Awesome is, I think, the right word for this piece of tech.  It’s a fully adjustable rotatable remote-controllable mobile on-wheels webcam!  It can be told to roam your house, take snaps, email them do you, then go recharge itself.  Enter Rovio!

Of course being WiFi enabled you can log-on and control it from that interwebs thing the kids tell me so much about.  There are obvious security benefits and many don’t-try-this-at-home snooping on your fellow house occupants features to be enjoyed.  Personally I think I could have hours of fun watching / chasing a pet cat / dog / rat of unusual size with it.

So here I was, minding my own business, when thought I’d have a poke around with a Twitter search or two. First off I figured I’d search for Chrome so see if anything interesting had been spotted about Google’s shiny browser. Turns out very shiny things had happened, very shiny indeed.

Namely the feature I’ve been waiting for… bookmark synchronisation! Great days I eagerly downloaded the dev version (up to version 4 already, crickey) and with great gusto I hammered in my login details and waited with baited (is that even the right spelling in this context? meh) breath for my Google Bookmarks to stream down.

And I waited.

And waited.

Waited some more…

Nothing. Oh. Suppose it must just sync between chrome and other instances of chrome. That’s still cool but was a bit of an anticlimax. But wait… the story doesn’t end here!

Enter @chronarion! The fellow seemed to be interested in tails of bookmark fail, being involved in Chrome development an’ all. His words of wisdom told me that sadly Chrome does not sync with Google Bookmarks (which kinda makes sense – Google Bookmarks sucks.. sorry Google, it’s true). Oh woe was me, for how will I now access my bookmarks when not on one my own machines?! FEAR NOT, said @chronarion (disclaimer: not actually a quote), FOR SALVATION… is at hand. Turns out your Chrome bookmarks are also synced up rather nicely to Google Docs for web-based access where-ever you are.

Well pleased. So export my Google Bookmarks I did, import them to Chrome I continues, and gasped I concluded as I watched with glee at my Google Docs as it filled up with my bookmarks.

The only real down-side I’ve found so far is that you cannot edit your bookmarks within Google Docs but given the highly beta nature of the Chrome dev branch I really don’t feel like complaining about it.

On a side point Chrome (well, Chromium to be accurate) for Mac is feeling more and more stable – I’m now using it side by side with Firefox as my two main browsers. Bookmark sync isn’t enabled in the Mac version at the moment but expect it’ll appear soon.

Keep up the good work Google ^_^

Note: to enable bookmark sync under Windows make sure you’re on at least version 4 of Chrome (FileHippo are always up to date) then follow the easy instructions here. Enjoy!

Lots of gadgets make for disaster-proofing

The Tomtom app for the iPhone appears to have appeared in Americaland for $99.99. Tomtom app for the iPhone (or any GPS enabled phone for that matter) seems like an obvious win in terms of usefulness and carting around less clutter but the price point seems… well a little out of sync with my idea of reality. That said my idea of reality is far removed from that of the iPhone Brigade. For me having one all singing all dancing does *everything* device is great… but ultimately a fail. So there you are, merrily chattering away on your iPhone (in the event that the call actually connected), uploading your freshly shot videos to youtube, geotagging your auto-focused snaps, emailing your friends, Twittering to everyone else, now using the Tomtom app to get to wherever it is your going when DONK…

…the unthinkable…

it a) breaks b) runs out of battery c) you foolishly destroy it escaping from a hoard of rampaging chickens who have momentarily mistaken your for the Hero of Time.

Well now you’re screwed. How will you take photos of this exciting place you’ve come to? How will you tell people on twitter how awesome it is? More importantly… how will you get home??

I have my man-bag, laden with many exciting colourful badges as it is, in which I cart around work iPhone, personal Sony Ericsson phone, digi cam, sat nav, occasionally an EeePC, MP3 player, USB pen drive – none of these things are crazy heavy or excessively bulky but it does pretty much guarantee that at no point am I truly knacked by one device keeling over.

On a side thought $99.99 is far too much for a Tomtom app for iPhone – for the benefit of everything in one device I can see the temptation but for the issue of battery life (without car charger of course), risk of one device failure and that Tomtom have zero hardware cost and next to nothing distribution cost it all smacks of taking advantage of the iPhone crowd’s “oooh look at me and what the walled garden of my iPhone can do” attitude.

You know, that thing that’s not Windows or Mac. Continue Reading

All hail! The long desired solution to the limited nature of the Wii’s internal 512MB storage is with us! But then you all know by now, of course, that the latest Wii system update now allows for Wii Ware / Virtual Console games to be downloaded directly to and loaded from SD cards. I also need not repeat to you that the Wii now also supports SDHC cards which means up to 32GB of storage compared to the 2GB limit of standard SD.

Right.. that aside.. how well does this actually work? Llylat Wars was already on my SD card so load away I did! Well… attempted to at least but alas not enough space on the internal memory to load it. So the game / channel is loaded from the SD to the internal memory for running. Clunky yes but still beats a proprietary Wii USB hard drive cost-wise. So now I’m loading all my downloaded content to the SD Card.

This may take a few moments… bear with me… Continue Reading

After seeing Vens post about FireFox and knowing how he realizes the importance of a good browser i thought that this was both relevant and full of lols.

Fish

Slashdot made mention that the testing of the next update to Firefox has turned up and promises lightening fast javascript performance.  But what does that mean to the average folk?   In short it means Facebook will work quicker.  As will gmail, google docs, the new version of Amie Street and pretty much anything else that falls under the web-app type thing (you know, those website that do stuff without reloading the whole page and generally work smoother).

I had a play with Minefield, as the preview version of Firefox 3.1 is called, and was astonished at the speed it loaded pages.  Bear in mind that it can’t make your downloads any quicker, that’s dependant on the speed of yourinternet connection and the reliability of your service provider (*shakes fist at Virgin Media*) but is processes what’s come down crazy fast.  I’m used toFacebook being a little sluggish to get going and sluggish to reload when you move between pages (like going from the homepage to a profile page).  With Minefield the page loaded nearly instantly.  Gmail (despite the usual short delay for the code to run gmail to download) ran fast and very smooth.  The Google Docs performance is outstanding.

This really puts the heat on Google’s Chrome browser which currently beats Firefox 3 hands down in javascript / web-app performance.  Downloading Minefield doesn’t ruin or touch your current installation of Firefox so you can try it at no risk, no commitment and absolutely no salespeople will call.  It’s far from ready for release though (not that it claims to be).  I’ve had Minefield crash on me several times when I have several web-app type sites open.  I’m trying to work out the combo that’s causing the crash so I can be a good little beta-tester and report it ^_^  None the less it’s a great sign of things to come.

If you want to have a play, download Minefield here.

Nintendo’s nemisis, The Homebrew Channel, has overcome the latest firmware updates to be able to work on even the shiniest and nost up to date Wii. Good times if you’re into dabblimg in Wii development or enjoying the fruits of said dabbling. What caught my attention was the SDHC card reading compatibility the latest version on The Homebrew Channel adds, meaning that the card reader in the Wii is not, as some suspected, technically limited to old style 2GB limited cards.

With luck Nintendo may, in the end, give up the ability to add up to 32GB of storage. Best be getting stocked up on Wii points