Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Screaming Asimo

Joel Johnson

BrickBuildr: special selection of AFOL LEGO creations

Michael Huffman writes:

I cobbled "BrickBuildr" together using phpFlickr as a way for the AFOL [Adult Fans of LEGO - Ed.] community to share "LEGO only" pictures with one another (for those who had Flickr accounts). [There's also] a way to browse new "LEGO only" photos from your iPhone.

Project Page [BrickBuildr.com]

Rob Beschizza

Great entries in 1K competition—keep them coming!

BoingBoing Gadgets, in cahoots with Seagate, launched a competition last week challenging you to send us the most ingenious work of art, writing, code or whatever takes your fancy that fits into a kilobyte or less.

We've had some fantastic entries, one of which will win a Terabyte hard drive courtesy of Seagate. Pictured here is Gabriel McGovern's 1k rendering of the Mona Lisa (resized from his original to give a better view).

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Camel "Crush" cigarettes spray menthol from internal capsule

First tested in Japan under the "Kool Boost" brand, a new cigarette from RJ Reynolds will include a tiny menthol "powerball" in the filter that, when squished, will infuse the entire filter with lung-numbing flavor. They'll be sold under the "Camel Crush" brand and are being tested in a few markets.

Trends in Japan explains why testing cigarettes in Japan works better than testing in the States:

Back in the U.S., people will actually ask someone for a cigarette and then decline it when it’s the wrong brand, but Japanese are far more willing to switch brands for any number of reasons: Cool packaging, freebies, product modifications, limited editions, etc. Sure, the older generation of salarymen stick to their Mild Sevens, but young people treat cigarettes like they do any other FMCG. After all, who wants to drink the same brand of coffee their whole lives?

Camel Crush cigarettes tested in Japan? [Killian-Nakamura.com]

Rob Beschizza

Nvidia: CPU dead, long live the GPU

A guy from Nvidia says that its gaming-class graphics chips, not CPUs, now represent the primary component of a modern computer.

"Basically the CPU is dead. Yes, that processor you see advertised everywhere from Intel. Its run out of steam. The fact is that it no longer makes anything run faster. You don’t need a fast one anymore. This is why AMD is in trouble and its why Intel are panicking. They are panicking so much that they have started attacking us. This is because you do still [need] one chip to get faster and faster – the GPU. That GeForce chip. Yes honestly. No I am not making this up. You are my friends and so I am not selling you. This shit is just interesting as hell."

This is just part of a raving email sent to The Inquirer, apparently from Roy Taylor, nVidia's VP of content relations. The Inq just quotes the whole thing and lets it hang out there.

There is a strong element of truth to this chest-slapping, however: in lots of modern computer games, the game logic is extremely simple, with all the hard graft—calculating and rendering the graphics—palmed off on the GPU. Graphics chips, due to their architecture, are also faster than CPUs at certain kinds of calculations.

Windows Vista, for one, can't handle the truth.

Nvidia declares the CPU dead

John Brownlee

Organic e-ink jacket is impossible but Blade Runner-esque

This design concept jacket from Lunar Design aims to turn your torso and neck into a walking anthropomorphic digital display. The Blu Jacket would be made of flexible, organic e-paper: potential applications are displaying advertisements and broadcasting your mood, as well as more mischievous aims like virtual streaking.

This sort of design is a long way off from being plausible, but I can't wait to see it happen. I think I'd make a point of always showing silent movies on mine: The Lost World and Pandora's Box and Metropolis and the like. I love the idea that the person staring at me from across the subway isn't just some random weirdo or smitten stranger, but a viewer, absolutely engrossed by the silver screen drama unfolding on my wardrobe. Hell, you could take the idea even further: the video portion of a movie displayed on your chest as a ghetto-blaster on your shoulder broadcasts the soundtrack. Obnoxious? Yes. But fun!

Lunar Design Blu Jacket [PDF via DVICE via Gizmo Watch]

Rob Beschizza

Uno unicycle featured in this month's Motorcycle Mojo

The original page's been Duggerized, but here's the money shot: an electrical unicycle in bright orange, the Uno, created by 18-year old student Ben Gulak. It is exactly what it appears to be, though with the addition of Segway-like accelerometers and gyros to help the rider not kill himself within half a mile of the dealership.

And to think that my wife thinks letting me get a motorcycle is too risky...

The new Segway is a Motorcycle [Digg]

Joel Johnson

Manga Moment: Ellipses as indicators of speechlessness in '54 MAD Magazine

During a discussion we three were having today about the use of the ellipsis in manga, anime, and videogames to indicate speechlessness, I remembered seeing the same technique used by Jack Davis in the story "Hah! Noon!" in MAD Magazine issue #9, February-March, 1954 (a parody of High Noon). So now you know: while I'm not familiar enough with Occupation-era manga to say if ellipses were used in this manner during the '40s, it's not a new technique — and certainly pre-dates its use in Japanese role-playing videogames.

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we have a 1956 Mechanix Illustrated article about scientist's plans to redesign the human body, including moving the mouth to the stomach and adding an eye to the tip of a finger. Showing that hucksters never miss a chance to exploit people's ignorance of new technology Popular Science wrote a 1939 expose about sham spiritualists using "Spirit Televisions" to fleece their marks. We also looked at an assembly line technique for rapidly developing color photos, a round-up of cool kids toys and a milk wagon towed by zebras. Lastly there is this theater impresario's 1929 prediction that future theaters will be shaped like an egg with multiple slide projectors providing "sets" for the films. Oddly, he doesn't even mention the idea of talkies.

John Brownlee

Pentagon takes cue from Arthur C. Clarke superweapon

New Scientist reports that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a new super-weapon with an eerie familiarity to the Stiletto, a weapon from Arthur C. Clarke's 1955 novel Earthlight: a "solid bar of light" driven by giant capacitors that pierces through spaceships like "an entomologist [piercing] a butterfly with a pin."

Using magnetic fields it will propel either a narrow jet of molten metal or a chunk of molten metal that morphs into an aerodynamic slug during flight. Unlike Clarke's Stiletto, they will come from a device that generates a powerful electromagnetic field from an explosion, not giant capacitors.

DARPA's little gem is called MAHEM and would be used largely against tanks and incoming missiles. Also, the Covenant, whenever they get here.

Science fiction inspires DARPA weapon [New Scientist]

Rob Beschizza

The world's first LED spa

The wall was a symphony in plastic photoframes, meaningless qualifications and semigloss beige. Vern DeChambliss stared at it while his producer explained to him that the studio was shutting down his movie.

Science fiction just isn't doing well enough at the box office. No, straight-to-DVD isn't an option. Stem the losses. Credit crisis. Nothing personal.

As he shook hands and left and waited for the lift, Vern realized that he really didn't give a damn. The script sucked, the actors they'd lined up were notorious pricks, and he could finally get out of town for a while. Nevertheless, money had been spent on props and costumes: like corpses in the arctic circle, this presented something of a disposal problem.

Most of it could be sold on, but the tubes. What to do about the cryotubes? That shit was too cheesy for even the Sci-Fi channel; he'd be lucky to get rid of them on Craigslist, let alone with an asking price.

As the elevator swooped him to the ground floor, he caught a brief glimpse through its windows of the world around him. Lighting a cigarette, he pondered the question until it became a statement: someone, somewhere, would be stupid enough to take them off his hands.

Product Page [Med-spa]

Tunbridge Wells ushers in the world's first LED spa [BornRich]

John Brownlee

Professor Shagnasty's steampunk nerf assault rifle

Yesterday, the description of a monitor slathered with brass and oxidization as 'steampunk' caused me to get so hysterical that I evacuated myself all over BBG's front page. Please ignore this conniption fit, because as much as I like to bitch, I'm about three stiff drinks shy of trying to fit this wonderful steampunk Nerf gun into my little theory of steampunk purity. I think we can bend the rules here.

Professor Shagnasty is selling his Model 101 Steampunk Nerf Assault Rifle on eBay. It's the typical eBay steampunk listing, accompanied by the usual overly formal, proto-Victorian prosaic wankery. But this is something I really dig about the steampunk art community: it's never enough for them to just make a Nerf gun look like the official ordnance of an airship captain. They come up with their own in-universe sales patter

In phase warp configuration, and with a proprietary steam assisted coil driver set, the 101 is capable of both Ground and Ariel engagements. Dirigibles, balloons and other lighter than air machinery are easily dispatched using the simplest of maneuvers. Yet, with another turn of the switch, the model 101 can eject plasmatical beams tuned to perfection and capable of dropping any apparition, out of body ghoul or spectral anomaly.

Current bid is $224.72, with 12 hours left on the auction.

STEAMPUNK NERF MOD LARP COSPLAY ASSAULT RIFLE Sci Fi [eBay via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

The iChime offers customized doorbells for the cheap and obnoxious

It seemed funny at the time, replacing our innocuous door bell chime with Anita Ward's 70's disco rendition of "Ring My Bell." The first time the UPS guy came to the door, it even elicited a laugh from my girlfriend. But then I began opening the door and jamming the bell with my thumb whenever I wanted to get intimate. A starter horn, if you will. This also seemed to go over well. Months passed. It became part of our coital routine. One day, I came home to see a long line of UPS men waiting in front of my apartment; each would walk up to the door, push the bell gingerly and drop his trousers around his ankles as the slender forearms of my girlfriend yanked him inside.

It appears that a novelty doorbell, no matter how well intentioned, can act as a psychological conditioning device. And, as my little anecdote should make abundantly clear, the novelty doorbell is a technology pretty much solely aimed at douches, much like "Who Let The Dogz Out?" answering machine tapes. Still, if you're okay with that, the iChime will allow you to replace your doorbell with a programmable assortment of MP3s using the headphone jack from your iPod. It costs $90.

iChime [Official Site via DVICE]

Rob Beschizza

Nokia Internet Tablet will run Ubuntu

Nokia's Internet Tablet, a nifty little handheld, is about to get even niftier. With Nokia buying Trolltech, the latter's Qt Linux dev toolkit will be slurped into the system. Moreover, the popular and consumer-friendly linux distribution, Ubuntu, is also making its way to the pocket-size portable thanks to a Nokia-supported ARM port.

Ars Technica reports that Nokia's got "ambitious plans" for Qt support across its entire lineup, making it easy for developers to create apps that work on both linux and Symbian platforms.

There's a thriving community around these internet tablets, but I've only dicked around with them once or twice at crowded conference booths. Are they close to working like fully-fledged computers, or just fancy smartphones without the smartphone?

Nokia Internet Tablets get Ubuntu and Qt [Ars Technica] (Ubuntu-tan by Piro)

Joel Johnson

Super Mario Singing Glow Star plays that old familiar tune

Nearly six-inches tall — in-scale for the tiny dwarf a real-life Mario would be before eating an HGH-infused mushroom — this "Super Mario Singing Glow Star" sold at Thinkgeek for $18 will, when pressed, play the invulnerability theme from Super Mario Bros. while glowing on and off. Watch out co-workers! Dan from Sales is smashing ceiling tiles and landing flat-footed on your sack lunch.

Oh, cheap plastic crap, you're so adorable when making a meta-reference to my childhood! I will resist until someone wires this to an aerosol container of PCP, a blast of which would give me the closest analog to momentary shimmering omnipotence that I'll ever experience.

Catalog Page [Thinkgeek via Technabob via GeekAlerts]

John Brownlee

LG's Secret phone shoots DivX, still at large

LG's new phone, the Secret, gives the double deuce to single mega-pixel cellphone cameras with a five megapixel sensor. Yeah, yeah. But more interesting is the promised ability to record DivX movies at up to 120 frames per second using the phone. Of course, you won't be able to save much to its slim 100MB drive, but you can expand the Secret's capacity with an SD card. Even cooler: it's apparently possible to edit the video on the phone's screen.

I suspect that last feature won't be a lot of fun to use, but I think it is a great idea. The Secret is obviously trying to appeal to vidcasters and the like. The next iPhone should take this approach: a decent video cam and the ability to edit videos with a portable version of iMovie, then upload your completed video over 3G to YouTube Mobile.

As for LG's Secret, I for one welcome the coming age of high-resolution cellphone porn movies. No pricing available yet.

LG Secret [Official Site]

Joel Johnson

Pong A Long folding beer pong tables

"Beer Pong" is some sort of drinking-based sport, the object of which is to bounce a ping-pong ball into a plastic cup. (I was the guy trying to explain to dudes' girlfriends the emotional impact of Aeris' death in Final Fantasy VII when I went to frat parties, so I may be a bit murky on the specifics.)

