Joel Johnson

Very first phone book up for auction

The only known edition of the world's first telephone directory — the first phone book — is up for auction, reports Discovery News:

The 20-page directory was issued in November of 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The phone book contained information useful to 391 subscribers within the New Haven, Conn., area who were obviously still learning their way around the new communication device.
"Should you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the conversation by saying, 'Hulloa!'" it instructs.

...

No phone numbers were printed in the Connecticut city's milestone book -- just the names of subscribers.

World's First Telephone Book Surfaces [dsc.discovery.com]

Joel Johnson

BoltBus fleet has free Wi-Fi, power in every seat

A new bus service called "BoltBus" offers free Wi-Fi an power outlets in all its vehicles. I just looked up the rate from New York to Boston (my most typical bus trip) and it's twice as much as the Chinatown options...which leaves it at a very affordable $20. I'd gladly pay $10 extra for Wi-Fi through the whole trip, even if it is likely just a 3G or satellite connection split between everyone on the bus.

BoltBus currently services New York, Boston, Philly, and D.C.

Company Page [Boltbus.com via Geeksugar]

Joel Johnson

Aga Four Oven Cooker skips whiz-bang for cast iron badassery

This "Four Oven Cooker" from Aga is made from cast iron, covered in "three coats of vitreous enamel" in fourteen different colors, weights 1,290 pounds, and must be installed by a certified fitter. It's available in an electric model, but please, if you can, go with the gas version. This is appliance porn at its finest, no unnecessary and fragile space-age frippery, but four separate simple ovens, all holes filled with hard cook. It's enough to make a gingerbread witch swoon.

It's $15,500 for this model (the one in the picture is technically the electric model, but the gas ones look the same) and features a specialized roasting oven behind door number five.

Product Page [Aga-ranges.com via Appliancist]

Joel Johnson

Video soporific: Cornelius music video

I could try to muster some connection between the all-white, claymation effects of this new music video from Cornelius and, I dunno, eastern design aesthetics, but that'd be a stretch. How about this: I just really like it. Enjoy your calm.

[via TV in Japan]

Rob Beschizza

Virtual worlds to visit before you die

Check out Tom Chick's new games-writing gig at Sci-Fi, Fidgit. Among the first entries is a virtual edition of places you must visit before you die...

Paris, Rome, Fiji, the Taj Majal? Pshaw. Yeah, sure, the graphics are pretty good and the back stories are great, but the fees are huge and you can't save your game. Plus, they won't yet run on any gaming system you own. So instead, here are five virtual places you must visit before you die, and you don't even have to leave your house to do it.

On the itinerary: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Assassin's Creed's Damascus, GTA 4's Liberty City, Bioshock's Rapture, and LotRO's Shire.

There seems to be to be a certain vibe to the choices, a living, breathing, "humanist" edge that might preclude popular gaming locales like, say, Hyrule. I'd like to sneak in the bleak, hazy beauty of the setting from Ico and Colossus. Few things stick to my heart for long in the artless cultural landfill of gaming, but that did.

Fallout's post-apocalyptic America has its charms, too, and it's something we'll be getting a fresh look at soon, thanks to Bethesda's forthcoming Fallout III. Speaking of Bethesda, I'd also include the alien milieux of Morrowind Isle—but not the setting of it's generic Med-Fantasy sequel, Oblivion. Joel, when asked, doubled up on GTA IV: "It continues to blow me away with its verisimilitude."

Oh, and so what if no-one's played it yet: Love's landscape (pictured) looks so stunning I can barely imagine not wanting to drop by.

John is out of town, but he would probably say Planescape:Torment or something. First person to say "Azeroth," gets disemvowelled. First person to say "Second Life" gets disembowelled.

Five Places... [Fidgit]

Joel Johnson

Grand Theft Auto IV thoughts

When taking a cab a couple of nights ago up the west side of Manhattan, I realized that after a couple of weeks of playing Grand Theft Auto IV I had begun to conflate my internal model of New York City with that of the game's own Liberty City. Not the streets — after five years in New York, most of the city still seems to me isolated neighborhoods connected by warrens — but the feel. The hum. The Petula Clark subtext that can both carry and bolster a person or drag them by the ankle into the wet green. Liberty City, as a refined extract of New York City, began to mix with the model in my mind. Walking around the corner to find a cop on the stairs to the F train, I for a moment thought, He's not in anyone's line of sight. I could get away without a problem. I watched the people milling on the subway platform in Brooklyn, many in finery à la mode, and thought how much more authentically people dressed on the streets of Broker.* I noticed how from a distance the profiles of cars in the real world nicely match those in the game. (And where they don't? My mind was happy to throw out the outliers in the dataset.)

As if on cue, my cab drove by a huge billboard for GTA IV, leading man Niko Belic's face — before I played the game, frightening; now, world-weary — looked out over the Hudson. I realized those billboards would soon be down, replaced. But for now the model city reached out into the real one, making Liberty City somehow more genuine than New York by refusing to accept an ephemeral advertisement for the sake of recursion.

It's the first game I've ever played which can be recommended as a method by which to understand the atmosphere New York. Friends have asked me after seeing movies set in New York: Is that what the city is like? Not exactly, I'd qualify. There's this and that. But I've been calling friends from out of town to tell them to play GTA IV.

Is it exact? No less — and probably more — than a guide book or a novel. In fact it's better than a map for expressing the city; no New Yorker understands every cranny, every neighborhood and industrial park, but instead crafts their own model in their head from real experiences, stories from friends, too-stylized transit maps. GTA IV is another model, a distillation of a city I love — or at least a model of which I hold around my internal model of myself — that makes me understand my city even more.

Grand Theft Auto IV is the finest, most attentive simulation of a real world location yet. It's a song to the world's greatest city, crafted by hundreds, a portrait of a city that is incapable of knowing it is loved.

Also you can shoot people in the face.

* Which is, of course, dumb. What people wear is what is authentic. Inversely hence, hipster appropriation of blue-collar style.

Joel Johnson

Cricket folding, portable laptop stand

The Cricket laptop stand is portable, folding up into the little eight-inch cudgel you see at right. A fine solution for mobile computing if you spend time at the tiny desk they give you in hotel rooms. I don't. I spend much of my hotel computing just as I do at home: reclining in bed with my laptop propped up on my bent knees.

If it must be yours, they're selling it for $40.

Product Page [LCDArms.com]

Joel Johnson

Silly helmet covers for barbarian bikers

Martin at "Silly Helmet Covers" will sell you one of these stylish additions to your open face motorcycle helmet for just $44, shipped. (Helmet not included, of course.)

Product Page [SillyHelmetCovers.com]

Joel Johnson

Trail camera company offers million-dollar bounty for pictures of bigfoot

Bushnell, making of outdoor optical equipment like binoculars and infrared-triggered trail cams, has offered a $1,000,000 prize for a verifiable picture of Bigfoot taken with their hardware, reports Loren Coleman.

Bushnell Corporation (also known as Bushnell and Bushnell Outdoor Products) is an American company specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include binoculars, spotting scopes, telescopes, night vision equipment, GPS devices, laser-guided rangefinders, riflescopes, holographic gun sights, and other high-end optical equipment. The company also sells Bollé ski goggles and sunglasses, H20Optix water sports sunglasses, and Serengeti all-purpose sunglasses. It was founded in 1948 by David P. Bushnell, during his time in Allied-occupied Japan.

One of the best little trail cam models to use is Bushnell’s new camouflage Trail Scout Pro 5.0 night vision digital camera, which is designed to be mounted to a tree in the forest. It automatically snaps 5-megapixel digital photos of anything that crosses its path.

Also, no, this picture is not a bigfoot. But that makes it no less amazing.

Bushnell: $1,000,000 For Bigfoot Trail Cam Photo [Cryptomundo]

Rob Beschizza

Totem shower brings bathroom luxury to the ... yard?

Who will buy Waterdesign's Totem SHT FO 2000 outdoor shower system? It's beautifully technological—with a price to match—so it's not like it's just going to get dunked in the dust outside improperly-equipped trailers. BornRich's baroque description of it is just wonderful:

Designed to resemble a high-end art piece, the water station can be fitted with a sink, mirror, towel holder, shower accessories and customized taps to make your neighbors heart burn with all the envy Satan can possibly bestow upon his tortured soul. The iroko wood anti-slip footboard and footstall almost add insult to injury while you catch him peeping over the fence and trying to stare holes into the stainless steel beauty that lets you have hot and cold water on demand.

More details and shots turn up at Living With Style. If I was at the Pentagon, I'd order eighty.

The mystical and magical Waterdesign Totem Shower [Born Rich]

Joel Johnson

Video: DEKA's Luke bionic arm

Although there's not much more information in this video from the All Things D conference that we didn't see in earlier ones, I'm happy to see any new footage of Dean Kamen's "Luke" arm. Kamen says that they're working hard to commercialize the product.

Rob Beschizza

Handmade art keyboards are beautiful and expensive

A Nishi-Ki handmade USB keyboard is a guaranteed stunner, graced with one of a selection of fantastic illustrations.

At $155, however, that's a lot of cash for a commodity 86-key board. What is it about technology that inhibits appreciating examples of it that ask for a high premium in return for artistic quality? Expected obsolescence, perhaps?

NISHI-KI Keyboard [GeekStuff4U via GeekSugar]

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Vacuum Sealer – "The Fresh Box" automatic vacuum food sealer and marinater for $16, shipped. Normally about $60. [Slickdeals]

• Wi-Fi Antenna – TRENDnet dual-band omni-directional antenna for $10, shipped. About half-off. [Dealnews]

• House Phones – Today's Woot! is the VTech 5.8Ghz 4 Handset Phone with Digital Answering Machine set for $60.

Rob Beschizza

Nano Ornithopter is smallest UAV

Yesterday's "Nano" was VIA's freshly-renamed Isaiah chip; today's is the Nano Air Vehicle, a tiny drone that flies by moving its wings instead of using propellers or jets. Graced by a half-mil from DARPA, creators AeroVironment have six months to convince the military it's good for something.

Weighing less than 10 grams and only 7.5 centimeters long, the Nano will "push the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency." The stated objectives are somewhat opaque...

The development of conformal, multifunctional structural hardware and strong, light, aerodynamic lifting surfaces/rotors for efficient flight at low Reynolds number (<15,000)

... But I can't help but remember something from that other bastion of ornithopter fandom, Dune:

Nano Air Vehicle [DARPA]
Nano Air Vehicle [Ubergizmo]

Rob Beschizza

Wired Senior Editor Destroys Cheap, Nasty Phone By Accident on Live TV

Wired's Nick Thompson just destroyed a Razr live on NBC's Today Show. Right in the middle of a segment where he was demonstrating the iPhone and Moto Razr, the latter slipped like butter from his hands. It hit the floor with a sharp plastic clatter and was then seen to be completely buggered.

So, folks, for Christ's sake buy a Razr: it's made of freakin' sugar.

I think it was a Razr, anyway. Either way, Nick, you rule. And I wish I taped The Today Show. Since this post isn't even remotely funny without video, could someone who did oblige?

Update: Gizmodo obliges. Unfortunately, the Razr lives, writes Thompson in a write-up at Wired's Gadget Lab.

Rob Beschizza

TechCrunch: Intelius online people search is a scam

Intelius is the market-leader in online people searches, trawling public records for information. It's headed for a $143m initial public offering. The problem? Its revenue growth is powered by deceptively signing customers up for a useless third party service which bills monthly until you notice it and cancel.

Every time a customer buys a product at Intelius, they are shown a page telling them “Take our 2008 Consumer Credit Survey and claim $10.00 CASH BACK with Privacy Matters Identity.” ... Undoubtedly a lot of consumers do the survey and move forward to the next page - it only takes a second. But what most people don’t do is read the fine print ... in light gray small text, users are told that by taking the survey they are really signing up to a $20/month subscription.

It's the way it's put in hard-to-read gray on gray text that makes it so great—a confession encoded in design principles? Arrington runs the numbers and calculates that without the scam's revenues, Intelius' would barely be growing at all. Why aren't the IPO's organizers noticing this? Would they care if they do?

Naveen Jain’s Latest Scam: Intelius [TechCrunch]

Rob Beschizza

Samsung L870 doesn't actually have Safari

Samsung's abandoned its claim that its forthcoming L870 dullphone will have the Safari browser. From The Reg:

The manufacturer has since said that the L870 is actually equipped with the S60 platform OSS browser, also known as S60 safari browser, and which uses the same webcore platform as Safari.

We'll see how it performs when it comes out, won't we?

Samsung retracts Safari phone claim [Reg]

Rob Beschizza

Post On Self Test: The Fall of Steve Jobs

[Via NOTCOT]

Rob Beschizza

Multitouch multiplayer Pong demo for iPhone

No wires, ma!

[Hatena::Diary via Asiajin and Waxy]

Rob Beschizza

Travel light with portable weighing scale

Dieters rejoice: $40 takes your obsession on the road! Magellan's 18 oz miniature electronic scales are 8.5 by 6 inches in size and only an inch deep, and come in a zippered carrying case. How long before similar-looking devices have awful video games in them, riding Wii Fit's wave?

Product Oage [Magellan Red Ferrett]

Rob Beschizza

Associated Press reviews Sony's Rolly. Verdict: It Sucks Eggs.

One could procedurally generate AP ledes describing how Sony lost the portable music market it created. A computer, however, could never generate gloriously spiteful remarks like "it's a conversation-starter if your dancing hamster has run off" and "like all eggs, it's hard to figure out the point." Bravo!

Between calling it a dumber R2-D2 and bringing Peter Fabergé into it, Rachel Metz points out other flaws in the cute but catastophically-expensive music player, such as the lack of a headphone socket(!) and its tiny 2GB of memory. The verdict? "The world's most advanced (and expensive) cat toy."

Review: Sony's Rolly not quite love at first dance [AP]

Rob Beschizza

British Justice Minister Not Gay For Bridget

There's a lot of fuss today about proposals in Britain to abolish "drawings" of child abuse. Naturally, this kicks the Internet's predilection for age-ambiguous Japanese cartoon smut, right in the balls. Or does it? Reading the original BBC article provides something of an RTFA moment:

Ms Eagle said the plans were "not about criminalising art or pornographic cartoons more generally, but about targeting obscene, and often very realistic, images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society".

There's always that slippery slope argument about free expression—especially in increasingly creepy Britain—and about the "thought police" nature of punishing crimes without victims. But the ambiguities and gotchas recounted by critics today, such as "how would one provide records to prove the the age of a drawn character?" fall immediately foul of Eagle's explicit claim to not be targeting erotic artwork in general. In fact, by "drawings" it may refer to a section in Britain's new Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, which details images "derived" from real photographs.

The idea of photoshop-filtering photos to appear superficially like genuine artwork isn't exactly novel. Conclusion: 4chan not banned quite yet.

UK Proposes Banning Computer Generated Abuse [/.]
Computer generated abuse 'banned' [BBC]

Rob Beschizza

Dying for 3G? 6 cell-tower technicians fall to death in 5 weeks

A rise in cell-tower deaths is being attributed to the breakneck rollout of 3G cellular services, which require equipment on the tall installations to be upgraded. Fortune's Apple blog tallies five deaths in only 12 days, following months of accident-free operation.

April 12: A 34-year-old cell tower technician from Oklahoma man died after falling 150 feet from monopole antenna in Wake Forest, NC. It was the nation’s first death in 2008 of a communications worker falling from an elevated structure.

April 14: A tower worker employed by Cornerstone Tower of Grand Island, Neb., fell to his death in Moorcroft, WY.

April 15: A 38-year-old technician finished tightening the bolts on a guyed wireless tower in San Antonio, TX, “sort of lean[ed] back a little,” according to witnesses, and fell 225 feet to his death.

April 17: North Carolina suffered its second cell tower fatality in a week when a 46-year-old Chesapeake, VA, man fell from a communications antenna in Frisco, NC.

April 23: A Griffin, GA, man died from extensive head and chest injuries after falling 100 feet from a communications tower near Natchez, MS. He was reportedly hanging boom gates to a Cell South antenna when he fell.

May 16: Guilford was rappelling down a load line attached to a 200 foot monopole when he stopped abruptly 140 feet up and bounced as if on a bungee cord, disengaging the carabiner that was secured to the tower.

Fatal bandwidth: 6 cell tower deaths in 5 weeks [Fortune Apple2.0 via TechCrunch]

Rob Beschizza

Turbografx emulator hits iPhone

In the England of 1987, the PC Engine, sold in the U.S. as the TurboGrafx, was a magical foreign super-console that wasn't coming to our shore. It was minuscule but unnervingly powerful, boasting the world's most perfect home rendition of Street Fighter (mysteriously renamed "Fighting Street") and a stack of ludicrous shoot-em-ups our NES-imprisoned minds could barely contain.

Now, 20 years later, all that wonder fits inside an iPhone, thanks to the latest emulator to hit Apple town.

ZODTTD [via Joystiq, TUAW and MacBytes]

Rob Beschizza

Horde of vintage trannies on Flickr

No, not the Scottsdale chapter of Quentin Crisp's fan club: it's Michael Jack's astonishing collection of more than 900 classic radios. Pictured here is a rare jade green Recency TR-1, a design that would be almost completely ageless were it not for the skinny font on the clickwh... tuning dial.

Photostream [Flickr via Retrothing]

Rob Beschizza

A coffee table in the shape of an iPod

Wired's Nicole Martinelli found an original late-1960s Ingersoll Rand iPod and repurposed it as a table. Gotta love that retro: I wonder if it had the original punch cards!

iCoffee Table [Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

MSI Wind hands-on at Crave

CNET Crave has a gallery up and a hands-on of MSI's Wind. With new cheapie subnotebooks on their way from Dell and Asus and the Eee already a success, it's got to stand out—and it does...

This could be the best mini laptop so far -- it's comfortable to use, has a good display, is super-affordable and promises great performance.

We like: Screen; keyboard; value for money.

We don't like: Mouse trackpad could be bigger; no integrated 3G.

Hands-On [CNET Crave]

Joel Johnson

Disc Manager takes aim at the pornography archivist demographic

Eager to find a place for their optical disc caddy in a world moving inexorably towards other forms of storage, Disc Makers is now suggesting their Disc Manager — capable of locking certain discs inside the box unless you've got the proper password — is a "safe place to store your adult DVD collection." A laudable and authentic pitch, if all too miscalculated: who buys pornography on DVD?

Are you looking for a safe place to store your adult DVD collection? Disc Makers has you covered with the Disc Manager 100. The Disc Manager 100 allows users to store and password protect certain DVDs owners may prefer to keep private. The Disc Manager 100 and its bundled software makes it easy to locate any file and eject the appropriate disc in seconds. It also protects your CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs from damage caused by improper handling, exposure to dust, and UV light. Users can stack up to five Disc Managers 100s – allowing parents to manage a 500 disc library with just one USB connection.

Product Page [DiscMakers.com]

Joel Johnson

Paper towel dispenser design

There's not much to this post on Core 77. Just some paper dispensers in a grid. Out of context, the industrial design choices become easier to recognize, the sticky emulsion of the original iMac seeping through the plastic molds of the entire Things industry.

Paper towel dispenser designs [Core 77]

Joel Johnson

Video: Google Android phone user interface (looking great!)

Android Community has three videos up from a recent presentation by Google, showing off the latest version of the open-source, Linux-based Android smartphone OS. It looks really fantastic, swiping many cues from the iPhone but adding several neat tricks of its own.

You really should click through to Android Community and watch the video showing the live Google Street View mapping application matched up to a motion sensor and compass. It's probably the first useful commercial implementation of an augmented reality device. It's a system seller.

I adore my iPhone (and already have cash earmarked for the new one), but it makes me really happy to see Android coming together so well. Apple always behaves better when there is a smart competitor keeping them in check.

First LIVE images and videos of FULLSCREEN Android demos! [AndroidCommunity.com]

Joel Johnson

Garmin Edge 705 GPS for bicycles reviewed (Verdict: fantastic voyages)

Over at Gadget Lab (no relation), Jackson Lynch keys a glowing review for the new Garmin Edge 705 GPS unit designed for bicycles. The Edge doesn't just do directions, but also a whole suite of performance metrics and social sharing (back at your PC, of course).

Over the course of a couple weeks I've put in more than 40 hours on the road and trail with the 705 and I found it to be incredibly accurate, even in close quarters with other bike-borne wireless electronics. It's righted my course a few times and has become an invaluable training tool, enabling me to analyze ride and race data over a couple months and realize marked improvements. At the end of the ride, the Garmin Edge 705 seems to be the Holy Grail for cycling enthusiasts. It tells you where you are, points the way to a destination, gets you home and provides every bit of data you need to become a fitter cyclists -- if that's your thing.

Review: Garmin Edge 705 GPS Offers Maps and Metrics for Data-Happy Cyclists [Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Nature Documentary – Get the Planet Earth series on DVD with bonus discs from other series for $60, plus shipping. A pretty good deal if you have DVD — but if you have a Blu-ray player, definitely go with that version. [Dealhack]

• Touch MIDI – The Korg mini-KP KAOSS Pad is down to $150, shipped. If you aren't sure what this is you probably don't want it. [Dealhack]

• DSLR – Canon Digital Rebel XT with kit lens for $430, shipped. It's a couple of generations behind the latest models, but this is the camera I use and I can tell you as an amateur there's more than enough power here to get you started. [Dealnews]

• AGP Video Card – It's nothing to write home about, but if you're willing to risk the rebate, you can get this EVGA GeForce 6200 card for $0 after a $45 rebate. [Dealnews]

• Batteries – Various deals on batteries, including 12 AA, 12 AAA, and a charger for $29. [Dealnews]

• Multitool – The oh-so-sexy Leatherman Skeletool CX can be yours for $64, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Gaming Mouse – Today's Woot! is the Razer Diamondback 3G Gaming Mouse for $35, shipped.

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Vintage Wiring

Image: Dark Roasted Blend

John Brownlee

Ninja star thumbtacks for posters and bulletin boards

No one's making these yet, but surely someone's clever enough to realize the geek potential and start marketing them. This is right up Thinkgeek's alley.

chromoly is a new partnership between designer jonathan sabine and ad man adam pickard. the collaboration has only resulted in one project so far, ‘ninja tacks’. the humourous tack design may look like a deadly ninja star, but is really just an elaborate thumbtack. the tack bears similarities to sabine’s earlier project ‘bourgeois brass knuckles’, a clever corkscrew design. both pieces combine ominous appearances with utilitarian function.

I'd buy a set in a heartbeat, along with those fantastic corkscrew brass knuckles.

ninja tacks by chromoly [Designboom]

John Brownlee

Astromech R2 shampoo dispensers

These squirtable R2 unit shampoo containers are all kinds of adorable, and the site gains a lot of geek cred by clearly associating the colors with their permutations of the Astromech line. The red/white one is an R4-P17, the black is the R2-Q5, the green is R2-A6 and the red/silver is R2-R9. Even so, that nozzle erecting itself from the top of R2's dome is entirely unnecessarily. The way the delivery mechanism should work is by pushing down R2's entire head, which causes the lotion to squirt out of his telescopic optical nozzle.

The official site has some insinuating descriptive wording as well: "The dispenser may be filled with 185ml or roughly 6 ounces worth of shampoo, creamy lotion, liquid soap, or greasy lubricants of some sort." There's really only one sort you keep in your bathroom or bedroom, gents.

$18 per droid, if you're interested.

Star Wars R2 Shampoo Pump Dispenser [NCSX via Shiny Shiny]

John Brownlee

Giant unrollable fabric keyboard rug

Electronics hacker Maurin Donneaud created this huge, unrollable keyboard carpet for his living room, punching hundreds of holes under each letter to guarantee that the conductive switches would pick up his fuzzily socked feet. Concepts that are better in theory than in execution: build one of these myself and use it to blog for a whole day, dancing between each key like Tom Hanks in Big.

Maurin Donneaud's Flickr Stream [Flickr via Hack-A-Day]

John Brownlee

Dell's new subnotebook spotted at All Things D

Gizmodo managed to catch up with Michael Dell at yesterday's All D Conference and he cagily spilled the beans to them on their rumored upcoming entry into the subnotebook field, the Dell Mini Inspiron. Writes Lam:

It's a small form factor notebook, just like the Asus Eee and the HP 2133. He wouldn't tell me what OS it's running, or the pricing, but that it's a low-cost notebook meant for developing countries, and I hope here. Maybe it's Atom-powered. Who knows? But I do see three USB ports, a card reader, VGA out, Ethernet, and that red candy shell.

It actually looks great, unlike most of the recent Eee-like subnotebooks, And it comes in my favorite laptop color: hussy red! Without any specs or pricing, though, there's little reason to get excited. Still, I'm wondering: Dell and Ubuntu have a partnership, and Ubuntu has recently announced that they will be tailoring a version of Ubuntu specifically for subnotebooks. I don't think it's too implausible to imagine that Dell has prodded Ububtu in that direction with the specific aim of pushing Ubuntu onto their new Mini-Inspirons, do you?

Dell Mini Inspiron: Their First Mini-Laptop [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Refined sugar cereal lighting system is delicious

Continuing this morning's inadvertently breakfast-themed gadgetry — a vivisection via blogging of my own hungry, pre-dawn id — the Refined Cereal Light Fixture turns a row of fluorescent-colored, sugary cereal boxes into a wall mountable light fixture. The omission of Apple Jacks from the design seems like a weakness in the design: everyone is familiar with the eerie sight of a box of Apple Jacks radioactively pulsating in the dark by dint of super-charged sweetness alone.

