inbae’s blog | [ i n b a e b a y . c o m ]

Theremins are antique electronic invention by a smart Russian fella, Leon Theremin, from years ago. You change the pitch by moving your right hand closer to or farther from the vertical antenna, and change the volume by moving your left hand to and from the loop. And you can play music! It’s wacky, makes the sound that you would hear in old movies when aliens appear or try to talk to you.

Some modern adaptations: Super Mario and Claire de Lune. (The latter played by Leon’s very own niece.)

Undercover is a cool app that might just save you your most valuable investment - Macbooks! It silently runs on the background, and the server constantly gets updated with your laptop’s whereabouts. When you report theft, the company starts tracking the location of the laptop, as well as take a snapshot of the thief with the iSight. And they boast 86% recovery rate. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me.

Thanks to a friend of mine (whom I actually can’t remember at the moment… oops) I’ve been trying out Mint.com, a web app for personal finance. Want to know why I like it? Here are the bullet points:

• It’s free.
• It looks nice.
• It lets you keep track of all your online accounts at once.
• It gives you a nice overview of your all transactions, your past spending habit/history by category. You can actually compare yours to other people’s - by country, state, and city. So far I’ve been doing good up against all SFers.

They claim to be secure, and I’ll believe that for now. One key feature that’s missing is being able to keep track of your cash reserve in your wallet, and as far as I’m concerned there is no option to add an account for that. Ooh, also, no way to add custom categories. But we’ll see if those will be added in the future.

WordPress is now just one tap away from iPhone users like myself, if you have downloaded the app from the App Store. It’s free, light and works well for me so far. Now I can take pictures with my phone and post them straight to my blog too. (That’s my housemate frantically coding away while we ride on the train to work.) The only qualm I have is that the app doesn’t look up your own tags that you have saved up on your server like your browser does on your computer. I wonder if they can add that feature… Does Mac OS Mobile support that kind of asynchronous transaction? I dunno. All and all, this is a good addition to this blog, you know, having me post articles wherever I go, as long as I have cell tower reception.

Today is an exciting day for all existing iPhone users because the software 2.0 is out. So even if you don’t have iPhone 3G you can still update yours and reap all the benefits (sans GPS functionality, pretty much) that the Team Extraordinaire at Apple has done for the universe.

I have alreay added a bunch of cool free apps, such as AIM, Facebook, Pandora Radio, Apple’s Remote, and so on. The AIM client lets you stay logged on without having to worry about lag or disconnection. I personally tested that even if you return to the home screen, you remain signed in. All the messages that other users have sent during that time will be cued up and later on pop up as new messages when you enter the app again. It’s nice. (I have signed up for another screen name just for my iPhone, so add “inbaebay” and you’ll see me more ubiquitously logged in!) Same goes for the Facebook app - you can pick it back up right where you left without having to re-load the page or signing in again. (This might be somewhat of a tricky thing if you care about your privacy, but then I guess you just have to trust your friends, or just have it auto-lock with password.) Pandora Radio lets you log into your account and listen to the music just the way you can on your computers! Free, live internet radio on your phone! Even on EDGE network it works, it just gets choppy depending on your signal reception. Lastly, the ultimate-chic-hot-pimp app… the Remote lets you control your iTunes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK, if you can’t picture it in your head… Imagine you’re having a party at your place, and a song that you don’t like is on, so you just pull out your phone and *boop*, Next. I will be taking 100% advantage of this one. I love you, whoever came up with this idea.

Maybe later on I’ll pay for some of the apps, especially games, like the Super Monkey Ball, if I deem them worthy. But I can definitely see myself playing that on the way to work every morning or so. If you have any suggestions on what apps I should download, let me know! And I hope you can get a chance to enjoy this sweetness too sooner or later - if you sign up for a new AT&T plan you won’t be paying that much for a new iPhone 3G, or maybe even just the old one, since people who had them for a year will probably thinking of selling them to upgrade. That would also include me. This iP3G will sell so hot it will be ridiculous… I forsee most people who didn’t get the first one due to one reason or another will be satisfied with the newer one, no?

This new virus for Macs called Newton is rather designed for pranks. Which might be a goal for some hackers or virus authors. It makes your icons on your desktop, along with the top bar, gravitated. Yeah. Seriously.

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Here are some tips through which you can follow in order to extend the lifespan and the maximum capacity of your beloved Apple products’ battery life. Some of the stuff I knew already, but for example, keep the battery charged around 50% for an extended period of time to keep the chemical charges active when storing for a long period of time, or don’t plug in your portables for more than a month straight, I didn’t know.  This may apply to all other electronic products that contain lithium-ion batteries, but meh.

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Bill Gates is coming to CMU! This is the last stop of his farewell-tour all over the country before he finally steps down from his throne. As much as I’m not a fan of MS’s products or policies in general, I gotta give the man a big, big credit for what he has done. His commitment to give back to the society will be a big part of this talk.

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An interesting article about the hacking contest that took place last year and this year. Last year, the price for hacking into a Mac computer was $10,000, this contest created awareness in the computer community and also resulted in numerous patches for the QuickTime. Apparently, this year, the same contest will be held for three platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. If you’re a hacker, you should probably consider partaking in this contest. I’m not geek-smart enough. You all know that.

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Passport cards in place of regular passport books for border people who need to travel to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean region frequently. RFID chips handle all the work. I’ve heard that Europe already has a similar system. (I put it under gadgets because I thought for an average person this will come by as pretty high-tech.)

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