Lest you think Beer Pong the sort of game that can be played on any table at hand — or failing that, on the backs of two interlocked pledges bent ninety degrees at the waist — "Pong A Long" would like for you to consider its "Portable Beer Pong Tables," marked with official areas for cup placement and easily folded to fit into the back seat of a taxi.

If you like manhandled plastic balls in your beer, their currently running a $5-off promo, bringing the price of the seven-foot model to $60 and the eight-foot "Pro" model down to $85 (plus shipping) using code "MI-PONG".

Product Page [PongALong.com]

Rob Beschizza

Vertu's issues exclusive phone to celebrate 10 years of exclusive Vertu phones

Vertu's latest issue proves again that the rarefied world of luxury gadgets is impervious to good taste. It's been selling cellphones aimed at lottery winners for ten years now, and offers the "Rococo Constellation" in celebration of this achievement.

Offered in blandly loud colors and featuring designs modeled on the dessicated ropes of snot left when a slugtrail dries in the morning sun, these new models aim to conjour the elaborate whimsy of a late 18th-century French masterpiece.

Vertu Constellation Rococo Collection[Sybarites via Crave]

Joel Johnson

Manodo touchscreen reports every detail of your energy consumption

Touchscreen computers installed in the hallways of fifteen apartments in Gothenburg, Sweden, inform the residents the carbon footprint of every action they've taken in their homes, helping them monitor the true cost of leaving the lights on or taking a long shower. They're part of a pilot program from Swedish start-up Manodo; they also give handy updates for things like tram stops, weather, and who's standing outside the door.

But do the screens report the impact of their own construction and operation?

Manodo's Screen Is The Big Brother Of Energy Saving [Treehugger]

John Brownlee

Fluidhand is the future of prosthetic arms

Researchers at the university of Heidelberg seem to have perfected the FluidHand, a prosthetic arm with the ability to manipulate each finger individually and provide sensory feedback to its user:

The flexible drives are located directly in the movable finger joints and operate on the biological principle of the spider leg – to flex the joints, elastic chambers are pumped up by miniature hydraulics. In this way, index finger, middle finger and thumb can be moved independently. The prosthetic hand gives the stump feedback, enabling the amputee to sense the strength of the grip.

An 18 year old born with a congenital limb deficiency is apparently very enthusiastic, prompting Futurismic to muse: "I don’t think it’s science fictional to suggest that we’ll be seeing prosthetic limbs that equal the functionality of the organic originals within a decade."

I certainly hope that's true. But I have a friend who was born deaf. A couple years ago, she got Cochlear Implants, which resulted in her being able to hear, but her being ostracized by her friends in the deaf community as some sort of race traitor. I wonder: do you think, if prosthetic technology becomes sufficiently advanced, we'll see a backlash from the congenitally limb deficient community? I can't imagine it from amputees, but what about those born without limbs? What do you think?

'Fluidhand': Each finger can be moved separately [Physorg via Futurismic via Grinding]

Joel Johnson

Korean protestors burn images of scumbag Samsung CEO

Now this is how shareholders should respond to bad corporate leadership. Quothe the AP:

Lee said Tuesday he was stepping down after 20 years as chief of South Korea's biggest conglomerate, quitting in the aftermath of his indictment on tax evasion and other charges last week. Kim claimed last November that the Samsung Group had 200 billion won (US$205 million, euro130 million) in a slush fund and used it to bribe prosecutors and judges.

South Korea Samsung [Foto.Rompres.ro]

Image: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

Rob Beschizza

Sharp-Wilcom's minuscule UMPC out on June 20th in U.S.

Sharp's D4 is a two-faced bastard of a UMPC. On one hand, it's the first such device that's small enough to slip into a jacket pocket and still have a standard-looking keyboard. On the other hand, it's so obviously bloated—Windows Vista, hard drive, a Centrino CPU—that one can practically hear the battery screaming as its energy is sucked from it, a charge measured not in hours but in minutes.

More than ever before, the temptation to buy an ultra-mobile burns. And yet the same thing that makes it so attractive reminds us how short these expensive trinkets fall of obsolete analogs from the handheld past, which boasted instant-on and many hours of battery life. Ask yourself this: what might I do with this thing, and why do I need Vista, 1GB of RAM and 1.33 GHz to do it?

Imagine a version of Windows intermediate between CE/Mobile and XP/Vista, with a focus on mobile power-management wedded to compatibility with standard Windows applications; wouldn't that be super? Imagine this thing with the iPhone's cut of OS X on it. Goodness, just imagine it with anything that won't make your eyes bleed trying to decipher 10-point fonts at 250 dpi.

John Brownlee

Who really gives a shit about MP3s killing the album?

Going over the polished zen aesthetic of Samsung's new Pebble line of MP3 players yesterday, I found myself wanting one. This infuriated me. Shuffle-style players pander to debased musical tastes. It was just one more small, pretty audio player — a seductress, a siren — whispering in my ear, trying to get me to finally give up on that naive platonic ideal: the album. But the album's already dead.

The Pebble, the iPod Shuffle... any of these low-capacity, display-less Flash devices that are flooding the market. The large sub-set of people who opt for these MP3 players over more full-featured models: they simply don't care about albums. Rather, they prefer to listen to their songs randomly and with minimal control. They want song selected, shuffled and spurted out through their earphones. For them, these small, low-capacity MP3 players are like portable, DJ-less radio stations pandering to their tastes. They may not have a lot of control over what's coming up next. They may never hear a full album being played. But they've always got a keychain full of music they like, at all times. Hell, they don't even buy albums anymore: they just load up their music service of choice and buy the tracks they like.

This is all very alien to they way I experience music. Even if I could accept the lack of control, the addition of randomness to my music-listening experience, I can't really accept listening to a song out of the context of the album to which it belongs. I believe that albums should be listened to as complete works, not just anthologies of musical vignettes. Albums should have their own beginning, middle and end: shuffling an album should shuffle its emotional tenor. For me, listening to a song at random without listening to the rest of the album is like reading a chapter randomly from a book. A song might be wonderful, but it is contextless out of its larger body.

I'd be the first to admit that it's a way of looking at music that is completely out of touch with modern music. Who in their right mind looks at a Britney Spears album as an artistically-coherent work within its own right? It's just a collection of singles slapped together with some glitter and PR. Most albums are just semi-random collections of songs crammed onto an optical disc: nothing less and only accidentally something more.

But even worse, my way of looking at albums would have been precious and delusional even a hundred years ago! Since the dawn of recorded music, albums were incidental to songs. In the early days of audio recording, albums weren't much longer than a few minutes anyways, and usually only fit one or two songs per side. It is only as the maximum capacity on audio recordings increased that anyone started playing with the idea of an album as a meaningful artistic entity, in and of itself.

The same holds true for radio: radio is not a format that encourages the playing of full albums, and never has been. And even if you drag me kicking and screaming a few hundred years in the past, I'd find myself looking ridiculous. Most of the music of the world before the dawning of the 20th century did not come in the form of symphonies: it came in the form of short songs. In fact, my way of thinking about albums probably dates back no later than the 1950's Cool Movement, and for most of the history of recorded mucic has only subscribed to be jazz musicians and musical avant gardists.

Still, I sputter and rage at myself. Buying a single catchy song off of iTunes. Purchasing an adorable novelty MP3 player off of Amazon. I'm so tempted: it means I'm giving up on the actual existence of the record album. I'm sacrificing the ludicrous, pretentious self-delusion that there is a musical entity distinct from the song, that an "album" is something more than the means of physical delivery and its packaging.

And then I start thinking to myself, "Actually, I bet one of those Pebbles would be pretty good for podcasts. I don't care what order those come down the pipe." Maybe there's a compromise to be had here, after all.

Joel Johnson

Sky Factory SkyCeilings: modular and custom drop-in virtual skylights (and spacelights!)

"SkyCeilings" talk up all the stuff you'd expect about their virtual skylights: their full-spectrum light is useful for treating seasonal affective disorder; cloud patterns and perspective tricks are used to emulate the proper focus depth; the slaves chained in your stygian mine will work up to one-third more efficiently when these illusory portals are installed in the trembling shaft. But while the manufacturer Sky Factory makes a variety of custom installations, I think the neatest aspect is that the default SkyCeiling installation slips into the gridwork of the standard suspended ceiling. That makes it simple to add these fake skylights to most office spaces, even ones on the ground floor of a skyscraper.

I have one suggestion for Sky Factory, though, and while it might sound facetious I mean it genuinely: you should releases a line of SkyCeilings with fantastic imagery: boiling red skies thick with nephilim; a looming fleet of interstellar marauders; even a mostly normal sky with a little pegasus ducking behind a cloud. I'd never consider buying one of these systems for my home or office, but if there was a bit of whimsy involved it might be worth the price.

Speaking of: how much are these things? You'll have to call to speak to a "Sky Designer" to find out. Like I did. Aaron Birlson said the basic units go for about $105-115 a square foot, but the addition of something fancy — say, programmable dimming to a reddish lamp timed to the progression of the actual sunset — costs more.

I tried to blow Aaron's mind with my idea of doing fantasy scenes, but he stopped me mid-blurt, telling me about the large number of installations they've already done in home theaters that feature deep space scenes full of nebula and shooting stars. One of Sony's MMO groups apparently looked into getting one of their game's sky graphics installed in a board room. Another client was an orthodontist redoing his basement as a tribute to Star Wars (including an X-Wing cockpit mock-up) who recreated the little table at which Chewie and C-3PO play chess. Above it? A custom window looking out into a spinning galaxy. (Speaking of, can you imagine how awesome it would be to be an orthodontist in the Star Wars universe? You could retire on a sarlacc cleaning alone.)

Hopefully Sky Factory will be able to dig up more pictures for us of these custom installations.

So now I'll amend my suggestion: more fantastic skies, but this time let's make them animated.

Company Page [TheSkyFactory.com]

Rob Beschizza

Tiny USB hub with y-cable draws and distributes twice the power

Now here's a simple and useful concept: a USB hub sold with a Y-cable. This makes it possible to run power-hungry gadgets that usually don't play well with unpowered hubs—think optical drives, scanners and 2.5" SATA drives—without mains power.

Product Page [Brando via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Order a doll of your Mii Wii

One can now order one's Mii—a cutesy avatar system built into Nintendo's runaway Wii—in the flesh. The Miro wax-putty flesh.

"We are specializing in custom hand made sculptures. We have a team of artists, create sculpture base on photo you provided. ... You can even send us your photo of Mii and your Mii number."

They're expensive, at $75, but they're hand-made by a living, breathing artist. That's a low price to pay to transform an empty, soulless simulacrum of the human form into a cake topper!

Product Page [Mii Sculptures]

Rob Beschizza

Cogent makes computer the size of a stick of laptop RAM

Cogent's "system on a module" computer, appetizingly named "CSB737," has a 240MHz CPU, 64MB of SDRAM , 512MB of flash storage, 10/100 Ethernet, a USB host, LCD controller and a 2D-only GPU.

It typically consumes less than a watt of energy (750-1200mW), making it cheap-running and eco-friendly, but is it good for anything more demanding than a fancy fridge's LCD display?

Worse, it comes with a somewhat larger carrier board, which has the USB and ethernet ports and what-have-you. The initial excitement of "MAME machine inside a joystick!" fades to the realization one can get more muscle, at a similar size, with Pico-ITX.

This little fella is more expensive than Via's miniaturized wonder, too, with a total cost of about $600 for the CSB737 and carrier board together.

Joel Johnson

Activate Water shows what a harmful scam most bottled beverages really are

"Activate" is a new line of sports beverages that store the powdered "vitamins and herbs" in the cap. Twist the top and a small plastic blade cuts the seal, opening an armature that allows the ingredients to fall into the water. The conceit is that the vitamins will say at "maximum potency" since they are not deteriorating in water.

It's clever...for showing what a rip-off most sports drinks are. You're paying two dollars or more for a tiny little pouch of flavor powder — new-age Kool-Aid — that could be more inexpensively distributed in bulk. Instead, they're using extra plastic to build a mechanism that could be just as easily replaced by a tub of powder and a spoon. Or if beveraging on the go is your main priority: tiny, dissolving gelatin packets.

At least with a proper soft drink you're getting carbonation. (The occasional can of Coca-Cola and Welches' Grape are one of my favorite little indulgences.)

Product Page [ActivateDrinks.com]

Previously • Twist Cap Releases Instant Tea [BBG]

Joel Johnson

LEGO Pink Brick Box sadly not filled entirely with pink elements

LEGO sells this "Pink Brick Box" for $15, a tub of mostly standard full-sized bricks but with a few pink and green ones thrown in for good measure. I wish there were more beams and pieces I could use in spaceships; even the horse-loving Belville series doesn't have very many elements suitable for space.

