Mod for Nike+iPod to work with any shoe

The new Nike+iPod Sports Kit will certainly be useful to folks who love running. However, you might not want to fork out more money to simply buy a shoe that can hold the kit's transmitter device. Well, this mod lets you use the kit with any brand of running shoe. It's quick and easy...and it works! Step-by-step guide and photos included.

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Free file sharing site for Singapore

Want to share a file with a friend? If you want a fast, speedy site to do it, check out MyFile.sg. The servers are connected to the SingaporeONE network so the speed is quite fast. Useful service to note.

My HDTV setup on HDBeat

Well, this is pretty cool. My home's HDTV setup that I posted on the HDBeat Flickr pool is featured on HDBeat. Check it out. Nice. I've even included some notes on the picture for fun and info.

Browse adult content with Heatseek

So, you're a consumer of adult content. If the typical browser does not cut it in your pursuit of porn paradise, then maybe you want to try Heatseek. This is a specialised browser for Windows that is built specifically to browse those naughty pictures. It even has protection from nasty popups and viruses. Available free or pay to get a "Gold" version.

Frequently Awkward Questions for the Entertainment Industry

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has come up with a list of FAQs - Frequently Awkward Questions - that one can throw out to challenge the entertainment industry's position. If your really think about it, some of these questions will make you think hard about the state of copyright, fair use, and our overall usage of the media products like music and video.

TVUplayer: TV viewing P2P-style

With the broadband pipes getting fatter, I can really start to see the death of regular TV. With the TVUplayer, P2P technology is utilized to deliver programmes to you. Although I've not tried it yet, there are already reports saying that the quality is excellent and a number of Net users have been watching the World Cup broadcast, or rather re-broadcast, using this tech. Simply amazing and one wonders how broadcasters plan to use or fight the oncoming tide.

STOMP is Citizen journalism?

The Singapore papers aka Straits Times recently did a feature on Citizen Journalism. It looks at blogs and other outlets whereby common folks, and not professional journos, report and post stories. Of course, the ST can't help to insert a healthy dosage of self-promotional coverage and featured their own STOMP website, which encourages people to send in stories, photos, and videos. Apparently, in the story, Cherian George was interviewed and it seems like the ST left out a major point brought up by George. Here's the major point.

Not surprisingly, though, ST left out one additional point I made: that I do not consider STOMP to be citizen journalism. The Review package celebrates STOMP as if it is the cutting edge of citizen journalism in Singapore.

ST is self-promotional and practicing real journalism? You decide.

World Cup in HD

Bigger screen. Greater sense of how much space there is on the pitch. Higher tactical awareness. That is how it feels to watch a WC in hi-def. Now, I want to ALL my Man U games in HD.

My home theatre with HDTV

This is my home theatre set up, with a 37" 1080i screen, and receiving HDTV signal that is over the air via the trial MediaCorp HDTV signals. Very nice indeed. Looking forward to watch the semis and finals of the World Cup in HD!

OS X on your x86 Windows computer!

First, it's Windows on a Mac. Now, with the release of OS X 10.4.7, it's possible to install the Mac OS on your Windows computer. At least this is what the site claims. Don't think it is really easy to do or even properly legal, but hackers will certainly try it regardless. The guide on the site walks you through the creation of a dual boot menu in which you can choose from OS X and Windows. There's also a step to create a nice rescue disk in case something goes wrong. Neat.

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HD DVD format already a failure

HD DVD is suppose to be the next step in the development of high quality video entertainment. With higher capacity which translate to better quality pictures, these formats are suppose to spearhead the hi-def entertainment revolution. However, some will disagree. In fact, the Audioholics website has given 10 reasons why the HD DVD formats are already failures. Interesting read.

Videos of Operating Systems

Although the best way to really get a feel of an OS is to actually install it and try it out, sometimes one would just want to take a look at how another OS functions. This website called OSvids provides videos of various Linux distros from Ubuntu to Fedora. Useful for reference.

Gleam: Lumines clone for GBA

Lumines is considered one of the best games on the Sony PSP. However, if you want to enjoy a similar experience on your GBA, you're out of luck. Of course, unless you play this homebrew version called Gleam. It has 8 levels and is a pretty nifty effort by the homebrew crowd.

Make Ubuntu look like OS X

Users of the Linux distro called Ubuntu who secretly wants to use Mac OS X can now rejoice. Lauri Taimila on his website has a how-to on making the Ubuntu interface resembles the OS X stylings. It's pretty neat way to have a OS X-like Linux system running on your computer.

