I recently purchased an Asus WL-520GU wireless router. For the average tech user, this router offers little innovation. It serves as a typical 4-port router 802.11b/g (no 802.11n support!) that you probably already have connected to your cable modem.  This device loses points simply by looking ugly. As you can see from the picture, the box-like white case is an eyesore to any living room.

For the tech geek, this router is a beast–it has 4mb of flashable memory on a 200mhz processor. All for less than $50. What does this mean? For one, you can turn it into an Internet radio. Another guy made a wireless weather station out of it. You can definitely turn it into a mini-computer to run your crew of wirelessly-controlled lunar rovers. Or to brew coffee.

That’s right. Internet-controlled coffeemaker. The concept isn’t new. I’ve definitely seen coffee makers that can be controlled remotely in Skymall. Imagine telling your coffeemaker to brew a cup of coffee while you’re online. Don’t feel like coffee today? No problem, cancel the order. It would be damn cool to send a text message to my coffeemaker, “brew coffee 9pm”.

I had actually planned to put my toaster and coffeemaker on the Internet. Then I saw this article about hackers breaking into your house through your coffeemaker. Boy would that be humiliating…

computing tech

My friend Jon sent me an invite for Google Wave a few weeks ago. The hype behind this online collaboration tool is that it serves as an alternative to email. In a way, this platform serves almost like a wiki, in which multiple participants can embed content to be distributed to any or all of the members of a ‘wave’.

The confusing aspect of this framework is that most users are accustomed to a linear conversation. We chat via instant messenger in a linear approach, as in emails. With a tree framework, certain topics can branch out into subtopics. The root topics/discussions can also be revised on a later date. This translates into an evolving topic, which potentially keeps old topics accessible.

This idea is not novel to the programming crowd. Version systems a la CVS have been around for decades to maintain proper updates on software. The problem with applying this to laypeople collaboration is that it’s a new system to learn. Given that Wave is still in an invite-only interfact with limited functionality, I don’t see myself collaborating much with my coworkers/peers anytime soon, unless I can muster up some more invites.

In the meantime, you can read “The Complete Guide to Wave” online to get up to speed, written by one of the Lifehacker editors.

computing tech

Several months ago, I wrote about Twitter spam or a variant of unwanted traffic on Twitter. Since then, it’s still not clear to me what motive these spammers have. Several weeks ago, I posted a link to the NYTimes about swine flu vaccinations. Minutes later, I received Twitter notices that I just garnered four new followers–all of them had an odd username, like a common first name followed by several numbers.

Great. While I’m all for having a large crew of loyal followers, it does no good that my followers are all bots. I actually not sure what purpose these bots serve anyway, because none of their Twitter pages link to any spam websites. As Mashable.com mentioned in their Twitter article, spam on Twitter comes in three flavors: Twittermercials, straight cons, and clueless cons.

While most of the spamming I’ve encountered are Twittermercials, the most recent iteration of spam doesn’t appear to serve much of a purpose other than harvesting data on my activity.

Fortunately, the coders at Twitter monitor these unsolicited activities often, and most of the spam accounts have been deactivated.

computing computing, tech

I remember when Instant Messaging flooded the workplace computers back in the tech-boom days. My colleagues working at IBM would get company-wide emails stating that IM decreased productivity and was prohibited. When company threats weren’t heeded, port 5190 was blocked on the company firewall.

Now that instant messaging has been superseded by text messaging and MMS, I see my colleagues “texting” away during conferences and lectures. It’s become a nuisance. If you’re simply notifying your spouse that you’ll be late for dinner, that’s one reason to be texting during fluorescein conference. However, checking the stock ticker? Chatting with your medical school classmate? What are you thinking? That is simply abusing technology. Perhaps I say this only because I don’t have a data plan on my phone, but there is a point in which your attention should be directed toward the lecturer and not your iPhone.

Our eye clinic is in the basement, where our cellphones unreachable by the outside world. You’d think that there wouldn’t be any contact with the outside. Wrong. Last week one of the technicians (who are supposed to be obtaining visual acuity for our patients) was logged onto her MySpace page. Another computer was logged onto Facebook.

I wonder how much social networking affects workplace productivity. A quick search online shows that this actually increases productivity. USAToday also states that we work better with social networking… The caveat? None of these companies are involved with healthcare.

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I ended up installing the Palm Pre SDK to test out the development kit. It includes the Palm Pre emulation engine, which runs from VirtualBox.

Although I’ve never used the physical hardware phone before, the software interface is very slick, similar to that of the iPhone. The snapshot includes the Web browser in action, which supports touch-dragging and zoom.

If I ever find the time, it would be interesting to develop some software for it.

computing computing, tech