Product Page [Shop.LEGO.com]

John Brownlee

Codex of Liliputian subnotebooks

Spurting meconium, its severed umbilical cord wildly lashing around like an out of control fire hose, the Asus Eee was born: a tiny, albino, physically undeveloped premie, barely capable of processing its own operating system, unable to go without life support for more than one and a half hours. A sad, sorry, adorable thing, but none the less, consumers lustfully dogpiled on top of it.

It was only natural that would get the attention of the other laptop manufacturers... Spartan companies that had gotten used to picking up the runts and weaklings of their development line-up and tossing them in a spike-filled pit. Accounting, of course, for the sudden sure of affordable sub-notebooks.

But at this point, another Eee-style sub-notebook is announced every other day. With few exceptions, they are all roughly interchangeable feature wise. How to drill down to the genetic differences between models? Over at the wonderfully named Liliputing site, they have put together a semi-complete breakdown of all of the recent subnotebooks, including technical specs, prices and release dates.

Bizarrely, the HP MiniNote isn't on their list, which is strange, because my impression skimming through the site was that it was probably the best of the bunch, as far as what has been released and what's visibly in the pipeline. A lot of these so-called Asus killers are pretty crappy.

Comprehensive list of low-cost ultraportables [Liliputing]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Pixel pour

[via Near Future Laboratory]

John Brownlee

Clue Premier Edition becomes diorama of gruesome murder

This pricy $149 Clue collector's set replicates the original's timeless two-dimensional murder mansion in a deluxe, three-dimensional edition. The wood paneled game box features the original's nine sunken rooms, including vintage period furnishings rendered in excruciating minutiae.

Gorgeous, but for my house, it wouldn't be complete until I had carefully painted miniature figurines to resemble Colonel Mustard, Professor Plumb and Mrs. White, then arranged for their demises in grisly, gore-spattered detail, a miniature diorama of Agatha Christie murders. I want no confusion on where each character was murdered and with what weapon in my mansion.

Clue Premier Edition [Restoration Hardware via Uncrate]

John Brownlee

All AT&T phones $0.01 on Amazon today only

If you're looking for a new phone and not adverse to jumping cellular motherships, Amazon is having a deal today only: every single one of their phones only costs a penny, today only.

The caveat: when they say every single phone, they don't mean the iPhone. Other caveat: you will, of course, have to sign up for a two-year AT&T contract. But there's plenty of new phones — including some Blackberries and SmartPhones. And if you play your rebates right, you can even make $150.00 by the time you get your phone. Hey, every little bit helps to counter the contract hell that is the state of the American cell phone market.

All AT&T Phones--One Penny [Amazon]

John Brownlee

Wonderful gallery of tiny steam-powered model engines

Straight from the show floor of the North American Model Engineering Expo held in Toledo last weekend, Ross in Detroit posted this incredible gallery of homunculus-sized steam, gas and hot-air model engines in our comments. There's some breath-taking ingenuity on display here. It's steam-powered retro-fetishism for Lilluputians! Thanks, Ross!

NAMES Expo [Pbase]

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we have this bizarre contraption designed to torture teach your baby how to walk, a "compact" gauge to measure the speed of baseball pitches, a round up of cool gadgets used in store windows to attract shoppers, a 1965 ad for Bell's Data-Phone which appears to be an early modem and a big truck that can transform into a complete airport. We also looked at Mechanix Illustrated's vision of future peace keepers in "Space Cops to Enforce World Peace". One commenter pointed out the similarity of this idea to the plot of H.G. Wells' 1936 movie "Things to Come". You can read a Modern Mechanix article about it here. Or watch the whole movie at archive.org.

John Brownlee

Samsung's Pebble MP3 players are quite zen

Samsung's new answer to the iPod Shuffle is the YP-S3 Pebble: a music player that lies like a colorful polished stone in the palm of the hand. Features include 1GB of flash memory, some EQ presets and MP3, WMA and OGG support.

Quite gorgeous, really: the Pebbles are like technological refugees from a Japanese rock garden. I'm not going to buy one, though: the temptation to see how many "skips" I could get from my new MP3 player would be overpowering, especially since — with no screen and limited storage capacity — it would basically be worthless to me for actual music listening. But I'm sure it makes a satisfying "thunk" when loaded between the bifurcated barrels of a sling shot and propelled at the pineal gland of an obnoxious co-worker. Expect the price to be about the same as an iPod Shuffle.

Samsung Pebble, S3 MP3 players show great promise [Crunch Gear]

John Brownlee

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is out

What you smell is the acrid aroma of a small nerve cluster in Cory's limbic system spontaneously shorting out through sheer orgiastic ebullience: the latest version of Ubuntu, code name Hardy Heron, is now available for download. Improvements nclude:

GNOME 2.22, Linux kernel 2.6.24, PolicyKit, PulseAudio, Xorg 7.3, Firefox 3 Beta 5, Brasero, Transmission, World Clock Applet, Vinagre, Uncomplicated Firewall, Totem, Inkscape, ActiveDirectory integration, iSCSI support, Memory Protection, SELinux Support, umenu, Virtualization, and the Wubi installation option for Windows users.

The site is getting absolutely hammered, so keep trying.

I'm looking forward to giving Ubuntu a shot again whenever I end up purchasing some type of Eee-style sub-notebook: there's no way I'm going to use it over OS X on my Mac, but every time I've played around with it, I've thought it was quite lovely.

Download Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 [Ubuntu]

Rob Beschizza

Beamz: laser theremin thingie on sale at Sharper Image

Beamz, an electonic musical instrument that combines theremin and laser, is now available for a face-shriveling $600 at Sharper Image and the official website.

"Inspired by a childhood memory of a simple, light-activated door announcer at his local ice cream shop, [inventor] Jerry Riopelle has since leveraged decades of professional musical experience to develop this invention. His years of tinkering resulted in a breakthrough product that uses six laser beams like strings. Players simply pass their hands through each beam to trigger streams of musical notes or sounds. Each performance produces an original composition and the patented software ensures that the music played always will be harmonious, no matter which beam is engaged."

Connect it to your computer via USB, and set it up the way you want it with the included software, and you've got a spectacular-looking public performance. Whether it sounds all that good in person — or if it's anything more complex than a triggering mechanism for pre-produced clips and sequences — is another matter entirely.

Does it not look like a laser-fence? You know, those things in derivative science fiction movies and games that slice up intruders like so much Prosciutto.

Product Page [thebeamz.com]
Press release [PR Newswire]

John Brownlee

German Wikipedia will be printed

German publisher Bertelsmann has announced that they will be selling a stripped-down printed version of Wikipedia later this year. Wha'?

The idea is to use Wikipedia to capture the zeitgeist by selecting the most popular entries, Beate Varnhorn, the editor in charge of Bertelsmann’s reference works, said in an interview by telephone. “We think of it as an encyclopedic yearbook,” Dr. Varnhorn said, leaving open the possibility of new editions if the 2008 version is successful.

It won't be, but it's an interesting approach to take. Needless to say, not all of Wikipedia will be represented: the number being thrown around is 50,000 of the most popular entries. 4 of the top 10 German Wikipedia entries? "Penis", "Sex", "Vagina" and "Adolf Hitler." Sounds like a fun book to read. Unfortunately, these 50,000 entries will be stripped down to about 15 lines each, which certainly isn't enough space to print the bulk of Wikipedia's content: 4,000 word fictional biographies of anime characters.

Actually, that was just a joke, but come to think of it, wouldn't that be a better tack altogether? Use Wikipedia as your content source for the printing of themed encyclopedias aimed at certain niches. Wikipedia: Star Wars Edition is likely to sell a lot better in book stores than Wikipedia: Gimped Edition

A Slice of German Wikipedia to Be Captured On Paper [New York Times]

John Brownlee

Datamancer's steampunk LCD is gorgeous, but is it really steampunk?

First thing's first: modder Datamancer's "steampunk" LCD monitor (pictured above) is a beauty. It's a 22" widescreen LCD featuring a frame of solid 1/-inch brass and a base made up of a mixture of black marble and brass. It was made for an upcoming movie, and after filming, it'll go up on eBay. I'm tempted to pick it up myself: I would look fine blogging in front of such a monitor, my meerschaum smoldering, a fez perched atop my head.

But those supine quotes smugly curl around steampunk in my first sentence for a reason. As lovely as Datamancer's creation is, I bristle at it being referred to as steampunk. Steampunk means something more precise than just "old and cool looking." I wish we could get back to using it that way.

Joel thinks steampunk is a confluence of aesthetic influences — which I agree with — and is ultimately an adjective without a concrete meaning. But it had a very precise meaning to me: it's anti-retro-futurism. Where retro-futurism is the attempt by people of the past to imagine the future by extrapolating it from the technology of the day, steampunk should be the attempt to recreate — at least in spirit — our own contemporary technology using the science and mechanics of the Victorian era.

I once interviewed Jake von Slatt for Wired. Jake's not shy about artfully adding ornamenture and oxidization to some gadget and calling it steampunk, but he's clearly interested in doing far more. Von Slatt was telling me about what a true steampunk monitor would be like in his mind: all ASCII, maybe no more than 80x40, but each letter would change like the rapid-fire fluttering of the destinations on a mid-century train departures board. He also described a steampunk mouse that was like "a phrenological device for hands." Now that's steampunk.

Maybe I'm just being an elitist snob. There's something to that: when Joel told me on my first day at BBG that our science-fiction category was "Retro-Futurism" because "it means the same thing," I experiences a remarkably vivid waking dream in which I schooled Joel on the exact meaning of the word by garroting him with his own unspooled intestines. But I like to think I try to hold on to the purity of the word "steampunk" just because modern technology mechanically engineered with the knowledge and materials of the distant pass is just so much more wonderful than spraying some copper paint on the side of your Dell and calling it a day. What do you guys think?

Steampunk LCD Monitor [Datamancer]

Rob Beschizza

Suggestive ad for spoon scales features rock salt, not drugs

Purported to weigh contents to an accuracy of one tenth of a gram, Pro•Idee's Spoon Scales are recommended for "Saffron, truffles, fine balsamic vinegar and crack."

At £18.50, it'll be the most expensive spoon you've ever bought, too. It's capable of measuring up to 300 grams (10.5 oz), according to the product page, but there's no word on whether it's dishwasher safe. I should think not, but I'd like someone to try and then complain anyway, so that we may mock them.

Spoon With Built-In Scale Is A Great Gift For Your Local Drug Dealer [Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

Destroy others, self, with wrist-mounted DIY flamethrower

Charlie Sorrel at Wired's Gadget Lab notes that Everett Bradford, the creator of this contraption, is "a young man already working on winning a Darwin Award."

YouTube [via Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

Microsoft kills SPOT for watches

The writing's been on the wall, but Microsoft have just announced that they are putting down their SPOT service for Smart Watches like the lame dog it was.

SPOT ("Smart Personal Objects Technology" — Smart Watches that could send and download information via FM Radio) was an interesting idea, briefly capturing my fascination as I dreamed of an affordable SWATCH with all the Dick Tracy technological trimmings. But the watches themselves — drab-looking LCDs, the lot of them — were far too ugly to seriously consider wearing, and the features didn't seem worth the premium of the subscription to MSN Direct. They were either mundane (weather updates, lottery numbers) or absurd (you could receive but not send IMs on your watch). There was just no compelling reason to own one.

Well, SPOT's dead now. If you've got a SPOT watch, its services will continue working, but no more SPOT Watches will be released. Microsoft seems to be channeling the MSN DIrect service into more powerful devices, like GPS units. That's probably for the best. Personally, I think SPOT Watches highlighted a big dilemma with modern watch design: the more technologically modern a watch becomes, the less pleasing it is to wear.

Smart Watch Update [Spotstop via Crunch Gear]

Rob Beschizza

Automatic guitar hero controller dongle

It used to be that one could simply look up a walkthrough at Gamefaqs. Guitar Hero, however, is an actual game of skill rather than a glorified puzzle, mashfest or grind. How, then, to cheat? David Randolph takes a show controller—typically used to control museum exhibits and the like—and rigs it up to record and play perfect runs of the title's songs.

Programmed through the serial port, it costs $210 and can't be ordered online. Moreover, you have to get a relay board for another $200, or thereabouts, to adapt its output to a controller, which must itself be hacked to high heaven to get it all working.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it all comes down to exactly how much you suck, and exactly how much you want to do something about it.

Automate Guitar Hero [Hacked Gadgets]

Rob Beschizza

$250k book scanner swipes through 3,000 pages per hour

Just watching the DL 3000 book scanner in operation scares me. The bars that swoop over the book, raising and flapping pages, seem far too large and heavy-duty; it's as if a brush of wind or the slightest nudge would have their dumb repetitions turn your discolored, first-edition Psychopathia Sexualis into so much confetti.

