August 2009
Steven Leckart
Computer Repair Flowchart
From Morris Rosenthal's Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts. Bonus: On his site, the charts are interactive, so clicking on a diamond jumps you to the text for each decision step.
After the jump, check out all the branches up close...
[via Tech DC]
Steven Leckart
Swarm Bots: Now W/Solar Power, Complex Behaviors!
I-SWARM robots are three-legged solar-powered droids which are less than 4 mm long, wide, tall. Two things to note:
1) I-SWARM stands for "intelligent small-world autonomous robots for micro-manipulation."
Physorg explains:
...a single microrobot by itself is a physically simple individual. But many robots communicating with each other using infrared sensors and interacting with their environment can form a group that is capable of establishing swarm intelligence to generate more complex behavior.
Like foraging...
2) it's now possible for them to be mass-manufactured.
Physorg explains:
The researchers, from institutes in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, explain that their building approach marks a new paradigm of robot development in microrobotics. The technique involves integrating an entire robot — with communication, locomotion, energy storage, and electronics — in different modules on a single circuit board. In the past, the single-chip robot concept has presented significant limitations in design and manufacturing. However, instead of using solder to mount electrical components on a printed circuit board as in the conventional method, the researchers use conductive adhesive to attach the components to a double-sided flexible printed circuit board using surface mount technology. The circuit board is then folded to create a three-dimensional robot...As this was the first test of this fabrication technique, the researchers noted that they encountered some fabrication problems. The single largest problem was to connect the naked integrated circuit to the flexible printed circuit board by the conductive adhesive. Also, some solar cells did not stick due to weak adhesion...
Many of these complications could likely be corrected, with the important result being that the microrobots can be assembled using a surface mounting machine, whereas prior robots have usually been manually assembled with a soldering iron...
In the future, the researchers hope to move from building academic prototypes to manufacturing the robot on a commercial basis, which is necessary for overcoming some of the technical issues. By mass-producing swarms of robots, the loss of some robotic units will be negligible in terms of cost, functionality, and time, yet still achieve a high level of performance. Currently, the researchers hope to find funding to reach these goals.
"Right now the robots need a new ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] and some other redesigns to be able to work properly," Edqvist said. "We have, however, (in a not yet published article) shown that the robot would have been able to walk at 3.0 V (the solar cell delivers 3.6 V), so with new funding, they could be up and running and be produced in large numbers."
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
[via BotJunkie]
Lisa Katayama
Review: A shower with the SimpleHuman bamboo adjustable caddy
I recently switched out my dinky plastic Target two-tiered caddy for this $50 bamboo adjustable shower caddy made by simplehuman. They're both the type that hang over the showerhead, so it didn't seem like it would be a huge change &mdash but it turns out that a quality shower caddy is one of those things that I didn't know I needed until I got one. Now I'm not sure how I showered without it for so many years.
The coolest aspect by far is the adjustable shelves &mdash there are two shelves that are already generous in length and width, but the most space-saving thing about them is that they move up and down, left and right to accommodate awkward-shaped bottles. I was able to move all of those stray shampoo and body scrub bottles from the corners of the tub onto the caddy, which makes the tub feel a whole lot bigger and cleaner. The caddy also has little indentations on both sides for razors to hang from, a small soap tray, and a suction cup for stability with a hook in its center for hanging loofahs and sponges from. The shelves are made of bamboo with a soft brown finish, which gives a nice nature-y touch to my otherwise all-white bathroom.
The only minor issue I have with it right now is that the suction cup isn't as strong as it could be, so it sometimes slips off and the caddy leans to one side. Considering how overloaded it is with shower shit, though, I don't think this is such a big deal.
Product page [simplehuman]
Steven Leckart
Apple iPod Announcement: Sept 9th
Apple's set to show off its latest iPod on September 9th @ 10am PST/1PM Eastern.
So what's up Jobs' sleeve?
[via Gizmodo]
Lisa Katayama
Birdhouses made from modded roof tiles
These birdhouses were made by combining reclaimed terracotta roof tiles cut by water-jet and laser with wooden boards etched with Victorian facades. Usually, roof tiles aren't recycled, but a team of artists led by Japan's Tomoko Azumi wanted to change that.
[via Designboom]
Steven Leckart, 9:28 AM Saturday
Solar keeps getting cheaper! Link
Steven Leckart
Full Moon Credenza Glows In The Dark
Designer Sotirios Papadopoulos developed "ELI" (Eco Light Inside) a material that glows in the dark and, previously, was used on this illuminating mirror.
Beats using a night light. Maybe.
[via Generate]
Lisa Katayama
Snow Leopard ate my data
I was really excited to install Snow Leopard on my MacBook. Yay for more hard drive space and better usability for only $30! Less than 10 minutes into the install process, though, I got an error message. Something about not being able to find my drive or not having enough space. And then the MacBook died. It refused to start up. I got a gray screen, and then it turned itself off. Gray screen, off. Gray screen, off. Three times. Starting in safe mode failed, and starting from the disk got me to a disk utility page where it tried to repair my disk and then told me to back up, reformat, and restore.
Luckily, I'd saved all my stuff on the Time Machine two days prior, so three hours later I am now able to write this blog post from my MacBook, where little has changed except for my wallpaper and a couple of notes I took on some Stickies yesterday. Maybe I did something wrong &mdash I should do my homework, read the instructions or the "things you should do before making the leap to Snow Leopard." But then again, I got a Mac so I could stop worrying about stuff like that.
I'm sure Snow Leopard is awesome once it's installed, but right now I'm not willing to invest the time into reading the precautions or to risk losing everything again.
Steven Leckart
BirkenCrocs!!!
Birkenstock's Birkies shoe was developed by fuseproject. Simple, slip-on clogs you can wear gardening, at the beach, or even while cooking, just like NY chef Mario Batali.
[via Bike Snob NYC]
Steven Leckart
Sony's Waterproof Universal Remotes
Sony is set to release a new line of waterproof remotes next month.
Bad news: Japan-only, at least for now.
Good news: You probably don't need a waterproof remote.
[via New Launches]
David Wertheimer
Review: Sennheiser's IE8 noise-isolating headphones
I spent much of the summer staring at the Sennheiser IE8s in anticipation. They're the second-most expensive headphones in my possession, at $449, and as the owner of two other pairs of Sennheisers, I wanted to savor the moment.
I spent considerable time just opening the package. The IE8's presentation is out of this world: several layers of foam surround the headphones and their brushed-metal, slide-open carrying case, which has dedicated spots for each earbud, a cord winder, four additional hooks for storing spare ear cushions, and a slot for the cleaning tool. The case has a pop-out compartment in back which, I learned, is used to hold one of those silica-gel packs to keep the headphones dry. The IE8s actually shipped with a silica gel pack in shrinkwrapped plastic that is meant for consumer use.
Lisa Katayama
Portable iPod speaker looks like a cute bag
Artist Yoshihiko Satoh designed this cute little iPod speaker, which looks and functions as a small tote bag. It's the modern, minimalist equivalent of carrying a boombox around.
[Product page via Spoon & Tamago]
Steven Leckart, 12:37 PM Thursday
Spotify has been approved for Apple's App Store Link (via @jennydeluxe)
Rob Beschizza, 11:38 AM Thursday
How Britain invented and lost the television industry: Link
Lisa Katayama
Why so many plane crashes in 2009?
It's been a pretty bad year for airplane accidents &mdash 36 and (hopefully not) counting, including a cargo plane crash in the Congo just yesterday that resulted in seven fatalities. Is it just a series of freak accidents or a glitch in the airplane industry? To find out, I interviewed R John Hansman, aeronautics professor at MIT and director of ICAT.
BBG: Is there a bigger reason for the onslaught of plane crashes in 2009 or is it just bad luck?
RJH: There have been times in the past where a series of accidents had exactly the same cause and there was a clear problem to fix. In the early 70s, we didn't understand the meteorology of windsheer, and sudden changes in wind direction were causing control problems. 15-20 years ago, the leading cause of fatal crashes was controlled flight into terrain &mdash that's when a pilot takes a perfectly good airplane and flies it into the ground. This was solved by enhanced ground proximity warning systems, which give the crew warning if they're about to fly a plane into the ground.
That's not the case here. It's been a bad year, but there don't seem to be any systematic problems. The accidents have all been quite different. Commercial aviation is incredibly safe &mdash only about one in every 10 million departures result in accidents in the developed world. It's possible, though, to have a cluster of rare events like this. This year looks bad, but the last couple of years have looked incredibly good. What you're seeing is an effect of statistics in small numbers.
BBG: Human error is involved in more than half of all airplane accidents. Why can't we fix this?
RJH: It's easy but not very useful to identify human failure as the cause of an accidents. More importantly, what caused the human to make the error? Was there a problem in the design of the aircraft, in the procedure, or in terms of fatigue of the crew? It's generally a fair assumption that pilots don't want to be put at risk. The rate of human error has gone down &mdash as a percentage base, it's still high, but that's because the number of overall accidents has declined significantly.
BBG: What about the Air France crash? Is that still a mystery?
RJH: Parts of it will always be a mystery. We have a pretty clear indication that what started the problem was icing on the air speed probes. It was known that the probes on this aircraft needed to be changed, but it wasn't seen to be that urgent. It may have been that the combination of the faulty probes and thunderstorm conditions may have been too hard to manage. The plane had also gone into a simpler flight control system, or alternate mode, which limits what the pilot can do to minimize the possibility of human error. We have a message from the airplane that they went into alternate mode, but we don't have the flight data recorder so we'll never know how that manifested.
*Statistics and image courtesy of Planecrashinfo.com
Steven Leckart
Shoe Cell Phone Holder: It's For Real?!
Only $19 from Amazon:
The perfect place for the fashion-plate to park her cell phone... Comes with built-in channel for recharging cable
Oh, and did I mention the manufacturer is called "Perfect Solutions"?
As if the company's ingenuity wasn't already evident by the hideous make that, ridiculous instantly-classic product you see before you.
Steven Leckart
Blockhead Stem: Cycling Do Or Don't?
The Blockhead Stem from cw&t costs $89, which seems pretty reasonable considering it's machined from 7075 aluminum.
Of course, you may be saying why on Earth would you want to put something so un-aerodynamic — with sharp edges — on the front of your bike.
Designer Che-Wei Wang explained to BBG:
The sharp edges are for aesthetic reasons. All the bike parts our there seem to focus on aerodynamics and weight, so we wanted to make something different. We [Wang and partner Taylor Levy] wanted to reveal the purest function of the stem, which is essentially a chunk of metal that has two holes in it. It's minimal and its fabrication is also simple. Starting with a solid block of aluminum the machine time required to mill the stem is low, cutting only what is needed to make it functional.
OK, maybe you're still not sold on the look. But certainly you can get behind their IP philosophy:
Blockhead Stem is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Take our design, modify it, make one for yourself. But please don't sell them because we need money to buy and eat dumplings. Give credit where it's due. We actually want you to go find your machinist buddy and see if he or she can make it for super cheap. We spent about a month searching for a quality machinist that can produce them on demand. If you find a better machinist please share.
