Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

Someone asked me if it is possible to fax from the internet to a normal landline fax number. I have never done this, and haven’t been able to find a service offering of the sort.

Do you know of a service like this? Obviously I need it to work to South African numbers, and preferably the service should be free

Let me know if you’re aware of something like this please?

I found a very interesting concept today: A printer which prints in pencil – and its got a built in eraser too!

If you’re interested to read more about this concept, read more at Yanko Design

Woohooo – I have received my invite to join Google Wave, and immediately joined. Now I’m not too sure if I’m missing something, but its not as exciting as I hoped :S

If any of you have any suggestions of what you enjoy most about Google Wave please share!

I think I still need to spend some more time on there to figure it out though. As mentioned in the about section, Google Wave is about sharing documents, photo’s, maps and more. Its about collaborating, and sharing information in a live environment – i.e. real time conversations.

I don’t have too many contacts on my account yet, and should probably give it a fair shot before I’m disappointed, but for now I can’t give it a thumbs up yet.

More About Google Wave

Lately it seems that South Africa is getting a lot of international attention. Caster Semenya, Winston the homing pigeon, and District 9…

It started off with Caster Semenya’s gender conspiracy. As most of us know by now the majority of opinions now believe that “she” is a hermaphrodite… I don’t have much on an opinion about whether or not a person like this should be allowed to compete. Yes, I guess it is not fair toward female competitors, but keep in mind that this is still a person – who did not ASK to be born this way. I think we should just try to keep this in mind, and search for the little bit of humaneness which still remains in us today. Read more @ The Guardian

Winston the homing pigeon got a short 2nd place (in my books in any case), where he beat the speed of Telkom’s ADSL… (No surprise here ) By the time that Winston had delivered the data card & the data had been downloaded, the Telkom download had progressed a mere 4%!! Aargh, South Africans cannot WAIT for a better connection!! Read more @ Daily Mail

And then lastly, but not least; District 9 – the very popular movie which was shot in South Africa, with a South African director, but which was also shown in the States. I’ve heard very good reviews about this, alas, I haven’t watched it myself. I’ll be sure to write a short review as soon as I have seen it! Read more @ District 9 – ABC News

Don’t you find it amazing that there are so many people, in so many different countries, each writing in there little space on the web.  Each sharing his or her opinion, and then in turn there are people reading their thoughts.

I find it amazing to think that I am part of this revolution!  Just think about our parents and grandparents.  They could probably not even imagine something like we have today.

Today we have blogs, Facebook, Myspace, and so the endless list goes on and on.  We’re literally living in a technological overdose.

To all of you who blog, I want to remind you that we’re all part of something new and incredible.  Something which has never happened on earth before.  What a priviledge to be part of this.

I’m loving it!

For all my fellow SIMS fans, SIMS 3 is soon to be released – June 2nd, its supposed to be on the shelves!! I’m extremely curious to see what they’ve come up with, and cannot wait to get my hands on it.

In the meantime, if you’re as bored with the old SIMS as me, here are some ways to kill your SIMS…

Electrocution. Really too random to be an effective murder tool. If a Sim with no Mechanical points attempts to repair an appliance, the result is almost always fatal. There is also a 1% chance of electrocution while changing a light bulb, regardless of Mechanical skill. This death can only affect family members, not neighbors or most NPC’s. Sims can also be electrocuted if they attempt to use an electric appliance while they are standing in water. This CAN kill neighbors and NPC’s.

Guinea Pig Disease. Again, another death that’s fairly random. If you don’t take proper care of the guinea pig, it may bite and infect your Sim with the dreaded Guinea Pig Disease. Unless steps are taken, the Sim will die from it. The disease apparently does not affect neighbors or NPC’s. The disease starts as mild cold, with minor coughing and the occasional sneeze, gradually progressing to a major illness, and eventually death. See below for cures, if you want to save your Sims for some weird reason.

Woodworkers Disease. One of the rarest deaths, continuously operating the woodworking table in a room with no windows may result in a Sim becoming ill. Cures are probably similar to those for the Guinea Pig Disease. This disease probably does not affect neighbors or NPC’s.

Spontaneous Combustion. The most extremely rare form of Sim death. I’ve only heard of this one, and never seen it. There is no known cause. The Sim just randomly bursts into flames. It is unknown if neighbors or NPC’s can suffer from this.

Slurm Overdose. The Slurm Vending Machine (It’s highly addictive!) is a download available on the Internet, it does not come with the Sims. It’s a fairly cheap vending machine, a mere $100. However, if your Sim drinks too much Slurm, he/she will double over in pain, collapse, and die. This may affect neighbors, but probably will not affect NPC’s.

Starve them. Remove all fridges, phones, anything that’s a way of getting your Sim fed. Removing the phone is important, because otherwise your Sims will keep calling for pizza (or Chinese after you have University). Your Sim will whine, cry, and yell at you for not feeding them, but ignore it. After they whine and cry for awhile, they’ll curl up into a ball and die.

