There are so many ways to study technology. I'm currently trying to decide how and what I want to study about it...and I simply cannot decide. Do I want to focus on personal relationships within CMC? Do I want to study social organization and social power in communities? Do I want to study the people who work within technology and what motivates them? Do I want to study the impact of technology on businesses and business workers?
There is just so much, and not only that--every field of study has something to say about it. I love technology for many reasons, that being one of them. There is so much, and it is always changing. Right now, I wouldn't be able to give you my masters thesis topic, because between that time and now the entire world of technology may change.
The nice thing about studying technology? I don't have to choose what to study. There will always be time to research it all, and there will always be more to come right after that.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Technology 101
As more and more tech products and companies are being produced, the more those producers are required to come up with original, or at least non-lawsuit imminent names. Unfortunately, the more names out there, the weirder the new ones must be. This ultimately leads to horrible newbie mistakes of mispronunciation.
ScanDisk
I know this makes sense, I used to be confused (in the long long ago), but it is not. There is no 'c' in their name. Say it with me.....SANdisk. like sand....and then an isk. Or whatever. Just for the love of god please stop googling scandisk.
Clié
If the accent on there is throwing you off, just as yourself "Who would name a product the 'cly'? Not even Motorola. Your next step may be to throw down a word that seems similar, such as cliché. After all, it has an accent too, right? Why yes, you would be correct, but if you ask for a case for your cliché you will simultaneously destroy the respect of the retail person you spoke to, but you will also make their day. Although, if you would like to earn some good kharma, go around and say it. By closing time the story will have spread through the entire store, thus getting many many people to laugh like they probably haven't laughed in a long time.
Motorola
I know you want to buy these people some damn vowels, but you can't. They don't work that way. Just learn to turn on the caps, and roll with it. Now, type it with me....RAZR, KRZR, ROKR, need I go on? Just keep in mind, whatever letters you naturally want to put in there: don't. Easiest way to never embarrass yourself.
Samsung
Now while Motorola attempts to turn model number language into readable words or phrases, Samsung just doesn't even bother. Especially with their mp3 players. If you don't know the model number of your item, just start trying to describe it, because it has no real name. E.g. "I have the stick shaped silvery buttoned red plastic thing with the screen that tells time". This is the only company that makes me hate Moto a little less. Just a little.
Any other companies? Throw me some suggestions!
ScanDisk
I know this makes sense, I used to be confused (in the long long ago), but it is not. There is no 'c' in their name. Say it with me.....SANdisk. like sand....and then an isk. Or whatever. Just for the love of god please stop googling scandisk.
Clié
If the accent on there is throwing you off, just as yourself "Who would name a product the 'cly'? Not even Motorola. Your next step may be to throw down a word that seems similar, such as cliché. After all, it has an accent too, right? Why yes, you would be correct, but if you ask for a case for your cliché you will simultaneously destroy the respect of the retail person you spoke to, but you will also make their day. Although, if you would like to earn some good kharma, go around and say it. By closing time the story will have spread through the entire store, thus getting many many people to laugh like they probably haven't laughed in a long time.
Motorola
I know you want to buy these people some damn vowels, but you can't. They don't work that way. Just learn to turn on the caps, and roll with it. Now, type it with me....RAZR, KRZR, ROKR, need I go on? Just keep in mind, whatever letters you naturally want to put in there: don't. Easiest way to never embarrass yourself.
Samsung
Now while Motorola attempts to turn model number language into readable words or phrases, Samsung just doesn't even bother. Especially with their mp3 players. If you don't know the model number of your item, just start trying to describe it, because it has no real name. E.g. "I have the stick shaped silvery buttoned red plastic thing with the screen that tells time". This is the only company that makes me hate Moto a little less. Just a little.
Any other companies? Throw me some suggestions!
Steve punks his fanboys, fanboys take it like old times
Oh Steve, you can be such an evil fanboy mother. You had minions lined up, dumping thousands of dollars on your latest chunk of plastic. And now? Same minions, just less money. Don't get me wrong, if you were an early adopter of the iPhone and did not expect to get screwed...well...you just don't know how the world works. No, no, I don't mean to be mean. But in all seriousness, are any of us surprised that it only took 66 days for the price to drop $200? I'm certainly not.The price drop we all expected to come just came a little earlier than expected. Most of us were waiting for the Christmas season to really get rolling, but some may not realize that there is a new wave of smart phones being introduced by the big guns here in the U.S. New BlackBerries, TONS of new HTCs (since when is Sprint the first one to throw down?), and a new RAZR to boot. Cell phone purchases have much more baggage than the aver mp3 player purchase. Not only does the consumer have to wrangle with contract discount dates, but they have to manage all those extra services that are tacked onto plans to ensure full functionality.
