Brandon Boyer

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld we saw a pair of pairs of retro-game inspired footwear, possibly the reigning champ of game-cakes, as these are ones you can actually play, explored the possibility that Taito may be returning to the DS for more retro-futuristic Space Invaders love, and saw more of Sega's upcoming Wii title that parodies retro gaming's finest.

We also held a brief service for the death of legendary design house The Designers Republic, best known in the games sphere for their work defining the visual identity of the Wipeout series, saw fantastic new media from Fez creators Polytron on the opening of their new website, and saw the first and likely only set of lesbian artificial intelligence erotica we'll ever see, with a forbidden romance between Portal's GlaDOS and System Shock's Shodan.

Finally, we saw one man's attempt to bring The Wrestler's Randy 'The Ram' Robinson forward from his on-screen 8-bit roots to full next-gen glory, and settled on a game for this weekend's community play: the open beta of London indie Beatnik Games' Plain Sight, a raucous and light-hearted robot arena battle that takes the best bits of Mario Galaxy's spherical worlds and combines it with brutal aerial acrobatics.

John Brownlee

Verizon announces the Hub, the world's first paralyzed smartphone

It's been a good, long while since anyone has written a gadget blog post about a desktop phone, short of being in the crimson hue and classic shape of the 1966 Batphone. Still, Verizon's Hub/One looks impressive: a widgeted phone that hooks up to your DSL line and allows you to do casual browsing, email and info grabbing through an attractive and wide touchscreen. Remote management of your apps and widgets is a touted feature, allowing you to change a calendar appointment from the office, or remotely delete an incriminating voicemail from a lover before the wife gets home.

Anyway, it looks good, if you can still get a throbber from a phone that sits on your desk and never moves... a paralyzed smartphone. Verizon's claiming it'll be $199 with a $35 a month fee, which makes that analogy particularly apt.

Verizon makes the Hub official [Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

Review: AccuNAS AN2L is easy and versatile

Guest reviewer Dean Putney takes the AccuNAS AN2L for a trip around the platters.

The AccuNAS AN2L puts you on easy street for working with a network storage solution. With very little setup, and all of the controls in a neat web interface, you gain a lot of control over all of the device's features very quickly. Compared to the work I've been doing setting up a web server, the AN2L provided a lot of the services I'm working on with just a fraction of the effort.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

Korean Lluon Mobbit MID Box

Oh, hell yeah.

[via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Default password for roadside LED signs

i-Hacked offers this handy tip for the next time you find yourself rummaging in the bowels of a Addco roadside sign:

Should it will ask you for a password. Try “DOTS”, the default password.

In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed it. However if they did, never fear. Hold “Control” and “Shift” and while holding, enter “DIPY”. This will reset the sign and reset the password to “DOTS” in the process. You’re in!

John Brownlee

The heart and soul of laptop art

Excuse the quality, but surreptitiously snapped on my iPhone while sneaking out of her apartment at dawn, the sticker-slathered backside of a PowerBook G4 belonging to a sassy Jersey Girl bartender I'm seeing. If you can tell the quality of a woman by the mad chromatic zoo of glittery Japanese chan characters she sticks on her laptop cover, I think I might have found something of a keeper. This, right here, was my day brightener.

I know, I know. The mad cap plastering of brightly colored stickers on an Apple notebook as if it was a teenage girl's Trapper Keeper might be looked upon by some as a profane desecration of Apple's clean, pure design, but I don't find myself in that camp at all. I have always liked slapping stickers on my laptops, making them dynamic, brightly-colored, multi-layered expressions of self... or, at least, any parts of self they make a sticker for. That Apple's laptops are so imminently uncustomizable and that its customers can be so cultishly slavish to Cupertino design makes it all the more important to do something, anything to differentiate my Mac from all the others out there.

What about you? Maybe you have just slapped some stickers on your laptop, or maybe you've fractally laser etched a design in, or maybe you've graffitied your chassis. If so, we'd love to see your laptop art. Just add a photograph of your laptop to the Boing Boing Gadgets Flickr pool, tag it "bbglaptopart" and we'll pick out some of our favorites to show off.

Boing Boing Gadgets Flickr Group [Label laptop art "bbglaptopart"]

John Brownlee

Adorable Mimobot C3P0 is the droid thumb drive you are looking for

Oh, Mimobots. You're so good at what you do. Hydrocephalia + geek reference + 1GB USB flash drives = $30. This coneheaded C3P0 Mimobot had me at hello.

Mimobot C3P0 [Mimoco via technabob]

John Brownlee

Palm adjusts self, double deuces Apple for veiled lawsuit threats

There was a little confusion yesterday about Tim Cook's remarks about pursuing lawsuits against competitors who rip off Apple's IP.

Based on the question being responded to, it seemed pretty obvious Apple was specifically warning Palm about their upcoming multi-touch capable Pre smartphone, but others have speculated that he was simply addressing the Chinese knock-off market (good luck suing those guys, Tim).

Either way, Palm seems to be pretty sure Cook was talking about them, and have released a rather swaggering statement through spokesperson Lynn Fox in return: bring it on.

Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio (31 pages of patents in Google Patent Search), and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.”

Miss Fox then picked up the chair she was sitting on, walked across the room and smashed it across the back of Tim Cook's head. Steve Wilkos rushed to the stage to establish order, but it was already too late. From the crowd, stunned silence, one shrill "Oh no she didn't!" and then the sudden protrusion of an ocean off wildly rotating fists, accompanied by the insistent, jackal-like chant: "PALM PRE! PALM PRE! PALM PRE!"

Palm to Apple: Bring It [All Things D]

John Brownlee

Quicksnap: the better ice cube tray

For some reason, incremental revisions of easily overlooked kitchen tech always gets me gobsmacked with admiration. The latest evolution: the common ice cube tray, now fitted with bright green tabs allowing for the easy expulsion of individual crystalline cubes ... without taking out the contents of the entire tray in a frigid freezer conglomeration of geometric shapes which must be broken apart by a hammer before their dispersal into whiskey sours.

Quicksnap: A Better Ice Block Tray [Gizmag via Oh Gizmo]

Rob Beschizza

Lattices, cells, modules: tomorrow's hard-to-dust architecture

The organic cellular design encoded in nature remains a popular theme in futuristic design. Oobject's gallery of buildings, chairs and inexplicable thingies suggests two things: firstly, that our childrens' spaces will have lots of links, bubbles and compartments.

And secondly, we'll all need maid service.

Joel Johnson

Laser-engraved Moleskine covers don't emit phosgene and chlorine, which is nice

A small company that laser-etches tech and nerd gear has this sage advice:

WARNING : DO NOT LASER ENGRAVE MOLESKINES WITHOUT THE PROPER FILTRATION SYSTEM. BURNING THEM CREATES HIGHLY TOXIC GASES INCLUDING PHOSGENE AND CHLORINE GAS. THE HYDROCHLORIC ACID PRODUCED WILL CORRODE EVERYTHING IT CONTACTS.

Instead of hitting the covers themselves, Engrave Your Tech now offers these undyed leather Moleskine covers that, when engraved by laser, emit only the mouth-watering smell of seared beef.

I go back and forth on Moleskine and other paper notebooks—wonderful for jotting ideas, but I have poor discipline in reencoding the ideas to something permanent and indexable by computer—but if I can come up with a clever custom design these might just be enough to lure me back, despite the $60 price.

Rob Beschizza

Fidgit's top video game gadgets

Tom Chick's collection of in-game gadgets warps spacetime, turns marble into moss, opens portals, controls minds, and gets you out of a combat pickle.

10 videogame gadgets we wish we had [Fidgit]

John Brownlee

Krass, get on this: USB glasses

This is such a great idea, it's irritating that these 2GB USB flash drive glasses aren't actually wearable: they're being advertised as book marks.

Four Eyes [Official Site via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Marc Marc TD Cross Generator synth at least looks good

We salute the reintroduction of pastels in rack-mounted synthesizers, as heralded by the Marc Marc TD Cross Generator. Yours today, starting at $25,000. [via George Cochrane]

Rob Beschizza

USB drive in a padlock

Among the many clever ideas at Dialog5's "Universal Connections" gallery of gadget art is this useful one. It must be manufactured!

Universal connections [Dialog5 via Design You Trust via Unplggd via Gizmodo]

Update:

– Joel

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ GPS – Refurbished Tom Tom ONE (3rd Edition) for $80, shipped. New ones go for $30-$40 more. [Dealoco]

⌦ Heart Rate Watch – Reebok Precision Trainer XT Heart Rate Monitor Watch with Chest Strap for $30, shipped. Water resistant, comes with optional whisky-level meter. [Dealhack]

⌦ LED Badget – Programmable Scrolling Red LED Name Tag for $12, shipped. [Dealnews]

⌦ Cheap Monitor – While Dell raised prices on most of their monitors, the 19-inch LCD flat panel dropped to $130, shipped, down $50. [Dealnews]

⌦ "Cocksucker" – The complete Deadwood on DVD for $65, shipped. About half off. [Slickdeals]

⌦ Game Pad Keyboard – Today's Woot is the Wolfking Warrior Game Pad Keyboard for $21, shipped.

Photo: Jeanine Anderson

John Brownlee

Jolicloud: beautiful new OS designed specifically for netbooks

Jolicloud looks gorgeous: a clean, crisp, stripped-down and iPhone-like OS specifically designed for netbooks by Tariq Krim.

This really is the sort of OS I want to see on netbooks: beautifully designed, crisp, clean and with a bare minimum of frills... just big program launching buttons and easy-to-install app packages.

Jolicloud isn't out yet, but I can't wait to give it a spin.

Jolicloud [Official Site via Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a phone that does not exist

This heavily customized Sony Xperia X1 was spotted in the execrable TV remake of Knight Rider. I love the font (Eurostile Condensed/Next, or clone thereof), and I love the idea of "CALL IGNORED" as a standard system message. [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Phantom Force meets the Phantom of the Opera

This electronic chess board with magnetically moving pieces is the same bog-standard chess machine you could buy back in Radio Shack back in 1989, right down to the monochrome LCD. And actually, it looks like Rob reviewed one last year, describing its method of independent piece locomotion as "loud and grinding."

Still, props to them for advertising the thing with a flamboyant appearance by the Universal's most mincing monster turned Broadway Star... Erik, the Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom Force Chess [Pro Idee]

Rob Beschizza

Lightbulbs that are, in fact, speakers

Castiglione Morelli is the latest designer to toy rudely with our expectations of thermodynamic energy transfer.

Portfolio [Morelli Design via Notcot and CrunchGear]

Rob Beschizza

For Sale: Speedboat in the shape of a guitar

Comissioned by singer Josh Pyke, this guitar-shaped boat is on sale. From Undercover News:

The extraordinary guitar-shaped boat built for the Josh Pyke video `Make You Happy` is going to be auctioned for charity. Maton guitars created the SS Maton for the video. Josh is seen sailing it around Sydney Harbour the ‘Make You Happy’ clip. Now Josh wants to use the guitar-boat to raise money for Indigenous Literacy Project

It hits eBay on Feb 9. I'll post an update to the news faucet in the sidebar when the time comes: save your pennies!

Josh Pyke To Auction Guitar Boat [Undercover News via Musicradar and Born Rich]

Rob Beschizza

The phone-watch of tomorrow, (rendered) today

LG's making one that actually exists, but Shirley A. Roberts' design for a wrist-phone has much more sci-fi panache. All it needs is cufflinks!

