Rob Beschizza

TechCrunch slams netbooks

TechCrunch's own takedown of netbooks is actually a much-needed counter to the insane hype surrounding these mobile mediocrities, but it misses the point and lards the piece with baffling errors.

"A typical Netbook has a 7 inch screen."

Au contraire! Most netbooks have 9" or 10" displays. The 7" netbooks of yore are no longer easy to find. The only hot seven-incher in the house is Raon's Everun Note, but it's really a UMPC, with specs that far exceed those of netbooks.

"Some make do with as little as 256 MB."

Few netbooks come with less than 1GB of memory, with 512MB configurations reduced to $250 Black Friday duty. To find 256MB, we again have to look back to old junk you can't even buy anymore: even the ur-netbook, the Asus EeePC 2G, had half a gig.

"Netbooks use Intel Celeron, Intel Atom, or Via Nano CPU"

A netbook with Via's Nano CPU? Now you're jutht being thilly.

"The iPhone or iPod Touch, with a tiny 3.5 inch screen, has a vastly better browsing experience."

This refers to a real netbook problem—600-line displays—but TechCrunch overplays it. As great as the iPhone's cut of Safari is, we have to get real about its usefulness for work. A 480-pixel display can't offer the plain utility of the 1024 horizontal pixels found on the average netbook.

"Any normal adult can’t type fast on it ... it isn’t much better than a Blackberry-type mobile keyboard"

Oh, please. As far as this can be taken seriously at all, it should suffice to say that I type just fine on netbooks—and I have blunt hobbit-fingers that can barely navigate a smartphone. "Normal adult" indeed!

"Even the lower end XP and Linux, with normal computing is a heavy chore for these machines."

I'm a performance whore, with a 4GB MacBook Pro and a gaming PC with a $500 video card. Even so, only a couple of netbooks slowed me down for the kind of basic tasks they're good for. Moreover, the real culprit for their problems was cheap flash storage with poor write speeds: the answer is to buy one with a hard drive, or to avoid the cheaper EeePCs.

After saying the netbook's keyboard is too small, TechCrunch again pitches its keyboard-free touchscreen tablet concept again: "That’s a device people will want." It's a fantastic proposal, but the notion that it's an "answer" to the "problem" of netbooks—which are selling in the millions—isn't fully baked. 

An abiding belief that little tablets are the future is something that Intel and Microsoft have been throwing cash at for years and years: HPCs, UMPCs and MIDs have been serving imaginary consumers for at least a decade. There is a fundamental problem with these Star Trek props: none of them ever hits a sweet spot, and that probably means that there isn't one. I can juuuuust imagine Apple succeeding with a bigger iPhone-like tablet, but it could do so only because of the foundations already built, not because it's a fundamentally appetizing idea.

Here are three things that will really improve netbooks, right now: 1. Fix the chipset power consumption problems so we really do get a full day on a 6-cell charge, 2. Give us more than 600 horizontal lines, and 3: Cellular modems as standard in the U.S.

Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough [TechCrunch]

Rob Beschizza

Intel slams netbooks

Intel's Atom chip is at the heart of the netbook revolution, but the company sought to dampen interest in the platform at a recent conference. Stu Pann, vice president of sales and marketing at Intel, said at the Raymond James IT Supple Chain Conference that they were intended for "emerging markets and younger kids" and indicated that Intel was surprised at their success in the west.

"We view the Netbook as mostly incremental to our total available market ... If you've ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size--it's fine for an hour. It's not something you're going to use day in and day out."

Netbooks are low-profit items that threaten a high-profit ecosystem. Intel doesn't want to swap its Core 2 dollars for Atom pennies. It always imagined these low-power chips as a sideline in devices that supplement, rather than replace, "real" laptops.

In underestimating netbooks' general appeal, however, Intel's seen its Atom become a "good enough" chip for uses it never intended. A year ago, a netbook would have seemed a foolish choice for a main machine — but times have changed. You can even just slap a netbook's guts in an everyday-looking laptop, keep the old price tag, and call it a day.

Intel rethinks Netbooks: ‘Fine for an hour’ but.. [CNET]

Rob Beschizza

Mundane gadget spam of the day

"请确认您是否订阅由"军华网为您提供的办公学习休闲期刊: 确认要订阅请直接回复本邮件; 无须订阅请不要理会此信息，如果您想从此不再受此信息困扰请将本邮件主题改为"unsubscribe"或今后您将再也收不到由本站发出的所有信息了。附"休闲岛"电子杂志期刊简介：本电子杂志期刊由"军华网主办，不定期通过电子邮件免费寄送，其主要内容包括：幽默笑话、生活小常识、电脑使用技巧、趣闻趣事、娱乐星闻、八卦、读者交友、中长篇小说(言情、武侠、侦探、科幻等)、杂文、办公管理知识、等等。(所有内容均来自网友推荐)。欢迎各位订阅，同时也请您推荐给您的好友一起欣赏，请将您朋友的地址告诉我们，谢谢!"

John Brownlee

Sennheiser announces wireless, unconncected ear buds

Sennheiser just announced these totally wireless earbuds for the Japanese market. They are truly wireless and bandless: no loop of plastic connecting buds between the ears. Each bud has a 2.4GHz wireless receiver built into it, and Sennheiser promises 10 hours per charge with no compromise to wireless fidelity. Price is jaw-meets-cracked-sternum: $630.

I eye these with a bit of skepticism. There is one notable advantage to wires: a cord snaking from your iPod makes it almost impossible to lose your ear buds. But there's very much the awareness of my own innate fuddyduddery: I feel like the first outraged optometrist who cried, "Contacts! They'll never work! Cram them in your eyes? And there's not even a nose piece in the middle to hold them together!"

Sennheiser announces the MX W1 [Watch Impress via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

MSI WIndbox makes the MSI Wind VESA mountable

The MSI Windbox is an interesting variation on the netbook-turned-PC concept: it's basically a stock MSI Wind without a display, meant to be strapped behind a VESA display of somekind. Otherwise, the specs are the same as always, for which I have set up a TextPander script: 1.6 GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It's actually a rather cool idea, but there's no HDMI out, and as Slashgear notes, that is a missed trick: this could be marketed as a very cheap Media Center Expander if it had one. Price when released will be roughly at around $260.

VESA-mounted fanless nettop [Slashgear]

Rob Beschizza

Joel's Post-Thanksgiving Message

See the full story at BBTV.

John Brownlee

Stephen Fry hates the Blackberry Storm

In his Twitter feed, Stephen Fry — my favorite dropsied, dandyish British comedian with the BMI of a bowl of congrealed oameal — devastated the Blackberry Storm in less than 432 characters.

Been playing with the BB Storm. Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity.

Yes, I blame n'works more than RIM. Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t'screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it.

Plus the GPS maps won't work - issue with BIS connections. I see from forums postings this is widespread in the UK. iPhone killer? Ha!

That last "Ha!" is just so scathing. The upper crust British aristocrat's answer to screwing in his monocle and saying "lolwut!"

Stephen Fry slams the Blackberry Storm [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

M.U.S.C.L.E. men go humping USB

I post this not for any id-driven delight at another variation of the phallic humping USB dongle motif, but because these particular ones are based on M.U.S.C.L.E. men, the tiny embryonically pink wrestlers that I bought by the plastic trash can full when I was nine. I'm just finding out now that America's M.U.S.C.L.E. line was based on the popular Kinnikuman manga, which is what these USB hubs are based on. You know, if these came in fleshy pink, I'd actually be nostalgic enough to buy one.

Kinniukman Warriors [Geekstuff 4 U]

Rob Beschizza

Gray Friday for gadgets

Is it bedlam where you are? Where I am, it's ... slightly busier than usual. The TV sections of the local consumer electronics shops are getting good foot, because that's where the best deals are. But the car lots aren't full and the traffic's not too bad. In Circuit City, I was the only guy checking out the laptops at 9:30 a.m.!

The only store I saw that was genuinely slammed was Bath and Body Works, which had checkout queues out the door: buying lotion futures now.

Rob Beschizza

Black Friday starts early (but double-check the specs)

According to the Internet, the retail industry's collective nerves snapped like cartoon guitar wire today, and most stores are already offering their black friday deals. Online, at least.

They perhaps planned it all along, but hey, this is how the hype goest. Blackfriday.info and bfads.net are as good as any place to start, but black-friday.net seems to have the best "everything on one page" list.

Remember to look twice. Acer's Aspire One netbook is a mere $250 at Newegg, but it's dismally configured: only 512MB of RAM and a 3-cell battery. Similar caveats apply to Amazon's $300 HP 2133.

Rob Beschizza

Lori Drew convicted of computer fraud after MySpace taunts

Lori Drew, 49, who used a fake MySpace identity to taunt 13-year-old Megan Meier, was convicted yesterday of computer fraud. Meier killed herself after being bullied online by 16-year old "Josh," who turned out to be a sockpuppet created by Drew to humiliate her.

Jurors aquitted her of felony charges and were deadlocked on a conspiracy charge, returning misdemeanor verdicts on three counts of accessing a computer without authorization.

For Meier's family, it's justice. Evidence at the trial demonstrated that Drew was responsible for a campaign of harassment—against a child—unbelievable in its depth and cruelty. Drew's conviction could be a valuable stepping stone to better laws targeting online harassment.

The court's ruling, however, is a problematic one. Here's Rebecca Lonergan, a law professor at University of Southern California, as interviewed by Reuters:

"The thing about this case that really bothered members of the public is the teenager's suicide, and the involvement of a grown woman in (allegedly) causing that suicide," she said. "And the main problem is that the charges weren't about the suicide. They were about computer hacking, essentially."

Drew's a callous sociopath, but she's not a hacker. In using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to successfully prosecute Drew, prosecutors have established breaking a website's terms of service as a criminal offense. The accused had to travel to MySpace's jurisdicton to defend herself, thanks to another clause in the unread, unsigned 4,350-word legal document that one "agrees" to whenever visiting MySpace.

Legislatures are working to ensure that harassment laws apply to the internet, but "in the meantime" decisions like have a legislative effect of their own. Here are a just a few examples from MySpace's Terms that now seem open to abuse by zealous prosecutors — even if MySpace itself would rather see the whole story just go away.

1. Obscuring MySpace's ads, or putting up your own ads.

2. Being "patently offensive."

3. Posting nudity or violent materials, or posting a link to a website that contains adult content.

4. Posting an email address, telephone number or home address.

5. Glorifying "illegal activities."

6. Promoting a commercial activity without MySpace's prior written consent.

7. Posting a photograph of someone without their consent

8. Promoting your band using sexually suggestive imagery.

9. Asking other MySpace users to embed your music player in their own profiles.

10. Copyright infringement

Dead Teen's Mother: Misdemeanor Convictions a 'Stepping Stone' in Cyberbullying Case [Wired: Threat Level]

Rob Beschizza

Eat

Rob Beschizza

FreeAgent Go drives now come in 10 colors

Seagate's FreeAgent Go drives are offered in 10 bright colors for Christmas, and come with free content and up to 500GB of space.

FreeAgent Go [Seagate]

John Brownlee

MacMall vs. Best Buy: Fight!

This is tempting, but you should hold off: MacMall and Best Buy are in a discount showdown over the price of new Macs, with no clear winner... unless you're looking to buy a MacBook Pro, as I am, in which case, MacMall is blowing Best Buy... [Tobias Funke pause].... away.

Except they kind of aren't: MacMall's prices are based on instant discounts and mail-in rebates. Even in the best of climates, there'd be little chance of you getting that rebate — rebate houses love to dismiss your claims for the most frivolous of technicalities — but given the recent bankrupting of major rebate houses, there's less reason to trust them than ever.

Either way, you should hold off: Apple's web site is teasing their own Black Friday sale, and they have recently promised to match all competitors prices. So worst case scenario is that on Friday you'll get the same discount anyway, and best case is they'll actually beat it.

Black Friday Discounts on Macs [Mac Rumors]

Rob Beschizza

Indamixx: the digital musician's netbook

Indamixx is an unpleasantly-named netbook dedicated to making music—and to keeping a nice sub-$500 price tag. Create Digital Music explains:

...a whole computer, pre-loaded with a bunch of music software. It may not be as powerful as a modern laptop, but it’s also in a cute, smaller form factor you can keep everywhere in case inspiration strikes, or balance on the corner of your Steinway grand

Indamixx Laptop is First Pre-Configured Music Netbook, Running Linux, $499 {CDM]

Rob Beschizza

Mini 9 now offered with HSDPA — in the U.S.

It's Dell with the first mass-market U.S. netbook you can just order with no-nonsense 3G internet. From Lilliputing:

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 has won the race to be the first netbook to include an optional wireless broadband modem and service plan in the United States. While Acer, Asus, Dell, and others have been working with wireless carriers in Europe and other countries for a few months, most netbooks sold in the US have just a WiFi module for wireless connectivity

It's $60 a month, and the upgrade itself costs $125. In other words, you have to get a two-year contract, but you don't get a subsidy on the cellular modem: not a great deal.

Dell Mini 9 Offers 3G Option for $120 (and Hefty Subscription) [Lilliputing]

John Brownlee

Simple DIY VGA to USB power adapter

There's something so beautifully simple about this Instructables hack: simply take a male VGA-VGA adapter and solder it to a spare USB socket, then plug it in. Voila! A USB charger for your laptop. Not, perhaps, universally useful, but for easy phone or MP3 player charging on the road, this seems plenty useful.

VGA to USB Power [Instructables]

Rob Beschizza

Papercraft HAL 9000 toy

Hallo.

HAL9000 [Mr. Hal via Dvice]

John Brownlee

Hong Kong camera phones have Escher-esque zoom out

Photoshop Disasters spotted this Escher-esque ad for some nameless Hong Kong cell phone. I am impressed: not only can it take color pictures in a monochromatic world, but it has a hell of a zoom out lens.

Hong Kong: Amazing New Camera Phone [Photoshop Disasters]

Joel Johnson

Keyboard for Blondes, designed by witless

The "Keyboard for Blondes" is a lame joke made manifest in pink plastic. Several of the keycaps have jokes silkscreened on top — the Enter key is "Yes! I Want It!"; the Backspace is "Oops!" — making the whole thing one of the first bits of pink tat I do not want to own. (Speaking of which, I think I may want to start collecting pink gadgets. It would be a waste, but oh, what a pretty shelf they'd make!)

I'll give them one pass: Ignoring the fact that the "/" and "*" characters have meanings other than mathematical, changing them to "Divide by" and "Times" on the numpad isn't actually that bad of an idea. Then again, who uses the numbpad that isn't already a ten-key expert?

I can't tell you the price because the order page is broken. Somehow I think you won't mind.

Keyboard for Blondes product page (makes stupid music on page load) [KeyboardForBlondes.com via Sorrel Lab via New Launches]

Joel Johnson

"I'm working with Motorola now, and I'm a huge fan of Sarah Palin pornography"

Teresa has discovered that "Michael 'MGOODE' Goode", our infamous Motorola Krave spammer, really likes the idea of Sarah Palin's "winking hands" all over the Krave's touchscreen. He wrote on October 30th on a post about the Sarah Palin pornography ad:

I wonder what kind of phone she's using? I bet it's the "krave" by Motorola. (motorola.com/krave) It's got a HUGE touch screen, so she can get her winking hands all over it.

The post in question [BTownBoyz.Blogspot.com]

Rob Beschizza

Teacher forced into computer-porn plea deal despite proof prosecutor, IT manager misled court

The deal, in which she surrenders her teaching credentials, comes despite a forensic report showing she was not reponsible for the infection of pornographic pop-up windows on the computer in question, and that the school district's IT manager, detectives and prosecutors misled the court.

Amero's motive is obvious: the alternative could have meant spending decades in jail on felony pornography charges.

As for the school district, detectives and prosecutors, however, there is no way to be equivocal about what they've done: they deceived jurors at the culmination of a bullying and inexcusable campaign against a woman whose innocence is overwhelmingly obvious.

Wired's Threat Level blog obtained a copy of the unreleased report (Julie Amero technical review - PDF), which finds that the school's IT manager bullshitted investigators, that the computer in question had no effective anti-malware provisions, and was infested. The distict's software licenses had expired and the jury was also misled in the original case.

Excepts from the report follow:

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

A chicken head makes an excellent camera stabilizer

A simple fix for a lack of a camera stabilizer: attach it to the self-stabilizing noggin of a chicken skull. It does not, of course, work if the noggin is no longer attached to the chicken. With his backyard chicken coop, our happy mutant overlord Mr. Frauenfelder should be able to do something fun with this for MAKE, you'd think.

[via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Fully Loaded Chair is stuffed with shotgun shells

Alexander Reh's Fully Loaded Chair is composed of a solid steel frame stuffed to the bore with 12-gauge shotgun shells. I like the thoughtful design: notice that the payload points away from the sitter. You can be confident in haphazardly flinging yourself into its ensconcement. Another plus: the chair can always be broken apart for ammo in case for Z-Day.

Fully Loaded Chair {Rehhab via Born Rich]

Joel Johnson

Bliss Lights, laser-powered starfield fairy lights

Kirk K. writes about "Bliss Lights", a fancy lighting projector that sprays a moving pattern of lights all over:

I saw these guys at a lighting conference in Vegas this year. They make these little laser emitters that project these little star-like fairy lights everywhere. A fascinating product. I think they have YouTube videos of these things in action. Really neat!

There are several different models on sale at their site, from the $85 Bliss Lights Handheld Laser Wand up the honking 50-milliwatt BL50 for $1,450.

I guess the diffuser on the front of these things steps down the laser light enough that it's safe for the eye, because there's certainly no way you'd be able to avoid catching some in the retina when these things start moving.

Blisslights company page [Blisslights.com]

John Brownlee

Lenovo introducing SMS disable to Thinkpad

Starting in 2009, Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops will be programmed with a feature that allows a stolen or lost laptop to be completely disabled by a simple SMS text message. It's reversible: if you somehow manage to reclaim your laptop, all data and functionality can be restored by a resurrection code.

It's a nice little security feature, but the drawback is obvious: your laptop needs to be tied to a data plan and contain an installed WAN card. So the extra security has a monthly fee. It also means the first thing canny thieves will do when they steal a Thinkpad is pop out the SIM card, but there's realistically slim chance of that: most thieves are idiots. Still, wouldn't a better security measure be not only to disable the laptop, but secretly phone home with location coordinates once the code is activated?

eWeek - Lenovo ThinkPad Notebooks Will Use Text Messages for Additional Security [eWeek via OhGizmo!]

John Brownlee

LED Screwdriver light

This $8.95 screwdriver attachment has a sprays LED light upon the philips head of your choice as you turn it. At first, this seemed useless, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there's often dark, hard-to-light crevices in which screws need to be winded, and that this product was not merely aimed at the midnight carpenter. The screwdriver is not included as a warning, but you'd want to be able to slap this on to anyone in your toolbox anyway.

LED Screwdriver Light [Lee Valley via Book of Joe]

John Brownlee

Neoprene camera wallet folds out into mini tripod

This attractive lightweight neoprene camera case — more like a wallet, really — unfurls into a tiny miniature tripod and costs around £19.95. I like this a lot more than most bulky camera cases I've seen, even if the tripod functionality seems a little useless.

Wrap-Up Tripod [Firebox via Geek Alerts]

Joel Johnson

Gizmine.com: Japanese stuffs for the Western stuffs buyer

The luxury laptop importers behind Dynamism.com have opened up another online outlet, Gizmine.com, which offers a wider selection of strange Japanese tchotchkes, gadgets, and clothing. So if you wanted to know how to buy that strange Tuttuki Bako poking box thing that Brownlee frightened you with a couple of months ago, now you know.

I've always liked the Dynamism folks. Good luck with the shop, guys!

Gizmine front door [Gizmine.com]

John Brownlee

Amazon Kindle 2 by Q1 2009?

Techcrunch — who have been wrong about the Kindle 2 release date before — are trotting out the rumor again, this time for a release in early 2009.

According to Arrington, their earlier reports of a slimmer, longer Kindle with a less cubist keypad were not mistaken: Bezos himself stepped in at the last second to delay an October release due to changes in the software.

A longer textbook edition of the Kindle is also slated for 2009.

All very well and good, and if Arrington keeps on bumping up his guesses on release dates, one of them will be accurate sooner or later. I just wish Amazon would start talking about releasing Kindles abroad.

Amazon Kindle 2 Slates for Early q1 [Techcrunch]

Joel Johnson

Would this iPhone ad make you complain to your government?

I can't decide who is goofiest: the 17 people who complained about Apple's iPhone 3G ad claiming that the phone was "really fast" or the UK's Advertising Standards Authority for listening to them and banning Apple's ad. Unfortunately I haven't seen the ad in question, but if the ASA's previous pedantry is any indication, it's probably being persnickety — especially when Apple has clearly amended its claims from the American ads, which claimed the 3G data speeds to be "twice as fast."

While the above ad is for Australia's Telus Optus, I wouldn't be surprised if it's basically the same ad in the UK. It does present a best case for each of those actions, but it also doesn't claim to be doing it all over 3G, either.

Apple made to drop iPhone advert [BBC] (Thanks, Zoe!)

John Brownlee

Paper bottles for mineral water gluggers

I have never seen plastic bottles themselves as a green evil. They are very useful and imminently reusable... as long as you can convince people that they can refill them from the tap. It's really the insistence of the water industry that tap water is in some way impure and unhealthy that strikes me as the real problem (and, of course, it can be... but most places in the United States, it is fine).

I have mixed feelings about this line of paper water bottles. They look fantastic and they are certainly more green than plastic, but it still ties into the whole notion that you need to buy a new disposable bottle every time you go for a jog. I suspect they are marginally reusable, which off-sets it a bit, but I'll keep a single plastic water bottle washed and filled for months.

I'm doing a lot of needless hand wringing, though. These are very cool. I just wish people would stop gagging at the mere mention of tap water. I like tap water! It can be delicious!

Paper bottle could save the planet [DVICE]

John Brownlee

An infinite collection of Macquariums

A few months back, when I inherited an old Indigo iMac G3, I asked you guys for ideas what to do with it... and have still yet to follow through on any of them. One thing I was resistant to the idea of doing was the timeless Macquarium mod: I suspected it would actually be a lot harder to accomplish than merely filling the thing full of water, as well as being prone to catastrophic failure and a bit cliched to boot.

Still, if you're interested in turning practically any old Mac into a goldfish bowl, this instruction gallery over at the Apple Collection has you covered, from the Mac Classic right down to the Newton. Interestingly, this has finally got me thinking: I wonder how my budgerigar companion Humbert J. Humbird would like living in an iMac cage?

Macquariums [The Apple Collection via Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

The most important gadget in your car

The stereo? The A/C? Dash wiring? Not even close.

Rob Beschizza

Spontaneous gadget generation amid mushroom rings in woods near Worthing, England.

When I was a kid, I found a TRS-80 Model 100, a motorcycle and a giant pig in a forest clearing.

My father and I used to roam the south downs, hills that sloped down to a chain of senescent resort towns on the English Channel. We'd head out at the weekend for a hike around a bronze age hill-fort here or a berried copse there. These were brief idylls of childhood: birdsong and breezy trees, a maze of ancient flint walls and bridle-paths.

Over the years we visited many places, but none so odd as a patch of woodland northwest of Worthing, the town where I grew up.

Details of the trip now escape me. The forest was denser and quieter than most of Sussex's well-groomed wildernesses. Its old trees seemed to absorb sound, heightening the senses, making you pay attention. Perhaps that false sense of stillness is an echo of instict, a deep memorious part of us that wakes up in any primal environment.

Heading from one end to the other, we traipse into a clearing and find a huge pig in the middle of it. It minded its own business, neither fearing us or angry at our presence.

My dad laughed and, as is his wont, crafted a corny story about how it came to be there.

A few yards away, however, we also found a motorcycle, laid down in the bushes. Bear in mind that this is probably a hundred feet from a muddy path, and half a mile from anything one might actually be able to reasonably traverse on motorcycle.

And then, a few feet from that, a TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer, half-hidden by the ivy.

Turned on.

READ THE REST

Xeni Jardin

Joel Reviews T-Mobile Cameo Picture Frame (BBtv Video)

Ahoy, readers -- Xeni Jardin sneaking in a BBtv post here. In this week's Boing Boing Gadgets review episode on Boing Boing tv, Joel Johnson reviews the T-Mobile Cameo Picture Frame, which displays digital photos but also sort of works like a phone. Joel's thumbs were neither decisively up nor down, but rather pensively wrapped around a scotch SORRY, *BOURBON* tumbler. Here is an MP4 for your downloading pleasure. After the jump: a slideshow of the images Boing Boing Gadgets readers submitted to Joel for use in this video review of the Cameo picture frame.

