Hello loyal readers and passerby alike. Ryo here after a crazy night of hanging out at my local Game Stop to enjoy the midnight launch of Modern Warfare 2. Unfortunately I didn’t have the cash to shell out, or the console to play it on due to my recent RROD on my 360. Three years of faithfully serving up hours of enjoyment, I think it deserves a rest. Ignoring the little itch in the back of my mind that wants to post detailed steps on how to disassemble a 360 in order to fix this error yourself…shall we jump into right into some techie news?

Nokia has finally started shipping out the new model of Maemo based smartphones to those who pre-ordered the device. Dubbed the N900 this is supposed to be Nokia’s top of the line hitter for the time being. I own their previous Maemo device called the N810 and if this really is an improvement over that, I can’t wait to see about getting my hands on that tempting piece of tech. The obvious improvements for this new model are going to be better CPU and larger internal storage. The N810 had an internal 2 GB card installed with a slot so you could add an extra micro SD in, but the CPU is what really was the limitation of the device. Better CPU means better programs/games and load times for apps.

When I first came across the GlideTV Navigator, my first thought was: “I wonder how well you could spin that on a table.” Ignoring the mocking comments I made to myself, I studied the review of it a bit closer and the thing really does look useful. If you are willing to plop down the cash for a piece of hardware that is essentially a remote control for your laptop or desktop. Honestly the thing looks uncomfortable to hold, but apparently the reviewer said that GlideTV really has put quite a bit of effort into the design to make it simple yet elegant enough to be set out in the living room without it sticking out like a sore thumb. This new device really makes the fairly simple setup for remotely controlling my laptop seem a bit amateurish…maybe I just am missing a funky styled device to connect to the laptop? Brilliant idea.

In an unsurprising move, Google has opted to toss out free WiFi to people using the US’ airports. Well some of them at least, 47 announced so far, but this is certainly a welcomed gesture from Google. It shows a bit of a human face on the giant company doesn’t it? Maybe even dispute the claims that Google is evil? Seriously though, Lee Williams from Symbian still thinks Google is evil because they state in their philosophy page that they will do no evil in order to make profits. <insert comment about ten commandments of Google here>

Couldn’t bring myself to type out a joke about that so I’ll leave it to your imaginations. A little side note, off topic of course: Today marks the 26th birthday of the first known bit of code that could give an un-priviledged user access to a server. Fred Cohen’s proof-of-concept code took five minutes after running to take over a Unix server. Not bad at all for the time, and since then malicious code has become nearly commonplace on the internet. I doubt I need to tell anyone not to open any suspicious attachments…do I?

Well, I’m off to steal one of my family member’s consoles so I can actually enjoy Dragon Age: Origins for awhile. Hopefully I can scrounge up some cash and get a new system since I have no desire to get this one repaired and it doesn’t help the fact it was previously opened due to one small mishap in the past. If anything it will make a great test system for testing out case mods and the like. Take care everyone, I’ll see you next week.

Another week has gone by and I am back to open the front door to greet the flurry of news swirling around the figurative doorstep located somewhere where it is cold. Yea, train of thought sort of derailed at the end of that sentence. Let’s completely ignore my failed attempt at typing up a colorful phrase and head right into some tech news.

First up, I found this little piece about an autonomous robot designed to crawl along the underside of ships to clean off what is called hard foulers. That usually consists of barnacles, oysters, and pretty much any sort of underwater life that will latch onto the bottom of a vessel. This little guy has been dubbed the BUG (Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming) Tool. Initial tests of the BUG Tool have apparently proven to be “very exciting.” How exciting? Well…I honestly have no clue, but let’s just imagine a bunch of stereotypical geeks in big glasses jumping up and down cause their robot works. Funny mental image isn’t it?

Microsoft is hopping into the non-smartphone part of the cellphone market with a fairly intriguing piece of software called OneApp. Very appropriately named since this app lets the standard cellphone that supports it to use Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, and several other services all from this tiny little program. From the tech demo, the thing looks pretty fast and if I didn’t have a Blackberry I would give this app a few test runs in a heartbeat. Once it is released outside of South Africa that is. Ahh…test markets. Gotta love them. Anyway, here’s the tech demo if you wanna see a visual of what OneApp does.

Nokia’s N900 finally has some pictures leaked out to the public. If you remember from last time, I mentioned I have the N810 version of their internet tablet and really do enjoy using the thing. It has come in quite handy for doing remote administration on my network and for popping it out of my pocket to load up the modified Firefox for a quick something to read while lounging on the couch. The N900 will run the new Maemo 5 operating system which is based around Debian, which in turn has spawned arguable one of the most popular Linux distros out there: Ubuntu.

Now it is time for me to show just how geeky I can be, not many know what today is. On today eighteen years ago, a college student living in Helsinki posts a comment to a Usenet board asking for a bit of feedback on this project he is working on that is based around Unix. This college student is none other than Linus Torvalds who at that time had built a simple kernel that was Unix-like. From this simple request, thousands of volunteers helped him refine the kernel he had built and the first version of his kernel was posted to the FTP server at the Helsinki University of Technology. This version was named Freax, but the sysop of the FTP server renamed the kernel Linux in honor of its creator. The first full version of Linux to be released, the 1.0 version, was released three years later in March of ’94.

Now that the history lesson for today is over with, and I’ve tipped my hat to the creator of the kernel that my OS runs off of…it’s time again to show you just why I picked that title, and yes there is a strange video to go along with it. Didn’t think I was going to let you off easy now did you?

Opera has been widely adopted as the go to choice for mobile browsers on cellphones and the sole browser used by the Nintendo Wii. Opera is getting ready to release version 10 of their browser that is supposed to be significantly faster. I am curious if this will help them out any in attracting new users to their browser since the internet browser market is dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox. Enjoy the video while I go get some video game time in, then some much needed sleep.