Pidgin, Google Talk, and XMPP

The Pidgin IM client supports just about every instant messaging protocol ever conceived, including many poorly-designed and undocumented proprietary protocols, such as those used by AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN.  It also supports  XMPP (aka Jabber), the open-standard protocol on which Google Talk is based.

There are some interesting technical and political issues surrounding the implementation of Google Talk's XMPP extensions...

Acer AS1410: first impressions

I recently bought an Acer AS1410 netbook/small notebook. Here's a bit more about my thought process while buying, and my initial review.

Supreme Court shadow boxing

Recently, Charles Blow of the New York Times noted that, if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, there will be 6 Catholics, 2 Jews, and only 1 Protestant on the Supreme Court. This is a sharp reversal from the situation 30 years ago where there were 8 Protestants and one (very liberal) Catholic on the Court. Blow asks, "Does/should this matter? Why?"

Here's what I think:

The Best of the Best

Tonight I went to both sessions of the Best of the 48 Hour Film Project DC 2009. 24 short films were shown in all, out of 94 (?) total on-time submissions. There was some great work shown tonight, with the second session in particular just blowing me away.

The latest Pentax DSLR, wow!!

Forget netbooks or camcorders, I have a new gadget to lust after... the new Pentax K-7 DSLR camera.

Handy feed of latest deals on Netbooks

Here's a nice site that keeps track of all the latest deals and special offers on Netbooks: dealnetbooks.com. There's an RSS feed too. Very handy, easier than sifting through Slickdeals or Edealinfo, and updated several times a day.

They also have some good reviews of netbooks at the companion blog, netbooked.net. Technically-minded and fluff-free information.

I for one am now leaning towards the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. It gets great reviews in terms of keyboard, battery life, build quality, and overall performance, and it's got built-in bluetooth. And deals to get it for $360 with a 2gb memory upgrade keep popping up and then selling out quickly. So I'm pretty tempted spring for it.

How to tether your Moto Q as a modem *in Windows*

Previously, I figured out how to use a Motorola Q smartphone as a modem under Linux. I use Linux all the time, but for the benefit of others I got around to figuring out how to do it under Windows XP as well.