I’ve been a fan of outliners ever since I stumbled across More while I was in college. Many a paper was written with More and later the MS Word outliner. I’ve had a fetish for them ever since. Today I got caught on an outliner meme and turned up some pretty cool stuff which I’ve collected as links. For anyone who needs a little free-form data storage tool that has a small memory footprint , take s moment to check outsome outliners. Links:

• Nice overview of available windows outliners
• atpm.com is running a great series of articles on outliners, including their history, some great information on how people use them and an explanation of the features available in the various outlining packages. The atpm articles get into exhaustive details on the available outliners for all OS’s too, despite their mac focus. (and the former mac junkie in me will point out how the innovation in this software comes mostly from the mac clients over the years).
• My current favorite (Leo) outliner, and another good one (Joe, the Java outliner), both cross platform (one Java, one tcl/tk).

The other interesting area of development is tying outline editors to wikis: I have great hopes for this class of software though so far nothing is to the point where I can really use it. I might manage to get a set of Leo templates going to manage this for me but I would prefer a turnkey solution. If you’re on a mac, you can check out the first halting steps towards this kind of system.

The Independent Games Festival has announced this year’s contest finalists. There are several games worth checking out, but Bontago takes the prize as far as I’m concerned. Realistic physics, very clever design, excellent graphics, and multiplayer, all for the low low price of $0. I would have paid $15-20 for this game, and still will if the developer releases it commercially. Who’s up for a game?

(don’t skip checking out Starshatter though, I have high hopes for this one too).

Has come to pass. Gomez is looking for folks living overseas to connect to their p2p network to help them test their systems. They’ll pay you for your participation. Once again I’ll observer – there is this huge untapped potential in the millions and millions of desktop computers hooked into always on broadband internet, and the company that finds a way to profitably tap that network of systems is going to be huge. This is the first example I can remember of someone actually paying for this, though there are numerous examples of free projects, SETI@home being the most well known.

…on usenet. Today’s example:

The graphics and sound effects are good, and I especially love the
vaporized blood that explodes from enemies when you shoot them. Very nice
touch.

oh yeah, you just gots to love the vaporized blood effects!

😉

I shouldn’t tease the guy though cause the truth is I notice stuff like that in the games I play too. It’s just that I had one of those ‘this is surreal’ moments when I was reading his review. He was talking about the just-released Call of Duty which I will almost definitely be picking up, unless the multiplayer gets poor reviews.

I picked up a new toy for myself, a Nueros mp3 player. I chose the Neuros after much consideration, in fact I even went so far as ordering an iPod and then cancelling it before going with the Neuros. Now that I’ve had several days to play with it I can make a few observations about it.

Firstly, the main reason I chose it over the iPod is because it is both a solid state flashram based player and a hard drive based player. The unit consists of multiple pieces, the ‘brains’ of the unit and then ‘memory’ modules, which can be solid state or hard drives. I read and heard a number of horror stories from folks with dead iPods warning that jogging with an iPod leads to premature death, and my main use for this thing was for excercising, hence the cancelled iPod order.

Things I like about it:

• Expandable – you can buy additional modules to your heart’s content
• Best of both worlds – exercise safe, but tons of storage also available
• built-in fm receiver
• built-in fm transmitter – tune it and broadcast your mp3 collection to your car or home stereo – this works really well
• handles voice and line-in recording – this also works really well

Things I don’t like:

• USB 1.1. Yup, it is frigging SLOW. Fortunately they’re moving to USB 2.0 so soon I will be able to trade in my 20gig usb 1.1 drive for a USB 2.0 one, but for now, it is fricking slow. And I would greatly prefer firewire.
• The software bundle so desperately wants to be iTunes on steroids but it’s really pretty weak compared to the real deal
• Swapping modules is a real pain in the ass. The mechanics of it are simple enough but getting the solid state module to remember the music you have in it is a slow, awkward struggle
• It’s big. Really big. Compared to an iPod, it’s ridiculously large. Fortunately the solid state module is small enough, but with the hard drive module attached the thing is huge
• Like the iPod, it has no user servicable parts, meaning you can’t swap the battery yourself, you have to send it in for service. At $12 this is not expensive, but it’s a pain in the ass nonetheless

So. On balance, I’m pleased with the purchase, though I will reserve final judgement until I have a USB 2.0 module on the thing. Now to find the perfect pair of ‘earbud’ headphones.

Oh and I should mention that these things are on sale right now, the bundle I bought usually goes for just over $400, but they’re 50% off as they clear inventory to make room for the USB 2.0 models, so if you’re at all tempted, now’s the time to go for it.

Masses of storage that is. Ok it’s a bad pun, but check out theXimeta NetDisk. I’m beginning to think this is the way I should move in terms of storage. Instead of stuffing multiple large capacity drives in each of my primary boxes (linux server, media box, gaming rig) I should move towards a networked attached storage model – one huge storage array and each machine sharing some partitioned space on that device. The Ximeta device isn’t quite right for that role, they max out at 160 gigs and at $300 cost a little too much, but the model is right -ethernet attached storage is clearly the way to go. What I really need is a drive array that uses Ximeta style firmware, ie a box I can stuff 800 gigs or so of drives into that sits on my network at the switch. Anyone know of such a device?

From the ‘I told you so’ department, check out how a recent review describes the emergence of RSS as a standard. I’m telling you, this is the next web browser – first email, then web browser, now this. If you haven’t already spent some time getting comfortable with an RSS aggregator, you’re missing out on a fabulous time saving tool. I also stumbled across another handy and recently updated list of available aggregators, though my opinions remain the same – FeedDemon on pc and Netwire News on OSX.

This is for you build it yourself PC types. Wondering why you bothered putting a floppy drive in that last PC you built up, then remembered Norton (Ghost, Virus checker, SystemWorks, whatever) or some other utility that still requires the use of the floppy drive? Check out this puppy and kill many birds with one stone. It’s a handy multi-format removable media memory card reader PLUS floppy that all fits into the floppy bay. I’m going to do a little digging on the quality of the drivers and if it seems good, score one for me.

In this case both literally and figuratively. You may have heard of carbon nano-tubes. Scientists have been talking about them for at least a decade and it has been speculated that if we could derive a way to manufacture them reliably they could become one of the strongest known manufacturing materials, and could enable us to develop a host of ‘jetson era’ tech, including my personal favorite, the space elevator.

Scientists at NEC revealed today that they have in fact invented a method for manufacturing them reliably. What’s interesting about this, which I didn’t know until today, is that this technology is also applicable to extending moore’s law. I still don’t know much about how they plan to overcome the ‘electrons jumping the gate’ problem, but this all sounds pretty damn promising. I still hold out hope that I’ll make it out into space in my lifetime, even if I am accompanied by a bossy little robo-assistant 😉 (see previous days postings for context on that one).

One other challenge remains in terms of the space elevator though, we have to figure out how to get the nanotubes to grow in long strands suitable for weaving cables. Stay tuned 😉

Voice over ip as a workable proposition is here. Check out Skype. Better sound quality than anything I’ve used to date, drop-dead easy to use, and for the time being anyway, free. PC only now but linux and mac clients are on the way, as are connections to the regular landline telephone network and a host of other features. There’s a great article at the register that gives a good overview of the tool. I’m tempus67, give me a call, evenings only 😉