Of course, this isn't full-on open source hardware because of the restrictions on selling modified versions of their design, but it's still close enough to make me smile.
Fake Steve on David Pogue's curiously effusive Snow Leopard review
Just to be clear: This is absolutely not because David Pogue makes most of his money by writing "missing manuals" and other Mac-related user guides. Like this one, and this one, both of them for ... wait for it ... Snow Leopard!
Snow Leopard reviews: Buggy, glitchy, and David Pogue loves it! [FSJ]
Rob Beschizza
Nokia N900 tablet runs Maemo, runs flash, likes money
Nokia's N900, a well-heeled angle on the shaky "mobile internet device" category, shall run Maemo 5, a cut of linux intended for heavy internet use. At 800 pixels wide, the display will better cellphones at showing web-pages, and high-end features abound: there's a 5 megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Flash compatibility, 32GB of storage, GPS and TV-out. Such a shame it isn't a cellphone! Update: It is a cellphone! Damn!
Furthermore, at 500 Euros, it'll have to justify itself as a "netbook replacement" for those not already fond of Nokia's past lineup of internet tablets.
Product Page [Nokia]
Rob Beschizza
Sharp's tiny NetWalker netbook echoes classic Zaurus
Sharp's netbook-cum-MID is something of a surprise--a shrunken laptop running an ARM CPU and Ubuntu linux, like the Zauruses of yore.
Featuring a 1024x600 pixel display, an 800MHz Freescale chip, 4GB of flash storage and 512MB of RAM, it won't challenge the latest from Asus and MSI on the performance front. But, like the perpetually sold-old Umid mBook, it has both a "real" qwerty keyboard and a pocket-friendly format.
The big claims, to my eye, are the 10 hour battery life and a 3-second boot time. If those are true, it'll be a real contender. Type on these tiny keyboards, though, is a chore: Sony's Vaio P is the smallest I've been comfortable with in the past.
Expect a price point around $500.
NetWalker, Sharp's Latest Ubuntu Netbook... Is the Zaurus back? - Hands-On !!! [Akihabara News via Lilliputing and Engadget]
Steven Leckart
Snakeguardz Are Also Bulletproof!
CrackShot's Snakeguardz are $70 gaiters made from tough, 1000-Denier nylon. They not only keep snakes from slithering up your pant legs, but prevent bites.
Cool stuff, but even cooler is the fact Ben Meadows says the gaiters are "strong enough to stop a 12-gauge shotgun blast at 20 yards."
I would hate to be the dude who tests these.*
*Yes, I realize no one actually wears them and gets in the line of fire.
Rob Beschizza, 6:22 AM Thursday
MS drops XBox 360 Elite price by $100. Now $300, same as PS3 Slim. Link
Rob Beschizza, 5:10 AM Thursday
The power of the pentatonic scale: Link #inspire
Steven Leckart
Snow Leopard Review Round-Up
Awesome, yawn-worthy, or a bit of both? The bottom lines are in...
Ed Baig at USA Today:
Snow Leopard isn't a must-have upgrade. There's not much new in the sizzle department. Many feature enrichments are modest, such as the ability to highlight text from a specific column in a PDF. The fine Safari 4 Web browser is also included, but you don't need Snow Leopard to get it. Apple does say the browser is faster and more crash resistant. (My iMac did crash once in my testing.)... Still, Snow Leopard should delight Mac fans...
Brian X. Chen at Wired.com:
This upgrade won't deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away (not that we would want it to), but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers. Stay tuned for Wired.com's full review of Snow Leopard as we continue to test it over the week.
Jim Dalrymple at CNET:
We think the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Mail, and iCal make Snow Leopard more than just a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price... Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.
Andy Ihnatko at Chicago Sun-Times:
...the price represents perhaps the most emphatic middle finger that Apple's ever extended towards Microsoft's general direction. In the past five years, Microsoft has done far less with Windows than Apple has done with the Mac OS.
Galen Gruman at InfoWorld:
When a new OS upgrade costs $29, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a service pack... an under-the-hood upgrade whose new capabilities won't be so obvious to users, and thus not worth the usual $129. I agree with that price assessment (if only Microsoft had made the same judgment about Windows 7), but I don't agree that what Snow Leopard offers resides merely under the hood. Instead, it provides many enhancements and some new features that Mac users of all persuasions will really like.
Randall C. Kennedy at PC World:
"Where's the beef?"
Brian Lam at Gizmodo:
Some fanboys will ask, incredulously, "This is a new operating system?!" Those people are missing the point. On deeper inspection, Snow Leopard's inconspicuous aspects--performance squeezed from underused CPU multicores/GPUs and basic UI tweaks--are found to be the kind of refinement generally reserved for virtuosity. These speed optimizations are deep, reminding me of when a master martial artist puts the entirety of his weight behind a strike (while a neophyte would flails his limbs like a henchman in a Bruce Lee movie). The little UI tweaks are no different than when a great sculptor's chisel works to remove everything non-essential during the final steps on a statue.
Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal:
Apple already had the best computer operating system in Leopard, and Snow Leopard makes it a little better. But it isn't a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn't a typical Apple lust-provoking product.
David Pogue at the New York Times:
Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor; following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7 gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents, is a first... That Snow Leopard's looks haven't changed at all, in other words, betrays the enormous changes under its pretty skin... Either way, the big story here isn't really Snow Leopard. It's the radical concept of a software update that's smaller, faster and better -- instead of bigger, slower and more bloated.
Jason Snell at Macworld:
Snow Leopard is Apple's lowest-priced OS update in eight years. Granted, it's a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately. But the price of upgrading is so low that I've really got to recommend it for all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users.
Peter Svensson at AP:
For most Mac users, Snow Leopard will likely be a no-brainer upgrade, given the low price. But early upgraders often face minor bugs and installation problems, so unless you're dying for one of the new features, waiting a month or so is a safer course... So how does Snow Leopard compare to Windows 7? Snow Leopard's benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff.
Joshua Topolsky at Engadget:
...the single inescapable fact that hung over our heads as we ran our tests and took our screenshots and made our graphs: it's $30. $30! If you're a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6... If you're still on Tiger, well, you'll have to decide whether or not you want to drop $130 on what's essentially a spit-shined Leopard, but if you do decide to spend the cash you'll find that the experience of using a Mac has changed dramatically for the better since you last upgraded.
photo by Tambako
Rob Beschizza
Write an iPhone disappointment Haiku in the comments, win a Mophie Juice Pack Air
You have an iPhone. You are dismayed by some attribute or experience associated with said iPhone. Accordingly, you will write a Haiku in the comments to this post expressing said dismay. You will as a result win a Mophie Juice Pack Air battery pack, an $80 value described by Joel Johnson as the first case that I've considered keeping on my iPhone for a long time.
Runner-up wins a Moleskine knockoff. Go!
Lisa Katayama
My Nike+ Sportband fell in the toilet
I was running with two friends on a trail by Baker Beach in San Francisco this morning when I decided to make a pit stop at a nearby parking lot. I was wearing the new Nike+ Sportband, which has proved itself to be a great tool when running with friends because I can track my mileage without lugging my Nano around. Then tragedy struck: I dropped the Sportband link &mdash the part that holds talks wirelessly to the shoe sensor, displays metrics, and transfers data to the computer via USB &mdash in the toilet.
Of course, I have myself to blame for it, mostly &mdash I was flinging my right arm across my left to shut the door, and accidentally knocked the Sportband link off its cradle on the armband and right into the bowl. But I had noticed in the last couple of months of running with it that the link did have a tendency to fall off the armband. It popped out several times in the past when stripping layers mid-run, and I had to lean over to pick it up and clip it back into place. This time, though, I made an executive decision not to fish the Sportband link out of the park toilet &mdash if I was at home, probably, but not in this dinky parking lot stall where there's no soap dispenser and no knowing what's been down in that deep dirty hole before this.
I explained what happened to a Nike.com customer service rep when I got home, and he said that if it's within 30 days of purchase he could replace it with a new one. That's nice!
Image by smi23le via Flickr
Rob Beschizza
Sumo chair available in bright green
Sumo, makers of gigantic shredded-foam furnishings, also makes one in bright lime green. Just thought you should know. [Sumo Lounge]
Steven Leckart
New Sport: Stand-Up Paddle Skiing
Stand-up paddle boarding, for those who don't know, involves balancing upright on a thick, buoyant surfboard while using a one-sided paddle to propel yourself through the water, and even catch waves. "SUP" has been around for years, but is getting more and more popular, as evident by Laird Hamilton's championing the sport over at Gizmodo.
Looking to push the sport even further, Jason Starr of Colchester, Vermont spent the last five years working and refining his design for stand-up paddle skiing, which is exactly as it sounds and looks in the pic above: riding atop two skis while using a double-sided, kayak-style paddle.
Jason's even patented the idea. And not just the apparatus and design for the skis, but even the "method" itself, including — wait for it — the use of a jet ski to tow into surf on the skis.
Should any adventurous surfer gets sued for attempting to hang 10 on skis it'll be a total bummer.
[via InventVermont via Post Surf]
Steven Leckart
HOWTO Build an Outdoor Pizza Oven
Remember when I modded my conventional kitchen oven with $13.50 worth of ceramic firebricks? In that post, I linked to a variety of outdoor ovens that seemed intriguing, like the Peruvian igloo.
Well, Serious Eats's Slice blog reports on Mark Wilkie, a Brooklynite who spent two months constructing a Pompeii brick oven in his backyard based on plans from Forno Bravo. Mark's posted some great photos documenting the process, including a few fun time-lapses:
If you've got the space, seems well worth the effort.
images by Mark Wilkie
[via Kottke]
Steven Leckart
TMBG: "Electric Car, The New Machine"
They Might Be Giants' new kid's album "Here Comes Science" features this catchy, pro-EV ditty.
I'm not a parent, but I'll admit I'm digging this...
Rob Beschizza
Big Time Capsule gets big writeup
Wired's Robert Capps reviews the latest Time Capsule. Pros: secure network partitioning, great router, and a red velvet backdrop sourced exclusively from bordellos in Cupertino. But it costs a lot. [Gadget Lab]
No, you don't need a new one
I love Anil Dash's website, "Last Year's Model," which reminds us that the best gadgets are most likely the ones we already have.
Rob Beschizza
Laptop sleeve disguised as a newspaper
Protect your laptop from thieves' attention by wrapping it in a foreign language newspaper. Or, perhaps, a bag designed to resemble a foreign-language newspaper. There are 5 mastheads to choose from. Unlike the Saddleback, this looks like one you'll need to see in real life.
Product Page [Mitemite via Technabob]
Rob Beschizza
A $3,000 steampunk thumbdrive
If this had been made in 1886, three grand might be a convincing price tag.
This drive was featured on Geeky-Gadgets.com with the remark " I am still unsure why it is being sold for $3,000, unless it was a typo and it should be $300." Nope, it's not a typo, $3,000 is simply what it would take to pry the drive out of my hands and take it from my world into yours.
As it happens, many of artist Will Rockwell's similar designs are much more affordable. Check out the Spirit Harvester!
