Simon's Mess » multimedia

The little toy is here !

simon — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:37:44 +0000

Just got my N810 today … And the geeky boy is back, laying down in the sofa while typing this message and watching an episode of Cashmere Mafia.
Here is what it looks like from my point of view now :

No ? You think ?

simon — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:55:00 +0000

Read on a post on pmarca :

“New York Times headline:

Investigators Find Possible Flaw in Minneapolis Bridge”

I thought this was a joke, so I dug the site, and found the original article !

I say that you really need investigators to find that out (

Design Roundup

simon — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Here are a few design items I found on TrendHunter and other sites I thought where worth sharing …

Those are actual portable lamps made of LEDs (Seems like a new technology coming to us which allows to build really cool light providing items !). You can charge those and they are supposed to work for 10 hours … Must be really cool for kids to play in the dark ! Or during parties with your friends.

More LED lamps, but his time embedded in ice cubes. Put those in your freezer, and get them out for your next party … Success guaranteed ! And all that for only a couple of $ !

Russian roulette was big couple hundreds years ago … For us techies who are sick of the poker mania running out there, here is a new toy. Up to four players put their fingers in the device, then a button is pushed, and after a few long seconds one of the players receives an electric shock ! Is it really as cool as it looks ?

Sick of those mobile phones that have the dumbest ringtone in your openspace … Or just don’t want to be one of those ? Well this mobile phone dock is for you as it will flash when your mobile is supposed to ring ! Nice and silent, at last your workplace will become a nice place to be all day long.

On sundays, when its barbecue time, you always look around for matches … When you find them they are either wet or every time you try to ignite one, it breaks in two pieces ? Then this little toy is for you ! First it keeps your matches away from humidity, and as a bonus, they automatically ignite !!! So who’s gonna look real cool two days from now ?

And to conclude this roundup, a “special dedicace” to the cabiste boy, who’s a big fan of Caca, specially when speaking about twitter … So why should we not be talking about iMac, iPod, iPhone, and other iToys as iCaca ?

Real Life ?

simon — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 19:45:00 +0000

Do you get all the fuzz about Second Life ? I don’t ! Even though I tried getting into the game and understanding the ins and outs of it … I probably did not spend enough time out there to figure out the real interestd of the thing, because I indeed did not have too much time to do so.
Anyhow, I found this really cool video mocking the virtual world with real character, simply showing how dumm real people doing second life moves would look ! Enjoy.

A real great clock !

simon — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:24:00 +0000

After finding cool desktops backgrounds, I recently foudn out a really nice screensaver.
It serves nicely the purpose for it since this is a clock, but definitely a nice one.
It’s written as a flash application, but a little installer allows for easy installation !
Here is a screenshot (I was unable to reduce the flash embed, so you’ll have to stick with the preview !)
Link to the real flash preview here.
Link to the home page here where you can find the screensaver installer.

AppleTV killer ?

simon — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:14:00 +0000

I’m sure that as a good blog reader, and techno fan out there, you cannot have missed the launch of the AppleTV. This is this cool little device sold by the Apple company in hopes to rule over the entertainment center world like the iPod did.
A certain number of competitors like Msft itself, Tivo, … are also competing on the market, and some software providers like Joost are eagerly looking into that space also. So believe me when I say this is a crowded place.
But fortunately, no place is too crowded for opened and standard compliant innovative initiatives. DivX, the company behind the world’s famous video encoding codec, has recently announced the release of the GejBox.
A complete post here on NewTeeVee describes the product, but this basically is a system similar to the AppleTV, but which will use DivX as an encoding system, use Stage6 as the content provider, and provide more standard and HD compatible outputs like HDMI. Connectivity will include WiFi and Ethernet. However no CPU or hard drive will be present on the box (CPU is replaced by a HW DivX stream decoder) which might be a little drawback but will certainly help making it unnoticeable in your living room. Finally the platform should remain opened for extension, living some room for all of you with imaginative minds to come up with some great usages for this platform.

Nice wallpapers

simon — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:24:00 +0000

Wallpapers have never really been my cup of tea ! They tend to bloat memory usage as well as reduce the clarity of the icons present there. Although I have some friends that do have really nice ones, i never really felt the need to actually have one.
But hen I came across desktopography and I changed my mind !
This websites is actually an exposition of landscapes remodeled by designer in order to provide desktop wallpapers. You will see there some very nice sceneries.
If you have the courage and download the ones you like, this may also make up for a really nice screensaver !

At last … A network enabled screensaver

simon — Sat, 12 May 2007 20:37:00 +0000

I currently have a bunch of computers at home, including one directly connected to my TV in the living room.
I’ve always wanted to use this display as a photo frame during idle hours, party times, … But I never found a screensaver that would allow me to get pictures from my home network, and plus ! (Granted, I did not look too much around ).
Anyway, I just came across the Google Screensaver (Aaah Google !). This tools lets you display photo coming from your computer or your home network, your picasa account, or any other photo feed available out there !

Once you installed the software, just go to the standard place where you configure your screensaver, and select the one entitled “Gphotos”. You may also run the shortcut installed on your standard Windows programs. You may then configure the screensaver by configuring your Picasa account, the folders containing pictures, as well as RSS feeds containing images.

Unfortunately it seems that Google only provides this util as part of the Google Pack, but you may still download directly the screensaver from here or here (4,5Mb) although URLs may change in the future.