Update: Joel here. One correction from what I said in the video. There is a way to copy all the images off of the device onto an SD card at once. It didn't work for me the first time, but I then I tried it again later and it did. Don't know what I did differently, but it makes a big difference in how easy it is to get images from the Cameo to your computer.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Interviewing Bill Gates

I still can't look Peter Rojas in the eye.

In 2004, Rojas left Gizmodo, the blog he had founded at Nick Denton's Gawker Media, to start Engadget. Denton asked me to step in to blog at Gizmodo while they searched for a full-time replacement. My two-week temporary position turned into a four-week one, then a six-week one, until Denton finally realized that my special brand of cock jokes were as good as Gizmodo deserved and made me the full-time editor.

But I was floundering. Rojas had hired a small team of writers to work at Engadget, while I was running Gizmodo by myself. I planted myself in front of my computer from five in the morning until midnight, breaking only to shovel General Tso Chicken and delivery fajitas down my gullet. I gained thirty pounds. I couldn't sleep at night, my back contorted with worry. My girlfriend and I barely slept together; she would gently try to coax me into relaxation, but I'd be too preoccupied with conceiving my next linkbait story to register her supplications.

I'd post 30 stories a day. Engadget would post 45. I'd post 45. Engadget would post 60. They were winning.

Rojas — a person who I still don't know in the least; someone whose sitting down amicably at my table at last year's SXSW prompted me to spring up, sputter a drunken unintelligible excuse and literally run away — haunted me, a fiendish specter who outwitted me at every move, whose machinations I saw behind every bad turn.

I was fucking nuts.

As CES 2005 rolled around, it was clear that Gizmodo was losing the gadget blog war. Although they never publicly exposed their readership numbers, it was obvious that Engadget was pulling ahead in traffic. And I knew through various channels that they were going to be heading to the Consumer Electronics Show in force, while I was going to be out there by myself.

I was ready to lose, though. Although I had been running Gizmodo for less than a year I was already about to burn out. If I'd had any inkling of the outcome over the next few years — Engadget's sale to AOL, the growth of Gizmodo with a proper staff, and eventual irrelevance of any sort of "win" between the two sites — I might have been able to keep my head on straight. But instead I saw the end of my short career in blogging, the first job I'd ever truly loved, about to end.

Susie and I sat in the back of towncar on the way to La Guardia to catch our plane to Vegas. She'd waited patiently by my side over the past few months. I thought perhaps we'd be able to catch an evening or two alone in Las Vegas in between all of the madness of the trade show. We needed it.

As I leaned back into the fake leather seat, my phone rang.

"Hey, Joel? It's Larry Cohen from Microsoft. I know it's sort of last second, but would you be interested in interviewing Bill Gates at CES?"

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

In John's post about Steve Jobs' purported tantrum, a commenter "MGOODE08" made this remark:

I'm so glad my boss isn't like that! I'm working with Motorola right now, and became a huge fan of the Krave (motorola.com/krave). I especially like the full touch screen display and html web browser. It's awesome!

On the 14th, he made this comment:

Oh man this looks awesome! I hope they release a version for the Krave by Motorola. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have became a huge fan of the phone (motorola.com/krave). With a full list of features, like a full touch screen, I can't stop obsessing over it.

"M Goode" loves this phone so much that he posted this at GigaOm:

This is a very good idea. I think it could be applied to any phones with a similar format. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have become a huge fan of the Krave. It has some of the same features, and I think a built in micropayment system would be great. It’s a fairly new phone, so if you haven’t seen it yet it’s online at motorola.com/krave. I wonder if they will jump on the bandwagon when/if a micropayment system is implemented.

When he's not on tech sites, though, "M Goode" loves to relax with a good game:

I wish this game would get released for a mobile gaming platform, especially the Krave. I have been a fan of this franchise since it’s first release, and would love to have it on a cell phone, especially the krave. Ever since I started working with Motorola, I have become a huge fan of the krave. Has anyone else seen it?(motorola.com/krave) It’s so loaded with features, most important of which is the full touch screen layout. It’s DEFINITELY worth checking out.

He's also really into the indie gaming scene:

I can’t wait to see this on a mobile phone platform! it would be so cool to see ti on a Krave! Has anyone else seen it? (motorola.com/krave) It’s a flip phone with a touch screen, 2 MP camera, full html browser and bluetooth functionality. Definitely worth checking out.

But uh oh! He might be considering switching from a Krave to the new Nokia:

My favorite phone right now is the Krave by Motorola. I became a huge fan of the Krave once I started working with Motorola. You can check out the full spec list online at motorola.com/krave. It’s definitely strong competition with it’s full touch screen

(He is also apparently working for Cirque Du Soleil, but we'll let them pass for the moment because I love acrobats.)

"Follow the money," they say, but in this case we don't have to, because all we have to do is follow the link. Motorola, if you could be so kind as to tell your viral marketer to fuck right off we'd sure appreciate it. Perhaps you could spend the money instead on making your phones something that people actually want to buy.

P.S., I love our readers. Check out the replies they immediately started making:

I'm so glad my boss isn't like that! I'm working for Burger King right now, and became a huge fan of the Mushroom and Swiss Steakhouse Burger. I especially like the cheese and mushrooms. It's awesome!

I'm so glad my boss isn't like that! I'm working for a pimp on the corner of wellwood and barrington and became a huge fan of Allie and her turrid backstroke technique. I especially like the pop and rock. It's awesome!

I'm so glad my boss isn't like that! I'm working with Cryptozoologia right now, and became a huge fan of the Trepanasaurus (Cryptozoologia.com/ Trepanasaurus). I especially like the way that, after the dinosaur-anteater hybrid rips off the top of a person's head with its sharp teeth, it can suck out its victim's brain with its nose. It's awesome!

John Brownlee

A private moment with Steve Jobs

My friend Mark Harrison is an intriguing sort: a globe-trotting alpha male who spends winters rubbing elbows with bikini models down in Mauretius and summers either indulging in sport in Berlin or piloting yachts around Cape Horn. He's also got some fantastic stories about his run-ins with various eccentric business tycoons. One of those tycoons is Steve Jobs.

According to Mark, the year was 2000, and the company he worked for had set up a meeting with Jobs. Their pitch was simple: while Apple at that time owned the educational market up until the end of grade school, they completely lost all of their users by the time high school started, where computer labs became dominated by PCs. Their proposition was simple: team up with Apple and leverage their presence in thousands of schools to expand Apple's educational market share.

From the very second he sat down with them, Jobs seemed agitated. The second his ass hit the chair, Jobs began rocking back and forth autistically. But as Mark's colleagues made blunt and undeniable appraisals of Apple's presence in high school computer labs, the rocking dramatically increased, then exploded... along with Jobs.

A purpling shade of apoplectic, Jobs launched to his feet, flecking the table with spittle. "You're shit! Your company's shit! It's nothing compared to mine!" he screamed, an outstretched finger jutting accusingly up and down. Eventually, his fury was spent, and the situation was defused by some politically expedient cooing noises.

Still, it's all just so Jobs, isn't it? Ever since I heard the anecdote, I can't help but think of Jobs that way. Turgid with rage and quivering in front of a PC or DAP or mobile phone, spraying its display with spittle: "You're shit! SHIT! DO YOU HEAR ME? Your operating system's nothing compared to mine."

John Brownlee

I Was A Pre-Teen Christian Supercomputer!

Let me tell you a little bit about Colby.

Ever since I was ten, Colby has been a part of me, like a small, sentient circuit board lodged in my brain. He wasn't always like this. When I first met him, he was autonomous: a Moloch Machine, a literal deus ex. Beneath the brim of his red baseball cap, unblinking eyes bulbously stared, plunged, hypnotized. In a contractionless castrati monotone, he sing-songed his teachings, and over many weeks and months, I memorized them until some remnant of his programming seeped into my own.

And who was Colby? A giant Christian supercomputer, of course.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

1980s-style pin clock for unrepentant yuppies, cenobites

Remember Pin Art, the classic 1980s executive toy that invariably depicted a handprint or the side of someone's face? Now they make a clock that displays the time in similar fashion. It has 3,000 pins, requires D-cell batteries, and costs a brow-furrowing $70.

You Can Hear a Pin Clock [Uncommon Goods]

Rob Beschizza

Boast love of obsolete technology with T-shirt

To be proud of one's status as a has-been is a smug pleasure we should all look forward to. Signals' T-Shirt, "Traveling 33 RPM in an iPod world," could even be purchased now and then stored until about 2040. Finally worn, it will by that time be completely baffling to everyone, even oneself.

"Traveling celluloid cylinders in a punchcard world," anyone?

Product Page [Signals]

Rob Beschizza

Miniature train set hardly a Lionel, but it fits in your pocket

On close inspection, this otherwise unspectacular stocking stuffer turns out to have two miniature trains whirling around its rim. Apparently, the wind-up mechanism plays "I've been working on the railroad" when the timepiece is opened. Thrilling stuff!

Mr. Christmas Musical Animated Train Pocket Watch [QVC]

Rob Beschizza

A transparent automatic tape dispenser

As much as I love these pleasantly youthful transparent gadgets from The Wireless Catalog, I'm not entirely convinced that a stapler or tape dispenser requires quite so many moving parts. Or, indeed, that they need to cost nearly $40.

Tape Dispenser

Rob Beschizza

A clear starry night, for when you don't have one

The sight of it is somehow both enticing and repulsive: an umbrella sewn throughout with an orderly twinkling of glowing stars.

Our picture here is from a print catalog, which casts it in earnest tones—"The world's most spectacular umbrella, thanks to sophisticated fiber-optic technology"—but it is the example below, from a less measured source ($29.98!), that brings out its true class.

John Brownlee

NES controller turned bicycle reflector

There is no other controller as infinitely moddable as the platonic, perfect design of the original NES joypad: wonderfully angular, its pleasing, barely egonomic symmetry outlined along the edges in red and white. This bicycle-rear NES reflector doesn't do much but use the controller as a case for some scintillating LEDs, but it will — at least — alert velocipedic tail gaters of your Paperboy skills. The man who can best tornados, break dancer, even the Grim Reaper himself is not to be messed with.

Bike Flasher made from NES Controller [Instructables via Hack-A-Day]

Joel Johnson

Lionel NYC MTA Subway train set with working lights, station announcements

Lionel is selling its first-ever subway train set, modeled after the New York MTA's R-27 subway cars that were in service up until the early 1990s. These are the same cars that were re-painted red in the '70s and '80s in an effort to discourage graffiti, earned them the nickname "Redbirds". (Other cars were painted the "Deep Gunn" red, too.)

According to Wikipedia, the R27s were "'Protestant' married pairs, which means that they were coupled together as pairs." The Lionel replicas are Protestant pairs, as well.

The "O" scale cars are finished in a kale green enamel, have real working opening doors and also speak out the subway stops recorded from the subway itself. The four-car (two pairs) set can be had for around $600.

A Model Subway, but the Announcements Are Clear [NYTimes via Animal]

Image: Chang W. Lee/NYTimes

John Brownlee

Internet able coffee machine runs Windows XP

This coffee maker runs Windows XP. Overkill, of course: Windows 3.11 would have clearly sufficed.

Windows XP Coffee Machine [Site via DVICE

John Brownlee

LG working on multi-touch displays... but are they for iMacs?

There's reason enough to be skeptical that Apple views multi-touch laptops and desktop displays as a sure thing, including comments from Jobs himself saying "just because we could doesn't mean we should." Still, with HP of all companies soundly beating Apple to the punch, it's not too hard to imagine that a touchscreen iMac may well be among the refreshes introduced to the line at January's Macworld, along with quad-core Intel processors and lower power usage.

Some butt to the scuttle, then: Stuff just took a tour of LG's Korea factory, and spotted some multi-touch capable displays. That doesn't mean that they are being made for Cupertino, of course, but it puts it, at least, in the realm of possibilioty.

Does LG's multitouch display mean a touchscreen iMac is coming? [Stuff.tv via Slashgear]

Rob Beschizza

Risilights: the nearest thing yet to transparent stone you can actually buy?

"Translucent cement" is finally available to buy — if you're willing to pony up $140 a brick. Furthermore, it's "kind of" cement, too, with the brick being best described as a kind of electrical lamp themed on see-through stone, but not actually comprising much of it.

RisiLights are used to illuminate walkways, steps and terraces. RisiLights are available to match both the Pisa2 and StackStone retaining wall systems (may also be used with RomanPisa or RomanStack Ashlar retaining wall systems).

They are manufactured to the highest quality standards and are shipped complete with instructions. The only additional items needed are the light bulb and the appropriate underground electrical cable. RisiLights are ready to be installed using a conventional 110V power supply. If you prefer, a 12V power supply may be used, but the light socket provided will need to be replaced with an appropriate low voltage light socket.

A timer or photoelectric control unit may be used with RisiLights, but should be installed at the power source. This allows all of the units in that circuit to be centrally controlled. Multiple units of RisiLights may be connected in a parallel circuit with a second external wire continuing to the next light through the second opening in the rear of the unit.

Still, it's pretty! Check out this pic from Risistone's catalog:

[RisiLights via Oh Gizmo]

Rob Beschizza

Most frightening CES booth ad so far

CES, the consumer tech show held in January each year, presents a few great new products and a lot of middling ones. Western purchasing officers chat with suppliers from far away, deals are cut, and LEDs furiously blink. And there are polyester laptop bags: more of them than you can possibly imagine.

Is MacWorld the same week as CES again next year? Why, yes, it is. A cyber-oreo goes to anyone who remembers what happened the last time these planets aligned.

Product Page (website made of pure flash, of course!) [Golla]

Joel Johnson

2nd-gen iPod Touch's faster processor gives clue about Touch platform progression

One of the presumptions about the iPhone and iPod Touch hardware is that the hardware is all essentially the same across the platform. (Ignoring obvious differences like the lack of a phone or camera in the iPod Touch, of course.) But Touch Arcade is reporting that the second-generation iPod Touch has a modestly faster CPU than its predecessors, a 532MHz ARM chip instead of the 412MHz version in the first-generation iPod Touch and the iPhone 3G.

For day-to-day use, this extra 120MHz may not end up making that much of a difference, but Handheld Games CEO Thomas Fessler reports that internal testing at the company reveals that the faster iPod Touch can render about 1,500 polygons on each of their 3D TouchSports Tennis [above] models compared to around 1,000 on the iPhone 3G. Moreover, there are slight differences in rendering speeds across all models, with the original iPhone EDGE running slightly faster than the original iPod Touch.

Details, perhaps, but it indicates an answer to one of my questions about the entire platform: Will Apple ever cut firm generational lines into the platform, removing compatibility for some software on older models, or will they continually make modest upgrades generation by generation? While we've only two generations of the platform to go by, the differences portend the latter will be the path taken by Apple. That's probably better overall, but it also implies that in the future — say, a couple of years from now — there could be iPhone and iPod Touch models with enough additional horsepower that some software, especially games, might have to be written for one generation or another.

2nd Generation iPod Touch Faster than iPhone [TouchArcade.com]

Rob Beschizza

Square traffic lights

It's about time someone responded to the inefficient spitefulness of round traffic lights.

The shape of traffic lights has barely changed since they were invented—there have always been three round lights: red, yellow and green. Initially, the sections were round simply because this allowed the spherical bulp inside light the glass evenly.

Today traffic lights use superbright light diodes that can be arranged in any way. And the sections are plastic, which also means any shape can be created.

Our idea is to produce square traffic lights. This can make the signals more easily noticeable and recognizable, with larger lit area for the same overall dimensions.

They're pitching the idea as a way for a city to distinguish itself without substantial extra cost.

Luxofor traffic lights design concept [Art Lebedev via DVICE]

Rob Beschizza

3G internet on the HP Mini 1000

HP's Mini 1000 netbook supports 3G, but you have to install a hard-to-find WWAN driver. Instructions on how to get it running are posted at Pocketables by dplxy, who reports that speeds on AT&T are O.K. (about 1.5Mbps) and battery life sucks, but it's really HP's fault for only offering a cruddy 3-cell battery to begin with.

How to get 3G working on the HP Mini 1000 [Pocketables]

John Brownlee

Beer bladder product shot expertly identifies its target consumer: the New Jersey guido

Know your guido! Your life may depend on it. Look for the tell-tale signs: the torn, skin-tight blue jeans, boxer shorts clearly exposed. The puffy sneakers and sockless ankles. The orange skin and jutting teeth stained with bronzer. The grease-stained bandana. The waxed chest and ruddy areolae. And, of course, the $39.99 beer bladder crammed down the front of the slacks, its long plastic hose snaked suggestively out of the zipper.

Still confused? This is the North American guido's mating dance, as flaunted on the boardwalks of the New Jersey shore each and every day:

The Beer Belly Beer Dispenser [Foolish Gadgets]

Rob Beschizza

Smut Wallpaper Universe removed from AppStore

Apple removed another program from the AppStore over the weekend: Wallpaper Universe is the latest for the chop.

And so the 'net embarsk on yet another round of the exact same hand-wringing over Apple's policies. Why do people not understand that you are working for Apple when you develop for the iPhone? It's not even trying to trick people into thinking the ecosystem is open, or that devs aren't unpaid work-made-for-hire: Apple's right to make arbitrary and inscrutable decisions is right there in the contract you sign!

This is not an argument for Apple's shiny golden godhood, but for "If you don't like it, don't do it."

Photo: Venturebeat

Sex can’t sell on the iPhone: Wallpaper Universe pulled from App Store [Industry Standard]

Rob Beschizza

$100 32GB solid state drive for Mini 9

Dell now offers a 32GB solid state drive option for it's Mini 9 netbook. It's a $100 upgrade — a nice option, but pricey enough to make it worth researching similarly-priced alternatives if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Patriot's SSD drives, for example, offer blazing-fast write speeds and are frequently hankered for by netbook owners annoyed at the use of cheap flash to bring system prices down.

Inspiron Mini 9 [Dell via Engadget and Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Hello Kitty charges $891 for a netbook

Manufactured by the same mysterious and omnipresent Taiwanese company that makes and markets all spec-identical netbooks, the HK C1 does not deviate a jot from the standard paradigms: an Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive and Windows XP in a 10-inch chassis. Value: $350, give or take. But slap a Hello Kitty decal on the lid — the mute, anthropomorphic swaztika of Japan's character culture — and you can apparently get away with charging almost $600 more.

Hello Kitty C1 [Geekstuff4u via Slippery Brick]

Rob Beschizza

Screw $10k MAME cabinets

Class warfare time!

The cigarette-burned, peeling plywood contraptions of yesteryear have been transmuted into sanitized fashion accessories for the rich. Born Rich assembles a selection of twelve luxurious table-top arcade games. At first sight, it's another paean to MAME, the software that allows anyone to play these old games on commodity PC hardware. But on second thoughts, all of these things are as obviously unplayable as they are expensive.

For the price of just one of these, you can grab half a dozen classic cabinets — including table-tops — in perfect nick.

Top 12 luxurious arcade gaming tables [Born Rich]

Joel Johnson

Video: David Cross for AOL (1995)

If only this were funny.

Joel Johnson

Frying pan with built-in thermometer

There's much to dissuade you from purchasing this pan: it's fifty bucks; you have to remove the thermometer from its handle before washing; you can buy an infrared thermometer for nearly the same price that would work on all your pans. Yet for some, this pan could be just the thing for teaching the basics, for learning the difference between sweating and sautéing, frying and burning.

Digital Thermometer Pan catalog page [Thinkgeek.com]

John Brownlee

Macworld reviews Scosche Firewire-to-USB converter (Verdict: better than replacing your car stereo)

Macworld reviews a little dongle that I've been curious about for some time: the Scosche Passport, a Firewire-to-USB converter. It doesn't seem to do what I want it to do — transform my dustily unplunged Firewire port into a more useful USB slot — but it seems invaluable for owners of iPod-compatible audio systems who have been bitten by Apple's new iPod charging circuitry

The Passport is a 1.5-inch-long adapter that essentially routes FireWire-circuitry power to the USB-power pins of your iPod or iPhone’s dock-connector port. You just plug your car audio system’s dock-connector cable into the bottom of the Passport, and then plug the Passport’s dock-connector plug into the bottom of your iPod or iPhone. Your new iPod or iPhone now charges properly. (Scosche lists compatible car-audio systems on the product’s Web site; there are a small number of car systems it doesn't work with.)

In my testing with a range of older iPod accessories, the Passport worked well, letting me charge and play the latest iPod and iPhone models. The Passport even worked with the new video-output circuitry on these iPod and iPhone models, which require dock-connector video accessories to include special “authentication” circuitry; accessories that included this circuitry successfully accessed the player’s video output through the Passport.

Scosche Passport [Macworld via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Knit lightsabers, patterns available

May the fleece be with you.

Star Wars Knitsabers Pattern PDF [Corbonscoring@etsy via Geekologie]

John Brownlee

Samsung demonstrates fully foldable OLED cell phone screen

The footage is a bit grainy, and once you've seen ten seconds you've seen it all, but this clip captured at the Samsung booth of last week's FPD International show basically shows the future of displays: bright, fully-foldable OLED screens.

We're years from seeing this technology in action, but I can't wait: fully foldable screens mean the 17-inch netbooks of 2011.

Rob Beschizza

Best Buy has killer deal on MacBooks and Pros

There's a super deal on at Best Buy for MacBooks and MacBook Pros: $100 off new machines, and you can pick up immediately at your local. You have to put it in the cart to see the price. [Best Buy via CrunchGear]

Joel Johnson

Gibson Dark Fire can sound like any guitar

Gibson's "Dark Fire" guitar is their latest, most tricked-out guitar, marrying on sound processor called "Chameleon Tone" to the second version of their self-tuning "Robot" technology. It even has a snazzy "Master Control Knob" with a LED display on top. Three pickups, a piezo-acoustic in the neck, Burstbucker 3 (a humbucker) in the bridge, and a singlecoil soapbar can be combined for a variety of sounds. ("Every imaginable guitar sound," they claim.)

There's no price announced for the Dark Fire yet, but it will surely be in the $3k range based on prices of the Robot guitars. And if you bought one of the Robots but would like to have it upgraded, Gibson is promising a reasonable upgrade path for not much more than the cost of the new hardware.

The Dark Fire is set to be released on December 15th. I look forward to all its onboard technology becoming more commonplace in the future, so that I can buy something similar for a few hundred dollars.

Dark Fire product page [Gibson]

Previously • Gibson Robot Guitar Official
• Gibson Powertune Self-Tuning Guitars
• N-Tune In-Guitar Tuner

John Brownlee

Early 60's Mellotron demo video: "It's a musical computer."

This demonstration video of the original Mellotron sample-playback keyboard of the early 60's reminds us E-popping, glitter huffing rave kiddies that electronic music was once the exclusive domain of elderly British codgers, chomping on pipes and cramming pocket squares into their plaid blazers as they contemplated the future of electronic polka.

John Brownlee

Soundwave wedding bands etch romantic whispers

Given the opportunity to immortalize one's love in a pithy engraveable slogan, almost everyone seems compelled to maudlin cliche. The calligraphic curlicues of "Forever yours" or "Eternal love" are etched into the bands of millions of lovers who — if not for the paucity of imaginative romance in the whole romance industry — might find a truer and less predictable expression of their love in almost anything at all, from an imprint of a co-mingled genetic sequence to the words "Fine ass bitch." Just about anything is more romantic than the rote repetition of cliche.

On the other hand, I really like these simple engraved wedding bands by Japanese designer Sakura Koshimizu, who takes the waveform of a lover's romantic whisper and fires it out of laser to be etched in gold, silver or steel. What the waveform actually says can be anything — an honest expression of fondness or the usual puked-up romantic pablum — but it captures more than just words: it freezes the tone of those early infatuated 'I love yous' to be traced and compared for years afterwards, even after you forget what the words sounded like full of meaning.

Yeah, I'm a big, cynical softie.

Yes, I Do Soundwave Ring [Random Good Stuff]

John Brownlee

QuickPwn released for iPhone 2.2

With the lightning efficiency of a neurosurgeon lopping out the medulla oblongata and replacing it with an Arduino installed in an Altoids tin, the Dev Team have released a quick update to their QuickPwn tool, allowing iPhone users to upgrade to a jailbroken 2.2.

There's some caveats: if you've got an iPhone 3G and have any hope of carrier unlock, don't upgrade. The iPod Touch 2G still isn't supported. But I upgraded my jailbroken iPhone 2G the other day without a hitch, so everyone should be safe.

Incidentally, I'm a big fan of the new App Store "update all" button.