Rob Beschizza
Apple Store fixes problem with man's image files
A man walked into the Apple store to report that something was wrong with his image collection. This was true enough.
Raymond Miller, of ... Fairfield, told Apple store clerks the computer had a problem with image files, court records show. After a technician began looking through the computer, images of naked 10- to 13-year-old girls in suggestive and explicit poses were found, according to court documents.
You'd think that someone taking a computer for servicing would think to remove the cache of illegal smut before doing so. [The Advocate via The Consumerist]
Photo: The Advocate
Rob Beschizza
S-series walkman out
Sony's S-Series Walkman is available at its online store. At $109 and up, it comes with some cool features: a big exterior speaker, FM radio with a recorder, and voice memos. Comes in black, pink, red and lavender. [Sony Style]
Rob Beschizza
A perfect leather case for big laptops
Perfectly-sized for 17" laptops (there's also a 15" cut), Saddleback's $245 bag is made of waterproof, oil-tanned full grain boot leather, padded with neoprene, and comes with a 100 year warranty. There are no breakable parts, either, such as snaps or zippers. The shoulder strap is removable, too, for use as a briefcase.
The outstanding quality here shines off the page (screen?), even without a close look. And there are so many variations: backpacks, messenger bags, pouches. There's even the lasts-forever suitcase I always wanted, but am too cheap to buy. That said, I can already sense that my better half is going to be complaining soon about this site.
One problem: needs a 13" edition!
Update: Reader Icey writes: "It's honestly the best bag I've ever owned. I buy laptops based on whether or not they'll fit in the bag."
Laptop Case Chestnut with pouch [Saddleback]
Rob Beschizza
How to shoot macro with a cellphone
This marvelous macro shot was taken, believe it or not, with a cellphone. To do likewise, you'll need the lens from an old DVD player and a piece of card. [Flickr via DIY Photography via MAKE and Gizmodo]
$400 Hackintosh netbook reviewed. It's good!
Gizmodo's Mark Wilson laments that by reviewing Macwind's preconfigured MSI netbook, he may have doomed it.
David Wertheimer
Review: Shure's SE530 headphones and faith restored
Let me start this review with the conclusion: Shure's SE530s are solid high-end performers that will satisfy anyone who likes clear acoustics and strong highs and lows.
Whew! I feel better. I've been riddled with guilt since posting my disappointment in Shure's SE310s. The SE530 is the most expensive model in my roster and, at $549, I was pretty much expecting greatness.
Lisa Katayama
Frankie Flood's pizza cutter designs
I love these custom pizza cutters designed by Frankie Flood. He has over half a dozen different designs, each with a different theme. This one is called the Gold Knuckle.
Lisa Katayama
Rigged glasses let ALS patients write with their eyes
A new device created by a team of graffiti artists and friends enables those who have lost their motor skills to draw with their eyes. The project was inspired by LA graffiti writer Tony Quan's 2003 diagnosis of ALS &mdash Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis &mdash since he still has full control of his mind and his eyes, this enables him to write graffiti from his hospital bed.
Here's a video of Quan aka. Temptone writing with his eyes:
Lisa Katayama
1932 banana-ice cream injector patent
Someone named P. Marchio filed this patent for a "banana extractor and ice cream injector" in 1932. What a wonderful idea! Unfortunately, there's no evidence that this was ever actually made, nor is there any sign that a banana with ice cream in it will ever replace the classic banana split.
[via Gizmodo]
Rob Beschizza
Want indigestion? There's an app for that
Thank God. Check out Chipotle Mexican Grill: The WebApp.
Rob Beschizza
Sony assaults Kindle with new touchscreen 3G reader
Sony's recently-announced new lineup of Readers was launched this morning in New York. The top item: a "Daily Edition," offering similar 3G wireless capabilities to the Kindle alongside a 7-inch touchscreen display. It'll be out in December, for $400--cheaper than Amazon's own large-format model, the DX.
Two other models will also hit 8,500 stores nationwide in the coming weeks: a basic $200 pocket-sized reader, and a $300 touchscreen edition that lacks the built-in wireless connection and giant display of the flagship model.
A touchscreen, useful for scribbling notes or turning "pages" by hand, isn't offered on the latest Kindles. Moreover, Sony plans to differentiate itself by embracing open formats, in contrast to Amazon's aggressive and much-criticized DRM scheme. Sony earlier responded to Amazon's missteps by cuddling up with Project Gutenberg, the online repository of public domain texts. An always-on internet connection to Sony's online library gives these moves sharper teeth.
The new models will be fully compatible with Apple's OSX as well as Windows, unlike previous editions that offered only basic file transfers on the Mac unless customers got additional third-party software.
It also announced a social networking site for readers, WordsMoveMe; a partnership with the New York Public Library; and a range of pointless accessories.
Sony has achieved something remarkable: it's delivered exactly what was wanted of it, in timely fashion, at a competitive price, without losing its way on the design front. This Christmas is going to be a good one for electronic Reader gadgets.
Rob Beschizza
Jobs micromanaging Tablet marketing
The WSJ has noticed that Steve Jobs concerns himself with "even the smallest details" of new Apple products. This latest retread is flavored with tablets.
Rob Beschizza
Robocop on a unicorn
Source, not quite via Ffff. This is of course one representative of a glorious genre, masterminded by artist Olav Rokne.
Rob Beschizza
MSI X600 comes to America
MSI's X600 ultraportable notebook, at 5.5 pounds, weighs in heavy given its name. That said, at less than an inch thick at its thickest point, and just $900, it's thin and not unreasonably expensive. The bonuses are neat, too: a free external optical drive, discrete ATI HD 4330 graphics card and 4GB of RAM. The 6-cell should keep it awake a while.
Product Page [Amazon]
Steven Leckart
Great Byte Hope: Visualizing Gordon Bell's Bits
I interviewed Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell for Wired's September issue. We chatted for several hours about his new book Total Recall and his project to capture and catalog much of his life in digital form.
From my story:
Since 2001, Bell has been compulsively scanning, capturing, and logging each and every bit of personal data he generates in his daily life. This trove includesWeb sites he's visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). To collect all this information, he uses a staggering assortment of hardware: desktop scanner, digicam, heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone, e-reader...Even cooler, Wired hired illustrator Nicholas Felton to create the above graphic, which visualizes all of Bell's bits. Feltron, as he's called, is known for quantifying his own life into awesome-looking "annual reports."
After the disappearance and presumed death of a friend, computer scientist Jim Gray, Bell combed through thousands of files to find forgotten photos and stories he was then able to arrange into a powerful slide show for Gray's memorial.
Bell's data dump is more than just a glorified photo album. By using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, he argues, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its).
Lisa Katayama
Exos arm brace is waterproof, radiolucent, easy to remove, and looks cool
The Exos arm brace is a new waterproof, radiolucent fracture brace that comes in some really cool colors and is adjustable by Boa lacing. All this basically means that you can now swim, shower, and get x-rays without having to remove the brace &mdash and when you do need to take it off, you just have to release the dial to loosen. Comes in sizes small, medium, and large. Neat!
Product page [Exos Medical]
Rob Beschizza, 10:49 AM Monday
Is OSX 10.2's boom-chakka-wakka jaguar print box *really* more tasteful than a picture of a cat? Link
Rob Beschizza, 10:45 AM Monday
Report: Shuttle to make notebooks: Link
Rob Beschizza
Nokia netbook brings its "A" game
Nokia arrives at the netbook party just as things are starting to wind down. But what a nice bottle it brought: 3G, GPS, Windows 7, HDMI, and a claimed 12 hours of battery life--not to mention an aluminum body.
How much, Nokes?
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: meet the Metroid makers, the average gamer makeup, crawling DS dungeons
With Nintendo's Metroid Prime Trilogy -- all three Metroid Prime games collected on a single disc and updated with Wii controls -- just released this week, we spent the day with Austin-native developer Retro Studios to learn how the classic franchise fell into their laps, the process of re-interpreting it in first person, and how to read Nintendo's haiku-like approach to game development.
Elsewhere on Offworld, we took an extended look at two of the best games released in recent weeks: the similarly classically Metroid-esque Xbox Live Arcade game Shadow Complex, and the fantastic downsizing of the Rock Band experience with Harmonix and Backbone's PSP game Rock Band: Unplugged.
Finally, we took a straw poll to determine whether the average gamer really is 35, overweight and depressed, and then investigated whether Bejeweled could fight that depression, saw the bloodbath that is Diablo III's new monk class, and took a trip into The Dark Spire -- a ten-dollar DS dungeon-crawler that you might have missed.
Steven Leckart
What's This Guy Driving?
The Tri-Magnum is a fuel-efficient, reverse trike built from a motorcycle, usually a Kawasaki KZ900 or Honda Gold Wing. As evident by the design lines (not to mention the driver's 'stache), this three-wheeler was developed decades ago. However, you can still buy inventor Robert Q. Riley's $95 guide on how to build your own Tri-Magnum for $3,500, not counting the motorcycle.
Since the early 1980s, Riley's refined his reverse trike design quite a bit. The XR3 plug-in hybrid is essentially a re-tooled version of the Tri-Magnum.
After the jump, check out more photos of each vehicle...
David Wertheimer
Review: a week with the Etymotic ER-4 microPro
We've reached the point where I can dwell on positives: the last three headphones in the queue--from Shure, Sennheiser and Etymotic--represent the best headphone technology in the industry.
These are the flagship products of their companies, and it shows. Pick up any of these headphones and you'll find amazing tonal separation, unerring clarity, faithful sound reproduction and a superlative listening experience.
Steven Leckart
Power On Self Test: Dead Format Device
[via walking on glass via fiction romance]
- Polaroid files for Chapter 11 - Boing Boing
- Last Polaroid film kits head to Urban Outfitters
- The Impossible Project: Firing up an old Polaroid instant film ...
- Polaroid to take another crack at the instant camera - Boing Boing ...
- Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer reviewed (Verdict: Shabby ...
- Polaroid cartridge as iPhone stand - Boing Boing Gadgets
Rob Beschizza
Kevin Van Aelst's strange gadget art
Illustrating a recent NYT piece about dads and technology is a clever photo-composite that echoes Magritte. His portfolio site has many similar works. My favorite is this iPod with rabbit ears!
Rob Beschizza
Cowhide iPhone case
This most unusual slipcase for iPhones and iPod touches is made from premium cowhide. Each one is unique,but all are $30. [Southern Brand via CrunchGear]
Rob Beschizza
Cigarette lighter in the shape of a cigarette
As is readily apparent, DealExtreme's $1.50 butane lighter is designed to resemble a cigarette.
Rob Beschizza
PNY offers lifetime warranty on graphics cards
PC peripheral maker PNY is offering a lifetime replacement warranty on its high-end video cards, and promises no guff:
The lifetime warranty kicks in once the original purchaser registers on PNY.com. When we say lifetime, we mean just that. So in 2015, when your GTX 260 has a defective part, then we'll replace it for the current comparable graphics card. ... the replacement would definitely be for a comparable model, and I'm certain by 2015 it will actually be an even better graphics card.