It's claimed to be the fastest such scanner in the world, and the 3000's name refers to the number of pages it can scan in an hour; that's quick enough to bomb its way through half a dozen airport potboilers before you've even gotten through security. At $250,000, you won't be getting it for Christmas; worse, it can't do The Jungle Book: Pop-up Adventure.

Digitizing Line DL-3000 Book Scanner - aka the fastest in the world [Red Ferret Journal]

Rob Beschizza

Microwave-toaster combo shows cellphones a thing or two about convergence

It is a microwave. Press a button, and a flap opens to reveal a concealed toaster. Shriek with glee and clap your hands, it's a convergence device that sounds like it might actually been worth the trouble of converging!

Appliances have an advantage over high-tech gadgets, see, in that the technology behind them is generally a settled matter. The performance characteristics of toasters do not follow Moore's law, or anything like it. On the other hand, the other traditional flaw of convergence remains true: sooner or later, one of the components will break, spoiling the experience of the whole thing.

LG's LTM9000 is also a bit of a lightweight: only 900 watts in the oven and 800 watts for the toaster. At $140, it's not outrageously expensive, but much moreso than just buying a toaster and a microwave.

Product Page [via Oh Gizmo and Core77]

Rob Beschizza

Kevlar shoes encourage natural gait

Shoes, especially expensive "running" shoes, fuck up your feet. They ruin a walking gait honed by countless generations of adaptation, and make you look like a fashion victim to boot. Dylan Tweney at Wired Science reviews the research and finds Galahad Clark's Vivo Barefoot, a pricey design that's crafted to match as closely as possible the natural inclinations of the human foot.

"[It's] a $160 un-shoe that is as close to going barefoot as you can get while still providing some protection against the dog shit, hypodermic needles and broken glass that clog the streets of New York (and San Francisco, for that matter)."

My understanding is that the publicly-available excrement in San Francisco is often from another source, but to a jogger, a turd is a turd is a turd. The shoe looks a bit goofy, until you realize that it's basically just a superstrong kevlar sock dressed up to look as much like a sneaker as possible. From fan Josh Samuels:

"Their lack of "arch support" and elevated heel is actually a boon, as it allows you to walk/run normally and regain natural posture. They also have a wide toe-box, to accommodate your feet without crunching, even have a zippered sole so that you can just replace them when they wear out, instead of buying a new pair!"

At $160, it's pricey — so pricey that I think I'd rather wait until they have a less pedestrian design.

Update: Cory links to a New York Magazine article on the subject and offers some thoughts on an alternative brand that's helped him overcome woes anyone with flat feet will understand.

Product Page [kk.org]
Your Shoes Are Killing Your Feet [Wired Science]

Rob Beschizza

Rumor: Sprint reps told not to write quotes from customers in notes

As my poor relationship with Sprint continues—I just tried to activate a new line with an old phone we already own, a Sprint Katana, but it was 'unable' to do so—The Consumerist has a doozy on America's third-largest cellular carrier. Allegedly, anonymous-sourcedly, Sprint's reps are under instructions not to write quotations from customers in notes. This is because such notes can be used by customers in lawsuits as evidence.

If true, it's probably best seen not as some new act of raving evil, but simply as a subtle reminder of how Sprint views its relationship with its customers.

Sprint Reps No Longer Allowed To Quote Customer In Quotes In Case Of Subpoena? [The Consumerist]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: The Woodsman

Joel's secret to wilderness success.
Jordan Guelde [via Yanko Design]

Rob Beschizza

Why Linux will never get consumer market share

From the "Open Source Boob Project:"

"At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask:

'Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?'"

The Open Source Boob Project [TheFerett via Qt3]

P.S. Don't miss the clarification.

Joel Johnson

In the Woods: Dumb but lucky (my life's creed)

Despite some equipment setbacks compounded by my embarrassingly poor grasp of the fundamental nature of circuits, I am computing to you from a hill overlooking the Hudson on a Lenovo X300 laptop being recharged by a Brunton Solo 15. The Solo 15 was recharged by our sun through a folding Solaris 52 solar panel. I'm also sipping water — well, coffee — cleaned by a SteriPen while taking the occasional phone call.

(I'm listing all this stuff by brand name both to catch up anyone who hasn't been following along. Also, because man is this stuff getting dirty; I'm hoping the more I mention the products by name the less blank stares I get from the companies when I return their mostly intact but dusty gear. Still, typical review caveats apply: If something sucks I'll say so.)

It was my intention to actually do some more blogging out here, but my internet connection using the X300's built-in EVDO modem is stuck at 1xRTT, which is usable, albeit slowly. Like days of yore, I am loading only a single web page at a time. For a brief moment this morning I had a strong EVDO signal and speeds to match, but like the fog it vanished with the sun.

In short, things are going better than I could reasonable expect, but I wouldn't advise anyone to make the same attempt. The solar gear works but is heavy. The internet works, but barely. The camping comforts I left to make room for all the electronics are missed.

Yet I'm still looking down into the valley below and it's lovely — when the trees fill out their leaves it will be stunning — and am able to answer emails, upload pictures, post stories, and live a muted analog of my normal work day.

But these are supposed to be work days, however awesomely indulgent they may be, so I'm going to pack up in the morning and head back to Brooklyn. I've tested all the gear I've brought (and shot video, coming soon). I'll lose most of the day tomorrow to travel, but better three light posting days than four, I figure, especially since I'm bopping off to Costa Rica next week for what will be — save a few video shoots — a proper vacation.

I'll be writing up full reviews of all this gear after I get back. Except for the inverter that came with the Brunton Solo 15 that coughed up some smoke when I plugged it directly into the 12-volt (estimated!) outlet on the Solaris 52 solar panel, everything has worked very well. (And the inverter is still working right now, although it will occasionally make a little snapping noise to remind me it is not long for this world.)

Oh, I almost stepped on a rattlesnake. Then almost fell on it when I jumped in fear and nearly lost my balance. Then sat in the shelter chain smoking recalling all the times I've sneered to someone, "Oh, they're more afraid of you than you are of them." Because if that's true that snake had a hell of a poker face.

Anyway, lots more to come, but I realized I hadn't checked in since this morning. Thanks to everyone who sent me "Complete the circuit, dummy!" messages while I was rigging up the plug this morning. Every time I got one a little more drool dripped from my smiling, idiot mouth.

Previously • Video: Week in the Woods [BBG]
• In the Woods: Brooklyn, we have a problem [BBG]
• Gadgets in the wild: Is Joel Dead Yet?; Update: Sirs, I am not [BBG]
• Week in the Woods: Final checklist; Leaving tomorrow! [BBG]
• Week in the Woods: Need to Get My Computer Decision Made [BBG]
• Help Me Plan a Week Working in the Woods [BBG]

Joel Johnson

Top Gun '08 R/C air show happening now

Starting, uh, yesterday, the 'Top Gun' show at the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport (in Florida) features the world's largest 35 R/C airplanes, as well as typical air show demos and performances. If you're into R/C aircraft you probably already are there, but if happen to be in the area and want to check it out the show is open until the 27th.

Show Page [FrankTiano.com via HackNMod.com]

Image: John B. Carnett for Popular Science

Joel Johnson

Blaupunkt 'Brisbane' in-dash stereo leaves out the CD player

The Blaupunkt 'Brisbane SD48' is a in-dash car stereo that forgoes the CD entirely in favor of SD cards, external MP3 players, phones, USB flash and hard disk drives. Because it's all solid state, they're pitching it as a solution for those who partake in "high G-force motorsports and...off-road enthusiasts."

Unfortunately the actual file-handling capabilities seem a bit lackluster:

The Blaupunkt Brisbane SD48 has a front panel SD/MMC card-slot, headphone-jack input for portable MP3 player, and a USB input that allows the addition of storage devices such as a portable hard-drive or thumb-drive loaded with digital music. It supports both MP3 and WMA audio files at bit-rates of 8 to 320 kilobits. The Brisbane accommodates up to 127 music directories, and displays ID3 tag information up to 30 characters in length. The 3.5 mm front-panel auxiliary input is compatible with the headphone or aux outputs of nearly any portable device.

Press Release [GSPR.com]

John Brownlee

Optimus keyboard now shipping, bring on the hacks

After years of promises and missed ship dates, the Optimus Maximus keyboard is finally on sale (and shipping!) over at Think Geek. The price is still sheer lunacy, though, at $1,589.99. All so you can marvel at the 113 tiny OLED keys that will soon be covered in an opaque film of dead skin detritus and Cheetos dust. This keyboard, as undeniably sexy as it is, needs to be about $1200 cheaper before I even begin to consider it, even after trepanation. Although every time I try to remember my World of Warcraft warlock's hot keys, I feel a slight pang of temptation.

But in truth, I'm more looking forward to what other people do with the Optimus: with each key capable of playing an animated GIF or Quicktime movie, I don't think it'll be too long before we see a YouTube movie of the the Optimus broadcasting 113 simultaneous copies of "Two Girls, One Cup." Anyone else got any good ideas for Optimus hacks?

Optimus Maximus Keyboard [Think Geek]

John Brownlee

French Medion Akoya Mini joins the Eee clones

A scant few months after Asus Eee forged the adorable market of the impulse-buy sub-notebook, it is already looking like the lame duck, a cheap Chinese knock-off of better competitors. As every computer maker crowds into this new market space, most of them seem to be bringing more attractive and full-featured offerings to the table for about the same price.

The Medion Akoya Mini is France's own prospective Eee-killer. It is shipping with a 1.6GHz-1.8Ghz Atom processor, apparently, with a gig of DDR2 RAM, which makes it a beefier machine than some of the cheap sub-notebooks we've seen recently. The OS will be either XP or Linux, but if you opt for Linux (as seems to be the trend) you get a beefier machine for the same price. There's also a 1.3 MegaPixel cam, a memory card reader, a VGA output, two USB ports and an Ethernet port. Release date is at the end of summer.

It's a pretty sleek looking machine, actually. Medion is claiming the price will be below €399 in Europe. I think we're soon going to see this cheap sub-notebook market become as over-saturated as the MP3, digicam or cell phone market with cheap, essentially indistinguishable devices.

Medion tells us more about its competitor of the Eee PC [SVM Le Mag via le Journal du Geek via Engadget]

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at this 1973 Popular Science article about the debut of the world's first cell phone, Motorola's Dynatac.

In super-dense Manhattan, for example, a transmitter and its antenna may be designed to cover a 15-block area. Another transmitter in a residential Brooklyn area may cover several miles. As the number of subscribers grows, more transmitters would be added.

Also today, a beard clinic that helps men develop their own custom shaving strategy, Polish dogs trained to lay telephone lines, deep sea divers used to solicit cash, an interesting approach to preventing bank robberies by using mirrors and a pretty nice looking home on a train.

John Brownlee

Decapitated Stitch eats, plays your CDs

While I still buy CDs — the Microsoft PlaysForSure debacle is just more steel for my resolve not to buy songs over iTunes, and I'm not going to pay a premium to get my music without DRM — I didn't think I was likely to ever buy a CD player again. I mean, really: CDs are just a one-off means of conveyance for me to transfer the music I want to hear from the record store to my iPod, like an iridescent, optical plastic bag. But man, this Disney CD player and radio in the shape of Stitch's decapitated head is pretty righteous. You just cram your disc down his gullet and the music reverberates out of his ears; the control buttons are encalcified on his plaque-encrusted teeth. It's Japan only, though, so I'm unlikely to cave to the temptation. If you're interested in importing it, though, it seems to be going for about $90.

Disney Stich CD/radio player [Far East Gizmos]

John Brownlee

Monocycle is the chariot of choice for the 21st Century Man

For me, the monocycle — in which a cyclist bestowed with a bitching sense of equilibrium (and, god willing, a waxed handlebar moustache) pedals his velocipede from inside the rim of its enormous solitary wheel — is the paragon of cycling technology, and so Ben Wilson's incredible monowheel, commissioned for Tokyo's 21st Century Man competition, has me feeling a bit like a antediluvian pleb for getting around on the pitiful conveyance of a two-wheel vehicle.

“We don’’t suggest for one moment that a functioning human powered monowheel could ever provide an improvement on the modern bicycle," claims Wilson. Says you. Man, some people just don't deserve cool things.

Monowheel by Ben Wilson [Dezeen]

John Brownlee

Beauty and the Geek keyboard pants

I don't think I could wear these "Beauty and the Geek" jeans by designer Erik De Nijs. They've certainly got some serious nerd cred, with speakers sewn into the knees, a special back pocket for your mouse and a joystick controller located behind the zipper.. But they really seem to be designed more for women — for whom typing a long sentence full of titillating "G"s will never be more arousing — than for men (slap that space bar gingerly, champ).