Refined Sugar Studio [Official Site via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

A better transmitting device for extra-office coffee delivery

This seems like a better solution to mass coffee delivery. You simply place two coffees on a cardboard sleeve in the appropriate holes and then lift the handles, turning the coffee holder into a handbag that won't spill a macchiato no matter how you swing it around. I prefer this to the Starbucks corrugated cardboard model, which not only seems comparatively wasteful, but which has an immutable law of the universe attached to it, dictating that the carrier will sag on one side if you carry it one handed and spill its contents all over the ground exactly one micro-instant before you deliver the coffee to its intended recipient.

Coffee carrier for common customers [Core77]

John Brownlee

The BalvenAmp: DIY single malt whiskey box speaker/amp

According to its maker, the BalvenAmp — a cheap amplifier and speaker made out of an old box of 12-year single malt Speyside — "there's a lot of low-end distortion, but at low volumes the treble is actually quite clear." On the bright side, though, after you've finished draining the bottle of Balvenie necessary to make the thing, you won't be able to process one half of the audible spectrum anyways.

The Balvenie DoubleWood packaging has pictures of the two casks the whisky is aged in; the volume pot is coming out of the whisky cask, the gain pot is coming out of the sherry cask, and the guitar cord plugs into the Balvenie seal in the middle.

The speaker replaces the lid on top. Big thumbs up: I could make thirteen of these just from the detritus strewn around my work desk.

BalvenAmp [Flickr via MAKE]

John Brownlee

Cassette-face watch tells time like a boom box

I absolutely dig the spinning chronological reels of this £35 Casette Face watch. It just needs a small cache for MP3s to be absolutely perfect, though I'd settle for a transformation into Laserbeak.

Cassette Face Watch [ASOS via Retro to Go]

Rob Beschizza

Help us identify mysterious joystick shaft

We recently bought a renovated Victorian townhouse in Pittsburgh. It is nice, and it has a long yard. While gardening at the far end, my wife, Heather, unearthed the above. No kidding.

It looks to me like a standard-issue Happ-like generic model, from any old JAMMA cabinet? Or is it from something in particular? I'm close to tearing up my yard to hunt for more remains...

John Brownlee

New Guitar Hero DS trailer is epic failure

Remember when Harmonix developed the Guitar Hero series and everything about it was just awesome instead of making you want to throw up in your mouth a little? Everything that's wrong with the franchise is expertly summed up by this video explaining the control system of the upcoming Guitar Hero on Tour DS port... a video which actually stars an avatar of Activision's doucheyness: a shrieking castrati emo rocker. And if that doesn't put you off the game for good, the control scheme just might. Yeesh. How do you ruin a rock solid franchise this quickly?

Guitar Hero on Tour [Gametrailers]

Rob Beschizza

Mankind discovers way to make Moleskines even more pretentious

Moleskines are wonderful, overpriced, deceptively-advertised notebooks. They're the blogger's dirty little secret, lurking in closets and drawers, unsullied by actual use—no, sirs, only the Internet is for the daily drudgery of the paid word. Moleskines are for the inspiration! And now you may have them laser-etched.

LaserMoleskine offers monograms, quotes, and dozens of ready-to-burn pictures, many of them featuring presidential candidates. They'll also take custom orders through an upload form, though you pay extra for the privilege. The result? A blank notepad that cost you $50.

Xonex makes a great cheap Moleskine alternative to satisfy the appetite for production. Below are a two fantasy Moleskine-based gadgets I'd love to covet.

Laser Etched Moleskine Are Reassuringly Expensive [Wired: Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

Flickr gallery of retro transistor radios

This Flickr gallery of old transistor radios, pointed out by the wonderful Retro-Thing, is surprisingly captivating. You simply don't see this scope of aesthetic design in today's line-up of ubiquitous PMPs. Of course, transistor radios had decades to experiment with the form... once PMPs stop being luxury items, I imagine we'll see the same whimsical design scope that we currently see with USB memory sticks.

Transistor Radios [Flickr]

Rob Beschizza

I-O Bluetooth keyboard aims for simplicity

I-O Data's surprisingly attractive Bluetooth keyboard is a winner due to simplicity and straightforward design; wouldn't it be wonderful if it had a tiny, single-line display and a wee bit o'RAM for saving text files? Unfortunately, it lacks a full complement of function keys, making it a hard sell for serious use. From the indistinct brochure, it looks almost too small, too.

There's always this.

A small keyboard for your mobile phone from I-O Data [Akihabara News]

Rob Beschizza

Monster Cable trademark hit list includes muppet, forms of transit, deity

Monster Cables is in the habit of aggressing other companies that use the name "Monster," claiming that consumers may resultantly be confused between its cables and, say, a miniature golf course. Monster, like some others, excuses its misbehaviour as an unavoidable consequence of "defend it or lose it" trademark law. Here at Boeing Boeing, we think that's nonsense, but I digress: the purpose of this missive is to direct you to Gizmodo's compendium of companies using the name "Monster," which, according to the cable company's wheedling, it is now obliged to launch legal claims against.

The list includes a video game, a motorcycle, a muppet and a God. I'd say Noel has his work cut out for him.

A Monster List of Things Monster Cable Will Soon Sue [Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

D-Link Plots Revenge of Thicknet

Coax is cheap and durable, and your house is already wired for it. D-Link's Coax Ethernet Kit puts it to use on your home network, with two adapters included under the $200 price tag.

For aging network techs, this'll be a blast from the past! What next, consumers and BNC connectors, living together? D-Link says that their boxes transmit outside the range of cable TV and internet transmissions, but doesn't tell us what bandwidth we get. Press release after the jump.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

The Mouse Phone is painted like Mickey's mutant brother (Update: it's not Mickey at all!)

There's some weird story of failed corporate dealings behind this tiny, two-inch Mouse phone. It has the shape of an official Mickey Mouse phone, but the face painted on the three interconnected ovals is not Mickey's... rather, it's some sort of bizarre, neotenous abstraction of rodentia. What's going on there? There's a small elbow which could be either a nose or mouth... but which? Are the diagonal slants epicanthic folds or solitary whiskers? And what about the round ovals at the top of the skull? Eyeballs or sunglasses?

In fact, the face is so curious, so distinctly Chinese, so absolutely anti-Mickey that you'd think, at first, this phone must be a Chinese knock-off of a Mickey Mouse phone. But then you look inside, and there's the Disney logo, clear as day. That's not exactly the type of thing Disney's corporate attorneys are going to smile at, and it sends a mixed message: is the phone a Mickey phone or isn't it? My guess is a zero hour pull-out by Disney to produce Mickey-themed phones in cooperation with an overzealous Chinese company who quickly repainted their stock and sold them anyway.

Either way, it's not a serious phone for adults, but seems squarely aimed at cute teenagers. The Mouse Phone sports a 1.3" LCD screen, has a 1.3MP camera nuzzled in one ear and even supports Bluetooth stereo output. They're rather pricy, though: one Mouse phone will cost $225, which is a lot for a crappy phone that doesn't really look like Mickey at all.

The Mouse Phone [Gizmodiva]

UPDATE: Ah ha! Our ingenious commenters have figured it out! This isn't a Mickey-shaped phone at all. Rather, it's shaped like Pucca, a popular Korean cartoon character that is distributed by Disney. That doesn't explain if it's a knock-off or an officially licensed product, but it does at least make any trademark theft going on here a lot less slapdash.

Rob Beschizza

DHL's "Biggest Drawing" GPS stunt is fiction

With its loop-de-loops over empty seas and blithe transgression of airspace and flight paths, it was easy for us to be a little suspicious of DHL's "biggest drawing in the world," ostensibly created by tracking a GPS tranceiver in a plastic briefcase. Now, however, the artist's 'fessed up. From Wired:

It's a fake. The artist has added a line to the bottom of his webpage stating "This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time." And DHL confirmed that Nordenenkar never went any further than a warehouse the company allowed him to film in.

It's a delicious thought: DHL harangued by all sorts of shady international unpleasantness because of an advertising stunt. Wired's Dylan Tweney outlines why it could never have been:

* DHL does not deliver to arbitrary latitude-longitude destinations.
* DHL is not likely to consider "trace a few looping lines through the Indian Ocean, without landing" as a valid delivery request, even with lat-long coordinates
* You can't get a GPS signal inside the aluminum skin of an airliner
* No GPS system, even with supplemental batteries, would have lasted the 55 days the artist says his project took
* Details on the setup's "extended tracklog and battery time" are suspiciously absent.

Artist Admits He Didn't Actually Use GPS, DHL to Create 'Biggest Drawing in the World' [Wired]

Rob Beschizza

Apples are not the only fruit

Karl Grandin [via The Style Press]

John Brownlee

The GameBoy PC case mod

This PC case mod isn't exactly artful — it's just a fully functional EPIA PX10000G sloppily crammed into a gutted first-gen GameBoy, after all — but it's still amazing to me that the brick-like hunk of plastic that could barely run Super Mario Land in 1989 can now be used to run Quake 3. Install a working display over that fan vent and I'll really be impressed.

Feature: Functional PCs Made From Game Consoles [TechEBlog]

John Brownlee

Squirt gun table: break in case of super soaker emergency

Summer's here, the mercury's percolating and you never know when a leisurely day spent sweltering will devolve into a John Woo style Super Soaker battle. You should be prepared. The Jellio Squirt Gun Table is a transparent end table made of clear acrylic and filled with fluorescent water cannons. Unfortunately, it's $350: for that price, you could buy yourself an entire pallet full of Super Soakers and more covertly stash them around the domicile... garnering no suspicion from your enemies until they are soaked and sputtering.

Jellio Squirt Gun Table [Official Site via Retro To Go via Gearfuse]

John Brownlee

Supine brackets easily typed with the Look@Me emoticon keyboard

Amongst my constabulary of IRC droogies, there are savants who can not only communicate the deep swelling of their souls entirely in punctuation marks, but who can also easily rattle of an ASCII portrait of a flower, a crab nebula or a four panel pictogram of inter-species erotica with uncanny skill. My 13 year old cousin is scarcely less prolific. Yes, the emoticon may seem like a gimped form of human expression, but consider for a moment the fact that the great master literary prose stylist Vladimir Nabokov pined for the invention of the form, finding mere words a poor substitute for a smiley. "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile - some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question," Nabokov once famously replied to a particularly stupid interview question. Indeed. The point is clear: emoticons are the future.

Asus' R&D design studio, PEGA, is obviously taking Nabokov to heart. Their concept Look@Me emoticon keyboard is like an auxiliary number pad aimed not at accountants or mathematicians but at giggly teenage girls. Each key contains an ASCII symbol — concave marks and supine round brackets — that allows emoticons to be typed out with rapid-fire acumen by fresh-faced Lolitas around the world. Vlad would be proud.

Look@Me Emoticon Keyboard [Pega Design via Designboom via OhGizmo!]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: The Hard Disk You've Been Waiting For

Image: Widelec

John Brownlee

Microwaved cell phone summons Nyarlathotep

Please do not attempt.

Cellphone in Microwave [Dark Roasted Blend]

John Brownlee

How-to set up your own floating micro-nation

Over at Gizmodo, Adam Frucci conducted an interview with Patri Friedman, executive director of the Seasteading Institute, an organization devoted to trying to convince open seas frontiersmen to live on a gigantic slab of concrete in the middle of the ocean. It's a pretty fascinating discussion on the subject... especially this snippet, in which Patri (after being asked) talks about the problem of a micro-nation of pedophiles being set up:

Each community will decide and enforce its own rules. More importantly, each community will decide its own procedures for deciding on its rules. The point is not just to create one political system or type of system, but to make a turnkey product for creating new countries, so that lots of different groups will try lots of different things, and we can all learn from it.

The one rule I think seasteads should enforce on each other is the right for individuals to choose their society. As long as people are freely choosing their society, then as far as I'm concerned the society can pick whatever rules it wants.

Personally, I want a society that's very libertarian for internal affairs, except for strong national security rules against doing anything that will piss off a military power (exporting drugs, laundering money, polluting). Basically the vision of "As much freedom as we can reasonably get away with".

I think forcefully kidnapping 14 year old girls to service a floating nation of perverts would pretty quickly bring a battleship knocking. Patri's whole interview seems like what it probably is: a retired Google software engineer's crazy pipe dream of setting up his own Snowcrash-style Raft. But at least Patri's got the business model figured out: timeshares!

How To Build Your Own Sea-Based Country for Fun and Profit [Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Yamaha Disklavier Mark IV player piano downloads songs over Wi-Fi

Yamaha's latest Disklavier player piano, the Mark IV, can download music from the internet via Wi-Fi and play along, pedals and keys clacking in time. For now it only supports music in the "Tune-1000" format from Yamaha's website, but "other formats will be supported."

The Mark IV series takes the Disklavier’s remote control functions to the next level: all Mark IV models include the PDA-type Pocket Remote Controller, a wireless remote with dedicated buttons and a full-color LCD touch screen. In addition to the Pocket Remote, select models also feature the tablet-PC type Tablet Remote Controller, a portable 10.4” touch-screen LCD color control panel that offers different animated, customizable visual environments to operate from. Both remote controllers use the 802.11b wireless specification to communicate with the piano over long distances, enabling full-function control of the Disklavier through walls and with a flexibility never before possible.
      The Yamaha Mark IV line features new, open-ended software-based architecture built on a rock-solid Linux Operating System that will facilitate future upgrades and expansions, thus offering outstanding investment protection. Another first for the Mark IV series is the inclusion of a built-in, high-capacity hard drive for easy, high-volume storage of MIDI, CD-audio and graphic data. The Mark IV’s 80-gigabyte hard drive replaces the 16-megabyte flash memory found in previous models.

The line starts at $11k, but if you get all the fixin's I'm sure you'll be shelling out a lot more than that.

Press release after the jump.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

Loyd Case on installing solar panels

Over at Extreme Tech, Loyd Case has put together a wonderful little write-up about his experience installing solar powers on the roof of his Californian home... from talking to contractors to results. Even if you're not particularly green-friendly, the numbers certainly seem to make a lot of sense...

Our power usage is unusually high for a typical, four person nuclear family. A big part of that is because I have a PC lab and network in the basement. Both my wife and I work out of the house much of the time, with her time almost 100% in the home office. Plus, we have two teenage girls and a pretty beefy HDTV and home audio setup in the family room.

The net result is annual power consumption in the Case house of 17,400kW hours. That will go down a bit—probably about 5–10% for each girl when our daughters head off to college (my oldest girl will be a high school senior next year.) We've also been fairly active in converting our lighting to compact fluorescent, though we still have a number of halogen sconces scattered throughout the house.

The solar power system would generate 8,721kW hours of energy per year. More importantly, it would generate that power during the peak hours of the day, when electricity from the grid is at its highest price. So our estimated annual power bill will drop from about $4,400 a year to less than $1,100 a year, with the average cost per kWH dropping from 25 cents to 6.3 cents.

The payback time, assuming energy costs don't spike steeply, is a little under nine years. If we sell the house, we should get it all back immediately.

Going Solar [Extreme Tech]

John Brownlee

Video: Best Buy dance off

It's a scene any Best Buy patron has seen a million times before: three sassy soul sisters shaking their booties in an impromptu display of dancing prowess before the stereo speaker display, while a dorky, heavy set employee looks on, pathetically trying to look "hep." But god bless the dorky, heavy set employee in this video, because after 40 seconds of indecision and lame bobbing, he just gets down, becoming one with the groove, and triumphantly wins high fives from all.

It's an awesome sight, but as an ex Best Buy supervisor, I can't help but furrow my brow in disapproval: this does not look like a man properly upselling an extended warranty. Leave the dancing to the customers on-the-clock, chuckles.

Best Buy Dance [YouTube]

Joel Johnson

Free Booze: "Bloody Mary Mixer" tomorrow in Manhattan for blood donation network

If you're in New York tomorrow and like vodka, you can drink for free for 90 minutes — no pacing yourself! — at the "Bloody Mary Mixer," an event sponsored by "Takes All Types," a non-profit organization that's trying to make blood donation smarter. Sign up for their Facebook app — it'll add a blood type card to your profile, just like you're a Japanese fighting game star. Better, when there is a need for your blood type in your area, you can get an alert via Facebook, email, or SMS.

Disclaimer: I had a beer with these guys last week which I think maybe makes me an advisor or something.

Rob Beschizza

Who'd like a portable text game console?

BBG co-editor John Brownlee wants someone to make a simple, cheap handheld roguelike in a similar vein to the dedicated Tiger portable games of yore...

Some sort of UMPC or handheld console solution dedicated to one single purpose: Playing ASCII rogue-likes on the go. Everything has to be designed so you can play Dwarf Fortress or Nethack with the minimum amount of bullshit.

The thought experiment it implies is "what might a portable, text-only game console be like?"

At the low end, the cheap hardware used for $30 translators and dictionaries could handle such staples as interactive fiction and basic roguelikes: CalcRogue, by Jim Babcock, looks ready made for action in something one might impulse-buy at Target.

At the high end, a more capable machine might meet the likes of Dwarf Fortress' stiff system requirements, and open up the possibilities to the world's vast back catalog of ASCII-style titles.

Our mockups here are, respectively, an iRiver Discple (above), a $200 monster-translator that could be fitted out with an x86 CPU, a stripped-down linux and bucketloads of text-only games on tap; and an ultra-cheap Franklin Spanish dictionary (below), depicted as running only a baked-in CalcRogue.

The closest Tiger itself got to a Roguelike is, presumably, its version of Gauntlet. It's Wheel of Fortune has a QWERTY keyboard. Of course, the LCD displays in these are far too primitive for a proper implementation; they merely show that the foothills of this mountain have been danced upon.

John Brownlee

USB superdock reads memory cards and SATA HDDs

This new multi-function dock from Brando not only allows you to read the usual gaggle of memory cards (SD, MiniSD, MicroSD, Memory Stick, Compact Flash, etc) but it also allows you to dramatically plunge 2.5" or 3.5" SATA hard drives into it, reading their contents with the ease of a USB thumb drive. The price is $79, but that's including a heft $25 shipping charge from Hong Kong.

SATA HDD Multi-Function Dock (USB + ESATA) [Brando via Crunchgear]

Joel Johnson

Walgreens LED sign will be Times Square's largest

The Times reports on a gigantic new LED advertising billboard to be installed in Times Square by Walgreens — the largest so far.

The sign will have 12 million light-emitting diodes, known as L.E.D.’s — 17,000 square feet of them, “which is more than a third of an acre,” said Arthur Gilmore, president of the Gilmore Group, a Manhattan design and branding consulting firm, which created the sign. “Including its digital and vinyl decorative components, it will be 43,720 square feet in area.” ... And so, the sign components of the east and west facades of the building, which are 341 feet tall and 143 feet wide, will be programmed “in a synchronized way, as a single animation,” said Meric Adriansen ... The sign will marshal enough candlepower to withstand the sun at high noon. Its images will be projected by 12 million red, green and blue L.E.D.’s programmed to glow in different configurations so that the brains of human observers interpret them as images. A trillion colors are programmable.

Image: Dinosaurs and Robots

How to Stand Out in Times Square? Build a Bigger and Brighter Billboard [NYTimes.com via Racked]

John Brownlee

Ubuntu moving into UMPCs and subnotebooks

In an interview with the Guardian, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth just came out and admitted that a version of the OS specifically aimed at Asus Eee devices was, indeed, in development:

TG: Will you be coming out with a tailored version of Ubuntu for the ultraportable sector?

MS: We're announcing it in the first week of June. It's called the Netbook Remix. We're working with Intel, which produces chips custom-made for this sector

Fantastic news. You can slap Ubuntu on a subnotebook as it is, of course, but I've read there's a certain degree of general wonkiness on getting it to run perfectly on the hardware. I think this is a real smart move: the desktop space is pretty much owned by Vista and OS X, both of which are simply too beefy for Eee-class devices. Ubuntu could own this space if they tried... an excellent way to introduce their OS to more consumers.

interview: Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu [Guardian]

Image: Lloyd Humphreys

John Brownlee

MacBook Air sharp enough to slice bread, bone, human flesh

According to a group of Germans — a people who know a thing or two about the subject — the edge of a MacBook Air, quickly drawn across the softly pulsing skin of a human throat, is enough to slice through windpipes, sever sinew and squirt spouts of crimson-scented gore. It's also sharp enough to slice a loaf of bread or accidentally dice an elbow. Apple currently has no plans to adopt either MBA "feature" into a hip, upbeat television advertisement, backed by the melodious lyrics of Yael Naïm. Pity.

MacBook Air can cut through bread, flesh [Google Translate via Engadget]

Update: Sadly, it appears the cut was actually from a regular Macbook, not an Air. I'm pretty sure that means the Air is even more dangerous! – Joel

John Brownlee

Vintage Modern Mechanix t-shirts from Retropolis

Nestled in its own vintage futurism subheading under Brad Schenck's fantastic web outlet of science fiction t-shirts, Retropolis' fantastic array of t-shirts screened with retro-futuristic covers from vintage Modern Mechanix magazines is a sorely tempting target on which to drop a few Hamiltons. A standard t-shirt is about $26, which is on the pricier side for a t-shirt, but they also over other permutations of casual cotton clothing: baseball jerseys, long sleeves, wife beaters and the like.

Retropolis Transit Authority [Official Site]

Joel Johnson

Apple toying with solar cell displays for iPods, laptops

One thing I love about Apple is that they have the clout to push ideas to market that might seem too niche or quirky from other vendors. (Wi-Fi in the first iBooks and USB in iMacs come to mind, although both of those products are from a younger Apple without nearly as much oomph as the company has today.) So when I see a patent coming down the pipe from Apple describing an attempt to integrate solar cells underneath LCD panels — allowing every iPhone, iPod, and open laptop to trickle charge its battery just by being left in the sun — I can't help but get excited. If Apple can make the technology work, it's likely that they'll push it into all their product lines — and hence the mainstream.

Of course, filing a patent doesn't mean that they've got the problems licked or that they'll be implementing the technology, either. But I can hope. Battery technology doesn't seem to be improving, but with the right power management techniques and a sunny day, some devices might not have to hit a charger for days at a time.

Solar LCD Powered iPods, iPhones and Laptops? [Mac Rumors]

Joel Johnson

Koss Sparkplug headphones are unusable thanks to a goofy mute

I wasn't expecting much from the Koss Sparkplug earbuds when I picked them up at a Radio Shack for twenty bucks. I'd broken my previous set of earbuds and needed a quick replacement. And they were the only earbuds this particular Radio Shack sold, if you can believe it.

They're horrible! They're ugly, for one, with strange little ridges. The sound quality is poor. (Although what can you expect for the price?) But the worst — what takes them from unfortunate low-end item to hilariously unusable — is the unnecessary in-line mute button.

I suppose a mute toggle can be handy, but not when it's a raised plastic button with such a low physical resistance that it often mutes and unmutes itself — or worse, mutes just one of the two channels — while I'm walking. Every time the mute button bounces against my clothing it activates. The only way I can reliably listen to music with this headphones while walking is to hold my MP3 player in my hand, keeping it above my waist to provide enough slack to keep the mute button away from my body. That works sometimes.

Joel Johnson

EcoGIR suits made from recycled PET bottles

New "EcoGIR" suits from Bagir, available nowish at Sears, are made in part from recycled PET plastic bottles. They're also machine washable, which is sort of awesome, too.

They're also only $200 for pants and a jacket, which is a little bit daunting; I'm all about cheap suits, but that's very cheap. Still, I'd really like to put my hands on one and get a feel of the fabric. (Too bad there's no Sears anywhere around me.)

Sears Sells Bagir’s Recycled PET Bottle Suit on Father’s Day [Treehugger]

Joel Johnson

Video: The ChroniCaster is bong in a guitar

Or maybe it's just a pipe? I can't remember if bongs have to have water filtering or not.

Mike Edison's ChroniCaster: An Ax Hack That'll Make You Hack (and Wheeze) [Listening Post]

Joel Johnson

Glowing reader rec. for Himalayn Imports' khukuri knives

Reader "Heteromeles" is a big fan of Himalayan Imports and their knives. He's almost convinced me I need one and I'm not a knife collector at all.

Sustainably made knives.  Big knives.

Actually, they're not labeled "sustainable" by any green organization, but when you understand them, the label fits.  What I'm talking about are the khukuri knives (kukri) from Himalayan Imports.

Why are they sustainable?

A.  The metal in the blades is all recycled (the steel is generally from junked Mercedes car springs). The handle and sheath are traditional wood, horn, and leather.  While I'm not sure that the wood is sustainably sourced, I'm pretty sure that horn and leather in Nepal are sustainable.

B.  The blades are designed to last *UNDER NORMAL USE* for 50-100 years, and if they don't, you can get them replaced.  Note that you will go through 4-5 handles before the blade is destroyed, but it's easy to rehilt the blade.

C. The customer service is wonderful.  When they say that, if you break under normal use, they will replace it, they mean it.

D. Every blade is handmade by a Nepalese craftsman, and HI is careful to pay them living wages, so that they can support their families.  Yes, you can get khukuris for much cheaper, but they are factory made and the quality is much  lower.

E.  The blades are as tough as advertised, although there are a bunch of different types for different uses.  The heaviest ones can cut a 55 gallon drum or a light car in half.  The lightest ones are like machetes (brush cutters) only better.

F.  HI has a loyal (shall we say rabid?) customer base.  Example: Bill Martino, the founder of HI, was supporting the son of a smith as he went through medical school,so that he could return to the village as a doctor.  When Bill died, several of the customers have taken it upon themselves to hold raffles every semester so that the student could finish his studies and graduate.  (Disclaimer: I'm one of those loyal customers).

I've bought knives from a number of companies, and I don't know of any that are as good as Himalayan Imports. They are so retro (i.e. quality craftsmanship, excellent customer relations) that they are avant-garde.

In our disposable era, the idea that you can buy a knife, use it daily (if you happen to live in a rural area), trust your life to it (as some customers have), and leave it to your kids is something special. Building things to last isn't an antiquated idea, it's a way of living sustainably.  When I run out of gas for my chainsaw, I can still count on my khukuri.

