal barb. After ripping it out of her side, she stumbles through the cave, wary of the voices she hears around her. The cave starts to give way, collapsing around her. Lara rushes through tunnels, and after pushing away a strange man that says he’s “trying to help her”, finally emerges onto an open cliff. Lara manages to get down off the cliff and into the woods, where she camps out for her first night, alone, stranded, wounded and cold. She sits by the fire and you are introduced to the abilities system.

The rest of the game is just as thrilling and engaging. You find yourself pulling off stealth kills with your bow, climbing mountainsides with your climbing axe, fighting off wolves and the mad, sick and twisted inhabitants of the island. Lara quickly learns that to survive in this harsh and dangerous environment, she has to make hard choices. You go through the motions with her as she fires a weapon into the face of an enemy for the first time, and afterwords feeling sick over what she had done. Through the entire thing your captain and father figure, Roth, walks you through the rough times via walkie-talkies. After you find your team again you are sent into an old World War 2 era fort to try to get out an SOS signal, finding that you must climb high up to the top of a tower to get any signal at all.

After fighting every single day just to stay alive, running away constantly and dying fairly gruesome deaths multiple times (the game is pretty difficult, even on the easy setting) you and Lara become hardened to the violence, and your only objective is to find your friends and get away from the seemingly cursed island.

The environment is extraordinary and wonderfully open. The player is free to roam about in search of hidden tombs and relics, food and salvage to upgrade your weapons. It challenges you every step of the way, and just sucks you into the universe of Lara Croft as she learns about the island and the ancient Sun Queen, and all the while, slowly turning into the Tomb Raider we know from previous games. The game isn’t mainly about platforming, though as you make progress you find yourself climbing more and more objects and jumping from surface to surface as Lara becomes more adept and in tune with her environment.

Tomb Raider is, in truth, nothing like any of the previous games. It’s much, much better. It’s not just about jumping from platform to platform and solving simple puzzles. It’s about survival, and discovering Lara’s inner raider. This is the new Tomb Raider, the new Lara…and I sincerely hope that they keep her around for years to come.

Now that I’ve gone on and on about the game itself, let’s have a look at the Collector’s Edition items.

Everything was packaged in a Survival Tin made to look as if it’s fresh off the Endurance itself. Upon opening you are greeted with the lovely game that you’ve been waiting for since, like, forever.

Under that is the promotional paper for your free Gold trial for Xbox live, along with a CD soundtrack of the game, the lithograph, and a double sided poster (one side a map of Yamatai, the other a picture of Lara from the game cover).

Lift up the cardboard holding those, and you will find the 3 iron-on survival badges and the one and only Lara Croft figurine. Complete with weapons.

There was a lot of detail put into Lara, from the torn clothes to the dirt on her skin. Her joints are fairly flexible, though I found it hard to get her to stand up on her own without wanting to topple over one way or the other. But no matter, I’ve just got her leaning slightly against my monitor on my desk.

Her weapons are amazing. She comes with the shotgun, her famous pistol, her climbing axe (useful and deadly), and the awesome recurve bow (complete with arrow). The amount of detail in these alone are outstanding. If only I had a camera good enough to capture it all but i did my best lol.

Here’s a link to a gallery page for all of the images: Click Here

I’m in love with this game, there’s not much else I can say about it really other than I really, really love this game. Square Enix did a wonderful job on it, and I’m glad that Lara has become the true heroine she was meant to be. I hope that girls all over the world can now look up to Lara as their hero and role model, for her strength, dignity, courage, and will power.

And I’d like to give a shout out to everyone who had a hand in creating this game…thank you all very much. I’ve been waiting for this Lara for years.

I spent several hours devouring thread after thread on Reddit and my iPhone was just about dead.  I plugged her up, but moments later decided to get some takeout. I was left with a choice: leave my phone at home to charge up in my absence, or bring it with me and only get a 5 percent charge during my drive. I decided that some phone-free time would be good for me.  And my eyes.

Leaving the house sans wireless was oddly liberating. Somehow my mind felt clearer. I had come up with several ideas for blog post ideas in under 15 minutes!  Excitement that slightly dwindled when I realized that I didn’t have my phone to take note of my ideas…dammit.

I hate feeling so dependent upon technology, so I try to take screen free breaks as often as possible. I encourage you to do the same. Also, it’s an easy way to get back to basics and remember to enjoy simple things.

