www.andyduffell.com

Short, sharp, and straight to the point.

There’s a hell of a lot of random waffle about technology out there. That’s why I like Shot of Jaq.

A twice-weekly 10-minute shotcast from Jono Bacon and Stuart “Aq” Langridge (Jono+Aq=Jaq) they cover a wide range of geek topics. Recent shots have tackled the impending the rise of ARM netbooks, the nightmare maze of ebook incompatibility, and whether Android is living up to it’s early promise as an iPhone killer.

The guys have an obvious rapport, having worked together before on Lugradio. The initial part of each shot is scripted, followed by the random musings of the two presenters, after which the topic is thrown open to the listeners and continues on the site, Twitter and IRC.

So far it’s been good stuff, I hope the guys can keep finding interesting stuff to argue about every Tuesday and Thursday for a long while yet.

Sod going to multiple inboxes, get it all from one place

Googsystray is a notifier gizmo for Google Voice, GMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Google Wave. It sits in your system tray and notifies you by popups or sound. I particular like the way you can set a threshold of new items in Reader before it bugs you. It’s also the only decent Google Voice notifier out there. Having everything combined into one lightweight notifier is nice and tidy, too.

Available for Windows and Linux. No love for the Mactards sorry!

Google have launched the beta of their Chrome web browser for Mac and Linux.

Until now people using non-Windows machines have been forced to use the open source Chromium branch of the project, but now we’ve got an actual release. As a beta it may still be a little wobbly, but probably less so than using daily builds of Chromium.

The verdict so far: it’s nice. Desktop integration is good, and if anything it seems even faster than Chromium. Yikes!

Get it here:

Linux (both 32-bit and 64-bit RPM and DEB, nice one Google!)

There’s also a Linux repository available to get automatic updates. I’d highly recommend this, it’s important to get security updates for a browser.

OS X

Not content with possesing enough conventional firepower to squish pretty much anything on the battlefield, the US military seems to now be plundering the future for cool new tech to waste people with. Next up on the US military’s agenda: autonomous walking battledroids. No really.

It turns out walking is actually a pretty practical way of getting around over rough terrain, so DARPA is flinging money at tech labs who can build them a droid that can lug heavy loads across rough ground. Presumably these poor bots would end up doing the jobs that the humans find difficult and dangerous, such as resupply and EOD. They’re kind of creepy, but i’ll bet they’d be popular with the meatsacks that would be doing these jobs otherwise.

Electric cars: no longer glorified milk floats

Formula 1 is the cutting edge of automotive technology. A lot of the stuff in production cars today like ABS and fuel injection started out in F1. That’s why the news that the FIA is backing a new racing series using electric propulsion is exciting news. Called the EV Cup it should help accelerate the performance of alternative propulsion in cars.

It could make for some exciting racing, too. Electric propulsion has ludicrously high torque, meaning insane acceleration and crazy passing manoeuvres. If all goes to plan, look out for EV Cup races in 2011.

Possibly an image of Barbara herself...

St Barbara is the patron saint of armourers, miners, gunners and (bizarrely) mathematicians. Now most armourers I’ve known aren’t too bothered about obscure Catholic saints, but since St Barbara’s Day is a great excuse to drink a lot of port I’ve never heard them complain.

So happy St Barbara’s Day to all past and serving armourers!