Sustainable?  Well, they do ship knives from Nepal and all over the world, but if you amortize that carbon footprint over the life of each blade, it's pretty darn small, especially compared to the plastic-handled, factory made machete or ax that you get from a big box store.  HI knives cut better too.

Rob Beschizza

Orgasmatron: false advertising?

Australia's Orgasmatron is extremely effective at making one's head tingly. Techopolis wheels it out for excoriation on the grounds that "Orgasmatron" is a deceptive product name, given that it does not actually give one orgasms.

To be quite frank, this particular criticism is disturbing. It suggests that the author—who I am sure is a perfectly normal, well-balanced person—looked at the writhing profusion of metallic spines, concluded from the name that it is intended for genital use, and was later disappointed.

Wikipedia has a list of classic Orgasmatrons from fiction. The one you're thinking of, however, was in fact called the Excessive Machine.

Deceptive Product Names - Orgasmatron [Techopolis]

Rob Beschizza

Mac Mini and pals, enclosed by Power Mac G4 Cube case

Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube was an illustrious failure, beautiful but dysfunctionally-designed and overpriced. Fans and a vigorous resale market built a legend around it, but the smaller, better Mac Mini put its predecessor into perspective.

Rich Willis weds the two tiny machines together, by using the former's attractive transparent casing as an enclosure for the latter, with a bunch of extras.

Having happily found that my new Airport Extreme had the same footprint as the Mac Mini and its accessory HDD case, I naturally wanted to enclose it in an old Macintosh Cube acrylic shell I happened to have lying around

Experiments indicate that a jigsaw at a slow speed is the only way to go: the clear acrylic cracks and melts easily. The result is gorgeous, though I wish Apple would standardize the dimensions it uses for small machines like Time Capsules, Apple TVs and Mac Minis: 7.7" or 6.5", chaps. Pick one.

Mac Mini Cube [via NoWhereElse and Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Innards of the MSI's Wind subnotebook

MSI's Wind proves itself a dark horse thanks to its lengthy battery life and $400 price tag. Someone has already taken the knives to it, so we can gawk at the entrails.

Looks like a tight fit, doesn't it? Compare to the MacBook Air's interior, described by engineers as "full of waste."

MSI Wind U100 dissected [jkkmobile]

Rob Beschizza

Comic book ads lied? No!

"Kids are stupid," Justin Plourde rightly asserts in his introduction to twelve examples of planet Earth's most inconsequential false advertising of all time. Whatever happened to the classic comic book ads? Did someone finally kick up a litigious stir about X-ray specs and all the other useless gadgets? Did they pupate into ads for homoepathic elixirs and healing crystals?

Wired's Lewis Wallace, however, points to a better example of the genre, from Dogwelder's Flick set:

12 Comic Book Ads That Taught Us To Be Cynical [Cracked]

Rob Beschizza

Motorola's 180-gram spy radio has GPS, end-to-end encryption

Is frisking someone for a wire still much use as an anti-surveillance measure? Motorola, with its TETRA Covert Radio, has removed any hope of easily ratting out the spies: it weighs only 180 grams and can "easily be concealed in light clothing." From the press release:

The TCR1000 ... helps officers to disguise their equipment during covert operations,
allowing them to blend into the crowd. ...
end-to-end encryption. It incorporates many innovative features to address
the unique requirements of covert radios such as discrete audio, radio
control and long battery lifetime. ... The TCR1000 is controllable from a remote unit that provides
greater flexibility to users in their operations.

It even has integrated GPS. It'll be on show at Hong Kong's TETRA World Congress in June.
Press Release [Motorola]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Shoggoth Advance

Photograph of my Microwaved Mutant Gameboy Advance [perfectlymadebird's Photoset]

Joel Johnson

Guinness ball cap with built-in bottle opener

This pedestrian ball cap has a garish bottle opener riveted onto the bill. It's an officially branded Guinness product; too bad the best non-draught Guinness comes in a can.

It's $20, plus shipping.

Catalog Page [BeWild.com]

Joel Johnson

This is what a broken Amazon Kindle looks like

I wish I could blame this on shoddy craftsmanship or a DRM snafu, but I'm guessing this is probably the result of my foot. All I know is that I put it in my bag one morning and when I removed it in the afternoon the screen no longer updated. There's not a crack, per se, but you can tell it looks like something fractured underneath the plastic.

Ah well.

My Kindle was given to me as a press preview unit, so I can't exactly complain. I'd come to enjoy having the Kindle at hand more than I'd expected, but I still don't think I'll be paying $400 to get a new one.

I had just gotten it really stuffed with eBooks, too.

John Brownlee

Star Wars tackle-and-rod for the suppression of Mon Calamari

There's nothing more enjoyable than a languorous day at the lake, fishing with a sawed-off shotgun, although god knows that the latest Star Wars merchandise — fishing gear and tackle box — tries to at least throw a lightsaber into the mix. We'd say George Lucas has no shame, but you all saw The Phantom Menace, so why labor the point?

Star Wars Fishing Supplies [The Force via Oh Gizmo]

John Brownlee

Artist draws his face on the world with GPS and DHL

As a project, this campaign by artist Erik Nordenankar and DHL is quite clever: ship a small package with a GPS locator around the world to geo-map a global self-portrait of the artist. But I'd be more impressed if DHL hadn't been in on the project: some of the circuitous Baltic curlicues necessary to etch-a-sketch Nordenankar's bed head hair are simply too implausible without having a special delivery plane devoted to the task.

World's Biggest Drawing [Official Site]

John Brownlee

The science of keyboard design

Amar Sagoo has posted a fantastic summary of 1997's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction... specifically its sections on optimal keyboard design. Sagoo supplements this with many of his own observations. It's a fascinating dissection of the qualities that contribute to the perfect keyboard, jettisoning vague complaints about keyboard "smooshiness" in favor of highly objective haptic terminology like "clickiness:'

One of the most-cited criteria for keyboard aficionados to prefer a certain keyboard over another is “clickiness”. The idea behind this is that a good keyboard should give you some tactile feedback when you've successfully “actuated” a key, and that you shouldn't have to depress the key all the way to the bottom to be sure, as this would not allow you to type very fast. Some keyboards don't click at all, some give a softer and others a sharper click. The exact behaviour can be described by a graph plotting how the physical force required to push the key varies along its way down and its way up. The sudden dip in force on the downstroke is where you will feel the “click”.

Read the whole thing, it'll solidify your thoughts about your favorite keyboards.

Science of Keyboard Design [Amar Sagoo] (Thanks, Joel!)

John Brownlee

Tell time haptically with the braille watch

David Chavez's conceptual braille watch is a simple solution to time-reading for the blind. Instead of tracing the hands on a crystal-less watch face, the visually impaired simply trace the bumps (raised by rotating discs) with their fingers. I actually wouldn't be too averse to owning a watch like this: it would be excellent for covertly checking the time during a terrible movie or a tedious blind date.

Haptica Braille Watch Concept [Tuvie]

John Brownlee

Gallery of Mac Mini mods

TechEBlog has posted a nice little Memorial Day gallery of custom Mac Minis... implausible modifications in which the guts of Apple's most spindly and sunken chested computer are crammed into different chassises and supplemented with additional functionality. Seen here is the Mac Mini tablet, featuring an 8 inch touch screen display with handwriting recognition, Bluetooth, Airport and a 3-hour battery life.

Custom Mac Mini Setups [Techeblog]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Etch-A-Photoshop

Image: n0wak

Rob Beschizza

Colors! turns Nintendo DS into pocket Wacom Cintiq

Colors! is the Nintendo DS app that most powerfully makes the point that homebrew is not just a wheedling cipher for piracy. Developed by Jens Andersson, it offers hard and soft brushes, pressure sensitivity, a 512x384-resolution canvas, and can send paintings as PNG files via email. It has a Corel Painter-style hue-circle, saturation-triangle palette.

Wired's How-To Wiki has a tutorial on how to work with it to produce stunning works of art; pictured above is a reproduction of a Rembrandt self-portrait by Jason R. Dunn.

Forthcoming versions of the app will have undo, a levels tool and collaborative painting.

Download Page [Collecting Smiles]
How to [Wired via Gizmodo]
Gallery of Colors! paintings [Brombra.net]

Joel Johnson

Photojojo Mac keyboard editor hotkey stickers overlays

Photojojo is selling these rubber, stick-on overlays for Mac laptop and desktop keyboards with hotkey information for Photoshop, Aperture, or Final Cut Pro. They make new keyboards look like the dedicated editing suite keyboards of yore. They're $30 for laptop versions, $40 for desktop — a lot of scratch for fancy stickers.

Update: Amit from Photojojo corrects me:

One quick note: They're not actually stickers! They're thin, flexible rubber overlaps, custom-fitted to each of five or so different kinds of Mac keyboards. They don't stick on (they're no adhesive) but they stay on because they're molded to fit the keyboard shape. They're also washable and keep crud from getting under your keys.

Product Page [Photojojo]

Rob Beschizza

An hour with the Datto 100 NAS

The Datto 100 and 500 are NAS devices, with 100GB and 500GB of storage respectively, that sit on your home network and, with a $10 monthly subscription, backup their contents to Datto's online storage service.

The instructions are straightforward: register at the official homepage, then with the box itself on its web-based administration panel. Once done, simply set up your network file shares, accessible via local IP address or by redirection to same from the official homepage—and the users who may access them.

When tested, setup failed at the point where the box asks for an admin user to be set up. This required a remote reset. Recovery involved accessing Datto's website and having it remotely add a "recover user," then logging into the box with its credentials, creating a new user and assigning it "web access" privileges.

Once up and running, it's easy to add SMB shares, create new users and assign them to specific shares. Users must have passwords, but shares can be made guest-accessible.

You can instruct the Datto to immediately backup to the online storage; pause ongoing backups; and configure schedules along with speed limits (e.g. upload at the default 96kbps during the day, but give it your full pipe late at night).

Resetting the datto box takes about 2 minutes — this is triggered for certain configuration changes like setting the Windows workgroup.

Other features include read-only FTP access over the internet, email alerts for device failure, low disk space, excessive backup times (triggered if it will take more than 30 days to complete a si ngle operation!), and if there are any network problems.

The box itself is small and neat, with no-nonsense industrial design. About 7 inches by 5, and about 2.5" deep, it has an odd fanless cooling grille looking into the PCB within.

More on the Datto after a few days of use.

John Brownlee

Dr. Ashen reviews the R-Zone

Everyone's favorite reviewer of cheap video game tat, Dr. Ashen, has done a video retro-review of the R-Zone Pocket Extreme, a bizarre attempt at ripping off the VirtualBoy "excreted from Tiger Electronics' corporate anus" in the 90's.

R-Zone Pocket Extreme Pocket Game Review [YouTube]

John Brownlee

Retrofuturistic PC case mod is straight from Vault 13

MAKE spotted this fantastic case mod, turning an original 1957 Setchell-Carlson P-62 Portable television into a Fallout-style computer. The keyboard and mouse are big aesthetic failures, but that monitor's just gorgeous: it screams Vault 13.

'Computervision' PC mod [MAKE]

John Brownlee

Pixelated couch distresses poor hungover blogger who needs a hug

I'm off to a late start this morning, since I'm hungover. I did wake up around 10am with the best of intentions, but the first thing I spotted in the feeds was this pixelated couch, which was enough to make me unspool my guts into the toilet and then spend the next few hours in bed, trying to suppress my mutineer limbic system. Having won a partial victory in that battle, I have to say, I still find the couch a bit unsettling: it looks like where they found Mario's smeared, bloated corpse after eboy took turns raping him to death.

Pixel Couch [Cool Hunter via Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

Friday linkswap: Rock Paper Shotgun

Its tasteful color scheme says it all: RPS is a megalith of good taste in a world gone pink, green and cornflower blue. Its utterances shoot forth like the baleful glares of a reawakened god: no, ladies and gentlemen, it is not the nineties, and there is not time for Klax.

The Trouble with Demos
Games demos suck. Instead of crafting an exciting overview of a new title, developers typically just dump out the first level or two.Alec Meer slams efforts which amount to "all tutorial and no trousers," and points to what a demo needs to get a gamer in on the game: an introduction to its world, the illusion of openness, and a movie trailer's "hyper-edited" frenzy.

Dinosaurs!
They've been hitting the fumes again, posting multiple examples of games that feature dinosaurs. See Dino Run, Petroglider, Ketpack Brontosaurus and Offroad Velocirapter Safari.

RPS: The Game
In which the origins of the world's best PC gaming blog are illustrated through the medium of an official game

Rock Paper Scissors originates as an early attempt to simulate the Prussian/Hungarian conflict of 1842, where the Prussians armed their grand imperial forces with Rocks. However, a Russian-funded Hungarian counter-attack with Paper lead to the complete rout of the Prussian forces and the later capituation of Prussia to the Parisian commune. Scissors was added later for game-balance purposes, in a move which offends historical purists to this day.

Commmenter Bob Ince responds: "Doesn’t work with a joypad. Doesn’t take advantage of DirectX 10.1 features. YOU ARE KILLING PC GAMING."

Future of the PC: “the de facto single format”
Jim Rossignol finds an interview in which Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is said to remark that the PC is the future of gaming. He agrees, pointing out that either PCs will either supplant consoles under the TV, or consoles will expand until they do everything a PC does.

"When I suggest this future people generally dismiss it as a 1950s-style technofuture dream: one box fits all? Never! But it’s not quite like that. One box scales to all."

Also, buy Jim's book. Joel says it's good.

Rob Beschizza

$47,200 GSM bathtub for people who want to subscribe to cleanliness

Lest you feel bathtubs are beyond the remit of a gadget blog, know this: the Red Diamond bathtub from WaterGamesTechnologies has two waterproof televisions, a GSM module to allow remote control from anywhere on Planet Earth, a temperature panel and a crowd of whirlpool pumps. One can even set how frequently it disinfects itself: perfect for after a nice Craigslist-organized hot-tub soirée.

In predictably tasteless fashion, the tub, designed by Aldo Puglielli, comes in whore red and has a champagne holder studded with Swarovski crystals.

Product Page [WGT via BornRich]

Rob Beschizza

USB Flash drive in a clothes peg

It's the case now that you could put a USB thumbdrive in almost anything: just grab a Microvault Tiny and jam it in there. This clothes pin one, however, has superior potential for use in a derivative spy comedy.

Product Page [Spinacz via Oh Gizmo!]

Rob Beschizza

From Schlub to Superhero in only 5 gadget purchases

Wired's Charlie Sorrel transforms from chairbound technology writer to enterprising hero in just a few hundred (or thousand) dollars.

Some super heroes are born with special powers (Superman), some are transformed by a tragic and improbable scientific accidents (Spiderman, Hulk) and some just kick butt with their amazing gadget hacking skills (Batman, MacGyver). You'll need precisely one guess to know which we prefer.

The piece says it will offer five gadgets, but only four are forthcoming. Suggestions for fifth gadget: high-tech lair, belt of many pouches, and one of those 3.5" floppy disks that lets you hack into any 1990s movie computer.

Brooklyn has a store that can help.

Five Gadgets That Will Make You a Superhero [Wired: Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

M-Audio Microtrack II "changed my life"

Emily Scarlet Kramer at Cool Hunting, in her review of M-Audio's Microtrack II, says that it "changed my life for the better." A straightforward, no-nonsense high-quality portable digital recorder, it records to WAV or MP3 and can easily be configured to pick up exactly what you want it to...

Sound quality is superior for a small on-the-go recorder and its simple and straightforward interface makes it easy to use. Cutting back on the oftentimes superfluous knobs in favor of a few straightforward buttons makes for a quick learning curve. ... I'm most impressed with the MicroTrack's range. A tiny plug-in T-mic is able to pick up the most discrete library voice, but the ability to adjust levels allows me to record even the loudest dance music.

At $300, it's still a lot more expensive than even fancy voice recorders, but reasonable given its features. Any other suggestions for a capable entry-level mobile recorder?

Product Page [M-Audio]
M-Audio MicroTrack II [Cool Hunting]

Rob Beschizza

Computer desk is exactly that

XYZ's computer desk is unusual among its peers, in that it's a computer and a desk.

We enjoy the design of the Apple computer range, though on a functional level, PC is preferred. So we designed a desk/computer as beautiful as a Mac but easily upgradeable like a PC. All computer components and cable management is contained within the thickness of the desk, and when upgrading is required, the desk lid simply flips open. CDRW/DVD, USB and Hot Keys are located on the side of the desk.

From the look of that art, I'm quite sure it doesn't actually exist. You could make your own, however, with one of Home Depot's basic hollow doors. They're very light, don't have any irritating pre-cut holes, and have a pleasing smooth, unfinished appearance that can stand alone, IKEA-style, or be stained or painted. Just make sure you have adequate cooling in there, chaps.

Product Page [DDDXYZ via BornRich]

Rob Beschizza

Telescope cane and USB-drive hip flask

Here's two for steampunks, inconspicuous time-travelers and pimps: a cane with a concealed telescope, and a hip flask containing a USB hard drive instead of whisky.

Iomega's leathery eGo hard drive is $142.50 and has 250GB of space. According to the specs, it requires a single USB port—many similar drives require two due to SATA's power requirements.

The Hammacher Schlemmer cane comes in at a surprisingly cheap $90. Cut from a 37-inch shaft of African rosewood, it offers only 3X magnification, but infinite magnification of your geek élan.

Walking Stick with Built-in Telescope: for the Victorian Perv in You [Gizmodo]
Iomega's Leather Bound Hard Drive Resembles Hip Flask [Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Bird Electron's kinky tight leather envelope for MacBook Air

Bird Electron's leather sleeve for the MacBook Air is a pleasing mix of simplicity and saucy, based as it is on the interoffice paper envelope used in Apple's ads.

Now, the real reason for this post: are there any nice leather bags for the 17" MacBook Pro that are not (a) just a sleeve, or (b) an enormous piece of luggage with more pouches than a Rob Liefeld superhero?

A New Leather MacBook Air Case from Bird Electron [Akibahara News]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Cargo Cult of Mac

Source [esse est percipi via Ffffound]

Rob Beschizza

Lifelock CEO: Those claiming my identity's been stolen are wrong

Lifelock CEO Todd Davis was on the Today Show this morning. He's just said that people who claim his identity has been repeatedly stolen are lying. Davis advertises his own social security number as evidence of his firm's identity-protecting services, but last week reports emerged that disgruntled customers were suing Lifelock for false advertising.

"They're not. Those are attempts," Davis said, responding to a list of driving license applications offered by Matt Lauer. "These are some of the 87 people who tried to use my identity ... and were turned away."

The segment's intro narrative said, however, that at least one person had successfully stolen Davis's identity. This would make the CEO one of about 100 customers who the company has failed.

Rob Beschizza

Cellranger: easy USB-powered cellular signal booster

Cellphone signal boosters are typically static, expensive, bulky things; Cellranger is an attempt at getting this class of device into the pocket (or at least the rucksack) and hooking it up to mobile power sources such as cigarette lighters and USB.

It doesn't need to be attached to the target device: it passively boosts whatever it gets to the immediate surroundings.

My experience of such devices is that they work as ways to push signals into dead-zones. You'll still be limited to whatever download speeds and call quality you get in your general location, but you can now bounce them into that 6ft lead-lined sarcophagus you're using as a office. Given its short range, it's worth bearing in mind that it won't help the uplink from your phone to the tower.

To be launched on May 28, the Cellranger is GSM-only and will cost $150.

Product Page [Getcellranger. Thanks, ministryoftruth5!]

Joel Johnson

Video: He-Man and the Hulk sell motorcycles in Brazil

He-Man and Skeletor sell Honda Motorcycles from the Mearim Motos dealership in Brazil. How could this be better?

If they hired a crazy kid to paint his body like the Hulk but he ends up looking more like a young Blanka.

(Thanks, Slickardo Ricardo!)

Joel Johnson

BBQ Donut is a boat with a grill, not nature's perfect snack

The "BBQ Donut" is a round pontoon boat with a grill in the middle, made mobile with a small outboard motor. Tool around a lake while grilling, suggests its manufacturer, enjoying music from its optional soundsystem. I can't imagine spending more than a few minutes in one before I'd go stir crazy.

I do like the idea of a grill on a boat, however, nestled next to a cooler full of lemon and butter. Who wants to eat hot dogs when you've got a fishing pole or spear gun?

Company Page (Flash with music) [BBQDonut.de via Serious Eats]

Rob Beschizza

Andrew Kellett, "world's dumbest criminal," can't keep activities off YouTube

Techdirt rightly points out that attempts to stop criminals uploading their activities to YouTube are stupid: why deprive prosecutors of such easily-gathered evidence? There must be something to it, however, as Leeds' city council has gone out of its way to ban the city's "dumbest criminal" from doing precisely that.

Andrew Kellett, 23, was branded the city's "dumbest criminal" by Leeds City Council after posting more than 80 videos showing himself and others committing a range of offences.

The videos included leaving a petrol station apparently without paying, trespassing and shouting abuse, dangerous driving and racing at high speeds, as well as taking class A drugs.

Naturally, he filmed himself being awarded a suspended sentence at the local Magistrates' court.

It's not like there aren't a million other ways to get attention for one's misbehavior. Surely being able to nail criminals more easily in court would outweigh any benefit gained from nannying them off the Internet.

Britain's 'dumbest criminal' is banned from boasting about his offences on the internet [Daily Heil via TechDirt]

John Brownlee

The Flatmobile: if not the world's flattest car, at least the world's flattest Batmobile

Only 19" tall, the Flatmobile proclaims itself to be the world's flattest car: a Batmobile pancaked by a steamroller.

The Flatmobile is powered by a jet engine (based on a gas turbine jet engine and a Holset 685 turbocharger from a Volvo FL10 truck) which, thanks to having its own custom afterburner, is capable of delivering 90lbs of thrust powering the Flatmobile to speeds in excess of 100mph.

Flatmobile Jet Powered Car Set To Claim World's Lowest Vehicle Record [Nexus 404]

John Brownlee

Ego's purse-like fashion laptops

The Ego Lifestyle is a luxury laptop designed to simulate the look of a hand bag when closed. It certainly looks swank: the handmade leather skins are easily swapped from alligator to leopard print according to your ensemble, for example. And even the specs are pretty nice: there's a real machine here. The price, however, is jaw dropping: over $4,000 for the basic model. But let's face it... when the official website constantly bombards you with glamor shots of millionaire fashionistas carrying their purse-like luxury laptops while Indian bellhops struggle behind them to lug 200 pounds of luggage up to the penthouse suite, you know they're marketing exclusively to twats.

Ego Lifestyle Notebooks [Official Site]

Rob Beschizza

Skooba, Targus among first TSA-approved laptop bags

Having to take laptops out of bags for the x-ray machines at airport security is a pain, especially if you tend to have funny laptops that set off tedious "Oh, that's a funny laptop" conversations whenever you get them out. Skooba Design and Targus will be among the first to make TSA-approved bags, permitted to run through the screening machine with the lappy still inside. From USA Today:

"A policy likely to take effect in a few months ... [for the] new "checkpoint-friendly" cases, which passengers would have to buy if they want to take advantage of the new TSA policy. Travelers could still use old cases but would have to continue removing laptops at checkpoints."

Skooba says it's currently working on product demos, and hopes to have products available soon. In fact, the TSA has received 52 proposals since announcing the new policy. Yay! A whole new consumer product category invested entirely in the eternal continuation of a state of war.

UPDATE: Skooba's Michael Hess writes to remind consumers that internet photoshops aren't real:

"Believe it or not, we have already received a few calls and notes both asking if we had that bag and also some expressing annoyance that we do! Obviously we don't can't be "responsible" or liable for that message or the mocked-up product (though I think it is very funny) or mislead any consumers, so if you can somehow address that, we'd appreciate it. Wish I didn't have to ask, but you know how these things go."

No problem, Michael! Perhaps you should consider making a special edition. After the TSA approves your new bag, that is.

Have laptop, will breeze through security [USA Today]

John Brownlee

Tom Chick on Wii Fit (Verdict: wretched for fitness)

Within the narrow confines of the legendary 7-9 video game review scale, Nintendo's Wii Fit is getting middling scores, with most reviewers doing their best to dance around the fact that it is not a serious fitness solution. But over at Quarter to Three, stalwart game critic Tom Chick has quickly summarized a lot of Wii Fit's faults, confirming a lot of my pre-launch suspicions...

I'm a week into using it daily, and I think it's absolutely wretched. For one thing, it's not really built for guys like me who are already somewhat active. Wii Fit won't let you start anywhere other than the bottom level...

But more to the point, it's terrible for people who actually need help being motivated to stick to a fitness routine, because there are no routines. Wii Fit is little more than a collection of minigames with almost zero regard for a bigger picture. A lot of the stuff is really bad, and the push ups are a perfect example. They're just going to discourage people by trying to cram the balance board gimmick into the exercises. Similarly, their focus on balance -- which is really the only thing the stupid board can measure -- really misses the point. And the stop-start-stop-start of the interface is horrible.

In short, if you're out-of-shape and want to lose some weight? Go to the gym. If you're in shape and want to maintain what you've got? Go to the gym. If you just want another collection of Wii-specific mini-games tangentially related to fitness, a la Wii Sports? Buy Wii Fit, but don't expect anything out of it.

Tom Chick on Wii Fit [Quarter to Three]

Rob Beschizza

Nokia Cocking Up N-Gage Again: Must Buy Games Again When Current Phone Dies

When you upgrade or otherwise replace your Nokia phone, the only way to move your N-Gage games over is to buy them again. From All About N-Gage:

"To combat piracy, the activation code is linked to just one phone. It does this by checking that phone's unique IMEI number (every phone in the world has its own), so if you try to use the same activation code on another phone it won't work.The problems start when you try to upgrade to a new phone. Because it will have a different IMEI number, you cannot use your existing game activation codes on it ... if you sell your old phone, or if it breaks while out of guarantee, you lose your games forever."