Kevin seeks a solution to his Mac photo management woes:

Currently, all of our family photos are stored on my iMac using iPhoto. I would prefer to move everything to a Dropbox folder, so that they are stored both on my computer and the cloud, but I no longer wish to use iPhoto and instead wish to manage our photos using something like Picasa. I would greatly appreciate your advice on the best, as well as the simplest, way to:

1. move all of our images out of iPhoto without losing quality
2. copy them into a Dropbox folder
3. ensure new photos upload to the Dropbox folder

All of the tutorials and solutions I have come across on the Web seem to be beyond my tech knowledge and ability. I would also love to hear any alternative you would suggest for cloud or hard drive storage of photos other than iPhoto. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for taking the time to ask your questions, Kevin! Mac photo management seems easy when you use all the default tools and settings your iMac came configured to use. When it comes time to migrate to other methods of viewing and storing images, however, it can seem a bit daunting of a task if you’re not particularly tech savvy. I hope I’ll be able to show you how to go from one Mac photo management method to another without causing you too much anguish.

Mac Photo Management: Changing Your Mac’s Preferences

To prevent your iMac (or any Mac) from launching iPhoto every time you connect a camera or other image capturing device (including an iPhone, iPad, or iPod), first head to iPhoto’s Preferences in order to select the No application item. Preferences are settings that determine how your Mac behaves. In order to instruct your iMac to stop using iPhoto to view your images, look under iPhoto, Preferences, General, and then Connecting Camera opens. Once you’ve selected No application, iPhoto should no longer launch whenever your iMac detects the connection of a device that contains images. (That’s how to prevent iPhoto from automatically launching, but you can always open iPhoto manually, should you ever wish to.)

Jump to 1:03 in the video to learn how to access iPhoto’s Preferences.

If you already have Picasa installed, then you probably won’t need to change iPhoto’s settings. Instead, open up Picasa’s own Preferences, head to the General area, and look for the item When a camera is connected, launch. To clarify, this item is located in a drop-down menu located under Picasa, Preferences, then General. By default, iPhoto will be the item selected, so change that to Picasa and from then on, Picasa will be application that is launched whenever a camera or other image capturing/storing device is connected to your iMac. Should you wish to use a different application to manage your images in the future, you should be able to do so following this method. (The wording for items under different applications’ Preferences menu may differ slightly, but they should carry the same or similar meaning.)

Mac Photo Management: Moving Your Images to Dropbox and Picasa

If you wish to use Dropbox or another online storage solution instead of Picasa’s own Picasa Web Albums, you’ll need to set Picasa’s settings to do so. Jeremy Roberts of Cloud Productivity has a handy tutorial on how to back up Picasa with Dropbox for those who are familiar with their Mac’s Terminal application. For those less inclined to using a command line interface, I recommend first installing Dropbox, moving your iPhoto library to your Dropbox folder, then directing Picasa to scan your Dropbox folder. Don’t worry if all of that seems intimidating right now. I assure you, it’s simple as long as you perform one step at a time, and in sequence.

First, download and install Dropbox. I expect you’ll be able to install Dropbox without issue. If you do have any issues installing Dropbox, leave a comment. Once Dropbox is installed, here’s how you’ll move your iPhoto library. First, locate the iPhoto Library, which is where all of your images are stored. You’ll find this in the Pictures folder. Copy or move the entire iPhoto Library over to your local Dropbox folder. If you have a lot of pictures, it’ll take some time for your local Dropbox folder to sync with your Dropbox cloud server. (It may take seconds, minutes, or even hours, depending on how many images you have in your iPhoto Library.) You’ll know your Dropbox folders are in sync once you see the Dropbox status indicator change from a rotating blue sync marker to a white check mark on a green circle.

To get Picasa to recognize the images stored in your Dropbox so that you’ll be able to browse the images, you’ll need to set Picasa to monitor your local Dropbox folder. Start your Picasa application and look for the Tools menu item. Select this and then the Folder Manager item that is listed below it. (The path to this item is Tools, then Folder Manager.) In the Folder Manager, you can choose which folders you would like Picasa to keep track of. Select your Dropbox folder and you should now be able to view all of the images you moved from your iPhoto library. That’s it!

Jump to 2:12 in the video to learn how to access Picasa’s Folder Manager.

