Apple Quality but Not the Premium? $400 Gets You the Same 27-Inch Panel Used in Their Displays (No Film School)
There’s actually fewer LCD panel manufacturers than there are brands. LG makes all of Apple’s displays, along with Dell, NEC, etc. My preferred panels are Dell Ultrasharps as they use high-end LG panels and have a wealth of input options. Some South Korean resellers have started putting LG panels up for sale on eBay for a fraction of the cost, and now Monoprice has gotten in on the action. 2 big differences – only DVI input, and no RGB controls. It will be interesting to see the results for the Monoprice monitor after running through tests by Anandtech and others. If the tests are good, I might be in the market for one of these babies.
Connectify Dispatch Merges Your Available Internet Connections into One Fat, Super-Fast Pipe (Life Hacker)
Connectify is a Windows app for network load balancing. This allows you to have multiple connections (DSL, cable, T1, 3G, etc) and balance your internet connection among them, and/or act as failover. This is popular in areas where some internet pipes are not reliable, and guaranteed uptime of services like T1 and fibre are too expensive (ie, where I live). In my area, T1 is 1.5Mbps Up and Down for $350/mo (99.999% guaranteed uptime); DSL is .8 Up and 1.3 Down for $50/mo; and business cable is 5 Up and 50 Down for $200/mo. So for $250/mo, you can get the burst speeds of cable, balanced with a second connection of DSL, which gives you the reliability of T1 (by having 2 connections) for $100 less per month. It’s even less if you get residential cable service, but the business tier has better speeds and MUCH better customer service. You can also add a Verizon MiFi as another failover. If you’re a restaurant running credit cards over the internet, failover systems pay for themselves the first time your main internet connection goes down.
This usually means buying an expensive router like those from Peplink and Mushroom Networks. But if you have a spare Windows box, you can get similar functionality in an app for $70. Not bad.
How to Travel Through 20+ Countries with Free Room and Board (4 Hour Work Week Blog)
I’m a bit of a travel hacker, so I love posts like this. This is about CouchSurfing.org and is one of the best distillations of the concept and how to do it. There’s also great advice about how to be a good guest at someone’s house (including your mom’s!). I just wish my tiny 400 square foot home in Jackson Hole, WY had enough space for me to be a couch surfing host.
Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore (Wired)
This article about Wired editor Mat Honan being hacked and subsequently having his digital life erased, is 2 months old, but is a really good read. Basically, your password doesn’t mean a damn thing, no matter how many random characters it is, because it can be reset so easily. It’s not about hacking passwords, it’s about hacking the system around them. This week, Google announced some things they’re working on to make passwords a thing of the past. We’ll see…
SUNDANCE PARTNERS WITH REELHOUSE TO TURN FILMMAKERS INTO SELF-DISTRIBUTION PROS (Fast Company)
Microsoft’s Epic Plan To Turn Your Living Room Into A Giant TV (Fast Company)
Microsoft’s version of Panasonic’s Ambilight. Whenever I see stuff like this, I just think of “Matinee” with John Goodman and the theater seats that pinched you. Meh.
Infographic of the Day: 64 Of The Coolest Guitars From The Past 100 Years (Fast Company)
Open the link. It’s a poster of one person’s selection of 64 “coolest” guitars. It’s for sale as a poster for $22 or a T-shirt for $16.
My Take: I thought it was going to be awesome. But then I looked at the poster closely and started reading the years, models and players, and I just started getting confused. And then I got angry. The images are terrible – they’re not pictures, but horrible single-color graphic approximations. The dimensions on most of the guitars is wrong. Some aren’t even the right model (see Johnny Cash’s 1964 Martin D-35 and pictured is a guitar that isn’t even a dreadnought). Jimmy Page’s #1 was a 1959, not a 1957 (which would make it a Goldtop and not a Standard). Slash very famously played a replica Les Paul when he was with Guns N Roses, not a 1959 Gibson. Chuck Berry played RED 335’s, not natural. The Strat that Jimi Hendrix burned at Monterey Pop in 1967 was not black. They even brag about how much time was spent researching and how each guitar was “painstakingly” reproduced. So far one person has commented, pointing out other flaws, and yet, this article has almost 1000 re-tweets and Facebook likes.
What makes me angry is that someone is making money selling this poorly researched and designed piece of shit. And some unsuspecting consumer like my dad will probably buy one for me as a gift thinking that I’ll find it really cool. I’ll have to smile and accept the gift, and then later take it out in the backyard and burn it before any of my guitar playing friends see it.
Let’s Cook (ProLost)
Stu of ProLost gives a hands-on review of the hard-to-categorize Blackmagic Cinema Camera.
My Take: Tons of potential, strange design and layout, when are they actually going to build the damn things at scale?, desperately needs a version 2.
How RCA Lost the LCD (IEEE Spectrum)
An interesting history on how RCA invented LCD (liquid crystal displays) almost by accident, and then lost the technology to overseas companies through bad management from above. A cautionary tale for companies that only give lip service to R&D, are afraid to experiment because the returns are questionable, and chase profits instead.