It sucks. I know. I'd be pissed too. Steve, you are a cruel mistress, but sometimes you just gatta do what you gatta do. Now I know someone figured up that Apple takes in around $350 per iPhone from AT&T (boo, it's still Cingular to me), so like most cell phones, they can easily be sold to consumers at a loss: the contracts make up for the cost of hardware. So why did Apple decide to introduce the iPhone as crazy expensive in the first place? Fear would be my guess. They had no way to know if people would roll will the price tag of the phone and the data/service plan. Plus, they had no way to know how the blogosphere would take their newest product. I bet they were simply afraid of them bombing, just like many were predicting. Apple can't survive on fanboys alone, not anymore. Now that we've hit a million strong sold, they can sit back and watch the money roll in.
So when am I going to buy one? Psh. I just dropped $400 on the Cingular 8125 last november, and I need to get at least a year and a half out of the little guy. Besides, you know they are going to do their usual post Christmas refresh, and that will include 3G. Plus, I'm just waiting for the kinks to get worked out. I was an early adopter of the ipod5G and now I'm out some of the features (like search) of the newer models.
REVIEW: Pioneer DEHP6800MP and CDIB100II
Car: Saturn '03 L200
Stereo: Pioneer DEHP6800MP ($260)
iPod brain: Pioneer CDIB100II ($50)
iPod: 5G 60GB Black
Wire/Harness: $30-$50 (depends on your car, and if you have an after market head unit in there now)
Install: Free at Circuit City (free install with any head unit $99+ sale, generally runs all summer)
With a 45 min commute between home and school and now the possibility of multiple road trips up to Chicago (3 hour drive one way), when I purchased a new car the first thing I did as soon as I got paid that summer was to get a new cd player with some sort of AUX input. On my previous car I had just a plan aux port with RCA hookups in the rear, when I purchased it I got a Y cable and had them run it out to the front. Worked well, but it was annoying on the interstate to poke at the ipod and check what song was playing.
The Pioneer head unit that I purchased has 2 AUX ports (one in the front, and the other you can get the optional kit to install in the back), optional bluetooth connection, optional ipod interface, radio tuner, and cd player that can do mp3 cds (it can read AAC files, although not DRMed ones).
Radio:
The channel preset switching process kind of sucks, but nothing else of note about the radio.
CD player:
Nothing of consequence.
MP3 CD feature:
The random function isn't as...random...as I'd prefer, but not horrible. You can have the artist and song title display. You can navigate easily through the folders.
Front aux port:
Ok, this I admit is a bit odd. First, you have to 'activate' it in the odd sort of start menu thing, until then you'll spend hours cursing at it wondering why the hell it doesn't work. Second, it's a 2.5mm port, so you'll have to get a 2.5->3.5 adapter (about $5 a radio shack if you don't have one for your phone). Third, it's a front port, but on the bottom of the faceplate. As you can see in the picture you have to make the faceplate angle out so that you can actually get to the port. Works well, you get used to it, but just be careful to not thwack it too hard and break your faceplate mechanism off.
----
iPod integration:
It has some quirks, yes, but overall I'm very happy with it. You can have the iPod cable run where you want, but the glove compartment seems to be the best choice as you don't need to touch the iPod after connecting it.
---
After connecting the cable, the iPod will display 'Pioneer' on it and charge. It will start playing whatever has been paused, or nothing if nothing has been playing. The nice thing is that it will resume whatever you've been listening to automatically, so it's a pretty seamless transition from walking around and listening to it with headphones and then listening to it in your car.
If you press the 'list' button next to the gigantic main button the regular ipod main screen shows up listing playlists, artists, songs, options, etc. Select one of those and it takes you to a list of them. The other problem that I have is in this area. If you have playlists ready to go, they're very easy to find. However, if you want to pick a song out of your entire list it will take forever to spin the big wheel around to find it if you have a lot of music. I have about 20GBs of music, so you can imagine my artist list. Horrible. It's easier to just find the artist or song you want to listen to on the ipod and then reconnect it. This integration works well if you assemble a bunch of playlists beforehand.
When you turn off your car the ipod is automatically paused when you turned it off, so I've found this to be wonderful when running errands around town.
As far as the display, this is my only true pet peeve. I love the mp3 cd display for showing the song/artist, this makes sense right? Well, for whatever reason (maybe I'm just doing it wrong) the closest I can get is artist/cd, or song/cd name. I just keep it on song/cd and suck it up.