I do my best to make technical information such as this easy for most people to understand, but once in a while I miss a step or describe something that is still difficult for my readers to gather. If anyone is having trouble comprehending this tutorial, please comment below and I’ll do my best to clarify any of the steps in this how-to. Anyone else who has additional insight into this process: feel free to comment! I want to make certain that everyone understands Mac photo management!

Mac Update

I’m usually pretty tech savvy, but I’m a complete avoider when it comes to doing tech stuff that’s a bit over my head. And it finally caught up with me last weekend…

I knew I needed to update my Mac from 10.5.8, I’d already missed updating it to the next operating system, Snow Leopard, and then Mountain Lion, but doing that required me to figure out why the last time(s) I’d tried to back up my data via Time Machine didn’t work (jump drive memory was too small).

Fast forward to just recently, when my browsers Firefox and Chrome stopped working correctly – not playing videos, crashing, and the final straw..not printing a boarding pass correctly (argh!) – I knew then it was time to get my techie act together.

And when I did, the situation wasn’t pretty and at times made me feel like doing this:

My first clue this whole escapade was going to be a headache was at the Apple store, Apple doesn’t allow you to download Snow Leopard online and they don’t physically carry it in their stores anymore.

They’ll ship to you for free, though

I sent out a pitiful plea on twitter about needing my own geek, and my friends Sinclaire and Leandro came to the rescue! But…according to Leandro, I needed to purchase more memory to run Snow Leopard and a larger hard drive with Firewire for Time Machine before I could do anything. A hit to my wallet or crashing browsers?

Once I got the hard drive, Time Machine was pretty much a one click operation (love it!) but took a lonnnnng time to back up.

Inserting the RAM chips was not a one click operation and required the laptop to be cracked open. Some of those screws in the back are tiny (place them next to each hole to keep track of what goes where), there was a lot of dust (Swiffer sheet works well here), and replacing the chips required finesse (I’m glad Leandro knew what he was doing!)

After the new memory chips were in, I inserted the Snow Leopard DVD and started the Installation and….nothing happened. After texts back and forth, Leandro decided the Install hadn’t initiated the Restart and I had to turn off the laptop and restart manually to do it.

Come on…help a non-techie out here, Apple

The manual restart did the trick and Snow Leopard was installed! (twirl). But wait…the DVD only had the version up to 10.6.3 and Mountain Lion requires the OS to be at 10.6.8 before it can install. So, I clicked on Software update…it does it thing…and no prompting for what new updates I need to install.

After mistakenly thinking I’d need to download each update individually, Leandro has me restart my mac and then run software update again and this time it gives me the update version I need to download.

I download and install 10.6.8 Combo v1.1 and it’s all good! I wanted to update to Mountain Lion, but it looks like all the kinks haven’t been worked out when running Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS5

So, I’m all updated now, thanks to Leandro. Let me be your cautionary tale about keeping up on software updates (don’t do this at home, kids)…until the next adventure….

Animated gif source: Twisted Sifter

-5-inch full high-definition Super Amoled screen, using Gorilla Glass 3, 441ppi , Pentile 
-Google Android 4.2.2
-13MP rear camera, 2MP front camera
-2600mAh battery
- eight-core Samsung Exynos in some countries , others use quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro
- Plastic Chassis with metal bezel

Thoughts : Pentile again ?! -.- . Can’t they just go for true RGB .. 441 ppi is outstanding though. Plastic is used once again for its chassis, no surprise there.

Additional features :

Air Gesture –> Instead of touching the screen, the new S 4 has greater gesture controls. Users can skip through songs simply my moving their hands across the screen, or view contents of e-mail messages and photo albums by hovering their finger above the display screen. The Galaxy S 4 is able to sense the presence of your finger up to about a centimeter away from the display.

Camera
- New camera software allow users to remove a moving object completely from a photo, while another allow users to create a moving GIF file using multiple photos.
- Multiple Camera scenes
- A Camera function which allows user to be able to see front and rear views at the same time

Samsung Smart Scroll, which is designed to let users control the screen by where they look. You can scroll the browser or emails up and down without even touching the screen.

Samsung Smart Pause – For those watching videos, playback stops the moment a user’s eyes are taken of the screen, and will only resume when the user stares at the screen again.

S Translator – A built in translator in the device will translate foreign languages automatically in e-mail, text and chat messages.