BBFC considers classifying web vids

Guardian UK is reporting that the British Board of Film Classification is looking at the possibility of rating web videos. Although the intention is noble, it is difficult to envision how this will be done. The Internet cuts across boundaries and there are so many videos on the net these days. Just think of sits like YouTube... how can one possibly rate even single video on there? At best, this will be an advisory system. I'm just totally skeptical about this.

Complete command line lists

Ah... geeks love command line. GUIs are for sissys. Seriously, you can do pretty complex computing stuff using the command line. So if you want to explore the wonderful world of the command line, you can head to this web site. It has a complete list of command line tools you would need for Linux, Windows, MacOS and even Oracle.

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My Mac Won't Start!

So what do you do when your Mac won't start? Instead of panicking, maybe you can take out this Tiny Guide called "My Mac Won't Start!" that you have printed from this site, and use it to help solve your Mac woes. Pretty handy for those unexpected situations.

Anti-war movie made with Sims 2

The popular EA Sims 2 game can be a really creative tool in the right hands. In fact, this fellow called Thuyen Nguyen has made a short 5 mins machinima film using Sims 2 about war. It is a rather "minimalist dramatic presentation on the futility and cruelty of war", according to a description. Nice. Even machinima can have great depth.

LOST Theories-all in one place

If the TV series LOST has captured your imagination, then this site that put together in one place all the theories about the show eill interest you. It organises the theories into various categories like the "most likely" and "debunked" theories. It also categorises them into themes and locations. Interesting read for the LOST fans.

Top 50 Game Ending Songs

Music has always been important in games. Especially when you've beaten the final boss, the tune that you hear is certainly sweet. Here, you can find a list of what can be considered some of the best tunes you heard in games. There're even MP3 files for you to listen if you've never heard them before or if you just need a fix of nostalgia.

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Modchip for the Xbox360

Seems like the folks at Devil360 is saying that they are close to getting ready a modchip for the Xbox360. There are some things that they need to complete, including things like getting it to be programmable using the PC, protecting it from any updates, and botting unsigned code. Well, we'll wait and see if it turns up as a true product.

MC360 Skin for the XBMC

Team Blackbolt has released an amazing skin for Xbox Media Center. This is probably the most advanced skin for the great XBMC app. It replicates the GUI interface of the 360 and much more. Too bad the 720p and 1080i versions are still not available so I guess I'll hold out a bit before I try this out.

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Blizzard's Secrets Revealed

Blizzard has made some of the most addictive and fun games ever on the computer. But ever wondered how Blizzard does it? On this site of The Escapist Magazine, there are a couple of pieces looking in detail how the maker of games like Starcraft and Diablo rose and changed the gaming industry. Awesome.

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From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games

Games and war. These surely go hand-in-hand. Ed Halter has therefore written a book called From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames, and it's a book looking at the relationship of videogames and war. He also has a blog where he continues to examine this topic.

Portable Xbox

Want a Xbox that you can always carry around with you? Well, some hacker guy has managed to hack and made a portable Xbox that's in a green casing. Photos also show that the system is running the EVO-X dashboard and even a game of Halo 2. This must be the ultimate Xbox mod.

CC Hits: Creative Commons music goes digg-style

CCHits is a social web application/site that works rather like the popular Digg.com social news site. It allows users to submit links to tunes that have the Creative Commons license so that other folks can track, share and even comment on them. Nice way to share music and explore the world of music without having the big bad recording industry breathing down your neck.

RPS - 25: Scissors, paper, stone to the extreme

Take the simple scissors, paper, stone game to the extreme with this thing called RPS 25. With 25 hand gestures like wolf, sponge, and even alien, you will have countless hours of fun trying to figure out what gestures beats what. Amazing.

On writing about "Girls in Games"

"Girls in Games" is such a popular topic simply because there are much less girls who are obsessive about gaming than boys. Surely, you'd have read special features in magazines or online articles looking at the less common girls who are in games or are into gaming. Anyway, a UK journo called Richard Cobbett has written an interesting piece on writing about "girls in games".

At some point in your writing career, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll think it’s a good idea to write one of these articles. If you’re a guy, that is. By and large, female writers have better things to do with their time than obsess over their gender while playing a game, and tend to be into gaming because they like - how can I put this? Oh, yes, playing games, rather than out of a burning need to practice amateur sociology.

