Michael Hainsworth

Nov 13
2009

StressCam: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

The introduction of civilians adds to the realism — and the stress. Here’s a short video of both the player and the game. Right click to Download.

Jul 07
2009

iPhone’s Dirty Little Secrets

Our Editor in Chief breaks through Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field to point out some serious flaws with the world's fastest selling mobile phone.

Jun 27
2009

Movin’ on Up!

HAINSWORTH.COM switches web hosting providers to Bluehost.com to improve site reliability after sluggish database response from previous provider, Pair.

Jun 20
2009

HAINSWORTH.COM now iPhone Friendly

75 years of content is now formatted for iPhone. Editor in Chief still mooching off others to enjoy the experience. Your Editor in Chief may not own an iPhone (yet, thanks to a screw-up with my account at Rogers Wireless) but if you do, HAINSWORTH.COM will automagically recognize you’re surfing the site from your wizbang [...]

Jun 18
2009

Apple iPhone 3GS Camera Comparison

Real world snap reveals my 3 year old Sony Ericsson still beats the iPhone 3GS. Check out the photo and tell me if you think it's enough to warrant a purchase.

Jun 09
2009

Rogers Wireless to offer iPhone 3GS June 19th: The “S” stands for “sold!”

It was always about the camera. The iPhone 3G and its first generation couldn’t hold a candle to the camera on my Sony Ericsson K790a. The lack of a proper xenon flash is a big disappointment, but truth be told: I found the flash washed out the image most of the time anyway, so it [...]

May 20
2009

POLL CLOSED: iPhone Rumour Reality Check

The countdown to the June 8th World Wide Developers Conference has begun. The rumours are flying fast and furious about the next generation iPhone being released at the Apple geekfest. You can catch up here. Do you believe the rumours? Add your US$0.02 to the mix. Check all that apply: The poll is now closed. [...]

May 01
2009

iPhone has “most satisfied” users: study

JD Power finds the battery is the smartphone user’s only complaint, while dumbphone users want GPS, aren’t as likely to cut their landlines.

Apr 29
2009

The Trouble with Twitter: Quitters

More than 60% of Twitter users abandon the service after the first month. Here’s how to ensure this phenomenon grows beyond its current fad status. When it comes to the Internet, there are trends and there are fads. During the net’s infancy, enough companies created websites to make the move to the Information Superhighway (remember [...]

Apr 24
2009

Auto-tuning the news, one story at a time

What happens when the music industry’s dirty little secret is used on the news? Hilarity, that’s what. The Auto-Tune is the music industry’s audio version of Photoshop. It’s allegedly been used to fix the off-key singing of Britney Spears, Reba McEntire, Faith Hill and was used to create the yodel-esque effect in Cher’s 1998 hit [...]

Apr 23
2009

BioShock 2: I’m already creeped out

The best adventure game I’ve played on a computer in 10 years gets a sequel this fall, and this time it’s personal. It had been a very long time since a single player video game drew me in the way BioShock did two years ago. The premise? Your plane crashes in the ocean in the [...]

Apr 20
2009

A Hollywood legend and your cellphone

The late Hedy Lamarr is a key figure in why you can surf the web wirelessly, talk on your cellphone hands-free using Bluetooth, and guide torpedoes to their destinations. Her name wasn’t always Hedy Lemarr. She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Keisler in Vienna to a successful banker and her pianist mother. Louis B. Mayer [...]

Apr 13
2009

Apple’s next iPhone (Update 5 – 3 versions of version 3, including China-specific w/CDMA)

China Times is reporting Apple is preparing for three variations.

Apr 11
2009

Apple’s next iPhone (Update 4 – What’s in a name?)

The next generation iPhone expected in June can’t be named iPhone 3, can it? After all, Apple named version 2 “iPhone 3G” to promote the boost from EDGE cellular speeds to the latest incarnation. And if the rumour mill proves accurate, the existing 3G gets a speed boost from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps. The update is [...]

Apr 08
2009

Apple’s next iPhone (Update 3 – video confirmed, June launch)

BGR tricks a current iPhone into thinking it has the new video chip.

Apr 06
2009

Apple’s new iPhone to please jocks, budding filmmakers

Nextgen iPhone users may be able to actually hear the gym TVs.