Mobeam – a way to beam barcodes using pulses of infrared light

Group Play – Send music,documents to other phones. Ability to play music together at the same time. Seems to only work with other S4s -.- .

S Health –> S Health includes support for an integrated pedometer, temperature and humidity sensors in the SGS4. The S Health app is supposed to be able to track distance traveled and give you local identification of current temperature and humidity. The app also includes the ability to act as a meal tracker, just look up foods you’ve eaten and it’ll keep a running tally of calories consumed.

Thoughts:

Air gestures is the feature which is pretty much innovative, the others doesn’t have the excitement factor. Samsung Smart Scroll is looking good too, but I read on some sites that both of these features work intermittently, so we shall see how it fares in the coming weeks when it is rolled out.

John Klein Bluff, Yellowknife, Gales Crater

This week there has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere and on newsfeeds about life on Mars.  Let’s be perfectly clear; no, our Man on Mars did not make first contact.

Curiosity did, however, analyze a bit of sediment drilled from a rock nicknamed John Klein in what appears to be a dry creek bed and found tantalizing evidence suggesting life.  The Martian Rover has the onboard ability to conduct a battery of tests.

Analysis showed the material was found to include Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur, all necessary for life.  Rounding out the possible footprints of organisms long gone were Nitrogen and Phosphorus, also found in the same testing sample.

It’s been a bit more than seven months since Curiosity touched down at Gale crater, an area that was identified as a potentially habitable environment based on data from satellites orbiting the planet. Almost immediately, the rover uncovered evidence that the place was an ancient riverbed, with a long and complex history of flowing water.

A second round of drilling is scheduled for May of this year to compare and confirm these findings, as NASA has some concern over cross contamination from previous testing and analysis by Curiosity since its August 2012 landing.

Mars Soil Sample

In recent weeks, Curiosity has analyzed air samples and found trace amounts of oxygen, as well as nitrogen, argon, and high levels of CO2 which is known to contribute to the greenhouse gas affect on Earth.

Scientists say that this chemical makeup on a dry river bed is not unlike conditions found in an Arizona desert.

“We have found a habitable environment that is so supportive of life that if water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it”’ said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist for the mission in a Tuesday news conference.

Grotzinger, who is based at Caltech in Pasadena, went on to say, “The key thing here is this is an environment that a microbe could have lived in and even prospered in”.

Estimates are that water flowed on Mars 3 million years ago, adding a real possibility that microbial life appeared on the red planet before appearing on Earth.

A popular theory suggests that comets from beyond our solar system bombarding Mars, Earth and even the moons of Saturn carried the building blocks of life to our lifeless system millions of years ago.

Previous testing at other locations on the planet by probes Spirit and Opportunity found clay minerals on the surface called jarosites that would have formed in the presence of acidic or highly salty water.

A team of scientists at Imperial College London recently reported that methane levels in the atmosphere are higher than can be explained simply from meteoric activity, suggesting organic activity below ground that can release methane as a byproduct of life.

When Curiosity finishes with testing and photography at its current location in the Yellowknife Bay Area near Gale Crater, our Man on Mars will have a new assignment a few miles away at the original target area of Gale Crater, where NASA officials suspect signs of life.

Martian Sunset

More About Mars Atmosphere

More About Opportunity Rover

********************

Douglas Black

About Douglas Black

Douglas Black is a photojournalist and

green technologies analyst out of Chicago,

and is currently Managing Producer for

ENERSPEC/enerficiency and Hot Flying Rats!

Earlier Douglas promoted greentech in Detroit as

Senior Marketing Strategist and Architect.

Connect on Google Plus

To avoid the temptation, make sure you set your default format to have at least 12 points after the paragraph. This setting is accessible under the Line Spacing drop-down in the format bar by clicking Other.

But that only helps you from here on out. Sure, you can clean up those extra lines in your word processor after compiling, but what if you’re trying to create an e-book?

If you’re currently stuck with a manuscript with an extra carriage return after each paragraph, here’s how to fix it.

Mac Users

1. To start, make sure you have the invisible characters showing. That’ll make it easier to ensure you don’t copy anything unintended. Turn them on by going to Format–>Options–>Show Invisibles.

2. Select two paragraph markers in a row within your text. Any two, it doesn’t matter, but make sure you don’t get any spaces or anything in there.