A layman's reading of the terms is enough to ascertain that you should not overclock or otherwise modify the card ("altered in any way that affects its performance"). You also pay for shipping and need the receipt.
The deal is good for the pricey GTX 295 1792MB, GTX 285 1GB, and GTX 275/GTX 260 896MB models. [PNY]
Lisa Katayama, 6:38 PM Sunday
Tiny video camera disguised as a button. Link
Rob Beschizza, 5:47 PM Sunday
The inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism detailed in video: Link #inspire
Rob Beschizza, 5:19 PM Sunday
Joel Johnson reviews the Canon WP-V1 underwater camcorder housing at Gizmodo: Link
Christian social networkers' accounts hacked
Remember how some schools have told students to give them their social networking passwords? Here's why that sort of thing is a bad idea: one college got hacked, the list stolen, and the students' accounts ravished with obscene uploads and status updates.
Brandon West, 11:57 AM Sunday
Sportpong is a life-sized, arcade pong game played using motion tracking Link (via notcot)
Brandon West, 12:14 PM Saturday
Stuck In Desert, Crazy Frenchman Builds Motorcycle Out Of Busted Citroën 2CV Link
Rob Beschizza, 12:00 PM Saturday
Techcrunch reports that Apple is simply lying through its teeth in its reply to the FCC: Link
Rob Beschizza, 11:54 AM Saturday
Apple made a better telephone, but it's been blindsided by Google on the bigger issue of a better telephone system.
Lisa Katayama
New Justin Timberlake fragrance looks like an MP3 player
Justin Timberlake's new men's fragrance for Givenchy is called Play, and the bottle looks like an MP3 player. The design, according to the web site, is inspired by "mobile multimedia gadgets, those quintessential objects of modernity and style that have become both everyday objects and icons of our era."
Steven Leckart
Hands On w/HTC's myTouch
I dropped by Wired to talk about HTC's latest Android phone.
Rob Beschizza
About 10 apps an hour processed at AppStore by each review pair
Apple's reply to the FCC's questions are in. These things go out on Friday afternoon for a reason. Some straight answers, some not so straight at all. But one can hardly blame Apple for its cagy replies. What is this sort of regulatorial inquisition if not "Answer these questions to give us rope to hang you?" [Apple]
The AppStore tidbits are interesting. There are about 40 appstore reviewers, with two checking each app. As there are 8,500 submissions a week, each "pair" will review 425 apps a week. Assuming for expediency's sake a 42.5 hour working week, that means each reviewer checks out 10 apps an hour. (Update: Gruber doubles the number, presumably interpreting review pairs simply as brief quality control checks by the second person)
And, according to the reply, 80% are approved (though clearly many of the remainder are resubmitted and ultimately accepted.)
Adds Joel Johnson: "Cut and paste rejection: explained."
Rob Beschizza
$25 Incubator
Xeni spots an incubator that will save the lives of prematurely-born infants in the developing world. It costs $25: "They realized they didn't need to design a cheaper incubator. They just needed a way to keep babies warm."
Rob Beschizza
Mind the Gap: A compendium of disturbing British public information films
What cinematic horrors compare to the schadenfreude of a British public service announcement? When it comes to illustrating our poor judgment and feeble bodies, knifecrime island has no peer. Imperious accents, marbled with black humor, dwell on the dangers that lurk everywhere. Foolish teens scream along to diskfuls of bone-crunching sound effects; tentacles assault the female ones with crude metaphors, and they never, ever forget. Life is an orgy of risk: escape it while you can!
Warning: disturbing British PSAs are disturbing.
Lisa Katayama
Review: My two favorite sport headphones for running
I've been running a lot lately, mostly because I committed myself to running a half-marathon after a BBG story I wrote four months ago. On shorter runs, I listen to music or nothing at all. On longer solo runs, I listen to podcasts, usually This American Life or Studio360, because they're long and very engaging. I've tried several kinds of headphones made specifically for sport use or otherwise designed to withstand sport conditions, and have found that the Philips-Nike Sport Flow headphones and the Sennheiser MX 85 are my favorites.
Let me start by saying that headphones, in general, can be really annoying while you're running. The cord gets tangled with my arms or flaps around in front of your face, the earbuds fall out, and in strong wind conditions they tend to make a swoosh-swoosh noise in my ear canal that often results in me flinging the headphones away, only to pick them up and hold them in one hand the whole time to avoid tripping over them.
The Sport Flow headphones are a collaborative product that Philips and Nike made to be as unnoticeable as possible &mdash and it works. The rubberized earhooks are super lightweight and they allow the earbuds to sit in place by my ear holes without feeling overly invasive. They're white, so it goes with any outfit. And perhaps most importantly, they come with a little white cable managing disc for winding unused lengths of cord around that clips onto a shirt sleeve or collar so the cord doesn't get in the way. The Sport Flows are $25 on Amazon.
Sennheiser's MX 85 sport earphones have a different design &mdash they have what the company calls a twist-to-fit system, which basically means that the earbuds wedge into a secure spot between the top and middle of the outside of the ear to prevent too much movement. The two things I like the most about the MX 85s are the color combination &mdash gray and orange! &mdash and the sound quality. Songs were much crisper but not as loud compared to the Sport Flows, and I was able to hear my music slightly better in windy conditions with these. The MX 85s have a longer right earbud cable than the left so that it's easier to sling behind the neck while running. However, the clip that comes with it is shoddy and kept falling off while I ran along Krissy Field. These are listed as $70 on Sennheiser's web site.
Rob Beschizza
How to repair a typewriter
There's something gorgeous about Andrew Leman's typewriter repair kit, with its compartments, metal trays and myriad of strange tools. [Make]
Rob Beschizza
Sony's WX1 shoots great in low-light
The New York Times' David Pogue reports that Sony's DSC-WX1 is the best bet if you want a point-and-shoot camera that shoots well in darkness.
Sony says that in its new Exmor R sensor, the circuitry layer has been moved to the bottom, so that less light is lost en route through the stack. Does any of this make any difference? It sure does. ... It's truly amazing; there hasn't been an advance in small cameras this important since image stabilization came along.
Of course, you still have to use Memory Sticks. DPReview has more analysis.
Photo: DigitalCamera.jp
The Herring-lights of old London
In Victorian London, two scientist-entrepreneurs set out to use the bioluminescence of dead fish to light the streets. [BLBGBLOG]
Rob Beschizza
RGB Vases
Oscar Diaz's RGB Vases look much nicer nested together than apart.
Each vase is made using the values of red, green and blue that make up the specific purple color (P242). When the three vases are nested, the light passes through, and mixes the three colors so that the purple becomes evident.A computer is used to calculate the exact amount of color that each vase must have in order to achieve the desired color.
RGB Vases [Design Milk]
Rob Beschizza
Circuit City played creepy teambuilding propaganda to self on deathbed
Near the end, electronics retailer Circuit City produced a series of shiny, happy video dreams for its employees to watch.
Fantasy: presenting Circuit City as a corporate self-actualization cult ("We're going to take Circuit City and make that brand very cool and very emotionally contained") will make a difference.
Reality: Circuit City replaced its skilled workers with kids on minimum wage, then shriveled like a plastic bag in an oven.
Circuit City Sure Had A Lot Of Optimism Near The End [Consumerist]
Rob Beschizza
LG Wristphone on Stephen Fry's wrist
The very concept makes it somehow better. [@stephenfry]
Rob Beschizza
First-gen iPod now available at Apple Store
Get your 5GB iPod for MAC today! [Apple Store via TUAW]
Photo: Jennie Woo
Rob Beschizza
Analyst predicts Apple TV will become a television set
Can you guess which one? [Fortune Brains]
Analysts research and write for paying clients in a similar way to how reporters research and write for the general public. But whereas reporters tell stories about things that have already happened, analysts sell stories about the future.
Their clients gamble that analysts know more. And sometimes, they do. As often as not, however, analyst clients end up paying someone with few real contacts to tell them the same thing that bloggers with few real contacts have already told the whole world, for the lulz.
By way of illustration, the pic above was made by some random twit about a year ago.
Rob Beschizza
Plantronics brings chrome, pleather to upscale BT headsets
Plantronics' fashionable BlueTooth headset joins the Jawbone and BlueAnt in trying to shed the category's "Junior Vice President of Douche" associations. Unlike the other two, however, which went for a techno look, the Discovery 975 has a leathery pad with chrome.
It'll be $130 at Amazon and Best Buy.
Product Page [Plantronics]
Rob Beschizza
The All-New Mockbook Pro
I love this ad for Rob Zombie's Halloween reboot sequel. (refresh if it's already played to the end) Other targets include annoying insurance and dating ads.
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: Valve talks Left 4 Dead, Metroid goes metal, Elvis goes techno on DS
Could the Left 4 Dead and Half-Life universes ever converge into one uber-Valve-geography? In Jim Rossignol's latest Ragdoll Metaphysics column, Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek has said the idea's at least been internally bandied about, as part of a wide, wide ranging interview that also covers the mixed messages and missed opportunities that spawned the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, and why AI constructs make him depressed.
Elsewhere on Offworld we saw even more newly announced games coming out of the ongoing GamesCom conference: Lionhead returning with Fable III, top-down zombie shooter Dead Nation, which will apparently have individual countries competing to fully eliminate the undead virus, more of Sony's PSP cult cute platformer Loco Roco, and Hudson's The Tower of Shadow, in which you play as the shadow.
We also saw a fantastically unlikely official new contest to create the best Elvis techno cover/remix on your DS, listened to Metroid metal cover album Varia Suite, played the latest NES demoscene ROM, and saw both Alice's Adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom, and Spider creators Tiger Style showing us tomorrow's game development studio, today.
Steven Leckart
Review: Chrome Warsaw [Verdict: GINORMOUS]
Chrome's Warsaw bag is made from 1000-denier Cordura, lined with a weather-resistant PVC liner and features a super-padded back panel, making it one of the toughest and most comfortable packs I've slung on my back. Also, the most enormous non-touring backpack I've ever traveled with.
When opened up and fully-loaded, the Warsaw is an awe-some 5400 cu. in. The inside pockets, smaller compartments for clothes, laptop, etc., and the comfy straps/backing are helpful, sure. But really, the big sell here is the massive main compartment.
I once carried a 16-quart cooler in the Warsaw for a picnic at the park. All this week, I've been loading up the bag with product boxes to drop off at the Post Office and Wired. It's fair to say I've pushed it fairly close to the limits...
...and yet, riding with that sucker on my back never got uncomfortable.
I've also flown with the Warsaw to Portland, OR, Denver, CO, and Los Angeles, CA on two different airlines and had zero trouble carrying it on. Best of all, it crammed into the overhead compartments without much elbow grease.
I realize messenger bags are "hipper." People complain that backpacks make you sweatier. This HUGE backpack has the tendency to make me look tiny.
1) Hip is showing up to the picnic with cold beer, in a cooler, you pulled out of your backpack, Mary Poppins-style.
2) Yes, you get sweatier. Still, I prefer the weight distribution of a backpack when cycling. Messengers have the tendency to pull on one shoulder or slide around.
