Joel Johnson

Flying dildo drone says: Loose lips won't sink ships

Noah Shachtman reports on the "Voyeur" drone, a 27-inch flying drone designed to protect our ships at sea.

Drone-maker Lite Machines is working on a similar machine for land-spying. And the company informs us that the Voyeur boasts "near-silent operation" and can be "hand-launched," as well. Two useful qualities, no matter what the gadget's final purpose.

Video: Marital Aid... or Navy Spy Drone? [Danger Room]

John Brownlee

Retro Famicom business card holders

The picture's terrible — a photograph taken through a lens slathered in Vaseline by a half-blind astigamtic — but even in colored blob form, these Nintendo NES Business Card Holders are pretty neat. The holders themselves are based on old-school Famicom cartridge templates such as Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Ice Climber or Balloon Fight. At $8.80 a piece, this is the swankest way to signal your retro-gaming cred to a group of potential clients without shaking their hands with a PowerGlove.

Nintendo NES Business Card Holder [Game Asylum via Nerd Approved]

John Brownlee

ASUS' new MATRIX GPUs are like (but not to be confused with) The Matrix

This may be the strangest wording I've ever seen in a press release. From the $10-per-hour corporate copy monkeys of ASUS' PR department, to announce their new MATRIX series of graphics cards:

Taipei, Taiwan, June 26, 2008 – ASUS, producer of top quality graphic solutions, has today introduced the world's most intelligent graphics card with the ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) EN9600GT MATRIX/HTDI/512M. Much like a sci-fi movie where the protagonists can do just about anything, the ROG MATRIX Series will allow gamers to unleash the true power of graphics cards.

What sci-fi movie could they possibly be talking about? It couldn't be the popular sci-fi movie, The Matrix, could it? Don't be shy about saying so, ASUS: you already liked the movie enough to name your video card after it!

This is the sort of awkward, ugly wording that spurts its way, undigested, out of a company's public relations colon when the directive from the top is, "Try to tie our new product into the Matrix, but in such a way it doesn't honk off the licensing attorneys at Warner Bros."

Weirdly, this isn't the first time I've encountered this. In the excellent exergaming title Yourself! Fitness, one of the locations you can choose to work out in is a dojo. If you choose it, Maya — your plucky virtual trainer — remarks, "I love working out here. It always reminds me of that scene from that sci-fi movie. YOU KNOW the one I mean." Warner Brothers' legal team apparently causes bladder-evacuating terror across multiple industries.

Image: BESCHIZZA!

ASUS Launches World's Most Intelligent Graphics Card [Far East Gizmos]

Joel Johnson

Cartivision: '70s home tape system had physical DRM

Dan Rutter has a wonderful retrospective on the first wave of home video recording systems, casting his wistful eye on 1972 and the launch of the "Cartivision." Like all dabbling attempts to release media, it appears that Cartivision also had their own corny proto-DRM scheme in place that contributed at least in part to its quick demise.

But if you wanted actual cinematic films, you could only rent them.

This, by itself, was not a disaster. Movie rental turned out to be a huge business, and Cartridge Television were the first to do it.

But because Embassy Pictures were in the movie business, they saw absolutely no reason to let people who rented a movie on Cartrivision watch it more than once.

So movies came on special tapes, which could not be rewound. Well, not without the special machine they kept back at Rental H.Q., anyway.

Meet the new DRM, same as the old DRM [Dan's Data]

Image: Cartivision Site

John Brownlee

Gallery of retro German cameras, sawn-in-half

Wired's notorious Charlie Sorrel — who was the only one of us who managed to bicycle home from boozing on Friday night without being detained and breathalyzed by German police officers — nursed his weekend hangover in a most wonderful way: he spent all day Saturday at the Deutshes Technikmuseum Berlin, photographing the many magnificent specimens of retro German cameras that were on display, thoroughly vivisected.

He also encountered a staircase for horses. I suppose this is the sort of productive weekend a gadget blogger in Berlin can have when he's not huddled in the corner of a Prenzlauerberg drunk tank, shaking in fear and silently dry retching. I hate you, Charlie.

Gallery of Sawn-in-Half Cameras [Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Ex-EA exec founds iPhone gaming publisher 'Ngmoco'

When news that "longtime" Electronic Arts' employee Neil Young had left the videogame giant, there was little speculation about where he'd end up. It turns out he's formed his own new company, the gutturally named "Ngmoco," a mobile gaming producer that intends to publish games exclusively for the iPhone — and from the sound of this interview on Gamasutra, probably other top-shelf mobile platforms like Google's Android.

Can you tell me a little bit about your new venture?

Neil Young: Sure. I'm leaving EA to found a new type of mobile games publisher that is specifically focused on games for the iPhone and beyond -- that class of mobile phone, a more open mobile platform that has the type of capability you see in a device like the iPhone.

NY: I should be clear. I don't think that taking games that would look good on the PSP and then moving them onto the iPhone is the right strategy. I think that the great leader in this particular space has been Nintendo. What Nintendo does better than any other company is build hardware that has specific features that can be serviced well in games.

Q&A: EA Vet Young Reveals iPhone Publisher Ngmoco [Gamasutra via Waxy]

Rob Beschizza

Time Harp gurgles its way to musical genius

The slurping dissonance of Larnie Fox's Time Harp is the antidote for Omer Yosha's Air Piano. Whereas that instrument produces notes of sylphid and sublime beauty on diatonic scales, this thing sounds like the workings of a randomly-generated digestive system.

Photo set [Flickr via Make]

Rob Beschizza

AirPiano strikes an ethereal note

In the grim meatclef future, where it is illegal to operate a musical instrument, the semi-legal AirPiano will be song's final hope. By hovering one's fingers lightly above the device's flat, IR-sensing surface, no note is actually plucked; and yet sound appears, as if conjured into life by angels. Or designer Omer Yosha.

Above the AirPiano is a virtual matrix of keys and faders, each assigned with MIDI messages and ready to be triggered. The length of a triggered note is equivalent to the time a hand is placed on the corresponding virtual key. This is also confirmed by LED feedback.

The AirPiano Software allows easy setup, loading/saving presets and transposing notes.

See the product page for more examples of what it can do, including control of MIDI software like Ableton Live.

Product Page [Air Piano]

airpiano: touch free ir piano [Hack a Day via Engadget ]

John Brownlee

WowWee Elvis Robot becomes T-800 Elvinator

WowWee makes many fun robots of limited but clever articulation and affordable price. It's a cool company, but ultimately, the novelty of a singing Elvis robot wears out about just as fast as one of those Wal-Mart brand singing mackerels.

To re-inject some fun into a gag gift that had long been played out, Instructables user GWJax took a blowtorch to one side of his Elvis' robot's rubbery mug, fitted it with a glowing red LED eyes, and thus the Elvinator was born.

Eventually, the Elvinator will have his own Skynet-issue "brain board" and a custom jaw piston to allow Austrian body builder style robotic elocution. Awesome.

The Elvinator [Instructables]

Joel Johnson

Turn your Garmin Nüvi GPS into GLaDOS from Portal

An enterprising hacker has developed "GLaGPS", a voice pack for the Garmin Nüvi navigation system that replaces the stock turn-by-turn voice with that of GLaDOS from the hit videogame Portal. It's a free download. The creator is not liable for any directions that end with your car being incinerated.

Project Page [GLaGPS.vansmiddlesworth.org via Engadget]

Previously • Portal Theme on 8080 Computer with C64 Sound and Assembler Source
• Portal in LEGO
• Portal Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft
• Rule 34: Portal Edition
• Portal Writer Erik Wolpaw Interviewed
• Jonathan Coulton on Writing Portal's End Theme
• Portal Papercraft
• Novint ties-in wacky Falcon gaming peripheral with GLaDOS

Rob Beschizza

The Ladybug of Unexpected Utility

This charming ladybug has a memory card reader, flash memory, USB charger, an LED flashlight and a counterfeit money detector.

One imagines an uneasy silence in Project Ladybug's coffee-filled conference room. A junior executive stands up, thumps her hand on the table and yells "No! There is no intuitive human interface objective that 'Ladybird' may represent! Let's just put in everything!"

According to the product page, it sports "Duel intellect charging." A portable walrus-cleaning upgrade kit will be made available by 2010.

Product Page [Sourcingmap via Crave]

Joel Johnson

Video: Homemade Chinese autogyro

The "shanzhai huaxiangji" is a homemade autogyro created by a Chinese farmer. Kottke said there was so doubt as to whether or not this was a real creation, but unless someone is going through a lot of trouble to create a hoax, this video would imply that it's the real deal. Now I hope someone make a kit version!

John Brownlee

Gigeresque Aliens car mod

This silver-toothed xenomorph mod job done by a group of energetic sci-fi roughs from Krasnoyarsk, Russia is ready to hit the road at 90mph and chestburst right through the passenger cage of that dinky little hybrid you bought to impress your girlfriend. Why are all the coolest modders from Russia? A hereto unknown physical law of the universe. or a powerful argument for the benefits of low-level background radiation on the creative cortex of the human brain? One suggestion: GPS unit that says "Stay on target! Stay on target!"

Behold, the (alien) queen of the road [DVICE]

Joel Johnson

Twemco classic flip clocks

Let's get the cheap shots out of the way first: I love that Hong Kong clockmaker Twemco thinks of us all as "treasure customers." And arguably their clocks are like jewels: clean, hard-edged classics that would complement nearly any decor. For over 30 years the design of Twemco's mechanical flip clocks has stayed the same on the outside, but inside the newest models include atomic accuracy.

Getting a Twemco might be a bit of a hassle, though. I can't find any retail outlets that advertise them, leaving contacting the company for a direct order as the only option. (And they appear to only want to sell in bulk.) However there are several older, used models on eBay.

Company page [Twemco.com via Oh Gizmo! via Apartment Therapy]

John Brownlee

"Explosion containment net" patent also good against hippies

Behold, a filthy hippie. Visible smell waves oscillate off of him, offending the sensitive, mucus-soaked nasal capillaries of all who stand downwind. One grubby hand is extended in a placating gesture of love... a message turned even more loathsome by the smear of excremental filth caked to the blade of his outstretched palm. The hippie shouts wildly about the murky, omnipresent Man... the corporations, the politicians, the baby killers who prevent all of mankind from sloppily colliding in an orgiastic rut of granola, pot and unshaven armpits. Everyone hates him.

But say you're the murky, omnipresent Man who is duty-bound to exile him to certain mid-west detainment camps. You've got a problem: how best to oppress this hippie without letting him touch you? This hippie containment net — first dreamed up and patented under the Nixon administration, then cleverly re-marketed as an "explosion containment net" after September 11th — solves the problem with deft engineering. Cram this in your bong hole, Cheech. The good citizens of America want to hear nothing of your disgusting "peace" and "love."

Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents [Neatorama]

Rob Beschizza

Today Show's gadgets of tomorrow

I'm watching the Today show, which is running through a selection of "Appliances of the Future."

First up was a $700 doorbell, which has an intercom built-in. Then there was a $1,200 microwave which could cook entire turkeys. Third up: a $430 water filter that has "five filters" for extra contaminant-removal.

Too expensive? How about a $150 plug socket hooked up to the internet, so that you may turn the appliance thusly attached on or off with a text message?

Welcome to the future.

Joel Johnson

Vestal grenade watch for urban Rambos

Incorporating military fashion into your wardrobe is fine by me — I'm a fan of Eastern European army surplus myself, although it's next-to-impossible to find anything approaching "discount" here in New York — but it can certainly be taken too far. Strapping a grenade to your wrist, for example.

These watches by Vestal have a flip-up front that reveals the face, but sadly do not include an alarm which blows the wrist of the wearer clean off. They're $125 and ghastly.

vestal grenade watch: somebody pulled the pin! [Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

Sound Chaser dashes along record fragments, making mad music

There is the Unicorn Chaser: after posting a particularly horrifying example of the Internet's myriad wonders, Boing Boing follows it with a relaxing picture of a unicorn. Perhaps the Sound Chaser, a tiny wheeled device that runs along fragments of vinyl albums assembled into a giant Scalextric track, could be our equivalent here at BBG: playing broken-up segments of the Unico theme tune after every post on the latest iPhone knockoff.

Sound Chaser [Yurisuzuki via MAKE]

Joel Johnson

Party-A-CarGo is a kegerator for your trailer hitch

While we may all have our own opinions on gas prices, global warming, and the safety of large vehicles, I think we can all agree that trucks and SUVs would be a lot more acceptable if they dispensed draught beer from their tailpipes. Until some genius develops an engine that runs on the bubbling gas emitted by fermenting barley, the "Party-A-CarGo" remains our best option. Place the steel and aluminum box on your tail hitch, slap in a standard beer keg, turn the speakers to any type of rock that you please and kick back in your most scenic parking lot for up to 12 hours.

The only thing missing is the autopilot.

The Party-A-CarGo tail gating system is available in a variety of configurations, including models with TVs or iPod docks integrated into the sound system. The actual ordering page at the manufacturer's site is down, but according to TailgatingIdeas.com – who sells the Party-A-CarGo with the charming line "If you can’t round up some random poon with this on the back of your vehicle, you will probably remain celibate for the rest of your life." — these things cost around $3,000, give or take a few hundred depending on how you configure the stereo.

Product Page [PartyACargo.com]

John Brownlee

Invader Zim's GIR recreated in metal and LEDs

Invader Zim's piggy-loving, waffle-eating robot, GIR... recreated in loving detail by a crackerjack team of metal welders and hackers. Only the head is functional right now, which can switch between glowing-blue-eyed regular mode and psychotic-red duty mode, but I hope when the full project is done we will see a fully functional GIR unit, dressed up in a zippered dog costume, and sucking on a chocolate bubble gum slurpee.

RoboGir [Official Site via Hack-A-Day]

John Brownlee

MSI Wind hacked to run Leopard

While endless Eee-caliber mini-notebooks tumble to market, most looking like tiny idiot clones of the iBook, the question remains when Apple will jump into the fray. The answer, for various reasons, is probably never, or optimistically "no time soon." But the good news for Mac fans is that the trusty MSI Wind — currently the best-of-breed in the mini-note pageant — can apparently be hacked fairly easily to run OS X. This isn't so unusual, and the usual trouble spots remain: resolution and WiFi aren't adjustable yet. But with so much progress made on getting Leopard running before the Wind is officially released, MSI's little 10-incher is looking like a good investment for the OS X aficionado.

OS X on MSI Wind [Insanely Mac]

Joel Johnson

DIY: Headphone amp in a CD-ROM drive

Not that there is anything at all wrong with having a headphone amplifier prominently and obviously displayed on your desk, you may in fact work in an environment where leaving such a bit of easily pocketed hardware about is dangerous. (Okay, that's not very likely, but I'm trying.) Reader Gio Militano sent in his own DIY project to share, in which an out-of-work external CD-ROM drive is converted into a homebrew headphone amplifier that blends in to the beige boxes around your desk.

DIY CLASS A MOSFET HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER [DIYAudioProjects.com]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Firefly DVD – Complete series of Firefly for $17 on Amazon. [Slickdeals]

• Earbuds – Lenntek Sonix HD earbuds for $25, shipped, at Costco.com. $1.25 more for non-members. [Dealnews]

• Rechargeable Batteries – 20-pack of 2600mAh NiMH batteries plus a basic charger for $21, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Gyro Mouse – Today's Woot! is the Gyration GyroTransport Air Mouse with 1GB USB Drive for $45, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

Overclock your Mac Pro

Some of us own Macs so that we may compute in peace, away from the old world of tweaking unstable monster gaming PCs. Get back off the wagon with this Mac overclocking utility from ZDNet. Soon, there will doubtless be benchmarking software too, so that human-imperceptible performance differentials may be measured.

It's also a bit amusing how ZDNet reports something it did as an "exclusive." If you didn't get the exclusive, guys, something would have been very wrong.

Exclusive: ZDNet overclocking tool enhances performance of Mac Pro via Gadget Lab

John Brownlee

Updated: Come play Diablo II with Boing Boing Gadgets on Battle.net

To celebrate the triumphant announcement of Blizzard's Diablo 3, I'm going to spend the rest of the evening lazily sweeping my mouse icon across hordes of the undead and breezily gelatinating them. Which is to say, I will be jumping onto Battle.net to play Diablo II. Right now.

Want to come play with me? Sure you do. Diablo II is one of the most addictive multiplayer games of all time. After seeing that trailer, you're sure to have the itch. I'll start a game called BBG on US East US West Ladder, password BBG. If you've still got Diablo II, just jump on in. If that game fills up, I invite you to start up bbg2/bbg, and so on. Any game that starts with bbg will be a Boing Boing Gadgets game.

Hope to see a cluster of able warriors in-game. The loot really does improve the more people there are playing.

Update: Joel has been convinced to sell a couple fillings and buy the game, so we're going to play in a couple hours. Rob may be convinced to come along too. If you want to buy the game, you can get it as a digital download from Blizzard's site. You need to get both the core game and expansion for the digital downloads, not the Battle Chest. Hope to see you guys then!

Update 2: Blizzard's having some issues with propogating new CD keys to US East, so we're moving to US West. And we're going in now!

Rob Beschizza

Rubik hacks

Just one example from a stupendous gallery assembled by Dark Roasted Blend.

Geekiest LEGOs and Rubik Cubes

Rob Beschizza

Recently at Rock Paper Shotgun

In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in bristling, multikilling armaments.

Diablo III Announced
Yeah, Blizzard finally did it! See the coverage and the trailer!

Exclusive Multiwinia Preview
Forget grindfeasts like Age of Conan; try something awe-inspiring, like Multiwinia. "I’m going to yabber on at length, as I Know Things You Don’t Know," Kieron says.

Eurogamer: Mythos
Alec Meer previews Flagship Studios' cute-looking fantasy action-RPG: "There’s quite the chance it’ll absolutely massive. Find out a bit more about it, and how it’s changed dramatically in the last few weeks.."

Twenty Minutes Of Far Cry 2
Oblivion with guns? Mix a sunny African locale, an FPS worth playing and plenty of freeform wandering, and we get Far Cry 2. Rossignol asks: "Game of the year, anyone?"

Barnett on Games Journalism
EA Mythic's creative director lets it all out in an interview with Kieron. "Someone will offer you money. That’ll be the end of you."

Carmack: “Quake III was my personal favorite”
Carmack preferred the third installation; mine was the one called "Unreal Tournament."

The King of Limbo-oooooh!
If you've been following the background-swiping imbroglio around Limbo of the Lost, you'll be delighted to find that someone played through the whole thing. Past this link you can watch the ending video. "It's quite the thing," writes KG.

John Brownlee

Jack Black Beard Lube

It gets cold in the great Alaskan forests. So cold that death feels warm. Cold does thing to a man: it pents up passions, creeps down hair follicles, makes the skin itch. It saps and drains. Even the most manly man — the lumberjack — must sometimes resort... on those bleak winter nights, as the frosty wind howls about him... to curling up into a fetal position to conserve warmth. Then, lubing up his great, bristly beard, he keeps it warm by cramming it deep up nature's pocket. Jack Black Beard Lube. Fifteen bucks a bottle. Transparent. Won't make a mess.

Jack Black Beard Lube [Amazon via Uncrate]

Joel Johnson

Hallmark eschews goofy battery in lovely new hand-cranked greeting cards

Paging Mark Frauenfelder: You're going to love these new hand-cranked motion-and-sound greeting cards from Hallmark. (I think I love them, too! Someone needs to shoot us a video of one in action.)

Animated Automata Greeting Cards with Sound [DugNorth.com]

Update: Wayne "Mas90Guru" Schulz from Gear Diary has a video!

John Brownlee

DIY anti-CCTV glasses

These easy-to-make glasses use infra-red LEDs to obscure your face from cameras... and, perhaps most usefully, from ubiquitous CCTV observation. This is going to the top of our list of things to make Cory for his birthday.

Anti-Paparazzi Sunglasses [Metacafe via Red Ferret]

Joel Johnson

Book: 'LEGO for Adults' full of brick-shooting weapons

We received this pitch and could not resist passing it on:

My name is Martin Hüdepohl, I am a 27 years old designer from germany, and I would like to introduce you to my just-released book "LEGO for ADULTS".

It's the first construction manual for real fun-to-shoot Lego weapons.

It also introduces a completely new type of small arms: the slide-action magazine-fed crossbow pistol!

Catalog Page [Amazon]

John Brownlee

The Choprical Fish human-powered party bike

Sound familiar? A well-cultivated hipster takes his reggae-blaring party bicycle to the streets, to be surrounded at every street corner by the common man of the streets... all of whom drop their 40s in ecological outrage when they discover the music isn't actually human powered. And then it gets ugly. A perfectly greased coiffureage is mussed. A meticulously cultivated sideburn is knocked akimbo. A designer leather jacket is torn around the cuff. And so on.

An ugly, desperate scene. It's a common danger facing the humanitarian hipster trying to bring music to the people. The Choprical Fish, designed by well-known humanitarian Paul "Fossil Fool" Freedman, is a nice attempt to eliminate the problem by adding a battery-powered iPod to the roving party bike. Look at how delighted the plebiscite are in their totally spontaneous outpourings of rhythmic enthusiasm!

The Human Powered Party Bike [Hack 'N' Mod]

Joel Johnson

Unsurprisingly, the Venture Bros. love mid-century modern chairs

The sharp, tasteful eyes at Apartment Therapy have noticed that the world's best cartoon, The Venture Bros., completes their Jet Age sets with authentic mid-century modern chairs, including selections from the Eames, Corbusier, and Bertoia.

When I said I was trying to make my new bedroom look like the suite of a "Danish modern submarine captain", I think what I really was trying to say was "I want to live in the Venture Compound".

By the by, if anyone has any good contacts at Astrobase Go, we'd love to do a BBtv segment on the team behind Team Venture.

"The Venture Brothers" Love Mid-Century Modern Chairs [ApartmentTherapy.com]

Previously • iPod parody in new Venture Bros.

Joel Johnson

Treehugger/Planet Green looking for a "green tech" blogger

Sounds like a fun gig:

BE EVEN-KEELED. They will be open-minded, appreciate that life has many grey areas, not get phased by insults from commenters and will appreciate the scientific method and basic statistics.

IDEALLY, BE IN THE BAY AREA. We'd love someone from the San Francisco area but are open to other locations.
The Planet Green team is a global team of more than 60 passionate people from varied backgrounds and nationalities who are united by the desire to help push sustainability further into the mainstream. We reach millions of people who tune in to hear what we have to say. Want to become part of that voice?

Job Requirements:
8 -10 posts per day, main focus is on traffic.
Salary 40-55K, depends on skills, plus bonuses
40+hours/week

Treehugger is Seeking a Green Electronics Writer- $1000 referral award! [Treehugger]

Joel Johnson

Heart-Beans coffee grinder may spawn wave of teratoma appliances

The "Heart Beans" coffee grinder does not exist, born as it is from the collective imagination of art school students and not the mind of a single overworked engineer in the bowels of a Taiwanese manufacturing plant. That's why the machine looks like a lumpen wooden tumor and not a slick, white plastic slab — and why the prototype doesn't actually work.

For once, though, these art school kids may be on to something. Cuddling a large wooden infant over the shoulder as it burps coffee to the rhythm of its owner's heart isn't exactly the sort of thing most companies think people would like to do every groggy morning, but perhaps they've underestimated the public's penchant for anthromorphosizing gadgets — or the public's love for misshapen babies. (The latter quality explaining young Brownlee's early success on the carnival circuit.)

Heart-Beans Grinds Coffee With the Rhythm of Your Heart [Treehugger]

Rob Beschizza

How to connect violence to games without anyone noticing — except the Internet

Tom Chick at Fidgit spots some naughty editorial word games. In a Newsday report on some teenage thugs, the lede claims that they were "inspired" by GTA 4, but when we get to the actual attributed quote from Det. Sgt. Anthony Repalone, a Nassau police spokesman, it's just not the same: "They were emulating the character in that Grand Theft Auto game."

A subtle distinction? Not really: inspiration concerns the cause of a crime, while emulation concerns the manner in which it is conducted. The quote's vanished in an update to the piece, however, replaced by a nearly identical one ("emulating the popular fictional character Niko Bellic") — attributed to a different official!

That Newsday appended the word said to suspiciously coordinated and obviously written statements from public officials is par for the course. Setting out to improve such quotes, however, never looks good.

Attention mothers: If you're concerned about the effects of video games on children, and wonder why nothing ever actually happens to benefit your side, this is why: it's because journalists and politicians exploit your fears so ham-fistedly that no-one really takes them seriously.

Grand Theft Auto IV "inspires" criminals [Fidgit]

Rob Beschizza

Dot anything domains approved, may cost $100,000

From next year, any word will be able to follow the last dot in domain names, opening the system to a vast number of possible new URLs.

Previous expansions of the system added .mobi, .name and other unappetizing suffixes to the traditional standards of .com, .org. .net and the many country-coded domains. By opening the door to arbitrary entries, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) seeks to permanently lay to rest arguments over the matter, such as whether to shepherd pornographic sites into a proposed .xxx smut ghetto.