Dev Team [Official Site]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Baron Impossible

[via Concept Robots, sister blog to our favorite Concept Ships]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

• Windows Home Server – HP EX470 MediaSmart Server with 512MB DDR, 500GB HDD, Windows Home Server, for $300. Normally about $500 or so. These are backup/network devices, not computers. [Slickdeals]

• Espresso Makers – A large portion of the higher-end espresso makers on Amazon are about 20% off. [Amazon]

• Toys – Apparently Toys 'R' Us is having a big sale that should be as good as their Black Friday prices. This includes deals on videogames. [Bargainist]

• Home Theater Receiver – Sony STR-DG820 7.1-channel home theater receiver with HDMI switching (four inputs) for $215, shipped. A fine bit of hardware, although you'll need speakers, too. [Dealnews]

• Amazon Sale – Amazon will be doing Black Fridayesque deals all week, they say. We'll see! [Amazon]

• The Killers – Get The Killers new album "Day & Age", released today, from the Amazon MP3 store for $4. [Day & Age]

• Camera – Today's Woot is the Pentax Optio V20 8MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom for $115, shipped.

Joel Johnson

Divers fix deep pipe under NYC

Don't miss story in the Times today about the steps being taken to repair one of our major water tunnels:

For this, the city has enlisted six deep-sea divers who are living for more than a month in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.

Plumber’s Job on a Giant’s Scale: Fixing New York’s Drinking Straw [NYTimes]

Rob Beschizza

How to leave evidence: hire hit-men via text messages

Murder, plotted via text messages. Kevin Poulsen quotes Oklahoman Tonia Mullins:

"Don't care who as long as they can in no way be traced 2 me or u guys through someone else," the 32-year-old Oklahoma woman texted a would-be intermediary. "Price is going 2 be the big factor here. What r we lookin at?"

Seven to nine years, it turns out. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The sharp edge of the case is that Mullins' activities inherently created a record of evidence. Voice recordings are also now a text, but this doofus made it easy.

Fed Blotter: Murder-For-Hire Plot Unfolds In Text Messages [Wired: Threat Level]

Rob Beschizza

Peek email-only handset is Wired's gadget of 2008

Peek, the thin email-only handset with a full keyboard, is Wired's gadget of 2008. From Peek's Amol Sarva:

Wired Magazine has had a huge impact on me over the years; I remember the first issue I ever saw. I remember dreaming of doing something that might merit them writing about it.

So we were honored when Wired's editors selected Peek for their holiday wish list, and chose us to be featured in their tightly-curated Wired Store in New York this year.

But....when we got December's issue, it floored us. Peek is Wired's #1 Gadget of 2008.

I liked it a lot, too: see us buff it good. Real good. If you don't have a BlackBerry, or otherwise don't want a smartphone with an expensive contract, its super. There are just two serious issues: (1) deleting email is slow, making busy or spam-infested account management a pain, and (2) it does not have IMAP. But it does have instant messaging, thanks to a recent firmware upgrade.

The story isn't up yet at wired.com, it seems: you'll have to catch it on the stands, the old-fashioned way!

Rob Beschizza

Behold the Meat Cannon of Philadelphia

How fitting that on a day where Joel looked up "irrumatio" in the dictionary, we get a pitch for "The Hot Dog launcher, possibly the greatest gadget ever."

After years of R&D, not to mention hundreds of packs of premium grade hotdogs, Hatfield has perfected a meat cannon that can propel a warm, juicy dog from the infield to the nosebleed section - in the blink of an eye.

There's more on the launcher at grillthegoodness.com.

Rob Beschizza

An MP3 player in the shape of a nut

Attention: Nextar has developed an mp3 player contrived to resemble a peanut. It comes in five colors, costs $20 for a 1GB model or $30 for 2GB, and is to be found at Staples and Kmart.

I can think of a few things it resembles more than a peanut.

MA588 [Nextar]

Rob Beschizza

Coupon sharer wins lawsuit

John Stottlemire of Mountain View, Calif., discovered that by simply by cutting out part of the codes entered into Coupons Inc's software, one could generate extra printable coupons. When he told people about this product flaw, the firm sued him, under the absurd premise that he had circumvented digital copyright protections in their software.

The silliness of the claim is such that without even hiring a lawyer, he forced it to drop its case.

"I defended myself in federal court against a company who solicited the services of two separate law firms," Stottlemire said. "And in my opinion, I kicked their ass."

As the case was dropped, the question remains as to whether or not changing a URL or other code, to find or generate "unauthorized" results, amounts to circumvention of a digital lock.

Coupon Hacker Defeats DMCA Suit [Wired: Threat Level]

Rob Beschizza

Rotato Express, an automatic vegetable peeler

Potato Express is a delicate-looking kitchen gadget that, given a vegetable to embrace, strips it of its skin.

Rotato Express automatically peels potatoes, fruits and other vegetables in seconds. Puts an end to thick peels and waste. Simply skewer potato on bottom spike and lower the top spike. Then, push the button to start peeling - automatically stops when complete. Skin peels off in one continuous piece. Ultra safe design with no need to hold or touch while peeling

It's cheap, too, at $30. But it's also sold out. Boing Boing Gadgets is solicitiing suggestions for unusual things to attempt to peel with it.

ROTATO EXPRESS [Taylor Gifts via RGS]

Rob Beschizza

Bulldog clip iPhone stand

Instructions are available at instructables for Rich Sipe's cleverly minimalist iPhone stand, but you shoud figure it out for yourself. It's a puzzle!

How To: iPhone Binder Clip Stand [Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

Leaf keychain contains secret speaker

I'd want Bird Electron's gorgeous leather leaf keychain even if it didn't have an inbuilt speaker.

Product Page [Bird Electron via Akihabara News]

Rob Beschizza

A splash of paint for Dell's netbook

Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 just went to the art gallery and came home with a new paint job courtesy of Tristan Eaton. As the first big shop to do this, Dell seeks to underscore its transformation into a PC design haus: Sony, for example, doesn't even have a Netbook out, yet.

Tristan Eaton designed his first toy -- for Fisher-Price -- at age18, and has since become a driving force in the world of “designer toys.” He was the head designer for the influential Kidrobot brand and designed some of its most influential “art toys,” including Dunny and Munny. He currently is the President and Creative Director of Thunderdog Studios, a New York-based designer toy brand and creative agency. Eaton joins Mike Ming, Joseph Amedokpo, Bruce Mau and Siobhan Gunning as contemporary artists reinterpreting the PC for a new generation.

How long until print-on-demand laptops? Someone make it happen! Or something in green.

Dell Adds Eye Candy to Inspiron Mini Mix with Cherry Red, Pretty Pink and Tristan Eaton Designs [Dell via Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

My Racer, a Korean handheld gaming console

One of these days, we'll do a colossal roundup of budget gaming consoles like Korea's MPGIO My Racer, which has a 320x240 pixel display and plays Adobe Flash lite files. It comes with a subway map, MP3 player and personal info basics. It's 90,000 Won, about $70.

Something like this, able to play real Flash without sputtering, would have a lot of potential in the U.S. if served by a solid application store and sold at a similarly throwaway price.

MYRACER [Aving]

John Brownlee

iPod cigarette case fits Marlboros, cloves, magic jay bones alike

A fantastically carcinogenic use for an old iPod: turn it into a cigarette case.

This is a lot cooler if you smoke [Tulip Society]

John Brownlee

STC wireless router vase

There's plenty of reason to laugh at this combination router / vase's breathless press release: "The STC Router successfully bridges the gap between lifestyle and technology with it’s flower vase functionality!" the designers enthuse. Indeed... and my Time Capsule successfully bridges the gap between lifestyle and technology with its wharf rat crushing facility.

That all said, I still think this is pretty neat. Certainly, I arch a quavering eyebrow at filling my router with liquid, but given the fact that my router does nothing except blink silently on a small table in my hallway, I'm just in touch with my feminine side enough to think how nice it would be to have sunflowers there instead.

Wireless router vase by STC [Dezeen]

John Brownlee

Jonathan Hoefler on the 441-year life of the pixel

In a great post by Jonathan Hoefler titled "On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel", Giovanni Ostaus' alphabetical bitmap embroidery from 1567 is juxtaposed against modern typographical design:

Renaissance ‘lace books’ have much to offer the modern digital designer, who also faces the challenge of portraying clear and replicable images in a constrained environment. Ostaus’s alphabet follows the cardinal rule of bitmaps, which is to always reckon the height of a capital letter on an odd number of pixels. (Try drawing a capital E on both a 5×5 grid and a 6×6, and you'll see.) Ostaus ignored the second rule, however, which is “leave space for descenders.”

I’d planned to introduce this item with a snappy headline that juxtaposed the old and the new — for your sixteenth-century Nintendo! — before reflecting on the pixel’s moribund existence. Pixels were the stuff of my first computer, which strained to show 137 of them in a square inch; my latest cellphone manages 32,562 in this same space, and has 65,000 colors to choose from, not eight. Its smooth anti-aliased type helps conceal the underlying matrix of pixels, which are nearly as invisible as the grains of silver halide on a piece of film. And its user interface reinforces this illusion using a trick borrowed from Hollywood: it keeps the type moving as much as possible.

On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel [Typography via Daring Fireball]

John Brownlee

Inside Nokia's S&M dungeon

Gizmodo has a great photo gallery up of the Nokia Damage Test Labs, where they bake, burn, spray, drop, bend, crack, freeze, acid dip, explode and otherwise maim mobile phone prototypes, all aimed to scientifically gauge the precise conditions under which they can deny you a warranty repair.

A Look At The Nokia Damage Test Labs [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Vintage vinyl CD packaging kit

Although the RIAA would doubtlessly disagree, I still find mix CDs to be a rather charming and thoughtful gift: since my parents have retired, I have tended to ask my father to make me CDs of tracks pulled from his extensive jazz collection over his natural inclination to buy me box sets. One problem with burnt CDs as gifts though is the presentation: it's hard to make them truly look good, which is why this $17 Vintage Vinyl CD Packaging Kit appeals: sure, it's just an attractive sleeve, but that makes all the difference. I really like the colors: they remind me of the Acme Novelty Library.

Vintage Vinyl CD Packaging Kit [Fred Flare via Geek Sugar]

John Brownlee

Meet the Spreadheads... their nosebleeds are your condiments

Crunchgear's John Biggs just received this bizarre PR dispatch for "Spread Heads." Even I think the visual metaphor here is absolutely disgusting: squeeze a horrible otherkin until thick, gelatinous ropes of gore spray from its nasal passages.

Spreadheads plus “Today’s lesson in PR pitching” [Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

iPhone OS 2.2 update out now

Rather unexpectedly, Apple has rolled out firmware 2.2 in the middle of the night, which brings Google Street View, over-the-air podcast downloads, mass transit directions and location sharing by e-mail to iPhones and iPod Touches.

Needless to say, if you're jailbroken, you'll want to wait. The Pwnage team don't anticipate any problems, but they stress that a safe jailbreaking path is not imminent.

Joel Johnson

Video: Microphone Fellatio

Nothing's shocking — except phantom power. [via BuzzFeed]

Joel Johnson

RIM BlackBerry Storm reviewed (Verdict: Not even a BlackBerry killer)

RIM's BlackBerry "Storm" smartphone — the one with the clickable touchscreen, but no QWERTY keyboard — fell through the reviews hamper today. The reviews almost all read as guardedly positive at first glance, but even a cursory reading finds big flaws in the Storm's interface.

Mossberg said that "neither I, nor any of the several BlackBerry addicts I asked to try it out, considered typing on the Storm’s keyboard to be very similar to using the keyboard of a traditional full-sized BlackBerry," but ultimately concluded that it's "another good option for anyone who is looking to buy one of the new, more powerful, pocket computers."

Matt Buchanan said "I kind of came to hate typing on it" and called it "tiring".

Joshua Topolsky, quested if the clicky touchscreen could "actually improve the experience of using this sort of device -- and in our opinion, they do not."

Danny Dumas says the laggy operating system "moves like a tranquilized yak," and that it's not as good as RIM's own Bold, let alone the iPhone.

Yardena Arar, from PC World described it as "awkward and disappointing," and that "People who were hoping for a credible iPhone alternative fortified with BlackBerry's strengths as a mobile tool for corporate travelers will likely find the Storm a disappointment."

Laptop Mag's Mark Spoonauer knocks the "sluggish performance," issuing a verdict that stops short of outright condemnation: "The one thing that most BlackBerry users have grown accustomed to—a superior keyboard—is frustrating to use on the Storm."

Peter Ha at CrunchGear won't be ditching his current model: " I wish the Storm were the real iPhone killer, but it’s not..."

So, who, apart from Mossberg, liked it?

Boy Genius Report goes back and forth at length, but its firmest points are the positive ones: "This is the best phone to ever touch Verizon Wireless so far. If you’re a Verizon Wireless subscriber and a dumb phone won’t cut it, you’d be pretty air-headed to not pick this bad boy up above any other smartphone in Verizon’s lineup. ... "

David Ciccone at Mobility Today offers unreserved praise: "We will not compare the iPhone to the Storm since the iPhone is clearly not a full fledged business messaging device. If you are in the market for a new phone the Storm definitely has to be on your holiday list this year! Great job RIM!"

John Brownlee

Joel's Christmas list, entry 39: Wolverine blade claws

$40. For the death metal, flea market sociopath and multi-tasking, Weapon X mohel alike.

Tomahawk Skull Gauntlet [Budk via Slippery Brick]

John Brownlee

One-a-day cod liver oil calendar

While cod liver oil has been clinically proven to have positive effects on the hearts, bone and brain, as well as to nourish the skin, hair, nails and relieve arthritis. Anecdotal evidence suggests increased sexual potency. Drawbacks of daily ingestion, on the other hand, include an oral bouquet similar to a fish fully disgorging its cirrhosis-rotted bowels into your mouth. Tonsil hockey professionals, take note.

Once a Day Calendar [Dominic Wilcox]

John Brownlee

X-Ray MacBook

The glowing irradiated inside of an Apple MacBook, as photographed by the curious Jason de Villa... as seen by the TSA every day!

About a week ago, I was in the mood to do something crazy — anything to help pull myself out of the blue funk I had fallen into. I texted my brother the vet to ask if he had an x-ray machine in his office, and what size his film plates were. I told him that I wanted to try and x-ray my laptop, something that had been on my mind ever since I saw an x-ray of an Apple Titanium PowerBook. He said “No problem,” and two days later I was sitting in his office waiting for him to finish minor surgery on a dog. When he was done and had washed up, he led me to the x-ray machine, asked me to place the laptop on the plate, and signaled for me to step away from the machine. A couple of seconds later the x-ray was done, and after 15 minutes his assistant handed me the developed film. I scanned the developed plate and enhanced the brightness and contrast, and made low-res copies of the file.

The MacBook x-ray and my 15 minutes of (internet) fame [Jason de Villa]

John Brownlee

Stirr: the hands-free, battery-powered whisk

The whisk is a glorious invention with an irritating, Carpal Tunnel inducing mechanism. For about ten seconds, there's just something so satisfying about using a bulb-shaped wand of intertwined silver wires to stir a sauce to thickening: it even makes the same pleasing onomatopoeic sound of its name. But then there's ten minutes of tedium on the tail end.

Technology can, of course, do better. The Stirr is a hand free whisk that you just plop into the pot, stirring your sauces or gravies or soup automatically, like some sort of Hogwart's culinary instrument. It runs on four AA batteries. $23.

Whisking, the hands-free way [Crave]

John Brownlee

Resonance speakers come in cute milk carton packaging

You won't get great sound out of any resonance speaker, but the package design on these Sound Resolution speakers by Yorozu Audio is top notch: they come in a little faux milk carton with a speaker printed on the side. $51 is a bit too much to spend, but they're still cute.

Product Page [Device.net via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Nieman's recipe reader gadget not much of a stocking stuffer

At first look, Nieman Marcus' Demy Digital Recipe Reader, with its apparent ease of use, cuddly appearance and eminently original functionality, looks like a perfect christmas gift for grandma.

But it is not. Here's Wired's Jose Fermoso:

$300

Digital Recipe Reader Copies iPhone UI, Scams Grandma [Wired]

John Brownlee

Screw-on bottle cap tripod almost useless, but kind of neat

This $10 screw-on bottle cap will allow you to mount any camera to the top of a bottle, transforming it into a makeshift tripod. Needless to say, you'll want to make sure there's enough liquid in the bottle you're screwing it onto before attaching your expensive digicam.

Bottle Cap Tripod [Charles and Marie via Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

MSI splashes color on 12" notebooks

The cute names given to laptop colors form a lifestyle microcosm. With its VR220 12" notebooks, MSI has us wearing Denim Blue, eating Wasabi Green, kissing Coral Pink, and .... ruling Empire Black?

It gets an extra thumb up if a bar of Darth Vader's Imperial March rattles off whenever it's opened.

Specs are otherwise standard for a 12-incher: it's better than a netbook, but you won't be playing games on it. The 1280x800 pixel display is powered by an Intel GMA 4500M graphics chip, it comes with up to 2GB of RAM, and it has gigabit LAN, 802.11n, an SD card reader, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, and a 250GB hard drive. It weighs 4 pounds, and a little more with the optional 8-cell battery.

Product Page

John Brownlee

Houdini key-ring lets you break out (or in) to your car

Plunge your car off a bridge and you'll figure out quick enough that those electrical windows don't work in the drink. The Houdini Automotive Escape Tool is a key-ring sized gadget that features an LED light, a spring-loaded glass punch, a seatbelt cutter and a safety whistle. As small as it is, it seems like a good bet for $24.95, even if most of its features will hopefully never be used. An even better bet for professional radio jackers, though: finally, you can leave that crowbar at home!

Houdini Automotive Escape Tools [Uberreview]

Rob Beschizza

Vodafone's 226 reviewed. Verdict: Awful, but you won't hate it

Vodafone's 226 is, as Wired's Charlie Sorrel puts it, "Feature Free." And yet it deserves a full-page review. Tough times will get the blame for returning attention to budget gear, but it's really about liking the simple and straightforward:

It's thin, it is so light that you can't feel it in your pocket and the buttons, although very small, have a solid click to them. In conclusion, I set out to find a junk phone and that's exactly what I got. Two of them, in fact.

The e-ink Moto F3 remains my phone of choice, connoisseur of low-end rubbish that I am.

Hands-On With The Feature-Free Vodafone 226 [Wired: Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

FiiO E5 headphone amplifier looks like a Shuffle

I've never used a headphone amplifier and, in truth, I'm a little bit fuzzy on the advantages of using them, instinctively squinting at them as a form of audiophonic snake oil, at least for most people (audiophiles: feel free to school me in the comments), but FiiO's E5 compact headphone amps are, at least, eye-catching, even if the lapel clip design obviously channels a Shuffle aesthetic. The E5 is powered by a built-in 200mAh battery that's recharged via USB and specced for about 20 hours per charge. It'll sell for under $20.

FiiO E5 [GenerationMP3 via OhGizmo]

Joel Johnson

Letter to a Young Engineer (from a purported Honda employee)

After praising Honda a few days ago, we got a great email from a pleasingly enthusiastic engineer who asked to remain anonymous. He claims to be working at American Honda in Torrance and I'm inclined to believe him, but bear in mind also that this didn't come from a Honda email domain nor could I confirm that he's employed by American Honda. Even so, I loved his email and thought I'd share it with you.

The picture above? That's Honda's new FC Sport concept car, a fuel cell sports car designed to show what a hydrogen-powered racer might look like in the near future.

Honda is a freak, by American and even Japanese standards. There is an absolutely astounding amount of room here for anyone to work once they get in. The view is Global and the focus is Local. No one has ever told me what to do. One Rule - Dream. We find our way on an individual level, as reason, interest and inclination dictate, and this is an ultimate form of unequaled personal power to affect the future. In Honda, our own best interests are at the forefront of every day life at work and home. In engineering, there are no lines of demarcation segregating futurists from the present applications of science. There is nothing so esoteric that doesn't deserve a close inspection, and there is a common belief here in doing things the Hard Way. Even so, the core philosophy of the company could best be described as the pursuit of Joys.

Soichiro Honda once pointed out "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon, philosophy without action is worthless". He really believed that the only reason anyone would even show up to work is to have fun, and the real aim is to have fun you can share. He also said "If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don't particularly like."

He is the only person in business who seems to have fully understood a Japanese term that is a tad hard to translate, called Kioso. "Co-Creation Through Conflict", in which he breaks down the 4 necessary human elements of a properly functioning group of personalities which are co-dependent on each other's talents in order to succeed; Rationalist, Expert, Producer and Lunatic. Isn't that interesting? It could as easily be attributable to the success of The Beatles.

Lots more after the jump.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

There is no gingerspoon in my tea cup, and this makes me sad

All it took for the hot mug of Earl Grey Creme in front of me to suddenly lose its appeal was the discovery that not only were there things called "gingerspoons" available to buy on the Internet, but that one wasn't in my mug at that exact moment.

Gingerspoons [Official Site via Cribcandy]

Rob Beschizza

NYT mocks luxury phones in recession

The New York Times' Roy Furchgott takes a look at silly fashion phones like Vertu's $10,000 Ferrari, Motorola's $2,000 Aura, and something Tag Heuer calls a "communication instrument."

The high price is largely for the exotic case materials and short production runs, functionally, the luxe phones aren’t so luxe. “The first Prada phone was $600 to $800 and LG has the exact same phone for $99,” Mr. Greengart said.

He concludes that they're mostly marketing. It's true — remember the million dollar laptop that never really existed? — but that doesn't quite cover it. While Moto has many cheap handsets that can live in the aptly-named Aura's glow, other bling-gadget companies don't make mass-market models. At least some of these things are for real: people spending thousands of dollars on cell phones is their business plan.

The real problem with luxury gadgets is that they are mostly bad gadgets. This is why the likes of Vertu make shiny knockoffs of old-fashioned handsets: they simply have no design or engineering chops.

Champagne Phones in a Beer Economy [NYT]

Rob Beschizza

Scalado takes aim at camera phone shutter lag

Even expensive camera-phones suffer lag because their slow, complex operating systems have work to do before the hardware even knows it's supposed to be taking a picture. Scalado solved this problem by having the shutter open first, and having photos captured from the data stream. As a bonus, camera-phones get high quality, real-time live preview.

SlashPhone [Scalado via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Reiser appeals

After leading authorities to his wife's body, apologizing for killing her, agreeing to a 15-to-life term in prison, waiving his right to appeal, declaring that he knew what he was doing and had effective legal representation, Hans Reiser now claims that he thought the deal was for just three years — in his recently-filed appeal.

Reiser's handwritten request is the latest baffling move from the brilliant programmer, whose file system graces many Linux-based computers to this day.

In it, Wired reports, he suggests that his lawyer is delusional.

Linux Guru seeks new murder trial [Wired]

Joel Johnson

Three lovely ladies in black & white, toying with gadgets

• A remote-control smoker, demonstrated by Anton Wildrich and granddaughter. (Swoon.)

• Roberta Peters, opera singer, works all her muscles with some elastic gadget. (Hrrrrn.)

• A model demonstrates a bathtub cane. (Squeak.)

Joel Johnson

Rebate processor goes tits up, many gadget companies affected

Yet another reason never to use mail-in rebates: Continental Promotion Group, a rebate processor for a variety of companies, has filed bankruptcy. If you've filed for a rebate recently for one of the dozens of companies involved, well, good luck.

Here are a few of the companies most recently affected, but there are tons more: Antec, XFX, Acronis, AVG, Canon, Logitech, Smith Micro, TRENDNet.

Major Rebate Processor Files For Bankruptcy: Deal Rebates May Be Affected [Blog.Slickdeals.net]

Rob Beschizza

Aura clone lacks class, but has more fun

Motorola's Aura is a fashion phone with a vaguely Victorian cachet (picture it in brass) and a high price tag. Now, look at the cheapo clones of it.

Isn't it interesting, the manner in which these things are adopted, adapted, and improvised? It is parochial to "OMG LOL" at it all?

Motorola Aura clone surfaces in China [Unwired View]

Joel Johnson

Video: Daily Show's John Oliver looks at Jeff Han's multitouch screen

I love John Oliver. If you're not already listening to his podcast with Andy Zaltzman, "The Bugle", you're missing out.

Rob Beschizza

Gentlemen, remove your impellers

Did you ever buy a case fan only to think, "Damn! If only I could remove the impeller?" Gelid Solutions has a fan for you: the Wing UV Blue Removable Impeller Edition.

Product Page [Gelid]

Joel Johnson

MSI Wind Netron: This is what a "nettop" looks like

Tiny notebooks became "netbooks". Fine. Now tiny all-in-one desktop machines of the iMac/Dell XPS One pedigree, have become "nettops". MSI, maker of the popular "Wind" netbook, has announced the "Wind Neton" line of nettops, essentially flat panel monitors with little Atom-powered computers inside, perfect for browsing the web and doing basic computing tasks.

Prices will start around $400 and go up depending on screen size, with optional touch screens and operating system choices. The "M16" model has a disc-drive; the sleek "M19" [pictured] does not.