3) As big as the bag is, it's not nearly as ludicrous as this TITAN.
Steven Leckart
Kodak Can't Decide What To Call Its Next Camera
When The Boston Globe reviewed Kodak's latest pocket handicam, the pub dissed the product's "dreadful" nomenclature. Surely, writer Hiawatha Bray wondered, Kodak can come up with something better than "Zi8."*
Nope!
Which is why they want YOU to name their next video camera.** From now until this coming Monday August 24, you can submit product names on Kodak's corporate blog OR via Twitter &mdash just @ reply Kodak CMO JeffreyHayzlett and hash tag your suggestion with #NameAKodak.
Winner gets a trip to CES 2010 to see the unveiling of the new camera***. 100 runner-ups get a free Kodak Zi8.
Thus far, I can't say the crowd-branding has delivered too many plausible or palatable names. Many of the straightforward entries sound gimmicky ("MILI. You'll sell a mili-on"), familiar ("Zen"), or too hodgepodge-y ("Camvantix"). My favorite non-serious entry is "The Zod," which was posted by a guy named Fabien. Kudos to you, Fabien.
Here's a few quick suggestions of my own:
*The Kodak ZiRule (cause its predecessor does, in fact, rule)
*The Kodak Zzzz (ironic!)
*The Kodak HDude (Jeff Bridges endorses, in character)
*The Kodak J-Allison (lampoon-y!)
*The Kodak Raul (non-sequitur-ial!)
Got any legit and/or hilarious suggestions?
*For the record, I agree the name isn't terrific, but it's certainly not as bad as TrekStor's iBeat blaxx MP3 player from a couple years back.
**As everyone knows, tapping the wisdom of the crowd is the latest and greatest go-to ad/market/content gimmick... or at least it was back in 2006 when Wired dubbed crowdsourcing the "future of corporate R&D."
***The cam pictured above is the Zi8. Kodak hasn't released any photos or details about the new cam. But, I'm guessing it won't look too dissimilar from the Zi8. I've love to be proven wrong! ;)
Rob Beschizza
Behold! The most hideous cellphone in the universe
Jintailan's 999 is pitched as an iPhone mini with a dedicated flower pattern and gravity sensor. Sold by eemobi for $120, you get a 2.6" display with 240x320 pixels, MP3 ringtones, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a gig of storage and "7 common games." Compatibility with local GSM bands is your deal to work out.
No, you do not get a free teddy bear.
Rob Beschizza
Last Polaroid film kits head to Urban Outfitters
20th century institutions die not with a bang, but as fashion accessories for hip kids. [Dazed Digital]
Rob Beschizza
Dead head
Ivan Mavrovic's creepy computer mouse give me the chills. [Steampunk Workshop]
Rob Beschizza
Ricoh CX2
Ricoh's CX2 point-and-shoot improves on its predecessor with 10.7x optical zoom and 5fps burst shooting. [Crunchgear]
Rob Beschizza
Tell, don't show: QLOCKTWO gives time in plain English
Biegert & Funk's Qclocktwo comes in English and other European languages, all sorts of colors, and is $1,600. [Product Page via Technabob]
Rob Beschizza, 5:22 AM Thursday
Full Flash and Silverlight support for next-gen RIM web browsers: Link
Rob Beschizza
Carrier can't stop hackers stealing customer info
AT&T is booting "celebrity hacker" Kevin Mitnick off its cellular service. Mitnick's account is a target for script kiddies who think that hacking in and posting his personal details to the web is like winning a boxing match with both the Klitschko brothers at once.
While turfing him out cures a headache, it does reveal that AT&T is unable to secure its users' personal information.
"They can't seem to secure my account," Mitnick told The Register. "And then instead of doing something about it, they try to kill the messenger and want to boot me off their network when all I want them to do is to secure my account so no one gets access to my phone records."Mitnick said the cellular account has been repeatedly breached over the years, despite a wide range of countermeasures he's followed to prevent the attacks. In recent years, he's committed the password to memory and has deliberately not shared it with anyone or kept it stored on a computer. ...
"There are so many ways into these networks," he said. "They have to take some responsibility, not just silence the people that are filing complaints."
AT&T is looking into whether it encrypts passwords. It isn't quite sure.
Rob Beschizza
Things to know about the PS3 Slim
Gizmodo offers 10 things you need to know about the PS3 Slim. Now, "need" is pushing it, yes. I'm not sure anyone needs to know you can use your Bravia remote control to control the PS3's XMB interface. But still, a good list! The new version is a mostly a downgrade from the standard model--Giz writes that there's no Linux, half the number of USB ports, and no PS2 emulation at all.
Rob Beschizza
Magazine to run video ad
Entertainment Weekly will contain video-in-print advertising in september. From the BBC:
The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries.The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned. Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.
Only copies of the mag distributed in New York or LA will have the ad.
Bottom line: don't get excited, it's just a stunt. Remember the e-ink Esquire cover that turned out to be a pathetic disappointment?
Update: Cory has more details on this, and they are not pleasant details.
Rob Beschizza
Palm rather likes defecting Apple employees, actually
Two years ago, Bloomberg reports, Palm's Ed Colligan rejected an offer from Steve Jobs to join Silicon Valley's hiring cartel.
Jobs, Apple's CEO, told Colligan he was concerned that Rubinstein was recruiting Apple employees. "We must do whatever we can to stop this," Jobs said in the communications.
The details of these agreements not to hire one anothers' employees aren't known, but as the U.S. Justice Department is "investigating possible collusion," it stands to reason that Palm would find reason to turn down the offer, then leak it to the press.
Colligan, you'll remember, infamously dismissed the iPhone's chances like so: "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
That's true! It was more like waltzing in.
Rob Beschizza
Airline passengers tweet woes
Ubiquitous cellphones, wedded to Twitter, make every gripe a loud and echoing public announcement. Airlines don't like this, because it reveals the abuses they subject customers in real time, without being mellowed out by the stultifying prose of an after-the-fact news story. Reuters:
"Screw american airlines. Every plane has Been broken. Gah. So done," read one post from Twitter user sheissilenttoo."Shame on you Continental Airlines," read another post from user DiscoverU.
"United airlines, you are the bane of my existence," user elnodonle wrote.
Rob Beschizza
iPhone users loathe AT&T
From Computerworld:
Owners of Apple's new iPhone 3GS love the device, but more than half of them hate AT&T, the smartphone's exclusive mobile carrier in the U.S., according to a just-released survey.
A part of it is that the carrier serves as a scapegoat for any problem it can be convincingly assigned. But it does have serious service quality problems, and the benefit of an exclusivity deal (and a marketplace in general) that means it doesn't have to fix them.
Steven Leckart
HOWTO Create a GPS Grafitti Space Invader
SF Weekly writes:
With the aid of a GPS -- and nary a can of spray paint -- San Francisco graphic designer Vicente Montelongo has created a series of bike trails in the city shaped like videogame heroes of yore... Montelongo has been posting maps of his GPS videogame trips on the Web site EveryTrail.com.
New York Times more recently reports:
Part sport, part art, GPS drawing lets runners, walkers, cyclists and hikers imagine themselves anew -- not just as a collection of burning muscles, sweaty armpits, forward motion; not just as people endeavoring to crest a hill or lose five pounds. Instead, they are neo-cartographers, jumbo-size doodlers and bipedal pencils, mapping their track lines across cities, roads and farms, and sharing them online...Pedaling the rectangular city blocks in San Francisco, Vicente Montelongo, 32, a graphic artist, realized the street layout lent itself to the pixeled shapes of vintage 1980s video game characters like Pac-Man, Q*bert and Donkey Kong. Back home with a printed-out Google map and a pencil, he drew Pac-Man chasing a ghost over in the Sunset District and then set out on his bike, iPhone in tow, GPS mapping application on. After riding 8.6 miles in an unwavering line, he uploaded the GPS track data from his phone, and had his picture.
If you're in SF or planning to visit, here are directions on how to make the above Space Invader.
UPDATE: Offworld beat eveyone to this months ago.
Steven Leckart, 3:18 PM Wednesday
musician's etiquette tip #37: never call anyone a "sound guy." call him or her the "house engineer." Link
Rob Beschizza, 2:47 PM Wednesday
Get rich quick, by selling oven doors covered in stickers as HDTVs Link
Lisa Katayama
Stemglass tray for optimal wine glass portability
What's the best way to carry multiple wine glasses at once? A restaurant in Oita Prefecture in southern Japan has found a solution in the Stemglass Tray, pictured above.
[Product page via TokyoMango]
Lisa Katayama
Factron Quattro case for iPhone 3GS is fancy and expensive
For the ultimate in iPhone 3GS protection and to take advantage of its camera function, you could get the Factron Quattro for iPhone SP, a case made from leather, carbon fiber, and stainless steel. The case is just under $200, and additional lenses like the fish-eye, wide angle, and macro zoom are about $15-50 each. I think this is only available in Japan though.
Product page (Thanks, Hitoshi!)
Rob Beschizza, 12:27 PM Wednesday
Windows Mobile 7 won't be out until the end of 2010. It's done. Link
Lisa Katayama
Naoto Fukazawa's colorful Samsung netbooks
I'd seen the Samsung N310 netbook before, but I didn't know until now that it was designed by famed Japanese designer Naoto Fukazawa. It comes in four colors, has a rubberized back, weighs less than 3 lbs, and costs less than $500. I almost want it except I don't like the giant Samsung logo on the back.
Lisa Katayama
Five reasons why I like the Mountain Hardwear Napali
1. It has a roll top, the kind you see on dry sacks. It's great for saving space, watertight, and easy to open and close.
2. The yellow belts on the front are great for further compression, and for strapping in a sleeping bag or tent.
3. It's named after a beautiful coast on the north shore of Kauai &mdash which is where I took this pack last month on a camping trip.
4. It's lightweight, and the mesh back panels and wide shoulder straps make it easy to carry. No sweaty back even in the Hawaii summer, at least not for me.
5. It has lots of little and big extra pockets, including two on the hip strap for gadgets.
The Napali is $190.
Product page [Mountain Hardwear]
Steven Leckart
Money Origami: Star Wars, Star Trek
Gorgeous work, AndrewWan Park! (...nice photos, Andrew!)
[via Drawn!]
Steven Leckart
Retro Mega-Fridge: Huge, Red and $10K!
Forget hacking an ice box for energy-efficiency. Go big or go home with this roughly-$10,000 all-in-one from Meneghini.
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: PS3 slims, Plants Vs. Zombies the shirt, Miles Davis in 8-bits
The biggest news recently on Offworld will have been Sony's announcement of a new $299 Slim-model PS3 (though with the caveat that it no longer supports Linux), and the additional follow up news of its 'minis' line of smaller, affordable PSP games (many taken directly from the App Store itself, no matter how hard the company denies it's not competing with Apple) will probably provide us with an entire new virtual platform to cover in the coming months.
But elsewhere, with the European GamesCom conference in full swing, we saw a wide range of new trailers and video footage: Beatles: Rock Band, Lego Rock Band, Brütal Legend, LittleBigPlanet's new water filled world, indie WiiWare port And Yet It Moves, and legendary freeware shooter Tumiki Fighters on its way to the iPhone.
