With a slew of reviews coming out for the iPad, no one has mentioned this.  There's this cool little add-on that would make any gamer get the iPad just for it.  Introducing the iCade:  A little add-on that turns your iPad into a full blown retro mini arcade cabinet.   Play some old school games like Pac-man, Frogger, Donkey Kong.  The list is endless.  This thing fits nicely on your desk or perfect for the little ones to improve  on their hand eye coordination.  The app is free, but the mini cabinet is not.  Get it while supplies last.  It'll be a great collector's item.  Quantities are in the 80's.  Visit www.thinkgeek.com to purchase or for more info. Note: Yeah I know it's fake, but these things would sell like hot cakes if it were real.

Well, more likely I'm a multi OS person now.  As you know, I've been using Window7 beta on my netbook.  It will soon been turning off ever two hours and after that sometime in the summer it will totally be unusable.  I know that there are ways to circumvent it.  I just don't want to deal with.

I've been looking at Linux and more closely Ubuntu.  If you want to give it a shot and you're on windows, check out Wubi.  It's an Ubuntu installer and is all done in Windows and acts like an app.  All you do after installing it is restart your computer and boot in Ubuntu.  You can even uninstall it in Windows if you don't like.  This is probably the easiest way to install Ubuntu or the other way is just to use the live CD, which boots from the cd.  It is somewhat slow though.

Probably the hardest thing with Ubuntu is installing drivers.  If your components are built into Ubuntu you're all set.  If your not familiar with the terminal (command window), then you should probably stick to windows or mac.  If you're lucky, they will probably have an automatic installer, but I've haven't seen it yet for the drivers I need. I tried to set up my wireless network usb adapter (purchased separately).  Note, that adapter didn't have a Linux driver, so it made it harder to get it noticed.  I had to look around.  Found a similar device with the same chipset.   Did all that was instructed.  Ubuntu detected it, but I didn't know how to input my network settings.   It did install, but there was no GUI for the device.  The built in network manager didn't see it.  So, I eventual went back to my built in wireless card.  That was detected upon install and worked with the network manager.  No problems at all.  I did lose my Broadcom Crystal HD (didn't matter as installing it's drivers in Ubuntu was more than I could handle).  The gist of it is that if you're unlucky, you gonna have to find the linux driver, and either just install or compile, make the installer, and then install it. As far as installing the software, it was a cinch.  There are a lot of how-to's.  If they don't have an automatic installer, you would just install using the terminal.  A lot of them are just cut and paste.  All the Linux software that I installed didn't have any issues.  The only one were a Windows app running on WINE, but other than that all smooth sailing from there.  Web browsing works the same.  Flash works well and Quicktime/mp4 works well too.  It uses an open source version and it still works as well as the original. The best thing about Ubuntu is customization.  It took me awhile to get it to look right after installing theme managers and so forth.  The best thing is it doesn't seem to have reduced my system performance.  I'm running this on a netbook (Samsung NC10).  It doesn't feel clogged or stressed out.  I've made mine similar to Windows7, but with a black glass look.  It's pretty neat. I've also added the Expose of OSX.  I didn't use the multi desktop (very specific to Ubuntu/linux) because I just couldn't get used it.  Maybe later when I've matured with Ubuntu. I do have to work out some kinks.  One is trying to get all permission to a storage partition for a non-administrator user.  The other is trying to find an anti-virus software that is easy to install and will also detect and kill the virus.  You're asking why do you need an anti virus software for Linux, well I do use Windows.  I'm also on a network that has Windows so there could be problems.  Also I've read that you can still get rootkits/spyware especially if you just download programs that aren't in the Synaptic package thingy.

As far ditching Windows, well that probably won't happen.  I use software that only works in Windows or OSX (Adobe CS3 Master) and WINE doesn't work well for those types of programs.  Also the driver thing is a big turn off for me.  I'm sure they could sort it out in the future, since you can already install programs just like how you would do it on OSX or Windows.  If I didn't need software that only worked on Windows and the driver installation wasn't so hard, I'd have it on all my computers.  Yes it's that good.  Just another thing, Ubuntu feels so much snappier than when I had windows7 except for the boot time.  So check out Ubuntu or the other Linux OS.  You won't be disappointed.  Check out the video below for a how-to.

Who wants a giant art board? Who wants to create a giant mural without the mess? Well check this out, this here is a digital graffiti wall. It's basically a giant monitor where you use a program similar to painter and spray paint your art all over it. It's pretty cool. It also looks like it uses a pseudo spray can as your input device. Very clever. So for those that love to do graffiti and don't want to mess up a good brick building, make sure to check this thing out.

Video Courtesy of tangibleinteraction.com.

Microsoft just announced the next iteration of their Windows Mobile platform called Windows Phone.  This thing is going to be killer.  Also with Microsoft putting a restriction on the types of phones that are allowed to carry the 7 series, this ensures that the user will get nothing but a great experience. I'm digging the home screen.  The big buttons show the most used apps.  No fancy widgets, no excess of application icons, just items that you only need and use.  If you're into facebook, this has pretty much full integration with the os without having another app to launch.  This is a step, no a leap above the previous windows 6.5.3.  It has the elements of the Zune interface with some added new styles as well. Another thing is the search.  I really love it.  I think for a mobile it's better than google's/apple's integration.  It also seems to encompass more tasks than a regular search engine.  If you have to ask me, the phone's web search is like six apps in one. There are drawbacks though.  One is that it's doesn't seem like to have multitasking as of now.  There won't be flash at launch too.  Also, it seems to be geared towards the social person and not the power users.   Then again, it's too early as there were reports that there would be two version of the Windows phone. There would be one for the casual consumer and one for the business/power user where the later would have multitasking.   The biggest drawback though is that the Windows Phone 7 series won't be in stores until the 4th quarter of this year.

Also check out this live demonstration:

Courtesy of  Windowsteamblog.com

I recently found out about the online paint application, Sketchpad (http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/).  Everyone seems to think only HTML5 is responsible for this as if learning the "HTML5" markup language alone will allow them to create this wonderful app and say goodbye to Flash.  Yes, this technology will beat Flash, but you'll probably need to know lots of JavaScript before you can start making such dynamic applications.  Take a peek at the Sketchpad source and you'll see that it seems 90% of the script is JavaScript.  If designers thought coding in Flash ActionScript was hard, well things are about to get a little harder!  I could be wrong, but there are probably more syntax keywords and APIs to learn in JavaScript than ActionScript.  There's JQuery and Apple's "Canvas Element" which is the API in HTML5 that is used in Sketchpad.  You heard me right, APPLE, aka Steve Jobs, aka the pretty geeks' computer company has a key component that's part of the HTML5 specification.  Well, I can't wait to learn more about HTML5, but it seems like I have to wait if I want a book.  Amazon.com currently reports that HTML5 books are only available for Pre-Order! (BTW, IE lovers, this sample app doesn't work in IE8!)

Those of you looking for a great new monitor, check out Dell's 27"  U2711.  It's priced at $1099.  Don't let the price sway you away.  There are other monitors that are 27", but nothing like this.  First this monitor is geared towards those that want accurate colors (digital content creators).  Also, the resolution on this is wonderful.  2560x1440 is it's spec size.  It's like its 30" brother only smaller and has a 16:9 format.  That's great for watching movies without seeing those black lines.  Finally, the design of the monitor is simply minimal and simplistic. There's also slew of ports for whatever your connection desires. Dell's U2711 page: HERE