Will the "nettop" terminology stick? It might for a while, but I have a suspicion that within a couple of years we'll just be calling these sort of devices "computers", as the all-in-one PC merges with connected HDTVs.

MSI All-in-One Nettops previewed [Chinese.Engadget.com]

Joel Johnson

Bandai Gun O'Clock alarm clock review (Verdict: Fun but too quiet)

Reader Tucker Cummings bought the Bandai Gun O'Clock. Here's what she thinks of it!

I have never been a morning person. I need at least a liter of coffee to function between the hours or 8 and noon. I pity anyone who tries to wake me in the morning. Sleep is an awesome, awesome thing, and woe betide anyone who tries to come between me and my REM cycles. My mom could never wake me up in high school without me swearing at her, although my alarm clock always seemed to take the brunt of my morning aggression. And I'm sure I'm not alone in my hatred of that most awful of inventions: the alarm clock. I can't even tell you how many alarm clocks I have broken over the years by throwing them across the room or pounding them with angry morning fists. So of course I was intrigued by reports of an alarm clock that actually encouraged you to shoot the damn thing.

So I pre-ordered my Bandai Gun O'clock from Strapya World, and I picked it up from the post office this morning on my way to work. It was totally worth the cash I plunked down to have the thing shipped here from Japan.

The clock is, thankfully, fairly intuitive to operate. The clock does come with instructions, but they are Japanese-only. Setting the time was easy to figure out, but I did have to refer to the directions to figure out how to set the alarm (thankfully I have 2 semesters of Japanese under my belt, but it was still embarrassing to realize all I had to do to enter the Alarm Set Mode was hold down the alarm button, instead of tapping it).

The clock and gun were both a little smaller than I expected them to be when I finally extracted them from the packaging. I ran around the house hunting down the 6 double A batteries I needed to run the clock (two for the gun, and four for the clock).

The gun itself is a cute little thing that looks like it was modeled after a Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol. It's espescially fun to shoot because it makes a cute “pew-pew” noise, and the slide action actually moves when you pull the trigger.

The Gun O'clock has all the fun of Duck Hunt on the NES. Which is to say, it's fun, but I wish there was more to do. Both game modes are designed for very short rounds of play, which I found tremendously disappointing.

The clock's display goes to sleep after a few minutes. The backlight turns off, and the numbers turn from red to black, rendering the clock pretty much useless. Clearly, this is not the clock you should buy if you are looking for a useful time piece. But chances are, if you bought this clock, it was for the coolness factor.

And there is plenty of cool to be found. The sound effects that play as you cycle through the numbers to change the time sound like a gun being cocked and then fired. If you start a round of gameplay, but then change your mind and go back to the clock setting without shooting the target, a loud ARGH is played. When you hit the target in game mode, a very American sounding voice praises you in flawless English.

My only complaint about the sound is that there is no way the alarm clock can be used for it's intended purpose. The alarm buzzer is waaaay too quiet. It's a soft chime that does not increase in volume. I'm a heavy sleeper, and there's no way that chime would wake me up.

Overall, a great conversation starter, and a great item to add to your collection of quirky Japanese imports. But Gun O'clock is certainly not your best bet for an alarm clock. Until Bandai releases Gun O'clock version 2.0, I'll just have to keep shooting my alarm clock with my real gun every morning.

Joel Johnson

The trailer for the cartoon version of the Jodorowsky and Moebius Dune that never was

Bat21 wins the Reader No-Prize of the day with this awesome email update about the never-made version of Dune by Jodorowsky and Moebius:

Contrary to the legend circulating the Internet, Jodorowsky and Mobius did make this epic but not in the form they originally wanted. Jodorowsky had always said that he considered the novel as a starting point. His Dune was radically different. One the many changes was making the main character Emperor Shaddam IV, not Paul Muad'dib Atreides. Frank Herbert disavowed the project and this may have contributed to the funding falling through. Jodorowsky and Mobius did some tweaking (mostly name changes) and starting in 1981, published it as an original comic book series called L'Incal (The Incal). Some issues were translated into English and published in Heavy Metal magazine. Like Dune, the story was later greatly expanded. Science fiction/ comics fans refer to the books as the Jodoverse or the Metabarons Universe. The latest series, Sans Nom, le Dernier des Métabarons - (Nameless, the Last of the Metabarons) was released in 2003.

Because of L'Incal's popularity and success in Europe, Jodorowsky and Mobius again attempted to make a film in the mid-1980's. This time, the film would have been animated, giving the creators greater visual control but at a (hopefully) lower cost. For unknown reasons, this project also fell through. Enough footage was created for a trailer. [Posted above – Ed.] None of the Pink Floyd music is in the trailer. A generic synth track was used instead, but some of the filler footage does reference the now iconic cover of "Dark Side of the Moon". The voiceover may be jazz poet Ken Nordine.

More Dune facts:

• Frank Herbert has publicly stated that he was happy with Lynch's adaption of Dune. Because of their complexity and thematic density, Herbert believed his novels would never have mass appeal and was unsurprised by it's poor box office perfomance.

• Because of contractual obligations to producer Dino DeLaurentis, David Lynch had to turn down George Lucas' offer to direct Return of the Jedi.

• Dune may have inspired Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" (Walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm.)

Joel Johnson

The Mysterious Case of the Beer that was Poured from the Bottom

Not since Hermann Göring stood slowly from his chair, unbuttoned his creamy uniform, and revealed the wicker-and-leather lattice that swaddled the world's only anti-Semitic orang-utan pulling levers has Nuremberg hosted such a peristaltically perturbing reveal as Scotsman Beverage Systems' "Trufill" concept beer dispenser which can serve a pint of beer...from the bottom.

Gentlemen, let not your breakfasts further erupt from your bellies into your fellows' homburgs! Ladies, grasp your baby by its chubby ankle and remove it from your gullet! The mystery of the Trufill will be revealed in due time by the ace reporters of FOODBEV.COM, who assure us all: "Self serve, self fill... this takes the old fashioned world of dispense into the vending arena with a mix of Star Trek meets Harry Potter. I tour most of the major trade shows and it's rare to see true innovation. ‘Bottoms up Scotsman’, you’ve made my Brau. We can’t wait to follow this story as it unfolds."

DEVELOPING!

Scotsman turns the beverage world upside down [Foodbev.com via Oh Gizmo!]

Rob Beschizza

Netbook of the Day: Epson Endeavor Na01 mini

With Epson's me-too generic netbook — yep, 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, 1024x600 display, etc. — it is time someone simply made a Netbooks On Demand service. Cafepress Netbook! Lulu Netbook! Your own logo on a netbook!

Here's the machine-translated blurb:

1024 × 600 dot liquid crystal display (WSVGA) for 10.2-widescreen display, nonglare panel. 10.2-inch LCD adoption of the keyboard has a 17mm pitch. Keystrokes 2mm. ... The main specifications, Atom N270 (1.60GHz), memory 1GB, HDD 160GB (5400rpm), chipset Intel 945GSE Express (built-in video capability), WSVGA 10.2-widescreen LCD display support, OS with the Windows XP Home Edition . Interface USB 2.0 × 3, IEEE 802.11b / g wireless LAN, Ethernet, mini D-Sub15 pin, SD Card (SDHC) / MMC / Memory Stick (PRO) support slot, and audio input and output capability.

The body size is 266 × 184.7 × 39mm (width × height × depth) and weighs 1.28kg.

7.4V/4400mAh batteries, approximately 3.2 hours drive time.

Source, machtrans [PC Watch via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Infinite bookshelf can't hold infinite number of books

Borgesian echoes of the universal library lurk in Job Koelewijn's Mobius bookshelf.

Untitled [Knaw via Neatorama]

Rob Beschizza

Sperm-shaped USB flash drive

The problem, if indeed it is one, is that owning one immediately marks you as Glenn Quagmire.

USB Drive Proves Fertility Conventions Give Out the Best Swag Ever [Giz]

Rob Beschizza

Cardboard laptop cooler

Designed by James Li, this cardboard laptop cooler is powered by USB. "Cardboard ignites easily," cautions Make's Marc de Vinc.

DIY: Cardboard laptop cooler [Make]

Rob Beschizza

A forum for Samsung NC10 fans to gather

Samsung's NC10 is a Netbook you can believe in. Though little different from all the others, its combination of unpretentious design—and a long-life battery as standard—has made it the category's hot item. And now it has its own enthusiast blog.

The first 10 or so posts on this site pretty much cover the initial difficulties of tracking down a black Samsung NC10 right now

Unoff. Samsung NC10 blog [via UMPCportal]

Joel Johnson

Let's wave goodbye to PC Magazine

Paid Content brings somewhat sad tidings: PC Magazine is no more — at least as a print magazine. (PCMag.com will live on.) I hadn't read the magazine in years, but it was nothing personal. I still have a couple of magazine subs these days, but except for EDGE (which has lapsed!) they're all science or car magazines. For my computer nerdery I go online. As, apparently, does everyone else.

But I still have fond memories. When I was a kid I'd be left in my step-father's office while he worked. PC Magazine was about the only entertaining thing around. Certainly reading a John C. Dvorak column about Sybase or something was more interesting than reading the latest issue of C.I.O.. And there would even be a game review in there from time to time, albeit usually about three months after the game was out. It's also where I first ran into Loyd Case's work of which I've always been a fan. (Loyd helps run Extreme Tech, another Ziff Davis online property.)

Anyway, such is life, but it's certainly the passing of an era.

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

• Video Card – eVGA GeForce GTX 260 896MB PCI-Express Video Card with Far Cry 2. It starts at $210 (after a coupon code) with free shipping, but there's a $40 rebate. Even without the rebate the cards are going for $280 or so elsewhere. [Slickdeals]

• Car Care Kit – Basic spray-on Meguiar's Quick Care Auto Detailing Kit for $10 at Amazon. Just the spray-on stuff, but the chamois is probably worth $10. Remind me to ask you guys later about polishing compounds. I think I screwed up the new paint job on the 2002 by taking it through an automatic car wash. (I know.) [Slickdeals]

• HTPC Infrared...Thinger – As far as I can tell this "Antec Multimedia Station Basic" is a $25 box that fits into your PC's 2.5-inch drive bay and adds an infrared receiver for home theater PC control. [Dealnews]

• Media Streamer – Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player (for connecting to a HDTV and watching movies over the network or from attached hard drives) for $100, shipped. About $20 off. [Dealnews]

• Cow or Pig Flashlight Keychains – I'm linking this mainly because I want to quote Dealnews' write-up: "$1.35. With free shipping, we couldn't find a similar cow keychain for less. It features two LED emitters in the cow's nose." Also, the pig version is 24 cents cheaper. [Dealnews]

• Motherfucking – Woot -Off, yo.

John Brownlee

iTunes in the analog '80s didn't burn your music, it poured

The always wonderful Retro-Thing reminds us of Personics, iTunes analog 80's antecedent. Personics music delivery system was to install jukebox-like kiosks in record stores and allow you to pick a selection of "cassingles" to fill it with, which would be served up twenty minutes later by a surly teenage clerk.

The television advertisement is breathless enough — "Imagine! A jukebox with thousands of songs you can play in any order you want!" — but the print advertisement is equally striking: although now, we use the term "burn" to describe the process of making our own discs out of different songs, Personics seemed to prefer the equally intelligible "pour" metaphor.

Personics: iTunes in the Analog 80's [Retro-Thing]

John Brownlee

Guitar Hero goes Bike Hero

I feel like I'm missing something. This viral Bike Hero video shows in first person a bicyclist navigating the Guitar Hero tab sheet for the song "Prisoner of Society" by the Living End, which have been slapped as decals on a city street. As he follows the path, LED lights on the front of his bike flash, indicating hit frets, and occasional posted signs proclaim his score. Star power is activated via a light show (although regrettably, without popping a wheelie).

It's all a lot of fun, but what I feel like I'm missing is the skill. I could get psyched if he was hitting each and every note with the front of his bike wheels, but he's clearly not: he's just riding around a pre-determined course as programmed lights flash on his bike. That's cool, and there's no doubt the video took a lot of work, but not as jaw-dropping as the YouTube comments make it seem.

John Brownlee

OS X Snow Leopard coming in Q1 2009?

This is hardly official, but at a presentation about the evolution of OS X at the LISA '08 conference last week, Apple's director of engineering of Unix technologies, Jordan Hubbard, pushed up a slide noting a Snow Leopard release of Q1 2009.

That's not outside of the realm of possibilities: Snow Leopard is a stabilization and future-proofing OS X release, and with 14 odd months since Leopard, a Q1 release would still indicate a baking time longer than average.

I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard. Sure, it's not a flashy, feature-filled release like Leopard, but smaller program files, a svelter OS and performance gains for multi-processors are all appealing... especially since Leopard has felt sluggish on my ancient MacBook Pro ever since I upgraded from Tiger.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 Due In Q1 2009 [Mac Rumors]

John Brownlee

The Peek unlimited email PDA gets text messaging, image support

Most reviews of the Peek were content to review it based on things it had no interest in doing, but Beschizza really liked the tiny pocket email client, describing it as "the perfect simplifier, but only if you're a Peek kind of person."

Peek doesn't seem to be content to rest on its laurels, though. The latest firmware update not only adds unlimited text messaging to the mix, but also the ability to view image files: .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, .BMP. If you've got a smartphone, that's still not going to make this compelling — most of us aren't going to be Peek kinds of person — but image support makes it a better bet than ever for grandmothers and relatives you want to send pictures of the kids to.

Peek e-mail device gains unlimited texts, image viewing [JKontherun]

John Brownlee

A finger massaging robot for those hard blogging days

Christ, what a day. Control C, Control V, Control C, Control V. Pithy snark, pithy snark. Mr. Johnson.... what a slaver. I just want to shoot him in the face with a bazooka. But Christ... the way my fingers ache. I don't even think I could manage to pull the trigger.

Oh, my aching fingers. Where is that christing parakeet? We had a deal: I keep him stocked in millet and set him up in a nice cage, and he massages my tired fingers with his tiny little talons first thing when I come home from work for the day. Is this what I got myself into? That little hussy. If he doesn't start putting out with the finger massaging, there's plenty of younger hens down at the pet store with plump, glistening cloacas who will.

Wait. Didn't I see something like this the other day? Some sort of finger massaging robot? Oh man, that would hit the spot. How much was it again? ... $1950.00? Jesus, my fingers would have to be breaking off to justify that, even against my millionaire blogger salary. What do these guys take me for? An idiot? My nostrils do the same damn job for free.

Danball Shiatsu Finger Massager [Japan Trendshop via Red Ferret]

John Brownlee

The iCEphone folds itself thrice, from smartphone to mini-notebook

The iCEphone is a curious little mobile that features a triple hinge that allows it to expand from a relatively slim three inch candy bar into a full keyboard mini-notebook. When fully unfurled, the top panel contains a 3-inch touch screen, the middle panel a QWERTY, and the bottom panel the odd assortment keys usually left off of cell phone keyboards: the caps lock, the shift, the alt and function keys, all organized in a D-pad like array which doubles as arrow keys or a mouse tracker pad for gaming, of all things.

The iCEphone runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro, and also features a 3G connection with support for GPRS and EDGE, two SIM card slots, built-in WiFi and a 3.1 megapixel camera. That's a hell of a lot of phone, although the price matches: when it's released in the UK in Spring, it'll go for a little shy of $1000.

iCEphone [The Medical Phone via Slashgear]

John Brownlee

Andy Baio sniffs out Google voice search for the iPhone

Waxy.org's Andy Baio has been doing some digital sherlocking, trying to discover how Google's voice search on the iPhone actually works. As it turns out, it's a lot more mysterious and clever than it would first appear:

ere's my best guess: When you first start speaking into the microphone, the iPhone app opens a connection to Google's server, waits for you to finish talking, and then does a quick and dirty conversion into a smaller binary representation of the waveform.

The waveform image is generated on the phone and displayed along with a "Working" indicator and the adorable "beep-boop" sounds. In the background, the binary file is being sent as a POST request to http://www.google.com/m/appreq/gmiphone.

The next step: spoofing requests.

Deconstructing Google Mobiles Voice Search on the iPhone [Waxy]

John Brownlee

HP's new Touchsmart TX2 is multi-touch capable tablet notebook

HP's new Touchsmart tx2 is a sexy little machine: a tiny convertible notebook that functions as a laptop, a tablet and a multi-touch display. At 12.1-inches, it nudges just north of netbook size, and comes with a 1200x800 display capable of working with up to two fingers or a stylus. Specs include a 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 8GB of RAM, integrated web cam, a digital pen and hard drives up to 500GBs: all together, the Touchsmart only weighs about four and a half pounds. You can pre-order one now starting at $1150.

HP Touchsmart TX 2 [HP]

John Brownlee

Oil-less turkey fryer

In my fraternity days, my brothers and I discovered that a keg licked clean, filled with cooking oil and placed over a propane flame would cook a fine bacon-stuffed Thanksgiving turkey. This oil-less turkey fryer takes the same approach, but without the forty gallons of biohazard at the end (we solved the problem by just putingt it next to the toilet until September and made pledges drink it). It's $200 and is capable of cooking up to sixteen pounds of turkey at around 8-10 minutes per pound.

Oil-Less Turkey Fryer [Frontgate via Uncrate]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Steve Jobs opines on the IBM / Papermaster dispute

Image: Gearfuse

Xeni Jardin

Joel reviews the Selk Bag, impersonates Gumby (video)

Halloo! Xeni here sneaking in a post on Boing Boing Gadgets! This week, Boing Boing tv is debuting regular product reviews produced with Joel and the crew, and we'll blog 'em here on Gadgets first. What better way to kick the series off than a lulz-filled analysis of the Lippi Selk Bag, a sleeping bag with arms and legs that makes our Joel look like a bespectacled Gumby? The funky-chunky "sleepwear system" ranges in price from $169 to $399. I imagine they'd really come in handy at one of those outdoor all-nighter raves, unless you get lucky -- interpersonal intra-bag intercourse might be logistically difficult in these. Here is a direct MP4 link, if you prefer a downloadable video to the Flash embed above.

Rob Beschizza

Report: Newsweek orders Dan Lyons to be nice

Newsweek hired Dan Lyons because, in its own words, "In the establishment-skewering tradition of Voltaire, Cervantes and Swift, we now have a voice for our own digital age." Today, Newsweek decided that it wasn't really interested in that sort of thing, ordering Lyons to remove blog posts critical of people on his beat.

He described people at Yahoo as "lying sacks of shit," and mocked Kara Swisher for complaining about not being credited for an "exclusive" that was published moments before an official press release containing the same information.

As a result, Lyons, hired after becoming famous for exactly this sort of brutal comedy, is to quit blogging.

Here are Lyons' splendid insults:

Kara Swisher: "Kara, honey, I love you dearly, but girl-child, having a company send you a press release ten minutes before they put it on the wire isn't a scoop. That's called taking dictation."

Yahoo!: "I'd never dealt much with Yahoo before, and I was stunned by their PR operators — they're really an unsavory bunch. During that same reporting this crack team of lying sacks of shit put one of Yahoo's attorneys in Washington on the phone to tell me, over and over, the true "inside story" of what was going on with the Google deal ... The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever."

The situation has the whiff of old media attempting to get with the times, then exposing its fear of losing access to sources with an implosive spasm of self-moderation.

Real Dan Lyons bails on blogging [Standard via Valleywag]

Rob Beschizza

Great MacBook Air eBay deal turns out to be prototype...

... Or maybe the work of a modder with Cayce Pollardian logo-hatred.

A fellow claims that a stunning $700 deal on an MBA at eBay turned out to be an engineering sample of some kind. This would be possible to fake, and he even suggests that he might have gotten a modded machine. But in a wonderful and convincing detail, the serial number encodes a May 2007 incept date.

Either way, the thought that something like this could escape Apple's secretive innards is a myth-making par excellence.

Let's see what the Genius Bar makes of it!

Fake / Prototype Macbook Air [MacRumors]
Auction Page [eBay]

Rob Beschizza

Welcome the Prime Note: an astoundingly normal Netbook

A blog post about Japan's Prime Note Cartina UM netbook could be written by a machine.

It fits the standard form of the late 2008 netbook with unerring accuracy: a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU is wedded to a gig of RAM and a 9" display with 1024x600 pixels. It comes with a 120GB hard drive or a much smaller SSD, and runs Linux or Windows XP. With a webcam, WiFi and a $400-ish price tag, it's about 10 inches long by 7 deep, and just over an inch thick. The Prime Note weighs 2.4 pounds.

There's one big difference here, though: it's available only in Japan, in limited quantities. Hardly a problem, for once!

The differences between these devices are increasingly found in areas that the manufacturers themselves seem blind to: keyboard layout, the availability of compatible long-life batteries, and the quality of flash used in solid-state drives. A chipset's compatibility with OSX is another important consideration, if not one that could be marketed.

Prime Note Cartina UM: Limited Edition Japanese Netbook

Rob Beschizza

Watch a Boeing 787 Dreamliner get torn apart in stress tests

Scheduled to enter into service late next year, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, like any other commercial aircraft, must be able to withstand 1.5 times the stress it could experience in flight. AirShowFan writes in:

Basically ... the airplane could be put through roller-coaster-like G forces and not snap. Of course us structural engineers will show some calculations and computer models to claim the structure can take it, but the FAA wants real undeniable proof. So whenever Boeing designs an all new airplane - something that only happens once every 10 or 15 years - we must test the wings to destruction.

Of course, this just means that 1.5000001 times the stress it could experience in flight is where the science starts being fun.

AirShowFan also directs us to the spectacular tests conducted on the 777: "You can see that the wing bends up a good 20 or 30 feet before it snaps - which should make you feel safe next time you look out the window at turbulent skies and see the wingtip moving up and down just a few feet."

If it doesn't creep you out to see the wing of a jetliner flexed up like a ruler on the edge of a desk, you're a nutter.

More video

John Brownlee

Microsoft Zune spec ad finally gets the metaphor right

There are just a million reasons not to post this, but elaborating upon them would ruin the surprise. All I will say is that it is mildly not safe for work, and that none of us in the BBG editor's channel can figure out why these guys haven't been hired. They've created the perfect Zune metaphor. You'd think Microsoft would appreciate that.

Zune Paint [Vimeo (Thanks, Frank!)]

John Brownlee

For $14, turn any phone into a banana phone

For in the profound words of our one true Egyptian Bard, the mellifluous Raffi Cavoukian:

Banana Cell Phone Holder [Fred Flare via Foolish Gadgets]

Joel Johnson

Netgear taking on Geek Squad with premium "GearHead" tech support service

My first reaction to any extended warranty or service plan is always fear, varied only by the exact proportion of revulsion. Not my fault: we've been taught by experience that warranty service, especially when sold from someone other than the manufacturer, is a scam.

Still, there's something promising about Netgear's new "GearHead" support service. It's 24x7 phone support (with an option to pay more for in-house visits), but they will help you troubleshoot your entire network, not just the part that uses Netgear products. That's always been a hassle when dealing with the tech support provided by networking vendors: as soon as the packets hit off-brand copper they become someone else's problem.

Unlimited phone support is $70 for six months; $90 for a year. One-off "Get me on the internet" is $37 (but only for 30 minutes), while a "Tune Up" of nebulous value is $50. The "HomeSupport" subscriptions sound like a much better deal than the one-off options.

Of course, it all depends on how well-trained the Gearhead techs are. If you take the plunge I'd love to hear about your experience with them.

Oh, and it's Windows-only support for now — no OS X, no Linux.

Gearhead Support [Netgear.com]

Joel Johnson

Ten minutes in a Tesla

Brian Lam, bastard, has taken a Tesla Roadster out for a spin.

I can't afford this car. If I wanted something similar to this in shape, feel and performance, I'd probably buy a used Elise for $30k if I could get over the bug eyes. But I can assure you that a Tesla is still a hell of a a car, by electric or gas terms, even if its just a bit more portly and more expensive than a comparable Lotus. I mean, its fast. It's electric. It's efficient. It's sexy. And you can actually buy it if you're rich. And while Tesla as a company may have had some problems in manufacturing at first, they didn't wait for old industry to get off its ass and build something revolutionary. Like Android, I hope it catalyzes the fossil fuel makers traditional makers into a game of catch up with cars that are just as fast and efficient, and hopefully a lot cheaper. And if that doesn't leave you somewhat impressed, then you belong with the dinosaurs.

What it Feels Like to Drive a Tesla Roadster [Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Bottle carousel is begging for an IV drip rig-up

The "Deluxe Chrome Bottle Carousel & Measures" is a cute way to keep four upended bottles of booze close at hand, but it would never work for my spirit of choice: most bourbon comes in oddly shaped bottles, not the uniform one-liters needed to fix firmly into place. Not that I'd spend £80 on this stainless steel contraption in the first place — that's far too much money that could be spent on more booze. Besides, the sound of alcohol spilling out into an empty rocks glass always signifies that it's going to be a fun breakfast.

