September 2008
Joel Johnson
Open Pandora handheld gaming available for pre-order
Open Pandora, the powerful portable gaming platform with dual analog thumbsticks and a full QWERTY keyboard is now available for pre-order for $330. We've spent a fair amount of time debating whether I should get one or not, but while it scratches every itch I might have for a portable emulation platform, my resistance is sticking on one point: I don't actually play all that many retro games these days.
Above, a video comparing the size of the Open Pandora to a Nintendo DS Lite.
Pre-order a Pandora [OpenPandora.org]
Previously • Pandora portable gaming system flashes one huge QWERTY
Joel Johnson
Joel Hester turns junk cars into furniture
Joel Hester makes gorgeous steel furniture from the rusted sheet metal of old American cars and trucks. This table from a truck hood costs $850.
Modern steel furniture product page [JoelHester.com via Design-Milk via Freshome]
Joel Johnson
Ben & Jerry's Cleaner, Greener Freezer
Ben & Jerry's new in-store freezers don't use hydrofluorocarbons as refrigerants, but instead use, uh, something else. Something so useful and harmless to the ozone, in fact, that the Environmental Protection Agency hadn't allowed the technology in the U.S. before this test project, despite its inclusion in over 300 million refrigerators elsewhere around the world. (My guess is some sort of pinko, terrorist molecule that would threaten the American way of cooling — an enemy of freon.)
Speaking of B&J, has anyone had that new Elton John "Yellow Brickle Road" variant? I'm dying to try it but I haven't been able to find it in Brooklyn as our bodegas don't really cycle in ice cream in a timely manner. The Colbert flavor ended up being one of my favorites.
Greenpeace and Ben & Jerry’s Make Climate-Friendly Ice Cream Cooler [TreeHugger]
Joel Johnson
Fujitsu prototype flip phone breaks...on purpose
Fujitsu and NTT DoCoMo are showing off this prototype keitai handset at the CEATEC 2008 trade show. The "Separeeto Keitai" looks like a normal keitai flip phone, but give the keypad a tug and it sunders cleanly from its magnetic hinge. Then sensors determine the keypad's orientation and contextually change the input interface, making it possible to make a phone call with the top while writing emails with the other half.
Of course you could also do this simply by wearing a Bluetooth headset, but where's the fun in that?
[CEATEC] DoCoMo's Handset Breaks Into 2 Parts, Used Separately [Video] [NikkeiBP.co.jp via CrunchGear]
John Brownlee
Bus driver suspended for simultaneously playing PSP while driving
KGMB out of Hawaii is reporting that a bus driver caught on digicam driving his route while simultaneously playing a game on his PSP and kicking his legs up on the dashboard has been suspended without pay. "He was continuously playing his video game! CONTINUOUSLY!" shrieks the aggrieved passenger, but why so serious: surely this sort of natural multi-tasker is the kind of guy you want to keep around, though, capable of making split navigation decisions while otherwise embroiled in a heart round of Tekken: Dark Resurrection.
I find myself most interested in what game he was playing. Something turn based, I assume, but my heart hopes against hope that he was playing Grand Theft Auto.
Bus Driver Suspended; Playing Video Games [KGMB via PSP Fanboy]
John Brownlee
A Goofy Guide to Hooking Up Your Home Theater System
Disney's latest Goofy short, How To Hook Up Your Home Theater System, isn't new — it was released in 2007, but largely went under the radar — but it's significant, not just because it's a fantastic update with an equally absurd modern focus of the formula pioneered in Jack Kinney post-war classics like Goofy Gymnastics, but because it's one of the only cartoons I've seen from Disney in recent memory that is actually animated, not digitally squirted out by Pixar.
The central gags will be chuckled over and understood by any gadget blog reader (I love Goofy's chainsaw solution to hiding his cables), but for a thoughtful review on the short from an animation perspective, check out this fantastic review over at Cartoon Brew. This really is a love letter by contemporary animators to some of Disney's greats.
[via Giz]
Previously • Video: Tex Avery's Television of Tomorrow (1953)
John Brownlee
Luxury designed Pac-Man Italian stools
Even without mimicking the profile of Pac-Man gorging himself on an electro-fueled, ghost-digesting power pills, these leather Poufman stools crafted by Italian company Qayot would be striking: a combination of pure geometry, simple shapes interplaying with one another in hues of turtledove and cranberry. I only wish one of those simple shapes was a tiny bow in pink polyurethane.
Rob Beschizza
Will the "Brick" be an Apple TV with DVR?
GigaOm's Alistair Croll describes what he expects to see from Apple's mysterious "brick," which could in fact be hardware, software, service, or any combination thereof.
Here's his first three:
# TV tuner and set-top PVR to take on TiVo, with streaming and synchronization to Apple’s mobile devices, the way Slingbox does, handled through a more reliable MobileMe
# Controllers with accelerometers and a set-top App Store to rival what’s on the iPhone and iPod Touch
# Videoconferencing-capable features to connect a distributed family via iChat
As nice as the hypothetical device is, some of the details stretch it. Like Apple is going to make a "terminal" with "broad support" for other people's standards. The thrust of his piece, however, is about getting the iTunes content delivery system into the living room for real this time, delivering everything from music to video games.
One thing is true: it's now or never if Apple wants to do this. Cable companies and the like are currently too stupid to put significant selections of movies and media on their On-Demand systems, which already get the lion's share of the "dark bandwidth" that cable connections have but don't let you use for internetting. That state of affairs won't last forever.
Now, if Apple were to get Comcast to ditch On-Demand for iTunes and give customers Apple Bricks instead of faceless DVRs...
(As far as Brick is concerned, I'm leaning toward that being a simple metaphor for what it's intended to do to Windows, which suggests something other than an AppleTV replacement.)
Rob Beschizza
Surgical instruments from ancient Rome
It's something of a myth that pre-industrial doctoring was all leeches and cups. There was real expertise — of a sort — in field surgery. Such work, being about getting warriors and workers back into their game, lacks the historical appeal of the more "philosophical" medical arts studied by academics.
The Romans: now they knew how to remove a thing or two. As for the device pictured above, if you can't guess what it is, you probably don't want to know.
Rob Beschizza
Pink shoe-phone probably not one for the lads
Gadgets4all sells a $22 phone in the shape of a pink high-heeled shoe. "Don't try to wear it," it cautions.
Rob Beschizza
Fujitsu perfects the 12-inch tablet, at least on paper
Fujitsu Siemens' ST6012 Tablet PC has the acrylicy resolve characteristic of all its products; FS is all about quality products drained of cool by its cubicle-ready design instincts.
The ST6012 has a 12-inch 1280x800 pixel display, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive (or 64GB SSD), a fingerprint scanner, and an integrated 3G modem. It is, in other words, just the sort of stunning little computer that would make the blogs explode if it was made by you know who. This model, however, comes in gray, and has lots of little filth-collecting ribs along the edges so they could still use the cheap
plastic.
Fujitsu Siemens ST6012 Tablet PC Quietly Hits, Looks the Biz [TFTS via Gizmodo]
Rob Beschizza
News at 11: At trade show, major company shows off cool prototype it will never sell
"First of all," warns Ubergizmo, "this media server is a concept, not a commercial product."
And yet it has specifications. [Ubergizmo]
Rob Beschizza
Save pennies with an ancient pocket shopping calculator the color of melted human fat
Deep in the 1970s, the last bastion of non-electronic pocket calculating devices, Retro Thing finds the Pocket Adder.
John Brownlee
Charlie Sorrel's common sense tips for cutting back on your cell phone
Pictured above: professional gadget blogger Charlie Sorrel's cell phone. No foolin'.
In a display of the same breathtaking journalistic resilience which has become the corner stone of his Wired career, Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel abandoned his quest to go a week without a cellphone within mere hours.
Still the results of this imaginary week without a cell phone is a decent read, mostly since it edges away from the more Ludditical extreme of smashing your cell phone with a hobnailed boot, instead concentrating at more reasonable, easy-to-adopt habits aimed at making a cell phone less of an insistent, constantly slurping sanity sucker.
I have locked the phone to only accept calls from designated numbers. That way I can keep the phone on without it ringing off the hook. I can also make calls to anyone I like, but unless they are on my whitelist, their calls won’t get through.The other trick, and something I have been doing for years now, is to ignore my voicemail. I should probably switch it off entirely so callers don’t I’m actually going to listen to their rambling messages, but my close friends know that they shouldn’t bother. They send an SMS instead. Think of this as “Visual Voicemail”, only it works on every phone, not just the iPhone.
It's common sense, of course, but that's one of the truly great things of living in the age of mobile communication and caller ID: having a phone with you at all times doesn't necessarily mean you must always be contactable, just that you have the luxury of picking and choosing the calls you do want to answer. All it takes is some mental training.
A Week Without A Cellphone [Gadget Lab]
John Brownlee
Acme Made's gorgeous Bowler dSLR bag
Acme Made's latest camera bag is a luridly gorgeous retro affair, a perfect accessory to a pair of wing tips and a white-lapeled bowling shirt. It'll be out in December for the slaveringly tempting price of $40. I know just the button-cute hipster photo girl who is getting this for Christmas.
John Brownlee
USB Ferris Wheel is candy-colored crapgadget of cuteness
Plugged into a USB port, the key-pressed ferris wheel does nothing but wildly spin in parallel with fingers tapping off a wild rapid-fire staccato of letters upon the computer keyboard. For $30, I want one. Only Humbert Humbird's insistent glare from the top of the computer monitor — my own polychromatic, consumerist hawk, reminding me of the pecuniary responsibilities, vis-a-vis another beak to feed — has prevented me from clicking the "Add to cart" button. No one gives the ol' stink eye like a parakeet, although I suspect he would probably enjoy perching on it while I blogged.
Key-Press USB Ferris Wheel [Brando via Foolish Gadgets]
John Brownlee
MobileMe software engineer hints at what went wrong
Her nom de blog is Ethlite the Pole Dancing Philosopher, but in the halls of Cupertino, she appears to be Helen Hung Ma, an Apple software engineer tied to the disastrous MobileMe launch. And unfortunately for her, an unwise early morning post on her personal blog, since whisked down, is about the only glimpse we have of what went wrong.
Hung Ma hints that MobileMe's launch problems were totally avoidable, but Apple's corporate culture ostracizes potential problem labelers as cynical, hyper-critical mavericks. "Not team players," in other words.
Even with 100% hindsight, knowing exactly what caused the failure, if I had raised that issue before launch, there was no way I could have convinced anyone of the full seriousness of the problem. At best I would just be seen as merely doing my job, but more likely I would have been seen as a naysayer who isn't "fully on board" and instead trying to slow everyone down with overblown hypothetical edge cases.
Hung Ma then goes on to claim that this is not a specific dig at Apple, but rather an indictment of "corporate culture" as a whole. I'm unconvinced: Apple is different from most companies in that it is headed by a galvanic, steel-willed prophet / despot, whose visions mercilessly drive the entire company. It is easy to imagine Apple, as a culture, being too soft willed to challenge him with the devastating consequences of what Jobs might consider to be mundane technical details when his mind is made up about something.
Although "Ethlite" never specifically names Apple or MobileMe in her post, Dan Lyons' deep Apple sources confirm to him that she is indeed a MobileMe engineer talking about the launch, and Camillo Miller's excellent detective work has nailed down her identity even further. Further credence that she's speaking about MobileMe and Apple is the speed in which her blog was purged from the Internet, along with most Google caches of the page. Either Apple went into overdrive to keep this from leaking out, or Hung Ma rightfully panicked once the stream hit the surface of the swimming pool.
Elthlite, Apple and MobileMe: the Missing Post [Apple Lounge]
Previously:
John Brownlee
iPhone 3G being sold unlocked in Hong Kong
Apple has quietly begun to sell unlocked 3G iPhones in Hong Kong. The 8GB goes for approximately $695, while the 16GB costs closer to $800. This isn't the first country to sell unlocked iPhone 3Gs — Belgian law requires cell phone contracts to be uncoupled from handset sales — but this is the first time I've seen an actual dollar price quoted.
John Gruber wonders "Why only Hong Kong?", speculating that a particularly entrenched and legitimized black electronics market might have prompted the decision. "Why not sell unlocked iPhone 3Gs at those prices everywhere?" For America, at least, I assume it is because Apple couldn't have it both ways: it needed subsidized phones for mass penetration in a market where people are used to buying illusionary "cheap" phones tied to a contract, but that meant they had to sign an exclusive contract.
I know it's not true, but I like the conspiracy theory of Apple selling the unlocked 3G iPhone in Hong Kong as a way of getting them to American consumers through the floodgates of HK Craigslist and eBay sales. With the iPhone being a five year exclusive to AT&T, and with no solution in sight for soft unlocking the 3G, it looks as if that's still your best bet for getting an iPhone without signing a new contract.
John Brownlee
120 review HDTV buying guide for 2008
HD Guru has posted a mammoth review of 125 different HDTVs, mainly focusing on the differences between models in regards to static resolution vs. motion resolution, horizontal bandwidth and how well each HD can smash apart and reformulate a 24 FPS stream.
This is a staggeringly useful resource if you're in the market for an HDTV this holiday, although I'm somewhat relieved I've only discovered it after I already pulled the trigger on a 50 inch plasma, since otherwise I would have min-maxed my way to spending a couple thousand more on the brink of an economic crisis.
Will You See All The HDTV Resolution You Expected? [HD Guru]
Joel Johnson
"Dot Matrix Revolution", a pixel art history of computing
A history of computing and the internet, done up in blocky pixel chiptunes music video. This is so up my alley I had to sell my car. Be warned, though: it's more style than substance. Just kick back and enjoy it.
[via io9]
Previously • Paul Robertson's "Kings of Power 4 Billion %" Released to Unworthy Internet
Joel Johnson
Retro dual-mode floppy disk discovered in a swap meet bin
Not only did Trixter, an amateur PC historian, find two old unreleased videogame titles in a box of diskettes he picked up at a swap meet, he also happened to find a mysterious floppy that works in both C64 and IBM diskette drives.
The manual for Mental Blocks (see previous message) claims that, for both C64 and IBM, you put the diskette in label-side up. I thought that had to be a typo, since every single mixed C64/IBM or Apple/IBM diskette I have ever seen is a “flippy” disk where one side is IBM and the other side is C64 or Apple — until I looked at the FAT12 for the disk and saw that tons of sectors in an interleaved pattern were marked as BAD — very strange usage.A DIR on the disk shows that only about 256K of it is usable as space, instead of 360K. My Central Point Option Board’s Track Editor (TE.EXE) confirmed that every other track on side 0 cannot be identified as MFM data. So the manual is correct, and this truly is a mixed-format, mixed-architecture, mixed-sided diskette.
This diskette has officially blown my mind.
The diskette that blew Trixter’s mind [Trixter.Wordpress.com] (Thanks, Brett!)
Marvin Battelle
Marvin hates PhotoSwap
Brownlee was just so impressed with his little iPhone app, PhotoSwap. You should have seen him bouncing around the BBG offices, squealing and micturating in excitement like a vertiginous lemonade junkie strapped to a carnival Brain Scrambler.
"Look, Marvin!" he literally ejaculated. I hate this guy. "I just sent a photo of an insipid cartoon feline omnibus transformer to a random stranger, her face obscured, whom I hope might — through an implausible chain of events and a way slippery slope — somehow be persuaded to absorb my genetic filth by repeated exposure to my frankly embarrassing stuffed animal collection."
No matter how many times I drop to my knees and deliver a resounding haymaker to Brownlee's groin, he always seems surprised, even though it's a documented provision of the BBG human resources manual. But the deed was done. Then, I took his iPhone, hit reply to his mystery girl, took a picture of his fetally trembling gelatin mass and then went to take a four hour angry nap.
But my beak was wet. I admit, a lot of it was homesickness. Ever since being plucked from the dimensionally veiny navel of the timestream's pregnant belly like so much cybernetically-enhanced smegma, I have missed the marvels of the 29th century. For me, watching you guys with your iPhones is like watching a bunch of obelisk-licking cave monkeys communicate by smashing out brain-splattered morse code to one another with sharp rocks administered to the skull.
Still, PhotoSwap is an intriguing app.
Joel Johnson
Gang Garrison 2: What TF2 would have been in the '80s
Gang Garrison 2 is a playable 8-bit-inspired "de-make" of Valve's fantastic online multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2. You can download it for free at TIGSource; at the very least, watch the trailer so you can listen to the crunchy remake of the TF2 theme song.
Gang Garrison II (FINISHED) [Forums.TIGSource.com via Game|Life via Kotaku]
Joel Johnson
BrickArms creates Zombie Defense weapons for LEGO minifigs
BrickArms, a company that makes aftermarket guns and weapons for LEGO minifigs, has announced a new "Zombie Defense Weapons Pack" that includes several machine guns, snap-on bipods, and even a baseball bat. They'll be for sale once BrickArms relaunches their site, but in the meantime you can get some elements from free if you contribute a model to the BrickCon '08 LEGO convention.
Every set includes a custom glow-in-the-dark zombie minifig head. Cute, but where's the gore?
New BrickArms Zombie Defense Weapons Pack at BrickCon 2008 [Brothers-Brick.com]
Previously • Brickarms: Real-World Weapons for LEGO Minifigs
• Brickarms '08: new weapons for your bloodthirsty LEGO minifigs
Joel Johnson
We have a new thing: Introducing the News Faucet
Off to our left (your right), you may have noticed a new widget here on BBG. It's our "News Faucet," a frequently updated news stream made possible by a sponsorship from Delta Faucet.
Here's how it works: Rob, John, and I are all updating our Twitter streams throughout the day with a tag that pushes to the Faucet account, which shows up in the widget on the side. (It refreshes every minute or so, but Twitter being what it is sometimes it can take longer to update.)
Why? Because while we don't seek to be a comprehensive digest of the day's gadget news — Lord knows there's plenty of other resources for that out there — we do run across news that doesn't merit a whole post that we'd still like to link. There's also plenty of times when a single line of commentary is all that's necessary. We've been trying to build something like the Faucet since the site started, but Delta's sponsorship made it happen.
Even more interesting, we're starting to reach out to some of our favorite BBG commenters and asking them to participate, too. I've been trying to build more ways for the Boing Boing community to get their thoughts and discoveries on the sites. This is a great first step. Any blogger worth their salt knows that we're made smarter and faster because of our community.
Delta is launching a new line of faucets that use a diamond coating to make them more durable and less prone to leaks. They've also got a new "Dryden" line that have a more efficient flow rate, minimizing waste. If you find the News Faucet to be a useful addition to BBG I'm sure they'd be happy if you checked their new product lines out.
This is a sponsored post, sort of. Delta didn't ask me to say anything specifically, but obviously they've given us money to build and promote the News Faucet widget.
Joel Johnson
MiniMotel makes airport campouts possible, still awkward
The MiniMotel is a tiny, fold-up tent with everything you need to camp out in an airport or other transit station, including an inflatable air mattress, alarm clock, reading light, toothbrush and paste, and even earplugs. Everything folds up into a pouch small enough to be included in your carry-on luggage. Incredibly, it's reasonably priced at $50.
But I have to agree with Mark Crummett, who suggested the MiniMotel to us, when he says, "I can't believe that airports would let something like this be deployed by mere civilians. Throw this thing up and I bet you'd get rousted by Security within 15 minutes." The only way I could see these getting traction is if an airline bought a bunch to be used during emergencies — and even then the airline would probably catch hell for trying to get passengers to camp out in lounges instead of providing a proper hotel.
MiniMotel product page [MiniMotel.net]
John Brownlee
LG reveals new 3G netbook, the Momo
LG is releasing a 3G netbook called the Momo X110. Like all netbooks, it has indistinguishable specs: the ubiquitous 1.6GHz processor, a 1.3MP webcam, a 10 inch screen and Windows XP. The big addition is the 3G radio antenna, which will likely see the X110 as a bundle-deal with cellphone carriers.
The product name strikes me as a bit strange for an English market, though. LG is obviously conjuring up the image of a peach with the Momo name, which is a fine connotation for a cute netbook in pastel colors. But it's also a bit tin-eared: it's too close phonemically to the word "homo" not to cause a slew of double-takes when shoppers skim through their Verizon Wireless circulars and — for one brief moment, before they rub their eyes and re-read — are seemingly confronted with an ad for an adorable, pink laptop that apparently wears its sexuality on its sleeve. Which is, admittedly, a pretty wonderful mental image, but perhaps not the one LG is looking for.
X110 Momo [LG via Gadget Lab]
Joel Johnson
Tom Junod on Steve Jobs
Tom Junod muses about Steve Jobs' mortality in the latest issue of Esquire. Some highlights:
"It's almost like all the products are his own appearance," says Steve Wozniak, the guy who built the first Apple computer in the garage of the house where Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California.
It is true that his cancer, originating not in the ductwork of the pancreas but rather in the islets of Langerhans, is slow growing and, in the words of one expert, can be addressed "with curative intent"; it is also true that even after surgery, the average patient lives about five years.
And now that he has drawn undeniably closer to the day that has given all his other days their urgency -- now that the face staring back in the mirror has lost its shiny-haired California glamour and has taken on the frank rapacity of an old Arab trader -- it's worth asking what the pressure of continual existential awareness has done to him.That's just Page 1.
Steve Jobs and the Portal to the Invisible [Esquire]
Previously • Inside Steve's Brain Slices: Marvin Battelle on the Thinness of Mac
Rob Beschizza
Help Kym crack the obsolete DRM on her ebooks
BBG reader Kym paid legitimately for her e-books, but now the e-books don't work because the DRM behind them is dead.
I refuse to buy another darn ebook until I have unfettered access to the thing and as an engineer I’m DYING to have a good solution so I can read digitally and carry my library with me, but until DRM is GONE or there is a good way around it, forget it. I don’t trust anything if it has DRM, at some point I’m going to be locked out of it and the hassle involved in getting it unlocked is too much. I’ve tried all sorts of tech support trying to get these existing ebooks to open and when microsoft’s reader updated a few years ago, it is a lost cause, I cannot get them open. It is beyond aggravating.
I've never used any e-book DRM and don't know jack about it. What's the insider advice on defeating dead systems?
The part that aggravates me is how content providers screw over those who actually give them money. Such behavior is an advertisment for piracy as the only way to be sure you're getting a durable, quality product. Take, for example, Wal-Mart: rather than give the DRM keys to their customers now that it's killing the entire system anyway, it instead issues self-serving advice like "burn your tracks to CD and then re-rip them." This is expensive, time-consuming and likely to result in recompressing compressed data, which seriously reduces audio quality.
Kym, maybe tell us a bit more about your ebooks, in case someone out there has a direct fix for your particular cut of cloth.
Rob Beschizza
Destroy green and blue with RedScale film.
Christian Polt writes in to say that RedScale film, which casts in image in a sea of firey colors, is now available off-the-shelf. It's $15 for a pack of three 36-shot rolls.
This is the world’s very first pre-loaded and ready-to-shoot RedScale film – designed to re-cast your image in a sea of powerful and seriously intense red, orange, and yellow tones. With your “red-eyes” fully focused, allow us to show you this wunderbar effect – all thanks to a very special film that’s spooled on the wrong side.Earlier, ambitious photographers had to respoole negative films themselves to get a redscale effect, now they come out of the box - ready to shoot. Even better: There is no special development needed, just get you pictures developed in your local lab, supermarket, drug store… A sweet innovation for analogue photography market that is more alive than you might think. Get all the information and lots of sample pictures at http://www.lomography.com/redscalefilm/. To get an idea of what is going on in the analogue photography scene, take a quick look at www.flickr.com/analog.
RedScale Film: Gallery [Lomography]
Rob Beschizza
Pixel art fridge magnets
Art Lebedev, creator of the Optimus Maximus Pricemus keyboard, has something for humbler pockets: classic pixel-art fridge magnets.
Art Lebedev Design for the Rest of Us: Pixelated Mouse-Pointer Fridge Magnets [Lebedev via Pocket Lint and Gizmodo]
John Brownlee
Speaker Buddies are unnervingly creepy
If the Pillsbury Doughboy was gang-banged by the Residents, the bastard children would likely look much like these unnerving "Speaker Buddies" designed by Alex Underwood, except they would have eyeballs — not puckered rectums — for heads.
Speaker Buddies are creepy children [Slippery Brick]
Joel Johnson
iPhone icon drink coasters
Brazilian design firm Meninos sells this set of 16 coasters, each finished with the core icon sets from the iPhone's home menu screen. They're $60 for the set (plus shipping) and terminally dorky, but they'd certainly be a conversation starter in the right group of people.
They're not ceramic, either, but MDF with a vinyl sticker, all lacquered up.
iPhone coasters catalog page [Meninos.us via Technabob]
John Brownlee
Griffin's Simplifi iPod dock crams in card reader, USB hub
Griffin's new Simplifi gorgeously converges a card reader and a USB hub with the opalescent plastic brick of an iPod or iPhone dock. It's simple, but it takes what is usually a wasteful, unnecessary block and actually makes it useful, as opposed to merely superficially convenient. The price is a bit hefty, though: $70.
Griffin Simplifi [Griffin via Engadget]
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• Compact Flash – Deep discounts on SanDisk Compact Flash Extreme III memory cards. There are tiered rebates that bring you down to 16GB for $15 each or 8GB for $4 each if you buy three. These are the really nice fast ones that enable maximum speed burst shooting in DSLRs. [Slickdeals]
• Headsets – Plantronics is clearing out many of its headsets, included corded and wireless boom microphones, for as low as $13, shipped. Plantronics makes solid gear. [Dealnews]
• Cordless Tools – Bob Vila 166-piece cordless multi-tool kit for $26, shipped. That's about $25 off the normal price. (Beard not included.) [Dealnews]
• iPod Dock – Today's Woot is the Creative Labs X-Dock Wireless Music System for iPod for $45, shipped.
Rob Beschizza
An aquarium in your pocket
Sega Toys' digital pocket aquarium avoids the work and spitefulness of a real aquarium. Of course, it also means that you're wasting your time on something that isn't even alive!
As the little guy grows, so does the world around him or her—the scrolling map widens accordingly to reveal new areas of the underwater world. There are also three mini games you can play with your pets, which are sure to boost mutual affection. The Handheld Aquarium offers countless hours of fun (not to mention responsibility training) for all ages.
It is, at least, far more tasteful than most Tamogotchi-like toys. But are there apartments that disallow fish? Let's have a pocket unicorn, or something else prohibited by the rental contract. ("Tenants shall not keep or house animals of any kind whatsoever over 25lbs in weight, including dogs, extraordinarily overweight cats, and space narwhals.")
