technology: February 2008 Archives

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives, from homotron.net. I looked through the list and saw a few that I could use. I switched to Firefox a while back and found it much better than the IE of the time (and even the new one, which I really dislike because everything is placed horribly).

At the end of last semester I switched over from Microsoft Office 2000 to OpenOffice, and I just switched my e-mail client from Microsoft Outlook 2000 (I didn't uninstall Office yet) to Mozilla Thunderbird, and, even though I have to learn everything for these kinds of programs all over again, I'm finding them easy enough to use. I've used some other free open-source programs, like NetBeans and Praat, and found them very easy to use, as well as some that weren't that I hated and consequently don't remember. I hope the former true for some of these other popular ones because I'll probably download something for a web editor and a graphics program, mostly because I want to make some mind maps for some things in my field, like language history and typology (though I may end up trying to figure out more Java stuff to make an applet). Thoughts? Criticism?

Polaroid, known for their "instant" developing cameras, is getting out of the instant photography business:

It was a wonder in its time: A camera that spat out photos that developed themselves in a few minutes as you watched. You got to see them where and when you took them, not a week later when the prints came back from the drugstore.

But in a day when nearly every cellphone has a digital camera in it, “instant” photography long ago stopped being instant enough for most people. So today, the inevitable end of an era came: Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business.

Polaroid had already stopped production of the cameras last year, and will make enough film to last them through 2009. They are willing to license the technology, if some company wishes to supply the now niche market.

Polaroid will now be focusing on its line of digital cameras and photo printers.

Guess the lyric "shake it like a Polaroid picture" will now soon become an anachronism.

Via kottke.

A great new technique for creating the illusion of 3D on a 2D display using current console technology has been developed for the Nintendo Wii by the famous Johnny Lee.

The technique uses the infrared sensors in the wii-mote to track the movement of your head (with the help of some infrared LEDs) and adjust the display in real time so that the perspective changes. This creates the illusion of seeing a truly 3D image without the headache inducing stereoscopic techniques used in 3D IMAX theatres.

You can see Johnny Lee demonstrating the technology in the video below. It's very impressive:

Thomas Miller at Sony also was impressed and ported the technique to the PlayStation 3 and has released the code for free to all PS3 developers:

I'm actually excited about these techniques because they require a minimum amount of fuss from a development and materials stand point, and produce very impressive results. I can't wait for a game that uses this!