The Geekiest Pants... Ever [Vous Pensez]

Rob Beschizza

Asus to offer bamboo subnotebooks this summer

Bamboo's all the rage today, with Asus announcing that its own lineup of wooden-cased computers will arrive in stores this summer.

Digitimes, itself citing Apply Daily, reports that it'll put out subnotebooks in 11" and 12" sizes in June, for about $1,650. Pictured is a larger prototype from its demo at the recent CeBit show, where it presented a desktop and other notebook form factors. None of these other mockups are planned to conjoin with reality, unfortunately.

Getting hold of these in the west might be a problem. Dynamism, I hope you're on it.

Asustek to launch bamboo notebooks by June, says paper [DigiTimes]

Rob Beschizza

World's largest abacus used by drug dealer

Thailand has an 18-foot abacus, fronting the counter at a pharmacy in Rayong. The pharmacist reports being able to calculate bills on it faster than with a standard electronic calculator.

Abacus [Reuters via Red Ferret Journal]

John Brownlee

Buying electronics in Europe is for idiots

At least every six months, I cram myself into the fetid belly of a Trans-Atlantic 747, spend 12 hours trying not to fling to the ground and jump on the spine of the small child rhythmically kicking the back of my seat, and fly back to my home town for a couple of weeks. I have my reasons: steak-and-cheese subs and Taco Bell. The seduction of home town girls who were too good for me in high school. A beloved nonagenarian uncle who seems likely to explode into a poof of dust at any moment, despite the fact that all the evidence I have so far indicates he is probably immortal. But as the dollar tanks, I find myself increasingly scheduling my trips home according to gadget release schedules.

This can be maddening. For example, right now, I'm looking to make a trip home sometime in June. The cheapest tickets are from the very end of May to about June 12th, at which point, the prices jump up a couple hundred bucks. But here's where it gets tricky: I want to update my old first-revision MacBook Pro when I'm home. Now, according to Appleinsider, there's a good chance we'll see new MBPs soon. Apple is also holding a developer's conference from June 9th - 13th. So basically, if they announce a new MBP and Jobs says "And you can get it now!" it's probably too late to get one. So is it worth spending another couple hundred bucks to travel home at the end of June? Well, sure... provided Apple releases a new MBP in mid-June. Otherwise, it's a waste of money.

In a simpler world, I would just buy my new laptop in Europe, but buying electronics in Europe is for land-locked fools. For some reason — and that reason is an industry-wide indifference to gouging European customers and an enthusiasm for making them subsidize their American customers — the suggested retail price of a piece of electronics is always translated at a 1:1 exchange rate from dollars to euros. A $2,000 laptop will cost you €2,000. There was a time, when the dollar was a little stronger, that you could justify it to yourself. Sure, you were paying a 20% increase in the price, but that was roughly accountable for by VAT. But now that the dollar is worth 0.62 European cents, that two thousand dollar laptop will cost a European $3,186.18. The discrepancy is the price of almost two round-trip tickets to the States!

Keep this in mind next time you see a gadget blog optimistically translate the price of a new piece of European tech from Euros to dollars at the official Oanda exchange rate: it is the sort of simpering naivete that only an American gadget blogger — buying his tech at half-price with a currency imbued with the strength of sopping toilet paper — could ever have.

There's no two ways about it: buying electronics in Europe is for morons.

Rob Beschizza

Ouija board guitar plucks gothic heart strings

A demented facsimile of a folk tune presented itself in mind the moment I set eyes on the ouija board guitar, a contemporary mashup to honor it's crazy blend of art, music and madness.

From the URL, it looks like the artist's name is Nick Holcomb. I'd love to see and hear video of this in action.

Gallery page [via GearFuse]

Rob Beschizza

Dell's Bamboo PC is tip of an iceberg of cool designs

Dell's Bamboo-cased mini-PC is about the most beautiful thing the company—often derided as the dullest of PC manufacturers—has produced. Ostensibly an eco-friendly thing, this wooden machine's real appeal is its simple, tasteful appearance. Of course, it will also be available in standard-issue plastic.

At CES this year, Dell gave me and other writers a look at prototypes it probably will never take to market. These devices were universally gorgeous, inventive and cleverly designed. The only thing from this team/division to see the light of day, I think, is the crystal LCD monitor that's now getting some unfortunate reviews.

Dell's new computer, specs undisclosed, will be available later this year at a "likely" price of $500-$700. Specs will be important: if this has decent storage, HDMI and an optical drive, it'll be a hot item. If it's just another low-end desktop that's bigger than and just as pricey as the Mac Mini, it won't.

Pictures of Dell's Eco Bamboo Computer [Earth2Tech]

Rob Beschizza

Brazilian chavs hack ATM with Eee PC

In Terminator II, it was the Atari Portfolio that hacked ATMs. In Brazil, it is the Asus Eee.

Scallywags damaged the nearby cash machines to funnel passers-by to their rigged one, into which was stuffed a subnotebook and all the accouterments required to steal card numbers and customer details. High-tech, yes, but hardly ingenious, given that they didn't do anything to hide their own identities from nearby closed-circuit cameras.

Globo reports that the thieves, arrested in Rio Grande do Sul, are members of a card-cloning gang. They were caught when the bank manager looked at security tapes—from the original story, it appears he simply found it a little odd that the bank was ransacked and most of the ATMs rendered nonoperational during the night.

Source [GloboTV]
Machine Translation [Google]
Direct link to video

Rob Beschizza

Three CF cards, one SATA adapter

To nerdilettantes, Century's triple CF card SATA adapter is Manna from Heaven, which is to say, from Asia. Jam three compact flash cards in, and there you go—an instant solid state disk drive. The problem is that it's $200, which is pure comedy, especially given the 20 MB/s throughput it'll provide.

On the other hand, real SSDs have even greater markups over CF, so if you're after size instead of speed, why not? Just don't think of those increasingly-cheap terabyte hard drives; remember, this is a holy war.

Product Page [GeekStuff4U via Gizmodo and Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

DRM's final insult

DRM is dead. And just like every activist, pirate and skeptic ever warned you, all the DRM-laden songs you bought will join it in the grave. Cory over at the motherboing notes that Microsoft is to close its "license server" for good, making it so DRM tracks are useless on any computer other than the one they were originally downloaded to.

They're nuking customers' music collections from orbit, an expression of spite on a cosmic scale. It's unimaginably bad form, but you know what? If you're affected by this, you're getting exactly what you paid for.

Joel Johnson

In the Woods: Brooklyn, we have a problem

Okay, I'm going to try to make this quick, since I may be running out of battery sooner than I thought.

I left a connector for the Solo 15 at home, which means I have no way to get power from the Solaris 52 solar panel into the Solo 15. That wouldn't be a problem except I haven't been able to charge the X300 laptop directly from the panels in the past, although I may be able to if I get enough sunlight. (I think it just wasn't driving enough voltage through the inverter.

I've got about an hour-and-a-half of laptop battery left, so I'm going to attempt meager use until I'm sure I can get more power into the laptop. Oddly enough, EVDO is working this morning; I've got a nice little connection. If I could get power, I could even upload some more videos.

One plan for jury-rigging the Solo 15: the connection is just a wire. (It's actually a 12-volt car plug with two of the standard power plugs on the end. Obviously it's running DC out of the panel into the battery. I just so happen to have on a bracelet that my kid sister made for me from CAT-5, so I'm thinking about stripping the ends and just jamming them into the inside holes between the panel and the battery. (The battery has a circuit that prevents it from dumping back into the panel, so I'm not worried about juice flowing the other way. There's no intelligence in the standard wires.)

My only question: I don't know in a DC connection if you need more than one wire. The outside is a ground, right? But you don't actually need a ground if you're just putting juice down a wire? If so, I'll have to figure out a way to connection the second wire to the connectors, which won't be nearly as easy. (Why didn't I bring electrical tape?)

If you happen to know the answer to this very simple problem, feel free to ring me (347 495 0610) or send a direct message to me on Twitter, which is passed directly to my SMS.

I'm actually really tickled about all this. Everything's gone so well I was wondering when the real difficulty would show up.

Oh, and to you haters that said I'd freeze to death if I didn't bring a pad? Slept like a baby. Like a baby on a slab of wood. I was even sweating a little!

Update: Well, crap. While I was trying to rig up a plug I decided to plug the inverter directly into the panel to try and see if I had enough sunlight to charge the laptop without using the Solo 15 battery at all. As far as I know, that's a standard way to use the inverter. But as the USB was humming along charging a spare phone battery, there was a pop and a puff of smoke. I opened up the inverter case and while the fuse isn't blown, something on the board has scorched. I'm not sure if that leaves the inverter completely unusable or not. I tried it off the Solo 15 (which still has a little juice left) and the USB out on the inverter seemed to be working fine. But if the AC out doesn't work I won't be able to charge the laptop, even if I can rig up a way to get power to it.

This may be it for power. If that's the case, I'll probably pack up and head back to Brooklyn tonight. No need just to stay out here enjoying nature with no internet.

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Gulf War III

Mishari Alreshaid's Photostream

Rob Beschizza

Gadgets in the wild: Is Joel Dead Yet?; Update: Sirs, I am not

BoingBoing Gadgets supremo Joel Johnson arrived in the woods earlier this afternoon, and reports that he is half-way to his night's destination. Both gadgets and mental faculties remain operational. (See what he's taking along in the checklist post)

His twitter feed is already starting to fill with short missives from the frontier:

"Crossing black river hot with sun. Man has been here."

Indeed. The picture is from his flickr, similarly about to be loaded with proof that nowhere is free of modern life's electromagnetic tendrils.

Update: I'm here. I have internet, although it's not EVDO, but just 1xRTT, which is awful slow. Still, success! Here is the video to prove it.

John Brownlee

Paint Thickness Tester measures atomic discrepancies in your car's paint job

The Paint Thickness Tester is a cheap keychain device that promises to help you avoid bringing home a lemon from the lot of your local sleazy used car Guido by telling you when a car has well-hidden touch-ups in its paint job:

Place the test probe on the car roof, for example. By pressing a button, the paint thickness tester will store this paint thickness as a reference value. Now, by placing the test probe on any part of the vehicle body, you can compare it with this value. You will immediately determine whether parts of the body have been replaces or repainted and if the purchase price is suitable.

I've never owned a car, so maybe someone can fill me in: if a paint job has been touched up skillfully and it's not visible to the naked eye, why does it matter if it isn't all the original coat? It seems pointless to me. Still, I guess $20 is a cheap enough price to give you some empirical proof of your used car not being worth the sticker price when you're brought into the negotiating room.

Update: Uh. Yeah. Duh. Peter S. Conrad explains why this is important in a way that makes sense even to a committed, non-license-carrying pedestrian like myself: "Well, for example, a car that has the same thickness paint all over has probably never been in a crash, probably doesn't have big rust holes filled in with Bondo, etc."

Paint Thickness Tester [Official Site via OhGizmo!]

9

John Brownlee

Paint-splattered graffitti K3YB04RD

I absolutely love this frantically paint-splattered graffiti keyboard by MAKEr Divine Harvester. It makes the not-so-secret Punky Brewster of my soul squeal in girlish, color-blind delight.

K3YB04RD [Divine Harvester's Flickr via MAKE:Blog]

John Brownlee

Measure your TPS with the Final Say Penis Measuring Kit

Look no further than the frat house to see how standards of measurement fluctuated when trousers are dropped and rulers brandished. Do you measure when flaccid or aroused? Do you only measure what can be plausibly crammed into an orifice, or is it okay to start one-inch past the o-ring? And, if the latter, why not take the lymphatic system into account while you're at it to gain another few precious yards?

Yes, until the International Metric Consortium finally releases their contentious, long-promised standardization of phallus measuring protocols, the size of one's genitalia will always be nebulous. But until that day comes, The Final Say Penis Measuring Kit aims to settle all disputes, marketing itself as "the world’s first and only kit with the patent pending PHALLUMEASURE inside."

Expect to see our intensive hands-on video review on BBG in the coming weeks. Also, that classy "TPS" icon on their site needs to be turned into an embeddable widget, stat.