3. Copy your selection with Command+C (or Edit–>Copy).

4. Go to Edit–>Find–>Project Replace.

5. In the Replace text box, paste the paragraph symbols with Command+V (or Edit–>Paste).

6. In the With text box, paste the paragraph symbols again, but then press Delete on your keyboard once to remove one of them.

You’ve just set up Scrivener to find all double paragraph markers and replace them with a single paragraph marker.

7. Deselect all the check boxes except for Text so that you don’t affect anything else like Notes or Synopsis, as shown in the image below.

8. Click Replace.

It might take a few minutes if you have a lot of them to work through, but when you’re done, you’ll only have single paragraphs.

You’ll still want to make a quick run through your documents to make sure Scrivener didn’t miss any extra lines. A miss might happen if you inadvertently put a space or tab character on the blank line without realizing it. Those should show up since the non-printing characters are visible.

You can hide the invisible characters by going to Format–>Options–>Hide Invisibles.

Windows Users

Unfortunately, the Windows version of Project Replace isn’t (yet!) set up to handle non-printing characters. So, here’s my recommendation for a workaround. It’s not as elegant, but it’s still much faster than manually removing those extra paragraph lines from a 90,000-word manuscript.

Let me know if you have another idea.

1. Compile your manuscript to RTF or DOC, making sure to include a custom separator for the Text Separator and the Text and Folder Separator, as shown below. This will ensure that Scrivener can divide your scenes up properly later. This setup assumes that you have chapter folders with text documents inside for your scenes.

If you’re savvy enough, it’s also helpful to deselect the Title checkbox for all levels in the Formatting tab. Or you can manually delete the chapter titles in Word.

2. Open the compiled RTF or DOC in Word and go to Edit—>Find—>Replace. In the top text box, use the drop down menu to choose Paragraph Mark, then copy the paragraph mark and paste it again so you have two (or type ^p).

3. In the bottom text box, use the drop down to select Paragraph Mark.

4. Click Replace All. When the replacement is complete, save and close the file.

5. Now, you’re ready to get the file back into Scrivener with the new-to-Windows Import & Split option. (NOTE: You must be using 1.5.3 or later to have Import & Split.)

6. In your Scrivener project, choose a folder where you want to import your scenes. These will be duplicates of the ones you already have, but without the extra spacing. You may want to move your old version of the documents out of the Manuscript (Draft) and then select Manuscript (Draft) as your import location.

7. Go to File—>Import—>Import and Split.

8. In the Import and Split window, click Browse to select the file you just changed in Word, and in the Sections Are Separated By text box, type the character you used as a separator.

9. Scrivener imports the file, dividing it into a new document every time it encounters the separator character.

You’ll have a little cleaning up to do, renaming the documents, regrouping them into folders, and getting rid of chapter titles and such within the text, but I still think it’s faster than going through every paragraph in your project if you have a long manuscript.

As mentioned in the Mac section, wou’ll still want to make a quick run through your documents to make sure Scrivener didn’t miss any extra lines. A miss might happen if you inadvertently put a space or tab character on the blank line without realizing it.

Good luck!

For more help, check out Scrivener For Dummies, or sign up for an online class.

So let’s talk technology, graphs and scales because Gartner’s Hype Cycle predicts Consumerization and Hyper Connectivity. Okay this is like the MIT guys trying to give a speech at a Bowling alley, we aren’t paying attention. Simple terms, technology trends that consumers easily adapt before governments, and everything connected to the internet. That was easy and quick.

Goodreads on the Hype Cycle is Consumerizm, as a business they use social technologies for specific functions which enhances their interactions with clients. As social technology continues to emerge and reinvent itself, consumers  find it easy to adapt. These future predictions places goodreads in a position to utilize as much technology as possible.

The article goes through detailed steps within the following high level topics.

• Configuring Local and Remote Logging using the esxcli command
• Configuring Local and Remote logging using Host Profiles
• Configuring Local and Remote Logging using Advanced Configuration options

Check out the VMware KB Article for full details.

VMware KB Article – Configuring syslog on ESXI 5.x

Pete

Basically, it allows you to customize the icons for apps from the App Store.
My home screen went from this:

To this:

I feel like it’s important to mention that the stock application icons can’t be customized. The phone, messages, calendar, etc. It’s a little misleading because I saw plenty of icon options for phone/messages/calendar, but I could never get them enabled. Oh well! I still recommend it because it’s a nice change to more colorful and vibrant icons.