Details are yet to be determined, but it's not going to be a "grab it from GoDaddy" affair. Registrants of custom TLDs will be expected to know how to effectively run a top-level domain, or hire someone who can, ICANN told the AP. Fees are expected to be colossal — about $100,000, reports USA.

Opinion: in a shallow sense, it seems like a fine idea: they're just letters, so let people use any old crap they want to. Alternatively, it's an administrative quango creating new markets simply by manipulating the boundaries of a virtual real estate business. It forces intellectual property-holders to play ball and opens up new oceans of shakedown and scam for the unscrupulous to swim in.

Just think of the tricks people will play! Want yourname.porn off the internet? Better register it at our private registry today. Let's hope the ultimate effect is to make domains unlimited and worthless, until something is made of one.

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• SSBB – Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii for $26, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Guitar and Mandolin – This Rogue acoustic two-pack of a guitar and mandolin isn't really all that special (it's $100 for both, shipped) but I just think more people should be playing mandolin. [Dealhack]

• Mopping Robot – iRobot Scooba 5800 for $220, shipped. Mine works okay, but make sure you sweep well first. (Or have a Roomba.) [Amazon Friday Sale]

• Older Tablet PC – The Motion M1300, a Pentium M 1GHz-powered 12.1-inch tablet PC, for $354 shipped. It's by no means a beast, but it might be good for popping around the house. Comes with XP for Tablet. Oh, and it's a refurb. [Dealnews]

• Wi-Fi Router – Today's Woot! is a refurb Netgear WPN824 RangeMax MIMO Wireless Router for $35, shipped.

• Speck Cases Sale Speck, maker of iPhone, iPod cases, has a 50% off sale if you follow this link.

Rob Beschizza

What is a crapvendor?

What is a crapvendor? Joel has used the phrase a couple of times to a degree of bafflement, not least from crapvendors themselves. Please update your dictionaries:

Joel Johnson

Angus MacLane's LEGO Wall-E is nice...probably because he helped animate it

The Brothers Brick interview Angus MacLane, LEGO builder and animator at Pixar:

TBB: Has your LEGO hobby helped your “real” job in any way?

Angus: LEGO gets you used to thinking and designing in three dimensions. It has really helped my ability to visualize spatial relations. This is especially useful when working with artists and technical directors to take 2D designs and successfully turn them into 3D character models.

Also, when building with LEGO you often have to simplify or caricature the intended form. This is similar to caricaturing motion and simplifying acting ideas, which is an important part of the animation process.

Pixar animator Angus MacLane builds best LEGO Wall-E yet [Interview] [Brothers-Brick.com]

John Brownlee

AT&T email says iPhone 3G will have MMS

A new leak from within the heart of AT&T contains a surprising revelation about a hereto unknown feature of the iPhone 3G... a feature so incredible and jaw-dropping that several notable technology experts are already describing it as "impossible" and "like magic."

According to the leaked internal email, AT&T says that the iPhone 3G will be able to take text messages — ordinary, dull-as-dishwater text messages, the snail mail or the cellular band — and somehow bake into them (attach, if you will) advanced 21st century data streams such as pictures. And audio. And movies.

Frankly, we're skeptical. A technological advance like this would have been front and center at WWDC, along with Steve Jobs' triumphant announcement of their new pocket-sized time-travel capacitor, the iFlux. Instead, we hear nothing, except from industry analysts quaking in their boots, darkly murmuring about some industry-redefining technology that Apple has stumbled upon, which they call — with holy dread — a "multimedia messaging service."

ATT Memo Reveals Forthcoming iPhone 3G MMS Support [iPhone Atlas via Boy Genius Report]

Rob Beschizza

Nokia goes Supernova with new handsets

Nokia's 7610 Supernova absorbs a note or two from the iPhone's design tune, without it being in the service of an Instinct-like cloning operation. It's a smartphone with extensive customization options. Unfortunately, I couldn't get through more than a couple of paragraphs of the press release's brain-damaging prose, and therefore cannot report any of its characteristics.

The 7510 model is a little more old fashioned. It has a 2mp camera, a 512 microSD card and will be offered for €180 later this year. Here's the mugshot:

A 7310 model has "daring 3D textured designs" in colors featuring more randomly-prepended exotic nouns than a Sherwin Williams catalog. "Wasabi" green, anyone? It'll be €155 in the second quarter.

Nokia's last new model is the 7210, for €120, whose attributes are best summed up by noting that whereas the 7310 was offered in "candy pink," this one instead comes in "bubble gum pink."

Press releases [Nokia]

John Brownlee

Sexy Star Wars stormtrooper boots

Come-fuck-me boots for the fashion-conscious Imperial set, as designed by Rupert Sanderson for the Fashion Fringe Shoe competition. A casual Google image search reveals I'm not the only one who has nuzzled a passionate fantasy of PVC Death Star fumblings with a sexy female stormtrooper in both my brain and nethers ever since my pre-pubertal sexuality was awakened while watching the The Empire Strikes Back... although, in truth, the subsequent revelation that every stormtrooper was a clone of Jango Fett has put the dampers on that fantasy somewhat.

Walk in Space [Style Bubble via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Steampunk sonic rifle

This steampunk sonic rifle prop created by Deviant Artist Vladislaus Dantes isn't nearly as cool as that Model 666 anti-vampire NERF gun we posted yesterday, but one needs a war chest fitted with a suitable prop for every sub-genre.

Sonification Rifle by *VladislausDantes [Deviant Art via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

"The Helio Store is Closed"

Update: Virgin Mobile is buying Helio, writes Reuters, for $39m.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008, and Virgin Mobile said the Virgin Group and SK Telecom will each invest $25 million of equity capital in the company.

Here's one for the Passive-Aggressive Notes Blog: Helio, the virtual cellular network, is edging closer to its demise. This note, shot by Denver resident Sue Marek, shows that retail outlets are wrapping things up — but also that other parts of the company might be here to stay.

The website's still taking orders, but with only 200,000 subscribers, whither thou goest can't be that far from contracting to just wither.

This would be a good chance for Sprint to shore up its subscriber count a little, were it not for the fact that Sprint does not let you activate Sprint-compatible phones sold by MVNOs that resell its bandwidth. That's even true of Sprint-branded phones, such as those from Kajeet.

Photos: Helio Stores Close Up Shop [Fiercewireless via Engadget]

John Brownlee

The Kool Dogz Ice Treat Maker, or "how to market a bucket to dog-lovers"

While fulfilling Joel's wish that more pictures of cute dogs using tech hit the Boing Boing Gadgets front page, the Kool Dogz Ice Treat Maker isn't really much of a gadget. The marketing copy says:

Now there's a clever way to keep your dog happily occupied outside — just use the Kool Dogz Ice Treat Maker to freeze Fido's favorite play toys and dog treats in a block of ice; he'll be licking it throughout the day, just to get to the dog treats!

Eventually, though, they're forced to admit that what they are really selling is a giant bucket for $29.99, which is still a bit expensive for even a cleverly marketed bucket. Still, I like the idea: Fido licking away at a huge chunk of ice on the lawn all day, slowly eroding its cool, crystalline facade with his tongue to gradually reveal the treats within — a squeezable rubber pig, a cherished stick, some horse offal, three stillborn kittens, a human femur, a giant dried-up turd. You can just toss any old crap in there: dogs are filthy, they'll love it. Can't wait to see some of the user recipes.

Kool Dogz Ice Treat Maker [Improvements Catalog via Book of Joe]

Rob Beschizza

Dot-matrix toaster

Ready to start an eBay business selling pareidolia toast? The first church of Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde welcomes all careful oxidizers. Zuse, the dot matrix bread printer, would print beautiful spaghetti monsters—if only it was a real product.

Product Page [via Crave and Appliancist]

John Brownlee

World of Warcraft gets hardware account authenticator

It isn't uncommon for even relatively security-aware World of Warcraft players to log-on one day to find themselves naked paupers, stripped bare by canny Korean thieves. The overtaxed GMs are powerless to return your goods... the best they can do is take a report. And what then? For an effeminate elf dressed only in his underpants and whose only marketable skill is simulating Michael Jackson's signature dance moves. the world of Azeroth, as in the real world, is a gruesome and perverse place. Ask Joel.

The problem's certainly pretty bad, thanks to a combination of WoW's popularity, its players collective moronism and the sheer determination of hackers to steal items from an account and sell them for real world money. It's so bad, in fact, that Blizzard is taking a novel step to protect people's accounts: taking a cue from various office security IDs, Blizzard will debut the Blizzard Authenticator at the Worldwide Invitational... a small, electronic device that will generate a random six-digit code which must be entered along with your password every time you log-on.

The Blizzard Authenticator will only cost $6.95 when it's released. It's a smashing idea, but as it's optional, this will only help afford the users least likely already to have their accounts stolen with an extra level of protection, while the usual gaggle of rampaging doofuses will continue to log-on and find themselves laying in a snowbank in Winterspring with two stitched scars over vacant, oozing kidney cavities. Maybe Blizzard will make this mandatory and box it with the Lich King expansion.

Blizzard Authenticator to be Introduced [WoW Insider]

Rob Beschizza

Yahoo! hikes domains to $34.95, sneaks notification into unrelated email

Buried in one of those eminently ignorable, machine-generated information e-mails from Yahoo! came the following:

If your billing information is up-to-date, there’s no need to do a thing (except keep enjoying your service). *Important note:* Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!’s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

I just love how it comes after a sentence contrived to encourage people to stop reading.

They last hiked the price in March:

Important note: Beginning on March 11, 2008, Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases from $9.95 to $12.95 per year.

When a business turns a product into a recurring transaction scam, you know it's lost interest in the area. So Yahoo! is out of the domain game: small evidence of a big shift in the company's priorities?

Massive Yahoo! domain name price rise - is it to pay for the lawyers? [Red Ferett]

Rob Beschizza

Eight in 10 business now have Macs

In just two years, the number of business using Macs has almost doubled to 80%, according to researchers at Yankee Group.

Laura DiDio told Computerworld that a survey of 700 senior IT admins and executives also revealed an increase in the number of actual users. It's remarkable, she says, because "Apple Inc. has put little to no official effort into that part of the market."

The odd reason given as a driving force: virtualization. However, in explaining why, the article veers into simply using Macs to run Windows in boot camp. Either way, someone interesting's going on!

8 in 10 [Computerworld]

Rob Beschizza

Lamps made of plates

Old plates, new look: all you need is the right kind of drill bit and a lot of extra plates. The design's by Denis Belenko and the modeling by Dmitry Nkolaenko.

Dishlamp [Inflat via NOTCOT via MAKE]

Joel Johnson

Garmin Astro DC 30 GPS collar for hunting dogs

The Garmin DC 30 slips around your dog's next, counterbalancing the electronics to keep an antenna high in the air, the better to broadcast your pup's location to the "Astro" handheld GPS unit. By default the DC 30 sends a blip every five seconds for up to 17 hours; increasing the interval increases battery life — up to 36 hours for 30-second spurts. Depending on the terrain, you'll be able to track your dog from up to seven miles away.

It's designed for hunters, of course. Most of us don't need a $200 collar and a $650 GPS unit to let us know that, yup, the dog's still in on the couch drooling all over a copy of Field & Stream.

While we're on the subject, I'd like to make a request to other gadget manufacturers: please provide more images of your gear being used by dogs. That your product is not specifically designed for canine use is inconsequential.

Catalog Page [Buy.Garmin.com]

Rob Beschizza

Report: Intel says no to Vista

Intel's decided to stick with Windows XP, skipping Vista until the next edition of Windows comes steaming out of Ballmer's pores. The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian sums up the issue:

"When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says get stuffed, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows MS has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a black and white way though. Reassuring, like a warm cup of tea, or a public kick to the corporate crown jewels.

His conclusion: "Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines... ever."

Intel won't touch Vista [Inquirer]

Joel Johnson

Custom "Model 666" handgun suitable for slaying Nerf werewolves, vampires

What once was a mortal Nerf six shooter is now the "Model 666 Undead Slayer," a custom pistol designed for sending the undead hurtling toward their final, eternal unrest. Like all weapons sanctified by God and Church, the Model 666 is activated by grabbing the crucifix cross on top and cocking. (Prayers optional, but recommended.)

It's $37 shipped on eBay right now, but other slayers might raise the price of such an indulgence before the auction ends next week.

Shagnasty Labs Undead Slayer - PROP COSPLAY LARP [eBay]

Joel Johnson

College textbooks coming — slowly — to Kindle

Princeton University Press will be selling textbooks in Kindle editions, reports the Christian Science Monitor. That's potentially good news for students: it'll make carrying around a whole bunch of textbooks something besides a spine-compressing metaphor for their college loans. Not to mention how much less expensive those college textbooks will be when there are no printing costs involved, right?

Right?

This fall, Princeton University Press will begin publishing Kindle-edition textbooks. It’s on a short list of printing houses that are testing the e-textbook waters. (Kindle has also snagged Yale, Oxford, and the University of California.) But Princeton is the only to attempt a Kindle-first launch, offering Robert Shiller’s new economics book “The Subprime Solution” on the Amazon electronic reader two weeks before students can buy a hard copy.

Digital college textbooks [Features.CSMonitor.com] (Thanks, Nathan!)

John Brownlee

Never get out of bed to blog with the Boom Arm Starbase Workstation

As I increasingly try to introduce exercise and Vitamin D into my blogger's lifestyle, one of the things I miss most are my suppurating bed sores. Those guys and I really had some fantastic adventures. They didn't ask for much — a lancing here or there, the occasional slathering of ointment or table salt — but they were always there for me... a persistent burning, oozing sensation that my brief flings with promiscuous floozies informs me is very similar to the sensation of what you norms might call "love." Charlie, Ralph, Gwyneth, Chase: I know I buried you alive under pink skin and bristling musculature, and for that I am eternally sorry. I will never forget our many fond times together.

Still, when we were all together, my bed sores and I, I can't help but think we would have all appreciated this swiveling notebook stand. It really needs a built-in mini-fridge and built-in catheter and colostomy bag to be useful to the successful professional blogger. Even without, though, it helps afford one less reason to get out of bed every morning... just reach over, pull your laptop towards you and it's time for the professional Control+C/Control+V monkey to hit the feeds and earn his millions. At under $300, not a bad investment for a blogger or an MMORPG guild master.

Easy Workstation [Official Site via Gizmowatch]

Joel Johnson

Tiny universal remote on a keychain from Sourcing Map

SourcingMap.com is the latest online crapvendor to assault my inbox, very much in the DealExtreme.com vein. I'm going to give them a link, specifically to this keychain-sized universal remote that's just $8, shipped, but don't make me regret it, Sourcing Map! I like ruining the ecosystem of developing economies for bags full of unnecessary trinkets as much as the next American, but what I will not stand for is a cluttered inbox.

Catalog Page [SourcingMap.com]

Joel Johnson

Apple's own iPhone 3G GPS page describes "turn-by-turn directions"

Ryan Waddell writes:

So, I remember the big stink when the iPhone 3G was announced, saying that turn-by-turn directions were possibly going to be disallowed - but if you take a look at the iPhone 3g's feature page regarding maps, it specifically says: "Get directions to wherever from wherever. View turn-by-turn directions or watch your progress with live GPS tracking."

Is this a new addition to the page?  Or did everybody just miss this the first time around?

It's all a bit tedious at this point. Whether a proper GPS driving platform comes direct from Apple or from a third-party vendor, it's clear that a good solution will be coming from someone in the near future. It's just too obvious of an addition.

Previously • Rumor: TomTom not developing iPhone GPS software after all
• Apple's way or the highway: iPhone SDK agreement specifically forbids real-time route guidance
• TomTom is making an iPhone GPS software

Joel Johnson

Archimedes' Drill perfect for small boring jobs

"Archimedes' Drill" is a delicate tool used for small jobs — turn the spiraled top to crank the bit on the bottom. You won't get much torque when holding a finger on the top for balance, but it's really just for small holes anyway. It's the same general concept as the Yankee Screwdriver, although according to Toolmonger, Archimedes' Drill predates the Yankee by a few hundred years.

GarrettWade sells two new Archimedes Drills, one with modern trappings and one designed to look like an antique. You can buy both togeter for $18.

Archimedes Screw Drills [GarrettWade.com via Toolmonger]

Rob Beschizza

Akai MPC5000 and MPD32 Midi machines

Akai just wrote to say its MPC5000, a $3,5000 bad-ass music making, MIDI-slinging sampler, is now shipping; a quick whip around the internet reveals plenty of places offering it with heavy discounts. From the blurb:

MPC5000 is the first MPC to permit eight-track streaming hard disk recording for real-time capture of individual tracks or even entire songs. A 20-voice, three-oscillator analog synthesizer with arpeggiator, a new sequencing engine with 960 PPQ resolution, pad and track muting and mixing, 64 continuous sample tracks and 12 Q-Link controllers highlight just some of the never-before-seen features and capabilities that make MPC5000 the most advanced MPC ever.

MPC5000's virtual analog synth eliminates the need for users to deal with connecting external analog synth modules or working with buggy software synthesizers. The eight-track, direct-to-disk recorder lets musicians produce complete songs and mix them down internally. An optional CD/DVD drive permits usage of audio on CD or DVD in songs, and also records compositions. More than 650MB of premium sounds from Loopmasters are included so that MPC5000 is ready to produce professional results immediately.

Here's a movie of it in action...

Other features include an "old school" mode for pre-Fairlight nostalgia, an 80GB hard drive and included Chop Shop sample-slicing software.

Also (re)pitched today was the MPD32 USB pad, which adds hard control to GarageBand, Ableton and Reason tinkering, with 8 faders, 8 switches, 8 360°, knobs, and three shift keys to triple the number of available assignments. An LCD display reminds you of its and your importance — $500 gets it on your desk — but, unfortunately, does not flip.

Rob Beschizza

Remote Buddy sweeps away need for universal remote.

Why buy a decent universal remote control when you can just spend $60 on a plastic caddy to hold the ones you already have? From the blurb:

"Modern design adds a futuristic touch to any decor"

Does Logitech make a cup holder? No, sirs, it does not!

Remote Buddy [Taylor Gifts via Engadget

Rob Beschizza

HP Touchsmart IQ506 not an iMaclone

Gizmodo reviews the latest touchscreen all-in-one desktop from Messrs. Hewlett and Packard, concluding that despite rough edges, it's a good machine that offers plenty the iMac doesn't have.

The real hook here is whether or not the touchscreen features are as good as advertised. The short answer is that they're satisfactory within the custom interface, and not so great in the normal Vista environment. ... If you want a kitchen computer that looks nice, functions well with a keyboard and mouse, and has a few neat touch functions to boot, this $1500 machine, or the IQ504, isn't a bad deal.

The Touchsmart has a 22" display, 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo processor, TV tuner, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, 5 USB ports and a card reader, and starts at $1,500. Seeing that bristling array of A/V inputs and outputs is a reminder of things that the iMac should have, but doesn't.

Review: HP Touchsmart IQ506 PC is NOT Just an Imitation iMac [Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Vertu Suave phone is shoe-like, golden

That Vertu makes tasteless bling-phones for trailer park lottery winners is not in any doubt, but its latest concept phone has a refreshing and unusual look.

Designed by Christopher Tak Cheung Yue, the heptagonal "Vertu Suave" is aimed at the ladies and comes in gold, titanium or sheepskin. And when the powerball millions run out, you can use it as a trowel.

Vertu Suave – A swanky concept cell phone targets fashiondivas [Born Rich via Crave]

Rob Beschizza

Pistol Cam shoots while you shoot

Backed by positive reviews from Orange County's SWAT team, the $695 Pistol Cam affixes to handguns and records up to an hour of MPEG4 audio and video.

Taking bets: how long until the first "missing footage" scandal from a botched raid?

Pistolcams [Wired via Chipchick via UberGizmo

Rob Beschizza

Vacuum smash derby: Dyson awesomeness index eclipses that of Jobs

Want to know why this mild-mannered gent is one of the world's most famed and successful product designers?

"We have 150 people trying to break things," he says, as an immediate prelude to picking up a vacuum cleaner and repeatedly flinging it on the floor.

Dyson on Engineering and Design [CrunchGear]

John Brownlee

DIY cassette tape lamp

The guys at Transparent House have a great idea for what to do with all of those translucent old cassette tapes clacking together under the bucket seats of your Impala: glue them together and fashion them into a lamp. The color of each cassette's plastic shell and the half-rewound spooling of the magnetic tape itself will determine the kaleidoscopic pattern cast upon the walls. Transparent House isn't providing directions or even saying if they are selling these, but the idea's simple enough I imagine anyone could make this work with a little bit of elbow grease.

Transparent House [Official Site via Techanbob]

John Brownlee

Server room built into ladies' room handicapped stall

There's nothing like tweaking your company's server rack to the melodious trumpeting of a quadriplegic woman who abstains dietary fiber: The Daily WTF has the details on one company's server room that is only accessible through another company's handicapped women's room stall.

A few months back, Jen Frickell's company was given some bad news. When their lease ended, they'd have to move out of their second-floor suite. The good news, however, was that a suite would be available on the first floor. All they'd need to do was pack up and move downstairs.

It was a fairly reasonable request, so the company's executives signed a new lease and prepared to move. There was, however, just one, small hitch. The nice little server room they built in the back of their office - equipped with air conditioning units, ventilation, dedicated power, backup power, and so on - could not be relocated. Not only would it cost too much, but there was simply no room for it. The server room would just have to remain upstairs.

Obviously, the new second-floor tenant wouldn't want their neighbors walking through their office to access a server room, so building management and the company's executives came up with an alternative: wall off the server room door and build a new one. It seemed simple enough, but there was, however, just one small hitch. The only available wall to install a door was adjacent to the women's restroom. Inside the handicapped stall.

The Stalled Server Room [The Daily WTF]

John Brownlee

Dell officially announces Studio line of multi-colored MBP-likes

Dell's announcement of a chromatically-diverse line of Studio laptops will take no gadget reader by surprise. A leak is what happens when a pin punctures a bladder; the Studio line was splattered months ago all over the internet in an explosion of rainbow-hued offal more akin to a mule overdosed on Alka Seltzer.

Still, now that the Studio line is official, it does look like a step in the right direction. The design is similar to the XPS M1530, with a tapered one-inch thick design and a big side hinge. Unlike the brushed metal of the XPS, the Studio line is plastic... but available in multiple customized covers.

Specs-wise, we're looking at an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, up to 4GB of memory, 320GB hard drives, a Blu-Ray Disc Option, built-in 2-megapixel webcam, Wi-Fi, optional WLAN and optional EVDO. The 15-inch Studio 15 supports a resolution up to 1440x900, while the 17-inch Studio 17 goes up to 1900x1200.

All around, it looks like Dell's trying to move towards Mac-style design: the Studios are about as thick as a MacBook Pro, although they outweigh the latter by two pounds. Outside of a wimpy Intel graphics chip, you can optimize these to compete, feature-for-feature, with an MBP... you can even specify LED backlighting. The Studios also come with a little OS X style Dock installed, prompting one Gizmodo commenter to quip: "How awesome. They preload crap to clean up the crap they preload!"

The Studio 15 starts at $749, although that's bare bones, and all the truly interesting options are going to cost you. If you don't care about a gaming-caliber graphics chipset or Leopard, it looks like Dell has brought a decently attractive and substantially more affordable MacBook Pro clone to the table. It's nice to see Dell starting to give a honk for design.

Dell Studio Notebooks Officially Bring Decent Design to Mid-Range [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Roboclarinet plays "Flight of the Bumblebee"

This robotic clarinet player created by Australian research group took first prize at the Artemis Orchestra Competition, a contest in which engineers were challenged to create embedded systems capable of playing human instruments. It handles Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight of the Bumble Bee with the breathless disgorgement of rapid-fire notes you'd expect from an ADHD clarinet protegee dizzy on lemonade: it just spews the notes out without any soul or force. Clarinetists do not have to worry about their cybernetic peers just yet. Still, what's really impressive about the automated clarinet is the articulated mouthpiece capable of generating the plosive breath necessary to play the instrument, as well as the intricate fingering of the valves. Now that sophisticated chess computers can beat most grandmasters, I wonder if music will be the next venue for the gladiatorial match between human and robotic supremacy.

[via MAKE]

John Brownlee

NOAH concept monocycle: Segway meets Tron

The head-on collision between a Segway and a monocycle in the brain of one Brazilian designer results in the NOAH concept vehicle, a slick-as-shit, Tron-esque cycle for the future. Marrying a top-mounted seat with a traditional monocycle would quickly lead to a glistening smear of spinal fluid trailing slug-like down the freeway, but the NOAH is not a real monocycle — it has two closely mounted wheels, which act as stabilizers in turns. Speed, braking and turning is controlled Segway-style through pitching, leaning and shifting.