Emergency Phone [Fubiz via Monster Munch]

Rob Beschizza

CrunchEee Linux: minimalist distro for Asus netbooks

A lightweight derivative of Ubuntu Linux, CrunchBang is designed for the limited display resolution (and the hardware profile) of Asus' Eee PC range of netbooks. It's also limited in size, offering a few basic apps like Firefox, but otherwise maintaining a minimal footprint: Just slap it on a flash drive or CD and get cracking. Here's a forum thread about it.

As much as Linux confuses and disappoints mainstream users, projects like this are a much better path than the current trend in netbook software, which is "Put as much RAM in as possible and hope Vista won't suck too badly."

It's also perfectly named for Mike Arrington's tablet netbook thingy, if and when it appears! (And also comes in a standard edition if you want to put it on anything else)

Download [CrunchBang Linux via Lilliputing]

Rob Beschizza

Power on Self Test: Your papers, madam?

Greg Wiliams via Form Fifty Five

Brandon Boyer

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld, we saw Spore expanding with two new PC games as well as onto the Wii and again on the DS, saw Noby Noby Boy get a firm post-Valentine's date, and wondered if Digital Chocolate's excellent one-button mobile game Tower Bloxx might be moving to the iPhone.

On an artier front, we looked into the soul of an Atari 2600 and what we saw was very similar to late artist Jeremy Blake's digital art output, saw the most sinister(ly cute?) art-game to ever spring from Unreal Tournament, and saw fantastic pixel-chic fineries.

One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson also told us about how Nippon Ichi's strategy RPG Disgaea was "a quest for numerical orgasm," vinyl toy designer Touma turned Animal Crossing into razor-toothed evil, a new PC demo for Puzzle Quest sequel Galactrix sucked half our day away, and finally, Persuasive Games' brilliantly scathing TSA social parody game Airport Security moved to the iPhone and ended up even smarter for it.

Joel Johnson

I'd like to read more personal blogs of people who make things

Programmers, musicians, artists, animators, engineers, crafters, graphic designers, gave developers, or even — worst-case — writers. One caveat: While I don't mind if they are writing on a corporate site, I'd prefer bloggers who have retained a human voice.

My aim? I want to stop reading so much news that has already been digested and start reading more about the creation of the things that interest me.

Do you have any suggestions?

Examples: Cable.name; John K.; John Mayer (seriously! I like his blog); Some digital artist with a blog that is too cool for me to know about.

Joel Johnson

The Day Before Tomorrow, 1/22

Joel Johnson

Here come the new Star Trek toys

USA Today has a small gallery of some of the new toys that will be part of the surely epic merchandising effort alongside the upcoming Star Trek reboot. [USA Today]

Rob Beschizza

Obama Chia Pet

Dear America,

There is now an Obama Chia Pet.

Best regards,
Boing Boing Gadgets

Update: Apparently you can get these Chia Obama Handmade Decorative Planteron Amazon for twenty bucks, should you so choose.

Joel Johnson

Boxee gets Lost

Boxee, the "social" media center software for Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Apple TV (with Windows on the way) has added ABC shows to its streaming line-up "just in time for the Lost season premiere". It only works on OS X and Ubuntu at the moment — but it'll be added to the other versions soon enough.

Update: Clarification from the Boxeers:

I wanted to give you a quick update that boxee is available in a public Alpha for Mac and Ubuntu from boxee.tv. (go there, sign up, download immediately)
boxee is available on private Alpha for Windows (go there, sign up, twiddle your thumbs waiting for an invite for a week or two, then download).

boxee with ABC is available for the Mac version only at this point due to the Move Networks plug-in they use to deliver content (not available for Linux, and will take some more tweaking for Windows).

Joel Johnson

LEGO Digital Box augmented reality machine shows completed 3D model

I can't wait to play with the upcoming LEGO Digital Box, an augmented reality machine that will display a fully assembled 3D model on the top of boxes full of LEGO. It's built by German company Metalo and will be installed in toy stores around the world. [NOTCOT]

John Brownlee

Panasonic makes first portable Blu-Ray player

Panasonic has announced the production of the world's first portable Blu-Ray player, featuring an 8.9 inch LCD screen, as well as Internet connectivity for BD Live and other Internet services like Amazon Video-on-Demand, YouTube, Bloomberg, etc. T

The New York Times Gadgetwise blog is going WTF: they argue rightfully that an 8.9 inch screen isn't going to be able to show off Blu-Ray's high-def advantages. That's true, but clearly, they are banking on the fact that Blu-Ray is going to be the de facto DVD standard from now on, and people will still want to watch Blu-Ray movies on the airplane.

Expect to see more Blu-Ray portable players coming out over the next year, short of tehj format's complete implosion before the brunt of streaming video.

Portable Blu-Ray [Gadget Wise]

Xeni Jardin

Barack Obama, Gitmo, and the Casio Watch

An internet prankster and hacker known on LJ as tongodeon says,

For the last year or two, a friend and I have been giving our friends Casio F-91w wristwatches. They are cheap, reliable, and a reason why 28 prisoners have been held in extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo. In late October I attended a rally in Reno, NV and gave an F-91w and letter to Barack Obama via a senior staffer on the national campaign team. Today Barack Obama issued an executive order closing Guantanamo. The wire photos don't show him wearing my watch, but I still feel a little vindicated today.

I've been volunteering for your campaign because of this watch, the Casio model F-91w. These watches cost $7.50 in quantity. They are cheap, waterproof, and reliable. They are common throughout the developing world. And they have been listed by the Department of Defense as a reason for the continued extrajudicial detention of the 28 Guantanamo detainees listed on the following page.

In 1995, US intelligence recovered a document in Manila by Ramzi Yousef describing how to use this watch as the timing device for a bomb. Ahmed Ressam, the "millennial bomber" was captured with two Casio F91Ws. As a result, when Pakistani police and the Northern Alliance turned over alleged Taliban members to the military, their ordinary watches were identified as evidence that they were terrorists.

Rob Beschizza

1984 review of the original Mac: "A fever in Silicon Valley that’s hard not to catch."

Larry Magid's 1984 review of the 128k Apple Mac, published in the Los Angeles Times, speaks to the enduring mythology of Apple's products--the quality, the simplicity, the high-priced peripherals--and how it came to be.

Apple’s Macintosh, officially introduced last Tuesday, has started a fever in Silicon Valley that’s hard not to catch. ... [it] is as innovative today as the Apple II was in 1977. It’s one of the few computers introduced in the last 18 months that makes no attempt to imitate the IBM PC.

...

Like the Lisa, it uses a hand-held “mouse” — a small pointing device which enables the user to select programs, and move data from one part of the screen to another. Also like the Lisa, Macintosh uses a black and white display screen whose resolution is so high that it can quickly draw detailed pictures while at the same time display crisp and readable text.

...

The machine’s inability to run MS-DOS could be its salvation or its downfall.

John Biggs at CrunchGear sums it up well: "You really come to understand why Apple got the reputation for being expensive and weird. The printer cost $495 when similar gear cost maybe $250 on a good day. But remember: this thing had a “mouse” and a “GUI” back when most of us were about ten years old."

Larry Magid’s 1984 LA Times review of 128K Mac [PC Answer via CrunchGear]

Photo: Tom Borowski

Joel Johnson

Watchmen Video: NBS Nightly News with Ted Philips salutes Dr. Manhattan

I promise we won't keep linking all this viral Watchmen stuff...unless it keeps being this well made. (Thanks, CGI_Joe!)

Rob Beschizza

iPod Touch-controlled shooting range

Polymythic built an iPod Touch-controlled target range using an Arduino microcontroller board, an ioBridge panel and three servos.

A friend of mine who is something of an avid shooter had mentioned the lack of affordable "action" type targets. After some discussion, we determined it would be fun to build such a contraption for some indoor airsoft practice. The Arduino Diecimilia was a great choice for the "programming side" of things (I have 2 of them, he has one as well).

As a shooter, you would want to be up-range from the targets, so having something portable with a web interface was a great solution so nobody would have to be "in the line of fire". The iPod Touch and the ioBridge module I used in another recent project. Of course, why build a custom target enclosure when I could snap one together with my Construx.

Arduino/ioBridge Airsoft Target Range [Nowhere Else] (Thanks, Stagueve!)

Joel Johnson

Video: Red Ball roller-coaster from Sesame Street

I was always so jealous of that little girl. I loved Maraschino cherries as a kid.

John Brownlee

Slow-motion butterfly ornithoptering

Today is already absolutely maggoty with robot insects, so forgive me if I carry the meme, but I find these slow-motion-videos of butterfly ornithopters just hypnotically beautiful, like the ethereal fluttering of cyberpunk faeries.

Rob Beschizza

Rube Goldberg's Office

Chaos in the print shop [Liveleak]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Point-and-Shoot – Canon PowerShot SD790IS Digital ELPH camera for $114, shipped, plus another $10 from a rebate. About $40 off. [Slickdeals]

⌦ The Wire – The complete series of The Wire on DVD for $82, shipped, or around $30 off. "What the fuck did I do?" [Slickdeals]

⌦ Upscaling DVD Player – Pioneer DV-410V-K 1080p upscaling DVD player for $75, shipped. Plays Divx and SVCD, as well. About $25 off. [Dealhack]

⌦ Free Popcorn – Sample of Orville Redenbacher Natural Gourmet Popping Corn. I think I want to name a son "Orville". That was my great-grandfather's name. [Bargainst]

⌦ Netbook – The snazzy MSI Wind U120 is on the Amazons for $380, which is only about $20 off MSRP, but this is a brand-new model. This was the one I was waiting on, but now I'm waiting on the VAIO P or the Asus with the tablet display. I look forward to the ones that I will be waiting for in lieu of those two next month. [Dealnews]

⌦ Linux Tablet – The Nokia N810 internet tablet is now $220, shipped. That's quite a drop for this very tweak-friendly device. [Dealnews]

⌦ USB Flash Drive – SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 8GB for $18, shipped. Not cheap compared to generics, but cheap for this brand. [Dealnews]

⌦ MIDI Interface – The Tapco Link.MIDI 4x4 is a USB MIDI interface for Mac or PC with three XLR inputs, one XLR output, for $55, shipped. That's about half-off. [Dealnews]

⌦ Bass Pro Sale – Bass Pro is having a sale on nearly everything. (Y'all.) [Dealnews]

⌦ Roomba – Today's Woot is the iRobot Roomba 415 with Bonus Charging Dock and Filter Pack for $145, shipped. Comes with a self-charging base and extra filters for quite a bit less than the newer models.

Photo: djenvert

Rob Beschizza

iPhone stand made of pencils

[Geeky Gadgets via HackedGadgets]

Rob Beschizza

Spark plug bug

Gallery [Lockwasher via Make]

John Brownlee

Darth Vader does a drive-by

I always pictured him as more of a drift racer, myself

darth vader likes to have weekends too… [Kinod via Neatorama]

John Brownlee

The history of the Mac Boot Beep

This post by Andy Hertzfeld over on Folklore.org about the origins of the 1982 Mac's famous boot beep (complete with downloadable 68000 assembly source code) is delicious fodder for more technical minded Mac fans, but this anecdote will appeal even to the more casual appreciator of Apple's corporate mythos:

Charlie [Kellner] was pleased that he was able to make a significant contribution in his first week on the project. Inspired, he asked if he could take a prototype home over the weekend for testing. The next Monday he came into work very excited.

"I knew that something wasn't right!", he exclaimed. "The sound is being completely muffled by the case!. But I know how to fix it."

