Joel Johnson

Welcome to Solaris 8, a microscale LEGO space station

Onosendai2600's "Solaris 8" microscale space station is awesome with a capital awwww. Don't miss the up close tour and its hilarious captions. (Especially funny if you're an Adult Fan of LEGO and follow the scene. [Yes there is a LEGO scene now, but fortunately it's on Flickr and easy to follow.]) [via NeoClassicSpace.com]

Joel Johnson

Map: Band of Brothers set, Hatfield, UK

View Larger Map

Band of Brothers, the best WW2 series ever made, was shot primarily at the airfield outside of Hatfield, England. The sets are still standing and are visible on Google Maps.

I know where I'm when I'm next in the UK. (Which should be soonish; my pop just moved over there.)

Joel Johnson

Video: How to start a dance party (Sasquatch 2009)

As I once said to a crowd of stoically swaying My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult fans who were very frustrated with my attempts to dance with them while I was two bottles to my tits on DXM: Come on, let's just daaaance.

"Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension"

Brian Krebs:

Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that -- if done imprecisely -- can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.

PSP Go "revealed early"

From Gamespot:

A YouTube video of what appears to be the next issue of the PlayStation-focused video magazine Qore has revealed that Sony will use its event to unveil a new PSP model, the PSP Go. Sony is expected to unveil the PSP Go at its press conference Tuesday at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. As had been widely rumored, the PSP Go will have a sliding form factor like the Mylo, Sony's ill-fated Internet communicator device.

Here's our preliminary review: "Excellent hardware, but...."

Steven Leckart

Electric-Powered VW Bus Photobooth

Portland, OR-based photographer Soren Coughlin-Glaser runs a mobile photobooth out of his bright orange VW-EV bus. Cool stuff, but even cooler is that he re-built the e-bus mostly himself using 24 6V golf cart batteries.

Soren's blog doesn't provide full-on step-by-steps, but there are schematics, as well as lessons learned with regard to blown connections and brake woes.

Sadly, all those set backs pale in comparison to this full-on meltdown:

After the jump, find out what happened and check out some close-up pics...

READ THE REST

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we took a longer look at Bonsai Barber, the WiiWare debut game from Martin Hollis (former project lead on the Nintendo 64's GoldenEye 007) and his team at Zoonami. It's precisely what it sounds like: a mashup of zen-gardening and that traditional daily social life revolving around the barbershop, and smarter than you might think -- truly one of WiiWare's finest.

Elsewhere we dug up a fantastic iTunes visualizer based on DS favorite music game Rhythm Heaven, heard the first details of what Id has in store for its multiplayer-enabled iPhone version of Doom, saw the ghost-trapping abilities of the DSi's first augmented reality game, and saw World of Goo creators 2D Boy releasing their open-source rapid prototyping framework into the wild for other indie game creators.

We also peeked into two developer studios with 2 Player Productions -- the company behind chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet -- visiting inFamous studio Sucker Punch, and Simon Parkin posting a photo set of his trip to Parappa the Rapper dev NanaOn-Sha, and saw the latest NES rom flier for NYC chiptune showcase Pulsewave.

And our 'one shot's for the day: Devo wards off space invaders, who then invade Madrid, LittleBigPlanet's 2000AD crossover has a trouser malfunction, a broken Konami Code leads to a life of smothering darkness, and the evolution of BioShock 2's Big Sisters.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video - Boiler Bar: Oilpunk Creations + Sexy Burlesque Gyrations

(Download / Watch on YouTube)

Today's Boing Boing Video episode is a special pre-Maker Faire warmup extravaganza: the oil-punk creations and sexy burlesque gyrations of the Boiler Bar. Creator and host Jon Sarriugarte (who I first met through SRL) explains:

Oilpunk: is Punk, Hot Rod, Geek, Blue Collar, and Maker Culture mixed together with the Petroleum Golden Age of the last century. It's the intersection of petroleum products, art, and science. It harkens back to a time when hard work, combustion engines and industry shaped us, yet it speaks to the future. It's taking the castoffs of modern industrial culture and objects from the last decade to reuse today. Dirty, greasy, sweaty, it's a work hard, play hard style.

The Boiler Bar is what blue collar out of work down on their luck Bay Area artist decided to do with their spare time and last dollar. Come by and share our delight of the sparkle in the dust of this golden age of petroleum. Drink our hooch and watch the girls sing and dance their way to you heart, then be dazzled by the labor of men spent in seconds in glorious aerial and earthly displays of plenty. And as always ravers and DJ's are welcome to talk.

Also in this episode: The snail car! a real-live blacksmith! Who also happens to be a chick! And the Neverwas Runabout, cousin to the giant Neverwas Haul! All of this and more awaits this weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009. Image below courtesy dharmabum90: the Neverwas Haul, being towed by a 90-year-old steam-powered tractor.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Shannon O'Hare of the Neverwas and Jon Sarriugarte of Boiler Bar. And big thanks to BBV guest host Aaron Muszalski and our field producer and shooter Eddie Codel.)

Rob Beschizza

Comcast: Most Pittsburghers to get double internet speed at no extra cost

I got a phone call from Comcast last night. A recorded message told me that the service would be briefly down for upgrades in the early hours, and that the result would be double internet speeds for "most" customers at no extra cost.

My speed seems to have got a nice bump: throughput from about 15 mbps to 28 mbps. (Update: just checked to see what I'm paying for: 16mbps.) However, it's not consistent

I'm on the northside, near the Heinz Lofts and the Penn Brewery. I tested with Comcast's own test applet.

Do tell us if Comcast doesn't double your internet speed for free, Pittsburgh.

Joel Johnson

Time Warner Cable asks customers for "loyalty" ideas but doesn't actually want to improve service

J. Christenbury blogs this hilarious exchange that occurred on Twitter between a Time Warner Cable marketing stooge and a customer who had real ideas:

@jeffTWC: Please RT: working on customer loyalty programs and would love your ideas/input - raffling an iTouch on Thurs to constructive suggestions

jchristenbury @jeffTWC I have a whole handful, where do I send them?

jchristenbury @jeffTWC I want to choose and pay for the channels I want. (I know this is not a TWC decision but TWC has the clout to push it)

jchristenbury @jeffTWC I want the CS reps to listen when I tell them I have already rebooted my computer and its not on my end. #customerloyalty

jchristenbury @jeffTWC I want a bill that I can understand that doesn't have cryptic misc. charges. I want to know what the charges are #customerloyalty

jchristenbury @jeffTWC I want Higher internet speeds. the US has the lowest speeds of all.

jeffTWC @jchristenbury Thanks for your tips here -- but we're not really addressing industry problems with this, just creating a marketing tool

jchristenbury @jeffTWC These ARE things that will increase customer loyalty.

Joel Johnson

The Safety Seat

Tom Scocca:

Safety is about making tradeoffs. Not dying on the road is a very good thing to trade for--so good, nobody feels any need to make improvements to the improvements. It's churlish to complain about it. Your car is a little metal death box, and whatever joy you may find on the road is strictly a function of your insane denial of that truth. The safety gear gives you another layer of denial to work with: I am doing all this in the most prudent, least reckless way that automotive engineers have yet discovered. Got it, Death?

Joel Johnson

Video: Dynamic LEGO Bar Chart

I am so psyched for Maker Faire. It'll be my first! [via MAKE:]

Joel Johnson

Mad Money: Is Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee batshit crazy...like a fox?

Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee, on stage at the D7 conference along with Palm's Jon Rubinstein, as transcribed by Joshua Topolsky:

⌦ "This product has the best alien technology."

⌦ "And it eats iPhones for breakfast!"

⌦ "It'll be at precisely 4:20." McNamee was responding to Walt Mossberg's question about an earlier boast about when iPhone users would switch to Pre.

Later, in another non sequitur: "4:20 in the afternoon."

⌦ "It has a mirror on the back... there's never been a phone like this for women before."

⌦ "Show of hands in here, was anyone offended by me talking about a mirror?"

⌦ On an "express line" for iPhone customers: "Yeah, outside the rings of Saturn."

⌦ "If I were RIM or Apple, I wouldn't worry about it. In America you're not going to pay so much of a premium to get a smartphone that you can justify not getting one."

An executive in charge of millions of dollars in venture capital likes to make marijuana jokes. I can't tell if I love him or simply think he's fantastic. If anything, it gives me hope that I will be able to become a powerful Valley exec and still do boatloads of drugs, even while I'm on stage.

Steven Leckart

What Tech/Slang Should Disney Choose to Represent the '00s?

Disney decided on Pac-Man iconography and the word "Radical" to represent the 1980s wing of their Pop Century Resort in Florida. Obvious, sensible choices.

Any ideas for what they should use for the '00s icon and slang?

I'm going to offer up the iPhone + "Totes."*

*Disney's 80s wing also utilizes the phrase "totally awesome," which helps support the case for "totes." If Disney manages to work online shorthand and/or leet speak into the hotel, I'll be thoroughly impressed.

photo by Linda Leckart

Lisa Katayama

New iPhone app features pretty Japanese girls telling time

A few months ago, I blogged about a web-based analog clock that features the time held up by hot Japanese women.

Good news: it's now available as an iPhone app. If you use this to set your alarm, then the girl showing that time you want to wake up will appear on your screen when the alarm goes off. If you like the girl holding up 8:15 better than the girl holding up 8:20, it's incentive to wake up five minutes earlier.

Get it on iTunes [via Asiajin]

Joel Johnson

How to rescue the Mars rover by Julian, age 7

Julian, age 7, heard that the Spirit Mars rover was stuck, and offered his idea to fix it. Turns out that's a pretty good idea and one that JPL folks are already considering.

The rover drivers were so pleased by Julian's suggestion that they're going to send him a reward.

Update: NASA is naming the next rover "Curiosity", a name offered by a sixth-grader.

Joel Johnson

Eve Ensler and "Rape-Free" Gadgets

In the Congo, explains Eve Ensler, militias use rape to fracture communities and the threat of sexual violence to coerce slave labor to mine coltan (a colloquial name for columbite-tantalite ore) which is used to produce capacitors that power cell phones, iPods, and other gadgets.

"We create those atrocities through our consumption," says Ensler.

She is proposing that electronics manufacturers and their customers—us—began to concern themselves with the notion of "Rape-Free" products in which the raw, mineral components of consumer electronics are traced back to sources that can be verified to have procured them ethically. (She allows that "Rape-Free" is probably not a moniker that would be comfortable plastered on boxes and signs.)

It's without a doubt one of the most horrible but compelling things I've heard in a while. I've been considering a parallel notion lately about the shocking rate we're using a limited mineral supply to make what are essentially disposable bits of gadgetry. While I don't doubt that every effort will be made by profit-driven corporations to develop ways to produce goods even if rare minerals are fully depleted, the gulf between now and a future where minerals can be safely reclaimed and reused is fretfully wide. [via Treehugger]

Lisa Katayama

Review: Wüsthof electric knife sharpener

My kitchen knives have been dull for way too long. I have a sharpening steel, but I find it hard to use. I'm also too lazy to take all five of my kitchen knives to a professional knife sharpener. The Electric Sharpener is German knife company Wüsthof's first automated sharpening device ever &mdash since I have trusted Wüsthof to make good knives for years, I decided to give this machine a try.

There are basically three main features to the Electric Sharpener &mdash the on/off button, the coarse diamond wheel on the left, and the fine diamond wheel on the right. The coarse wheel sands both sides of the blade sharp; the fine wheel gives an already-pretty-sharp blade a good honing.

One of the best ways to test a knife for sharpness is by cutting a tomato. Tomatoes are squishy, and when cut with a dull knife, they spew seeds and juice all over the cutting board. And every bad incision shows up looking twice as bad in red. This knife hadn't been sharpened for at least a few months, so I used the coarse wheel. Ok, now take a look at the tomato in the picture. The slice on the far right was cut before sharpening. As you can see, there is juice everywhere, and the surface looks really uneven. After sharpening the knife, I took a stab (ha ha) at the rest of the tomato. The difference was simply amazing. The tomato didn't resist or spew juice at all.

The Electric Sharpener is rectangular and compact, so it won't take up too much counter or pantry space. At $200, it's kinda expensive, but think of it this way &mdash taking your knife to a professional sharpener (if you can find one) costs $4 a knife, and if you have 5 knives like me, and you want to maintain the blades by honing them every time you use them and sharpening them once every few weeks, and you're lazy about leaving the house... well, you do the math. It quickly adds up to being worth it, I think.

Wüsthof Electric Sharpener [Williams & Sonoma]

Joel Johnson

Video: Spotify music app for Android

Eliot Van Buskirk: "If I were Steve Jobs, the video...would scare me senseless."

Spotify is a streaming music service that also now allows caching on supported mobile devices. It is currently limited to Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and the UK, due to licensing issues.

Every song ever instantly available for free. It's getting awful close.

Joel Johnson

A psychologist reviews faucets

Dwell has human-computer interaction expert Don Norman look at the design of faucets:

"There are only two things you care about besides the appearance," he explains. "The amount of water coming out and the temperature." This seemingly simple balance between image and duty is one that Norman understands implicitly. As an engineer his priority is making sure things operate properly, but as a psychologist he argues that there's more to functionality than, well, functioning. "Emotions are really the most important part of life. Things have to work well, but they also should excite you."

Joel Johnson

New HDMI 1.4 standard offers just five confusing options

BusinessWire press release:

Consumers will have a choice of the following HDMI cables:

• Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60;
• High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification;
• Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.

Joel Johnson

Live fire in the coming Palm Pre flamewar

The Boy Genius Report put their juvenile mitts on a Palm Pre. And while they've yet to put up a "full review"—they must need to make a trip to the exclamation mark shop—they blithely share just enough criticism to make a few hearts drop into the stomachs of some Palm executives this morning:

Additionally, things aren't looking good for that QWERTY either. And hey, you know we take them keyboards seriously! When you try and type on the top row of keys, your finger hits the bottom part of the front piece and on top of that, you often hit multiple keys at the same time while typing. It's actually really frustrating and doesn't bode well for such a fantastic social communication/personal/business tool.

Oh, and check this out: Apparently the Pre syncs seamlessly with iTunes. Unlike CNN's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, I'm not exactly sure why this would be a "presumably unauthorized invasion of [Apple's] music store." It doesn't crack the DRM.

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Your First Pentium (1995)

I remember standing outside of band class my freshman year nearly frothing about how amazing the Pentium would be, based primarily on the description I'd found on a BBS of what John Carmack was planning to do with his next game "Quake", which would be a multi-server online MMORPG that would allow melee weapon combat with real 3D models.

Joel Johnson

Congruent Neckties

The "Congruent Necktie" is a patent-pending bit of neck-tech that allows the stripes of a tie to align with those of its knot, using some foul sorcery to be sure. They're sixty bucks each.

Coming soon: Horizontal Inline Neckties and Congruent Scarves. [via Brandish]

Joel Johnson

Video: Panic Sale!

Panic, makers of fine Macrintorsh softwares, are having a 50% sale.

Joel Johnson

fracking, a word

"'Fracking,' as the industry calls it, involves injecting a million gallons or more of water and chemicals deep underground to pry out gas that's locked away in tight spaces." – NPR

Joel Johnson

The HomeWrecker exposes studs

It's a $35 hammer with a Cat's Paw at the end. Mostly I just wanted to write that headline. [via Toolmonger]

Joel Johnson

More Mars in Crayon

Remember "Mars in Crayon" yesterday? Curator Dan Goods has put more images from JPL online, including this comparison of the pastels sketch and the actual decoded TV image above.

Though he used a brown/red color scheme, the thought that Mars was red did not enter his mind. He really was looking for the colors that best represented a grey scale, since that was what they were going to get anway. It is uncanny how close his color scheme is to the actual colors of Mars. It's as if they came right out of current images of the planet. I've seen some of the other color schemes he tried and it could have been green or purple!

Joel Johnson

The Secret Telegraphic Codes of Henry Ford

Rebecca Bizonet:

While cataloging a portion of the vast Henry Ford Office records (some 1,600 cubic feet), I became very excited when I discovered what I thought was a secret code. I later learned (quite fortuitously from a colleague on Twitter) that these documents formed a part of something almost equally fascinating.

It turned out that what I had instead was a commercial telegraphic code. From the 19th through the mid-20th centuries, telegrams were integral to business and personal communications. Telegraph codes proliferated as a way to correspond economically and privately. Readily available code books such as the ABC Universal Commercial Electric Telegraph Code, not to mention many others, were published, with many businesses creating in-house codes.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: "Dance Dance Revolution. With Flamethrowers. Pointed At You."

(Download / YouTube)

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, we experience the funky flaming glory that is DANCE DANCE IMMOLATION, a pyro-parody of the popular arcade game in which one jumps around on touch-sensitive pads underfoot in rhythm with music. With DDI, you do this inside a flame-retardant suit. Miss a step, you get torched with a giant flamethrower.

Dance Dance Immolation combines video games, music, and propane. You play DDR. A good performance wins you acclaim from flamethrowers. A missed step gets you a face full of fire! Yes, the fire is real. Put on a fireproof suit and give it a try!

We hear they're next performing at the "Smukfest" art confab in Denmark.

CREW NOTE: About this episode's host, Aaron Muszalski (aka SFSlim): He's a Burning Man builder, visual effects artist and educator, and a wandering polyglamorous anarcho-Dada Buddhist biker punk. He's on Twitter. In this episode, you'll also see our delightful recurring guest host Charis Tobias, who is all of 18 years old if memory serves. And thanks to our SF-based shooter-producer Eddie Codel who did a fine job capturing the madness on this piece, yet again.

(Photo below by Kristen Ankiewicz, courtesty Interpretive Arson)

Sponsor shout-out

Joel Johnson

Sony Pictures' Michael Lynton afraid of internet bootleggers who don't seem to be affecting profits

Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment:

I actually welcome the Sturm und Drang I've stirred, because it gives me an opportunity to make a larger point...the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.