When you buy into DRM, you get everything you deserve when the vendor shafts you.

What's most amazing about this is how it punishes Nokia's hardest-core fans, those who buy its top-end handsets and who frequently upgrade. They pulled the N-Gage brand out the toilet for this? The more one tries to understand the corporate psychology behind it, the more inexplicable it gets.

Want to move your N-Gage games? [All About N-Gage via The Guardian and The BBC]

John Brownlee

Indiana Jones Crystal Skull projector

I imagine the sensation of actually going to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull will be very much like the process that I went through when I saw this Indiana Jones licensed Crystal Skull projector: illogical excitement quickly followed by crushing disappointment. In the case of the Crystal Skull projector, I had visions of a home theater system powered by the glowing crystalline brain pan of a mutant extra-terrestrial, perched atop a shrine at the back of my living room. Then I discovered it was just a glorified Viewmaster for kids: it's a slide projector that shows you archeological discoveries of the 20th century, narrated by Harrison Ford impersonator thanks to a bundled audio CD. As for the movie itself, if reviews are anything to go by, my disappointment will come the moment Shia La Bouef begins swinging through the trees of the Amazons like Tarzan, accompanied by a constabulary of CGI monkeys who attack Commies on command.

Crystal Skull Adventure Porjector [Indiana Jones Shop]

John Brownlee

Get started in the DS homebrew scene

Taking part in Nintendo DS homebrew isn't nearly as maddening as the PSP homebrew scene, which still requires Job-like patience and the ability to compile and translate a thousand fragments of Internet-scattered instructions from a vast armada of nigh-illiterate Russian teenagers into a hacked PSP. Unlike a PSP, which requires custom firmware, all a Nintendo DS requires is a flash card. But with a hundred different no-name Chinese manufacturers vying for your money when they're not changing their names or going out of business, it can be hard to get a strong recommendation on exactly which flash card to buy and what you're getting yourself into.

Over at DS Fanboy, they've tried to take some confusion out of the equation with a homebrew guide that gives a summary and run-down of the perks and cons of the various flash cards on the market. The days of running DS homebrew off of a GBA flash cart are long over, thankfully: all of the current flash cards fit into the DS' Slot 1 and most of them seem to allow you to upgrade the storage by plugging in microSD cards.

As for me, I have a DS-X. Two months ago, I wouldn't have recommended it, since a year had passed since the last firmware update, despite customer's constant complaints and the fact that modern commercial DS games could no longer be played on the card due to some Nintendo changing the standard ARM7 code. They finally fixed it, though, so I'll cautiously endorse it: it's a neat card in that you can simply plug a standard USB cable into the card and mount it as a portable hard drive on your computer (most other cards require you to have a flash card reader / writer). Installing a program to it is as simple as copying it to the file. It even continues to work after I dropped it first in a cup of tea and then my toilet (don't ask). But keep in mind before you drop your money that their support is terrible, bordering on nonexistent.

DS Fanboy's (semi) ultimate homebrew guide [DS Fanboy]

Rob Beschizza

$318 wireless networking kit extends WiFi for 5 miles

One problem with trying to extend WiFi range is assembling all the necessary gear to establish a strong directional signal both ways. HD Communications' HD262000 aims to be a simple, all-in-one point-to-point WiFi bridge kit adding up to 5 miles of range to 802.11b/g networks.

The HD26200 is made up of two high performance Ubiquiti network radios with integrated 17dbi dual polarity antennas that are configured in wireless bridge mode. The HD26200 bridge is also powered over ethernet, so no RF cables are required, only an outdoor CAT5 cable to bring both data and power to the radios.

At $318, it's not too expensive, especially given that it runs on PoE and doesn't require one to fiddle around dismantling routers to hook up tiny coax connectors. Unfortunately, it also requires direct line of sight: here's hoping that this is just to get the full advertised range. My own adventures in wireless bridging failed, even over a far smaller distance, thanks to thick brick walls between my router and my target machine.

Press release [HD Communications via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Unconfessable Ideas: cute Apple-themed shirts and stuff store

"Unconfessable Ideas" is an Italian web shop selling Apple-themed merchandise, generally more subtle than the sort of stuff made by American geek retailers. I'm fond of the "trio" pins which replicate the Close, Minimize, and Expand buttons of the standard OS X window. I'd grab a set of them for € 3.50 right now, but I can't figure out if they ship to the U.S. or not (nor if it's cheap enough to bother).

The "vinyl Mac desktop" is also cute — perfect for inducting children into the cult before they can even comprehend language.

Company Page [UnconfessableIdeas.com]

John Brownlee

Rollable boom box for ghetto blasting on the go

I rather like this rollable MP3 boom box crafted by Israeli designer Inbal Tyagi. Normally, I'd even be inspired to write something about it. But after reading the astute analysis of the device by Atul over at Gizmowatch, I've simply resigned myself to blockquoting another writer's literary genius. After all, how could I possibly top this?

Who shouts coz I am Kazaam when he jumps out of the boom box? The Jennie Shaquille O’Neal was the one who gave me a fair insight into the meaning of the word.

*emphatic nodding* Exactly. It's the effortless insight of a literary maestro with his finger on the pulse of the human condition. I think we all know exactly what Atul's talking about, having struggled but failed our entire lives to translate this exact same emotional vibrato into words. What could I add? It's perfect. 'Nuff said, really.

Boombox on Wheels [Site via Gizmowatch]

Rob Beschizza

Play with a Curta caclulator without spending hundreds on eBay

Jan Meyer's created a Flash simulation of the Curta, a classic mechanical hand-cranked calculator. First sold in 1948, the Curta is pure gadget porn, able to perform all the fundamental arithmetical operations, but still fit in your pocket.

Amid the blasted heath of an irradiated post-oil America, these will revive the forgotten and arcane magic of accountancy.

Image: Dan Rutter

Unfortunately, they haven't been made since 1970, and they're insanely expensive expensive collector's items. Here's a YouTube video that offers instructions on how to use it, shows how tiny it is, and lets you hear the deeply satisfying noise it makes when cranked.

Simulator [Curta.de via jwz]

John Brownlee

Charge any Apple laptop battery with the TruePower U-Charge (MacBook Airs excluded)

One annoyance with carrying around spare laptop batteries is trying to figure out a speedy way of charging the suckers. This is doubly true for Mac laptops, where the only solution is to slot a new battery in and charge it until its full. There's simply never been any other way of doing it until now.

The FastMac TruePower U-Charge offers a solution. With a kit full of tips and connections for Mac batteries both modern and antiquated, you can charge your spare batteries without plugging them into your laptop first... halving the time it takes you to charge more than one battery hours before a flight. I've been looking for something like this for awhile, but I'm not sure it's worth the $70 they are asking. Convenience is only worth so much.

FastMac TruePower U-Charge [Official Site via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

WildCharger gadget charging pad reviewed (Verdict: Works, but still doomed)

Gearlog tried the WildCharger, the almost mythical charging pad that's been coming soon for ages. It works fine, but everyone's biggest fears — no good way to integrate the charge pads into gear — appear to have come true.

And there is the product's Achilles heel. Yes, you'll need a $35 adapter for each of your devices, at least until the magical day when manufacturers start building the tech directly into gadgets. Worse, the company still isn't selling adapters for anything other than the Motorola RAZR V3 phone. The Web site lists other adapters, for somewhat dated products like the Blackberry Pearl and 8800, as "coming soon." Even the iPhone charger they sent us isn't available for sale yet.

With Apple about to release the 3G iPhone and Research In Motion having moved on to the Curve and the Bold, WildCharge's "coming soon" section should have come more than a year ago. And there's no mention of adapters for any Windows Mobile device, Microsoft's Zune, or anything from Sony Ericson.

Hands On: WildCharger Charging Pad [Gearlog]

Joel Johnson

Knipex ribbon cable cutting tool

For a brief time in the history of home-built gaming PCs, the "rounded cable" was a premium accessory. The wide, flat ribbon cables that connected hard disk and CD-ROM drives to the motherboard impeded air flow, making it difficult to achieve an ample breeze over your overclocked Athlon. Because they were a speciality part, rounded cables were expensive — especially considering standard IDE cables were usually bundled for free with motherboards — which forced many to put down the Mountain Dew and take up an X-Acto knife to make their own. Soon the market fixed the problem. Rounded cables are now inexpensive — and obviated, since SATA uses a small, thin cable by default.

But out there in the world of computing there are still folks who need to make ribbon cables of their own for custom installations. And as a failed sysadmin myself, I've lost most of my knowledge of Cisco router commands but retained a fetish for cabling tools, like this ribbon cable cutter from Knipex that can slice through the delicate bands without crushing the individual strands. I also like it because the picture has a rainbow.

Street prices are between $60 and $100, which can buy a whole crate of pre-made ribbon cables of various length.

Knipex Ribbon-Cable Cutter [Toolmonger]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: 10 minutes per pound

Image: Defective Yeti

Joel Johnson

Video: "ProteinDS" hip-hop scratching software for Nintendo DS

I love any sort of digital music tool that it still takes talent — or at least a serviceable sense of rhythm — to operate.

That reminds me: my Korg DS-10 still hasn't shipped.

[via Create Digital Music]

Joel Johnson

Autoloc Flame Thrower for car exhaust

The Autoloc Flame Thrower clips onto your tail pipe and sparks fuel that should have been ignited and consumed in your engine, sending flames up to 20 feet behind your car. (In my experience, you'll be lucky to get more than a couple of feet of flame, but it's still impressive.)

They're "designed for carbureted vehicles, but can be used on fuel injected vehicles with additional modifications and parts." What they mean is most modern cars aren't coughing out enough gasoline through the tail pipe to fuel a flame so you'll have to do something silly like make your engine less efficient or run in a second line of fuel to get these to work.

A single exhaust system is $125; dual exhaust is $200.

Product Page [TheHoffmanGroup.com via Gearfuse's Ryan Ash via MAKE:]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Digital Cameras – Tons of cameras on sale at Dell Home, including the Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS Elph (in gold) for $179, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Pixar DVDs – Amazon is selling several Collector's and Special Edition DVD sets of Pixar movies, including The Incredibles, for $13. [Bargainist]

• Wi-Fi Antenna – Hawking Hi-Gain directional corner antenna for $30, shipped. Claims 2dBi to 15dBi boost. [Dealnews]

• Emergency Light – Life+Gear LifeLight, with signaling siren, compas, lantern, flasher, cell phone charging, AM/FM radio and hand crank for $15. [Dealnews]

• LCD HDTV – Today's Woot! is the Westinghouse 26” Widescreen LCD HDTV (720p native) for $315, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

It Just Works... Right?

Reader Trasel has a great twitter feed tracking his or her switch from Windows to OSX. Some experiences are all-too common to the modern switcher...

Who created this tale about Macs not crashing? Actually, my MacBook seems to crash more often than my old Pentium 4 with 512Gb RAM. 12:43 PM May 12, 2008 from web

Connected a Lexmark Z600 to the MacBook and - guess what? - it asked for new drivers. Windows dèja vu. By the way, Epson printers are shit. 11:17 AM May 13, 2008 from web

I'd have pulled out more, but Twitter's just shat itself again, so no.

It Just Works [Twitter]

John Brownlee

Monkeylectric turns your bike wheels into LED rainbow pinwheels

Fitted into your spokes, the Monkeyllectric will turn your spinning bicycle wheel into an electric kool-aid acid test. It fits the wheels of any bike and, fitted with three AAA batteries, will make your velocipede look like two mirrored ferris wheels insanely spinning out of control. The price is a bit much at $64.99 each but I'll likely buy a couple: my Berlin city bike could use some hallucinogenics.

Monkeylectric [Official Site via Gearfuse]

John Brownlee

16th century, $100k combination toothpick / ear wax spoon

Combed from the black muck of subaqueous depths by scuva diving treasure hunters, this gold toothpick / ear wax scoop dates from the wreck of a Spanish galleon dating back to the late 16th Century. Don't mix up the ends.

Tiny Gold Combined Toothpick and Earwax Spoon [Far East Gizmos]

Joel Johnson

Clip-on electric front wheel for bicycles

Ignore that the "Cyclemotor" electric bike conversion kit looks like a homebrew project — it sort of is. The inventors of the kit, Neodymics, haven't yet gotten the financial backing they need to make something salable. The hope is that commuters will find the ease of the conversion simple enough to use their own bikes, as the kit clips onto the front fork and bolts on a couple of controls to the handles.

There's one charming aspect to the design that I hope remains in a production model: the use of the standard DeWalt power tool battery pack to power the 1HP motor.

Product/Company Page [Neodymics.com via Gadget Lab via Bikehugger]

John Brownlee

Western Digital's My Passport Studio external HDDs

Amongst the editors bullpen of a gadget blog, there can surely be no shorter straw drawn than the requisite, soul-killing USB external hard drive post. Who the hell cares? Just go to Best Buy and pick one up, they're basically all the same.

But Western Digital's My Passport Studio brand of portable hard drives are actually something I can use. Advertised as "Mac-ready storage to go," these diminuitive drives are little larger than a set of car keys and come in sizes up to 320GB. But hey, they managed to fit in both USB and Firewire connections into the thing. Self-powering USB and Firewire connections, no less. And it's even Time Machine ready.

I could actually use this. My first Gen MacBook Pro has a tiny 80GB hard drive. My iTunes library, on the other hand, is 300GB, meaning I never have my music or videos with me when I'm on the road. Amazingly, this might be just what I am looking for. Even better, a chance to burst the hymen of my MBP's dusty, shriveled and completely unused FireWire port. Neat.

My Passport Studio [Western Digital]

Rob Beschizza

Cheaper OLED keyboard coming, thanks to there being no OLEDs on it

A sub-$1,000 keyboard from the makers of the Optimus Maximus is coming, except it won't have OLED displays in the keys. To be named Optimus Popularis, it will presumably target the huge untapped market of people for whom a $150 Logitech DiNovo is too cheap, and the original $1,500+ Maximus too pricey.

Our next big release in the Optimus keyboards family will be Optimus Popularis. Shorter than Maximus, it will not use OLED screens, but will be based on a totally different principle.

11 extra keys are above the F-keys now. Price will be below 1000 US$.

From the mockup, it looks like the cost savings will be achieved by replacing the expensive miniature screens with soap.

Art Lebedev Announces Sub-$1,000 Keyboard [Optimus Project via Wired: Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Flip Minos to Shoot Movies, Judge the Dead

There shall be a smaller version of Flip Video, the successful miniature camcorder. Revealed in B&H's catalog, it's listed at $180 and comes in black and white, with a release date of June 4.

Mino among sharks: New Flip camcorder coming [Crave]

John Brownlee

ASUS Eee vs. MSI Wind PC: PCMark Fight!

Rob and I have been keeping our eye on the Atom-based MSI Wind, waiting for reviews and hoping this is the subnotebook that finally gets us to drop our dough. At first blush, then, this comparison by Impress is not immediately encouraging... while the Wind scores higher than the Eee overall, the CPU Score is significantly lower than the Eee PC 900, running on a Celeron 900Mhz processor. It means nothing, of course, in the grand scheme of a laptop's performance, but one likes to min-max.

But wait, what's that under OS? Loathsome Vista. Perhaps that's the culprit. It's inclusion in the chart is curious, since I don't believe the Wind ships with Vista, only XP and SuSE. So is this just a typo, an unannounced flavor of the Wind or some fool's lamentable stab at running a bulky, clunky, resource hungry OS on his gimpy subnotebook? Why would you even do that?

Secrets of the Atom cracked, Wind PC Revealed [Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Taking the 'p' out of 'pilots'

Danger Room uses the announcement of the "Advanced Mission Extender Device" [pictured]— a fancy pair of urine-collecting briefs for pilots — to discuss the state of mid-air defueling technology.

Pilot relief isn't just a comfort issue.  "Some pilots do permanent damage to their bladders by holding it in for hours at a time, which can cause incontinence and other problems," the AP notes.  Totally draining yourself -- "tactical dehydration" -- can cause headaches and worse.  "At least twice, F-16s have crashed as their pilots tried to urinate. In 1992, one crashed in Turkey after a belt buckle got wedged between the seat and the control stick, prompting the Air Force to urge pilots not to unbuckle completely."

New Relief for Pilots? It Depends [Danger Room]

9

John Brownlee

Puma Disc Blaze Tetris sneakers are gorgeously awful

Blogs around the Internet are vocally reviling these Tetris-patterned Puma Disc Blaze sneakers. Charlie Sorrel over at Gadget Lab takes a jolt of Substance D to the alliteration gland and calls them "foul, fluorescent footwear." But my first thought when looking at them was that these were exactly the sort of sneakers Joel would like. And man, Joel's penchant for loud, technicolor sneakers must be rubbing off on me (we cuddle) because I have to admit... I kinda sorta like them too.

Puma Disc Blaze 1992 Tetris Pack [Kicks on Fire]

John Brownlee

8GB alien robot USB sticks from Planet Blõôh

Like any orifice, there's countless shapes, colors and varieties of objects you can cram into your USB port, according to your preference. As a cephalophile, I tend to like squid shaped USB drives, myself. But these adorable 8GB Mimobot flash sticks are pretty tempting. They even come with their own sci-fi backstory:

They're bigger... they're badder... they Came From Planet Blõôh! It's the monstrous 8GB MIMOBOT® flash drives, and they're coming to consume a datum near you! Beware, friends, as these over-enhanced denizens of silicone nature can devour nearly twenty thousand photos, two thousand songs, or twenty-five hundred minutes of video! Aaaaaaahhhhh! That's a lot...

"Planet Blõôh" is almost enough to justify $140 bucks. But not quite.

8GB MIMOBOT Drives Available! [Mimoco]

Joel Johnson

Hello Kitty sewing machine has settings for 'Ack!', 'Thbbbt'

Hello Kitty Hell nailed the description of this branded sewing machine: it looks like the love child of Hello Kitty and Bill the Cat.

Hello Kitty Face Sewing Machine [KittyHell.com]

Joel Johnson

Acer Aspire Predator gaming PC has a nifty front panel

One of my first jobs was standing in a Best Buy next to an Acer desktop machine, enticing customers to select the pocked green-and-beige computer instead of the more staid — and more attractive — models from Compaq or Packard Bell. (I think I made $20 a day doing that.)

Now the company, still powerfully still-not-out-of-business, has announced the "Aspire Predator" gaming PC, filled with the latest quad this and SLI that. But its most noteworthy feature is the one that matters the least: it's case design is over-the-top military future machismo.

The entire front panel — which looks like a mecha shin guard — levers up onto the top of the machine on arms, revealing a gilled, glowing, insectoid array of drives and bays. It's from the sci-fi movie prop school of case design and I totally love it.

And I'd totally never, ever buy it. I'm embarrassed enough by my piano black Antec case thrumming under my desk. I can't begin to imagine what decor would go with something like this. Perhaps steel plate?

There's a typically overwrought Flash site selling this thing, but for once it might actually be better than just text; click "Specifications" to see an animation of the front plate opening and tell me that doesn't appeal to the tiny little G.I. Joe accessory designer in you.

Brochure page [Acer.com via PC World]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Spike Likes His Bike

Image: Alex Handy

The application Mail quit unexpectedly

An amusing error: whenever I try to read a particular email, Mail crashes. The mail in question? A post-purchase Apple store survey, highlighted above.

John Brownlee

GRADED: The Worst '10 Worst Consoles' List of All Time

We wish we could have left it well enough alone. Certainly, in the Journalistic Special Olympics of blogging, criticizing another web writer's wordsmithing is a slippery slope ending in a pit full of our own weasel words, forced metaphors, slapdash punctuation and dangling participles.

But there was something wonderful about Ryan Ash's recent list for Gearfuse: The 10 Worst Video Game Consoles Of All Time. Something sublime. Something that nuzzled itself in the hollow of our bile duct and wouldn't stop roiling. In only two thousand words, Ash had perfectly measured the space between the nadir of prosaic achievement and the barrier of entry to Digg-bait style list compiling. Its diameter? A single neutrino.

Who were we — mortal men hewn of flesh and blood, hazy of grammar and flatulent of opinion — to judge one of our peers? But no matter how much we tried... no matter how much we drank... we couldn't let it go. Still, we didn't quite trust ourselves with grading Ryan's list. Out came the phone book, and our old English teacher Mrs. Buttermer was recruited to grade Ryan's essay as if it were a high school book report.

We regret to inform you that, post-grading, neither fared very well. Hit the jump to see the graded list... a document just as much about one writer's flagrant disregard for five hundred years of English-language composition as it is about old Mrs. Buttermer's lubricated slalom out of both sanity and sobriety. Click to enlarge.

Fowler wept.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

OLPC announces the next XO

There's been a lot of evidence mounting lately that OLPC has been steadily, inexorably losing its mind. At OLPC's Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte revealed the prospective design of the XO laptop Mark II, cutely deemed the XOXO (or, shorthand, XO-2). Jettisoning the keyboard of the XO, the XOXO will be a dual-screen touch-screen affair, and they are aiming for one-watt power consumption and a $75 price tag. The XOXO seems like a rubber stamp smashed against the forehead of the company: "INSANE."

It's simply a concept design, granted, but OLPC still can't get the XO-1 below $100. The dual-screen set-up is a fantastic idea — it can double as an e-book, especially since it will contain the same display technology as the currently XO, making it ideal for reading in outside conditions — but this hardly looks like technology that will be affordable in 2010. And where's the hand crank? Is it solar powered? How are the hundreds of millions of children living without electricity supposed to charge it?

God speed, OLPC, but this looks like something Apple would release for a retail price of a couple thousand. I believe in your mission, but I simply don't believe you guys can pull this off... at least not in 2010 for $75 (or even twice that). Perhaps you should concentrate on getting the XO-1 under $100 before you start pulling your next-gen designs straight out of Minority Report

First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0 [Laptop Mag via Gizmodo]

Image: Gizmodo

Joel Johnson

Bocci 22 power outlets distilled to just four shapes

Although these particular "22" plugs from Bocci are custom made to be recessed into drywall for a shockingly classy presentation of the standard power outlet, there's little reason someone with some dry wall skills and a good eye couldn't do something similar with a standard housing. The perfectly round plugs help quite a bit, of course.

God forbid you ever need to rewire, though.

Bocci 22: The Outlet for Minimalists [Unplggd.com]

Update: Core77 has a nice video showing how it's all made.

Joel Johnson

Book: 'This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities' by Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol's This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities is a rumination on the personal, sociological and even political impact of videogames — written, thank god, by a gamer, not an academic. Which is not to say Rossignol's book isn't peppered with its share of bell-ringing insights: that by defusing boredom, games that portray violence may actually prevent real violence; that games can improve not just tactical understand or motor skills, but our sense of humanity — our souls — as surely as any other form of expression; that while almost everyone now games, there will always be "gamers," self-identifying fans whose habits are saturated with their preferred method of play.

The opening chapters of the book are Rossignol's own story, a finance reporter on a grey train through a listless career who found a spark in the arena of online, competitive Quake playing. That obsession led to writing about games — and an escape from drudgery. (And almost certainly an escape from financial stability.)

As a gamer, Rossignol reports from the inside — every gamer is an embedded journalist — detailing epic betrayals in EVE Online (my favorite game to read about but never, ever play) or the jingoist propaganda fields of America's Army. The book's lack of an overarching Gladwellian thesis could be a weakness, but is also a strength: In the welcome post-hyperbolic mode of modern games journalism, the ability to make sweeping proclamations about gaming's hypothetical effect on society fade to more subtle, even murky reports of the real lives, relationships, and opinions forged and shattered by videogames every day. Whether you're a passionate gamer or a dabbler, This Gaming Life serves as an attentive guidebook through some the most interesting landmarks of gaming's recent journey.

This Gaming Life [Amazon Pre-Order]

John Brownlee

The FakeTV: welfare home security gets a $49 upgrade

The FakeTV is an appropriately named $49 anti-burglary boob tube. It does just one thing: it makes it look like someone is basking in the flickering glow of the television at midnight, simulating the stroboscopic effect of a real television but at a fraction of the real electrical cost. The manufacturers swear it will simulate "the light effects of real television programming — scene changes, camera pans, fades, flicks, swells, on-screen motion, and more." Not bad. Now let's hope no burglar ever gets the bright idea to rob your house in the day time.

FakeTV [Official Site]

Rob Beschizza

Amstrad GX4000 returns to haunt list of failed consoles

Gearfuse collects its selection of the worst video game consoles of all time. Its methodology appears to have been to simply select machines that allow for the snark of least resistance, but author Ryan Ash makes at least one splendid choice: Amstrad's GX4000 is a a perfectly obscure example of Why Consoles Fail.

There are problematic selections, however, such the Mattel Intellivision and SNK's Neo-Geo. And then there's the attention-hunting inclusion of Nintendo's Wii. Worse, the Vectrex is in the list. That's just heresy!

A better challenge would be to discover the absolute worst consoles of all time, by scouring junk stores and eBay for genuine trash. I think this is a job for Joel.

The 10 Worst Video Game Consoles Of All Time [Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

Napster DRM-free store has 6 million 256kbps tracks

Napster is now DRM-free, with its 6 million tracks costing 99 cents each. This makes it the largest DRM-free MP3 store going. The AP, writing what it thinks it ought to write, says it's a "direct challenge" to iTunes. Eliot van Buskirk has a detailed look at the new service at Wired, but Arrington nails the atmosphere in town with "I am failing to get excited." The one-word version: "Meh."

Let's face it: it's still funny as hell that the music industry, given the chance to own Napster when it was the only online music venue going, chose instead to destroy it.