But never mind that. Here’s your ten-step path to success.

Swarm the dot com

This is a must-have if you like to see what other people are browsing. Using this Firefox extension called Swarm, you can watch what the sites you're browsing and also display what other folks are viewing too. The site describes this app this way:

Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm and grow larger. Conversely, sites that lose traffic move away from the center and grow smaller.

Website traffic is symbolized with thin lines. Each time you see a line appear, it means someone has moved from one site to the other. You can gauge how many people are swarming around based on the number of lines.

LEGO Flash drive

You can already declare your love for LEGO by carrying your bunch of keys on a LEGO keychain. If you're a geek, why not also carry a USB drive that's made from LEGO bricks? On the MAKE blog, you can find links on folks who came up with some nifty home-made LEGO flash drive. There are also links on how you can make your own.

The musical Roomba

The Roomba is the famous robot vaccum cleaner. HOwever, it's also a hacker's fave tool. Now, hackers have turned the Roomba into a musical instrument, albeit a crude one. With the software called RoombaMidi running, you can make your Roomba move and light up according to preset Midi instructions. There's also a demo video of the Roomba grooving to Super Mario Brothers on the site. Neato.

Cataloging books in MacOS X

If you like to catalog the books that you have on your bookshelf, and you're looking for a free app to help you do that on your Mac, then check out Books. This is a freeware that will help you catalogue your books collection. Now, if it adds in scanning of the ISBN code using the iSight, then it will be the perfect app.

HFT: Quick-and-easy HTTP file server

If you're looking for something that lets you share files over the Net, you can try out HFS. It stands for HTTP File Server and it is free and open source. With it, you can do file sharing and use it as a webserver. It allows customisation and has features like HTML template, bandwidth control and even a dynamic DNS updater. Pretty nifty for something that's free.

Free, public domain images

With copyright a concern, using pictures in your presentation can be a problem. That\'s why you can use this site to help you get some pictures that you can use. There are plenty of public domain images here and, unless otherwise noted, you can use them for free. Granted that the pictures are mostly taken from old books and may not be that modern, it can still be a pretty good source to include images in your presentation or any project that you may be working on.

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yWriter: Word Processor for Authors

If you are planning to write that great novel that's in your head, you'll need some writers tool. Word is a good processor but it may not help you to organise your thoughts, writing fragments, etc. In comes this software called yWriter. It's suppose to be a word processor that's specifically a story writing software. Here's what the developer of this tool has to say:

I'm a programmer and a novelist, and yWriter is the result of 3 or 4 years of development. I really struggled over my first novel because I wrote whole slabs of text into a great big word processor file and tried to make sense of the whole thing at once. I then tried saving each chapter to individual files with great long descriptive filenames, but moving scenes around was a nuisance and I couldn't get an overview of the whole thing (or easily search for one word amongst 32 files) In the end I realised a dedicated program was the way to go, and yWriter is the result. It may look simple, but as the author of three books written with this tool I can guarantee it has everything needed to get a first draft together.

Best of all, yWriter is free.

Yes, check out that last bit, it's free. Too bad it's only for Windows.

Celebrating the unboxing of new gadgets

Sometimes, the best thing about buying a new gadget is not just knowing that you have a new toy to play with, but knowing that you can unpack a brand new toy. The act of unpacking, or unboxing, is certainly a joy if you're one who love to open packages and smell the fresh scent of brand new tech toys. Now, you can enjoy the act even if you're short of cash to buy new gadgets. On Unboxing.com, you can find picts of folks opening up their new gadgets. It's porn for the tech geeks, I tell ya!

The Top 25 X-Men

The new X-Men movie will soon hit the big screen. Outside of the movies, there are actually hundreds of mutants that have graced the covers of the comics. IGN has sorted through the many mutants who appeared in the past 40 plus years and come up with the top 25 X-Men. Cool.

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Turn Your Mac Into A Jedi Weapon

Your Mac laptop is your trusty computer. If you install this software called MacSaber, it'll also turn your machine into a Jedi weapon. Using the motion sensor on your machine, it will sense the movement and make authentic lightsaber sound effects. Essential for Mac-loving Padawans.

How-to Backup Your Original XBox360 Games

Now that the instructions for modifying the XBox360 firmware is out in the wild, those with the courage to actually do that will want to start making backups of their 360 games in case anything happens to them. This link will bring you to a guide that is written to help you make backups of your original xbox360 games. Why make backups? Well, there's the problem of scratches and othe malfuctions that may happen.