Finally, we saw the first official Plants Vs. Zombies T-shirts, found the most sublimely bizarre patent illustration for Sony's emotion-detecting engine and its perfect distillation of What Modern Comedy Looks Like (above), saw Interplay and Gameloft reviving Earthworm Jim for a number of consoles, previewed Kind of Bloop -- the 8-bit Miles Davis tribute album due for wider release tomorrow, saw Space Invaders crop-pixels, and mourned the earthy death of 8-bit.
Steven Leckart
"Home... is where I want to be, But I guess I'm already there"*
Constructed by artist Kevin Cyr, this tiny trailer is a "functioning sculptural piece." Translation: heavy and impractical (I'm guessing).
Of course, if you hooked up a GreenWheel, it might actually be plausible... until you hit any big hills.
[via Designboom via Trackosaurus Rex]
Rob Beschizza, 7:25 AM Wednesday
Mysterious "bars" reported on iPhones in San Francisco Link
Rob Beschizza
How Sony sneaked the PS3 slim into the public FCC database
Sony used a pseudonym, "Sand Dollar Enterprise Inc.," to obscure its PS3 slim filing at the FCC. It worked, keeping the thinner revision a perfect secret, visible in plain sight, right up until the reveal. PS3 News was first to spot the ruse, after the fact:
Sand Dollar Enterprise, Inc is represented by SCEA's General Council, Riley Russell.This house is actually a private residence, but whomever lives here filed the documents with the FCC, most likely on the behalf of Sony, as they would be much harder to find with a different FCC ID (XCE) than that of Sony (AK8).
The filing reveals a second unit, with a 250GB hard drive.
Filing [FCC via PS3 News]
Photo: PS3 News
Rob Beschizza
Rumored Canon G11, angry at own mediocrity, flips out
Canon's rumored G11 looks an unexciting nudge on from the G10: the alleged specs detail a flip-out display, but no HD video and a middling 1/1.7″ CCD sensor. [Canon Rumors]
UPDATE: Announcement! Check out DPReview's coverage.
Rob Beschizza
LG BL40 Chocolate looks like a 'lil remote control
LG's BL40 Chocolate is longer than most phones, and Gizmodo's John Herman seems disappointed by the first video of it to leak out:
It's been clear since the earliest teases that the BL40 is a streeeeeetched phone, to the point that LG had to design a few special interface elements to take advantage of--or to work around--the screen's odd proportions. But in promo videos, the BL40 just looked a little, I don't know, bigger.
The problem is that it looks too much like a remote control--but is that a bad thing? On the other hand, maybe it appeals to me simply because it's both unusual and simple. The hands-on review is from from Mobiles.co.uk.
Rob Beschizza
Kitchen Timer
Emma Caselton's ingenious design for a recipe holder has a little bar that moves down the sheet, telling the cook exactly what to do and when to do it. Brilliant! [Yanko design]
Rob Beschizza, 6:36 AM Wednesday
Details of the Zune HD's use of Nvidia's saucy Tegra chipset: Link
Rob Beschizza, 6:35 AM Wednesday
Playstation 3 finally gets a $100 price cut. Link
Rob Beschizza
Umid M1 finally reaching western shores
The fabled black UMID hits Dynamism.com next week. The $600 ultraportable has a 1.3GHZ Intel Atom CPU, 4 hours of battery life and a great keyboard for its tiny size, but lacks 3G and has some connectivity irritations, like micro-USB ports and no headphone jack. [UMPC Portal]
Rob Beschizza, 6:31 AM Wednesday
Brian X. Chen has 7 good reasons to switch to Windows 7: Link
Rob Beschizza
Lanner L488, the ultimate dumbphone
I'm fond of this chunky, no-nonsense, no-features handset from m8cool. One thing it offers over comparable basic handsets available in the U.S.: a display able to show a whole damned phone number on one line. Take that, Motofone F3! It's otherwise junk, yes.
Rob Beschizza
Nightmare Baby Laugh-A-Lot Commercial
Former BBG editor DrCrypt tweets: "You can not tell me that the director did not intend for this commercial to be utterly nightmarish."
Rob Beschizza, 8:47 PM Tuesday
Today in "saying it all" news: Sony hires Julia Allison to star in its ads. Link
Steven Leckart, 3:39 PM Tuesday
women account for "nearly 40 % of spending in consumer electronics," and yet gadgets designed for women mostly suck Link
Rob Beschizza, 12:53 PM Tuesday
Acer pushes douchebag index to new heights with the website for its Timeline series. Link (via @dannydoom)
Rob Beschizza, 11:19 AM Tuesday
Fake Ray Kurzweil sounds like my kind of transhumanist: Link #transhumanism #inspire #fake
Rob Beschizza, 11:13 AM Tuesday
Stupid cops down under try to trick hackers, get owned. Link
Steven Leckart
Review: River Rafting w/the GoPro HERO
I recently strapped the GoPro Wide camera to my head for a rafting trip down the Poudre (pronounced poo-daredur) in Colorado.
My expectations were high for the 5MP sensor, 170-degree lens, and waterproof casing. In short, I was mostly stoked with the results. After the jump, check out my full review...
Music:
Rob Beschizza
Move protruding USB dongles inside the case
This tiny internal card doesn't just add extra USB headers, but powers them properly using an extra molex connector: good for people sick of weak juice from front-panel USB ports. It's $14 at I Buy Power.
Rob Beschizza
Screw Key
"Nobody has made a high quality key ring screwdriver for the last 10 years, Until Now. They are constructed of heat treated, Blackend steel."
Product Page [Screw Keys via The Awesomer]
Steven Leckart
TV is Dead, Long Live PC.TV
My friend Sonia has written a series of posts for the New York Times in which she tests several options for streaming web content to your television. Everything from Boxee to PlayOn.
I'm already saving up for a Mac Mini. Call me a fanboy, but I already have AppleTV (it was a gift).
That said, I'd love to know what all of you are using or eyeballing...
image by hellabella
- Boxee on Apple TV: Don't bother
- Review: An afternoon with Shuttle's Nano-powered XS29
- Myka, the set-top box I talk myself out of buying in just over 300 ...
- The Web is the Only Set-Top Box That Matters - Boing Boing Gadgets
- Archos TV+ DVR Media Streaming Set-Top Thinger is Sadly Not HD ...
- New Mac Mini now has 17 USB Ports
- The Mac Mini Rules
Rob Beschizza
IdeaCentre Q100
What do you make of the stuff on the side? It's like a child's birthday card by Luis Vuitton. [Engadget]
Steven Leckart
Kodak Zi8: "much to love, little to gripe about"
I reviewed the Kodak Zi8 for Wired and found it to be a solid little handicam. From my review:
Inside and out, the Zi8 is brimming with upgrades (1080p) and little touches (a legit microphone jack!) that set a new standard for this class of cheap cams. Significantly sexier, with a slimmer body than previous Kodak cams, the Zi8 comes with a re-tooled USB connector that's easier to use and harder to unleash unintentionally... Even cooler, the connector is an agile rubber cord, which allows you to plug in the camera without removing drives from other ports on your computer...We shot side-by-side with Kodak's earlier iteration, the Zi6, in a variety of environments (indoors, the beach). In stark sunlight, natural low-light and indoors, the image quality of the Zi8 was consistently superior. Colors are richer and contrast is deep. The lens angle is also a tad wider. The sensor adjusts from dark to light much quicker and image stabilization is noticeably better.
Rob Beschizza
Man fakes webcam suicide
When Joseph Shepherd decided to fake a webcam suicide, he didn't expect to get arrested. But that's what N.Y. State Police officers did after Interpol spotted the public stunt in a web chatroom. Heres WKBW, from Lockport, NY:
Individuals that run a chat room website contacted the local authorities in England and stated that several members that were in the chat room observed Shepherd apparently commit suicide via webcam. Interpol London was in turn contacted by local law enforcement in Gwent England and advised them that a white male had committed suicide while broadcasting his webcam over the Internet.
When contacted by troopers, Shepherd was found to be "in good health and not deceased," and promptly booked for second-degree Aggravated Asshattery.
Here's the rule on hoaxes: would it be cool if Borges had done it? If not, don't do it.
STATE POLICE ARREST LOCKPORT MAN FOR HOAX WEB SUICIDE [WKBW via Giz]
Rob Beschizza, 6:40 AM Tuesday
A new TV-B-Gone kit is out ! Link #inspire
Rob Beschizza
Sony delays big-screen OLED TV
Sony's delayed the release of larger OLED television sets, previously expected later this year. It's no surprise: Sony isn't in a mood to lose money on reputation-building flagship products. Perhaps it also wants to send a message to its engineers, accustomed to making high-tech toys rather than usable and effective products.
Its XEL-1 is a marvel, the only OLED TV on the market. But it remains $2,000 despite being a tiny 11 inches across. Until you see it in person, you just don't get it (and even when you do, you think, "I'll be all over that...when it's cheaper!")
Rob Beschizza, 2:10 PM Monday
Pittsburgh is the first city to have its own complaint app: take a photo of the pothole, hit "complain!" Link
Rob Beschizza, 2:07 PM Monday
Brian Appleyard profiles Jobs. It's a big one: Link
Rob Beschizza
Why giving court powers to the music industry won't work
Nicholas Deleon serves up some sanity in the whole "extrajudicial ISP executions" concept so beloved of the music industry: what exactly will it do if it gets its way? It will have to either enforce very selectively indeed, or go after millions of people. This is no different to the status quo; it just streamlines the existing process of making examples of a few offenders and being despised by everyone else. [CrunchGear]
These guys are the dumbest venture capitalists on Earth. They've made terrible business decisions, and as a result have lost their market to technological innovation, lost their back catalog to pirates, and lost their investment model to consumers who no longer need an unnatural selector to choose acts for them.
The music industry is a joke that gets funnier every time it spends millions marketing and autotuning some talentless model, then wonders why it needs to beg for legislation to protect it from change.
Rob Beschizza
Mystery Mid looks like iTablet of 2007
Check out this Android MID, from an unidentified source. It's remarkable because it's basically the iTablet of every crap mockup you ever saw: a reminder that the real thing, when it comes, is likely to have something unexpected and new to show for its years of development.
Should Apple really put out a tablet that was just a big, fat iPhone, it would now be a bit embarrassing. On the other hand, it appears that at least one manufacturer is paying way too much attention to us gadget bloggers and our cheesy speculative photoshops.
Photos [Pocketables]
Rob Beschizza, 1:27 PM Monday
How to ruggedize any gadget: Link via @crunchgear
Rob Beschizza, 1:26 PM Monday
New GMA500 drivers! Vaio P, Dell 10/12 and vivil owners rejoice! Slightly! Link
Rob Beschizza
Heathrow gets driverless car of tomorrow, today
Screw Fast Company for calling Heathrow Airport's new driverless taxis "creepy." They are in fact awesome: fast, immune to accidents and traffic jams, and using much thinner roads. And driverless, so you don't have to spend 15 minutes agreeing with the cabbie's opinions regarding immigration.