Joel Johnson

A fashionable solar bag, depending on how you feel about buckles

Designer Ennio Capasa has developed the "Solar Energy Purse," a handbag whose functions will be familiar to we the geeks: it has a solar panel built in which can recharge portable devices using a variety of plugs. And fortunately there's a battery inside, too; I've come to think that practical portable solar needs batteries to really be useful.

Of course, it looks like it was made from cut-up bits from your grandfather's old belts and velour lounge wear, but it's the thought that counts.

Product Page [Blog.CNC-CostumeNational.com via Racked]

Joel Johnson

Own your own pulse jet-powered bicycle for just $650

Tinkerer Robert Maddox has built a pulse jet-powered bicycle — and he'll sell it to you on eBay (sans bike) for just $650. The 140 decibel clatter tube is capable of propelling a bicycle and rider up to 75 MPH.

In the video of Maddox's ride around a track it doesn't look like it goes all that fast, but I bet it feels a lot faster when the ass that's strapped to a roaring pulse jet is yours.

Auction Page [eBay via Bike Radar] (Thanks, Matt!)

Joel Johnson

Video: "Music Vest" commercial

(Thanks, Jenn!)

Rob Beschizza

3G iPhone coming June 9 with immediate worldwide availability

Gizmodo reports that Apple will announce the 3G iPhone on June 9, in the WWDC Keynote. This was expected: what wasn't is the further claim that it'll be made immediately available, worldwide.

"This most probably means the new 3G iPhone will be integrated in the usual marketing systems of carriers, with point-based trade-ups, discounts for carrier switchers, and other service-based subvention packages."

Breaking: iPhone 3G Launch Date Confirmed [Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Nanosoccer at RoboCup Open this weekend

If the picture looks faintly odd, it's not because it's a render: it's because it was taken by a scanning electron microscope and depicts microscopically-small robots playing Nanosoccer on a field smaller than a grain of rice. This weekend, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will host RoboCup 2008's nanosoccer exhibition right here at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It'll include several events to be battled out by teams from the U.S. Naval Academy, the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and CMU itself.

The 2-Millimeter Dash: Each nanobot chooses the optimal time for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field.
-Slalom Drill: Robots race from goal to goal while avoiding “defenders” (polymer posts) that block the path.
-Ball-Handling Drill: Robots “dribble” as many microdisks as possible into a goal within a 3-minute period.

Here's some amazing video of a tiny 'bot 'dribbling' a 'ball'...

Public invited to See Nanosoccer 2008 US RoboCup Open [Medgadget via BotJunkie]

Joel Johnson

Video: The evolution of mobile handsets

If you can handle the cheeseball music — and fortunately, there's no reason to leave it unmuted — this video shows the morphing of cellphone handsets from 1985's Motorola Dynatac up through the iPhone. (Which means it's probably from sometime last year and that's I'm thoroughly behind the curve on this one.)

The evolution of gadget design [New Scientist]

John Brownlee

Gorgeous art deco fan is a missed branding opportunity

It seems every gadget maker who springs for a dash of art deco ornamentation naturally calls it the Fitzgerald or the Gatsby. Thanks to the enforced appreciation of The Great Gatsby in our literacy programs, that's practically the only reference to the 1920's seeped into the national consciousness. It's tiresome.

So here we have the gorgeous Fitzgerald Art Deco Fan, and all I see is a lost opportunity. As gorgeous as this fan is, I'm not likely to pay $270 for one over investing in another air conditioner. But what if they'd been more original with the name? Say, evoking the spirit of art deco with another artist's surname, this time Metropolis' sublime effects expert Eugen Schüfftan? Rechristen this the Schüfffan and the pun alone would get my sale.

"Fitzgerald" Desk/Wall Fan [Horchow via DVICE]

Rob Beschizza

Mobiado Pro 105 ZAF phone almost tasteful

As luxurious phones go, Mobiado's Professional 105 ZAF is surprisingly sleek and design-conscious. It resembles Sony-Ericsson models, right down to the dinky little metal buttons, but with a simpler, less radioactive look.

It's 10.6mm thick and has a 2mp camera, Bluetooth, 1GB of RAM and standard-issue media playback options. But the creators couldn't resist framing it with at least some pointless bling: the front and back panels are made entirely of sapphire, as if it makes a difference!

ZAF comes in silver, black, "black satin," blue, gray or red, and it runs on both GSM and CDMA networks. They're also paranoid about fakes: the product page has instructions on how to authenticate your ZAF. Here's a hint, readers: if you pay $200 for it on eBay, it's fake.

Product Page [Mobiado]

Mobiado Professional 105 ZAF [Unwired View via UberGizmo]

John Brownlee

Macs outperforms Windows in $1,000+ PCs

According to a sales analysis by the NPD Group, Apple's experiencing a meteoric rise in sales among the consumer notebook and PC market.... at least as far as computers costing more than $1000+ are concerned (read: the only computers Apple makes). Over the last year, Apple has grown its MacBook line two times the rest of the market, where as they are up 45%. Overall, in the first quarter of 2008, Apple sold 66% of $1,000+ PCs.

For the usual gang of zealots, this will be proof of Steve Jobs' godhead. For those who dislike Macs, they'll point out that most laptops and PCs cost under $1,000, so this is simply proof that Apples are outrageously expensive compared to the rest of the market. There's some truth to that: Apple's Q1 retail share among all computer makers was only 14%. Apple's numbers are also slightly tarnished by the fact that the analysis doesn't take into account business PC sales... which is huge money that Apple has basically not even remotely been able to touch yet.

So Windows computers still rule, but, it's hard to deny that Apple is on the rise, and there's very big reason for Microsoft to be concerned, especially as Apple stores continue to spread to all major cities (for example, Apple's most recent addition, their largest retail outlet ever located on Boston's Boylston Street)... prompting NPD to opine that Microsoft should set up its own retail stores to directly compete. I imagine a Balmer Bar stretched down to the food court, in which impatient gamers cradle their 360s in their arms like bloodshot, cycloptic children.

Macs Defy Windows' Gravity [Apple Watch]

Joel Johnson

Leftovers compromise: glass containers with plastic lids

With fears that the plastic from which we've been eating and drinking for years may be putting toxic chemicals like Bisphenol A into our bodies, many people are going back to the pre-Tupperware era for their food storage needs, suggests Re-Nest. While some are picking up vintage Pyrex dishes from eBay with glass lids, many who carry leftovers to work for lunch are using these Pyrex dishes with plastic lids that lock on tight. As long as you remove the lids before putting the dishes in the microwave it should be a happy compromise.

I'm partial to one suggestion offered: just put a saucer or plate on top of a bowl. Not good for travel, I suppose, but easy and not at all wasteful.

There's another intangible benefit to using glass instead of plastic: eating your food out of glass makes it feel more like a meal and less of a obligatory midday calorie sludge, increasing satisfaction. (At least for me! Maybe you like eating out of plastic bins scored with the evidence of a thousand forkings prior.)

You could also go for a more traditional bento/tiffin solution, provided you don't mind apportioning the next day's lunch when you're putting up the leftovers.

Rob Beschizza

Giant wooden sphere speakers are surreal, vaguely naughty

After a hard day causing problems with his Myst books, Atrus likes to relax with Sound e-Motion's M100-20 BF, a set of giant wooden balls with speakers in them. The curious design is claimed to "minimize baffle distortions" and offer uniform "polar sound distribution," but it's the looks that people will love.

A meter high and weighing 36kg, these will surely dominate any room they're put in. Isn't there something about them that suggests a miniature table-top pair of computer speakers?

There's no list price — just a contact form — so take this as one of those "if you have to ask" situations.

Product Page [via BornRich]

Rob Beschizza

Rolly's $400 price tag for high rollers only

Sony's cute little troublemaker of a media player, the Rolly, will be $400 here in the States. With 2GB of flash memory and Bluetooth for wireless streaming, its specs don't look too hot for the price, but specs aren't why people want Rollies...

The player spins, rolls and twinkles in what Sony describes as "a unique combination of music, motion and fun." Tiny arms, shoulders and wheels writhe and whir to the beat, but you can also use the included choreography software to specify Rolly's moves for particular songs.

It comes with pre-recorded choreography for Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend,” and Earth Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland."

What a weird and wonderful little device; and such a shame that it's so expensive.

Press Release [Sony]

Joel Johnson

Beta passes for Legions on Instant Action for 50 BBG readers

Instant Action has set up a special enticement for Boing Boing Gadgets readers to try out their free web-based 3D gaming service. The first 50 people to send their Instant Action user names to "boing HAT instantaction.com" will get:

• Exclusive Boing Boing Gadgets avatars. (I haven't seen these yet!)

• Some extra bonus tokens for use in the Instant Action store to buy more avatars, etc.

• Access to the Fallen Empire: Legions beta. (!!!)

Maybe once you guys get hooked up with everything today we could play a Legions pick-up game tonight!

Previously • Instant Action, the YouTube of 3D Gaming, coming to OS X soon [BBG]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• iPod Dock – Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere Speakers for iPod for $65, plus an additional $30 mail-in rebate, shipped. [Dealhack]

• Beef Jerky – The original meat gadget beef jerky is on sale at Amazon. Buy $49 or more, get $20 off Jack Link's jerkies. (Still much cheaper to make at home and more delicious, too.) [Dealnews]

• Photo Paper – Today's Woot! is a three pack of GSI 4×6 High Gloss Digital Photo Paper 10 Sheets for $6, shipped.

John Brownlee

Gary Kasparov and the flying RC penis

International chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov was attacked by a flying penis helicopter during a recent speech in Russia. Alert security dealt with the situation by deftly swatting the cock out of the air long before it could infiltrate Kasparov's oral region or... even worse... hover suggestively around the grandmaster's buttocks.

Gary Kasparov and the Flying Penis [YouTube via POETV]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Fly Me To The Moon In Tennis Shorts and Space Boots

Image: Plan 59

Atari 7800 lounge at Milwaukee grocery store: the horror, the horror...

Past the dusty racks of Sun Chips and Wise Hot Cheese Popcorn, adjacent to the coffee station and the imposing portrait of notorious Milwauakee mutant HODAG!, the gaming lounge at Koppa's Farwell Foods is a perfect shrine to the early 80's. The flickering Magnavox. The phallic plastic potted plant. The wallpaper pattern... a macroscopic depiction of the chlamydia virus wrought by Jackson Pollack in his own projectile vomit. And the centerpiece: the fabled Atari 7800, a console so antediluvian that any child exiled to the corner by his parents for a game of Dig-Dug would walk away utterly mystified. "I think it's busted. It can only draw, like, 17 pixels at a time. And it smells like cat pee over there."

If you want to bring your kid by for a glimpse at the horrors of retro-gaming, you can check out Koppa's Farwell Foods in Milwaukee at 1490 N. Farwell Ave.

care for a game of jungle hunt before checking out? [Flickr via Technabob]

Joel Johnson

Review: A few days with the Netflix Player by Roku

The "Netflix Player by Roku" is awkwardly named, but there's a reason: while the first streaming media service offered by this little box is from Netflix, more services will likely be added to it in the future. (I'm leading with the most interesting bit to me, although obviously both Roku and Netflix would prefer you focus on what's on deck from the $100 streamer box today.)

There's not much to the lightweight little box: an IR port on the front that, with the included remote, is its only control interface; connections on the back for your TV, including component, composite, HDMI and optical audio out; and an Ethernet jack, should you not find its included 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connection sufficient.

If you've been using Netflix' "Watch Instantly" streaming service from Netflix.com, available free with most of the Netflix DVD rental plans — and I have, prompting me to start thinking set-top boxes aren't as good as web-based service — then you're familiar with the quality and speed of the movies available through the Roku box. It's all the same library. In short, they're good enough. Not quite DVD quality, but watchable even at full-screen on a large display.

That's if you get the full 2.2 megabit bitstream. (The box will tell you if it even needs to rebuffer a stream what bit rate you're getting. Faster, larger, near-HD streams may be coming out from Netflix in the future.) If all goes to plan, movies start playing in about 10 to 15 seconds, just like on the website.

Since fast-forwarding a streaming video is troublesome, the service also sends down keyframes spaced every ten seconds through the film or television show. Hit select at any point and the Roku box will bring up a slideshow, making skipping ahead fairly simple. Fast-forwarding through a whole set of keyframes can still take a while, however.

The box is intimately tied into Netflix.com in ways both handy and annoying. You can't browse through Netflix.com's streaming library from the Roku box; instead you'll select movies from Netflix.com (on your computer's web browser) and add them to your "Instant Queue." The Roku box will slurp those titles — up to 500 — within a few seconds of their addition. It's fairly elegant, but also means you'll have to sit down with a computer to add new movies. (You can remove them from the Roku box list, however.) Since the main reason to buy the Roku box is to watch Netflix Instant movies away from your computer, it's a tiny bit annoying, although amusing similar to the delayed gratification that is the normal Netflix DVD rental system.

One great feature: the Roku box talks to Netflix.com about how much of a movie you've watched. I started watching Before the Devil Knows You're Dead on the Roku, paused it, then fired it up on Netflix.com the next day exactly where I'd left off.

Should you get it? Well, it's only a hundred bucks. On the other hand, it only does Netflix movies. A Windows PC connected to your television — even one of relatively modest power — could stream not only Netflix.com movies, but Youtube or Hulu (or whatever) services as well.

On the other hand, the interface is dead simple to navigate; it passes the "I'd let Brownlee use this" test.

If and when the Roku box serves up other streaming services it'll be a nice little node to stick on your TV to slurp up some free(ish) web media. Until then, it's probably for Netflix.com die-hards only.

Press release after the jump.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Network Suicide! Sprint rumored to be capping 3G use

Computers, get off the phone internet! Rumors abound that Sprint is to kill its biggest selling point over rival networks: unlimited 3G data plans. From an alleged internal memo, leaked by an anonymous source, a change to the Terms of Service is coming down the pike this summer...

"Sprint reserves the right to limit throughput speeds or amount of data transferred and to deny, terminate, modify, or suspend service if usage exceeds 5GB per month in total or 300MB/month while off-network roaming."

Sprint's fast Evdo Rev. A. network offers DSL/Cable-like bandwidth, with real-world speeds typically peaking at about a megabit and a half. Applying a low cap to this would be a disaster for users like me, who rely on Sprint's 3G network day in, day out.

At 5GB, a user could eat their monthly allocation in a few hours of continuous maxed-out use; spread over a month, that's only about 160MB a day. Compare to this blog's homepage, which currently contains 1.6MB of stuff. Heavy browsing is easily enough, these days, to throw one past the rumored limit: a few YouTubes and maybe 100 homepages a day is all you'll get. For comparison, Comcast's undisclosed cap on its cable internet service is suspected to kick in between 250-300GB a month.

Five GB is no good for use as an everyday connection unless you haven't changed your browsing habits since the last century. If true, Sprint's vision for its 3G network is as something for phones, not computers.

Sprint is NOW LIMITING DATA USAGE [Sprint Users via Phonescoop via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Six ton excavator strips a woman (to her negligee, not the bone)

Though work safe, this video is the machine lover's fantasy at its most symbolically archetypal. A pale Italian beauty, biting her lip and trying not to tremble (for that would mean death), is slowly undressed, garment by garment, by a gentleman driving a six metric ton excavator with supernatural precision. In case that sentence wasn't clear enough: he undresses her with the excavator scoop. Simply incredible.

Undressing a woman with an excavator? [Liveleak]

John Brownlee

The Silverlit i-Fairy, a pastel-colored RC butterfly

If Boing Boing Gadgets were ever to have its own version of the unicorn chaser, this Silverlit i-Fairy (£24.99), a remote control butterfly fairy, might well be it. It's like some some lepidopterist was able to capture one of the bio-mechanical specimens that flutter in the faery realm about Joel's head, then successfully bred it.

Silverlit iFairy [Thumbs Up UK via Shiny Shiny]

John Brownlee

Wii Fit now on sale

If you've been eagerly looking forward to Wii Fit's American debut, and happen to be in the area to Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo World store in New York City is now distributing them to a long line of overweight individuals stretched around the corner... curiously enough, starting right at the spot where some jokester has erected a "Free Ranch-Soaked Ribs" placard.

If you're not in New York City, Wii Fit will hit shelves around America tomorrow at a retail price of $90. According to reviews, whether that's worth the money seems to depend on whether or not you prefer a real fitness solution (join a gym) or a reasonably fun game with some incidental fitness benefits.

If you want the former in video game form, check out our recent 25 Years of Exergaming feature, specifically the section about Yourself! Fitness. I can personally vouch for it.

John Brownlee

A mouse for your ring finger

The Finger Mouse: a big plastic rock of geekish bling that lets you control your pointer from the knuckle. Like a tiny jewel, a small trackball sits in the upper-left quadrant, surrounded on three sides by a scroll button, a left click button and a right click button. ou will require prehensile fingers or opposable joints to operate the finger mouse one-handed, but it's still a rather nifty idea... except it's wired, which wholly eliminates the Finger Mouse's potential killer app of being a slick way to control a Powerpoint presentation from behind the projector. £14.99 will get you one from Maplin.

Wired Optical Ring Mouse [Maplin via Red Ferret]

John Brownlee

The $40,000 car couch

Fred Bailey's custom designed Car Couch, glossily painted in Sunset Orange Pearl. Fitted with propulsion jets, the perfect interior accoutrement for the would-be Jet Screamer who aspires to reach third base with Judy Jetson. It'll set you back nearly $40,000, though... a high price, even to touch a space bopper's cervix.

Fred Bailey's Car Couch [eBay via Born Rich]

Rob Beschizza

Pay $6,850 to make MacBook somewhat uglier

The Monk Bogballe Workstation is an Apple MacBook denuded and placed inside a larger, nastier case. An expansive bezel allows it to resemble a television set from 1987, an illusion only furthered by a display enclosure that is larger than the bottom half of the machine.

Naturally, it comes pre-installed with Windows Vista.

Product Page [Monk Bogballe via Ars Technica and Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

Finger-stab simulation will make you as cool as Bishop

Finally! A way to practice the age old yet awkwardly titled art of "rapidly stabbing the space between your splayed digits to show off the size of your engorged chutzpah sack" without whittling your fingers down to notched bone in a flying confetti of ribboned flesh, diced muscle and shredded sinew!

"Simon Stabs..." is an interactive game that provides 'harmless' platform differs from a typical knife skill game with a real knife. It consists of two gaming platforms with wooden knives as 'switch' to press six 'buttons' in the space between each finger. The rule of the game is that player should remember sequence of pressing buttons led by flash movie clip on the screen similar to 'simon game'. First player's stabbing several spaces between fingers replays on the other player's screen so that he mimics the sequence and add more on it. Then first player should do the same, then back and forth. Game ends when any mistake occurs.

Simon Stabs [Official Site via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

One must pay to touch the diamond-encrusted Mercedes

The e-mailed circular blurts it out with all the bug-eyed hysteria of a Muslim Obama chain letter...

"THE CAR COSTS $4.8 MILLION AND IF YOU WANT TO TOUCH IT YOU HAVE TO PAY $1000 IT BELONGS TO PRINCE ALWALEED FROM SAUDI ARABIA remember this when gasoline hits $5.00 a gallon. You paid for this one."

German engineering, Saudi style. More follows after the jump. Apologies and profound commiserations to whoever had to take these photos. Swarovski to dip an S-class in glue and roll it in a tank of crushed glass in 3... 2... 1...

Update: It's a fake, made of Swarovski crystals and with nary a Saudi in sight. [Snopes]

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

ASUS to embed "instant on" Linux distro into every motherboard

ASUS has announced that the Express Gate distro — a version of Linux by DeviceVM shrinky-dinkified into a small BIOS chip to give your PC a fast-boot alternative for non-intesive tasks — will now be installed on all of their motherboards.

Express Gate allows you to boot up your PC within five seconds and access Firefox, Skype and media-playing apps. This quarter, ASUS will release four new Express Gate motherboards: P5Q Deluxe, P5Q-WS, P5Q3 Deluxe and P5Q-E.

Honestly, I could care less about this on a desktop: who turns them off besides ecologically-conscious hemp-huffing hippies like Joel? The environment? Never heard of it! But a laptop with this would be fantastic.

Asus to embed Linux into all motherboards [ZDNet]

Previously on Boing Boing Gadgets:

• SplashTop Instant-On Web Browsing and Skype

Rob Beschizza

Make your own Intel Atom-based computer

Tranquil PC's D945GCLF Mini-ITX motherboard comes with a baked-in 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU, a GMA 950 video chip and a single DDR2 RAM slot; on the downside is the lack of HDMI, PCI express and gigabit ethernet. At $103, however, it's going to be stiff competition for the VIA-based Mini-ITX boards that are the mainstay of ultrasmall form-factor case modding
loonies.

Product Page [Tranquil PC via Engadget]
Blog post [Tranquil PC]

John Brownlee

Kitty cats meet CAPTCHAs

According to Alan Turing's theorem, Cylon technology is one cracked CAPTCHA algorithm away from genocidal positronic sentience... and Rapidshare's doing its part. Over at Crunch Gear, John Biggs — secret brother, secret lover — spotted this CAPTCHA in which Rapidshare expected him to identify only the letters with hidden kitty cats in them. Curiously, this prompted Biggs to lament: "Basically, you need a doctorate to understand captchas now." As we showed such a preternatural acumen for the study in our kindergartener years, we wish we'd have heard of Biggs' alma mater before now: a transgressive liberal arts post-grad school where philosophy doctorates in fontocryptographical kitty cat identification are so willy-nilly handed out.

Basically, you need a doctorate to understand captchas now [Crunch Gear]

Rob Beschizza

Pyramid Puzzle claims to make you intellectually and emotionally smarter

The best puzzles are either masterpieces of complex workmanship or chunky, brightly-colored toys that can survive a nuclear explosion. Brando's $15 pyramid puzzle combines both characteristics, by the looks of it, wedding Rubik-like tasteless design to LeMarchandine intricacy. Brando claims that playing with it increases both your IQ and "emotional" intelligence quotient—layers of hogwash to match the device's layers of complexity!

One wonders, however, at the portal to Tomy Toytown hell that solving it will expose. It's time to play, Kirsty ... Pop-up Puzzle Pirate!

Product Page [Brando via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

iPhone sullied with Vista skin

With so many iPhone-derived skins knocking around on Windows Mobile handsets, why not? Perhaps the fact that this reversal is so obviously perverse illustrates how damaged the brand is. Cult of Vista, anyone?

Download (requires jailbreak, SSH, Summerboard) [via Technabob and Just Another iPhone Blog]

Rob Beschizza

Logitech ad full of photoshop horror

Gadget layout not advertising-optimal? Just do strange photoshop things with it, and hope no-one notices.

Logitech: Honey Where's The VT Remote? [Photoshop Disasters]

Rob Beschizza

Robot mows lawn, very slowly

As its masters laze in the yard, the tiny Mega-Dynamizer humanoid robot staggers along, pushing a similarly tiny lawnmower. Then it falls over. Then it scratches its arse.

More on Mega-Dynamizer Doing yard Work [Robot Dreams]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Pressure suit not required

Source unknown!

Joel Johnson

Money > Sense: Building a $15k "image crunching" computer

The latest "Ask Dan" column at Dan's Data finds our eponymous expert fielding a query from a man looking to spend $15,000 (Canadian) on an machine capable of "crunching as much image data as computationally possible per hour." Dan gives him the straight answer, but I have to ask: Surely a couple of different machines with some high-speed interconnect could do the job more efficiently than one machine kitted out with the most expensive server-class hardware available?

It's hard to make a judgement without knowing the details of the questioner's software architecture, but Dan points out the details:

For most applications, a high-end quad-core LGA775 system (including more sensibly priced Core 2 Quads that've been overclocked to three-point-something gigahertz, which is easy to do) will be indistinguishable from a dual-quad-core Skulltrail system. If you're doing something that's highly multithreaded, though, the system with twice as many cores may perform something approaching twice as well. There are all sorts of serious-server and scientific computation tasks that certainly can take advantage of those extra cores. Some other tasks, like hosting a bunch of game servers (on a LAN or a very fat Internet pipe), or doing some kinds of video effects generation or compression, or just charging up the Folding@Home or distributed.net charts, will also benefit greatly from more than four cores.
By and large, though, four cores really are more than enough for almost everybody these days. And even if you do need eight cores, it's still hard to justify making that eight cores of overpriced Q9775, when almost-as-fast Xeons are so much cheaper.

Ask Dan: The deadly temptation of Skulltrail [DansData.com]

Joel Johnson

Honda makes an exoskeleton that's almost practical

Although full-body exoskeletal robot assistance rigs aren't all that far away, battery limitations are keeping most power suits on the shelves pending research into fusion cores reverse engineered from alien attackers. Until then, Honda's "Experimental Walking Assist Device" scales down its utility but increases its useful operating time, allowing wearers to supplement their walking speed and increase their stride using battery-powered brushless DC motors for up to two hours. Great for the elderly, of course, but also for rental at the bottom of mountaintop scenic outlooks or sales to soccer teams.

If and when it ever goes on sale, of course.

Honda's experimental walking assist device [Gizmag]

Rob Beschizza

A wiki for randomly-generated cool stuff

Ever wanted to know how some computer games randomly create scenarios, landscapes and the like? Bookmark the Procedural Generation Wiki, a fledgling home for the mindbending programming concepts that make it possible.

It's all about creating the rules but letting a computer do all the work, then watching like a baffled god as unexpected wonders evolve before one's eyes. There's everthing from visual art generated on-the-go, to entire worlds modeled with landscapes, climates and histories. It let 1984's Elite contain an universe to explore in only 32kb of RAM; next year's Spore will bottle similar magic for a new generation of gamers.

Created by Roguelike developer Andrew Doull, the wiki's only got a few articles so far, including a bumper list of games that use procedural techniques and Doull's six-part article, The Death of the Level Designer. Doull laments the lack of cellular automata-based content. Hear Hear! Sick of fractals, I once made a CA-based terrain generator.