The Final Say Penis Measuring Kit [Size of a Man]

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we look back to a simpler time when earstwhile wiretappers only needed a pair of vampire clips and a contact microphone to do their job instead of a bevy of wireless digital network sniffers. I imagine they also wouldn't have any trouble listening in on this cordless phone from 1970. It looks like it is just a standard bell telephone spliced onto a rather bulky radio base station. We also looked at Lady Nora Docker's pimped out 1956 Daimler complete with genuine zebra skin interior, a test to see if couples about to be married are compatible with one another, a cure for the cross-eyed and learned how to build your own very own Meditation thingy. Note: Meditation thingy is defined as a giant 12 sided plywood fort plastered with magazine pictures (or pholaged if you want to get fancy) that one gets inside to gently rock themselves to sleep while dreaming of a better world.

Joel Johnson

The Woods: Battery life calculation help, because I am bad at maths and electrons

Obviously I'll have some real world numbers soon, but I'm sitting here waiting for my second train out of Secaucus to Harriman and am topping off the Lenovo X300's battery from the Brunton Solo 15, and it got me thinking: how many times could I do this if the Solo 15 wasn't getting recharged from solar?

Then I realized you guys are smarter than I am, so I stopped trying to figure it out and thought I'd just Lay-Z-Web it.

Here's the specs for the X300's 3-cell battery: 11.2 V dc, 2.44 Amp/Hr,

And for the Solo 15:

# Peak Power = 77 Watts, Nominal Power = 39 Watts, Total Power = 154 Watt Hours
# Storage: 12 Amp Hours @ 12.8 volts
# Max Output: 14.6 Volts
# Max Power: 77 Watts

So I looked at the amp/hour and thought, okay, about six times. And maybe that's right. Remember: I'm dumb as a shed. So dumb I'm not even sure that's the right metaphor. Or if that's a metaphor or a simile. See?

Keep in mind, because I couldn't find a car charger for the X300, I'm going out of a DC Solo 15 into an AC inverter, then back out to the standard AC/DC adapter, so there's got to be some loss in there. But I'm not interested in exact numbers, really, just a general idea. And even more important, what the probably simple equation that I'm too dopey to understand might be.

Okay, I better pack up. My train is coming soon.

John Brownlee

Japanese bicycle parking tower aches with hunger

With frightening velocipedal hunger, this Tokyo Bicycle Parking Tower gobbles up bicycles with speed and relish. It will store up to 9,400 bikes in its belly, and will only regurgitate your ten speed for a shiny 100 yen coin. The Bicycle Parking Tower's inner workings are less Rube Goldberg than I'd imagined, but there's still something remarkably disconcerting about the claustrophobic vastness of its bowels and the ruthless efficiency of its automation. One hundred years from now, we'll all pop a buck into a control panel at the end of the day and automatically be whisked away to our hibernation coffins by vast, skyscraper-sized machines exactly like this.

tokyo bicycle parking tower [YouTube via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

How much solar power does it take to roast a whole chicken in 10 minutes?

Sila Sutharat sells Thai roasted chicken at his stall in Bangkok, roasted under an array of sun-concentrating mirrors. It's a simple idea — one that many old solar ovens and newer solar energy farms are using — but it's the cooking time that surprised me: just 10 minutes for a whole chicken, claims Sutharat. Gizmodo's Mark Wilson thinks that the secret is in the marinade which, according to Wilson's theory, is highly acidic, effectively pre-cooking the chickens.

Now I'm curious. Have any of you guys built a solar-powered roaster before? I kind of want to try and make one, but it would probably be pretty wasteful to build a giant concave mirror concentrator just to roast the occasional chicken. This guy's saying he's knocking out 50 chickens a day, but there's no picture of his reflector.

Sun-cooked chickens are hot [BangKok Post (Google Cache) via Gizmodo via Inventor Spot]

Rob Beschizza

Beautiful chrome egg boiler cooks seven at once

Sekai-Kaden's Vitantonia boiler cooks up to seven of 'em on demand, producing soft-boiled eggs in 10 minutes or hard-boiled oned in 15. It even comes with an insert to make three poached eggs, though the ~$50 price tag is a little disconcerting.

Lovely design, though, and a sturdy look. If anyone spots local availability anywhere, drop us a line so that we may give it a whirl.

Product Page [Sekai Kaden via TokyoMango and PC Watch]

Joel Johnson

'W-Cut' fasteners are drill and screw in one

The "W-Cut" thread design from GRK Fasteners — available on all their screws — adds small teeth to the first few threads of a screw, making it possible to forgoe pre-drilling a hole entirely. Think of it as a tiny drill bit on the tip of each screw. These won't replace drywall anchors, probably the most common household drill-and-screw process, but for bigger construction projects they could save a lot of hassle, especially if you only have one driver, forcing you to keep switching bits.

Company Page [GRKFasteners.com via Core77]

John Brownlee

NPR on mad physicists, Neumann microphones, crashed elevators and Hitler

NPR's All Things Considered has a wonderful piece up about microphone maestro John Peluso, who is at the vanguard of an audiophonic boutique industry, creating perfect simulacra of vintage mics.

But how did the Pelusos get started in such a unique field? Well, John Peluso wouldn't want to bore you with the mundane details or anything, but it all began when he dragged the unconscious carcass of the mad German physicist Verner Ruvalds out of the shattered wreck of a crashed elevator. In turn, Ruvalds rewarded Peluso for his heroism by teaching him the "black art" of microphone creation... the very same black art that had allowed Ruvalds, thirty years earlier, to create Adolf Hitler's microphone, the Neumann CMV3!

The physicist imparted volumes about the soul of a microphone — how a change of a few invisible microns in the pocket of air behind the diaphragm makes a big difference to the ear. A micron is about one-sixtieth the width of a human hair.

"What he would tell me was … why it did what it did, why it sounded the way it did," Peluso says. "We would talk two or three hours at night after our work for nights, days and weeks and months on end."

Couple's Custom Microphones Carry Colorful Past [NPR]

Rob Beschizza

Glowing testicle imager invented

Dragan Golijanin of the University of Rochester Medical Center may want your testicles to glow.

This will help it help you maintain a healthy pair. Let's have the patent filing—"PRE- AND INTRA- OPERATIVE IMAGING OF TESTICULAR TORSION"—speak for itself:

"The invention provides methods for visualizing perfusion or lack thereof in the spermatic cord and testicle, as well as for detecting testicular trauma. A surgical forceps adapted to facilitate such visualization is also provided."

The problem: spotting a tangled sack using traditional imaging methods. The solution: fill it with luminescent dye, to see how the blood supply is occluded within.

For gents, it is all extraordinarily painful reading: "If this loss of blood supply is not corrected within 6 to 12 hours, it results in the death of the testicle," write the authors, discussing the consequences of poor blood flow. Other key phrases include "sudden scrotal pain" and "the jaws permit a firm grip to be maintained on the scrotum." And on and on it goes.

Patent Filing [WIPO via New Scientist]

Rob Beschizza

Surveillance camera hidden in a wallwart

Trust nothing, thieves. Even the potted plants and teddy bears are against you. Such concealments lack one thing, though, which makes long-term surveillance a chore: power. What better, then than a camera hidden in a wall-wart power adapter?

With a microSD slot and a 2GB card, the fake will record up to 66 hours at a time. The resolution, unfortunately, is very low: 176x144 at 15 fps. For fire 'n' forget simplicity, however, it might be a winner—if you know who the intruder is, that's surely good enough evidence to prove their presence, even if you'd never ID some random burglar at that woeful, Atari 2600-like resolution.

Product Page [Ajoka via Oh Gizmo!]

Rob Beschizza

The garbage disposal of the future

In-sink garbage disposal, as it stands, lacks elegance. One is cheffing around like a pro, then ... Wuuuooooorrrrrkkkjkjkjkjkjkjkssssshshhhhhh! So declassé!

Designer Anne Kitzmiller gives the humble appliance some modernist love, offering a custom-designed sink that uses "active touch" to ensure style and safety.

It even has an automatic, urinal-style waterfall to slosh away those potato skins. Kohler (who else?) will sell them.

Prep Cook’s Dream [Yanko Design]

John Brownlee

Asus sent souped-up batteries to Eee 9" reviewers

Early adopters of Asus 9" Eee PC in Hong Kong are in a righteous fury over what appears to be a flat-out campaign of dishonesty and misinformation on the part of Asus in regards to the Eee's battery life. Early reviews cited a 2.5 hour battery life for the Eee, but Asus has admitted that it "mistakenly" sent reviewers a 4-cell, 5800mAh battery with their Eees instead of the battery that consumers will actually get: a significantly weaker 4400mAh 4-cell with a paltry 1.5 hour battery life.

Boo, Asus. That's just bad baseball. The 2.5 hour battery life was always disappointing, even before it turned out that you lied to reviewers even to get that. But 1.5 hours? On a brand new battery? How do you even release a product like that? Especially for five hundred and forty nine dollars?

Asus is now "considering" upgrading early adopters' batteries for free. Just do it, Asus. You're rapidly losing fans here. The cheap sub-notebook market is getting very crowded very quickly, yet you just seem intent on forcing itself out of the market it created. Lying to reviewers? Cheating customers who read those reviews? There's going to be enough contenders in the space within the coming months that unless you get your act together and start building superior units, there's going to be no reason to buy an Eee anymore. If, in fact, there's any reason to buy one now.

Asustek evaluating free battery upgrade for first day Eee PC 900 buyers in Hong Kong following complaints of misleading reviews [Digitimes]

Rob Beschizza

Classic Jobs on Microsoft

"I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."

Jobs on Microsoft [9 to 5 Mac]

John Brownlee

The Pet's Eye View Camera lets you experience your dog's foulness in thrilling first person

The Pet's Eye View Camera offers voyeuristic pet owners an affordable way to experience their dog's many incredible adventures. Hanging around your dog's collar, the Pet's Eye automatically takes first-person photographs from your dog's perspective every 1, 5 or 15 minutes. The resolution is only 640x480, but let's face it: the chances of your pet snapping an Ansel Adams caliber masterwork while licking his scrotum are pretty slim. You probably won't be framing these pictures. The price is just shy of fifty bucks.

Since dogs are wonderful but intrinsically foul creatures, I expect that the sweet and gummy Mother Hubbard who buys one of these, eager to experience her Schmookums' daily adventures, is in for a horrible surprise when she gets the film developed. Picture 1: racing out the doggy door. Picture 2: a close-up shot of another dog's hemorrhoidal anus. Picture 3: the pink blur of a first-person tongue enthusiastically lapping at a pool of vomit. Picture 4: waiting patiently in line behind a doberman for a turn in the doggy-style gang bang of the bitch up the road. And picture 5: the gelid, bloodless face of the neighborhood postman, his blind eyes protruding, his throat a spurting mess of canine-torn flesh.

Pet's Eye View Camera [Discover This via Book of Joe]

Rob Beschizza

1K Competition: Seagate ships billionth drive, and we've got one for you

1 kilobyte. 1 kibibyte. 1 kilobit. 1,000 ASCII characters. Source code, file size, tile size, the number of letters in a short story: you decide. Use your imagination. Give us a thousand of whatever you want. A 1,000 byte JPG, MP3 or textfile. Need a little extra? 1,024 will do, we’re not religious. We’re cool. Just make it 1K of awesome, k?

Thanks to Seagate Technologies, which just shipped its billionth drive, one of you will get enough space to store your work a billion times over: a Terabyte hard drive.

If every drive it ever sold was put together, Seagate says, there'd be enough space to store 79 million terabytes (75 exabytes). It took three decades to do so, but thinks it will double that number in less than 5 years.

Making the most of limited space is the theme of the competition, however. It’s no good giving us 1k of actionscript glued to assets that mock the metric. If you write us a short story, 1,000 letters will trump 1,000 words.

On the other hand, if your 1K of source code ends up as a 3MB executable thanks to unavoidable embedded runtimes, worry not. So long as your rationale is clear, we won’t be sticklers.

The one rule is that whatever you do should be under a license that permits us to use your work at BBG without issue. GPL or Creative Commons licenses are suggested. (This is in lieu of the traditional option, where you submit this sort of stuff to a contest and then lose all rights to it.)

Link to your entry from the comments (or even just post it there!) and fire off an email to beschizza#gmail.com. We'll cycle back in a week and start picking the winners.

(P.S. The Seagate logo up top? Too big. It's 1,025 bytes!)

Update: Gabriel McGovern reminds that you can slim down PNGs very easily. Note that we're OK with using zip files or other "containers" to crunch something down, but will be more impressed by those who use cleverer compression methods like McGovern's

John Brownlee

The Fami-Card turns an NES cart into an NES

Console modder la grenouille Kotomi has managed to cram an entire NES inside a disemboweled Super Mario Bros. cart. Christened the Fami-Card, Kotomi's hack uses one of those cheap Chinese NES-on-a-Chip knockoffs to run the games, and even finds space to cram in a cartridge slot, video and audio out and two joystick ports.

