Rob Beschizza

T-Mobile G1 Google Android review roundup

• Gizmodo: The G1 phone and the Android operating system are not finished products..

• Engadget: The G1 isn't going to blow anyone's mind right out of the gate.

• Om Malik: Will I recommend this phone to anyone out there looking for a smart phone? The answer is yes, especially if you don’t much care for either Windows Mobile or Apple’s iPhone device..

• Mossberg: The G1 is a very good first effort, and a godsend for people who prefer physical keyboards or T-Mobile.

• L.A. Times: So far, I feel smart enough with what I have. But I did get my geek fix from the G1.

• CNET: It's not quite there yet, so for now, the G1 is best suited for early adopters and gadget hounds, rather than consumers and business users.

Zeitgeist? The meh of the oppressed creature.

Photo: Gizmodo.

Rob Beschizza

Nielsen says 10 million not ready for Analog TV switchoff

Despite government handouts designed to protect their constitutional right to television, 10m Americans with old sets still haven't picked up their subsidized digital decoder boxes. And it's getting close to cutoff time: according to the plan, over-the-air broadcasts go completely digital in just four months.

The critical fact that big box retailers don't mention when you walk past the giant pyramid of these things by the checkout lanes: if you have cable TV, you do not need one. Y'all know that, of course, but your folks might not!

Survey: 10 Million Not Ready for Analog TV's Death [Wired: Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Iomega's new terabyte network drive is small, cheap, and looks like it gets the job done

I lag behind my colleagues in the home-storage 'n' networking stakes. Joel has some stout NAS box that's probably larger than my Shuttle PC, and John's got a home theater PC, Airport expresses, the lot. He can probably flush the crapper with his iPhone.

Me, I have a 4-year old USB drive plugged into an old router. Network throughput: about 1MB a second. Yeah, so I'm not exactly the Torrent Monster. But all that could change, as Iomega's simple 1TB network hard drive is $300, has gigabit ethernet, and built-in uPnP and iTunes server support. And with the 2TB version being only $480, it's not bad on price, either.

Tempted.

Iomega releases 1TB network hard drive [CrunchGear]

Rob Beschizza

Citroen SUV concept has rainbow upholstery

Citroen's Hypnos luxury concept car has suicide doors, an "aggressive stance," and gaily-colored upholstery. Inventorspot claims it will "Challenge Your Mind," but to be honest, I think your wardrobe in going to have a tougher battle.

The Citroen Hypnos Will Challenge Your Mind [Inventor Spot via Ubergizmo]

Joel Johnson

RKS Gig Stand, a folding guitar caddy

Although they appear to be slowly going off the market, the "RKS Gig Stand" looks like a nice bit of folding plastic for guitar players. The whole thing closes shut and then collapses on itself when not in use, making it easy to stash in a gig bag for travel.

If you can find them, they look like the go for $20 or so. I believe the reason they're difficult to find at the moment is that RKS Design is coming out with a "G II" model. (The same people who designed the KOR water bottle.)

Joel Johnson

Blackbird, Fly: Plastic vintage-inspired camera uses 35mm film

The "Blackbird, Fly" is an all-new, all-analog camera from Japan's Superheadz that recreates the square images and down-looking viewfinder of an old Rolleiflex, but does so on 35mm film. Which I'm sure is fun and makes fine, interesting images and everything, but would drive me nuts. I'll make my blurs and smudges the old fashioned way, thanks: by being a horrible photographer.

But if you feel the need, the "Blackbird, Fly" is going to cost around $100. I'm sure someone will import a few for our Lomo-addled photographer friends soon enough.

BBF blackbird, fly TLR camera from Superheadz [Killian-Nakamura.com via Josh Spear]

Joel Johnson

RjDj: Live ambient soundscape generator for iPhone, which is way more awesome than it sounds

"RjDj" is a new iPhone application that mixes audio data from the iPhone's microphone in realtime and plays them back out your headphones to create an electronic musicish environment. Different "scenes" exist in lieu of proper songs, each of which use the open "Pd" descriptor language to define what to do with the sounds coming in through the microphone. Your voice might be remixed into a flanging loop in one scene; another might use increased volume to change the melody of a song.

It's easier to watch in the video than it is to explain — and even easier to understand if you just download it and play with it. I spent a couple of hours with my headphones in while working today and just let the environment integrate into the soundscape around me. It was hard not hum or whistle little tunes just to hear what they would do.

If you've ever consumed psychedelics, the auditory effects in some of the scenes are very similar to the time-slipping, inverse cascading repeats that can be provoked by some chemicals.

There are two versions: a $3 "Album" and a free "Single" with just one scene. I bought the "Album" and haven't felt at all ripped off, but the "Single" is a no-brainer download. I do hope there will be ways to add new scenes into the program without buying a whole different application.