Handheld Aquarium from Sega Toys [Japan Trend via Random Good Stuff]
Rob Beschizza
Your computer needs a guitar port
The standard minijack aux-in is just no good. You need a manlier, guitar-ready audio input for your machine. Instructables' shows you how, though commenter Steve Johnson points out that it won't work well with the basic CD-in socket that some PCs are limited to.
Guitar/Mic In Port [Instructables]
John Brownlee
Takumi Yoshida's Aptus pen
Beschizza is the resident pen fancier, and I admire him the hobby. As a writer, I have always admired the elegance of the fountain pen, the way in which a bronze nib might tattoo a cursive trail of words into some creamy stock, the orich ink welling up like blood. It has a certain poetry to it. Unfortunately, the laptop generation has spoiled me: writing by waggling your wrist and smearing ink seem like something a caveman would do.
Takkumi Yoshida's Aptus pen is yet another pang in my pen loving heart: the undulating ribbon of its body is specially designed to fit the hand just right, each contour ergonomically suited to the task of fluid, comfortable writing. I'd love to have one, yet know it would just join a legion of virgin Bics in the limbo of my pencil jar.
Fits My Hand Just Right [Yanko Design]
Rob Beschizza
Crunch time for WiMax: 10 Mbps in downtown Baltimore
Now is when Sprint's attempt to vault directly to 4G flops or flies. Baltimore is the first U.S. city to get an operational WiMax network, under the carrier's Xohm branding, with prices starting at $10 for a day pass and $35 per month.
There are no contracts, and WiMax modems will be sold for $45. An unlimited data plan is $50, at least for now. There's no voice plan at all, yet—understandable, given the lack of phones—but you won't need it unless you're worried about e911 on your laptop, as Skype works just fine.
Sprint promises throughput of between 2 and 4 megabits per second, but says you'll get up to 10 (ten!) under optimal conditions. It's describing the result, in effect, as like a city-wide WiFi hotspot: a claim that seems ballsy, but is really just the promise that WiMax (look at its name!) held all along.
The problem, of course, is that you have to go to downtown Baltimore to get it. Baltimore? Good lord, Sprint. Are the next two rollouts going to be Detriot and Fallujah?
Sprint takes wireless service to the max in Baltimore [USA Today]
John Brownlee
Matrix Trilogy comes in neat toy Nebuchadnezzar
Up until now, "Why would anyone want to own all three films in the Matrix trilogy?" has been one of those unanswerable questions like "what happens to you after you die?" best puzzled over by absinth-sotted philosophers. The first film is fantastic: the second and third like having two perverted sadomasochists crouch over your face and unspool an engorged colon's worth of celluloid crap into your eyes, the chunky pseudo-philosophy only partially digested, like peanuts. No one not being subjected to the Ludovico Technique should willingly watch them more than once.
Here's the only sensible answer: Warner Brothers' Japanese release of the Ultimate Matrix Collection comes in a swank recreation of the steampunkish Nebuchadnezzar. Tempting for a moment, but $375!
Japanese The Ultimate Matrix Collection Blu-Ray Packaging takes up an entire shelf [Crunch]
Rob Beschizza
Lightsaber unleashed video
Testing Lightsaber Unleashed from Dean Putney on Vimeo.
Dean Putney and pals put the iPhone app Lightsaber Unleashed through its paces. Verdict: more fun to watch that it probably should be...
[via Cult of Mac]
John Brownlee
Great ideas from the soup line: dumpster hot tub
A hot tub for the metrosexual Manhattan C.H.U.D. set by artist Michel de Broin, who has stolen the fever dream of many a hobo, except his dumpster hot tub is not self-replenishing thanks to its dual use as a communal pissoir. I love it: a Garbage Pail Kid fan, I would fill it with green slime.
Blue Monochrom [Michel de Broin via MAKE]
John Brownlee
Rumor: Nintendo DS with camera, music playback coming this year
Nikkei — a rather venerable financial newspaper, most famous outside of Japan for a series of blistering exposes on the economic blunders that followed the Gojira-prompted Tokyo Housing Crisis of 1986 — seems certain of the latest iteration of the refreshed Nintendo DS rumor. They claim that Nintendo will launch a new version of the DS later this year featuring a built-in camera, music playback and better wireless for around $190.
This rumor makes a bit more sense to me than the dual touchscreen DS being floated about by my friend Brian "LOL" Ashcraft at Kotaku: dual touchscreens would seem to imply a major revision of the current DS's specs, but the DS is still a thriving platform in the middle of its life span. A more incremental upgrade aimed at converging some commonly touted items in a consumerist appeal to pocket space is a safer bet.
One interesting aspect of this rumor is that it means Nintendo would be packing storage into a DS. That means PSP style hacking. Playing pirated ROMs on the DS is already trivial, but it does require sending $30 to shady Taiwanese companies across the pond. If the new DS does have storage space and does get custom firmware, it should prove an interesting case to test Sony's claims about piracy killing the PSP: a once vibrant platform that becomes a ghost town's video game arcade because of custom firmware. That's not going to happen, of course, but maybe it'll shut Sony up about it.
Report: New Nintendo DS Coming This Year With Camera Music Playback [Kotaku]
Rob Beschizza
Fourth time lucky for SpaceX
SpaceX's Falcon 1 has made it into space on the company's fourth attempt. From Wired Science:
After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles. As the rocket ascended, cheers rang out during every crucial stage of the launch sequence, and now, their headquarters in Hawthorne, California has erupted in excitement. The most tense moment came just before stage separation. At that critical moment, the third launch attempt had failed. This time, it worked out perfectly.
SpaceX Did It -- Falcon 1 Made it to Space! [Wired Science]
Update: Here's video from the rocket itself on launch. The cheers from the SpaceX team gives me goosebumps. – Joel
Rob Beschizza
Yahoo! Answers on why vinyl sounds better than CDs
It doesn't matter what side of that debate you come down on, because this stuff is fantastic.
The same people that hold that vinyl (analog) sounds better than CD (digital) are probably the same people that believe pipe organs are superior to electronic instruments. If Bach was alive today, he wouldn't be on a pipe organ - he'd be using cutting edge technology. And Beethoven would be saying, "Give me the digital"
How much did they want to sell this for, again? Worth every penny.
Why does vinyl sound better than CD? [Yahoo! Answers]
Rob Beschizza
Largest prime number yet discovered
From Science News:
Its size is mind-boggling. With nearly 13 million digits, it makes the number of atoms in the known universe seem negligible, a mere 80 digits. And its form is tidy and lovely: 2n-1.But its true beauty is far grander: It is a prime number. Indeed, it is the largest prime number ever found.The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, a computing project that uses volunteers’ computers to hunt for primes, found the prime and just confirmed the discovery
There's not a hope of printing it here: the resulting number would be 30 miles long! I figure you could stash it as 13MB or so of plaintext.
Largest known prime number found [Science News]
Distributed computing finds largest prime yet [ZDnet]
Rob Beschizza
Try and reshape your face with, well, face-reshaping gadgets
If your smile is too broad, or your face too long, Japan has some torturous-looking machines purporting to act like orthodontic braces, but with other parts of your chops in mind. Pictured here is Tex Mex's "Slim Mouth," which is applied for just a few minutes every day to reduce the appearance of fine lines like your mouth. Hit up Scout Japan below for an unlikely full-head solution.
Product Page for Slim Mouth [Tokyo Hands via Scount Japan]
Rob Beschizza
The Great .WAV off Kanagawa
This photo, by Hiroko Masuik, is of Jean Shin's "Sound Wave," a sculpture made of melted records. It's on display at 'Second Lives' at the Museum of Arts and Design. More info and another of Masuik's shots of it are at an article covering the exhibit at the New York Times
‘Second Lives’ at the Museum of Arts and Design [NYT via NOTCOT and Make]
Rob Beschizza
Rumor: Apple instructs reseller to remove, destroy Apple TV displays
Is the rumored "brick" device about to make its entry, or is Apple just about to take Steve's hobby horse out back? Or it is just another empty web rumor? Quickly, someone photoshop it!
Rob Beschizza
Porsche's Phone, gold iPod Nanos, a creepy robot and more
• The $900-ish Porschephone looks suspiciously like a $450 phone with a Porsche logo on it.
• From the department of "Tough cheese, you agreed to it:"TechCrunch's Dan Kimerling has had enough of developers complaining about how Apple runs the AppStore.
• Bling fans rejoice! Goldstriker is now dipping the new iPod Nano.
• Taiwan wins international creepy robot of the month.
• Die in spectacular and public fashion with a DIY fireworks ignition system.
• What you've been waiting all this time for: swivel-head HDMI plugs.
Rob Beschizza
Korg's tiny USB midi instrument set gets first look
Music Radar is first to receive the tiny keyboard, synth pad and fader deck that comprise Korg's nanoSeries. They look like toys, warns reviewer Ben Rogerson—are they?
Let's give you the good news first: the nanoSeries devices are certainly small. They're all incredibly slim, and each one measures just 320mm across.
Then, the bad news...
FIRST LOOK: Korg nanoSeries controllers [Music Radar via Engadget]
Rob Beschizza
Gadgets for hotel survival
Gizmodo's 10 Gadgets That Help You Survive in Cheap Hotel Rooms is instructive. But while UV disinfected water may indeed taste better than pill-disinfected water, if I'm in a hotel room where Urine-Off spray is necessary, I'll just sleep in the car.
Rob Beschizza
Ebay, the market for technological lemons
Dan Rutter applies the lesson of George Akerlof's used-car classic "The Market for Lemons" to the endless mountains of crap on eBay. He explains why certain products there, such as memory cards and power supplies, are doomed to be in poor nick: because most consumers don't know and can't tell the difference between a good one and a bad one.
"An awful lot of markets these days have a very strong lemon scent," Rutter writes. "There's almost always someone willing to sell garbage, and there's often also the critical "quality uncertainty" among buyers."
So on eBay, where it's impossible to verify the quality of a product, sloppy counterfeits and damaged stock inexorably drive out quality merchandise. One specific: most 500W power supplies sold there can only handle a 200W load.
Lemon-fresh power supplies [Dan's Data]
Rob Beschizza
Review Roundup: Lian-Li Xbox360 case, Vaio TT and Archos 5 get mixed verdicts
• CrunchGear's John Biggs reviews PC case maker Lian Li's XBox360 enclosure. It's big, metal, $80, and surprisingly pointless: "an insurance policy against future overheating."
• Laptop Mag got a Sony Vaio TT, the replacement for the TZ series. Though it starts at $2,000, Sony sent them a $4,344 model, making the review hopelessly academic. Guess what--they like it! But they don't like the tag.
• Gadget Lab praises the brilliant screen of Archos's model 5 Internet Tablet. Too big for a small pocket, with a glitchy Linux-based operating system, it has no mic, so you can't use it as a VoIP pone, and they swapped out the classic Archos design for the standard issue boringadget look. But it's fast, and the part that matters -- the display -- looks great.
Rob Beschizza
Morning roundup
• Rumor: Nvidia to start giving video cards sensible model numbers. [TGdaily]
• 256GB flash laptop drives, from Toshiba. [CrunchGear]
• Man crosses English Channel in jetpack without plunging to death. [CNN]
• MIT researchers invent a gadget that plugs into a tree and records its life. [Inhabitat]
• Remember that lawsuit filed regarding Apple's non-removable iPhone batteries? Case dismissed. [Bloomberg]
Photo: CNN
Joel Johnson
Tonight on History Channel: Bre Pettis is the "History Hacker"
Tonight at 8PM on the History Channel: the pilot of "History Hacker" starring Bre Pettis. I've only seen a bit, but I have every confidence it'll be a fun show. Bre's not only an inveterate tinkerer, he's also one of the only people I know that do a lot of video work that really care about the craft of production. If most of my pals told me they were going to try to do a TV show I'd shrug it off, but Bre's got the chops and taste to make it happen.
So this show better not suck, Bre! Do us proud!
What's "History Hacker" about? It's sort of a walk through technological inventions of the past, with in-lab experiments to try to replicate or improve the originals. Here's Bre on the pilot:
It’s an hour long, so I have time to get into some projects to break down some of the principles that Tesla pioneered and fought for in the war of the currents. I make a neon bulb, AC generator from a bike and muck about with an old telephone magneto. I also go check out the power plant in the basement of the New Yorker and the space systems lab at MIT to see how the principles that Tesla pioneered are being used today.
HISTORY HACKER - DAY OF SHOW [BrePettis.com]
Joel Johnson
TantraChair adds a touch of class to specialized sex furniture
The "TantraChair" was made for fucking. Unlike similar products, it would look merely peculiar in a living room or den, not icky and terrifying. I'm not exactly the most tightly wound freak out there, but my chakras bind right up when I walk into a house and see sex toys or fetish gear out in the open. Sorry, friends! I may even find you attractive but I don't want to know that much about your body functions until we've at least played a videogame or two.
Then again, the TantraChair looks enough like regular furniture you might sit on it without realizing its true role. Consider this a public service announcement.
The TantraChair isn't even all that expensive as far as custom furniture goes: $1,200. It's available in a variety of upholstery options, as well. If you'd like to learn more about how the chair can be used, the company page features two rather spectacular-looking humans going at it right there on the couch in pictures so vivid you can practically smell the Clorox Clean-Up. (Which is to say: NSFW.)
TantraChair product page [TantraChair.com via Boinkology via Ad Rants]
Rob Beschizza
3M creates portable ID scanner for mobile Napoleons
To its product portfolio of lint rollers and innovative stationary, 3M now adds the machinery of iron-fisted authoritarian rule. Its mobile ID reader scans passports and visas just like credit cards, verifying a citizen's ID for all those with the need and inclination to do so. It runs Windows Mobile 6 and includes a fingerprint panel for those who neglect to carry their papers. There's even a full 8GB of storage, so plenty of information can be stored on it.
Someone working for the British civil service won't even have to leave one on a train to create the government's next personal data scandal, either: it has WiFi and a GSM modem for wireless hook-up to back-end systems, to ensure it's always accessible to anyone with the right equipment.
Give Away Your Identity Faster Than Ever, in a Single Swipe [Wired: Gadget Lab]
Joel Johnson
Video: DIY Full Metal Rubber Band gun
An intrepid young man in Japan — whose website I believe is named "Psychodrive Over Boost!?"; We'll be renaming BBG to something similar now — has fashioned a beautiful one-off rubber band gun. It's the same basic design as wooden rubber band guns, but this one has a working safety and is far prettier. (And heavier!)
(Thanks, Matt!)
Joel Johnson
Samsung Pixon wants to be a smartphone and a nice camera
Samsung Pixon is half phone, half point-and-shoot camera. It's just a millimeter thicker than the iPhone but includes an 8-megapixel camera — one with the ability to record video. One bummer, though, is the listed "16x Zoom", which from what I can tell is all digital zoom, not optical, making all those megapixels a bit of a waste.
The Pixon runs Symbian's perfectly serviceable S60 operating system through the 3.2-inch touchscreen on the back. HSDPA 3G gets it online, but no Wi-Fi means you'll be relying on the whims of your cell provider.
All in all an interesting bit of kit, but there's not quite enough camera and perhaps not quite enough smartphone. Two halves are not yet making one whole.
Sometimes I forget Samsung makes phones. Don't know why, exactly — I think it's because I have no idea what sort of operating system they use from model to model. I barely even think about phones as hardware anymore.
Rob Beschizza
"You make strategic offensive and defensive moves, then try to bust your opponent's balls"
Megomuseum uploads an ad from 1975 for Ball Buster, a game for all the family. "For adults, it's exciting," intones the gravelly-voiced announcer. [via RetroThing]
Joel Johnson
Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators "Unnatural Selector" Ray-Blunderbuss
If your time-travelling hunting expeditions have netted you a fortune in apatosaurus ambergris, feel free to pick up one of these ornamental "Unnatural Selector Ray-Blunderbuses" from none other than Weta Workshop, New Zealand's most famous prop house. They're only making 50 — and the least expensive number edition is $4,500. Everything works...except the ray.
Unnatural Selector product page [WetaNZ.com via Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza
Oppo's gaming-friendly media player
Oppo's Muse G11 is just a media player, and the machine-translated text of its announcement offers scant details on specs, release dates or any useful info at all.
The simple gaming-friendly design, though, looks great. A simple, hackable, no-nonsense retrogaming pocketable for cheaper than the DS? Nothing will dethrone Nintendo's monster, but such a thing could carve its own little niche: especially if it's extremely small 'n' thin. Alas, even dimensions are vague at this point; it's not even clear if that's a real photo, or just a mockup.
A bigger question, perhaps, is found in the fact that "games" as a peripheral feature of media players is becoming more common in Asian-market products, often with NES emulation baked in. How long until the value-add becomes common in the U.S.? Does anything restrict it except the availability of legal games?
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• Bike Lamp – What looks to be a perfectly nice little 21-LED bicycle lamp for $5, shipped. Ride safe! [Slickdeals] Update: Fraa Lepton says this light is "very thin and brittle". I knew I should have skipped doing the deals today!
• Robot Mop – Today's Woot is the iRobot Scooba 5806 Floor Washing Robot Bundle for $185, shipped.
Rob Beschizza
The Daily Taser: Minor shocked by cops while holding her month-old baby
Canada'com's Katie Mercer reports that Vancouver police twice tased a 16-year-old girl as she held her newborn baby. The police claim they had no choice, as the girl might have "smothered" her baby in her attempts to resist a social worker's appropriation of it.
She looks pretty dangerous to me. Shoulda called the SWAT team, too.
[Thanks, Takuan!]
Rob Beschizza
What's the deal with all the rubbish at the AppStore?
Have you had quite enough of the rubbish floating around the AppStore? Michael Arrington alights on one example—yet another zippo-style lighter app—but it fires up a wider issue.
There are no less than ten different virtual lighter apps in iTunes, which is what I’d call a saturated market. And it gets better, because Sonic Lighter costs $.99. The official Zippo iphone app is free. The basic functionality of all of these is similar - you have a virtual lighter, you light it and when you move the iPhone the flame moves around.
The trick this time is that every use of the lighter app is piped into a database, meaning it can be visualized to create interesting social-networking digital crack.
As sympathetic to developer freedom as we are—and as aghast at Cupertino's ludicrous control-freak attitude to iPhone development—it's about time someone put out an honest-to-God rant about all the garbage being released for Apple's cellphone. In his piece, Arrington veers quickly into a straight-up corporate profile of the lighter app's developers, and so the promise of his angry headline is never fulfilled.
Though not an iPhone user, I see and hear an abundance of junk: the attention it gets rivals and often surpasses that of more serious matters, like the rejection of extremely useful programs for arbitrary reasons. Is it a mirage? Is it all that bad? That clever-dick and his $1,000 picture of a jewel was quite enough—must this sort of thing be turned into an enterprise? Just reading about these things is enough to turn me to the dark side and criticize Apple for not culling hard enough.
What Is The Deal With This Stupid Lighter iPhone App? [TechCrunch]
Rob Beschizza
Celio Redfly now just $200
Remember Celio's Redfly, which is essentially a Windows Mobile version of Palm's cancelled Foleo? It's now just $200, which is the price point such things suddenly become interesting.
The problem with these devices was a simple one: at $500, few can justify something that looks like a laptop, but only works in concert with a smartphone. The proliferation of cheap notebooks, which offered a fuller computing experience at a cheaper pricetag, seemed the killing blow.
Today, it all makes sense: a dumb terminal for your fancy smartphone, with a big screen and a big keyboard, at a price that may appeal to those who it doesn't already solve a pre-existing problem for.
As a mild note of warning, remember this thing really is just a "smartphone companion." This is not a $200 netbook.
REDFLY Mobile Companion [Celio]
Rob Beschizza
Unlocked Treo Pro hits stores
The GSM Treo Pro smartphone is now on sale at Palm.com for $550, unlocked, with free shipping.
Rob Beschizza
Nokia "Tube" launches Oct. 2
Reuters reports that Nokia's Tube phone will be seen next Thursday. The Finns' iClone will get its marketing baptism at a party in London. "There is a lot of pressure on Nokia," it quotes a Gartner analyst as saying.
Photo: Digitpedia
Nokia to unveil touch-screen phone next week: sources [Reuters]
Rob Beschizza
Blackberry Storm screenshots emerge
Storm Reviews finds some photos that evince a minimalist look on Blackberry's forthcoming Storm. Most people are poring over the touchscreen keyboard, but isn't this clock lovely? Kelly Hodgkins at BGR, however, is unimpressed:
The calendar, email, and browser look incredibly text-based for a touchscreen device that promises to take the world by Storm. Where are all the pretty icons that we can tap on? Let’s hope these images are only a small sample and the rest of the UI is significantly better than what is shown. Otherwise, this is one Storm that may just go out to sea.
After Android's clunky look, at least in T-Mobile G1 form, surely it's hard to be down on RIM's unvarnished instincts. Plain old black 'n' white 'n' dull works for me: it's "invisible," in the Helvetica sense, which matters in a UI.
Rob Beschizza
North Korean arcade upgrades to full-color displays, microprocessors
Insular and poverty-stricken North Korea is known for its lack of modern technology. Wide roads are clear of traffic, the electrics go out at night, and outsiders are shepherded and carefully watched whenever they visit. And yet Pyongyang has a video arcade, and someone found it. Just in: Yie Ar Kung Fu!
Is this just a prop for tourists? If so, its grubbiness surely just makes N.K. seem all the more depressing. The last time I saw an arcade like this was is Rhyl, North Wales.
Do note, however, that its machines still look better than your terrible MAME cabinet.
Update! I missed Cory's post at the Motherboing.
INSIDE A NORTH KOREAN ARCADE [Spiel Macht Frei]
Rob Beschizza
Do Want Giant Exterior Light Fixture in the Shape of a Spaceship
Up front, I'll admit having not read the accompanying text to this item, found at BLDGBLOG. I like it just as it is: the first mental impression of a giant useless light fixture outside the house. If there is a serious purpose or artistic interpretation, it can go hang.
Rob Beschizza
Business card web server
Hacakday offers instructions on how to create the smallest web server you ever did see: it occupies the dimensions (except depth, of course!) of a business card! I can't see myself handing these out at meetings any time soon, however. Not, at least, without creating a bomb scare.
how-to: web server on a business card part 1 and part 2 [Hackaday]
Rob Beschizza
Realistic-looking MacBook Pro photo doing the rounds
A photoshop, but not a bad one! (Tipoff: the iSight 'reflection' shows him shooting down with iPhone, but the shot's camera perspective angles upward. Behold the fury of Jesus Diaz.)
An LCD touchscreen trackpad? Yes please. But this machine looks disturbingly like an HP.
Rob Beschizza
BBG Presents Low-Altitude Attack Zeppelin
Welcome to Low-Altitude Attack Zeppelin, the first in our series of exciting futile games. Click the game and press space to start. Use the arrow keys to move, and press space to fire the machine gun—of your Low-Altitude Attack Zeppelin!
Vote for the next game! Tell us which one you, the hero, will bring to the futile conclusion implied by its own absurd premise!
• Pedal Prop-Cycle Plunge
• Orbital Space Combat
• In the Trenches
• Realistic Shinobi
• Mortgage Securities Trader
Joel Johnson
Log Bowls by Doha Chebib
Hardly a gadget at all, we diverge from our usually strident and disciplined coverage of things with electricity in them — or, you know, pants — to present these gorgeous wooden bowls with lacquered interiors. In my fairy world this is what my multi-dimensional scrying suite would look like, except instead of viewing orcish troop movements I'd peek into the milkman-in-the-kitchen fantasies of '50s housewives.
They were designed by Doha Chebib from the Loyal Loot Collective for "Cabin", which I presume is some sort of furniture store.
Loyal Loot Collective page [LoyalLoot.com via Freshome]
Joel Johnson
Cordarounds Bike-to-Work pants with reflective Teflon cuff
Cordarounds newest khakis, called the "Bike to Work" pants, have a clever secret: the rolled up cuff exposes a reflective strip for added safety and Teflon for resistance to scuffs and chain grabs.
They're $95 a pair because that's how Cordarounds makes their money: prices.
Bike to Work pants product page [Cordarounds.com]
Joel Johnson
Patagonia OutsideIn modular shoes
Patagonia's OutsideIn footwear comes in two parts: a soft upper with a light tread on the bottom, suitable for indoor wear; and a glueless, strap-on latex bottom that makes the shoes suitable for outdoor use. Replacement latex treads can be purchased if you wear them through before you ruin the booties.
It's a clever design and not even entirely wretched looking considering there's a giant strap over the laces. They aren't cheap, though. The "Rum & Cola" boots seen here cost a healthy $140.
I've used a similar "hack" for years with my shoes, where upon entering my home, I remove the entire upper of my shoe along with its sole, leaving myself in socks, which I then put into high-density sheepskin slippers.
Patagonia shoes catalog page [Patagonia.com via Treehugger]
Rob Beschizza
Robot political phone calls illegal in U.K.
Britain's Information Commissioner's Officer ruled today that automated phone calls, featuring a recorded message from Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, broke privacy rules. From the BBC:
The Lib Dems, who made 250,000 of the calls last week, have been issued with an enforcement notice after complaints to the commissioner's office. Senior Lib Dems had insisted the calls would not break any rules as they were for "genuine market research purposes".
Why do they ban such calls? Because they're annoying, said Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith.
Rob Beschizza
Man falls to death after being tased by Brooklyn cops
Iman Morales, approached by police after yelling at passers-by, started swinging a fluorescent light tube at officers. He fell 10 feet to his death after being Tased.
It's the odd details that linger.
Photo: Richard Box
Rob Beschizza
Amazon's awe-inspiring reader reviews of Bic's most basic ballpoint pen
"Since taking delivery of my pen I have been very happy with the quality of ink deposition on the various types of paper that I have used. ... My pen is the transparent type with a blue lid. I selected this one in preference to the orange type because I like to be able to see how much ink I have left so that I can put in another order before I finally run out.When the initial excitement of taking delivery of my new pen started to wear off I realised that I shouldn't just write for the fun of it, this should be a serious enterprise, so by the second day of ownership I started to take a little more care of what I wrote. I used it to sign three letters, and in each case was perfectly happy with the neatness of handwriting that I was able to achieve. — Matthew "Matt Williams" Williams
Williams' verdict? Incisive: "Very good if you need to write on paper." Available used and new from 10p!