Sony Pictures' profits are down 48.9% for the year ending in March—which means that in this worldwide recession, they made only $305 million. [via Techdirt]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ ePaper eBook – Ectaco jetBook JB5W-EN eBook Reader for $170, shipped. It's pretty ugly, but it has a five-inch ePaper screen and support for a lot of different formats, including .pdf, Mobi, and Epub. Don't take this as an endorsement, though—I've never even heard of it. [Dealhack]

⌦ Hard Drives – Dell Small Business is selling two Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB SATA internal hard drives for $198, shipped. My NAS screams for sustenance. [Dealnews]

⌦ LED Faucet – You know how every time we talk about a fancy new faucet people say, "Well, the light that shows you if it's hot or cold is useful"? You can buy this simple screw-on version for $7, shipped. [Dealnews]

⌦ Fake Mustaches – 12-pack of fake mustaches for $2.61, shipped. [Dealnews]

⌦ Wallet Tool – 11-in-1 Wallet Survival Tool for $3, shipped. [Dealnews]

⌦ Flip Mino – Today's Woot is a refurbished Pure Digital Mino 60 Minute Camcorder for $95.

Joel Johnson

If the Zune HD isn't a portable Xbox I will slap Robbie Bach in the teeth

Microsoft hasn't put the Zune out to pasture yet, announcing yesterday the upcoming availability of what is known, for the moment, as the "Zune HD". As far as portable media players go, it's a contender: a bright OLED screen, HD video output to larger screens, and most importantly, a multitouch interface with a version of the Internet Explorer web browser that can handle Flash.

The company will also be moving the Zune video library service to Xbox, finally wedding the two services that are already under the same corporate banner.

I suspect that also means the Zune HD will be Microsoft's foray into mobile gaming, first with casual 2D games from the likes of PopCap and other vendors that already provide downloadable games through the Xbox, as well as original titles designed to work specifically on the mobile device.

It would make sense, at least. Ever since Microsoft first dipped its toe into the gaming waters, many have wondered when the company would also try its hand at portable gaming. While idle speculation (including my own) isn't worth the phosphors it's written on, seeing the two biggest home entertainment brands that Microsoft owns (besides what it is arguably its biggest entertainment brand, Windows) being knit together certainly allows for the possibility. And it would be so dumb for Microsoft to let another market slip through its fingers.

Even without a do-all device like a Zune Phone to go up against the iPhone platform, the Zune HD could be a useful adjunct to those already heavily plugged into the Xbox. While I would prefer to see the full force of Microsoft's hardware and software development unified behind a single mobile platform, the millions of Xbox gamers provide Microsoft with at least a few million potential customers—a rare few who have had a generally positive experience with a Microsoft platform.

⌦ Would Microsoft make a handheld gaming system without a phone?

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld, still stinging from the uncertainty of a Western release, we watched, with wonder, six full minutes of Muscle March, Namco's WiiWare game of oiled down beefcake bodybuilders trying to retrieve their stolen protein powder -- and it's everything we'd hoped it would be.

We also saw the announcement of the seemingly Party-Monster-esque new chapter of Grand Theft Auto, called (yep) The Ballad of Gay Tony, watched the first extended video of the forthcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and pre-ordered fantastically designed fan-made Metal Gear Solid T-shirts, shoulderbags and buttons.

Finally we explored life on Mars as Noby Noby GIRL finally meets the red planet, saw Crayon Physics dev Petri Purho return with a sneak peek at his first new prototype in too long, coveted a pair of custom Grim Fandango Converse, loved the comic book cover concept when LittleBigPlanet meets 2000AD, and saw the first concept art from a proposed swamp-opera platformer/adventure from Die Gute Fabrik called Mutatione (above).

Alan Graham

Review: 6 Months with Kwikset Smartscan Biometric Deadbolt

Kwikset's own benefit list (pdf file) for this product includes five main selling points. Let's review them one at a time, shall we?

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Q&A: Donald MacDonald, Architect

Donald MacDonald has designed more than a dozen bridges since establishing his architectural firm in 1966. Today, he has bridges scheduled for construction in Dubai and Portland, OR, and he's in the midst of building the world's largest self-anchored suspension bridge: the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge's eastern span (due to be completed in 2013). We visited MacDonald's San Francisco offices to find out what it's like to build a $6.3 billion bridge, how things have changed since the "old days", and why young architects should learn to just "Draw the bloody thing!"

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Video: A Tiny Bridge of Floating Water

David Pescovitz blogged about this phenomenon previously, but until now I'd never seen a water bridge caught on video.

PhysOrg explains:

When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity...

Initially, the bridge forms due to electrostatic charges on the surface of the water. The electric field then concentrates inside the water, arranging the water molecules to form a highly ordered microstructure. This microstructure remains stable, keeping the bridge intact.

After the jump, check out more video of this crazy weird awesome phenom.

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Get This Guy To Finish His Laser-Cut Gingerbread Bridge

Instructables user rstraugh is building a kick-ass model of the Oberbaum Bridge in Berlin out of gingerbread, using an Epilog Laser. So far, the project looks awesome, but he says he probably won't finish it until next Christmas. :(

Steven Leckart

One of My All-Time Favorite Bridges

From Iron Man and The Big Lebowski all the way back to 1984's Starman, one of the most resilient and complex "bridges" of our time has been Jeff*. The Dude's mostly-handwritten web site is always surprising and enjoyable, especially the way he uses his own drawings to hyperlink to "Stuff" he likes.

*No disrespect to Lloyd, Beau, or Todd.

Steven Leckart

HOWTO Build a Rope Bridge

A small rope bridge can be assembled in 30-45 minutes. I've never built one, but I sure want to try. Glenn Cockwell's Scouting Bridge guide seems like enough to get a beginner going. If you have any tips, suggestions or resources of your own, let me know.

[photo by Antonio Jiménez Alonso via Kees Jan Koster NEW image via Sir Garlichad]

Steven Leckart

Bridges: Monuments To Progress

Lisa Katayama

Don't jump off the Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is frequently cited as the #1 suicide spot in the world. Someone jumps about every other week. It's supposedly one of the surest ways to die, although some &mdash like one guy interviewed in the super depressing documentary The Bridge &mdash do actually survive the fall.

A Chronicle reporter described the jump as follows:

The body goes from roughly 75 to 80 mph to nearly zero in a nanosecond. The physics of inertia being what they are, internal organs tend to keep going. The force of impact causes them to tear loose. Autopsy reports typically indicate that the jumpers have lacerated aortas, livers, spleens and hearts. Ribs are often broken, and the impact shoves them into the heart or lungs. Jumpers have broken sternums, clavicles, pelvises and necks. Skull fractures are common.

The Golden Gate Bridge was built in 1937 by Joseph Strauss, and the reason the bridge is so easy to jump from is because Strauss was just five feet tall and he wanted to be able to look out on the bay, too. So he changed the rail height from the originally intended five and a half feet to four feet. 10 weeks after completion, a WW1 veteran strolled onto the bridge, climbed over the rail, and took the first plunge.

The good news is that the Golden Gate Bridge is finally getting a barrier. After years of discussion and no action, a committee called the Golden Gate Bridge Physical Suicide Deterrent System Project agreed on a steel safety net 20 feet below the walkway, a yet-to-be-funded project that will cost three years and $50 million. (The lag was due to bureaucrats bickering about how to make one without ruining the bridge's aesthetic for years. Ultimately, they decided to paint the barrier's horizontal mesh wiring orange.) It's about time &mdash the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower already have suicide barriers in place, and Aokigahara forest in Japan, reportedly the #2 suicide hot spot of the world, has signs reminding people that their life is a precious gift from their parents and begging them to reconsider.

I hope this new initiative will go through, and that it will reduce the number of suicides in San Francisco.

Image by Dawn Endico via Flickr

Joel Johnson

Rumor: Nano next iPod to get a camera?

According to iLounge: Yes. That'll mix things up a bit!

Lisa Katayama

The longest arch bridge in the world will be in Dubai

Fxfowle, the NY architecture firm that built the NY Times Building and the Conde Nast Building, is now working on what will be the longest arch bridge in the world in Dubai. When &mdash and if &mdash completed in 2012, it will be a mile long, 670 feet tall, and have 12 lanes of traffic with train tracks dividing them in the middle. [via io9]

Lisa Katayama

Krämerbrücke is a bridge surrounded by houses

Krämerbrücke is one of my favorite bridges in the world. It's is in Erfurt, Germany, spans 86 yards, and has been around for about 1000 years. The walkway is an ordinary village street surrounded on both sides by houses that people live in, and every year they have a festival that celebrates the Middle Ages. It's a cool architectural idea that didn't catch on in a big way, but makes me think about what could have been if bridges hadn't evolved in a more minimalistic, function-oriented direction.

Joel Johnson

The Bridge-Building Centipede Truck

Alistair writes:

i have no more information on this truck other than it looks awesome. I'm going to go ahead and assume this will build bridges at the rate of about 1 mile an hour in a Sim City style.

Steven Leckart

Video Gallery: Bridge Jumping Looks As Crazy As It Is

The Ikari contest held in Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina, is touted as the world's oldest bridge diving competition. Construction on the city's Old Bridge, a 456-stone structure, was completed in 1566. At the time the Old Bridge was annihilated during the war in 1993, the Ikari had been held for 438 consecutive years.

The bridge was eventually rebuilt in 2004 (with help from the UN). Since then, some 30,000 people turn out every summer to watch people descend 70 feet into the waters below; watch a perfect swan dive in slow motion at 00:37.

Of course, you don't need a contest or huge audience to leap off a bridge with no ropes, bungee cords, harnesses, or nets! An assortment of videos, including a car chase that leads to a bridge jump, after the, uh, jump...

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Joel Johnson

"Kurzweil will probably die"

John Markoff on artificial intelligence and the Singularity (It's back! Run for $yourlives):

Nevertheless, this generation of humans, at least, is perhaps unlikely to need to rush to the barricades. The artificial-intelligence industry has advanced in fits and starts over the past half-century, since the term "artificial intelligence" was coined by the Stanford University computer scientist John McCarthy in 1956. In 1964, when Mr. McCarthy established the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the researchers informed their Pentagon backers that the construction of an artificially intelligent machine would take about a decade. Two decades later, in 1984, that original optimism hit a rough patch, leading to the collapse of a crop of A.I. start-up companies in Silicon Valley, a time known as "the A.I. winter."

Steven Leckart

Aeroelasticity and the Incredible, Bendable Bridge

On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed during a windstorm. During construction, workers had reported* a noticeable amount of "galloping" (some give is desirable), but nothing like what occurred on November 7. As 42 mph gusts pummeled the four-month-old suspension bridge, the road started to oscillate visibly. At one point, one side of the road was 28 feet higher than the other (at 05:03 you can see two folks stumbling across the bridge).

After an hour, a number of the bridge's cables snapped, forcing the center span to collapse. The cause: aeroelastic flutter. Essentially, the amplitude of the oscillations increased exponentially as the wind continued to hit the bridge. When the energy grew greater than what the bridge was naturally built to absorb (called "damping")... well, boom went the dynamite. This is why today's bridge designers put their models through wind tunnels.

Today, the old Tacoma Bridge's steel girders and half-mile of roadway comprise one of the world's largest human-made reefs in the waters of Puget Sound.

In 2004, Shawn Frayne used the concept of aeroelastic flutter to develop the "Windbelt", a small device that generates energy by placing magnets at the ends of a small fluttering belt. His company, Humdinger, is working to commercialize the devices. The Windbelt is not yet available for sale.

Humdinger's FAQ explains the difference between "resonance" and aeroelastic flutter: "While the effect of aeroelastic flutter is not necessarily a resonant effect, but rather a positive feedback loop that reaches a limit cycle, some variations of the Windbelt technology do use resonance between two or more components on the generators to increase efficiency."

*It's said they chewed lemons to combat nausea on the job.

Joel Johnson

Mars in Crayon

Jesus Diaz:

The people at the JPL were so excited to receive the images that they couldn't wait for them to be processed by the lab's imager. As the first picture was beamed down as a stream of 8-bit numbers--each point indicating a brightness point--they thought of a quick way to get an image straight away: Print the numbers indicating brightness in paper strips, put them together, and color them with pastel crayons.

Today on BBG: Bridges

Pretty sure Newton meant that metaphorically, but either way, since the father of gravity uttered those words some 250 years ago, we've taken his point to heart. Today on BBG, we'll be investigating bridges of all shapes, sizes and function. We'll examine a laser-cut gingerbread bridge, the longest natural vs. artificial arch bridges, how to build both model and rope bridges, bridge jumping (for sport), bridge jumping (for suicide), tiny natural water bridges, and more.

We'll also speak to the lead architect on the in-progress San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge, and find out why architecture schools are starting to favor hand drawing over software renderings.

Joel Johnson

Visualization: "Obama | One People - The City" maps phone calls on inauguration day

The City illustrates the emotional flow of the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C. Through an analysis of the number of mobile phone calls made in Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day and the home state or country of phone origin, it is possible to see peaks of call activity as the crowd anticipates President Obama's oath, a drop in call activity as the crowd listens to his inaugural address, and peaks again as the crowd celebrates the inauguration of the new President. Through their cell phones, those present at the historic event share their impressions with friends and family in vast numbers: on the morning of January 20th, call activity is two to three times stronger than usual, and it rises to five times the normal levels after 2 pm as President Obama takes his oath and people begin to celebrate.

Joel Johnson

NEC offers typically Japanese take on a netbook

It weights just over a pound-and-a-half, a good pound less than other netbooks. It is just .62-inches thick. It has what appears to be a useable keyboard (less so if you can't hang with the Thinkpad-style navigation clitoris.)

And like any good Japanese subnotebook, it's twice as much as its competitors: This "Versa Pro J Ultralite Type VS" will cost $1,000 out of the gate. [via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Why is in-car Bluetooth and iPod/audio support still a "premium"?

In his review of the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Bill Howard makes a good point about in-car Bluetooth and iPod hookups:

Even if you don't buy one, raise a glass to toast Hyundai for forcing all the automakers to understand Bluetooth and a music adapter should be on every car. (Once an automaker turns it into an option, the connector costs more than your iPod or cellphone.) I had no problem hooking a couple phones to the car via Bluetooth, and connections were equally idiot-proof for an iPod, a music key, and a hard drive holding music. Unlike Ford's Sync, which uses the stupid term "user device," when you hook up an iPod, the display says "iPod." Hyundai makes it easier to see your music options because every car gets an in-dash LCD, even if it's monochrome on cars without navigation systems. That said, other automakers do a better job presenting the information on an LCD display.

Joel Johnson

Mechaphilia: Whatever revs your engine

Edward Smith is a mechaphiliac who claims to have had sex with 1,000 cars. He's currently dating a VW Bug named "Vanilla". [Telegraph via Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Monitor – Dell S2409 24-inch 1080p LCD for $185; S2209W 1080p LCD for $134; 2009W 1,600 by 900 pixel monitor for $101. [Slickdeals]

⌦ GPS – Garmin Nuvi 205W for $140, shipped. [Dealoco]

⌦ Klingon Phrasebook – A Klingon phrasebook is on sale for just $1 on the iTunes App Store, perfect for copying to your tricorder. [iTunes]

⌦ Sprinklers – Today's Woot is a pair of Nelson 360-degree Pulsating Sprinklers for $10, shipped.

Joel Johnson

Gallery: 23 photos of soldiers looking completely badass

Best Warrior

Field Artillery

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Joel Johnson

"Map the Fallen" honors military deaths in Google Earth

Noah Shachtman:

Google Earth developer Kevin Welch has put together something truly remarkable for this Memorial Day. It's called "Map the Fallen," and it "uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Joel Johnson

Lenovo S12 the first Nvidia Ion-powered netbook...probably

John Hermann:

Pricing starts at $449, and the S12 goes on sale in July. Ion, however, won't make its way to production units until an unspecified "late summer" date, and it'll cost a $50 premium over the standard, Intel-based solution.

Rob Beschizza

How TechCrunch turns the screw

Photo: Joi Ito.

TechCrunch's strategy is brilliant: Publicly accuse a company of misbehavior knowing that the claim is possibly false, hoping to reveal a larger truth through controversy. When this happens, run a followup admitting the earlier mistake as part of an aggressive move to shift focus to the bigger picture.

This weekend offers the perfect example. Last.fm tracks the music listened to by its users, and the RIAA sues people who listen to it. A few weeks ago, on the slimmest evidence, TechCrunch accused Last.fm of revealing user data to the RIAA. The claim was false. Now, however, it reports that Last.fm's parent company, CBS, did in fact make the RIAA disclosure, having gained the data itself by lying to staff at its last.fm subsidiary.

Here's what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for "internal use only." It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.

Techcrunch's fresh attack on Last.fm is utterly ruthless: in the headline, it demands that Last.fm deny this, knowing full well that Last.fm cannot speak for CBS, the real villain of the piece. Forcing last.fm to bear the brunt lets TechCrunch portray its earlier mistake as reflecting an "underlying truth," which Last.fm omitted, rather than Techcruch's own propensity for premature accusation. But it also puts the pressure on last.fm to do something--anything--to burn its parent company in efforts to exculpate itself.

While everyone else enjoyed a holiday weekend, Last.fm kept its cool and TechCrunch kept hounding it.

What's interesting is how it circumvents expectations of journalistic proprietry to get to stories that others can't. People don't seem to understand that Doing Good Work isn't necessarily the arbiter of success. TechCrunch didn't even bother to contact Last.fm before the latest piece. But why would it?

This is what its critics think: "Techcrunch will eventually go too far and get sued for libel. Ha! And that will be the end of TechCrunch."

