think of a better title

Netflix have offerred a million dollar prize to anyone who could improve their prediction algorithm 10%.

The leaderboard is already showing a 5.58% improvement, this is likely to be one of the best $1 million Netflix ever spent.

Inventor and singularity Evangelist Ray Kurzweil chats on TED illustrating the increasingly exponential evolution of technology, predicting a sharp rise in computing capability, robotics and life expectancy within the next 15 years. He outlines the “shocking ways” we’ll use technology to augment our own capabilities, forever blurring the lines between human and machine

Just got home from watching Martin Scorseses The Departed and thoroughly recommend it. It’s a real return to form with excellent performances throughout. I’ve never really been a DeCaprio fan and thought Nicholson was past his best but they were both excellent in this , as were the supporting cast.

I gave up playing computer games once it became obvious that I couldn’t get anywhere without reading the instruction manual and then dedicating hour upon hour learning strategy and shortcuts (oh and having three kids didn’t help). However with the upcoming Wii from Nintendo that just may change, an article in this weeks Economist states
“The main problem with modern games, he says, is that they require players to invest enormous amounts of time. As lifestyles have become busier, leaving less time for gaming, the industry has moved towards epic games which take dozens of hours to complete. This is leading some occasional gamers to stop playing and deterring non-gamers from giving it a try, says Mr Iwata. There are other factors too: novices are put off by the need to master complex controllers, festooned with buttons, triggers and joysticks. And not everyone wants to escape into a fantasy gaming world. “That attracts avid gamers,” he says, but can make it “difficult for people to become interested in games”.

Nintendo set out to reach beyond existing gamers and expand the market. This would involve simpler games that could be played for a few minutes at a time and would appeal to non-gamers or casual gamers (who play simple games on the web but would not dream of buying a console). They would be based on new, easy-to-use controls. And they would rely on real-life rather than escapist scenarios. This was not an entirely new approach: dancing games that use cameras or dance mats as controllers have proved popular in recent years. But Nintendo began to design entire games consoles around such ideas.”

Looks like I’ve got a present on my xmas list (for the kids of course )

Yes I know iTV is due out early next year but I thought I’d get the jump on this by purchasing the Elgato EyeHome device.

I managed to get one with a wireless bridge for 80 GBP, probably due to Elgato dropping the EyeHome as soon as Apple announced iTV (theres been some talk on the forums that Apple and Elgato have partnered to produce the iTV)

Set up of the EyeHome was extremely simple and within 5 minutes I was streaming movies, itunes and iphoto from my iMac to my TV. It’s also fairly easy to set up streaming from my EyeTV DTT by getting VLC to do the streaming to a web browser

Some EyeHome drawbacks I’ve can see are:

• general UI weaknesses (e.g. sorting limitations, awkward menu navigation)
• no menu/navigation with DVD content (not really EyeHome’s problem)
• no H.264 or DRM support (hurray - I dont buy DRM’d media )
• can’t remotely control/program EyeTV
• clumsy content navigation (e.g. fast forward/rewind)
• no stop/resume memory

The combination of those last two items makes it frustrating to return to previous locations after stopping playback for any reason.

Hopefully iTV will support the iTunes equivalent of “remember playback position”. And being able to interact with EyeTV would be ideal, probably dependent on Apple/Elgato cooperation.

EyeHome has no trouble handling any supported media streamed over my not-fully-optimized 802.11g WLAN

I don’t want a multiple-purpose computer and digital media mass storage devices in the living room so EyeHome is serving me well enough even with its flaws, especially as I dont have an HD Television.
Right now it would be foolish to say for sure that iTV won’t be a worthwhile upgrade but I doubt I’ll be in any hurry.

Where I work requires that I logon onto Windows to access applications that just won't run under WINE. This was a complete pain as I found myself constantly rebooting between UBUNTU and windows. However I've recently been using the excellent coLinux

"Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine"

As I already had a Linux partition I decided against running the provided Gentoo or Debian images they provide. Here's the steps I had to go through to get this up and running.

1. Downloaded the Cooperative Linux installation executable v. 0.62 (which uses the 2.6 version of the kernel)
2. Downloaded and installed WinPCap
3. Installed into C:\CoLinux
4. Download dmdiag from the Microsoft Windows 2000 Resource Kit to find out your Linux partition anme. The tool can be downloaded for free from Microsoft

\Device\Harddisk0\DP(2)0×843fbb800-0×577374c00+2 (Device)
\Device\Harddisk0\DP(3)0xdbb338200-0×3dc57e00+3 (Device)
\Device\Harddisk0\DR0 (Device)
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 (SymbolicLink) -> \Device\Harddisk0\DR0
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 (SymbolicLink) -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2 (SymbolicLink) -> \Device\HarddiskVolume2
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition3 (SymbolicLink) -> \Device\HarddiskVolume3

5. 6. Change your config file to include your Linux partition ( you can also add your cd
   drive at this point ).I'm using dhcp and simply set up a network bridge between my existing network adaptor and the tap virtual adaptor installed by coLinux.Started up coLinux from windows command line, it basically starts up a colinux console where you can find out your ip addressStarted up a putty session, export HTTP_proxy as I'm behind a firewall and ran apt-get update

   Hey presto - worked a treat, recommended

I’m using del.icio.us a lot in order to store my bookmarks etc and got to thinking, when will Yahoo start charging for this data or tying you to a yahoo account similiar to the way Flickr seems to be going, what if the server goes down blah blah

Anyway previously I was backing up my data into an xml file but I’ve since discovered scuttle

It’s basically an opensource del.icio.us type tagging system which allows you to import your del.icio.us xml file. It supports most of the del.icio.us api which means any plugin that works in del.icio.us should work with scuttle with some easy modifications.

You can check out my installation here

Where to go when you’re after cash to further your Web 2.0 application,               TechCrunch list the top 5 VC’s who actually understand what all this tagging, podcasting, sem web stuff is all about.

Now I just need a great idea to sell to them

And I’m posting to my blog from it, first impressions are good

You can download it from here

Finally got round to replacing my Netgear 854GT which was giving me nothing but problems.

I’ve gotten hold of a Speedtouch 716WL

First impressions are pretty good and its easy to configure  

ADSL 2+ ready along with VOIP which doesn’t tie you to a particular carrier, I’ve set up a SIP proxy account with iptel which is free of charge, now I just need to buy myself a RJ11 cable arrgghhhh