Reader reviews for Bic Crystal Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point, Black [Amazon.co.uk via Qt3]
Product Page for Bic Crystal Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point, Black [Amazon.co.uk]
Joel Johnson
Mate toddler plate grips table
The "Mate" plate and mat for toddlers keeps a three-sectioned plate stuck to a table top, with snap-on fork and spoon to match. It won't stop your larvae from slathering themselves in muddled pork gravy, but at least they'll have to work harder to up-end the whole mess onto the floor.
The Mate is $20. The plate snaps out of the mat for easy clean up and is dishwasher and microwave safe. We should get one of these for Brownlee, but then he'd suspect we're trying to move him on to solid foods.
Mate stay-put mat + plate product page [SkipHop.com via Crunchgear]
Joel Johnson
Furutech's $1,800 power cable
Furutech sells a $1.8k power cable. I used it to charge my iPhone and got the smoothest calculator performance I've ever experienced.
Extreme Performance Pure Transmission Power Cable product page [Furutech.com via Ubergizmo via Oh Gizmo!]
Previously • Furutech DFV-1 LP Vinyl Album Flattener
Rob Beschizza
A guitar amp in your pocket
Vox is a guitar amp. Unlike most guitar amps, it's about the size of a deck of cards. Just plug the $40 box into your guitar and go. There's even an aux-in socket for mixing in another audio source.
Vendor ThinkGeek insists the results "perfectly reproduce the complex and warm distortion that is distinctive of a vacuum tube." There are three editions, one of which emulates the Vox AC30 amp, another that of classic British rock, and "metal," which "delivers the explosive roar of US high-gain metal sound."
Let's just wrap this up now, before I run out of scare quotes.
amPlug VOX Mini Guitar Amp [ThinkGeek]
Rob Beschizza
Failure is art, if you're a robot
Watch M. Kontopoulos' Machines That Almost Fall Over and Machine That Tries to Draw Circles.
Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.
Machine that Tries to Draw Circles from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.
The installation is at the New Wight Gallery in Los Angeles. Isn't there something really sad about the Circle video?
Projects and Collaborations [M. Kontopoulos via Make]
Joel Johnson
Draganflyer X6: Your own personal spy drone
UAVs aren't just for soldiers and horny lab assistants anymore: the Draganflyer X6 will put a remote-controlled, auto-stablizing flying camera platform into your hands for just $15k. A mount on the bottom can hold a variety of cameras, including video, still, and thermal imagers. (Anything, really, but I just wanted to mention thermal so I could imagine flying through Humboldt County and picking out the grow rooms.)
The X6 has a fancy four-axis remote with an OLED screen inside, but its onboard computers make it relatively simple to fly. Dual motors on each of its three arms keep the X6 flying even if a motor — or even a whole rotor — go kaput. And a built-in GPS system lets you punch in lat-and-long coordinates and kick back while the X6 does the spying for you.
It also packs into a handle travel tube.
In short: I want one. If only I didn't think I'd be shot by police and citizens alike if I started flying one around Manhattan.
Draganfly product page [Draganfly.com via Technabob]
Joel Johnson
Joby Gorillapod Focus tripod holds up to 11 pounds of camera in precarious positions
Joby's Gorillapod tripod is great. I've had one for years and it goes with me on every trip. It ably handles my DSLR and smaller camcorders. And it's cheap!
The new Gorillapod "Focus" tripod is not cheap. It's $150. But at 1.1-pounds it's rated to handle up to 11 pounds of gear. That's the size of larger camcorders or DSLRs with professional-sized lenses. And there's a new adapter head that lets you screw on pro tripod mounts.
Apologies if this sounds like marketing copy, but Joby makes a simple, quality product. I expect the same from the Focus.
Gorillapod Focus press release [Joby.com]
Rob Beschizza
iPhone costume sports toxic icons, ransom letter text, rainbow Payot cables.
Apparently, this fellow is protesting something quite important. His iPhone costume, though, is distractingly bad. Does it have something to do with iPhones? Maybe. Click through to see the full-size shot o'er the Giz.
Worst. iPhone Costume. Ever. [Gizmodo]
Rob Beschizza
Reactionless space thruster under construction in China
The Chinese are attempting to implement the Emdrive, a hypothetical propulsion system derided by many scientists as a perpetual motion machine that doesn't account for conservation of momentum. Check out the designers' FAQ and description of how it works and, and then read why people think it won't.
Conceived by Roger Shawyer, the drive is under development at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in X'ian. And if it does work? Fuel-free satellites and other spacecraft is the hook: something China is very much interested in.
Perhaps there should be a sort of "Mr. Yuk" or "Smokey the Bear" for scientists, so they know not to lick or set fire to the wrong things. "Mr. Thermodynamics," doesn't quite have the right ring to it.
Photo: Emdrive
Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive [Danger Room]
Joel Johnson
Asus adds 3.75G to latest Eee PC; What the hell is "3.75G"?
AsusTek has released yet another Asus Eee netbook, but this one has a cellular radio modem inside, not unlike the thousands of other laptops sold every day. But because their modem uses HSUPA, a slightly faster flavor of 3G than typical, the company has coined a wholly imaginary term on which to hang their marketing campaign.
With 3.75G, the Eee PC™ will be able to deliver on its promise of borderless one-day computing better than ever before. No longer bound to Internet hotspots, 3.75G-equipped Eee PC™ users will be able to enjoy low latency mobile broadband Internet access at high downlink and uplink speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and 2 Mbps** respectively, regardless of where they are—ensuring a seamless connected experience on the go. The Eee PC’s™ 7.5-hour battery life*** provides more than ample power to keep it up and running during extended outdoor excursions.I don't know why it is irking me as much as it is, but I suppose I'm able to predict the onslaught of questions from friends and family when Asus's lazy marketing blows back my way. "Should I get a computer with 3.75G or 3G, huh? I heard a rumor about 3.85G: should I wait?"
Update: Looks like Nokia is to blame for the original term, but it's still crap. A quick run through Googles shows that nobody uses that term instead of HSUPA. Except Asus.
Rob Beschizza
T-Mobile lifts Googlephone bandwidth cap
After announcing a meagre, Euro-style 1GB monthly cap on the G1's bandwidth, there was much gnashing of keys over what would surely limit the Android-running phones' utility on T-Mobile's 3G networks. The New York Times reports a change of heart:
We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers.
The much-awaited "Googlephone" will hit town in late October and cost $180 with a contract.
T-Mobile Lifts Bandwidth Cap for Google Phone [Bits at the New York Times]
John Brownlee
Review: the Trust KB-2950 isn't a wireless keyboard, it's a $25 HTPC remote.
There aren't a lot of reviews on the Internet for the KB-2950 Vista Remote Keyboard. There's a reason for that: made by Trust, it's something of a crap gadget. But set to the one purpose for which it is a suited, it's a damned fine crap gadget for the price.
What the KB-2950 attempts to do is to roll every input device necessary to control a home theater PC into one small, affordable device. As a keyboard, it is merely okay: the keys have a marginally satisfying, slightly plushy plonk them, but there is no tactile vibrancy like an IBM Model M. It's not meant as a serious contender to a more ergonomic Microsoft keyboard. In fact, you are barely meant to type on the KB-2950. This is a keyboard for light typing and idle web surfing from the opposite end of a living room, not for writing a novel.
Where the KB-2950 gets interesting is the pulsing, silver-pupiled Eye of Sauron built into the right bank of the keyboard. It's a working trackball, which can be turned on or off with a press of a button. Intriguingly, the left and right mouse buttons are placed in the upper most corners of the keyboard, similar to a console gamepad's shoulder buttons.There's some issues with this arrangement: it's incredibly difficult to shift click multiple items with the mouse buttons mounted in the keyboard's shoulders. But the placement is still surprisingly innovative: it means that the keyboard can be gripped like a controller, the pointer swooshed across the screen without any need for a planar surface. As a desktop keyboard / mouse replacement, this button placement is not only unintuitive, but damn near unmanageable, but that all changes when you are sweeping a mouse pointer across a 50 inch plasma screen from 10 feet away using a keyboard clutched between two palms in mid-air.
A smattering of Media Center buttons for playing, fast forwarding, rewinding, pausing and muting fill out the KB-2950's feature set. It's hardly a staggering technological marvel, but what's impressive about the Trust is that it has managed to cram into one reasonably sized wireless device all the base necessities — wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and wireless remote — for couch-driving an HTPC. That puts it in the same class of device as the diminutive Logitech diNovo Mini. But while the Logitech diNovo costs $149.99, I was able to pick up the Trust KB-2950 for a mere $25, and while it is neither as sexy or as small, it is a far more usable peripheral for controlling a computer across the room.
The KB-2950 can't be considered through the prism of day-to-day desktop use: if you bought one with that aim, you made a huge mistake. But as an all-in-one keyboard, trackpad and remote for an HTPC, the KB-2950 takes about the best approach to the challenge of usably controlling a media center from a supine position on the couch as can be expected. And it does it all for a smattering of fins.
Joel Johnson
The environmental cost of Esquire's e-ink cover
Clive Thompson points to some rough estimates done by Fast Company's Anya Kamenetz about how much extra carbon it took to produce those e-ink covers:
So… the total outlay in greenhouse gas emissions for this little experiment—again, this is based on loose estimates—comes to 150 tons of CO2 equivalent, similar to the output of 15 Hummers or 20 average Americans for an entire year, and a 16% increase over the carbon footprint of a typical print publication (based on calculations by Discover Magazine, Time, and In Style). The potential environmental impact of the E Ink covers increases even more when you consider that the units are designed to be disposable after one use and they’ll make it more difficult or impossible to recycle the paper portion of the magazines.Not good, but everything we produce has a carbon footprint and in this case the stunt — disappointing as it may have been — isn't a permanent addition to Esquire's production process.
The Real Cost of E-Ink [Fast Company via Collision Detection]
Joel Johnson
Seiko-chan robot is adorable, which makes the commercial for her brother even creepier
I know none of us will ever buy the new "Murata Girl", an updated version of the older "Murata Boy" robot, but the commercial for the Boy above is far creepier than the pictures of the Girl would imply. (I'd link the picture of the Girl, as well, but I've already swiped plenty from CrunchGear already.)
You really should click over, though: the "Seiko-chan" robot is shaped like a cute Japanese schoolgirl riding a unicycle. Adorable!
Little Seiko: Japanese company develops creepy kindergarten girl robot [CrunchGear]
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• Stick Tools – The Craftsman sale continues, with a buy-one-get-one-free promotion on "stick tools", which sounds like shovels and rakes and the like. [Slickdeals]
• Food Processor – Cuisinart DLC-10S Pro Classic 7-cup food processor for $100, shipped. I don't have a food processor at the moment — I've always presumed they were for people who don't know how to use a knife — but I've been hearing lots of people talk about how useful they are lately when preparing a big meal, so I'm starting to soften a little. [Dealhack]
• Netbook – The Everex CloudBook Via C7-M ultra mobile super amazing happy dancing 1.2GHz 7-inch laptop is on sale for $307, shipped. [Dealnews]
• Basic Phone – Rob's secret passion, the Motorola "I just make calls" MOTOFONE F3 cell phone, is on sale for $35, shipped. It's unlocked so should work on any GSM network. [Dealnews]
• Headphones – Sennheiser PXC150 Supra-Aural Active Noise Canceling headphones for $43, shipped — about $37 off. And if you trade in an old pair of headphones you can get an additional $25 with a mail-in rebate. Great deal for a quality brand. [Dealnews]
• Woot-Off – The Woot-Off continues apace.
Rob Beschizza
Cuol Book, the nettop that runs Windows CE
As weak as the knees as I am for little QWERTY-sporting mini-laptops, the Cuol Book has its obvious drawbacks. It's as big as a netbook, but is limited to Windows CE: this sort of platform already exists in more compact form as the NEC MobilePro 900, which is a great instant-on handheld PC with a nearly full-sized keyboard.
Moreover, Cuol lacks the touchscreen that used to come on those old things, but doesn't have a trackpad or trackteat either: you must use a mouse! The display is 7" across and it weighs a lithe 1.5 pounds.
However, Cuol is both more technically advanced that the best of the old HPCs (it has a gig of storage, 512MB of RAM and two USB ports) and is extremely cheap, at $300. This will make it an interesting alternative to the lowest-end Eee PCs for those who want only the very basics, but want them "instant-on."
Cuol Notebook... [Lilliputing via Ubergizmo]
Rob Beschizza
LG Xenon on AT&T soon
LG's Xenon is a forthcoming AT&T sliderphone of undistinguished capabilities. But it comes in a lovely shade of blue.
It has a keyboard, quad-band GSM, HSDPA and a 3 megapixel camera, says Boy Genius, which offers pictures and more details.
Rob Beschizza
You deserve a medal for your many victories
A close look at Supermandolini's medals reveals a simple fact: almost every reader of BBG has earned one or both! Still, you'll have to pony up €18 for each.
Console Wars Veteran 1 and 2 [Supermandolini via Formfiftyfive]
Rob Beschizza
Peapod electric car
Chrysler's joyful Peapod electric car pursues me in my nightmares.
Introducing the Peapod [Chrysler via Dezeen]
John Brownlee
A long time ago, in a bathtub far, far away...
I only wish there was a Jabba the Duck.
Pond Wars Ducks are, as you may have ascertained, LED-packed rubber duckies resembling characters from a bathtub far, far away. Simply pop 'em in the water and watch in awe as they float around and automatically phase through various mesmerising colours.Whether you choose Luke Pondwater, Duck Fadar, Princess Layer or Pondtrooper, you can be sure bathtime will never be the same again. In fact, why not buy all four and conduct your very own water-based sci-fi epics: from Pond Wars: A New Soap to The Empire Goes Quack!
Luke Pondwater's cardboard box even transforms into a papercraft X-Wing. Only £6.95, or roughly $13 a pop. I love everything about these.
Pond Wars Ducks [Firebox via Foolish Gadgets]
John Brownlee
App Store Devs: your arbitrary rejection is now under NDA
Absolutely bogus: App Store developers can not only be turned down by Apple for shameful reasons like competing with a built-in App, or creating a program of limited appeal, but now you're not even allowed to talk about it. Rejection letters and stated reasons for rejections are now under NDA.
Wise up, Apple. This is a particularly onerous attempt at hushing up criticism... and it particularly gets the goat when you could simply defuse that criticism by being more open and honest about the App Store's positively arcane approval process. If this is the way you're going to treat your programmers, there's now a competing platform — Google's Android — that will likely be just as good or better than the App Store. Developers are going to leave the platform in droves. Hell, that exodus has already begun.
Apple Extends Non-Disclosure to App Store Rejection Letters [Mac Rumors]
John Brownlee
My face goes white, my eyeballs bulge, my fists always clench when a house guest uses my laptop
I generally treat my guests fairly well: I give them my bed, I bring them pastry in the morning, I teach them the rules to two games of my own devising ("Is that a parakeet in your pocket?" and "What's in my mouth?") and I allow them a generous daily allowance of ten toilet paper squares. I like my guests to feel relaxed. I mother them and generally make it known that they are welcome to play with my toys, watch my television, pet my budgerigar, and drink all my beer.
But yesterday, as a guest sat on my couch and — without asking permission — suddenly grabbed my laptop to check his email, I realized I had one major complex: I hate it when people use my computers without permission.
In truth, there's nothing to worry about, or even to get so seized up about: if they ask to use my laptop, I will simply say "Yes" and give it no more thought. But the brazen, unsolicited boldness of grabbing my laptop and using it without a word irks. Moreover, it immediately spirals me into paranoia: did I leave PornHub.com up in Safari? Will they use this opportunity to search my email for incriminating mentions of their name? Will they charge Kid and Play's complete oeuvre to my iTunes account? Will they use my computer to send death threats to a major political candidate, or log-in to an alt.lolitas Usenet group?
The solution is simple, of course: I could simply get a visitor's laptop. It would actually be an excellent reason to pick up an Acer Aspire or a Dell Mini-Inspiron. But it's still an expensive solution for a non-problem: in truth, I'm not doing anything on my computers I wouldn't mind my friends knowing about. A floating flash video of Giannia Michaels mid-coitus is the worst that could be expected, and that's nothing amongst friends. But the psychological aspect of violated privacy still irks.
Am I alone here? I feel very uptight about it — when it happened yesterday, I immediately started gritting my teeth — but a laptop is private, a repository for a huge amount of personal information that one can only trust a visitor to use with consideration. That I trust my friends to do so isn't really what bothers me: I do. But I'd like a head nod that they've acknowledged that trust before they start alt-tabbing around.
John Brownlee
Gallery of curious photos from iPhone PhotoSwap app
This morning over a pre-dawn milchkaffee, I spent some time groggily playing with my iPhone, and stumbled — like many users before me — on the fantastic app PhotoSwap: a swell little program that allows you to trade one picture with a random stranger anywhere in the world. I took a picture of a millet-nomming parakeet, angrily muttering to himself about the hour, and was rewarded with a profile picture of a striking blonde, one hand obscuring her face. I replied (a neat little feature) by mimicking the same shot, and thus began a half hour international flirtation that finally ended in the taste of throw-up when my virtual girlfriend finally revealed herself as the floozily-conceived grandaughter of Lena the Hyena.
Never the less, I remain a fan of the program, and if you've used it this morning you can comfortably assume that any pictures you have received of sneezing budgerigars, cat buses or Cthulhus are from Gleimstrasse in Berlin. Needless to say, the temptation to snap a shot of my girded, glistening nethers is strong, but the horrible uncertainty that I might be rewarded with Monsieur Goatse.cx's gaping rectum is enough to keep me in check.
Not so for many. An entire Flickr group has sprung up dedicated to NSFW PhotoSwap shots. There's the usual assortment of sulfurous moon shots, a few oiled breasts, a rubbery schlong. It's actually surprisingly uninteresting in an age of porn in which the only nudity still alien is pulsating, exposed musculature. More interesting and amusing is the SFW gallery, where gentlemen like the one to the right are on Katamari Damacy like display. I love you, King of Cosmos. You can share photos with me anytime.
iPhone Photoswap SFW and Photoswap NSFW (Warning: NSFW!) [via CoM]
John Brownlee
In the retrofuture, go-karts will save the world: AMC's 1968 Amitron electric car
AMC's 1968 Amitron prototype — an electric go-kart with inflatable plastic seats that promised a puttering, green-friendly jet age of "miniskirts, go-go boots and a sexy battery pack" — was probably not as viable an alternative to the primordial ooze slurpers of the day as the press materials made it sound: the two-hundred nickel-cadmium / lithium-nickel-fluoride dual battery pack claimed a 150 mile range with a top speed of 50 mph. But its retro-futuristic design is simply adorable, like the puttering roadster a black-crystaled Logan might drive on Lastday to his local Sleepshop.
AMC's Amazing Amitron Electric Car [Retrothing]
Image: Retro-Thing
John Brownlee
A $1,000 premium for a 16 watt low-power mini-desktop
The gingerly power sipping Fulwood isn't the cheapest mini-desktop you can buy. In fact, ranging from £868-£1104 ($1,562-$1,987), it's probably the most expensive.Similarly, the specs don't really jive with a PC in this price range: it comes stock with an Intel P9500 2.53GHz dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, a 250GB HDD, Intel x4500HD graphics, DVDRW, remote control Windows Vista Premium, DVI (with DVI-VGA splitter for dual screens and HDMI adaptor), and surround sound audio (with SPIDIF optical interface Gigabit LAN). You can also slap on WiFi, an internal television tuner and Bluetooth.
But the investment here is in a low-power HTPC base that sucks up only 16 watts of power. It's hard to fathom, though, how many month's worth of power savings you'd have to rack up to make up the Fulwood's $1,000 premium over similar mini-desktops like the Acer Aspire X3200 or the Mac Mini. I'm just going to say a jillion.
Very PC intros 16 watt Fulwood mini desktop [Smart Planet via Treehugger]
John Brownlee
T-Mobile ad promises the G1 will be "more connecteder and funnerer"
T-Mobile's first ad for the G1 has hit YouTube, and let us give T-Mobile the eye-bulging, thorax-gobbling slow clap (in unison, please): it raises the bar on the "unapologetic stupidity = cool" technique that marketers have been perfecting ever since Bubble Yum first thought to slap the word "EXXXTreme!" on a packet of purple-flavored caulking. The new G1 will, according to the advertisement, make the average customer more "smarterer", "connecteder" and "funnerer." The phone itself? Merely "newerer", "superer" and "nicerer". Word construction like this is like a cheese grater sloughing off brain slices.
My favorite part of the ad, though, is when a brief glimpse of a typical G1 text message is shown; it clearly reads: "Man, that is totally funky, bro." While the iPhone is clearly being marketed to the latte-sipping urban hipster, it's nice to see that the G1 is setting its sights on a more down-to-earth market: the booyeah shouting, beer bonging frat boy, pockets overflowing with flunitrazepam. I'm ordering one!
[via Monkey Bites]
John Brownlee
HTC's Android G1 leaves out the 3.5mm headphone jack
Android's built-in Amazon MP3 service, offering six million tracks dipped in acid and cleansed of DRM, is certainly a juicy plum, but listening to those tracks on the first HTC G1 on your cans isn't going to be easy: there's no standard 3.5mm jack. You'll have to buy an adapter.
This isn't much of a surprise. HTC's Touch series also eschews the standard, opting instead for an ExtUSB connector that ties microphone, power and headphones into one. You won't be totally out-in-the-cold: HTC will bundle the G1 with a built-in headset, probably of the usual crap bundled-in aural ergonomic design: a set to jaggedly tear at your penichrondiums and which must be thumb pressed down to the cochlea to prevent plopping out.
That's disappointing and a bit puzzling: the G1 is going head-to-head with the iPhone, so you'd think they'd have learned from the iPhone's mistake of a recessed 3.5mm jack. Instead, HTC's topped it, forcing most people who want to listen to music on their phone to waggle around a doofy dongle. That may seem like a small nitpick, but for people who want a phone that is as much a music player as anything else, another peripheral to lug around is a big tick in the "con" column.
Confirmed: T-Mobile G1 has no 3.5mm headphone jack [Engadget]
John Brownlee
Emerald LED laser blob plays the piano
This emerald LED piano player bouncing between ivory chords while overlooking the sliding, pre-dawn backside of a San Franciscan hill was created by Ryan Cashman with a Canon Rebel DSLR using a 30 second exposure time and a small keychain light. I've love it: it takes a lot of skill to make a laser cartoon look so gosh darn pleased with himself when you've only got half a minute to sketch out each frame, like attending some anthropomorphic laser blob's first piano recital. I would like to see more of this savant's incredible twilight performances... some Adaggio in G Minor overlooking an ancient Acropolis, perhaps.
Light-Paint Piano Player [Vimeo via MAKE]
John Brownlee
Power On Self Test: Vehicle Lust
Taken outside of Mitte' Tacheles, I only wish the sculpture had been in front of a cooler car, though it was at least located near what appeared to be a gynecology stirrup built out of industrial trash (not pictured)
Rob Beschizza
Atom vs Atom vs Atom: tiny motherboards compared
Ewan Wilcocks points us to his roundup of five Intel Atom-based motherboards. The verdict: Mini-ITX, the classic mini motherboard form factor, has a bright future. But if you need HD video playback, get Intel's own implementation, which has the spectacularly unpleasant name "D945GCLF2."
In our multiple Atom board review, we cover the original Intel D945GCLF motherboard, Gigabyte's GA-GC230D, Jetway's JNC91, an board from MSI due to be released in the next few weeks, and Intel's Dual Core Atom 330 powered D945GCLF2 - released today (or thereabouts). Very brief summary: the D945GCLF2 can playback 720p quite happily. The single core boards nearly can.
I just love to look at them stacked up like that. Wouldn't it be cool to have a Mini-ITX cluster supercomputer made of these, stacked 40-high in a perspex-encased column?
Review [Mini-ITX]
Rob Beschizza
Chained to the desk? Keep your toes twinkling with Webble, now on sale
Webble is an ergonomic board designed to go under your desk. You put your feet on it, instead of on the floor, and as a result these selfsame feet stay busy and healthy for the long hours at work. It's not just a goofy toy, the makers claim: it has real physiological benefits.
... Decades of research that unambiguously points to the physiological benefits of increased leg activity while seated. That said, for us wellness in the workplace means a lot more. it means connecting with the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of well-being. After all, the workplace is where so many of us increasingly spend the vast majority of our waking hours. And it is this simple fact - for better or for worse - that has fueled us to create the Webble™, the first of a new genre of workplace wellness products designed to shine new light on your office experience.
Here's a flickr gallery of this $200 oddity, which comes in red, black and silver. Check out Yanko Design's review.
Psst. This is totally like those "neck massager" ads, right? It goes on the boss's dime as some kind of ergonomic workplace strain-remediation thing, but it's really about permanent skateboard access, 9-5.
The Webble active footrest [Webble] Thanks, Branko!
Rob Beschizza
Playing creepy tunes with monitor radiation
In this strange video, BBG reader Sergio demonstrates a device that can detect monitor radiation from an old CRT and represent it as noise. While there are security-related uses for such a thing, here it instead plays the tune generated by patterns of on-screen light.
John Brownlee
Pinhole Camera Fashioned From 150 Year-Old Skull
Third Eye: a sculpture by artist Wayne Martin Bleger in which the 150 year old skull of a thirteen year old girl — strategically trephined &mdashl becomes a pinhole camera. Quoth Ectoplasmosis' Ross Rosenberg, whose prose I can blockquote wholesale by dint of the fact that I own his words:
Wayne Martin Bleger makes pinhole cameras using a variety of materials including precious stones, metals, human organs, and bone. This piece, entitled Third Eye, features many of these materials, all constructed around the 150 year-old skull of a 13 year-old girl. The film is exposed to light through titular ocular cavity making a Polaroid momento mori. The photos taken with this camera (one of which is after the jump) stay with the theme, their blurriness and patina making them look as if they were snatched from the memories of the dead.
Gizmo Watch, bless them, wants no ambiguity in regard to why we should all find this skull camera rather interesting, with a bolded What's Innovative heading that reads:
The Third Eye pinhole camera isn’t a regular plastic contraption. Making use of a 150-year-old skull as the camera structure is not just innovative, but unbelievably creative. If you can peep through a skull and see death’s pale visage staring back at you, rest assured excitement will not be the instant feeling.
Indeed!
Boy of Blue Industries [Artist's Site via Ectoplasmos via Gizmo Watch]
John Brownlee
T-Mobile capping Android G1 3G at 1GB
T-Mobile's announcement earlier today that unlimited 3G data would cost a minimum of $25-a-month for in conjunction with the purchase of an Android G1 was well received: it's eminently reasonable and hugely competitive with AT&T's iPhone plan. But lo, not all is as it seems. The fine print indicates that there is an effective cap of 3G throughput at the 1GB range per month... anything over "may" be degraded to 50Kbps, or EDGE speeds.