No, it won't. The part that critics miss is that many publications have paid their dues under relentless legal fire. Britain's Private Eye, for example, is a scurrilous satirical mag that has been sued for libel more times than I've had hot dinners. Florida tabloids have budgets to settle their errors: eventually, it results in spectacular success. If John Edwards were president, the Enquirer could have sent him into abdication faster than a dozen Deep Throats. This is why tabloid journalism is worth it.

Mike Arrington isn't afraid of lawsuits. What could energize him more than being attacked? With every carefully-measured payload of pious abuse, he practically begs his targets to sue him or fuck off. And there's nothing anyone--least of all CBS's rattled and wheedling lawyers--can do about it.

But it'll be fun to see them try.

Steven Leckart

The Case for Working With Your Hands

Matthew B. Crawford, motorcycle mechanic and author, has a great piece in the NY Times Magazine that adapts his book Shop Class as Soulcraft:

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become "knowledge workers." The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur -- the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it?

...Seeing a motorcycle about to leave my shop under its own power, several days after arriving in the back of a pickup truck, I don't feel tired even though I've been standing on a concrete floor all day. Peering into the portal of his helmet, I think I can make out the edges of a grin on the face of a guy who hasn't ridden his bike in a while. I give him a wave. With one of his hands on the throttle and the other on the clutch, I know he can't wave back. But I can hear his salute in the exuberant "bwaaAAAAP!" of a crisp throttle, gratuitously revved. That sound pleases me, as I know it does him. It's a ventriloquist conversation in one mechanical voice, and the gist of it is "Yeah!"

Joel Johnson

Eucalyptus ebook reader app allowed on iTunes

Proving that the best way to publicity for your iPhone app is to have one of the prudish worrywarts that attend Apple's iTunes proving grounds ban your application, the ebook app "Eucalyptus" has been sheepishly led into the App Store after all. Good news all around the the developer, who now is left with only the challenge of explaining to the public why they should pay $10 for an ebook app when Stanza is available for free.

(Here's a starter: Amazon, makers of the Kindle ebook device, as well as a free iPhone ebook reader, recently acquired Lexcycle, makes of Stanza. So if you'd like to support an independent developer until his company is acquired...)

Rob Beschizza

UMID M1 at Dynamism, makes Vaio P look like a briefcase

Umid's M1, now available for $600 at Dynamism, is touted as the world's smallest ever fully-functional PC: 6.2 inches long, 3.7 inches deep and 0.7 of an inch thick. It runs Windows XP on a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU, has 1 gigabyte of RAM and up to 32GB of solid state storage. Weighing 0.69 lbs, it has a 4.8" 1024x600 pixel display.

There's WiFi, Bluetooth, an integrated SD card reader and a single mini-USB port, with an adapter included in the box if you're too cheap to spend a few bucks at monoprice for new cables. The tiny keyboard isn't bad -- I had a tap at CES -- but given its tiny size, it's not angling to be your main machine.

I thought, for a second, that the lack of WWAN was a shortcoming. But then I remembered that Novatel just changed that game.

Product Page [Dynamism]

Rob Beschizza

Deliberately buried. Huh!

This is the latest liquid-cooled tower PC from CoolIT Systems and Boxx. I love the absurd angle at which the photograph is taken, to give it the appearance of a skyscraper or Kubrikian monolith. Is there a less likely perspective from which a human eye might view a desktop computer? "No, you have to crouch right there, and look up. Squint a bit!"

Rob Beschizza

Colossus

More great shots of the rebuilt code-breaking computer, sent in by reader Rich. Thanks, Rich!

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Steven Leckart

Review: Two Days w/the Santos Vac Pot [Verdict: Good Sucker]

Bodum's been manufacturing vacuum-style, stovetop coffee brewers like the 32-oz. Santos (at right) for more than 50 years, so I assumed they know what they're doing. My take: pretty much.

Find out why it's vital to read the directions, how I almost broke my Santos, then telepathically alerted the fire dept, and yet somehow still wound up brewing some really delicious coffee, after the jump...

[$80 via Bodum , $69 via Amazon]

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Microsoft removes 3-app limit on Windows Starter Edition

Next-gen netbooks won't come with a hidden upgrade charge if you want them to be useful. Next step: getting them to remove other unpleasant limitations. [Paul Thurrott's Supersite]

Lisa Katayama

The most expensive coffee in the world is made from animal poop

Meet the Asian Palm Civet. Also known as a Toddy Cat, he is a feline-sized mammal native to Southeast Asia. Civets like to eat red coffee berries and beans. In the jungles in which they live, they find the sweetest, ripest ones and munch on them with their cute little faces. But they can't digest them, so the berries and beans come out as poop. One day, humans discovered that the enzymes in the civets' tummies break down the coffee's bitterness, leaving behind an extremely delicious pooped bean. They took the poop home, washed it lightly, roasted it, ground it, poured boiled water over it, and drank it. Tastes like caramel and chocolate! Thus spawned a small industry of poop-coffee-making.

Today, Kopi Luwak--civet coffee in Indonesian--sells for about $30 a cup in select coffee shops in Japan and the US. I have yet to try a cup, but if you've ever drank it I'd love to know whether you thought it was worth the extra bucks.

Joel Johnson

Getting local farmers' crops to restaurants using the internet

Alexis Madrigal:

FarmsReach wants to make ordering from local, small farms as easy and reliable as ordering from Sysco. Farmers with smartphones would snap quick photos of their produce, then upload their products into their "virtual stalls." Restaurants could cruise through the vegetables online and pick what they wanted. It's a classic farmer's market with a high-tech twist.

Let's see if Mac users have a sense of humor

Click to see the full pic at Cult of Mac.

Steven Leckart

HOWTO "Stir + Scoop" w/Your French Press

A writer for CoffeeGeek held a tasting event with beans from Ritual Coffee in San Francisco's Mission District to get the dirt on and posted techniques for the more adventurous French presser:

The "stir and scoop method" [is] where an additional 2 grams of coffee are added to the typical 7-gram dose of grounds (per "cup"). The grinds are agitated and the plunger is ignored until the very end; a saucer is used in its place throughout the steeping time, and two spoons are used to scoop off the grinds before the plunger is finally applied and pressed, and the brew is poured.

Users say it tastes better, makes it easier to plunge the press, and cuts down on errant grounds in your cup. That's been my experience. Here's a video demo. Stir and scoop portion begins at 03:40.

[photo by Karen Hamilton]

Update: See CoffeeGeek's corrections in the comments below.

Rob Beschizza

USB Cat Ears

$42 in Japan. [CrunchGear]

Steven Leckart

Review: MSR MugMate Travel Filter [Verdict: Get One]

When citydwellers go camping, we tend to opt for the ol' "Cowboy Cup." Read: pour the ground beans into a cup, add water, let sit and sip. A few grounds in your mouth here and there, but dammit, you feel tough as nails.

You know what? I've decided that's plain ridiculous.

Lightweight backpacking fanatics are some of the best advisers when it comes to useful gear. You may not always walk away with the cheapest solution, but most anything they recommend is usually guaranteed to be practical, packable and well worth toting.

Case in point: MSR's MugMate, a reusable coffee filter that clocks in at just 0.98 oz. You could cart along a standard coffee filter, but this one fits directly in an average cup, and balances perfectly because of those two handles.

Featherweight fanatics urge ditching the top cover to cut down on the added 0.32 oz. On the other hand, true javaseurs say it's vital to let your coffee steep while covered. I leave the decision up to you. Either way, even if you're not camping, the MugMate works great at home or the office for a quick, single, grounds-free cup. The only downside is it requires a very slow, intermittent pour to avoid overfilling and spilling grounds into the cup.

If any true cowboys give you any guff out on the trail, you're on your own.

Rob Beschizza

Cigarette case-style clock winds self with atmospheric pressure

JLC Atmos Regulator for Alfred Dunhill [Acquire mag via Giz]

Rob Beschizza

Golden Wii for Queen

Earmarked for her majesty, THQ's gold-plated Wii will join a gift archive ranging from gemstones the size of a cat's head to the bones of dead enemies. [Joystiq]

Lisa Katayama

Review: Breakfast with the Montano French press

For our special theme day on coffee, I decided to review the Bonjour Montano French press &mdash not because it's new (it came out in 2007), but because it was by far the coolest looking commercially sold French press out there. I was digging the brushed stainless steel leaning-tower-of-Pisa look. It makes eight cups of coffee, which was perfect for when I had a pancake birthday party for my dog Malcolm last weekend. At $70, it's on the high end of the French press market, but think of it as an investment into the overall coolness factor of your kitchen appliance collection.

I tested the Montano with Peet's Arabian Mocha Java, a full-bodied French roast that takes like chocolate. Yum. French presses are great because they don't have filters, which means you get stronger coffee and you end up tasting more of the natural flavors and oils in the coffee bean (in a regular coffee maker, those often get trapped in the filter). The Montano also has a rotating steel screen that separates the grind from the liquid so that the coffee lasts longer in the press. The steel encasing also kept it hot for a good half hour. The only down side is that you can't see the coffee, so if you're one of those gauge-by-color people, it won't work for you.

By the way, here are some tips on making a good French press:
* Make sure your beans are freshly ground and coarser than for drip coffee.
* Let the water sit after boiling for half a minute so you don't scorch the beans.
* 2 Tbsp coffee for every 6oz of water.
* Pour just enough water in to cover the beans first, stir it, and then put the rest of the water in.
* Push the press down halfway and wait three minutes; then push it down all the way.
* Put it in your fave mug and drink it.

The pot of Arabian Mocha Java for Malcolm's pancake party came out great. There was a nice foamy bloom at the top, and the flavors weren't compromised.

Product Page [Bonjour]
Buy at Amazon

Joel Johnson

Video: Ghostmatrix, the spooky printer

Ghostmatrix is a "weekend hack" that "only took a few months." Jonathan Foote made this printer, which puts an array of UV LEDs over phosphorescent paper, allowing it to temporarily print letters that fade away like will o'wisps. [via Laughing Squid]

Joel Johnson

Behind the scenes look at the design of a poor product

TechRadar has an interview with several of the design heads at Griffin, maker of generally quality Apple aftermarket accessories, made all the more fascinating as the product they use as a case study is the AirCurve, a powerless amplifier for the iPhone that is just awful. [via Core77]

Steven Leckart

7 Attention-Getting, No-Frills Coffee Mugs For Work

A unique mug can be a great conversation starter around the office. But if you want to impress your boss and earn the respect of your more straight-laced peers, stay away from big cartoonish heads, skip travel mugs (it hints at addiction), don't settle for color-changing ceramic cups, and give those slogan-y ironic jobs a break*.

Until the PC cup becomes a reality, there are plenty of subtle but cleverly-designed, non-frills but classy mugs to choose from, like this data-heavy one that says, "I always keep things in perspective."

[$12 via Amazon]

More after the jump...

*I rocked a mug adorned with a magical painting of a horse for a couple years, but after a while, it got to be too much.

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Joel Johnson

Braun bodycruZer is another demammalling device

Watch out BodyGroom, there's a new scrotum shaver in town. The Braun bodycruZer weds a hair trimmer to a Gillette Fusion razor, letting you drag both separately or in tandem to make your body as sleek and hairless as a sea lion in a zentai suit.

They're available in your local drug store and such for around $70.

(Dieter Rams must be turning over in his sleek aluminum grave. Someone let him out and wheel him back over to Braun, because he's still alive and they clearly need the help.)

Lisa Katayama

Coffee in a can from a vending machine is big (and manly) in Japan

When I was a teenager in Tokyo, I used to drink coffee all the time &mdash from a can, from a vending machine, often at the train station on my way home from school. In went a 100 yen coin, and out came a piping hot 250 ml can of delicious brew, pre-mixed with cream and sugar. Coffee in a can is everywhere in Japan, and when I moved to the US, I wondered why it's not as prevalent here. Why? It's so much more convenient and cheaper than searching for a Starbucks.

The Japanese like to compartmentalize everything--recent years have spawned everything from instant noodles to beef and potatoes served in cans out of vending machines. Canned coffee is said to have originated in Japan in the late 1950s, but it really took off around 1973, when beverage company Pocca invented the Hot/Cold vending machine. After that, everyone from Coca Cola to beer manufacturers like Asahi and Suntory came out with their own versions of coffee in a can. The UCC version, pictured here, has been around since last sixties, and you can still find it in vending machines. Amazing, right? Today, you can get almost any variation of coffee in a can in Japan &mdash just like how you can go crazy on options at Starbucks.

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Steven Leckart

World's Largest Cup of Coffee

The Guinesss World Record for the largest cup of coffee was set in 2007 by Mauricio Cadavid, whose Colombian brew contained nearly 1,095 gallons (US). His colon-blasting mug (equal to about 16,000 cups) topped the former record of 952.07 gallons, which was set in Vietnam only a few months earlier. Two years later, the record stands unchallenged. Go for it.

[photo via Perpenduum]

Joel Johnson

A short chat with a programmer who is dabbling with the Palm webOS SDK

Palmer Eldritch: btw, if the palm emulator is anything to go buy, this thing's going to fucking rock
Palmer Eldritch: that is, if the software works as well on the device as it does in emulation

Joel Johnson: I presume all the fretting about the "web environment" not being powerful enough is bullshit?

Palmer Eldritch: yeah, assuming the handheld can keep up with everything
Palmer Eldritch: the api looks pretty thorough
Palmer Eldritch: and the web environment means a nub like me can write an app with about 10 min of reading
Palmer Eldritch: vs the iphone :p

Joel Johnson: Yeah, that is a pretty big deal
Joel Johnson: Even if the apps don't end up as "powerful"

Palmer Eldritch: yeah
Palmer Eldritch: well, how many iphone apps need power?
Palmer Eldritch: obviously some
Palmer Eldritch: but nothing I'd write!
Palmer Eldritch: if I read one of these config options right, you can back your pre up "to the cloud"
Palmer Eldritch: there's going to be some palm service for it
Palmer Eldritch: I'm probably being over optimistic, but I'm really excited about it
Palmer Eldritch: and now I can keep my super cheap sprint plan

Joel Johnson: that's interesting

Palmer Eldritch: I wish MS and RIM would start from scratch on something
Palmer Eldritch: maybe it takes desperation to do that
Palmer Eldritch: but I'm tired of phone software that was built in 1998

Joel Johnson: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with starting over
Joel Johnson: Also, you should post that stuff.
Joel Johnson: It'll make Palm happy.
Joel Johnson: Anonymously, of course.

Palmer Eldritch: haha
Palmer Eldritch: you can, if you want :p

Joel Johnson: There's not enough to go with yet!

Palmer Eldritch: ok, what all do you want to know?

Joel Johnson: let's structure this like an interview
Joel Johnson: Now that you've had a couple of days to dink around with the SDK, what makes you so excited about webOS?

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Steven Leckart

Videos: HOWTO Make Latte Art

The World Latte Art Championship is in a month. Better get practicing. Here's how to make "The Indian."

More after the jump...

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Rob Beschizza

How to bullshit like an industry analyst

Apple's tablet, when it finally comes, will prove one thing: if you predict something often enough, eventually you can say you got it right.

Here's Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's latest dance around the maypole, from Wired:

"Between indications from our component contacts in Asia, recent patents relating to multi-touch sensitivity for more complex computing devices, comments from [chief operating officer] Tim Cook on the April 22 conference call, and Apple's acquisition of PA Semi along with other recent chip-related hires, it is increasingly clear that Apple is investing more in its mobile-computing franchise," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research statement issued to clients. Apple's next step in mobile computing will likely be the release of a touchscreen tablet featuring a 7-to-10-inch display sometime in the first half of 2010, Munster predicts.

The attention this received from the blogosphere speaks more for our collective anticipation than for any facts, of which Munster explicitly disavows having any knowledge. It differs only in details from a prediction he made in January 2007, reported by Mac Observer:

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster took a look at the pre-Macworld Expo rumors, and offers his odds on what Apple Computer will surprise us with on January 9. ... Mr. Munster added "Another possibility is that of a touch-screen tablet Mac. Rather than marketing the tablet computer to business users (like tablet PCs), we believe that a tablet Mac would be targeted at home users desiring to wirelessly control media content."

Then in October 2007, reported by AppleInsider:

Investment bank Piper Jaffray said Monday it believes there's a "high" likelihood Apple will announce an ultraportable Mac sometime in the next 4 to 6 months. ...

"The move could take place in the form of an smaller laptop and/or a tablet device using the iPhone's multi-touch technology," Sr. Analyst Gene Munster explained in a report issued to client investors. "Although we do not have firm evidence, either product would be a strategic extension of Apple's current technology base." ...

He said an ultraportable product from this category would likely be a tablet device similar to, but slightly larger than, the iPhone.

Mike Arrington deduced likewise in fall 2008, but Gene was there all along. Here he is, back in April 2008:

Expecting the lower-cost model to hit stores by the end of January 2009, Munster suggests that by that point Apple will have three distinct smartphones in the iPhone range, one of which will be the 3G iPhone and another the company's attempt to move beyond the $400 price point.

Gene Munster makes this prediction over and over again because it's easy, and because he knows he will eventually be right. By the standards of his profession, his record is pretty good. More interesting is what the eruption of hype yesterday says about the quid-pro-quo relationship between analysts and reporters. Analysts are identified in print as experts, bolstering their credibility with private clients. And reporters use them to dress rumors as credible, multiple-sourced news stories.

Fun fact: Gene Munster is the target of the internet's worst ever attempt at a "Fake Steve Jobs"-style alter ego blog.

There's another good reason to ignore what analysts say about Apple. CNBC's Jim Cramer, exposed on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, revealed that analysts bullshit to manipulate the financial environment around a company's stock, and get away with it because "because the SEC doesn't understand it." He uses Apple as his example. Why? Because the enthusiast press that follows it is hungry for secrets: "It's easy because the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim its credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, but [you know] Apple isnt going to comment."

