The last thing we want is to cut off resources from our readers, but we feel that a day of protest is the right thing to do.  Without the sites, there is no World Wide Web.  The people are in charge, not the government and media companies!  #STOPSOPA

Android Design

In an attempt to reign in the variety of design styles within Android applications, Google unveiled Android Design.  It’s a site that was released specifically to give developers ideas on how to make their Android Apps look and feel more integrated into the Android operating system.  The site includes design principles, an overview of UI, and many other design related resources for Android developers to take advantage of.

As expected, the Android Design site itself is quite beautiful.  Their message about design and UI concepts would probably not carry much weight if they weren’t presented with great design in mind.  It seems that the search giant is starting to see that focusing on simplicity and keeping design tasteful will help them win in the long run.  My primary complaint about Android thus far has always been that it feels too cluttered.  Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), along with design help like this, will help to alleviate that complaint and push Android even further into the market share lead.

International CES 2012

Well, it’s that time of year again.  You know…that time of year when every other tech geek blogger is usually spouting off about the next best technologies being demo’d at CES.  For anyone that doesn’t know, CES is the world’s largest consumer electronics tradeshow.  In fact, it’s epic in size.  Some 3,000 companies show up to peddle their latest tech to the masses.  And every year, the “experts” predict the next top consumer technologies from the heap of contenders.  The issue that I take with CES is that inevitably, the most hyped technologies turn out to be total duds once they hit the market.

Remember 2009?  The hot tech buzz coming out of CES 2009 was Palm’s webOS.  How’d that work out?  Oh that’s right, Palm ended up near death and got purchased by HP only to see their precious webOS get turned into an even bigger failure in the tablet market.  Another hyped product from CES 2009 was the “Netbook”.  Remember these?  I know several people who actually got one.  Cheap, low spec laptops designed with couch web surfing in mind.  The result?  Enter the tablet, exit the netbook.

How about 2010?  Well, everyone was certain that 3D television would be the next smash hit.  Cut to a couple years later and 3D television isn’t really any further along than it was then.  I’ve seen 3D television in action before and it’s kinda cool.  It probably isn’t going anywhere as a technology, but it will probably never be a true selling point.

Well, what about last year?  CES 2011 was the year of the Android Tablets!  Something like 100 different Android based tablets were splashed around in front of the cheering ocean of consumer geeks.  They were ALL going to give the Apple iPad a run for its money.  I LOVE Android tablets.  I prefer a good Android tablet to the iPad.  However, MY opinion doesn’t translate into financial success for a technology.  The masses wanted iPads.  Most of the tablets exhibited at CES 2011 never made it to the marketplace at all.

So what’s my point?  When I see every tech blog out there spraying nonsense into the ether about this technology or that technology based on reports from CES, I get frustrated.  Ultra Definition Television?  Really?  They aren’t even trying anymore.  Flying cars, robot servants, holographic video phones…The utopian technolust world of The Jetsons sadly seems like a fallacy.  Perhaps, the best we can do is get The Jetsons boxset in 3D.

Funding Breakdown for SOPA

With SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA still looming, I have been coming across lots of ways to gain access to websites during a government shutdown of the internet.  Everything from dial-up modems to creating a mesh wireless network for communicating with others.  In the event of a DNS shutdown, all sites that have a dedicated IP address will still be reachable.  All you have to do is enter the IP.  Here’s an emergency list of IP’s for such a situation:

Amazon's shipping manager ensures every box is correct before it ships.

With the holiday season in full swing, I really try to be a good consumer and do much of my shopping earlier in the month of December. And because the local malls and stores are filled to the brim with people who seem to lose their minds when presented with merchandise, I also try to do the bulk of the shopping online.

I’ve been an Amazon Prime subscriber for over 2 years now, and I really must say that it is an excellent service. For around $80 a year (less for students-YAY!) you get free 2-day shipping on all prime eligible purchases, as well as other perks like access to free online streaming movies and cloud storage. If you’re a busy professional or student, the service will pay for itself very quickly. I find myself ordering more and more items from Amazon, even things like peanut butter, because they are cheaper, and hey, the shipping is now free!