I always feel rather apologetic about posting concepts, since they are usually wishful thinking based upon Foundation-era technology and fueled by pixy magic, but I really like this one. The world could use a Segway aimed at an audience more speed-thirsty than the local mailman, a flabby rent-a-cop and The Woz.

Update: Reader SD reminds us in the comments that, while not the same bike, there's already basically a working prototype of this concept in the Uno.

The Noah personal riding wheel [DVICE]

John Brownlee

Retro-Duo plays both NES and SNES cartridges

The box is ugly enough to cause spontaneous miscarriages in pregnant sheep (and the console design will at least generate some distressed bleating) but inside the Retro-Duo's box is a rather interesting piece of hardware: a dual-slot NES / SNES console with vintage controller support. It's running emulation chips, so it's not likely to be 100 percent compatible, but for the vast majority of retro-gamers, this is probably a good solution for cutting down on some vertical and horizontal real-estate in your entertainment system. It apparently plays the usual difficult subjects like Castlevania III and Starfox with aplomb.

The Retro-Duo is $45.99, which I guess is a reasonable price, but with home media PCs so cheap to build and software emulators free, I think I'd prefer to go that route than replace batteries and blow dust and skin detritus out of twenty year old eBay cartridges.

Retro-Duo [Buy Here via Slashgear]

John Brownlee

Wired on Google Android

Wired has a fantastic write-up of Google Android's origins, methodology and ultimate plans for world domination. I think the piece reaches its narrative peak by the second t page, recounting the first Android meeting between founder Andy Rubin and Google's Larry Page. It's an exciting description of the internal reasoning that turned a meeting aimed at getting a Google stamp of approval on Android into a quick company buy-out.

The desktop metaphor was fading. Phones were going to replace PCs as the main gateway to the Internet, and they were going to do it soon. Why would consumers tether themselves to a PC when phones were growing more and more powerful — and were cheaper, too?

But because cell phones ran on different software, had less memory, and operated under the constraints of pay-per-byte wireless networks, the mobile Web was a stripped-down, mimeographed version of the real thing. Reading and surfing and — more to the point — viewing Google ads was a slow, stultifying chore. Even worse, a second-class Web could derail Google's grand strategy... working the problem had been a nightmare. Google engineers had a closet overflowing with mobile phones to test the company's wireless applications — mobile Google, Blogger, search over SMS. There were dozens of operating systems to navigate, a mobile Tower of Babel completely at odds with the easy access and universal language of the Web.

What worried Page most was that the only firm from the PC world that seemed to be successfully navigating the mobile labyrinth was Microsoft, one of Google's biggest rivals. The Windows Mobile platform had less than 10 percent of the US smartphone market, but it was growing fast. Microsoft's system, however, was the ugly stepsister of what Rubin was proposing: Redmond executives cared less about opening up the Net to mobile users than about tying the mobile operating system into its desktop dominance. A decade ago, Microsoft had underestimated the growth of the Web and then lost control of it to Google. Now it looked like it was Google's turn to be caught flat-footed.

Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free The Wireless Web [Wired]

John Brownlee

Innolux gets news Apple touch panel order

According to a Digitimes report yesterday, Taiwanese display manufacturer Innolux has secured a secret order for touch panels from Apple, with shipments slated to begin "soon." Arching far back on its heels, thumbing its suspenders and whistling, "No comment!" says Innolux.

There's a lot of possibilities here, some more obvious and less exciting than others. Innolux currently supplies the touch panel for the iPhone, so this could just be a standard refill order as Apple confidently predicts the 3G iPhone to be a smash. But since size isn't mentioned in the Digitimes piece, one can dare to dream... a MacBook Pro successor with a swivling tablet screen? A touch panel iMac, a la the HP Touchsmart?

Innolux rumored to have secured touch panel orders from Apple [Digitimes]

Rob Beschizza

Kanye West rant was hammered out on a MacBook Air

A venue cocked up his elaborate show, and he is not amused. That Air ain't made for a beating, young man!

I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!!

And then there's more if you want to read it.

UNTITLED [Kanye West via Qt3]

Joel Johnson

Exclusive: One-of-a-kind official Blade Runner "Spinner" car from LEGO

Today BBtv and I headed to the house of artist, designer, and futurist Syd Mead, who graciously let us sit around for a couple of hours and talk about, gosh, everything. It was without a doubt one of the most fantastic days of my life, bouncing ideas and picking the brain about car design, utopianism, and Hollywood. We shot enough video we could cut multiple BBtv episodes (and maybe we will!) but I thought I'd give you guys a little something to tide you over.

So here you go: A one-of-a-kind official LEGO version of Mead's "Spinner" flying car from Blade Runner, presented to Syd by LEGO when he attended a design summit in Billund. Syd let me pick it up and swoop it around my head like a child.

I have the best job ever.

Thanks again to Xeni, Dana, and Derek (Team BBtv!) for setting up the whole thing. I owe you big.

Two more pictures after the jump.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Three-player table tennis offers intrinsically imbalanced larks

Fancy a game of three-player ping pong? Just imagine the exquisitely hateful arguments one could get into over this.

It starts with jolliness and camaraderie. Fun. As play progresses, however, and one player starts to trail, the atmosphere changes, slipping imperceptibly to frustration and unease. A suggestion is made to occasionally swap positions; declined, the air darkens still further. A cigarette "forgotten" on one corner inflicts passive-aggressive revenge. Rule disputes are arbitrated with snide remarks. Uncouth language is used. The decisive "hit the ping pong ball so hard it bounces into the ceiling" technique is employed. Decades of sublimated hatred boil to the surface.

Product Page

Source [Next Big Thing via SlipperyBrick and Dvice]

John Brownlee

Rumor: Microsoft to allow third-party 360s

1UP's latest rumor column is reporting that Microsoft may only be a couple tossed-back drinks away from licensing Xbox 360 tech to third-party manufacturers.

We'll tell you what's up with Microsoft: new hardware options. It may sound totally insane -- trust us, we did a double-take the first time Qmann whispered it in our ears -- but word has it that Microsoft may begin allowing third-party manufacturers to create Xbox 360 hardware. And we're not talking about peripherals, people; we mean hardware that runs 360 game discs created by someone other than Microsoft. It's a novel way of dealing with that red ring issue, don't you think?

Plausible or not, it certainly would be interesting to see. It's the only way we'll ever see a Blu-Ray playing 360 in this lifetime.

Third-Party 360s? [1UP via Kotaku]

Rob Beschizza

Would you like to hate iPhone 3G? Get it out your system!

Here's the short form of a long list from APC's Dan Warne, advising us on how best to hate Apple's forthcoming 3G iPhone:

1. Crap camera.
2. No Flash.
3. No IM.
4. International roaming rates.
5. Crippled bluetooth.
6. No cut and paste.
7. No user-replacable battery.
8. No MMS.
9. No turn-by-turn navigation.
Bait reason: "Stunning hypocrisy."

If hypocrisy characterizes the industry to such an extent that Apple is now just on an even footing with it, why is it stunning? It's like being stunned by the run rising, or by the unbearable lightness of meringues.

Top 10... [APC via Cult of Mac]

John Brownlee

The Fulgurator fulgurates (?) subliminal messages on photographs

Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck has invented the Image Fulgurator... a camera-like device that implants messages in a sub-visible spectrum on its object. These messages are invisible to the naked eye, but are clearly visible when photographed. Naturally, as an artist, he's using the device primarily to mess with tourists and flash them non-sensical political statements they could care less about.

That would usually honk me off, but if you watch the video (a bit long, scored by a series of musical blorps), he's using it to fuck with people at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum... which is a historically inaccurate sham, Berlin's own Cold-War-themed answer to Disneyworld. How bad is it? It's not located on the original site of Checkpoint Charlie. Everything about it is a recreation... and a ludicrously botched one, at that. For example, depending on which direction you approach it, you will either see a huge picture of a GI (welcoming you to the West) or a picture of a Russian soldier (welcoming you to the East, comrade). The Russian soldier is wearing military insignia that makes him four different military ranks at the same time.

On one hand, who cares if people vacationing in Berlin take pictures and enjoy themselves at an iconic site that just happens to be a totally manufactured tourist attraction? But it rankles, somehow. I got a kick out of his prank, the mystified double-takes of his unwitting victims. I hope for his sake, though, he doesn't try aiming his suspiciously gun-like device at any real monuments, though.

The Fulgurator [Julius von Bismarck via MAKE]

Update: Charlie Sorrel has an interview with the Fulgurator's inventor, Julius von Bismarck. [Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

"Your report matter!" to Yahoo! Answers

The soul of Yahoo! is to be found in its "Yahoo! Answers" service, remarkable for the quality of its users (How is babby formed?) and for the quality of itself.

"Not everyone is entitled to influence the Answers community," the site warns. When that Yahoo veep said the company was spread like a thin coating of peanut butter over the internet, perhaps that's what he meant. Ask, answer, discover!

John Brownlee

JVC HDTVs with built-in iPod Dock

JVC's new LT line of televisions marries that chic-est and most useless of gadgetry fashions — the iPod dock — to its slim HDTVs. Starting at 32" and 720p and going up to 52" and 1080p, you're looking at way too many pixels and way too much screen real estate to make the average, highly-compressed iPod video look like anything better than an animated smear of pixelated puke. Luckily, the JVC also allows you to play your iPod music through the dock... which is probably a much better use for such a thing.

I question the wisdom of buying expensive gadgets with iPod docks. I use my iPod a lot, I love it, but it's hardly a future-proof accessory. It may very well be the DAP du jour, replaced in a couple years by a company that unexpectedly ambles up and delivers the iPod line a bowel-evacuating haymaker. Even if that isn't the case, Apple's just one flip decision away from changing the shape of the docking connector or changing the shape of the iPod so it no longer fits (as they've already done with the iPhone 3G).

I suppose I'm old fashioned: I look at televisions as electronics that should last decade, so a television with an iPod dock strikes the same discordant note in me as an old 80's Magnavox with a built-in Walkman connector. Still, if you're interested, the various models of the LT line cost between 640 and 2000 euros and are available now.

The New JVC Combo: HDTV - iPod Docking Station Now Available [Akihabara News]

John Brownlee

Chutes and Ladders: keychain edition

This is is just great: a Lilliputian-sized version of Chutes and Ladders in key-chain form. All the pieces are there... even the spinner! God knows how you're meant to actually flick the spinner around, though... it's too small for a finger nail, too light to blow on. Highly-precise atom smasher aimed directly at the lip of the arrow, perhaps? Either way, at $4.99, this is a wonderful way to accessorize your keys.

Miniature Chutes and Ladders key chain [Ultimate Key Chains via Nerd Approved]

John Brownlee

Novint ties-in wacky Falcon gaming peripheral with GLaDOS

You won't catch me using Novint's freaky-loo Falcon controller, which promises to let you feel weight, impact, recoil and inertia in the games it supports. I'm not getting burned on another PowerGlove, thank you very much. But you've got to hand it to Novint: they really do know how to package this thing to really tickle a gamer's g-spot. Doubtlessly noticing that their Falcon controller looked quite a bit like a certain Aperture Science portal gun or one of GLaDOS' ascetic, streamlined nodules, Novint has teamed up to package their Falcon controller with The Orange Box. It comes with an attachable pistol grip and ships for $189.99, yet offers the Falcon in black as well, somewhat squandering the genius Portal tie-in.

Truthfully, if anything were ever to get me to buy another flash-in-the-pan "revolutionary" controller, this would probably be the deal that would get me to do it... if I already didn't own the Orange Box. Slather it in art-deco oxidized crud and tie it in to Bioshock, though, and I'll throw caution to the wind.

Falcon Orange Box Package [Novint via Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

Purported Bill Gates rant from 2003 slams Windows' flaws: "But that is just the start of the crap."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer offers an example of the kind of missive Gates fires off "nearly every day..."

---- Original Message ----

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant [seattlepi via
techdirt et al]

Rob Beschizza

American Airlines testing in-flight WiFi today

Xeni's been keeping track of American Airlines' WiFi plans over at the Motherboing. The service goes live today, with tests of wireless broadband internet now available on domestic flights. Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News provided an exclusive analysis of this long-delayed, much-wanted service:

BoingBoing readers will likely be ecstatic to hear that Aircell and American are entirely clueful when it comes to filtering for content. American's Backlein said the airline will "not block or filter content, and we're going to rely on the good judgement of our passengers, and also our flight crew do have polciies and procedures on inappropriate behavior." The crew already have to deal with people bringing on magazines and DVDs, and this falls into the same category.

Bravo, AA! Read the full piece.

Rob Beschizza

Dyson sets sights on electric vehicles

Sir James Dyson plans to develop an electric motor at his Wiltshire research labs. Interviewed by The Independent, he said that such vehicles were the future of transport and could outnumber petrol vehicles in a decade. His plans remain vague, but will involve batteries charged with solar power as well as the grid.

Gasoline in Dyson's native England now costs about $8.80 a gallon. Change runs fast there: an ugly but cheap electric smart car called the G-Wiz "costs only 1p a mile to run" and qualifies for broad tax and turnpike exemptions.

With Dyson on the game, however, the U.K. could have a pretty one, with a single giant spherical orange tire, by 2011.

Dyson working on new generation of fast, green cars [Indy]

Rob Beschizza

Test: Lithium AA batteries are a better deal than cheap alkalines

Problem 1: they all look alike. Problem 2: the metric most often offered as a performance indicator (mA) is hype, like megapixels and megahertz. Problem 3: the quality of the charger makes a big difference for rechargeable models. Popular Photography dumped $200 worth of AA batteries on tester Zach Honig's desk, resulting in a roundup of what's really worth buying.

The big surprise is that expensive lithium disposables are a much better deal than cheap alkalines. They lasted seven times longer in a digicam, resulting in shots that cost .16 of a cent instead of .28 of a cent.

He also likes the 15-minute chargers for rechargeable models; others, however, say these kill the batteries quicker than slow burners.

Results [Pop Photo via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

MacBook Air Superdrive does work on other machines

Slimline external drives tend to be ugly or rubbish. The one Apple made for its MacBook Air is the exception. However, it requires more juice than even two USB ports can provide, meaning it won't work on any other machine — or so goes the story! Tnkgrl's hacked it, however, and finds that it uses a simple hardware handshake to lock out non-Air machines. She's posted a how-to to get the ostentatious optical up and running on anything, powered by only a single USB port.

Here's video of it running on a HP Mini-Note:

Macbook Air superdrive for all [tnkgrl]

Rob Beschizza

How do you cope without your £50,000 plastic egg chamber?

Ovei pods cost £50,000 and contain a "personal multimedia experience," supposedly enhanced by their egg-shaped chassis. Complete isolation, brown-note bass, the self-righting luxury of rolling around while you do whatever you need complete isolation to do ... what? I'm a paragraph in and am already completely confused.

Anyway, designer Lee McCormack and McLaren Applied Technologies launched it yesterday at Britain's CEDIA show, promising to cut each capsule to the customer's needs. PS3- and Xbox 360-compatible, it will also be offered in your color and upholstery of choice.

Ovei pod offers "Personal Media Experience" [Pocket List]

Rob Beschizza

The world's most innovative vacuum cleaners

Techopolis introduces a roundup of the world's most innovative vacuum cleaners, for the connoisseur of high-tech, miniaturized labor-saving devices: a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a lifestyle that does not exist.

Innovative vacuum cleaners [techopolis]

Rob Beschizza

Ringtones for dogs

Dwango of Japan has a web service offering ringtones only dogs can hear. This new service is called "Ringtones only dogs can hear," and is free of charge to subscribers to its flat-rate plan.

Japanese company offers ringtones for dogs [CrunchGear]

John Brownlee

Ubuntu releases Hardy Heron for MIDs

Here at Boing Boing Gadgets, we leave the foaming rants about the uselessness of MIDs to Beschizza, who can't post about one without hunting down a gazelle, ripping out its throat with his teeth and smearing its blood all over his pasty British torso while screaming and staring directly into the sun. Suffice to say, Joel and I feel similarly about them, without all the festering primal rage: Beschizza can be our avatar in this.

With that said, Canonical has quietly released their own MID-specific version of Hardy Heron for mobile internet devices. The big features include a Gecko-based browser with screen zooming for tiny displays and the usual, lovely Linux OS, optimized for all current and last generation Intel MID chipsets. If you've got a McCaslin or Menlow-based MID, you can download it now. It looks great, though doubtless that's simply because they seem to have jettisoned the merconium-brown default color scheme for this release.

Ubuntu MID Edition [Ubuntu]

John Brownlee

iTunes may not be used as a weapon of mass destruction

When you use iTunes, please don't use it to make weapons of mass destruction, guide your nuclear missiles or inject a highly-virulent, 21st century bio-plague into the heartland of America. A EULA clause prohibits...

…including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture, or production of nuclear missiles or chemical or biological weapons.

But it's okay to use iTunes to save lives, right? No.

The Apple software is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, life support machines, or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.

Music of Mass Destruction [Freakonomics via, image the Apple Blog]

John Brownlee

Kohjinsha SX mini-note tablet

Japan's been cranking out attractive mini-notebooks with swivling tablet screens for a while now — last September, I briefly considered selling my ticket home for one during a tour of electronics stores in Tokyo — but Kohjinsha's new SX-series looks about as feature packed as you can get without bumping up into full notebook territory. The display is an 8.9-inch tablet while the computer itself is a 1.33GHz Atom processor with 1GB or RAM, a 60GB hard-drive, WiFi, Ethernet, two cameras, an ExpressCard slot, VGA out, a card reader and 2 USB ports.

What really seems to set apart the SX series is that built-in dual layer DVD drive. You just don't see those on Eee-sized mini-notebooks. The battery life is impressive too: 4.2 hours standard, with 8.2 hours extended. Admittedly, it looks dreadfully thick, but it's only about an inch thick... MacBook Pro thickness, in other words, and weighing only half as much. This really isn't all that much bigger than the HP MiniNote.

It'll be available soon in Japan for about $1,000. That certainly crashes through the already stretched membrane of netbook prices, but it's certainly offering a lot more than just e-mail anywhere functionality.

Kohjinsha SX Series [Official Site via Engadget]

John Brownlee

Possibly Chinese truck crashes at 40MPH, practically vaporizes

This video purports to be a crash test for a Chinese truck. That may not be the actual truth, but considering the fact that this 40MPH crash ended up with pureed crash test dummy limbs spitting out of the tail pipe like corpses flung into a wood chipper, it's certainly time to go back to the drawing board. Remember, safety designers: a crumpling cage is good, but there are diminishing returns to safety the more you crumple. Example: the passenger cabin folding up like a deflated accordion.

[via POETV]

John Brownlee

Digimech clock with gear-controlled sliders

The Digimech Clock by Duncan Shotton pantomimes the look of an LED clock through an ingenious cycling of segmented cryptograms printed on long mechanical sliders. It's much huger than you'd expect, which is too bad: with some miniaturization, this is a clock I'd like to have.

Digimech Clock [Duncan Shotton via technabob]

John Brownlee

Make your 360 quieter, cooler, four times the size

The Xbox 360 — for all the joys it brings from its glowing green eye — is a hot and noisy beast. The Lian-Li PC-XB01 case mod (due for release in August) tries to quiet and cool down the cyclops with a single 120mm fan, optional water cooling and thick, sound-proofing slabs of foam to shut up the damn disc drive. There's a certain hilarity in modders feeling like they need to go to these extremes to correct innate 360 design flaws, but really... the PC-XB01 is four times the size of an Xbox 360. If you want to go to that big to own a quieter, cooler next-gen console that is less prone to breaking down, buy a PS3. Oh no he didn't!

PC-XB01 [Lian Li via Hack A Day]

Joel Johnson

In Japan, conflating Obama with a monkey is a fun way to sell phones

This commercial for Japan's EMobile cellular company has a monkey in a suit standing on a podium in front of a crowd of people holding placards emblazoned "Change." At the end, the monkey cries a single tear, ashamed of his role.

[via Japanese Think Obama Is Bananas [AnimalNewYork.com]

John Brownlee

The Toast Cannon: the highest popping toaster in the world

Advertising itself as the world's highest popping toaster, Freddie Yauner's Toast Cannon — which utilizes a high-pressure CO2 system and a mechanical ram to fire burnt bread into the stratosphere — is powerful enough to smash a piece of wheat through the hard cartilage and veiny, wrinkled sponge of your palate, then splatter against the ceiling, already covered in a tasty layer of what appears to be strawberry jam.

Freddie's going for the world toaster record today. Good luck, champ!

The Highest Popping Toaster in the World [Freddie Yauner via Core77]

Update: Digital Lifestyles has video — including slo-mo — of the world record attempt. [Digital-Lifestyles.info]

John Brownlee

Snow Leopard will vastly shrink OS X bloat

According to Apple Insider, OS X's upcoming 1.06 update, Snow Leopard, will at least have one immediate benefit for all upgraders: it'll shrink the bloated baseline of your OS X install significantly.

The big shrink probably comes mostly from Jobs giving PowerPC support the hobnailed boot in 10.6. Without having to key relics of IBM bloat around, Mail.app will drop from 287MB to 91MB, iChat from 111MB to 52MB, and iCal from 89MB to 48MB. Even the tinier apps will shrink: Calculator will only be 2MB. At the end of the day, the applications folder will be a mere 25% the size it was in Leopard.

Apple, my gasping hard drive thanks you. It's already oozing bytes from both ends.

Update: Check out the comments. There's some fascinating stuff in there from people telling me I'm wrong, and what the real bloat from OS X comes from. Thanks, guys!

Five Undisclosed Features of Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard [Apple Insider via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Turn signal bicycle jacket substitutes visibility for blinking style

When it comes to bicycle safety, visibility is key. If you want to be safe, you should be lit up like a Christmas tree, with a fluorescent, mile high afro like Sushi K. So I'm a tad skeptical of this DIY Turn Signal Biking Jacket. It's a nice idea in theory, but surely you can accomplish the same thing by just sticking your arm out in the direction you're turning. Worse, while you could theoretically substitute a lighter jacket, those blinking signals are only really going to show up against a dark background, so this jacket would sacrifice substantial visibility just to less obviously do something that all good city bikers should already be doing in the first place. A bad idea made more palatable by being totally awesome anyway. I do love the little arc reactor in the middle, though.

Turn Signal Jacket [Leah Buechly]

John Brownlee

Waist-measuring belt is useless but for bragging supermodel's skeletons

book of joe pointed out this girth-measuring centimeter belt. It's perhaps indicative of how obsessed with weight-loss I've become over the last couple months that this seems like something I actually want to add to my wardrobe. Not for any bragging rights, you understand. I'm not a supermodel. The circumference of my spinal column isn't something I feel proud enough to broadcast. Maybe if this were a banana hammock... but I digress.

The point is that when I first started dieting and working out, the most important thing to me was seeing pounds tick off the scale. But as I got in better shape, I realized that the scale would wildly oscillate by as much as five pounds, sometimes. At this point, I realized that my goal wasn't some subjective numeric poundage, but a Jenny Craig pant size: an image of me doing a karate kick in skin-tight leather while holding a 'before' set of MC Hammer style parachute pants aloft for comparison. I wanted to know more than if I'd lost or gained weight: I wanted to know if I'd broadened or shrunk.

In truth, I wouldn't exactly wear this belt out to the gentleman's club. But putting it on every morning and seeing how much closer I was to my end goal waist size would make things easier. Of course, a tape measure properly wrapped around one's mid-riff does the same job, less swankily... making this belt just an expensive little trinket satisfying no real need whatsoever except to the braggartly vain or the person who needs to be chic even whilst aprising the girth of their belly fat in the toilet.

Waist measuring belt [Eat Nine Ghost via book of joe]

Joel Johnson

Mercedes-Benz Zetros is a heftier, more defensible Unimog

Daimler AG has announced the Mercedes-Benz Zetros, a heavy duty work truck available in 4x4 and 6x6 variants for use by militaries, hauling fleets, and other industrial transportation infrastructures around the world. Think Unimog but even bigger.

To give you some idea of the sort of conditions these vehicles are likely to be used, check out this little bit from the press release:

The all-in-one concept (chassis, cab and vehicle bodies) meets all the requirements associated with highly-mobile, on-road and off-road vehicles. The forward tilting bonnet in this series facilitates fast and easy servicing. The cab does not need to be tilted to service the vehicle, which is technically much harder with armoured cab-over-engine trucks. This means that some of the crew can stay in the cab for communications or protection tasks.

Mercedes Zetros: When You Need A Bigger Unimog [Jalopnik]

John Brownlee

Canonical: Game with Boing Boing Gadgets

It is perhaps no secret that Joel, Rob and I all carry within our bloated, bile-filled bellies the absorbed fetuses of our doppelgangers, all of whom — in another universe, perhaps — could have been hired to run the entirely theoretical Boing Boing Games. Unfortunately, we were born instead, but we still hear something burbling seductively in our guts... our deformed gaming brother Belials, singing embryonic siren songs, lulling us into the sweet cel-shaded oblivion of just one more round of Team Fortress 2.

