Blog Marco - Technology + Gadgets

Print Books On Demand

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:48:37 -0700

Teaser:
Now we can print books on demand.

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No I don't mean using your home printer to print out a whole book using your own ink and printer. I'm talking about walking into your local bookshop and printing up a book on the spot using a machine called an "ATM for books" by Time magazine. Even if the book is not on the shelves and is totally out of print - you can have it instantly. Angus & Robertson became the first Australian book chain to install the "Espresso Book Machine" (EBM) aka the "storymaker", capable of printing, trimming and binding a paperback book on demand within minutes. The bookshop chain has initially planned for several hundred out-of-print or difficult to get hold of books to be available, but Angus & Robertson said the range would expand daily, reaching 10,000 within 18 months. They would cost the same as the current shelf price of paperbacks or less, the retailer said. Which is great news as a typical Angus & Robertson shop can hold just more than the 20,000 physical books and it gives them a competitive edge against significant threats from online sellers such as Amazon.

What Mobile Phone to Buy?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:41:13 -0700

Teaser:
What Mobile Phone Should I Buy? Something I Want? or Need? Based on the Model or the Plan?

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Which mobile phone should I buy? Should I base my decision on the mobile phone model type or the cellphone plan and the amount of credit I get during the usual 24 month contract?

If I base my decision on what type of phone - which mobile phone type of function should I buy and look for? A Camera phone - mobile phone with camera as key feature, although there could be other fuctions like music player, but less advanced? Music phone - mobile phone with music playback capability as key feature, although there could be other functions such as camera / but less advanced? Multimedia phone - mobile phone with equally good functions of camera, music and video? Or a Smart phone - mobile phone with PDA like function?

If I base my decision on the mobile phone plan what numbers and costs should I look at? What will be my usage like? How many minutes will I be talking on the phone? How many SMS' will I send? How much credit will I need? Am I comfortable with a two year plan? What is my budget for a phone? Different mobile phone carriers have different flag fall rates and charge either per second or per 30 second block - perhaps I should calculate which carrier's plan is cheaper depending on how they price their call rates?

Vacuum Dustbin

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:11:42 -0700

Useless gadget of the day: Vacuum Dustbin. Instead of sweeping up the dust into a dustpan and throwing it into the bin, have a bin which as a vacuum inside it suck the dust into it? Sounds like a good idea but really, its a waste of electricity and a waste of space. Just use the good old dust pan and broom. OR why don't you just use a vacuum cleaner? They were trying to sell this crap on http://www.catchoftheday.com.au/ today. I've actually bought junk from that website - novelty items that aren't worth a penny. RRP $150 for the vacuum, but they're having a fire sale and are selling it at a bargain basement price of $20.

ThinkPad pwned MacBook AIR

Sat, 03 May 2008 17:36:53 -0700

I love the Thinkpad line... MacBook Air may look sexy but on a practical level, perhaps its a little ahead of its time.

Video details: Viral Video parody of the MacBook AIR commercial sales pitch of having the whole laptop into a yellow envelope, but then having to contend with various USB connections - a little over the top, but nowadays USB connections are used for Mice, Keyboards, Printers, external Hard Drives, Cameras, Memory stock readers... Thinkpad 1 vs. Mac Air 0

How to Lubricate Your Bicycle Chain

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:59:11 -0700

I'm a bit of a bicycle enthusiast. I enjoy riding my bike for exercise and leisure. I did the Spring Cycle in Sydney in 2006 and again last year. The Spring Cycle is a 50km public cycling event in Sydney held annually in October riding from North Sydney to Sydney Olympic Park. It's been a while since I gave the bike a clean: especially the most important part of the bicycle: the gears and the chain. So now I have to learn how to lubricate my bicycle chain. And from my research and asking around (thanks to the helpful guys at the bicycle shop Cheeky Transport.)

So what grease do you use to lube a bike chain?

PR Firms and Press Releases

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:05:52 -0700

Did you know that a lot of our news are produced from News Releases? Some are pure news like reports from government and things. Some are commercial. You may be being sold a product without your knowledge. I was reading through the paper and I found probably the most unconvincing story which most probably originated from a press release. I thought they were going to talk about cycling around Vietnam but really they're selling some tech gear. Screw them. (Although for disclosure I do own a FreeAgent drive which does a pretty good job, but I own a JVC HD Camera and not the Sony HD cam as advertised by the article)

In March last year, documentary filmmaker David Smith had no intention of following 30 cyclists from one end of Vietnam to the other perched on the back of a motorbike.