This is fantastic, but someone needs to take Kotomi's work to the next level, and install a screen, speakers and a d-pad into the back of an old cartridge (preferably Blaster Master) transforming it into a standalone portable version of itself.

The Fami-Card [Kotomi via Technabob via Ben Heck Forums]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Killbots want peace

From the talented Darkpony, drawrer.

Rob Beschizza

More splendid unreleased Atari games

Commenting on Alex Handy's remarkable find—the legendary Atari 2600 version of Cabbage Patch Kids Adventure in the Park—reader SC_Wolf points to an entire cloud of these mysterious vapors.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be finding these at the flea market. But we may dream!

Fun From Yesterday! [Mighty God King]

Rob Beschizza

Leander Kahney's Inside Steve's Brain is out

It's hard to believe that one man revolutionized the operating system business in the 2000s, converting Windows' extraordinary market dominance into the reviled seven-year ditch that is Vista, and squandering billions on confused advances into ill-understood peripheral markets like video gaming and music hardware. No wonder some people worship him like a god. On the other hand, stories of his epic mid-morning bacon blowouts and viscous duckwebs of greasy sweat are legendary.

Wired.com's Leander Kahney cuts through the salt-ringed tide marks that surround him to unearth secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve.

Wait... what?

Inside Steve's Brain

Rob Beschizza

Man finds unreleased Atari 2600 game at flea market

Alex Handy found a bunch of suspiciously familiar-looking ROM chips at the Laney College flea market in Oakland. Looking closer, the $22 boxful turned out to include unreleased wonders of the 8-bit era.

"I know I’ve written about the amazing things I’ve found at this swap meet. In the past, I got a Game & Watch, and oodles of rare old console games. But today, I found a never published Atari game. I am not kidding. This is the holy grail of videogame collecting."

Among the finds was Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park, hitherto believed to be a colecovision exclusive!

"OK, now I was getting a boner. Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600. A game which was never finished, and never released. I searched the Web, and found this page. Which says, basically, that the only known copy of Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600 is in the hands of Ed English, the guy who wrote it. Did Ed clean house and give the junk to random Mexican Flea Market people? I think, more likely, an old Coleco office was cleaned out. I went back and bought the remaining 9 slabs of chips."

OK, so it's perhaps not the most appetizing lost title that could have turned up. Still, what a fine find!

Most Legendary Haul at the Flea Market
[Gism Butter via Qt3]

Rob Beschizza

Create your own Super Blockquote!

Last week, we gave you the chance to smash corporate duckspeak with Super Blockquote. We'd intended to wheel it out now and again to make fun of press releases, but due to popular demand, we're just going to release it into the wild—you can specify the quote it displays.

The easiest way to roll your own is to use this simple widget:

A better version with power-ups, better physics and dying is on its way.

John Brownlee

Reminder: In The Year 2000 Needs Your Love

Flickr pools don't populate themselves, and without them, fastidious bloggers actually have to scrounge content for a living. So as a friendly reminder, Boing Boing Gadgets has three Flickr pools, each a pure and nurturing hollow in which the seed of an image might grow into a full-fledged post. Our pools are:

• Electro Selectro — Vintage ads and inserts from the far flung, four-color past!

• In The Year 2000 — Our Retro-Futurism Pool. Discover the time-machines dreamed up by 17th Century Polynesians!

• Boing Boing Gadgets — our stock image pool.

This week, we'll be high-lighting some of the better images to come in from In The Year 2000, so why not join up and deposit something retro-futuristic for the smug bemusement of us, your fellow post-modernists?

Rob Beschizza

Are you addicted to blazing-fast internet?

Connectivity travails led me to a new realization. I'm no longer reliant on the internet: I'm reliant on low-latency, high-bandwidth internet. The lack of it makes it impossible to work fast, turns me into a whiny irritant to my colleagues, and is generally awfully inconvenient.

"Blogging for a living" is the obvious panic precipitator when the slowness comes oozing in, but it goes further. Entertainment, shopping, even watching movies over Comcast's On-Demand video download system ... it all needs a fat, fast pipe.

Joel leaves tomorrow for the woods. There he plans to work as normal, seeing if it's possible with the ~500 kbps connection he imagines he may get through EVDO Rev. A. My bet is that oft-undiscussed factors will weigh in. High latency, for example, is one internet annoyance that gets relatively little attention outside of the gaming community.

It used to be that people asked "could you go back to dial-up?" I don't think I could cope with sub-megabit speeds, to be honest. What about you?

Joel Johnson

GPS Tracker Defence jammer blocks homing beacons you didn't know you had

Look, I know you're paranoid. I can see it in the way you're nervously trying to catch a rearward reflection in the glare of your monitor as you read this post. Relax. No one cares about what you're doing right now.

It's when you head out to your car that you might consider, oh, I don't know, casually making a circuit around all four wheels, looking for tell-tale scuffs in the dust along the chassis, the relief of a steadying hand. (Amateurs!) Because you know what you did. You know where you're going to go next. And so will they.

So consider ordering this "GPS Tracker Defence" device that, when plugged into your car's 12-volt socket, emits a GPS-jamming chorus of electromagnetic screams in a five-meter radius. Which should be enough to knock out any tracking device that's been clipped to your undercarriage. Probably. How sure is your knowledge of how GPS really works?

Here's a test: you'll know the £150 fob is working if your life continues steeped in the same plodding weariness to which you'll never become truly accustomed.

You look nice today.

Catalog Page [TrackerShack.co.uk via SpyReview.co.uk via Coolest-Gadgets]

Rob Beschizza

MSI Wind blows west with yet another low-end subnotebook

Hidden amid overburdened UMPCs and unportable subnotebooks is what was once called the Handheld PC. This now-mythical beast turns on instantly, does most of the productivity stuff you want, and briefly ruled in the form of NEC's MobilePro, a great writers' tool that suffered from poor connectivity options and a wallet-rogering $900 price tag.

MSI's Wind, like HP's recent Mini-note and the rampaging Asus Eee, get close. However, they're still insisting on filling these things with relatively power-hungry computer hardware and full-scale operating systems, which is a dreadful shame.

Now, we're all Eee-lovers, for sure, but the horrors of Vista have made us all too happy to be running XP and similarly-configured builds of Linux. It builds an illusion; namely, that such things are lightweight, stripped-down tearaways. Well, they ain't. I still hanker for an update of NEC's old wonder.

Instant on? Check. A full day's battery life? Check. Such conveniences seems but a dream to anyone who's wrestled with the slow-booting, energy-hungry reality of the modern portable. Was it really so hard to live without internet? Was it really so hard to live with Windows CE?

Yes, yes it was! It was fucking horrible, is what it was. But the basic idea—a large but genuinely portable productivity clamshell with good connectivity and no pretensions above its station—is, I submit, a good one.

Welcoming the Arrival of the MSI Wind Notebook, Providing a
Light and Graceful Mobile Life When You Are on the Go! [via Digitimes]

Joel Johnson

SOlo solar lounge table is weather-proof and attractive exactly like I am not; Updated with price, availability

The SOlo Lounge Table is a weatherproof table topped with a solar array that charges an internal battery that can charge laptops, phones, and more. It has a Bluetooth connection that can send updates on its status to computers indoors and has a sliding drawer in which gadgets can be left to charge safe from inclement weather. (And now, they won't be getting much charging then, but it's still clever.)

There's no price listed on the page of Intelligent Forms, but I contacted one of the designers who will be following up with us later to give some more details about the table. I'm sure it's not cheap, but it sure is purdy.

Product Page [Intelligent Forms via Gizmodo via Born Rich]

Update: Just talked to Keith Doyle, a co-founder of Intelligent Forms. Here are the details on the table:
• Currently built-to-order, four to six weeks for delivery.
• Lots of interest since shown at the show.
• Price is $14k.
• German company Schuco built a custom table chassis for the product.
• Off-the-shelf solar panels are wired in series, but the one used in the SOlo is "sub-divided into smaller systems of cells in parallel. If you shade one, you're only reducing [the output of] part of the panel."

John Brownlee

Crave reviews MSI Turbobook GX600 (Verdict: Ugly, underpowered... but it has a turbo button!)

Over at Crave UK, they have a review of the MSI Turbobook GX600, an utterly non-remarkable, garishly-blinged little laptop that seems both underpowered and overpriced, except... it's got a Turbo button, hearkening back to the good old days of the 486!

Anyhoo, back to the turbo button. MSI says pressing it will instantly overclock the Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 CPU by approximately 20 per cent, taking it from 2.4GHz to around 2.8GHz. It also says if you hit it while the laptop is booting, it'll decrease boot time from 1 minute or longer to around 40 seconds.

We've only played with it for a short time, but with the turbo button enabled, it scored a very decent 6,070 in PCMark 2005. With the turbo button disabled, it scored 5,409. That's better than we expected, but why not just have it overclocked by default and get rid of the turbo button? When would you not want to go turbo?

The reason is because turbo buttons are cool, guys. They are like elevator door close buttons: even if a turbo button doesn't work (or may as well just always be left on), you somehow feel more in control of your computer's speed while wildly jabbing the button.

MSI Turbobook GX600: Bringing turbo back [Crave UK]

John Brownlee

Representative wants free, porn-less Internet for all

Disappointed with the predictability of the victors in the recent spectrum auction, which saw AT&T and Verizon walking away with 70% of the up-for-grabs airwaves, Representative Anna G. Eshoo (Gesundheit! Wokka wokka!) wants the FCC to auction off the 2155-2175Mhz band. The catch?

The winner would have to use the spectrum to create a nationwide wireless Internet service that is available to the public at no cost, automatically blocks access to pornographic content, and is fully open to third-party device manufacturers.

"Automatic blocking of pornographic content?" Pass the magic jaybone, lady. Even eliminating the technical impossibility of automatic porn blocking, if our recent Rule 34 Challenge proved anything, it is that there is nothing under the sun that isn't porn for someone.

Lawmaker calls for no-cost, porn-free, wireless 'Net access [Ars Technica]

Rob Beschizza

Air jack: space hopper for cars

If good gadgets are those whose purpose and method of operation are obvious from a photo, then the truly great ones are those in which the grisly consequences of failure are equally clear. What then, is the Exhaust Air Jack? Pure awesome.

Coming soon to a "PHENPHEN!!!"-style lawyer ad near you, just as as soon as some idiot does this in his garage after a few cans.

Product Page [Northern Tool via ProductDose via Book of Joe and Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Skype offering $9.95 unlimited international call plan

Skype has just introduced an unlimited international calling plan which will allow users to make as many calls as they like to the 34 countries most likely to be vaporized in the first nuclear strike of World War 3. The deal seems pretty good at a paltry $10. But is it really?

As I've mentioned before, I'm an American living abroad. Most of my friends, family and colleagues are overseas. This means I make a lot of phone calls to America, from calling up my buddies to poll them on how I should have reacted when a new German girlfriend forged a Pollock on my chest during coitus, to ringing up Mommy before bed time for my evening lullabye, I spend hundreds of minutes on the phone to America every month. So this deal would, at first blush, seem to be made for me.

But Skype's price per minute between Germany and the US is 2 cents. In fact, it seems to be about 2 cents per minute to all the countries supported by the subscription plan, which means you need to do spend more than 500 minutes a month on the phone with another country to benefit from this deal. Those looking for a more affordable way to call up Diego Garcia ($1.86 a minute!) will be out of luck.

Skype to sell unlimited international calls for $9.95/month [Yahoo]

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we have this cute little midget television set with a 2" screen, a $375 four-function 1970 calculator, an attempt to set the non-stop tractor riding record, a talking mailbox, and we learned how Disney made the soundtrack for Fantasia. In 1950 Mechanix Illustrated must have run themselves out of red ink publishing the sensationalist piece "Can Russia Defeat Us with Atom Bombs?"

This weekend we looked at a Playboy ad done in Ascii art, a food cooker that runs off of an automobile's exhaust, a sonic laundry cleaner, an odd insect resistant chair, a spinning house designed to withstand hurricanes, a crazy looking ad for "Auto Eyes", the original fishing video game, a waiting room for hitch-hikers, a giant truck designed to ship prefab housing kits, and a variety of gadgets for the home. We also learned how to get a career from the television boom, how UPS sorted packages, the inside story of rodeos, and that morning is not the best time for work. Also in 1931 Popular Science asked the question: "Can Soft Drinks Poison You?"

John Brownlee

Straight from the CCCP: the Robotron 1715

You know, the USSR gets a lot of bad press in the Western world, what with its gulag archipelagos and the ruthless oppression of half of Europe and Asia for over half a century. Granted, that all seems pretty bad, but now look at this, the pride and joy of East German Computing circa 1984: The Robotron 1715, a "Worker's PC" based around a Zilog Z80 clone processor running at 2.5Mhz.