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld, One More Go columnist took a longer look at Jason Rohrer's famed five-minute memento mori art game Passage (above), to get "ammunition needed to convince yet another friendly, clever, skeptical non-gamer about the potential of the medium."

We also saw the first stirring of an El Lissitzky-inspired grainy constructivist 2D platformer (!), found out that Left 4 Dead's Francis hates everything that everybody on Twitter hates, saw Street Fighter deconstructed, and spotted LucasArts vet/Double Fine founder Tim Schafer putting in another tour de force acting performance alongside Jack Black.

Finally, we spotted Super Mario Bros 2 in horrible hyper-real life, watched a long preview of the upcoming labor struggles in Minotaur China Shop creators' next game, Crane Wars, and watched two brilliant short films made in 50x50 pixels, and saw the Famous Monsters of LittleBig-land.

Steven Leckart

What Happened To The Analog Coffee Grinder?

I use an antique Zassenhaus coffee grinder that's at least 30 years old. A refined, classic piece of tabletop machinery if ever there was one. The grinder resembles the 4.5" x 4.5" x 8" "San José dunkel gebeizt," though the finish is more of a lacquered maple. After seven years, it still works great, with no sign of slowing.

More recently, Z-haus has gotten quite liberal with their design and branding.

Eh, I just don't know.

OSX on netbooks chart updated

Recent models added. More to come.

Steven Leckart

Power on Self Test: Breakdancing Robot

[GetRobo via BotJunkie]

Joel Johnson

Here, have a short, free comic about genius dinosaur origin stories

Atomic Robo appears to be an awesome comic.

Brandon Boyer

Do you make chiptunes? Help us score these retro-videos.

Here's the deal: Boing Boing has come into possession of some wicked footage of an anonymous Atari Computer Camp excursion that has everything you could ever want from grainy stock video: namely, yellowed and over-saturated money shots of retro-tech, and a bevy of over-eager and still-innocent pre-teens banging out BASIC to make crossword crosses out of the words Van Halen (no joke!) and gawping at the awesome limitless power and future of computers.

Here's the catch: neither of the videos -- the first clocking in at about seven minutes, and the second coming in at seven and a half -- have any sound at all.

And so: given Offworld/Boing Boing's sizable audience of chiptune/junk-tech musicians, we thought we'd throw the score open to you. If you're interested in submitting some of your music for the videos, which will be broadcast on BBtv at a later date, send an email to brandon@offworld.com with the subject line "Atari Computer Camp" and we'll dig through and select our favorites from there. Bonus points awarded for (but certainly not limited to) composing on actual 8-bit Atari tech.

See the original post on Offworld for more inspirational shots of the kids at work (and play).

Joel Johnson

FCC claims warrantless search if you use Wi-Fi, baby monitor

Ryan Singel:

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

That's the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

"Anything using RF energy -- we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference," says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

Joel Johnson

Boxee on Apple TV: Don't bother

Boxee, the free fork of the stupendous Xbox Media Center (XBMC) project, certainly gets a lot of attention. And it's often mentioned in the same breath as the Apple TV, one of the platforms on which it can run. What isn't said is this: Boxee on Apple TV is not very good.

Here's what's good about it:

⌦ Install is simple. Download an app to make a USB stick, follow a few short steps, and you're golden.

⌦ The form factor is right. The Apple TV is small, but has all the right outputs: HDMI, component, optical audio.

Here's what's bad about it:

⌦ It's so slow. The Apple TV has a 1GHz processor inside. The variant of OS X that runs uses that processor for all video decoding, which works fine for Apple-provided content, because Apple has optimized both its content and its software to take full advantage of that modest processor.

But Boxee is trying to do all sorts of magic, from streaming internet video to indexing content on network shares. That little 1GHz processor just can't handle it, especially since there isn't yet a way for Boxee (and XBMC) to pass some of that decoding over to a GPU.

⌦ It crashes a lot. Button presses from the remote are often ignored. The interface will lock up when trying to stop playback.

⌦ There's no way to shut it down. Telling Boxee to shut down (or at least go back to the Apple TV software), on my unit, just fails. That means to turn the unit off, you have to get up and physically remove the power plug.

⌦ No Netflix streaming. The little processor can't handle it.

⌦ Uh, I guess that's it. But isn't that enough? It's slow, buggy, and crashy. Boxee is pretty great, but I don't want anyone else to make the same mistake I did when considering new hardware on which to put one of these XBMC variants.

Next for me? A Mac Mini, with Boxee and/or Plex. It'll cost twice as much, but there's no content it shouldn't be able to play with ease.

Photo: SkyFirePDL

Rob Beschizza

Review: A few hours with Seagate's FreeAgent Theater

Seagate's FreeAgent Theater looks like a streaming box, but it isn't: it's a dock for thumbdrives and the included 2.5" hard drive, and you plug it into your TV set to view media saved on them. There's no ethernet or wireless capability at all, but it does do 720p/1080i HD playback and is only $100 if you get it without a drive.

It plays AVI, MOV, VOB, ISO, DIVx and Xvid movies; MP3, AC3, WAV, WMA and OGG audio; and JPEG images. It has composite, component and S-Video output, but lacks HDMI, DVI or DisplayPort. Coaxial SPDIF is available for Dolby Digital surround.

What good about it is its simplicity and budget price (it's $160 with a 250GB external drive, and $230 with a 500GB one). If you have a Windows PC and prefer to have stuff stashed on USB drives instead of a home network, happy days. Bad is the lack of 1080p and digital output. Also, the syncing software isn't Mac compatible, and expects NTFS-formatted drives. Reformatting the supplied drive and dragging-and-dropping files worked fine.

Product Page [Seagate]
Buy at Amazon.

Joel Johnson

A week with the Verizon MiFi personal hotspot (Verdict: The best 3G device yet)

Just a couple of days after getting the Verizon MiFi in the mail, my home internet service died. No matter—let's just hit the button on this little box and...hrm. Into the instruction manual, then.

Oh, you have to authorize it first, using the software that's installed on its internal flash memory. But why doesn't it show up on my Mac as a drive?

Into the Windows box. Aaannnd there we go, that familiar and annoying Verizon Access Manager software. Connect to Verizon's 3G network. Log into the MiFi's Wi-Fi network using the SSID and password that's on the sticker on the back.

And done. Real broadband internet, or at least as close as 3G ever gets.

I'm not actually sure why I bothered to relate the setup process, because once it was done, getting the MiFi back online is as simple as hitting a button. (And activating it on a Mac that already had internet would be easy, since you could download the Verizon software.)

A battery inside the MiFi sets up a personal hotspot for around four hours. I never actually tried to run it all the way down, though, instead keeping it charged up by plugging it into the USB port on my computer. (It has a MicroUSB connection, though a cable is included.)

It's about two-thirds the size of an iPhone, but much lighter; it disappears in a pocket.

Up to five devices can connect to the MiFi's Wi-Fi network, sharing the 3G connection at once.

The biggest bummer is the price—$150 (before a $50 rebate) with a 2-year, $60-a-month contract for 5GB of data a month; or a $15-a-day rate if you pay the full $270 price up front. That's completely in line with 3G service from every other carrier, skimpy as it may be, and the MiFi is undoubtedly the most convienent, pleasant 3G experience I've ever had.

The MiFi doesn't just obsolete outrigger 3G cards and USB sticks—it actually makes me realize I don't ever want to buy a device with embedded 3G service for which I'll have to pay a monthly fee. The future of mobile 3G is personal Wi-Fi hotspots, for sure—and until the carriers start letting mobile phones do that duty, the MiFi is as good as it gets.

I'm not alone in thinking the MiFi is a winner:

⌦ Andy Ihnatko: "If I should ever give up and cave in, I would want a device exactly like the MiFi."
⌦ Chris Ziegler: "Put simply, our hats go off to Novatel and Verizon on this one."
⌦ James Kendrick: " I've only had the Verizon MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot for a day, but I can state emphatically it is everything I thought it would be and more."
⌦ Brian Lam: "I guess I belong to part of the population that doesn't worry so much about portable WiFi on a separate piece of gear, no matter how nice the hardware is. But I'd take this thing."
⌦ Sal Cangeloso: "Overall, the MiFi 2200 is a step forward in mobile broadband connectivity."
⌦ Greg Kumparak: "It does everything right, and is the simplest and most rock solid solution we've seen so far."
⌦ The Pogue: "He was floored when I pulled the MiFi from my pocket, its power light glowing evilly."

Joel Johnson

Video: World's most awesome Steadicam operator performs the flying Segway dismount

Check out the skills and big swinging balls of this Steadicam operator as he rides a Segway at full tilt towards a Eurovision singer, then seamlessly dismounts onto stage. ProVideo Coalition has clips of the finished shot, too, which are totally worth sitting through the horrible Belarussian hair metal to see how it works out in front of a live audience. (Spoiler: It looks rad.)

Rob Beschizza

Review: A week with Lenovo's IdeaCenter A600

Lenovo' IdeaCenter A600 is a well-specced, big-screen all-in-one cheap enough to make nettops look like an iffy deal. With a 1920x1080 20.5" display, great looks and an optional TV Tuner, the starting price of just $680 presents a sensible choice for those wanting a capable "main machine" on a budget.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

A couple of hours with the NeatDesk scanner (Verdict: Not worth the time or trouble)

If there's one good thing that has come out of dabbling with the NeatDesk scanner, it's that my desk is now—or at least was for a moment—neat. That's not because my desk was overflowing with paperwork, receipts, and business cards that are now in digital form, so much as it is that I really like to clean my desk off before I start writing. I use a "box of crap" technique, in which I slop everything off my desk into a box. Works great.

The NeatDesk, though? Not so great. Its first problem is that it's simply a scanner, and a sheet-fed one at that, with slots for "Documents" (8.5 x 11 inch paper), "Receipts", and "Cards". Useful when it works, but you won't be putting a stack of anything on the NearDesk for unattended scanning; the plastic slots are too thin.

Then there's the software, the so-called "Neat Library". It's not free, for one, although you do get a license code for a copy when you buy the NeatDesk. (Presumably Neat is trying to prevent you from using the software with just any old scanner.) And the latest version, which also supports OS X (the platform on which I tested the NeatDesk), coughed when it came time to calibrate, but seemed to work when I fired up the program itself.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Mobile Pizza Oven – The Roadpro Pizza Oven can be powered by the 12-volt outlet in your car. It's only $30, shipped, although I haven't calculated the devaluation of your self-respect. [Dealoco]

⌦ HD Monitor – Westinghouse 42-inch LCD Monitor for $580. I've got a Westinghouse monitor that I use as an HDTV, and it's just fine, although it's certainly on the low-middle end of equipment. It's hard to beat their inches-per-dollar ratio, though. [Dealoco]

⌦ Hard Drives – Newegg is offering 10% off most of its hard drives, all flavors. I am looking for a batch of five drives for my NAS and I very nearly pulled the trigger on some Samsung 1TB ones that are as low as $68 each now, but the reviews seem a little iffy on the larger-sized drives from all vendors. [Dealnews]

⌦ Retractable Fishing Rod – The Coleman FishPen is $7, shipped. It extends to three feet but breaks down to just an eight-inch case. [Dealnews]

⌦ Laptop – Today's Woot is a refurbished HP Pavilion 17" 2GHz Core 2 Duo Notebook for $655, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

Robot Therapy Seal Pups

Adorable! "World's Most Therapeutic Robot, certified by Guinness World Records," is exactly how they'll get us. Video after the jump.

Product Page [Parobots via inhabitots and BotJunkie]

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Rubik's Cube stamp can print any letter

Give a brief to create a font generator able to print the word "Move" on real paper, Jas Bhachu crafted this amazing stamp from a Rubik's Cube. Able to represent a huge number of glyphs, the result is a versatile—if extremely slow—print head.

Rubik's Cube Font Generator [Jas Bhachu via Oh Gizmo and Design Boom]

Rob Beschizza

Power Pump cellphone charger ready for glastonbury

U.K. cellular operator Orange is to launch a footpump-powered cellular charger at the annual Glastonbury rock festival.

A compact camping accessory which fits all handsets, the Orange Power Pump measures 154mm by 129mm with a height of 47mm making it no bigger than a packet of Wet Wipes, is lightweight and easy to fit into your rucksack. Encased in sleek black housing, the turbine can generate enough energy to power 5 minutes of call time in the time it takes to inflate a pillow.

That would be about 4 minutes 38 seconds. Get pumping!

[Orange via Red Ferret Journal]

Von Slatt designs guitar amp

Nathan's New Amp [Steampunk Workshop via Make]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we looked at a bold step forward in first person shooter stage design with Matt Bradley's DM-Spectrum (above), an Unreal Tournament 3 level that intersects the dance floor with the killing floor, created with 4300 (!) dynamic lights and due for an update that'll have players creating generative music alongside its light show.

We also saw new details on Katamari Damacy Online, a massively multiplayer version of the game that (for now) is a Korean exclusive, but will hopefully roll up on other shores by the end of the year, and watched a trailer for Messhof's terrifying low-bit helicopter/organ harvesting game The Thrill of Combat.

Elsewhere, we saw time shifting platformer Braid come to the Mac, Space Invaders as a carnival game, Battlestations: Pacific gone Harper's Index, Metroid in yarn, and heard Bubblyfish in Bit.Trip, Japan's voice-synth pop idol covering 80's new wave stars, and made chiptunes of our own with 8-bit Weapon/Sony's new sample/loop pack.

And the day's 'one shot's: a Super Nintendo 'nymphographics' intersection, Duncan Harris threatens to raise in-game screenshots to an art-form, and Team Fortress 2 channels Charles Atlas, only with jars of pee.

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Legs

Joel Johnson

8Bitone, a chiptunes synth and sequencer for iPhone

Japanese developer Yudo will soon be releasing "8Bitone", an 8-bit chiptunes synthesizer for iPhone and iPod touch. No idea on the cost—most sequencers have been fairly expensive on the iPhone, in the $10-$20 range. I am fond of their title banner. [via GameSetWatch]

Joel Johnson

Elephant Bottle Opener

This bottle opener by Georg Jensen is $20 at Urban Outfitters. [via The Laughing Squider via Der Swisser Misser]

Joel Johnson

Un Petit Le Whif Chocolate Inhaler

Mark Wilson:

The sensation is akin to sucking a tiny bit of cocoa powder through a straw. And while not necessarily enjoyable in any way, it was admittedly a lot of chocolate flavor for only .8 calories a stick.

Joel Johnson

Gallery: The Gear of War

iRobot SUGV

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

A day with Aliph's Jawbone Prime and BlueAnt's Q1

Aliph's Jawbone Prime and BlueAnt's Q1 Bluetooth headsets are alike. The Jawbone has "NoiseAssassin", while the BlueAnt has "Voice Isolation Technology" -- in either case, audio is clearer and louder as a result. Both can pair with 8 devices, and simultaneously connect to 2. Both are voice activated, and neither require earloops to fit comfortably. Both are pretty little things: as is clear at a glance, they even share a similar design. They are both $130, and both arrive in extravagant display-case boxes.

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

LEGO: Building Block of Post-War Hope

Jan Vormann is at it again. Instead of Tel Aviv, this time he's in Berlin, filling in structural damage from WWII gunfire with LEGO blocks.

[via LikeCool]

Lisa Katayama

Cute charity alarm clocks made from old barn wood

These super-cute alarm clocks were made from scraps of wood from a 200-year old barn in Switzerland. The body is designed and made by furniture designer Furni Creations and then painted by Don Pendleton, a skateboard artist. There are two different designs currently on auction at eBay--proceeds go youth skateboarding non-profit Elemental Awareness.

Joel Johnson

Online dating in war zones

USA Today (via Danger Room):

"It always amazes me when I think about how I had to go to Iraq to meet the person I would be with back in the United States," says Jonathan Stoddard, 26, who met Lisa Wagner online while serving as a Marine lieutenant in Anbar province and married her in Fullerton, Calif., last Oct. 26. ... Their first get-acquainted chats were over a satellite phone with Jonathan huddled outside -- to get the uplink -- dressed out in helmet and body armor.

Joel Johnson

iUnika Gyy: Inexpensive netbook with integrated solar and bioplastic body

The disposable computer is here.

The "Gyy" netbook from iUnika may have less computing power than many modern cellphones, but it weighs just a pound and a half, has a chassis made from biodegradable cellulose, and wears an array of solar panels on its top that can charge up its battery. All this for a projected price of $180, available "this summer".

It won't be completely disposable, of course. Heavy metals in the electronics will still need to be reclaimed and reprocessed. But built-in solar and bioplastic casing makes this several steps in the right direction. I want one—and as soon as I learn to read Spanish I'll see if I can pre-order. [via Inhabitat]

Joel Johnson

Howto make low-inductance speaker cables

DIY Audio Projects writes a DIY speaker cable project::

The cables use multiple stands of 16 AWG wire that is twisted together in alternating directions. The alternating cable geometry minimizes inductance. The multiple 16 AWG wires combine to create a cable with an equivalent cable gauge of 10, so resistance is also low. The result is a fine looking cable that delivers the performance of commercial cables at a fraction of the cost.

Joel Johnson

Video: Decommissioning a blast furnace

Haiko Hebig has video of the Ougrée blast furnace being decommissioned, shot by furnaceman Pierre Machiroux:

Shutting down a blast furnace in such a fashion that it can be restarted at a later point involves removing the liquid and solidified materials in the hearth of the furnace below the tap hole. This part of the furnace is called Sau (=sow) in German, le loup (=wolf) in French or salamander in English. Its liquid part gets tapped using a drill and an oxygen lance.

Joel Johnson

Music Video: Jonathan Coulton "The Future Soon"

From that hairy cyborg bastard Jonathan Coulton's spanking new concert DVD, "Best. Concert. Ever." Just $20, every dollar of which goes towards bionic laser eye research.