But two weeks later, armed with a digital high definition camera and no script, that's exactly what he and his son Denby were doing.

SciFi: Black Hole Danger for Earth!

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:30:16 -0700

Teaser:
This sounds like something straight out of SciFi (Science Fiction): A mad scientist creating a device to make a black hole

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This story sounds like something straight out of SciFi (Science Fiction). These mad European scientists have created a labratory which can potentially create a black hole (probably a 0.0000001% chance) and destroy all of Earth in the process. I say: go ahead... it'll be so cool to see a black hole in our lifetime!

A giant particle accelerator that mimics the effects of the Big Bang could destroy all life on Earth by sucking it into a black hole, a lawsuit claims.

Walter Wagner, who runs a botanical garden on Hawaii's Big Island, and Luis Sancho of Spain have asked for an injunction to prevent the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) starting up its Large Hadron Collider.

The accelerator, which will be the world's most powerful particle smasher, is due to begin hurling protons at each other at its base outside Geneva this northern summer.

Physicists hope the device, which has taken 14 years and $8.7 billion to build, will provide clues to the universe's origins by mimicking its condition one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Free Flash Drives in Magazine

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:06:06 -0700

If you live in the great ol' USA you may want to buy Entertainment Weekly. They have a free flash drive in their current September Issue of their magazine. They have a new marketing ploy of attaching a USB drive to the magazine advertising CBS and Cadillac when you insert it into your computer. Formatting the drive gives you 120MB. I assume the flash drives cost pennies to make and that someday soon we will be flooded with them like we used to be flooded with AOL CDs.

Calling Toll Free Numbers For Free on The Internet Using Skype

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:03:27 -0700

Did you know you can call a toll free number from the internet to a physical phone through the internet using skype? I haven't needed to use this until now (I think this ability has been present since 2005)... I had to call up a company in USA from Australia to enquire about an eBay auction. You can simply dial freecall phone numbers to France, Poland, UK and USA. These number rangers are supported:
* France: +33 800, +33 805, +33 809
* Poland: +48 800
* UK: +44 500, +44 800, +44 808
* USA: +1 800, +1 866, +1 877, +1 888
And this is how you can use this skype freecall system using skypeOut (you don't need to buy credits): In Skype, just enter the number in international format in the Address Bar (start with +1 for USA, +44 for UK etc) and hit the big green button. Couldn’t be easier! You can also add the numbers to your contact list and call them “pizza”, “video rentals” or wherever else you’re calling. The free calls are effective immediately and supported on all platforms where the Skype client is available. Oh and if you need to select a choice from a menu just go to the dial tab and click on the numbers you need to press. Something free... practical and a source for amusement when your bored.

Desperately Need To Back Up Files - USB Ports Failed

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:35:31 -0700

So last Monday I needed to desperately backup my files as a result of all the USB ports failing. So I couldn't plug in any USB external hard drives. The other ways I can save files for backup is by sending the most critical ones by email to myself. (Or save them on some Internet Hard drive) The only other ways were to buy a PCMCIA card for USB and there is a final creative way is to use a LAN between two computers and transfer files using shared folders. The internet method is tedious and slow. Even with a fast connection. I didn't want to buy anything new, let alone wait for any eBay orders to come through so the card was out. I had an Ethernet cable - well you actually need two for this since you need a crossover bit where you crossover the transmission and receiver wires. You can find out more information about this stuff here: about sharing files, here is the best site I can find about setting up two computers in a LAN, and here some other info about shareing folders.

My USB Would Not Recognise Devices

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 02:06:48 -0700

Last Saturday, both USB ports on my IBM X40 Thinkpad laptop died. The USB ports simply would not recognise any of the USB devices I had from the external hard drive, external DVD Burner, USB memory sticks or the Microsoft intellimouse. So off to Google to find some answers... Search query for me was "usb drive won't recognise devices" and other combinations thereof. What frustrates me the most is that a lot of the results have a partial relevancy to my problem... some have no helpful information at all... its like a hunt for facts or clues on what exactly to search for. So this blog entry is for those looking for the best way to solve the problem. Lucky for me, the laptop was an IBM and was still under warranty - and my problem was promptly solved by a replacement motherboard - or "system board" was what they called it.