...He drilled a hole about the size of a dime in a strategic place, which caused the measurements to improve dramatically.

He started demoing his modified prototype, showing how the hole improved the sound quality. The difference didn't sound that significant to me, but it definitely was an improvement. He showed it to Terry Oyama, who designed the case, and asked him if he could add the hole.

The next day, Steve Jobs came by in the afternoon and asked to hear Charlie's demo. He listened to the two Macs, and then decreed "There's not enough improvement! There's no way that we're going to put an ugly hole in the case! Just forget about it!"

Charlie was pretty disappointed, and never got very enthusiatic about the Mac after that. A couple of weeks later, he transfered back to the Apple II group, leaving the boot beep as his only legacy.

Very recognizably Steve. Folklore has a lot of great anecdotes up by Andy about early Apple, Mac and Lisa development, including this hilarious one explaining why Apple went with "OK" over "Do It" for their dialog windows: people thought the software was calling them a 'dolt.'

Boot Beep [Folklore.org via MAKE]

Rob Beschizza

Robot beetle larvae swim without paddling

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have designed a propulsion system that uses electrical charges to destabilize the surface tension of water. There are no motors or flippers: just the water's own dynamics.

The technique is ideal for small robotic watercraft such as those that monitor water quality, which currently rely on battery-sapping propellers.

Inspired by how beetle larvae move on water, bending their backs rhythmically to exploit surface tension, the experiments used electrodes attached to a 2-centimeter-long boat that created a similar effect. Top speed: 4 millimeters per second.

Creepy But Cool: Baby Beetles... [Techburger]

John Brownlee

Bookmark Bedside Lamp

This is simple, but great: the Bookmark Bedside Lamp features one protruding spine over which to splay your half-read book at the end of the night. I only wish it had more protruding bookmarks, splayed in a fan around the perimeter I have half-a-dozen half-read books jostling for attention on my bedside table at any one time.

Bookmark Bedside Lamp for Bookworms [Gizmodiva]

John Brownlee

Apple to Palm: You're So Sued. Maybe.

Asked during yesterday's sales call about Apple's plans to deal with the competitors to the iPhone like Android and the Palm Pre, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook's voice took on a dangerous edge, like a rusty razor drawn suddenly across a protruding throat.

We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.

Asked if he was specifically talking about Palm and the Pre, Cook began to smash his fist against the table rhythmically, his voice rising into an insane falsetto while his fellow conference call participants laughed with nervous sycophancy:

I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.

He then closed with a joke about invading Poland, which resulted in riotous laughter and applause.

In all seriousness, what Cook seems to be referring to is the Palm Pre's multitouch screen, which the iPhone has patented up the wazoo... but threatening to sue competitors for daring to come up with their own independent method for tracking two or more fingers across a screen is the very definition of patent evil.

Apple's Tim Cook Warns Competitors [Apple]

John Brownlee

Tomy Dustbot out-Roombaed Roomba back in 1985

A chronic pipe smoker constantly belching forth pungent plumes of camel-scented latakia, char and greasy tobacco detritus, the only way my work desk stays clean is by the small armada of battery-powered toy robots who constantly whir away to Humbert's alarm, making sure my workspace does not become a sooty, carcinogenic metaphor for the inside of my lungs.

This, for me, is one of the best things about living in the 21st century... but robot vacuums are nothing new. Check out this awesome Tomy Dustbot from 1985. Not only did it have edge sensors, it even carries around its own dustpan and broom! Fuck you, Roomba!

Tomy Dustbot [The Old Robots]

John Brownlee

Inflatable gladiator combat armor for inter-office dispute resolution

While an excellent way to settle big questions like prom dates, gladiatorial combat is a poor way of solving the petty squabbles that crop up during the day. The Inflatable Gladiator Combat Set provides a middle ground: using blow-up instruments and armor, seemingly unsolvable interpersonal problems can be solved not with the deflation of an opponent's skull, but by their Spartacus helmet. Only $16, even.

Inflatable Gladiator Combat [OhGizmo]

John Brownlee

The Diana Cult Camera, a vintage crapgadget reborn

The Diana Cult Camera is a recreation of its famous plastic predecessor. According to the Wikipedia article, "Thee poor quality of the [Diana's] plastic meniscus lens results in generally low contrast, odd color rendition, chromatic aberration, and blurred images." In other words, it takes in real time the sort of lousily ethereal, overfiltered pictures you'd have to spend hours fiddling in PhotoShop to achieve.

The Wikipedia article notes: "The Diana was first produced during the early 1960s in Kowloon, Hong Kong, by the "Great Wall Plastic Factory", and was sold under various labels (often just a different stick-on nametag). Most were given away as novelties or prizes at fairs, carnivals, or other public events." In other words, the Diana is a truly vintage crapgadget. Only £39.99.

Diana Cult Classic [Lazy Bone UK via Coolest Gadgets]

Previously • Lo-Fi "Diana" Camera Reissued as "Diana+"
• Flash for Diana+ vintage film camera

John Brownlee

Malia Obama recommends the Kodak EasyShare M893

One of the most adorable small moments of the inauguration was watching the button cute daughter of President Obama happily snap pictures of her Dad. According to the New York Times, that digicam was a $150 EasyShare M893, which looks like a neat camera for a little girl.

But then I started wondering: why did her parents buy her a Kodak? Is it because Kodak is really one of the last American companies still making cameras? And if so, is this what it's like to be a President, where the purchase of even the smallest gift for your child must be, in some respect, a patriotic gesture... a symbol of support for home industry?

I'm overthinking it, I know. I would just hate to think that the kids of a United States president could never open a Voltron or Hello Kitty doll on Christmas morning.

A New Photographer in the White House [New York Times]

John Brownlee

Concord C QuantumGravity Watch is inscrutably unwearable

This QuantumGravity Watch by Concord C Lab touts an aerial bi-axial Tourbillon mechanism to allow the free movement of its churning guts, regardless of gravitational pull. Ach so! A more interesting problem: what sort of frickin' Cylon do you need to be to figure out how to strap this thing to your wrist?

BREAKING Concord C Lab QuantumGravity [Watch Luxus via Crunch]

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: Electrician lolwut

Rob Beschizza

Apple's new CEO: Netbooks "will not provide the experience to customers that they're happy with"

Here's Tim Cook, quoted by Wired's Brian X. Chen:

Apple reinforced its skepticism in netbooks, saying their low-powered CPUs, cramped keyboards and small displays are not enough to satisfy customers...

"We've got some ideas, but right now we think the products in theory will not provide the experience to customers that they're happy with," said Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer.

It's too easy to assume they're missing the boat because of corporate elitism. But the smarter assumption is that they've got something cooking, and are being customarily sly about it.

The clue? When businessmen talk of imaginary customers, a solution to their imaginary problems is always close at hand.

Apple Still Oblivious to Netbook Opportunity [Wired: Gadget Lab]

Brandon Boyer

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld, we saw how Obama (or a reasonable facsimile, at least) unwinds after a long inaugural day with a little retro-gaming, and likely the best piece of cosplay kit we'll see in some time -- a masterfully rebuilt Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.

We also saw new flashcarts built specifically for Game Boy musicians, the finalists in the Independent Games Festival's student showcase, custom vinyl toys of classic Dig Dug characters, and new God of War and WipEout crossovers coming to LittleBigPlanet.

Finally, we played the latest game in the fantastically complex Grow series, looked back at LucasArts' 300-baud C64 virtual world forerunner Habitat, heard about Flashbang's newest abstract underwater action game Blush, and saw the first hints at a new WiiWare game from Sega that parodies 8-bit gaming's past.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: Micachu and "maker" music, the Russell Porter interview

WATCH: Flash video embed above, or download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here.

Today's a Russell Porter double-header on Boing Boing Video. In this episode, our UK-based music correspondent introduces us to minimalist/electro/glitch trio Micachu and the Shapes. 21-year-old songwriter/musician/MC Mica "Micachu" Levi leads the band, with Raisa Khan on keyboards and Marc Pell on drums.

They're destined to win a Grammy for best use of a vacuum cleaner in a melodic noise composition. Well, whatever, maybe not, but I love that they use a "hoover" as a voice modulation accessory on-stage, and they build or mod other instruments from odd origins.

In our Boing Boing video interview, they joke about the vacuum cleaner thing being a gimmick, but it's cheap and punk and I like it. Micachu's debut record is due out in a couple weeks (early February, 2009), and was produced by the acclaimed electronic musician Matthew Herbert.

As is the case with many of the bands Russell introduces us to in these Boing Boing interviews, his timing is prescient. Music critics in the UK are using headlines like "Is Micachu The Next Big Thing?" which probably means: yes. But we wouldn't hear about them in the US otherwise for months.

Here's a snip from the band's Wikipedia entry which delves into the "maker" aspect of their act:

Micachu describes the music she performs with The Shapes as pop, but the term may be misleading, as her music veers away from much of pop's defining characteristics, including obvious choruses, and accessible lyrics, and often makes use of unconventional playing styles and use of noise like bottles breaking or a vacuum cleaner. There is also little or no bass line in much of her music, which is very uncommon in pop music. For these reasons, her music has been widely described as experimental, and difficult to categorize.

Inspired by experimental composer Harry Partch, Micachu uses unorthodox instruments which are sometimes customised or even homemade. These included a modified guitar played with a hammer action called a 'chu' and a bowed instrument fashioned from a CD rack. She also uses improvised instruments, such as glass bottles or a vacuum cleaner.

Björk is said to be a fan of Micachu and the Shapes:

[O]ne of her mix tapes brought her to the attention of the east-London grime scene. But ask her about Bjork calling her up after a gig and she scrunches her face. "Yeah, that was nuts. We spoke but she didn't call me up. It's not like she had my number or anything. "But I spotted her dancing and I kind of stopped for a second."

* Boing Boing Video Archives
* Previous posts with Russell Porter music interviews
* Russell's Porter Report website.

Joel Johnson

Chart: Mediawiki (Wikipedia) database schema

[Wikimedia.org]

Joel Johnson

The Day Before Tomorrow, January 21st, 2009

Joel Johnson

Experiment: Dissolving starch packing peanuts

Above: A sink full of starch packing peanuts soaking in hot water.

Below: The results, 24 hours later.

Conclusion: These packing peanuts are made of plastic.

Joel Johnson

Tablecloth sans table as table

This low-slung table, created from a woven tablecloth petrified with sort of resin, may not be a retail product, but it could always get work as a set piece in an Aqua Net commercial.

If I were to try to build one, what sort of resin should I use? [Pink Wolf via Freshome]

Joel Johnson

Fake LEGO ads pit brickplay against sex, needle, and gunplay

These advertisements for LEGO from agency DDB aren't real, in as far as they certainly weren't commissioned by the brickmaker, but we can still love them. [via Animal]

Joel Johnson

Video: T-Mobile's Liverpool dancing commercial

T-Mobile's UK commercial takes Improv Everywhere techniques to a ridiculous level inside the Liverpool Street Station.

Joel Johnson

Poster: Diversity of Mechanized Species in the Rainforest

[OroVerde.de via GOOD]

Joel Johnson

Video: i-Limb bionic arm

deglove

Verb • to deglove (third-person singular simple present degloves, present participle degloving, simple past and past participle degloved)

"to peel back the skin from part of the body as if removing a glove, especially as the result of an accident" – Wikitionary

After Evan Reynolds' arm was degloved from the forearm in a car accident, he received an i-Linb, a $50k bionic arm controlled by muscle tension. [via Crunchgear]

Previously • Video: DEKA's Luke bionic arm
• Fluidhand is the future of prosthetic arms

John Brownlee

20 Awesome Robot Tattoos

I continue to wrestle with adorning my skin with ink. It is, of course, the permanence that is the issue: it may look good now, but how cool will I look with that Vic Rattlehead tattoo pooping in a retirement castle bed pan?