Joel Johnson

Frank Lloyd Wright LEGO: The Guggenheim and Falling Water

Brickstructures has added two more models to their series of architectural LEGO microscale models, both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: The Guggenheim Museum and Falling Water. The Gugg is $55, shipped, within the U.S.; it doesn't actually appear that Falling Water is on sale yet. [via Prairie Mod]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

As bombshells go, they don't get much bigger than this: the first video has surfaced of project codename Trico (above), the PS3 followup to Fumito Ueda's Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, two games that have helped advance and solidify -- in many minds -- games as high art, and it's just as stark, surreal and beautiful as you might expect.

The Austin Game Developers Conference also formally announced that it would be adding an indie games summit to this year's lineup, and has added Offworld to its advisory board, and we saw a new WiiWare game that has you scribbling with a literally magic marker to help guide and protect a boy through its levels.

Elsewhere we saw Fallout 3 reimagined as a 70s Japanese TV cop-drama, as more expansions were announced for the game, saw a new game built entirely on and around Google Earth, a new series of official artist-created levels for LittleBigPlanet, and the Team Fortress team taught how to publicly faceplant with grace.

Finally, we saw how to kill reams of Hitler clones in a cute 2D world, listened to the last chiptune mixtape you might ever need and a musical theater ode to the buggy world of the original Saints Row, and saw both Metroid by way of Miyazaki, and Silent Hill in real, horrifying, life.

Rob Beschizza

Sony X reviewed. Verdict: "Thrashes" the iPod

Sony's Walkman X has superior audio quality, a beautiful OLED display and effective noise-canceling. Brian Ashcraft, writing for T3:

It sucker punches the iPod from the off with cracking sonics. ... This is a superb PMP. Things like a poorer interface and lack of Mac compatibility put it at a slight disadvantage to the iPod Touch, but its screen and audio quality really shine. After numerous false starts and a general drubbing from the iPod, the X-Series puts the Walkman right back in the game.

It's also Sony, so you'll probably be begging for software and firmware updates, let alone an App Store.

Sony X-Series Walkman MP3 player exclusive review, pics, video [T3. Pic via Akihabara News]

Rob Beschizza

Light-activated fridge guard plays recorded messages

Hoping that the Fridge Recorder was an inconspicuous surveillance device, I am crushed by disappointment: it's just a toy that detects the fridge light and plays a message. On the other hand, there's not much to surveil inside a refrigerator. [Drinkstuff via Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

Doctor Driller saves boy's life

A doctor in Australia drilled into a boy's skull with a power drill, draining it of blood clots that would otherwise have killed him. From the BBC:

Dr Rob Carson performed the procedure on Nicholas Rossi, 13, after the boy fell off his bike and hit his head. The doctor had never attempted the surgery before, and had to be talked through the operation by a Melbourne neurosurgeon. ... The small hospital had no special tools, so the team had to use a household drill.

I wonder what model it was.

Photo: fox.out22 / Игорь Сергеев

Rob Beschizza

Behold! A USB 3.0 controller!

NEC is first to market with a USB 3.0 host controller, excitingly named µPD720200. It expects "rapid adoptions of the device," which is $15.

USB 3.0 is long-awaited and much-needed, upping capacity to 5 gigabits per second (with 400 Megabytes per second of thoughput) and power supply to 900mA (over USB 2's 500mA). Expect the first products in 2010.

NEC Electronics Introduces World's First USB 3.0 Host Controller [NEC via The Inquirer]

Rob Beschizza

Nvidia accuses Intel of anticompetitive hornswoggling

If you buy an Intel Atom chip with Intel's shitty video chipset, you pay $25 for the lot. But if you are Nvidia buying an Atom chip to wed to one of your own superior video chipsets, you pay $45 just for the Atom. [Lilliputing]

Rob Beschizza

Infallibly Polite Alarm Clock, voiced by Stephen Fry

Like the clock, I'll let Hammacher Schlemmer speak for itself:

The clock plays 126 different wake-up messages in the reserved voice of Stephen Fry, the original actor from the English comedy Jeeves and Wooster. When the alarm sounds, Jeeves speaks softly as he assuages your displeasure that the morning has indeed come.

It's $100.

The Infallibly Polite Speaking Alarm Clock [HS via Slashgear via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: Crop Circles

Kansas fields, fed by the Ogallala Aquifer. [Earth Observatory (nasa.gov)]

Rob Beschizza

Pets

Rob Beschizza

Sigma Bluetribe Bluetooth Headphones

Steven Leckart

Ionic-Cooling Laptop

What if every time your laptop hit 100°F, you didn't have to hear a noisy fan?

Technology Review reports:

One novel idea is to cool a system by using ions to push air molecules across a hot microprocessor, thereby creating a cooling breeze. So-called ionic-cooling systems have been demonstrated in research labs before, but now Tessera, an international chip-packaging company based in San Jose, CA, has demonstrated an ionic-cooling system integrated into a working laptop...

Tessera's ionic cooler sits near a vent inside the laptop. Heat pipes, which transfer heat using the evaporation and condensation of a fluid, draw heat away from the computer's processing units and toward the ionic-cooling system. Inside the ionic-cooling device are two electrodes: one that ionizes air molecules such as nitrogen, and another that acts as a receiver for those molecules. When a voltage is applied between the two electrodes, the ions flow from the emitter electrode to the collector. As they move, their momentum pushes neutral air molecules across a hot spot, cooling it down...

The system can extract roughly 30 percent more heat from a laptop than a conventional fan can, and lab tests show that it could potentially consume only half as much power, the company says...

Tessera isn't the only company looking at ionic breeze as a means to cool consumer electronics. Researchers at Garimella's own lab at Purdue have demonstrated a similar technology, which is being developed commercially by an early-stage Silicon Valley startup called Ventiva.

[image via Sherritalley]

Joel Johnson

Clever box from LeapFrog grabs parents' attention, not kids'

LeapFrog sent me their new Text & Learn kids PDA. God knows why—I pushed the buttons a few times, then started to cry when the pixel puppy began to judge me. I will push the buttons when I want to, dog, not when you command me from your bubblebath. Here is a new lesson: I am a human and you are a dog. Now let me in that bubblebath.

But I love their box, with its horror movie font and the ruined real PDA (looks like a Palm). It's not anything that kids will care about, but it should grab parents' attention long enough to get them to open up the front flap to find the Text & Learn inside.

Update: Here's Gearlog's review by a five-year-old.

Joel Johnson

Myka, the set-top box I talk myself out of buying in just over 300 words

Imagine a Mac Mini, but with HDMI and component video outputs, and with a custom Linux-based user interface: that's Myka, a set-top home theater computer that is shipping now. The Myka is thick with features, playing nearly every video container format around (including .mkv)—there's even a BitTorrent client on the box.

Even the price is reasonable: The 80GB version is just $280 right now, with free shipping; a version with a 500GB hard drive is only $390.

Having recently gone through a painful experience with an AppleTV and Boxee (more to come, but my quick take is "don't bother"), I'm in the market. I was actually planning on getting a Mac Mini and putting Boxee on there, but now I'll have to consider Myka, even though I am very doubtful that their interface is as polished as Boxee or even XBMC.

Another worry: The manufacturer never quite states what sort of processor is inside except to call it a "450 DMIPS SOC". One of my biggest issues with trying to run Boxee on the AppleTV was simple that the 1GHz processor inside couldn't handle everything that Boxee was trying to do (not to mention 1080p videos). A little poking around in the forum reveals that they're referring to the Broadcom BCM7403 "video system-on-a-chip", a 300MHz MIPS processor that is specially built for video decoding and encoding, but will be mostly useless for any heavy general purpose computing.

In fact, the more that I look at this, the more it appears to be a DVR-class box in a smaller form factor with a custom interface. That's not a bad thing by any means, but it's certainly not going to be a screamer. [via Technabob]

Rob Beschizza

Rumor: Playstation 3 to finally get rid of stupid Spiderman font

Running this picture, ostensibly of a new, slim, small PS3, is getting folks legal warnings from the lawyers that represent whomever made them.

This means, in Internetlish, that it's a real leak. However, the client (presumably Sony, a partner or subsidiary) isn't identified by the lawyer, James Lan of Li Mo & Associated, so we're not quite home free.

Rob Beschizza

"New" iPhone 3G "leaked" to "blog"

A blog that has since disappeared apparently ran this pic of the "New iPhone 3G." It's a good pic — but is it real? No. The composition looks off, and "New Bottom Look," with all the nerdy details, is wrong.

UPDATE: it's art. Victor Anselme's original concept design is here. Thanks, Jay!

Purported specs are at Cult of Mac. [hat tip: Camillo Miller]

Rob Beschizza

Dell's Rugged New Netbooks

Dell's 10.1" Latitude 2100, intended for schoolkids, has a nice chunky, rugged look to it—and a selection of bright colors to pick from. Upgrades over the International Standard Netbook include an antimicrobial keyboard and ventless bottom to avoid spill damage.

Press Release [Dell]

Rob Beschizza

"Pet Spa," an automated dog-washing unit

Dog-o-Matic Washes Your Dog, Traumatizes Them For Life [Oh Gizmo]

Joel Johnson

Video: iRobot "Ember", a swarming battlefield robot

Like a tiny version of the Packbot, the Ember is a prototype battlefield robot that iRobot hopes will someday be nigh-on disposable. [via Danger Room]

Rob Beschizza

Facebank 2 removes the original's creepy eyes.

The new:

The old:

Joel Johnson

Programmer Machismo

Nat Torkington:

It makes me realize how much of the macho meritocracy "it's just about how GOOD YOU ARE" individual-excellence cocks-out culture in programming in general and open source in particular isn't about what's necessary to make good programs and good programmers, it's what's necessary to make great egos feel good about themselves.

Rob Beschizza

Palm Pre to launch June 6

Does it have a prayer? Yes. [Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

Big-ass light bulbs

John Pomp Studios [via MocoLoco]

Rob Beschizza

More Modern Fossils

Heartless Machine [via Next Nature]

Joel Johnson

I really hope ZuneX isn't real

I don't know if the "ZuneX" portable Xbox rumors are true, but I would remind you that the Zune trademark includes provision for "Toys and games, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games" as well as "cellular telephone services".

That said, that is one ugly, monster device. I'd really hope a Zune Phone that was built around gaming would be more versatile and pocketable. I can't believe Microsoft would be so dumb as to recreate their precipitous second-place standing with Nintendo and Sony in another market.

Joel Johnson

Video: Charming netbook review by Polish kid

Apparently the result of a school project, this video was made in one take by a young Polish man who is working on his English. I like his style. I don't think I could do a review that long in the Polskaspeak, even with notes. [via Crunchgear]

Joel Johnson

Pine Trail: Future netbooks will be thinner, faster, and cooler

Intel is showing off "Pine Trail", its next iteration of the Atom processor that powers the vast majority of netbooks and low-end nettop desktop PCs. Pine Trail chipsets will be slightly faster, as this is the way of all things, but will cram the graphics chip into the CPU, making it cheaper, potentially cooler (fanless variants should be possible), and thinner.

It's an attempt to make the Atom platform more profitable for Intel, which has (in my opinion) been worried that its high-end, high-margin processor market may be eroded by the popularity of Atom-powered computers. Depending on how much performance they squeeze out of the integrated GPU, it may also be an attempt to stave off Nvidia, whose Ion platform weds an Atom CPU to a gaming-class graphics chip. (Or perhaps more importantly, the Ion graphics chip can handle high-resolution video.)

Intel also is chatting up "Moblin", its Linux-based desktop interface for Atom-class machines. The latest beta version of Mobile (2.0) is now available for downloads at Moblin.org. Most netbook users will probably be sticking with Ubuntu, Windows 7 (soon, anyway), or OS X, but it always feels a bit mean to bemoan any Linux development from large companies.

Joel Johnson

A film I liked: "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music" (2003)

Do you have any interest in music production, wiring together 8-track tape recorders by hand, the history of Atlantic records, jazz, R&B, southern rock, or atomic bombs? Then get thee to a copy of "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music", a documentary of the man who pretty much single-handedly developed multi-track recording, working with the likes of John Coltraine, Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Tito Puente, and Otis Redding. It's well-crafted and easy to watch—Dowd is an affable old coot, and he was clearly stoked to get some recognition of his contribution to pop music, which as any of the dozens of musicians interviewed will testify, was considerable.

I watched it on Netflix Instant streaming, but it's also on Amazon for twenty bucks.

My favorite part might have been the interlude between Dowd and Les Paul, who had quietly been building an 8-track recording system in his garage while the rest of the recording world was still using gear scavenged from radio stations.

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Universal Remote – Amazon is selling a refurbished Logitech Harmony 890 remote for $120, shipped. They're normally over twice that new. [Slickdeals] Relatedly, Logitech has finally put out an RF adapter to make the Harmony remotes with with the PlayStation 3. It's $60. [Logitech Harmony Adapter for Playstation 3]

⌦ Programmable Thermostat – The Lux Smart programmable thermostat is $21, shipped, about $14 off. [Dealnews]

⌦ Canned Air – Today's Woot is the Turbo Air Rechargeable Blower System by WD-40 two-pack for $25, shipped.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video - Diving into Space: Miles O'Brien in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab

(Download MP4. This episode of Boing Boing Video is brought to you by WEPC.)

Boing Boing Video guest contributor Miles O'Brien brings us this special report on the same day NASA astronauts complete their final space walk -- and zero-g repair job -- on the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission #4.

Astronauts spend a lot more time training for missions than flying in space. But I wouldn't feel sorry for them as the training is an amazing adventure unto itself. They practice in airplanes that fly a roller-coaster pattern to give them brief stints of weightlessness (the so called Vomit Comet); they get to zoom around in supersonic T-38 training jets; they fly approaches to shuttle runways in a Gulfstream jet rigged up to fly (or more accurately, plummet) like a real orbiter; they get time in high-fidelity full motion simulators; they use virtual reality goggles to practice tasks they will perform in space - and if they are a spacewalker, they get to spend a lot of time in a huge swimming pool in a former hangar at Ellington Field - near the Johnson Space Center in Houston - learning the nuances of working in the void.

Astronaut John Grunsfeld, who is an astronomer and a huge fan of the Hubble Space Telescope, invited me to join him during one of his 6 hour "runs" in the big pool - officially known as the Sonny Carter Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. I watched him as he practiced the most challenging spacewalk of his long career - the resuscitation of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Worried as he was about accomplishing this intricate task - not designed to be done by the thick, gloved hand of a spacewalker - when he did the real thing the other day (Saturday) it went of without a hitch - unlike the other 4 spacewalks of the fifth and final Hubble Repair Mission.

The spacewalks are now over - and a shuttle crew has left Hubble behind for the last time. The telescope is in the best shape it has ever been in - Hubble's "Perils of Pauline" tale now mashed up with "Benjamin Button". The eye above the sky will begin a new phase of scientific discovery making astronomers pretty happy right about now. But for those of us who are passionate about sending human beings into space, and have enjoyed watching this adventure unfold over the past 19 years, it is the end of a great era - a wistful moment.

Miles is the only reporter who has ever dived in the NBL.

Hubble crewmember Mike Massimino, shown above doing Hubble telescope repairs today in the Atlantis cargo bay, is on Twitter: @Astro_Mike. You can follow Miles O'Brien on Twitter, too: @milesobrien. Read his feature reports at trueslant.com, and catch his launch coverage at spaceflightnow.com. Official NASA STS-125 mission page is here.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

Previously:
Boing Boing Video: Welcome, Miles O'Brien! - Boing Boing
BB Video - Miles O'Brien Reports: An Astronaut Climbs Everest ...

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we played Fathom, the latest web game by Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman (who had a hand in the recently featured Paper Moon, iPhone's Wurdle, and indie favorite grappler Gravity Hook), and found a fantastic short story of a game about duty and dedication that's hiding much more depth than its cutely militant pixels/chiptunes first present.

We also saw the game One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson called out as the Zelda chapter too few have played, Majora's Mask, added to the Wii's Virtual Console so everyone can have their own one more go, hoped for a new dawn of the dead with Left 4 Dead's SDK released to the PC public, and saw the latest reason the Team Fortress team need to work on a feature length film.

Elsewhere, iPhone publisher ngmoco reveal a Halo connection in their latest first person shooter, a Romanian magazine offers an eBoy poster and a chiptune/indie game DVD, we hear Japanese synth-legends YMO get covered on the Nintendo DS, see the latest official Metal Gear vinyl, crochet our own Noby Noby BOYs, and see Mario jonesing for his next mushroom fix.

Finally, the day's 'one shot's: Half Life in Lego, and indie game bling with a BeDazzling Darwinia jacket.

Steven Leckart

8.0-Megapixels is the New 3.2 (In Japan)

DoCoMo's line up of cell phones releasing in June/July is impressive for two reasons: 1) there are 18 models. 2) the majority feature an 8.0-megapixel lens cam or better. Here's the distribution:

10.0 megapixel: 3 phones
8.0 megapixel: 7 phones
5.0 megapixel: 3 phones
3.2 megapixel: 5 phones

And we're all still whining at Apple to deliver a measly 3.2.

Previously:
A very simple Japanese cell phone
Japanese cell phones designed by artist Yayoi Kusama - Boing Boing ...
Why Japanese cell phones suck - Boing Boing Gadgets

Joel Johnson

The interior design of '70s Danish pornography

A blogger has excerpted decor and fashion highlights from '70s Danish print pornography in such a way as to make them more-or-less safe for work. The above example is probably not the most illustrative of the collection, which is more lamps and furniture, but is too precious not to share. [via @RichardMetzger]

Joel Johnson

Snoozy the Sloth, a stuffed toy that really breathes

Justin Blinder gave birth to "Snoozy the Sloth", a stuffed toy that has a real diaphragm inside that allows it to breath, going so far as to exhale breath from its latex-glove lungs onto the neck of whomever is nuzzling it.

