Ricardo Diaz

I’m in TechCrunch!

… well not really! Kind of!

I read geek news all the time and TechCrunch is one of the tech blogs I subscribe to from my Google Reader (For my non geek friends, Google Reader consolidates all the blogs & stories I read into one place.)  Google Reader recently added the “I Like” functionality to its services and I have started to use it.  There was an article yesterday that talked about the new feature and take a look at the picture within the article.  The Liked list, third row, fourth name: my name appears.  I did “Like” this article so I am pretty sure that is me.

Check out the link:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/20/people-are-using-google-reader-likes-but-some-hate-it-and-its-flawed/

Augmented Reality

This AR stuff is just getting cooler and cooler by the day.  Check this one out:

The morning paper.

I am old enough to remember having the newspaper delivered to my house and young enough to have my Google Reader replace my morning paper. The way the public consumes information has drastically changed and the newspaper and print industries have had to make some major adjustment. Here is an interesting and funny video from 1981 of the conception of the online newspaper.

Zombies ahead!

A couple constructions road signs were hacked in Texas a couple weeks back warning the public of a zombie attack. Very nice work! Video Below.

Did you know?

Minority Report for reals

With multi touch and interactive interfaces becoming more common place it was only a matter of time when we would get to a real version of the “Minority Report” UI. How many times has this come up in meetings? Well, now its seems the guys at Oblong made it a reality.

Updated and now mobile

The blog has officially gone mobile. I am writing to you from my iPhone in a mom and pop Peruvian restaurant in the valley called Las Quenas. I updated the version of Wordpress the blog is running and downloaded the WP iPhone app. So beware, now I can blog from anywhere. Hopefully this means more posts.

The lost art of the Yo Yo

My generation has seen some interesting times. Technologies made some leaps and bounds in our lifetime. We’ve seen computers evolve and become part of our everyday lives. For the most part this has been a good thing; well, at least for me because its what I do. But there have been simple non electrical toys I miss from my childhood. Toys that I fear may become obsolete before my grandkids generation. The Yo Yo is a great example. Who plays with Yo Yo’s anymore. They have been replaced with iPods and Gameboys. Just came across this cool video of a kid with mad Yo Yo skills. God bless him for kicking it old school.

digital musical instrument

Tenori-on is a digital musical instrument designed and created in a collaboration between Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha. It’s a hand held screen with a 16 x 16 LED switch grid. Each switch is a trigger and the grid creates a visual musical interface. Check out the video below; really cool.

AIR getting full release

Thats right, AIR is finally out of beta. Adobe has taken AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) out of beta and released it to the world. Download the installer here.

What is AIR? “Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash, and Flex technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop.”

To paraphrase, AIR is going to let web developers write cross platform desktop applications. This is a pretty big deal. It will continue to blur the online and desktop user experience. You can find some cool examples at Adobes Application showcase. I use a couple already, Finetunes and the Google analytics app.