With all that being said, I recently received a coupon for the Home Shopping Network, and their website, hsn.com. I know what you are thinking. “What did Beef buy at 3am on TV to get this coupon?” Well the answer would be nothing, but the coupon was good for $20 off any $40 order, so I figured I would use it. I made my purchase online on December 13, well before any deadlines for shipping in time Christmas. And then, I waited.

I waited some more.

No updates. No emails. No tracking information. No shipping status. Nothing.

Finally, becoming a little concerned, I called HSN on December 21, and I was assured that the item would still arrive by the 23rd. I wake up the next morning on the 22nd, and what do I see waiting for me in my email box but a message from HSN.

My order was cancelled, 3 days before Christmas. No explanations, no apology, just cancelled.

Thankfully, Amazon came to the rescue, as they had the same item in stock, and I was able to upgrade my shipping to overnight through my prime account for only $4. Item is en route on a UPS truck as I type this. So I guess the moral of the story is Amazon rocks, and HSN can kick rocks. Thanks Amazon!

More info on Amazon Prime is available here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/prime/ref=footer_prime/192-1036267-6037003

Google Robot Car

A few days ago, Google landed a patent for a control method for a robotic vehicle.  The specifics are even cooler!  The vehicle’s ability to change from being human-controlled to autonomous was featured in the patent request.  Using visual indicators like barcodes or RFID tags, the car will be able to switch from one mode to another.

Imagine taking a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  Now imagine that I-5 (the majority of the drive) was setup to support autonomous vehicles using RFID or roadside barcodes.  You would only need to drive your car to I-5 from which point the car would take over and you could kick back and enjoy the ride all the way down I-5!  Pretty cool huh?

A car could, for example, drive to a specific location and based on a visual indicator on a “landing strip,” such as a bar code or radio tag, the car would then transition to autonomous operation. One could imagine, for example, bringing a car to a roadway dedicated to autonomous vehicles where the transition would take place.

One of the obvious benefits to autonomous vehicles is a reduction in traffic accidents.  It will also help relieve the stress of long road trips and commutes.  We are, of course, a long way from having the infrastructure for such an undertaking.  However, the fact that this patent was awarded to a company with so many resources is very promising!

Eclipse

A while back, we published an article chock full of free apps.  There was a lot of stuff that we left out though.  One of the glaring holes was in the Programming/Development section.  We completely left out Eclipse.  One reason for this is that Eclipse isn’t really an app.  It is an entire development environment.  The project is completely open source and it is one of the most powerful resources available to developers…and it’s free!  So, what is Eclipse exactly?

About Eclipse

From their website: Eclipse is an open source community, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services.

Where to Download

You can find the Eclipse Project at http://www.eclipse.org.

What do those html hex values for colors actually mean?  Well, I intend to explain it as clearly as possible right here.  HTML colors aren’t supposed to be complex or confusing.  The hex values are six digits following a (#) sign.  The six digits are actually 3 pairs of digits.  Each pair represents either Red, Green, or Blue (RGB).  The lowest value that a pair can get is 00.  The highest value that a pair can get is FF.  So, #000000 is the lowest RGB value possible.  #00FF33 has the lowest possible value for Red (first pair), the highest possible value for Green (second pair), and the value “33″ for Blue (third pair).

With all three colors allowing values from 0 to 255, there are a total of 16 Million colors.  I know this isn’t anything ground breaking, but I have found that while many people are familiar with the #FFFFFF hex notation, very few actually know what the hex values mean and how to use that information to tweak colors.

Below is a nice color chart to help you find most of the hex values you’ll need for web sites:

Space Elevators and Lunar Landers

There is a top secret lab in the Bay Area called Google X.  Some might think that this is where top secret proprietary software and search algorithms are researched and developed.  In reality, Google X has nothing to do with Google’s current software or search engine interests.  The lab is devoted to planning the future of the human race.

Lofty projects including space elevators and personal robots are rapidly being researched and developed at Google X.  There is an elite group of engineers working on a list of 100 of these projects.  Many of them are focused on robots, and with security that is run as “mysteriously as the CIA”, you could only imagine how advanced some of this research must be!