Relatedly, I still haven't found a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka on sale anywhere in real life or on the internet. I'm getting a bit desperate. If anyone knows where to pick one up in NYC please let me know!

Bottle Carousel catalog page [Beta.Drinkstuff.com via Core77]

John Brownlee

SpongeBob SquarePants eyeball speaker dock. You know... for kids.

It is hard to imagine a more grotesque children's cartoon character than SpongeBob SquarePants: a buck toothed idiot man child incarnated into a cube of gasping, asexual jelly. That such a surreal horror could become an icon of cuteness just defines everything I love about the pop culture age we live in.

I mean, look at this SpongeBob Speaker Dock: it is the top of SpongeBob's skull, lopped off with a butcher's knife. The brain pan is hollowed: an iPod is inserted. The horrible, alien eyeballs of this subaqueous horror have been wrenched out of their sockets, and against all sense or sanity, function as speakers. It costs $40. And your kid wants one.

Hell, so do I. This is the iPod dock my complete Tiny Tim collection has been waiting for.

Spongebob Squarepants Eyeball Speaker Dock [Nickelodeon]

Joel Johnson

Send images to my T-Mobile Cameo picture frame

If you send an email or MMS to 2062270093 DERP tmomail.net it will show itself on this T-Mobile Cameo digital picture frame that I've just plopped on my desk. Send what you like, but if it's going to be smut, at least make it creative: my dog co-worker has seen enough goatse to last a lifetime.

Update: They're coming in! You guys are hilarious. Also, it appears that there is a max message size limit, so multiple-megabyte images won't go through.

John Brownlee

The Toshiba G450: "a 3G modem with benefits."

The Toshiba G450 is an odd conglomeration of different functions merged into a silver candy bar shell. It's not just a memory stick, or a memory stick / MP3 player, or a memory stick / MP3 player with built-in tri-band GSM cell phone. It's all of those things secondary, while primarily being an HSDPA USB modem capable of dropping back down to EDGE if 3G isn't available. That's a lot of gadget for £140, even if its usability as a memory stick or MP3 player is severely gimped by a measly 160MB of memory. Still, Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel defines the G450 best and puts it all in perspective: "a modem with benefits." Yeah.

Toshiba G450 [Toshiba Europe via Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Honda, where engineers rule

A few months back Honda was a sponsor of a "green" section on the Mother Boing. A few people got upset that we'd take money from a company that makes internal combustion engines.

It got my goat. Honda is one of my favorite companies. And this Forbes article goes a long way to explaining why:

Of all the bizarre subsidiaries that big companies can find themselves with, Harmony Agricultural Products, founded and owned by Honda Motor, is one of the strangest. This small company near Marysville, Ohio produces soybeans for tofu. Soybeans? Honda couldn't brook the sight of the shipping containers that brought parts from Japan to its nearby auto factories returning empty. So Harmony now ships 33,000 pounds of soybeans to Japan. An inveterate tinkerer, Honda also set up a center nearby to develop better soybean varieties and improve agricultural processes.

This is from a company that sold 21 million internal combustion engines for cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers and boats last year. But there's nothing Honda hates more than waste, and there is nothing Honda likes more than an engineering problem. Indeed, how else to explain why Honda has studied the maddeningly evasive cockroach (for anticollision technology), decoded the rice genome (to increase crop yields and create more-productive crops for biofuels) and developed a robot that can get instructions by reading human brain waves (to learn how machines and humans can better coexist).

The article is actually from '06 and says that Honda had never had a mass layoff. I wondered if that was still true considering the present troubles. So far so good, at least in Ohio: they still aren't planning layoffs.

Engineers Rule [Forbes via MAKE]

Joel Johnson

Stitch humidifier retches moist air into your face

Even if I didn't already like Disney's Lilo and Stitch — I thought it was one of the better outings from Disney in an otherwise dismal decade — I'd adore this Stitch Hudifier. It emits a constant gaseous belch of misty air from its toothy maw, keeping winter air breathable and teaching kids the rudiments of French kissing.

Criminally, it's available only in Japan for well over a hundred bucks.

Stitch humidifier product page (Japanese) [Runat.co.jp via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

GameBoy in a graphing calculator

Some covert gamers spend all their time programming Tetris clones for their graphing calculators. Others simply rip out the guts of a GameBoy and cram it into their old TI-84s. It's the difference between programmers-in-the-making and hackers-in-the-offing!

GameBoy Color inside a TI-83 series calculator [Mark Bowers via OhGizmo!]

Joel Johnson

Blackbird Rider Nylon, a carbon-fiber acoustic guitar

Blackbird Guitars is now selling a nylon-stringed version of their Rider, unibody, carbon fiber guitar that is slightly larger than the steel-stringed original. The "Rider Nylon" is just as pretty as its predecessor — and someday I'll actually play one to find out how they feel.

The Blackbird Rider Nylon starts at $1,900.

Rider Nylon press release [BlackbirdGuitars.com] (Thanks, Jeremy!)

Previously • Blackbird Rider Acoustic Carbon Fiber Guitar
• SR-71 Blackbird by Lego Monster
• Story: SR-71 Pilots Show Off

Joel Johnson

Organic Motion: Motion capture without the suit

Organic Motion Demo from tonyhightower on Vimeo.

Tony Hightower – Chalk another one up to years of coding obscurity finally being brought to the bright light of day: Organic Motion, a New York-based software house, has upgraded their new type of motion capture software to coincide with the launch of the new Intel Core i7 chip. As these things go, it's a pretty solid step forward.

Motion capture has been used in medical, military, physical training and entertainment for decades. But one of the problems with the technology was that it generally has involved using physical markers placed at certain points on the subject and using those to re-create the subject digitally. Some marketing guy pastes some ping-pong balls on Tiger Woods, he swings a few times, and then he can either analyze his swing or EA Sports winds up with their latest title.

Problem is, you're following the markers, not the subject itself, so there will be inconsistencies between them and the subject. (Not to mention the effect pasting balls on the outside of Tiger's body would have on the naturalness of his swing.) These distinctions get more important when you're using motion capture for, say, actual physiotherapy or military exercises, where exact replication is absolutely vital.

Andrew Tschesnok, CEO of Organic Motion, thinks he's got that licked. He's developed a new capture program that doesn't require any markers at all. Instead, it uses a series of 2-D cameras to capture a form and render it in real time — and with a startling degree of accuracy. I got the chance to see it in action last week:

They've worked out almost all the bugs. (It didn't seem to like my shaven head, and it needs to be able to see your feet so it knows which way you're facing), but it rendered most movements pretty cleanly and quickly, and while we were using it in a well-lit 16x16 space, there's no reason that the theater area couldn't be expanded to an area as large (or as small) as whatever camera hardware you're using could handle.

Tschesnok is interested in using it for military and medical applications, but at the CES last January, he used four prototypes in four different locations in Las Vegas to beam the members of Smashmouth into a "garage" in the convention hall.

And of course, he sees many retail possibilities: "You could set this up in a sporting goods store, and have the customer get on a treadmill for a minute, and it could analyze their gait and let them know what kind of shoe would work best with their walk, or even if they need a certain kind of orthotic or other adjustment. Much of that could be done automatically. Or imagine your living room at home is set up with one of these. You could go to an online clothing store, get measured, make a purchase, and have it shipped to you, without ever having to go outside."

I have to say, the idea of buying pants without having to put on a pair and leaving your house sounds kind of alright.

Tony Hightower really misses Total Request Live.

Joel Johnson

Busted philanderer blames dirty pictures on iPhone glitch

Oh dear. From the Apple support forum:

Please help! I took my husband's i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Pictures automatically attach to e-mail? [Discussions.Apple.com] (Thanks, Jon F.!)

Joel Johnson

Apple adds HDCP compliance to its laptop monitor ports

Some of Apple iTune's video content is being wrapped in HDCP copy protection that makes it impossible to output the movies on any non-HDCP screen. That's a pain in the ass, but not unlike Blu-ray and other HDCP-compliant video sources that have been around for the last few years.

Still, this is the first time that Apple has added HDCP restrictions to the standard external monitor port of its hardware. What a rip.

Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you [Ars Technica]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

• HDTV – Toshiba REGZA 32" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV for $590, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Monitor • Dell S2409W 24-inch 1080p LCD monitor with HDMI for $300, shipped. About $30 off. [Dealnews]

• Sealab 2021 – Complete seasons of Sealab 2021 for $8.50 each. I don't know if this is actually an atypical deal, but hey, it's Sealab. [Dealnews]

• Xbox 360 – Live on the edge and buy a refurbished Xbox 360 Pro with a 20GB HDD for just $175, shipped. 90-day warranty! Extreme! [Dealnews]

• LEGO – The LEGO Star Wars Sandcrawler (a.k.a. the home of the Jawas) for $100, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Ear Flaps – Today's wWoot is a two-pack of Eargrips Behind the Head Fleece Ear Warmer for $10, shipped.

John Brownlee

App turns iPhone into ad-hoc MacBook num pad

Numberkey is a nifty iPhone app that extends your MacBook or MacBook Pro keyboard with an ad-hoc numeric keypad, which communicates with your laptop via WiFi. It comes with many different skins, from the modern chiclets to italicized numerals of the old Apple Extended.

Most of my spreadsheet days are behind me, but this strikes me as the sort of detail the iPhone or iPod Touch should do by default. The absence of the number pad is an understandable but regrettable omission from most laptops, and using the JKL keys with the number lock on has never felt right. Turning the iPhone into a laptop peripheral — whether as a number pad or tiny secondary display for widgets and the like — just feels right. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone continued to evolve in this direction as the firmware evolves.

Balmuda’s Numberkey connect software [Balmuda via Technabob]

John Brownlee

Asus R50a has netbook specs at quadruple the price

Right or wrong, netbooks have trained us to look at an Intel Atom processor, a gig of RAM, a 32GB SSD hard drive and a tiny screen at 1024x600 as a less than $500 purchase, especially when its being released by Asus. But the Asus R50a is almost $2,000, which is enough to plunge the jaw through the sternum.

Oh, sure, it's a 5.6 inch UMPC, which certainly counts. Sure, there's a 3G option. And sure, it runs Vista... although on a 1.33 GHz Atom, why would you want to? But with the guts of a netbook and the design of a Hong Kong PSP clone, it's really hard to justify the quadrupled price... especially when UMPCs are all but unusable anyway.

Asus R50a Now Shipping [Pocketables]

John Brownlee

Sector Compass Watch transmits secrets in morse code

- .... .- -. -.- ... / - --- / .- / ... -- .- .-.. .-.. / . -- -... . -.. -.. . -.. / .-.. .. --. .... - / -. ..- --.. --.. .-.. . -.. / .. -. / - .... . / ... .. -.. . / --- ..-. / - .... . / -.-. .- ... . --..-- / - .... .. ... / .-..-. ... . -.-. - --- .-. / -.-. --- -- .--. .- ... ... / - --- .-. -.-. .... .-..-. / -.-. .- -. / -... .-. --- .- -.. -.-. .- ... - / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / -- . ... ... .- --. . ... --..-- / .--. . .-. ..-. . -.-. - / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / ... ..- .-. .-. . .--. - .. - .. --- ..- ... / - .-. .- -. ... -- .. ... ... .. --- -. / --- ..-. / -.-. --- .-. .--. --- .-. .- - . / ... . -.-. .-. . - ... / .-.. .. -.- . / - .... .. ... / --- -. . ---... / .--- --- . .-.. / .--- --- .... -. ... --- -. / --- .-- -. ... / .- -. / . -. - .. .-. . / .--. .- -. - ... ..- .. - / -- .- -.. . / --- ..-. / - .... . / ... .- -- . / --. .-. --- ...- . .-. / ..-. ..- .-. / .--. --- .--. ..- .-.. .- .-. .. --.. . -.. / -... -.-- / -.-. .- -. .- -.. .. .- -. / .--. .. -.-. -.- -....- ..- .--. / .- .-. - .. ... - / .- -. -.. / .. -. - . .-. -. .- - .. --- -. .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .-. . -. --- .-- -. . -.. / -.. --- ..- -.-. .... . / -... .- --. / . .-. .. -.- / ...- --- -. / -- .- .-. -.- --- ...- .. -.- .... . / -.-. .- .-.. .-.. ... / .. - / .... .. ... / -- -.-- ... - . .-. -.-- / ... ..- .. - .-.-.-

Sector Compass Torch Watch [Eikowatch via Gizmodo via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Retro flip clock exposes chronological vinyl fluttering

I've always been fascinated with the analog flipping mechanism: as a boy, I loved watching the minute flutter by on my mother's alarm clock, the thousand vinyl wings folded upon themselves as the carapace of some time-telling scarab.

The carapace is exposed on this chic, gear operated metallic clock, and it scratches all the right itches. All except the price, which gouges open my miserly skin with a ragged fingernail: it's $83.99.

Retro Flip Down Clock [GadgetGrid]

John Brownlee

NES cart sleeve turned pen holder

This original Nintendo cartridge sleeve, repurposed as a pen holder, doesn't really deserve the distinction of being a hack or mod, but it did remind me just how sultry and gorgeous those vinyl sleeves really were. I really don't think protective packaging has ever managed to be more simple or attractive. And they smelled great.

NES Pen Holder [Flickr via MAKE]

John Brownlee

Google voice search for iPhone released (it's great)

After one of the mysterious delays pretty much synonymous with Apple's closed and inscrutable application approval process (the roll of an i-ching disgorged from Steve Jobs' uptight, puckered rectum), voice search has come to the iPhone Google App. It's available now.

I like it. You need to turn it on in the Google App, at which point, you can simply push a microphone button and speak your search into the phone. Google then generates a visual wav pattern, outputs a delightful burbling audio noise to indicate that it is processing your requests, then outputs search results as normal.

How does it work? Pretty well. When you first start it up, a charming cartoon boy walks you through how to use the program, and "skateboard bulldog" works as advertised. I decided to take things up a notch, and Google voice search performed well here too, managing to keep up with a torrid stream of profanity and give me results to match. Likewise, it correctly gave me results for my name without a stumble.

Unfortunately, Beschizza did not fare so well, first returning a result for "rob dyskenesia," which sounds like a cerebral disorder and then for "robert fisk usa." Likewise, "Salomee Sklodowska Bronislawa" resulted in listings for various Warsawian pizzerias. Basically, you need to use some common sense: things that are not pronounced even close to phonetically will generate bad results.

Overall, it's a big improvement over stock Google searching on the iPhone: for most searches, just speaking into your phone is about a hundred times easier than trying to type it out with the iPhone's excellent but typo prone onscreen keyboard. Go grab it.

Google voice search app [iTunes]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Cup Lens

Image: tebe-interesno

John Brownlee

Manga Man: a multimedia novel readable by mobile phone, via t-shirt

The New Scientist has the details on Alexander Besher's new multimedia science fiction book, Manga Man, which is deliverable to mobile phones by a strange t-shirt delivery mechanism:

More unusually (at least by Western standards) is that the book is being published direct to mobile phones. Reading novels on mobiles hasn't really taken off over here, but it's all the rage in Japan, where the novels are sent in installments as text messages.

But what grabbed my attention was the bit about scanning a barcode on a T-shirt to be able to read it...

Besher has come up with the sly idea of getting T-shirts printed with a QR code, which when scanned directs people to the website for the novel.

I look forward to increasing sophistication in the cell phone delivery of fiction. Some genius is going to figure out how to do the first literary iPhone ARG one of these days, and he's going to make a million bucks.

A mobile phone novel read via a t-shirt [New Scientist via MAKE]

John Brownlee

"What could be more festive than a cross covered in fuzzy Christmas lights?"

"Oh... right. Uhhhhh...."

The American Family Association is selling this Christmas Cross as a way of "letting your light shine for Christ this Christmas season." Can you spot the horrifically offensive cultural faux pas they somehow failed to notice during the product design phase? I bet you can!

Buy A Christmas Cross [American Family Association via Qt3]

John Brownlee

The Kami Kami chewing sensor measure your child's mastication

Nitto Kagaku's Kami Kami sensor measures the number of bites a child takes, beeping after every thirty and one thousand chomps, respectively. The idea is to promote proper mastication^*, but the parent who makes their kid actually wear something like this has well earned the physically abusive geriatric castle they are exiled into half a century down the line.

Bite Counter [Japan Today via DVICE]

* - I really liked this post a whole lot better before I corrected the Freudian slip.

John Brownlee

Giant rubber band has ACME possibilities

A six foot long rubber band hardly qualifies as a gadget except in the loosest interpretation of the term, but still... many uses thoughtfully present themselves, not the least of which is a Wile E. Coyote like scenario in which it is secured about a nemesis' ears, stretched taut around an anvil, then released. That's a lot of fun for $5.50.

Giant Rubber Band [The Mut via Nerd Approved]

John Brownlee

Order Domino's Pizza through your TiVo

TiVo and Domino's recent team-up to allow for the ordering of drinks, side orders and pizza pies through their DVR menu is generating a degree of skepticism, but I think they are halfway to a great campaign.

The trick is to tie the ability to order pizza in with the time with the Tivo's user data. For example, let's say that every Tuesday night at around 6pm, you sit down and watch two hours of stored television: a couple of thirty minute sitcoms, then an hour long episode of some medical whodunnit. It's a ritual.

Right after the first sitcom, Tivo pops in, remind you it is supper time and asks if you'd like to order a pizza: it'll be delivered by the time House starts. Answer "No" or "Never Again" if you want, or cave to the temptation of 18 inches of bubbling cheese and perfectly spiced and cured hog intestine.

I know: some will view this as yet another insidious intrusion into our homes by the Obesity Industry. But that's not the point.... handled well — with a proper network of carriers, intelligent application of TiVo's learning facility and options to turn off the feature in the menu — it could be quite the boon, both to food delivery businesses and couch potatoes.

TiVo delivers Domino [Zats Not Funny]

Joel Johnson

Video: Pronto Condoms take all the awkwardness out of sheathing

Available, sadly, only in New Zealand South Africa. [ProntoCondoms.co.za]

Rob Beschizza

HP fury at Microsoft allowing Vista-Capable stickers on junk

When Microsoft lowered system requirements for the official "Vista Capable" imprimatur, HP got mad:

"I hope this incident isn't a foretaste of the relationship I will have with Microsoft going forward, but I can tell you that it's left a very bad taste with me and my team," Richard Walker, senior vice president at HP's consumer PC unit, said in a Feb. 1, 2006, message to senior Microsoft executives.

HP spent $7m meeting the original, realistic Vista-capable requirements before Microsoft dropped them to please Intel.

Maybe it sensed that lying about a massively-hyped software product would precipitate a public relations problem that would affect everyone in the business of selling Windows-based computers. Just maybe.

The elegance of it all is wonderful: when the prevailing chip- and software-makers are in alignment, system builders get screwed, and all they can do is complain about the "very bad taste" in their mouth.

'Vista Capable' changes outraged HP, insider e-mails show [Computerworld]

Joel Johnson

Vintage Synth of the Day: David Company's Clavitar

From Keyboard Magazine Presents: Vintage Synthesizers:

If it weren't for the rock-and-roll world' perverse tendency to shovel lead synthesists into the guitar-hero mold, the remote controller idea might never have gotten off the ground. Even before Moog's guitar-necked portable Liberation synthesizer, remote controllers were appearing with everything but frets and strings. Case in point: The David Company's Clavitar, surely the duck-billed platypus of keyboard phylogeny.

David Clavitar in Vintage Synthesizers [Books.Google.com via Surroundhead]

Joel Johnson

Jodorowsky's Dune: Designed by Giger and Moebius, scored by Pink Floyd, scenery chewed by fat Orson Welles

Of course I'm flipping out in our Editor's chat about the fact that Alejandro "The Holy Mountain" Jodorowsky collaborated with Jean "Mœbius" Giraud, H.R. Giger, and Pink Floyd to adapt Frank Herbert's Dune into a film in 1975 — a project that never took off due to funding issues — when Rob, cultured beyond American measure, casually coughs that me not knowing about it is impossible, simply because it is too awesome not to be known.

Yet, I did not know!

Check out who Jodorowsky wanted for the cast:

The project was intended to involve his son Brontis Jodorowsky as Paul, Orson Welles as the Baron, Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha, Alain Delon as Duncan Idaho, Geraldine Chaplin as Lady Jessica, David Carradine as Duke Leto and Gloria Swanson as The Benne Geserit Reverend Mother.

Now we must demand a Yoshitaka Amano-designed version of Dune directed by...hrm, I'm at a loss.

Unseen Dune - Jean "Moebius" Giraud [Duneinfo.com]
Unseen Dune - Alejandro Jodorowsky [Duneinfo.com]

[via Sci-fi-o-rama via io9]

Joel Johnson

Incase Power Slider battery case for iPhone 3G

Incase has released a new version of their popular Slider case for the iPhone with an integrated battery inside. Called the "Power Slider", the new case has built-in five LED power level status lights in the back (like the MacBook) and a pass-through port that allows you to charge and sync the phone without removing the case itself.

It obviously adds to the thickness of the phone more than a typical case would, but it's the first extended battery case that I'm actually considering picking up. And I hate cases. Yet it's $100, which is a painful premium to anticipate a situation which I rarely find myself in. (I work from home; I know that many iPhone 3G users who are out and about all day have battery life issues.)

Power Slider iPhone 3G case product page [GoIncase.com]

Rob Beschizza

Boombox wristwatch

It's often true that something nerdy is so astounding or self-aware that it becomes cool by virtue of its novelty or attitude. The Flüd Boombox digital watch takes this conceit and runs with it—off a cliff.

One imagines a humming server room, green LEDs twinkling behind blue ropes of CatV. Experienced networking hands pluck tufts of insulation from under their Tokyoflash timepieces. A young new IT hire, fresh from Cisco academy, hurries in to proudly show off his awesome boombox watch.

There are smiles that do not reach the eyes, and silence.

Retro Boombox LCD Wrist Watch [Epotpourri]

Rob Beschizza

XPod Active Sound Speakers

Dismal portable speakers just got a bit sexier.

XPod is genuinely pocket-tiny and even has two piezo buzzers for stereo awful sound. An integrated 770mW amp is powered by a battery, itself juiced-up via USB, though there's no obvious indication of how long you'll get on a charge. That's an immaterial complaint, however, as a more immediate problem presents itself: they are available only in Korea.

Surely SkyMall or Hammacher Schlemmer can do something about that.

X-Pod [Early Adopter via
Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

Watch your life slip by

Take a seat for Andy Kurovetz's Cycle Life watch.

Welcome to the Glamourous Life of a Full-Time Professional Designer! Watch Yourself! [Yanko Dvice]

Joel Johnson

Flipbac angle viewfinder for cameras (it's a mirror)

The "Flipbac" adds a pull-down mirror to your camera's LCD screen, making it possible to place the camera at odd angles but still see the screen. (Albeit upside down!) It can open in both landscape and portrait positions after it's been attached using an adhesive, which is included.

It's $25, shipped anywhere in the world.

Flipbac angle viewfinder product page [Flipbac.com]

Joel Johnson

Community incinerator turns slum garbage into cooking heat

AfriGadget takes a look at a clever garbage incinerator deployed in Kibera, Kenya, that turns waste fuel and garbage into cooking heat for residents. The design of the furnace actually allows plastics and other waste to be burnt without releasing harmful fumes:

What kind of garbage? Any, plastics, food wastes even clothes - anything that will burn really! But doesn’t that produce toxic fumes you ask?? This is what’s so clever about the project. Using technology that I don’t understand the oven burns at temperatures of up to 930 degrees F. which basically detoxifies many hazardous pollutants.

“It uses a superheated steel plate inside the incinerator box to vaporize drops of water. The oxygen released then helps burn discarded “sump” oil from vehicles – itself a pollutant in the slums – driving temperatures higher”.

Turning rubbish into dinners in Kibera [AfriGadget.com]

Joel Johnson

Video: Dekotora Nintendo DS Lite has LED-a-go-go

This enterprising Japanese hacker kitted his Nintendo DS Lite with at least a dozen LEDs, creating the most powerful portable seizure machine on the planet. (Skip to 4:40 if you just want to see the lights, not the build process.)

[via Kotaku]

Joel Johnson

A picture that can change its shadow

By combining several hundred photographs and then printing the composite lighting differences into a grid of transparent hexagons, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute's Martin Fuchs have developed these pictures that change as light moves through them during the day.

From New Scientist:

The researcher's prototype device, which can be attached to a window, comprises three layers: a lens array at the rear focuses light onto a transparency film on which a photograph is printed; the light passes through and is projected onto a "diffuser" in front, where the image is revealed.

When the Sun rises in the east, the projected image shows objects casting a long shadow to the west. As the Sun climbs towards midday, the shadow shrinks, before extending to the east in the evening.