We want you to help us C-Section ourselves, bringing our stinking, mewling gamer twins to the light. We want you to play video games with us. Shooters. Role-playing games. Turn-based strategy. Real-time strategy. MMORPGS. SHMUPs. Team-based tactical. Adventures. Simulations. LARPs. Board games. Fighters. Pinball. Stealth. Survival horror. Text adventures. 4X. Tower Defense. Music games. What have you!

Here's how to play with us:

Steam: Join the Boing Boing Steam Group to play any Steam-supported game with us (or other Boing Boing readers).

Xbox Live: Of the BBG editors, Joel's the only one with a functional Live account. His Xbox Live ID is Joelev. Rob and I murmur uncomfortably and promise to get our accounts reinstated soon. Drop your Xbox Live handle in the comments and we'll update this list with other Boing Boing readers.

Reader XBL GamerTags: o DUNCAN o, twoborgz, McSway, Jennatar, ApeData, reesocles, ridestowe1

That's it for now. It's a start. But we want to hear from you. What we want to know is this: what games would you like to play with us? What other useful community information can we put here? We're amenable to nearly anything. Suggest it in this thread and, if we can, we'll give it a try. If it's a success, it'll be added to this canonical gaming post.

If the Mother Boing asks,interacting with our readers is part of our jobs. Help us slack off just a little while longer, for fun and profit. Tell us what games you want to play with us in the comments.

Joel Johnson

Indie platformer videogames primer

Platform games — platformers — ruled the videogame school in the '80s and early '90s, but 3D gaming pushed the Marios and the Sonics to the side. But old videogame genres never die, they just become the domain of dedicated, talented fans.

Metafilter's "Archagon" has collected a couple dozen stand-out titles from the indie platform gaming scene, provided some context, and given a great template for understanding where platformers went once they were no longer the concern of Triple-A developers. And considering there are fan-made titles like "Might Jill Off", a charming BSDM-themed game (some art from which is seen here), it looks like the platformer scene is still alive and and jumping.

Indie platformer extravaganza! [Metafilter via Waxy]

Previously • Clever Indie Game: Fez

Joel Johnson

Syd Mead dreams the future of Doha, Qatar

BBG's patron saint of design, Syd Mead, has released his latest vision of a future city: Doha, Qatar. Limpet dirigibles whale through the sky while oil barons cavort in martini glass sky parks.

As I am the luckiest person in the world — and beneficiary of the machinations of one Ms. Xeni Jardin — I will be sitting down with Mr. Mead tomorrow in his home to shoot an interview for Boing Boing TV. After I get done gushingly asking him to draw the future on my pot belly with a Sharpie, what would you like for me to ask him about?

Features: Qatar [SydMead.com via PSFK via Treehugger]

Joel Johnson

GE Caulk Singles

Forgive any exuberance about a single-serving product, but these "Caulk Singles" from GE could be very handy for small touch-up home improvements. And considering that most of the time I use caulk I end up using just a little bit of a tube before letting it set on a shelf to harden forever, there may not actually be all that much additional waste.

Each single costs about three dollars for 1.25 ounces of goop, so it's far from the least expensive way to purchase the material. There are three varieties: a clear, waterproof; a white, paintable; and a white, waterproof caulk.

Catalog Page [Lowes.com via Uncrate]

Rob Beschizza

Lego reproduction of Nord synth cuter than original

Behold the very much-paralleled beauty of LEGO: if this NordLead Modular synth were its own product rather than a derivative, it could hardly be sexier. Also: does not cost $1,600.

Gallery [via MAKE]

Joel Johnson

DanceCharge strap converts sinful self-expression into practical, honest electricity

An experimental kinetic energy recharger will be strapped to the arms of a few music fans as they whip and snap their taut, delicious teen bodies through England's Glastonbury Festival this weekend. Inside the strap-on pad from delicately named corporation "GotWind" a "system of weights and magnets" skitter around to produce electricity, which is then stored in an internal battery and can later be offloaded to other gadgets like phones, cameras, or MP3 players.

I was always under the impression that these sorts of kinetic power generators never actually generated all that much power, but I suppose the original research never fed the test subjects Ecstasy and threw them in a pit of other sweaty, pogoing children.

Mobile phone battery dead? Try dancing [Reuters]

Rob Beschizza

Nokia to buy Symbian and open the source

Nokia will buy the remaining 52 percent of Symbian for $410m, then open-source its operating system. From the AP:

Nokia will then establish a foundation with handset makers Sony Ericsson and Motorola Inc. and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo to make the software available royalty-free. They will combine their three different versions of the Symbian software for advanced, data-enabled phones into one open platform.

AT&T Inc., LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., STMicroelectronics N.V., Texas Instruments Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC will also join the foundation, Nokia said.

Nokia said all previous owners of Symbian, except Samsung, have committed themselves to accept the offer and that it expects Samsung to join them shortly.

Perfect news for the aftermath of Google's Android delay.

Nokia to buy rest of Symbian, free its software [AP]

Rob Beschizza

Boing Boing Gadgets presents X-Maple pixel-flutter reduction block for PCIe

We are not to be outdone by our competitors at HIC and their noise-reducing PCIe card.

The signal-regulating and noise dampening characteristics of our innovative innovation, carved from the finest extra virgin Carthaginian maple, allow pixels to appear at their most natural. Shading is radically improved, allowing a more expansive dynamic color range and superior definition. Here is a test for all you AMD and NVidia owners: try removing all the capacitors from your video card. You will be shocked by the result! The signature design of the BBG X-Maple will have an even greater effect. How does it work? Microvibrations cause incontegrity, demodulative leaching and, ultimately, pixel flutter. Bad vibrations! Bad! Trust the brain/eye convergence that you'll experience with X-Maple.

For only $998.59 $998.50 — it's yours.

John Brownlee

Exorcist Spider-Walk Regan action figure

I'd certainly rather have seen a green-slime-spewing, blasphemy-spouting Regan over this Spider-Walk Regan action figure, which will go on sale for just $16.99 when it is released at the end of the month. Hopefully, that'll be next in this line of Exorcist branded toys. But what then? I don't think anyone wants to see "Crucifix Masturbating Regan... Now With Suggestive Karate Chop Action!" coming down the pipeline.... or do we?

Exorcist Spider Walk Action Figure [Nerd Approved]

Rob Beschizza

HIS iClear "noise reduction" PCI card doesn't really do much of anything

Say "Hi" to the HIS iClear "noise reduction" card, a peripheral that snaps into your computer's PCIe socket, just like a video card. What does it do? It is not clear. Dan Rutter investigates:

According to the iClear Card’s product page on the HIS site, it, and I quote verbatim, “is HIS latest solution to video card noise reduction. It has an excellent implement of state-of-the-art design and technology and give you a better gaming experience by reducing the distortion and noise generated from graphic card. It reduces the noise distortion generated from high-end graphic card (from both Radeon and GeForce) or TV tuner card, which provide up to 10% increase performance on Signal-to-Noise Ratio.”

The specifications page is empty. The PCB is just a slab of plastic with six capacitors and some board cruft.

Will plugging power-regulating gear into a leftover PCIe slot improve the output of a video card? Obviously not with video juiced directly from the PSU via molex. Rutter explores various other electrical scenarios in an attempt to find what it could possibly be doing with its little rack of capacitors, but remains unconvinced.

Alexey Samsonov has reviewed it. His results are that it produces a power-regulating affect of general inconsequence: a decibel here and there at rare frequencies. A human-discernible difference? Even test equipment mostly couldn't tell a difference! Here's an example chart from its review:

Samsonov writes that it's "attractive" to certain consumers; after all, it's bundled free with video cards at Newegg.com. But he neglected to evaluate how danceable the signal-to-noise ratio was, which seriously compromises his review.

The Nothing Card [How to Spot a Psychopath]

John Brownlee

Infinium Labs finally releases the Phantom Lapboard

After six years of highly-entertaining internet drama, Phantom Entertainment (nee Infinium Labs) have finally released their first product: the Phantom Lapboard. Back in the halcyon days of gadget gossip, the Lapboard was to be the controller-of-choice for the mythical Phantom Console... a console which, as everyone knows, was ultimately proven as vaporous as an ectoplasmic bottom blast. Regardless, a Bronx Cheer for Phantom Entertainment for finally getting their Lapboard to market. You sure did hang in there, kitty.

A swiveling keyboard with a bottom tray for using a wireless mouse, Maximum PC reviewed the Lapboard in April, and said the keyboard was a little bit of alright, but the mouse was decidedly wimpy. At $129, then, this is probably a product for game historians only.

Phantom Lapboard [Official Site]

John Brownlee

DIY LED Chess Set

Over at Instructables, they've posted a tutorial on how to turn a cheap glass chess board into a glowing, one-of-a-kind LED set.

I had just picked up a cheap-o glass chess set at my local arcade for the low low price of only 15,000 tickets. The novelty of playing with glass pieces quickly wore off, and I wondered how I could make it better. The thought of illuminating the set seemed very appealing, but there were so many different ways that could be done...

The final design I chose (which will be explained in more depth in the next step), was to have each piece contain an LED that would be powered by a conductive board. The board is plugged into an outlet, so there is no need to worry about the power running out. While the pieces are on the board they are "live" and illuminated, and while off the board they are "dead" and dark.

LED Chess Set [Instructables]

John Brownlee

A-Data SD card transforms into USB dongle

The A-Data SD Duo Memory card is just a wonderfully simple and simply elegant idea. With the cap on, it's an SD card. Pop the end-cap off, though, and a USB connector is revealed, ready to be popped into any open port and be directly read without any middleman card readers. It comes in capacities of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB, with prices starting at $25.99.

A-Data SD Duo Memory Card [Giz Fever via Red Ferret]

John Brownlee

Logitech's new QuickCam Vision Pro is Mac-only, for no discernible reason

I've just about had it with Logitech and its platform-specific headsets and web cams. Dear idiots: there is no reason in the world that technology as fundamentally simple as a web cam or a Skype headset should require 100 megs worth of platform-specific drivers, the absence of which turns your new, stupidly-purchased "Windows only" headset into a $50 jangle of worthless plastic on OS X. Get your act together. All this stuff should be able to use generic drivers, even if the fancier features aren't supported on some systems.

But Logitech's new USB 2.0, 2-megapixel QuickCam Vision Pro is simply incredible, in that it is a Mac-only web cam. You know. A web cam for a platform that has had an embedded camera in all its laptops and the vast majority of its computers for years.

Oh, sure, there's a market there: people with old PowerBooks. Customers with Mac Pros. Grannies with Mac Minis. But it just seems like such an infinitesimally small one that releasing this as Mac only makes zero business sense when they could simply shove a driver for Windows into the USB dongle and reach out the vast market of cam-less PC users.

For those who are interested, though, the QuickCam Vision Pro will be available in July for $130, and it is certainly a higher-quality web cam than the one built into your Mac, if you have use for such a thing. Apple vloggers, take note.

Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro [Official Site]

John Brownlee

Car-shaped ear buds will crash into your cochlea

If cramming tiny bits of pork into your ear canals seems like a good way to develop a spurting, life-long infection, Aygo offers tiny, car shaped ear plugs which can be used to (less than comfortably) crash into your auricle, delivering the shriek and din of your favorite music. They also sell decidedly less interesting computer speakers in the same shape.

Aygo [Official Site via Wamptha via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

T-Mobile introduces declining early termination fees

From a press release issued by T-Mobile:

Beginning on June 28, 2008, the ETF for customers who choose a one-year or two-year service agreement with T-Mobile will decline during the course their contract. The ETF decreases from $200 to $100 if customers terminate service with 91 to 180 days remaining on their agreement; and decreases again to $50 with fewer than 91 days remaining. If customers terminate in the last 30 days of their term, the ETF is $50 or their standard monthly charge, whichever is less.

Here's a quick pic:

Not terribly appetizing, though I guess the point is more about staving off regulatory legislation than pleasing customers. Hated Sprint-Nextel is now the only remaining ETF holdout; understandable, given that fleeing customers are its only growing source of revenue.

Joel Johnson

Buick Reatta had a touchscreen interface in the '80s

In a collection of design flops that includes products that many of we nerds often lament, the Wall Street Journal also remembers the Buick Reatta, a strange little two-seater that featured among other innovations a touchscreen interface for its radio and climate controls. And people hated it. Wikipedia remembers:

During the first two years of production, the Reatta, like its Riviera stablemate, featured a touchscreen computer interface called the "Electronic Control Center", or ECC. The touchscreen controlled the radio and climate control functions and provided diagnostic access to the vehicle's various electronic systems and sensors, mostly eliminating the need for a diagnostic scanner. It also featured a date reminder, a trip computer, and a user-configurable overspeed alarm.

When Design Goes Bad [WSJ.com via Core77]

John Brownlee

Giant Ultraman is made of ten thousand Ultramen

At the Tokyo Show 2008, a crimson-and-argentine biomass of tiny, seething Ultraman toy make up a giant twenty foot tall Ultra-Ultraman statue. I love it, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been a more apt sculpture if the base molecules were made up of tiny Voltron-style figures, which then broke down atomically into its leonine metallic components.

Giant Ultraman [Hobby Media via Ultraman]

Joel Johnson

Yamuna Rolling Footsavers review (Verdict: Foots are saved)

The Yamuna "Rolling Footsavers" get high praise from Aaron Pastor, who says the little rubber half-domes have saved his aprehensile leg-hands. (Keep in mind I am not a doctor.)

You stand on them and work your feet, positioning each foot down the inside line, outside line and mid-line. It's a simple routine that's explained on the instructional DVD it comes with. If you have any foot discomfort, the kind you get from imperfect shoes or simply being on your feel all day, these really can make a difference. At first, it will be painful.

Yamuna Body Rolling Footsavers [Cool Tools]

Joel Johnson

Gorgeous papercraft gaming miniatures sold on cardstock

Joel Smash(!) nerds out over Worldworks Games, a company that sells awesome papercraft miniatures for role-playing games printed on heavy cardstock:

This company sells very nice papercraft terrain pieces for miniature based RPGs and wargames in styles ranging from Outdoors to Deep space. I just started working the hellscape so that I'll have new terrain to hide behind when Warhammer 40,000 5th edition comes out this summer with it's new True Line of Site (for shooting) rule.

Just to clarify: In the above picture the hero is a standard miniature while the backgrounds are cardstock, but if you look through the site you can also see more intricate models, including big wooden ships.

Catalog Page [WorldworksGames.com]

John Brownlee

Fear and self-loathing in stealing Wi-Fi

With a wry twinkle of the eye and nostalgic sighs, Lev Grossman has posted a humorous article over at TIME about his three years spent as that most loathsome of criminals, the Wi-Fi thief. At the end of the day, Grossman got off scottfree, but leeching Wi-Fi isn't without its travails:

Mine wasn't a particularly sociable apartment building, but wi-fi transcends urban alienation. You can draw your blinds and grunt at me on the stairs all you want, No. 7, but I can see your network just fine. Some people thought of creative names for their networks: ParisBrooklyn, MessageInaBottle. Some were boring: linksys, NETGEAR, default. I was always happy to see the boring ones, because the people who don't bother thinking of clever names for their home networks are the same people who don't bother to password-protect them. Anybody who calls his hot spot WebOfDarkness isn't going to give me any wireless love. I think YouHavSomNerv was on to me too.

You don't fly first class when you're stealing bandwidth. Wi-fi hot spots are large--about the size of a football field--but those signals had to pass through a lot of masonry before they got to my laptop. Wi-fi operates on an unlicensed frequency, so it has to deal with interference from baby monitors and microwave ovens and cordless phones too. As a result, my Internet access would vanish and reappear like a will-o'-the-wisp, even when I engaged OS X's excitingly named "interference robustness" feature. I always seemed to lose connectivity just when I was about to send a crucial e-mail--it's embarrassing to run down a city street waving your laptop around like a crazy person, but it's amazing how unselfconscious you get when you have to find one lousy bar of wi-fi in the next two minutes or you're going to get fired.

I always find myself, in abstract, believing in leaving my Wi-Fi open to be neighborly. When it comes down to doing it, though, I find I begrudge the loss of oomph, the sacrifice of upstream and downstream to a neighbor's thoughtless torrenting. Would I let my neighbor use my shower if his was broken? Sure. But if the constant choice I had to face was letting him take a shower and therefore only having half as much hot water when I came around to bathing, I'd terminate the arrangement quickly, leaving him to dehydration and feculence. Do you guys simply leave your wireless open to everyone, including the will'o'wisps?

Confessions of a Wi-Fi Thief [TIME]

Joel Johnson

Cherry Pal PC has just enough oomph for web browsing

The "Cherry Pal" would once have been called a "thin client," a computer just powerful enough to connect you to a larger mainframe server on which your real computing work would be done. Nowadays that server is a little something we call "internet" and the Cherry's anemic 400MHz Freescale processor is sufficient to run Linux (Debian) and a web browser — and that's good enough.

It's got all the standard hardware trimmings, including Wi-Fi, USB, and audio out.

The clincher, of course, will be price: the manufacturer is claiming it will be "dramatically cheaper" than Asus's upcoming desktop Eee computer, but if they're not under $100 (give or take) then the only drama they'll be seeing will be in the board room as their executives wail that their customer base has chosen to go with more fully featured, similarly priced machines.

It's a cute little thing, but their window for success is closing. This class of device is about to reach a commodity status that will relegate it into a bullet point on a display or monitor's feature list. I bet in five years it'll be difficult to buy a television or monitor that doesn't include an embedded Linux computer and browser, a la Splashtop.

I would also like to note that many of you have smartphones more powerful than this machine. (That's not a ding on the Cherry Pal as long as it doesn't cost more than a cheap smartphone.)

CherryPal: A 2-Watt Computer the Size of a Paperback [Treehugger]

Joel Johnson

OLLO: A little bit LEGO, a little bit Meccano, a whole lot cute robots

Frankie writes:

During the Tokyo Toy Show the Japanese company Robotis (famous for the Bioloid robot kits) showed the final version of the OLLO build system.

OLLO is a mix of Lego Technics, Meccano and Tamiya educational model kits.

The pieces are pretty small but the special tool made by Robotis is pretty helpful. I'm playing with a beginner kit and it's really fun (I confess that, being a Lego maniac, at the beginning I was a little bit sceptic about OLLO).

Robotis Ollo: Il modellismo robotico incontra il Lego… [HobbyMedia.it]

Joel Johnson

Artificial tornado device sadly for helping, not destroying humanity

It's with not a little disappointment that we note New Scientist's write-up of an artificial tornado device; Turns out it's a giant "vortex engine" designed to harness waste heat from conventional power plants and turn it into additional energy. I think we can all agree that a shoulder-mounted air cannon that sends whirlwinds whipping through the tract housing of our enemies — some sort of Megaman villain meets urban rezoning commissioner — is a much better investment.

[Louis Michaud] latest design is a circular wall 200 meters across and 100 meters high without a roof. Air carrying the waste heat would be blown in from vents on the sides, spinning around the walls into a vortex that becomes just like a real tornado. Once started, the vortex would draw in more hot air from vents in the wall, pulling it past turbines and generating electricity.

Michaud calculates that a vortex engine of this size would create a tornado about 50 meters in diameter and generate between 50 and 500 MW of electricity.

Artificial tornado plan to generate electricity [New Scientist] (Thanks, Nathan!)

John Brownlee

Psystar announces Mac server clones, still not sued

Psystar — the zany hardware company that is openly giving the finger to Apple's ToS (and their lawyers) by releasing the first Apple clones since Jobs put the kibosh on them in 1998 — have come out with another entry in their line of quasi-legal Mac clones. They are now offering Mac server solutions in the form of the OpenServ 1100 and 2400, which can run Windows Server, Leopard Server or Linux and come stocked with Intel Xeon Harpertown processors, up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 6 TB of storage, starting at $1599.

As puzzled as I am that Apple's lawyers haven't sued these guys into a thin layer of translucent jelly — not that I wish it on them, you understand — I'm more curious who is buying them. I imagine an entire business model based on selling tech reviewers and bloggers a nearly ephemeral product: making them leap through hoops, prodding them with mystery, intrigue and the whiff of the elusive "exclusive scoop." Certainly, a good chunk of the individuals who ordered PsyStar's first Open Computer Mac clone were tech journalists in one fashion or another, looking to take the computer for a spin. Could a small one-man company be run on such a business model by loudly announcing plausible but ever-more-outlandish and scoopable products, then building a small number themselves? Probably not, but it's a great idea for a story.

Psystar [Official Site]

John Brownlee

The difference between well-designed gadgets and designer electronics

Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel word perfect delineation between between design and designer crap:

Take the sleep light on a Mac: Jonathan Ive (Apple's head designer) was once challenged that this was trivial eye candy. His answer? That a soft, pulsing light perfectly represents the sleep state of the computer. That it also looks good is an intentional bonus. Lately, this design has been refined -- the light glows steadily when the display sleeps, indicating that the machine is still on. It also glows steadily while the contents of RAM are written to disk on entering hibernation.

That is design: Details sweated over so thoroughly that they look almost childishly simple. Which is why it rankles so much when some airheaded moron sprays a little glue onto a gadget, rolls it in a bag of crushed glass and calls it a "Designer Phone". It's utterly demeaning to any real designer.

Fashion Computers Just as Air-headed as their Catwalk Contemporaries [Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

Knight Rider GPS Unit: "Hello, Michael. Where Would You Like To Go Today?"

This is a triumph of product tie-ins. The Knight Rider GPS by mio teams a working, turn-by-turn dashboard GPS unit with the soothing, confident voice of KITT himself, Mr. William Daniels. The unit will actually ask you, "Hello, Michael. Where do you want to go today?" when you turn it on. Needless to say, it isn't out yet, but will be released for $270 when the time comes. I'd pay twice that for a Will Arnett version, though.

Knight Rider-themed GPS system with authentic KITT voice [Autoblog via Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

USB Killbot teaches me what it means to love thumb drives

I swore I'd never care about another cheap USB drive again, then comes along this chrome killbot, grabbing its head with coiled silver arms as it tries to compute this strange feeling... the human emotion called "wuv." $28.95 seems a steal.

Robot USB Drive [E-Corporate Gifts]

Rob Beschizza

Camo satellite dishes kinda sorta blend into environment

Ugly satellite dishes may be obscured by laminating photographs of their backdrops onto their surfaces. But their owners' poor taste is ineluctable.

"Sqish" is the product's name, and they're available only to Sky and Freesat users in the UK. The dish itself is about $300. Stickers are $50, and they're available to those stupid enough to pay $50 for a sticker. "It was only a matter of time," says Technabob.

They're pitching it with perfectly-shot and color-balanced examples, but let's get real. This innovation dooms us to council estates bedecked with peeling, faded and misaligned dishes completely incongruous with their backgrounds, lacking even the invisible uniformity of a plain dish's industrial design. The saving throw: Goatsedish is but an upload away.

Product Page [via DailyMail]

John Brownlee

Make your new bike theft-proof... through aesthetics!

Bicycle theft is more endemic to some cities than others. In Berlin, bicycles don't seem to be stolen very often, and you'll often see unlocked bicycles parked at the sides of roads... mostly temporarily, to jump into a shop, but sometimes for longer periods with careless confidence. It seems to be as much an aspect of German character as anything: where as I, an American, tend to have the feeling that anyone who doesn't lock their property down kinda-sorta-deserves to have it stolen, the average German wouldn't even consider it.

On the other hand, a few hundred miles away in Amsterdam, I have friends who tell me that they see no point in spending more than five euros on their bicycles, so invariably certain is any stray velocipede to be stolen. One friend of mine habitually buys his bicycle back every few weeks from the same junkie who stole it. The Dutch sigh and blame the problem on a lot of transient drug addicts, but they accept their plight: the Dutch have a long history of being the victims of bicycle theft, going all the way back to the mass German bicycle thefts of World War II... which they still mumble dourly about during Germany vs. Netherlands football matches. For some reason, the Dutch have been cursed as a people who are not allowed to own a bicycle in peace.

In any city, though, there's a few common sense rules for not getting your bicycle stolen. Always lock it up. Spring for a good lock. Bring it inside when you can. And, most importantly, try to buy a bicycle that looks bad but is actually quite good. Used bikes, in other words.

But what if you've got a great new bike? What then? MAKE has an article up, giving a blow-by-blow account on how to absolutely ruin its finish while maintaining its structural serenity. I can't see a lick of sense in destroying the finish of a new bike when you can buy a good, used bike pretty easily, but I feel a certain ghastly fascination watching a gorgeous bicycle scraped, sanded and rusted to death. Torture porn for bicycle enthusiasts, perhaps.

U-G-L-Y Your Bike [MAKE via core77]

John Brownlee

The KISS plasma light decapitated head wants to give you some tongue

At first glance, K.I.S.S. is a sad-looking bunch... a cadre of pudgy sixty year olds squeezed into leather body suits, wheezing and panting. One has a star painted on his face, while another has made himself up to look like a sad kitty cat. But any doubts that K.I.S.S. stands for Knights in Satan's Service immediately evaporates when Gene Simmons opens his jaw and unfurls the slavering, gelatinous musculature of his wildly flailing tongue. This is the salivating organ of Baphomet, grafted into a human mouth. This is Satanism. This... is... ROCK!