The four-passenger personal rapid transport (PRT) vehicles, unveiled this week at the Science Museum in London, take airport-goers on a special narrow road from Heathrow's Terminal 5 to various parking lots. Passengers use a touch screen to type in their destination, press a start button, and the battery-powered vehicle zips along at 25 mph to their destination. There's a reason the pods look so futuristic--they were designed by Mark Lowson, who worked on the Saturn Rocket that launched Apollo missions.
Now, how about some Total Recall quotes, people?
Lisa Katayama
Michelin tire ad by René Vincent circa 1916
I love the work of René Vincent, illustrator extraordinaire from the early 1900s. He did poster art for Bugatti, Shell, and Peugeot, among many others until his death in 1936. I saw this 1916 Michelin ad at the Concours d'Elegance yesterday &mdash I love that the tire dude is smoking a fat cigar while the rich family that owns the car is fixing his belly. There's something very endearing about the whole scene.
Lisa Katayama
Japanese cubic clocks have personalities based on blood types
Clockman is an adorable series of clocks with smiley and frowny faces that emanates personality traits based on the Japanese theory of blood types.
[via TokyoMango]
Steven Leckart, 10:15 AM Monday
MSNBC.com buys EveryBlock.com... OK, so what is EveryBlock? Link
Steven Leckart, 10:11 AM Monday
great tip from @lifehacker: use rice to dry out waterlogged gadgets. (via @gizmodo) Link
Dean Putney, 9:53 AM Monday
Jesus Christ, it's Leonardo daVinci's mechanical lion! Get in the car! Link
Steven Leckart
Contest Winner!: Fighting Space Chicken
Well, I really had no idea so many BBG readers would want to get their hands on my fighting cock bot.
In the end, the winner was a reader by the name of Paul (aka Misterfricative), who won us over with a beautiful, succinct jingle.
Interesting side note: Paul lives in Taiwan, where the fighting cock bot was constructed some 20 years ago. Apart from the fact his tune is fantastic, the notion of returning the bot to its homeland certainly influenced our decision.
And without further adieu, here's the bot-winning song:
Enjoy the cock bot, Paul. And remember, "Never let a child swallow the bullet."
Of course, other BBG readers submitted some wonderful entries. Below are a few of the highlights. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Lisa Katayama
The trunk of a Bugatti Type 44, circa 1928
Here's proof that, before cars had trunk space, they literally had trunks attached to their backs. This is the Bugatti Type 44 from the late 1920s, spotted at the annual Concours d'Elegance car show in Pebble Beach yesterday. The Ford Model A, which also came into production around the same time, also featured an attached trunk &mdash it wasn't until several models later that the trunk was integrated into the car.
Lisa Katayama, 8:55 AM Monday
Verizon sued after repairmen assaults customer in Queens. Link
Lisa Katayama
Headphones have two birds sticking out of them
Part of a series of objects by the Dutch art collective Idiots featuring stuffed dead animals. Taxidermy + found objects = creepy cool animal art.
[Idiots main page via Dezeen]
Steven Leckart, 8:28 AM Monday
world's tiniest laser is just 44 nanometers in diameter. Link
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: inside the games factory, the job-quitting game, Pong in the streets
If you've been long-suffering under the assumption that games are created in a mashup of impalpable art and science, our latest high-res gallery on Offworld will prove you wrong, as we go inside the factory workshops where your favorite games were built (above), from the smelting of Sonic's rings, the chiseling of the 1-Up mushroom, and the rubber-pressed rebounding blocks of Arkanoid.
And in more art-overload news, we also took a look at the fantastically fragile and delicately rendered games-inspired work of Melbourne illustrator Ghostpatrol, saw some select images from French guerrilla artist Invader's new Rubikubism exhibition in London, and played with the bloom-lit pixels of Stimergy, a 36-hour game of retro-futurist picnic ant invasions.
Elsewhere, One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson told us how Galleon, the criminally overlooked Xbox game from Tomb Raider designer Toby Gard, can lead us on a six-degrees journey through the games industry, found another example of a gainfully employed developer using a game to announce he was quitting his job, and watched the first official trailer for our new top iPhone pick, Spider.
We also saw Timbaland and Rockstar's music creator app Beaterator officially announced for PSP and the steampunk-ian environmental strategy game Greed Corp announced for PS3, learned that Tokidoki and Upper Playground were coming to Wii racer Need for Speed, and our one shot's: Call of Duty and BioShock, the Criterion editions, and Pong on the streets, and Pong in the streets.
Steven Leckart
ECCEROBOT: Not Via SKYNET, But Might As Well Be
ECCE is an anthropomimetic robot, meaning it is designed not only to look human, but to mimic the inner architecture and mechanisms of the human body like bones, ligaments, and joints.
Behold, the three goals behind ECCE:
(1) to design and build a robot using anthropomimetic principles
(2) to characterise its dynamics and control it
(3) to exploit its human-like characteristics to produce some human-like cognitive features
Says ECCE:
Nice try with #2. KNEEL BEFORE, ECCE!!!!!!!
I suggest we add a #4 to the list. How about programming ECCE to abide by the Three Laws?
[via IEEE Spectrum via BotJunkie]
Steven Leckart
DIY Low-NRG Fridge: Coolest Ice Box Ever?
Tom Chalko built this low-energy refrigerator out of a chest freezer. He rigged it with a SparOmeter that measures power consumption (bottom left) and a $40 external thermometer (top right) with a battery-operated internal relay that cuts the power at a set temp.
Says Tom:
In the first 24 hours my new chest fridge took 103 Wh (0.103 kWh) of energy. About 30% of this energy was consumed during the initial power up and re-arranging of the fridge content. The room temperature varied from 21oC during the day to 15oC at night. The fridge interior temperature was kept between +4o and +7o C. The fridge compressor was working only for about 90 seconds per hour. When the thermostat intervened - the fridge consumed ZERO power. The only active part was a battery powered temperature display.Results of my experiment exceeded all my expectations. My chest fridge consumes as much energy in 24 hours as a 100W light bulb does in just an hour. Not only it is energy efficient. I have never seen a fridge that was SO quiet. It only works 90 seconds or so every hour. At all other times it is perfectly quiet and consumes no power whatsoever. My wind/solar system batteries and the power sensing inverter simply love it. With my new chest fridge I have power to spare and I can use it to warm up my house in winter with a heat pump. I wonder why no one has ever thought of a chest fridge controlled by a digital thermostat...
Instructions are available at Build It Solar (links to PDF).
[via Home Design Find]
Rob Beschizza, 7:25 AM Monday
Pirate Bay touts mixtape of $675k-fined downloader's songs: Link
Rob Beschizza
Shock PSA warns against texting at wheel
Text-messaging teen causes car accident, kills many. From the BBC:
Gwent Police hope a shocking film about the consequences of texting while driving will help prevent crashes. The film, which was made by Peter Watkins-Hughes, stars young local actors and is expected to be shown in schools.
And there'a a very short Part 2 on the account of YouTube uploader richardjonm. Anyone know where the rest of the story may we found?
Here's some earlier coverage, pointing out that YouTube has determined that the video is inappropriate for minors to watch and hidden it behind a verified login.
P.S. Yes, it's a Sony Ericsson.
Rob Beschizza
Laptop thief taunts victim on her Facebook Page
From the Telegraph:
One message left on the site read: "on my new laptop". The next said: "Listening to music on my new phone feels so good." The callous thief then mocked the fact they had left Victoria's television because it was 'rubbish', adding: "I have the laptop , phones ok but a bit scratched itll do, tv was rubbish so I left it , ds was a bonus, now to the porn shop, thankyou toshiba is my favourite make".
What a scumbag. I hope Facebook can tell the cops in Brighton and Hove this guy's IP address.
Rob Beschizza
Stringer takes chairman spot at Sony Ericsson
Well now. And a new president, Bert Nordberg.
The hands-on involvement could be midwifery for the PSP Phone: Sony won't let its joint venture go it alone, so the joint venture has to come back under the wing. [Sony Ericsson]
Steven Leckart
Power On Self Test: Wood BlackBerry
Available on Etsy
- i-wood, the only phone more precious than the iPhone - Boing Boing ...
- iWood cases coming for iPhone 3G at the end of the month - Boing ...
- Wood iPod Mini
- Pappa*phone is $300 of walnut and brass
- Arthur Schmitt's punchcard, steampunk phone - Boing Boing Gadgets
- Maple phone design matches stylish and inexpensive furniture ...
- Laser-cut wooden keyboard
- Tiny wooden camera MP3 player is adorable, albeit useless - Boing ...
- Wooden Laptop Case - Boing Boing Gadgets
David Wertheimer
Review: Audio Technica ATH-CK7 headphones
This is the second BBG review of Audio Technica headphones, following the active noise canceling ATH-ANC3s (which I loved). In contrast, the ATH-CK7 are a noise-isolating set. They proved to be a very good product, and an instructional one.
Steven Leckart
Apple Store As Audition/Office Space
This little dude Nicholi has shot dozens of lip sync videos at the 5th Avenue Apple Store. And why not? Plenty of desktops. Free wi-fi. Solid tech support.
These are the same reasons model and self-marketer Isobella Jade wrote her entire memoir in the SoHo Apple Store. (Sound uncomfortable? Consider that Hemingway also wrote while standing up.)
Above is Nicholi's rendition of the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow", and here's his take on "I Gotta Feeling."
[via Abe Forman-Greenwald]
Rob Beschizza
Nokla has no class (but plenty of swivel)
This bootleg "Nokla E81" uses a remarkable swiveling design far more innovative than the conservative phones Nokia itself pumps out these days. Remember when it used to be famous for oddities? [Justamp via Engadget]
Rob Beschizza, 7:02 AM Sunday
Snow Leopard retail packaging leaked: Link
Rob Beschizza
Kindle hidden inside a book
BustedTypewriter makes and sells these unusual Kindle-holders. More.
Product page via Book Patrol]
Rob Beschizza, 8:08 PM Saturday
You'd think Sony's disk would play in a Sony drive on a Sony laptop with Sony's software to a Sony TV. Think again. Link
Steven Leckart, 7:07 PM Saturday
the video for the factor001 bike is totally RIDICULOUS. Link (via @bookofjoe)
Rob Beschizza, 10:41 AM Saturday
You know you're reading CNET when MS Exchange support is "the most important feature" of Snow Leopard: Link
Rob Beschizza, 2:17 PM Friday
ThinkGeek has a neat dorm-room laptop safe out: Link
Rob Beschizza, 2:02 PM Friday
Got a mac? Google 10A432
Rob Beschizza
iPods in Bikini Bottom
Joel Johnson got back from an underwater adventure--a journey enhanced with the help of a waterproof iPod case, H2O Audio's iDive300.
Scuba diving is about minimizing distraction, but you wouldn't know it from looking at a scuba diver. ... So why would you want to add an iPod? Because, like all those seemingly superfluous bits of tinsel, sometimes music is exactly the tool a diver needs to make a mundane dive as otherworldly as the very first splash in the water.
