Killer App for “Getting Things Done”

After reading David Allen’s personal management book Getting Things Done, I’ve monkeyed around with a number of the software tools and hacks that incorporate his organizational ideas. Nothing has stuck with me. I had a system set up in TextWrangler, BareBones Software’s free text editor, but it was…well…barebones; not pretty to look at. Last night, I discovered the GTD TiddlyWiki and it’s rockin’ my world. Within an hour, I had my whole org setup transfered to a TiddlyWiki page under a Firefox tab.

To use TiddlyWiki, you have to know Wiki formatting, but that is easily learned (instructions included). The entire “app” is bundled as a single HTML page that you save to your desktop and then set up/customize as you please. You can store the HTML locally or remotely, as your needs dictate. The interface is handsome, the functionality is very smooth, and there are nifty features, such as auto Time/Date stamping of entries, RegExp searching, auto backup capability, and printing of each item (called a “Tiddler”) to 3×5 cards to use with your HipsterPDA. I freakin’ love this thing!

Free Paper Gaming

I’m on “vacation” right now (the whole family is with me) and I’ve been looking for games to play with the kids while it rains outside here in Portland.

Having grown up on Car Wars, OGRE, and other paper classics, I find myself drawn to analog tabletop gaming as my kids get older.

Board Game Geek has a nice list of games that are free to print and play

There are other “open gaming” resources out there, but they mostly seem focused on RPG titles such as the labrynthinely-licensed D20. I’d like to make/find an “open gaming” licensed version of something like the classic Ogre by Steve Jackson.

Cheap A** games has a lot of great stuff for <$5.00, including a section of free titles.

Apple’s HD Gallery for Quicktime 7

Apple has put up a gallery of movie trailers (and other content) in high-definition Quicktime. The recently-released Quicktime 7 makes use of the H.264 codec (compression/decompression) technology which is being widely adopted as the new standard for everything from third generation (3G) broadband cellphones to high-definition TVs. One thing that’s great about H.264 is its ability to offer incredible image quality at surprising low data transfer rates, making it perfect for streaming content, video on demand, and mobile broadband.

To play these QT HD videos, you’ll need a G5 Mac and Quicktime 7. The results really are impressive: fast download times and crystal-clear image quality.

Amazing A. I. Toy

In today’s Cool Tools e-zine, Kevin Kelly writes about an incredible long-term artificial intelligence project that’s been turned into a toy. The US$10-14 device is a tennis-ball-sized blue orb that plays a game of 20 questions, with uncanny results. Kevin writes:

Burned into its 8-bit chip is a neural net that has been learning for 17 years. Inventor Robin Burgener programmed a simple neural net on a DOS machine 1988. He taught it 20 questions about a cat. He than passed the program around to friends on a floppy and had them challenge the neural net with their yes/no answers to the object they had in mind. The neural net learns only when it plays a game; no data is added except for the yes/no answers of visitors. So the more people who test it, the more they teach it. In 1995 Burgener put the now robust neural net onto the new web where anyone could play it (that is, train it) 24 hours a day. And they did. Burgener’s genius was to turn the hard tedious work of training a neural net into a fun game for humans.

I tried the Web-based version and was blown away. It guessed “cresent wrench” in twelve questions, “kiwi fruit” in sixteen. You can buy it for $14 on Amazon, but find it as low as ten at other retailers.

Street Tech Email Update

So…we’re still waiting for our new…a-hem…improved hosting service to implement the fix to our broken email service. Until then, our lovely and talented (okay, he’s talented, anyway — what do you want from us, we’re geeks!) webmaster, Tim, has come up with a workaround. Click on the link below to read it.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Honestly, we had no idea that so many people use streettech.com email accounts, many as their primary email. We’re flattered, and ya know, guilt-ridden as shit ’cause we broke your email pipeline.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE
We do NOT…I repeat, we DO NOT have email. You still have to change your local Hosts file as described in the link below to get ST email to work on your machine.

“Broadcast Flag” Gets Burned

A Federal Appeals Court in DC has tossed out the FCC’s “broadcast flag” rule which would have prevented all digital TVs (starting July 1) from recording or outputing unecrypted signals. On the EFF’s page about the decision, they say:

The court ruled, as we argued, that the FCC lacks the authority to regulate what happens inside your TV or computer once it has received a broadcast signal. The broadcast flag rule would have required all signal demodulators to “recognize and give effect to” a broadcast flag, forcing them not to record or output an unencrypted high-def digital signal if the flag were set. This technology mandate, set to take effect July 1, would have stopped the manufacture of open hardware that has enabled us to build our own digital television recorders.

This is great news!

[Thanks to Kate on the assist]

Street Tech Email Troubles

As mentioned earlier, we’re in the process of moving Street Tech to a new host. As a result, ST’s email service is currently unavailable. We really apologize for the hassle. As devout Netizens, we know what a drag it is to not have access to your email. We’re trying to get the bugs beaten out of everything ASAP. Please bear with us.

Longhorn sees all, knows all?

Is it me, or did Bill Gates just admit to system-level spyware?

Gates said that Microsoft is expanding its Watson program that sends error reports that alert the company’s engineers to problems in the software.

‘We’re taking Watson to a whole new level,’ Gates said. ‘We’ll have the ability to record what’s going on.’ He said Watson would become similar to the black boxes in airplanes that record all flight data.”

TiVo to Go Hack

As we commented earlier, the new TiVo Desktop 2.1 blocks the use of Dr. DivX, TMPGEnc, and some other video encoding/conversion programs. If you’re comfortable using a hexeditor, such as Hexworks, this is easily fixable — for now, anyway. All you have to do is find the DLL file:

C:Program FilesCommon FilesTiVo SharedDirectShowTiVoDirectShowFilter.dll

Open it in your hexeditor, search for the program name (e.g. “divx” or “tmpgenc”) and add a letter to the name (e.g. “divxx”). Save and quit the program. By changing the name of the filtered video conversion program, you disable TiVo Desktop’s ability to find and disable it.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]