---
Overall, I've extremely happy with this unit. My SO has a new jetta with the VW ipod kit. Remember what happened to the fax machine at the end of Office Space? Ya? Well, that's exactly what I want to do to this thing. Horrible. But that's another story.
There is another Pioneer head unit that runs around $200 that still works with the iPod brain. This is an expensive solution if you don't have a head unit that supports a preexisting brain. You can find head units at $100 (sony makes them) with front AUX ports, all you have to pay for are the needed wires/harness and install if you can't find a free intall deal. All I've heard about FM transmitters is that they all suck. So, if you're about to drop the $80 on a decent one, go ahead and take a look at a real solution such as an AUX port or iPod integration.
Stereo: Pioneer DEHP6800MP ($260)
iPod brain: Pioneer CDIB100II ($50)
iPod: 5G 60GB Black
Wire/Harness: $30-$50 (depends on your car, and if you have an after market head unit in there now)
Install: Free at Circuit City (free install with any head unit $99+ sale, generally runs all summer)
With a 45 min commute between home and school and now the possibility of multiple road trips up to Chicago (3 hour drive one way), when I purchased a new car the first thing I did as soon as I got paid that summer was to get a new cd player with some sort of AUX input. On my previous car I had just a plan aux port with RCA hookups in the rear, when I purchased it I got a Y cable and had them run it out to the front. Worked well, but it was annoying on the interstate to poke at the ipod and check what song was playing.
The Pioneer head unit that I purchased has 2 AUX ports (one in the front, and the other you can get the optional kit to install in the back), optional bluetooth connection, optional ipod interface, radio tuner, and cd player that can do mp3 cds (it can read AAC files, although not DRMed ones).
Radio:
The channel preset switching process kind of sucks, but nothing else of note about the radio.
CD player:
Nothing of consequence.
MP3 CD feature:
The random function isn't as...random...as I'd prefer, but not horrible. You can have the artist and song title display. You can navigate easily through the folders.
Front aux port:
Ok, this I admit is a bit odd. First, you have to 'activate' it in the odd sort of start menu thing, until then you'll spend hours cursing at it wondering why the hell it doesn't work. Second, it's a 2.5mm port, so you'll have to get a 2.5->3.5 adapter (about $5 a radio shack if you don't have one for your phone). Third, it's a front port, but on the bottom of the faceplate. As you can see in the picture you have to make the faceplate angle out so that you can actually get to the port. Works well, you get used to it, but just be careful to not thwack it too hard and break your faceplate mechanism off.
----iPod integration:
It has some quirks, yes, but overall I'm very happy with it. You can have the iPod cable run where you want, but the glove compartment seems to be the best choice as you don't need to touch the iPod after connecting it.
---After connecting the cable, the iPod will display 'Pioneer' on it and charge. It will start playing whatever has been paused, or nothing if nothing has been playing. The nice thing is that it will resume whatever you've been listening to automatically, so it's a pretty seamless transition from walking around and listening to it with headphones and then listening to it in your car.
If you press the 'list' button next to the gigantic main button the regular ipod main screen shows up listing playlists, artists, songs, options, etc. Select one of those and it takes you to a list of them. The other problem that I have is in this area. If you have playlists ready to go, they're very easy to find. However, if you want to pick a song out of your entire list it will take forever to spin the big wheel around to find it if you have a lot of music. I have about 20GBs of music, so you can imagine my artist list. Horrible. It's easier to just find the artist or song you want to listen to on the ipod and then reconnect it. This integration works well if you assemble a bunch of playlists beforehand.
When you turn off your car the ipod is automatically paused when you turned it off, so I've found this to be wonderful when running errands around town.
As far as the display, this is my only true pet peeve. I love the mp3 cd display for showing the song/artist, this makes sense right? Well, for whatever reason (maybe I'm just doing it wrong) the closest I can get is artist/cd, or song/cd name. I just keep it on song/cd and suck it up.
---Overall, I've extremely happy with this unit. My SO has a new jetta with the VW ipod kit. Remember what happened to the fax machine at the end of Office Space? Ya? Well, that's exactly what I want to do to this thing. Horrible. But that's another story.
There is another Pioneer head unit that runs around $200 that still works with the iPod brain. This is an expensive solution if you don't have a head unit that supports a preexisting brain. You can find head units at $100 (sony makes them) with front AUX ports, all you have to pay for are the needed wires/harness and install if you can't find a free intall deal. All I've heard about FM transmitters is that they all suck. So, if you're about to drop the $80 on a decent one, go ahead and take a look at a real solution such as an AUX port or iPod integration.
Welcome to the new KilRly!
I am moving and recreating KilRly to this location. Look for new and better tech commentary!!
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