Still, I think awesome robot tattoos will be timeless. Here's 20, including at least one obvious fake.

20 Awesome Robot Tattoos [Botropolis via Giz]

Joel Johnson

Bebot, the lil'est iPhone robot synth

When reader Dom suggested we checked out "Bebot", a "fantabulous singing robot in a tux [who] has Boing Boing written all over it/him", I was expecting a plastic USB crapbot that sang along to MP3s with Teddy Ruxpinesque conniptions.

Not so! Bebot is a precious little thing who lives inside a $2 iPhone app that responds to multitouch with a variety of chirps and whirrs. He even has autotune "just like pop stars use!"

Completely pointless and completely charming—you were right, Dom!

Joel Johnson

New Whorls: Interactive space exploration chart from Nat Geo

This interactive chart from National Geographic (seen here in full but non-interactive form) is gorgeous. [NatGeo]

John Brownlee

1 Millimeter A Day

Photographer Chris Hornbecker has been taking a picture every day for a year. The gimmick? Starting at 14mm, he has zoomed in his camera by one millimeter a day. He's now at 398mm, with two days left of the project. Flipping through the archives is like a first person photoplay of The Amazing Shrinking Man: I'm disappointed Chris will stop before he starts sliding between atoms.

1 Millimeter [Official Site via Cool Hunting]

John Brownlee

Clippy: copy-and-paste for Jailbroken iPhones

Joel pretty much consistently sticks to his party line that there's no reason to jailbreak the iPhone now that the App Store is around. Since my iPhone is an old US one and I needed to carrier unlock it to use it in Berlin, I don't entirely agree... but he's right that jailbreaking is becoming more and more irrelevant for the average user. Hell, if not for carrier unlock, the only reason I'd jailbreak my iPhone is to get a five button dock. Or cut-and-paste, if someone came up with it...

Which they have! Clippy from iSpazio allows you to cut and paste any text on your iPhone. Simply hit the "123" button to reveal your copy and paste buttons. Totally simple execution. This should be default, Apple. Make it so.

Clippy [Spazio Cellular]

Joel Johnson

The SQUID: An elastic road mine for safer vehicle immobilization

The Department of Homeland Security puts out a brief called "S&T Snapshots", a look at some of the upcoming projects that may be used by DHS agencies to protect, you know, Americans. (In theory! Let's not get bogged down here.) The last edition shows "The SQUID", a mine-like device that can be detonated by remote to unfurl elastic streamers into the undercarriage of a vehicle, slowing it down as the stretchy arms eventually immobilize the driveshaft, steering, and other moving parts. If it works, it'll be a safer alternative to spikes lines and other caltrops, but it also looks like it'll take a sharper eye and a quick response time from enforcement officers, with the included diagram mentioning that the SQUID must be triggered "half-a-second" before the target car drives over it.

The 1.5-foot-wide disc was conceived and developed by Engineering Science Analysis Corporation (ESA) of Tempe, Arizona. S&T’s Borders and Maritime Security Division manages the project.
“SQUID was inspired by a sea creature and a superhero,” says ESA president Martín Martínez. Like its oceanic namesake, SQUID ensnares its prey with sticky tendrils. Like Spiderman’s webbing, these tendrils stretch to absorb the kinetic energy of their fleeing target.

(Thanks, Charlie, whose email address I have not revealed...yet!)

John Brownlee

Counting cock rings measures bonks per minute

It looks like a gadget fished out of a Cracker Jack box, but you'd be more likely to fish it out of a cervix: this decidedly cheap looking cock ring measures BPMs, or "bonks per minute." Because nothing scientifically measures excellent love making than the friction burn of a thousand unlubricated, piston-like thrusts per second. £9.99, but someone should really make one of these that measures duration of intercourse. Beat your last record!

Counting Cock Ring [Love Honey via Shiny Shiny]

Rob Beschizza

Carbon fiber laptop case

Carbotron makes laptop cases out of sleek and expensive carbon fiber. There's a waiting list for any of the sizes on offer. Why? Because in a world where hundreds of supposedly hard cases exist, this one is the real deal:

This product's primary objective is durability, and if structural integrity is not compromised by an imperfection, we believe it adds character, and leave it in.

And yet, it is beautiful.

[Thanks, Ian!]

P.S. When they remake Robocop they should make him carbon fiber. That would be cool. And they should bring back Paul Verhoeven and Peter Weller. That is all. Thank you.

Joel Johnson

"Golden Throat" talk box from the golden age

Scott from Electro-Harmonix doesn't just blog about their newer FX boxes. He also digs up videos of old products that EHX no longer makes like the "Golden Throat" talk box, a box that sounds like a vocoder, but wasn't, as it "physically pumped audio (not an electric signanl) up a tube, into the player's mouth, to then be shaped and captured via an external microphone."

Bad ass. (Several versions were released.)

Roger Troutman's group Zapp famously used a Golden Throat for the lead vocal line of "California Love", which was remade in 1995 by 2Pac and Dr. Dre with Troutman rerecording the vocals. "California Love" was itself a remake of sorts, with the foundation lick being lifted whole cloth from Joe Cocker's 1972 track "Woman to Woman". [Sample below.]

In the above video, a cornball French dude named "Mo' Cheeze" puts the Golden Throat off to hilariously right-on effect. (Fun experiment: Close your eyes, pretend you're listening to a track from the early '90s, then open your eyes to gaze on the smooze leer of Mssr. Cheeze.)

Other "Golden Throats" that are not this thing: throat lozenge; RCA Victrola

Related • The History of the Robot Voice from Kraftwerk to Kanye [Gearcrave]

John Brownlee

Chobu 01 mechs are the Cadillacs of another world

These fantastic Chobu 01 mechas were created by Japanese 3D artist Kazushi Kobayashi as relics from "a parallel 50s where the robots are the most popular transport system." I'm guessing the pilot seat in the pudendum explains a lot of that popularity.

You can buy one of these 1/12 scale models yourself if you wish for $315... assembly required.

Chubu 01 [Official Site via Bot Junkie]

Joel Johnson

Neatsfoot oil, for recovering leather

From Outside's fascinating profile of Brit Eaton, a man who scavenges Western states to recover vintage clothing which he sells at a tremendous markup to collectors and fashion archivists:

THE LEADS FROM THE PEEPHOLE kept us busy for a couple more days, though they didn't produce any exciting finds beyond a human leg bone that I plucked from a hole in the ground after being directed to the location by a local landowner. The waistband from the buckleback jeans outside Modena was the closest we'd come to a big-game find, though the back of the truck continued to pile up with small-game items that might fetch $10 or $50 or $200. In addition to Theo's macbeth T-shirt, we had a stack of saddle blankets, assorted western-style button-up shirts, a pair of 1970s corduroy pants, a beat-up piece of Filson luggage, a Victorian-era women's coat made of velvet, a homemade coat rack of welded horseshoes and fencing staples, a leather rifle scabbard, old riding chaps, assorted trucker's hats, and a pair of cowboy boots that were so stiff with age, they felt bronzed. (Brit soaks leather goods back to life in neat's-foot oil, which he buys by the drum.)

Prices seem to on par with other leather treatment oils; SouthernAgriculture.com sells a quart for ten bucks.

Photo: The Ghost Factory

John Brownlee

Gorgeous conceptual bar bedside clocks

This is just another Yanko concept, so it's unlikely we'll actually be able to buy these anytime soon (or at all), but I still love the design of these bedside clocks by Antrepo Design Industry: slim, ruler-like bars with bright colors and gorgeously linear OLED screens.

My Alarm Clock is not a movie [Yanko]

John Brownlee

Dr. Manhattan shoots the Apollo Moon Landings

Like all of his other films, Zack Snyder's Watchmen will doubtlessly be terrible, but I will give props where they are due: the Watchmen viral team sure is doing some great work.

Consider this picture posted on the Flickr page of the Watchmen viral site, The New Frontiersmen. The caption: "Dr Manhattan photographs Neil Armstrong on the occasion of the Apollo moon landings, July 20th 1969."

Charlie Sorrel of Gadget Lab thinks the attention to detail to be pretty impressive:

The best part? That Doc Manhattan is holding the camera properly. The Apollo missions took medium format Hasselblads along with them. These cameras have waist level viewfinders, so you hold them low and look into them from above. This is the kind of attention to detail that is getting us so juiced about the movie.

And the other benefit, of course, is that a Hasselblad waist-level camera allows them to conceal Dr. Manhattan's blue, nuclear wang.

Apollo Moon Landings [Flickr]

John Brownlee

Cover Flow goes manual

Ripped straight from OS X and made incarnate in black glossy plastic, iTunes' worst (but sexiest) music browsing interface becomes a sexy tray for the triumphant living room display of five CDs. Pick them carefully: I'd definitely leave out that Macy Gray.

Coverflow goes Manual [Yanko]

Joel Johnson

Photo: 4Chan's finest invention (SFW!)

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Rock Band 2 – For the Xbox 360, the popular game—no instruments—is available for $35, shipped. [Slickdeals]

⌦ LCD Monitor – A relatively junky Acer 19-inch flat panel monitor with 1,440 by 900 pixel resolution, but it's only $130 shipped. (If you're buying just one for yourself, though, you can do so much better if you're ready to spend around $200.) [Dealhack]

⌦ MacBook – Apple updated the low-end white MacBook, adding a faster processor, 2GB of RAM, and the Nvidia 9400M video chipset, all still for $1,000. If you can live without the aluminum unibody that's a nice little machine for the price. [Dealnews]

⌦ Tilimi – "Tilimi" is a strange little iPhone application that operates a lot like a ham radio, with a bunch of different "channels" to which you can tune to have push-to-talk voice communication with others. Why would you use it in lieu of other VOIP services? No idea. But it's cute and it's free for download today. [iTunes App Store]

⌦ Music Keyboard — Refurbished Yamaha KX-61 USB MIDI controlling keyboard for $220, shipped. These seem like nice gear, despite coming with a copy of Cubase AI4 "starring Haley Joel Osment". [Dealnews]

⌦ Tungsten Ring – Classy, understated beveled edge ring in solid tungsten for $60, shipped. It would be cool to have two or three rings that all looked exactly the same made from different elements of vastly different weights. [Dealnews]

⌦ Camcorder – Today's Woot is a Polaroid High Definition Digital Camcorder for $135, shipped.

Photo: Aftershow

Rob Beschizza

Exactly the Xacti: Sanyo's 2009 lineup

Sanyo's Xacti range of pistol-grip camcorders will see new models on Feb. 6., including compact HD models.

The HD2000 (left two models above) replaces the HD1010, does 1,920x1,080 video at 60fps (and lower-res video at even faster frame rates), and will be offered in champers and black. The CA9 (right three models above) will be waterproof, include a 30x optical zoom lens, and crank out 720p.

There's allso be versions in a standard camcorder format, the WH1 (specced like the CA9) and the FM11 (specced like the HD2000)

Most interesting for the sneaky shooter is the CG10, which offers 720p HD at a size competitive with the Flips and Kodak Zi6es of the world. These also take 10mp stills.