K.I.S.S. fans can now own a decapitated replica of Gene Simmons head, as well as his purplish, pulsating tongue. The Gene Simmons LED bust features an 8" long fiber-optic glass tongue that will hallucinogenically flash in time with Detroit Rock City. Not only an excellent piece of tasteful decor for any post-modernist luxury apartment, but an excellent way to practice your french kissing. Just remember to tightly constrict your esophagus.

KISS Plasma Light Sculpted Head [Things You Never Knew via Nerd Approved]

Rob Beschizza

UN wonders what we're going to do with 3 billion dead mobile phones

It used to be that mobile phones were a luxury yet to filter to the third world. Soon enough, their cellular infrastructure became a boon to those living in remote or underdeveloped locales. Finally, we reach an inevitable orgasm of garbage, the world-spanning disposal problem of three billion phones heading to the trashcan. The UN is holding a 5-day conference in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, to figure something out. From AFP:

The conference would "consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones," a statement from the organisers said. ... Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia's long coastline made it particularly vulnerable to the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

"Due to its archipelagic nature, with the second longest coastline in the world, Indonesia is vulnerable to illegal traffic of transboundary hazardous waste," he said.

Hey, let's recycle them or create giant underground landfills and dump them there!

Hazard of old mobile phones under spotlight at UN meet [Yahoo! News]

John Brownlee

Laughing Squid on vintage Consumer Reports product test photos

The illustrious mikl-em of Laughing Squid wildly jactitates and squeals with excitement as he points out this fantastic gallery of vintage photos from 50s, 60s and 70s consumer product tests.

If that's not good enough, mikl-em takes the opportunity to nostalgically sigh over the many decades of Consumer Reports magazines that have brought us the wildly implausible retro-future each and every day.

Those rows and rows of black or red dots comparing the merits of every conceivable product from electric shavers to popcorn poppers and chocolate bars to nasal sprays, were at the time a wonder of the world of buying stuff that awaited me. Like the thinking man’s Price is Right, here was the racing form for the consumerism derby. CR is really the predecessor to the Engadgets and Gizmodos of the world, as well as car review sites like Edmunds.com and the like.

But unlike their followers, Consumer Reports has a strong policy of impartiality. They do not accept any ads in their magazine or allow their reviews to be used in commercials of any kind. So in a world of planned obsolescence where widgets that are more expensive are not necessarily more better, CR is an un-bribeable auditor of all the suitors for your hard-earned dough.

Very well said, mikl-em.

Vintage Photos of Consumer Product Tests [Consumer Reports]

Consumer Reports' Vintage Test Photos [Laughing Squid]

Rob Beschizza

Om unimpressed by HP MiniNote, lays out Subnote Manifesto

Om Malik's review of HP's MiniNote begins with the now-compulsory attempt to decipher the twisty maze of marketing bullshit that surrounds miniature computers: UMPC? MID? HPC? Netbook? Lah-di-dah. Anyway, he thinks it sucks:

It has become obvious that they really need to go back to the drawing board and rethink how people are going to use these devices, if they want to participate in the next big shift of computing.

So far, all they have done is cram traditional notebooks into smaller, maybe-lighter-to-carry bodies. They’re neither good for computing nor for communication. To me, the dozens of models being touted seem like a genetic-experiment gone wrong, a fact that was brought home when I tested one of the most talked-about devices...

It's fair warning for those who've yet to use an Eee or one of its clones, and are expecting more than such things can deliver—the major point of annoyance for Malik is that 2.7lbs is a little too heavy for an ultraportable, when the additional weight of an extended battery is taken into account. It also get very hot, he says.

It's his first experience of the form factor, so the review's probably not much help to those who already like these things and are wanting, say, to get help deciding between this and the 9" Eee or Dell's forthcoming entry. Malik's unfamiliarity with the shelf still works to his advantage, however, and he produces a list of everything that small computers need, that they don't have:

1. Instant On
2. Doesn’t generate too much heat.
3. Minimum 5 years hours of battery life.
4. Must feature at least four communications options: WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth & Wireless Wide Area Network connection to, say, an EVDO or HSPA Network.
5. Less than three pounds (Batteries included).
6. Screen size of 3.5 to 8 inches (wide-screen proportioned)
7. The primary function of the computer should be cloud-based activities that can include everything from listening to live music, reading blogs and watching videos. Writing research reports or cranking out spreadsheets isn’t the primary purpose of these machines.
8. It should cost no more than $300. This isn’t a computer; it’s a communications device. It should really be an on-the-go device. It is a device for the moments when your cellphone isn’t enough, and laptop is too much. An iPhone should qualify.
9. Its innards, ports should be geared for Internet-based activities — from making calls on Skype to consuming RSS feeds — though it should be able to handle external peripherals.
10. In the future it should move away from the keyboard and have a touchscreen interface that allows one to sift through large amounts of data (or web pages) quickly, as cramped keyboards and touchpads can be hard to use.

Number 10 is a religious issue, but I'm on board for the rest. Number 8 is a bit fanciful.

What Makes A Cloud Computer? [Gigaom]

Rob Beschizza

Pig-shaped earbuds making me want bacon for breakfast

Green House of Japan's Buta (Pig) earphones are available in pink, black and white for $12. Oink!

Product Page [Green-house.co.jp via CrunchGear]

Rob Beschizza

Motorola ZN5 has more megapixels

Motorola's ZN5 candybar-shaped cell phone has a 5mp camera and hardware image stitching, WiFi for quick photo uploads, and compatibility with GSM/EDGE networks. China will get it first, says Wired's Danny Dumas, with the rest of us having to wait until later this year.

Commenter Metafizzicaluv at Gadget Lab nails this one: it's a cheap camera with a phone in it.

5-Megapixel Motorola ZN5 Cell Phone Announced [Wired]

Rob Beschizza

Report: Atari sues game site for publishing review without permission

Atari is reportedly suing game review website 4player after it published a review of its latest Alone in the Dark game without permission.

As the site did not receive a copy of the game from the publisher, Atari believes 4player obtained it illegally and seeks undisclosed restitution. 4players says the game was legally leaked to it from a retailer. It awarded AiTD 68 percent, a grim total on the industry standard "7 to 9" rating scale used by gaming journalists.

There is a pinch of salt element at hand: 4player's denunciation of Atari has all the accouterments of a standard-issue internet drama play. Fidgit's Tom Chick describes it as "a website with a sense of entitlement instead of an early review copy."

If its version of events is true, however, it's the latest example of publishers' increasingly aggressive attempts to determine how the gaming press covers its products. In the run up to the release of its latest blockbuster, Konami presented reviewers with early-access contracts that told them not to report certain aspects of the game — after they'd already given them access. Late last year, Gamespot fired longtime staffer Jeff Gerstmann after he panned Kane and Lynch, whose publisher had paid for a site-wide advertising campaign at the site.

It's not limited to gaming, either: Websites covering rock mainstays Metallica were ordered to pull reviews of their latest songs. Wired asked one editor why they comply, and the answer was direct and to the point: because his writers were in danger of losing access.

Atari versus press freedom (Machine Trans) [4players.de via Wired: Game|Life]

Rob Beschizza

Dig Dug pillows are pixel-perfect

Manic maiden, a "Computer Geek and artistic Domestic Goddess," made these wonderful pillows for her brother's birthday. Don 't miss her giant Mario Quilt.

Manic Maden's flickr set [via Craftzine via Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

Amazon reader reviews of Denon's $500 scam cable are brilliant

Denon's $500 ethernet cable, ostensibly for use in Denon Link hookups, is easy to mock. But it's Amazon's readers who mock the hardest:

"If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that's compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely -- like white, holy light."

javascript:void(0) “A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the ‘directional markings’ on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.”

"The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.”

"I accidentally dropped one end of my Denon cable into a glass of Tuscan whole milk I was drinking. Later when I finished my milk (yeah, I still drank it; should I not have done that?), my right arm (lost in an accident in 1987) spontaneously grew back. Is that normal?"

This is perhaps the best Amazon reviews page of all time. Don't miss it, or the tags customers associate with this product, which include "from the future," "I can't believe it's not butter," "as effective as dog hair," "ecstacy godlike troll-killing superWMD ubercable," and "lol."

Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable reader reviews [Amazon via Newsvine via CrunchGear]

Rob Beschizza

Students build enclosed electric motorcycle

Enclosed scooters are something of a conundrum. They add a surprising degree of protection: as Autoblog Green writes, BMW's C1 produced unexpectedly good crash test results. The problem is that they look so bad that no-one would ever dream of buying one. This fine tradition of design impossibility continues with the Saint Thomas EV, an electric bike powered by a 60v lithium phosphate battery.

The current configuration is said to be good for a top speed of sixty miles per hour and a range of forty miles. The chassis is constructed from chromoly tubing. The body is made from a carbon fiber and Kevlar composite and should therefore prove very strong. The full seat even features a seatbelt. We are not certain that anything quite like this will ever be available for purchase again, but its good to see it in concept form at least.

For those readers lacking the faculty of sight, let me describe it for you: it looks like someone took a giant partially-melted plastic tick and upended it atop a motorcycle, then laser-cut the interior from its tumescent, lime-green carapace. Do I want one? Yes.

High School students build enclosed electric motorcycle [Autoblog Green]

Rob Beschizza

Asus ZX1 Lambophone wins design award

Asus's ZX1 Lamborghini cellphone won the iF Communication Design Award. "Masculine cuts," as the ZX1's press release put it, are clearly the new Swarovsky crystals when it comes to $1,500 clones of everyday shovelphones.

Asus-Lamborghini ZX1 PDA phone wins iF Communication Design Awards 2008 [Fareastgizmos.com via Crave]

Rob Beschizza

Cellranger, USB-powered signal booster

Cellranger, a $150 USB-powered dongle which improves reception for cellphones and 3G modems, is now available. Also offered in a 12V cigarette-lighter edition, it has about 6ft of effective range and can be hooked up to standard cellphone and unidirectional antennas.

Product Page

John Brownlee

Tomy's new piggy bank rewards savings with in-built RPG

This new Tomy piggy bank gives forward-thinking youngsters a reason to save their quarters: it features a miniature RPG game on the front, and every coin you pump into the bank is translated into gold, which can be used to buy weapons, items and armor for your character. Ultima meets Tamagotchi, basically. Although I'd hasten to add that a savings account is a better return on investment than putting your money into a wardrobe for an imaginary elf.

Enjoy this new Tomy RPG Piggy Bank [Akihabara News]

John Brownlee

Geiger counter case mod

Stuffed into this vintage Ion Chamber radiation detector, a tiny Russian-built Civil Defense computer... running at 300MHz with 256MB of RAM and a 4GB flash drive. Flick the ON switch and the entire rig leaps into radioactive life, wildly ticking and buzzing about its own nuclear decay.

Technabob doesn't think this rig would play the original Half-Life or Fallout, but I played both games on a rig about this powerful, back in the day. Lugging this around through the wasteland for a portable game of either is a dream application.

Geiger Counter PC Casemod Can't Play Half-Life [Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

You too can become a twinkle-toed Terminator with Tensegrity prosthetic foot

Tensegrity, a prototype prosthesis, offers the wearer a stable gait thanks to its reproduction of the human foot's natural mechanisms. From Medgadget:

Built by inventor and mechanical engineer Jerome Rifkin, the artificial foot bends like a normal foot and ankle, and conforms to the terrain underneath it. The prosthetic options for foot amputees is limited due to the complexity involved in mimicking the weight-bearing action and propulsion involved with the foot.

While fancy robotic prosthetic feet are already available, insurers don't like them and won't pay for them. Tensegrity, however, doesn't use complex, vulnerable electronics: it's pure hardware, manipulated with thick braided metal ropes and pneumatics, with no need for expensive motors, regenerative power cycling or AI chips.

"The human foot is ... a passive device. You just have to set it up correctly and let it do what it does," Rifkin told Popular Science, which reports that it cost $100,000 and eight years to develop. It has video of it in action.

A more natural prosthetic foot [Medgadget]

The Natural Artificial Foot [PopSci]

Rob Beschizza

RoboVault biometric maximum-security center proposed

Where shall our new robot masters recharge, safe from the resentful predations of their wily meat slaves? In Fort Lauderdale's RoboVault, a giant robotic rail warehouse that BLDGBLOG describes as presaging a "mechano-Derridean future of the archive."

RoboVault [BLDGBLOG]

Joel Johnson

World's *est: Project Genesis Oasis-class cruise liner

Sure to cause waves to lap on the world's shores when she's launched next year, Royal Caribbean's "Project Genesis" cruise liner will be the world's largest. Her stats are appropriately titanic:

• Cost: $1.24 billion dollars.

• Bigger Than: 43 percent larger than the Queen Elizabeth II, the world's previous largest ship. She's 1,180 feet long with a gross tonnage of 220,000, uh, tons.

• Its Own Park: In the middle of the ship is "Central Park," a public garden that's as big as a football field.

• Its Own Amphitheater: The "AquaTheater" at the stern is the "first amphitheater at sea." Note the rock-climbing walls around the edges.

• Its Own Tattoo Parlour/Psychic: It goes without saying: intestinal scarring shouldn't be the only permanent souvenir your bring home from your cruise.

• Plague Opportunities: Standard berthing supports 5,400 passengers, or 6,400 under Sardine Conditions.

• Sister Forthcoming: A second "Oasis Class" ship will be delivered by the Aker Yards in August, 2010.

I'd rather sequester myself on a dinghy with a case of rum and a rotting seal carcass than go on a cruise, but I understand lots of people like to travel to the world's most beautiful locations and view them from the confines of a floating strip mall.

The world’s largest and most expensive ship [Gizmag]
Official Site [OasisOfTheSeas.com]
Oasis Class [Wikipedia]

Joel Johnson

Boyd Ashford Turtle pocket knife

This cute little pocket knife, designed by Boyd Ashworth, is only two-inches long when folded and weights just 1.3 ounces. Despite its oddly endearing shape, it can still be opened one-handed.

It's available in multiple finishes for $40.

Catalog Page [Shopatron via Cool Hunting]

John Brownlee

Chapter One $400k watch

The Chapter One watch from Maîtres du Temps is wonderfully intricate. It looks beautiful. It is a collaboration between famed watch designers Christophe Claret, Peter Speake-Marin and Roger Dubuis. It features a tourbillon, retrograde GMT and date indicators, rolling displays that show the day and moon phase, and a mono-pusher chronograph with a 60-minute totalizer.

It's also four hundred freakin' thousand dollars. And that's without a layer of Swarovski Crystals, also known as crushed glass. Way to price yourself out of even rich people's price range, guys.

Maitres du Temps [Official Site via DVICE]

Joel Johnson

Government rules it's legal for government to spy on those not in government

Assholes. The whole lot. Mike Masnick reports on the American congress' failure to not only penalize telco giants who allowed warrantless spying on American citizens, but to provide retroactive immunity for any previous crimes. A few hundred corrupt, pissloaf schemers have just made it totally legal for the government to spy on you without any oversight whatsoever.

However, under this new law, Congress has basically given the President (who ordered the wiretaps in the first place, and doesn't want these trials to go forward since they may reveal that he broke the law too) "get out of jail free" cards he can hand to each telco, saying that since he told them that the wiretaps were legal, the lawsuits no longer can proceed. Basically, this puts the President above the law, lets him avoid trials that might prove that his activities broke the law and to reward telcos who broke the law at his command.

Our Congress Has Failed Us: Gives In On Telecom Immunity [Techdirt]

Joel Johnson

SkyCeilings now support programmable azimuth lighting

The folks at Sky Factory sent word that their SkyCeilings faux skylights now include programmable lighting which can be used to emulate the intensity and color changes that come with a rising and setting sun.

Further, the bi-color Programmable SkyCeiling is enhanced by a DALI controlled (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) light source that adds the color of sunrise and sunset - or, for those who wish, the drama of theatrical moonlight. Control of the programmable system can be manual or by means of personal computer or smart system technology.

Information page (with auto-playing audio) [TheSkyFactory.com]

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

Joel Johnson

Latest Oobject gallery looks inside Chinese factories

David Galbraith, curator over at Oobject, writes about his latest gallery showing the insides of Chinese factories:

Although a couple of these are from a photo essay, I've tried to pull as many as poss from publicity material. A weird thing emerged - most Chinese factories seem to have the same bland pastel colored thing going on.

chinese factories [Oobject]

Joel Johnson

Video: Amazing NERF office war

This video, which from the wealth of weapons used in its creation I can only presume is a sanctioned viral commissioned by Nerf, manages to break every rule of good internet video: it's over five-minutes long; it is a commercial; it's trying to be funny. Against all odds, it manages to be completely awesome. It's enough to almost make me wish I worked in an office.

Video Friday: The Great Office War [Oh Gizmo!]

Previously • N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25: Fully Automatic NERF Cannon

John Brownlee

Another nice Texas Instruments Photoshop: Elephant and head-explode girl send their greetings from the savannah

At the risk of turning Boing Boing Gadgets into a tech-themed rip-off of Photoshop Disasters, non-Euclidean sharks are just the tip of Texas Instruments' swollen-tongue in regards to their doofusism in the art of image manipulation. This image was taken from Texas Instruments' homepage for their new DLP projectors. Oh, what the ffffffff.....

What the samhell is going on here? A supernaturally hovering little girl, her feet amputated, melts her own face off when she opens the Lament Configuration via the malignant psychic command of a floating, physics-defying elephant. And that's not even pointing out that the scene is set on a planet with three or four different suns, judging from the shadows.

I'd really like to congratulate the plucky seven year old who spun two free Photoshop lessons at Boys Club computer camp into a lucrative contract with Texas Instruments. You'll go far in the business world, my son.

(Thanks to Banksynergy for the tip!)

Joel Johnson

Video: Highlights from the Tokyo Toy Show '08

Trends in Japan made it to the Toyko Toy Show and shot lots of video. If you'd like to see the latest in dancing flowers, tiny robots, and R/C hovercraft, give a click over to look at their lovely photo gallery.

Tokyo Toy Show 2008 with video and photos [Killian-Nakamura]

Joel Johnson

Tanita Ironman Segmental Body Composition Monitor: It's a fancy scale

If you're body image obsessed, Tanita's new BC-558 scale — they like to call it the "Ironman Segmental Body Composition Monitor" — will allow you not only to weigh your entire carcas but to take separate body mass readings for each limb. It uses bioelectrical impedance analysis just like most scales with body mass features, but multiple electrodes, including two in retractable handgrips, let you freak out that you're not only fat, but asymmetrically chubby.

The scale costs $300. Consider this one for professional bodybuilders only.

Catalog Page [TheCompetitiveEdge.com]

Rob Beschizza

GPS recording gadget debunks psychic's child abuse allegation

After school officials suggested her severely autistic daughter was being abused because a psychic told them so, mom Colleen Leduc had the perfect scientific smack-down: 24/7 GPS records of her daughter's location, with audio.

Leduc equipped 11-year old, non-verbal Victoria with a GPS device that never stops recording — evidence that demonstrated the allegations could not possibly be true.

Leduc's nightmare began in May, when after picking her daughter up from an Autistic Spectrum Disorder class, she was summoned back to LIvigstone East school by an urgent call. From the Barrie Examiner:

Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school. She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher. Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

Dr. Lindy Zaretsky, the school board superintendent and who brings a shining new light to the phrase "jobsworth," claims they were obliged to initiate investigations. The investigator assigned to the case, however, immediately closed it and described it as "ridiculous."

Dr. Zaretsky, you are obliged to not be stupid.

Leduc says that reports from psychics shouldn't be grounds for investigations.

"A, I don't believe in psychics. B, (Victoria) is not around people who are those ages (mentioned by the psychic)," she said. "C, she has GPS with a listen-in device. And D, it's an insult to me as a parent because I'm so diligent with her and who she's around.""

Astonishingly, the board stands by its decision, even though the information came from a psychic and appears to be false. They would do it again. The allegations will remain on file forever.

"I think they require more education about dealing with an autistic child," Leduc told the Examiner.

Psychic's charge of abuse leaves Barrie mom fuming
[Barrie Examiner]

John Brownlee

Kill a man with the Unbreakable Umbrella

For $180, the Unbreakable Umbrella advertises a precipitation shielding system that is not only nigh-invulnerable enough to support the body weight of an Ian Holm look-alike, but which is also strong enough to smash open a human skull like a watermelon.

Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited, unlike a walking stick it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it does protect from rain. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella.

Do you know how to swing a baseball bat? Do you know how to strike with a sturdy stick? If you do, you know all you need to know…

...to beat a man clean to death with an umbrella. Any umbrella, in point of fact.

The Unbreakable Umbrella [Real Self Defense via Oh Gizmo]

John Brownlee

MSN Music postpones DRM server shutdown until 2011

In response to the whole Internet basically ejaculating its central nervous system in collective outrage, Microsoft is postponing the de-commissioning of their MSN Music DRM servers, which means that the music you legally purchased will be yours to listen to until 2011. Thrillsville, guys.

On April 22, Microsoft notified you that as of August 31st, 2008, we would be changing the level of support for music purchased from MSN Music, and while your existing purchased music would continue to play, you would no longer be able to authorize new PCs and devices to play that music. After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of 2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers.

Microsoft, the only appropriate next step is replacing the DRM tracks you have sold customers with non-DRM equivalents. Period. Irate triple exclamation point.

Microsoft Relents on Killing MSN Music DRM Authenticaton...For a Few Years [Digital Home Thoughts]

John Brownlee

Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3 typography showdown

Ralf Herrmann's typography blog has a great post up comparing the type handling of Safari 3, which doesn't support kerning or OpenType layout features, with Firefox 3, which does in theory. Unfortunately, it's still got a way to go: for example, ligatures are applied universally that should only appear under certain contextual conditions. Hopefully this will continue to be tweaked for the point releases.

Kerning and OpenType features in Firefox 3 [Ralf Herrmann via TUAW]

Joel Johnson

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in LEGO

Architecture student Matija Grguric's brilliant recreation of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye is an obvious candidate for LEGO when you think about it. Le Corbusier's square-edged design of the concrete home — completed in 1929, if you can believe it — lends itself perfectly to blocks, being modular itself.

This is the first I've heard of Le Corbusier and "International Style". I can imagine it was a fairly mind-blowing architectural notion at the time, even if the house looks like an office park on stilts today.

Project Page [MOCPages.com via Bros. Brick]

John Brownlee

Ha! Nice Photoshop, Texas Instruments... Beware Non-Euclidean Sharks!

lolwut? In what physical dimension is this scene set? The fifth? The sixth? The ninth? Or is the implication that your new 3D projector runs on magic? Because nothing in this newly released promotional image for your latest product takes place in this reality.

The audience seems to be reacting to something incredibly fascinating happening in the corner, because they aren't even looking at the screen, which is parallel to their line of sight. Even if they were looking at it, it wouldn't explain the great white shark hungrily leaping out of the screen. We won't fault you for creative license: yes, it is impossible to project with just one 3D projector the side of an object hidden from the audience, but clearly you're just trying to get a point across. But couldn't you have at least made sure that your 3D projector was aimed at the screen? Also conspicuous: the mysterious lack of shadows cast by all the objects you just magic lassoed in.

You can't farm out Photoshop work to chlorine huffers, TI. I've had theophylline fever dreams with more cogent Newtonian physics than this.

TI showcases 3D projector and DLP Pico chipset at InfoComm [Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Limbo of the Lost copycats not even speaking to locals

Limbo of the Lost is the gaming meme of the month: three pub mates from provincial England coming together to produce an old-school adventure game years in the making, and landing a big U.S. publishing deal. And then it all going horribly wrong as a result, because the world then discovers that their game's backgrounds are swiped from every second triple-A title from the last decade.

The publisher, humiliated by its own lack of oversight, can't seem to get a response from them. And neither, sadly, can the local paper that penned a proud summary of their success in May. Helen Wagstaff reports that they're "reluctant to comment at the moment," writing a short overview of the game's woes in the Kent Messenger.

There is a certain tragedy to it; the game got good reviews, after all, and as the work of three non-pros, amounted to proof that you can make it in this business without awe-inspiring truckfuls of capital — they even used an off-the-shelf game creation system, Wintermute. Limbo of the Lost could have been proof that artistic imagination and dedication alone were enough — were it not for the fact that so much of their art was from others' works.

Think how it could have been different: a local art student bumped into at the pub, for example, paid a fair bag for a few dozen original backdrops. Hell, they could have just grabbed appropriately licensed work, free of charge, from the Creative Commons!

I wonder if the situation isn't simply that an amateur project, little different in spirit from the countless online animations, mashups and flash games that rip sprites, music and other assets from classic games, didn't just get way out of hand. The moment of truth, of course, didn't really come in the last few weeks. It came a long time ago: when Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis took a breath, then signed on the dotted line.

