Monthly Archives: September 2007

Gadgets

Sony's Rolly MP3 Player

Leave a comment

Sony has finally unveiled the Rolly after sending out some very fuzzy viral video of the player “in action.”  Here’s a link describing Sony’s attempt to combine an MP3 player with a robot.  My first thought is who is this devise intended for? ‘Tweens maybe, but then the price of $350 leaves me scratching my head.  I scratch my head even further when I realized those little dots that look like feet, may actually be the speakers (???) and there is no head phone plug.  Maybe it’s an expensive cat toy ???   A musical football???  $350!!!  1GB!!!  I think I’ll take the iPod touch or any other less expensive iPod or similar MP3 player from other manufacturers.

Maybe Sony should bring back Aibo and QRio and slap some big speakers on them.  Those would be much more interesting with musical capability and perhaps worth $350.  I thinking I’d be entertained watching a little QRio boogeying down on my desk.  People could bring them to work and we could have a big dance off … or something.  (You just got served).

General

A wonderful Blog: Hello Kitty Hell

2 Comments

A wonderful blog brought to you from a guy who has a love-hate relationship with Hello Kitty.  URL:  http://www.kittyhell.com/ I think the thing that makes this blog special is the depth of this guy’s obsession with Hello Kitty which he claims he hates.  He has so many Hello Kitty products lovingly documented — it almost feels like a shrine.  My question is whether this is about Hello Kitty or a man’s love for his wife who happens to be a Hello Kitty fanatic.   Hmmm…

I’m not a fan of Hello Kitty, but I do have the 2007 calendar in my cube because it is irresistibly adorable.  It came with stickers which I actually use to mark important dates (I have no idea what got into me with this calendar).  As a new year comes up, I’ll be looking for a new calendar.  Please send me some suggestions.  This year I really wanted to use my Hellsing calendar in my cube, but I wimped out because I figured lots of folks would find it sacrilegious.  It currently proudly hangs at home in my kitchen.  In 2006 I hung the “Funny Love” (Pucca and Friends) calendar in my cube.  I really liked that calendar :).

Anyhow, it’s amazing how a logo like Hello Kitty can be so pervasive for so long.

General

Indra Nooyi — CEO and President of Pepsi

Leave a comment

Here is a nice blog entry from Capitalist Chicks about Indra Nooyi.   Indra also said some nice things about employee appreciation and talent management.  Also, her story is a very interesting one about how a girl from India rose to become today’s most powerful business women in the US.  Please read it and be inspired :).

http://www.capitalistchicks.com/?q=node/120

Another nice article too:

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/2006-nooyi.php

Gadgets

Pano Logic’s Virtual Desktop — Do you Buy the Pitch?

Leave a comment

Here’s the link:  http://www.panologic.com/who-we-are/resources.php

Well, I’ve always something like this would be cool, but I don’t buy all the claims of no maintenance, no software, no CPU (GPU or memory), and rock solid security.  I’m sorry, but there is some basic hardward and coding needed to process images, handle peripherial input, and to shuffle data back and forth between the client and the server.  I’ve seen the way my weakest computer sputters when it has downloaded an application intensive webpage.  There’s a lot of operations going on inside a computer, so it seems to me that you would need a pretty FAT Internet pipe in order to handle the data in this virtual computing environment.  As for the security, well, fundamentally it makes no sense to me because the server can always be attacked.  It sounds to me, that anyone with a credential could go and cause problems.  Anyhow, I don’t know much about these things, but, this just doesn’t sound right.

Are there any experts out there who could explain how this would all work (in English please — I don’t understand network/CS speak)?  If this were seriously the case, then all video games could be played through virtualization and keeping up with the latest hardware would be out of the hands of the gamer.  In this way gaming would become a pure service like cable and it could be easily integrated into any entertainment device.