LIVEdigitally

While I was in San Francisco last week I (obviously) did all of my computing on my laptop; it really got me thinking about the options that are out there when it comes to sychronizing stuff on different machines.

I found out about Portable Firefox this morning and spent a few minutes downloading and performing the steps required to get it working. Download the software, throw it on your flash drive and you have, as the name implies, a portable version of the browser with all of your bookmarks and extensions! Built on John Haller’s Portable Firefox 1.0.6 (for Windows), the latest version is cross-platform and requires a quick modification before being ready for the Mac. I’m still tinkering with mine, but it seems like a fantastic idea – I always have my flash drive handy and it’s so much easier than booting up both machines, connecting them and manually copying the appropriate files. Cross-platform compatibility makes it a no-brainer. If anyone out there has gotten it working and has any remarks, post ‘em!

I hate losing my remote control. I’ll end up looking everywhere. Under the couch, in the bathroom, sometimes I’ll even check the fridge. But if my TV remote was my hand, I’d never be without it. Researchers at Australasian CRC for Interaction Design are working on doing just that.
They are creating a glove that when placed on your hand will control the TV using specific gestures. The TV will wirelessly recognize hand motions for on, off, channel up etc, you get the idea.

Hopefully they could integrate it with other household items like the lights, microwave, robotic maid and we will never have to leave the couch again.