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Cork'd: A site for wine aficionados

Cork's is a website where users can freely catalog, rate and review wines. It's like a online database for wine that you can use. The site is still new so it may take some time for the database to expand and include more variety of wine. Anyway, it's free and all you need to do is sign up to use the service.

Installing a Dualboot Homebrew Firmware Mod on the Xbox360

If you're prepared to tinker with the Xbox360, then this tutorial on XBox-Scene will tell you how to get two fireware chips on the console so that you can switch between the original DVD firmware and the special firmware for the TS-H943 DVD drive. Note: This may not be legal depending on how you view it so proceed with caution.

singapore: a free php-driven image gallery

What is Singapore? Yes, it's the sunny island republic near the tip of the Malayan Peninsular. But singapore, on the other hand, is an open source image gallery. According to the website, it's an

...open source, multilingual, template-driven image gallery web application... quite a mouthful! It is written in PHP and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

What makes singapore different from the hundreds of other similar scripts is that it was originaly conceived for displaying photographic art in an aesthetically pleasing fashion using a clean, uncluttered interface. Now, though, its powerful templating system allows you to display your images in pretty much any way that takes your fancy.

Well, it's quite amusing to find that someone actually names their product after Singapore.
Link

Free version of Avid video editing software

Those who have worked in pro-video editing environment will know that Avid is widely used in the video editing world. However, Avid may be too expensive for home users. It is therefore a good thing that Avid has a free version for those who just want a simple way to edit their video. This software called Avid Free DV can be downloaded from the Avid site and versions are available for Mac OS and Windows.

Tools for Getting Things Done

The Getting Things Done, or GTD, system seems to be quite popular with the tech set. It's therefore no suprise that there are plenty of software or online tools to help organise your life with the GTD system. This webpage has a list of GTD tools that your can try out and start getting your life in order.
Link

Documentary on piracy available for download

Is downloading films and music piracy? It all depends. To explore this issue, here's a 2-hour documentary that discusses music & movie piracy. It covers issues like DRM, the DMCA, why people pirate, and what everyone thinks of it. It features interviews with industry execs, copyright lawyers, pirates, consumers, artists, the government, and everyone that's ever said anything about piracy in Canada. Best of all, it's available free for the download. You may need to use the torrent file to get the film due to the massive demand for the file.

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Creative Commons tunes on Jamendo

If you're looking for legal music to fill your MP3 player, head down to Jamendo. It has plenty of Creative Commons licensed music for your to grab by direct download or via BitTorrent. So in your search for new music, you might just want to check out more than 1,000 albums that they have. You can also write your own reviews, and participate in community forum discussions. Nice.
Link

Bloodspell: A machinima fantasy film

Think machinima, ie. films made with a game rendering engine, and you'll think of short films. Of course, Scotland's Strange Company is going beyond the short film with its feature-length fantasy-adventure machinima film. Offered under the Creative Commons license, this film is released in various episodes and is suppose to be quite good. Spell-binding indeed!

New Google tools are all about search

On the official Google Blog, the folks in everyone's fave search company annouced 4 new Google products all based around search. They are Google Co-op, Google Desktop 4, Google Trends and Google Notebook. Of the four items, probably the most fun is Google Trends where you can compare 2 or more search terms and look at the search trend over the years. With it, now you can know if "good" or "evil" has grown or decline in popularity over the years.

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ted: The torrent episode downloader

If you want an automatic way to grab specific shows using a RSS feed, you can check out this free application called ted. It will save you time to track new episodes of your fave shows from torrent sites.

3tunes - Time shifting Pandora

If you've used Pandora, you'd know that it's a pretty cool service that suggests and plays you tunes from a genre or artist that you like. So what if you've heard something from the Pandora stream that you like? Well, now you can save it for your later listening pleasure with an app called 3tunes. It's free and is in early alpha, but what it does is cool, allowing you to grab music with the track info and save them. Nice.

Keeping tabs of E3 with torrents

Can't be there for the biggest gaming event of the year? Don't worry. There's a Bittorrent tracker site that's called Titanium Torrents and it is is dedicated to video game media. You can get the latest E3 videos here. The videos for the last year's Nintendo and Microsoft press conference are there now and hopefully, it'll be updated with more trailers and stuff from this year's E3.