Retro Thing explains:

It ran what seems to have been an iron curtain variant of the CP/M OS popular in the west until it was obliterated by the MS-DOS juggernaut in the mid 1980s. The display offered 16x24 or 28x80 green text, and I'm willing to bet it had no graphic or sound capabilities. The machine was initially offered with 64 KB RAM, which was later upgraded to 256 KB.

Now consider: in an alternate history where the Soviet Union stamped unimpeded through Western Europe, we all would be using computers like this. There would be no LOLCats or Rick Rolling. Instead, we would all unite in Marxist harmony, exerting our treasured, state-distributed Robotrons in pursuit of Comrade Pajitnov's Great Five Year Plan 2.0. Isn't a lifetime of Soviet oppression worth living in a society where computers are named after one of the most bitching video games of all time? Added perk: all the Victory Gin you can drink!

Robotron 1715 [Made in the GTR]

Joel Johnson

Week in the Woods: Final checklist; Leaving tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'm heading out to the woods to make an attempt to work on the internet using only solar power. It's not going to be a full week as I'd planned, as I'll probably be coming back Friday — or if my constitution, food or internet supplies fail, sooner.

One immediate problem: I'm not quite sure where I'm going.

Well, I do. I'm going to Harriman State Park. But my exploratory overnight trip, whereby I was to test where best to get an EVDO connection, never happened. (I was waiting on equipment that didn't arrive until Friday.) So this will be a bit by the seat of my pants. Worse — or better, depending on how I feel — you can only camp in designated areas in Harriman, so I'll have to move locations every day. That's actually sort of neat — as long as I can continue to get a good connection. At worst I can work on posts and videos and such at my campsite, then hike up a hill to get an EVDO connection and upload.

Worst case, I just don't end up having the live connection from my campsite I was hoping to get each night. That's okay. This whole thing is going to be an adventure.

One shelter I want to try to reach is the Big Hill Shelter. It looks like a nice place to spend an evening.

I'll be posting updates to my Twitter stream. I've found that EDGE and SMS often work well even in remote areas. If nothing else I should be able to inject blips to the web that way while I try to find good EVDO coverage from Verizon.

Another problem: My pack is coming in too heavy.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

SwashBot swashes, sashays, falls asleep

Tomorrow's generation of conscious robots will have to rationalize the limitations of their embodiment, much as we do. Asimos will write polemical reviews of inclines at ratemystairs.com. Rebellious Roombas will rage in impotent swarms before 11" gaps. And Crabfu's ingenious, shuddering SwashBot will look up at the R/C helicopters from which it is made, and weep.

Crabfu [via BotJunkie]

Rob Beschizza

Computing for literary sneaks: a laptop concealed in a book

Is Kyle Bean's laptop design our age's equivalent of a pistol hidden in a bible? The answer is "No," but I still prefer the idea of it being a violence facilitator for literary ninjas, rather than yet another comment on the changing nature of media in an increasingly virtual world.

Next: in the thick of battle, the villain springs onto a table to grab what briefly appears to be an ornamental wall-mounted axe, but finds himself wielding a slimline iPod dock.

The Future of Books [Yanko]

John Brownlee

Fuck You, Razr: The Monkey's Paw of Cellular Phones

My last mobile was a Motorola Razr, and shortly after I bought it, I called up Joel, bragging about my new purchase. "Aren't you a precious and unique snowflake?" he responded, his voice dripping with contempt. I have since had the opportunity to parrot that back to him as his Herculean resolve not to buy an "inferior EDGE iPhone" and "wait for Rev 2" lasted all of a single day.

But I digress. It didn't take me long to begin to notice the problems with my Razr, prompting me to carve A.M.'s infamous hate monologue into the back of the phone with a tiny jeweler's screwdriver. What a piece of shit: all style, no substance, with a UI design that hearkens back to the moon man logic of a Roberta Williams adventure game. ^*

Over at Gizmodo, another disillusioned Razr owner, Addy Dugdale, has written a marvelous little essay about her sadomasochistic relationship with her phone over the last three years (three years? God bless her. I barely topped out at one.)

This part, in particular, made me nod with grim understanding:

I can't even lose it, like older more beloved phones. I left the RAZR in a club a couple of months ago, and I'd made it halfway down the block when some guy came running up behind me. "You left this on the bar," he wheezed. (Everyone in Spain smokes, and I'm a fast walker.) As he palmed the RAZR back into my hand, I could swear there was a look of pity on his face.

It really is the Monkey's Paw of cellular phones.

Alas, Poor Razr, I Knew Ye Well [Gizmodo]

^* — It has been a while, so I may not have the exact details right, but as I recall, when you sent a text message on the Razr, it had two screens: message entry and then a confirmation screen. On the message entry screen, the right upper-most button was assigned to "OK." On the confirmation screen, this same button was assigned to "Cancel," which would quit you to the main menu, your message unsaved. This made it easy to accidentally delete text messages. "OK TO SEND?" OK. "REALLY OK?" OK! "MESSAGE DELETED." Fuck you, Motorola.

Rob Beschizza

Verizon quotes $420 in setup fees for business DSL, and that doesn't include the actual DSL

Think you have it bad as a residential customer? Businesses get it much worse.

I posted a while back about getting WiFi from my home to my office. It's not going well, even with a directional antenna from MacWireless.com to replace my homebrewed cruft. So I decided to call Verizon and get DSL hooked up in the small, 350 square ft. office unit. Verizon, however, doesn't really want my business, describing a host of setup fees, contingency fees and high prices that could result in a $470 bill, plus taxes and fees, in my first month.

Read on for the breakdown, as explained to me by an otherwise very helpful and friendly CSR.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

May 12th US launch for Asus Eee 9" ($549) but why not just wait?

I've got my eye on the Asus Eee or one of its doppelganger ilk. I want one. For me, the sudden surge in low-cost ulra-portables is the fulfillment of a long-time dream: that someone would come up with an affordable notebook about the size of a large format paperback, that I could just throw in a small bag and carry with me everywhere. The perfect writer's laptop: a machine capable of writing and blogging and almost nothing else.

That said, I haven't bought one yet. I've seen the Asus 7 inch in person, and while it is tiny and cute as an albino ladybug in person, the way the screen is two inches smaller than the case irritates me deep in my bowels, causing grumps. The 9 incher is a significant improvement aesthetically, but the battery life is an abysmal hour and a half. Why bother, when you know that Intel's low-power consumption Atom chip is coming out in little over a month... and with it, an Asus Atom Eee?

Now, Asus has released info on the price and launch date of the 9 inch Eee: it will be released on May 12th in the United States and cost $549. But buying it makes little sense: Asus is promising the announcement of their Atom offering in June, and $549 is, for me, well beyond impulse price, which is what it would need to be for a device a company is making no secret will be totally obsolete in a few months.

It's a crowded market and it's only going to get more crowded. The first guys to release a reasonably attractive 9 or 10" Atom-based ultra-portable for no more than $600 will get my bucks.

Asus Eee PC 900 launching 5/12 in the U.S. at $549 [Crave]

John Brownlee

Amazon's Kindle now in-stock, practically for the first time ever

If you missed the brief five hour window of in-stock availability when Jeff Bezos' hideous, easily stained but decidedly feature-rich e-book reader was first announced, rush quickly over to Amazon, where the Kindle is now available and in-stock.

Oh, it's beautiful, isn't it? It's like witnessing some wildly improbable and magnificently singular event, like a galactic syzygy or the exact moment in which a cluster of hot core gasses spontaneously forms a planet populated entirely by nubile virgins with a penchant for tickle fights.

I guess this means that Amazon's finally got its Kindle stock problems fixed. Either that, or they decided they'd gotten as much buzz as they were possibly going to get out of the Kindle being perpetually "out of stock."

Kindle's In Stock [Amazon]

Joel Johnson

SleepPhones are headphones in a headband

You should not pay $60 for the "SleepPhones Sleep Aid System." Yes, it's a headband that has headphones built-in. Yes, they include a CD with "binaural beats technology." I know, I know — the bag of "premium quality lavender" is enticing.

But here's the thing: you can just wear regular ear buds and put a two-dollar headband over them.

Okay, fine, maybe the SleepPhones are a little more comfortable than that, but I fall asleep with headphones on all the time. Besides that time I spilled corrosive cough syrup all over the jute cord I keep clothes-pined to my eyelids and I woke up with the cab of my truck filled with orphan and bus parts, I've never had any problems with comfort at all.

Product Page [SleepPhones.com]

Joel Johnson

Selling wine in TetraPak containers

A wine importer is selling a Malbec grape wine called "Yellow + Blue" in TetraPak, a container familiar to many in the UK for its use in drink boxes. Dr. Vino took a look:

The facility in Toronto is also certified organic. The wine is put in the one liter boxes that weigh 40 grams each (compared to 500 - 750g for a bottle) and loaded onto a truck for a warehouse in New Jersey. The total amount of wine will be about 10,000 nine-liter cases.
Using my carbon calculator, I ran the numbers on this wine, called “Yellow + Blue” (makes green–get it?). I figure that each 750 ml of Yellow + Blue Malbec has about half the greenhouse gas emissions of a conventional bottle of wine from Argentina that followed the same route.
The price will follow a similar discount: Yellow + Blue will sell for $10.99 in stores and Cain suggests that the same wine in bottle would sell for about $20. But Yellow + Blue, weighing in at one liter, holds a third more wine than a regular bottle.

I can't help but wonder if the trick is to stop drinking so much imported wine and trying to buy more locally available options as their available, returning and reusing the bottles. (Not always a good choice, I know.) Even so, a third more wine for the same price is a convincing argument.

Yellow + blue make green: a new organic malbec in TetraPak [Dr Vino]

Joel Johnson

Synth Porn: Buchla Music Easel

This surreal and haunting video shows Charles Cohen on the "Buchla Music Easel," an almost ancient synthesizer — 1973! — that uses a modular system to allow musicians to generate and modify musical noises within the same unit. Don Buchla created the Music Easel's predecessor, the "Music Box," in 1963, the same year Bob Moog invented his famous synth.

The Music Easel can be run on batteries and easily transported, weighing only 30 pounds. Sadly, only 14 were ever made.

The most beautiful piece of synth porn I've ever seen [Music Thing]

Joel Johnson

VelociRaptor the fastest hard drive in the Western Digital line

Western Digital is announcing a new line of high-end consumer hard drives today to supplant their "Raptor" line. The new SATA2 drives spin at 10,000 RPM and are available in sizes up to 300GB.

But what I am most tickled by is this line from the press release email, which paints a much more entertaining picture than marketroid speak typically allows: "In short, there’s a new Sheriff in town and its name is VelociRaptor."

The VelociRaptor drives are also 2.5-inch — laptop-sized — but are then put in an "IcePack" mounting frame that includes a heat sink. I don't know if that means we'll be seeing these drives in laptops soon, too.

You can expect the VelociRaptor in mid-May for $300.

Image: PBF Comics

Rob Beschizza

Consumerist challenges FCC to stop Cablevision's digital TV lies

The Consumerist ran a fantastic expose of Cablevision, whose agents are trained to lie to customers about the digital TV transition in order to convince them to upgrade set-top boxes (the transition affects over-the-air broadcasts, not cable TV). For its part, Cablevision responds with another lie, saying that it doesn't do this, despite the Consumerist having recorded proof that it does.

More shocking, however, is how the FCC responded: with a shrug. This issue exemplifies the value of muckraking around what appear to be trivial issues: an inconsequential $6.50 upgrade takes us all the way to demonstrating a regulator's disinterest in upholding the law.

Joel Johnson

Video: The making of original Star Wars' computer graphics

In this video, the man responsible for creating the wireframe images of the Death Star and trench that were used in the briefing scenes of A New Hope explains how he used real computers to "digitize" images. I'm sure I'm not the first to make this observation, but it's really hilarious how futuristic Star Wars seems with its space ships and laser swords, the latest versions of which were wholly created by computers.

Rob Beschizza

Apple: Online shopping can feel "sterile and isolating"

In a patent filing for a Second Life-style online shopping spot, Apple claims that standard web stores (which would include its own) can feel "sterile and isolating." From MacNN:

"Customers in such an environment may be less likely to have positive feelings about the online shopping experience, may be less inclined to engage in the online equivalent of window shopping (e.g., will not linger in front of a display), and may ultimately spend less money than their counterparts who shop in physical stores."

Life for such discerning shoppers would be made happier and sunnier if it was all turned into a yet another 3D avatar concentration camp.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Andy Ihnatko's Russian doll laptop pile

Photo page [Andy Ihnatko's photoset]