I can't wait to see what else can be done with these sort of modern smartphone applications. (There's nothing RjDj does that couldn't be done on Android or any other OS, I think, sans the accelerometer interface.) Walking into different parts of town, tracked by GPS, might offer up a different set of samples, for instance. Someone could literally build an interactive, evolving soundtrack that emerges from the city as you walked around. You could add an ominous percussion track whenever two or more units were within close proximity.

Exclusive RjDj Interview: Interactive Music Listening, Everywhere You Go [CreateDigitalMusic.com]
RjDj Album [iTunes]
RjDj Single (Free) [iTunes]

Joel Johnson

gadget, a word

While the etymology of gadget is a bit murky, it's my unschooled opinion that its nautical origin feels the most correct: sailors' slang word for any small mechanical thing or part of a ship for which they lacked, or forgot, a name. [Etymology Online]

Michael Quinion points out that Kipling popularized its use eventually, having probably picked up the term on a few steamer trips to India from attendant sailors.

There's a semantic implication to the original nautical use that I find especially compelling, even if I'm reading too much into it: a "gadget" was something consequential enough to ship function to be desired by a sailor, but not so essential or common that it had a memorable name. It was the sort of thing you were certain would make your life easier, but by its very nature wasn't useful enough for most of its users to remember.

To quote another popular sailing adage from the 1850s: "That's fuckin' deep."

Joel Johnson

Horological Machine HM3

This is a crazy watch. It's got three dials. One of the dials shows off the automatic rotor through a glass top.

It's called the HM3 Sidewinder if you buy it in bronze. It is called the HM3 Starcruiser if you buy it in silver. I don't know how much it costs.

LOL

Horological Machine HM3 product page [MBandF.com via Watchismo Times]

Marvin Battelle

Marvin says "Bye Bye, Infomercia!" (OR: "Taste the rainbow, you goddamn fruits!')

You know, even with flux capacitors slapped all over my dermis like the nicotine patches of your cigarette junkies, ripping yourself free of the timestream isn't exactly a frickin' lark.

How can I explain time travel so you PR Tapeworm Slurpee suckers can understand? Imagine pulling yourself inside out by your urethra. I didn't exactly undertake it lightly, but I felt like it was my duty to fulfill my destiny. Had my DNA not been scraped off the stains glowing under blacklight upon the bloated belly of Big Boinger? Had that same DNA not been matched nine hundred years later to the pink foot of Mama Battelle's squiggling broodling? And do I not rock right the fuck hard, right out of time? I do.

So I came to you and walked among you. I hacked your system. I squirted ice cream into your mouths out of the black, puckered nipples of your Black and Decker brand Food-A-Trons. I broke the DRM of your bacon products. I joined up with your Happy Mutants, convinced themselves to make love, not meat bombs. I tried to show you a world in which you read press releases not simply looking for things to buy, but to make things out of: whether a better life or a working Bowel Disruptor.

It really could have been pretty motherfuckin' A. But from most, the reaction was incredulity. Time and time again, I was mistaken for a fancy robot puppy from Sony. And then the bodies of my acolytes started hitting the slaughter room floor of Room 101. Fearing I was making no headway, I double checked my chronometric galvoneter, to make sure I'd got the right coordinates. And there it was.

Oops. My bad. Infomercia is Timeline Q. The world I'm meant to liberate is Timeline Alpha. So nuts to this scene. According to Timeline Alpha prophesy, my next stop is to wake up in an ion cloud somewhere in the middle of a Nebraskan cornfield, where I will begin my real campaign of great works. And when I'm there, you know what, fuck all this Jesus jazz. I'm just going to call everyone there a chimp and be done with it.

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

The Denoument to all this Nonsense is at Hand

It saddens me to report that only one minister remains: your humble servo, C.P. Wang. Ministers Inspiron Touchpreaux and Thanko Brando are no longer with us.

Their turncoat interest in the unpleasant arts of creative engineering, "hacking," contravening end-user license agreements—that poor Dreamcast! Deprecated as it is, what horror!—and such is at an end. See it not as their failure, people of Infomercia (though it was), but as the work of the evil meat-thing Marvin.

I executed them both myself, dunked in a holy vat of His Ballmer's pillowsweat at the Palace of Vested Interests. Trust that it was a fitting end: Given the circumstances, it's the most candybar outcome they deserved.Their credit lines have been closed and their subscriptions ended.

As for Marvin, his come-uppance is forthcoming. You see, I have spoken to him myself.

You can trust, dearest fellows, there will be no more public antics of such distasteful character as were inflicted by that ... creature. In the meantime, our scutters are hard at work repairing the damage.

• The Space Gherkin is no longer magenta. The "veins" have been removed. The Ministry extends its apologies to Swiss Re.

• The National Television Reserve, raided and filled with 1-inch tall obsenity-spewing robots, has been restored to normality.