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Satisfaction of a Boss

"Boss battle". Tell that to a gamer and he'll certainly be able to tell you a memorable incident during a boss fight where the experience is so intense that it becomes part of his own gaming myth. On Wired News, there's an article that looks at the attraction of bosses in games. Essential read for gamers before you go taking on another boss in your next game.

It's like bosses are the SATs of the game world: "It's a culmination," Byron notes. "It's not asking you to suddenly learn new skills. It's asking you to remember everything you've learned." You're aiming for that "aha" moment when, desperate for some way to topple the boss, you suddenly hit upon a clever new way to apply your powers -- and the insurmountable becomes manageable.

That's one of the best feelings ever -- and it's also one we rarely get in everyday life. The enemies we face in our contemporary world are so much more ambiguous and internal, and half the time it's ourselves. We try to find a meaningful job, to hack through a bad relationship, to blunder through the red tape of money and taxes. Even our modern literature of struggle has been blunted. The Greeks and Romans imagined their lives through metaphors of heroes facing down arcane monsters; we read The Corrections or Indecision or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

City Guides for iPod

Your iPod can do more than be a musical companion when you're traveling. When you install CityGuides, you get info about the location that you're visiting right there on your handy music player. There are 300 cities for you to choose from so before you get on your plane, you can load up this useful and free app.
Link

Star Wars + Lord of the Rings = Star Lords

What happens when you put Star Wars and Lord of the Rings together, and then mix it up in a pot filled with disco goodness? Well, you get the video Star Lords. This is a video mash-up of the two epic movies into a 6-minute plus clip. The music track "Its Just Begun" by Jimmy Castor Bunch is then thrown into the mix and you have the characters from the films are seen to boogie. Fun to watch.
Link

Watch 70 TV stations on the Net

This site called Channelchooser has put together a page which has a collection of 70 channels that you can watch from your browser. Some of the channels include Game Network, Horror Channel, Comedy Channel, Sci-Fi Channel, Lifestyle Network, and even 8 Adult channels. Are they illegal? Well, it's up for debate.

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Top Azureus Plugins Revealed

The Azureus bittorrent client is a feature rich application. If not for the fact that it can be a resource hog, I would spend more time using this client. However, if you have plenty of processing power to spare, then using Azureus may not be such a bad thing, since it allows plugins that can enhance your BT experience.

Zeropaid.com has an article that is useful for those want wants to venture into the plugins territory. It features some of the best plugins available for Azureus include one that will give you a 3D representation of your downloads. Nifty.
Link

Amusing screenshot of Green Card application on CNA

When browsing on the Channelnewsasia.com website, I stumble across something quite amusing and I've captured a screenshot of what I saw.

On a page where the General Election news is reported, there is a banner ad on top of the screen that belongs to a Green Card Lottery Application site. The story is about Singapore not needing full-time MPs. So since we don't need full-time MPs, one can chose to get a US Green Card instead?

Seriously, I know it's just a coincidence, but it is just amusing and doesn't seem appropriate.

FIFA World Cup info on your iPod

Here's another use for your iPod. If you're a footy fan and an iPod user, and you are eagerly waiting for this year's World Cup, then head to Coolgorilla.com to grab this World Cup 2006 Guide. The guide contains useful stuff like the full schedule, info on teams and players, stadium details, and plenty more. In the words of the folks at Coolgorilla,

This game will transform your iPod into an interactive football encyclopedia. It unleashes the power of your iPod by using a clever system of menus so that all the information you want is only a few clicks away. Astound your friends with your knowledge of the beautiful game.

Beautiful indeed.
Link

Fold - another web-based desktop

Add another AJAX-based webpages to your list. This one called Fold is a portal or start page that claims to be a "desktop in a browser". It looks pretty cool as you can put "containers" with News feed, HTML, notes, and even Flash content on this "desktop". It's in beta now but it sure looks promising.

Ponyfish RSS Feed Builder

Have you ever wanted to track a blog but then finds that it does not have a RSS feed? Ponyfish is a tool that'll help you with this problem. It's a free web-based tool that lets you create a RSS feed from almost web page. The concept is simple and it'll help you to get your blog cravings even though the site does not have RSS.

Smarter way of formatting

Many folks are moving to open source office suites because they don't want to pay for MS Office. While that is a good thing, the problem arises when it comes to compatibility between the documents created in the two software.