That's shitty, but unsurprising: T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telecom, and in Germany, they are also stingy with the iPhone's data: at debut, the cap was similarly 1GB, while Americans enjoyed AT&Ts ostensible unlimited throughput. I believe it's better now, though.
There's reason to want to give the benefit of a doubt here, though: T-Mobile's American 3G rollout is still relatively new, and the G1 may be the first massive test of the system. Ramping the more omnivorous bandwidth users back a notch to maintain network performance is certainly better than wide scale complaint and revolt. The needs of the many something something.
T-Mobile 3G [T-Mobile G1 via Engadget]
John Brownlee
5-in-1 USB charger handles iPod, PSP, DS and GBA
This quintuple-headed USB charging cable could eliminate a whole USB hub from my desktop setup. Each prong charges a different gadget: a PSP, Nintendo DS, GBA or iPod, with a Mini-USB nub for PSP syncing. It's hard to get excited about cabling, and in truth, I'm not at all excited by this, but the efficiency of not having to untangle cords and trace their slitherings to the proper connector appeals to me, especially for $14.00.
5 in 1 USB Charging and Data-Sync Cable [Gadget 4 All via Coolest Gadgets]
John Brownlee
Samsung HZ1 packs 10x optical zoom into a point-and-shoot
Samsung's new 10 megapixel HZ1 crams in the usual features of a point-and-shoot digicam: digital image stabilization, face detection, even a welcome HD 720p video mode. But the eyebrow arches at the 10x optical zoom... which has &mdash' in this age of nearly indistinguishable consumer point-and-shoots — pretty much my primary consideration when buying a new camera, megapixels be damned. Another welcome feature: WiFi computer syncing. Alas, no price or date quite yet.
Samsung Unveils a New Point & Shoot Camera with HD Movie Capability [Akihabara News]
John Brownlee
Audio-Technica announces designer ear buds for the womenfolk
Audio-Technica's new range of attractive, pastel-colored earbuds have been "created especially for women," a creative PR euphemism belying the underlying technology's true import: the first headphones capable of transmitting sound through vaginal walls to the mysterious "uterine" ear that has mystified anatomists for centuries.
Audio-Technica: "Headphones for Ladies" [Slashgear]
John Brownlee
Lighting review of the Acer Aspire X3200 mini-desktop (Verdict: a fine beginner's HTPC)
On the surface, there's little to really say about the Acer Aspire X3200, which is perhaps the greatest testament to the straight forward excellence in which it carries out its function as a frugal consumer's first home theater PC. It's a tiny, glossy little black box with the same smash-up of cheap yet understated aesthetics for which Acer is known. You won't find any brushed metal here; the Power button is a translucent wave of blue-glowing plastic that is cheap to the touch. But the x3200 isn't ugly: though no one would admire its looks, it is meant to sit unnoticed in an entertainment center, the silent engine of a high-definition media center. And silent it is: it's fan is quieter than my MacBook Pro. There's no underlying hum, no quiver of the air, certainly no crackle of ozone to pollute the ambience. It's a triumph of quietness.
The processor and video card are ample for an HTPC: the CPU is an Athlon 64 Dual Core 4400+ running at 2.3GHz and backed by 2GBs of RAM and a 360GB hard drive whirring away at 7,200RPM. Some configurations allow you to amp this up to a quad-core and up to 8GBs of RAM and a one terrabyte hard drive, but I got the bare bones system. Similarly, the GPU is an Nvidia 8200 which slurps up to 256MB of shared RAM, but there's also a PCI-e Nvidia 9500 with VGA and HDMI out slapped in the case. The latter works amply for those who want to free up some memory, but problematically, it doesn't output HDMI sound, requiring another cable for direct audio output to your television or speakers. No matter what GPU you choose to use, this is not a Bioshock PC, but for hooking up to a television and running movies, audio and MAME, it is absolutely fine.
Where the x3200 really shines is its output. Into a tiny chassis somewhere between the size of a Mac Mini and an Xbox 360, Acer has packed a staggeing nine USB ports split between the front and back of the case: after cramming in a wireless keyboard / trackball combination, an Xbox 360 controller, a WiFi dongle, an external hard drive and an infrared sensor, the entire front is still unperturbed by technological protuberances. Amongst those peripherals, you'll spot the X3200's few weakness as an HTPC: there is no built-in wireless card, nor is there an infrared sensor for PC enabled universal remotes.
But there's a tendency to get weighed down with specs on machines like this. It's the run-off madness of an industry obsessed with incremental technology. The Acer Aspire X3200 gets what matters right: for $400, you can walk out of the store with a simple-to-setup, tiny, subliminally attractive HTPC to hook up to your HDTV. For a few hundred more, you can double the RAM and the processing cores and throw in a Blu-Ray drive. For the mewling home theater neonate, there's much to recommend and little to criticize about Acer's Aspire X3200: a small, affordable mini-desktop that makes setting up an HTPC as easy as dropping a credit card and tucking a cardboard box in the crook of the arm out of the computer store. I should know. I am that bewildered neonate, and the X3200 halved my birthing pains. I love the damn thing.
Joel Johnson
I have touched the Google Android-powered T-Mobile G1 and it is capable, interesting, moderately polished, and will completely baffle the average consumer
I pity the person who has to market this.
The T-Mobile G1 is a fine phone with a fine operating system. It's relatively small, although still evidencing the thickness that its slide-out QWERTY keyboard necessitates. There are genuine innovations in how it displays information to its user, with a snappy little "windowblind" that fills up like a status bar of icons on the top of the screen but can be pulled down with a finger swipe to show more detailed alerts. There's a compass inside that opens a wide array of new capabilities when coupled with the onboard camera and GPS.
Perhaps it does too much. Google has created what seems to be a solid operating system — I'll be able to say with more surety when we get our demo unit in early October — and quite a few attractive applications. But in the press conference announcing the G1 there was only one ooh-and-ah moment, when the live Google Maps augmented reality mode that overlays StreetView imagry and data on the real world. It was shown briefly in a video, which then transitioned to someone downloading Pac-Man.
Fuckin' Pac-Man.
There's no magic in the G1 and that's a shame, because the potential for magic is there. A completely open-source operating system married to an over-the-air marketplace? There's nothing not to love about that. Except that there are few applications on display on the G1 demo units on the floor here under the Queensboro bridge at all. The rich software ecosystem that Android chief Andy Rubin touts is coming &mdash "We don't support Exchange," he more-or-less said in my memory, "but that will be a great opportunity for a third-party developer" — won't take off unless there are a broad base of customers using the devices.
Recently I spent a few days driving up Highway 101 with a friend. She had never used an iPhone before, but I handed the phone to her to pick out some music for us to pipe through the rental car over the minijack cable I'd gone to many tiny Radio Shacks to find. I figured she'd be able to figure out the iPod interface without trouble — and she did — but I didn't expect to hear her exclaim wistfully "how pretty the animations are." My friend is bright, but she's not a geek, yet the interface of the iPhone triggered an appreciation of elegance and beauty in her that nothing inside of Android's interface, full of conflicting user-interface button shapes and garish (if cutesy!) icons, seemed to provoke in me.
The G1 will be a great phone for geeks. A more-than-worthy heir to Windows Mobile. The best handset yet for coders, tinkerers, experimenters, and open-source iconoclasts (or those, like me, who just like to profit from the fruit of their labor). But as a consumer device and a contender to the nascent iPhone it has a rough row to hoe.
Still, I'm cheering Google on. Better a free, open, powerful, and slightly awkward operating system from Google than from Microsoft, Nokia, or RIM. Google isn't marketing Android to the mass market, but instead to phone manufacturers. It will probably do very well as an operating system for low-end smartphones.
HTC is HTC: a maker of whatever hardware you tell them to make. I've no doubt the G1 (formerly the HTC Dream) will live up their typically high standards. But they're irrelevant to the consumer, their tiny HTC logo silk-screened on the side of the device, while T-Mobile takes the front and Google the back.
T-Mobile, of course, aren't doing anything they don't have to when it comes to mixing up the game. Their pricing plans for the G1 are reasonable: $25-a-month for unlimited data and 400 text messages; $35-a-month for unlimited data and SMS. And they've rolled out 3G in the major markets.
But the G1 will still be SIM-locked to T-Mobile, just like every other phone. And they aren't going to offer a data-only plan for the G1 which would let users rely on voice-over-IP solutions in lieu of cellular. Just like AT&T and Apple, T-Mobile and Google (and HTC) will play as nicely together as they have to move units into customers' hands while keeping those same customers locked into multi-year contracts. There may be shake-ups in the way wireless data is provisioned in the future, but it's not happening today.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a brief, perhaps-a-surprise appearance at the press conference. Their off-the-cuff comments were trifles — Android is open! These are little computers in your pocket! In the future people will use phones! — but as the previously lackadaisical crowd surged to snap pictures and shoot video of the richest people they'll ever share air with, Page himself inadvertently summed up both the potential and pitfalls ahead for Android.
"I've been using this phone, well, for a while now," said Page. He'd even taken it home and written an application for it that, using the accelerometer, would measure how long a tossed phone would remain in the air. That one of the heads of Google still goes home at night and tinkers with code speaks volumes about the culture from which Android is born.
Page turned to Android project lead Andy Rubin, smiling. "I don't think we'll put that software out on the App Store..." Page caught his mistake — Google's online application store branding had, after several last minute changes, settled on "Android Market" — but he couldn't remember the proper branding in time. "...the App Store," he said, going with it. Page was still smiling, but Rubin apparently was not. Page soldiered on.
"I think I'm getting a dirty look."
Previously • Rushkoff's take on Android
John Brownlee
µTorrent for Mac alpha leaked to Pirate Bay
Ever since I switched to a Mac as my main computer a couple years back, there have been few regrets... few cherished programs I have not been able to replace with something just as good, if not better. In fact, there's been only two: I still think FeedDemon is a better blogger's RSS reader than NetNewsWire, and there's no Bitorrent program on the Mac as simple, elegant, full-featured yet streamlined as µTorrent.
I've never quite understood why a program as bloated and confrontational as Vuze (formerly Azureus) was the best torrent client the Mac had to offer. Both Beschizza and I have tried the alternatives: Transmission and Tomato Torrent and the like. Rob suspects that there's some trickiness involved in programming a BT client around OS X's wonky UPnP settings. I don't know anything about that: I've simply rejected every other torrent client as too slow compared to Vuze, then grudgingly returned to it.
But I've always pined for a µTorrent for Mac. In under 300k, the Windows client is so simple my mother could figure out how to use it without a screen sharing session, yet advanced enough that I can make it the engine to drive an entire television worth of intercontinental programming. In fact, the Windows client is so simple, attractive and streamlined it has always seemed utterly out of place on Vista.
Now, according to Cult of Mac, an alpha version of µTorrent for OS X has hit The Pirate Bay. It's a premature delivery, obviously, and I doubt the µTorrent developers would approve, but surely they'd be the first to admit that it was at least a poetic birth. The screenshots look great, and CoM is reporting that it runs better than its Windows counterpart, with only search still acting wonky, but I have not been able to get a response from the Pirate Bay to give it a try. Once I do, I'll put up some impressions.
John Brownlee
Vanity Fair asks advertising agencies about Microsoft's Seinfeld campaign
Confronting a gaggle of advertising experts with the befuddling Seinfeld Windows Vista campaign and asking them what they think, Vanity Fair has posted the responses in ironic, old-school, Windows XP error boxes.
Needless to say, some hack whipped out the old "Any publicity is good publicity" canard:
The problem with this whole theory is that it's easy to get people to talk about you. For example, if I went to a metropolitan discotheque to try to pick up slinkily-dressed floozies, but then toss back ten vodka doubles, excrete in the middle of the dance floor and then split my head open on the rim of the toilet bowl as I combine micturating with passing out, there'd be no shortage of people willing to gossip about my actions at the end of the night. There would, however, be a complete lack of women willing to pay me to have sex with them. As an act of epic stupidity, my display might have been amusing; as a seduction technique, it would have been an abysmal failure.
My point: advertising is about seduction, not mere awareness. Any product can "raise awareness" by being epically incompetent. A car that spontaneously explodes every time an infant is detected in the backseat will certainly "raise brand awareness," but it's not exactly going to sell any cars.
Microsoft's Seinfeld campaign was in direct response nor just to Apple's blistering "Get a Mac" series of ads, but more importantly to Vista's disastrous reception by a public that considered the OS to be be puzzling, inconsistent, bloated and buggy. Responding to that with a self-indulgent series of puzzling, inconsistent, bloated and buggy ads was such a forehead-slapping blunder that it raises serious questions about the qualifications of any ad agent defending the campaign. Does the curiously named Anne Bologna understand even the most basic truth about advertising: that an ad isn't just about eliciting incredulous WTFs, but about selling a product to consumers by saying something good about it?
Or, in the words of Zain Raj:
Error Message: The Microsoft Advertising Campaign [Vanity Fair]
John Brownlee
The Adventures of Decapitated Albino Hercules in Ironic Hell. Chapter 11: Noxious Horror!
A Greco-Roman stool (former OED def, not latter) designed by Fashion Architecture Taste, cast in the foam-rubber form of Hercules' face, blind eyes cast up in consterne disapproval of a noxious, lowering backside.
Soft Hercules by FAT [Dezeen]
Rob Beschizza
G1 Android phone coming October 22 for $179
T-Mobile's Android-powered phone is ready to rumble. At an event in New York, the company's chief development officer, Cole Brodman, said that it will launch on October 22 and cost $179.
Existing customers of T-Mobile can order it now and get it shipped as soon as it becomes available. T-Mobile's usual voice and data plans apply, though its fast mobile internet system will be available in only 27 markets by November. That's "all of the large metropolitan markets in the U.S.," Brodman said.
HTC's Peter Chou, credited as the technical mind behind the handset, thanked his colleagues and said that it was a good day in New York, which hosted the launch event. HTC, based in Taiwan, is manufacturing the phone itself.
"We share a vision of making the mobile internet practical and fun," Chou said. "I've been working in this industry very long time. The Android phone is nimble, flexible and powerful. ... it's a fundamental shift in how people use the internet."
Explaining the motivation behind the system, which combines hardware from HTC, services and the open-source Android operating system from Google, and T-Mobile's small but growing 3G network, Brodman said that U.S. consumers overconsume everything, which is "why we love them." Given that, he lamented the lack of domestic broadband penetration, and blamed it on the lack of open standards and partnerships.
"This new open alliance will drive in the coming years and array of devices ... to really embrace the mobile internet," Brodman said.
Google's Andy Rubin said that on the launch date, the entirety of the operating system would be open-sourced.
Demonstrated live, the G1 sported a fully-featured, desktop-style browser described as "Chrome lite," and showed snappy response to touchscreen commands. And it's all-Google, preloaded with apps and syncing data to its servers, a la T-Mobile's Sidekicks. Also shown was Flickr and an implementation of Pac-Man.
Programs will be found at the "Android market," similar to the AppStore accessible to users of Apple's iPhone. There will also be an on-the-go MP3 download service hooked up to Amazon's DRM-free library.
"Trust me, it's a lot of fun," Brodman said.
By being open-source, Android is expected to avoid some of the rancor associated with the tightly-controlled software ecosystem around the iPhone, against which Android is seen as a potential dethroner.
The executives also fielded reporters' questions. Here are some of the answers:
• The data plan will require a voice plan. You can't get a "dry loop" and use it for VoIP only.
• It can read Word and PDF documents, but no exchange capability until a third party developer writes it.
• It will be SIM-locked to T-Mobile. Asked how tightly they would enforce that, Brodman said "The device cost a lot more than $179 from a purchase perspective."
• On the PC desktop: there's no app for syncing with your computer. It will sync like Sidekicks, with a server. In this case, Google's.
• It will be available in markets outside of 3G, but Brodman is pretty down on the idea of it: "The best experience there will be on WiFi."
• The browser uses the same base as Chrome, WebKit. "You can think of it as Chrome lite."
• "This device is going to have mass appeal. We expect it to be more of a consumer device, rather than enterprise, but people ... will use it for those reasons as well."
• It will offer a "robust" Gmail experience. People can plug third-party services into the front-end used to display it on your G1.
• It will work with any non-DRM audio files.
• No Skype yet.
• It's quad-band, the device will work on "essentially any GPRS/GSM network in the world."
The event also saw a surprise visit from Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who said he'd written an Android app that calculated how long the G1 remained aloft when thrown in the air.
"It's good to have a phone that I can play with and modify," Page said.
Here's a short clip from the demo video:
And here are a couple of stills from it:
Photo (top right): T-Mobile
Rob Beschizza
Android specs leaked; event starts shortly
Hear the magic, feel the roar.
TmoNews says it is 4.6 inches long, 2.2 inches wide and just 0.63 inches thick. It has a 480x320 display, GPS, 5 hours of talk time, up to 8 GB of storage and, of course, the full rack of Google apps.
There'll be no prepay options, and no stereo Bluetooth.
T-Mobile and Google's press conference begins in minutes, and Joel is there. In the meantime, head over to TMO for the spec sheet.
Confirmed info leaks [Tmo News]
Rob Beschizza
So, Sony, where's your netbook?
Dear Sony,
You've obviously tired of the Vaio UX UMPC, which hasn't been at SonyStyle now for months. We know you like it small and thin: your new Vaio TT is a nice little number. But it's $2,000 and up, and clearly designed for watching Blu-Ray movies and getting heavyweight work done on the go.
So when do we get our Vaio netbook? The fact is that most of the extant models are sort of ugly. We've got Dell, HP, Asus and a bunch of other guys: not exactly the Tate modern out there, is it? They all look like sandwich makers.
Come, now. Show Apple that high-end PC makers can make reasonably-priced, modest machines without frustrating their customers. Give us something tiny, lightweight, and get it out for less than $600. Put art on the case — make it print-on-demand, even. Show all these guys how to make a pretty little laptop. Sex up the dossier.
It's not as if you're wanting for heritage. Hell, you could just start making the "Picturebook" PCG series again, with only minor upgrades (WiFi, WWAN, you know), and that would be more than enough. Those things were freakin' awesome.
Or, how about it: a little brother to the old X505? It was much like the MacBook air, but a few years ahead of its day. Don't say you've not been tempted to refresh this baby since Apple proved you can sell 'em. I played with one of these a while back — not bad, even now. With 3G, Intel's Atom, and bare-minimum specs elsewhere, this would be a killer if a lid could be kept on the overall price.
Something entirely new, of course, is the more likely scenario. So how about it, Sony? Let's have a netbook we can love, not just use.
Rob Beschizza
Vaio TT brings Blu-Ray and WWAN to ultraportable feast
Sony's Vaio TT notebooks put a Blu-Ray drive in an ultraportable frame weighing less than 3 pounds. There's an 11" LED-backlit display at 1366 x 768, and the TT has an HDMI out for connection to a TV set.
Included is a 3G modem that rides Sprint's EVDO Rev. A network, a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, optional solid-state storage, and any kind of Windows you want, including XP. Base models come with 2GB.
The Blu-Ray edition starts at a painful $2,700, and the SSD model starts at $2,750. Drop both, and a machine can be had for $2,000. Including 4GB of RAM, and both Blu-Ray and SSD, nudges the price past $4,000.
TT Notebooks [SonyStyle]
Joel Johnson
Camera Armor Seattle Sling dry bag
The "Seattle Sling" from Camera Armor keeps cameras and other gear free from water, dirt, dust, or cookie crumbs. It's essentially a dry bag inside a padded, single-strap sling, which means you'll have quick access to your gear, but won't be able to take it underwater. Looks useful for adventurey, outdoors shooters, but also seems to take up quite a bit of space.
The Seattle Sling will sell for $150 once they're back in stock. Considering it was just announced that should be any day now. (I'm not sure they were technically ever in stock at their online store.)
Seattle Sling dry bag catalog page [Made-Products.com]
Rob Beschizza
Red Scarlet camera cancelled
Red's Jim Jannard told fans of the forthcoming Red Scarlet, a $3,000-ish HD movie camera, some bad news: it's getting the can. From the Red User forums:
Scarlet... not the same. We have changed everything about Scarlet because the market has changed and we have discovered a lot of things in the process. We have a new vision.Wipe you minds of the past announced Scarlet. Forget the design and forget the price. It is all different now. We think you will be surprised. Glad we didn't take any deposits... :-)
And later, he talked of the replacement:
This will be like getting a second generation camera instead of a 1st generation. Actually, much bigger than that. ...What we are planning is the right thing to do no matter what. If you do the right thing... you just have a better chance at selling something. Our motivation is doing the best we can 1st. Then we let the success (or failure) be the judge of how well we did.
The decision, Jannard wrote, was made only a few days ago.
Recent months have seen DSLR cameras adding more powerful HD video capabilities, so it's only natural for Red to rejigger its prosumer masterpiece to make sure it remains head and shoulders above those products.
Daniel Browning, a poster at the forums, puts the skeptical case: "I'm not surprised ... Come on: 3K, RAW, 2/3", 120 FPS for $3K? Madness."
Thread [Reduser.com Forums]
Joel Johnson
TravelRest inflatable travel pillow
The "TravelRest" is billed as the "ultimate travel pillow" — clearly hyperbole, as the ultimate travel pillow is the soft shoulder of your preferred companion. (Unless that companion is a robot, in which case I would suggest the Nzzle Touch Pro neodymium-clasped sooth pouch upgrade.)
But the $27 TravelRest isn't without its tricks: it's inflatable, which makes for easy stowage; it has a loop that keeps it in place when attached to the back of your seat; and its comma shape supports more of your body than the standard toilet-lid-shaped travel pillows.
TravelRest product page [TravelRest.com]
Rob Beschizza
Rubik's Mirror
Rubik's Mirror Blocks, with its exploded segments and weirdly foreshortened grid, looks like the classic cube puzzle gone wrong. It's exactly the same size — at least when solved — but unlike the original, every side is the same color.
At this point, I have three choices.
• Hellraiser joke about solving puzzle boxes and going strait to hell without passing go.
• Personal anecdote about Rubik's cube from the 1980s.
• Praise self for getting through a post about Rubik without using the phrases "mindbending" or "fiendish."
Either way, I'm gonna pull the trigger on this one when they appear here in the west (It's apparently Japan-only right now). Why waste time on the inadvertent puzzles found in gadgets' user interfaces? Here's video:
Mega Toy Rubik's Mirror [MegaHouse via Digital Gadgets Freak and Technabob]
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• Binoculars – Brunton Lite-Tech 8 x 42 binoculars for $64, $96 off. [Dealhack]
• Led Zeppelin – Amazon MP3 is selling "Led Zeppelin IV" for $2. If it's good enough for Brock Sampson it's good enough for me. [Amazon]
• PS3 Controller – Official Sony PlayStation DualShock 3 wireless controller for $41, shipped. About $14 the normal price. [Dealnews]
• Woot-Off! – It's a Woot-Off, folks!
Rob Beschizza
Power On Self Test: The eyes have it
"It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter."
Sculpture: Dead Star by Michel de Broin, 2008. Photo: Eyebeam
Rob Beschizza
The Top 10 "Top 10 iPhone Flaws" lists
You'd think iPhones were everywhere, a Kudzu of silicon spreading through the last creditworthy coatpockets on planet Earth, given the furious coverage it gets. We shall live with its vices and its virtues, yea— but not without warning. We have the Internet to inform us of its myriad flaws, its failures and foibles! Again and again and again has it told us.
Boy, has it ever told us.
10b: Top 10 Annoying Things About iPhone [Wired News]
With a tip of the hat to Mr. Gadget's own list (see below), Wired's Brian Chen boils them down to the ten worst and adds a few considered suggestions of his own. Topping the list is "Terrible Battery Life," citing tests by Anandtech and offering recommendations to extend it, most of which involve turning important things off.
1. Poor Battery Life
2. Gimped BlueTooth
3. Gimped Outlook support
4. No Cut and Paste
5. Crap camera
6. Crap data plan in Australia
7. No voice dialing
8. No webcam
9. No handwriting recognition
10. Crap GPS
The bonus entries comprise the lack of landscape keyboard support in non-web apps, lack of multimedia text messaging, and buggy software. Chen's list is confident and succinct: if it wore a moustache, it would be perfectly groomed.
10a: 10 of the Most Annoying Things about the iPhone [Mr.Gadget]
Mr. Gadget's list goes on and on and on, stretching to a practical infinity in blogging terms: 1,400 words! His top 10 is the same as Wired's, but goes into exhaustive depth. Even Steve Jobs would be hard-pressed not to fling his glassy slab into a lake after this thorough denunciation of his product.
9. Top 10 Reasons the New iPhone 3G Still Sucks! [List after List]
A List after List poster plunges into it with a brusque, no-nonsense attitude. No time for hedge-sitting preliminaries here! Just a list of blunt complaints, including the intriguing, philosophically recursive "7. The list goes on." The intellectual challenge continues when this "top 10" list proceeds to 13 entries.
1. Too expensive.
2. Crap GPS
3. No tethering
4. No cut and paste.
5. Crap camera
6. Gimped Bluetooth.
7. "The list goes on."
8. No Flash
9. No MMS
10. No voice dialing
11. No TV
12. Can't replace battery
13. No flash card slot
Balanced unerringly between praise and dismay, Amy at Crazymokes ultimately takes a refreshingly software-focused angle in her report on the iPhone's myriad unpleasantnesses.
1. Check calculation application sucks
2. Calendar sucks
3. No Cut and Paste
4. Adding contacts is annoying
5. Gimped syncing
6. No webcam
7. Calender really sucks
8. YouTube app sucks
9. Clock sucks
10. Notes sucks
11. Stocks sucks
7. Top 10 reasons Why, to buy iPhone in India is Not a Win Win Situation and Seemingly bad idea [Dynamic Disruption]
It is in India, land of elephants and the scent of sandalwood ashes, that we find ourselves on our first international excursion. With resolve and tolerance, the unnamed author says he was prepared to accept the lack of Flash, user-replaceable batteries and other well-known flaws. But there are 10 more ills to contend with, each of greater import.
1. Local carriers suck
2. It will be too expensive for India
3. No 3G in India
4. No iTunes in India
5. No decent internet at all in India outside fancy cities
6. Locked to carrier
7. "No Widgets for us we're Indians."