So what led to my USB ports failing to recognise any devices? First of all, one of the ports was acting erratically for about a week - with my USB mouse just dying and becoming non-responsive. I had to unplug and replug it to make it work again. Then, last Saturday when I plugged in a printer through the USB - the ports just died. So the first thing I did was unplug all the ports and restarted the computer a few times. Didn't work. Jiggled the ports. Didn't work. Opened up Control Panel, in System and looking at Devices... no errors or hazard signs there. So I deleted all the USB drivers ports etc.

Digger or Dig Dug?

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:38:17 -0700

Teaser:
Digger was one of the first video games I ever played. Why was it called dig dug? And now I'm at it again...

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For all you digger fans out there you can download it from this page (Digger XP). It has been remastered and it can be played on Windows XP! But if you want the original remastered Dos version you can go here. The website also contains the recordings of the games of the world record holders - a very interesting watch! This game was made back in 1983 but I picked it up much later around 1989 when a lot of games seemed to be swapped around on those 3.5" disks. For some reason my file of Digger was named Dig Dug so I always called it that until I found out just a few months ago that it was actually called Digger. Dig Dug is actually another game but I never played that one. Digger is a simple game - get all the gems and move on to the next level before nobbin or hobbin comes out to get you. Bonus points are awarded for shooting down those aliens or getting the money or even getting the money to squash nobbin (or hobbin). If you kill enough aliens you get awarded a cherry which allows you to eat the aliens for a set amount of time while the William Tell Overture by Rossini is being played. Normally a song called Popcorn is being played in the background. When you die the game plays the "Funeral March" by F. Chopin for you. Download the game today and play it!

Useful Mobile Applications for Australians

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:55:58 -0700

I know, I've got an old mobile phone... nothing like those new phones coming out with great internet applications. I've got a Sony Ericsson K750i whose on-board camera is now screwy as it takes snowy photos (although if I open up the phone and tighten the connections, the photos come out great). Anyway, age and the crappy camera aside, its still a good phone. It allows me surf the internet - the phone I have has Java Virtual Machine which allows me to install and run certain games and other useful internet applications (for Australians) to trade local and international stockmarkets using the CMC Mobile Marketmaker platform. I surf the internet on my phone using this cool lite browser called Opera Mobile. You can surf the internet with Opera Mobile, it compresses webpages for you and removes images. Another useful Internet Application is Google Mobile which allows you to check emails (on your gmail account) as well as view attachments you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents and PDF files. Finally, another (new) Internet Application specifically for Australians is this thing called

Windows cannot find "copy.exe"

Mon, 28 May 2007 12:32:58 -0700

When I installed AVG free last month it removed a few viruses including a file called "copy.exe". So whenever I go to "My Computer" (WinKey+E) and double click on any of my hard drives, including external and flash drives I get an error stating that "Windows cannot find "copy.exe". The only way I could get into the hard drive was to right click and select open or to simply manually type in the hard drive label into the address bar like c:, d:, etc...

Well the solution to this copy.exe conundrum is to get rid of a file called autorun.inf in each of the infected hard drives. Here's the solution to the problem...

Make sure you or the virus scanner is run through the infected hard drives/flash drives to make sure the virus files is gone.

Now, some forums said you could just select "show hidden files" from the options and this would enable you to see the "autorun.inf" file. This wasn't the case for me.

Also, some entries in the "autorun.inf" may be legitimate. So to check the file (even when you can't see the file) do this: type in the infected hard drive label followed by autorun.inf For example: f:\autorun.inf

This will load the autorun.inf file and should display it as a text file in notepad. If the only entry is that incriminating copy.exe then this is what I did. I tried to overwrite the file by saving a blank text file with the same name as autorun.inf. That didn't work because that inf file was "read-only". so I saved that blank file on the desktop and simply cut and pasted it into the drive, then selecting the overwrite file option. That should stop that annoying Windows cannot find "copy.exe" message every time you double click into a drive.

All Over for Moore's Law

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:35:38 -0700

Moore's Law is an observation made by Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months. But it isn't too far ahead when memory chip makers will crash into the physics barrier wall - the limitations of the laws of physics and the technology based around silicon. Platters of silicon can contain hundreds of rectangles, each the size of a grain of rice, with each cell containing circuits etched at a width of 50 nanometers or 2000 times thinner that a human hair.

There will have to be a massive change of process. The next technology could well be one of the following: M-RAM, P-RAM (Phase change memory), molecular memory and carbon nanotubes. these new technologies will come to light in the next decade ushering in new processes and new processor and memory capabilities. Moore's Law would have a hard time keeping up, becuase of the shift in technology and processes. Here's to the future...