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

Meet the WowWee Chatterbot, a USB-powered hound from Phlegethon in the cheap plastic guise of a talking desktop companion. With azure eyes as blue as the ice of Cocytus, he stares into your soul. As you type, he reminds you! He reminds you in a voice that echoes with the screams of panderers and pimps... reminds you of painted lips and school girl outfits and the pretty, pretty hair... the hair that must be punished! Start doing his bidding. You are the Hand chosen by the Master. You are the Spear of Blood. Yours is the Sword of Michael. You are the one filthy with wrath and lust and sin. And in the end, you know you must obey. For the WowWee Chatterbot is a thirsty lad, and he will not stop until he gets his belly full of blood.

PC and Mac compatible. Only $49.99!

Chatterbots Online [Official Site via Slashgear]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Let Them Eat Cakewalk

Image: Merrrxvii

Rob Beschizza

New E-Ink cells offer curved pixels, any-shape displays

E-Ink's newest segmented display cells are 40 percent thinner and may be cut to any desired shape. The first device to feature them is a wireless key fob from Delphi.

The SDC products are simple digit, icon and alpha-numeric displays, offering exceptional readability in a paper-thin form factor that uses minimal battery power. The new SDCs are 40% thinner with a wider operational temperature range and increased flexibility for repetitive 3-D bends or 2-D conformable solutions. Applications include consumer electronics, PC-accessory, display smartcards, capacity indicators, electronic shelf labels, signage and communications applications. The SDC displays use the same E Ink Vizplex™ technology that is shipping in popular electronic book devices such as the Amazon Kindle, SONY Reader and iRex iLiad.

This sounded radical until I remembered all those old-skool LCD watches, and those handheld games where the crystal elements were shaped like a race car or a karate man.

Press Release [E-Ink via Electronista via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Woman logs into stolen laptop, shoots pics of thief

A New York woman used .Mac's Back to my Mac remote login feature to take shots of the man who stole her laptop.

Duplaga immediately signed on to another Macintosh computer and, using a feature called “Back to My Mac,” was able to gain access to her missing laptop remotely. She could see that that the person who had her computer was shopping for beds, Mr. Jackson said. Then it occurred to her that she could activate a camera on her laptop and watch the thief live.

At first, the photo application revealed only a smoky room and an empty chair, Mr. Jackson said, but then a man sat down. Ms. Duplaga, again using remote technology, typed in the command to snap a photo. “When you take a picture with that computer, it shows a countdown, and when it does, this guy figures out what’s going on,” Mr. Jackson said. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture.”

Edmon Shahikian, 23, of Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, of the Bronx, were arrested and charged with being completely stupid.

Stolen Laptop Helps Turn Tables on Suspects [NY Times]

Joel Johnson

25-year-old BSD bug finally squashed

From OS NewsA few days ago, Marc Balmer, OpenBSD developer, received an email from an OpenBSD user. The email claimed that SAMBA would crash when serving files off an MS-DOS filesystem. Balmer got into contact with a few SAMBA developers who claimed that SAMBA uses a special workaround in order to function properly on BSD systems: the code for reading directories in all BSDs was flawed.
Understandably, Balmer's first reaction was disbelief. "Of course my first reaction was to blame Samba," he writes. Despite his initial reaction, he decided to dig deeper into this case, and he uncovered a bug that had been sitting in the code of all BSDs (including Mac OS X), including a lot of old releases. He confirmed the bug was already in 4.2BSD, released in August of 1983.

The 25 Year Old BSD Bug [OS News]