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Here’s a cool wireless E-book from Amazon, the Amazon Kindle.  The Amazon Kindle allows you to access the Amazon store via its EDVO connection (meaning you don’t have to connect to WiFi) and buy books that will get downloaded to your Kindle.

I think you can say this new Kindle is more like the iPod for books.  Of course, I really like it except the fact that the Kindle is still in black and white.  But if you are a book-fanatic and you have thousands of books in collection, you might want to consider this E-book that can hold almost 200 books.

Aside from buying books, you can also read blogs, access Wikipedia, all this paid for by Amazon. (the EDVO connection)

Well, if you like it, knock youself out and get one at Amazon here.

I was kinda bitter yesterday that Palin let her Yahoo e-mail account be hacked. Well, I am even more bitter now that the Palin’s e-mail hacker responded with how he/she “hacked” Palin’s e-mail account.

Here’s the excerpt:

after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…

It seems that her account password was very easy to crack using public information.  Well, there goes the Alaskan mayor’s governor’s credibility down the drain.

via michellemalkin

Don’t mind the post title as this DIY shows you how to make hydroponics unit for growing anything.

Aside from people with medical marijuana licenses who live in San Francisco and can legally grow several pot plants, the hydroponic system can be used for growing your own organic vegetables and what not.

My wife teaches 8th grade science. This project “The Hydroshack” is a rendition of one I built over 20 years ago in my college teaching methods class. It is designed specifically for performing experiments in a science class. It therefore incorporates some modifications for flexibility and control purposes. It also needs to be collapsible for storage in tight quarters. If you are considering building something similar for your home, it can be less complex.

via instructables

Of course, if you don’t want to build one yourself, here’s some resources too:

Hydroponics.com sells bunch of nutrients and other hardware needed for home-growing.

All about Hydroponics at Wikipedia.

Hydroponics.net sells bunch of stuff for home-growing too.

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Stealth Pennycam is pretty amazing in that it can capture video but it isn’t stealth anymore if we know about it… Well, I guess it can work for petty thieves who don’t use the internet anyways.

The PennyCam is concealed within a Take-A-Penny, Leave-A-Penny tray, and connects to a DVR using a standard BNC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC cable, which can be run underneath the counter. The USD$199 unit is powered by a 12vdc adapter, and delivers 500×582 pixel images with its 1/3” Sony CCD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCD Image Sensor.

via gizmag

Recently, I’ve been noticing that more and more laptop manufacturers are putting Linux on their mini-notebooks inluding the Eec PCs.

Continue reading ‘Linux starting to take over the world with Mini-notebooks and netbooks!’

Sony is accelerating their production of larger OLED TVs.

Why?

OLED TVs are obviously better than traditional TVs due to their lower power while high output, meaning brighter, better pictures. There’s also Samsung, who is working on their own OLED TVs.

The question will remain which big TV manufacturer will win the race. The competition might be all too good for consumers and we should expect to be able to buy a 102″ OLED TV for around $2000 in the next couple years.

According to a Sony report straight from its Japan headquarters, its young OLED TV-display production unit will be funded with a $210-million investment in larger screens (over 16-inches at least) and will ramp-up by the end of 2008. This will put it in place for a full-line release of TVs in late 2009 or early 2010. Sony was the first manufacturer to launch a legitimate (if very expensive) OLED TV option, the XEL-1, late last year.

via wired

Quick Tips: What is an OLED? (via WIkipedia)

A significant benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. Because there is no need to distribute the backlight, an OLED display can also be much thinner than an LCD panel. OLED-based display devices also can be more effectively manufactured than LCDs and plasma displays.

Here’s a video of a Sony OLED TV from CES 2008:

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Well, to promote our new hack search engine, GooHack, we will be doing “GooHack searches of the Day” daily and try to find some interesting new hacks for all you hacker readers.

So to start out, I did a Goo Hack search on the term “Goo” and found some interesting stuff:

How to make glow stick goo - Lol… I really need this guy next time I am at a rave.

The future of Goo - Yey, goo is officially awesome and being continually improved by companies.

How to make Nasa-grade Space Goo - Don’t you just love Goo?

What is Goo exactly?

Goo is a term for a slimy, shapeless mass. - according to Wikipedia

Here’s what Alex from Net-Entrepreneur posted about SiteHoppin:

Soju is a distilled beverage native to Korea and traditionally made from rice. Soju is clear in color and typically varies in alcohol content from about 20% to about 45% alcohol by volume, with 20% being most common. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soju)

 

Max Lee, a very drunk, Korean-American guy from California has developed a “stumble” service that helps Entrecard users drop-till-they drop, with a press of a button. Browser within browser technology used for this service rids the user (you) of the need to install toolbars of any kind.

It is now possible, for the addicted Entrecardist, to save a considerable amount of time dropping the daily maximum number of cards. It is available at www.sitehoppin.com. Just set the tag to Entrecard and hop away.

I admit trying this for a couple of times myself, when it was really, really late to do anything else, and it works! A big surprise, considering Max’ drunkenness.

 

Since Entrecard is not really my cup of tea, what is entertaining is Max’ blog, at www.sitehoppin.com/blog. Constantly drunk, Max provides the latest SiteHoppin news and development updates, his personal standpoints, ramblings and other ingredients for a good laugh – all in COLOR video. Which is good for your tired minds and eyes, after a long day of hard work.

via Net-Entrepreneur

This might comes to a shock to some of you but yes, Google’s search engine dominance in South Korea is less than 2%. Proof?

Here’s an image I got from a blog post from Korea:

As you can see in the above graph, Naver.com is dominant with over 70% market share, Daum.net with 12%, Yahoo at 7%, Empas.com at 2%, and Google at the last place. The above graph is from last year but it probably hasn’t changed much a year later.

Why is it that the famous PageRank not working for the South Koreans?

Answer is simple. Google’s Algorithm is geared toward the English language. As soon as you put another language, the algorithm no longer works. (This is not the case with all languages such as Spanish, French, or other languages derived from Latin)

Even me, I remember rarely using Google in Korea unless I wanted to find something in English. (Funny thing is, as soon as I come back to the US, I am ONLY using Google…)

How did Naver.com take so much market share? They don’t have an algorithm.

From what I hear on the news and my friends over in Korea, Naver has like 100,000 people working at their company adding and editing their search engine results daily.

Basically, Naver is a “human” powered search engine, sorta like what founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is building right now, the Wikia. You can check out Wikia’s new alpha version of the search engine here.

I tried the Wiki search engine but the results? very mediocre indeed. But I do remember when Wikipedia first started appearing on the internet, the Wikipedia content was so crap back then I didn’t think it’d get so big today.

I think Wikia has a chance at grabbing a big share of the search engine market if they can start picking up more users. We will give it some time and come back to this topic later down the road.

Although there have been rumors that Wikia may not be so successful at taking some share of the search engine market from Google, this study proves that the “PageRank” algorithm can be beaten in other countries.

FYI, Korea has about 15 Million internet users. Naver.com makes about $15 million in revenue annually. (Nothing compared to Google but why isn’t Google at the top with the billions of dollar they have? I mean, they did open an office in Korea couple years back too.)

The point of this story?

Not that Wikia might get some of the market share but that search engine markets in other countries are still vulnerable to young MBA graduates (or dropouts) like Sergey Brin.

I apologize if you can’t read Korean and all my sources are in Korean but I have only translated them and all sources are from respectable blogs in Korea.