What they want... [ASCII Dreams]

Rob Beschizza

Microwave vs. Compact Disk

Whole worlds in cracks of light.

The Microwaved CD [Wacky Archives via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

Scammer responds to my Craigslist iMac listing

Hey, readers, let's have some fun.

I've got a 24" iMac for sale on Craigslist. I just got this inquiry:

Dear seller, My name Micheal Peter the owner of MICHEAL & SONS LTD based in UK. I will like to buy this your item,iMac 24" Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, 256MB video, CS3, more for my son who is presently studying in Africa urgently for his birthday and I will like offer $1800 USD for a fast deal and the shipping to Africa via EMS Speed Post. If you accept my offer get back to me with your Full Name, Bank Name, Bank Account number, IBAN, Swift Code e.t.c so that I can transfer the money to you account immediately through Bank of England. I await your urgent response ASAP. Regards

Naming a fake company with one's own fake first name is a lovely touch. Any (legal) ideas for amusements? If you haven't seen it yet(!), check out the classic P-P-P-P-Powerbook for inspiration.

Joel Johnson

Condé Nast/Wired.com buys Ars Technica

Details are not officially announced, but Condé Nast, which also owns Wired.com, has acquired Ars Technica. I love Wired.com and I love Ars Technica, so congrats to them both.

Joel Johnson

Rock, Paper, Shotgun, we can't stop thinking about you

When we were a young site, our mother — a stout search engine from Reno named Veronica — she'd sit us on her lap, wipe our tears, and promise us that the mean little boys in the server playground wouldn't be our tormentors forever. We'd blossom, she said and smoothed our hair, and meet a tall web site who would sweep us off our feet.

We don't get ahead of ourselves, but we met the cutest site last night. We talked about videogames for hours.

About Jetpack Brontosaurus, the latest game from the creators of Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, in which you pretend you're a giant dino flying through the crowds.

We were chatting philosphy next to the fire when he leaned over and whisper warmly, "Did you know they're making a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil?" We'll admit: we were having a few evil thoughts ourselves.

And he's so knowledgeable but so modest! When he told us that Nvidia was holding 62% of the graphics card market over ATi, he admitted having read the statistics in the Valve hardware survey.

He's not afraid to speak out against injustice, either, like the shocking number of Windows games that don't support Alt-Tab.

Got a good job, too. Said he impressed them when he put his World of Warcraft experience on his resume.

We may have something. Maybe it's too soon to say. But we're supposed to meet again next Friday.

John Brownlee

Experts outraged that Wii Fit calls children "overweight"

Keep your inner foul-mouthed Mexican teenager sequestered here. You'll have to take a few deep breaths to maneuver your way past the sensationalist tone and outright dishonest claims about the nature of Wii Fit to find the few decent criticisms at the core of this Daily Mail article. You're probably going to want to throw a stick of butter and shout "WHY SO SAD, FATTIES?" at the obesity experts in the UK criticizing Wii Fit for daring to call their overweight children overweight. But it seems to me that there's something to their complaining.

Summary: leading obesity experts in the UK are upset that Wii Fit uses BMI to pigeonhole children as being underweight, ideal or overweight. They are calling for the sale of Wii Fit to be banned for children. Wii Fit heavily uses the BMI measurement system, which isn't terrible as a very vague rule of thumb but, as an actual scientific system of determining health or attractiveness, is utterly worthless. More over, one of the Daily Mail's examples is that a 10 year old girl who weighed 84 pounds at 4 foot 9 was classified as "overweight." If true, that's either a serious bug or a loathsomely narrow definition on Nintendo's part of what constitutes fitness. However, that seems to be the sole data point in the evidence of the critique... hardly the sort of thing people who aren't already desperate to be offended would get up in arms about. It could simply be a broken Wii Fit board.

Like I said, the tone of the piece is both indignant and dishonest: they claim that children are being told they are "fat" in Wii Fit, even though the actual terminology is the far more neutral "overweight." Perhaps that's a semantic niggle, but it's the difference between telling a kid they need to do a bit more exercise and calling them an Orca and warning people not to get within splash zone for fear of mucus membrane infection. On the other hand, should a program marketed to kids be calling them overweight? Only doctors and parents should be telling that to a kid. A far better approach would simply be to encourage kids to become more active, not merely to get their BMI within a target zone. Wii Fit could have kept its own damn criticisms to itself and still helped a kid get in better shape.

I don't have Wii Fit, gleaning all my information about how it works from reviews online, so perhaps this is all being wildly blown out of proportion. If you own Wii Fit, what do you think? Is this much ado about nothing, or was there a better way for Nintendo to handle this? Perhaps a more sensitive and less judgmental Wii Fit children's mode?

Obesity experts condemn Nintendo's Wii 'Fit' game after it tells 10-year-old girl she's fat [Daily Mail]

Rob Beschizza

The legend of Mall Ninja

If a fellow walked into a Glock fans' forum thread and started a jargon-heavy discussion about how best to take multiple .338 shots to the back, what would you imagine his career to be? The top bodyguard for a developing nation's ambassador, perhaps? A specialist document courier?

No.

"I am the Sergeant of a three-man Rapid Tactical Force at one of America’s largest indoor retail shopping areas."

This is his preferred loadout:

* 3) MP5K-PDW with red-dot sights;
* 2) G36 rifles using SS109 rounds;
* 3) Glock practical tacticles in .357 Sig
* 1) PSG-1 using Fed Gold Medal .308
* 1) Starlight scope for the PSG-1 in case we lose power in the building.
* 3) Glock 27 backup guns
* 3) Kahr P-9 holdouts

If you like gadgets that don't kill people (because trolls kill people) this is the legendary thread for you.

"I am a Master of three martial arts including ninjitsu, which means I can wear the special boots to climb walls. ... If you want to laugh at somebody, try laughing at the sheep out there who go to the mall unarmed trusting in me to stand guiard over their lives like a God."

Shrine of the Mall Ninja [Lonely Machines via Qt3]

John Brownlee

What else to expect from WWDC besides the 3G iPhone?

With the WWDC a few scant weeks away, the updates and rumors posted to cryptomacology blogs have come so fast and furious that some have simply blinked out of our reality, having consummated their union with the Speed Force. Over at Wired's Gadget Lab, Charlie Sorrel has approached the current slate of Apple rumors with a level-head. No surprises here: the most likely new products from Apple will be a 3G iPhone and a new MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pro is almost exactly the same in looks as the original PowerBook G4, announced back in January 2001. It's time for a change. We expect a big multi touch trackpad, the new chiclet-style keyboard, an almost bezel-less screen (which should bring the overall size down despite still having a 15" screen) and perhaps some 3G connectivity (Apple has so many deals with cellphone networks now that an international rollout of an always-on connection is feasible). We'll probably see a version without an optical drive, too, perhaps with a second hard drive filing the space. And after all the whining about the MacBook Air being a little wussy in its specs, it could be time for Apple to drive home a powerful, well endowed twelve-incher.

You know, I was hot for the new MacBook Pro, but in a recent conversation with Beschizza, I realized that my current MBP is pretty much the perfect form factor for a serious work laptop. The MBP's exterior still a svelte, sophisticated and attractive chassis... the only things I find myself wanting are silly things like more USB ports. I'm not really sure anymore that the MBP does need an overhaul: how much better could it really look? A bezel-less screen would certainly be hot, a higher resolution would be lovely, and Apple can make pretty much anything thinner, but I'm not sure that a new MBP design is the "must have" for me I was convinced it was a scant few months ago. The MBP's pretty much perfect as is.

What To Expect From Apple At WWDC [Gadget Lab]

Image: Mac Rumors

Joel Johnson

Brad Litwin's ball-catching "Rotapult"

Brad Litwin sent us this video of his latest kinetic sculpture, on display at the "re.action" exhibition at the Annmarie Garden Sculpture Park and Arts Center in Solomons, Maryland, starting on June 1st.

More projects from Brad [BradLitwin.com]

John Brownlee

The SlomunnyV3: post-apocalyptic cyborg lemon

An irradiated cyborg lemon from the citrus-scented post-apocalypse, SlommunnyV3 is an adorable 4-inch tall Mini Mummy figurine created especially for Pink Ghost's Giant Skills — MINI Munny: Custom Group Air Show, to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this weekend.

SlomunnyV3 is the cutest DIY Mini Munny Ever [Gizmowatch]

Rob Beschizza

Containership power strip design models manufacturing microcosm

Sexing up power strips is a little industry all to itself: the sexiest being the Power Squid. The latest design rests on the waves, not beneath them: it's modeled on the container tankers that deliver to our shores the very gadgets it powers.

Designed to accommodate the many power adapters cluttering our living space, this ship powers our electronic devices with their cords in its wake. It also makes apparent the infrastructure behind all those power cords.

Most electronic devices in use everyday are manufactured in one province in China and are delivered to us by containership. What people often do not realize is the extreme scale of the infrastructure needed when a single geographic area becomes a primary manufacturing source; even for things that most people see as insignificant. The largest of these ships hold up to 9,000 40ft containers and are too massive for the Panama Canal. They frequently return to China empty. There is nothing to bring back.

The Containership Powersupply (Prototype shown) measures 20"x3.5"x5" and is made from a cast rubber body over a metal chassis. Prototyping by ModelSource, Avon, CT

Product Page (Click the "I" in the top row) [Giffintermeer VIA SlipperyBrick and Oh Gizmo!]

Joel Johnson

Syd Mead's "Sulaco" ship from Aliens just a big gun

Bethesda's Adam Adamowicz has a great post up talking about some of the thought that went into the concept art for the upcoming videogame Fallout 3. He namechecks BBG's patron saint of design in this great little anecdote about Aliens:

Seeing Syd Mead lecture in SF was an incredibly profound lesson on design. During the Q&A I asked him how far he went on a design to make it technically believable. His advice was ‘to design with the story in mind and stay consistent with it’. Hence I learned that the Sulacco [sic] from Aliens is essentially a massive gun in space with a big nuclear reactor at one end which beautifully fits the theme of space marines exploring a planet infested with deadly hostile aliens. That answer freed me obsessing over minutiae that diverges story-wise, and focus on the broad strokes that propel the story. The addition of ensuing consistent minutiae would give it richness.

The concept art from Fallout 3 is pretty fantastic, too. These are some fantasy gadgets, all of which are attempts to create that strange alt-history aesthetic where technology was slightly more advanced than what we have now, but still using only '50s materials and design cues.

Conceptual Design [Fallout.Bethsoft.com via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Image: Michael Heilemann

John Brownlee

Portable ice cream floats with the Fizz Cup

Delicious, but unportable, the ice cream float is one of the few summer pleasures that food scientists have proven completely incapable of reproducing in bottle form. Every once and a while, the sages of Coca Cola or Pepsi or ABC will claim to have come up with the secret, only to slap a picture of a cartoon hugel of ice cream on the label and serve up a foul slime infused with so much chemical vanilla that a single sip causes the mucus membrane to melt away like a Fruit Roll-up dipped in toxic waste.

Over at the Mother Boing, our Cory spotted the Fizz Cup, an ingenious accessory to correct the shortcomings of the beverage industry through excellence of design. You simply scoop a mound of ice cream into the Fizz Cup and snap the top onto a bottle of Coke or Root Beer. Instant ice cream float satisfaction. Genius. And at £6.95, cheap enough for the impulse buy.

Fizz Cup [Firebox via Boing Boing]

Rob Beschizza

Rumor: Comcast to meter bandwidth. Good or bad thing?

ExtremeTech asks today if Comcast — rumored to be about to start metering bandwidth — is "preparing to screw its customers."

While it's true that Comcast screws its customers, metering bandwidth strikes me as a fairer modus buggerandi than what it does now: lying to us by offering "unlimited" plans with secret limits, with a Kafka-esque policy of not communicating with people who get close to it.

Here's the rumored plan:

"Comcast is considering a rate hike for broadband customers who consume more than 250 gigabytes of data each month, though there are no immediate plans for implementation. "Comcast is currently evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our customers," the company said in a statement. "We have not made any changes to our current service offerings and have no new announcement to make at this time."

It all comes down to cost. If Comcast stopped offering unlimited bandwidth, would you still feel entitled to it? It would be beastly indeed if Comcast smacked 250GB transgressors for huge penalties, but at least then it wouldn't be defrauding its customers any more. Or is it all just part of a strategy to get you used to paying by the unit for a commodity — bandwidth — that is or will soon be effectively free of charge to it, the utility provider?

John Brownlee

The Ringshot, a rubber band slingshot re-inforcement device for your fingers

The digitally tremulous will never be true rubber band snipers. I know how to make a rubber band slingshot with my fingers, know how to hook a loop of plastic around the tips of my thumb and index finger, know how to seat a glinting paper clip in the barrel. But somehow — the slippery slope, the one thing leading to another — and the next thing I know, my optometrist fishes around with a pair of tweezers in my aqueous vitreous for misfired paper clip shards.

Shira Nahon's Ringshot aims to level the playing field. A hollowed sheath of stainless steel makes a rigid, immovable 'L' of your thumb and index finger, allowing the mounted rubber band to be drawn back without causing the loops of elastic to wildly snap off your fingers. All it requires is a knuckle-mounted sight to make me truly competitive in the BBG office wargames.

Ringshot [Flickr via Ubergizmo]

Joel Johnson

Pencil and eraser rings

Shown at the Holon Institute of Technology industrial design department's "Next Exit" exhibition in Tel Aviv, these "Pencil Case Rings" replace the standard jewels with tiny pencil and eraser nubbins. Looks like a great DIY project for someone with some casting skills.

It might be awkward to use, but if someone made a ring with a smaller writing tip — a gel pen, perhaps — I could see myself replacing the pen I always keep clipped to my shirt with something similar.

Pencil case rings [Flickr via Coolest Gadgets]

Joel Johnson

Spada TS Codatronca: The Italians still make the prettiest cars

From the racooon-eyed door to the stealth-inspired rear exhaust, the Spada TS Codatronca might be the most menacing car I've ever seen. It's like what would be born if a Buick Riviera was impregnated by demon seed. I've added it to the growing list of cars I love but will never, ever own.Jalopnik has even more on the Italian monstrosity.

Aside from the obvious 'holy-crap-that's-crazy' bodywork, this car features details rarely — if ever — seen on cars of any era, much less new ones. First, and the one we love the most, is the Pitot-static tube mounted on the roof. It takes engineers to decide the best way to determine high speeds is to measure stagnation against ambient pressure. The car also has an internally regulated, kinetically charged lap watch for visual measurement, even though it can record up to 40 laps of telemetry data for analysis after a run.

Spada TS Codatronca Production Announced, Tie Fighters No Longer Cool [Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Fry's Sale – Electronics mega-mart Fry's is having an Anniversary Sale. It's pretty much in-store only, but there a few online items. [Slickdeals]

• Memory Stick – Sony's proprietary Memory Stick PRO Duo card, 2GB, for $11.50, shipped. These are what the PSP uses. [Dealnews]

• Hard Disk – Seagate (Oooh!) Barracuda 750GB 7200RPM internal hard disk drive for $107, shipped. [Dealnews]

• HDTV Stick – Today's Woot! is the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick for $45, shipped.

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: May The Font Be With You

Image: Ironic Sans

Rob Beschizza

"How to Photoshop" book has incompetently photoshopped cover

The terrible western cartoon artwork gracing "How to Draw Manga" books are beaten in the shitstakes by the amateurish cover to "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3: The art of creative photorealistic montages."

Looking like something tossed off in five minutes for a Worth1000 or SA forum thread, the image is a mash of ill-cropped components, sharp edges and woeful colorization, with the spatial relationships of a popsicle shadow play. And ... why is there a giant hole in his left elbow? "Photorealistic montages" indeed—fourth edition!

Be sure to read the creepy reviews at Amazon. Here's the apparent original, fished out by a commenter at the original post...

How To Cheat In Photoshop By Reason Of Mental Illness [Photoshop Disasters, via a similarly horrifying work featured at the motherboing.]

Joel Johnson

From Atari Joyboard to Wii Fit: 25 years of "exergaming"

Atari Joyboard (1982)
In 1982, Atari released the "Joyboard," a simple four-switch balance board controller for the Atari 2600 that stuffed the guts of a standard joystick into a ridged, black plastic slab. A single game was released for the Joyboard. Dubbed Mogul Maniac, the game emulated the experience of slalom skiing with all the subtlety a four-position digital sensor could provide.

The Joyboard is generally considered a failure, too finicky for nuanced control. In fact, one of the most interesting uses for the Joyboard involved not triggering its switches: some claim, perhaps apocryphally, that engineers building the Commodore Amiga used to manage development stress by sitting perfectly motionless on the Joyboard in zazen, leading to the "Guru Meditation" verbiage in the Amiga's crash warning dialog. Game developer Ian Bogost developed a game of the same name that uses the Joyboard as an interface, in which fully motionless sitting causes an on-screen guru avatar to slowly decamp from his mat into the air with yogic flight. [Image: AtariAge.com]

Had the Joyboard seen retail triumph, it's conceivable Atari might have developed a proper exercise game, complete with weight statistics and performance tracking.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

JumpSnap: the ropeless jump rope revolution!

A plucky businessman, accidentally receiving a shipment of futuristic dildos from his Chinese suppliers instead of the usual selection of jump ropes, ingeniously markets them as the JumpSnap, the world's first ropeless jump rope! Because jumping rope to jump rope is just too hard! That last sentence was something of a snarky joke, though truth be told, my muffed sense of equilibrium does make jumping a rope an exercise in frustration. Still, hopping up and down and swinging my arms around like a small child dizzy on lemonade is free.

Rob Beschizza

Font Haiku

And now, an interlude.

Loathsome Comic Sans'
uneven inky slugtrails.
That vile, hated font.

Transparent? Get real.
Sickeningly self-conscious.
Yep, Helvetica.

Trebuchet MS,
Web designers sick of want
use you, but still weep.

From the seventies,
Not one thing or the other:
It is Optima.

Let's make a movie!
Oh, in that case you must use
Manly Trajan Pro.

Arial, the clone
But not of helvetica.
Grotesque is its sire.

Georgia, Verdana,
Sprung from the internet's loin
Liked but never loved.

The cheapest sherry,
Expensive invitations,
Demand Zapfino.

Add your font haiku/senryu/limerick/whatever to the comments!

Update: Someone's had this idea before!

Rob Beschizza

DIY music controller uses water

Toriton Plus is a musical instrument that reacts to fingers dipped in a bowl of water.

How does it work? Lasers over the face of the deep, interrupted by ripples. Only a few inches deep, but still.

Toriton plus prototype: first look [Toriton via Makezine]

Joel Johnson

Aliph's updated Jawbone Bluetooth headset reviewed (Verdict: Smaller but just as quirky)

The first time I saw the original Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headset in person I was shocked at its size. That perforated metal casing that looked so lovely on the outside concealed a mound of plastic the size of a circus peanut. Mark McClusky has taken the updated Jawbone for a ride on his auricle and found it to match the already excellent call quality of its predecessor, all in a package that's 50% lighter than before and visibly less broad.

But at $120, you'll be paying mostly for the looks. (Perfectly functional Bluetooth headsets can be found for under $20 without much trouble.) I like the lizard skin pattern on the new model — designed by Yves Behar, dontchakno — but I could see how some would find it a bit tawdry. It definitely rides the line.

Review: Jawbone's Latest Headset is Smaller Skinnier Sexier [Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Intel spokesman: no larger Atom iPhone

Fscklog, a German blog that covers Apple, says that Intel's "confirmation" of an Atom-based, larger iPhone is no such thing.

"Intel's press spokesman Mike Cato made clear to me that the statement made by Intel Germany's CEO Hannes Schwaderer is not to be taken as such. Rather, Intel (in this case is Mr. Schwaderer) said the iPhone has been, for a long time, an example of the entire category of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)"

Thanks to BBG reader Rudi for spotting the update.

Update: ZDNet.de, the source of the original claim, says that the man was using the word "iPhone" to refer to mobile internet devices in general. We guessed this yesterday, and look forward to the trademark shenanigans that result when people do this.

Nein (translation) [fscklog]

Rob Beschizza

CBS to buy CNET for $1.75bn

CBS has noticed the Internet. It is to pay $11.50 a share for CNET, which adds up to nearly $1.8bn, instantly turning it a big player in the tubes. Fortune says that's a 44 percent premium over Wednesday's closing price, which is basically them saying "Damn, this company is run terribly. Grab it!"

Here's CEO Les Moonves.

“There are very few opportunities to acquire a profitable, growing, well-managed Internet company like CNet Networks. CBS stands for premium content and unparalleled reach, and CNet Networks will add a tremendous platform to extend our complementary entertainment, news, sports, music and information content to a whole new global audience.”

CBS shares down, CNET shares up 34 percent in early trading. In the distance, a dog barks.

CBS agrees to buy CNET [AP]

Joel Johnson

Another day, another jet-powered backpack flight over the Alps

CNN/AP has video of the first flight of Yves "Fusion Man" Rossy and his winged, jet-powered backpack. Rossy tips out of a small airplane and ignites the four thrusters, hitting speeds of up to 186 MPH before deploying a parachute and landing gently back at the local airfield.

'Fusion Man' soars above Swiss Alps [CNN]

Rob Beschizza

MSI Wind review: Te enamorarás! Yes, it's an Eee-killer

MSI's Wind is a 10" subnotebook coming soon in a $400 512MB linux version and a $550 1GB Windows XP version—you get Bluetooth and a 7-hour battery with the latter, explaining the price hike. The XP model is great, according to Chilean hardware site CHW. Google translates its conclusion like so:

" What we tested, and we are thrilled with the HANDS. The MSI Notebook Wind is all that the EEA is not PC and more. Clearly these teams have a clearly defined and limited niche in the market and it is timely for those seeking one second laptop or a supplement to your desktop computer that is ultra-mobile or for those who do not have high demands for power. If this goal within this segment, CREEN. Fall in love."

I'm thinking it might be slightly too big, with that 10" screen, to quite capture the Eee's portability. At 2.8 pounds with that long-life battery, however, what the hell am I complaining about? Talk about a dark horse: Asus and HP have a real competitor to deal with here.

Translation [CHW via UMPC Portal]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Labeler – As part of a sale at Office Depot, buy 2 Brother high yield toners and get a free P-Touch PT80 handheld labeler. [Bargainist]

• UMPC – That new HP Mini-Note 2133, a 9-inch laptop with a nice keyboard, is now on sale starting at $500 for the SUSE Linux version. [Dealnews]

• Laptop Dock – Kensington laptop docking station for $30, shipped. (About $25 off.) Adds extra USB and parallel ports.[Dealnews]

• Tools, Tools, Tools – Craftsman 1,470-piece tool set for $6,880, shipped. That's $1,850 off the regular price! [Dealnews]

• iPod Player – Today's Woot! is a Sonic Impact V55 Video Player for iPod for $35, shipped. Works only with 5th gen iPods, not anything released last year.

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer

Image: Michael Surbrook

Rob Beschizza

Midi controller with arcade buttons puts the Shoryuken into Schubert

With its central profusion of arcade buttons, the Midibox promises satisfaction: this is an electronic musical instrument to be pounded like a 6-button fighter. Built around a PIC microcontroller—a low cost computer chip backed by a vast library of applications—it has 16 knobs, 5 faders, 32 MIDI controlled LED buttons, and 16 arcade buttons.

Flickr Set [William's Photos]
Project Page [UCApps.de via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

Intel: Atom to be heart of larger, hi-res "version of iPhone"

Intel Germany supremo Hannes Schwaderer just slapped his todger on the bar and demanded service, announcing a 720x new iPhone featuring Intel's Atom chip. This is according to the Internet. From ZDNet Germany, as translated by MacRumors:

"As part of an Intel event for the 40th birthday of the semiconductor company at Munich’s BMW World, Germany managing director Hannes Schwaderer confirmed today what has long been a rumor on the Internet: namely, that there is an iPhone with Intel’s new Atom chip. The device is slightly larger than the current version, Schwaderer said. That is not, however, because of the Intel chip, but because of the larger display used in the new iPhone."

Intel's been flashing its MID prototype around at conferences for a while. It's clearly modeled on the iPhone.

If this is for real, it's either the dumbest intentional leak of all time, of a gaffe of monumental proportions. If it isn't, it could be a use of "iPhone" as a generic reference to its class of device: a linguistic development that can render trademarks unenforceable and which will displease pharaoh.

iPhone kommt mit größerem Display und Intel Atom [ZDnet.de via MacRumors]

Rob Beschizza

Help CMU's AI research by playing casual games online

Carnegie Mellon University's new online games are designed to make other programs smarter by learning from the players. Each multi-player title encapsulates a class of problem that remain impossible for computers to solve.

"We have games that can help improve Internet image and audio searches,
enhance artificial intelligence and teach computers to see," Luis von Ahn, of CMU's Computer Science deaprtment, said in a press release. "But that shouldn't matter to the players because it turns out these games are super fun."

So far, there are four "Games with a Purpose." Matchin, which has players judge which of two images is more appealing, aims to improve image search algorithms. Tag a Tune has players describe songs, so that listeners may search for songs with certain emotional qualities; Verbosity, a "common sense" test game designed to help AI programs become smarter; and Squigi, which has players outline objects in photos to teach computers how to do likewise.

Play the games [GWAP]

John Brownlee

Willy Wonka and the Radiation Factory

The Habog Facility in the Netherlands is a massive warehouse for decaying nuclear waste, cheerily painted orange and inscribed with pastel-colored physics formulas by Einstein and Planck. According to Dutch law, all nuclear waste must be securely stored for 100 years, so the Habog facility will be repainted a lighter, less radioactive color every twenty years to symbolize the slowly decaying radiation. That's a few years short of U235's 703,800,000 half-life, but even Dutch bureaucracies aren't so optimistic as to plan the scope of their public art projects so far in advance.