I'm seriously considering one of those high-def littluns: Joel warned me the other day all that Xacti's all look the same in photos, but that current HD models are much larger than the Flip-esque mainstays: up to 6 1/2 inches long. It's as if Sanyo was listening in and wanted to make sure I bought one. Yay magical thinking!

First commenter to post an "Is that a Xacti in your pocket, or are you--" joke gets a special reward.

Press release [Sanyo]

Rob Beschizza

Submiaower

[via icanhascheezburger]

Rob Beschizza

iTurtle dances to your tunes

iTurtle is a $46-ish speaker that dances to the tunes it plays. Developed by Tiger electronics, it has seven multicolor LEDs and works with portable music players (but obviously with anything else, too!)

Source (machine trans) [Robot Watch via Dvice]

Rob Beschizza

Carved iphone holder in the shape of a hand

Is this Mother nature's spirit, emerging from the very wood to steal back the muse of fire? If so, she needs hand cream, badly.

iPhone Holder [Woodenart designs via Geekologie]

Rob Beschizza

"Love Edition" MSI Wind

This year's "pink Valentine's laptop promo" award goes to MSI, which offers its Wind U100 Love Edition for $430. Fifteen will be given away to competition entrants.

From the press release:

These limited edition Winds feature the Intel Atom N270 1.6G processor, Windows Home XP Home Edition™, a 6-cell battery and the same great light weight ultra mobile design as the other U100 models. MSI will also be offering free shipping on all the Valentine Edition Winds

Rob Beschizza

Clockwork Bees

Buzzing out of Tinyminds' Etsy store comes this steampunk bee brooch, offered for $34 from Brighton in England.

The most beautiful tiny jewelled watch movement is connected to an itsy bitsy brass bee stamping and made into a brooch. the idea of a little clockwork bee buzzing round the flowers is such a lovely one :)

It conjures up images of some lavishly-illustrated Victorian children's tale: the young protagonists find one of these things sputtering about and get led into a dreamlike Tir Na Nog of clockwork insects and minuscule robots in their efforts to repair it.

Steampunk bee brooch [Tinyminds]

Rob Beschizza

Ninja Tacks now available

Designed by Jonathan Sabine and Adam Pickard, these beautiful and deadly Ninja Tacks--previously seen only as prototypes--are now available. Best of all, they're only $12 for a pack of three.

Ninja Tacks are injection molded ABS with a Chrome Plated finish. Each individual web order consists of 3 Ninja Tacks in a padded mailer. It's cheaper than mailing the retail packaging.

Ninja Tacks [Chromoly via Mocoloco]

Rob Beschizza

Sony explains why the Vaio P isn't a netbook

With its Atom CPU and small form, Sony's Vaio P looks like a netbook. But Sony doesn't call it a netbook: a PR staffer at the unveiling growled (good-naturedly!) and rolled her eyes when we made jokes about it. Today at Sony's Electronics blog, it lays out its rationale for avoiding this popular term.

The keyboard, it says, is closer to a larger notebook size than "most" netbooks. The 1600x768 display has a higher resolution than you'll find on a "typical" netbook. It has a cooler version of Intel's Atom processor, allowing a fanless chassis. It has bluetooth and 3G. It has GPS. It has a fast-booting Linux mode. You can get it with large-size solid state drives. And, yes, it's $900, a third more expensive than the higher-end netbooks.

Note those scare quotes. The fatter Eees, for example, have nearly full-size keyboards, and HP's Mini 2000 series has 768-line displays, though they aren't as wide as that on the P. The "wireless capabilities" claim doesn't withstand scrutiny, either: many netbooks now have 3G options alongside bluetooth and WiFi.

No other netbook has GPS, however, and while Asus and LG have Splashtop instant-on models in development, they're not out. Massive, fast SSDs are available to netbook owners, but only on the aftermarket, and at similar expense to those offered by Sony.

Sony's explanation, however, is unnecessary. The real reason the Vaio P isn't a netbook is because it's sexier than netbooks.

You Can't Tell a Netbook by its Cover [Sony electronics blog]

Joel Johnson

The Day That Was, January 20th, 2009

Animal Collective's new album uses a popular optical illusion for its cover ⌁ A local news station interviews interim Apple head Tim Cook's parents, which is a little strange ⌁ Samsung will go Android on at least one phone ⌁ Asus's Eee PC Touch UI, what using their tablet netbook will be like ⌁ New Sony TVs will shut themselves off if no one is in the room

Brandon Boyer

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld, we rang in the new administration with our vote for gaming's best president: the mech-fighting, West Wing exploding commander in chief of Xbox import rarity Metal Wolf Chaos.

We also saw a number of excellent looking games on the horizon: a WiiWare remake of Edmund McMillan's visceral platformer Meat Boy, Square Enix's troublingly addictive puzzler Yosumin, Jeff Minter's typically psychedelic Xbox Live Arcade remake Gridrunner+++, and, above all else, Arkedo's just-released brilliant looking firework-debris dodging DS arcade shooter Big Bang Mini.

Finally, we heard about a new homebrew creation that uses Wii remotes to teach us how to knit sensible hats and octopus toaster covers, brought down Kyle Gabler's website by downloading his incredible World of Goo soundtrack, and, best of all, re-downloaded area/code entertainment's absolutely fantastic iPhone game Drop7 -- one of my top-most recommended iPhone games released thus far.

John Brownlee

Robot Lamp for dim, robotless rooms

For the room that doesn't have enough robots. Which, let's face it, is basically every room. $30.

Robot Lamp [Urban Outfitters via Bot Junkie]

John Brownlee

Folding Bicycle Backpack is a cross-country dream

This Folding Bicycle Backpack designed by Bergmonch is undeniably sexy, although it makes me pine for the future, flabbier days of backpackable Segways.

Folding Bicycle Backpacks [Bergmoench]

John Brownlee

Kiss-O-Meter gauges halitosis with cute icons and blinking lights

On the average day, I kiss a lot of people. Young, old, it doesn't matter... in the dark. Yet I also suffer from bronchial-searing halitosis.

In truth, this was why I originally purchased my budgerigar, Humbert Humbird: a little buddy to trim my nose hairs and pick the mottled skin off my lips most of the time, but whom also played the role of "canary in the mine shaft." It's Humbert's more sterling qualities of dignity and forbearance that have prevented me from cramming him down past my uvula for a whiff like his predecessors.

Thankfully, technology. For only $30 — only a bit more than the price of a budgerigar — you can get a portable Kiss-O-Meter to accurately gauge the stench emanating from the sunken butt of your throat.

Kiss-O-Meter [Urban Outfitters via Geeksugar]

John Brownlee

Palm Pre automatically messages others when late for meetings

Another newly announced feature of the upcoming Palm Pre sounds like it could be pretty spiffy, depending on its ability to be controlled by the user: it will automatically send messages to people if you're going to be late to a meeting or appointment.

When you're late it — remember, this thing has GPS; it has a clock; and it has your calendar. So it not only knows where you are, it knows where you're supposed to be and when....so when it realizes you're going to be late, it says, 'Hey, not only are you going to be late, but I can take care of it for you. I'll send an email to your assistant or to the people in the meeting, which would you prefer? And oh, by the way, here's the map.'

That sounds ostensibly rad, as long as it can be turned off. But Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo — their sinistral but cute-as-a-button ginger — makes an excellent point:

The proper way to handle being late is to make it seem like your presence is imminent, no matter how far away you are.

Back when I worked at HSBC in Dublin, this tack was the exact method I used to stay at the pub and out of meetings all day long.

Why Elevation Partners Invests 425M in Palm [Yahoo Finance]

John Brownlee

Rich meets stupid: ElectroLux Swarovski Vacuum Cleaner

Electrolux has just announced a vacuum cleaner "designed" by the implausibly named Lukasz Mistletoe: its main feature is the ability to instantly Hoover up any of the 3,730 pieces of Swarovski crushed glass that will fall off the side when the glue starts to degrade.

ErgoRapido Vacuum Cleaner Encrusted With Swarovski Crystals [Born Rich]

John Brownlee

Get a Matte Book Pro for $199

The lack of a matte option on the unibody MacBook line continues to elicit protest on the Internet. I used to be a squealing member of this camp, since my reaction to my own reflected physiognomy is Medusa-like, if not in calcification than in nightmarish, shrieking ululation. But it's funny how quickly I became a convert: while the occasional reflection is annoying, ultimately, the colors on the screen really do look a lot better, and the ability to wipe mysterious genetic filth off of the screen with anything on hand can't be underestimated. Glass is great.

Regardless, if you still want a matte MacBook Pro screen, Techrestore can hook you up. It's not just a cheap matter overlay: it's a replacement LCD said to be the "same specs" as Apple's. I don't actually think the price is that unreasonable: $199 for the replacement LCD, which seems cheap compared to some of the $500 MacBook paintjobs some companies sell.

Matte Screen MacBook Pro [Techrestore via Ars via Crunch]

Rob Beschizza

Do ultra-mobile computers need cameras? YES!

Jenn of Mid Moves, embarking on a blogging tour using devices like the new OQO model 2+, takes a side in the long-running religious war over whether these things should have world-facing cameras.

I am sitting at a cafe near the entrance of Magic Mountain wishing the OQO Model 2+ I’m typing this on had a camera. And not even a very good one. Just *something* that would allow me to take a quick picture and add it to this post. ... The Model 2+ doesn’t have a memory card slot ... Expect more micro blogging and text-only posts than anything else today. *sigh* Not a good day so far.

There's a class of UMPC user who gets offended when this point is made. In that view, wanting a camera on a UMPC is impurely proletarian: why not leave such functions to smartphones such as Apple's iPhone or Sony's Xperia X1? How dare you blog on a handheld computer? It is for work!

Screw those guys: the lack of a camera, or at least an SD card slot, is the OQO's principal failing for precisely these reasons. And yes, utilitarian quality is just fine, too!

This could be fixed with an accessory, at least for those UMPCs and MIDs that have appropriately located USB ports: a rigid camera, the size of a small thumbdrive, that plugs into the slot. I can't actually find anything like this (they all have long cords and other flaws) -- anyone know where to get one?

Do MIDs need cameras? [MID Moves]

Joel Johnson

Obama administration takes over Whitehouse.gov

Of note to our readers, the "Technology Agenda" page.

An excerpt:

• Protect the Openness of the Internet: Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

• Encourage Diversity in Media Ownership: Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum.

• Protect Our Children While Preserving the First Amendment: Give parents the tools and information they need to control what their children see on television and the Internet in ways fully consistent with the First Amendment. Support tough penalties, increase enforcement resources and forensic tools for law enforcement, and encourage collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector to identify and prosecute people who try to exploit children online.

• Safeguard our Right to Privacy: Strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy.

Also, as @anildash noted, Whitehouse.gov has a blog!

Before and after screenshots by Brian Warren

John Brownlee

Super Mario Land etched on an Eee

With the help of NYC Resistor, Flickr user revolvingdork etched the entire world map of Super Mario Land for the Nintendo Gameboy on the case of his Eee netbook. I assume he used a pattern he found on the Internet, but I could probably have managed to do this from memory, given an appropriate, pea-soup-green netbook lying around and a stray etcher.

Etching Overview [Flickr via Hack A Day]

Joel Johnson

Brando Segon: USB memory stick in the shape of system RAM

Brando brings their F-game to the "Segon Turbo Flash Drive", a memory stick in the shape of...memory. The "DDR RAM appearance" has an "environmental green shell" — plastic, surely.

Like nearly everything Brando makes, it's so dumb that it's kind of awesome. (Super-overpriced, though: 4GB for $20? Get out.)