Joel Johnson

Bandai 'Ikemenbank' piggy bank rewards saving with virtual romance

The new "Ikemenbank" from Bandai is a piggy bank for women with a twist: its name translates into "handsome man bank"; it tells a story of love as frugal yen-pinchers drop in 500 yen coins.

Reports Reuters:

"Ikemenbank" first asks the user to choose between five different types of men: "cool model", "witty comedian", "gentle, public-school boy", "young athlete" and "older man with patience".

As the user inserts coins, the men talk back, saying "you are the best," and "you are looking prettier these days".

Japanese piggy bank helps savers enjoy romance [Reuters]

Joel Johnson

'HD for Kids!' coloring book

It's difficult to discern how seriously we're supposed to take the "HD for Kids!" coloring book from Non-Toxic Reviews. Ostensibly it's designed to teach kids about HDTV, or perhaps to educate their parents as they follow along, but it's also got a couple of tedious and baffling activities.

One frame encourages kids to "Take your Crayon and draw 480 dots inside this TV," followed by an exhortation to "Take a different color Crayon and draw 1,080 dots inside this HDTV." Not only is that technically wrong — standard-def TVs can display 480 lines, as stated just above in the coloring book — but it also sounds sort of boring.

But here was the one that made me think the whole thing is a joke, a section entitled "Make your own! DLP Projector Television!"

Did this guy really just encourage kids to stare at shiny lights in a mirror until they start to hallucinate? That is fantastic.

The "HD for Kids!" coloring book is available as a free PDF download.

Free coloring book - HD for Kids! [NonToxicReviews.com via Consumerist]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Gaming Headphones – Plantronics Audio 350 Halo 2 Noise Cancelling Stereo Gaming headset with boom mic for $10, shipped. If you've never used Google Checkout, you can get them for free. Look decent to me for ten bucks! [Slickdeals]

• Multitools – Amazon has a sale on multitools from Gerber, Leatherman, and Victorinox. [Dealhack]

• HDMI Swtich – Good ol' Monoprice has dropped the price of their 5-port HDMI switch to $36, shipped. [Dealnews]

• WOOT OFF – Today's Woot! is a WOOT-OFF.

John Brownlee

The Birds Barbie doll gets her eyes pecked

Presumably to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Mattel is releasing this special, limited edition Barbie doll, modeled after Tippi Hedren's iconic pose: a single, soft white hand shielding herself from a horde of feathered rates eager to plunge their beaks into the sweet aqueous vitreous of her eyes. It could only be more historically perfect a tribute if the accompanying Ken doll was modeled after Sir Alfred himself, lecherously smacking his ponderous jowls after Barbie Tippi's shiny, segmented, asexual pudendum, which would at least fittingly capture Hitchcock's fascination with most of his starlets. $44.99 when it is released later this year.

Update: As I mentioned in the comments, they should really follow this up with a Psycho-licensed Vivien Leigh Barbie, with Ken as Norman Bates in drag.

Alfred Hitchcock The Birds Barbie Doll [Entertainment Earth via Nerd Approved]

Joel Johnson

Uncle Walt reviews in-flight Wi-Fi from GoGo

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg hauled several laptops and mobile gadgets onto a jet kitted out with Aircell's GoGo in-flight Wi-Fi service. Speeds weren't miraculous — 600Kbps down, 400Kbps up — and that bandwidth will be shared among all users, but hey, something is better than nothing.

American Airlines flights from New York to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami will be the first to go GoGo; Virgin America will see the service installed on the whole fleet later this year.

Prices are $13 for flights over three hours or $10 for shorter flights.

Things you won't be able to do on GoGo: VoIP (it's blocked by GoGo); streaming video (it's too slow); make cellular calls with your phone (it's Wi-Fi, not cellular, even though the connection from the plane to the ground is more-or-less a cellular connection).

Rob Beschizza

Doggie IQ test now available

How smart is your dog? Give it an IQ test! Dr. Stanley Coren takes that popular mismeasure of man and slaps it onto the pooch psyche. It's a £5 book that comes with one (1) gadget: a custom stopwatch!

With 12 carefully designed and researched tests you’ll learn how to determine the Canine Intelligence Quotient (CIQ) of your pet. Five of the tests cover problem solving, while the other seven deal with learning ability and memory. With a test book, score and result guide, and a stopwatch for timing the results, the Doggy IQ Test has everything you need to silence those detractors who keep telling you your dog’s stupid. The only thing to watch out for is the worrying possibility that your dog might end up with a higher IQ score than you do.

Product Page [I want one of those via Red Ferret]

Rob Beschizza

Asus EeePC 1000H is good, but is $650

Asus's upgraded Eee PC, with a bold 10" display and 80GB hard drive, rules. But Laptop laments the $650 price tag, with which it exits the cheap-subnote category its own predecessors created.

We like the Eee PC 1000H, but we’ll like it a lot more if the final pricing for the system winds up being less.

The result is that it draws further attention to MSI's Wind, which is similarly-specified but $150 cheaper and half a pound lighter.

Review [Laptopmag]

John Brownlee

Fully functioning grandfather clock made of old bicycle parts

BBG reader Guy Vardi passed along this wonderful video of the Waste of Time, a functioning grandfather clock made up entirely of old bicycles. It was built by Yedidya Vardi and Vladimir Zviagintsev, and it is on display at the Vardi Center for the Development of the Gifted in Israel. And here's the making-of video:

I love this quote from the YouTube description:

One of the design principles was to use only used elements. Edison once said that to invent you need good imagination and a pile of junk. The designers took his advice seriously.

(Thanks, Guy!)

Rob Beschizza

Why women quit technology careers

Harvard Business Review has an answer to why women get sick of the tech business, despite excelling in it. It is because of "antigens" — elements of the culture that actively repel women. Which is another way of saying that it's full of misogynistic dicks. From Computer World:

"We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment. That's a really high figure. They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning. It's distressing to find this kind of data in 2008. "

The other "antigens" are consequential from this. Women feel isolated, because there are so few women in the trade. Women tend to see less long-term opportunities, because they don't bond with colleagues as a result. IT outfits also reward employees involved in patterns of ostentatious failure and rescue, "the diving catch" — Women, of course, get shit fixed before it starts to break.

Why women quite tech careers [Computer World]

John Brownlee

Talking, singing, dancing dolls... dissected!

Matt Kirkland, Designer for Hire!, vivisects a wide variety of talking dolls, peeling their skin off layer by layer to reveal the plastic musculature and copper-twined sinews of the anatomy within. Baby Big Bird can be scraped down to a small tape recorder, but some other dolls have truly horrifying robot skeletons.

in vestimentis ursum [Matt Kirkland]

Rob Beschizza

Lenovo X200 shots leaked

Images of Lenovo's X200 lightweight laptop have surfaced, and it looks exactly the way you imagined it would. IBM's design language is here to stay.

The problem, if it is one, is that the look was never that good to begin with; it's trying to be the Little Black Dress of notebook computers, a kind of Cayce Pollard laptop free of caprice and ornament, but doesn't quite it pull it off.

Source [51nb.com via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Video of man using tablet PC as a hammer

MobileDemand's xTablet Tablet PC is more effective than the handle of a pair of scissors.

John Brownlee

Cuisipro invents the better ice cream scoop

I suspect the Cuisipori Ice Cream Scoop and Stack will primarily be wielded by sullen ice cream parlor gang bosses who begrudge you every frozen fat strand in that heaping kugel of chocolate chip mint served on a skin-blistering summer day, but for private use, it's genius. Simply plunge the scooper into a bucket of ice cream, twist and lift out a perfectly ovular 3.75 ounce scoop... precisely the width of an ice cream cone. Since the top is flat, this will facilitate structurally sound ice cream towers.

Here in Berlin, we tend to prefer gelato, which can be easily scooped up with a spatula, but I still nurse my American fondness for hard ice cream... and a mounting frustration, even in abstract, of scraping a spoon across the surface of a frozen block of Neapolitan recovered from my freezer's paleolithic ice core. $14.99 seems a small price to pay to forego all of that.

Cuisipro Ice Cream Scoop & Stack [Wrapables via DVICE]

Rob Beschizza

Samsung and LG Mobile Internet Devices loaded into the cannon for summer release

Samsung's Snapdragon-powered sequel to its Q1 series of ultramobile PCs is nearing production. A Qualcomm official quoted by Aving offers a release date within the month; the unit itself will support a 1GHz CPU, 3G internet, a 12 megapixel camera, GPS, HD video and "all day battery life," whatever that means.

To be released as a MID, or Mobile Internet Device, the new machine will also have a 600 MHz digital signal processor, WiFi and Bluetooth.

LG, however, opted for Intel's Atom instead of Quallcomm's Snapdragon set; its 4.8" model will have a 40GB hard drive, 3G support and stouter 1.8 GHz speed.

Samsung to go with Qualcomm, LG with Intel[Aving via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Tighten up the graphics! Only 5 percent of game development degrees accredited

The Beeb reports that game devs are facing a severe talent shortage in the UK, bracketed by an alarming statistic: of 81 game development degree courses offered in the UK, only 4 are accredited. David Braben, creator of Elite and LostWinds, says that these courses are a "waste of time for all involved."

It comes down to fundamentals that would-be developers don't want to deal with—maths and computer science—and which schools therefore do not sell to them.

Comments on the story are interesting, including a university lecturer who says developers ignore academics when they ask what the industry wants; a dev who points out that the wages in the biz are not going to attract many bachelors of science; and pretentious drivel about the essential nature of gaming, from a game design student who one suspects isn't going to know the difference between trigonometry and type safety after his three years are up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7460870.stm

Joel Johnson

I will be playing Team Fortress 2 tonight

If anybody would like to join up, I'll probably be farming some of those Pyro achievements.

We have started a Boing Boing group on Steam. Our page is right here.

Also, the new "Meet the Sniper" video (above) is so amazingly amazing it's amazing. I want Valve to make a whole Team Fortress movie now.

Joel Johnson

A Convenient Lie

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has issued another press release about Al Gore's personal energy spending in his Tennessee manse, claiming that even after "greening" his home the former Vice-President uses even more energy.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Said user 'ender7074': "Just goes to show that hes in it for the money and not for any noble reason. Pure scum." 'Mattalice' chimed: "This will NEVER be publicized in the general news media. They want the global warming fraud and they need their green jesus to preach it." 'ChLb' followed the money: "Gore does have investments in 'carbon offset' businesses which will get plenty more business thanks to him advertising their services and trying to force taxpayers and businesses to buy into these schemes by law."

Pointing a trembling finger at hypocrisy is a useful tradition and Mr. Gore — of all people — should make more of an effort to practice what he preached. Yes, heating a large home takes a lot of power; no, it's not unreasonable to think that a man who asks the world to make do with less should consider making better use of such a large estate.

(Bear in mind that abandoning the house has an energy burden as well, so moving to a smaller home is not necessarily a better option. Perhaps he could take on boarders.)

Worse, Mr. Gore's enormous energy bill gives easy release to the fragile conscience of the inconsiderate. Why should I, a citizen of the first world, sacrifice?

It's a shame. One large electricity bill, mostly inconsequential, will end up as the excuse needed by thousands of lazy, suspicious consumers to crank their air conditioners to 65° and toss on their favorite sweater.

Joke's on them, of course. No matter how much energy Gore may waste, their energy bills aren't getting any cheaper.

Still, what a disgusting response to an unfortunate indiscretion! We know the world is warming due to our actions. Even if it were not, with non-renewable energy costs peaking — and then peaking again — a national and global effort to use less, conserve more, and generally make ourselves less reliant on costly energy to power our lives is an undeniably good thing to anyone not desperately grasping at justifications to continue buying, burning, and junking our resources.

Enjoy the gotcha. I hope the memory of Al Gore's mistake keeps you warm when oil is at $200-a-barrel.

Image: Snopes

Rob Beschizza

Fourteen 3D printers to choose from

As children, we read about a golden future of 3D xerox machines that would bring to life a barely-expressible future of universal fabrication.

As adult, we read things like "14 3D printers", and see that the future has become the mundane with no interstitial period of hands-on wonder. Chunks of milled beigeness? This isn't Earl Grey!

I do, however, love this example, which makes me think of a city of very happy skyscrapers in which they forgot to put in the roads.

14_3D Printers [Tim Pickup via Fabaloo and Makezine]

Joel Johnson

KOR ONE water bottle looks, is venerated like God's own suppository

Surely I am conflicted: The "KOR ONE" is a high-end reusable water bottle. Reusable water bottles are a great thing, as bottled water from the shelves is such a waste of resources. On the other hand, the promotional copy and hype surrounding its upcoming August launch is awfully self-laudatory, if not hyperbolic. ("The KOR ONE is not a water bottle; it's an innovation invitation.")

On the other other hand, it does look like a well-designed bit of plastic, with a one-handed flip-top lid and an attractive, burl-free plastic case. (BPA-free!) And if a little fancy chatting and branded design is what it takes to make using a reusable water bottle hip — excuse me, hydration vessel — then I suppose I can grin and bear it.

It's gonna be $25.

Product Page [KORwater.com via Core77 (no relation)]

Charles Shopsin

Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Over at Modern Mechanix we're currently in the middle of series of posts about technologies that were invented earlier than you might have thought. We've already done fax machines, answering machines and televisions and have more coming later this week. (At right is a color fax machine from 1946)

We've also posted articles about a man who designed magic tricks for famous magicians, designs for floating airports, extremes in sexual behavior (of the time, pretty mild by today's standards), a truck that walks on metal feet, the $125,000,000 (1931 dollars) mini-golf industry, how to disarm a gun toting attacker, self lighting cigarettes, a photographer who poses as a cactus, Wile Coyote style, a collection of strange bridges, one man helicopters, rocket planes that'll get your from NYC to LA in 40 minutes, leg falsies, a nicotine remover for cigarettes, 3D-movies, camouflaged military pigeons, a self dialing directory driven phone and a look at where television stands today (today being 1931).

In the computer section we also looked at Byte magazine's review of the original Macintosh, and their much more interesting interview with the design team (hint: even in 1984 Jobs was arrogant and irritatingly right), an ad for a 1983 "64-bit" computer, and in 1968 Look magazine asked the question "The Computer Data Bank, Will it Kill Your Freedom?"

Joel Johnson

Songbird hearing aid is inexpensive...perhaps too inexpensive

It's surprising that technology as commonplace as the hearing aid is not yet fully commoditized, but according to Sascha Segan, the new "Songbird" hearing aid — available over-the-counter for $80 — is the first "disposable" model.

The speaker element comes on an adjustable-length wire, so it's one-size-sorta-fits-all. You buy it over the counter with no doctor's visit required. And when you run out of the 400 hours of battery life (call it a month or so), you buy another one.

Songbird: The First "Disposable" Hearing Aid [Gearlog]

Joel Johnson

Video: The Trons, homebrew automata band

The Three Laws of Robotic Bands:

1. A robot may not fail to rock a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to fail to rock.

2. A robot must obey requests given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law (or are "Freebird").

3. A robot must protect its own relevancy as long as such relevance does not conflict with the First or Second Law. (Also known as "Bowie's Paradox".)

[via Engadget]

Previously • DIY robot fingers cheat at Guitar Hero in style

Joel Johnson

Model-making industrial spy wanted to infiltrate Apple

Core77's "Coroflot" design job portal has an intriguing position listed for a "model maker - finisher" at Apple. If you get the job after we've brought it to your attention, you are ethically compelled to leak at least one product to us a year.

Work with the Apple industrial design team to create appearance models and mock-ups used to evaluate and communicate industrial design directions, forms, and details of future product concepts. Ideal candidate should have 5+ years of product model making or equivalent experience. Requires an advanced knowledge of all model making phases and processes with emphasis on machining and finishing.

Coroflot Design Job of the Day: Model Maker, Apple, Cupertino, California [Core77.com]

Update: My pal Mike points out that the job entry for "Astronaut Candidate" does make a point to note the position requires "frequent travel."

Rob Beschizza

Unchecked malware on government computer results in bogus child porn charge (UPDATE: Now with excerpts from forensic report)

Forensics experts exonerated a "computer illiterate" man accused of downloading child porn, after finding that his work computer was infected with malware that his employers failed to block, remove, or even identify.

The Boston Herald reports that Michael Fiola's computer quietly filled with a relentless spew of pornographic imagery. The Department of Industrial Accidents terminated him after its discovery.

Fiola’s troubles began in November 2006 when, seven years into a job probing workers’ compensation fraud, DIA gave him a replacement laptop for one that was stolen.

Months later, DIA information technology officials noted that the data usage on Fiola’s Verizon wireless bill was 4 times greater than his colleagues’. After discovering the child porn , Commissioner Paul Buckley fired him on
March 14, 2007.

Fiola was forced to hire his own investigators to clear his name. Their conclusions were confirmed by the prosecution's own forensic experts, and he now intends to sue the DIA for ruining his life.

“Our lives have been hell,” Fiola, an ex-park ranger, told the Herald. “I hope to recover my reputation, but our friends all ran.”

The best thing about the story is how Fiola's lawyer calmly exposes Buckley and co. as stupid, presumptuous morons: "As soon as you mention child pornography, everybody’s senses go out the window."

Update: BBG reader Tubman found the forensic report (PDF), which explains exactly how much of a slam-dunk exoneration it is. It also excoriates the original "investigation," which amounted to some incompetent IT jobsworths finding the images and promptly railroading Mr. Fiola.

Nice, considering they gave him a compromised computer, malware on which started slurping down the smut within minutes of "the first significant user activity by Mr. Fiola after receiving the Laptop."

Some excerpts from examiner Tami Loehrs' report:

The pornography appears out of nowhere ... fast and furious with no pattern. While search results pages appear, the pages that follow do not come from links on the search results page and the content that appears next does not match the search. In addition, the content itself is sporadic – child pornography, scat sites, urination sites, gay men, incest, large women, etc. This activity is more indicative of a virus, Trojan or hacker than an individual browsing the Internet for pornography. ... we know for sure that the system was badly infected.

...

Mr. Glennon testified that there is no evidence that anyone else other than the Administrator had ever accessed the Laptop. However, a review of the computer revealed several other accounts that had been created on the Laptop prior to Michael Fiola including diauser, user, test and test2. Unfortunately, all previous accounts had been deleted, thereby eliminating potentially relevant evidence.

...

Glennon went on to testify that it is highly unlikely for Internet files to be on the computer without activity by the user and that there is no way for files to be in the Internet folder without browsing the Internet. A review of the Symantec logs by Mr. Glennon would have revealed the viruses and Trojans that were attacking the Laptop for four and a half months.

...

the DIA spent approximately 3 hours investigating the computer ... With only 3 hours spent on the Laptop by the DIA, they could not possibly have conducted a thorough investigation ... I have spent over 100 hours conducting a thorough forensic examination of the Laptop in order to reach the preliminary results and conclusions contained in this report and my investigation continues. It appears that the only investigation by the DIA was to copy the temporary internet files and confirm that child pornography existed on the computer when it was in Michael Fiola’s possession.

State worker cleared on child porn charges that were due to malware [News.cnet.com]

Rob Beschizza

Lost with just a camera? Program scans Flickr for location matchups

Forget geo-tagging: researchers at Carnegie Mellon University can tell where in the world a photo was taken, no metadata required.

The new technique, developed by computer science graduate student James Hays and assistant computer science and robotics professor Alexei A. Efros, compares the photograph against millions of GPS-tagged images in Flickr's massive online library. It doesn't require "clues" such as signage, but instead operates on the statistical distribution of texture, color and line.

“We’re not asking the computer to tell us what is depicted in the photo but to find other photos that look like it,” Efros said in a press release. “It was surprising to us how effective this approach proved to be. Who would have guessed that similarity in overall image appearance would correlate to geographic proximity so well?”

It's not a magic bullet: 16 percent of photos in a test set worked. That's far greater than chance would allow, however, and even the failures often got close enough to be useful. From the project page at CMU:

We quantitatively evaluate our approach in several geolocation tasks and demonstrate encouraging performance (up to 30 times better than chance). We show that geolocation estimates can provide the basis for numerous other image understanding tasks such as population density estimation, land cover estimation or urban/rural classification.

Hays will present the work at June's IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Anchorage, Alaska. Here's a direct link to their paper. The link below also includes the test set of photos, and the source code.

Project Page [CMU]

Rob Beschizza

Fake branded pens designed to upset freeloading pen-borrowers

Sick of people asking to borrow your pen? These amusingly-texted biros were created for just this purpose, with made-up branding such as "Springfield Sexual Addiction Center" and "Stuffed with Love, Taxidermist."

Problem: people will want to steal your pens even more! It's as if there was a somewhat sharper original concept, but they ultimately went for light entertainment rather than making the pen-challenged recipient actually feel uncomfortable.

Let's come up with some genuinely awkward pens in this vein, and perhaps put in an official BBG order at pens.com. Your ideas in the comments, ladies and gentlemen!

Product Page [Perpetual Kid via Oh Gizmo! and Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

PGP code book, distributed to route around export restrictions, on eBay

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an email encryption system originally released at a time the U.S. government wanted to treat all such encryption as military technology. To route around an absurd prohibition on exporting such software, its creator, Phil Zimmerman, published the entire source code as a dead-tree book and exported that instead. A copy of that book (alas, not a moldy tome filled with blackletter illuminations) is now on eBay.

Auction [eBay via Wired: Threat Level]

Rob Beschizza

Blacksmith recycles everything; uses old bike as bellows

Kenyan smith George Odhiambo makes just about anything, and his workshop is stacked with recycled metalwork. From Afrigadget:

It turns out that they reuse multiple types of iron for their goods, including leftover pieces from old vehicles. Nothing goes to waste here.

Even more interesting to me (probably because it moved and did stuff with fire), was the bicycle-turned-to-bellows that kept the fire going that would heat the metal rods. It’s a fairly simple, yet ingenious contraption that utilizes old materials with a little bit of engineering. The thing runs all day, every day too, so it’s made to last.

Re-use in the (unofficial) Kenyan Ironworks Industry [Afrigadget]

John Brownlee

Philips introduces new Shuffle-sized MP3 players with built-in display

Philips has just introduced its new line of Shuffle-sized MP3 players and I rather like them. With names like the SA2845, the SA2825, the SA2840 and the SA2820, the branding is execrable — the usual sluicing of random alphanumeric characters through the corporate drainage shunt. But they come with 2GB-4GB worth of storage, have FM-radio flavors and, better yet. an embedded screen. They are about the size of an iPod Shuffle width wise, just not quite as thin... still an absolutely fine size for a clip-on sports MP3 player. And the interface is pure drag-and-drop: a big boon to those who don't like to use audio file managers on their computers.

I'm tempted. I've just taken up jogging, and I just picked myself up a Shuffle because my 160Gb iPod was simply too bulky (and potentially gender-neutering) to have clogging around my thin running shorts' pockets during a run. It's fine for the purpose, but the lack of a display already annoys me when I try to find my place in audio books, and I even find it a bit irritating when I try to listen to previously unheard albums, since I can't look down and memorize the title and track number of a song I like. With prices starting around $44.99, though, I might pick up one of these Philips and convert my Shuffle into a keychain.

Philips [Official Site]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Tripod – Case Logic flexible tripod (a clone of the GorillaPod) for $10, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Watch – Today's Woot! is the Invicta Speedway II Stainless Steel Chronograph for $95, shipped.

Slow day on the deal feeds.

John Brownlee

The history of Japanese vending machines

Ping Mag has a great write-up on the hallucinogenic consumerist scope of Japanese vending machines:

To go back a bit, the first known vending machine was a pneumatically driven holy water vending machine in an Egyptian temple in Alexandria in 215 B.C. The first Japanese machine made its dedebut over 2 millenniums later in 1890 and the oldest existing stamp vending machine from 1904 can still be seen at the Museum Meiji-Mura. Since then, the number of machines has risen to an astonishing 5,405,300, making Japan the country with the highest concentration in the world (one for every 23 people!) While half of these are standard soft drink vending machines, a surprising number of contraptions sell more unusual fare. There are 118,000 machines selling razors and socks and an impressive 5,500 issuing cans of noodles.

The much-fabled-but-never-seen used panty vending machines — which Internet legend would have us believe are ubiquitous fixtures in every Tokyo subway men's room, but which I once spent half-a-day fruitlessly hunting for — do not make an appearance, because they are imaginary vendomatic leprechauns. Sorry, huffers.

Vending Machine Extravaganza [Ping Mag]

John Brownlee

Mazda's new Russian concept is half SUV, half Batmobile

The latest iteration in Mazda's line of Nagare concept cars appropriates the apocalyptic look of Frank Miller's Batmobile and slathers it with a coat of sleekness for the appreciation of the SUV-hungry Russian market, where it will be unveiled for Muscovite car enthusiasts in August. Sadly, Mazda's Nagare line of concepts are meant to suggest where Mazda thinks its designs will be at by 2020. If even the Russians are driving SUVs in 2020, the only explanation is a Mad Max style apocalypse and Master Blaster taking over the Kremlinship after beating Putin's brains out in the Thunderdome.

