Have you ever grown tired of the typical ;) :) :( smileys? Well I have, a bit. Though I use and find practical most of them, if you ever visit japanese forums you’ll notice a wide variety of nice japanese smileys which, even though use more characters, are more appealing, in the sense that you don’t have to turn your head in order to see them correctly. In the following website, there is a big collection of them. Here are some of my favorites (you will need japanese character in order to see these correctly): ミ(∇) ( ▜)/ (^o^)/ o(^^o)(o^^)o (T_T) (。_゜) There are plenty more where these came from, Read more »

Y.A.i.N.W. means of course Yet Another iPod Nano Wannabe. This DAP will have sizes from 512MB to 2GB and will play Mp3, WAV, OGG and ASF files (so it’s already losing for not having AAC support). Another difference is that the screen appears to be a monochromatic OLED instead of the Nano’s full color screen. There have been worse contenders against the Nano, but so far, I think the closest thing to an iPod is a Creative player. Read more »

So much for roller hockey at the Googleplex! Most would think that working at Google is every tech geek’s dream. Well, it’s probably just hype. Of course there are the excellent benefits and work set-up such as free gourmet lunches, Google stock, and being able to work on your pet projects 20% of the time. Still, it’s work and you either enjoy it or not (and you tend to either slack or age faster when you don’t enjoy what you do). Here’s a peek into how it’s like to interview with Google. Peter Abilla was contacted for a position in Google’s print team. After two days of gruelling interviews–11 in Read more »

A few weeks ago, Slashdot czar CmdrTaco, aka Rob Malda, decided that he wanted to give the information dinosaur known as Slashdot a face lift. He set up a very specific set of guidelines for what he wanted, which resulted in more of a reskin rather than a redesign. He has announced the winner and will be implementing the new design in the next few days. You can see the winning design here. Read more »

CNET has launched AllYouCanUpload, a free image hosting site that doesn’t require registration. Sites like PhotoBukcet have been wildly popular for those that want to include images in comments on sites that get lots of traffic (like Fark.com), but don’t want that traffic to be the downfall of their server. Allyoucanupload.com is an online space where you can store (host) images to embed in pages elsewhere on the Internet. Use allyoucanupload.com to add images to your other online spaces, such as online auctions (eBay), blogs (Blogger, TypePad), message boards, online classifieds, and social networking sites (Xanga, MySpace). You upload, we host, you post. It’s that simple. If you want to Read more »

Though Nintendo hasn’t stepped out and said it officially, many Japanese retailers are now taking pre-orders for big N’s latest console for 18.000 Yen, which is around $160. So basically, at the time of release, you can buy a PS3, or buy a Nintendo Wii and an XBox 360 for nearly the same price. Hopefully this will lead to cheaper PS3s, though I wouldn’t count on it much until the second quarter of 2007 at least. Read more »

It seems that the creators of the alleged Modchip shown yesterday have stepped up and showed a different picture of the modchip that actually has it placed inside the PSP. They have also released a ‘Press Release’ text, announcing all of it’s features: The U.P. (Undiluted Platinum) is a flash replacement system for the PSP™ which allows the use of previous flash updates or custom firmware builds, opening up the possibility to run unsigned homebrew code on even the latest PSP systems. The U.P. contains 32MB NAND flash which is programmable from the PC via a high speed USB connection, using our user friendly software. You may boot the PSP Read more »

Yesterday evening the wife and I had to run over to the neighborhood grocery store for some necessities. I found myself low on cash, so I thought about paying with plastic instead of running across the street to withdraw from the ATM. By plastic, I don’t mean credit cards. I detest those things as they only make me spend and spend well beyond my means (I’m an economist and I don’t get why governments have to spend on a deficit, either). Or at least I had a bad experience with consumer debt–but that’s another story. For me, plastic is either paying with debit cards or thru points-of-sale that accept transactions Read more »

Though I have not been with FG since it’s creation, this marks the first “third millenia” article on FG. As a writer, I hope you enjoyed these last articles. Even though there are probably more famous classic articles, and we had our ups and downs, I think that our quality level is rising again, and our readers’ quality seems to have improved also. In the name of the FG crew, thank you for reading our blog, and I hope we can continue to provide you great articles for the next thousand articles! Read more »

It can’t get any better than this. Remember when I previously blogged that the CIA was reading up on the blogosphere looking for possible leads? Here’s the real deal–a spy gone into the business of blogging. I recently stumbled upon this blog by Richard Tomlinson, formerly a covert operative of the MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA, and yes, the agency that James Bond is supposed to be working for). Apparently, Tomlinson had been in legal disputes with the MI6 after the latter had fired him supposedly without explanation. Tomlinson tried to take the issue to an employment tribunal, but was blocked by virtue of the Official Secrets Act. Read more »