A gorgeous monument to radioactive decay [io9]

John Brownlee

The Brannock Device is the iPhone of shoe salesmen

Over at the Design Observer blog, Michael Bierut waxes poetic about a triumph of industrial engineering... the ubiquitous Brannock Device. Never heard of it? Your sweaty, calloused trotter has been crammed into one by a disgruntled shoe salesman at one time or another...

Charles F. Brannock only invented one thing in his life, and this was it. The son of a Syracuse, New York, shoe magnate, Brannock became interested in improving the primitive wooden measuring sticks that he saw around his father's store. He patented his first prototype in 1926, based on models he had made from Erector Set parts. As the Park-Brannock Shoe Store became legendary for fitting feet with absolute accuracy, the demand for the device grew, and in 1927 Brannock opened a factory to mass produce it. The Brannock Device Co., Inc., is still in business today. Refreshingly, it still only makes this one thing. They have sold over a million, a remarkable number when one considers that each of them lasts up to 15 years, when the numbers wear off...

Having such an exotic bit of machinery at my disposal took a job that's actually sort of demeaning — after all, I literally had to kneel in front of each of my customers — and transformed it into something akin to brain surgery. What people today feel about their iPhones, I felt about my Brannock Device.

Fitting [Design Observer via Core77]

John Brownlee

Gay consumers love Apple, but hate Samsung for some reason

In today's consumerist age, it's important, when buying a gadget or gewgaw, to be one hundred percent certain that its manufacturer applauds your choice of whichever gooey orifice you might find yourself drawn towards plunging. So in a recent survey by Prime Access, 757 gays and lesbians were asked to rank companies by their perceived gay-friendliness.

The gay-friendliest companies aren't surprising. Companies that strongly pursue the metrosexual demographic come out tops: Apple is, not shockingly, considered the most gay friendly tech company out there. Starbucks, Bravo, Absolut, Baccardi and Levi's are also in the top 13.

It's the bottom half of the list that's strange. The least gay friendly tech company, according to the study? Samsung. The least gay friendly company overall? Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel fired a number of employees in the 90s solely for being gay, but in 2003, they changed their tune, instituting an anti-gay discrimination policy. The gay community remembers these things for a long time... as they should. Speaking with your dollars is the only real way to be heard.

But Samsung? Google turns up no mention of Samsung sponsored, anti-gay pogroms. I am very willing to condemn Samsung's anti-gay agenda — it's ludicrous that any firm would harbor an anti-gay policy in 2008 — but I can't find anything on it. Yet something must be there: the Cracker Barrel placement indicates that gay consumers have elephant-like memories when it comes to a company's history. So what did Samsung do to stir up the ire of our nation's Rainbow Legionnaires?

Highlights of the 2008 Gay and Lesbian Consumer Study [Prime Access via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

MS: No redesigned Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 will not transmogrify into a slick but faintly unrealistic 3D-rendered fantasy in 2009, according to manufacturer Microsoft. From Engadget:

"Microsoft representative let us know today that "While we don't normally comment on rumors like this, we can tell you that we have no plans to release a new console in 2009". Yep, rumor assassinated, just like that."

Microsoft says no new Xbox 360s in 2009 [Engadget, pic from xbox360fanboy]

Rob Beschizza

Puzzle alarm clock demands more than mere wakefulness

Puzzle alarm clock: the simple, profoundly irritating idea at its heart is easy enough to guess, but why, then, is the puzzle itself so simple? It's a toddler's learning toy, a matter of bashing three shapes into the corresponding holes. Perhaps the idea is to force you to retrieve them from the other side of the room first—but then why not merely place the alarm clock itself out of arm's reach?

At $40, it's a little more expensive than a Tomy toy, too. Wake me up when there is a 20-move Japanese puzzle box version, or one inside a Rubik's Cube.

P.S. There is a Rubik's Cube alarm clock, but not one that forces you to solve the puzzle to end the alarm.

Product Page [Latest Buy via Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

iPhone vs PSP: which has the better specs?

In response to rumors of an Apple portable gaming machine, Joel pointed out that it's a completely stupid rumor. This is because the iPhone already exists, and the only thing standing between it and gaming wonder is a pernicious assumption that you can't do anything interesting without a D-Pad and physical buttons.

Cult of Mac has a piece today making the same point, but it offers hard facts about the system that bring out in sharp relief how much potential it has. See the chart:

With its beefy specs and rapid sales, the iPhone's potential as a gaming machine is so overwhelming it would be odd if Apple didn't push it hard sooner or later.
You may already own the best portable gaming device [CoM]

Rob Beschizza

New Get a Mac ad

There's a new Get a Mac ad. Just assume that this post has gone through the necessary preliminaries to posting a new Get a Mac ad: a lede inoculating the post against criticism by admitting that it's not funny, followed by a finger-steeply remark about how Apple's homing in on Vista, and finally some self-conscious mumbling about Hodgman.

I like the puppy.

John Brownlee

Real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cosplay in Chernobyl

The outward limits on fandom tightly border total insanity. A squadron of Russian gamers, clad in gas masks, army fatigues and melted mutant rubber masks, bribed Russian officials to take them deep into the mutagenic wasteland of Chernbobyl's Zone of Alienation and cosplay a real-life version of the sci-fi PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. About the only thing they didn't do to attain 100% verisimilitude is hire out some of the children from Chernobyl's depressingly real mutant orphanages to shoot with their paint guns.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Cosplay [Webpark.ru via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Rob Beschizza

Macworld's rules for buying Macs

I've just broken all the rules for buying a Mac; my colleagues think I'm dumb. I grabbed a relatively unpopular high-end model, the 17" MacBook Pro with the 133dpi 1920x display, within weeks of an expected replacement from Apple. But it fulfills my sole requirement, to immediately replace a 24" iMac with the nearest portable equivalent. Moreover, I got a fair deal on a refurb, paying a little over $2k instead of the $3k I'd be paying if I waited for the new one and bought it fresh.

MacWorld has its own shakeup of the rules today, declaring that the Mac Pro is unnecessary for all but extremely specialized purposes ("for most mainstay applications, the high-end iMac and MacBook Pro models are plenty fast") and that no, you do not need an upgrade path. It says the performance difference between MacBooks and iMacs are negligible, so get a laptop unless you want to save money. Accordingly, you don't need a desktop for the desk and a laptop for travel. The higher CPU options aren't worth it, either—spend the dough on more RAM instead. And while Macs are expensive, you shouldn't use price as a guide to performance, as "the differences between the various Mac lines have diminished."

The upshot of it all is, funnily enough, that power users should "buy a 17" MacBook Pro" if they're not anchored to a desk. Bravo! To which I will add: but you really should wait a few weeks, unless you're cheap.

The new rules for buying a Mac [Macworld]

Rob Beschizza

Playing card-sized Pico-ITX motherboards now even smaller

VIA's tiny Pico-ITX motherboards just got a bit more Pico, losing the bulky CPU fan. The new fanless models will accordingly fit easier into whatever weird thing you're trying to make into a PC case. Compromise? Oh, yes: the EPIA PX5000EG is even feebler than the standard model, with a VIA C7 CPU clocked at 500Mhz instead of the standard 1GHz.

I always sign off Pico-ITX posts with a remark about my vague plans to make a MAME machine inside an old Dreamcast Arcade Joystick. Maybe it's time to get cracking.

The coolest ever Pico ITX board [Technovoyance via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Office box cubicle offers isolation, despair

Work: the dehumanized symphony of cycling photocopiers, ringing phones and muttered greetings. Old fluorescent lights flicker and hum, Gutmann-shredding your hypothalamus with ones and zeroes at 60hz. Backwards laughter comes from that lady down the hall, echoing ever-louder in the baked echo chamber of your skull. If only you could crawl in a box and get away from it all ...

... only to find that you have to work on a HP Pavilion inside it. God help you!

Designer [Design Mong via Yanko]

John Brownlee

Astak's new eBook reader is almost as good at reading books as a PDA

Astak's latest e-Book reader, the Mentor, can't beat the Kindle's killer feature of an always on EVDO connection, so it's slicing the form factor and price in half. The Mentor features a five inch tall e-ink screen, 512MB of memory, an SD Card slot and runs on Windows CE 5.0 and reads all the standard formats: .doc, .txt, .pdf, .jpg, .htm and .rtf files, and the price will be an affordable $200.

But here's the problem: while $200 is about right for an eBook reader in the post-Kindle age, that five inch screen is scarcely bigger than the screen of a PDA, which opens up another thought process: hey, why don't you just pick up an old PDA off of eBay, download the phenomenal Pocket PC e-book program µBook and have a backlit, Internet-connected eBook reader in the exact same form factor for the exact same price? A platform, incidentally, that you can ably play X-Com on when you're not reading Proust in PDF?

Three New Astak Mentors Beat One New BeBook [Tech.Blorge via Crave]

John Brownlee

Don't Panic: DIY portable Wikipedia as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Hack

Instructables has posted a great little how-to on creating your own Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

This Instructable will set out how to construct what I believe to be a unique implementation of Wikipedia in an offline, portable device. It involves installing a stripped-down distribution of Linux on a Psion 5mx handheld, and installing a static HTML version of Wikipedia for use with one of two browsers. Most importantly, you do not have to be a Linux wizard to achieve this. I will assume a basic familiarity with computers, but you do not need experience with the intricacies of filing systems, compiling source code and the stuff that traditionally puts people off using Linux.

I'd prefer the Encyclopedia Galactica myself, but hey...

Wikipedia in your pocket, aka Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy v1.0 [Instructables]

John Brownlee

Cuddleable plushie gadgets from yesteryear

Blueblythemonster's Flickr stream hosts an orgy of soft embroidered felt plushies, gorgeous simulacrums of antique technology. Carnally speaking, I'm only a techno-fetishist by dint of career, but these are adorably cuddleable. I'm tempted to make a bid on this hand dyed and embroidered felt Underwood, sew some spider legs onto the sides and have my very own Naked Lunch plushie.

Embroidered Felt Objects [Flickr]

Rob Beschizza

Scientists expect terror from Mars Probe descent

Nasa's Phoenix lander, set to examine soils for evidence of water and living things, will provide scientists with "seven minutes of terror" during an iffy descent to Mars' surface, says the BBC.

"The Phoenix lander will begin its plunge through the Martian atmosphere on 25 May (GMT) as it attempts to land in the planet's polar north. The craft needs to perform a series of challenging manoeuvres along the way. "

It's a little-known fact that the Martian atmosphere is filled with nets, explosive gas balloons, and flak from robot-operated 88m cannons, left there by the Nazis.

Mars probe set for risky descent [BBC]

John Brownlee

MSI Wind becomes the $400 subnotebook to beat

MSI have just released pricing details for the Wind, and it's looking very good. Americans will get the 10" Wind on the 3rd of June, featuring a 1024x600 LCD, an 80GB HDD, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a six-cell battery specced for 5.5 hours of life, along with Intel's new Atom processor. If you want the Linux version with 512MB of RAM, the price will only be $399. You'll pay an astonishing $150 premium for XP and an extra half-gig of RAM though for the Windows flavor, which costs $549. Just slap Ubuntu on the damn thing and save yourself a couple bills.

Despite its gauche white plastic shell, the MSI Wind subnotebook may have just ripped the lashing, fluid-spurting spine out of the Asus Eee's market share and become the subnotebook to beat. A subnotebook that costs less than $400 and has six hours of battery life? Sold.

MSI unveils pricing, launch date for Wind laptop [Tech Report]

Image: Crunchgear

Rob Beschizza

Virgin Mobile's starkly honest FAQ

The defining characteristic of the internet-era institution of "frequently asked questions" is that they rarely resemble questions many would actually ask. They're always "questions we anticipate you might ask, the subset thereof we deign to answer." Virgin Mobile is shaking up this tradition with its revolutionary Honest FAQ.

"How do I make my own ringtones?" for example, is replied to with a blunt "Dunno."

The FAQ also leaks the names of three new handsets presumably forthcoming from Virgin Mobile: The X, Y, and Z.

This Virgin Mobile FAQ Is Honest, But Not Very Helpful [Consumerist]

Joel Johnson

Sharp business HDTV includes built-in web browser

When I ruminated that the future of the set-top box was the web browser, I asked when television manufacturers would add a browser to their sets. Sharp's latest LCD HDTVs include a browser, so I guess the answer is "now". Too bad they're priced for business use at over $5,000 — and that many streaming video sites still use Windows Media-based DRM, which these televisions surely don't support. But it's a step in the right direction!

Press Release [Slashgear.com via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Google blurs horse face on Street View

This horse testified against Michael Corleone. His cousin's body was never recovered.

Central Park Horse [Maps.Google.com via Reddit]

Joel Johnson

Video: Casio VL-1 dropping sick(ly) beats

The blogger who runs Palm Sounds just picked up a vintage Casio VL-1 and recorded this short video showing off its filtered squarewave timbres.

Casio VL-1 Pictures and video [Palm Sounds]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Christie enjoys a fitness

[via The Evil Beet]

Joel Johnson

Ad-supported Sega Mobile games for download

Gamejump, a company that offers ad-supported games for many mobile phones, has added several titles from Sega to their line-up. If you can stomach the ads — and you have a data plan so you won't be charged every time a new ad loads — it might be worth the hassle.

Games Page [Games.Gamejump.com via Crave.CNET.com]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Laptop – Dell Vostro 1000 AMD Sempron 2GHz 15-inch laptop for $400, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Gutter Robot – Today's Woot! is a refurbished iRobot Looj 120 gutter cleaning for $75, shipped.

Slim deals today, but that's the way it shakes sometimes.

Joel Johnson

Lobster Catching Arcade Game

Gavin Anderson snapped this picture of the "Sub Marine Catcher," a traditional claw game that replaces the moldy stuffed animals with adorable clacking lobsters. Snuggle up with a crustacean tonight!

There should be a bonus token that you can capture that, upon removal from the tank, causes the entire contraption to heat to boiling and spits out bibs and cups of melted butter.

Marine Catcher or the claws of Death! [Flickr via Serious Eats via Eat Geek]

Joel Johnson

Creative Vado Pocket Video Cam just like the Flip Video Ultra, but pinker

Creative continues to transform into the niche electronics vendor it has always — despite proclamations otherwise — strived to be. It's announced the "Vado Pocket Video Cam," a $100 just-press-the-button-dummy VGA camcorder unmistakably designed to take a healthy 2-4% chunk of the Flip Video Ultra's share of the cheap YouTube camera market.

The Vado is available in silver or hot pink, has a removable, rechargeable battery (that's nice, and additional batteries are just $15), and can copy movies from its non-expandable 2GB of RAM over the flip-out USB connector.

Press Release [PR Newswire]
Product Page [US.Creative.com]

Previously • Creative Stops Hacker from Improving Their Product [BBG]

John Brownlee

Gallery of Grand Theft Auto 4 / New York City comparison shots

Sightseeing in Liberty City is a fantastic Flickr gallery dedicated to contrasting locations from Grand Theft Auto 4 with their real-world NYC counterparts. The bottom image, for example, is a comparison between Brooklyn's Paramount Theater and Liberty City's Canyon Theater. I must buy this game already... damn German censorship laws.

Sightseeing in Liberty City [Flickr]

John Brownlee

Place your toddler upon a robot mount

The Ringbo rideable robot is a tiny positronic mount for your toddler, controlled with a pair of ear-like joysticks, and though I would have loved this as a kid, my adult incarnation is disappointed: at first blush, I thought the Ringobo was a rideable robot potty-training toilet, and only lamented the absence of side-mounted cannons hooked up to the tank.

RINGBO Riding Robot [Korea Trade Show New York]

Joel Johnson

Demolition derby with farm combines

Each year the town of Lind, Washington, holds a demolition derby — with combines. I must attend this.

2007 Derby Gallery [Lindwa.com via Go Sleep Go via Oh Gizmo

John Brownlee

Conceptual bicycle tree lifts your bike to safety

A conceptual bike tree for cities with both a lot of bikes and a lot of bike crooks. Amsterdam, I'm looking at you: there is something seriously out of whack when a city's entire bicycle economy is based upon buying your bike back from the same brown-toothed junkie two to three times a month with the same nonchalance as a transaction with your local green grocer.

The concept's somewhat solid: the tree reduces bike rack clutter and lifts your bicycle above the bolt cutters of roaming thieves. It's certainly an attractive way to store bikes. Security is a finger print scanner, which may be a design flaw: after all, those bolt cutters can just as easily be used against your waggling digits as your bike lock.

Bicycle Tree [Coroflot via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Sternreiter alarm clocks will wake (or make) the dead

Many alarm clocks have come out in the past few years, trying to get you from hitting the snooze button by requiring you to perform some act of groggy, post-oneiric dexterity (like hitting a target with a laser beam) or a teeth-grating act of pseudo-robotic annoyance (like an alarm clock that rolls off the table and goes rushing around the room, squealing).

Still, why accomplish with circuitry what you can accomplish with ear drum bursting sound? The $49.95 Sternreiter Twin-Bell alarm clock ring at a volume of over 86db. There is no snooze. You either wake up, turn it off, then vomit out your heart, or your friends find you a week later, lying in a pillow puddle of your own gelatinized brains.

Sternreiter Twin-bell Mechanical Alarm Clocks [Alarm Clocks Online via Retro Thing]

Rob Beschizza

First Mobile Internet Device to cost as much as four Eees, three iPhones, 55 peggles.

The handheld PC fail crusade just took Jerusalem! The first mobile internet device (MID) was announced to be more expensive than than the bloated, unusable ultramobile PCs for which this new class of gadget is supposed to be a cheaper, cleaner consumer replacement.

At $1,119 in Australian dollars, the M528 3G will shift at the equivalent of about $1,050 USD. UMPC Portal's updated its post already to soften the blow, reporting that it hopes it'll be only $750 when it comes to the U.S., but the rationale -- "It appears that we might have stirred the sales and marketing groups into a re-think" -- doesn't quite add up. While the point that Aussies and Europeans just get screwed on consumer electronics is true, they're putting this thing out to bat in a pricing league way over what's expected for something supposed to occupy an intermediary spot between cell phones and subnotebooks/UMPCS. It's almost as if they've chickened out on the high-volume, thin-margin model that MID seems to imply, in favor of cashing in on the buzz by trying to sneakily rebrand UMPCs, devices with a reputation for overburdened hardware and wretched battery life.

We're supposed to be reasonable about these things, but by God, how can they keep cocking it up generation after generation? The lesson of the Eee, or, indeed, the iPhone, has simply not been learned: a handheld computer should be low-priced, with limited but productive functionality, not yet another dumb run at trying to get people to pay a grand for a bloatware-crippled shit trinket.

First Intel MID pre-order/pricing. Sit down before reading. [UMPC Portal]

Joel Johnson

Instant Action, the YouTube of 3D Gaming, coming to OS X soon

"Think about the amount of graphical horsepower in your bottom-end machine these days — it's totally suitable for delivering a rich game experience," explains Mark Frohnmayer, co-founder of indie developer Garage Games. That's what they're counting on with "Instant Action," a web-based multiplayer gaming portal that offers casual gamers more than just simple puzzle games. Even lowly office computers, built to browse the web and munge a few spreadsheets, now have enough power to play 3D games — first-person shooters, racers, even flight simulators — that would have been state-of-the-art just a few years ago.

"I think Nintendo demonstrated very well that cutting-edge hardware wasn't required for delivering really awesome game experiences," Frohnmayer continues. And because Garage Games was founded to provide the inexpensive tools and support for indie developers — including the "Torque" game engine, built on work started when many of the Garage Games founders created Tribes 2 at the legendary but scuttled game company Dynamix — the company has a lot of experience squeezing good graphics out of "baseline" PC hardware.

But it's not the graphics which are most compelling about Instant Action; they are good enough to serve the gameplay, and that is that. Instead, Garage Games has built an entire social gaming platform, complete with friends lists, leaderboards (soon), simple team functions, and all the other accoutrements of a modern games delivery platform right inside the browser. If digital download services like Valve's Steam are the iTunes of the PC gaming world, then Instant Action could be the first YouTube. Players can ever cut-and-paste a simple hyperlink to be sent to their friends. Anyone who clicks the link won't just be taken to InstantAction.com; they'll be added automatically to the ongoing multiplayer match in which their friend is playing.

Unlike YouTube, however, Instant Action isn't a place to discover loads of user-generated or indie content...yet. Of the current games, all are funded in part by Garage Games. Specifics on each development deal varies, but General Manager Andy Yang explained that Garage Games is letting these hired guns retain the IP to their games, which is laudable. While the games currently available show polish — I've enjoyed quite a few sessions of the simple FPS sports shooter, Rokkitball — Yang acknowledged that the current Beta phase of Instant Action is in some ways measuring time, adding new features and stability, while waiting for the platform's first smash hit.

Like Fallen Empire: Legions, perhaps, the next game to be launched on Instant Action, currently in closed beta. A sort of "Tribes Lite," the first-person team combat game keeps the jetpacks and skiing (now "skating") from Dynamix's classic Tribes and Tribes 2, but leaves most of the tactical gameplay features behind in favor of quick matches. As a Tribes snob, I'll never be happy until someone creates a full-blown, triple-A update to my most beloved game of all time. Bearing that unhealthy bias in mind, I've found Legions to be an engaging way to wile away a few minutes here and there. It's certainly the most involved web-based game I've ever downloaded in a couple of minutes and played.

But when I'm at my Windows gaming rig, I could also be playing other PC games. It's when I'm on the road with my Mac — no Parallels or VMWare to be found — that I often wish I could kill a few minutes cursing at the inequities of hotel Wi-Fi as a cover for my poor aiming skills. Good news, then, that Instant Action should also be available on OS X in "four to six weeks," give or take. The Torque engine, which currently powers all the Instant Action games (although other engines can and will be supported), already runs on OS X. And most of the games available for the Windows version of Instant Action are almost ported to OS X. (Even though Instant Action is web-based, the engines still run as executables in the background; you can't make these sorts of 3D games with Javascript or Flash yet.)

Instant Action is currently in invite-queued beta, although more slots will be opening soon. Legions will be moving out of lockdown in the next few weeks. Like all Instant Action games so far, the basic games are free to play, with optional skins, widgets, avatars, and guaranteed server slots costing extra. (So far no gameplay affecting items are available for purchase in games and it sounds like Garage Games intends to keep it that way.)

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: What The Bible Says About Flying Saucers

Image: LP Cover Lover

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• HDMI Cable – 15-foot HDMI cable for $6, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• 5.1 Speakers – JVC 650-watt 5.1-channel home theater system for $62, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Hard Drive – The new Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10k RPM drive for $296, shipped. Just barely a deal at all, but it's new and shiny. [Dealnews]

• Headphones – Today's Woot! is a two-pack of RCA Lightweight Behind the Neck Headphones for $7, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

From rendering to reality: Asus's desktop Eee PC

Spot the difference! Granted, it's not the most flattering of photographs. But the journey from Maya to the material plane is clearly one of compromise. Engadget puts it bluntly: The Eee desktop looks "noticeably worse than the concept preceding it."

The Eee Box, as it shall be known, is still prettier than the smaller Dells and HPs. At 2.2 pounds, it has Intel's Atom CPU, a gig of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It'll run Linux, and, if they want to sell any of them, be a lot cheaper than the Mac Mini.

ASUS Eee Box B202 desktop gets pictured: we like the concept better [Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Multitouch Missile Command

Steve Mason's implementation of Atari's classic game runs on an 8x4' display and allows one to basketfuls of warheads at a time.

I wrote a Missile Command clone for the multi-touch wall at Obscura Digital. Just like the original, except you can fire by touching the wall with your fingers. Save the Golden Gate Bridge from ICBMs. Fun for the whole family!

It's incredible to watch, making the already-frenetic original look like a cakewalk. Missile Command meets bullet hell:

randomWarGamesQuotation();

Missile Command[Steve Mason via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Hardbox drive enclosure is hard, not really much like a book

It starts with a good, if precious, idea: wouldn't it be cool if we made an external hard drive that looked like a classic hardcover book?

The idea is greenlit by the powers that be, and begins its journey through the colon of product development. One by one, committees, jobsworths and other executive polyps strip it of moisture and add in "must have" features like giant, blinking LED lights, until we get to the end result:

It's like those plastic kitchens they sell to little girls. Someone should buy a bulk lot of hard drive enclosures and orphaned Britannica Great Books, find a very sharp knife, and get cutting. Restore the sense of wonder!

Product Page [Hardbox via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Shocker: TV news hacks want you to spend your rebate check on televisions

WTAE, the ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, just ran a story about people spending rebate cheques on televisions. It went from stern to drooling at record speed, with the "reporter" noting that for only a hundred dollars extra over the base model, one can "invest" in the 42" Visio model!

There are certain marketing-like words that we sometimes allow to creep into coverage--companies may unveil gadgets, boast of new features, or sport cheap crimson lipstick--but this one is just a beauty. Invest!

Rob Beschizza

Bicycles, all you need to know

Jamie Zawinski sells beer, does battle with unix derivatives and rides bicycles. He has posted to the Internet his collected wisdom regarding the latter subject.

"City bikes" and "road bikes" are designed for some Jetsons-slick hypothetical future city that I've never seen. Or maybe for the bike paths in Los Altos or something. Here in real cities, roads are shit, and if you want your wheels and tires to survive curbs and potholes, you need a hybrid. They're a little heavier and a little slower. Are you racing? No? Then you don't care.

We moved to Pittsburgh a few months ago from rural New Mexico, so have been considering the bikes: the city has a similarly compact, hilly landscape to San Franciso, from whence jwz's tips come. Reading this might just have convinced me to give it a whirl.

the collected jwz bicycle wisdom [jwz]

John Brownlee

The future of funerals: melting bodies with lye

An article on Newsvine nicely illuminates its readers on the future of corpse disposal: melted in a vat of lye into a brown, feculent sludge, then flushed down the toilet.