Justin made Snoozy for a class at Parsons; I bet it won't be long before he is mass produced. For now, though, I like that Snoozy is a one-off, held together with makeshift parts, like a premature robot just clinging to life.

Joel Johnson

MECO plays "hide the home theater PC"

The MECO home entertainment computer from Pearing Systems is not cheap—custom configurations with Blu-ray, DVR, and full-blown audio solutions will run you into the thousands of dollars—but I appreciate their attempt at integration into home decor. The veneered coffee table chassis is fairly attractive and generic enough to match most living rooms.

(Right there, yes, with the wine on it. That's the computer.)

The systems are built entirely on Vista, which may or may not be a tick in your "For" column. But I've got to give them credit where it's due: at least they're trying to make the computer invisible.

Rob Beschizza

A week with the Puget Deluge Mini

Jon Bach, founder of boutique PC maker Puget Systems, is not always impressed by his suppliers' quality control.

"The deeper that we get into the computer industry, the more cynical I become about it," Bach says. "There's so much hype, so little regard for what's best for the customer."

To illustrate, he points to memory, where rapid innovation is just as rapidly commodified, and prices seem in perpetual freefall. Moving from one brand to another, Bach says, can result in profound differences in error rates. It's an offhand comment, but it expresses the animating principle of his business: building it yourself is fraught with risk. Puget does the research, assembles computers every day, and knows exactly what components will work well together.

"One of the deciding factors is the [sales] volume of a boutique," Bach said. "It takes a lot of volume to discern trends and problems. Four years ago, we saw enough volume to discern trends, and to gain a direct line to engineers at Asus and Intel and so on. Most of the time we figure [problems] out before they do."

Its latest product is the Puget Mini. It is like a small, dangerous sports car. Lavish customer service surrounds assembly and delivery. They overclock, benchmark and burn in it. Performance is stellar.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Welcome, Wired. We call this land "Internet"

Here's the problem with Wired: They think print matters.

Background: Stephanie Clifford warns that Wired may be about to die. Ad sales are down 50%, putting it just above Power and Motoryacht at the bottom of Condé Nast's portfolio of magazines.

I've got some relatively ancient history to share, but I think it's germane.

After I left Gawker Media, I was contracted by Condé to help the newly reacquired Wired.com develop a blogging strategy. I spent a few weeks with the Wired.com chiefs developing a battle plan and presented it to the magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. He gave it the nod—he got what I was trying to do instantly—and away we went.

Three months later the traffic to the Wired.com blogs had doubled. I cleared out writers that weren't working. That didn't always mean they were bad writers, but usually just bad bloggers—there is a difference. Even the best magazine writer may not be able to write and report in front of an audience.

Our most successful blog was Table of Malcontents, run by our friend John Brownlee (with Lisa, too!), who ran with the opportunity, creating a "net culture" blog that was the archetypal model for what we were trying to create: Smart, fast, full of personality, two steps ahead of mainstream tastes. It had a superstar team, and with hard work they were soon the most popular blog on the network behind Rob's Gadget Lab. (They also did much to make my not-so-secret motto come true: "Make Wired weird again.")

Then the magazine folks stepped in. As soon as it became clear that Wired.com's blogs might actually get some traction, the magazine started to dabble. I had structured the blogs so that each had a lead editor, something that that worked very well at Gawker. No one had a problem with that—until it meant that my lead bloggers might be telling magazine staffers what to do.

It's not unusual for print journalists to look down at online writers, and often rightly so. There are some amazing reporters and writers whose work appears in Wired, people who do the sort of storytelling that bloggers rarely have the time or skill to do.

But reporters treating their online peers like that at Wired? It was accepted without much question that the magazine side of the business—literally across the "Berlin Hall"—always trumped the online side.

I made it about six months before I felt too constrained by both the magazine and its publishers and moved on. Since then, Wired.com's grown to 11 million monthly visitors: its blogs are among the best in their fields and its tech news reportage is among the finest, online or off—successes I don't take credit for. The sheer size of that readership speaks volumes: the Times says the magazine has only 700k or so subscribers. (It's a damn shame that online advertising is devalued compared to print advertising, but that's the media world for you.)

Wired makes a fantastic magazine. The "puzzle" edition last month was just brilliant, and I skimmed it from cover to cover. But for technology and pop science reporting, the market has moved on. Tech magazines, now matter how well executed, are nothing more than a cute anachronism, with the same sort of boutique market as hand-made stationery.

Which isn't to say that we or anyone else who writes for money isn't doomed; we just don't have to buy paper by the ton roll, nor keep a support staff around nearly as large as our editorial staff.

Wired is great print, but if the magazine can't make money and is shuttered, taking the website down with it, I'm going to be livid. Not that making money online is easy—it's not, especially without sacrificing your ethics and your voice—but if any mainstream outlet should be able to make the transition, it should be Wired.

I fear that may be impossible, not just for Wired but for all these old brands, because they can't accept that the work at which they have excelled for years will be just as important when it's online—and online only.

P.S. No one actually ever called it the "Berlin Hall" except me.
P.P.S. The fact that it was the Times that published this piece, one of my other dear media orgs also choking and sputtering on the future, was not lost on me.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video - Miles O'Brien Reports: An Astronaut Climbs Everest (with a GPS Assist)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, guest contributor Miles O'Brien, the veteran space and science reporter formerly with CNN, speaks with astronaut Scott Parazynski as he attempts to summit Mt. Everest.

Parazynski and his team are scheduled to actually attempt the summit within the next day or two, as I understand their current plans.

They are using a personal satellite tracking device called "Spot" as a security measure. The GPS device has the added benefit of providing digital breadcrumbs of data that can be used to generate real-time maps of exactly where they are on the trail.

More of Miles "1337" O'Brien's work at True/Slant, and you can (and should) follow him here on Twitter.

Astronaut-turned-climber Scott Parazynski's Everest climb blog is here, and you can also follow him on Twitter, live from Nepal.

Below, a screengrab of their current coordinates -- and a snapshot of Scott at rest on Mount Everest. After the jump, more photos.

(Previously: Boing Boing Video: Welcome, Miles O'Brien!)

READ THE REST

In Russia, Case Mods You

Rob Beschizza

International Sockets

Spot the mistakes!

Power Plugs and Sockets all over the World [Eurocom via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

RadTech ProCable Shortz

The product's name is longer than the thing itself. TUAW reviewed it (it works) and recommends it for ridding oneself of the "tangled nest of wires." At $8, it's also cheaper than the standard issue. [RadTech via TUAW]

Rob Beschizza

Midori Otoko

He's 2GB, flexible, and ¥2,200.

Rob Beschizza

Steampunk iPod

Yep, Neal Bridgens' Steampunk iPod is about perfect: not too extravagant, but plenty of brass. [via Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

Psychic predicts Jobs will return to Apple as scheduled

From Cult of Mac:

Speaking by phone from her home in Redwood City, Courtney said Jobs will return to Apple in June as promised -- but he won't stay long.

"My feeling is he will come back," said Courtney. "I'm not seeing June as too soon."

...

A "corporate psychic" for more than 30 years, Courtney claims to have consulted with scores of tech companies, including Apple, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Motorola. She says politicians in local and federal government have also consulted her.

How odd that a psychic would divine the most unremarkable outcome possible! She does this for $200 an hour.

Steve Jobs will return... [CoM]

Napster rises from grave

Napster's corpse is wheeled out again for the board to amuse itself with: this time, as the brand for a $5 monthly music streaming service. [Engadget]

Rumor: AT&T to introduce limited data plan for iPhone

If you like the idea of paying just $20 for the compulsory data plan AT&T hooks the iPhone up to, know that the tradeoff would be harsh usage caps. [AppleInsider]

Joel Johnson

Video: Toy 2002 roundie bests evil Mercedes

This ad for Turkish die-cast retailer Dekalo is cute on its own, but especially so when they reveal how it was made. [via Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Wal-Mart testing automated trade-in machines for used videogame

Wal-Mart is testing a used games trade-in machine at certain locations, a development that's welcome, if only to raise the price of trade-ins (or lower the price of used games) at Gamestop. Unfortunately, according to Neocrisis, the blog-slash-anime-suffix, the vending machines don't always know what game discs you're inserting to be scanned—and when they do, they don't provide instant credit, but instead a charge to your credit card in two or three days. [via Cheap Ass Gamer]

Update: Apparently Wal-Mart is dabbling with big box store-style electronics displays, too. [CrunchGear]

Rob Beschizza

Clarkson: Honda Hybrid is "Biblically terrible"

Jeremy Clarkson takes Honda's Insight Hybrid for a spin around the block, and finds himself wishing it was a spin into a tree:

It's terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn't have to drive it any more. ... since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota's Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief. There's more.

All for 60 mpg, and 60mpg for all!

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid [Times]

Joel Johnson

The fMRI of Love

A.J. Jacobs slips into an fMRI machine to test what his brain looks like when he's thinking of his wife—and what it looks like when he's thinking of Angelina Jolie. It's a jumping off point to discuss the chemistry of love, one of the most interesting (and mysteriously painful) matters of modern neuroscience:

The three systems are intertwined. For instance, sex boosts attachment. When you have an orgasm, your brain pumps out oxytocin, heightening feelings of closeness. Which is why one-night stands often last past one night. And why exhausted married couples should force themselves to hump once in a while. In fact, semen itself contains oxytocin. You literally have a love syringe between your legs.

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Xbox 360 Arcade Classics – Lots of classic arcade games for $3 from Amazon, including Gauntlet, Dig Dug, and TMNT the arcade game. That's a couple bucks off on most, I believe. [Slickdeals]

⌦ Headphones – Basic over-the-ear Sennheiser HD201 headphones for $18. They're at Amazon, so shipped free if you order $25 or more. [Dealoco]

⌦ Backpacks – Several SwissGear laptop bags and backpacks are on sale at Amazon, from $16 to $50. I got Carmela a basic black one for Christmas and it's held up to daily use really well. [Dealhack]

⌦ Desktop PC – A friend of mine recently asked me what I thought of those Atom-powered desktops, and I nearly recommend she get one until I realized that you can get one of these small Dell machines with a dual-core Pentium and 3GB of RAM for about the same price it takes to kit one of those out. They're on sale again for $300. [Dealnews]

⌦ Cordless Mouse – Basic Logitech V220 notebook mouse for $10, shipped. Normally around $20-$25. [Dealnews]

⌦ Camcorder – Today's Woot is the JVC Mini DV Camcorder with 30x Optical Zoom for $135, shipped.

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

You've been very patient and waited longer than you should have for another game to come from Japan that manages to both capture and captivate with all the sublime high-weirdness that made Katamari Damacy the cult hit it's become, and again it's come from Namco, and it's for the Wii, and that game is: Muscle March (above).

Elsewhere we saw Guru Meditation, the first Atari 2600/iPhone cross-platform game, which asks you, simply, to meditate as quietly and as still as possible, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek recreated in The Sims, the first footage of Id's Wolfenstein as an iPhone RPG, and new levels for the google-maps enhanced PlayStation 3 downloadable The Last Guy.

We also got the first glimpse at Tony Hawk's latest Ride and its literal skate-deck controller, a half-baked Solid Snake custom toy, a program to create your own glitched-out NES art, and illustrator/children's book illustrator J.otto Seibold apparently prepping a secret videogame project.

Joel Johnson

Button Spy Camera continues Brando's commitment of novelty

Crapvendor Brando's spy products tend to be the most compelling, even if they're surely built with the same attention to detail (none) as the gear they craft for the budget cloak-and-dagger set. Nevermind that the $96 "Button Spy Camera" appears to be a black button when slipped through the open buttonhole of your shirt, regardless of the color of all the other buttons on your shirt—pay more attention to the control mechanism, a golden ring which, when waved near the button it a series of undisclosed patterns, will cause it to record or snap a photograph.

As far as I know, Brando will still not extradite its customers from enemy territories after they've been captured, but perhaps there will be a Brando Black Ops unit soon, equipped with plastic assault rifles/USB webcams.

Rob Beschizza

Asus T91 netbook battery not replaceable

The FCC has Asus' new netbook in, and JKKMobile spotted it. Inside is GPS, mobile internet, and a nonremovable battery.

And yes, non removable battery.. BAD Asus BAD!

For big laptops, I don't care about battery replacement, because the one that comes with it will last long enough to make stripping the machine down acceptable. But people swap batteries out on lightweights every day-- the batteries are often so small and light it's no trouble to bring an extra one--or buy massive aftermarket 13000mAH ones so it can calculate weather patterns all day.

Application 391202 [FCC via JKK]

Rob Beschizza

A New Kind of Search

Steven Leckart

Chopstick door-stopper hack

Jan Chipchase's discoveries while traveling are always inspiring. This chopstick-as-door-stopper hack he photographed is one I saw frequently in Japan. Wonderfully simple.

Steven Leckart

Back Dorm Boys: the lesser-known hits

The Hou She Boys (aka Back Dorm Boys) hit it big in 2006 with their lip sync to "I want It That Way". Wei Wei and Huang Yixin, students at Guangzhou College of Fine Arts, went on to star in a commercial for Pepsi, and become national celebrities. What I never realized is just how prolific they were, both in English and their native tongue.

Here's one of my favorite videos. More after the jump...

We Will Rock You

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Video: Light Art Performance Photography

If you wonder if I sit at my desk and talk to myself, you may be like to know that I just started watching this video and said, aloud, "Ho-lee shit." Porter, the dog, shrugged.

The video is a collection of stills from a group called "Light Art Performance Photography" who use LEDs, lasers, illuminated body suits, sparkers, and sheer pluck to make these wonderful long-exposure photographs. Just tremendous. [via HackNMod]

Joel Johnson

Asian camera doesn't understand Asian eyes

Joz got her mother a new camera. It seems to have just enough intelligence to say the wrong thing.

I feel sorry for manufacturers. First they had to teach their gadgets how to think—now they have to teach them tact.

Joel Johnson

Quote: Sony Pictures CEO on the value of the internet

"I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet," said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton. "Period." – Woman's Wear Daily

Steven Leckart

Ode to Richard "Data" Wang, master-tinkerer & goonie

Nevermind that the character's frequent technical malfunctions -- or actor Jonathan Ke Quan's accent -- were used as comic relief. When I force my children to watch Goonies, I'm going to make sure they appreciate Data's ingenuity and drive to invent.

Lisa Katayama

Korean Rubik's cube is a tic-tac-toe board

A guy I know got this Rubik's cube in Korea. It's pretty much the same deal, except instead of being color-coded you have to try to line up completed tic-tac-toe boards on each side. [Link (Japanese)]

Lisa Katayama

Photo of a computer lab in Dharamsala, India

I took this photo of a computer lab at a nunnery in Dharamsala, India in the fall of 2006. After traveling through more rural parts of Northern India where kids at school all claimed to want to become computer scientists but had never seen electricity, it was a relief to see that some were getting the opportunity they deserved. This nunnery was built by the Dalai Lama's sister-in-law to accommodate young refugee girls who left their families in Tibet and risked their lives trekking through the Himalayas to meet His Holiness and to be free.

Joel Johnson

Kohler Fluid Faucet is also a bathroom water fountain

While the Fluid Faucet is not yet in production, I will wrest it into being through desirous thirst. You may be thinking, as I did, what happens when you crack it up to get a sip? Does water go everywhere?

Oh ho! The water slows until the faucet is parallel to the sink; continuing to twist it up turns it back on again. [via Freshome]

Lisa Katayama

A very simple Japanese cell phone

During a brief visit home to Tokyo a couple of years ago, I got this awesomely simple temporary cell phone designed by KDDI for elderly people. It has no screen, no redial, no confusing menu buttons, just a simple number pad, a big green TALK button, and a smaller red OFF button. The buttons are large and easy to push. It's very zen, in a way. Nothing to distract you from the simple goal of making or receiving a phone call. I didn't have to charge it once during my two weeks there, and the ring tone was clearly a ring tone--it didn't sound like mall background music or voices in my head.

I think it's interesting that this comes from the same cultural origin as the blingiest cell phone decorations probably in the whole world.

Lisa Katayama

What happens when you let a Japanese designer decorate an exercise machine?

The Power Plate is a multi-tasking, relatively compact exercise machine created by Belgians based on Soviet cosmonaut technology, but what will it look like when you let a famous Japanese fashion designer have a go at decorating it? Kenzo Takada (yes, of the famous Kenzo brand) created this colorful, flowery prototype for people who don't want giant metal objects tarnishing their home decor. You can actually buy this for $10,600, and it apparently comes with a matching exercise outfit. Seriously stylish.

[via StyleFrizz]

Joel Johnson

It's 2009 and the L.A. Times is still treating geeks as mysterious others

The L.A. Times profiles Utah's Neumont University, said by some to be a "geek heaven", but also known as a school that exacerbates their students asocial tendencies.

Some of Neumont's female students, who make up about 5% of the 266 enrolled this year, are on a mission to get their peers to tune in to the world around them. In October, one posted a message on Neumont's Web forums protesting what she called "offensive odors."

"The truth is there are people in this school who just don't smell pleasant at all," she wrote.

(Although I'm going to have to back Alana Semuels on the stink thing: Geeks—and in my experience this applies trebly to those of the core gamer variant—can occasionally smell like a sarlacc's vagina. Take a shower every single day. I don't care to hear your excuses about sensitive skin or brittle hair. Wash yourself with soap every day, perhaps even twice if necessary, and wear clean clothes. You're not just embarrassing yourself—you're embarrassing the rest of us.) [via The Awl (which is read by dicks, judging by the comments. Mean ol' dicks!)]