8. No-one has WiFi
Issues 9 and 10 do not appear to be criticisms, and so have been removed. The conclusion, though, is laser-guided: "our Plan is to first build the Tire-Swing and then construct a park around it?"
6. Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhone [Wired]
Who wrote this brilliant, incisive list of critical flaws within a day of the device's original announcement back in January, 2007? Give that man a cigar. Really.
1. AT&T sucks
2. Not enough storage
3. Can't replace battery
4. No 3G. (Note: fixed bin the second coming of iPhone)
5. No hardware keyboard
5. Apple iPhone desperately needs Cut and Paste functionality [IntoMobile]
I see what you did there, Will of IntoMobile! The sneaky devil has no use for the rambling anathemata of his colleagues. His list offers but a single, all-important entry:
1. No Cut and Paste
And right you are, sir.
4. Mobile phone architect lists 10 iPhone problems [ZDNet]
Willie Lu, a 15-year veteran of the mobile phone business, offers up the most steeple-fingered entry in our roundup of Top 10 Top 10 iPhone flaw lists. His selections are not merely problems, he writes: they are documented problems.
1. Closed Wireless architecture sucks. iPhone should open it up, but won't.
2. Wireless transmission efficiency is very low. iPhones should include magic radios.
3. iPhone potentially susceptible to viruses and other complex data attacks based on frame-by-frame transmission standards and explotation of frame error rate bottlenecks.
4. AT&T sucks
5. Apple's exposure to lawsuits is humungous and no-one sees it yet
6. Carrier-locked
7. Too expensive.
8. Closed software ecosystem.
9. iClones will quickly be superior
10. Hype
3.
iPhone 3g Flaws [Dude Toyota Rocks]
Why write when you can make a blurry video of yourself playing around with an iPhone on YouTube? Correspondent DudeToyotaROCKS boils it down the three attributes most ripe for censure.
1. Battery life sucks
2. No flash on camera
3. No MMS
Chimes in top commenter Hoarp001: "Also you cant copy and paste..." Rival YouTubery comes courtesy of NewMacGeek. What is it with Europeans and MMS? I don't even know what that is.
2. Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G [APCmag]
A strong personal touch and a warning not to post angry comments introduces Dan Warne's systematic perusal of the iPhone 3G's shortcomings. A creative note creeps in early — the lack of a decent camera tops his roundup, followed by the lack of Flash — but the classics are out in force.
It is with his final entry, however, that Warne sashays into action: "Stunning hypocrisy," comes in at number 10, nailing Apple's failed BlackBerry clone, MobileMe, in a neat tweak of the corporate nipple.
1. Crap camera
2. No Flash
3. No Instant Messaging
4. Crap international data
5. Gimped BlueTooth
6. No Cut and Paste
7. Can't replace battery
8. No MMS
9. Crap GPS
10. "Stunning Hypocrisy"
1. 50 iPhone problems [PC Advisor]
Top spot in our Top 10 Top 10 lists goes to PC Advisor's epic, 50-entry execration of Apple's technological indulgences, ready to be nailed to Cupertino's door like the theses of Luther. Here are the first ten:
1. Crap touchscreen
2. Gimped web apps
3. No web cache
4. Cannot browse file system
5. No Flash or Java
6. Mail sucks.
7. Yahoo Mail sucks on it.
8. Proximity sensor sucks
9. RF leakage
10. Speakerphone sucks
Many of the rest are trivial ("Substantial delay for new voicemail notification") or demented ("Safari doesn't try to reformat web page for convenient viewing like Windows Mobile"), but all of them deliver.
Bonus Lists: Not had enough? But we've already gone past our quota! Try 6 Major Flaws in iPhone. Will Consumers Still Spend the Money?, from Smartmoney, or The iPhone: Lots to Love, but Flaws Too, from PC World.
Coming soon: Top 10 Top 10 rebuttals to top 10 iPhone flaw list list lists. If we're lucky, the universe will break at 255 levels of recursion, before they switch the Large Hadron Collider back on.
Joel Johnson
Android shows its gleaming head tomorrow
Boing Boing Gadgets will be at the NYC launch. Until then, two interesting bits about the long-awaited Google Phone.
• Google's Andy Rubin on the future of mobiles, mentioning "Smart Alerts" (think Google News alerts on the go); "Augmented Reality", which will allow digital overlays of the real world; "Crowd Sourcing"; "Sensors Everywhere", including traffic tracking tools; and more.
• Pictures of the device, as well as news that Amazon will be one of the first to provide a mobile media purchase and download system for the device.
I'm really excited about this phone. I hope that it becomes the repository for innovation that Apple seems happy to stymy on the iPhone.
Rob Beschizza
How to buy a used laptop
Thinking of picking something cheap up from Craigslist or that kid down the street? Sustainablog has a 10-step guide with an eye on what's good and green. Here's No. 3:
First check for cosmetic issues—and then realize that it doesn’t matter whatsoever. As long as the computer still works, that little chip on the bottom corner will not be a problem. But if you’d like, you can try to get a few bucks knocked off the price because of it.
More important is making sure the screen and hard drive exhibit none of the tell-tale signs of early failure.
Photo: Declan Jewell
Rob Beschizza
RIAA rejects damages award in file-sharing case, wants more
The RIAA, in a case filed against a 16-year old girl, has rejected the damages awarded it by a judge and taken the case to an expensive jury trial in pursuit of a bigger payout. The judge specified the payout at $200 per shared song, accepting the girl's claim that at the time, she knew nothing about the illegality of her actions. That's not enough to get her off the hook—ignorance of the law is not a defense—but it allows a presiding judge to set per-song damages below the $750 minimum.
If nothing else, this finally lays to rest the RIAA's claim that its "sue everyone" legal strategy is not about money.
RIAA rejects damage award, forces trial, looks hypocritical [Ars Technica]
Rob Beschizza
Teen-ager dies after walking into busy street while texting
Christopher Cepeda, 14, of Davenport, Fla., died today after walking into the path of a car while texting on his cell phone. From the Orlando Sentinel:
"The three friends saw a tan, 1998 Buick 4-Door traveling in the inside lane and stopped. The victim, who was texting on his phone, did not see the car and stepped into the roadway," the statement said. "The vehicle's bumper struck the victim, causing him to be thrown over the hood and into the windshield."
14-year-old dies after walking into path of car while texting on cell phone [Orlando Sentinel]
Joel Johnson
Leica S2, first foray into market with a 37.5-megapixel DSLR
I hope you have refilled your money bucket: Leica has announced its own DSLR system built around the S2, their first DSLR. With a 37.5-megapixel sensor (and even autofocus — fancy!), the S2 is designed to bridge the space between lower DSLRs and medium-format bodies.
Leica enters the digital SLR market with 37.5 megapixel surprise [BJP-Online.com]
Leica S2 - 13 photos of the new system [1854.eu]
Rob Beschizza
Is God of War a swipe of 2002 screenplay? Let's look at the complaint in depth.
In a complaint filed in California's U.S. District Court, writer Jonathan Bissoon-Dath and artist Jennifer Barrette-Herzon claim that Sony's God of War swipes work from screenplays, synopses and a map submitted to the company in 2002.
The legal issue will be decided by deep pockets and, conceivably, a jury. The moral issue is simpler to determine. Is there anything truly original in Bissoon-Dath's take on an otherwise well-trodden Olympic scenario, or are both properties derivative of other sources? Is it all just so much Clash of the Titans with glowy swords?
It's easy to assume the latter. Anticipating this assumption, the complaint (Download as PDF) says that the similarities go beyond even substantial similarity. It asserts that God of War is "strikingly" derivative of the original components to the plaintiffs' work.
Bissoon-Dath claims to have created his scenario between summer 2001 and October 2002, incorporating Greek history and mythology but with original central characters. In 2001, he wrote a screenplay called Theseus, followed by a shorter version of the same story, titled Owen. There was also a two-page synopsis, referred to as Olympiad Version A, "another version of the same story," and a completed screenplay, Olympiad.
The other plaintiff, Barrette-Herzog, created an illustrated map, Island at the Edge of the Living World, to go with Owen's work.
Starting in January 2002, the complaint says, the pair pitched their creation to Sony and companies that do business with Sony, who then "actively collaborated with each other regarding Plaintiff's works." Acting on their behalf, L.A. attorney Judith Karfiol sent the materials on to the Monteiro-Rose Agency, Ken Sherman & Associates, and Josh Berman, all companies who "regularly do business" with Sony. Bissoon-Dath also pitched Olympiad directly, in October 2002, to Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The basic claim is that Sony's God of War, released in early 2005 after a development cycle that started at the same time as Bissoon-Dath submitted his screenplay to Sony, swiped "plot, story, themes, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, characters, relationships among characters, settings, tone, detail and sequence of events" from Bissoon-Dath's writings, and much of the in-game map from that made by Barrette-Herzon.
The specifics given as evidence of copying range from the eye-rolling ("conflicts between gods," and dual-wielded swords resemble "light sabers") to the eyebrow-raising (both maps having similarly-named regions in the same spots).
Included in the complaint are the following similarities between each work:
• A champion saves Athens from destruction by an invading Spartan army sent by Ares.
• The earthly conflict is mirrored on Mount Olympus as conflict between the gods.
• The champion is chosen by Zeus and Athena to embark on a quest distinguished by relentless hand-to-hand combat.
• The champion's family is murdered in their peaceful village. In both stories, the protagonist feels guilt for this, despite not being responsible, and seeks absolution through his quest. In the plaintiff's tale, he hides while his parents are hacked to death, while in God of War, the protagonist is tricked by Ares into killing his wife and child.
• Kratos, the protagonist of God of War possesses "brutish and animalistic" qualities modeled on the plantiff's bad guy, Gaylon: they are both Spartan commanders who worship Ares fanatically at the stories' outset. Much is made of their rage and lack of self-control, claimed to be an original element contrary to the general presentation of Spartans as disciplined and even-keeled soldiers.
• Kratos gets two glowing sword-like blades on chains fused to his wrists. Bissoon-Dath believes this is taken from a scene in his work where Zeus's hands "morph into two massive swords that glow like light sabers."
• The destruction of the hero's village and family, which serves to initiate a "turning point" in the hero's life. (Readers, put your Joseph Campbell away and stop laughing.)
• In both stories, the gods appear as expressionless statues around a pool of water, in which they see a vision of the Spartan commanders. The statues "morph" into life.
• The plaintiff's work depicts a region called the Bottomless Valley. God of War has a Bottomless Chasm. Both appear at the same point in the story, and are traversed by rickety suspension bridges.
• The gods, in both stories, try to resolve their disputes without resorting to destructive war. In particular, both stories contain a scene wherein Zeus admonishes Ares and Athena for their bickering. (Perhaps the complaint's author hasn't read The Iliad)
• Both stories depict Satyrs unusually. In Greek myth, the complaint says, satyrs are portrayed as "playful" lovers of wine, women and boys. In both the Olympus stories and God of War, however, they are "sinister minions" and soldiers of Hades.
• Both stories "redefine" gods as being mortal, in defiance of traditional myth.
Onto the maps.
Here's Barrette-Herzon's.
And here's the map from God of War.
• Barette-Herzog's map has a Meadow of Lost Souls flanked by dark silhouettes. God of War's in-game map has an area called the Desert of Lost Souls, flanked by similar figures. In each map, both regions are bordered by dark, triangular trees or mountains.
• Both maps use similar symbol for the hero's destination, a mountain range with a small, round door beneath the highest peak.
• Both maps have similar geography, with the sea at the bottom. "The look and feel of the maps and their layout is strikingly similar," writes the complaint's author.
Copyright in the U.S. applies automatically at the moment of creation: you don't have to register work with the Copyright office to get it. However, Bissoon-Dath neglected to register his stories until 2006, which could limit the damages he receives should he prevail. He did, however, file the works with private IP-registration databases in 2002, which may help establish his time-line.
First impression: most of the complaint riffs on extremely generic monomythic elements. Claiming propriety over heavenly conflicts mirroring those on Earth, for example, is quite ridiculous. A hero's journey starting with the death of his family, statues of gods coming to life, glowing weapons? Come, now... he even called them light sabers in his own original treatment. That bird will not fly.
The overall spread of structural similarities, however, is more striking: plot elements tied to specific imagery are just the sort of thing that can give a distinctive and novel character to even the most hackneyed retreads.
The maps are more convincing, to my mind, particularly the naming of and spacial relationships surrounding the "lost souls" areas. I can believe that whoever drew the latter saw the former.
Illustration: Sony
Joel Johnson
Electro Selectro: gadget and car ad scans from November 1967 NatGeo
I scanned in a bunch of the ads from the November, 1967 edition of National Geographic. I left out the travel and food ads, but that still left about 20 pages of cars and gadgets, including this gem from Panasonic.
Electro Selectro group [Flickr] (You can add your own retro gadget ad scans if you want!)
Previously • "I Love My Electric Appliance!" Vintage Advertisement
Rob Beschizza
Review: Duracell Daylite flashlight. Verdict: Small and very bright.
Duracell's $35 Daylite is only 7 inches long, but produces a surprisingly intense and useful beam from two 123-size batteries.
For that stout outlay, you get a solid metal item that feels sturdy enough for light intruder-coshing duties; Duracell recently bought LED flashlight maker Garrity, so it doesn't come out of the blue. Its head swivels to focus or widen the beam, which is a nice touch for such a little thing, and the rubbery light switch is on the base.
Not so nice is that it requires those fancy 3v 123-size batteries, which are expensive—it's quite obvious why Duracell would be interested in selling flashlights that require them, as a pack of two is $20! A box of 6 generics for that on Amazon, however, and Duracell will also offer other Daylites in other battery sizes (though they're only half as bright: 60 instead of 120 lumens).
It's hard not to recommend this. After all, it's brighter than my normal flashlight, which is too heavy to stay anywhere other than the top of the fridge. And I never use my little AAA-powered LED flashlight (a Maglite), because its feeble glow would be useless to a theater usherette, let alone any serious purpose.
If you can get one of these on special, or if you have convenient access to a cheap supply of 123s? Yes. As a $45 outlay in stores? No.
Rob Beschizza
Help me resist Brando's Super Tiny Keyboard
Imaginary hot tears of shame pour from my eyes as I offer devotions to Brando's $25 miniature QWERTY keyboard with retractable USB cord.
You see, we all know that the promise is a phantasy, that no-one can type properly on it, and that posting it merely propagates the lie. But I can't help myself. To this day, I still nurse the idea that I might buy a Jornada 728, which is about as useful as an old teabag. I still nurse the idea that I may write with it. In the face of hand size and keyboard size failing to match, the spirit of every human Utopia whispers. "The system is perfect; it is your hands that are wrong."
Brando's crap gadget is 6.7 inches wide, 3 inches deep, wafer-thin.
Super tiny keyboard [Brando CrunchGear]
Rob Beschizza
Mother kills son, 6, with cellphone strap
Lisa Katayama spots a disturbing story out of Fukuoka, Japan, where Kaoru Tomiishi admitted strangling her 6-year old son with his cell phone. The Mainichi Daily News has more details.
Photo: Mainichi
Joel Johnson
Nomad Traveler Speaker: tweed vinyl is this generation's wooden Victoriana
Urban Outfitters may be staffed by design-stealing bastards, but sometimes their mining of retro culture dusts off a look that feels new. This "Nomad Traveler Speaker", for instance, clad entirely in a tweed vinyl. You can plug in your iPod or listen to AM/FM radio. Very sharp.
It's $72, exclusive to Urban Outfitters, unfortunately, and should be available soon.
Nomad Traveler Speaker catalog page [UrbanOutfitters.com via Coolest Gadgets via Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza
Is Starcom's Knick the ultimate portable blogging platform?
UTStarcom's Knick, revealed in a Radioshack-sourced spy shot, appears to be something of a Sidekick clone. There's a full keyboard, a camera that can shoot video, GPS, email, TV, and internet browsing: all features you'd expect of such a thing.
Something about it, however, suggests a power and technological maturity not associated with the Sidekicks. It looks more like the Sony VAIO UX micro-PC's little brother than something kids would hammer out love notes on. Or is this crazy talk?
Engadget's Darren Murph sounds like he's in the same place I'm at, of thinking that it's pretty damn hot ("Awestruck," is how he puts it) but not quite knowing why we think that way. Skepticism leads me to think it's just a clever combination of Sidekick and UMPC-ish design that flies, laser-guided, to the feature-whore heart in all of us gadgetfolk.
But damn, do I want to get a look at this Knick. You'd better have a good browser, laddie.
Joel Johnson
FujiFilm's Finepix Real 3D dual-lensed camera allows 3D imaging and more
Photokina is on, the world's largest trade show for photography, and as per usual it's filled mostly with incremental trifles, minor upgrades to existing products, and products aimed squarely at the professional market.
Here's something that is none of the above: FujiFilm's new "Finepix 3D" technology, a dual-lens imaging system that will take 3D stereoscopic images and display them on special 3D LCD panels. It's the latest iteration of an old technology, but FujiFilm's intention to put it in consumer-grade cameras is noteworthy.
Also of note: some of the ideas that FujiFilm has considered possible in cameras with two lenses. From the press release:
Point-and-shoot cameras have been stagnant for the last few years — anything that livens up the market is okay by be, even if it will be at best a fun novelty.
• Simultaneous Dual Image Shooting: (Telephoto and Wide Angle)
• Simultaneous Dual-Image Shooting (film modes)
• Ultra-Wide Panoramic Shots Shooting
• Movie-Still Simultaneous
No official products have yet been announced save the 8.4-inch "FinePix Real 3D Photo Frame", fitted with the shuttering LCD panel that makes 3D image viewing possible without special glasses. (A similar, smaller LCD panel will be on the back of the cameras once they are released.)
FinePix Real 3D press release [DPreview.com via Engadget]
Joel Johnson
Broseley's contemporary wood-burning stoves
Broseley Fires makes a variety of modern wood- and gas-burning stoves including these above examples which I find lovely and terrifying all at once. Something about seeing a primal force in such a fancy, soon-to-be-dated thing puts me ill at ease.
Relatedly, fire is hot and I like it. And the big, round brass-finished one looks like it was crafted from the scavenged button of a ice giant's waistcoat.
Contemporary Stove Range [BroseleyFires.com via Appliancist]
Joel Johnson
Jiminy.
One of the most common criticisms of Daring Fireball's John Gruber is that he too stridently and uncritically defends Apple. I believe Gruber's perspective is better understood not as fanatic, but as someone who gives Apple — a company he obviously loves — the benefit of the doubt based on a history of good faith and positive experiences. Whether that's a useful perspective to you or not is something for you to decide. (For me it is. Now if I could get over his Yankees obsession.)
But Gruber's coverage of Apple's latest mistake, the banning of two completely useful, non-SDK-violating applications for the iPhone — Podcaster and MailWrangler, both axed due to purported duplication of features of Apple's own iPhone software — has been fair and critical of Apple's decisions. I've been turned off by what I felt was Gruber's borderline sycophantism in the past, but his reporting and writing the last couple of weeks have laid any doubts I might have had to rest that he's willing to call out Apple on their mistakes.
For example, as he writes about Podcaster and Apple's App Store policies:
The App Store concept has trade-offs. There are pros and cons to this model versus the wide-open nature of Mac OS X. There are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. But blatantly anti-competitive exclusion of apps that compete with Apple’s own? There is no trade-off here. No one benefits from such a policy, not even Apple. If this is truly Apple’s policy, it’s a disaster for the platform. And if it’s not Apple’s policy, then Podcaster’s exclusion is proof that the approval process is completely broken.Outstanding.Either way, something is seriously wrong.
Rob Beschizza
Samsung and Armani make simple but startlingly unstylish chav-phone
This branded tie-in phone from Samsung is a mixed bag, as they say, when it comes to looks. Its apparent simplicity and minimalism have the blunt appeal that such characteristics always have, but the fashionable additions are quite comical. Neon ricer lights? Really? Does it come with a VTEC sticker, too?
Such things might make sense in the style-challenged milieu of gadget design, but allow us to put it crudely and make the point clear: Could you really imagine someone pulling this €300 piece of teeny-bopper trash out of an Armani suit in a dark nightclub?
Actually, don't answer that.
The specs, irrelevant as they are: quadband GSM with HSDPA, a 2.2" glass display, 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio and BlueTooth. Spot the front-facing camera!
Samsung's Armani 2 Night Effect Cellphone Forgets to Include Stylishness [Giz]
Rob Beschizza
Report: Palm's next-gen cellphones slipping deep into 2009
Palm's long-awaited update to its cellphone software will be finished by the end of the year, reports The Register, but handsets based on it won't arrive until after the first half of 2009.
As most OS development projects do, Palm OS II has slipped a bit. Palm CEO Ed Colligan indicated in May 2007 that handhelds equipped with the software would be available in 2007. Two months on, and that timeframe had expanded to 2008, and by October 2007, Colligan was saying fans will have to wait until the end of 2008.
This idea, that it will have a completed operating system floating around unsold after years of delay, does not convince. Palm has the airs of mid-1990s Apple, and its attempts to crank out a successor to what's now called Mac OS Classic.
Palm OS II-based smartphones now due H2 2009 [Reg Hardware]
Joel Johnson
iYo: Would a yo-yo phone charger actually work?
There's no reason Peter Thuvander's "iYo" yo-yo-powered charger wouldn't work — except perhaps physics. He hasn't actually built one, but suspects that the motion of a yo-yo with a magnet inside would generate enough power to charge his iPhone or anything else that can sip power from a USB port.
Help me out: would this actually work at a rate that would be practical? I haven't the first idea of how to do the math.
iYo project page [PeterThuvander.se via Core77]
Joel Johnson
Origami stroller folds and unfolds on its own
The "Origami" stroller from 4Moms is going to appeal to nerdy papas, too: powered by an onboard generator that recharges the unit every 300 feet, the Origami folds and unfolds itself automatically. There's a built-in safety mechanism that prevents the device from closing in on your child and reducing it to jelly. It's a shame there's no depression to hold the child when it's closed — it could be Baby's First Power Armor.
It'll cost you $650 when it's released next year. A fair chunk of change, but not all that expensive when compared to other premium prams.
Origami stroller product page [4MomsOnline.com via Growing Your Baby via Oh Gizmo!]
Rob Beschizza
Olympus adds retro style to ultra-modern camera body format
Take a look a Olympus's newest design for the Micro 4/3 lineup of digital cameras. Practically a ghost, it begs for a hackneyed Star Wars-ism about elegant tools from a more civilized age.
With a DSLR-sized sensor, quality should be assured, though it's hard to imagine plunking big black plastic lenses onto this stylish m3/4's interchangeable-lens mount system. Its feature set, and its price, will likely be similarly ample, but for now it remains a concept. It's hard not to imagine something with the capabilities of the Canon G10 or Nikon P6000, but with that old-school feel.
Source [Digital Camera Review]
Rob Beschizza
The Tantrum Alarm Clock
Pounding its fists and shrieking, the Tantrum-Throwing Alarm Clock doubtless lives up to its name. The only mystery is its decibelage: combined with the throat of a Screaming Meanie, this thing could be a real beast.
It's a Hammacher Schlemmer item, of course, that most high-end of crapvendors being the best place to demand $50 for an irritating clock. The description itself aggravates in its glibness and calm:
As your selected wake-up time approaches to within five minutes, its feet and body will begin to glow, and when the alarm sounds, it begins tapping its arms lightly, but if you are dilatory in touching its snooze sensor by more than one minute, it launches into its full tantrum routine and turns off after an hour of unabated whining.
It will relent briefly if you "pat" it on the head, says the anonymous copywriter, in a subtle invitation to the sort of physical action that will make it relent permanently.
Product Page [via RGS]
Joel Johnson
Nite Ize Figure 9 carabiner makes knots unnecessary
The "Nite Ize Figure 9 Carabiner" looks a bit precarious: a toothed hook holds the loose end of a rope in place, making lashing as simple as a couple of quick loops. But Timothy Lord, writing for Cool Tools, has found the $5 bits handy for lots of jobs, including hauling a kayak around on his car.
Thus far, I have used the devices only with standard-issue parachute cord, but they're sized to work with a range of small-diameter ropes. Though the tying system looks suspiciously wimpy, I've found it is as robust as promised. I ordered the Figure 9s to replace the mesh netting that came with the roof-rack basket on my car. Not only do these make a decent replacement (i.e. riding around with a kayak strapped to my car this summer), but tying one more knot under the car is something I'm glad to skip.Not for climbing! It says so right on the aluminum clip.
Nite Ize Figure 9 Carabiner [KK.org]
Rob Beschizza
Apple recalls iPhone USB power adapters
Apple's tiny mains-to-USB power adapter, supplied with iPhone 3Gs, may easily break, leaving the prongs lodged dangerously in the socket. From the AP:
We have received reports of detached blades involving a very small percentage of the adapters sold, but no injuries have been reported," Apple said in a statement.Spokeswoman Natalie Kerris could not say exactly how many adapters have broken in this way.
The recall affects ultra-compact USB power adapters sold in the United States, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Panama and Peru.
Adapters with a green dot on the bottom are safe and do not need to be replaced, Apple said.
Joel Johnson
slotMusic: It's just albums on microSD cards
How much would you pay for a 1GB microSD flash memory card? If you thought "just a hair over five bucks" your internal market price lookup table is well attuned.
But what would you pay if that 1GB TransFlash card also had an album on it? SanDisk — having announced a deal with major record labels to sell music on "slotMusic" flash memory cards — is hoping you'll pay something like $7 to $10 (according to prices sussed out by Saul Hansell, although no official prices have been announced).
There's no chance that slotMusic will become the dominant way for music to be delivered to customers. Digital downloads aren't the future of music — iTunes has proved they're the present. Worse, slotMusic cards will have just a single album apiece, necessitating swaps to change albums, something that's been antiquated in digital media players since the beginning.
But as an adjunct to CDs, slotMusic cards do have one advantage: they can be listened to instantly on most modern phones and media players (minus the iPod, which lacks a memory expansion slot). And if the price proves to be inexpensive, they're may have a short window in which buying a slotMusic card is cheaper than buying blank memory at retail. (At brick-and-mortar retail a 1GB microSD card goes for $10-15.)
Ignoring all that, though, it's clear that SanDisk and the supporting major labels did several things right. It wouldn't be fair to ignore them:
• The bitrate is excellent: 320kbps. (Or "up to" says the spare slotMusic info page.)
• The format is DRM-Free MP3 which will work on every computer or device.
• The rest of the space on the slotMusic cards will be used for album art, videos, and other related content.