On the linked site, there's an article titled "Smart formatting for better compatibility between OpenOffice.org and MS Office", on how you can better format your documents so that when you move them around, the formatting doesn't change too drastically. There're plenty of tips on how you should format documents and they are sure handy even if you don't switch your office suites.

Wiki for song lyrics

There seems to be a Wiki for everything these days. Of course, only useful wikis will attract attention and this wiki for song lyrics will certainly be useful for many music lovers. Great if you want an ad-free environment to look for the words to your fave tunes.

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Rallies at Hougang compared

The Singapore General Election is in full swing. One of the most exciting things during elections is the rallies. What is interesting is that the media does not seem to fully or accurately show the number of people who are present at those rallies. I found these two photos on two different blogs. Click on the links to see the photo.

Photo One

This is taken from sgrally.blogspot.com and is suppose to be a rally by the PAP. The field is suppose to be muddy as the rally was held after a rain.

Photo Two

This one is from Yawningbread.org. It's a rally by the Workers' Party.

Compare the two pictures and you can tell the difference in the size of the crowd. Draw your own conclusion.

Blogging with Xbox360

Want to start a blog but you're too lazy to stop playing the Xbox360 to actually start one? Here's the solution for you. On the 360voice.com page, you can give your 360 a voice. Just enter your Gamertag and it'll generate a blog from your gamerfeed that details what you've been doing on Xbox live. Pretty cool.

ajaxOS coming soon

AJAX is proving to be popular on Web 2.0-type websites. Now, it sees like AJAX is to be applied to an operating system. Called ajaxOS, it is a fully functional AJAX-aware operating system. The most exciting feature in ajaxOS is the ability to store to a remote server, with full access to file navigation on this remote server as well as your computer's hard disk. Sounds cool? Then check out the demo.

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Site for Users Manual/Guide

So, you've accidentally thrown away your manual with the packaging? Fear not. This site called UsersManualGuide.com collects together plenty of User Manuals ranging from aircons to even microwave. Of course, next time, don't just throw away your manual, keep them in a safe place.

Thinkfree: Online Office suite

AJAX-based office suites running online is all the rage. Now, there's another one to add to the list. Thinkfree Online claims to be the "best online office on earth" with the ability to create MS-compatible word files, spreadsheets, and even presentation files. They've also thrown in a gigabyte worth of file storage space. It's now in beta so we'll have to wait and see how it shapes up in the future. But it sure sounds good.

New Media & politics in Singapore

New Media, politics and the law. These three elements are certainly a potent mix when you consider that they push the limits of what is acceptable into uncharted territories. Cherian George, an academic in Singapore, has a blog that looks at issues in this areas. This description on the site summarises what the blog is all about.

Since the mid-1990s, technology (mainly but not only the internet) has allowed individuals and groups to have their say in ways hitherto impossible. The government has been playing legislative catch-up, but loopholes remain for small independent producers. Many of the rules are new and untested. This site is an attempt to clarify the terrain. Please note that I am not a legal expert, and some of my interpretations may be incorrect.

Good read if you are interested in the development of law and the new media in Singapore.

Google Calendar Notifier available as a Firefox Extension

Since the release of Google Calendar, it has become quite popular for those who wants an online shared calender. Now, there's a Firefox extension that'll notify you of your upcoming events even if you're not looking at the calendar itself. Pretty useful if you use Firefox and like to enhance the function of your browser with extensions.

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Star Wars lightsabre fight with the Revolution controller

Some folks who are Star Wars-cum-Nintendo fans have put together a cool and funny video that features a lightsabre fight using the controller of the Nintendo Revolution as weapons. Go look see, it brought a smile to my face.

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Fans sharing music are not thieves

For too long, folks from RIAA have branded those who share their music files as thieves. It's a good thing that some important musicians from Canada are standing up and speaking out against that view. Musicians like Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne have formed the Canadian Music Creators Coalition to, among other things, support fans being sued by the Big Four Organized Music cartel. In their first white paper, the artists say, "Fans who share music are not thieves or pirates. Sharing music has been happening for decades." Way to good!

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DiggUpdate v2.0 Released

If you're using a Mac and you want to really be updated with what's happening on Digg.com, here's a hnady software called DiggUpdate for the Mac and it will instantly keep you updated of new Digg stories from your menu bar. Nice, and it's free and open source.

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Watermelon squares

Cubic melons? Yes, you're right. But at 50 clams for one, I'll think twice about buying one.