Death via broken elevator.
This one took me a while to discover, as I hadn’t really made use of the extra building tools that came with the Open For Business expansion pack. The advent of elevators, however, has ‘opened new doors’ in the death arena. If you’ve got no handy mechanical Sims in your house (and are too cheap to hire a repairman), a poorly repaired elevator can send your Sim plummeting to his or her death in a quick trip to the bottom floor. Just like a bad soap opera.

Fire – rocket. You know those really cool outdoor rockets you can buy? Ever set one up inside? With lots of carpets surrounding it? And your Sim in the middle?

Burn them. Get a Sim that is bad at cooking. Buy the cheapest stove – or even better, a microwave. Cook a big dinner. Then let it burn away. For maximum effect, fill the room with wooden furniture and plants, and delete the door. Remember to remove any fire alarms, as this will automatically call the fire brigade. If all of your Sims are good cooks, buy the decoration that shoots fire. You can find it in Decorative/Misc. Simply place it adjacent to any item in the room, including your Sim.
Buy a fireplace and a heart-shaped rug. Place the rug in front of the fireplace and light a fire. Before long, the rug will catch fire. You can also buy a rug made of flowers, found in the Decorative/Misc. section

Fire Storm. The absolute most spectacular way to commit mass-murder. Simply place rugs through a room, so that the rugs overlap each other. Leave one square uncovered. Then place the model rocket launcher in the room. When someone launches a rocket, it will land in that one empty square and the entire room will ignite at once. The number of flames appearing could potentially crash a slower computer, so try not to make the fire too big. Because you can easily kill a dozen or more Sims at once, it may take the Grim Reaper several minutes to collect all the dead. This will kill anything in the room, including neighbors and NPC’s.

Drown them. Get a pool with no ladder, just a diving board. Make your Sim jump into it. They will soon drown. Or, if you have Seasons, tell them to jump into the pool; you won’t need a diving board. A relative can’t plead with the grim reaper because they can’t access the death site, so the drowned Sim has no opportunity to be revived.

Do a double whammy. Create a family of about 8 Sims and just put them on a lot. No house, nothing else and just hit that fast-forward key until the grim reaper shows up. Once everyone’s dead, exit, but do not bulldoze the lot. Place another family on the lot (feel free to build a house this time if you like). Do this often enough and you will have a lot full of urns and tombstones in no time.

Watch clouds/stargaze without a telescope. If you wait long enough, a satellite will fall down and crush your Sim.

Make them talk on the phone a long time. Each time they use the phone (not the cell phone that comes with University) there is a small chance the phone will burst into flames. This only works if they are cooking in a different room.

Scare your sim to death. After you’ve killed all of the other Sims, their ghosts may very well scare the living daylights out of your survivors.

Allow your Sim to be eaten alive by vicious bugs. Put your Sim in a narrow hallway filled with rotting food/dirty dishes. Stepping on a tile with rotten food carries a small chance that a swarm of flies will engulf your Sim.

Refuse to care for a sick Sim, and it will die from its own illness (unless that illness is morning sickness). Also, you can’t die from a cold, but colds turn into pneumonia, which can kill you.

Build a small room to trap them in (1X1 with no door should be fine). Enable the movement cheat (type “moveObjects on” exactly as it is seen here, minus the quotes, into the cheat box. The cheat box can be displayed by pressing Ctrl, Shift, and C at the same time) and, in Buy Mode or Build mode, use the Hand tool to drop your Sim into the room.

Bring up the cheat box and type “boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true”, and then hold down the shift button and click on the Sim you want to kill. Go through the menu until you see the spawn option. Click on it, then go to Rodneys death creator. A little tombstone will appear next to your Sim, click on it, and chose the way your Sim dies.

Get a Sim to use the most expensive telescope for a very long time. Every time he uses the telescope between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. there is a 5% chance he will be abducted by aliens. Rarely, the aliens do not return him. If it is an adult male, and he is returned, he will return pregnant with an alien baby.

Download the InSimenator. This program comes with many of the methods listed above, such as “Dying of Fright”, sickness, fire, satellite, so on and so forth. There is also an option to have your sim of old age. Find it here [1]. You must register for a free account first, however.

Laganaphyllis Simnovorii. Otherwise known as a ‘Cow Plant’, the Laganaphyllis Simnovorii dangles a piece of something that looks like cake from its mouth, luring your guests into its clutches and an early death. Your Sim, meanwhile, gets to enjoy another full five days of life from the resulting elixir. You couldn’t ask for a better pet really. The Laganaphyllis Simnovorii also makes up for having to wear nothing but fig leaves once you’ve reached the top of the Natural Science career path. I thought nothing could beat the Cow Plant, until I remembered the dread…

Death Island. Are those pesky visitors always annoying you? Then here’s an easy and fun way to get rid of them! Build your dream house and add a little something extra. A Swimming Pool Moat all the way round your house. On the side the side-walk is on, place a diving board. On the side your house is on, place a ladder. This means that your visitors come along, dive into your moat and climb up on the other side to ring your doorbell. But when they leave they climb into the moat but can’t get out as there is only a diving board there. Their only option is to return to Death Island, but instead they drown or die of hunger.