[via Coolest-Gadgets]

John Brownlee

Knife Porn: Four years waiting and one month with the Randall Model 1 Fighting Knife

Guest Review by Chris Abraham

After four years, I finally received my bespoke, hand-made, Randall Model 1 "All-Purpose Fighting Knife." Unstead of tearing right into the box, I paused and filmed a nine-minute unboxing video and took some photos of the knife — knife porn.

There are two iconic fighting knives known the world over for their service in World War II. The British Sykes-Fairbairn dagger and the American style of fighting knife, inspired both by the Bowie and the American hunting knife. There was one knife, above all other, that I coveted... coveted not just because it was considered "the best" by all of the knife magazines I bought but also because it was associated with doing hard service during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. That knife was the Randall Model #1.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Waterproof cellphones, at last!

In Japan, Fujitsu also makes phones. They're of the style so common in Japan—flat, rectangular clamshells—but are shiny, pretty and, as of now, waterproof. Offered by carrier NTTDoCoMo, it'll survive for half an hour in up to a meter of water.

Fujitsu phone gallery [NTTDoCoMo via CrunchGear]

Joel Johnson

What I have to do about once an hour to get Gmail to work in Safari

Somehow I don't think I should have several hundred cookies from Gmail. When it works properly, I have, like, two.

I suspect some rogue Javascript is going kooky and dropping its drawers.

Joel Johnson

The North Face's clever E-Tip gloves too ugly to be removed from pockets

Because I'm so dumb that I think hot cocoa is the primary fundament of winter preparedness, I still haven't bought gloves—and it's been as cold as Dick Cheney's inverted pentacular anus in New York this year, too.

Is January too late to buy gloves? Because I want these "E-Tip" gloves from The North Face, despite their comically bad cybertwerp silicone grip pattern on the palms and fingers. That may not be slick, but the "X-static" fabric on the tip of the index finger and thumb certainly is. Woven with silver, the special tips let you use resistive touchscreens like those on the iPhone and G1 without taking your gloves off at all.

But you know what? I'm not paying $40 for gloves that look like I just slapped the smirk off of the Master Control Program. Make these in plain ol' black, North Face. (And take off the incongruous power button symbol while you're at it!)

[via Oh Gizmo! via Book of Joe via WSJ]

John Brownlee

Post-Mortem of a failed Genius Bar warranty repair

Three weeks ago, I purchased myself a more-or-less top of the line second generation MacBook Pro... specifically , the $2499 configuration. Two weeks ago, I got it, and began to love it. One week ago, at CES, a slithering Samsung representative — his bifurcated tongue a nesting ground of sibilant s-es — handed me a press kit CD that, once inserted into my MBP's superdrive, stubbornly refused to eject itself. And a couple days ago, Apple charged me over $200 dollars to get that SuperDrive replaced.

At no point was I actually to blame for that drive failing, but I did make some blunders in actually dealing with the Apple Store Geniuses that cost me a couple hundred bucks. My tendency is to get furious with Apple, but another Internet bitch session isn't going to help anyone. Instead, I want to lead you guys through the problem I had and how I interacted with the Apple store representatives, which gave them all the excuse they needed to charge me a significant charge for something that was probably a manufacturing or shipping issue... even if the end result is just so much navel gazing.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Video: Obama + Daft Punk + Adam Freeland + Kubrick + GOLD + Speak & Spell == "Aer Obama"

Daft Punk's "Aerodynamic" is remixed by Adam Freeland as "Aer Obama", a celebration of our 44th president's entry into the halls of glory, people by toys and figurines (including a Speak & Spell!) and flashy, Infomercian graphics from GOLD.

Warm it up, Kris. (Thanks, Brandon "nn" Boyer!)

Rob Beschizza

Wooden Laptop Case

Designed with the 15inch MacBooks in mind, Rainer Spehl's wooden laptop case is gorgeous, useful and likely very expensive: "For Purchases please contact Rainer Spehl."

Photographed here by Achim Hatzius, it's another one of those ineffable Do Want gadget porn situations.

Wooden Laptop Case [Rainer Spehl via NOTCOT]

Joel Johnson

nru, another step towards magical augmented reality phones

"nru" is an application from UK developers lastminute.com, designed like so many other recent mobile apps to location food, shopping, and entertainment deals around you. What makes nru (pronounced "near you") compelling is in part its platform, running as it does exclusively on the T-Mobile G1 powered by Google's Android mobile OS.

Because the G1 has a compass inside, nru presents its data as a sonar-like spinning map when held parallel to the ground, but presents a snazzy augmented reality overlay when tipped up towards the horizon. It's easier to grok when you can see it in motion; there's a video up above.

You can give it a literal whirl today if you're an Android user in the U.K., where it's available on the marketplace.

The merit of nru itself aside, it's clear that the addition of a compass to the G1 is its superlative feature. It's this year's accelerometer. I'd expect to see one in the next iPhone revision. By next year they'll be in digital picture frames and blenders, a nickel's worth of "Why not?" silicon telemetry.

From the examples of the augmented reality software like nru and Google's own Maps program, however, it's clear that we're a little ways away from the portable rendering power necessary to make these truly feel magical. The iPhone and G1's camera has horrendous refresh rates, akin to primitive digital cameras. Before we'll get truly amazing "looking glass" applications, our handsets will need either faster cameras or more optimized visual processing. We're really close, though. Can't be more than a couple of years out.

Rob Beschizza

Unboxing Atari's 1984 Touch Tablet

Technologizer's Benj Edwards unboxes Atari's 1984 touch tablet. Sat in its original box for 25 years, it's both a cute pastiche on a gadget blog fetish--and a reminder that there's nothing quite like mint-condition technology to whet the gears.

Here it is, folks: a brand-new Atari CX77 Touch Tablet in the original box. OK, so the box is scuffed up a bit. But as you’ll soon see, its contents are about as un-scuffed as you can get.

Joel Johnson

Video: Obama inaugurated at LEGOland

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Band of Brothers – I already own Band of Brothers on DVD, but Amazon has dropped the Blu-ray version to $35 today (from $100) and I've just bought it again. I was skeptical that there would be any real difference since BoB was only ever shown in SD on HBO, but from the reviews it sounds like it must have been shot on film, allowing for an HD resolution in Blu-ray.

It's one of my very favorite movies or television shows ever. I watch it at least a couple of times a year from start to finish. [Amazon]

⌦ All-in-one printer – Epson Stylus NX400 color photo all-in-one inkjet printer for $60, shipped. Seems like a nice little unit for the price. Normally sells for around $100. [Dealhack]

⌦ Rolando – Ngmoco's Rolando game for the iPhone has been dropped to $6, down from the original $10 I paid and didn't regret one bit. It's a killer title and a load of fun to play and show off. [iTunes]

⌦ Pro Camcorder – Amazon is selling the Panasonic AG-HMC70PJ AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory Camcorder for $1,204, shipped. That's about $700 off the price available from B&H, but I can't find anything out on the web to indicate if this is a good product or not. (Panasonic tends to make very nice camcorders all the way up to their professional models, but it's strange there appears to be no reviews out there on this model at all.) Still, 1080i recording, 12x optical zoom, SDHC support, XLR inputs, quarter-inch CCD, HDMI and BNC Component outputs — this is a heavy duty camera. [Dealnews]

⌦ Stapleless Staper – With this $3 plastic tube you can staple up to three sheets of paper together without using a physical metal staple at all. [Dealnews]

⌦ Sonos Multi-Room – We may have thumped on Sonos a bit in the past, but for multi-room setups that want perfectly synced music, there's really not a better option — especially when paired with the new Sonos iPhone/touch controller application. Best Buy is selling a multi-room system with a ZonePlayer 80, 100, and a wireless controller for $500 with in-store pick-up. That's half-price; I wonder if there's a new package from Sonos in the works? (I haven't heard anything.) Update: Sonos tells us, "Nothing on the near horizon." [Dealnews]

⌦ Mini Bluetooth Dongle – Tiny USB Bluetooth dongle for $3, perfect for a netbook and external mouse. [Dealnews]

⌦ R/C Cars – Today's Woot are the Excalibur Electronics Micro Zoomer desktop R/C cars in a 2-pack for $18, shipped.

Photo: 1leve

Rob Beschizza

Review: 5 days with Rovair's EVDO rental service

Rovair rents out pre-activated wireless broadband modems. We used it for coverage of CES in Vegas. Apart from the general lack of available bandwidth at the modem-infested show, the service worked perfectly and we'll be sure to use it again.

It works like this: you tell Rovair the dates you need them for, then select the exact model you want. We opted for the broad compatibility of Novatel's U727 USB modems, but there's plenty to choose from. Rovair mails you the gear, which arrives on the specified date.

When you're done, you use a pre-paid envelope to overnight it back to them. Staff were pleasant and personal whenever contacted.

There are a few things to bear in mind. First, you're billed until the time the return envelope is scanned by the mail people. So it's best not to dump it in an airport mailbox, which might not be checked frequently or on weekends. Find a person to hand it to, like a FedEx worker, hotel concierge or clerk at Kinkos.

Remember the stick's phone number, too. You'll need it in a pinch: Verizon's Access Manager download page is guarded by a form that requires it, and Sprint won't even talk to you if you don't know it.

Finally, a WiMax offering is a must this year: EVDO used to be the secret to effective CES coverage, but now everyone's got it, it's as slow as dial-up!

Rovair

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: the essential music studio of 2009

Authentic Chipmusic Soft Synth Emulation: Plogue Chipsounds Scoop from NAMM [Create Digital Music]

Brandon Boyer

Today on Offworld

Today on Offworld we watched: chiptune artist Leeni and her 8-bit pixel-kabuki video 'Underworld', someone beat Marble Madness in 2:30 with a peculiar flailing-palm technique while another performs feats of Tetris magic, and, while we were hanging around there anyway, played a round of YouTube Street Fighter.

We also saw fantastic Metroid, Zelda and Rock Band DIY jewelry, fantastic Swiss design-inspired remakes of classic game covers and a Left 4 Dead remake of a classic Beatles t-shirt, as well as the Game Boy's Super Mario Land etched on the case of an Eee PC.

Finally, we got word of new iPhone games coming from Rolando and Dr. Awesome publisher ngmoco, as well as a "Lemmings meets The Lost Vikings" superhero iPhone game from indie devs Infinite Ammo, and lost far too much of the day trying an online demo of the sci-fi followup to cult hit Puzzle Quest, Galactrix.

Rob Beschizza

The Day That Was

Soundclip, a tiny plastic scoop to direct iPhone sound ($8) ⌁ An investor buys Republic Windows factory to build new efficient windowpanes ⌁ Acer's 10-inch netbook, shades of the Xbox 360 ⌁ AMD cut 1,100 staffers ⌁ "SkyBox", "SkyMarket" are Microsoft's rumored MobileMe, App Store equivalent for Windows Mobile ⌁ Hanging out with Alan Kay, god ⌁ Would Apple make a 15-inch MacBook Air? ⌁ Obama keeps his BlackBerry, but must use a monster for official business ⌁ Belkin employee was buying good reviews via Mechanical Turk ⌁ The next Puzzle Quest teased, playable online ⌁ For the first time, the Toyota Prius has a cash incentive ⌁ Ugly "Bone" is a better garage creeper ($200ish) ⌁ Crecente turns even parenting into pageviews with a LEGO Sonic ⌁ Kill-A-Watt + Twitter == Tweet-a-watt ⌁ There are those into retro batteries ⌁ Another Vaio P review, this time from Akihabara News ⌁ Speaker found in carton of milk ⌁ CrunchGear looking for an iPhone writer ⌁ Belkin paid for positive reviews.