Photos with shifting shadows come to life [New Scientist via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Ricoh's wind- and solar-powered Times Square billboard

Ricoh will be installing this $3 million billboard in Times Square (7th and 42nd) that will be powered entirely by wind and solar. If there's not enough sun or wind, explains the Times, the 16 floodlamps that will shine on the unit will simply...turn off.

In Times Square, a Company’s Name in (Wind- and Solar-Powered) Lights [NYTimes.com] (Thanks, Rachel!)

Joel Johnson

Buttkicker wireless low-frequency seat shaker package for $300

ButtKicker has announced a new wireless version of its low frequency audio transducer to be sold on Amazon on Black Friday for $300. You can piece all the same gear together separately, but the whole package together is new. (The wireless stuff goes for about $70 now; the actual amp and shaker price varies depending on which model you get.)

The Buttkicker stuff is pretty amusing, adding a vibration to your chair or couch when triggered by low-end audio frequencies in games or movies. It definitely does add something visceral to a movie watching experience, although perhaps not as much as $300 more worth of speakers might (provided you live in a home where turning up the sound won't cause your neighbors to plotz).

For some reason the whole kit is listing as $400 now, so I wouldn't buy it yet. Buttkicker just sent out a press release announcing the price at $300.

Buttkicker Wireless Home Theater Kit catalog page [Amazon.com]

Update: Speaking of which, the Tulsa Emergency Medical Services Authority has started installing "Howler" sirens on their 77 ambulances. Each Howler generates a low-frequency noise that can be felt from up to 200 feet away, cutting through even loud engine or stereo noise that might cause a driver to miss the screaming, blaring, flashing explosion of light and sound that is a modern ambulance. Each unit costs about $400.

A siren you can feel coming [TulsaWorld.com via Medgadget via Oh Gizmo]

John Brownlee

Make your own warning sign with articulated ball-joint stick man

This ball jointed bendy man juxtaposed against a yellow triangular caution sign is certainly worth the $12 bucks, just to put him in some of the poses seen above. To the left, a perennial Haight Street favorite, the "Keep On Truckin'" caution sign. To the right, a stern warning concerning the dangers of marauding breakdancers.

Stickman Action Figure [Think Geek via OhGizmo!]

John Brownlee

Moon Dust DNA watches have a bit of Le Voyage Dans La Lune

Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome have crafted a line of gorgeous watches called Moon Dust DNA, using materials such as the eponymous moon dust, fragments from the Apollo XI and International Space Station, and presumably the deoxyribonucleic helixes of some Martian moon man.

I think the designs are hit or miss, and there's something tacky about these watches, like the occasional luxury gadget containing a splinter off the hull of Titanic aimed at rich idiots with dysenteric bank accounts. Still, I really love the design of the watch to the right: perhaps it is just the juxtaposition against the velvety black background, but it reminds somehow of the Le Voyage Dans La Lune aesthetic of a silvery man in the moon with a rocket stuck in his eye as a monocle.

Needless to say, don't expect cheap: retail price for these watches are between $15,000 and $500,000.

Luxury Watch Created With Moon Dust and Spacecraft Scrap [The Age via Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

• Netbook – The Asus Eee 3G Surf (Celeron M 900, not the Atom one) for $260, shipped. A fine deal, but bear in mind this is the first generation netbook platform, not the newer one. [Dealnews]

• Blu-ray Player – Today's Woot is a Memorex Blu-Ray Disc Player for $145, shipped. Looks like this is the Christmas that Blu-ray goes mainstream. About time.

Joel Johnson

My new desktop: 1970 Nissan 270X Concept

The 270X was a stunning project car from Nissan, combining the lean, lupine look of the time with the practicality of a Paceresque hatchback. It's an aggressive style — aggressively ugly, even — but there's nothing about it I don't like, right down to the redline Bridgestone tires.

Although built in 1970 for the 17th Tokyo Auto Show, it is still branded a Nissan, not a Datsun. That brand existed in the U.S. until 1983-1984 until the company underwent a transition that was rumored to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in signage, advertising, and sales lost to confusion.

More gorgeous Nissan concept cars [ConceptNissan.com]

"Okay! From now on you're Nissan!"

John Brownlee

Mac Pro Ultra Mini made out of broken MacBook and aluminum enclosure

By cramming the still functioning guts of a waterlogged MacBook into an aluminum external hard drive closure and melting a whole lot of solder, the guys over at WolphBite managed to create their own Mac Pro Ultra Mini. It looks great: I want one.

My New Mac Pro Ultra Mini [Wolph Bite]

John Brownlee

iPhone cases for Christmas sparkle like ornaments

These iPhone cases from More Thing aim to festively match the reflective metallic skin of Christmas tree ball ornaments. Even outside of the context of the holiday, though, I think they are attractive, although I wish they somehow managed to give that tinged, convex reflection of a world blinking brightly with colored lights and buried in discarded reams of wrapping paper that makes looking into a ball ornament so much like peering into a world of Always Christmas. $29.90.

iPhone Noel Cases [More Thing via Technabob]

John Brownlee

MP3-playing skull belt buckle is the perfect gift for the death metal man child

I like to imagine the person who would wear this gleaming silver skull belt buckle with built-in MP3 player and four LED pineal glands. In my mind's eye, I see a death metal man child, his flabby torso squeezed into a child's size Megadeth t-shirt. He is completely bald, but still manages to have a mullet. His hands are deformed, crab-like pincers in the shape of devil's horns; he is incapable of human speech except for the occasional moist shouting of the word "Metallica!" to denote excitement or approval. And, of course, the zipper on his leather pants must always be down: our man rocks with his [REDACTED] out.

In short, I think Joel's really going to love this when he gets it from me for Christmas. The belt buckle includes a built-in MP3/MP4 player with 1GB of memory, an FM radio and LED lights that visualize the playing tune.

MP3 Player / LED Light Belt Buckle - Punk Skull Design [Chinavasion via Geek Alerts]

John Brownlee

iPhones should not be ensconced in schweinefleisch

Bacon tastes great. On that, we're all agreed. But let's get our heads together here: while bacon as a flavor and texture is wonderful, tempting all, the visual aesthetic of bacon is no different than that of a long strip of pulsating flesh peeled off of the squealing flank of an obese, shit-encrusted sow.

Where will your madness end, bacon lovers? One second, you are recreating the aesthetic of bacon in felt for the express purpose of the ensconcing of your iPhones. But why stop there? Why not make your iPhone case out of bacon? And once you begin sliding down that fat greased slope of stinking exposed swine musculature, what's next? Plasma panels embedded in the fleshless bellies of a wall-mounted hog? Bacon toilets? iPig?

Clive Barker may welcome this technological vision of the future with eyes rolled white and hands stuffed down the front of his pants, but I don't. I draw the line at wood grain.

Bacon iPhone Case [DaWanda via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Matrioshka-like nesting bowls (matrioshka-like nesting bowels sold separately)

These colorful matrioshka-like nesting bowls capture my home maker fancy. At $59, they seem overpriced — surely IKEA must sell something like this at half the price— but the chromatic nesting and stacking of four measuring cups, two bowls, a colander and sieve inside each other somehow triggers in me the self-satisfaction of a preschooler solving a simple geometric block puzzle.

Joseph Joseph Nest 8 Multicolored Bowls [Conran USA]

John Brownlee

CNet doesn't know what a BSOD looks like

The caption to this photograph — spotted on CNet's gadget blog, Crave — reads "CNET News reporter Elinor Mills knows what it's like to feel frustrated by computer glitches." Apparently! Look at her: the woman is so perturbed she actually needs to clamp the lid of her skull down on the pan, lest her brain boil over. One would imagine that even the citizens of Hiroshima, witnessing an encroaching wall of nuclear fire racing towards them out of ground zero, somehow managed to be more composed.

So yes, we agree: CNet News reporter Elinor Mills knows what it's like to feel frustrated by computer glitches. There couldn't be any less doubt about that if she was tearing long strips of skin from her face with her finger nails. Curiously, though, it seems that what CNet News reporter Elinor Mills doesn't know is what a blue screen of death actually looks like. Here's a hint: it is neither a pop-up window nor an embedded graphic in a Word document. You may stuff your hysterically disgorged eyeballs back in their sockets, Elinor. There is nothing to see here.

Young people, men more optimistic when tech fails [CNet]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Power Plant

Image: Sean O'Steen

Joel Johnson

All the President's Email

From the Times' story about Obama surrendering his BlackBerry:

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe [NYTimes]

Rob Beschizza

Report: Allchin tried to stop Microsoft Vista-Certifying computers that couldn't run it properly

According to court documents, Microsoft not only knew that it was lying when it issued "Vista Capable" certification to computers with puny Intel 915 chipsets that had no such capability, but was thanked for it directly by Intel CEO Paul Ottelini.

Imagine being someone who mattered at Microsoft having to listen to fellow executive Jim Allchin go on and on and on:

"We are going to be misleading customers with the Capable program. OEMs (computer makers) will say a machine is Capable and customers will believe that it will run all the core Vista features. The fact that aero won't be there EVER for many of these machines is misleading to customers. ...We need to meet on this. Please set this up ASAP. We need something simpler in my view. I know we don't want to hurt the OEMS, but end-customers must be the top priority. We must avoid confusion. It is wrong for customers. And we probably will have to change your current plans.........."

Allchin retired the day Vista was released.

New court documents reveal internal Microsoft fighting over Vista, Intel [TechFlash]

Rob Beschizza

Wal-Mart Orders Internet Not To Tell People It Will Sell Wiis For $224 On Black Friday

Yes, Wal-Mart, you can put the genie back in the bottle! The problem, of course, is that the ad doing the rounds is a fake. A cease and desist letter went to CrunchGear, among others. Here's Arrington, pretending that he doesn't know what Photoshop is:

Walmart claims both that the ad is copyrighted and otherwise proprietary information. But they also claim it is inaccurate, which suggests that it’s fake. I don’t see how it can be both.

It's actually going to be $425, according to the Black Friday sites.

Walmart Wants It Both Ways. We Say No. [TechCrunch]

Rob Beschizza

IBM to Mark Papermaster, who left for Apple: think about your family

Mark Papermaster is the executive who left IBM's blade server business to take over Apple's iPod and iPhone shop. IBM sued him, claiming that he's violating a non-compete clause in his employment contract. Papermaster has countersued, saying that iPods are obviously not in competition with blade servers.

The wrangling goes on, but there's a fantastic line from IBM, according to one source:

After Papermaster informed IBM of his decision to accept the position at Apple, IBM implored Papermaster "to consider the effect of his decision on his family."

One can imagine nasal-voiced, reed-thin IBM brass deliver this absurd threat, only to be suffocated when The Papermaster calls upon the Ancient Spirits of Cellulose, the filing cabinets snap open, and they are buried in a shrieking whirlwind of printouts and reports.

John Brownlee

Great moments in euphemistically masturbatory gadget grammar: Atari 2600 USB Joystick

Atari USB Joystick [Legacy Engineer]

Joel Johnson

There aren't that many top-end film cameras out there for RED's new Digital Still and Motion Camera System to replace

RED released a new camera system today, the "Digital Still and Motion Camera System", a ridiculously modular system with a goofy name for which I'd mock them if the whole package didn't turn my tongue to sandpaper with lust.

But in a preface to an interview with RED head honcho Ted Schilowitz, FX Guide make an interesting observation: even though the new RED cameras could take on professional 35mm cinema cameras, there aren't actually all that many top-end units being used at any given point in time:

Currently there are about 75 Genesis cameras in the world, far fewer F35s or Dalsa cameras. If one was to give these cameras a generous $200,000 price tag, then at about 50 Cameras a company could expect to make 50x 200K = $10,000,000.

It was estimated in 2007 before RED delivered that the world requirements for high end cameras to service the non-indie film feature film market was just 500 cameras total. If the world could be clever: a mere 500 cameras would be need to film all the professional studio films in the world. There just aren't that many major features being shot simultaneously in any given month that the world needs more than about 500 top end cameras.

Interview with RED [FXGuide.com]

John Brownlee

TriGears puzzle by Bittorrent co-creator

This cute little puzzle made by Bittorrent co-creator Bram Cohen features three interlocking gears that can only freely rotate in one configuration.

TriGears is a special puzzle. There are three gears set so that turning one gear turns the other two. If the three gears were in a flat plane they would, of course, jam. Oskar had the gears bevelled and set them at 60 degrees so that they all mesh in the middle. This apparently has no practical value and would not be a puzzle if Oskar had not made the teeth of the gears of varying width and of varying spacing. The object of the puzzle is to place the three gears in their holder such that they spin freely and do not jam. There is only one way to do this (see the solution). All other assemblies quickly jam. Once solved, the puzzle becomes a toy in that it is very satisfying to keep spinning the gears.

TriGears [Puzzle Palace via MAKE]

John Brownlee

Google releasing speak-to-search iPhone app

Google has just announced that sometime today, they will release an iPhone app that allows users to generate search results just by speaking into the mike. It simply sucks up your voice, uploads it to a Google server and returns the results, with promises that the results will get better over time as Google gets exposed to a larger variety of stutters, mumbles and lisps.

Sounds great: I'd definitely rather speak into my iPhone than use the onscreen keyboard. But why is Google premiering stuff like this on the iPhone? It just makes them seem sloppily uncommitted to Android.

New York Times article

John Brownlee

4,000 Pages of IBM PC Documentation

Over at Gearfuse, Vince Veneziani — the shrieking monkey id of gadget blogging — took advantage of an all-too-rare moment of sanguinity to post this striking shot of the gorgeous manual set that IBM shipped with the original PC back in 1984. This complete set of documentation is still sitting on the shelves of my parent's house under a cake of twenty year old dust as thick, silvery and undappled as the surface of the moon. They just don't make documentation like this anymore.

Classic IBM Packaging [Gearfuse]

John Brownlee

The Hydraulic Excavator That Could

Spotted over at Dark Roasted Blend, this hydraulic excavator, monkey climbing its way up a specially designed tower and then doing a handstand at the top. This, my friends, is the Harold Lloyd of construction vehicles.

Rocket Explosion Overture [Dark Roasted Blend via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Decapitated NASCAR cyborg turned CD player

A big part of me has always hoped that underneath the helmet, this was the way all NASCAR drivers were: just massive automobile racing cyborgs with laser-emitting LEDs for eyes, each race's programming inserted into a DVD tray that pops out of their chinguard.

Otherwise, not much to report, except a radio, a built-in CD player and a staggering $140 price tag. Its being sold exclusively at Walmart: apparently, FAO Schwartz — the nation's other most popular mega-retailer amongst NASCAR fans — lost the bidding war.

NASCAR Helmet with Radio and CD Player [Walmart via Slippery Brick]

John Brownlee

Best Buy to hold digital crossover workshops, push HDTVs

Blue shirted benefactors of humanity and sephirim guiding us all upon the path of technological enlightenment that they be, Best Buy will be hosting workshops in 25 of its stores around the country to "educate consumers about the transition to digital television broadcasting and help them choose the best solution for their television needs."

In reality, though, it is hard to imagine these will be anything but elaborate sales presentations trying to sell people expensive HDTVs. Best Buy and other big box retailers has been using the digital transition (and the public's lack of education about it) to sell unnecessary televisions for months.

I mean, hell, what is there to really hold a workshop about? If you've got cable — which approximately 80 percent of Americans do — you don't need to worry about anything. If you're still sucking in broadcast waves via bunny ears, you do. And that box is not a $1500 plasma.

Blue Shirts to solve digital TV transition [Crave]

John Brownlee

The iBoogie speaker and dance machine

The iBoogie is a twenty dollar speaker containing the accompanying rhythmic dance routines of a Stop Signal refuge. I would have prefered a moonwalking ampelmann, personally.

iBoogie Speaker and Dance Machine for MP3 Players [HSN via Oh Gizmo]

Rob Beschizza

Review: Mugen Pop Pop Endless Bubble Popping toy

Mugen Pop Pop is a handheld toy, based on bubble-wrap, manufactured by Bandai America. It comes in four colors and is in stores now. They fired one our way, and I can humbly report that is it as addictive as it is silly. And best illustrated by video:

Joel Johnson

Review: WowWee Flytech Bladestar flying toy (Verdict: Clever but dull)

Like a lot of WowWee products, the Flytech Bladestar is more impressive as an engineering feat than as a toy. Infrared hoverdiscs have been around for ages, but the Bladestar has its own sensors inside — presumably another little IR blaster — that can let it sense light-colored objects like walls (or ghosts). In this "Autopilot" mode all you need control is the altitude via the throttle, sending it up or down as it meanders around a room. It's fun for a second.

In "R/C mode" you can steer it in four directions. The Bladestar cleverly modulates its two fans to make forward motion. Unfortunately the infrared receivers inside the Bladestar aren't very responsive, meaning it's quite possible to have the Bladestar crash into a wall or ceiling or pet before it responds to your correction. Or worse, refuse to shut off as it thrashes on the ground, denting the light but sturdy foam wings.

There's nothing wrong with the Bladestar, per se. It does exactly what it aims to do. It's just that it's only amusing for a bit. (I handed it over our backyard wall to the neighbor kids; they returned it in a few minutes and went back to playing basketball.) At $40 you'd be better off buying two of the tiny little foam helicopters available nearly everywhere. They may not be as technologically advanced, but they're a lot more fun to fly.

Flytech Bladestar product page [BladestarOnline.com]
Flytech Bladestar catalog page [Amazon]

Joel Johnson

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

Nate Miller writes:

I'm reliving a current fascination with the Apple ][ family, and am considering picking up a //c for the reasons I can't quite justify.

I stumbled upon this page, which is an original review of a //c, circa 1984. It's just so easy to read it as the output of a current blogger.

Some of the fascinating quotes:

"The ivory color, rounded edges, and high-performance look of the IIc have been dubbed the "Snow White" look and will be featured in all new Apple products. It is the look of the 80's, the Pepsi Generation, and you had better get used to it. You will be seeing a lot of it in years to come."

"It also reinforces Apple's contention that the IIc isn't machine for people who want to hack around with the hardware."

It's even got the fanboy Art of War maxim: turn your weakness into the greatest strength:

"The lack of slots is really a blessing in disguise. It makes the IIc a "closed system." This is the kind of environment for which software developers like to program, since they don't have to worry about all the different cards and hardware kits that you may or may not have in your computer. With a closed system, if the program runs correctly on one IIc, it runs correctly on every IIc. I anticipate that software firms will flock to the IIc. This machine is a programmer's dream•a powerful closed system with a wide range of special features."

Couple this with the fact that the //c was introduced at an "Apple Forever" event at Moscone Center...and it was somehow carried off, even without a single liveblogger.

Joel Johnson

Review: Riff Rocker USB guitar controller (Verdict: Sorry, but no)

The Riff Rocker pitch was intriguing: a cheap little USB guitar peripheral that actually ships with the open-source Guitar Hero clone Frets on Fire. Pretty cool — except the $20 peripheral is really just not a good piece of equipment and worth, at most, a buck or two.

The controller is two small to easily hold in two hands and the narrow neck makes the fret buttons difficult to strike. It doesn't feel anything like playing a standard-sized guitar peripheral at all — let alone a guitar.

The tiny little rocker switch that serves as a strum bar is difficult to flip back and forth. The cord is only about three feet long, which means you'll have to be seated right next to your computer. At that distance, why not just use a keyboard?

Consider Frets on Fire ships with only a couple of songs — let's face it, it's really designed to be used with copyright-violating packs of pop songs with fret patterns programmed by fans — there's really nothing much left to a Riff Rocker owner except frustration and a desire to play with a full-sized (miniature) controller.

Riff Rocker project page [Riff-Rocker.com]

Related • Make a Guitar Hero Kit for your PC for $30 [Instructables]

Rob Beschizza

LED Menorah

For the Festival of Blinkenlights.

LED motherboard menorah [Fred Flare via Hack a Day]

John Brownlee

Make your own Muppet Whatnot

By selecting from a rainbow of felty flesh tones, bulbous noses, jutting thyroidic button eyes, flapping mouth shapes and appalling fashion choices, FAO Schwartz will allow you to create your very own likeness in Muppet form, then sell it to you for $90 as a "Muppet Whatnot."

It's all terribly neat. To the right, behold Beschizza's Muppet Doppelganger. Beschizza is quintessentially British, and I think — short of ripping the teeth out of a decaying horse and cramming them into this Muppet's mouth — I've found his perfect likeness, right down to the grotesque plaid blazer, the green pallor of the hungover binge drinker and the dropsied Liverpudlian eyelids. I can't wait until it arrives, so I can prance around BBG headquarters with my hand up its backside, lispily rattling off Beschizza-isms in a shrieking castrati falsetto as Bobert himself quietly arranges a noose for himself in the supply closet, reflecting upon the glory of Empire.

The Muppet Whatnnot Workshop [FAO Schwartz]

Rob Beschizza

Note: Magic things you plug into 12V power ports don't give you extra MPG

The Magic Power System Power Bar plugs into your auto's 12V power port and is claimed to increase fuel efficiency up to 30 percent, increase torque and reduce emissions. Also said to improve car audio quality and "clean the entire car electrically," it costs just £35.

It's a scam, of course, but hey—it says its magic right on the side!

Contribute To The Environment Unconsciously With The Magic Power System! [Jalopnik via Dan's Data]

Joel Johnson

Recycling E-waste the right way

The Times profiles "e-Scrap", an E-waste recycling company that vows to have a "zero landfill policy". It's clearly a problem in need of solving:

Finding ways to dispose of America’s increasingly large stream of e-waste is difficult: an estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses every day. In a 2006 report, the International Association of Electronics Recyclers estimated that about 400 million pieces of e-waste are scrapped each year. And while some prominent manufacturers, like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have agreed to recycle their own equipment, such programs have so far made only a modest difference.

For the Digitally Deceased, a Profitable Graveyard [NYTimes]

Previously • Video: 60 Minutes tackles exported E-waste

Joel Johnson

Colo shutdown takes a big bite out of spam traffic

Brian Krebs reports that the takedown of a single computer colocation facility in Northern California, the cleverly named "McColo", caused worldwide spam traffic to drop an amazing "two-thirds" to "75 percent". It has long been suspected that the majority of spam comes from just a handful of sources, but that's pretty incredible.

My unix admin roommate and I were debating how a location pushing out such an overwhelming amount of spam could have operated within the United States for so long without being taken down. Obviously they could be relaying the mail, etc., but they what's to stop the spammers from simply reinstating the control machines from another location? I'm sure there's a simple explanation, but I'm too dumb to know what it is.

Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline [WashingtonPost.com]

John Brownlee

Piaggio's MP3 hybrid scooter gets 141 MPG

There's a couple of reasons I like the look of Piaggio's new plug-in MP3 Hybrid Scooter.

The first is the technology. According to Piaggio, the MP3 will be capable of up to 141 miles per gallon, with zero-to-sixty times of five seconds. The battery is recharged by wall socket in only three hours, with regenerative braking helping to keep the battery juiced as you're puttering around. All of which adds up to squeezing as much gas mileage as possible out of the MP3's 125-cc gasoline engine.

But I also really like the design: a sort of backwards tricycle, as designed by Starfleet engineers. It doesn't have the classic lines or tiny toy wheels of a Vespa, but that's why I like it. A scooter's defining trait — the tiny wheels — is what makes them incredibly dangerous. An unexpected curve, bump or pothole is enough to completely discombobulate your balance and send you flying (which is how I broke a few of my limbs on a scooter back in 2002), while a motorcycle would barely feel the jar. That third stabilizing wheel goes a long way to making the scooter safer for its riders.

Piaggio says the two front wheels are still capable of 40 degree turns like any other scooter or motorcycle, and improves traction, stability and braking. I believe it.

No firm release date or price yet, but Piaggio says they could hit dealerships as early as 2009.

Piaggio unveils a 141-MPG Plug-In Hybrid Scooter [Autopia]

Joel Johnson

New Trek designer talks ship design with Rick Sternbach

The debate about the new Enterprise design nerdrages on, with discussion on Trek Movie between famous Trek designer Rick Sternbach and Ryan Church, the new movie's designer. Here's Church standing up for his new design:

I’m not going to get involved in the mud slinging, here, but needed to assure you guys and gals: we’ve built you a fine ship. To clarify: there’s a slight optical illusion occurring here, consequence of the “camera” angle. For Rick and others who worry the nacelles don’t have a clear line of sight over the disc — they, in fact, do. We were hardly working in a vacuum. I raided ILM reference photos like a madman. We were deferential to “inviolates” of Star Trek design vocabulary. Additionally, the profile here isn’t 100% representative, because, as you’ve noticed, the Bussards are dimmed. The true profile of the nacelles may or may not be revealed here, and that’s all I’ll say.

