Beneath the Peak

The developers of Foobar2000, an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform, have released V1.0. Foobar2000 is a wonderful piece of software that I’ve used for the past five years. It’s stable, elegant and very configurable., and it plays just about anything you can throw at it. Previous versions had a bit of a [...]

I was one of the many people who received an Amazon Kindle for Christmas. It’s been an interesting experience. Initially, I was skeptical because I haven’t enjoyed reading books on a computer. In fact, I’ve downloaded several books that I never finished. I’m also a fan of open source software and distrust closed systems. To [...]

…is a very talented man. But why am I not filled with confidence by the appointment of Microsoft’s former chief security executive as the new cybersecurity czar for the United States? (Insert obligatory BSOD joke here) Share/Save

As an expat living in Hong Kong for nearly two decades, I’ve made my peace with the the city and (most of) its idiosyncrasies. But there are still some things that puzzle me, like why we use U.K.-standard electrical plugs. These beasts are big enough to power an arc welder, but are fitted to devices [...]

Last week, Google released version 3.5 of Picassa, their free software for managing digital photos, which now includes face-recognition capabilities. Picassa scans the photos on your hard drive, groups the similar ones and lets you tag them with peoples’ names and locations using Google maps. It’s a very powerful piece of technology and it gave [...]

Wired has an interesting piece on the rise of “good enough” products, like Flip video cameras and the MP3 players. These products combine simplicity, essential features and usability in a way that makes them more popular than superior technologies. Here are two more technologies that didn’t make it into the Wired story, but that are [...]

I’m now in the homestretch with my second book, which is about Japanese real estate. Unsurprisingly, that involves lots of time on Japanese corporate sites. Today, I found this FireFox extension, which delivers near real-time translations of Web pages, without the need to visit Google Translate, pick a language and enter a URL. While the [...]

… and was disappointed to discover that “Barrington’s Smuj” doesn’t exist. Smuj, which was featured in the Patent Pending column in yesterday’s How to Spend It magazine from the Financial Times, was billed as a biodegradable, non-greasy moisturizer that prevents your face from being captured by CCTV cameras. There’s an idea whose time has come. [...]

After five years and countless miles, my Sony Vaio  PCG-TR2 has finally died. Sony was ahead of the curve with this small, relatively lightweight laptop, which was a precursor to the netbooks that are now so popular. I bought it for delivering PowerPoint presentations and writing and managing email while traveling, all of which it [...]

Previously, all you had to worry about was ensuring you had a spare overhead projector bulb. Now, there’s a new consideration: audiences who Twitter while you speak. The Pistachio Consulting blog has some helpful suggestions for managing Twitterers from the podium. The post’s author, Olivia Mitchell, sees Twittering as something that is potentially positive, increasing audience [...]