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest — dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.

Getting the public to accept a process that strikes some as ghastly may be the biggest challenge. Psychopaths and dictators have used acid or lye to torture or erase their victims, and legislation to make alkaline hydrolysis available to the public in New York state was branded "Hannibal Lecter's bill" in a play on the sponsor's name — Sen. Kemp Hannon — and the movie character's sadism.

This quote from a Catholic priest is priceless:

"We believe this process, which enables a portion of human remains to be flushed down a drain, to be undignified," said Patrick McGee, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester.

Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of anything more undigniified than the current funeral industry, which makes a point of bilking grieving family members with cheap caskets marked up by maudlin sentimentality and insinuating branding. You can flush me down the toilet for all I care, just as long as my widow doesn't need to decide whether or not she loved me enough to spend another $10,000 on the "Cherished Forever" casket.

New idea in mortuary science: dissolving bodies with lye [Newsvine]

Joel Johnson

Eye-Fi Explore adds geotagging and Wayport hotspots

Next to the Flip Video Ultra, the one white-and-orange geegaw that had people yapping rapturously this year has been the Eye-Fi, the SD card that added Wi-Fi to any camera. It was cheap, it worked well, and it added features that should have be de riguer in cameras for years.

Now the company has announced two models and rebranded the original as the "Eye-Fi Share." A low-end model comes in as the "Eye-Fi Home," which only works a cable replacement, not an uploading tool to photo sharing sites like Flickr.

The one most people will be picking up is the new $130 "Eye-Fi Explore," which adds geo-tagging using the same quasi-GPS that is in the iPhone and the ability to upload to your preferred photo sharing site at any one of 10,000 Wayport Wi-Fi hotspots in the US free for one year. Since there is no way to access the Eye-Fi Explore once it's in your camera, the service will send you an SMS or email once the uploads have completed.

It'd still be nice if these cards could connect to any open Wi-Fi hotspot and upload pictures automatically — a simple "I can upload" light on the back or a status JPG browsable by the camera would suffice — but for obvious reasons I understand why they don't offer that capability. Still, since I suspect the difference between the three models of Eye-Fi are simply software, not hardware, I wonder how challenging it would be for someone to write a firmware that does just that.

Press Release [Eye.fi via Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

Online encyclopedia of all Warner Bros. cartoon ACME brand products

Although exiled from memory now, there was but one name in gadgetry to be trusted from the 1930s through the 1960s: the storied and indefatigable inventing house of ACME Products. Who can forget their many technological triumphs? ACME Brand Dehydrated Boulders, which — with a single drop of water — would granoblastically engorge themselves from small pebbles? Or the ACME Brand Indestructo Steel Ball, which beat Volvo to the punch with the first nigh-invulnerable passenger vehicle? Or the patented ACME brand Instant Girl, a small capsule which, taken regularly, would fight off the loneliness of even the most introverted teenage boy? And let's not forget old stalwarts like the ACME Brand Jet Propelled Pogo Stick, the ACME Brand Iron Carrot, ACME Brand Strait-Jacketed Ejecting Bazookas and, of course, the timeless ACME Brand Giant Rubber Band.

Follow the link below to be whisked away to an online museum of ACME brand products, with links, images and descriptions detailing each and every invention in ACME's legendary arsenal of gadgets. It may be hard to imagine now, but we owe so many of our modern day tech industries to ACME's radical ingenuity. Bow your heads and usher forth to the museum of ACME with due reverence, gadget swine!

The Original Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products [Site via Oh Gizmo!]

Joel Johnson

Dave's Adjustable Hot Sauce lets you dial in the pain

Inside "Dave's Adjustable Hot Sauce" bottle are two chambers, one filled with scorching hot sauce fit only for braggarts and masochists, while the other holds a mixture barely hot enough to merit the name. Click the dial at the top to select your preferred place on the Scoville scale and then give it a press; the commingled sauce will spray out like mace all over your Mexican breakfast.

Inspired, I've created a similar product for French fries that allows you to select your preferred mixture of malt vinegar and mayonnaise. I'll release it once I figure out how to aerosolize mayonnaise, after which I'll replace the malt vinegar with more mayonnaise.

It's $10, plus shipping.

Catalog Page [DavesGourmet.Peachhost.com via Uncrate via Thrillist]

Joel Johnson

Video: Bizarre light bulb commercial from Thailand has just enough monsters

This commercial from Thailand, featuring a variety of what I presume are traditional monsters in Thai culture, is really fantastic. I can never get enough television featuring motile, glowing internal organs floating free of body but still attached to a malevolent head. Or transvestites, which are also features. And it actually makes me want to buy Sylvania lightbulbs, not because the commercial has a bit to do with the product, but just because I'd like to support a company that sanctions something this wacky.

[via Animal New York]

Joel Johnson

Why Apple isn't releasing a handheld gaming device: because they're not dumb

Apple is getting ready to launch a portable gaming device this year. Many of you already own it. It's called the iPhone.

The Register is running a rumor piece that posits that the iPhone 3G will be announced before WWDC, opening up space in the keynote for Jobs to introduce an entirely new device. This theory is based mostly on reports that inventory of current model iPhones is low. Surely this means that Apple will be announcing the iPhone 3G soon? Think of all the lost sales!

Apple has thought of the lost sales, I'm sure — sales they'll quickly make up next month if they have ample iPhone 3G stock on the shelves waiting to be slurped by shoppers. No one is going to not buy an iPhone today who wouldn't also buy a better model in a month from now (or at least not enough people to matter). Remember, WWDC is less than a month away.

The next part of the rumor follows: What would Apple announce at WWDC that would supplant the announcement of the iPhone 3G? Why a handheld gaming device, of course, since it's an entertainment market in which Apple has only dabbled. Plus, they registered some gaming trademarks in February, so surely...

Gaming is a big part of Apple's future. I said as much right after the SDK launch, as did both game and Mac developers. But there's no way Apple — just getting ready to complete its first year with its most important new product line — is going to cleave the platform in two just for to add a couple of extra buttons and a directional-pad. Anyone who thinks so has missed the sea change happening in gaming over the last few years, as casual games with simplified interfaces have become the dominant form of videogame play for many consumers.

Apple isn't going to try to fight Nintendo. They don't have to, just like Nintendo no longer has to fight Sony or Microsoft in the home console market. Instead, Apple has several million iPhone and iPod Touch customers already, each of whom will be able to download games over the air to their devices. Apple doesn't need to compete with Sony or Nintendo to grab market from them. Apple just needs to sell games to their customers. And I'm sure they're going to sell a ton, if only because it seems like every indie Mac developer out there is working on a game for the iPhone. The first Peggle on the iPhone is going to net its developer a lot of money.*

We're going to hear a lot more about Apple and gaming over the next couple of years, but it'll be the sort of backdoor success that happens when quality games are released on a device with a clever way to purchase them, not some bastard offshoot that's part iPhone, part PSP. Unless your conception of a gaming platform is something other than "a standardized handheld machine which can play games," the iPhone is a more-than-capable gaming device all by itself.

* Or, you know, actual Peggle from PopCap, which is coming.

Rob Beschizza

Japanese ciggie vending machines demand ID

Japanese tobacco-smokers must get themselves a special puffing passport if they wish to get their fix from the nation's ciggie vending machines. From Wired:

"The legal smoking age in Japan may be 20, but schoolgirls in need of a nicotine fix have always had an easy workaround: "Vending machines can't tell if you're 16," says Haruka Narazaki, a student in Osaka."

Well, now they can. But do they eye older buyers suspiciously when they grab 5 packs at once, while their banned teenage friends watch from a safe distance?

Japanese Schoolgirl Watch: Tobacco Vending Machines Block Underage Smokers [Wired via Oh Gizmo!]

Update: Our Antinous writes: "It turns out that you can fool the software by simply holding up a magazine photo of someone who fits the profile. In one case, a picture only three inches wide was enough to fool the software. I wonder if there's a black market for photos of the elderly yet." [Pink Tentacle]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Wireless Prepaid Data – AT&T is now offering all-you-can-eat data plans on its GoPhone pre-paid phone service for $20-a-month. [Dealnews]

• Kids MP3 Player – SanDisk Sansa Shaker 1GB MP3 player (expandable) for $20, shipped. I played with one of these at a friend's house this weekend and their three-year-old thought it was super cool. [Dealnews]

• Batteries and Charger – Maximal Power AA/AAA NiMH Battery Charger + 4 AA 2700mAh Batteries for $10, shipped. [Dealnews]

• LCD TV – Today's Woot! is the Digital Lifestyles 26-inch LCD HDTV for $360, shipped. 1,366-by-768 pixel native resolution. [Woot]

Joel Johnson

Hydro-4000 fuel injection device; Boing Boing Huckster Dismantling Squad: Assemble!

A device called the "Hydro-4000" claims to inject hydrogen into your car's engine, synthesized from water using power from your car, to increase the efficiency of the combustion in the chamber. A local news crew in Florida tested the device on a news truck and claimed the Hydro-4000 increased their fuel efficiency from 9.4 MPG to 23.2 MPG after a one-month road test.

But something's screwy. Look at these numbers:

Once done, we found that even with an oil change, clean air filter and proper tire pressure, we were averaging roughly 9.4 miles to the gallon.

We then ran our truck on the street for close to a month with the Hydro-4000 running. The owners said this would give the device time to clean out the engine. We then put our vehicle back on the dynamometer, and did the same test all over again.

And guess what? With the device on, we were now averaging 23.2 miles to the gallon. That's 61% better than the gas mileage we were previously getting.

We also road tested the device. There we averaged 16-point-one miles to the gallon, which is 58% better than before.

Farhad Manjoo talked to the president of Green Machine Solutions who makes the device; he's trying to get one for review.

So what's going on here, huh? I'll throw out my usual disclaimer: If these things worked as well as they claimed, why aren't they installed in cars at the factory? I wonder if it's just somehow cleaning out the injectors and bringing the vehicle more closely in line with its original capability.

Device promises to save 60% at the pump [WPTV.com] (Thanks, Mark!)

Product Page [Hydro4000.com]

Joel Johnson

Gallery of shipping container data centers

Royal Pingdom has a few images from the inside of portable data centers, the sort used by Sun and Google to drop massive computing power anywhere they can send a shipping container. I would like to hang a hammock inside and make one my new nest.

What the inside of a container data center looks like [Royal.Pingdom.com]

Previously • illy's Shipping Container Cafe [BBG]

Joel Johnson

Review: A couple of weeks using the Lenovo ThinkPad x300 notebook

The nut: The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is a no-compromise ultra-light laptop that weighs just 3.3 pounds (or less if you ditch the optical drive), but the famous ThinkPad industrial design is getting a bit long in the tooth.

What a difference just a couple of pounds can make. I regularly hold my 15-inch MacBook Pro with one hand as I carry it around, but there's always a bit of nervous mindfulness necessary. Drop two pounds, from 5.4 pounds to the Lenovo ThinkPad X300's 3.3 pounds, and suddenly moving the laptop around with one hand is no longer an exercise is risk management. There's no worry that the X300 will slip out of a sweaty grip, especially since its matte plastic surface is easier to hold than Apple's aluminum.

Unlike the MacBook Air, its closest rival, the X300 includes an optical drive and a higher resolution 1,440-by-900 pixel LED-backlit display. If weight is a factor, you could even ditch the six-cell battery for a three-cell (which is what my test unit had) and leave the optical drive out entirely, taking the weight down to 2.9 pounds. Or the best option for those who spend lots of time away from power: the six-cell internal battery coupled with an additional battery that fits into the optical drive bay.

The X300 is priced to move...into your stately manse. Depending on configuration, the X300 costs around three grand. All that engineering wasn't cheap, it seems, putting a fully kitted X300 at almost twice the price of the MacBook Air.

But the target buyer for the X300 is the same business traveler at which previous ThinkPads have been aimed. As the diesel Mercedes of the laptop world, ThinkPads have never been the low-cost option. Yet while the X300 is a marvelous bit of engineering — there's not only a touchpad but the infamous ThinkPad pointing nubbin around the full-sized, extremely typeable keyboard, for instance — the slapdash industrial design of the ThinkPad line is showing its age. The big blue Enter key, the garish diagonal "ThinkPad" logo in the lower right corner, the chintzy Windows and Intel badges, the exposed case latches when opened — all of these add up to make the X300 feel like a ThinkPad, which was of course the intention, but I can't help but question if it's time for Lenovo to start phasing out the anachronisms of the IBM era. (Their upcoming U110 laptop looks more like a modern ThinkPad than the modern ThinkPads, to my eye.)

As for a computer to take camping, the X300 is a great solution in most ways. It's light. Its built-in EVDO modem got a signal from what was probably at least a couple of miles away from the nearest tower despite no external antenna. (I'm guessing on range, be warned.) It had great battery life even with just the three-cell battery, chugging through 1xRTTT (and sometimes EVDO, depending on which way the wind was blowing) and standard web browsing, photo editing, and chatting for almost three hours. Its case, however, didn't take to being thrown in a bag along with other plastic and metal fear very well, netting several scrapes and even some chipped plastic near the front edge. That was surprising, but understandable — a properly ruggedized laptop would weigh several pounds more than an ultra-light business portable. And fortunately, it's all cosmetic.

Still, that does bring up a noteworthy point: at this size and weight, the X300 is just the sort of computer you'll want to toss into a backpack or shoulder bag without concern. (The greatest selling point of the Asus Eee is its nigh-on disposable nature.) But at three large, the X300 costs too much to be handled roughly. You'll want to keep it in a soft wrap or separate compartment, typical care-and-feeding for larger laptops, but a bit of a disappointment for something this lightweight.

A couple of final thoughts: The built-in Verizon EVDO modem worked well — I especially liked Verizon's decision to activate the EVDO without a subscription to allow remote sign-up for service — but I wonder why Verizon still hasn't implemented a day- or week-long pass for a fee. Well, I know why: the want subscription money, still caught up in the cellphone model. But for integrated EVDO modems that can't be transferred to other devices, I don't feel comfortable signing up for two-year contracts. Instead, Verizon should offer a reasonably priced pass system that lets mobile users buy a day or a week at a time. I'd gladly spend $30 for a week of EVDO service each time I went on a trip rather than buying Wi-Fi service piecemeal.

Perhaps my favorite feature of the X300 is one that won't matter to most: its screen can be cocked back flat [pictured!], making it possible to put the keyboard on your keys while lying in bed but still face the screen head on. I wish all laptop manufacturers would add a few more degrees of incline to their designs. It really gives you quite a bit more freedom in how you hold and use the laptop, which makes moving around and staying comfortable much easier over long computing sessions.

John Brownlee

Squirt files between iPods with miShare

If the Zune ever had a killer feature, it was its ability to squirt an audio file from one Zune to another effortlessly. Unfortunately, it was a killer feature utterly squandered by the addition of DRM. Enter miShare, a less elegant $99 solution for iPods, allowing you to easily squirt a song from one iPod to another.

The miShare is a dongle with two dock connectors: you simply select the iPods to the donor and receiver ports, select the song you want to transfer on the donor iPod, push a button and it squirts onto the other iPod. Even neater: you can exchange DRM-encrypted files, which will simply sit on your iPod's disk area, unlockable with your iTunes password when you hook your iPod up to your computer.

The big Achilles heel here is transfer speed: miShare can transfern songs at about 500kb/s, which is slow enough to make transferring the entire contents of a 160GB iPod collection completely impractical. However, it is fast enough to transfer a few tracks in a minute, which seems like a good compromise between the conscionable and convenient.

MiShare [Official Site via Slashgear]

Rob Beschizza

Claim: business suit protects wearer from phone radiation

A tailor is making a suit that will protect you from cellphone broadcasts. Electromagnetic sensitives rejoice: hucksters are treating your condition as an opportunity! You know you've arrived when, eh?

"Clothing company Remus has cut a gents' suit with an interwoven metal frame that’s claimed to reflect Bluetooth and mobile phone radiation, despite the jury still being undecided about the dangers such signals may or may not pose to our grey matter.

However, a spokesman at one of the suit’s stockists told Register Hardware that the so-called E-Blocker suit doesn’t mean the wearer’s mobile phone reception will be hampered. He said that the suit is “purely designed to stop any potential radiation” and is suitable for “someone who’s a little sceptical about the risk of such rays”."

So, let's get this straight. Firstly, we are to accept that "phone radiation"—radio waves, in other words—is dangerous. Then we are to accept that this E-Blocker suit and its weasel-worded marketing will protect you from it, even when you're using your own cellphone. Doesn't accepting the former as a fact only make the latter proposal seem doubly ludicrous? Unless they make it like the one in the photo here, of course, from the photoset of "Mr. Rubber Bear."

Product Page [Douglas and Grahame via Reg]

Joel Johnson

JVC and Kenwood to merge

Quoth Reuters:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese electronics makers JVC (6792.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Kenwood Corp (6765.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday they would merge under a holding company on October 1 to fight fierce price competition and growing costs of product development.

But the new entity would still fall far behind some of its rivals in size as combined sales of the two companies totaled 823.7 billion yen ($8 billion) in the year ended March 31, or less than one-tenth of Panasonic maker Matsushita's (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research) 9 trillion yen.

JVC, Kenwood to merge under holding company [Reuters]

Rob Beschizza

AT&T wants $100 more for pre-paid extra handset if you're already a customer

In a single, perfectly-shaped act, AT&T proves that cell phone contracts are treated by operators simply as debts to collect. After the initial point of sale, you're just a delinquent lendee that owes them $2,000 or so over 24 months. From the Consumerist:

"Reader Dan writes in to tell us about an AT&T store that wouldn't sell him a phone because he was already an AT&T customer. ... it's strange that the store would be under impression that current customers have to pay more for a product. Isn't that a little counterintuitive?"

They've already got him under a contract. The purpose of pre-paid phones is to get people into contracts later on—a proposition that would explain the credit checks when you buy them. This is why existing customers always pay more for the goodies than do customers yet to be. They calculate that we won't choose the inconvenience of leaving, and that they can therefore squeeze us and drink all our brandy.

AT&T Customer? No Go Phone For You! [Consumerist]

Joel Johnson

Review: A few days in the woods with the Brunton Solaris 52 solar panel and Solo 15 battery

The nut: The Brunton Solaris 52 is a big panel in a small package — at least when it's folded up — but you'll want a good battery like the Brunton Solo 15 to go with it in most situations, which affects the overall portability — and price.

For backpacking, the Brunton Solaris 52 isn't too big; the flexible solar panel array folds down into a pack that's only 11-inches wide, about the size and heft of a college textbook. And unlike most portable solar panels, the Solaris 52 can power big hardware — even laptops — provided it's getting enough sunlight to convert into DC power.

If you were only going to use the Solaris 52 for emergency back-up power, it would do its duty ably, outputting to a standard 12-volt car charger plug, one of four DC input tips (check your device's rating, of course!) or the included car battery clamps. But if you're relying exclusively on the Solaris 52 to power your devices (like I did when I took the gear into the woods), I'd suggest pairing the solar panel with a battery like Brunton's own Solo 15. Charging up a battery which in turn charges your devices allows you to keep the backup battery topped up while using your devices elsewhere, continue to draw power at night, and charge devices that need a more wattage than the panel can provide on a overcast day.

Then again, adding a battery adds more weight: four pounds in the case of the $650 Solo 15, added to the already wincingly prohibitive $1,300 price of the Solaris 52. But this sort of gear isn't for the casual backpacker who wants to top up their iPod battery — there are plenty of cheaper solutions for that, including units from Brunton themselves. Instead, this level of gear is for people who intend to spend serious time away from the grid with relatively serious hardware.

Just don't plug the Solo 15's DC-to-AC inverter directly into the Solaris 52's 12-volt output or you might get the same puff of smoke that I did. (To its credit, the inverter still worked!)

The Solo 15 unit I tested was a pre-release unit, but there was one annoying flaw that I hope the company will address before shipping: the charge indicator on the front of the battery seemed finicky, sometimes showing a full charge when the button was pressed, other times not showing anything at all. Worse, the three stage LEDs — three for full, down to one for empty — seemed to skip the middle LED almost completely, going from full- to low-power in just an instant. Rechargeable batteries are by nature finicky bags of chemicals, so be sure to follow best charging practices to squeeze the rated 12 amp hours out of the Solo 15.

The Solo 15 comes with the same adapters as the Solaris 52, as well as an AC input, making it possible — and recommended — to top its reserves off at a power outlet before setting off to rely exclusively on the sun's generosity.

Joel Johnson

Canonical: #boingboing IRC chat room

The network is Freenode (chat.freenode.net), while our room is #boingboing.

To connect you'll need an "IRC Client," dozens of which are available for almost every computing platform, including mIRC, Trillian, and X-Chat 2 for Windows; X-Chat Aqua and Colloquy on OS X; and IRSSI and other favorites on Linux and other UNIXish environments. You can also use the Chatzilla plug-in for Firefox or simply use the Freenode java applet to connect.

To register your nickname, which gives you the ability to send private messages and reserve your name from use by others, type "/msg NickServ register [choose a password]" when connected to the Freenode server. Don't share your password with anyone!

To wonder if IRC is an antiquated old protocol far past its prime, consider that Douglas Rushkoff was lamenting its death in '96. Boing Boing Gadgets loves to serve you Yesterday's Future Today!

John Brownlee

Alcatel's Playboy phone not even good for masturbators

The Internet is so successful as a pornography distribution system that even the once venerable Playboy must expand its brand to include lingerie, t-shirts, plastic training potties and, now, cell phones.

Alcatel's OT-V770A is a shoddy little device, branded with the ubiquitous silhouetted bunny. The specs are appalling: a 1.3 megapixel camera and 10MB of onboard memory, expandable by microSD. But features aren't what Alcatel are banking on to sell this thing: it's the pre-loaded images of Playboy playmates included on the device.

There probably is a cell phone market for obsessive-compulsive masturbators and pornography enthusiasts. Certainly, the iPhone allows you instant access to the Internet's Borges-esque library of infinitely sub-fetishistic pornography, no matter where you are. But even that committed pervert would probably balk at surfing his porn on a 200 pixel screen. The clitoral pink color scheme probably doesn't help any either. But at least any young girls who pick this phone up will have a library of appropriate body-image role models to choose as wallpapers from the get-go!

Is That A Playboy Mobile In Your Pocket? [Pocket Picks]

John Brownlee

Proporta Crystal Case for the Asus Eee

Laptop case makers Proporta have developed a case for the Asus Eee PC. Constructed of shatter proof and shock-absorbent polycarbonate plastic, the Eee Crystal Case has a secure closure catch and a 360-degree double hinge, which allows you to open the Eee at any angle. For me, though, I see little point in vigorously protecting an Eee: it already comes with a little fabric case, and the entire idea is to just be able to have a tiny, cheap laptop you can sling around and not really worry about breaking or having stolen. It also only comes in clear ("ideal for use with GPS navigation" claims the website, though I wasn't aware that the Eee had GPS) which won't help you camouflage your Eee's garish white default casing. If only it came in whore red!

Asus Eee PC Series Crystal Case [Proporta]

John Brownlee

Again and Again: The OS X desktop as music video

Digital filmmaker Dennis Liu has produced a video for the The Bird and the Bee's lovely single "Again and Again," in which the lyrics, melody and vocals unspool in surprising ways across his Mac's desktop in a beautiful visual harmony... ending in an artfully delightful pimping of the band in question that makes buying the track on iTunes almost hypnotically compulsory.

This is the sort of video that would drive you mad if you had to experience it endlessly looped on the big screen of your local Apple store, yet Liu's film is far, far more brilliant and joyful and effective than any ad campaign Apple's ever done... a wonderful zen fusion between one filmmaker's uncynical enthusiasm for his platform of choice and an adorable little pop song.

John Brownlee

Run as you cycle with the Treadmill Bike

I love novelty velocipedes, and so I've already developed a fondness for this Treadmill Bike for sale from Bike Forest. It's stupidly impractical and inefficient, but it makes up for that with goofy charm: the video on the official site touts "you can bring it on the bus" as a major feature, yet cuts away just as the handle bars smack into the door frame. Another bullet points out that you are unlikely to be transformed into a gelatinous smear by an SUV while riding the Treadmill Bike, since "the Treadmill Bike's elevated running platform means you'll be seen over the hood of even the most heinously overbuilt motor vehicle." Goofy charm only goes so far, though: I'm not sure that it's worth $2,500 Canadian to be the biggest doofus on the bike path.

Treadmill Bike [Bike Forest via Gizmowatch]

John Brownlee

The Botanical Twitter Kit is a sound machine for your plant

The Sound Machine — one of Roald Dahl's earlier science fiction stories — is about an inventor named Krauser who builds a device that translates higher frequency noise into audible sound. It has an unexpected secondary effect: the sound machine allows its inventor to hear the screams of vegetation as they are trampled, eaten and cut. Krauser quickly goes mad, as one does.

On the other hand, Adafruit's Botanical Twitter Kit will convert your house plant's biometric readings into Twitter posts. It uses moisture sensors to detect your plant's well-being, then connects to Twitter via Ethernet jack to send surprisingly human-like messages about the excruciating minutiae of your plant's boring, sedentary life. Tweets about how much water it just had to drink, or what the weather's like, or rhetorical questions about the location of a missing sock, or unexplained links followed by a string of unilluminating LOLs.

Yes, just like Roald Dahl's short story, the Adafruit Botanical Twitter Kit will drive you mad. But if you're the sort of person who wants to subscribe to the flotsam thoughts of a house plant and pay $160 to do so, chances are you already were.

Adafruit [Official Site via MAKE]

John Brownlee

For the modern-day Berkowitz, the WowWee Chatterbot