welcome to the world of tomorrow
A couple of gmail-related technological tidbits:
- As part of their new features, gmail is offering a downloadable tool that sits in your system tray and lets you know when you have new mail. Pretty slick, if you ask me -- this effectively mitigates the biggest complaint I have with web-based email. Requires win2k/XP, for now. I'm sure someone will whip up a Mac equivalent by and by.
- Via paragon-of-nerdiness Kevin Rose comes a way to actually take advantage of your gmail account's gigabyte of space: gmailFS, a utility that turns your gmail account into a new hard drive entry under "My Computer". There are some restrictions on filename size (40 characters) and individual filesize (10 MB), but these will likely be fixed in future versions. Again, no Mac version, but there's a linux version here, if that's your thing.
Finally, I'll mention that Xbox Media Player has really evolved into a powerful application. It happened without my noticing -- with an install of MythTV handy, there was never much reason to pay attention to the copy of XBMC that came with my modified XBox hard drive image. Now that I've ditched MythTV for TiVo, though, I can see that that awkward MPlayer port has grown up into a beautiful young, uh, media application suite.
If you've been looking for a good way to get those DivX files you shouldn't have been downloading out of your PC and onto your TV (without having to move the files themselves), you might want to give it a shot. You can put together a modded XBox for just over $150 -- not a bad deal for what XBMC can do, and a great deal if you have any interest in XBox games, emulation, or soldering tiny wires together.
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I forgot to mention but my roommate bought an XBox... how difficult would it be for you to hook us up with some Dr. Mario when you come out here to visit?
well, I won't pretend it's a simple thing to do, but it's definitely doable. You'll need to buy one of these asap, though. A bigger hard drive wouldn't hurt if you plan on copying XBox games, although it's not essential. Let me know if you do end up buying a mod chip, and I'll be sure to bring my soldering iron and the necessary screwdriver bits. Other than that you'll just need a PC with a broadband connection, a CD Burner and a CDRW disc (regular CDRs won't work).
I should clarify: the xbox comes with an 8GB hard drive. That'll be fine for emulating NES games, but you'll probably want something bigger if you're going to do anything more exciting than that. The max it can use is 120GB (it'll take larger ones, but ignore everything over 120GB). That's what we put in -- we've barely filled up half of it, I believe.
Perhaps we can have a hard-drive-acquiring field trip to the one California site I'd really like to see: Fry's.
the xbox comes with an 8GB hard drive. That'll be fine for emulating NES games, but you'll probably want something bigger if you're going to do anything more exciting than that.
I think you mean "more frilly than that." Every bit after 8 was redundant. Think about it: 8 bits * 8 gigs * uh, conversion coefficient? = 256 billion NES games. Mind-boggling.
Jeff, what, do you think you're going to beat me?
I've got plans for you, Naomi. Big plans.
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