Steven Leckart

Two years of air quality photos in Beijing

Working with the Asia Society and a photographer in Beijing, my former colleague Michael Zhao has designed an interactive site with an amazing collection of snapshots taken through the same apartment window in Beijing. The images date from March 2009 (as I write) all the way back to March 2007.

You can click through them all, and sort by best/worst air pollution index (API) and air quality grade for each day on the Asia Society project site. Or you can watch everything in reverse timelapse and zoom out to see tiny images of every day on Michael's site.

On my last birthday (Dec. 7), Beijing's air scored a C and the index was a 112, meaning "Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort." The photo above is a 115. The worst day recorded/photographed: December 28, 2007, with a score a 500!

Of course, there's some pretty neat tech wizardry that goes into measuring airborne chemicals. After the jump, check out a quantum cascade laser open path sensor...

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Procedurally generated "Pixel City" by Shamus Young

Shamus Young is the sort of fellow who decides to figure out how to make a procedurally generated city for fun. Even better, he likes to document wresting a city from raw pixels, explaining the entire development process in 10 blog posts.

He didn't even use pixel shaders, the set of specialized instructions that execute directly on modern 3D video cards, which would have given him more real-time Calc-U-Power™. [via Flowing Data]

Joel Johnson

Would Microsoft make a handheld gaming system without a phone?

So if you can stand to read a couple thousand words of speculation in which the most solid information is from "well placed sources", César A. Berardini from Team Xbox is speculating that Microsoft will be releasing a handheld super-gizmo that will be capable of playing games, serving as a GPS device, sharing music, games, and video downloads with the Xbox, perhaps working as a phone, and maybe even using Wi-Max. It's hopeful, at best, but it's not at all implausible.

My question, though, would be why this wouldn't simply be the Zune Phone. (And it could be, since we're talking about wisps and fairies.) As the flashing ad for Need for Speed on the iPhone underneath César's story title reminds, Apple has done very well for itself by making a single do-all device. And if any group within Microsoft could do it, too, it'd be the Entertainment and Devices division.

Lisa Katayama

6 gadgets of the future from Doraemon

The Japanese are much more diverse than we usually get credit for, but if there's one thing that 99.9% of us do have in common, it is our love for Doraemon. The robotic cat from the future made its debut manga appearance in a magazine for fourth graders in January 1970. In the first installment, he appears out of the desk drawer belonging to a boy named Nobita and tells him that he will be strangled in 30 minutes and roasted in a fire in 40 minutes. Of course, it all comes true. Nobita then finds out that Doraemon has come to the present (i.e. the 70s), along with Nobita's future grandson, to help make his life &mdash destined to be full of misery, mishaps, and disaster &mdash just a little bit easier to handle. Doraemon's kind, endearing, and forward-thinking qualities led him to become Japan's first official Anime Ambassador to the world last March.

Manga artist duo Fujiko Fujio &mdash creator of Doraemon and many other manga classics from Japan &mdash also invented many of the greatest gadget prototypes known to man, some of which actually exist today. Here are a few from the first decade of the series (1970-1980):

1. Takecopter (January 1970)

The most frequently used gadget in the Doraemon series is a suctioned bamboo propeller that attaches to any part of the body and instantly scoops you up into the air. Navigable by shifting body weight or maybe just by thinking about where to go.

2. Voodoo Camera (October 1970)

Take a photo of someone, and this point-and-shoot will make a miniature voodoo doll of that person. This was a great episode &mdash not knowing its powers, Nobita takes photos of Doraemon taking a nap and of his parents, and then gives them to Shizuka-chan, who gives them to the little girl next door who is best friends with a girl who likes to torture dolls...

3. Effect-Amplifying Mic (June 1975)

Nobita gets praised by the teacher at school, but when he tries to tell his parents and friends about it, nobody seems to care. That's why Doraemon hands him the mic that makes everything spoken into it sound like the most moving speech ever made by humankind. This scene shows Nobita blushing from embarrassment when he accidentally farts into the mic after he forgot he left it in his back pocket.

READ THE REST

Lisa Katayama

USB flash drive looks like a panda and saves them, too

Want to do your part in saving pandas from extinction? When you buy the USB Panda flash drive on Amazon, 5% of the proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund's panda initiative.

[Amazon via Craziest Gadgets]

Joel Johnson

Advertisers, remember this about Hulu viewers

There's a piece in the Times about Hulu and some conflicting numbers. Nielsen, the same people who try to count the number of people watching television shows, also have a web metrics business. They estimated 9 million viewers a month; Comscore, a competing metric house, estimated 42 million. For an advertising-based business, that much variance in the numbers makes it really hard to sell ad campaigns.

Boring business talk, I know, but I brought it up to say this: I don't watch broadcast or cable television. I rent or buy DVDs, download video from torrent sites, buy from iTunes, or—most commonly these days—watch it online. I actually watch a ton of television, but most of it has been stripped of commercials entirely.

But every day I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, as well as 30 Rock and occasionally The Office. Every single day, usually over lunch. And during those shows I see two or three commercials.

What advertisers should remember is this: Whether your commercial will play 9 million times a month or 42, for a large percentage of users, Hulu is the only opportunity you'll have to reach us with a commercial at all.

Lisa Katayama

Will Hollywood's Astro Boy do the original '60s anime justice?

Astro Boy, the classic story of a friendly nuclear-powered robot boy created by legendary Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka, is being released as a 3D CG Hollywood film. It hits theaters in October, with voices by people like Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, and Kristen Bell. I'm excited to watch it, and I hope they don't screw it up like they did Speed Racer. The original Japanese intro sequence from the '60s is below.

Lisa Katayama

We're celebrating Asian Heritage Month

Today on BBG, we'll be featuring a bunch of posts to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Enjoy!

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld, Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol used the occasion of Eidos Montreal taking the reigns of the Thief franchise to take a deeper look back at the legacy of the game and the legacy of the people who made it, and the remarkably high bar set for Eidos to reach.

We also looked at upcoming games: a nine minute walkthrough of BioShock 2, the coming storm of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima's next game, a next-gen Breakout-meets-shooter for PS3, the tiny planets and big chaos of Max Blastronaut, as well as more Noby Noby Boy culinary treats, and Rag Doll Kung Fu's PS3 remake gone free for a week.

More artful things: what happens when you tear videogame code like modern artist Lucio Fontana slashed his canvases, 8-bit game iconography meets ancient Andean textile art, the sexiest Space Invaders psych-pop ever created, Metal Gear meets Mary Blair, and swimming in a low-bit pixel pool.

And other odds and ends: a new Space In-vader shirt, a shirt to make you a Sackboy, a glitch-pop chiptune afterparty, Fable and Mario 64 in paper, and Super Smash Bros. meets Team Fortress 2.

Joel Johnson

Music Video: Harmonic 313 "Battlestar"

Mark Simpson from Sixty40 writes to say:

We've just finished a clip for Harmonic 313 on Warp Records. It uses a really exciting mutation of stereoscopic camera work. It's inspired by flickering 2 frame animations of old 3D photos. The story is based on one of the greatest parasites ever, the horsehair worm. Oh, and the track is remixed for the clip and is totally banging.

Joel Johnson

Insulation and packing material made from rice hulls and fungus

Scientific American profiles the creators of "Greensulate", an organic insulation made from rice hulls, recycled paper, and fungus:

They incorporated three basic ingredients in a solution of water and hydrogen peroxide: mycelium mushroom roots; perlite, a glassy volcanic mineral used by farmers to aerate soil; and recycled paper. They poured the mixture into a seven-by-seven-inch (17.8 centimeters) plastic container and stuck it under a bed in their apartment (Greensulate must be kept in the dark while it is growing). The mycelium fed off the natural sugars in the recycled paper, causing it to grow, tightly bind the perlite, and take the shape of the plastic container. The perlite created small insulating air pockets within this new rigid, beige-colored panel, which they then baked at 110 degrees F (43.3 degrees C) to remove all water from the finished product and assure that mold and spores do not photosynthesize. Bayer and McIntyre also experimented by replacing perlite with rice hulls, which form similar air pockets. The rice hulls are roughly 10 times cheaper than perlite. Greensulate panel of any size can be grown in five to 14 days, Bayer says, and will last for the life of the building in which it is installed. Manufacturing space should come relatively cheap because all Bayer and McIntyre need is someplace big and dark. "It could be an old Kmart," McIntyre says, "or even an abandoned mine shaft."

Steven Leckart

A club chair fit for Johnny Blaze

I'm at the HD Expo in Las Vegas, where I'm wandering the conference halls trolling for strange gems like this flaming skull chair made by SIF Technology. The company creates its digital leather using a process whereby several layers, including a print adhesive, polymer, and polypropylene, are applied to the chair to create and protect a printed image.

Steven Leckart

Eureka 2.0: collaborative urban prospecting

Last week our pals at Gizmodo stumbled on an Instructables project for hacking a metal detector with a hydrocarbon sensor. The goal: use it to find oil you can extract and sell for $$$ OR locate underground toxins, so you can try to sue whoever put them there (win win, if you ask me).

When I spoke with project founder Col. Jon Cohrs a few days ago, he was racing to finish assembling another 5 detectors for the Futuresonic festival in Manchester. But why?

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

LEGO: Karf Oolhu's "Wump in the Woods"

I feel I can safely say this is the best use of LEGO chicken and battledroid heads ever. [via Brothers-Brick]

Joel Johnson

Video: Projekt P.I.W.O. 3, apartment building as light show

As captured by Engadget Polska, the latest performance of Projekt P.I.W.O., a hacker group that turns buildings into light shows. Not a new concept, of course, but P.I.W.O. is really good at it.

Joel Johnson

Cardboard Animal Trophies, for the big game hunter who prefers to mail-order

Cardboard Safari makes laser-cut cardboard animal head trophies suitable for wall-mounting, each available for $52 (plus shipping). They're made from recycled cardboard. I'd proudly display any one of them on my wall, but I'd only feel most ethically in the clear if I dressed and skinned my own boxes. [via Animal]

Joel Johnson

Siemens puts a coffee maker in the kitchen wall

As attractive as the Siemens TK76K572 coffee maker wall unit may be, I can't say I'd want to commit myself so fully to just one method of bean juicing. But in my mythical world of unlimited resources, it's undeniably swanky. [via Appliancist]

Joel Johnson

Tiny USB robot head screams when you lean too close to your monitor

While it may look like a friendly robot that would be taken in by Hume Cronen and Jessica Tandy, this little USB device is a "Posture Correcting Alert Device" that sends off a chime and a flashing LED when you get closer than you should be to the screen. That won't get annoying at all! (You can set the preferred distance, though.)

$22 will get you one from UXSight.com, although you'd be better off just not ever leaning forward in your chair. [via GadgetsAlerts]

Rob Beschizza

Oi, mate, deal on a Viliv

Dynamism.com is hosting a one-day sale on the Viliv S5 mobile internet device, with a 1.33GHz Atom CPU, XP and a 6-hour battery. The S5 has a 4.8" touchscreen haptic display, and the first 400 to order get a free case and extra battery. The price is $600, which is good if you get the extras.

Joel Johnson

Video: Howto composite photos over time, not space

David Carroll took a stab at replicating the "Time, Not Space" composite photography of Peter Funch (which Cory linked a while back.) And he was kind enough to make a short video showing the process. Looks simple enough, provided you have patience! Now I am dreaming of a room full of sleeping bulldogs.

Joel Johnson

How to discern a real UL Mark

For a press release, this brief from Underwriters Laboratories pretty interesting. (As was this image; the Mark used to look a little different!) I'm down with cheap counterfeits right up until the point they burst into flame:

How to Recognize a Genuine UL Mark

Whether a UL Mark comes in the form of a label or is die-stamped, silk-screened or molded into a product, it needs to contain the following 4 design elements to be verified as legitimate:

--The UL trademark: the letters "UL" arranged diagonally (descending left to right) within a circle, with a small ® symbol directly below the U

--The word "listed" printed either below or beside the circle in all capital letters: LISTED

--A 4-character alphanumeric control number, or a 4 to 6-digit issue number. In the case of the issue number, it may or may not be preceded by the phrase "Issue No." as well as 1 or 2 letters

--A product identity phrase that concisely names what the product is

Additional signs of a genuine UL Mark are:

--A UL file number (which will often have the letter "E" as a prefix)

--The manufacturer's company name or logo

--Applicable electrical ratings

--Information designating the product's Catalog, Model, or Type designation

Indication that a UL Mark is Counterfeit

When shopping, steer clear of products whose UL Marks are missing the four main elements outlined above. In addition, keep an eye out for the following red flags, which can also be telling signs of a bogus UL Mark:

--Products whose packaging makes reference to UL, but is free from a company name, trademark, trade name, or other UL-authorized designations

--Low-quality, cheaply manufactured products with the letters "UL" printed side by side, instead of diagonally and inside a circle

--The use of words like approved or pending in place of classified or listed. Neither "approved" nor "pending" are sanctioned or used by Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.

--"UL marked" product packages containing a large number of spelling and grammatical errors

--The lack of appropriate product documentation, including instructions for use, safety warnings, and information on proper care and maintenance

--Products whose packaging lacks a toll-free customer service number, company address, or other corporate contact information

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ LEGO Indiana Jones game – Amazon is clearing out the LEGO Indy game for Wii for $15. Anything over $25 is shipped free, as per usual. [Slickdeals]

⌦ Pocket Camcorder – The Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG9 camcorder is available for $180, shipped. I'm a big Xacti fan, but bear in mind this one doesn't shoot in 720p, but VGA.[Dealhack]

⌦ Dutch Oven – Lodge Logic 7-quart dutch over with iron cover for $37, shipped. I have a big Lodge cast iron I use for most of my cooking so I can safely ignore this, but it doesn't mean I don't want it. Buy your UPS man flowers, though. [Dealoco]

⌦ Pocket Camcorder – Refurbished Flip Video Mino (not HD) for $105, shipped, or about $50 off. [Dealnews]

⌦ Desk Forklight – As seen in the video above, a Desk Forklift ($17, shipped) is an essential part of the busy sysadmin's jerky organization system. [Dealnews]

⌦ PCI 802.11n Card – TRENDnet wireless draft N 802.11n PCI adapter for $20, shipped, about half off, easily. Reviews are mixed on Newegg, though, so check for OS + driver compatibility. [Dealnews]

⌦ Six Pounds of Pens – For $20, you can own around 318 pens. You can use them to write on your Kindle. [Dealnews]

⌦ Inflatable Bed – The always-classy (and always-handy) inflatable AeroBed is on sale at Costco for $30, about $20 off. I wouldn't want to use one of these every night, but these things are surprisingly comfortable. [Dealnews]

⌦ Woot-Off! – At Woot there has been a Woot-Off! going since last night.

Rob Beschizza

Hacker claims to have Steve Jobs' Amazon.com history

At Cult of Mac, Leander Kahney scores an exclusive: details of a hacker who claims to have phished Steve Jobs himself. Camillo Miller suggested a perfect title for Kahney's next book, and we're only too happy to dash off a cover for it.

Exclusive: Steve Jobs' Amazon.com Account Hacked, Hacker Claims [Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

Win a copy of demented RIAA comic "The Case of Internet Piracy"

The Case of Internet Piracy was the first of two comic books named Justice Case Files. Produced by the non-profit National Center for State Courts, its claimed purpose was to educate readers about the workings of the U.S. justice system. In the words of NCSC president Mary Campbell McQueen, it would "remind the public of the important role that courts play in a democratic society."

Given this remit, the story it relates is an odd one: Teen-aged Megan is charged as a criminal after downloading music off the Internet. A heartfelt display of contrition in the courtroom saves her from jail, and the story ends with her explaining to the reader how lucky she was to be caught, and why the recording industry's business model is the correct one.

Questions remain. Why would a guide to the court system portray such a vanishingly unlikely legal scenario? Casual file-sharers are offered expensive settlements to avoid civil lawsuits, not charged with theft by "cyber police."

Why would Megan explain RIAA dogma in front of smashed music instruments piled against a wall on which "DO NOT DOWNLOAD" is scrawled in human blood? As a former court reporter, I must admit to being unfamiliar with these legal procedures.

Thanks to reader Tom, you can read it here today and win a copy of your own! Yay! All you have to do is send in the most hilarious remix of any panel or page therein. (Suggestion: Chick Tract mashup) We'll publish the entries after a fair interval and announce a winner.

The comic follows after the jump.

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Ten beautiful computers

They ended their lives as museum pieces, aquariums, couches, and even at the bottom of the sea. But these are the ones that stay with us.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

We may or may not have refreshed BBG

So it looks considerably different, but in many ways this refresh is just setting the scene for a whole mess of upgrades we've been waiting to unveil. Not to say I'm unhappy with the new look, complete with our sterile new logo (thank you) and the retro-modern background by the talented (and annoyingly handsome) James White of SignalNoise.com that looks like something we'd have found on the cover of a science textbook in 2070.

It's not all just twerpy looks. The page should load much faster than before, thanks to endless hours slashing through Movable Type templates by our own Rob Beschizza. (Who really did 99% of the heavy lifting, bless him and keep him.) There's also less metadata cruft on the front page, although we make up for that with even more metadata on the permalink pages.

The "Stars as comments" thing might be irksome, and to be honest I could be persuaded that they're dumb—maybe. I like the way they look, for one. I like the implication that comments are a sort of positive vote, or at least an indication of activity. But I'm certainly open to discussion, provided you don't get upset when I decide to just stick with it.

We really are trying to build the site around providing more content to you with a minimum of hassle. Images and videos can now be even larger, while tiny reblogs posts, when we simply want to pass on a link or embed an MP3, can be done without taking up a whole lot of space. Scannable, but readable.

We may end up putting less posts up on the front door, however, because larger pictures mean larger pageloads—and we're already pushing it. If it were up to me, we'd just make it so we loaded more content when you scrolled to the bottom (and we may!), but there are issues with that, too. In the meantime, the headlines-only block at the bottom will continue to be fleshed out. It's been my dream for five years to try to figure out how to get people to click on to read Page 2 of a blog. It's one of the great mysteries of blogging.

