PBS star Charlie Rose risked facial disfigurement to save his MacBook Air during a recent fall on the streets of New York.
As reported in Salon.com, Rose stumbled in a pothole, and his first instinct was to save not himself but his MacBook Air!
TechHeroes Awards originated in honor of the brave photographers who have fallen into the drink while holding their cameras above their heads, and now is branching out to recognize others who give their all to support and protect their great technology.
The latest buzz and rumors indicate that the Korg KAOSSILATOR portable mini-synthesizer will be available in the U.S. after March 31, 2008, woo hoo!!
You have your lithium battery drilldriver, your mini cordless screwdriver, and your humungo horsepower corded drill, and an assortment of hand screwdrivers.
But for elegance, simplicity, and dependability, there’s nothing like an old-fashioned Yankee screwdriver.
Isomax Contractor Push Pull Yankee Type Screwdriver-Drill
Fit a drillbit or bolt or screw into the slot. Line it up, make sure the switch is flipped the right way, push the handle toward the drill bit, and the pressure of your pushing will turn the rachet, rotating the drillbit and drilling the wood.
To remove a bolt or screw, flip the switch the other way, and your pushing will now cause a counterclockwise movement to remove it.
If the power goes out, you forget the batteries, you don’t want to make a racket, or you just like clever and well crafted tools, this one is very cool.
One of the unexpected virtues of computers is that they’ve brought about screen savers.
In the day there were flying toasters. Now you can have bright and realistic 3-D fish swimming across your screen while your computer sleeps. Marine Aquarium is one such elegant screensaver.
It has options such as an integrated date and clock, sound on or off, and choice of fishes.
The website name serenescreen.com is not far off, since it provides a surprisingly relaxing change of scene.
For personalized help with your technical writing as well as other kinds of writing, check out:
You can find writing tips here from an experienced and organized writer and professor, then sign up for personalized help with your own paper, thesis, dissertation or book. Dr. Averill has successfully helped people from all over the world finish a variety of writing projects.
This donation-ware allows you flexibility in where you store and how you subdivide your iPhoto library, as well as iMovie and iDVD.
With it you can break up your iPhoto library into smaller sections that will run faster, an important consideration on older machines, especially if you have thousands of images. You can store these photo libraries wherever you want, such as on external drives. Rock solid and great for archiving, and it works seamlessly with iPhoto.
Needs Mac OS X 10.2 and up, Photo 2.0 or higher
and integrates with iMovie 3.0 or higher, iDVD 3.0 or higher, iWeb 1.0 or higher
http://www.iphotobuddy.com/
Galerie is a web gallery creation freeware for web designers from the renowned French Guillion brothers, authors of the amazing music composition programs Harmony Assistant and Melody Assistant.
It allows you to use a variety of customizable templates to create web galleries from a folder of pictures or Quicktime files, or from iPhoto, GraphicConverter, iView and Extensis portfolio. It is fast, reliable, and runs on Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.4. Enjoy this software from designers who have been generous and steadfast for years.
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/galerie.htm
Before it’s even released in all countries, the Kaossilator portable battery-operated synthesizer from Korg is already generating an enormous amount of buzz. It basically lets you draw music with your fingertip, live, on a small portable trackpad, which also has built in drums, beats, and many other sounds and sequences, supports overdubbing, and can also record what you do. You can even hook it up with a guitar strap and wear it while you play it.
The idea of a really solid gestural synthesizer has been a dream since the first thought of the Theremin. Some keyboards include an infrared beam-interrupt function, and there have been joysticks, and even music drawing functions in software, like in the old neXt machines. But this puts it all in one portable package.
It is basically a combination of radio dials and touchpad. The dial and gesture-drawing combination is a nice way to change a lot of inputs rapidly.
But the ergonomics seem awkward— it is designed as a one-hand-friendly device, but in a movie demo, the man using the synth keeps reaching over his gesturing hand to use the dials. Turning the pad sideways might this improve this situation.
It seems to have stereo line and mini-phone out, but not midi. For that you will need its awesome, but less portable, big brother, the $400 Kaoss Pad KP3.
Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad Dynamic Effects Sampler
The KP3 is a truly spectacular controller, effects-adder, recorder, and dj tool, which allows you to create and mix sounds and effects and samples, which can then be exported in midi or audio format, or saved to flash cards. It is AC, thus considerably less portable than the battery operated Kaossilator.
It seems like the Kaossilator would not be too hard for a beginner to learn. The demonstrators on utube put together some beats pretty fast. The opportunities for happy accidents and found-music abound—it will be interesting to see how easy it is to make deliberate beats and melodies. And what great opportunities for producing truly horrible sounds! $200 seems a small price to pay for so much fun.
