gadget news and reviews

California Fires – Satellite Images +

We’ve got some High Resolution Satellite images of the fires that have been burning across Southern California for the past 5 days. (Images were taken over the past two days.) As of now there have been over 900,000 forced evacuations, over 1,600 homes have been destroyed, and 500,000 acres have been burned down stretching from Santa Barbara to the Mexican Border. Many who have not yet been asked to evacuate are leaving due to the poor air quality. Both Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush have declared a state of emergency and federal aid is being provided.

As for the images, they have been taken by NASA’s MODIS Rapid Response System. The first image at the top was taken yesterday (10/24/07) and the two images below were taken October 22nd (left) and October 23rd (right). To save server load, we’ve only placed the low resolution images in the thumbnails, however if you would like a copy of the full resolution images, save the zip file provided below.

Download: california-fires-2007.zip
Links: California Wild Fires Of October 2007 (wiki)
Related: Hurricane Katrina Satellite Images

Gmail Gets Buddy Icons +

Google has constantly been adding new features to Gmail since it originally launched in 2004. Over the last two years they have added over 2GB of storage space, RSS feed reader, virus scanning, chat, and many more features. Their latest add-on allows Gmail users to associate images with each contact (email address), therefore making it easier than ever to identify contacts. Although this may be a “new feature” for Gmail, other email services such as Yahoo! Mail have already been working on implementing custom “avatars,” which are used in Yahoo! Messenger, into their mail services for a long time.

This feature, as usual, is currently only available to a few users; however Google will eventually enable this feature for every account. Once this feature is enabled, the next time you get an email from your friend you may see an image your friend has selected or one that you may have set for him. Check back here for more information, but in the meantime login to your Gmail account and check if you already have this feature.

Links: Gmail | Gmail “Whats New!”
Related: Google Integration | Gmail Anti-Virus

Hurricane Katrina Satellite Images 1

Image 1 | Image 2 | Image 3 | Image 4 | Image 5 | Image 6

The images above are high resolution images of Hurricane Katrina. Click on the thumbnails to get enlarged images. To save images right-click and click on “save as.” There are seven satellite images displaying different stages of the storm and two before / after shots of New Orleans. Some of these images came from MODIS and DigitalGlobe. If you have any other good images please post some links to them in the comments. Update: (09/01/05) I just added in 3 new satellite images of New Orleans. Looks like theres a ton of damage, looks very similar to the damage caused by the Tsunami in Asia. Update: (09/02/05) lots of traffic thanks to Digg and Google. Update: (09/03/05) Google Maps has updated their satellite imagery (08/31/05) for New Orleans. (Better quality with Google Earth)

Link: MODIS | Digital Globe
Related: Google Earth
Donations: RedCross

Result Of MSN Copying Google 2

If you search for the phrase “desktop search” in Google’s search engine it brings up Google Desktop Search as the first result. Then if you search for it in Yahoo’s engine it brings up Yahoo! Desktop Search as their first result. (both as expected) They both advertise their products properly (prioritizing their own), but also provide results for competitor products after theirs. This is completely normal. But when you try out MSN’s Search you will see that Google’s Desktop Search hilariously appears at the top of this list. This is even above their over their own product. Let me know if im wrong, but if you have a product competing with another major company, wouldn’t you advertise it. I’m guessing, but this is what happens when MSN copies Google’s results. If MSN wants people to use their product then they should be advertising it over competitor products.

Link: MSN Search | Google Search | Yahoo! Search

Y2k38 Bug Has Started 17

The Y2k38 bug was detected a few months ago, but there was no actual testing done to prove that this will affect our current computers. Now this bug can actually start to cause some damage. To test this we can try using any chatting client either AOL Messenger , MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, or Gaim will do. As for my testing this bug affected all of these applications (windows). To test these for yourself do the following: First double click on the time in the bottom right-hand corner. Change the date to something after January 19, 2038 (2039 is fine!). Now start up any of the chatting clients mentioned above. Try sending a message to someone else (or to yourself if it supports it). As soon as you do this, the entire program should crash within a few seconds and will display some sort of error message. It will then bring up a message asking to send an error report or debug. (The only application I tested that actually survived this bug was Skype. It just let me send the message to who ever I want and it never complained, but the rest crashed.) From the actual technical problem, apparently as soon as the year 2038 strikes, all certain computers will immediately get confused and switch the date to December 13, 1901 from January 2038. Please post any other programs you have experienced this problem with in the comments. Hope people don’t wait until the last minute to find a solution to this problem.

Update: Here are some more links Project 2038 | 2038 Bug | …

Carnival Cruises Now Have WiFi +

Carnival Cruises will start to provide WiFi access through out the entire ship very soon. In the past wired internet access was avaliable, but only to some confined rooms. (which also had limits on the max computers connected at a time) But now, WiFi will be accessable from “bow to stern, in all cabins and decks”. There are no specific details on speeds or even pricing (or whether it might be included w/ ticket cost), but will be announced soon.
Many convention sponsorers are planning on hosting major events on these cruise lines, because internet is the only thing required to communicate with the ouside world. Generally when cruise ships get far away from shore, cell phone signals are lost and making calls from wired phones are expensive. But with WiFi everywhere, anyone can make VOIP calls using clients such as Skype. (or just chat..)

Update: (07/01/05) New details have been revealed which states that the Carnival Valor has installed over 200 access points throughout the ship. Also no offical price announcements, but some sites are stating that a minute of usage will cost about $0.25!

Link: eWeek | NetStumbler

TV Tuner 4 The PSP? 12

Sony has been demo/test-ing a Memory Stick TV tuner adaptor for a few years now. It was originaly meant for the Sony CLIE (Palm-based handheld), which was soon discontinued. The tuner card in the picture is for the standard memory stick card. This will not work with the duo cards that the PSP uses, but this shows that Sony is very close and is possible. Will most likley be better on the Memory Stick Duo because it supports much higher data transfer speeds. The card will be an off air tuner which will be controlled by a little app running on the device using it. But for now, a 1GB card is the best way to get media onto your PSP for most people. (can listen to music, watch movies, look at pictures, play games, and more… just by using memory sticks!)

Other related news: Sony will be launching the PSP in Europe on September 1st and they are planning to launch 20 Games and 10 UMD Movies. (No estimates on when Sony will start to re-stock the U.S.)

Update: Thanx 4 the links digg! Also check out PSP Hacker (they currently host the PSP swaploit memory stick hack) they seem to have posted a link to the same thing.

Update: (10/01/05) This image is for real, but is a 100% concept model. Sony for now has actually planned on looking towards distrubuting free and paid media through a webportal that the PSP v2.0s can access through their browsers via WiFi. These will include movie trailers, movies, music videos, podcasts, paid music, music, and plenty of other audio/video products.

Link: Kotaku | BargainPDA
Related: Memory Stick Duo Deals | PSP Multi-Player Hack

RSS Feeds w/ Ads 1

Most people use RSS feeds with a RSS client (ex: Thunderbird) to avoid needing go to webpages each time, and also to avoid popups and ads. Even people using Firefox were able to block ads by using Adblock, while viewing RSS feeds. But now Google has figured out a way to place ads into RSS feeds, and have given the option to blog publishers to add these feature into their feeds. As a result most of the feeds major websites have placed Google ads in the bottom of their articles. I just hope someone makes an adblock extension for Thunderbird. Click Here to see an example of ads placed into an RSS feed from Engadget. And Click Here to see some RSS ads from Slashdot.

Related: RSS/ATOM 4 This Site | TextAmerica Moblog RSS