Online backups are becoming more and more popular. Its so much more convenient than having to carry your memory stick, or portable hard drive along.

You might know I’m close to paranoid about making backups. I have lost data before, due to my PC hard drives crashing (repeatedly), and I know the feeling of not being able to get back your photo’s or emails.

Even business documents and your CV is safe and secure with iBackup. For only $9.95 / month for 5GB you will have peace of mind, knowing that your data is safe from harm.

Some things can just never be replaced, and I strongly suggest that you keep these in a place where you know they won’t get hit by lightning, stolen, or just plain lost.

So finally, when I have a few moments to sit down, pick up my pen… I mean,… Sit at my PC and type I don’t have much news, except that I got the Rooibos for Beth, Christine & Joe, and will send it off . I am so glad that its weekend, but aren’t we all?

So instead of boring you with my monotonous daily routine or something like that, I will show you what options you have if you’re upgrading your mobile phone sometime in the nearby (or not so nearby) future…..Some of these really remind me of the horrible 60’s films which were made about the ‘future’.

1 . Nokia 888 Communicator
Nokia definitely has the most interesting concept phones. Nokia 888 Communicator is a striking futuristic concept phone. The phone, which uses liquid batteries, speech recognition, flexible touchscreen and touch-sensitive body cover,is designed by Tamer Nakisci and won the Nokia Design Award

2 . Nokia Aeon
Nokia Aeon was presented by Nokia on their website in the Research & Development section. What is so great about this phone is that it looks like it will actually go into production next February. Of course, its just a rumor, but still, makes us hope to actually see it someday in the GSM shop. All we know about it for now is that its a touchscreen phone and it looks fantastic.

3 . Sky “Sleak n Slim”
“Sleek & Slim” from SKY is another concept based on touchscreen technology. The phone has a discretely glowing touch-pad, hideaway keys and generally utterly-fashionable minimalist design.

4 . Benq-Siemens “Snaked”
Benq designers thought of women too and presented Snaked. This is a “reptile” looking phone, creepy somehow, but still is very cool. The Snaked is a fashion phone for sport loving women, because it also has body monitoring sensors to help the ladies keep those fine shapes. Somehow similar to the Snaked concept, the NEC Tag is a flexible phone concept that can be , for example, hung from a belt or wrapped around the user’s arm. Interesting is that the phone has shape-memorizing material and sensors that allows the phone to change its shape according to the mode.

5 . What You See is What You Get Concept
One thing is for sure about this concept phone…they could’ve named it shorter. Designed by Pei-Hua Hang, the phone’s name comes from the fact that this concept no longer uses an LCD as viewfinder for the digital camera, instead it uses a transparent frame. And of course, interaction is made through a touchscreen.

6 . Retroxis By Dark Label
If most phones presented here will never be sold in store for sure, the Retroxis concept phone from Dark Label looks kinda human, and makes us hope we’ll be able to get one of these one day. Designed by Lim Sze Tat the phone is encased in high polished polycarbonate renowned for its lightweight and toughness and has an invisible OLED display that silently hides away when inactive.

7 . Benq-Siemens “The Blackbox”
Black Box designed by Benq-Siemens uses a touch screen as its keypad and, depending on the functions you are using, the touch screen changes the control layout immediately.

8 . NEC Tag
Somehow similar to the Snaked concept, the NEC Tag is a flexible phone concept that can be , for example, hung from a belt or wrapped around the user’s arm. Interesting is that the phone has shape-memorizing material and sensors that allows the phone to change its shape according to the mode.

9 . TripleWatch
Though the idea of a cellphone watch is not so new, the TripleWatch designed by Manon Maneenawa has an interesting triple flip technique that allows the user to transform the watch into a normal cellphone. When used as a wrist watch, the phone has a speaker button that allows the user to answer the phone and hang up while driving.

10 . Asus Aura
And here’s another concept phone – Asus Aura, produced by Hungarian design company Egy Studio for Taiwanese vendor. It was clearly inspired by iPhone, although it has some interesting innovations addressing commonly mentioned shortcomings of Apple’s cellphone.
Asus Aura Concept Phone. One of them is a movable navigation module with navigation buttons, another – a sliding QWERTY keyboard that should make text entry much easier. Other features of Asus Aura include – 3,9″ touchscreen covering the whole surface of the phone, 2 megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot, GSM, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. All of this in a 6mm thick package. Unfortunately Asus Aura is just a concept so far and will stay that way probably a few years.

You know I am always going on about backups. I cannot stress this enough. It is important to make backups. Even if its of things you think you will never use again.
I got myself a 250GB external hard drive a while ago, which works like a charm (If I remember to backup obviously).

But for those of you who do not have something like this, its now easier than ever. For $9.95 per month for 5GB you use IBackup’s Online Storage.
You can sign up for the free trial on their website just to make sure that it is what you want. Pretty cool, huh?

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash……..Twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.