There's little reason to love it; little reason to hate it. It's billed as a "new format" but is simply a way to sell flash memory — which is fine, but inconsequential, a momentary blip before every last device pulls data seamlessly from ubiquitous wireless internet.
Here's a question, though: might it have been better for SanDisk to work out some deal by which a bunch of music and other content was released on all their flash memory cards by default? It would have to be promotional material — customers wouldn't want to pay a huge premium for content when they are really just trying to buy a blank card — but advertising on empty cards seems a more likely revenue than trying to wholesale flash memory to record labels.
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• Rock Band 2 – If you buy Rock Band 2 at Amazon they'll toss in 1,600 Microsoft Xbox Live points for free. If you've got a copy of Rock Band you could use $5 worth to migrate the songs to RB2. [Slickdeals]
• Point-and-Shoot – Canon A590 IS 8-megapixel camera for $130 shipped. [Dealhack]
• Point-and-Shoot – Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS 8-megapixel camera for $200, shipped, with bundled Nextar 10.4-inch digital picture frame. [Dealnews]
• Six Feet Under – One of my favorite television series about dead girlfriends, Six Feet Under, is being sold as the complete 25-disc box set for $110, shipped. I'm enjoying creator Alan Ball's new series, True Blood, but I wish there were a little more of SFU in its characters. [Dealnews]
• Tool Chest – Sears is selling the Craftsman 3-drawer tool chest for $30, in-store pickup only. Actually it looks like quite a bit of a Craftsman tool chests are on sale. [Dealnews]
• Windows Smartphone – If you're a new Sprint customer you can get the HTC P3450 "Touch" for free; $100 if you're an existing subscriber. An updated model is on its way, but if you like Windows Mobile this is a capable handset. [Dealnews]
• HDTV – Today's Woot is a gargantuan Olevia 65-inch 1080p LCD HDTV for $2,305. It's going for about $3,600 (or more) from other sellers.
John Brownlee
LHC shuts down for two glorious, existence-filled months
Being sucked at the speed of light in a head-on, face-first collision with every speck of matter on Earth will have to wait: a large helium leak on Friday has shut down the LHC (which I guess we're now supposed to call "Halo") for two months... two months not required to fix the leak, but to warm up the chamber from absolute zero to repairman-tolerable working conditions.
LHC helium leak will shut collider down for two months [Scientific American Blog]
John Brownlee
Rumor: iPhone 8GB to be discontinued, 3G line to slide up to 32GB?
Cup of Joe RSS scuttlebutt: that Apple is finally bringing back at home iPhone activation, and will discontinue that 8GB iPhone model, bumping the high-storage back end of the line to 32GB, like the iPod Touch. Some optimistic souls even say that it will drop next week. How would the price slide for the 32GB? Groggy, snot-filled-eyed musings: would the 16GB be the new $199 entry level phone, or would the 32GB go for $399?
Evidence points toward iPhone 3G home activation and model refresh [Apple Insider[
John Brownlee
The Corpus Clock & Chronophage is not £1m strange, but close!
For £1,000,000,000, I expected the Corpus Clock — ostensibly the world's strangest clock — to be stranger. It's still pretty strange, I guess: a giant grasshopper and 60 illuminated slits cut into its face that tell the time. It's sort of like what kind of watch Lewis Carroll would design if he got a job with Tokyo Flash.
Update: Times Online has more, including a surreal image of the Chronophage's creator polishing the suspended metal droplet at the center of the clock. – JJ
Cambridge reveals the time-eater, Chronophage, devourer of hours [Times Online]
John Brownlee
The ultimate LEGO Star Wars diorama
A Star Wars LEGO diorama of staggering complexity, constructed with obsessive compulsive precision by Flickr user roguebantha_1138. "Welcome to Mustaneer! (It's not as distant as Mustafar.) Basically, it's a Rebel attack on an Imperial base and mining installation."
At 1:200 scale, this is the exact same sort of Star Wars scene I imagined constructing when breaking out the old cardboard box of LEGOs from the floor closet as a boy. Unfortunately, by the time I'd completed one plastic rainbow AT-AT's leg, I'd usually run out of the base materials.
Rebel Attack! [Flickr via Slippery Brick]
Rob Beschizza
"Every surface of FORM 6 is smooth and usable for sensation"
Mark forwarded us this press release, which really is best left to speak for itself. However, I have taken the liberty of adding a typographical break between paragraphs, to effect an easier read.
I wanted to make you and your readers aware of our redesigned best-selling FORM 6 vibrating massager. We would love to hear your reader’s comments. If you have any questions, let me know. We completely re-engineered FORM 6 from the inside out, taking the performance to a new plateau. It is now the only waterproof rechargeable vibrating massager that is also cordless. We’ve also made it even more powerful – but also quieter. We’ve eliminated the raised buttons and charging contact of the original design so that more than ever, every surface of FORM 6 is smooth and usable for sensation. No other vibrating massager offers this versatility.
Still not satisfied, we created a new, fully enclosed Charging Case to protect FORM 6 – it’s perfect for discreet charging, clean storage, or packing in your overnight bag. Of course, the new design still features the integration of body-friendly materials and sustainable design that has become our hallmark.
Perhaps best of all, the new generation of FORM 6 is completely submersible in your bathtub, offering a whole host of new possibilities. FORM 6 has been embraced as the gold standard of the sexual wellbeing market, but also has been a cross-over hit, performing as the best-selling premium handheld vibrating massager for therapeutic use at top retailers.
Our extension of color – Plum, Blue, Slate – should make this new version an even bigger sensation.
Some time ago, we were sat around in the BBG editorial channel crafting "gadgety" typographical symbols for use in gadget blogging. Finally, one of the more unusual creations has its day.
Rob Beschizza
$800 warranty for $1200 laptop
Cubit, a Best Buy employee, posts the company's extraordinary warranty schedule for Geek Squad's fanciest plans: "Our managers tell us that we are offering this because its what customers asked for."
With these service plans, if your computer cannot be repaired and is replaced with a new one more than a year after purchase, the plan is fulfilled.This means that if a customer buys a 1200 laptop and the 830 premium plan, then a year and one day later it is "junked out". Then that 830 plan is gone. Completely."
I suspect it's not actually real, and is in fact a scenario presented in an internal test the Objectivists use to identify loony True Believers who shouldn't actually be given anything important to do.
The $800 laptop warranty [qt3]
Rob Beschizza
Shuttle X2700 blasts off against Dell's Studio Hybrid, Mac Mini
Shuttle makes small computers, but the X2700 is its smallest. The thermodynamically-unlikely dream of a true gaming box in such proportions remains elusive—it has but a humble Intel GMX 950 graphics chip—but at just an inch fatter than the Mac Mini, it's hard to complain.
At $400, it's pretty cheap, too, though it comes with Foresight Linux instead of XP. That gets you an Intel Atom 230 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, an 80 gig hard drive and a DVD player. You can double the RAM for $30 more, and add a 120GB drive for $20 (or up to 64GB of flash, if you're super-rich), but there's no option for Blu-Ray.
Does it have HDMI output? It does not, which puts it at an ease-of-use disadvantage against similar stuff from other makers (Brownlee just got Asus' miniature desktop model, and is loving it). Counterpoint: it looks cool and has 6 USB ports.
Product Page [Shuttle]
Marvin Battelle
Inside Steve's Brain Slices: Marvin Battelle on the Thinness of Mac
Steve Jobs Looked Thinner Than Usual at WWDC: So What? [Gizmodo] Is Steve Jobs Sick Again or Just Thin? [Seeking Alpha] Does Steve Jobs Have Cancer Again? [Alley Insider] Steve Jobs' Weight Loss Worries Apple Investors [The Street] Steve Jobs says he doesn't have cancer and why it's not your business anyway [Gizmodo]
You know, sometimes I can't help but laugh. You wouldn't understand that I was laughing, of course, as unattuned to the throbbing vibrato of my hyper-evolved, Dirk-Diggler-like pineal gland as a chimpanzee is to morse-code. All you would feel is a wash of self-loathing, as if Lord Xenu had just hocked a cosmic phlegmgobber all over your thetan. And that just makes me laugh all the more. I swear, the LHC can't explode quickly enough.
But I'm not here to talk down to you. Let's talk about Steve Jobs. I know many of you are concerned by his weight loss. Over the course of a year, Steve Jobs has gone from the robust picture of what you might call "health" to a ghastly, reptiloid skeleton. His skin is translucent. His eyes insanely bulge from sepulchral hollows bored in a fleshless brainpan, underlined by a yellowing rictus that only stops chattering long enough to shout "BOOM!" with a puff of dust.
Is he sick, you wonder? Jobs had cancer, after all. Maybe it came back? Under a blanket in their grandmother's basements, the Cult of Mac flaps their hands around their heads, mascara streaking down their filthy cheeks as they lift their voice up to a shrill falsetto: "Leave Steve Jobs alone!" The internet divides itself into camps: in one corner, those morbidly fascinated by the prospect of a Fortune 500 tech company being driven by a voodoo-resurrected skeleton. The rest, equally fascinated mingers who pretend that they are somehow above the ghoulish delectability of speculating about a man who seems in the midst of the slow process of teleporting himself to Flatland.
But let me ask you a question: did it ever occur to you that Steve Jobs' growing emaciation and Apple's insane obsession with thinness were linked? That we may all, in fact, be witnessing a Dorian Gray scenario, in which the corporeality of one man is ineffably linked with his own insane philosophical ideal? That the thinner Nano, the thinner MacBooks, the contemptuous dumping of the "fat" iPod Classic have their avatar in the chattering skeleton remote-controlled by Imagineers at every Apple press event? A man who has boasted for years of a caloric intake in the negative? A galvanic leader of men who once — by his mocking repetition of the phrase "You're fat, fatty" over and over and over again — reduced no less a personage than Carrot Top to hysterical tears?
In short, hasn't it ever occurred to you that Steve Jobs is getting thinner at the exact same rate as Apple's products?
Rob Beschizza
Mundane Mary Worth Tackles Technology
There is a long-running comic strip called Mary Worth, which you'll find in many local newspapers. Of late, it has focused on the empty-headed character Toby and her naive but perseverent attempts to understand computers. The series' sequential nature, combined with its stupefying dullness, inadvertently makes individual strips seem like blunt nihilistic ruminations. It's like removing Garfield from Garfield, but they made it this way to begin with.
There is an organization, devoted to stopping Mary Worth being canceled, called "Don't Cancel Mary Worth." I suggest you tithe yourself to it at once.
John Brownlee
$1,000 motorized wine squirting bladder
Born Rich's headline: "Store and serve wines in style with Skybar Wine Cabinet." I can't think of anything less stylish, though, than squirting out wine like mustard. Oh, it does more than that: precisely measured internal temperatures tied to LED displays and vacuum seals that keep open bottles of wine good for up to 10 days. But wine should be poured, not sprayed out of a $1,000, mahogany-entombed mechanical bladder.
Skybar Wine Cabinet [Front Gate via Born Rich]
Rob Beschizza
Sorapot reviewed. Verdict: good, with minor flaws about the spout
Yanko reviews the attractive Sorapot, a teapot for modern minimalist types, and finds it to its liking. Joey Roth's Pyrex-esque design wins for its simplicity, lack of taste-affecting materials and easy clean-up, but loses marks for its tiny size (you only get two cups), lack of a spout lid to prevent heat escaping, and a sieve that lets fine leaves through.
It's also $200, which is art-expensive. Me, I'll stick with the brown betty.
It’s Tea Time! Sorapot Review [Yanko]
John Brownlee
Gizmodo reviews LASIK (Verdict: having your eyeball sucked out of your skull and sliced open with a laser hurts.)
Gizmodo's Brian Lam describes in grisly detail a sensation I have often imagined in lurid detail in the waiting room of my optometrist's office: what it is like to have your retina sliced open with a laser beam.
The nurse applied a series of numbing drops to my eyeball, each stronger than the previous. The doctor clamped my lids back with a metal tool. I felt a bracket hold my eye down and someone in the operating room gave the order, "Suction."A whirring sound commenced and my eyeball felt like it was being sucked up and out of my skull, elongated like a green grape between a Roman emperor's fingers, ready to burst. The bright blue-white light grew closer. As the pressure killed circulation in the eye things went black and I felt an arcing slice in the surface of my cornea—I did not move my jaw or tongue or mouth, but deep in my throat I uncontrollably whimpered...
Amazingly, Lam says that most LASIK customers, eager to save a few bucks, opt to have the surgery done with a scalpel instead. Meanwhile, it takes me a bottle of scotch every morning to work up the nerve to put my contacts in.
What LASIK really feels like [Gizmodo]
Rob Beschizza
Fit PC gets slimmer
The king of ultrawee desktop PC's is Artigo, a kit model based on Via's minuscle Pico-ITX motherboard. The newest Fit-PC Slim aims to take its tiny little crown.
The specs are even crummier than Pico, with a 500 MHz Geode, 512 MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive and last-gen WiFi, but three USB ports is a fair set and you're not exactly going to be cracking through the latest games with it, are you?
Kids' bedrooms, MAME cabinets, closet-bound file/web servers, the basics in a minimalist frame. The original remains $345 (or $445 with an XP license), but the slim edition's not quite ready yet.
Product Page [Fit PC World's Smallest PC [Crave]
Rob Beschizza
The Recession Wallet
Gadgets: unnecessary toys, or aspirational marketing? The "Think Twice" wallet is $25 at Trees With Knees' Etsy shop.
Via Design Muse.
Joel Johnson
Wind-powered light for cars is useless, but has fins
Slapping the "Car Decorative Wind Power LED Lamp" on your vehicle will net you two things: an increase of glowing red and blue lights, certain to fool only the most rheumy-eyed driver that you're a tiny, whistling cop; and a sure decrease in the resale value (not to mention drag efficiency) of your car. It's $5, plus $5 shipping. It's horrible, of course, but has a certain something, if only because it reminds me of those sorely missed fins and wings of Jet Age automobiles.
Car Decorative Wind Power LED Lamp catalog page [SourcingMap.com via Red Ferret]
Rob Beschizza
Top 10 best ultra-portable laptops looks like top 3 ultra-portable laptops in hall of mirrors
PC World published a considered and reasonable list of the 10 best ultra-portable laptops. The funny part is that most of them all look identical even today: this list could make for a pretty funny retrospective in 20 years. Warning! One of them comes in light gray.
John Brownlee
Linksys WRT54GL turned RC monster truck
Jonathan Bennett is calling this $5 dollar RC car — a Linksys WRT54GL and a Panasonic Bl-C1A network camera soldered to its guts — a "WiFi Robot." I call it the only RC car I have ever wanted: it can be driven wirelessly by laptop from up to 500 meters away. A miniature Linksys monster truck to vroom around the neighborhood: it's so appropriate. The WRT54G series always has been the Big Foot family of routers.
WiFi Robot [JB Projects]
John Brownlee
XBMC Remote for the iPhone controls your media over WiFi or 3G
A recent buyer — redolent with pride, bloated with debt — of an iPhone, a 50 inch HDTV and an HTPC, the release of an iPhone remote app for XBMC is wonderfully serendipitous. The XBMC remote allows you to play, queue, shuffle, view cover art or even read album reviews. Somehow, I am particularly tickled by the ability to connect to XBMC over Edge or 3G: there are not really many reasons why I would need to phone home and put on a particular MP3 or movie while in, say, Bolivia, but it's nice to know the options open. Not bad at all for a fin.
XBMC Remote [Official Site]
John Brownlee
Light Bot: LEGO Mindstorms-like flash game for programming
Light Bot is a fantastic flash game in which you must program a robot to go from one side of a maze to another. I am embarrassingly ignorant of even the fundamentals of programming, so my first reaction was to take a little angry nap when confronted with nonsense terminology like "Main Method" and "Func. 1." However, I persisted, and by the time I'd gotten to the end of level 1, I was emitting squees of delight and firing off CVs for programming jobs consisting only of a screenshot of my score. This is a great little game.
Light Bot [Official Site via Monkey Bites]
John Brownlee
Slides 2 PC slide scanner is a cheap, easy way to digitize forgotten memories
Ion Audio is now selling a USB 35mm slide digitizer called the Slides 2 PC. For less than $100, it digitizes each slide at a respectable (but not incredible) 5 megapixels. The whole process is painless: you simply push a slide into the box, push a button, and the slide is scanned in less than a second. There's even automated exposure and color balance.
I'm impressed. Sure, there's been plenty of slide scanners, but about seven years back, my mother purchased one of the first slide scanners to digitize boxes of old 35mm wafers, a childhood memory of frilly dresses, scotch-and-sodas and chain smoking fathers in shirt sleeves frozen in each. I don't remember the price, just that it was staggeringly expensive.
I wish this sort of consumer solution had been around back then, but surely, there's plenty of people like my mother with boxes of old slides in the closet. An affordable, painless slide scanner like the Ion Slides 2 PC is going to be the gateway to a lot of poignant memories of old friends, cherished pets and departed loved ones.
Slides 2 PC [Ion Audio via Everything USB]
John Brownlee
Microsoft's "I'm a PC" ad
After two ads, Microsoft has dragged Jerry Seinfeld behind the shed. What happened back there, no one knows, but sources say that there was the recitation of a mildly amusing nasal monologue ( "Say, what's the deal with hog slaughtering tubs?"), the sound of thrashing and then sudden silence. Good riddance.
This is the new advertisement campaign: "I'm a PC." I thought this was going to be awful: on the surface of things, a John Hodgman look-alike is such a creatively bereft idea that I wondered how Microsoft could not realize that such an ad was an admission that Apple had won.
But Microsoft's done something clever here. The Hodgman doppelganger is just the scene setter, a tacit acknowledgement of Apple's campaign while, simultaneously, being an implicit observation that in Apple's ads, the PC is portrayed by the hipper, smarter guy. The ad then quickly flutters through dozens of PC users: from adorably gawky schoolgirls in Africa to astronauts and famous celebrities. A sea of cool, creative, innovative and intelligent people who — with few exceptions — do far more to improve the world than the insufferable Justin Long.
It falls apart in the last ten seconds: some pretentious egghead mumbles something about "not being a human thinking or doing, but a human being." He then leans back in his chair, a wash of smugness inflating his face, as if this were a fact to be proud of. Does Microsoft really want to conflate the mere, passive act of existing with its operating system? "Hey, just like Windows, existing's basically all I ever do anymore!"
But that sort of meaningless pretentiousness can be preened out in future ads. This is a great Parthian shot at Apple... a year and a half too late, alas. The message is clear: "Yeah, I'm a PC. So fucking what, asshole?" Microsoft should have been saying this all along.
John Brownlee
500XL: iPod earbuds go elephantine
Love the Photoshop guys, but the product still tickles me: Apple's old iPod stock earbuds actually make fairly attractive desktop speakers. Even better, these are scarcely less conforming to the prawn-like shape of the ear canal than Apple's more diminutive offerings. I'll be damned if I could manage to cram either set in my aural cauliflowers.
Joel Johnson
In fairness, they're both delicious
I found this correction in today's Reuters feed amusing. Because I'm twelve.
AMD "Fusion" ads focus on graphics, user experience [Reuters]
Previously • Reuters gets snarky about Steve Jobs' lack of death
Joel Johnson
SunLawn LMM-40 Push Reel Mower reviewed (Verdict: Smooth — but death in the long grass)
TreeHugger reviews the SunLawn LMM-40 Push Reel Mower ($140 on Amazon) and gives it a thumbs-up for normal length grass — "smooth as butter" &;mdash; but says it bogs down a bit in the long stuff. (Typical of most reel mowers.)
TreeHugger Review: SunLawn LMM-40 Push Reel Mower [TreeHugger.com]
Related • iRobot's lawnmower patents
• Custom Lawn Choppers
• Irony, Thy Name is Amazon (Great discussion of gas-vs-electric-vs-manual in lawn tools)
Joel Johnson
Verterra dishes and bowls made from pressed leaves
Verterra makes a whole line of dishes from fallen leaves and water, completely reusable — until they aren't, after which they can be composted in as little as three months. They're microwave-, refrigerator-, and oven-safe, but likely not dishwasher-safe since they don't mention it. I'm going to order a set and try them out in the dishwasher, though. I must know.
The set I'm ordering — 9-inch hexagonal plates — cost $12 plus shipping for a 10-pack.
Don't know why I'm so stoked about trying these, but that's the sort of dork I am these days. It doesn't hurt that they're very attractive.
Product page [Verterra.com via Josh Spear]
Previous • Leaf Bowls of India
John Brownlee
The Shuttle-D10: a desktop with a built-in touchscreen
Crunchgear's Doug Aamoth is ambivalent about desktops with built-in touchscreens: he doesn't really see the point in PCs like the Shuttle D10. But I can't be the only one who sees a built-in touchscreen as incredibly convenient for a home file server, or some other use where you might want to have a computer but not have to dedicate a monitor to it. In fact, at a price starting at $500, the Shuttle D10 seems like a very attractive buy for just such a function.
Shuttle D10 with 7-inch LCD touchscreen [Akihabara News via Crunch]
Joel Johnson
Philip Isohe's detailed airplane models from rubbish
AfriGadget profiles Philip Isohe, a talented maker who creates detailed, working (but not flyable) model airplanes out of scrap.
John Brownlee
SmoothCreations' custom-painted Wedge netbooks
SmoothCreations is marketing its $500 custom painted Wedge netbook to "those unique souls that want to make a powerful yet subtle statement." That's just a triumph of PR purple prose, isn't it? It's true: nothing shows the the delicate latticing of crystalline emotions imbued into your snowflake-like soul better than a triumvirate of cackling skulls, or perhaps a dragon popping a wheelie on a monster truck. One thing's for sure: the Wedge's specs aren't going to show uniqueness in anything... it's just the bog standard 1.6 Atom CPU with a 10-inch display and 1GB of RAM.
Introducing the Smoothcreations Netbook Wedge [Tweaktown via Engadget]
Joel Johnson
Evolution Mobile Bar folds up for boozing on the run
When we were 18 or so, my buddy Mike and I stumbled onto a bit of fried gold: instead of hosting our own parties — inevitably money-losing affairs with the risk of parental seizure — we'd host parties for others. Our deal was simple: give us a hundred dollars or so, plus any available primary mixing liquor one had; we'd add the donated liquor (inevitably cheap scotch) to our library of mixers in our mobile bar, use the cash to shore up any key items like ice or limes, then spend the night adding a touch of class to your out-of-town uncle's basement.
We'd stay relatively sober, shepherd the young drinkers through the perils of a drunken teen party by keeping things happy but not ridiculous, and even pick up the worst of the damage before we left in the morning. We got to be the locus of fun for the evening, make a little cash, and restock our mobile bar — the customer got to have a stress-free, kick-ass party. I would totally recommend this business model to any of our teenage readers except it's totally illegal. But it made for a fun summer.
Our mobile bar — inexplicably called the "Fun Bus", despite being just a particle board cabinet with casters screwed on the bottom and a hasp for a padlock on the doors — couldn't hold a candle to the "Evolution Mobile Bar" from KegWorks, although to be fair for the $1,900 purchase price we could have funded a whole month of parties from our little wooden box. But I can't help but daydream a little of rolling the folded aluminum case into a client's house, perhaps wearing the white tuxedos we never got around to wearing, and whipping the Evolution out to be filled with garnishes, stemware and a mixing jugs.
For $1,900, though, someone even as klutzy in the workshop as I am could probably make something bigger that could support a proper keg or two. It's odd that a company named "KegWorks" didn't have the same idea.
Product Page [KegWorks.com via Uncrate]
Joel Johnson
Google Android phone's 3G will work in these cities
T-Mobile just announced where its first 3G deployments will occur, all of which should be online by the end of the year:
T-Mobile’s UMTS/HSDPA high-speed data network is currently available across 13 major metropolitan markets: Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York (including northern New Jersey and Long Island), Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio and San Diego. The company plans to expand its service by mid-October to additional markets, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Francisco and Seattle. An additional six markets — Birmingham, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis and Tampa — are expected to have the network available before the end of the year, increasing the number of markets with T-Mobile’s 3G network to 27 markets.Data will continue to work in other T-Mobile markets, of course, but will failover to EDGE.
John Brownlee
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism spelled out in alphabet paper clips
There's nothing much to say about these alphabet paper clips. They are simply elegant. I admire the way the Roman alphabet is cut into the curlicue of the inside bend. These are expensive paper clips, though: they are almost 18 bucks a sheet. The word in the title would cost you a thousand dollars to spell.
Alphabet Paperclips [Stephen Reed via Book of Joe]
Joel Johnson
Note: CyberDsignClan.com now iPhone compatible
No need to update your bookmarks. Using web-certified defatteners developed by leading d-sign-tists, the world's only web design clan now supports the iPhone. [CyberDsignClan.com]
Joel Johnson
Griffin's new iPhone geegaws: Clarifi case, AirCurve "waveguide" amplifier
Griffin has announced two interesting iPhone accessories: the Clarifi iPhone case for the iPhone 3G and the AirCurve sound-amplifying dock.
The weirdest first: The AirCurve [pictured left] is billed as an "amplifier", but there's no electronics inside. Instead a collection of bends and turns in the acrylic — think Bose Wave radio here — directs the sound of the iPhone's built-in monophonic speaker to make it louder (in one direction, of course). I'll be surprised if the sound is improved to any degree that will provoke more than a "huh!" from me, but it's also only $20 and sort of an elegant system. One that doesn't charge your phone at night.
The other product, the Clarifi case, is pretty normal fare: industrial black rubber and plastic. Its big feature is a sliding camera lens that gives a sort of macro mode for the iPhone's camera, allowing pictures to be shot from as close as six inches away but remain clear. It's not inexpensive — $35 — and it's rare that I've found an iPhone case that is worth increasing the physical size of the device, especially since I keep my phone in my pocket, not a belt clip or bag.
John Brownlee
The Need: just a cell phone
Rob often floats his concept image of the ideal cellphone in the BBG editor chat channel: an elegant, touch screen with spartan, square-edged design and no functionality whatsoever short of making phone calls. I have described it as the "prettiest crappiest cell phone ever": Rob agrees with the assessment, but wants it none the less.
I can understand that. After my Nokia proved incapable of penetrating the walls of my altbau, I bought a cheap, $20 unlocked phone with the bare minimum of functionality. At first, I reveled in the purity of a device that could only really fulfill a cell phone's ostensible prime function, but soon I was annoyed by the ghastliness of its Tourette's-like T9 prediction, an annoyance that forced me to actually use my cell for its primary function even for the most frivolous of communications.