Big Reaction To New Enterprise - New Designer Responds [TrekMovie.com]

Previously • J.J. Abrams' Star Trek gets its Enterprise

John Brownlee

Last Call iPhone app lets your blood alcohol level stay on the right side of the law

In truth, there's little reason to need to precisely calculate your blood alcohol volume. The legal limit in the States is so low that an Irishman can get you arrested simply by belching into your face. If you've had more than a single drink in the last few hours, you're likely over the legal limit... and even if you aren't, cops pulling you over have quotas to make.

Still, from a purely scientific perspective, I love the Last Call iPhone app, which allows me to measure my likely drunkenness at any time. You simply plug in what booze you're drinking, when you drank it and how much you weigh and it tells you whether you are above or below the legal limit. Well soused, positively jactitating? It'll let you look up numbers of taxi cab companies or even DUI attorneys.

.016 Brownlee, signing out.

Last Call [iTunes via Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

The Job is a Lie: Valve almost lured Half-Life 2 source hacker with fake job interview

Just a friendly reminder: if you're going in for a job interview with Valve Software (the creators of the Half-Life series, Portal and the upcoming Left 4 Dead), make sure they aren't charging you with any felonies. The job offer might not quite be on the up-and-up.

After the secret source code for its then-unreleased shooter Half Life 2 showed up on BitTorrent in 2003, gamemaker Valve Software cooked up an elaborate ruse with the FBI targeting the German hacker suspected in the leak, even setting up a fake job interview in an effort to lure him to the United States for arrest...

In March, several Valve managers staged a 40-minute "job interview' with DaGuy over the phone, in which the hacker confirmed that he was Gembe. Gembe detailed how he'd cracked the company's network, first entering through an account that had no password, then ramping up to root access using remote CGI exploits and scanning software.

After the interview, the then-21-year-old Gembe sent the company his résumé. "Well, I really hope you hire me," he wrote. "I'm no bad guy, just a little misguided."

Newell passed the resume along to the feds, then invited Gembe to travel to Seattle for a follow-up interview in person. "We pay for all interview related expenses (travel, hotel, food, etc. ...) as well as relocation expenses (pretty standard for the game business)."

Eventually, the hacker's spider sense weakly tingled, and he refrained from flying to Seattle to let Valve and the FBI arrest him. What a maroon.

Valve Tried to Trick Half-Life 2 Hacker Into Fake Job Interview [27 B Stroke 6]

John Brownlee

UFO Webcam looks like War of the Worlds Tripod appendage

This curious web cam with a built-in fan (presumably for cooling, as opposed to a simulated simoom-swept web cam coiffureage) and microphone tickles me, not just because of its curious Martian design — it looks exactly like the occular appendage of a George Pal Martian Tripod — but by the name of its manufacturer, Chinavasion, which sounds like just the sort of thing that will eventually predicate Fallout 3.

UFO Web Cam with Fan + Microphone [Chinavasion]

John Brownlee

Make your own doppelganger visage with That's My Face

That's My Face will generate a creepy, eerie mask of your face from two static photos for the price of $200. Many uses come to mind. Start next Halloween's "Yul Brynner in Westworld" costume! Buy one and wear it every day: be immortally young forever! Stitch one on a corpse and fake your own death! Or simply give one to your girlfriend and make out with yourself! That's My Face seem to recommend the last one above all: their motto is "Do Your Face Now."

That's My Face [Official Site via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Belkin's PC-to-Mac migration dongle spares you the annoyance of an Apple Genius

Belkin's latest color coordinated Apple dongle is $50 and comes bundled with Migration Assistant software, automating the process of switching your files and preferences from a Windows PC to a Mac... but, of course, not vice versa.

Sure, an Apple store employee will do this for you free, but I'd actually rather pay $50 than deal with Apple's vat-grown eugenic soldiers of supreme genetic douchiness, the "Apple Store Genius."

Switch to Mac USB-to-USB [Belkin via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Alien visualization of a Linux boot sequence

The sinuous and diffusing rills of the Linux boot sequence, as visualized by Perry Hung at MIT. Each function is a node, with every edge representing a function call, direct branch or indirect branch. It looks like a fluff of parakeet down, or a bit of crystalized algae in the blackness of subaqueous depths.

Visualization of Linux Boot Sequence [Flickr via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

However do you cope without a commercial portable shopping cart washer

"The #1 show stopper at Global shop and FMI."

Shopping Cart Washers [Medco]

Rob Beschizza

Review: A day with the Datto Z500

Datto's Z-series of NAS boxes offer a triple whammy of useful features. First, they use ZFS, a file system which maintains low-footprint snapshots of itself that can be browsed and restored. Secondly, it can be optionally configured as RAID 1 to bank against hardware failure. Finally, all models upload their contents to Datto's online storage system automatically, ensuring that local catastophe can't wipe your data.

Datto's online service offers enough storage to hold the entire system. Accessed through a web-based admin panel or via FTP, it can be set to warn you if it's low on space or if it's having trouble communicating with your local box.

As for the machine itself, it has two SATA hard drives with up to 1TB of storage, two gigabit ethernet ports, a 1.5 GHz VIA processor, 1GB of RAM, and 4 USB ports. Running OpenSolaris, it serves files over IP using samba or NFS. It's configured using a web browser.

Though made with commodity desktop hardware — the motherboard even has a VGA port — it's an attractive enough box, with a lockable cover over the drive's hot-swap bay. A problem, though, was the noise it produces: loud internal fans whirr away constantly.

Setup was easy, with only one minor hitch: there's no default share, so its instructions on how to connect are presented before there's actually anything to connect to. Remember to create a share, add a user, and, if desired, turn on guest access before wondering why there's nothing to be found at its IP address.

If there's any criticism to make of it, it's that its not much fun, lacking features seen in sexier NAS boxes such as bittorrent and iTunes serving. Instead, Datto offers snapshots, online backup and monthly fees: perfect for small businesses wanting maximum redundancy, but not so much for holding media libraries.

Pros

ZFS maintains low-footprint snapshots
Backs up online automatically, with easy access via FTP
Can set upload speed limits, schedule, pause, and force immediate backups
Can also backup to attached USB drive
Hot-swap drive slot

Cons

$35 for the monthly service fee, and that's just the 250GB model
Lacks consumer-friendly features
Big and loud

Datto Online Store

Rob Beschizza

What sort of computer does the president-elect prefer?

Three guesses, and I'll give you a clue: it's not a Commodore Amiga!

Turns out the president elect uses a Mac. But most certainly not an iPhone.

Update: Xeni tackles the question.

Rob Beschizza

Christmassy decal for Shuttle shoeboxers

Attention KPC owners: Shuttle has another freebie faceplate decal, this time for Christmas.

John Brownlee

UMID rebrands latest UMPC/MID as "mini-netbook"

Korean manufacturer UMID's latest touchscreen UMPC has all the gorgeous, unergonomic allure of the best pocket electronic dictionaries, but instead runs XP, VIsta or Linux on an Atom chipset instead, with 1GB of memory and up to 32GB of SSD Storage and a 1024 x 600 display. The specs are similarly nice: out-of-the-box, it can pipe in HSDPA, WiMAX, Wi-Fi or even digital television. No price or release date yet.

Smaller than a paperback notebook, UMID is christening it a "mini-netbook," which is understandable: netbooks are certainly more of a gadget vogue brand right now than the mere UMPC or MID, which are clunky acronyms that have never found a market. Very deft.

Unfortunately, that prefaced "mini" destroys all the worth of the netbook concept: netbooks are supposed to be just small enough to be able to really do some writing on. Smaller sizes aren't an asset: that's why the most popular netbooks are all 10 inchers. And, of course, at half the physical size, expect a battery life far worse than any netbook currently on the market.

But the problem with UMPCs or MIDs was never in the name: it was in the device concept itself, which is basically a full-featured laptop that folds up into your pocket. That sounds great, but it's conceptually the same thing as an HDTV you can carry around in your shoe: a rather neat but ultimately unusable proof technology hobbled by constraints and compromises.

So the question ends up being the incredulous same as the one I ask myself every time an attractive UMPC or MID comes about: okay, it's a mini-netbook, but who is the product for? Who could stand to use it, or could bear to pay for it? As near as I can tell, mini-netbooks (or whatever you want to call them) are expensive and practically unusable products aimed at exactly one customer: Rob Beschizza, who swears he could blog indefinitely on one as long as they'd sort out the battery life.

UMID Mini-Netbook [AVING via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Flip MinoHD camcorder: Will 720p matter to low-end camcorder buyers?

Pure Digital, makers of the mega-popular Flip camcorders, has announced the the MinoHD, essentially the Flip Mino capable of shooting 720p video. Its internal 4GB of will hold up to an hour of video.

Part of the Flip's appeal — besides its capable video quality and its simple interface — was its oh-why-the-hell-not price. The MinoHD sells for $230, putting it firmly in the realm of other flash memory- and tape-based camcorders with greater features (including such luxuries as optical zoom).

Then again, I thought the original Flip was a silly idea, but I underestimated the appeal of simplicity. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 720p recording capability folded down into the rest of the product line by this time next year.

(As an aside, 720p really seems like a nice resolution for things for the next couple of years. 1080p files are quite a bit larger and useless on the internet; 720p is still too high resolution for the likes of YouTube, but it won't be for long.)

MinoHD Press Release [TheFlip.com]
A Camcorder Insurgent Goes HD [Bits]
Testing the Flip MinoHD Camera (Video) [WSJ]

John Brownlee

The world's greatest chair: the Thonet No. 14

The International Herald Tribune has put up a fantastic write-up of what might possibly be the world's most popular chair: the Thonet Model 14. Six pieces of wood — two circles, two arches, two legs — that screwed together have seated more plump, writhing buttocks than any other chair in history.

The No.14 was the result of years of technical experiments by its inventor, the 19th-century German-born cabinetmaker Michael Thonet. His ambition was characteristically bold. Thonet wanted to produce the first mass-manufactured chair, which would be sold at an affordable price (three florins, slightly less than a bottle of wine). Many of his rivals had tried to make similar chairs, but failed and, at first, Thonet seemed doomed to failure too. When his German workshop was seized by creditors in 1842, he moved his family to Austria and opened a workshop in Vienna, determined to try again.

Eventually Thonet succeeded. When the No.14 was launched in 1859, it was the first piece of furniture to be both attractive and inexpensive enough to appeal to everyone from aristocrats to schoolteachers. By 1930, some 50 million No.14s had been sold, and millions more have been snapped up since then. Brahms sat on one to play his piano, as did Lenin while writing his political tracts, and millions of us have perched comfortably on them in cafés. Another admirer was the modernist pioneer Le Corbusier. "Never was a better and more elegant design and a more precisely crafted and practical item created," he enthused.

No. 14: The Chair That Has Seated Millions [IHT via Treehugger]

Rob Beschizza

Beautiful Urushi PC enclosures by Ryou Ikurin

No single item at Art-PC.jp stands out, but many of them are beautiful. There's also an interview with artist Ryou Ikurin, for those that can read it! Reader Minory writes in:

This is a modern Urushi art. This personal computer was made from the technique in the traditional craft of Japan. It is not a personal computer any longer.It is an interior. The case made from the wood wears natural beauty by coating Urushi (Japanese lacquer). The mouse becomes familiar with the hand by having been coated by Urushi(Japanese lacquer).

Art-PC

Rob Beschizza

Pharos' GPS smartphones link cars in a convoy

Satnav-maker Pharos has two new beefy RIM-like smartphones on offer, each packing HSDPA cellular radios and expensive unlocked price tags.

Top of the bullet points for the quad-band GSM Traveler 117 and 127 phones, however, is software: Pharos Smart Navigator, which weds GPS with Pharos services such as "follow me," which links multiple vehicles, and real-time traffic updates.

Though both have 128MB RAM, bluetooth, WiFi, a 2MP camera and 0.3MP webcam, the 117 has a larger 480 x 640 2.8" touchscreen, while the 127 has a 320 x 240 display with a qwerty keyboard. Both models will be $529.95 at Amazon, Newegg and other usual suspects, from Dec .1.

Rob Beschizza

Wired reviews the massive box that a tiny gadget came in. Verdict: WTF, SanDisk

Charlie "Charlie" Sorrel of Wired's Gadget Lab does not review anything so mundane as flash memory cards. The packaging it comes in, however, is another matter.

A ridiculously elaborate and frankly huge set of interlocking parts which do nothing so much as take up valuable space in a shipping container. ... SanDisk feels the need to pad the package so the buyer will have something substantial to fill his or her shopping bag. So, how bad is it? Using my computer's handy on-screen ruler, I checked the dimensions....

And on he goes, uncovering worthless value-add within, such as a big complementary carrying case for a single compact flash card. Also, he introduces a new unit of measurement, the Standard International rubber dinosaur.

Hands-On With SanDisk's Extreme IV Packaging [Wired]

Rob Beschizza

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Dice edition

If one lacks the fingers and hands required to play RPS, but has developed a preternatural ability to slurp up dice, clatter them around behind the teeth and then spit them neatly back into the table, designer Fatih Baltas has you covered.

Modern Rendition of Rock Paper Scissors Game [Fatih Baltas via Likecool]

Rob Beschizza

One percent is 5 percent in Circuit City math

A reader of The Consumerist spots a "deal" at a closing-down Circuit City. It evidently hopes you are as bad at math as it is.

John Brownlee

Toyota Corolla advertises with ninja cats

Toyota's latest Australian advertisement for the Corolla features a showdown between one lone modern-day feline shogun and a constabulary of anthropomorphic ninja cats, whose illicit sardine production facility is deftly robbed through a combination of kick-ass kung-fu and swinging lights.

It is weird.

John Brownlee

Best Buy follows Target's lead with built-in speaker gift cards, but misses the point

By no means is Best Buy's new gift card as cool as the Target digicam gift card of yesterday. While Target's built-in camera allowed for some amount of personalization in an otherwise impersonal and lazy gift, all Best Buy's card does is allow the recipient to use it as a speaker for their iPod.

On one hand, it's nice to see gift cards that do something. On the other, ideally, they'd allow you to do something creative with your gift card: a speaker only is really interesting if you could also record some sort of message on the device to play out of that speaker.

I'm interested in knowing who Target and Best Buy's supplier for these cards is? Sounds like there's a new gift card supplier in town.

Best Buy Gift Certificate Also A Speaker [Best Buy]

John Brownlee

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek gets its Enterprise

This is the new Enterprise in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reboot. It looks fine, although it is certain to prompt no shortage of indignant sputtering from the Internet's brigades of autistic, Klingon-fluent gelatinous orbs.

On my part, though I arch my eyebrow a bit at the new nacelle design (are those air scoops? in space?), it's hard to get too upset about it: I lost hope when the pictures of the bridge came out and it became clear that Abrams was too creatively bereft to do anything except totally modernize the technology while keeping the babes in mini-skirts, as opposed to a more imaginative retro-futurization of the design.

Star Trel: An exclusive first look at the Enterprise [Popwatch]

John Brownlee

The whimsical rationale behind tech's best branding

CIO has posted a pretty good feature (at least for perusal during the standards usually set by groggy, early-morning coffee slurping) about how ten famous technology products were named. Some of them are pretty interesting, like Red Hat Linux taking its name from a goofy red LaCrosse hat the co-founder liked to wear, or the rationale behind the BlackBerry, which aims to parlay the stress of the words "business email" into "sweet addictiveness":

The consultancy pushed RIM founders away from the word "e-mail," which research shows can raise blood pressure. Instead, they looked for a name that would evoke joy and somehow give feelings of peace. After someone made the connection that the small buttons on the device resembled a bunch of seeds, Lexicon's team (see profile) explored names like strawberry, melon and various vegetables before settling on blackberry—a word both pleasing and which evoked the black color of the device.

On the other hand, some of them are just lame. Wikipedia is a port manteau of wiki and encyclopedia? OS X is really just "Operating System 10?" Oh, do tell! My propellor beanie is positively whizzing, gents.

How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names [CIO]

John Brownlee

Quintuple bladed herb scissors

These sharp, quintuple bladed herb scissors make for fine, easy dicing, and would also make a superlative prop for a horror movie about an insane mohel who wants to forcibly convert the goyim and, what the heck, maybe he's also a spooky ghost. M. Night Shyamalan can direct, and at the end, the twist can be it was Zion all along, ooga booga! Only $9.99, which is competitive even against uni-bladed scissors.

RSVP Herb Scissors [Amazon via Gadget Grid]

Joel Johnson

Video: 60 Minutes tackles exported E-waste

I'm still digesting this piece which ran on CBS this Sunday, but I am only getting around to today. This is deeply upsetting.

It was gloomy and wet when we came back to town the next morning. Lamy had arranged to meet a man who would be able to introduce us to some workers. We drove our small car to an appointed corner, he jumped into the back seat, and we drove off. The worker liaison was a small, wiry fellow in a tan rain slicker. He had scarred, dark skin with handsome features and a wary smile. As we rounded a corner and parked against the edge of a building, he told us that the town authorities had recently warned workers that they would spend 30 days in jail if they spoke with foreign reporters. Lamy explained to me that the workers are migrants from other parts of China. Since they’re not official citizens of this province, they have no right to health care or other protections. "I keep thinking that they are totally vulnerable" she said.

Who Was Following Whom? [CBSNews.com]

Joel Johnson

Pomegranate NS08: The fake phone that does everything

Introduction

As a promotion to induce tourism, Nova Scotia commissioned these ads for a fake phone, the Pomegranate NS08, a ridiculously full-featured phone to promote "a place that has everything".

It appears the destination site is taking a bit of a drubbing right now, but I've thrown some of the other videos after the jump.

[via The Squid That Laughs via Kevin Rose]

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Sprint "Now" widget ad page is momentarily nifty even if you're not using their product

@mathowie said, "When I was a kid, I always thought in the future I'd get paid to look at something like the Sprint Now dashboard"

Intrigued, I looked, and then we discussed in our editor's chat room:

Joel J. oh man surely we can comment somehow on this http://now.sprint.com/widget/ 1:05 PM Rob B. playing pong already Joel J. haha, boing boing is on there [First we'd heard of it – Ed.] god damn it I want to hate this btu I don't it's useless but cool Rob B. This is cooler than it should be. They should let you embed these And customize them. e.g. set the location for the weather widget Joel J. Yeah, but did you se some fo the widgets interact? Marvin B. is Les Savy Fav the default music for everyone or have they tapped into my brainwave cookies Joel J. like the trees into houses thing I don't ahve music I have ambient sound Marvin B. one of the widgets is LSF - Let's Stay Friends fo rme Joel J. neat 1:10 PM Joel J. oh cool the widgets change I LIKE THIS BUT I DON"T WANT TO Marvin B. and actually the YouTube widget is something i just watched the other day, too Joel J. no it loaded les savy fav for me too and I haven't listened to them Marvin B. i'm feeling surveilled ah, good Joel J. Brooklyn-based indie pop? It'll never work. 1:15 PM John B. Wow, that's weird. Joel J. This is one of those times we should just paste the chat into the post, but if we do it we should make sure we say something smugly meta-aware of our intentions. DIVIDE BY ZERO

Looks interesting from a design point. Unfortunately, being a longtime Sprint customer, I think that you cannot tart up and gloss over things to sell what a service that is badly in need of improvement.

Joel Johnson

Custom PlayStation 3 interface helps disabled man game again

A young man calling himself "KitsuneYume" had this PlayStation 3 interface custom manufactured that allows him to control the vast majority of the buttons and toggles that make gaming possible. An array of widgets, including even a tongue-controlled toggle, were designed by Mark Felling of Gimpgear.us, maker of custom controllers for the disabled like "Sip & Puff Mouth Joysticks" and "Head Tracking Mouse Gaming" systems. (How can you not love a company that has a whole section titled "Pimp Your Wheelchair"?)

My custom one of a kind PS3 controller,I can game again! [BoardsUS.PlayStation.com via Engadget]

Previously • Kenguru: Drive-In Car for Wheelchairs
• Video: Dwarf Shows Off His Tools for Getting Dressed

John Brownlee

Mgestyk's gesture-based interface lets you play shooters with your own finger gun

Mgestyk's gesture-based interface technology turns the wax-on flick of a wrist into a rotation, the wave of the hands into a scroll and a thumbs up into a press of the Enter key. It's all done with a 3D camera that translates hand movements into commands for any computer application, regardless of the lighting. And if the promotional video is to be believed, it does it very, very well.

I tend to be cynical about motion interfaces: the metaphor of pushing an arrow key or waving a mouse simply seems more straight forward and less elaborate than doing a pantomime routine in front of my computer all day. That said, I find the apparent integration of Mgestyk's technology terribly neat: even if I don't particularly have any interest in doing all my computering this way, I could easily see a future iteration of the Wii going this route and be fine with it.

Rob Beschizza

NPD: iPhone outselling RAZR

Apple's iPhone is finally the best-selling cell phone, beating out even America's favorite contract freebie, the RAZR.

Apple iPhone 3G

Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)

RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)

LG Rumor

LG enV2

iPhone 3G Leads U.S. Consumer Mobile Phone Purchases in the Third Quarter of 2008 [NPR via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Inconspicuous-looking device sucks wasps to Iain Banks-style captivity, doom

An innocuous but mysterious pipe coils from the neighbor's roof, few clues offered as to its purpose. An overflow pipe? Surely not. A vent, maybe? The sinister truth is that your quiet, respectable neighbor has installed a wasp sucking machine.

I happened to have this incredibly powerful blower that I bought at a surplus store thinking I might use it for a pipe organ, but never used. Given this opportunity, and the blower, I decided to build a dedicated 'wasp sucking machine'.

The blower and 1/3 hp motor came as one unit, connected together with a flatbelt. I know, the shopvacs are supposed to have 5 horsepower, but they don't suck much harder than this unit, and they just don't last. The box has a glass lid so you can see the status of the catch, and only bug screen for a 'filter' so there isn't much to resist the flow of air. A piece of metal or cardboard can be slid in a gap where the hose connects to seal off the box, and the box just sits on top of the intake spout for the blower, so it can easily be removed from the machine for purposes of showing off one's catch.

Here's an example of its yield:

To the sacrifice poles!

Wasp sucking machine [Mattias Wandel via Make]

John Brownlee

Fallout 3 Survival Edition ships with real-life Pip Boy for your wrist

According to Internet reports, everything about this genuine Pip Boy replica shipped with Bethesda's super-duper Fallout 3: Survival Edition sucks the wax tadpole: the display is unreadable, the sharp plastic edges slice open wrists like swiss cheese, and the batteries drain after mere hours, necessitating you to screw the thing open and replace them.

In short, then, it operates — in mint — exactly the way you would expect an advanced piece of computer electronics to operate two hundred years after a nuclear war. I want one anyway for next Halloween's "Vault Dweller" costume, though Rob has an even better idea: mod a UMPC into it, then blog CES from it.

Fallout 3 Survival Series [Extreme Tech]

Joel Johnson

Video: Gear's heart

A beautiful interlocking set of gears which form a heart not unlike the one that grinds inside my own wet, sepulchural cavity. [via Core77]

Rob Beschizza

Dell netbook to dip under $300

On the day after thanksgiving, Dell's 9" Minspiron will be $300. There's an element of "enh" to it all—I recently found the $300 EeePC to have taken a corner-cut too many for anything more than the most casual use—but it's a nicer-looking machine than the 900-series Eees and OSX installs on it relatively easily.

But not with just 512MB of RAM! Remember to check the specs.

Dell Black Friday deal: $299 Inspiron Mini 9 [Lilliputing]

Rob Beschizza

Cool transparent Goldbergian coin bank

The irony, of course, is that the magnificently convoluted journey ends with the coin going into a drawer you can just open.

Coin Factory [Product Page via RGS]

Joel Johnson

Video: Stop-motion cutout Mega Man versus LEGO, pasta

I've spent half my life knelt in worship of the internet, but rarely does it bestow a gift so tailored to please me. This handmade video, woven from stop-motion cut-outs, found items, LEGO, and bound by a chiptune soundtrack, is not only hilarious and attractive, but serves to remind me how much I miss Mega Man. I was never that into the series after the first few, but I would always download the sprite rip packs that would show up and try to figure out how Capcom's artists could make simple sprites turn into lively cartoons.

Coincidentally, when I saw this first at Game Pipe Life, there was an ad for Sony's Little Big Planet off to the side, a game that renders the same literal textures as this stop motion video.

[via Game|Life]

Previously • Video: Gradius a la Little Big Planet

Related • Capcom PSN Store Open For Business This Thursday [Kotaku]

John Brownlee

Richard Solo: self-flagellator and iPhone battery manufacturer extraordinaire.

The Richard Solo 1800 is the euphemistic name of a help line for chronic masturbators in my home town of Malden, Massachusetts. It is also, apparently, an 1800 mAH battery pack for the iPhone... just like the million others in your local Apple store's accessory aisle. Where it sets itself apart, though, is its attractive, homuncular design: plugged into your iPhone's dock connector, it looks exactly like an iPhone and its prototypical little brother, an iPhone Nano, lying down chin to chin.