6 Year old drummer

A 6 year-old drummer was spotted at Orchard Road. He plays the drums quite well for a kid. Cool kiddo.

XboxMediaCenter Widget

If you use OS X and have a modded Xbox, this may be of interest to you. There is a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget available that allows you to send media URLs to the XBMC web server for streaming. Incredible, the usefulness of XBMC and a modded Xbox.

Build a Mac Mini Media Center

This site is called the Media Center Macintosh Project and it is useful for those who want to turn their Mac Mini into a Media Center-type computer. All you need is a Mac Mini (quite obvious), extra hard disk space, and a TV tuner (in this case an Elgato EyeTV EZ).

Intel Mac Benchmarks compared

Interested in knowing how well Intel Macs running Windows compare against other machines? Macologist has posted plenty of benchmarks comparing Macs with other computers and you can see how well they do, especially in games.

Six cool Quicksilver plugins

43 Folders has something that will be of interest to Quicksilver users. If you want to tap into the power of this nifty free app, check out the 6 plug-ins for QS, including one that will let you upload images to Flickr.

I want a Freeware Utility to...

There are quite a number of freeware lists out there. This list on econsultant is rather unique because it's not just a plain list. It presents the freewares by what you would want to do. There are more than 300+ items for you to try out. Neat.

Media on a Senator's iPod

iPac is a project that seeks to send US senators iPods loaded with Creative Commons and other free content. If you're interested in getting these free content, you can check out the website in this link. The only problem is that it seems that the site is loading pretty slowing. Maybe plenty of folks are interested in getting the same free stuff.

One Legged DDR

So you think those kids in the arcade are great at Dance Dance Revolution? You haven't seen nothing yet. In this video, the guy doing DDR has only one leg! Ok, so he has the help of two crutches, still it's amazing that he has the spirit and passion to play DDR even with his disability. I'm amazed.

Simply Google: Google services on a page

Want to see all the Google services on a single page and start searching things you want? There's a page called Simply Google that lists all the services that Google provides and also various boxes where you can enter your search term depending on which part of Google you want to search. Just to throw in a few other things, you can also search on IMDB, Wikipedia, among others.

The Most Controversial Game Ads

GamePro has a feature looking at some of the most controversial game ads that were ever ran. Some of them are quite amusing and one does wonder what those creatives were taking when they thought of those ideas. In any case, you can see all of them on the site.

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Secure Windows on a Mac

Now that you can use Boot Camp to run Windows on a Mac, you also have to accept that if you run Windows, your Mac will be open to attacks from all the viruses, spyware, and other nasty stuff. CNET has come up with a guide that will certainly be useful for Mac fans who wants to use WinXP on their Macs. Useful read.

Crazy USB stuff

This is a crazy German site. It's a site showcasing some wacky things that has a USB plug attached to them. Some of the things which they have added a USB plug to include a tie, a syringe, and get this... a bra?

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Singapore in E3 = success?

Gaming is big business. That's why Singapore is trying to gain a foothold in this area, and one of the main thrusts helping to put Singapore on the map is the island's participation in this year's E3. But does having a presence in E3 means that we are going to make a mark?

On GameAxis, there is a piece looking at the milestone of having a Singapore Pavilion at E3. However, it's not just a fluff, PR-type piece celebrating this achievement, but a thoughtful look at what it means. Worth reading if you're interested in gaming in Singapore.

The day when I feel proud of the fact that there’s a Singapore Pavilion at E3 is the day when I shown genuine admiration for products created by our local developers that meet my high expectations, and that of other game journalists around the world. That’s not to say that it has to be a AAA title, because even a modest title the likes of British indie developers like Introversion who were inspired enough to create Darwinia is good enough for me, just as long as they are creating games with a lot of heart and innovation, and not with financial figures first and foremost on their mind.

Digg Tools to check out

Using Digg is fun. To enhance your usage of Digg, here's a large list of various digg tools/links collected from around the web. Check it out if you want to get more involved in the Digg experience.

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Comparison of Legal Music Downloads

If you need some advice on where to legally get your music besides the famed iTunes Music Store, check this out. TechCrunch compares iTunes and its competitors. In the comparison, the Russian semi-legal Allofmp3 wins on all counts, but number of songs. They also offer the highest quality. Other stores reviewed include BuyMusic, MSN Music, Napster, Rhapsody, Walmart and Yahoo. Too bad they are not Singapore-based music download stores.