Basically, there's something philosophically pleasing about a device doing only one thing perfectly, and a cell phone that can only make and receive calls should be that device. But that's just a semantic illusion. But we don't have cell phones anymore. We don't want them. We don't need them. What we want, what we have, what we need are portable communication devices that allow us to quickly, easily and with mobility communicate with other people across a broad spectrum of different mediums, each suited for a specific type of transmission. A "cell phone" without decent text messaging fails.
So I look at the Need concept phone and I'm skeptical. It's beautiful: a six-inch long OLED touchscreen of rod-like thickness that could only really do phone calls. But the simplicity of the design, the promise of its name only works if you still think a phone is just a phone with a lot of extras slapped on top to drive up the price. But in regards to features that actually help you choose the method in which you communicate, I'm not sure that's true.
Update: Here's my phone design, which John talks of here. It would be called something precious, like "Minim." You could imagine that display to be some fancy touchscreen, but I just picture it as glowy sub-surface backlighting, walkman style. Battery life!
Background: John and Joel both have iPhones. I have a Moto F3, which I only assented to after failing in my brief quest to live completely phone-free. I lasted about a month—and might try again when the Peek's software does IMAP and the IM networks.
Need [Behance via Gadget Lab]
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• iPod Nano – The new iPod nano 8GB is on sale at Nike.com for $120, shipped. That's $30 off — and it's not going to get better than that for a while. [Dealnews]
• Label Printer – Brother PT-80 thermal label printer for $13, shipped. [Dealnews]
• Solar Charger – Solio Hybrid solar powered battery charger for $70, shipped. [Dealnews]
• GPS – Today's Woot is the Cobra NAV ONE 5000 Portable GPS with 5” Touchscreen, Text to Speech and Bluetooth for $205, shipped.
John Brownlee
NoseBudd: special ice packs for nose bleeds
The temptation to write something gross and snide about nose bleed medication — perhaps with a passing aside to the Beavis and Butthead method of nose bleed prevention — is strong, but the story of how Steve Riedle came up with NoseBudd — a specifically-designed ice pack for hemophiliacs — is worthy of respect.
A hemophiliac himself, Riedle's three brothers died of bleed outs as children, and the disorder prevented him from keeping a proper job. While shoveling snow as an adult, Riedle's nose began to bleed, and while bunching a snowball to the bridge of his nose, he had the inspiration to invent an ice pack that specifically targeted nosebleeds.
It's not exactly some amazing insight that cold stops nose bleeds. But it appears Riedle's project really works — a BBG reader specifically wrote in to kudos the product — and it's a reminder that just as simple problems that most of us take frivolously can end people's lives, incremental revisions of simple, existing applications can save them.
Nose Budd [Official Site]
John Brownlee
Da Vinci Alarm Clocks put your sleep schedule in a binary state
I like to live a binary life. At any given moment, I am either inhaling or exhaling. I am either blinking or not blinking. Talking or not talking. Writing or not writing. Confusion enters when I am either excreting or eating, because sometimes I like to do both, but that's simply a bad habit. Whether is possible for me to not exist is is a matter for philosophers and semanticists, but theoretically, I can either exist or not exist. It's a semblance of micro-structure in an otherwise chaotic life.
I rather like the purity of this Da Vinci Alarm clock concept (so-called because it allows you to easily follow the sleep schedule of Master Leonardo: three and a half hours awake, thirty minutes asleep). It's an externalization of life's inherent binary symmetry of somnolence: you can either be asleep or be awake. There's no in-betweens.
Well, until you do a week of 21 hour days. Then you become confronted with an inherent contradiction: you will be a zombie, neither asleep nor awake, neither alive nor dead.
Da Vinci Alarm Clock [Yanko Design]
John Brownlee
Is the death of landlines a reflection on the economy?
The New York Times has an article up, claiming that by the end of the year one in five American households will not have a home phone. Curiously, they think the downward economy has a lot to do with it.
I don't get that at all. It's not an economic issue when people realize that in the age of cell phones, Skype and cable Internet access, having a landline makes little sense for most people. Europe's economy has been booming for the last five years, during which time more and more people have realized that land lines are simply the withered umbilical of a past age of communication.
I suppose it's possible that the credit crunch has made some people realize that they haven't really needed a landline for years. But tangibly linking the obsolescence of the landline to Lehman seems like the sort of perspective imposed by a New York editor.
Out of curiosity, is there anyone out there who still finds a landline indispensable? Tell us why.
John Brownlee
Children, please don't put the Epidermits in your mouth or your ass
As part of an experiment to see how wildly gadget design can veer off the tracks of semblance and taste when the focus shifts from the human to mere feature subsets, Karten Design has crafted the Epidermits: a programmable, Furby-like toy (you know... for kids!) bio-engineered from a wad of Silly Putty, a coil of slimy pubic hair fished out of a bus station's floor drain, a tramp stamp and a vibrating butt plug. It is a body modder's huggable, saline-engorged scrotum turned teddy bear.
Naturally, it has become pretty much my most desired toy ever. Christmas has never seemed so far away.
Scariest Toy Concept Ever: The Epidermits Thing [Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza
Bizarre programmable chirping bird organ
Compose your own hand-cranked chirping cacophonies with Gakken's Bird Song Organ. $40 from Japan Trend.
Product Page [via Dug North]
Rob Beschizza
Mildly sexist washing machine ad touts that "steam thing" that women need
Sure, stereotypes have their uses. But it's the content of stereotypes that unite face and palm.
"A Woman Has Needs. And Right Now, I Need This Wild Cherry Steam Thing" [Consumerist]
John Brownlee
Peter Moore on the death of Dreamcast and the console wars
The Guardian's Keith Stuart has posted two parts of a fascinating and candid interview with Peter Moore: head of Sega of America during the Dreamcast years, head of Microsoft's Xbox division and current president of EA Sports.
The whole thing is entertaining reading for gamers, but Moore's explanation of the Dreamcast's death gets me misty-eyed with pining nostalgia for that pristine little console that first gave me Ikaruga:
We had a tremendous 18 months. Dreamcast was on fire – we really thought that we could do it. But then we had a target from Japan that said – and I can't remember the exact figures – but we had to make N hundreds of millions of dollars by the holiday season and shift N millions of units of hardware, otherwise we just couldn't sustain the business...We were selling 50,000 units a day, then 60,000, then 100,000, but it was just not going to be enough to get the critical mass to take on the launch of PS2. It was a big stakes game. Sega had the option of pouring in more money and going bankrupt and they decided they wanted to live to fight another day. So we licked our wounds, ate some humble pie and went to Sony and Nintendo to ask for dev kits.
Other interesting comments from Moore include his appraisal of Sony (incredible PR bullshitters whose marketing department has mastered defusing competitor's upcoming announcements with impossible-to-deliver "seeds of doubt" like the "Emotion Engine" and Killzone) and Microsoft's obsession with killing Sony ("Nintendo wasn't even on our radar.")
Peter Moore Interview Part One and Part 2 [Guardian]
Image: Joystiq
John Brownlee
Iomega eGo hard drive for the MacBook Air
Iomega's latest eGo external USB hard drive markets itself to MacBook Air owners with 320GB in an anodized aluminum chassis less than an inch thick. For $149.99, though, it doesn't look like a bad choice for any laptop owner looking for svelte, attractive, easily lugged storage.
Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive Matches With Your MacBook Air [Gizmodo]
John Brownlee
Gadget Lab installs OS X on the Wind, says it runs better than XP
Pausing only to subtly point out what worthless turds Wired's commenters are, Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel has posted a fantastic write-up of his experience installing OS X on the MSI Wind.
What caught my attention was not the project itself — everyone knows it can be done — or the instructions — it's basically as easy as downloading a package and preparing a USB thumb drive — but Charlie's observations on performance:
All in all, it actually runs OS X a lot faster than XP.
That's almost unfathomable to me: the latest versions of Leopard run like a hobbled, bipedal hog even on my first-gen MacBook Pro. But if true, that's simply Holy Grail: I can deal with a third-party WiFi program and a dead headphone jack for a paperback sized Mac.
It Lives! Gadget Lab's Netbook Running OS X Leopard [Gadget Lab]
John Brownlee
New LazerTag guns are practically sci-fi objets d'art
Just the product image of the Lazertag Multiplayer Battle System is causing me to experience a euphoric sensation of jellification. For$ 80, the package includes two gorgeously designed Phoenix LTC guns with rumble, recoil and manual reload as an option. Look at those laser guns: those are beautiful enough to mount on a wall, the battle-charred war pistols of some futuristic rocketman. There's also a Shot Blast attachment, which allows you to tag multiple targets at once, therefore boosting your hit damage.
I'm really tempted to pull the trigger on these. I've never played LazerTag: I'm an 80s child whose parents unfortunately bought into the whole nightly news scare when the first urban legend about a cop shooting a kid armed with a LazerTag gun in a playground made its word-of-mouth lamentable tour.
Lazer Tag Multiplayer Battle System [Amazon via Uncrate]
UPDATE: It's been brought to our attention that the cop did shoot the kid. Read this story from the NYT. Take that, urban legends!
John Brownlee
Are you metal enough for Skullcandy's Metallica headphones?
Am I metal enough to wear these Skullcandy Metallica headphones? Nay. Though my hair is square cut in a black helmet, and though a MegaDeth t-shirt stretches taut across my belly; though my boots weigh forty pounds, and though I am prone to sticking out my tongue and waggling them between the twin digital horns of my mano cornuta; though I practice the dark preachings of Aleister Crowley and though I use "Metallica!" as an ejaculation signifying the utmost euphoria of dudicalness: I am not worthy.
But at least I can take comfort in the fact that Lars Ulrich isn't metal enough to wear Skullcandy's Metallica headphones either.
Metallica Limited Edition Artist Series [Skull Candy via Pocket-Lint]
John Brownlee
Bioshock, Resident Evil 5 and more go Atari 2600
Courtesy of Andy Baio at the illustrious Waxy.org, this fantastic gallery of Atari Modern Classics: modern generation games given the delicious Atari 2600 treatment. Any pixelated depiction of a Big Daddy brings a smile to the face, but I'm also tickled by the depiction of Resident Evil 5's Los Plagas as mocha-colored candy cane heads.
Atari Modern Classics [The Minus World via Waxy]
Rob Beschizza
Curious MacBook Pro rendering up at online store.
Everyone's going crazy over this render of a MacBook Pro up at a German T-Mobile subsidiary's online store. No spec bump, so it's perhaps just a mistake. But hey, who knows? Amusing happenstance: the German word for "more"—the link prominently displayed under the image—is "mehr."
Product Page [it-shop.t]
John Brownlee
Project C-Macc: arcade cabinet that can play every game, ever
Every once and a while, Joel, Rob and I fever dream about building ourselves MAME cabinets. It's never going to happen, for a variety of reasons: lethargy, lack of space, and the unspoken knowledge that that the 20 years of home consoles have inured into us a certain fondness for supine lounging while blasting our aliens or hopping upon evil anthropomorphic mushrooms. We simply do not have the souls of the MAME cabinet builder.
But this guy from the UK Over-Clock forums is totally Thetan Clear on the E-Meter of cabinet makers. His Project: C-MACC resulted in a cabinet capable of playing practically every console and arcade game ever. That which he could not emulate in MAME or MESS he installed manually, including an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a Wii, a PSP and a Nintendo DS. End cost: roughly $4,500.
It's hideous, but even so: we are impressed. Chest thumping respect, sir.
Project C-macc's Another Mayhem Build [Over-Clock.co.uk]
John Brownlee
The Damascene: $30,000 worth of straight razor
Ever since I gave myself a Brazilian smile while missing all four follicles of my lanugo-ish preteen moustache, I have eschewed the grand pomp of the straight razor. Why risk a sink full of ears and a mirror drenched in arterial spray when the Gillette Fusion is the greatest shaving instrument ever created by man? But this $30,000 straight razor is still a lusty instrument: dubbed the Damascene, the steel has been folded 128 times in the same arcane fashion used to forge Escalibur, as described by Sir Thomas Mallory in La Morte D'Arthur.
Joel Johnson
100 years of tea bags (give or take a few years)
Depending on how you slice it, this could be the 100th anniversary of the tea bag. (The Guardian suspects tea'd-up silken sachets might first have been dunked in 1904.)
I've found a small stash of green Earl Grey at our local Food Dimensions; sounds like a celebratory cup or two is in order.
What could obviate the tea bag? Alex Renton suspects it might be disposable tea sticks. My vote is for 2 Dog Farm's invention, pictured above: the Peep Bag.
A century of the tea bag [Guardian.co.uk via Serious Eats]
Joel Johnson
Video: Talking LEGO Terminator head
Someone has built this Mindstorms-powered Terminator head that recites lines made famous by the governor of California. [ThinkingBricks.com]
Joel Johnson
Dumping a sex doll is still littering
It's not illegal to kill a sex robot. Like the best girlfriends, they're already dead. But it is a misdemeanor to toss them out on the side of the road — and impolite to the Japanese police, who spent a few hours trying to identify this particular silicone succubus before realizing she wasn't a real human.
Turns out she'd been the pliant partner of a 60-year-old man from Izu, who decided to toss the sex doll after deciding to move in with one of his children. He didn't have the heart to cut her up, he claims, but had no problem wrapping her in a sleeping bag and leaving her in a ditch. Even a silicone heart is softer than that.
Man charged with dumping silicone girlfriend [Pink Tentacle]
Joel Johnson
DS-DSLR: Homebrew Nintendo DS remote for Canon DSLR
Steve from Panocamera.com has built a custom interface from his Canon DSLR to his Nintendo DS. Add a dash of custom software and his little DS can now do the sorts of things — HDR intervalometer-based shot bracketing, remote shots in bulb mode, even a sound-based "Clapper" control — all with his little gaming device. Brilliant! The DS has enough power to do all the calculations you need for these sorts of shots but is so much smaller and lighter than a laptop. (And can play Advance Wars.)
Steve said he's considering building more for sale. Do it! Hell, build out a reference design and let's figure out how to mass produce them. This is exactly the sort of fantastic hack that reminds how homebrew is extending the capability of our devices and should be encouraged by all parties involved.
AT LAST, MY GREATEST INVENTION IS ETC. ETC. [Panocamera.com] (Thanks, McQueen!)
Joel Johnson
Chevy Volt hybrid will make judgements about charging based on distance from your home
GM's upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid car may end up being the savior of the ailing, hundred-year-old company, especially if they can keep adding intelligent features like this range-based recharging calculation. From Jalopnik, quoting GM Kraftfahrzeugelektrikermarschall "Maximum" Bob Lutz:
with the Volt, you never have to worry you use the full 40 (mile range), the worst thing that happens is the gasoline engine comes on, and the car will know how far you are from home, and it will only run the gas engine long enough to give you enough charge to get you home where you can actually plug it into the wall outlet. So the car will be smart enough to know where its home base is.If only they hadn't ended up making the Volt look so blasé.
GM's Lutz: Chevy Volt Will Use GPS To Determine Distance From Home, Adjust Engine Accordingly [Jalopnik]
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• GPS – Garmin nuvi 760 with a 4.3-inch screen and Bluetooth for $300, shipped. About $50 off. [Slickdeals]
• DualShock – Sony DualShock 3 wireless controller for the PlayStation 3 for $49, shipped. That's only about $6 off, but every bit helps when purchasing the controller that should have shipped with the PS3 in the first place. [Dealhack]
• Laptop Sleeve – Chelsey Henry is giving away free laptop sleeves. Don't know why. Don't care! They look pretty sharp. [Bargainist]
• MemoryStick – 4GB Lexar MemoryStick Pro Duo for $21, shipped. This is the kind that goes in the PSP. [Dealnews]
• Dolly Parton – Today's Amazon MP3 deal is Dolly Parton's 2001 classic "Little Sparrow" for $3. Recommended for certain. [Amazon]
• Tire Gauge – Accutire Pistol Grip digital tire gauge for $2, plus shipping, but it's at Amazon so orders over $25 (or Prime) ship free. A healthy tire is an efficient tire! [Dealnews]
• MiniDV Camcorder – Today's Woot is a refurbished JVC MiniDV Camcorder with 34x Optical Zoom and Dual Recording for $135, shipped.
Rob Beschizza
Nokia N900 coming soon?
The next generation of Nokia internet tablets will have online-anywhere 3G connectivity, OMAP3-series processors from TI, and high-definition cameras with photo sharing features.
All come part and parcel of the new version of Maemo, the series' software, and are being presented by Dr. Ari Jaakso today in his keynote speech at OSiM. No new device has actually been announced, but the "N900" is surely on its way.
Word is that it won't be called that, though; tablet fans expect Nokia to relaunch the brand.
The iPod Touch stole the N800/N810's thunder in sharp fashion, but the N800 scene is already marked by a strong community and lots of cool apps. But AppStore is a juggernaut, even if its developers are somewhat corralled into behaving like work-for-hire for Apple: we're past the point where good hardware and good software are enough. A distribution system must exist to make it easy to slurp cool stuff on to any given handheld.
Liveblog: Fifth generation maemo – the next generation: Highlights [Tablet Blog]
Rob Beschizza
Canon aims for digicam sweet spot with G10
Canon's G10 is all about making the most of a small resource: space. Perched atop the PowerShot line, it has a new image processor, a 28mm lens with 5x optical zoom, 14.7 megapixels and a 3-inch display. It replaces the G9, and goes head-to-head this October with Nikon's P6000.
Though the G10 lacks the latter's GPS geotagging, it has a higher resolution and the same chunky, pocket-friendly form factor. At $500, it's as expensive as an entry-level DSLR.
I had the pleasure of just a few minutes with the G9 some time ago, and there's a certain freedom that comes with cameras like these. The pressure is always on to make digicams smaller, so most stuff that comes our way is quite compromised, quality-wise. That's not to say the little Cybershots and Exilims and Elphs are no good – they often surprise in how good they are — but rather that there's a lot you get by allowing an extra half-inch in every direction. Better optics, faster processing, more features: after years of owning decent cameras, I'm about ready for a great one that still isn't a DSLR.
Rob Beschizza
Report: Canon wanted NDA extensions on camera announcement
According to Roumazelles.net, Canon fought to extend non-disclosure agreements that parties had already agreed to. The speculation is that it didn't want to announce new models the day before Nikon does — its new high-end DSLR is expected tomorrow.
This is really becoming annoying, now...
Nikon Rumors asks "Is that legally possible?"
When reporters sign such agreements, they get access to information in return for agreeing not the publish it until a certain time. For Canon to "extend" an NDA, it's likely asking the reporters for a favor—not service at lawsuit-point— because if the NDA contained clauses specifying Canon could extend the date, there'd be no grounds for complaint.
P.S. There's a bunch of new cameras out from Canon.
Canon only [Roumazelles]
Rob Beschizza
iPhone cupcakes win championship
Nick and Danielle Bilton made these wonderful, tasty-looking iPhone-themed cupcakes, which won a cupcake championship. Om nom nom, and so forth.
iPhone Cupcakes [Nick Bilton's Photostream via Laughing Squid]
Rob Beschizza
Bluetooth, Steampunk-style
Nicrosin's amazing Victorian-style mechanical confections deserve to be made real. As it is, he made them from sculpey and watch parts, lining with leather for comfort.
Rob Beschizza
Coffee cup in an old lens
Alas, it's just a clever photoshop, found floating around unattributed, save for a scrawled signature, on the image boards.
Design page [yok2008 via Gizmodo, etc.]
Rob Beschizza
Fridges for flatshares
The weeping, mold-stricken melon. A sandwich covered in green fluff, its meats of indeterminate origin. Knotted fists of rancid pre-cheese floating in a half-gallon of milk.
Why anyone would want to raid a shared fridge is beyond me, but raid them they do. Enter Stefan Buchberger and his design for a modular fridge system designed to be shared. It's an entry in Electrolux's Design Lab 2008.
Gallery [Electrolux Design Lab]
Rob Beschizza
Zivio Boom reviewed. Verdict: looks good, but isn't
Engadget reviews the Zivio Boom Bluetooth headset. It does not like it.
Zivio Boom hands (and ears) on [Engadget]
John Brownlee
Concept Sci-Fi Spaceships A-Go-Go
My new favorite blog du jour: the Concept Ships blog, stuffed up the port thrusters with fantastic science-fiction ship designs of our coming FTL future. I couldn't pick just one to share, so here is an emerald space jalopy by GraphMac, an interdimensional jumper by Gonzalo Golpe and some deconstructing spiderbots by Dan Blomberg. Add to feeds!
Concept Ships Blog [Official Site via SF Signal]
Rob Beschizza
Cray should make a gaming computer for the rest of us
Supercomputer legend Cray is partnered with Microsoft to make the CX1, a desktop Windows HPC Server 2008 box that runs from $6,000 to $60,000, depending on configuration. This hunk of pure horsepower can bury up to 16 processors in 64GB of RAM per node: it is not for running World of Warcraft. At least not the client.
That said, if you're going to make supercomputers within a few grand of consumer feasibility, why not make a boutique consumer box? A Cray desktop PC? Sweet!
Perhaps not.
A real-deal licensed Cray-for-consumers should be a miniature replica of the Cray-II, complete with cooling fountain:
John Brownlee
Laser-guided pool cue is kind of useless
Back in the days before my dreams of being an international pool hustler were dashed by noted Quebecois pool shark Fat Froggy Francois in a subterranean pool hall that smelled predominantly of monkeys, I practiced my skills on the original Virtual Pool. It was actually an excellent little program: the ability to project a laser-like beam from your virtual cue's tip and visualize the angles of a table, the way the cue ball would cause a cluster of balls to spread depending on slight degree variations of the shot... it was all was formative to my current impressive state of savant billiard mediocrity.
This Laser-Guided Pool Cue almost looks like a real-world equivalent of Virtual Pool's visualization mode... except as near as I can tell, the only thing it does is pulse a carbuncle-like laser tilak in the middle of the cue ball. That seems... not so useful, especially for $80.
The Laser-Guided Pool Cute [Hammacher]
John Brownlee
iPhone Modem steps into NetShare's tethering void
With NetShare hog slaughtered in the plastic tub of rejected iPhone apps and no AT&T supported tethering in sight, there's plenty of people jonesing for a way to use their "unlimited" iPhone 3G connection for a pub counter Uldaman run.
The latest app to try to step into the tetherting void is iPhone Modem by Addition Software. Apple hasn't gotten back to them with approval for official App Store release (Song cue: "Going through the motions") so they are releasing through the Cydia package management application (Jailbroken iPhone required, natch), although they still want $10.
Most impressive: iPhone Modem claims a painless 10 second tethering time.
iPhone Modem [Official Site via Gizmodo]
John Brownlee
Kraftwek goes iPhone with a little help from the Korg DS-10 and a stylophone
A fantastic chiptune cover of Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator using an iPhone, Korg DS-10 and Stylophone. I love it: I can hear it in my fillings.
Stylophone with KORG DS-10 + iPhone App [YouTube via MAKE via Matrixsynth]
John Brownlee
Sharp smashes together VHS and Blu-Ray in one $1,100 player
The Sharp Aquos BD-HDv22 combination Blu-Ray/VHS recorder. It's like smashing together an abacus and a Cray: people can't understand why you'd need the former when you've got the latter. Why in God's name would you watch VHS when you've already got Blu-Ray?
But I've got a worn, dog-eared VHS copy of the 1975 Robert Mitchum version of Farewell, My Lovely — never released on DVD, let alone Blu-Ray — still sitting on my shelves. How sweet, how easy, to translate that grainy plastic brick into a nice Blu-Ray disc before the stock finally disintegrates. I understand, Sharp! And, I assume, so do all of the flabby, balding amateur pornographers who so bravely forged their bedroom careers in the early 80s: surely, they would like to transcribe their permed conquests to the next generation of medium.
So there's surely a market for this. It might even be a practical, commonplace one.The BD-HDV22 also allows recording of television programs to a 250GB hard drive and full support for BD-R/RE, DVD-R/RW and DVD-R DL. In short, it's a fine all-around system that can handle anything you throw at it, short of Laser Disc. But you'll pay for all those formats: it's due to be released on October 20 for $1,100.
Sharp didn't forget VHS, now marries it with Blu-Ray [Crunchgear]
Joel Johnson
Slacker G2 portable player review (Verdict: Nails its niche, but its hardware days are numbered)
The Slacker G2 media player meets its primary goal ably: it puts the streaming radio service — think XM plus Pandora — in a pocket-sized player that automatically updates itself when in range of friendly Wi-Fi. Its new BlackBerry-like interface, with a rolling clickwheel on the side, is easy to understand and pleasant to use. And if you like exploring new music, its hand-selected genre channels are completely entertaining.
But it's still just a real-world cache for an internet service — the real future of the company was announced last week, when RIM announced a software version of Slacker for BlackBerry. Music players that exist outside of phones are still the predominate way to listen to music on the go, but they're in their twilight. It's good to see that Slacker is moving away from its hardware business to focus on the connected devices already on the market. (And indeed, if you're a BlackBerry user I can recommend the Slacker app without question; even the free version, with limited "skips", is a great way to be introduced to new music.)
The G2 fails hard in one area: the screen. Amply sized and of modest resolution, the LCD used goes completely black in direct sunlight, an oversight somewhat inexplicable when other devices have managed to avoid this hurdle for years.
Syncing new stations over Wi-Fi can be slow, but only if you sit and watch it load. (And you shouldn't. The G2 will slurp up new stations whenever it's in range of a Wi-Fi network.) It's filling its 4 or 8GB cache (depending on model) with lots of new compressed music. Slacker wouldn't tell me the exact bit rate, but say they use AAC to provide something that sounds like 128kbps MP3s — I'd guess they're using 64 or 96kbps. It sounds fine, although certainly not pristine.
You can also copy MP3s from your home computer to take up part of the cache space if you wish.
The basic unit is $200; the 8GB is $250. The Slacker streaming service is completely free, but you'll have a few ads interspersed between songs, as well as limits on the number of times you can skip past a playing song to go to the next. For an additional $7.50 a month you can not only skip as many times as you want, but can even mark specific songs to be saved on the device to be listened to later. I have a hard time thinking of why someone would pay $250 for the G2 and then not get the premium service.
It's safe to say that the G2 is less an enticement to lure in new customers to the Slacker service and more of a way for die-hard Slacker users to take the experience on the road. If you're unsure if you're interested, the buying exploration is easy: go play around with Slacker.com in your web browser; if you want that service on the go and have a BlackBerry, get the Slacker application; if you don't have a BlackBerry, buy the G2.