Richard Solo 1800 [Official Site via Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Beautiful simplicity of a bottle opener

In Africa (and many other places in the world, I imagine) bottle openers are made of simply a stick with a screw in it. Simple and — when beaded — quite lovely.

Togolese Bottle Opener Simplicity [Afrigadget.com via Treehugger]

John Brownlee

Target gift cards contain built-in digicam

It's easy to get all sniffy about the specs of Target's new digicam gift cards — 1.2 megapixels? 8MBs of onboard memory? The eyeroll of disdain underlined with a wipe of a mucousy nose with the back of the sleeve — but they're still awesome. A gift card is an inherently tacky and thoughtless gift, but the ability to load photographs of yourself or loved ones before shoving one into a Christmas stocking is a great, humanizing touch.

Target Gift Cards [Target via Coolest Gadgets]

John Brownlee

Twenty Five Years of the IBM PCjr

Old Skooler ramblings has a fantastic write-up of the twenty-five year old PCjr., IBM's embarrassing attempt at designing an affordable, entry-level computesr to '80s consumers. Its primary failing? It was actually less IBM compatible than the clones on the market at the time. But the PCjr was filled with similar juicy design fuck-ups:

• Because of no DMA capability, the computer needed to use the CPU to read the floppy disk, grinding the machine to a halt every time a floppy was accessed.

• The PCjr. was the only PC ever created that was slower than the original IBM PC.

• A modular design that allows you to simply plug-in additional PCjr. hardware, but which effectively doubled the PCjr's physical size.

• Memory expansion sidecars were required to approach rudimentary compatibility with most PC programs.

Of course, some good came out of it all: the PCjr was the computer Tandy eventually decided to clone and enhance, leading to the creation of the crackerjack Tandy 1000.

25 Years of Junior [Oldskooler Ramblings]

John Brownlee

Clarify C900 cell phone for Ludditical codgers (god bless 'em!)

The Clarity C900 is a cell phone aimed at seniors. That concept itself seems smug at first, but there's more to it than just marketing to the perceived Ludditical befuddlement of those dottering old pension codgers: in truth, it is easy to forget how complicated even an iPhone can seem to someone who hasn't spent years immersed in the taken-for-granted metaphors of the computer UI. ^* Factor in fading vision and hearing and arthritis, and what you have is a technology that should be as ubiquitous among seniors as Medic Alert bracelets, but isn't.

The Clarity C900 tries to get around all that with four big, simple buttons, a ring twice as loud as your normal cell phone, a flashing screen and a big red "panic" button depressed on the back that when pressed for three seconds will automatically text an emergency message to five contacts of your choosing while also cycling through them until someone picks up. Better yet, it's sold for $270 without a contract.

I suspect the only real problem with the design here is the lack of numeric buttons. I understand why they aren't there, but it's almost definitely true that your average elderly person will be more comfortable typing in numbers on a pad than scrolling through the digits with arrows. It seems like this phone is really meant to be entirely set-up by a younger relative, and given to a grandparent in case of emergencies.

Clarity C900 [Clarity via Crunchgear]

* - Or to put it another way: imagine going to Japan, drinking two bottles of Vodka, smashing your hands with hammers and then trying to operate the average Japanese teenage girl's Byzantine cell phone.

John Brownlee

The Onion takes on Snow Leopard and Windows 7

The Onion turns its eye to next summer's Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 showdown, and heaps scorn upon both in equal measure. "Weird Euro-Internet cafe" may be the most pitch-perfect dismissal of the Windows target market I've ever read.

OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows [Onion]

John Brownlee

The MSI Wind becomes the Apple MacBook Nano

Spotted in the wilds of Flickr, this MacBook Nano: a modified MSI Wind with some slick Apple branding, a hacked install of OS X Leopard and a 320GB hard drive bump. There's some typically Apple details you just can't mod, of course: there's simply no way Apple would release a netbook with a non-chiclet keyboard at this stage in the game, and that touchpad isn't fooling anyone either. Still, this really is about halfway towards what I want in an Apple netbook, with the additional 50% being extraordinary battery life.

Apple MacBook Nano [Flickr via Gadget Lab]

John Brownlee

The Food Chain Friends eat each other and cuddily illustrate Darwinism

I love this adorable series of stuffed animals, the Food Chain Friends, delightfully Darwinian creatures which eat each other in one long daisy chain of carnivorous glutting. $50!

Food Chain Friends [FAO via Gearfuse]

John Brownlee

Don't say "Reboot": Android OS executes every word you type

In what may possibly be the most bizarre bugs to ever ship, Google's Android OS attempts to carry out every single word you type as a command:

When I first read this I didn’t believe it. Then I read it again, and again, and finally tried it for myself. It’s true. Don’t believe me? Save anything you’re working on (this will reboot your phone!), open the keyboard tray on your G1, ignore anything you see on the screen, and type these 8 keystrokes: -r-e-b-o-o-t-. Poof, your phone will reboot. This only works on a real phone, not in the emulator, and only with firmware version 1.0 TC4-RC29 and earlier.

Google's already issued a fix, but this is a fun one. Unfortunately, "Marilyn Monrobot Massage" is not a recognizable command on my G1.

Worst. Bug. Ever. [ZDNet]

Joel Johnson

Tread: Expensive bags made from recycled bike truck tires

The same people who make the Solio solar chargers have released a whole new line of bags, laptop sleeves, and gadget cases under the "Tread" brand. Each of the items is made from recycled inner tube tires from trucks.

Most of the smaller bags look fairly typical, but the "Transient Attache" and the "Sleeve" are really nice looking. The inherent folds of the inner tubes make the material look like animal leather.

Even though the material has been saved from the dump you won't be getting second-hand prices: the Attache is $200, while the smaller cases are around $20-$30.

Pointlessly noisy Flash page [Tread.com]

John Brownlee

Inside the DSi: battery life reduced to fuel beefier CPU

So what's the autopsy report on the Nintendo DSi? Why is the battery life notably worse than the DS Lite? Over at bunnie: studios, the eponymous Bunnie ripped one apart, and it looks like we have our answer: a beefier CPU to handle the video and audio stuff.

I haven’t had much of a chance to play around with the device yet, but from what I can tell the CPU is substantially beefed up (consistent with reports of the DSi battery life being shorter than the DS-lite, despite having similar battery capacities of 840 mAh for the DSi and 850 mAh for the DS-lite), as it can do all kinds of real-time image manipulation tricks on the video feeds, and it also has a built-in minigame for audio streams where you can loop in samples over music files and do some low-quality pitch distortion on the fly. The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range.

Inside the Nintendo DSi [Bunnie Studios]

John Brownlee

The New Machiavelli goes USB

As part of the Blood on Paper exhibition, which gave artists a book and then asked them to customize it, Richard Shed took a sixty year old Penguin Classics copy of The New Machiavelli, digitized each pages and placed it on its own miniature USB homunculus. I love it: the only thing its missing is the skittering of tiny blood red spiders in the crevice of the spine. H.G. Wells would approve!

Digital Book [Richard Shed via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Badass custom Opel GT Batmobile sells for a measly $9k

Having recently bought a car myself, I'm familiar with the vagaries of used automobiles. My headlamps are a bit out of weak and the carburetor needs some tweaking, for instance.

But learning the quirks of a new car is half the fun of buying used. I shudder to imagine how much joy I'd have discovering how to work this one-of-a-kind Batmobile based on a '73 Opel GT and stuffed to the gills with early '90s electronics.

Check out some of the stuff that was inside:

1. SONY Digital Navigation System #NVX-F160

3. SONY Magic Link System with pager. This is the original vehicle PDA system before there were PDAs. Google Sony Magic Link System to get an idea. I do not know how to use it but it is there. I think you send emails, messaging, etc.

4. SONY Magic Link SkyTel Card

6. SONY Hi-8 VCR

7. Pioneer CD player DEH-85 in the dash....comes with the batman theme on cd!

8. Alpine Bat Phone #91530

11.Super Nintendo NES Game system with Batman Forever game.......yes, a game system that plays batman!

13.Alpine 80-80 Remote Commander RMX 38 (something to do with the alarm I think)

14.Alpine Alarm 8401 with paging system, unlocks and opens doors, windows...It will take you a full day just to learn the alarm system.

1973 Opel GT [eBay via Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Switch Table Chair looks simple and comfortable

In a stunning departure from the mode of typical concept furniture, the "Switch" chair-thing actually looks rather comfortable. Cock it back on its side and the ball inside is a lounger; roll the ball out and use it as a table, albeit one that won't easily let you fit your knees underneath.

It does look like a few of them have been manufactured — the designer even talks about the unique serial numbers on them — but it doesn't seem they're actually for sale.

Switch Table Chair product page [SwitchTableChair.buz via Decojournal via Freshome]

John Brownlee

Allio All-in-One crams full media center PC into 42" HDTV

Allio'sconvergence HDTV crams a full media center PC and Blu-Ray besides into a 42-inch LCD capable of a full 1080p, thanks to an Intel processor 4GB of RAM and 1TB of on-board storage.

It starts at $1600, which isn't bad, but these convergence systems are always tricky buying decisions: sure, you get everything you need to start a home theater system out of the box with no additional set-up, but all that stuff crammed inside just makes it more likely that one component going off will take down the entire system. And when you're talking about buying a television, it all just gets trickier: televisions are purchases people intend on keeping around for years or decades, but while the built-in PC might be convenient and beefy enough now, it is effectively stuck in amber forever... and that Intel processor, 4GBs of RAM and 1TB hard drive are going to start looking wimpy a long time before you're ready to upgrade your television.

Allio All-in-One [Product Page via Crunch]

John Brownlee

Hiranao Tsuoboi's LED Watch concept

It's just a concept, but Hiranao Tsuoboi's watch — which displays the time thanks to LEDs baked in between the links of the band — is utterly gorgeous.

LED Watch [Design Boom]

John Brownlee

Rumor: Dell shelving Zing MP3 player prototypes indefinitely

The earlier rumors of Dell launching a new MP3 player called Zing were surprisingly intriguing: a new DAP with the ability to download MP3s over WiFi and share them with other PCs and phones. More Zunish than iPod-like. I was looking forward to seeing what Dell would cook up: my first MP3 player was the crunchy old Dell DJ, an iPod as envisioned by Soviet-era electronics designers, but surprisingly full featured and resilient: five years later, my mother still putters around the garden with it, listening to old time radio programs as she rakes.

Unfortunately, it looks like Dell's not going to follow through with the device. According to the Wall Street Journal, the prototypes are being indefinitely shelves, and Dell will turn its concentration to the Zing software. Which seems just stupid: no one needs another music manager or store, or will be convinced to use one when there's not a killer device tailored specifically to it.

Dell shelving Zing prototypes [Wall Street Journal via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Beer even Kurzweil would love

A team of students at Rice University — many of them under 21 — have spliced genes into brewer's yeast to increase its output of resveratrol, the same healthful chemical found in red wine. In the future it will be possible to get all of one's medicinal needs met by beer, I bet. (It's nearly possible now.)

An iGEM requirement is that all of the biological "parts," also called BioBricks, be freely available to any team, a requirement the Rice team followed. However, they eventually hope to modify their yeast enough that they will be granted a patent. They also hope to publish their results sometime next year.

But don't expect to swill this brew soon. The team would need to remove certain genetic markers in the yeast cells first. FDA approval might then be necessary as well, since the yeast could be classified as a genetically modified organism.

Filtering the beer would eliminate the yeast but remove the medical benefits as well. The yeast cells produce resverstrol inside the cells. The cells have to burst for the human body to access the resverstrol. The easiest way is to let the stomach do what it does best.

'Bio-Beer' Designed to Extend Life [Discovery.com]

John Brownlee

Doom 3: Repercussions of Evil: another Garry's Mod masterpiece

It is not entirely as majestic an opus as the other Garry's Mod fan fiction masterpiece, Half-Life: Full-Life Consequences, but Doom 3: Repercussions of Evil is still a magnificent dramatic work, full of all the pathos and bathos you'd expect from Fanfiction.net's most promising up-and-coming playwright. Dig that twist at the end: you just never see it coming! He's a veritable M. Night Shyamalan!

John Brownlee

Steampunk Vacuum Survival System is top hat accommodating space helmet

Spotted over at the illustrious Brass Goggles, Herr Doktor's Vacuum Survival System, which allows the dapper cosmonaut to soar between the ethereal void between the spheres with a monocle firmly entrenched in occular cavity and a domed helmet that accommodates the finest of haberdasher accoutrements, the top hat.

Essential Headgear for the Modern Astro-Traveler [Brass Goggles]

Joel Johnson

Kata Sensitivity V laptop backpack

The "Sensitivity V" laptop backpack certainly stands out, with a droop shoulder design and S-curve asymmetric back pockets. And though it might be a little aggressively sporty for all tastes, it does look modern without looking totally overwrought, in large part because of its relatively small size. (I could do with slightly less prominent rubber fobs, but that's the way it goes.)

It's only about $80 from online retailers, too, which isn't too bad. I'm in the market for a new backpack (still) to replace my weathered Gravis sack, but I'm trying to find something that is sturdy that would look okay with slightly nicer clothes than normal. I know shoulder bags are much more classy than backpacks, but they just don't work for trips as well as backpacks. Basically what I want is something like this very bag, but in soft leather. And I'll never find it.

Kata Ergo-Tech Sensitivty V backpack catalog page [Amazon.com via Core77]

Joel Johnson

Stephen Fry's lonely refrigerator

From @stephenfry's Twitter stream, an "enterprising man runs paraffin (kerosene) powered fridge and sells cold drinks to baobab tourists" in Africa.

Propane-powered refrigerators are common in RVs and mobile homes, but I'd never heard of kerosene in refrigerators — or that kerosene is called paraffin in the UK.

The full pictures [Twitpic.com]

Joel Johnson

Earbuds can stop the hearts of the elderly (but probably won't)

Yikes. It looks like the tiny magnets found inside headphones and earbuds can interfere with pacemakers. According to the AP the interference only occurs when they're about an inch away, so if you've got a ThumpAssist 3000 just don't keep your headphones in your pocket.

Of course the liberal media glosses over the real meat of this story: we've found yet another way to murder our elders without leaving a trace. The soon-to-be-ol' Earbuds Heart Punch will live in infamy beside the Over-Salted Pork Trap and the Really Stressful Self-Correcting Turn Signal Stalk.

Music headphones can interfere with heart devices [AP/Yahoo]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

• Plasma TV – 42-inch 1080p Panasonic Viera plasma HDTV for $807, shipped. That's about $100 off. Aren't you glad you waited to buy a new HDTV? And didn't pay twice as much for that one in your room you're staring at right now just last year? Yeah, me neither.

What's crazier is that I expect prices to fall even more before Xmas. [Slickdeals]

• Ethernet Switches – Up to 25% off Dell PowerCorrect Ethernet switches. It's like Cisco without all fancy settings. (Although I haven't used a PowerConnect switch in years; I'm sure they're even better now.) The perfect gift for any sysadmin. [Dealhack]

• Floor Speakers – Polk Audio Monitor 50 floor-standing speakers in Black or Cherry for $100, shipped. The Monitor 60 is available for $130. About half off. [Dealnews]

• Basic NAS – Refurbished Netgear SC101 Storage Central NAS Enclosure that holds two ATA or SATA drives for $27. Wouldn't count on any real warranty support. [Dealnews]

• PS3 Blu-Ray Remote – Buy two Blu-ray movies at Best Buy for $40, get a free PlayStation 3 remote. I kind of want to do this but the selection of movies is iffy. I'm really only into "Bullitt" and "A Clockwork Orange" and I'm not sure I need to own them on Blu-ray. [Dealnews]

• iPod Dock – Today's Woot is the Polk Audio miDock Portfolio iPod Speaker Dock for $35, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

Ford on selling 65MPG Euro-diesel car in U.S.: Nah, Americans won't buy it

Will someone knock some heads together at Ford.

"But there are business reasons why we can't sell it in the U.S.," Ford America President Mark Fields. ... "We just don't think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars."

Meanwhile, Japanese and European automakers ready new high-MPG diesels for the U.S.

It's as if Ford's corporate strategy is to fail as spectacularly as it can. Bailout!

Source [Business Week]

Rob Beschizza

Singing in the Rain

Photo: Vincent K Wong [via Notcot]

Joel Johnson

How Apple wins the smartphone game: By ignoring the marginal customer

According to the 2008 "Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study" by J.D. Power & Associates, Apple's iPhone — a smartphone with no turn-by-turn directions, copy-and-paste, physical QWERTY keyboard, user-installable programs, expandable flash memory, or removable battery — rates a perfect five-out-of-five in the "Features" category, winning out over HTC, Motorola, Palm, RIM, and Samsung.

There's only way to interpret that data: for iPhone owners, Apple has provided every feature that matters, even if that means leaving some features out. Obvious at first, it becomes something more when you ask the follow up: why are phones with more features perceived by their users as still having the wrong features? (Or worse, not enough features?)

Restraint, I believe it's called. Or perhaps focus.

(Let the grousing in the comments commence!)

Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Survey [JDPower.com via Apple Insider]

Joel Johnson

Cocktail Chemistry Set

This "Cocktail Chemistry Set" is cute enough and just shy of $40, making it nearly cheap enough to merit a second look. But if you were willing to give up the custom bent-metal serving tray, you could order the flasks and beakers from some place like American Science & Surplus for considerably less.

And who drinks out of a test tube anyway? God didn't create scientists from the dust so they could sip out of something other than Klein bottles.

Cocktail Chemistry Set catalog page [Perpetual Kid via Uncrate]

John Brownlee

Windows 7 coming mid 2009

So there you go: Microsoft's promising Windows 7 by mid-2009, with pre-configured PCs hitting by the Holiday Season. That means summer will have two big OS releases on both side of the camp: Snow Leopard for Macheads and Windows 7 for PC users. Let's hope the close juxtaposition of releases doesn't make any one of them look the poorer (prediction: it will.)

Microsoft aims Windows 7 for 2009 holiday season [CNET]

Joel Johnson

Icicle XLR-to-USB in-line interface from Blue Microphones

Blue Microphones has announced the "Icicle", a simple XLR-to-USB interface that sits inline between your PC and your traditional microphone. It works with dynamic or condenser mics equally well, has 48V phantom power, analog gain, and CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz) fidelitiy.

Easy peasy — and while a bit pricey, I'd rather have this than a dedicated USB microphone, especially since older XLR mics of high quality are widely available used. It's going to be sixty bucks and launch before Christmas.

Icicle adds USB compatibility to any XLR microphone [MusicRadar.com via Engadget]

John Brownlee

"Buttonless" Xbox 360 controller mod isn't really

The Xbox 360 controller's already pretty great for FPS gaming as long as you can get over your mouse and keyboard indoctrination, but one modder has removed all the face buttons from the front of his 360 controller, instead shifting them to the back, in a curiously specific operation somewhat similar to surgically shifting your girlfriend's breasts to her back for better dancing.

I'm not entirely convinced: where's the D-pad, which is usually used by shooters for things like hotkeys and weapon selection? And I can't get over the fact that the default 360 pad works just fine. If there was one thing I'd change about it? The upper shoulder buttons are practically impossible to click simultaneously with the lower triggers, which means I can't shoot properly in GTA IV while driving, which means I suck. Grr. Get on that, Microsoft.

Buttonless 360 Controller [Acidmods via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Electric bullet train coming to California

While Californians were protecting gay people from the horror of marriage on Tuesday, they were not afraid to send miles of high-speed bullet trains screaming through of the loins of the state. With the passing of Proposition 1A a bond will be issued to fund part of the development of the 220MPH electric train that will connect Sacramento to San Diego (with a little fork to reach San Francisco). Despite the $45 billion price tag, it is generally thought that the California High-Speed Rail Authority's program will be cheaper overall than a similar capacity expansion of the state's freeway system.

Plus, you know, bullet trains are nifty. And easier on the environment than cars or planes.

It's unclear when the first routes would start operating, but we're obviously several years away from seeing the system fully in place. The Authority is aiming to carry 100 million passengers a year by 2030.

California High Speed Rail Authority info page [cahighspeedrail.ca.gov]
Rail lines on Google Maps

John Brownlee

Video: The DSi comes with a built-in budgerigar, of course

I have been a noted critic of Nintendo's lackluster DS Lite update, the DSi, but that was before I discovered that the built-in music and sound app comes replete with a virtual parakeet who will intermittently chirp and tweet back your own voice as you idle upon the menu. Now I want one.

Although it must be mentioned that Humbert was not fooled, responding to the video only with a theatrical yawn and then the sudden evacuation of his bowels. On the other hand, this video? Drove him absolutely bazonkers.

(Thanks, Brandon!)

John Brownlee

The Future of Mobile Phones according to Ericsson

The vision of mobile phones according to Ericsson: by 2012, we'll all be packing HD video capable camera phones with 1GHz CPUs, 20 megapixel still shots and Internet connections at over 100 Mbps. It's a strange mishmash between the mundanely plausible and a Yellow Submarine style Lucy trip. But prove me wrong on the 100 Mbps Internet, Ericsson!

Erisson sees the future of cell phones [via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Photoshop Interface rendered in real-world objects

This fantastic "real world" Photoshop window, made with actual objects, seems to have been made as an Adobe PhotoShop ad for the Indonesian market. There's also a good Flickr photoset that shows how they put it together.

Real-World Photoshop [John Nack via Charlie Sorrel]

John Brownlee

A Gallery of Motorcycle Watches

Although the page over at the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors that houses these pictures of a miniature motorcycle made of watch parts contains no other information, I have it on good authority that it was, in fact, the velocipedic steed of one Mr. Ralph S. Mouse.

Watch Motorcycles [NAWCC via Hacked Gadgets]

John Brownlee

Ocarina iPhone app has Legend of Zelda mode

The Smule Ocarina app for the iPhone would be worth the 99 cents even if didn't boast a Zelda mode: it turns your iPhone into a musical wind instrument, where playing is accomplished by the fingering of digital valves coordinated with blowing into the microphone. It's also a social application: you can tap a globe icon and hear what other Ocarina players are playing, all over the world.

I'm eager to try it, but the disclaimer on the front page is a bit strange: "Optimized for 3G phones; for first generation phones we recommend upgrading to the 2.2 firmware when it becomes available." Huh. I wonder what's up with that.

Ocarina [Smule]

Update: I can't play worth a damn, but this is pretty neat. The Global View, in which you can listen to other users playing, is particularly impressive: a fluid, rotatable globe spraying whirling ionic fountains of music.

John Brownlee

Circuit City selling "liquidated" HTDVs for more than their website

Looking to take advantage of the liquidation sales at the 155 closing Circuit City stores to buy yourself an HDTV? According to HD Guru, you should rethink things.

Circuit City is claiming that they are offering 10% off the price off all HDTVS. That discount is an illusion: Circuit City is actually bumping up the pre-discount price to make up the difference. What's most astonishing is that Circuit City's own web site lists many of the televisions they are selling at a 10% discount in liquidated stores only for hundreds of dollars less.

And then there's the "No Return" policy: if you buy one of these televisions, bring it home and it doesn't work, you're at the whim of the manufacturer's warranty.

The good news: it you're fine with buying a display model, Circuit City will be selling them as "open box" and heaping a negotiable 10% discount on top of it. That could be tempting, and HD Guru has a few good pointers on making sure you don't get screwed on the transaction, including how to calculate how much of the display life you've lost and getting all the parts and materials that originally came with the television.

Circuit City Liquidation Sale Price Switch-Can You Beat It or Will It Beat You? [HD Guru]

John Brownlee

Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Burnt Toast

Amongst a certain subset of religious attention seekers (not to mention GoldenPalace.com), this Star Wars toaster should be all the pareidolic proof required to conclude, once and for all, that Darth Vader is not only the Dark Lord of the Sith, but out Dark Messiah as well.

Star Wars Toaster [Star Wars]

John Brownlee

Anti-static keychains for the human Tesla coil

These tiny keychains only have one purpose: they discharge static electricity, preventing accidental door knob shocks in the like. I can't even remember the last time I got a static shot, so no use here, I'm afraid, but it would certainly be neat if you could store up the energy and discharge it upon the unwitting.

Anti-Static Keychain [Funshop via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Sound and Vision rounds up the best speakers in nearly every class

Sound and Vision Magazine have put together an overview of the best speakers in nearly every class. It's a bit infuriating to browse — whoever decided to do a buyer's guide to high-end speakers as an image slideshow with 10 second intervals should be soundly thrashed — but it seems like a good buying guide... albeit, one for millionaires: the cheapest systems they recommend are over $1100, and can go up to $40,000.

Top Speakers in Every Class [Sound and Vision Mag]