The Doppler Effect » Video

Thinking Different

B. Tan — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:30:02 +0000

AT&T Wi-Fi

B. Tan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:51:26 +0000

A while back I wrote about Starbucks’ Rewards program. Any registered member of the program receives “up to two hours of free AT&T Wi-Fi service, everyday.” I was previously under the impression that this meant you needed to purchase something to get wi-fi access, however it appears (upon closer inspection of the terms and in real-world trials) that no purchase is necessary.

This makes things more convenient for road warriors. I would suspect that this trick works at any AT&T Hotspot. Of course anyone with an iPhone or other qualifying AT&T plan automatically gets hot-spot access and you can even enable automatic login with iPhone OS 3.0:

Anyways, if anyone has confirmed that with Starbucks Rewards, you can use AT&T Wi-Fi at any AT&T hotspot, be sure to share in the comments.

Check out more about Starbucks Rewards at http://starbucks.com/cardrewards.

Usain Bolt – World’s Fastest Man

B. Tan — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:01:01 +0000

Usain Bolt – World’s Fastest Man

Originally uploaded by Bonita Jamaica

Not two months ago, superstar sprinter Usain Bolt flipped his car into a ditch. The accident resulted in Bolt getting surgery on some wounds he obtained exiting the wrecked car. Despite this setback, Bolt came back this past week (to the dismay of his coach) in a publicity 150m race held on a specially constructed track in the streets of Manchester.

Bolt shattered the world best with a time of 14.35, but even more impressive was how fast he covered the last 100m. After the first 50m, Bolt ran the next 100m in 8.72. That’s unbelievably staggering especially considering the level of fitness Bolt’s in after missing some training. This 100m split is 0.97 seconds off Bolt’s 9.69 world record set at the Beijing Olympic Games. In my experience, a block start shouldn’t add a full second to a flying time, especially for a sprinter of Bolt’s caliber.

We have yet to see the best of Bolt. A rather conservative estimate on my part puts the WR at 9.4X, but only time will tell. I doubt that he’d go for this, but I would really like to see Bolt own records at every distance from 100-400m (he’s already halfway there). It’s a good time for Puma’s marketing department, that’s for sure.

Check out the race for yourself at Universal Sports

Microsoft is at it again

B. Tan — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:02:08 +0000

Following in the footsteps of their latest Laptop Hunter ads, Microsoft has created a new ad targeting the iPod. More specifically, the cost of filling an iPod with music. According to Microsoft, it’ll cost $30,000 to fill an iPod from using iTunes.

A lie of this magnitude makes the Laptop Hunter ads look almost reasonable. Considering the fact that

Not all songs cost $0.99 (some cost more but some cost less too).
Purchasing albums lowers the cost per song
Ripped CD’s
Movies take up a lot of room, and if you have an iPod touch, apps
Maybe I like my iPod to double as an external hard drive

These are all ways that you can fill an iPod without spending $30k. I didn’t even mention pirated music! As far as I’m concerned, digital music is somewhere Microsoft has managed to fail on a much more consistent basis that some of their other departments (Windows XP sort of…and XBox).

Given the outrageous claim that we all spend $30,000 to fill our iPods, my iPod library (movies, music, apps, audiobooks, photos) does take up a significant portion of my hard drive, on my old HP laptop, it was over half; granted I only had an 80GB HD back then.

Dirty Money

B. Tan — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:32:49 +0000

A raunchy raunchy ad for Bontrust (German currency trading firm).

If only American ads were so interesting.

Explanations “In plain English”

B. Tan — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:11:53 +0000

In light of Cornell’s launching of Google Apps for Education, dubbed CMail, there has undoubtedly a slew of questions about how it works. For many people, the concept of “cloud computing” is pretty novel. Trying to explain this to a tech-newbie can sometimes be difficult.

Enter Common Craft. Common Craft is a company that specializes in explanations. They’ve produced plenty of videos that make sense of products or services that aren’t quite so obvious. Two of my favorites are Twitter in Plain English and Google Docs in Plain English.