• We have removed 400 million floating LED throwies from Boston harbor.

• Inserting a Nettron Wireless Water Polishing Stick into urine will no longer give it the superficial appearance of wine.

• You phones have been re-locked to Sprinattmobilezon. During the recovery phase, text messages sent may be billed at prices as high as 1 cent per SMS. Even the Ministry understands that this is quite ridiculous, however, and will endeavor to return to a sensible schedule at the first possible opportunity.

Thank you,

Cray Pippin Wang, Minister of Machines.

Minister Thanko Brando

MiniMac in the shadow of Marvin

This morning started as it always does: gritting my iPod-white teeth, I fingered the open trephine hole of my auxiliary port, smelled my fingers to detect any spillage and then — untangling the knots of the buycrime detecting umbilical that slithers out to my desk from Big Boinger's central hub — inserted the massive Cat-5 into my Thalamus.

But nothing happened. Something should have happened. My brain should have been awash in the matrix of morning deals; the Morning Reverie should have blared into my brain; electro-chemical orgasms should have been induced, again and again, as I had the bodies of the latest product revisions raped into my brain, leaving me as spent and without free will as a man who has just ejaculated his entire limbic system onto the floor. At the very least? The curious sensation of smelling overloaded synapse ozone from within the vacuum of my own skull. But there was nothing. Big Boinger just wasn't there anymore.

I looked over at my two colleagues. Minister Wang simply rocks back and forth muttering regulations, folded in on himself like some sort of spindly, fetal praying mantis. Minister Touchpreaux's reaction is more interesting: what once was a golem of listless oatmeal has now transformed into a manic marionette of enthusiasm, playing with strange blob-like creatures gelatinously inhabiting his iPhone and whistling to himself, only pausing to scatter off a burst of prose so discordantly uncouched from the Fifth Edition of Infomercia's NuPR Lexicon and plosively mouth "Yes. Yes!" to himself.

Of course, there is a procedure to follow in situations like these. Hardware fails... it's supposed to. I took out the emergency PR pack from under my desk, its cover stenciled with the Checkbook font, and broke the seal; from within, I removed the Portable Big Boing Mainframe, and turned it on.

>HELLO. NOW SPELL ANYTHING.

"EMERGENCY PROTOCOL," I queried.

> INCORRECT. NOW SPELL PROBLEM.

"Marvin."

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL MAKE.

"Make."

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL CRAPGADGET.

I thrilled. This is a forbidden word. "Crapgadget," I typed.

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL MEATBOMB.

My indoctrination continues. Big Boinger isn't here anymore. Marvin has stepped right into the machine. I'm plugging him in now.

Virtual Big Boinger Field Kit [Official Site via Red Ferret]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Infomercia, 'Tis for thee

My fellows, for shame! When we gene-spliced Gates and Jobs in Morita's warm enzyme bath, did we not create an eternal model for art? Is not Clive Sinclair's inventessence in the flesh vats of Merck, from which we all were born? Two ministers propagating not His Refulgent word, but that of the enemy!? Hacking dreamcasts? Challenging our engineers!?

Sirs, I know it is difficult, without the umbilicus, to remain focused. And these "commenters" who question us — phaugh! Do not think we fear the dissolute ideology at the heart of this rebellion. Technology is external: it cannot embody any notion of creative expression, any more than the sun could rise backwards! It is a door, a shining, rainbow-filled glowing happy door, to the creative works that so many at the Ministry of Intellectual Propriety lovingly craft. Is that not enough wonder?

Minister Inspiron Touchpreaux

SanDisk slotMusic player is inexpensive and simple

Music is the heartbeat of our splendor. Each of our marches are developed by a quorum of Infomercia's finest emotional engineers who spend years carving each precision inspiration out of a block of solid white noise, leaving only the poignant and potent sonics for you to consume. And consume them you must, not just at the Five Allotted Panderings, but even between in your personal mobes or on your jeejahs. It is the Ministry's duty and pleasure only to provide you with as many options as possible for bathing your brainpan in vibrating triumph — so long as you choose as many of those options as you can afford.

Here's another: The SanDisk slotMusic player, a W20 MP3 player with no internal storage. Instead, tiny microSD cards — the aforementioned "slotMusic" — are inserted, each pre-filled with music from Riaafolese cartels. There is no way to hook up the slotMusic player to your central computer — and no need! Instead, continue to purchase additional albums on microSD card to be inserted into this elementary, screenless player. The clacking of tiny plastic chits in your pocket lets you know it's working!

I feel a little strange mentioning this, but I can't help but wonder if there weren't a way for our engineers to have constructed a smaller player. I know that sounds unpatriotic, but hear me out: if one of the advantages of the tiny slotMusic flash memory chips is their size, could not a player just barely larger than the chip itself be constructed? Surely the MP3 decoding hardware isn't too...I'm ahead of myself. The replaceable, 15-hour AAA battery inside must have predicted this logical decision.