Joel Johnson

Aim high, Wasilla Xbox Craigslist seller

[Anchorage.Craigslist.org]

Joel Johnson

Obaba, the "handsome black man face have a hidden camera" belt buckle

If I'm not mistaken, this is a spy camera hidden in a belt buckle that is supposed to be carved in the shape of Barack Obama in profile. It's a bit difficult to discern: it's called the "Obaba" buckle, for one, which might not be the same as "Obama"; then again, it is described as a "handsome black man face have a hidden camera". I think it's safe to say this is supposed to be our president. With a camera for a face.

I can't actually find it in the Ajoka.com store where it is listed, which is a pity. As the worst bit of Obama-related junk I've seen so far, I sort of want to own it show my grandkids how stupid we were in the olden days, too. [via Red Ferret]

Rob Beschizza

An hour with Tamagotchi Music Star

Tamagotchi is back! Again! One came in the mail from Bandai. Here are my thoughts, bearing in mind that I have not played with one for 10 years.

1. They're are better games than they used to be. This latest iteration of the toy is themed on a rock career: raise your sprog and train it to sing or play instruments. There's a bunch of subgames of the sort children obsess over, but won't likely please anyone used to more sophisticated fare. It is, at least, much better than the original, which amounted to playing "Tapper with Turds" in very slow motion.

2. You can apparently link Tamas for vs. play.

3. You can also pause it. The originals lacked this facility, meaning that even a few hours distraction could result in your digital pet's death by starvation, or toxic shock from swimming in its own excrement. You know, as if there were some sort of child-rearing point to be made.

4. The display is still very low-tech, black-on-gray LCD as befits the watch battery that must power it.

5. It's cheap, tiny fun for kids 8 and up: good for shutting the little things up for a few hours without having to fork out for a Nintendo DS game.

Product Page [Bandai USA]

Joel Johnson

The Light Fantastic

Author Terry Pratchett wears an experimental helmet that directs infrared bursts into his brain to promote cell growth in an attempt to halt the onset of Alzheimer's. [Daily Mail]

Joel Johnson

Why are things so heavy in the future?

The only question: What took so long? [Flickr/Legohaulic via Brothers Brick]

Joel Johnson

The crystalline keen of a siren's urogential diaphragm

Skot Wiedmann's Motus Mavis hand-built analog synthesizers sound like this. [via MAKE:]

Joel Johnson

CORE Competency: Victory Motorcycle's new concept

Victory Motorcycles built this "CORE" concept motorcycle in cast aluminum and paired it with a 1,731cc engine in a bike that weighs only 469 pounds. [Motorcycle-USA.com via Core77]

Joel Johnson

Oddage, brain training challenge for iPhone

Local mutant Danilo Campos has released Oddage, a new game for the iPhone that forces you to find the word that doesn't match the others as a timer ticks down. It's all the fun of a standardized test with none of the pressure of getting into a good prep school!

(I tease. I've been playing it for the last couple of weeks. It's perfect for whiling away a minute or two while standing in line for the unemployment checks while regretting how I didn't get into that good prep school.)

It's $3 on App Store. No charge for its default "Klingon Universal Remote" skin.

Rob Beschizza

Warn your friends: Circuit City liquidation is no deal

It's not the job of Circuit City's liquidators to clear inventory. Their job is to make money. And the most effective trick in their book is to exploit the belief among consumers that great deals exist at the failed chain's closing down sale.

Though the 10% discounts make non-discounted premium items a little cheaper, many goods at Circuit City are more expensive than last week. This is simply because the blanket discount replaces better deals previously in effect.

I've just returned from my local CC, and the story there is summed up by the fellow I saw excitedly clutching a $30 ethernet cable, delighted at the 30 percent price cut he'd get on it at the checkout. On the deals desk at the front of the store were Nintendo Gamecubes, offered "half price" for $50 each.

More interestingly, they won't sell display models, even of out-of-stock items. The store seemed well-staffed. Perhaps they're still hoping for a white knight to come in and fix everything, despite the "Everyone's fired!" note that replaced the Circuitcity.com site over the weekend.

Either way, the deals are barely competitive with healthier brick and mortar stores, let alone Amazon or Newegg. Wait for a few weeks until they get serious about clearing stock before wasting your time there.

Joel Johnson

Video: Motorcade SUVs with miniguns in the trunk

Those black SUVs that travel with a presidential motorcade? They very well may have a 7.62mm minigun inside.

Joel Johnson

The Impossible Project: Firing up an old Polaroid instant film factory

"Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible." – Edwin Land, Inventor of Instant Photography

That's the quote that opens "The Impossible Project", a group of obdurate men who have purchased the old Polaroid factory in Enschede, Netherlands, with the aim to restart production of instant film.

Producing instant film for a ratty old camera, no matter how charming it may be, is hardly "manifestly important", especially considering the environmental toll of instant film. (Which is not to draw a distinction between instant and traditional film, but instead to point out that there is the need for plastic, metals, and chemicals to produce a photo at all. [Besides the camera, but don't you dare...])

The "nearly impossible" part of their endeavor seems at first overwrought: can't they just turn the machines back on? Not exactly. Presuming they could secure the same reagents used by Polaroid, the exact process used is still entwined in patents like good ol' 6,227,729, which gives Polaroid the rights to a "film cassette for housing and dispensing film units of the self-developing type" until 2019.

But that's not what The Impossible Project claims to want to do. Their stated aim is to "develop a new product with new characteristics, consisting of new optimised components, produced with a streamlined modern setup. An innovative and fresh analog material, sold under a new brand name that perfectly will match the global re-positioning of Integral Films."

I understand that film for Polaroids is getting insultingly expensive. I understand that these guys miss shooting with their Polaroids. It just seems like an awful lot of effort to go through to recreate something that is not just antiquated, but practically obviated by modern technology. See that photo above? I shot it with my iPhone and processed it on the phone with Camera Bag before uploading it to Flickr with Mobile Photos. If I wanted to, I could print out a copy on a home printer or have one of Flickr's parters send me a copy. But instead I can show it instantly to my friends on my phone as well as anyone else in the world online. I find it nearly impossible to understand how that isn't better than shooting with a Polaroid instant in nearly every way.

[via this supremely interesting Metafilter thread]

Joel Johnson

Video: Current's Ben Hoffman at CES

"I'm gonna put Wild Things on while I hug my mom." Thank you, Ben Hoffman, for not making us the only assholes to wander around CES haranguing people.

Joel Johnson

Carlos Alberto's wooden Vespa scooter

You know what you could do if you were totally awesome? Build a wooden Vespa. Carlos Alberto did it. You know why?

Joel Johnson

Mitch Altman completes his worldwide tour of hackerspaces (Welcome home!)

Greetings from San Francisco! As wonderful as my travels have been, I’m really glad to be home. The skies are an incredible shade of blue, every day has been in the 70s, and my cat is very happy (and maybe a bit angry) to have me back in my little one-room studio apartment on top of a house on top of a hill, where I can see for miles through the crystal clear air.

I am still very excited about what I have seen and experienced throughout my 7 week tour of Chicago, the capitals of Europe, Philly, and New York City. The theme for the trip has been community with hackers.

If you’ve never been to a hacker conference or a hacker space, you may wonder what a bunch of hackers would do when they get together. Hackers are a very large group of individuals all around the planet who love learning about technology, making it better, and sharing it with the world. Hackers are a big driving force behind what makes the tech world happen. Think about all the open-source software, and the growing number of open-source hardware projects available. What hackers are dreaming up today becomes the reality we live tomorrow.

Hacker conferences happen year round. There is probably one coming up somewhere near you. Do a search for “hacker conferences”. Why not check one out for yourself?

The annual Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin is one of the highlights of my year. This year too! The hardware hacking area I set up was hopping 24/7, even during the few hours that I managed to sleep each day. The talks were top-notch, and the people I met were some of the more creative, intelligent, friendly people you’ll hope to find. I’m still buzzing from all the solder fumes from people building TV-B-Gone remote controls, Brain Machines, Trippy RGB Waves, and other projects of mine that I taught people how to make – many of whom have never built anything before!

Hacker spaces are popping up all over the world. These past 12 months have seen so many renting their own space: Philadelphia, New York City, Kansas City, Toronto, San Francisco, Montreal, DC, Vancouver, Paris, Boston, Providence, Chicago. And that list consists only of places where I have met the people who started them. Hackerspaces.org is a new, international organization that exists to promote the starting of and continuation of hacker spaces. A quick perusal through their website reveals a list of well over 100 spaces on planet Earth where people can get together and share, learn, and work on the next cool thing.

Noisebridge is a hacker space that is near and dear to my heart, as I helped start it here in San Francisco. Based on the models that evolved through the experiences of Chaos Computer Club folks in Germany, Noisebridge already has 50 dues-paying members, In a few short months we’ve managed to create a space where you can stop by at 1am and eat home made bread just coming out of the oven from our kitchen while listening to the latest dance music of one of our members being played on our juke box as someone else shows off a years worth of their 8000 photos flashing by as a 5-minute video and someone else solders their latest hardware project upstairs in the new electronics lab while others catch up on their emails. There’s always something happening. If you’re ever in the San Francisco area, please stop by for a visit – you are always welcome.

Joel Johnson

Browse the Battlestar prop catalog for the auction you just missed

As Battlestar Galactica steams out for its final parade of weeping around the galaxy—Spoiler: Muffit is the final Cylon—the sets inside British Columbia's Vancouver Film Studios have been dismantled with atypical care to be auctioned off to fans. NBC Universal has given costumes, production art, props, set decoration and set pieces* over to Propworx, a company specializing in movie and television auctions, and it appears they've done a fine job of both archiving and contextualizing all the props they plan on selling. While it may be frustrating for true fans to feel they've lost a chance at some cheap memorobilia, it's a far sight better that these bits are being handled by professionals than tossed in a junkyard.

If you'd like to browse the entirety of the catalog, Propworx has provided a PDF version of the catalog for download, but they'll happily sell you a printed version of the Battlestar prop catalog for $35. You'll have to sate yourself with that—the auction ended yesterday.

* Dig that futuristic Microsoft keyboard!

John Brownlee

Retro-Mini Media Center is gorgeous like a Cadillac fin

As part of has final project for a BA in Modelmaking for Design and Media, Thomas put together this jaw-dropping jet age Mini-Media Centre case mod, which has all of the foam green sexiness of a 1950's Frigidaire with the lines and svelteness of a Cadillac's fin. Thomas is looking for advice on how to sell the design to get it mass produced, if anyone knows how that's done... I'd certainly like to buy one of these.

Retro Mini-Media Center [Thomthom.net]

John Brownlee

Abandoned nuclear lighthouses of the Soviet empire

English Russia is hosting a fantastic gallery of abandoned Soviet nuclear lighthouses, which were strung in the polar regions off of Russia's northern coast. A rather Russian-Engrishy description, but you get the idea:

he Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to build a chain of lighthouses to guide ships finding their way in the dark polar night across uninhabited shores of the Soviet Russian Empire. So it has been done and a series of such lighthouses has been erected. They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas. After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses. Those small reactors could work in the independent mode for years and didn’t require any human interference, so it was very handy in the situation like this. It was a kind of robot-lighthouse which counted itself the time of the year and the length of the daylight, turned on its lights when it was needed and sent radio signals to near by ships to warn them on their journey. It all looks like ran out the sci-fi book pages, but so they were.