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Using Boot Camp

MacWorld has this article that runs you through the process of installing and running of WinXP using Boot Camp. It seems really really simple to do. The article also has some comments on running games. Comments are actually quite positive and someone has also tried running Half-Life 2 on an iMac. Performance-wise, they run great. Another reason why my next PC purchase might very well be an iMac, since I CAN PLAY PC GAMES ON IT!

My bro, Copperblue, has also posted picts of the installation of WinXP on a MacBook Pro. Sweet.

Generate your own Dummies book cover

You know those "For Dummies" books? Well, those can be really useful and well, you can see it everywhere and they cover plenty of topics under the sun. Sure, they may not have some more wacky topics, that's why you can use this fun tool to generate your own Dummies book cover, and hope that one day, someone, maybe even yourself, can write such a dummies book. You can also send the cover to your pals from the site. In the spirit of fun, I've generated my own wacky "Dummies" book. Enjoy!

Windows on a Mac is here

It's official. With the news of hackers booting Windows on a Mac, Apple has come out of the woodwork to announce that they will make available something called Boot Camp. It is something that is now in beta and will enable WinXP to run natively on Intel-based Macs. There's even a page on the Apple site that gives you instructions on how to install WinXP using the beta of Boot Camp. Hmmm... with this amazing news, I may not even have to think of getting another PC machine and just get a Mac.

Best home made lightsaber duel ever!

The best thing in Star Wars has to be the lightsaber duels. In this video, two guys have probably created one of the best, if not the best lightsaber duel ever. It's well choreographed and it's about 5 minutes long. It's just amazing what some imagination and a whole lot of Star Wars fanaticism can do.

Your own Web 2.0 homepage

Netvibes is really, really cool. It uses Web 2.0-type tech and it allows you to create your own personal page. On the page, you can add RSS feeds, pictures from Flickr, Gmail notification, and plenty more. You've got to try it to believe how amazing this thing is.

TiddlyWiki - your personal web wiki

TiddlyWiki is a really interesting thing. It's what the folks who did it call "a reusable non-linear personal web notebook". It's written in HTML, CSS and also JavaScript and it can become your own wiki. Based on a tutorial, you can even save the entire wiki as a single file can carry it with you on a USB stick. Well, the best way to describe what TiddlyWiki does is just to quote what is on the site. It's quite cool.

A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it's divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read it by hyperlinking rather than sequentially: if you like, a non-linear blog analogue that binds the individual microcontent items into a cohesive whole.

ajaxSketch: Sketching in a browser

First there's ajaxWrite. Now, the same folks that brought you that are bringing to you ajaxSketch. It allows you to do flow charts and simple drawings within your browser. Seems like the days of an AJAX-based presentation software may not be such a wild dream after all.

Online Feed Readers compared

Feedlounge... Newsgator... Rojo... and my fave Bloglines. These are online feed readers and they help many to keep track of their RSS feeds anywhere they are, as long as there is a Net connection. Techcrunch has done a comparison table of these web-based readers and if you don't know which to go with, check this out. Me? I'm sticking with Bloglines.

Find music with Audiri

The RIAA backlash has begun. Audiri is a site that can help you look for music. You can bypass RIAA such that you can connect to the artistes themselves. The site's philosophy is

...to help you find music you like, easily. This means organizing music conveniently into genres, advanced search functionality, and a radio suggest system that can optionally play songs based on what our computers think you will like.

Sounds good for music lovers indeed.

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So many Linux distros, so little time

There are many, many Linux distros out there. If you don't believe, check out the listing of Linux distros and open source apps that is on the OSDir.com site. There're plenty of distros you can try out, and screenies that you can check out.

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List of today's April Fools Jokes

Yes, it's April Fools. If you want a full list of the hilarities that various websites and media Wikipedia has concocted, head to Wikipedia. Using the power of user-edited content, it has a list of all of the big pranks that have happened, and the list is still growing. Oh, and no, this is not an April Fools post.

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Jiving your site with Gizoogle

Want to sound like you're speaking jive? You can use the site called Gizoogle to translate your words into jive. Just enter the webpage that you want translated and you'll get your text translated. Well, I've tested this and this is what this post will be like if it is written in jive.

Wizzy ta sound like you're speak'n jizzy? You can use tha site called Gizoogle ta translate yo words into jizzy. Just shot calla tha webpage that you wizzy translated n you'll git yo text translated. Wiznell, I've tested this n this is what this post wizzy be like if it is written in jive.