If you are a fan of 3D programs, including Google Earth and Google SketchUp, you know how frustrating it can be to navigate using a computer mouse. Fortunately, a company called “3DConnexion”:1 (now owned by Logitech) makes an affordable six degrees-of-freedom controller called the SpaceNavigator — Amazon currently has it listed for about “56 bucks”:2.

I’ve been using it for about a month now and find it to be far, far superior to the mouse. It’s a bit complicated to explain how it works, so a demo is in order. A couple minutes of searching on YouTube comes up with a bunch of SpaceNavigator/Google Earth demos. Here’s one of the better ones…

And here’s a video of how the device works…

[2(SpaceNavigator on Amazon)]http://www.amazon.com/3Dconnexion-SpaceNavigator-3D-Navigation-3DX-700029/dp/B000LB41BM/
[1(3DConnexion homepage)]http://www.3dconnexion.com/

I’ve been wanting to purchase a new laptop for quite a while now. However, I was so disappointed with my last one (a Compaq Presario 1501CL) that it’s almost turned me off on the whole idea of owning a laptop. The Compaq’s battery life sucked, the add-on WiFi card had problems, the power supply blew up, it sucked power while in hibernate mode, etc. etc.

Well, today Apple announced a piece of software called “Boot Camp”:1 that will allow you to dual boot Intel-based Apple’s to either OSX or Windows XP. Now I have another choice in laptops that I probably won’t buy.

[1(Apple announces Boot Camp)]http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/05bootcamp.html

It ain’t pretty, but it works…

P.S. The last thing you want while gaming on a PC is to suck up CPU cycles to capture video. Obviously, this avoids that pitfall.

So, I finally got the new Yahoo! Mail beta on one of my accounts. It’s the OddpostAjaxDHTMLWannabeOutlook interface for Yahoo! Mail. It’s really slick… but is kind of slow on my current computer.

However, on my friend’s new Dell (that cost something like 8 hundo), it rocks.

2006… time for a new rig.

In this post “here”:1 I wrote about the Canon MultiPass “MP390″:2. Here’s my review: It rules!

I finally got around to plugging the thing into a USB 2.0 port (instead of my keyboard’s USB 1.1 port), and it just cranks now. Super-fast printing _and_ super fast scanning… _and_ it’s also a fax machine. This is what happens when you stop ever using “parallel ports”:3 ever again. Life just gets better.

OMG, remember when you had have a “SCSI”:4 interface to get a scanner to work? Or trying to get a file scanned into a “PDF”:7? The software that comes with my MP390 does that automagically.

Hum… but I really wish I would have waited a bit and picked up this one, the Canon MP750, with the auto document feeder… deeeamn, as of today, 7/9/05, it’s only *129* bucks at “Amazon”:8. Man, I paid $149 for my MP350 just back in April. That’s just wrong.

Oh… _and_ both my MP390 and the MP750 are photo printers, of course. Where’s the margin in printers (or scanners or faxes or photo printers) these days?

[8(Amazon page on the Canon MP750)]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000650R0M/qid=1120967408/

[7(Wikipedia on PDF files)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format

[6(Yahoo quote for HPQ)]http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=HPQ&d=t

[5(Amazon page for the Canon PIXMA MP750)]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000650R0M/qid=1120967408/

[4(Wikipedia on SCSI)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI

[3(Wikipedia on parallel ports)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port

[2(Amazon page for the Canon MultiPass MP390)]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001CJECC/qid%3D1113278325/

[1(Zoinger post on the Canon MultiPass MP390)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/archives/2005/04/13/how-to-annoy-your-local-starbucks-staff-lesson-1/