Anyway, welcome back, and thank you very much for reading.

Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 3

Joel Johnson

Sling Media, Apple, and AT&T: A confederacy of douches

AT&T and Apple's arbitrary decision to forbid the streaming media iPhone app SlingPlayer to be allowed to operate over 3G, for fear of saturating AT&T's network, was—if I may adopt the tenor of a business analyst here—super douchey. Eliot Van Buskirk sums up the situation tidily.

But considering that Sling Media offered weak excuses about why its older models did not fully support the $30 application—did I mention it's a $30 iPhone application?—it doesn't sound like it's much of a loss. The planned obsolescence would be more forgivable if the iPhone app were free.

I actually understand AT&T's hesitancy to approve this use of their fragile 3G network, as horribly short-sighted as it may be, but the hoops they jump through to try to justify it are typically gymnastic:

"Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service," stated AT&T. "We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs."

However, this policy is obviously inconsistent. Owners of the Samsung Blackjack, Motorola Q, Blackberry, and other smartphones are able to stream Slingbox content over AT&T's 3G network. Only Sling's iPhone app is crippled in this way.

Steven Leckart

Goggles schmoggles

[via Make]

[via CreativePro]

[via Smartdogs]

[via Make]

[ditto Make]

Joel Johnson

Twitt jr

Alex Grant got this IBM PCjr to talk to Twitter, pulling down three recent posts with its 4.77MHz processor and displaying them on its sexy 16-color display. [via Hackaday]

Joel Johnson

Why Ford's side airbags can't be set off by an errant shopping cart

Ben Wojdyla:

Ford decided to start using pressure wave detection. In this method, the sensor is placed inside the door on the outer skin of the car, it monitors the ambient air pressure in the door cavity and sends a signal to the crash computer. The crash computer interprets the data every few miliseconds, confirming it with what the other sensors scattered around the car tell it. What's the advantage? Fidelity. The signal coming from the pressure sensor has a much higher resolution than an accelerometer, which means it can tell the difference between a car hitting your door and say a shopping cart loaded with 110 lbs, hitting the door at 10 MPH. But before it can do that, engineers have to calibrate it to be able to tell the difference. This is where the shopping cart test comes in.

Joel Johnson

I don't know why Vtech is making the IS9181 Wi-Fi Internet Radio

I'm a bit baffled by this one: Vtech, known best for their top-notch electronic toys for kids, have released the "IS9181 Wi-Fi Internet Radio", a desktop radio straight out of 2004 with a name that conjures all the joy and fun of an international standards committee.

It does what you'd expect—streaming radio, plays MP3 files shared over the network, pass through audio from aux in—but...huh. It doesn't look bad, just really behind the curve. There's not a single thing the $200 IS9181 can do that an iPod Touch in a dock can't do better.

I wouldn't have posted it at all except that I typically like Vtech's products, which only compounded my confusion. Vtech isn't typically at the cusp of innovation, I know, but it's one thing to make a bunch of cordless phones because they're still solid sellers and another to take a stab at a market that is already cooling.

Lisa Katayama

Wig Purifier uses ozone power to clean your hair piece

The Wig Purifier is an airtight tube that you can stick your wig in at the end of the day for automatic sterilization and deodorization. Apparently it uses ozone air to work its magic--ten minutes in the faux-suede Purifier will give you a fresh head. It's $367. Check out the cheesy promo video below. [Product page via Born Rich]

Joel Johnson

MSI X340 X-Thin laptop reviewed (Verdict: Merely okay)

The MSI X340 is a netbook in the body of a MacBook Air. Joanna Stern, a woman who has single-handedly made Laptop magazine the center of the netbook universe, passes judgement on a not-quite-production model:

For $899, the MSI X340 delivers on the promise of an affordable ultraportable as thin and light as the MacBook Air. However, while it provides better performance than netbooks, it doesn't provide the same build quality and graphics oomph. But that may not matter to those who like that the X340 costs half as much as the base model Air, and has more ports and much better battery life, to boot.

Joanna also mentions that the plastic chassis makes the X340 feel flimsy compared to the MacBook Air.

The X340 has a suggested price of $900—refurbished aluminum MacBook Air units can be bought from Apple for $1,000. Even if you aren't an unabashed OS X fan like me, that's a tough sell for MSI. (The X340 will go down in price pretty quickly, however, while the Air will not.)

Steven Leckart

Ergo ninja-toe sandals

The Dopie is a $30 split-toe sandal made by Terra Plana, a company best known for the Kevlar-soled Vivo Barefoot. Their motto says it all: "Naked shoes for naked people."

Lisa Katayama

Bra counts down to marriage, plays wedding march

Japanese lingerie company Triumph just announced their new "getting-ready-for-marriage" bra. It's a huge wedding dress-themed contraption with a ticking counter and a slot to put an engagement ring in. If you don't have marriage plans by the time the counter reaches zero, then you get to feel an immense amount of shame--and you're stuck with a stupid bra. It also has slits in the sides for a pen for when you need to sign marriage papers.

Triumph doesn't plan to ever actually sell this thing, which is probably a good thing.

Plasma sticking around for a while, says plasma HDTV makers

HD Guru asked the LG, Panasonic, and Samsung if they were phasing out plasma. Their answer? Not yet.

Joel Johnson

Mossad Pen has visible, then invisible, then visible ink

The "Mossad Pen" from Shomer-Tec ($28) writes with what appears to regular, visible ink. Hit your scribblings with a hair dryer, however, and they'll disappear. Pop the blank pages in the freezer and they're back! It's exactly the sort of high-tech invisible ink that I'm sure the Israeli intelligence cadets are using to pass messages around in class right now.

Can you believe we've done this site for nearly two years and we still don't have a "Spy" category? I think that says a lot about what gadgetry has become over the last couple of decades.

Joel Johnson

Photo: Amazon Kindling

This exists.

Joel Johnson

IF-Mode folding bike

Every once in a while you see product that just looks like it's going to be a hit: Areaware's IF Mode folding bike has that spice, especially when you see its folding mechanism demonstrated.

Unfortunately the things that makes it top shelf—the full-sized wheels, the hidden chain, the disc brakes—also make it expensive: $2,250. Hang tight, cheapskates; counterfeiters are standing by. [via Core77]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we played perhaps our new favorite dungeon exploring web-obsession, the cutely retro-modern Wayfarer, a rogue-like built entirely in Processing, and regurgitated rainbows (as above) at news that Toronto indie studio Capybara would be bringing their fantastic mobile puzzler Critter Crunch to the PlayStation 3 in full, hand-animated HD.

Looking forward, we saw new videos of retro-future rhythm-pong game Bit.Trip: Core, Konami's downloadable Contra revival for the Wii, and a one-man-team Community game for Xbox 360 that's nothing if it isn't a combination of NES underdogs Bionic Commando and Blaster Master.

Finally, we saw a Max/MSP hack that lets you control Super Mario Bros by voice, guitar and drums, watched geek culture cross all borders with a Romanian retro-game laden video, kickstarted a music project to recreate Miles Davis' Kind of Blue in chiptune style, and saw all 200+ 8-bit games never made for the Famicase exhibit in one interactive Flash piece.

And the 'one shot's for the day: the sad sight of a middle aged Mario, and modern C64 demoscene artist Mirage's pixel montage, 1 UP - 1 DEAD.

Joel Johnson

Morning tech deals highlights

⌦ Xbox Controller – Newegg is selling the regular black 360 wireless controller for $30. [Slickdeals]

⌦ Security Camera – The Q-See 4-channel color outdoor wired camera set feeds back to a 250GB DVR, perfect for your own Little Brother LARPing. It's $300, shipped. [Dealoco]

⌦ Netbook – Dell is selling its new Mini 10v for $292, shipped. Should be hackintorshable judging from the chipset. (We'll be updating our compatibility chart soon, honest injun.) [Dealnews]

⌦ Fake Rock Speaker – The Phoenix Gold 5.25-inch granite rock landscape speaker is yours for just $26, shipped—that's about $21 off. [Dealnews]

⌦ Monitor – Unbelievably, the Dell S2209W 1080p widescreen monitor (21.5-inch) has dropped again, down now to $150, shipped. That's $60 cheaper than the drop last week. Soon I will be able to realize my lifelong dream of sitting at a bank of enveloping monitors, each displaying status updates of chittering consoles and flashing Nagios grids. But since I have no machines to monitor anymore, they'll have to be monitoring your computers. [Dealnews]

⌦ Zune – Today's Woot is a 30GB Zune for $85. Buy it today and I'll throw in $30,000 worth of music for just $15 a month.

Joel Johnson

The spaced out covers of Advanced Materials

If the covers of Advanced Materials, a peer-reviewed science journal published every month by Wiley, were offered as a series of posters, I would not be made of strong enough stuff to resist.

Steven Leckart

Use LEDs to create a Pac-Man Roomba

"He promises better cleaning time."

Steven Leckart

Review: A few days w/the Mind Lamp [verdict: trippy!]

As I write, I'm staring at an LED vase that's pink, wait, red. No, violet. Def pale blue. Errr...yellow. Constructed from blown glass, the Mind Lamp is more than an attractive, color-changing accessory. It's a challenge. Known informally as "consciousness-related" tech, the lamp comes stocked with what's known as a quantum measurement device, or REG. Find out what that is, and my attempts to influence the color of the lamp with nothing but... my mind.

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Power on Selft Test: Jezigns

"They're called 'Bubble Clouds'...pretty sick."

I concur.

[available from Jezign]

Joel Johnson

Photo: NASA Snack Mobile

Countdown to a flavor liftoff.

Photo: Smailtronic

Steven Leckart

Stackable, reconfigurable LED block lamp

The TwistTogether lamp is comprised of four LED blocks that can be rearranged in a myriad of ways. Dwell called it the "Legos of the lighting world." Nuff said.

[$104 via Design Public]

Joel Johnson

Don't Panic visits Transmutant machine builders

James from Don't Panic writes:

We went to visit Transmutant last weekend - thought you might be interested. They're a ragtag bunch of punk engineers and Royal Aerospace runaways.

They weld together scrap to create new and wonderful machines. One of their latest, which they talk us through, is a Cessna training plane combined with a Jeep, and painted baby pink. Taken them 1000 hours so far, but it looks great.

Oh, and they made an operational 4-legged unsupported walker, capable of carrying a passenger.

Steven Leckart

His & Hers flashy, LED wedding gear

As if setting your first dance to an Aerosmith ballad wasn't magical enough. Nothing says "white wedding" more than 300 white LEDS. Unless you program your dress to literally say "white wedding" or whatever.

Why tell your in-laws you're made of money, when you can show them?

Of course, some grooms may prefer to go with something a bit more subtle.

[via enlighted]

Rob Beschizza

Amazing Jobs portrait built from Apple marketing slogans

Here's to the level-headed ones. The sociable. The orthodox. The builders of consensus.

Illustration: Dylan Roscover via Cult of Mac.

Lisa Katayama

3 questions for Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue LED

Red LEDs had been around since the 1920s, but sixty years later folks were still trying to figure out how to get the green and the blue necessary to complete the spectrum. Enter Shuji Nakamura, who was researching gallium nitride at a chemical manufacturing company in Tokyo. Shuji Nakamura discovered green and blue LEDs in 1993. Later, after joining UCSB's Materials Department, Nakamura sued Nichia for paying him a discovery bonus: of $200. He won the appeal and ultimately took home about $8 million -- the largest such bonus paid by a Japanese company to date. I was able to catch Nakamura for a few minutes on the phone while on business in Hong Kong. I only got to ask him a few things before he had to run off, but here's a short excerpt from our interview:

Q: What got you interested in LEDs?
A: I joined Nichia Corporation in 1979, at the age of 24. For 10 years, we just did red LEDs, but the biggest problem in the field was that there was no blue or green. To make anything, you need the three primary colors. Red was easier to make because gallium arsenide was readily available, but nobody had figured out how to make blue. There were two materials being researched at the time for blue. Everyone thought zinc selenide was better, and only maybe 6 out of 1000 researchers were looking at gallium nitride. It has lots of crystal defects, and many thought it would be too difficult at the time.

Q: How long did it take you to make the discovery?
A: I started researching gallium nitride in 1989, and discovered a way to make it work and marketable by 1993.

Q: Tell me about what suing your old company was like.
A: I quit Nichia in 2000 and moved to Santa Barbara to become a professor. I was supposed to sign an NDA, but I didn't. Once I got to the US, Nichia tried to sue me for infringing trade secrets. So in 2001, I filed a counter suit. The Japanese legal system is a mess. It's baffling once you know the truth about this stuff.

You can read more about him in the book Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology.

Rob Beschizza

Four Robots

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Lisa Katayama

LED toothbrush for looking deep inside your mouth

Can LED lighting really prevent cavities? This toothbrush by Toyo Living has a LED lightbulb in the center so that you can investigate the deepest crevices in your teeth while brushing and (allegedly) keeping your mouth germ-free. It comes with a proprietary toothpaste with translucent properties that let the light shine through it.

It goes on sale in mid-May, Japan only, for about $60. I kinda want one, but not for $60.

Press release via Impress Watch]

Steven Leckart

"I suggest you keep your ample derrier off my hood"

For $100, you can get one 15" LED strip designed by Auto Indulgence, the same team that created Kitt's grill lights for the re-boot.

Available in blue, green, white and purple. But why would you want anything other than Baywatch-swim-trunks red?

Warning: not all Kitt look-a-likes are friendly.
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Rob Beschizza

Finally Fast!

FinallyFast.com is unappetizing system cleaning software for Windows. What makes it special is the ubiquitous TV ads, which feature all sorts of silliness.

The current run has the Mac suffering a blue screen of death. You imagine it must be a little wink to geeks, saying "Yep. Yep. This isn't for you."

And here it is in British:

Steven Leckart

5 DIY wearable LED projects I'll probably never do

Back in 1927 when Oleg Vladimirovich Losev noted the fluorescence in silicone carbide and calculated its threshold current, it probably never occurred to him people would eventually find ways to incorporate said fluorescence into their wardrobes.

These LED Pants kinda remind me of Dynamo from Running Man.

[via Instructables]

More after the jump...

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Joel Johnson

Reviews you can use: "Why TomTom Sucks"

It's so nice when a product reviewer gives you a sweeping discouragement against an entire brand, like Wilson Rothman has done as he sticks a finger in GPS maker TomTom's eye, listing everything he's ever hated about their products—and still hates, because they've never fixed the issues.

No sarcastic here. Above the fields of myopic product reviews from thumbwrestling gadget hacks, these are the sort of statements that filter up to the consuming masses: TomTom sucks; just buy a Garmin. That's powerful mojo, as the phone call that Wilson is surely receiving from the TomTom PR stoolie right now will attest.

Joel Johnson

Why isn't Home Depot aping Ponoko?

Samuel Blanco made this desk himself from plywood (smartly the kind with holes in the bottom so he could loop his router and such underneath) for just $185. It won't win any awards for originality, but you can't beat the price.

It'd be nice, though, if there were a way for everyone to cut out big piece of wood like this. I just ordered a cut of wood from Ponoko last night for a car PC that I'm building. It'd be slick if Ponoko could work with machine and wood shops around the country to outsource bigger projects like Blanco's table. Or hell, it's a perfect opportunity for Home Depot or Lowes—upload your EPS file before you leave the house to go pick up your freshly cut pieces.

For someone like me who doesn't want to buy tools they're likely only to use a few times, a larger-scale manufacture-to-order service would be great. They could dip their toe in with services like cut-to-order wood for easy things like desks and shelves, then scale up to larger, more intricate projects with more materials if it makes sense. It'd let the hardware stores expand into a whole new marketplace, half-Ponoko, half-Ikea.

Rob Beschizza

Disturbing lack of gold plastic trim in pyramid-shaped computer

Now, a computer in the shape of a pyramid is a good idea. Though I always imagined something minimalist—simple brushed metal, or a bit like the old Cube G4 Macs—this sort of thing has always carried a high probability of photoshop lens flare.

Scimitar Computers does not disappoint. But where is the painting of an Eye of Horus? For $400, I want a mouse in the shape of a sphinx thrown in.

Pyramid-shaped Computer Case [Etsy via technabob]

Rob Beschizza

New Diesel watch is two-faced

Product Page [Watchismo via technabob]

Joel Johnson

Computer lock-up using the Monoprice Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter

Not a big deal, but throwing this out there for anyone else who may be experiencing it: About once every dozen times or so, plugging in the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter from Monoprice causes my unibody MacBook Pro to hard lock. I can only fix it by power cycling the laptop.

For $10 I'm not going to complain, especially when it may well be a problem with the computer—and no one else on the Monoprice customer reviews page seems to mention it—but if it has happened to you, take comfort: you are not alone.

Joel Johnson

JVC 8K projector: Until your monitor has 8,192 x 4,320 pixels...

There aren't much in the way of details—and this is pro gear, so it's wank material for the likes of most of us anyway—but JVC has launched two new video projectors, an 8K (8,192 x 4,320 pixel) and 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixel) models, as well as the pleasingly austere 4K camera seen above.

The camera's just a prototype, but there are plenty of other high-end digital camcorders that can shoot 4K these days, or at least the RED and surely some stuff from Sony, right? I just said I wasn't a professional. Back off! (See also: Dalsa, Basler, other companies that I could Google.)

So what do you think? I'm getting the inkling that we're only a couple of years away from 4K monitors becoming the hot new thing for desktop PCs, seasoned with a dash of resolution-independent operating system widget rendering.

Rob Beschizza

Microsoft thinks it costs $30k to fill an iPod

Who has ever thought, "I'm worried I will have to spend $30,000 to fill my iPod?"

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