Apr 05
2009

Apple’s new iPhone to get faster 3G, WiFi

Patience may pay off for HAINSWORTH.COM’s Editor in Chief with an expected June iPhone upgrade. References to the iPod Touch supporting the latest 802.11n WiFi networks has been uncovered in the Beta of the new operating system, and the iPhone is likely to sport the same chip. Meantime, AT&T has ordered high end Jupiter Networks [...]

Mar 25
2009

Warp Whistle: Mario in Manhattan

Matthew Dominick offers this look at what happens when Super Mario blows the warp whistle and ends up in the city so nice, they named it twice: New York, New York.

Mar 25
2009

54% don’t want or need mobile video

We laughed when they put cameras in our cellphones but now use them extensively. We shrugged when GPS chips appeared in our Blackberrys but wonder how we lived without them. And now we learn more than half of us don’t give a rat’s ass about watching television on a 2.3″ screen. For now. With apologies [...]

Mar 17
2009

The Trouble with Twitters

I certainly see the irony in blogging about Twitter. But damn, I just don’t get the point of it.

Mar 14
2009

A Peek Under the Hood of the Atari 2600 VCS

We learn how one of the Atari’s biggest flaws didn’t keep it from being one of the history’s most successful video game consoles, and why Pac Man looked like crap. When the designers of the Atari 2600 gave the console only 128 bytes (not K, but bytes), they didn’t have enough memory to include one [...]

Mar 05
2009

High Speed Foam Car Prototyping

This five minute video shows the latest in computer aided manufacturing — prototyping a car using foam, resin, and a lot of noise. It’s hyp-mo-tizing. From Wikipedia.org: In modern CNC systems, end-to-end component design is highly automated using CAD/CAM programs. The programs produce a computer file that is interpreted to extract the commands needed to [...]

Feb 27
2009

Josh Sullivan, The 21st Century Hobo

Today’s kids would call him a couch surfer. My Dad’s generation would have called him a wander. And my grandfather would have called him a hobo. You can call him Josh Sullivan. The 27 year old has ditched his day job to document the 52 weeks he’ll staying with 52 different people in 52 different [...]

Feb 21
2009

Internet loves porn, believes in evolution

You discover all sorts of unusual things combing the logs and statistics at HAINSWORTH.COM. It was no surprise that Porn airs during Super Bowl Game was the most popular article here. What surprises me more is that Darwin Poster: Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In surpassed it. When a Tuscon, Arizona Comcast feed of [...]

Feb 20
2009

My Geek Belt vindicated, and other low tech tricks

I’m not trying to imitate Batman, but some days it feels like I’m wearing his Utility Belt. Y’see, I’m one of those guys who wears his cellphone in a belt holster. Yes, it’s geeky. But what’s the point of having a cellphone if you don’t hear it go off in your briefcase or when you’re [...]

Feb 20
2009

Pointui 2: Pointless if you’re Canadian

Programmer and Windows Mobile enthusiast Jeff Hainsworth warns us a great update to the interface on WinMo phones ain’t so great in the Great White North. Windows Mobile-based cellphones have notoriously bad interfaces. It’s like Bill Gates crammed all the existing Windows interface ideas designed for keyboards and mice onto screens too small to be [...]

Feb 19
2009

Facebook’s About Face, and why Digital Democracy Stinks

After unleashing a firestorm of anger from the blogging community about Facebook’s quiet attempt to change its Terms of Service that retroactively makes them the owner of all the photos, videos and other personal content you upload to the social networking site, the company has done an about face. From blog.facebook.com: Going forward, we’ve decided [...]

Feb 17
2009

Facebook Now Owns Your Content

UPDATE! See: Facebook’s About Face, and why Digital Democracy Stinks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is saying, “trust me” after the insanely popular social networking site quietly changed its terms of service. Everything the site’s 175,000,000 users upload, from personal photos to videos and everything in between, is now property of Facebook. They can do whatever [...]

Feb 14
2009

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

Seamstress Becky of EveningArwen on etsy.com can make every geek boy’s Star Trek fantasy come true for a mere US$200. Betsy says her goal is to create movie replica costumes for Hallowe’en or themed birthday parties, and admits you’ll pay a pretty penny for the cosplay (costume play) that goes with fulfilling a fantasy such [...]

Feb 03
2009

This should end well: USA building super computer to manage decaying nukes

Does the Pentagon not watch movies? The main purpose of the massive super computer will be to run nuclear simulations to determine the safety of America’s decaying thermonuclear war machine. The problem we have with the nuclear stockpile is similar to one you might have at home with a car you’ve kept in the garage [...]

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