And they call me an Engineer

I’m not sure how my wife would feel about this doorbell, but I think it’s rather elegant.  A must have for any true geek.  The problem… it’s not even close to available.  It’s just a design concept from renown designer, Li Jianye.

Come on ThinkGeek, hope on the stick with this product.

It’s so cool, er, geeky.  Heck, I’ll take two (one for the dog house I will be in after installing this on the house).

Second Life (an online virtual 3D world) has been around a while now.  It’s incredibly popular and even has its own economy.  You can enter Second Life and “live” a life completely different from who you really are.  It’s somewhat of a game, but it mimics real life as much as possible. Companies (mainly IBM) have been known to hold virtual meetings or conferences within the Second Life universe.  But the main problem with Second Life is you have to download a rather large installation program and have to have some decent hardware to run it.

Second Life is about to get it’s first real competitor, LifePlace.  Not only does does the virtual world look more amazing and real (and slightly unsettling), but all the visual imagery is rendered “in the cloud.”  There is no installation.  You will visit LifePlace through a web browser and all the rendering is done on the server side.  So even if you don’t have amazing hardware with the latest and greatest graphics card, you will still be able to partake in the amazing world to be. You will even be able to stream it to a mobile device (the video below was captured on a Palm Treo). The technology is developed by a company called OTOY.

Gizmodo and TechCruch both have articles about LivePlace, but it’s the video that really does the talking.

Remember, if you can’t see the embedded video. View the original posting.

Have you ever been on vacation and wanted to know where the closest LDS Church is?  How about moving to a new area and wondering to which ward you belong, to which building you should go and what time are services?

The IT team for the church has just released a beta version of their new mapping application.  This will eventually replace the current “Meetinghouse Locator.”

Check it out.  It’s nicely done.  Even if you don’t know an address, you can “Place a Marker” (click the icon on the top left of the map and then click on your desired location) and it will figure it all out for you.  It provides surrounding meetinghouses and all the wards that meet at each location as well as contact information.  It will also identify to which ward that location is assigned (even gives you language and YSA wards).

Under the hood, it can either use Google Maps or Microsoft’s Live Maps.

Well done guys!

Today will be a day of infamy fame, err… it’ll be cool.   Ok… maybe not that amazing, but it might be cool.  The Mozilla Foundation has just released the latest version of Firefox. What does version 3 give you?  It’s faster, sleeker, consumes less memory and gives more functionality.

Today is special because they want to set a new Guinness World Record for the most downloads of a software product in a 24 hour period.  It started at 10AM PDT and is still going.

If you aren’t using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, then shame on you.

Not only is Firefox a better, more secure and faster product, it’s also open-source. Which means several things.  Firstly, it’s free!  Yay! Secondly, it’s free!  You may say that I just said that, but there are two different uses of the word free.  There’s free when speaking of price, but there is also free when speaking of speech.  Internet Explorer is free (price), but not free (speech).  Firefox, although it is developed by Mozilla, can be changed, re-written and distributed by anybody.  In fact, there are a few other projects that liked what Mozilla started with, but didn’t like the direction or a trademark and so they started their own version of Firefox (renaming it).

Although there are offshoots, Firefox reigns supreme in the browser war as the “other browser.”  Internet Explorer has had a foothold for many years, but Firefox is changing that.  And this version brings us that much closer.

So go get it.  Let freedom ring!

Some people say that Apple Macintosh users are elitists. If that’s the case, I just became rather elite.  I’m now typing this on my shiny new MacBook Pro.

On Wednesday, I started a new job at the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service (WFR).  When I started, they gave me the choice of what kind of computer I wanted. I had the option of a laptop, desktop, PC, Mac, etc.  I’ve had my eyes on a MacBook Pro for some time (since OS X came out and I realized it was built on BSD), but just never had enough guts to spend a lot of money on something I might not really like.  So I let the company spend that money. ;)  First thing I got when I got to the office on Wednesday morning is a bright shiny 17 inch MacBook Pro.  And I quickly got to work configuring it and making it my own.

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You know the feeling.  You’re right in the middle of something important on your laptop.  You’re in deep concentration and nothing should interrupt you. Then all the sudden… [BEEP].  That dang battery warning. It seems like you just barely charged the thing.

Laptop batteries are what make laptops so amazing.  But at the same time, they seem to be the first thing to degrade on your brand new laptop.  Even if you forked out the extra money for a 12 cell battery and you can work for a full 4 hours without a charge, it never seems like enough.

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Ever wanted to know exactly where Santa is on Christmas Eve? Well, usually you would have to wait for the news or something similar. But this year, the traditional Santa trackers (NORAD) and Google have teamed up to give you the best way to track Santa.

Santa can now be tracked through Google Earth. If you don’t have Google Earth installed, click that link to download it. Then visit NoradSanta.org to download the tracker link. It will open in Google Earth and a nice 3D graphic of Santa and his reindeer will display and he will continue to move throughout the world. If you don’t want to download Google Earth, then NoradSanta.org has an embedded map that will update when Santa moves. But Google Earth updates much more often and is far cooler.

He’s already started and is in Ethiopia as I type. Not only is this a lot of fun for the kids, but it’s a great world geography lesson too!

Enjoy!

PS. For an interesting history on how NORAD started tracking Santa, check out the Wikipedia article.

As you may recall, I wrote about Celestia a while back. Celestia just got some serious competition. The new version of Google Earth, 4.2, will include a feature many have dubbed “Google Sky.” And if you haven’t guessed it from the name, Google Earth can be “turned around” to show you the stars. And it works in a similar fashion to Google Earth. Just zoom into a location in the sky and any high resolution images that are available will be displayed.

Nebulae, stars, planets and constellations can all be searched. Some pretty amazing images can be seen. That being said, Celestia is still easier to navigate and more complete when it comes to tracking and viewing celestial bodies. But the integration into Google Earth and the use of high resolution images will make “Google Sky” far more popular. And I’m sure Google will continue to improve the navigation and searching in Google Sky.

So if you are willing to install a beta version, checkout the new Google Earth. There are still a few glitches with the beta, but it’s very usable.

For more information on the new features in 4.2, checkout the Ogle Earth posting.

A recent study from the Journal of Consumer Research and highlighted by ars technica indicates that most consumers are a little duped when it comes to judging the superiority of consumer products. Too often the average consumer is loyal to a product simply because of familiarity. That’s not all that bad, but they mistake that familiarity for superiority.

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A Quote from Nathanial Borenstein made me laugh:

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.

So in other words, you need to be nice to us “computer professionals.”