Mazda to unveil new Nagare concept car [Pink Tentacle]

John Brownlee

Boarding a train that never stops

Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-Lun believes that trains are more energy inefficient than they have to be, hobbled ecologically by the totally unnecessary task of having to stop to pick up passengers. To counter the problem, he has invented a concept for a constantly moving train, or a "non-stop MRT system."

Giddily, I imagined Japanese train pushers hurling people off of overpasses into huge nets, but his idea is even more ingenious: a top-mounted boarding shuttle that is scooped up when the train passes one station and automatically deposited when it reaches the next stop.

It's a wonderful idea in concept — this sort of solution could potentially eliminate most train and subway delays — but what happens when some carousing subway roughs stand in the doorway of the passenger vehicle, preventing it from closing, while the rest of the shuttlecraft's passengers respond the only way they know how: with a co-ordinated attack of passive aggressive annoyance? And those shuttle crafts would have to be pretty big (and the trains even bigger) to accommodate Tokyo or New York City platform crowds.

Inventor rolls out efficient non-stop train system [Taiwan Headlines via DVICE]

John Brownlee

Vintage Flash Gordon strip shills Union Carbide products

According to this vintage Flash Gordon strip by Alex Raymond, Union Carbide's chemical and plastic empire had already spread its sticky polymer tentacles as far as the planet Mongo by 1936. "We sure could use some rocket carloads of BAKELITE polyethylene in Frigia, Flash," Ronal casually remarks to the shirtless beefcake during an exciting escape from a patrol of murderous alien giants. An ironic wish, considering the fact that Union Carbide was eventually to be forced off of Mongo after what is commonly referred to as the Frigian Catastrophe, a thermonuclear explosion of BAKELITE brand rocket car fuel that was, in itself, a dire foreshadowing of Earth's own 1984 Bhopal Disaster.

Product Placement, Flash Style [Core77, strip via io9]

John Brownlee

Dale Mathis' clockworkpunk executive desk

Dale Mathis' gorgeous executive desk uses clockwork gears to kinetically imply the massive inner cogitations — the brainthink — of the man sitting behind it, whether an airship captain planning the optimal air-route over the trouble nation of Zembla, a Mechanical Turk chewing his moustache over a particularly difficult endgame variant, or a corporate executive wondering if he wants rye bread on his ham sandwich. The desk is only being marketed to the latter, though: each unique clockworkpunk sculpture costs $21,000.

Executive Desk [Redstone Gallery via Born Rich]

John Brownlee

Don't lick your fingers: the Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter

Think Geek's Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter has some great product pictures and even better copy. Designed by Art Lebedev, the developer of the Optimus Maximus keyboard, it's being marketed by Think Geek as a tool — inspired by various Soviet-era KGBA "persuasion" devices — that lets any one quickly and easily test the functionality of any electrical socket. Lebedev himself is being less coy: "Vilcus dactyloadapter was developed specially for people who enjoy closing electrical circuits with their own fingers." For example, a sensuous duo of Castro Street electricians.

I think it's a great gag product, especially for $12.99, but what I find more interesting about the Vilcus is the fact that it must be safe... or at least, safe enough that Think Geek isn't terribly worried about selling it, their bolded humorous legal patter aside. Fantastic bullet point features include "Exclusive Russian Design" and "Become more alert through free electroshock therapy."

Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter [Think Geek via book of joe]

John Brownlee

Retrospective of the Amiga Walker

Wobbling on stubby quadrupedal legs like an Imperial beetle bot, the Amiga Walker was Commodore's last ditch attempt at popularizing their flagging line of personal computers before pulling them off the market. Retro Thing has a retrospective, making the point that many of the Walker's features — a fun, mainstream, internet-ready computer with a unique design — were later applied with great success by companies like Apple:

An innovative feature that folks seem to have forgotten about was that the top section of the Walker was designed to lift off, so an end user could easily sandwich in hardware expansion modules for things like hard drives, advanced graphics boards, and whatever other magic the Amiga's vibrant 3rd party community could dream up. Fun computing and easy end-user experience weren't mainstream ideas in 1996.

Only a few years later these ideas wouldn't seem so ridiculous when Apple launched the first iMac. The Mac Mini also has some of the Walker spirit in that many of its hardware accessories are available in the same miniature case style and footprint, so you can stack up components on your desk in a neat and compact package. It's a shame that while Mac's design departures earn Apple magazine covers and financial rewards, it seems that the history of the Walker will forever be relegated to the trashcan that people said it resembled.

Walker: The Amiga That Never Took Its First Steps [Retro Thing]

Rob Beschizza

Earliest computer music recovered—BBC was making chiptunes in 1951

The BBC says that it's recovered the earliest computer music ever recorded, renditions of Baa Baa Black Sheep and In the Mood from more than half a century ago.

The songs were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester.

The recording has been unveiled as part of the 60th Anniversary of "Baby", the forerunner of all modern computers.

The tunes were played on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine.

The Beeb thinks it now hold a record previously attributed to IBM and Bell Labs, for a recording made in 1957.
Follow the link for samples, including a horrendous version of God Save the Robot Masters.

'Oldest' computer music unveiled [BBC]

Rob Beschizza

Toshiba's Portege R500-S50007V is 0.77" thick with 128GB solid state drive

Toshiba's entry in the superthin stakes is the Portege R500-S5007v, a 2.4lb notebook with a 128GB flash drive and integrated optical. Topped by a 12.1" 1280x800 widescreen display, it comes with 2GB of RAM, a U7700 Core 2 Duo CPU and Intel GMA video. There's no WWAN, and it comes with Vista Business.

Yours for three grand.

Joel Johnson

Latest tech news from the Associated Press, free excerpt full compliance edition

From the Associated Press:

In response, the AP

From the Associated Press:

It's about the size

From the Associated Press:

essentially declared a war

From the Associated Press:

since the Great Depression

From the Associated Press:

from the sound-bite culture.

Previously • Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license)

Rob Beschizza

Minox TLX spy camera price halved, to be last batch

Minox's TLX, a classic 8x11mm-film concealed carry, is dead. The last batch will be sold for £399, half the usual sum, and then be sold no more.

There will doubtless be a strong enthusiast following to carry the torch—and keep a third-party supply chain alive—but is this not another herald of film's greater doom?

Minox halves classic spy camera price [Amateur Photographer via Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Michael Ruhlman suggests a book about kitchen knives

Michael Ruhlman recommends the book An Edge in the Kitchen. It's a whole book about kitchen knives!

Chad Ward, a writer based in North Carolina, has written a handsome volume on knives and everything you might want to know about them, and about using them: An Edge in the Kitchen: How to buy them, keep them razor sharp and use them like a pro.  It's not only filled with good info put together with a good design, the writing is lively as well ("The knives found in most commercial and home kitchens are like supermarket tomatoes--designed more for sturdiness than quality."). 

Books Worth Reading and Using [Blog.Ruhlman.com]

Previously • Michael Ruhlman's essential kitchen gadgets

John Brownlee

Google Street View car busted by traffic cop

A traffic cop pulls over one of Google Maps' Street View hybrds, clearly alarmed by the suspicious looking, five-foot tall, tripod-mounted camera attached to the top. That's got to be some kind of violation.

This makes me wonder: what happens to the poor Google Street View driver who accidentally drives by an embassy or government building? Does he get the detention and the deep-root?

Google Maps Car Busted [dspain's Flickr via Treehugger]

Joel Johnson

Honda razzle-dazzles with a 2010 NSX supercar

There's two fantastic things about this image (and I don't just mean the double watermarks): First, this is a picture of an upcoming NSX from Honda, purported to have a V10 under the bonnet. First the Nissan GT-R, now a new NSX; where's the new Supra, Toyota? It's just like the '90s all over again: tons of fantastic Japanese supercars coming out that I still can't afford to own.

But the other thing I love is this paint job on the test mule, reminiscent of the "razzle-dazzle" paint jobs done during WWI to protect convoys of ships crossing the North Atlantic. Obviously it doesn't obfuscate the overall shape, but it does help cloak details.

2010 Acura NSX Is Real After All [Jalopnik]

John Brownlee

Archie McPhee's bacon-flavored dental floss

Archie McPhee is now selling bacon-flavored waxed floss for only $4.95 per container. An excellent way to get that lovely bacon taste in your mouth again after brushing, but I prefer to use the fat-greased sinew of a freshly slaughtered sow first thing in the morning.

Bacon Floss [Archie McPhee via Nerd Approved via OhGizmo!]

John Brownlee

Another Bloody Water. Needs more blood.

This brand of bottled water available only in Australia is really only one supermarket prankster with a vial of red food dye away from making some truly international PR waves. Fortified with hemoglobin and exported to Eastern Europe, it also might make a smash in Transylvania.

Another Bloody Water [The Dieline]

John Brownlee

Adobe claims Flash already working in iPhone emulator

According to their latest quarterly conference call, Adobe already has a version of Flash working for the iPhone and running on emulation software:

We have a version that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.

If that's true, that really makes Apple's already-rather-implausible claim that the mobile version of Flash isn't powerful enough for the iPhone look rather jerky. Even if slightly gimped from regular PC use, surely some Flash to check out YouTube vids and the like is better than no Flash, unless they are simply trying to corporate-pirouette themselves out of a secret agreement with carriers (who likely don't want the burden of trying to handle streaming vids over their 3G networks) not to support Flash in the near future.

But what if — instead of a Safari plug-in — Adobe gets around Apple's reticence by releasing their own Flash client through the App Store? That could be awkward, but I think most people would be happy to jump through a few hoops to watch streaming Flash video or play web games on the go. Of course, how Adobe would make that elegant without cut-and-paste or download flash vids straight to the iPhone is a huge question mark.

Update: Beshizza comments in our secret editorial channel: "I think the flash thing really is a performance one. iPhone-class devices just aren't up to rendering all the shitty flash on the web. That konami thing required optimization to run acceptably on my MBP. Flash is basically one program telling another program to tell another program to tell the hardware what to do. It's so skanky it's unbelievable -- but it means complete amateurs can produce cool stuff."

And Joel points out that Apple is trying to kill Adobe, so there's another reason.

Adobe Flash Coming To Apple's iPhone -- Maybe, Someday (AAPL, ADBE) [AlleyInsider.com via Crunchgear]

Image: intoiphone

John Brownlee

Survey: 14-24 year olds want to pay for their music but await the perfect service

According to a new survey sponsored by British Music Rights (an institution representing songwriters and music publishers in the UK), 80% of British P2P users between the ages of 14-24 would pay for a legal file-sharing service. According to Ars:

What the respondents appear to want is an unlimited download service free of DRM that could be legally accessed for a monthly fee, something that doesn't yet exist. Even legal P2P systems like Qtrax wouldn't offer this level of access. People were quite clear that an on-demand over-the-web streaming service like Last.fm won't cut it; they want to own and control their music.

On their part, British Music Rights showed a touch of class by saying the survey results were to be greeted with optimism by the music industry. "It is quite clear that this young and tech-savvy demographic is as crazy about and engaged with music as any previous generation. Contrary to popular belief, they are also prepared to pay for it, too. But only if offered the services they want."

That those crazy Internet kids today are just as engaged with music as your grampa was listening to the Big Bopper bop should surprise no one. But there is undeniably a difference between the intent to pay under a certain set of ideal circumstances and reality.

So would 14-24 year olds actually subscribe to an ideal service without DRM and unlimited downloads? $10 a month (for example) is still more expensive than Bittorrent's free. I'm optimistic. I think most people do believe in rewarding artists for their work, when they actually sit down and think about it. What they don't believe in is music controlled by central servers, the inflated price of current music, the paltry slice of proceeds that actually go to the artists, and so on. It's simply too exhausting to weigh each and every one of these valid concerns every time you want to download a song... especially when you can have it in a single Azureus session.

Any aggregate lack of morality in not paying at all is made up of many microscopic decisions based upon convenience and thriftiness over ethics. In other words, asked to make one choice about whether you are willing to do the right thing and pay $10 a month to get all the DRM-free music you can swallow while rewarding the artists for their work, most people will say yes, even if they do a lot of torrenting. Those who won't could never be convinced to pay at any price.

And that last group of people are the ones the record industry really should be prosecuting, as opposed to the incidental pirates who are subject of most of the RIAA's lawsuits... the guys who love the music and are willing to pay for it but reject the way it is being delivered. A DRM-free, unlimited subscription service at a reasonable price would separate the wheat from the chaff. It would end the persecution of technologically savvy music-lovers who have simply evolved faster than the industry itself... and reveal the real villains. Reason enough, from a consumer perspective, to at least give it a go.

Survey: young people happy to pay for music on their terms [Ars Technica]

Joel Johnson

3-in-1 Ostrich Chair makes dead man's reading comfortable

One of the best things about the Amazon Kindle is that it gives you more positions in which to read a book. When you don't worry about having to hold a book open you can sit pretty much however you'd prefer. And one of my favorite positions for reading a book or the Kindle is laying down over the edge of my bed, book on the floor, face overhanging. It's comfortable, but only for a bit.

All that lede burying is to say: I never imagined I'd even consider paying $80 for a folding sun chair, but the "3-in-1 Ostrich Chair," with its holes in the top for your face and arms has almost swayed me. I could even get a screen and a keyboard positioned under there, I bet, and maybe get a bedpan...

I'm just not going to be happy until I can spend my life floating in a nutrient tank absorbing media with absolutely no physical exertion.

Catalog Page [BrylaneHome.com via Coolest Gadgets via 7 Gadgets]

Update: Looks like crapvendor Thanko has had a similar idea, although their version is a padded wedge. Mock if you must, but that looks pretty comfortable to me!

Joel Johnson

WheelEasy LE collapsable wheelbarrow

The "WheelEasy LE" is a folding wheelbarrow, replacing the heavy steel or plastic tubs of conventional haulers with a 3-cubic-foot, vinyl-coated nylon basin which can hold up to 150 pounds. You won't be carting around concrete or bears*, but when it comes to dirt or lawn clippings, the WheelEasy has one clear advantage over solid barrows: because it can lie completely flat on the ground, it's easy to quickly rake it full without shoveling stuff up over the side.

You can find them for around $35, says ToolMonger, but at retail they're more like $60.

Folding Yard Cart Challenges The Wheelbarrow [Toolmonger]

* My garden is awesome.

Rob Beschizza

Eight megapixel geo-tagging Cyber-shot tops out Sony Ericsson's new batch

The C905 Cyber-shot claims a "complete digital camera experience" on a phone, with the style and responsiveness of the real thing. Picture quality? Sony Ericsson says it's "outstanding."

A 2GB memory stick is included on the phone, which has GPS geo-tagging and can send photos over Wifi, or display them using the bundled TV-out cable. This GSM/EDGE/HSDPA device will be offered in Q4, in black, silver and gold.

The S302 Snapshot s a less capable affair, with only a 2 megapixel camera and 20 MB of internal memory. There's no free memory stick, but it can upload its photos over bluetooth and has basic photo-editing tools built-in. It will be available in the fourth quarter, in gray and this delightful shade of blue.

No prices yet.
Press Release [Sony Ericsson]

Joel Johnson

Mid-life Crysis: HP Blackbird 002 "Exhilaration Edition"

Yesterday, HP squeezed a little marketing blood out of blogs — clearly the turnips of the online media world — as they announced an update to their flagship gaming PC, the HP Blackbird 002 "Exhilaration Edition". It's chock-a-block with the latest PC hardware, including a pair of Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 280 cards, the latest and greatest 3D graphics hardware. Prices for the Blackbird 002 start at $6,600.

Over six-thousand dollars.

There must be a certain segment of the market who has the disposable income to spend thousands on a new gaming PC every six months or so. These are the outliers, the rich geeks who still have time to game, or at least remember what it was like to be a young buck with a shit-hot Voodoo 2 card. For them, these sort of PCs are the convertible Corvettes of the PC hardware world.

But how many rich gamers are actually out there? Enough for this to be a profitable product for HP?

Or are these sort of computers like sports cars for their manufacturers, too? High-end mules for the latest widgets that park themselves in buyers' minds when they go out and buy the economy model? That has to be it. I can't understand any PC gamer worth their salt who would spend this sort of money on a PC they could build themselves — or have built for them — in six months time for half the cost. Or less.

HP BlackBird 002 Exhilaration Edition with GeForce GTX 280 [Ubergizmo]

John Brownlee

Retro vacuum USB hoovers your desktop

This lovely USB Retro Desk Vac allows you to hoover up keyboard detritus like a Lilliputian June Cleaver for only £7.99. Quite lovely, but I don't think the vacuum bag can handle the sheer scope of skin shavings, Latakia flakes, burnt matches, Cheetos dust and magic nose goblins that make my computer desk look like the filthy surface of some feculent garbage planet's moon.

USB Desk Vac [Prezzies Plus via Red Ferret]

Rob Beschizza

Count calories and wake up to FM radio with Sony Ericsson's new cheapies

Described as "entry-level," Sony Ericsson's J132 and K330 candybars don't represent the company's raison d'etre, but they're lovely-looking all the same. This perhaps assumes that they're actually cheap — again, no price was announced — but sometimes, simplicity and plain utility sell themselves.

The J132 is a "solid talk and text phone," which means it does practically nothing else. it does, however, have an FM radio and an alarm clock, and a "torch" function to "find objects in the dark." I could fall in love with such a minimalist machine; if only it were not as thick as a candybar.

The K330 is somewhat more featuresome, with a VGA camera and enough storage to hold 250 pics. It also has a calorie counting app pre-installed

Sony's press release has a comparison chart.

Joel Johnson

Upcoming LEGO Star Wars Death Star is brimming with minifigs

There's a new LEGO Death Star coming down the pike. Unlike the big Death Star II model before, this one is more about recreating famous scenes in diorama. That's why you'll be getting at least 21 minifigures with the set, including three separate Luke figures. (And probably more, as it looks like there are multiple Stormtroopers, at least.) I'm mostly into Star Wars LEGO sets for the pieces, but if the price is right — it's a set leak, so no official announcement — I might have to go for it.

From the hip I'd guess this is about a $150 set.

Lego Death Star 10188 - Pics at last!, It's here and it's freakin' massive [Eurobricks.com via Brothers Brick]

Rob Beschizza

Sony Ericsson pitches gaming with accelerometer phone

Sony Ericsson's F305 is an unremarkable phone with one killer attribute: cheap accelerometer gaming. From the press release:

• Motion Gaming with three preloaded motion games, “Bowling”, “Bass fishing” and “Jockey” – encounter gaming in a completely new way • Additional motion games developed by Gameloft™ plus 50 more 2D and 3D games available for download at PlayNow. • Loud stereo speakers– enhance your gaming experience or share the latest music with friends • Horizontal game play and dedicated gaming keys – play games the way you want • 2.0 megapixel camera and Bluetooth™ - a complete media experience • Expandable memory – Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) slot.

It comes in black of white, bears a 176x220 display, and has only EDGE data. It will be available in the third quarter in "selected markets," though the actual price is TBA.

Press release follows.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

Twittering Teddy Ruxbin

The hackers at my home 2.0 shows us how to create a dead-eyed, transvestite Teddy Ruxbin, who will speak in blinks and soulless monotone the flotsam babble of our Twitter friends. Teddy Ruxbin says in 140 characters or less: "WE'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL WE'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL WE'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL."

Twittering Teddy Bear [my home 2.0]

John Brownlee

AMD creates doppelganger of Half-Life 2 robot to advertise Cinema 2.0

Announcing their new RV770 teraFLOPs graphic chip as the world's "first-ever Cinema 2.0" experience, AMD released a video demo of the iconic ATI mascot Ruby running down the streets of New York, chased by a giant robot that bears an eerie resemblance to Half-Life 2's robo-mascot, Dog.

Is the similarity just in my head, or is there something really to this? A call-back to one of gaming's most beloved NPCs would be appropriate to a graphics card, although you'd think they'd at least try to get the rights from Valve.

More amusingly, AMD claims that the RV770 is "more powerful than every generation of game console ever brought to market combined." The wording there is clever: you're supposed to think they are saying that a sole RV770 is more powerful than all of the 360 and PS3 graphics processors meshed into one massive super-cluster hive mind of graphics processing, where as the dissected semantics of the actual statement are far less grand: the RV770 is simply better than a single GPU chip from every console ever released rolled up into one (one 360 GPU, one PS3 Cell, and so on)... a statement that has vastly diminishing returns previous to the current gens. Either way, it's always refreshing to get the skin wet when a company's PR orifice projectile vomits hyperbolic pea-soup all over you.

Cinema 2.0 [AMD via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Ethernet Router – Trendnet 5-port unmanaged gigabit Ethernet switch for $10, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Planet Earth – David Attenborough's Planet Earth series on Blu-ray for $47, shipped. (About $10 off.) [Dealnews]

• iPhone Case – Today's Woot! is a four-pack of Speck SeeThru iPhone Case (Gen 1) for $9, shipped.

John Brownlee

AT&T hedges bets, advertises iPhone 3G "real world" speeds of 1.4Mbps

The eagle eyes over at MacNN spotted something amiss in AT&T's recent update to their Apple iPhone 3G website: despite the fact that the latest gen of HSDPA cards offer speeds up to 7.2Mbps, AT&T is claiming only 1.4 on the iPhone.

There's been some clarification since then. That 1.4Mbps is the average "observed speed" as seen over AT&T's networks, with faster speeds possible on both the hardware and network side, but they don't want to promise too much when their network gets slammed on July 11th. Hedged bets, as it were.

I think that's a fine tack to take. Apple's trying to advertise real-world speeds over theoretical maximums. That prevents customers from being pissed off when everything isn't optimal and allows them to be delighted when they get faster downstream than they were counting on. And even 1.4Mbps, as a worst case scenario, blows the pants off of EDGE. Let's just hope that AT&T continues to improve their network so that 1.4Mbps edges upwards over time.

AT&T (not) limiting iPhone 3G speeds to 1.4Mbps [MacNN]

John Brownlee

MSI Wind delayed a couple weeks, battery life slashed

Well, some small and then large disappointment on the MSI Wind front. If you've eagerly been awaiting MSI's Eee-killer, you may have noticed that they weren't available yesterday, as promised at Computex. They have now been pushed back to a Friday, June 27th release.

Two weeks won't kill anyone. That's fine. Not fine, however: the six-cell battery has been slashed to a three-cell due to "industry wide shortages." The price is being reduced to $479 to compensate, with the promise of six-cell batteries being available in the coming months, but slashing the battery in half immediately nerfs one of the Wind's killer features compared to the Eee: it's astonishing six-hour battery life.

For me, that means waiting another couple months before buying a Wind entirely... and at the current rate of release for new mini-notebooks, that could well mean that the Wind will have been toppled from the top spot by then... perhaps by Dell's line of attractive (though embarrassingly named) E series of subnotebooks.

MSI Wind Online Fulfillment Page [Official Site via thegadgetsite]

John Brownlee

Plate offers millimeter-precise cake division

I never had any brothers or sisters, so I'm always fascinated when my father talks about inter-sibling rivalry in his larval form. When I was home visiting him recently, he told me about the elaborate ritual that had been established around pie-cutting... a Solomon-like affair, in which my wise grandfather pronounced that whatever brother cut the pie for dessert must pick his slice last. The result? Equality in pie-division at a sub-atomic scale. Apparently, the only thing that beats a small child's greed is his eagerness to screw over his brother.

This metrically measured cake plate aims to bring the absolute precision of two greedy children bickering over the biggest slice to everyone with $45 CAD to spare. I have a hard time believing adults could be so petty, but I can see this saving a kid called upon by his father to cut his brother's piece some hand-wringing and brow-mopping.

Cake Pie [Uptoyoutoronto via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Pincerhead versus CRTocodile

Image: Gorunfly

Joel Johnson

How is Spore hiding creature information in PNG images?

John Brownlee

Wooden digital scale for mahogany-paneled toilets

This gorgeous wood digital scale comes in birch, cherry, teak and the mystery flavor of "antique." The digital scale itself will weigh you up to 350 pounds, but you can probably add a few bills to what the wood can hold before it madly begins to splinter beneath your sweaty, purpling trotters. $59.95.

Wooden Digital Scale [Solutions via Coolest Gadgets via Gearfuse, who approach the subject matter with extraordinary uniqueness]

John Brownlee

Sony working on new motion-sensing PlayStation 3 controllers?

Rumors are a-fly today that Sony intends to release a Wii-like controller or the PlayStation 3 sooner rather than later.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the controller would look very similar to the DualShock, but would break in half into two motion-sensing, nunchuck-like devices. Their source already says that the controllers are out to developers for testing.

But a source close to Kotaku says otherwise. They say that Sony's new controllers are actually meant to strap to the hands and feet, allowing you to walk in real-time through an MMO or play a fighting game by actually throwing punches and kicks around. He rejects that these four controllers will converge, Voltron-like, into the majesty of a single controller.