Oh, and one more little piece of info. CocoPpa links a different picture to the selected app, but it’s a separate icon. So the original icon still exists on your phone, just now you have a cuter one to tap on and after a split second of “thinking” the linked app will open up.

When I was a kid (I’m a lot older now) I used to say “I want to do something that not many people can do, and it’s not going to be writing… Writing is easy”.
Now I use to say “I want to do something that not many people can do, and it’s probably going to be writing”.

As usual, I thought about this while riding my awesome bike to get back home. Today it was a rainy day – now you know the rationale behind the title – but that didn’t stop me from getting to the University in the fastest way ever, that is with my bike. With the sunglasses on.

The rain gives a sense of cleaning up – just in a figurative way, here in Milan it’s like acid rain – and it cleared my mind from some of the issues I had been thinking about in the last days. I also thought that it’s been a while that I haven’t been writing a post on tech stuff (recall the “writing is hard” part). No worries, I’ll catch up in some way.

But seriously, have you ever seen somebody riding a bike with a pair of sunglasses on, a big smile on his/her face, no matter how wet he was getting? I think I really need to go and see a doctor.

Enjoy the rest of the evening:

If you’re still thinking about the fact that I wore sunglasses on a rainy day, it’s because I used them as a windshield.

Last night my daughter proclaimed that she has a right to an iPod.

Lord, have mercy.

But it has come to this.  An ad which ran during the Super Bowl even proclaimed it, “I need- no, I have a right to be unlimited!”  Technology has become a freedom, a need, and, apparently, a right.  And, like all freedoms we indulge in, technology has become an idol.  The idolatry of technology (Technolatry?) is something everyone, especially families, needs to be aware of.

Consider this:

• How many TVs were in your house growing up?
• How many are in your house now?
• How often do you all sit down as a family and watch the same show?
• How often is the family divided up among many different TVs watching different shows?

Or, how about this:

• How many computers were in your house growing up?
• How many are in your house now, including smart phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and iPods?
• How lost are your kids if they can’t play video games, watch TV, or be on a computer device?

And finally:

• How much do you spend, per month, on cable TV, Netflix, Cell Phone service, and internet?
• How much per month do you give to churches or service organizations?

We’ve got a problem!  In my house alone there’s a couple of TVs, a computer, a Wii, three iPods, two smart phones, and an iPad.  When my wife suggested this morning that we fast from technology over Holy Week you’d have thought by the reactions that someone had died.

But here’s the thing: someone did die!  His name is Jesus, and he died for our sins.  His death and resurrection has granted us freedom, but also self-control.  Technology is wonderful, but too much technology- an over-dependence and obsession with technology- is not beneficial.

So take a look at your life.  Power-down.  Consider joining my family in a Holy Week Technology Fast.  And enjoy one another!

What? It crashes, you say?

That’s right. Google recently updated is Google Chrome app to address some issues. But, as users all found out, it causes problems more than fixes them.

As you can see above, Google tried to address some security and stability issues, but I guess this causes more stability issues.

When trying to go on Chrome, after a little less than 4 sec the app will crash on you. Just like that!

The disappointed users took to the Reviews section of the app page on the App Store to unleash their anger at the unusable app and also dropping the rating of the app as a whole.

Hopefully, Google will come out with another update to address this and not cause any further issues with it’s Chrome App.

At the time of this writing, Google has not acknowledged the problem about its app.

I’m currently rocking a Samsung Galaxy W phone with a 1.4 Ghz processor and 512 mb ram. It ain’t that impressive to start. I know. What else can I say, I’m broke. The only thing I could do was to make use of what I had.

Just like many people, I started out by heading to the xda forums where all the magic happens. Got my phone rooted. Tried out a few Roms. Bricked my phone once. And here I am now. With a phone running on Cyanogenmod 9 by the great Arco68. Here’s the link to the thread, just for show – “ http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1576874 “

Maybe it’s ’cause I get bored to easily. Maybe it’s ’cause of the trill of messing around on your own. Whatever it may be, all it’s hella fun to me. So to all y’all who be calling this Mat nothing but ghetto, there’s a geek in here too. Just ’cause someone acts all dimwitted or simple, don’t mean that he be an empty shell.

Wonder *pun intended* if I’ll be using anymore Roms in the future and how many more phones will I brick in that time.

