Macs, PCs, You may now video chat!

If you own a mac or have friends or family that own macs and have tried to start a video chat with them, then, you hate Microslop, I mean Microsoft, sorry. Microsoft has for years undermined the ability of it's users to video chat with Mac users for years with no plausible, viable reason. There are solutions available such as Adium and AIM but nothing that works with all PC hardware, all the time. On this day you begin a love affair with Google if you have not already. I love Google because the current CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun Microsystems and Novell) has made a career of sticking it to Microsoft every chance he gets. Why, just because.

Google today introduced Video/Audio Chat for Gmail users, the free email service from Google that offers over 7GB of storage and counting. Did I mention it's free? A 1 minute video showing the program in action is available on YouTube. Gmail video chat is currently available for PCs and Macs with promised support for Linux on the way. The CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer, the famed "Dancing Monkeyboy", has in the past voiced his dislike for Google in a very professional manner when Google coaxed a Microsoft employee away from the dark side. Considering how he handled that bit of trivial news, I'd love to see his reaction to this!

Mustangs and Scorpions and Hydrogen! Oh My!

Wondering what the future automobiles holds? Me too. A quick search of the internet will pop up DIY conversion kits for the car you have now. The so called "run your car on water adds" litter search results leading to pages speaking of HHO gas generators and promising freedom from high gas prices. But does it really work? According to Mike Allen at Popular Mechanics, absolutely not. But a little known car maker from Texas, Ronn Motors, has a response: uh..., yes it does. Why does PM believe it doesn't work? Because the vehicles ECU compensates for the HHO gas produced by the HHO generator by dumping more fuel into the engine negating any gains in efficiency. Perhaps PM doesn't realize there are VMU control units that correct this (bad) behavior.

Ronn Motors latest creation, the Scorpion, uses a twin turbo V6 sourced from Honda that puts out 450hp and propels the vehicle from 0-60mph in a scant 3.5 seconds. It is also probably the sexiest car since the McLaren F1. But what's most interesting about this car is that it returns 40mpg. How? Through the use of an HHO gas generator that PM swears does not work. Yes the Scorpion carries a price tag of $150k but not because of the HHO generator feature. One of the highest quality HHO conversion kits available can be had for less that $2k at HydroxyCorp.

40mpg not good enough for you? Me neither. Probably the most promissing news that promises high MPGs and untamable power comes not from Multi-Billion dollar car company or even a start up specialty shop, but from a garage in Ohio. Doug Pelmear working out of his garage tuned a 1987 Ford Mustang to 400hp and 500ft-lbs torque pushing the Stang from 0-60 in 3 seconds flat that he debuted at SEMA 2008. Is it fuel efficient?

How does 110MPG grap you? Yeah, me too.

Deepest Ultraviolet Image of the Universe Yet

For those of you who have been dying to download a 30MegaByte 27MegaPixel Jpeg deep field image of the universe, today is your lucky day.

From Slashdot:

"European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has captured the deepest ground based U-band image of the universe yet. The image contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observations with the VIMOS instrument. 'Galaxies were detected that are a billion times fainter than the unaided eye can see and over a range of colours not directly observable by the eye. This deep image has been essential to the discovery of a large number of new galaxies"

Low to High-Res image available HERE.

President-Elect Obama wants your opinion

President-Elect Barack Obama is making strides to have an open government. At http://change.gov/ Obama is leveraging the internet just as he did in his campaign to achieve this. The President-Elect is reaching out to us at this new website which gives the opportunity to voice your opinions and concerns. Though the information is not available yet detailed plans (such as economic and health care plans) are to be posted on the site in a promised "plain english, non-Washington-speak" format. We shall see.

Love him or hate him he works in a very post-baby boomer manner leveraging technology to (hopefully) disclose more information than we have ever seen from a President on his administrations' intents. With any kind of luck this will catch on and dictate the manner in which all elected officials run their offices. Open and easily accessible.

Welcome to Digistenz

Greetings everyone, my name is Jason Hall, I'm a web developer from Miami, Florida. Digistenz is my personal blog where I comment on interesting things I find around the web. We all have our favorite sites and news feeds. The stories you read about here are from my favorite sites and feeds, some with my own opinions attached. Posts on this blog will fall into one of these categories:

1. Technology
2. Cars
3. Science
4. Politics
5. Funny / Weird News
   

I invite you read and comment on my posts here at Digistenz. I also welcome you to comment on the template of I have designed for this blog and will consider any changes or fixes you think would benefit the Digistenz blog.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy creating them for you.

Digistenz (http://digistenz.blogspot.com):
Random digitized musings and opinions of a techie on news you can use from around the web.