All very interesting, but is this really the best timing for a new PlayStation 3 controller? After Sony dropped the ball with the motion-sensing SixAxis (a controller so bad it was re-christened the SuxAsses by various members of gaming journalism's Algonquin Round Table), PS3 owners spent a couple of years waiting for the return of rumble, which was finally rewarded a few months ago with the release of the DualShock 3. Sony's obviously trying to tap the same market share as the Wii, which is laudable, but it will take more than a controller and a couple of games: like Nintendo, they need to design a whole console for that market. If they are serious about trying to compete with the Wii for the money of casual gamers, they need to make the controller the central design element of the PS4, not release it as an easy-to-overlook peripheral for the current gen.

Sony working on 'break apart' motion PS3 pad [GamesIndustry.biz]

Rumor: Details on Sony's Motion Controls, No "Break-Apart" [Kotaku]

Joel Johnson

Stan Winston, monster maker, passes on

AICN is reporting that Stan Winston, legendary creature design and special effects engineer, has passed away. Most recently his shop built the practical effects — the suit — for Iron Man. Winston also put his stamp on movies like The Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, and Edward Scissorhands. He was 62. [AICN]

John Brownlee

The world's most luxurious office cubicle

Behold the stately, mahogany-paneled walls of Jared Nielsen's cubicle. Witness the dark cherry hardwood floors and small turkish rug. Consider the fluted end caps, the artfully hewn carvings of the desk. Now consider your own smelly corporate sarcophagus, covered in thumb tacked spreadsheets and "Hang in there, Kitty!" posters. This is where you will spend 40 hours a week over the next thirty years. This could be the place you die. It's really enough to make you want to beat the crap out of that Jared Nielsen character, isn't it? He sits there just looking oh-so-smug.

Extreme Cubicle Makeover: Red Mahogany Luxury Paneled Cubicle with Dark Cherry Hardwood Floors [Nielsen Data via DVICE]

Joel Johnson

Fancy fly swatter probes the very nature of insect consciousness

Don't buy this Rosendahl-designed "Fly Swatter". It's $92. If you can afford that you can afford to hire a whole dojo of karate champions to pluck flies from the air with chopsticks* or fill every room of your house with geckos. It is pretty, I'll grant you.

But here's my question: Apartment Therapy called this a "fly stunner," somehow divining that the long bristles would merely knock a fly unconscious, making disposal free of bug guts and perhaps more ethical. But can you knock a bug out? Aren't bugs basically little goop-and-chitin robots? Can you stun something that is almost solid state? If threatened, could I cold-cock a robot? These are important questions — the type only an designer-reduced horsetail can prompt.

Catalog Page [HenryAndLulu.com via Apartment Therapy]

* I once did this as a child. My finest hour. No one believes me, but my grandmother saw it.

Joel Johnson

Icon, the folding Light Sport Aircraft

I was ready to love the Icon foldable airplane — I still want to give Davin Coburn a stiff uppercut for pitching a learn-to-fly-in-a-week story to PopMech before I did — but the promotional material surrounding the little two-seater Light Sport Aircraft is revolting and trite. (See the launch party video below, if you can stomach the generic thumping techno and the visual reek of Los Angeles.)

That's not to say I don't still want one. The little plane can do 138 MPH when its rear-facing, reciprocating engine is going full bore. It can even be kitted out with gear for water landings, which has already fueled a few daydreams where I fly to a remote atoll and do some scuba diving, grab a quick snack, and then putter back to my island cabana.

Estimated price starts at $140k with standard equipment. A $5k deposit will secure your place in line when Icon starts delivering aircraft in 2010.

Product Page [IconAircraft.com]

Joel Johnson

Korg 'nano' laptop MIDI controls 'incredibly small, light, and flimsy'

Tom Whitwell dabbled with the new Korg Nano USB MIDI controllers at a recent music trade show.

They are incredibly small, light and flimsy. Fortunately, they're also absurdly cheap. Even at just £49, the NanoKey is certainly the lamest - obviously built using clicky, rattly laptop keyboard technology. From the way it feels, it seems unlikely to have much velocity sensitivity. You might be better off with something like this £50 Miditech Control 25, unless you're really stuck for space. At £59, the NanoPad is worth considering. The pads are a reasonable size, and the touchpad (from the PadKontrol) will be fun. The £59

NanoKontrol looks great, with a good number of knobs, buttons and sliders, useful (if rubbery) transport controls.
It's hard to overstate how cheap and plasticky these things are. The faders are tiny and toy-like, the cases would need to be taped down to stop them moving across the table.

Korg nanoKEY, nanoKONTROL, nanoPAD: Tiny, cute and crazy cheap [Music Thing]

See also • Korg nanoKEY, nanoKONTROL, nanoPAD: Super Tiny MIDI Keyboard, Controller, Pads [CDM]

John Brownlee

An AT-AT gets tagged, becomes the $1,500 Suckadelic Graff-AT

Living in Berlin, the graffiti capital of the world, I do not wonder at the in-universe plausibility of this graffitied AT-AT toy — the Suckadelic Graff-At — currently being auctioned for $1,500 by Christie's. Street artists can tag anything, up to and including a moving mech war elephant in a galaxy far, far away.

Suckadaelic Graff-At [Christie's]

John Brownlee

Binaural blue stereo mic with human ears

The boys at Engadget seem skeeved out by the Otokinoki Binaural Mic... a blue anthropomorphic microphone with a rubbery simulacrum of an elderly man's massive, troll-likes ears mounted to the side, aimed at allowing you to record sound after the same fashion in which humans hear it. I can understand the creep factor, but I love it anyway: I think it would fashion admirably as a Mr. Potatohead for the top of your camcorder. On the other hand, the mic costs $3,900, which is absurd... for that sort of money, I'd rather buy a camcorder with a giant, squishy eyeball at the end.

Binaural Recording Mic from Otokinoko [Kilian Nakamura via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Oregon Scientific Portable UV monitor

Being fair-skinned, my time outdoors is usually done from inside a thin candy shell of sunscreen and sweat. Even that rarely protects me from sunburns, as my skin has a charming tendency to withstand sunlight for hours, then go from rosy to rock lobster in minutes. It's all in the amount of actual UV I'm getting, I guess, but it's impossible to tell how much radiation I'm absorbing when even a 100 watt bulb is enough to make me flush and reach for the lemonade.

I could buy this "Portable UV Sensor" from Oregon Scientific which monitors incoming UV rays and can calculate exposure time based on the SPF of my sunblock. (Provided they have a setting for "sludge.") But I won't because it's one more thing to haul around in the outdoors. And the last thing I need is an alarm confirming mid-hike that yes, I am indeed going to regret leaving the house.

The Portable UV Sensor sells for around $20. Perfect for lifeguards!

Catalog Page [Amazon via Coolest Gadgets]

John Brownlee

The Kuchofuku air-conditioned bed

An air conditioned bed seems like the greatest invention of all time during a season when I wake up every morning and need to moistly peel myself off a stenching sweat silhouette of my own foul, nocturnal drippings. This Kuchofuku model pulls air from near your head and cooled as it travels through the inflatable matt, ultimately being expelled near the feet. Looking at the remarkably uninformative site, I'm a tad concerned that there's no actual air-conditioning going on — it seems like, in a worst case scenario, this could just be a gimmicky fan that doesn't even blow on you, but under you — but the price of $399 seems to imply that it actually does what it's supposed to do, which may be worth the chance in these sweltering summer months.

Kuchofuku Air-Conditioned Bed [Kilian Nakamura]

John Brownlee

Alternate uses for laptops

With its razor-sharp edge making the MacBook Air such a great guillotine frisbee, we are reminded that there are many uses for laptops besides number-crunching. Crooked Brains has compiled a list of some of the better ones, though they inexplicably fail to mention my favorite alternate laptop use... probably because it involves heavy lubrication of the inside hinges, potential staining, and the distinct possibility that your laptop will go flying out of your hands and smash into a million pieces against the ceiling.

Alternative Uses of Notebook [Crooked Brains]

Rob Beschizza

Black leather keyboard doesn't need letters

Kazuharu Sakura's leather keyboard is beautiful, minimalist, and tactile. And when you're done with it, you can use it as a BDSM paddle!

There's no price listed, but the artist's other work isn't insanely overpriced.
Kazuharu Sakura: Handmade Keyboard Art! [Akihabara News]

Joel Johnson

Shannonia, a LEGO city in microscale

Shannon Young's delightful "Shannonia" is a microscale LEGO city that recently underwent some urban expansion, finding itself suddenly next to an ocean. I really, really love this project. It's like a real world Eboy poster.

I may have to rip off Shannon's idea, as this really appeals to my microburst OCD inclinations. If I ever needed to take a little break during the day I could construct a new tower or do some landscaping. I'd have to order a bunch of ocean blue plates!

Project Page [MOCPages.com via The Brothers Brick]

Rob Beschizza

HTC to develop cheap mobile internet devices

DigiTimes reports that HTC, maker of many smartphones and the too-little-too-late HTC Shift UMPC, has noted the Asus Eee and will make cheap little computers to steal its thunder.

HTC is developing new MID (Mobile Internet Device) products, using Intel's Atom and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset platforms. New devices are likely to be unveiled in the second half of 2008

It also has 10 new phones coming later this year, the Taipei daily writes.

As it is, most UMPC-like handhelds are broken. High-priced portable business machines with terrible battery life and overburdened hardware, they're shoehorned to fit the whims of imaginary quasi-consumers that Intel thinks its marketing schemes can fart into existence. MID is ostensibly an attempt to fix this, but it all comes down to making them (and selling them) in such vast numbers that the core problems—price and software—are fixed by scale and a healthy market of platform-dedicated developers.

HTC to revamp UMPC strategy [DigiTimes]

Joel Johnson

"i" before "me" except after WWDC

Adam Lisagor on the significance of Apple's new "MobileMe" branding:

I offer evidence only in my strictly unacademic impressions of the differences between ‘I’ and ‘me’.  For instance, ‘I’ implies activity, a doing and a being of something.  Ideologically, this meshes well with Apple’s provenance as the tool of the artist and its aim to imbue the user with the identity of Unique Creator of Digital Artifact, of curator and distributor and master of his or her digital hub.  In this model, I am the center of my digital lifestyle, from which springs endless evidence of my unique and lovable existence and expendable income.

...

Signs do, however, point clearly to Apple steering away from consumer as creator of data and toward consumer as data itself.  I no longer create the data I sync, the data is me and it syncs on its own.

For those who might have wondered, the brand "iMobile" is already taken by a company that makes in-dash PCs for cars.

Why me? [LonelySandwich.com]

Rob Beschizza

"See with your skin" by sitting in Mind Chair

Resembling an interrogation device from one of those cheap but ineffably-brilliant sci-fi flicks, the Mind Chair bristles with solenoids. Each is ready to prod the occupant's back according to the output of a video camera—the brain, its creators submit, recreates the image from the impressions made.

The pictured model was built by Beta Tank of London and is based on an original displayed by New York's Museum of Modern Art earlier this year.

Mind Chair by Beta Tank [via Dezeen and Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

'5 Second Stadium' stopwatch yells, chides

The "5 Second Stadium" stopwatch only counts to five, making it at first glance suitable only for timing jet car races or Brownlee's mood swings. But what it's really timing is your brain's internal clock; stop the watch too early or too late and various character voices will scream at you for your poor sense of timing.

It's probably a fairly useless skill to develop — and one obviated by a real stopwatch! — but it's kind of a charming toy all the same. It's Japan-only for the moment.

5 Second Stadium teaches you to count to five [Trends in Japan]

Rob Beschizza

Nikon D90 rumor image: can you tell by the pixels?

That D90 badge looks ropey to me: whites too bright, edges too sharp, angle o' dangle not quite right...

Check this marketing image for the D300, offered by a commenter at Nikon Rumors.

Update: Putting the images atop one another results in a telling matchup of what one would expect to be random patterns in the texture:

Nikon D90 - is this what's coming tomorrow? [Nikon Rumors]

Joel Johnson

Solar LED lamp company ditches Silicon Valley for China

D.Light, a company that aims to sell low-cost solar-powered LED lights to the developing world (to replace kerosine lamps) is moving from Mountain View, California, to manufacturing mega-hub Shenzen, China, reports Earth2Tech. They are also not planning on selling their product to Western retail markets, instead focussing on their primary market. Sounds like these guys have their heads screwed on straight. [Earth2Tech]

Previously • Pop!Tech Notes: Sheila Kennedy and the Portable Light

Joel Johnson

Microsoft, UN kickstart "Uganda Green Computer Company"

Microsoft has worked with the U.N. to help create the "Uganda Green Computer Company," a firm in the capital city of Kampala. The company takes older PCs donated by American companies, freshens them up inside and out, and then sells them to small businesses like dress makers and coffee farmers. Prices start at around $175 which seems a little expensive, but that's a third of the price of a new PC in Uganda. (It also comes with Windows instead of a free operating system, which probably adds to the cost since the press release doesn't refer to any Windows licenses being donated.)

In all this is a good thing, preventing older computers that still have lots of life left from being junked, while putting computers that have warranties, support, and training into the hands of those who might not otherwise be able to afford them. The Uganda Green Computer Company will even accept the PCs back at the end of their lifecycle for recycling.

Press Release [Microsoft]

Image: The Funk Lab (Different project, same country!)

Rob Beschizza

Solar-powered Theremin in an Altoids tin

There comes a day in every gadget-fiend's life where he or she realizes that they do not own a solar-powered theremin. Remediation of this lack involves the 1381 Solar Engine, a custom-made PCB, and the supplied full-color instructions. Oh, and an Altoids tin.

The result is the perfectly irritating Heliophone, which sounds like a bee whose wingbeats-per-second rate is under the tight control of a neurotransmitter drip.

Product Page [Clockwork Robot via Make]

Rob Beschizza

Halo lamp is great design, but also great for artists?

Yanko's often the home of impractical designs, but Sander Muller's Halo Light is eminently usable. A desk lamp with a wide, circular ring of natural-light elements, it'd be perfect for artists wanting to minimize unwanted shadows but still have only a single light source.

This 'holy' light has no light bulb; instead the entire inside of the hood itself emits light. This makes for a functional light with a minimal yet intriguing visual impact. It's easily adjusted and suspended above a table with it's stainless arc, but it's also available for free hanging purposes ( cable suspended ) in bars, living rooms etc.

It's a real product, but made-to-order with an undisclosed price. Hobby Lobby, you're my only hope!

Product Page [Sander via Yatzer and Yanko]

Rob Beschizza

Contractual obligations make new $200 iPhone more expensive than old one

The Consumerist runs the numbers of the new iPhone's Total Cost of Ownership. It does not come out good.

The iPhone itself may be cheaper, but the required flat-rate data plan now costs $30 per month, a $10 increase. Over the mandatory two-year contract, that works out to an extra $240. AT&T also now charges $5 per month for 200 text messages, which used to be free. That adds up to another $120. ... The new iPhone is not more affordable. Anyone deceived by Apple's lower price point is going to get a nasty wake-up call when they read their first bill.

I can almost hear Daffy sputtering at the 60-page sheaf sent to him by AT&T at the end of the month. Detheived!

The New $199 iPhone Is $160 More Expensive Than The $399 iPhone It Replaced. What? [Consumerist]

Joel Johnson

Peachtree Decco amplifier supercharges the Sonos music streamer

The Peachtree Decco is a tube-powered amplifier with a slot in the back for the Sonos ZP80 Wi-Fi music streamer. It can grab the digital stream directly from the Sonos and run it through its own DAC, which they claim is higher quality — and certainly backed by a higher power amp, at 50 watts per channel — than the one from the Sonos.

It's $800.

Product Page [SignalPathInt.com]
Desktop Decco from Peachtree [Blog.Stereophile.com] (Thanks, Matt!)

Joel Johnson

Understandable grow room diagram

This graphic showing all the hardware that goes into a marijuana grow room is cleanly laid out with mouse-over tooltips. [IntegralHydro.com]

Joel Johnson

WASP Injector Knife inflates sharks

The "WASP Injector Knife" secrets a CO2 canister in the handle which, when a small button on the hilt is triggered, injects a blast of 850psi gas through a channel in the knife's blade, inflating the target with a painful and debilitating pocket of gaseous pain. It's being marketed towards scuba divers, although I'd be too terrified of accidental discharge to carry it myself, let alone try to get into a cutting match with a shark.

From their product description page:

This weapon injects a frozen ball of compressed gas approximately the size of a basketball at 850psi nearly instantly. The effects of this injection will drop many of the world's largest land predators. The effects of the compressed gas not only cause over-inflation during ascent when used underwater, but also freezes all tissues and organs surrounding the point of injection on land or at sea. When used underwater, the injected gas carries the predator to the surface BEFORE blood is released into the water. Thus giving the diver added protection by diverting other potential predators to the surface.

Product Page [Waspknife.com]

Update: There's a video demonstration now:

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Magazines – Various cheap magazine subscriptions, including Wired and Car and Driver for $3 - $4 a year. [Slickdeals]

• TiVo HD – Refurbished TiVo HD for $200, shipped, plus service. You can get a new unit for $263 [Dealhack]

• Huge HDTV – Samsung 72-inch 1080p widescreen DLP projection TV for $2,100, shipped. That's about $400 off. [Dealnews]

• Apple TV – Refurb Apple TV 40GB for $200, shipped. [Dealnews]

• MP3 Player – Today's Woot! is the Sandisk Sansa e260 4GB Media Player for $45, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

What was your first gadget? Mine was the Pilot V-point pen

My first fetish gadget was Pilot's Hi-Techpoint pen, marketed in the United States as the V-point V5 and V7. I was perhaps seven or eight years old. Our teacher stopped the lesson to introduce it to us, and from the beginning it was an item of profoundly technical reverence for the entire class.

We were at an age where we were expected to transition to the adult world of dirty, cheap fountain pens, as is the British school tradition. This new pen, its decisive line springing from a strange syringe-like delivery system, routed neatly around a prohibition on felt-tip and ballpoint pens. Our teacher had to make a 20-mile trip to acquire them, but gave them to us freely that first day. From then on, she would pick them up for us as needed, taking orders by the pack.

I liked to watch the ink traverse the fans in the transparent casing, a process as slow as plant growth. Did that do anything useful, or was it pure hype? No idea. Every benefit of the pen, from its perfect inkflow, its sharp, even line, and its cleanliness, are now standard-issues features of everything on the shelf. Everything's gel-ink these days; even its clinical industrial design has been copied to death.

To me, however, it was a perfect single-function gadget, a direct application of technology to one purpose: an ink pen that "just worked" in an environment with stupid rules on pens. To this day, I'm not comfortable using any roller- or ball-point pen that is not one of these. (Though the Parker Jotter, with the gel ink refill, has its charms.)

Tell us about your first gadget in the comments.

Product Page [Pilot]

Rob Beschizza

"There is currently a good service operating on all London Underground lines"

Taken on a trip to England a while back. Perhaps the indicated service conditions were so rare that this part of the program never received adequate testing!

Update! Reader Gabriel Sharp offers the following:

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Shoot to Still

via FFFound

Rob Beschizza

1UP says Konami "made it clear we wouldn't be leaving until we signed" NDA (Now with "Escape from Konami" Flash game!)

Rumors abound that Konami presented non-disclosure agreements to reviewers wanting an early look at its latest game, Metal Gear Solid 4. While NDAs are common and generally accepted, this particular one attracted attention due to its claimed terms: specifically, reviewers were not to disclose certain facts about the game in their coverage. 1UP's Jeremy Parish not only confirms it, but describes further startling details: the NDA was presented only at the very end of a several-day reviewing session, applying retroactively. Worse, Parish suggests that they were threatened with detention until they signed it.

Unfortunately, the NDA was supposed to have been ready day one, which would have been fine. Our practice when presented with NDAs is to run them by the legal department first. But they didn't give us our NDAs on the first day. Or the second. Instead, they presented them to us at the literal last moment -- I was watching the game's closing credits scroll past -- and made it clear that we wouldn't be leaving until we signed them. This was a problem, as we had a plane to catch and a magazine to ship within the next few hours, which didn't leave time for running things by legal. So, despite some misgivings, we signed. We didn't really leave us a choice.

The part that's really incongruous is that Parish's presentation of this absurd situation is cast as a defense of Konami, even though it resulted in suboptimal coverage, a bout of internal hand-wringing after they signed the NDA, and was plainly extortive. It is "not-at-all-sordid," he writes. Parish even casts criticism of Konami in straw-man fashion, as people calling the company "Nazis."

Standard procedure in journalism when authorities threaten to detain you is to know your rights and call your editor immediately. Standard procedure in journalism when PR people threaten you? Hard to know, really, because it's hilarious.

In honor of the outrageous threats allegedly made by Konami's PR goons, BBG presents Escape from Konami, an awful flash game. Click it to begin. Enjoy!

Jeremy's 1UP blog [1up]

Joel Johnson

Video: A few minutes with the Spore 'Creature Creator'

EA/Maxis sent me a copy of the Spore 'Creature Creator,' the first part of the upcoming game design by Wil Wright (with a little help from Soren Johnson). We're supposed to be designing creatures as part of some big competition, the winner of which gets to donate $15k to his favorite charity. I'm just warming up now with my first monsters, but I thought you'd like to see me do a little walk-through.

A note about framerates: I bumped up the settings quite a bit on my first-gen Macbook Pro. Coupled with the screencasting software capture and compression, it looks much more choppy in the video than it is when I'm actually playing it. The system requirements for Spore aren't too onerous. They've built this engine for mass market success.

Update: Here's another friendly face you may recognize from another videogame. Took me about 10 minutes to make him. There aren't a lot of feather options!

Update 2: BEHOLD TERROR PIG!

Update 3: Okay, one more: our beloved mascot thing.

Joel Johnson

Chef'n Garlic Zoom revs up the prep work

Single-purpose kitchen gadgets — chromed coffee bean massagers, leek deveiners, cast iron quinoa forks — are the bane of the modern kitchen. Yet despite doing nothing a sharp knife and a deft hand couldn't do, I really want this "Chef'n Garlic Zoom" chopper, which minces those wonderful little bulbs into yuppie ketchup like a transparent penny racer. I can smell the fun already!

The reviews on Amazon are generally positive, although clean-up is said to be a bit of a chore as the sharp stainless steel blades like to nibble on fingers just as much as they like to chaw on garlic.

Rolling Garlic Chopper Looks Kind Of Fun [Oh Gizmo!]

Rob Beschizza

$500 ethernet cable: are your packets worth it?

The people who sell super-expensive cables are on the march from Audiophileland to Nerdasia. Are we ready for the onslaught? First up: $500 ethernet cables from Denon!

IP is what we usually send over these cables, error-corrected from end-to-end. This means, generally, that throughput, rather than quality, is what drops with interference or long runs—the networking cards perform integrity checks on incoming packets and ask for re-sends if they're imperfect.

From a standard computing perspective, then, this cable is outright robbery if what you use it for involves ethernet networking, with routers and computers and what-have-you.

This is not, however, what Denon is pitching this for. Denon uses ethernet cable for its Denon Link system, and this means that it tangles up with protocols and streams which are not error-corrected. And it's true that digital isn't the "it works or fails outright" surety that some think it is: you can scramble ones and zeroes just like anything else, if nothing's acting as a gatekeeper at the far end.

Standard Cat6's characteristics, however, allow it hundreds of megabits per second of throughput (they're rated for a full Gigabit), over runs longer than almost any sound system could need. Are we seriously to believe that audio data such as 24-bit PCM and DVD-Audio, will be improved by spending $500 for fancy ones? Over runs of only 6 feet?

Product Page [Denon via Consumerist]

John Brownlee

AT&T 3G iPhone details leaked in internal email

Boy Genius Report has gotten their hands on a legit-looking internal email detailing AT&T's iPhone 3G protocols. It directly refutes all of my earlier pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking that you could buy an iPhone from AT&T, not activate it, and then get dinged on your credit card 30 days later for the full price of the phone. The jist: iPhone 3Gs will be activated at AT&T stores, end of story. The only question is whether or not Apple stores will force you to activate in store. By the wording of the AT&T email, it sounds like they're not entirely counting on it, so that may still be an option. Otherwise, AT&T makes the provision that each customer can only buy three iPhones at a time, which means you'll probably still be able to pick one up (for a massive gouging) on eBay, or be the lucky gouger yourself.

We'll see. I'm starting to suspect that most unlocked 3G iPhones are going to be coming into America from the rest of the world this time around, which will be a nice reversal of the exodus of iPhones from Chinatown to Beijing which we saw last year.

iPhone 3G: the details you never wanted to know [Boy Genius Report]

John Brownlee

The einö portable iPod dock

I rather like the this portable Japanese iPod dock by einö. No idea on the sound quality, of course (my guess is rather tinny, just by dint of being portable), but it has a certain allure in the combination of jet age sleekness and Famicom-like juxtaposition between cranberry plastic and bright