Boy in the  black tee signing off with a geeky smile

Robby and Robot

In 2005 Honda introduced us to the most advanced, walking, running, hopping ASIMO, an upright walking spaceman looking robot.  Kind of cute.  He played himself in a couple Hollywood films.  Seemed to operate autonomously.

The reality was that the “intelligence” reflected merely preprogrammed responses to an anticipated script.  Big Blue, the IBM artificial intelligence chess champ, he ain’t.  Further, the mechanical movement was not much better than Robot from Lost In Space, and worse than C3PO of Star Wars Fame.

.As much as technology has advanced in just eight short years, poor little ASIMO gets a bit of a “meh” reaction now.As recently as January 2012 Bruno Maisonnier of Aldebaran Robotics appeared at a TED presentation with his troupe of choreographed dancing robots.  Cute, but no more intelligent than a wooden puppet boy manipulated by some old guy with strings.

Robot Kiosks in Korea

The state-of-the-art products in domestic robots of a few years ago were no more than specialty taskmasters with movement tailored to a specific mundane function which humans would rather delegate.

The Roomba vacuum is a good example.  This squatty-bot has some basic mandates: suck up dirt, turn when it bumps into an obstacle.  That’s an intelligence level just south of an earthworm.  But face it, the computer circuitry, its onboard brain, is very small.

As micro processing capacity and power continue to increase exponentially, so too do the design opportunities for modern engineers.

Robohub Exoskeleton

As pointed out by futurist Ray Kurzweil in what he attributes to Moore’s law and the dictum of exponential growth of technology, computing power has been doubling every two years for the past century. And, says Kurzweil, “we are only a decade or two away from a singularity”, the point at which the intelligence of computers will be equal to humans in analysis capacity, speed, and memory capacity.

CP30

So, imagine Bruce Wayne without his valet Alfred T.C.Pennyworth.  Could he be Batman? Hell no!  The computer is rapidly going in the direction where we will all have our own personal Alfred, and we can all be Batman.

And if the computer is our Alfred, then the mechanical robotics, devices and wearable’s are the Batmobile of the future human experience.  Hell Yeah!

Let me explain.

Just as specialty practices have become the status quo for physicians, each being highly qualified in one area or another, robotic technology has evolved piecemeal.

Science fiction of the twentieth century imagined the robots of the future, from Metropolis to Robby the Robot, and from C3PO to Terminator, as assistant or nemesis that would mimic human form to some degree.

The future is upon us and while it is true some developers are looking toward the mechanical humanoid (Brent Spiner’s Data character from Star trek comes to mind), other researchers and engineers are making advances in specific functionality at an amazingly rapid rate.

Brent Spiner as Cmdr Data

LaVar Burton as Geordi La Forge

Google Glass

Data’s Star Fleet BFF Geordi La Forge (played flawlessly by  LeVar Burton ) wore a prosthetic eyeband that improved his vision capabilities.  Do I need to say Google Glass?

Specialty robotic assistance in prosthetics now allow an amputee the flexibility of 5-digits, tactile or HAPTIC INTERFACE awareness at fingertips, and even direct command through brainwave communication.

Bipedal robotic technology, creating those mini-me’s who walk upright for our benefit or amusement is advancing rapidly.  The need for functional (and better than born with) prosthetic legs of war wounded has led to development of an upright walking soldier.  PETMAN from Boston Dynamics is  yet another in the long line of DARPA funded off-the-chart success stories.

PETMAN – src DARPA

The first bionic eyeball is now on the market, a sensory device that can communicate its view directly to the brain of the wearer and/or a remote observer who happens to be along for the ride.  Wearable devices such as Google Glass can give the wearer a continual heads up display of information and database far larger than his or her own organic memory contain.

Put these components together, along with today’s computer technology, and the true humanoid cyborg materializes.  Not later this century, or in 20 or so.  We could see life-like android assistants in a couple years, say the BigDog handlers at Boston Dynamics.

Dragonfly micro surveillance robot

Tech MC IV Drone

If you bring together all of these specialists and assemble their parts, this morning’s robot is more advanced than R2D2 or Robby the Robot, and perhaps (sans snarky personalities) more advanced than C3PO or the Jetsons’ Rosie the Maid.

Tomorrow morning – much more capable.

Robot Report –Yakkiti Yak, Don’t Talk Back 

But we are taking it further, much further.  The holistic approach has been adopted to reproduce living creatures.

