My next phone - Palm Pre

Finally a smartphone that focuses on Personal Information Management with the elegance of a touch based UI, Palm presents its new flagship product the Palm Pre.   Follow the video to get all of the details (an hour or so viewing).   Im guessing that the magnet / induction power will find more uses than just simple charging (think backpack powered accesories)

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/palm-pre-ces.html

Best of all, it runs Linux ;)

Radeon 2600 HD HDMI with Ubuntu 8.10 working

Well, never thought I'd see the day where I would be playing 1080p movies from within Linux over an HDMI w/audio.   The day has arrived!

Following a link that was sent to me, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonHD  I was able to download the latest RadeonHD driver version which included the following enhancements from the stock Ubuntu Ibex 8.10 release:

- Xvideo Support ( allows you to actually view movies at 1080 without lag )
- HDMI Audio support ( 2 channel stereo for now, ALSA updates coming soon for AC3/DTS output )

These updates finally allowed me to ditch the analog VGA connection to our Sony Bravia and remove the complexity of my existing audio routing via the receiver.

In order to get audio working, I needed to abandon the Xorg.conf free installation and create simple Xorg.conf file that enabled Audio explicitly:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon Driver"
Driver "radeonhd"
Option "Audio" "on"
Option "HDMI" "all"
EndSection

To celebrate, I just finished watching the Wall-E blueray on my Mythbuntu machine in all of its digital glory ;)

Excellent video of a lightning strike >20meters away

Just bumped into this while browsing "The Tube". Just skip to 3 mins in and watch from there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hm-2WvzEGM&feature=related 

Sprint expected to release Samsung Google Andriod Phone in June

Sprint expected to release Samsung Google Andriod Phone in June based on the Instinct and Omnia phones.   This may be the phone I will ultimately select to replace my 1.5yr old Mogul.

http://english.etnews.co.kr/news/detail.html?id=200812190010

New Features for Android - G1 Google Phone

A host of new features has arrived for the Android platform (highlights)

- Stereo Bluetooth! A2DP
- Cut/Paste in Browser
- Video Recording
- New WebKit update to improve performance of browser

The only item remaining on my wishlist - MS Exchange ActiveSync.

http://source.android.com/roadmap/cupcake

Linux on the iPhone

Patiently watching this project to see how it progresses.   The Linux kernel has been ported to and running on the iPhone.

http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/

Tow Truck Laughs

Latest viral video going around:   Lady gets upset with Tow Truck Driver, tows tow truck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLC1Iy1UkE

Real video of an unbelievable tow in Japan:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1-FuMLNMKk&NR=1