Author: rakesh

We were exhibiting SnapStream’s new enterprise products at a tradeshow in Los Angeles last week and being a photo wonk, I picked up a tripod and took sequential photographs of us tearing down our booth. Then I used iMovie to put this together:

Click To Play

My wife left her Macbook here in the States and her sister has one in India so we tried using iChat today between Houston and New Delhi and it worked incredibly well. My daughter wished me a happy father’s day through iChat, I virtually tickled her (I made my tickle approach from here in Houston while my wife took care of the tickle delivery in New Delhi), and I caught up with my wife for a good hour or so. And my daughter got to see and talk to her Didi (my eldest sister’s daughter), her Bua (my eldest sister), her Fufaji (my brother-in-law), her Dada (my Dad) and Dadi (my Mom). She also got to see her toys at home that she’s been missing. Nicer quality video would have been nice, but that’s just a matter of bandwidth and the video quality was still good. Apart from that, the experience was great. iChat just worked, the way any good product should.

Now I’m curious to try the new iChat features in Leopard to see how they extend a video chat like this in meaningful ways. I think I would have used the new iChat feature that lets you share a photograph or a browser window in your chat session — at one point, Shonali and I were each looking at the same speadsheet of things to do and a calendar that I created in Google Docs and Google Calendar respectively and I think the share-a-window-in-your-chat feature would have been perfect for that.

My latest favorite tool: Synergy. Synergy lets me control other computers with my primary computer’s mouse and keyboard. So it’s like having a multi-monitor setup across computers or like having a software KVM that works over the network. In the setup below, the laptop in the middle is my primary computer and with Synergy, I can drag my mouse cursor from my primary computer to the Dell laptop on the left and I can control the Dell using the mouse and keyboard on my primary computer. The setup could be easier, but once you have it installed, it just works. Another nice thing is that your clipboard is also copied across computers. So you could copy a string on one computer and paste it on another. The setup could be easier, but otherwise I highly recommend Synergy.

(from Slashfood)

I’ve been wanting something like Ultramon for a while. Now, when I get up from my desk at home or in the office (where I almost always use a second monitor with my laptop), I don’t have to laboriously disable my second monitor (it amounts to about 7 operations) through the Windows Display Properties to reclaim the windows that were on it. Ultramon has a one-click disable/enable secondary monitor. Nice!

The next step will be to find something that automatically detects the disconnect/connect of a second monitor and automatically changes my multi-monitor settings accordingly.

I wonder how the Mac handles this?

I was at an airport a couple of months ago with my parents waiting for a late night flight. My Mom had to take some medicine and all the shops selling bottled water were closed and the nearest water fountain was barely visible… probably about 100 meters away. And I didn’t want my Mom to have to get up and walk over to the water fountain. So I used some of my childhood Origami skills to fashion a glass for her out of paper. I was reminded of this today when reading “No Snack Cup? No Problem.” on Wired’s Geekdad blog. (Yes, I was quite proud of my paper water glass. :-))

I highly recommend the Geekdad blog, it’s kind of like Make Magazine but with training wheels (and no soldering irons) and you definitely don’t need to have any children to enjoy it.

I’ve been using Google Checkout a lot and the short review is that I really like it. It’s simple and straightforward. A couple of clicks and my goods are on their way to me.

In contrast, I had a friend over the other day and he needed an AC adapter for his camcorder. He had never purchased anything from eBay (I’m always surprised at how few people are eBay savvy) and paying for his simple $20 purchase was a nightmare. For credit cards, eBay’s only option is PayPal. Even though we were using my eBay account, he wanted to pay for it. So we get to PayPal and it asks us to login and sure enough he doesn’t know his login. He spends a bunch of time guessing his login. Eventually, after he’s failed 3 times, there’s a prompt that says something to the effect of “forget about it, pay without logging in.” I think, “great! I can just enter cc information and be done.” I click through to the next screen and sure enough it presents me with standard credit card information fields. We fill ’em all out with my friends credit card data. We click submit and it says, “Sorry, that credit card is associated with a PayPal account, you have to login.” Argh! If I couldn’t use a credit card that was associated with a PayPal account, why did you take me to that screen at all?? I go back to the login screen and eventually my friend figures out his login… but the ordeal doesn’t end there. It’s turns out the account he could remember login info for doesn’t have any credit card information associated with it. And he can’t remember the login info for his other account that’s linked to the credit card that he has with him. So then I go back a couple of screens and I see that there’s an “other credit card” option on the payment screen, I click on that thinking, cool, they have a way to pay with a credit card that bypasses the PayPal morass. Nope, that option takes me to a screen that sends the seller an e-mail, seemingly designed for an offline, credit-card-over-the-phone scenario. Eventually, I just gave up trying to use my friend’s credit card information and I logged in with my own account and paid for it myself. Sigh.

A tip for new Nintendo Wii owners: when you go to buy a second Wiimote (the controller for the Wii), don’t buy a standalone remote for $40. Instead, buy the Wiiplay bundle — it includes a second Wii controller and 8-9 other games. The games aren’t all great, but there are a couple of fun ones and it’s definitely worth the extra $10. (credit goes to Jason for this tip)

Just as quick as Digg’s users revolted earlier this week, PC World magazine is pretty much dead today after Harry McCracken resigned over an advertising – editorial conflict. It’s amazing how quickly you can lose everything you have in the digital world. And this quote from the Slashdot posting on the whole affair:

…it essentially confirms that PC World reviews should be thought of as no more than press releases. I know that’s how I will consider links from them in the future.

Ouch.