Haibane.info

Month: July 2009

  • Microsoft Bing: But It ‘s Not Google!

    I’ve been increasingly using Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing in lieu of Google for my casual searches. One of the things that appeals to me is how the search results are so much more organized and comprehensive than just a list of ten text items. Google’s spartan deisgn was cool and chic ten years ago but today it feels increasingly stale, and Bing is pulling from Apple’s playbook in tailoring the interface to users’ needs. Some examples: saved searches are essential for keeping track of what you’ve been researching, and the live preview of video thumbnails on mouseover saves you a click – and getting video and photos along with text links on the same search results page is a huge timesaver. I feel like I spend less time using Bing. Right now I stil have to manually decide to go to Bing but I intend to switch the default search engine on all my browsers for a few weeks – including Chrome – and see how that works out.

    Bing has been getting a lot of attention lately – there’s a piece on it in the New York Times, another in USA Today, and even a website, Bing Vs Google, that lets you see searches compared side-by-side. It’s good to shake things up – and Bing certainly has its rough spots, ut just like Google these should improve over time. The mere existence of Bing ensures that Google is forced to compete and innovate as well.

  • Kindle temptation and DX desire

    kindle2.jpg

    My friend Zack recently obtained the Kindle 2 and wrote up his initial impressions. Something I hadn’t considered was that the audio-book feature, where it will read the text aloud, is really useful for kids – his daughter loved it and I can see how my 2yr old would, too. Zack also found the bookmarks feature to be invaluable, though he hadn’t played with the annotations capability yet. The latter is really what interests me, because it’s really hard to review or discuss a book afterwards wthout notes taken during the reading process rather than after the fact.

    It’s worth noting that Amazon just dropped the price on the Kindle 2 by $60, from $359 to the magic $299 price point. This puts it right in line with the iPod Touch or other high-end music/video players. I don’t have an iPod either so for me the choice would boil down to either music and video on the go, or books. Frankly, the idea of video to go isn’t all that appealing to me, since video is even more attention-monopolizing than reading. Since the Kindle supports MP3 audio, I’m more tempted by the Kindle than I am by the iPod, though it’s safe to assume that most people buying a Kindle already have an iPod and.or an iPhone as well. I personally prefer to minimize my technological footprint, though. The Kindle really is an ideal device in that regard, and with most bestsellers selling for $10, would make reading convenient and affordable. I drop that much every week on Starbucks alone!

    I’m actually more interested in the Kindle DX because it has better PDF support, meaning I could use it to read research articles for my work. That would be pretty handy and almost justifies my buying one, but I just can’t rationalize it right now. I will probably wait until the end of the year, and maybe the DX will come down in price by then too. However if not for that, I’d have already picked up a Kindle at the reduced price. It’s just too tempting to ignore.

  • when addictions combine: Twitter + Warcraft = TweetCraft

    I recently passed on the Palm Pre because I realize it would be harder to tweet while driving. Yes, yes, I deserve all teh oppobrium such a statement should bring upon me. Still. it gives you an idea of my addiction to Twitter. In the meantime, I’ve been delving deeper into Warcraft and while my addiction there hasn’t quite reached my twitter levels, it still is enough of a compulsion that I was watching television of some beachfront yesterday evening and thought to myself, “hey that looks like the island I swam to off the coast of Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale”.

    So, I regard this latest technical innovation with the appropriate mixture of fearful sweat and eager drool – TweetCraft, an in-game twitter client for WoW. Here’s a video on how it works:

    Thus far I have been playing WoW without any addons of any kind. Obviously it’s time to break the virgin seal on my addons folder. I’ll be piping my tweets to the @otakusphere account. After I install the new hard drive on the gaming machine, that is.

    Aside – does anyone know when the patch comes out that lets you gain riding skill at level 20?

  • Fear the Japanese: bagelheads

    look what an injection of saline can do for you: (below the fold, for decency’s sake, though not NSFW)

    (more…)

  • Finding Ponyo

    The trailers for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on a Cliff are out, and the influence of Disney/Pixar animation honcho John Lassiter is rather apparent from the poster art:

    PonyoPosterSm.jpg

    Check out that font, complete with little ocean wave! 🙂 Plus here’s a bonus image still from the movie, which makes me suspect that Ponyo is going to have a very Mai-from-Totoro personality:

    Here’s some more info on the film from AICN Anime:

    The film hits theatres August 14th.

    Noah Cyrus will voice the goldfish who wants to be a human and Frankie Jonas will be her human friend Sosuke while other cast members include Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin and Betty White.

    […]

    For hints on how Disney has handled the film, check out producer producer Frank Marshall’s recent conversation with Sci-Fi Wire.

    In January, Variety reported that John Pixar’s Lasseter was working with Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy to make Hayao Miyazaki/Ghibli’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea “the studio’s biggest hit ever Stateside.” According to the piece, Ghibli has been frustrated that their films have only found a niche audience about anime fans and arthouse goers.

    From the Variety piece:

    The goal is to boost both the number of screens and the box office take beyond Ghibli’s record for a U.S. release set by “Spirited Away,” the Miyazaki toon that earned a little more than $10 million on 714 screens in 2002 and 2003.