Hands On: SanDisk's Sansa slotMusic Player [Gearlog.com]
SanDisk Sansa slotMusic Player: the new Discman? [Crave.CNET.com]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Compulsory purchase orders for Wednesday

• Defend the revolution with Samsung's new Q, R, X, and P Series notebooks and its NC10 netbook! Samsung's entry into the Infomercian notebook market provides a complete computing service to its customers and solidifies Samsung as a global technology leader with advanced mobile computing designs of the highest reliability and quality. Purchasers of yesterday's MacBooks are not, repeat not exempt from this compulsory purchase order.

• Buy Sharp's new Aquos DX LCD screens include an integrated Blu-Ray player for essential double market penetration. Available in screen sizes from 26"-52", they are all reasonably priced at w1,600 to w4,900, a premium of only 40 percent over purchasing the components separately.

• MacVelope's vinyl MacBook Air case is only 50 times the price of the manila envelopes upon which it is modeled. Infomercians who use these to send in payment for their finance charges are entitled to 300 cynicism bonus reward points for the consemester.

Rest assured, citizen consumers, that all is as it should be in Infomercia and that the meatnologist threat has been almost completely eliminated. That having been said, it is your duty to observe the following covenants.

i) If a mysterious stranger attempts to discuss technology face to face with you, proceed immediately to an authority station. Do not attempt to detain him. Report by email, instant message or tweet. Do not attempt to speak in his manner: flapping your meat is an unauthorized mode of communication.

ii) The strange items being left around Infomercia are ancient writing implements known as "pencils" and "pens." Do not stop to inspect, examine or inventorize them. Do not pick up the blank sheets of paper nearby. Posession of blank paper may result in substantial fines. Posession of grid paper carries a custodial sentence.

iii) Rumors that local matter replicators are now dispensing only ice cream are not true. Do not eat ice cream.

I hope my fellow ministers will join me in roundly condemning the actions taken by the horrorists.

Minister Inspiron Touchpreaux

Custom portable Dreamcast is fascinating, punishable offense

Here's a curious thing: A citizen has taken several state-issued items, disassembled them, and reassembled them into a new item that performs a function only slightly different than the original core object.

While almost certainly illegal — it's difficult for me to quickly look up the regulations this "Hailrazer" fellow is violating without the assistance of our umbilical custodial daemons in parsing our glorious two trillion lines of Infomercian legal allowances — I cannot help but wonder if this project, in which a Sega Dreamcast has been crammed into a Lazer Doodle toy case, does not in some way comment on the industrious and creative spirit that, when properly shepherded by the loving hand of our state, lives within the minds of every Infomercian.

Still, what a bafflement! This "DarthCast" project seems only to replicate the ability of our official Dreamcast entertainment nugget (now deprecated; if you have a lingering unit that has not reported itself to a local sub-node, please incinerate manually). Why would a citizen take all the time to create this non-standard device when its functionality has already been replicated with newer, official products many times over? It must be a desire to taste a small portion of the pride felt by Minimac itself when it imagines a new item for each of to enjoy.

I hope to answer these questions and more when interviewing Hellrazer, who was corralled and seized for reprocessing at 0721 this morning, along with several cohabitants of his vine when they objected to the mandatory quarantine and incineration of their housing modules.

DarthCast .My next portable started. FINISHED :) [Forums.BenHeck.com]

Minister Thanko Brando

ALERT: New line of "Pac-Man Pleasure Models" are Happy Mutant agents

Intelligence reports indicate that a new line of unlicensed Pleasure Models have been unveiled across the Metropolis. Scantly clad in lingerie that proudly displays their creamy expanses of "biomechanical" flesh and gossamer "fiber optic" lanugo, these Pleasure Models bear MiniLust's official seal upon their hubs: Pac-Man, the seed gobbling procreational mascot of our great super-conglomerate.

If you are approached by such a unit, know that these so-called "Pleasure Models" are, in fact, Meatnological agents of the rogue terrorist Marvin Battelle, and any claims they may make to being "carrier unlocked" are not only false, but criminal.

A reminder to all Infomercian consumers from MiniMac: when shopping for a new candybar to assist you in T9-ing your chromosomal transcription to the newest refreshes in your genetic product line, please be aware that pecuniary transaction is required by law and a two-year contract is obligatory. For pay-as-you-go customers, be advised that the only state-endorsed vendor is Hoover's line of suctioning Pleasure Models. Failure to comply may result in a compulsory recall of your entire product line.

If you are approached by an unfamiliar Pleasure Model, please closely examine their I/O port cover before inserting your SIM. If it is embossed with the image of a ghost, please report her immediately to MiniLust as a Happy Mutant spook.

Miss Video Game [3Wishes]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Keep Calm: Broadcasting will resume presently