Let’s face it – if we could simply control the minds of the living creatures on our planet to do our bidding, like Tarzan summoned the beasts of the jungle in the Edgar Rice Burroughs classics, we would not likely be pursuing robotics for any use other than deep space exploration.

Just ask the whales to conduct a sea bottom survey for us, and send a slew of spiders into a coal mine for recon missions.

SpiderDroid

It just doesn’t work that way.  Try telling your cat to do anything at all and you get a squinty glance at best, probably an indignant exit from the room as well.  Swish of the tail.

Engineers and designers opened the box beyond humanoid long ago, and now robots, controlled remotely by computer programs fly, run, creep, roll and swim.

See MetallicaLocusts

Rogues Gallery – Winging Wheeling Walking, Clicking Hopping Rolling

Researchers today are building beasties that mimic roaches, spiders, mosquitoes, and dragonflies.  Bat wings are currently being perfected.

We have successfully launched robo-tuna  and turtles in the oceans.  Small bouncing hoards of bugs that think collectively like ants are a reality.  Mechanical four legged ‘bots that can run faster than any human (including Usain Bolt) and robot packmules with a superstrength throwing arm in place of a skull, have today been successfully Beta tested.

So we have reached the tipping point.  The power of computers is now at a point where the “consciousness of the collective” can become the DNA of a tribe of cyber assistance.

Here is what I mean.

Cadydroid

Cheetah

BigDog

A well stabled suburban family abode of 1950 could have included fish, birds, guinea pig, cat and dog.  Kids and grown-ups alike enjoyed their pets, but they could be high maintenance, and ill-behaved at times.

Fast forward to 2015 and the finches become a dozen robobees, buzzing around the backyard and front, video taping and monitoring for activity. They hive when necessary for charging.

QuadraBot

These cyber-bugs are not an independent flock but rather a direct appendage of the household’s robotic assistant overlord, like flying eyes and ears reporting to the central intelligence.

In a couple of years you may indeed have a yard hawk -a quadracopter drone equipped with a camera, remote higher altitude antennae and audio broadcasting ability for Tiki-Tiki music to play over the swimming pool while zapping mosquitoes with precision lasers.

That is unless you live in Texas, where your neighbor will most likely “shoot that damned buzzard ‘outta the sky”.

5 Homeland Security ‘Bots Who Could Already Be Watching You

The guinea pig has become a small communications pod and docking station for your wearable iWatch or smartphone.  While loaded with your mobile device, the”pig” will zip around the house, Mr. Underfoot at your heals and acting as proxy for video calls, voice chats and holographic message.  Think Princess Leia to Luke in the Lars homestead.

The fish, if you have riparian rights, may be used to remotely explore your lake or salty lagoon, broadcasting their collective imagery to an applied monitor integrated into your living room wall.  Imagine a school of fish POV floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in real time.

RoboTrout

And a simple voice command to your RoboConcierge to “bring ‘em home Alfred” and the view turns toward your dock.  Better than watching a fishtank.   Self cleaning, too.

Fluffy the housecat can become a security specialist extension for Computer Alfred.

DARPA is developing CHEETAH.

A smaller, stealthier Cheetah would detect and hunt down vermin and reptilian intruders, and also tasks such as running companion, health monitor, and courier.

BigDog is a natural yard work assistant.  In fact, the robot lawn mower currently on the market could be steered and guided around the yard by BigDog like a border collie with its flock.

But BigDog is not a stand alone mechanical creature, but rather a part of the entire artificially intelligent collective system that assists its human colleagues in every facet of their ‘people-stuff’.

The ultimate goal, the Prime Directive, should be to make life easier for humans.

The manifestation of a real life Residential HAL9000, but not as malicious, is well within reach.

The strings will soon be cut, Pinocchio.  The Robopacolypse is upon us.

Related to Robopacolypse  Military Applications

Day of the Robot is Here – A 4-Part Series on the Coming Robopacolypse

sources;  Honda, Gizmag, Wired, DARPA, DC Comics

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Douglas Black

About Douglas Black

Douglas Black is a photojournalist and

green technologies analyst out of Chicago,

and is currently Managing Producer for

ENERSPEC/enerficiency and Hot Flying Rats!

Earlier Douglas promoted greentech in Detroit as

Senior Marketing Strategist and Architect.

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