Product Page [Slacker.com]
Related • Review: Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player
• Product review - Slacker G2 personal radio [Gadling]
• Lightning Review: Slacker G2 Portable Radio [Gizmodo]
• Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player [PCMag]
• Slacker G2 Internet Radio Portable: The Technologizer Review">Technologizer]
Rob Beschizza
PC Mag's greatest hacks of all time
"Just 10?" is the obvious refrain, but those selected are beauts. Starting with 1961's Space War game — a PDP-1 mainframe hack — it leads right up to cool present day stuff like Hackintoshes and DeCSS. And, of course, Ben Heck.
Pictured is Joi Ito's photograph of a PDP-1 running Spacewar. If you're ever near Albuquerque, they have one at the STARTUP exhibit.
Photo: Joi Ito
The Ten Greatest Hacks of All Time [PC mag via Hackaday]
Rob Beschizza
Minox's new SpyCam: is it the smallest decent digital camera?
Minox's SpyCam, a little wee digital Bond gadget about half the size of a normal digicam, is out in 6 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes and 15 seconds. At the time of writing, of course!
To be launched at Photokina, the cam has a 3.2 megapixel sensor, 128 MB of memory and a MicroSD card slot. It can shoot VGA movies, too. There's even a flash expansion unit, as the minuscule base doesn't have one.
What's always struck me about digital cameras is that most have a more-or-less identical form factor. Almost every consumer model is a little under an inch thick and about four inches long. Canon's squared-off Elph series is somewhat distinctive of the genre, while Casio's Exilims typically shave off a bit here and there compared to the competition. Minox's SpyCam, however, promises a severe drop in size, but without the 0.3-megapixel trappings of something horrible from the crapvendors.
Minox recently retired its TLX (pictured) and halved the retail price on remaining inventory, opening the way for September 24's replacement.
Countdown [Minox License to Shoot via Retrothing]
John Brownlee
Nintendo's WiFi router is tiny and a tad inexplicable
Confronted with Nintendo's newly announced Wi-Fi router, most gadget bloggers are galvanically erupting a questioning curlicue of molten incredulity out of the tops of their cranial crevasses. Why would Nintendo release this? The Wii and DS work without an existing router. And furthermore, shouldn't Nintendo be working on a Wii hard drive instead?
Sadly, I know exactly who this is aimed at: guys like me who have to shut down our WPA2-secure routers just so Beschizza can dandily traipse through our DS Animal Crossing town, leaving baskets of plums and starting politely-worded petitions to rename the whole village to Gropecunt Lane.
The DS, you see, inexplicably will not connect to a WPA protected network, favoring non-protected routers or WEP (what?). The Nintendo WiFi Network Adapter has three settings: Router, Bridge or Auto. That "bridge" looks tasty: a way to finally get your DS online without stripping all its security.
Of course, Nintendo already makes such a device: the Nintendo DS WiFi USB Connector. So perhaps this really is aimed at the Nintendo die-hard with an aesthetic soft spot for a tiny Liliputian doppelganger sitting side by side with his Wii, controlling the pulse and flux of his outgoing data. And that person, perhaps, will rather drop his $59 on Nintendo WiFi device than a Linksys or Netgear. Whoever you are, I don't understand you, dear Nintendork, but your race shall swarm the earth.
Nintendo Announces... Wii/DS WiFi Router [Kotaku via Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza
TXTing suspected in LA rail disaster
Those investigating the L.A. train crash want to see phone records following reports the engineer responsible was text messaging shortly beforehand.
Joel Johnson
Morning tech deals highlights
• PC Case – The Antec P180 case, a local favorite, is going for $70, shipped at Newegg. It's normally about $130 or so. [Slickdeals]
• Rackmount PC – Refurbished Dual Opteron servers in a 1U case for $200. [Dealhack]
• iPhone Adapter – Remember that stupid recessed iPhone headphone socket? And the ridiculous prices people charged for adapters? Meritline.com is selling a simple adapter for $1, shipped. [Dealnews]
• PC Mic – Meritline.com is also selling this cute vintagesque omnidirectional microphone for $4, shipped. [Dealnews]
Rob Beschizza
Taking a Poke at the Peek
Makezine reader Maushammer took apart a Peek, the new email-only handset, to see what lay within. The answer? Heavily integrated circuits and an impressive metal backbone: "The insides are very simple."
If you're a Peek fan, check out the just-started geekypeek blog, founded by the makers to encourage technical wizards to get their hands dirty.
Photo set [Maushammer via Make]
John Brownlee
Pentagon sweating over possible World of Warcraft terror plots
According to Pentagon researchers, the next 9/11 bloodbath on American soil might be plotted out in World of Warcraft... and that's making some politicians very nervous.
Danger Room's Noah Schachtman has a great write-up on a presentation recently made by Dr. Dwight Toaves of the National Defense University on how a meatspace terrorist attack might be plotted in a virtual world.
[T]wo World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the "White Keep" inside the "Stonetalon Mountains." The major objective is to set off a "Dragon Fire spell" inside, and make off with "110 Gold and 234 Silver" in treasure. "No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast," one player, "war_monger," crows.Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Dragon Fire" is an unconventional weapon. And "110 Gold and 234 Silver" tells the plotters how to align the game's map with one of Washington, D.C.
I find this objectively fascinating, though I struggle to see how it is more useful than any of the other methods of communication a terrorist group might use to plot an attack. That this could happen in a "virtual world" is what is causing brow-mopping in Washington: the implication for the technologically Luditical is that terrorists have somehow tapped into a commercially-available, programmable virtual-reality mass murder simulator. But just as an FPS isn't a primer on how to actually shoot a gun, World of Warcraft isn't anything remotely resembling a terrorism simulator. TSA agents are not MOBS. A virtual world is, at best, a method of communication indistinguishable from email, IRC or web forums.
The sage word of reason comes from Steven Aftergood, an analyst for the Federation of the American Scientists: "Could terrorists use Second Life? Sure, they can use anything. But is it a significant augmentation? That's not obvious. It's a scenario that an intelligence officer is duty-bound to consider. That's all."
Pentagon Researcher Unveils Warcraft Terror Plot [Danger Room]
Rob Beschizza
How to make your own books the old-fashioned way
Admit it. You've always wanted to know how to make your own gorgeous hardback books. Without expensive machinery and supplies, however, it comes down to you, your craftsmanship, and Dave the Designer's comprehensive book tutorial. The photo is of Kelley Linehan's own handmade books: they teach you how at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee's craft center.
Photo: illustriousbean
via Monster Munch
Rob Beschizza
Nokia N810 as remote mixing console
Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet is a little bigger than the iPod Touch, but still pocketable—a characteristic that makes it perfect for use as a portable music-maker.
Dubwise, a member of the Internet Tablet Talk forums, uses his to operate the virtual dials and knobs of a Yamaha digital mixer.
"The resolution is perfect. All 20 faders fit onscreen, no scrolling. I’ve been mixing some simple shows from a seat in the audience. Even for the hands-on and chaotic shows, being able to tweak the balcony speakers from the balcony, and set the stage mix standing next to the musicians, is simply amazing."
He uses a VNC client, which mirrors the target machine's desktop and allows you to control its mouse, on the tablet.
Photo: Dubwise
Forum thread [via Pocketables]
John Brownlee
The bone-scouring monstrosity of the JVC HXD77J mini-system
Maxell's famous "Blown Away" Le Corbusier LC2 ad implicitly promised an era when music could blow you away, leaving only a shrieking skeleton clinging to a chain-link fence, like the nuclear attack in Terminator 2.
That future never arrived, though: consumer speakers were not up to the task. Worse, as audio devices got increasingly more svelte and compact, there wasn't even the visual illusion of a system of bone-scouring aural output.
This JVC HXD77J ($269) is a gorgeous monstrosity. It's your standard mini-system: radio, CD, USB port to listen to music directly from a PC or Mac. It curiously says it has the ability to "play" JPEG files. But where it really satisfies is in the early 90's oomph of its design. Now this is the kind of boom box that could blast your eyeballs into the back of your cerebellum.
JVC HXD77J Mini System [Buy.com via Red Ferret Journal]
John Brownlee
Apple patents SmartGarment DRM for clothing
Apple, we love you, but you are most definitely the screen door in our submarine sometimes.
Apple's Nike+ iPod Sport Kit is rather neat if you're a runner. By inserting a little dongle in your shoe and pairing it to your iPod, you can record all of your statistics as you go for a jog. Despite the Nike branding, one of the cooler things about it is you could use the Nike+ kit in any shoe, from a pair of old chucks to a glossy pair of taps.
Now, Apple wants to change all that. In a patent published last week but filed in March of 2007, Apple describes a "Smart Garment" technology that would lock a gadget to a specific set of clothes. In short, it's DRM for clothing.
Ars Technica has a better look at the patent, and to be fair, Apple's offering some new features: one Smart Garment feature, for example, is the ability to inform a runner that their Nike shoe has been dangerously degraded and may result in injury. But even that feature can be interpreted cynically: isn't that something Nike could set the threshold on to sell people unnecessary and expensive new shoes.
DRM in music is bad enough, Apple. DRM in clothing is simply ludicrous. It's the sort of thing Terry Gilliam might have inserted into Brazil if it had been made twenty years later.
Apple Wants To Tie Your Shoes To Your Clothes With DRM [Ars Technica via GeekSugar]
John Brownlee
FRED UFO humidifier uses patented extraterrestrial technology to prevent sloughing skin
After a summer spent banana hammocking around upon the black sand beaches of Santorini, it is important for me to keep my skin moist. Dry, it has a tendency to slough, which simply encourages Joel when he visits to pick one up off the floor, insert himself into it like a dermatological coverall and then make out with my unsuspecting girlfriend.
As such, I am always keeping an eye out for attractive humidifiers, but the 21st century design craze has yet to really impact the humidifier isle of the local Wal-Mart. So the FRED UFO Humidifier is refreshing to behold: a lovely silver discus with attractive, useless LEDs, capable of gasifying two gallons of water in a day. It also comes in red, green and black. $99 is a bit pricey for a humidifier though, but my girlfriend says that if it'll save us a few bucks, she's willing to take another of Joel's tonsil gougers for the team. It's called love, boys and girls.
FRED UFO Humidifier [Products with Style via Oh Gizmo]
Rob Beschizza
Power On Self Test: PROMETHEUS's installation at Infart in Bassino, Italy
(You can't see it in the photo, but the spatter is made up of text: dozens of brand names)
via Make and Who Killed Bambi?
Rob Beschizza
Where can I get Bandai's officially-hacked TV game of Gladiator?
Bandai evidently sells a game-in-a-controller compilation (you know, the kind that hooks up directly to the TV set) that includes classic Taito arcade game Gladiator, also known as Ohgon No Shiro or Great Gurianos. Moreoever, it comes with hacked gameplay modes!
Google failed me. The lazyweb node that finds this for me will win a prize! It won't be a very nice prize, but it will be a genuine gadget. If you're curious, see footage of the original unhacked game. It was fun!
Rob Beschizza
Three more Vaio Graphic Splashes on the way
Amy Neal's "Colorful," Kristen Getchell's "Kaleidoscope," and Ivan Flores' "Sound Waves," are the winners of Sony's "My graphics splash" design competition. Each will be sold as a limited edition Sony Vaio FW. The winners got five grand; the finalists all received machines with their designs on them.
My own favorite is Nature's Call from Above, by Nimbus. Dear Sony: have you ever considered making a Print-on-Demand laptop service? Does the technology even exist? As beautiful as some of these compo entries are, people would pay a serious premium to have custom designs properly set for them out the factory.
Competition winners [Sony]
Rob Beschizza
Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard: not user-serviceable
Ever thought of trying to dismantle one of Apple's industrial-looking metal keyboards? Don't.
Rob Beschizza
Ghostly gallery of decommissioned strategic air command base
Mustard Hamsters explores Loring Air Force Base, a decommissioned facility packed with derelict military technology.
Living at MSSM for two years, I was about three miles from the decommissioned Loring Air Force Base, but I had no car and never really had the chance to get out there. This weekend was graduation weekend for the class of ‘08, and as an alumnus my friends and I planned to meet up at the old stomping grounds for the ceremonies. Much to my delight a friend offered to bring me over to the base to explore. We went twice during the day and found some really great and cool stuff.
In its time, it was the largest Strategic Air Command base and stored more weapons and fuel than any other air base in the nation. It even had its own ski slope.
Visit to LAFB [Mustard Hamsters]
Rob Beschizza
CMU's Formula SAE car + a deserted car lot + plenty of gas = awesome
A few days back, I had the pleasure of being given a whirlwind tour of Carnegie Mellon University Formula SAE racing team's garage. I'd like nothing better than to tool around in one of these tiny, awe-inspiring asphalt rockets: all that's needed are dual cannons, a rear flamethrower and a button to make buzzsaws emerge sideways out of the wheels.
I understand that they may also be raced.
Shots of the team, and the stripped machine, after the jump!
John Brownlee
QuickerTek ExpressCard WiFi has draft-n, huge honking antenna
Owner of an aging MacBook Pro with a decidedly draft-n AirPort card, the adoption of a Time Capsule as my router has spurred me to lust after a speedier WiFi solution. The QuickerTek WiFi ExpressCard might have been it, except for a bizarre request of almost total Airport castration before installation, a $199 price tag and a massive umbrella-like antenna which — in its size and shape — conjures more the image of some sort of wireless internet IUD than a happy receptor for incoming bits.
QuikerTek Express Card [Official Site]
John Brownlee
Analyst says aluminum MacBooks are already shipping to Apple stores
Rumor has it new MacBooks will be triumphantly unveiled on October 14th with exactly the same improvements we've been scuttlebutting about for a year: thinner design, aluminum chassis, LED backlit, stock Intel Centrino 2 speedbump. But what does the last authority in such rumors — the godlike business analyst — have to say about the matter?
They say we'll see thinner aluminum MacBooks with LED backlights in October. In fact, they say they are already shipping.
[Analyst Richard Gardner] also says that “field checks” have confirmed that shipments of new MacBooks have begun; he says the most distinctive features of the new MacBooks are “very thin aluminum casing, an LED-backlit display and an aggressive entry-level price point.”
That "aggressive entry-level price point" is interesting: how much more aggressive than $999 could we be talking about here? And what will that do for the tedious "You pay a premium for the hardware for the zeitgeist?" anti-Mac argument?
Apple: Citi Says Sept. Qtr Tracking Ahead Of Street Ests; Contends Shipments Have Begun On New MacBooks [Barron's via Crunchgear]
Joel Johnson
Gerber Artifact multitool has tiny, replaceable blades
Gerber snuck out this cute little "Artifact" multi-tool when I wasn't looking. Just a little longer than a cigarette lighter, it includes a Phillips and flathead screwdrivers, a bottle opener, wire stripper, prybar, and a knife — and the knife uses replaceable #11 blades. Not bad for $10 — you might even be able to get it past the TSA by tossing away the blade before a flight.
Product Page [Gerber-Tools.com via Toolmonger]
• Atwood Knives Back in Stock Soon
• Spyderco Byrdrench is Literal Multitool
• Leatherman Skeletool: Lightest Full-Sized Multi-Tool
• Cabinet Jack: Multi-Tool for Cabinet Makers
John Brownlee
WriteRoom comes to iPhone, but what's the point?
One of my favorite productivity apps for the Mac is WriteRoom by Hog Bay Software. It's little more than a text editor: its genius is its incredible, program-defining full screen feature. My left thumb presses Command, my right pink slaps Enter, and suddenly the alabaster and lanugo of Apple's OS is stripped away, revealing the pulsing circulatory system upon which all computer interfaces are based: the word processing progenitor, the pure function of the terminal, green text glowing on black. It's easy enough to switch out of, just Command+Enter again, but once I've stripped everything else away, I find myself lost in a sort of pure dimension of prose, where inch high letters spell out my thoughts, their ebb and flow undisturbed by the burbling of instant messages or the emergence of a sudden tweet inviting me to wile away some time watching a movie about a kitten-hugging gorilla.
Now, Hog Bay Software have released a version of WriteRoom for the iPhone, but as much as I immediately want to hand them my fin, I really don't understand the point. The iPhone doesn't really have multi-tasking. It doesn't have lots of distracting little windows popping up all over the screen. WriteRoom on the Mac's most brilliant feature is the way it can absorb, but on the iPhone, every app must absorb your attention for as long as its up.
Which makes WriteRoom for the iPhone a bit of a "huh": it's a pretty text editor with some nice features (you can create documents on your computer in Safari and they are automatically synced to your iPhone) but it's just a text editor, where as WriteRoom on the Mac simply sucks you in, redolent of some kind of feeling of being alone with your words, like the midnight absorption of an 80s novelist cast in cathode rays as he hunches over his IBM word processor deep into the night.
John Brownlee
Kitchen Drawer concept packs bachelor's kitchen into a trolley
When I think of my dormitory days, creating vacuum seals on keg bungs and bird dogging girls gone wild, I find myself yearning for a sort of culinary Swiss Army Knife: a gadget in which the toaster, waffle iron, skillet, microwave, refrigerator, blender, tea kettle and stove top gloriously converge.
The Kitchen Drawer, designed by Nojoe Park for the Electrolux Design Contest, makes the first plodding steps towards that bachelor's ideal. The concept packs four kitchen essentials into a small trolley: a hot plate, an electric stove, a dish drawer and a mini-fridge.
Unfortunately, I have a relatively well-stocked kitchen these days, so the practical yang of my soul fights its booyeahing yin: no, I will not buy one of these and tuck it in the small nook to the left of the toilet, along with the toilet brush and the pornography.
Kitchen on Wheels Natch [Yanko Design]
Joel Johnson
Alan's DIY "Cat Jet" litter box ventilation system
Our friend Alan Graham wrote up this great project for venting cat litter box fumes out of his house. It's called the "Cat Jet", which implies much more hilarity than the actual project affords.
As any cat owner knows, no matter how many cats you have or what type of litter you use, the cat box smell is something that you never quite get used to. My wife and I keep our litter box in the garage with access via a pet door. This summer the high heat made walking into the garage to do the laundry or even reach the car an exercise in chemical warfare. Once we made the mistake of leaving the car window open.
I recently saw a post on Apartment Therapy showing a homemade "Cat Jet" ventilation solution (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/at-email/tools-for-pet-living-the-cat-jet-and-the-roomba-email-from-9108-062199) using a bathroom fan to vent the noxious fumes of a litter box from the inside of the house to the outside. As a home automation geek I immediately was inspired to take it up a notch by combining similar hardware to a series of timers.
Behold: Alan's Automated Cat Jet! Total Cost? $80.
Consisting of one bathroom fan, one bathroom vent kit, one Smarthome Appliance module, and my home automation system, Alan's Automated Cat Jet shows once again that with technology, anything is possible.
Now you don't actually need to have as advanced a home automation system as I do to put this together, so I've given you an alternative solution using a special timer.
Before you build my solution, I recommend checking out Chris' Cat Jet system first. It will give you an idea of how to mount a bathroom fan to an enclosed litter box and vent it out a window. For my solution, I just vented the litter box out the side of the house, as you would vent a dryer. Sorry neighbors!
Parts list and more howto info after the jump.
Rob Beschizza
In a beautiful mass of cogs and gears, a clock
When the apocalypse comes, mains electricity winks out after a few days. Water pressure subsides shortly thereafter. Fires consume city blocks within weeks; if it's summer, they spread unchecked. Within a few months, a billion starve to death or die of once-harmless diseases. Worse is to come. Five years in, the batteries within Tokyo Flash's incomprehensible binary wristwatches will also die. How shall we not be able to tell the time easily, unless we think about it for a while, when the zombies are in charge?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Clayton Boyer's Solaris clock.
Solaris Wooden Clock [Clayton's website via Hacked Gadgets ]
Rob Beschizza
Aside: Clearing the Gadget Dungeon
Needing office space for the BBG technodungeon, I cleared the basement of my recently-bought Victorian house. Taking a steel brush to the walls soon caused a chunk of ancient mortar to topple off. Underneath, a brick sat, unanchored, in its space. This is what lay behind it:
A bottle! Unfortunately crushed by the weight — literally — of decades of time.
It's easy imagine the former occupant of this place working slavishly on whatever he or she worked on, locked for long hours in this dark cellar, occasionally taking a remedial swig from the stash. Is this my destiny? I shall nip misery and despair in the bud right now, and promise myself never to review an off-brand cellphone ever again.
Rob Beschizza
Verizon's mildly sexist "cellphone for the ladies" ad, annotated
From this month's "Real Simple" magazine.
It's a neat collection of stereotypical women's preoccupations, none so outrageous it stops the eye but, together, forming a lovely symphony in frilly pink.
Here's a compulsory addendum from the BBC's Look Around You, the Petticoat 5 women's computer...
John Brownlee
Hentai NVIDIA card reveals new benchmark standard in GPU processing
We will not claim that this hentai brandedi GeForce 8800 GT card, initially spotted by a member of the Fucked Gaijin forums, is real. It is almost certainly a PhotoShop. That said, as GPUs get more and more powerful, what could be a better showcase for a graphic card's polygon-pumping might than the cel-shaded depiction of a hydrocephalic Japanese pre-teen's cervix, her realistic mucous membrane providing an impressive testing ground for Nvidia's revolutionary fluidic physics processing?
Thank you, Japan. We look forward to the introduction of the Cartoon Cervix Scale in the next version of 3D Mark.
Elsa Gladiac NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT [Fucked Gaijin]
John Brownlee
Tetris bathroom tiles
The Tetris tile pattern is incredibly pleasing right before four rows collapse in on themselves: a hodge-podge of brightly colored, four-cell pieces, stacked upon one another with the utmost symmetry. Unfortunately, taken from the monochromatic peasoup of a GameBoy screen and into the real world, the pattern rarely satisfies: imbued into a cloth pattern or ice cube tray, the Tetris pattern becomes too difficult to mass produce, and so short cuts are taken: three- or five-celled pieces filling in the gaps that have resulted from a haphazard planning, giving the impression of being plotted out and dropped into place by the sort of thumbless cretin who would find himself buried under blocks before Music Type A had even looped once.
I have hope for these Tetris shaped bathroom tiles though. Oh, sure, their "Mosaic" offering — a sheet of Tetris tiles already laid out in what is purported to be a polygonally pure Tetris pattern — is in fact a shameless cheat, the edges sullied by one- and two-celled space-filling abominations. But with a box of the base pieces, I don't need to rely on some designer's muffed polygon stacking skills: my 959-line Tetris personal best attests to my ability to find some configuration that would make Saint Pajitnov proud... right before my entire bathroom wall collapsed in on itself with a triumphant chiptune tromp.
Tetris Tiles [Official Site via Gearfuse]
Previously • Tetris ice cube trays
• Tetris wall art only $42; Update: Competitive Tetris arm wrestling!
• Puma Disc Blaze Tetris sneakers are gorgeously awful
• Tetris in a box
• Tetris theme blown on bottles
• Nixon Tetris & Pong Watch Isn't Real
Related • Tetrion installation at Burning Man [Flickr]
John Brownlee
Nintendo Wii software hacked to load ISO "backups"
Over the last two years, the Wii has stood fast, remarkably resilient to software piracy without a mod chip. That era seems to be over. The Wii Backup Loader purports to be a simple Wii Homebrew Channel program that, once visited, can load (modified) ISOs right from the DVD drive.
Nintendo will doubtlessly patch this in a Wii firmware update, which raises the question as to whether we are going to start seeing a PSP custom firmware scenario re-enacted on a non-portable console, in which — once done — dogged hackers crack open the breastbone of each successive firmware update and rewire the innards within days of an update, or if this is in fact a one-off vulnerability, easily closed.
Wii Backup Loader [Tehskeen via Gizmodo]
Joel Johnson
Review: Axe Detailer Shower Tool (Verdict: I can't believe I like it)
"What's that thing?" asked my roommate. I pulled the Axe Detailer Shower Tool from the cardboard box, fresh from the PR company promoting it.
"It's like a shower poof," I said, giving it a squeeze. "And they included some Axe body wash, too."
"I bet that stuff smells like rapists, if rapists wanted to advertise they were approaching." I gave him a sniff but he wasn't impressed. Personally, I thought it smelled fine, if generically masculine. Besides, it's just soap.
So I put that Detailer up against every part of my sagging, pockmarked body and I cleaned myself like it mattered if my skin were exfoliated or not.
It's pretty decent! The tire-like handle at the top actually gives you something to hold on to unlike most fake loofa poofs, while the rough scouring pad on the top is good for thick skin like heels and elbows. I've used it every day for a week and found myself growing to like it quite a bit, despite its dubious branding lineage. I'd go so far as to say it's probably the best poof I've ever used — if for the rubber grip alone. (And while its name is a cute nod to men and car culture, it's just as useful for women. Not to say women can't like cars, either. You know what I'm saying.)
Fifty people can have one for free, they tell me, by becoming an Axe fan on Facebook and saying "I'm from Boing Boing. I need a Detailer." Or you can just buy them: a pack of four on Amazon is $17. In stores they should cost about $5.
John Brownlee
The Bandai Luminodot: Lite Brite goes high-def
For me, the Lite Brite was my first exposure to creating pixel art... the medium in which I first understood that images could be conjured not by contours but by a staccato succession of brightly shining lights. The knowledge was revolutionary: all of a sudden, I understood the strange timbre of NES graphics, what separated them as a form from the drawings I crayoned on construction paper, and the specific challenge of extrapolating detail from the broad sequences of color on a 32x32 grid.
Part of me is saddened, then, by the Bandai Luminodot, most succinctly described as Lite Brite gone high-def. Oh, it's natural... one wonders why simply upping the pixel count on a Lite Brite could have taxen so long. But it's the same slippery slope of 2D game art design: in some ways, the limits of a form define it, and while with only 3,500 light pegs, the Luminodot merely steps gingerly into the 16-bit era, there's somehow the saddening feeling that anything created with it would be less artistic for being more detailed.
It's still gorgeous, still lustful. The 12 blinking LEDs still entice. But somehow, the sensation of hampered creativity still prevails, which is always the biggest unseen disappointment of improving tech. Still, for $96, it is going to be worth playing around with.
Luminodot [Official Site via Technabob]
Related • Create Lite Brite-like art in Adobe Illustrator [RWIllustrator]
• Lite Brite "Last Supper" [You Made Me Say It]
• The previous "World's Largest Lite Brite" [KanaryArt.com]
• Giant Lite Brite-like object at 2002 Burning Man [BurningMan.com] (and Theme Camp [LiteBrite.org])
• Official site [Hasbro.com/litebrite]
• Original Lite Brite television commercial [YouTube]