Other topics include blogs, phishing scams, online video sharing and many more.

Beautiful day, ugly running

B. Tan — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:36:10 +0000

Yet another subpar race this week. I’m still trying to figure out what the deal is. This season has definitely been beyond frustrating.

Bucknell Bison Outdoor Invitational

B. Tan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:32:00 +0000

Here’s a video from this past weekend’s meet at Bucknell University. Definitely didn’t do as well as I hoped.

The video was recorded on a Polaroid DVC-00725F High Definition Digital Camcorder and edited in iMovie.

Did You Know?

B. Tan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:57:36 +0000

I stumbled upon this upon while at the library today. It’s a bit old, but still cool nonetheless.

Web Apps Galore

B. Tan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:11:17 +0000

It seems nowadays, there is a web application for everything. In a few short years, we’ve seen explosive growth in a movement called Web 2.0. This has resulted in a shift towards spending more and more time in our browsers, and less time in standard desktop applications. With so many new web applications popping up left and right, you will invariably see clones and companies trying to best each other. It can definitely be overwhelming trying to keep track of them all. The following are the web apps that make the cut for me. Those who know me well, know that I am extremely particular about the technology I use so I hope you will find these sites as useful as I have.

I’ll start off with a name everyone recognizes. Google. Aside from Google search, Google provides a number of staggering number of services ranging from Picasa and YouTube, to Google Docs, and Grand Central. However, Google’s shining star (aside from their search of course) is Gmail. In the free webmail arena, Gmail is the clear cut winner, scoring major points for innovative features and UI and also keeping everything free (you have to pay Yahoo for anything “advanced”). Another strength of Gmail is that you can port it for use on your own domain name. Anyone who’s used the webmail interface provided by their web host can appreciate Google Apps. I’m assuming most people have already experienced for themselves the power of Gmail; and since I have enough to say about Gmail to merit its own post, those who are unfamiliar can read up about Gmail at Lifehacker.

Mint Logo

Right in line with the usefulness of Google’s apps, lies a website known as Mint. Mint is a financial tool that allows you to consolidate all your financial information presents it in an easy to understand format. It lists all your transactions across all your credit and debit cards and generates graphs of your spending trends (so you can see your financial mistakes in pie chart form ). Also, Mint keeps track of your interest rates on your credit cards, and bank accounts and suggests offers from other banks to help you save. There are also notifications (via email or SMS) that you can setup for your accounts (ex. have Mint txt you about a low account balance). Mint also recently added a feature for tracking investment portfolios, student loans and mortgages. Naturally, having all this sensitive information in one place is a reason to be wary. However, Mint does not store your personal data and uses bank-grade encryption. If you’re still skeptical, Mint has been featured in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, BusinessWeek, CNN Money, The NY Times…the list goes on and on (read: Mint is pretty legit). In the future, Mint plans add feature such as bill pay making it an even more powerful tool. Like every good web app, they have demo video which you should definitely check out.

The next app, Dropbox (still in private beta but I have a few invitations available…) is one of those tools that you’ll wonder how you lived without. In my quest for a free iDisk alternative, I found this nifty app that seems to be much better implemented than services such as Box.net and free unlike SugarSync. Another plus is that the developers seem extremely in tune with the user community, in terms of addressing concerns, feature requests and being active on the Dropbox forum. It’s sort of hard to explain exactly how Dropbox operates, so I’ll just let you watch yet another screencast (I promise it’s worth it).

While those are the web apps I use on a daily basis, there are still many helpful apps out there I haven’t mentioned:

http://epassportphoto.com/ – Essentially free and instant passport photos
Pandora – Must have if you like music (who doesn’t?)
Hulu – Free, fast and legal web TV.

As you can tell, I basically live on the internet; computers do everything for me. But hey, what’s wrong with that? I hope you find these web apps useful, or if you know of any better ones I’d love to hear suggestions. Do you have any favorites I missed?