These are all ostensibly abandoned now, although some seafarers report the soft green gloaming of irradiated ghouls illuminating the granite outcrops of some of these isles at night.

Abandoned Russian Polar Nuclear Lighthouses [English Russia]

Joel Johnson

Is Michael Arrington the next Steve Jobs?

No. But are you?

Michael Arrington has lifted his knickers to show "Prototype B," the latest revision of the CrunchPad, a Linux-based touchscreen internet tablet that has sprung fully formed from the genitals of his technological desire. It's more cumbersome than the initial mock-up, but it's just a proof-of-concept for the hardware inside: a VIA Nano-powered processor, a mobile processor on par with the Intel Atom found inside nearly every netbook on the market; 1GB of RAM, which Arrington claims is "more than we need"; and 4GB of Flash memory to store the Ubuntu operating system, a WebKit-based browser, and adjunctive cache.

It's an act of will not to pan the project—Arrington is a trembling blowhard who tends to mistake rage for insight—but taken on its own merit, the device itself, as well as its relative ease of development by Arrington's team, may further a new wave of small-batch consumer electronics designed not by marketing executives or insulated engineers, but by the very customers who want to buy them.

Or it may not. Remember the Chumby, the cuddly touchscreen internet device that was created to serve very much the same purpose as the CrunchPad? In development for years, the Chumby finally launched in late 2007, only to quickly be obviated by the iPhone and iPod Touch, two mainstream devices that sell for the same $200 price but offer a broader suite of applications and utility — and fit far more easily into a pocket than the plush lump. (Chumby isn't helped by its business model, which allows you to design your own widgets that are then sold through the advertiser-supported Chumby Network.)

Which is not to say the Chumby is a failure. (I cannot find unit sales numbers online, although I don't know anyone offhand who owns one besides hardware hackers who bought Chumby units at launch.) It may very well break even by selling to its niche. But a mainstream product it is not, nor likely will it ever be.* And it's hard to say that the success of Chumby making it to market heralded anything but another small electronics company setting sail.

Craft electronics, if I may crib a term from the American brewing industry, may end up filling the cracks in markets that are too small to be addressed by large manufacturers. There are pitfalls ahead: Will they provide user support? A warranty? Will they be able to create a unified, elegant touch-based interface when hundreds of others, like Microsoft and open-source teams, have had such a sticky time of it? Will they offer a recycling program?

Will anyone want to buy a CrunchPad instead of a netbook? Arrington says the original $200 price will probably end up more like $300, due primarily to a "much better, more expensive LCD." (Which is good: Prototype B has a 1,024 by 768 pixel display in a 4:3 aspect ratio.) I'd prefer a widescreen display and a real keyboard, as would many, since it's clear the CrunchPad will be competing with the iPod Touch and netbooks, offering neither the portability of the former, nor the utility of the latter.

Arrington has built a device for Arrington. (The CrunchPad is not some sort of crowdsourced project, as Robert Scoble bafflingly claims.) While it's easy to dismiss the entire project as a manifestation of his overflowing hubris—and it is—it would be a mistake not to also recognize it for what it also is: a consumer electronics project from a relatively small team that will probably make it to market.

Customers will decide if the CrunchPad will become more than an experiment in wish fulfillment, but even its failure would be useful. The easier it becomes for the average person—or average Silicon Valley networker, at least—to bring products to market, the less we have to rely on large corporations to develop the electronics we want to buy. Apple and HP and the like may continue to be the Anheuser-Busch of the computing world, but it's hard to imagine a healthy, blossoming craft electronics selection as being anything other than beneficial to the industry as a whole.

Because if Michael Arrington can will a gadget to market, imagine what anyone else could dream up.

* I am aware how douchey this sentence sounds, but it goes so well with this smoking jacket.

John Brownlee

Space Invaders piggy bank

This Space Invaders themed piggy bank has the wood paneled allure of a vintage arcade machine plucked from the corner of a dingy Jersey arcade, leaving an eternal silhouette in the carcinogen cake of the wall to mark its passing, like a Hirshoma shadow.

You can't actually play a game on it, of course, but it does its best: a coin plunked down the shoot causes a pixel squid blob invader to display on the screen. When all rows and columns of invaders are filled, the bank is full. I only wish a laser canon would vaporize the invaders when money was withdrawn.

Space Invaders Piggy Bank [Gizmo Diva]

John Brownlee

Steampunk Vader Mask

Tristan Eaton and AZK One created this gas mask Darth Vader helmet for the Vader Project art exhibition, which displays artist's colorful refashionings of sci-fi's most iconic fashion accessory.

What's strange to me is that, once seeing it, I realized that while I've seen a lot of steampunk Vaders, I don't think I've ever seen one take the gas mask approach. This is either a shameful oversight of the steampunk community or my memory... one or the other.

Thunderdog enters the Vader Project [Thunderblog via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Japanese push-up robot loses arms

Awesome robot horror. Wait around for the limb dismemberment.

[via Pushup Robot with No Arms]

John Brownlee

Scrabble tile keyboard

During the waning moments of the worst parties, someone always pulls out Scrabble (a game I hate) and tries to win me over from my face-curdled loathing by insisting I must be good at it, since I'm a writer. My response to this assertion is always just to stare, gobstruck, until silence sinks in the fact writing is not about randomly shaking up a tray of letters in one's heads and plucking words from the alphabetical mnemonic slurry... if it was, my posts would make more sense.

That all said, I like this Scrabble tile keyboard... there is something a bit nifty about knowing exactly how many triple word scores I'm racking up if I somehow glom onto 'Quetzalcoat' as my word of the day.

Scrabble Keyboard [Datamancer via Hack A Day]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Colorful Keyboard – Crayola 3-piece computer kit with keyboard, mouse, and photo mouse pad (a photo can be slipped inside) for $10 at Wal-Mart. An additional $1 for shipping. [Slickdeals]

⌦ iPod Bluetooth – wiRevo A100 Bluetooth adapter for iPod for $20, shipped. It should work with most any iPod, but obviously it will sit more flush with some models than others. The only review on Amazon indicates that it's a pretty good bit of gear, especially for this price. [Dealhack]

⌦ iPhone Translation – NibiruTech's Mobile Translator software, a front-end for Google Translate, is available for free on iTunes App Store. [Dealnews]

⌦ Netbook – Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook for $350, shipped. Includes 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, XP Home. [Dealnews]

⌦ The Finest China – Barack Obama Historic Victory Collectible Plate for $10, shipped. Remember, you will be a smelly grandmother someday and will need things for the walls of your cottage. [Dealnews]

⌦ HDTV – Today's Woot is a "recertified" Philips 47" 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Perfect Pixel HD Engine for $905, shipped. Congratulations to Team Woot for a very sharp-looking new redesign, too, no matter how all the crazy dorks in their forums may whinge. (Don't miss the 2009 CES Woot Awards, either.)

Photo: HugoVK

Rob Beschizza

Change Back: The Post-CES Guide to de-Appleification

The day Microsoft, Palm and Sony upstage Apple is a strange day indeed. With MacWorld offering little more than an expensive laptop upgrade, however, it was left to CES—a show often buried by Cupertino cool—to bring new toys to 2009's table.

Apple will be back in force, with new ideas and shiny new things, but why wait? Aren't you sick of spec bumps that never come? It's time to change back—and for the first time in ages, you can do it in style.

Palm Pre

It's smaller than the iPhone, has a fantastic new interface, and it runs linux. There'll be an AppStore anyone can get into, top-knotch integration with Facebook and Gmail, and a multitouch display. Even the menu bar caused CES attendees to gape like beached whales. With a hardware keyboard and cut and paste, the mobile novelist brigade will be happy, too.

And it's by Palm! Palm!

Windows 7 beta

After the public relations abattoir of Windows Vista, the sequel has a lot riding on it. First indications are that Microsoft might have nailed it: the beta edition is simpler, swifter and sleeker than its irritating predecessor. Available free to the public until August, the unfinished and unsupported software weds XP's snappiness with Vista's eye candy.

Just don't expect it to work perfectly, O.K.? Caveat downloador.

Sony Vaio P

In the Vaio P "lifestyle" computer, Sony's created the high-end mini-notebook that Apple hasn't. Early reviews paint it as a masterpiece, beautifully designed and small enough to slip into a jacket pocket.

It also has a decent keyboard, a high-definition display, and a fast-booting linux mode. Performance isn't too hot, mind, and the $900 tag is only cheap by Sony standards. Nonetheless, it's easily the coolest laptop on the block.

HP Mini 2140 netbook
Want a real netbook that costs half the price of Sony's little wonder? HP's Mini 2140 has a 10-inch 16:9 screen with 768 lines (most netbooks have only 600), 2GB of RAM. It runs Windows Vista, which you will promptly remove, and was cut to a surprisingly Mac-esque design. Best of all? It's just $500.

Just try not to think about where the trackpad buttons are.

Dell Adamo

What do we know about Dell's new 13-inch laptop? Not much, except for the fact that it's not out yet and doesn't have a release date.

What we do know is that it's a monolith made of pure Kubrickstone, surface-textured by a million years of thrashing by an army of robot monkeys armed with diamond-tipped cats o' nine tails.

Is it any good? Haven't a clue: they wouldn't let us touch its mockup/prototype. But it's got looks to match the unibody MacBooks: no mean feat for the company that had 250 different words for beige.

Want something right now? Voodoo's Envy laptop is a similarly slab-like alternative to the MacBook Air. [Photo: Gizmodo]

Lenovo IdeaCenter 600 all-in-one

With the iMac already looking underfeatured compared to rival machines from HP, Dell and Sony, Lenovo's IdeaCenter 600 comes along to kick the whole lot back into 2008, where they belong.

Now, it has its flaws. The Wii-like remote wasn't much fun. And the design? It looks great from the front, but weird from behind: Lenovo clearly imagines use as a television.

But look at the hardware behind that 21.5 display: 2GB of RAM, Blu-ray disk, a TV tuner, 6-in-one card reader, dolby digital audio and 6 USB ports.There's even an optional 512MB DirectX 10 video card: it can game like no iMac in this universe.

To quote m'colleague Joel: "The junk down on the trunk is appealing."

Sony Walkman X-1000

It's sleeker than the iPod Touch, and it's got a brighter OLED touchscreen display and in-built noise cancellation. It's beautiful and black, with a strange texture that looks like a fancy tombstone.

Thanks to Apple itself, defection is easy, too: pay the DRM kill fee in iTunes and your hitherto iPod-locked collection is free. The only question: it is worth paying extra, when the Walkman's price tag will surely make the iPod Touch look like a stocking stuffer?

Netgear Internet TV Player

So it's not as pretty as Apple TV. It looks like the routers that spawned it. It's not very powerful, either, requiring saved media to be stored on an external USB drive. But Netgear's Internet TV Player handles standard-def TV streaming in any format known to man and is absolutely tiny: little larger than a deck of cards. Dangle it off the back of your TV set for a solution to a problem you already have: watching internet junk like YouTube on a big TV. Too proletarian? Get Boxee then, media snob!

Eee Keyboard

Weird as all hell and strange too, Asus's Eee Keyboard contains a home theater PC and an LCD display. Unlike most demented modern attempts at that oldschool computer-in-the-keyboard combo, it even looks cool.

It's as if Commodore Amiga 500's spirit was reaching up from 1988, to clutch at the Mac's throat one final time. [Photo: Matt Buchanan/Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Bit-amin supplements