The Mega-Man Effect
No, I haven’t coined a new internet buzz inducing term…The Mega-Man Effect is a cool, but utterly useless, app for OS X users that changes the the way new applications are opened. Instead of the usual bouncing icon in the dock, this produces the program icon in the same way the villains were first shown in the old 8-bit Nintendo game.
Maybe a picture will help:
(Thanks to TUAW.com for the photo.)
Its fun for a while, but then you can just turn it off and back on again to show your friends and gloat that your Windows friends will never get this, because according to the author:
I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking about a Windows version of this. Sorry but I don’t use Windows anymore and have no interest in making a port.
CVS Digital Camcorder Hack Getting Closer to Finished
Phillip Torrone at the wonderful MAKE Blog, along with help from the hacking community have taken many steps in getting to a complete hack of the CVS Digital camcorder.
A lot of progress on the CVS camcorder this last week. This weekend I figured out how to unlock the camera, and then daBass found a USB command that downloaded the most recently recorded video. By deleting that video after saving it, you can download all the videos. Lots of other people filled in with code to combine our discoveries. It’s been an amazing group effort…
Torrone said the next step is getting the camera to act as a USB mass storage device. Meaning, that you could record something, hook it to your computer and then just pull it off! Amazing. Once they get that figured out, the next step will be for me to get my ass to a state where CVSs are around to pick one of these up.
Question: Does South Carolina have CVSs? I’m going to be down there in a month…
Microsoft’s start.com
Let it not be said that I dump on all things Microsoft! I really like the beta of their new start.com. In fact I really like start.com. It has a nice feel to it. Very clean, everything works, its easy to add feeds or modify the look. If Microsoft keeps this going in this direction, and doesn’t add a bunch of useless crap on here…like forcing one of your feeds to be their blog or something, then they really have something here.
Check it out. Its a really nice use of Web 2.0 features with a clean interface for everything.
Good job (so far) Microsoft.
Whats Happening on August 2nd?
( Sub-Title: The Return of Quick Hits )
I haven’t done this in a while, but there are lots of little topics flying around.
Apple finally realized that people want a two button mouse. — The Mighty Mouse
The features I want in the PSP (Web Browser w/o a hack, email?, …) are comming on the 12th! — PSP 2.0
Everyone loves the Black Eyed Pees! — This is a great pciture!
Barry Bond’s knee hurts, so Rafael Palmeiro gave him a little something for it. — Bonds Doesn’t Expect 2005 Return
Thats all.
The Psychology of Shopping Carts
Postings on this site have been sparce lately, and I applogize. The last week of work has, well, been a lot of work. I am working on tweaking the interface, and adding features to the shopping cart that I build for Artfinale.com. Things seem to be going well, but the interesting thing is why things are going well. …I’ll explain.
For instance, the total of user-created shopping carts jumped when we did the following changes:
1. Changed the wording on the button, from “Buy Now” to “Add To Cart”.
2. Changed the color of the button to red.
Thats it. We have made more changes to other areas like adding a Live Help chatting system, and I’ve working on some new features for the cart itself, but those changes stated before were what made the difference on getting people to put things in their cart.
Do you find yourself clicking on things that are bright red more often? And what about the wording? Is “Buy Now” really worse than “Add To Cart”?
Rafael Palmeiro Forgets About Steroid Use, Then Remembers When Busted.
Rafael Palmeiro did not take steroids! …earlier today…we think. Every other time during his career however, most are pretty sure he did. Why? Well it was released earlier today that the man that just broke 3,000 hits and last year topped 500 home runs was suspended for failing Major League Baseball’s drug test. I guess he forgot about the time he was in front of congress in March and said that he had not taken steroids ever. “…except for this one time, but it was my birthday, and I was hurting so I just thought it would be cool.”
Of course now he says, pretty much the same thing:
“Why would I do this in a year when I went in front of Congress and I testified and I told the truth?” he said. “Why would I do this during a season where I was going to get to 3,000 hits? It just makes no sense. I would not put my career on the line. I would not put my reputation on the line, everything that I’ve accomplished throughout my career. I would not do that. I’m not a crazy person.”
Ok then, tell us what you did take that set off the test then? If you didn’t take steroids, then just tell us what it was and we can evaluate further…oh and don’t tell us “You don’t know” because you are a pro athlete, and a good one at that. You know everything that goes into your body. So what did you take Rafael?!
Well, I don’t think he’ll tell us what drugs he took, but I we all saw him ingest a serious about of crow today.
……
I’ve been asked this question a lot today:
“Does this hurt his chances of going to the Hall of Fame?”
Of course.
“Will he still get in?”
Probably.
More on this story:
Buster Olney’s Take