Eatoni Inc’s Letterwise is a challenger for the current dominant T9 predictive text system on mobile phone handsets. The new system apparently works better and is cheaper for the manufacturers than T9, but I have a feeling that this will not be enough of itself to unseat the incumbent. You never know though. [via The Register]
FreeCraft is something which should send a shiver up the spines of the established game development business – a free open source real time strategy engine developed and distributed on most operating system platforms (except Windows XP for some strange reason). A perfect way for wannabe Command & Conquer programmers to get their teeth into a ready built engine and create their own multiplayer masterpiece. If this kind of thing catches on, what price Electronic Arts then, eh?
Trend Micro is now offering a free online virus checking service. Just log on to House Call, select the local drive/s you want tested and press scan. You can also specify that the service automatically clean out any viruses it finds. I’m not sure just how long it will remain free, but grab it while you can.
A fascinating look at the real live air traffic over LAX right now. [Via Metafilter.com] True anoraks can check out this live LAX Web cam to take a look at the planes landing, and listen to live audio feeds from air traffic control here! Needs Real Player. Update: And here’s Atlanta, Las Vegas and Louisville. If you want to get a good look at the current US air traffic as a whole, check the FlightView site. Expect to see over…
You want robots? The NASA Cool Robot of the Week site has them aplenty, like the dinky little floppy disk robot featured above. Now if only they could just make tea!
The PocketTop infra red keyboard provides a novel method of adding a keyboard to your PDA. Instead of relying on cables, it uses the infra red port, which means that it should work with any IR enabled PocketPC or Palm PDA on the market. You still need to install the relevant software drivers of course, so it isn’t that universal, although who knows, maybe one day we’ll see a version for the new range of smartphones about to hit the…
Mmmm, the Cyclone – yet another disposable phone from the land of the free. It uses 3 standard AA batteries, should cost less than $40.00 and works on a prepaid top up voucher basis. At the present time plans are for the phone to be sold in the USA and Canada, with no news of an international launch.
The Qualys Browser Check Up is a free service designed to identify any potential security vulnerabilities in your Internet Explorer browser. It only supports the Windows version at the moment, but does offer the latest Microsoft patches for you to download should it find any glaring holes. In practice, of course, every version of IE seems to come equipped with such holes as standard , so finding them shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Nevertheless a neat site.
The Blue Unplugged site stocks a veritable feast of Bluetooth products in its catalogue; including items like the tiny Motorola headset and 3Com USB adapter for PCs and laptops above. And what’s more it sells in multi-currencies too.
The amiright.com site bills itself as ‘making fun of music, one song at a time’, and judging by the content they are certainly on the right track (arf arf). The two key parts of the site are a song parody section (which really should be called lyric parody) and the excellent ‘misheard lyrics’ area. I bet you thought it was ‘So why I love to come home?’ in the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, didn’t you? Hah!
Veteran game developer Peter Molyneux is working on a new game title called The Movies(warning – stupid pop up advert), where the player gets the chance to play at being the boss of a movie studio in Hollywood. The storyline sounds great – you start off in the 1920s and build your studio up hopefully through making a series of blockbuster hit films. Peter is a great ideas guy – as well as coming across as a nice guy in…
Erm…it seems that these geeky folk have gone and created the Augmented Reality Quake system (Arquake) which will allow you to play the 3D shoot ’em up game Quake through a sort of virtual reality headset coupled to a GPS satellite tracking system. This means that you can walk around your neighbourhood shooting monsters and the like with your special virtual gun. It’s a research project at the moment, but if this catches on it could play havoc with the…
Need to give your party that extra special something? Why not hire a look alike celebrity? OK, some are definitely a bit dodgy, but some look excellent.
Apparently this is the world’s smallest Web site. I really do have to agree. oh…and it’s simply brilliant!
The BookCrossing site is an innovative attempt to help distribute books in an ‘underground’ way – in some cases literally. The idea is that people should register their books with the site, and then, after they’ve been read, leave them around in various places for others to pick up and read. These people then can pass them on in the same way when they have finished. The result is a sort of ad-hoc free library stretching across the world. It…