H2O's iDive300 Case Review: An iPhone Deep Beneath the Briny Sea [Gizmodo]
Rob Beschizza
Verizon doesn't see a problem with bilking customers on pointless info messages
David Pogue started a campaign to get rid of the ridiculously long informational messages that cellular carriers force people to listen to when they hit a voicemail box. The purpose of these messages is to increase call charges.
Most carriers have made at least token movements to respond to the campaign.
Except Verizon. Verizon spokesperson Tom Pica said that Verizon lets customers turn off these messages.
Pogue, in response, said that Pica was lying.
Pica then claimed he was misquoted, and that he's right because you don't get the message if you completely disable your voicemail box.
What he said was that you can turn off *voicemail altogether* if you don't like the 15-second instructions.Well, O.K., but...huh?
Isn't that like saying, "My son bites his nails, so let's chop off his hands"?
It's just amazing how awful U.S. cellular companies are. Meanwhile, domestic cellular tech lags way behind other developed nations', but we're charged more for service.
'Take Back the Beep' Campaign: An Update [Pogue's Posts]
Photo: FutureOfTheBook
My roommate Ian caught this great moment while he's interning in Los Angeles.
Credit: Ian Norman
Flat Top Intervention
Steven Leckart, 11:04 AM Friday
Samsung Netherlands refers to #Augmented Reality as the "Optical Internet". That term is totally blah IMHO. (via @bruces)
Steven Leckart
Tron-Watch '09: LED Handrails
A concept by Croatian designer Zoran Sunjic, these LED handrails could help light dark stairways to prevent commuter spills, tumbles, or muggings.
Should these handrails ever see the light of day (har), I trust they'll be available in teal or turquoise. From LED bikes to RAZR-like radar detectors, Tron-like aesthetics really are in full effect.
[Toxel via Design Launches via New Launches]
Lisa Katayama
Japanese netbook looks like a teddy bear
Rilakumma is a Japanese cartoon character, a cute yellow bear who likes to relax and eat mochi and donuts. Now, his face is plastered on the back of a new limited edition netbook made by toy company Bandai Namco. It's about $800, and has 1 gig of memory, an Atom processor, and Windows XP.
[Product page via TokyoMango]
Lisa Katayama
Bluetooth speaker shaped like a bird cage
This wireless speaker system by Japanese design studio Nendo is shaped like a bird cage and plays music via Bluetooth from any computer or cell phone. It can hang from a ceiling or sit on a table.
Nendo's main page [via Dezeen]
Lisa Katayama
Photos from inside an abandoned Titan missile silo
Over on the front page, Xeni wrote about amazing photographs from the inside of an abandoned Titan I missile. Check them out.
Steven Leckart
Review: O'Neill SL Gloves [Verdict: Wipeout]
I bought O'Neill's SL gloves for three reasons:
1) The water is frigid in San Francisco, so 3mm neoprene seemed like the way to go.
2) $40 seemed reasonable at the time.
3) The model name boasts my initials (SL = Steven Leckart).
I've worn these gloves while surfing, on average, twice a week since February. At first, I loved them: The fit is great and allow for reasonable dexterity; the gloves enhance paddling; and they really keep my hands warm... well, kept my hands warm.
After the jump, check out why I'm embarrassed to share initials with this product...
Lisa Katayama
Review: A week with the Panasonic Link-to-Cell home phone
Brian and I live and work at home, and we have three phone lines and four handsets that are constantly demanding our attention from different parts of the house. It's a little hard to keep track of. That's why I was excited to try out the Panasonic KX-TH1211 Link to Cell &mdash a land line that can make and retrieve calls from up to two cell phones via Bluetooth. I figured it would solve the problem of too many phones if we just had one handset to keep track of. But while the idea is novel, it wasn't actually as useful as I had initially expected.
First of all, there is not a single corner of our house that has good AT&T reception. (Yes, that's right, AT&T has no reception in a popular San Francisco neighborhood. I have no idea why.) So we scrapped that idea of trying to link the Link to Cell to Brian's iPhone. This is no fault of Panasonic's, of course &mdash you just have to have reception. T-Mobile gets a couple of bars by my desk, so I linked my Sony Ericsson to the Panasonic base unit and used it for the past week.
The set-up was easy and pretty much the same as any other Bluetooth device. Once it was hooked up, I could use my cell phone minutes to make calls from the land line &mdash so I probably saved a few bucks on my home phone bill. That's nice! One problem for me, though, is that Link to Cell didn't allow me to link my cell phone to both itself and a Bluetooth headset. I like to take my work phone calls hands-free so I can type and talk at the same time. While I was testing, I had to disconnect my cell phone from the land line base unit it each time I wanted to do a phone interview.
Throughout the week, the phone talked to me &mdash it told me who was calling, which was convenient for screening calls while I was preoccupied, but also annoying when I needed my concentration not to be broken by a robotic voice. Also, if somebody's using the land line, calls to the cell phone got routed back to my cell phone. In a high phone-traffic household, the whole purpose of the convenience of one phone is defeated.
If you're the type of person who likes to come home, put your cell phone away on its charger in the second floor bathroom corner, and not have to worry about running upstairs to get it when you hear it ring, then for $80 this is a great phone for you. Or if you have your own office with a lot going on and no time to be fishing for one phone or the other or to check who's calling on your caller ID or to keep track of appointments, then the talking robot voice may be a great help. But if you're like me, and you're just trying to keep things simple at the desk or at home in a single-story house that it's not that big, then you probably don't need it.
Product page [Panasonic]
David Wertheimer
Review: JVC's HA-NC250 noise-canceling headphones
Most of my headphone reviews for BBG this summer have been robust explorations. I'm learning all about the different ways headphone manufacturers approach audio, and the pros and cons of their methodologies.
Now, JVC I know all about. I've watched their TVs, I've listened to their stereos, I even had a JVC boombox as my shelf system in college. JVC's stuff is as you'd expect: consumer-grade, well-executed, accessible, decently equalized, sturdy. Y'know, JVC.
So here I am with a pair of JVC noise-canceling headphones. I installed the noise canceling unit's battery, put on the headphones, turned on my music, and broke into a huge grin.
Rob Beschizza, 10:14 PM Thursday
Summery road trip/argument solved by iPhone/resentment simmers
Rob Beschizza
Even insiders don't know everything -- especially at Apple
John Gruber put his angry old man of the Mac hat on today to snark about Gizmodo's supposed "insider" information regarding the forthcoming Apple tablet.
So Lam's source is an "insider" but has no idea what the OS is and has the ship date wrong. Sure.
Gruber's snipe fails, however, because there is indeed a particular kind of "insider" who knows little about the technology, but much about the looks and hooks: talent hired by marketing.
As you can imagine, these people also tend to know only the preliminary bullshit on release dates, and are the most accessible to reporters hungry for leaks.
At Wired, we scored a massive hit in the run up to the MacBook Air's release with the above mockup (created in about 90 minutes at very short notice), and I'm still pretty proud of it, mistakes notwithstanding. To illustrate it, I relied on an extremely subjective description of the machine, provided by a verified insider who would have had no clue at all about its technology or the ship date. To them, it was just a silver laptop with certain features that everyone kept talking about, and had an extremely distinctive profile
It has an extremely thin profile and is shaped like a teardrop when closed-- thicker at the top behind the screen, tapering at the bottom behind the keyboard.
The most remarkable thing, however, was that this person, who certainly saw the machine, provided us with several completely inaccurate details.
Naturally, I wish I'd taken the source's word even more literally about the teardrop thing -- it seemed quite absurd at the time!
Steven Leckart
Toshiba Unleashing Biggest Memory Card EVER
64GB!!!
Some hyperbolic highlights from the press release:
world's first 64GB1 SDXC Memory Card... capable of operating at the world's fastest data transfer rate3 for reading and writing to a flash memory card... world's first memory cards compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Version 3.00, UHS104, which brings a new level of ultra-fast read and write speeds to NAND flash based memory cards: a maximum write speed of 35MB4 per second, and a read speed of 60MB per second... with these cards, it will be possible to download a 2.4GB video in only 70 seconds.
Available spring 2010.
[via Gadgetwise]
Lisa Katayama
Shark bean bag chair
This shark bean bag chair, available from an online bargain retailer in Australia, would be a great gift for a friend who fears sharks, you know, so he can work on getting over his phobias at home.
[Product page via Neatorama]
Rob Beschizza
Apple tablet details leak! Maybe.
Blam got a purported leak from an insider:
"The device, which I've held mock ups of, is going to have a 10 inch screen, and when I saw it looked just like a giant iPhone, with a black back-- although that design could change at any time."
In brief, it'll come in two editions (one for schools) be about $800, can be used as an auxiliary display for Macs, has been in development for about 5 years and prototyped since the end of 2008, and will launch for Christmas.
Happy Christmas.
Source [Gizmodo]
Lisa Katayama
Robot alerts you of happy and sad Tweets
This is an adorable robot, created by one Ken Lim, that alerts you of important Twitter messages and encourages you to respond in his own cute cuddly way:
...when it finds a "happy" post, the Guardian Robot raises its head and arm in triumph. It holds the pose until you give it a "high five" by pushing the switch in its raised hand. Once you do that, the robot pass the high five on to your buddy via a reply Tweet.
[Guardian via Make]
Lisa Katayama
iPhone charging dock made from cedar wood
Do you love your gadgets just as much as you love nature? This dual iPhone-iPod docking station found on Etsy is made of real cedar wood, so it smells lovely and looks like a little log cabin just for your gadgets.
Steven Leckart, 9:00 AM Thursday
Apple Tablet to be a "giant iPhone"??? via @blam Link
Rob Beschizza
Zune HD pre-orders open
Microsoft's Zune HD comes out on September 15 and will be available in 16GB and 32GB models. [Engadget]
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: a more social Nintendo, more DS blood diamonds, time ufck'd pathos puzzling
Recently on Offworld we've had a good slate of indie devs giving us a deeper look into some of the games already high on our most-wanted lists: chief among them is Castle Crashers devs The Behemoth officially beginning to reveal the mechanics of their cutely chaotic party/arena game still known as Game #3, and art game champ Jason Rohrer showing off a paper prototype of his Angolan conflict diamond-based DS multiplayer game.
Elsewhere, we got the first shot of Die Gute Fabrik's gorgeously illustrated swamp-opera adventure Mutatione, Edmund McMillen & co. showed off the first video of their pathos puzzler Time Ufck, and Taito revealed the first video of dual control methods in their upcoming Puzzle Bobble iPhone port.
We also saw Nintendo plunging their toes further into the social media space with the U.S. release of their free web-sharable DS flipbook animation app FlipNote Studio, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner revealed the first draft script for a prequel to his PC adventure The Last Express, the EA Black Box team behind Skate gave us their top 10 user-made skate videos, and Team Fortress devs began dropping awesomely gentlemanly turn-of-the-century ephemera surrounding their latest game update.
Finally, our 'one shot's: the nostalgic simplicity of Six Flags' early-80s Pac-Man theme park, Metroid's Samus on a ZX Spectrum, 9 0 0 0 gives us a motivational ninja poster, and, as above, Brock Davis shows us the sobering tragedy of a Mushroom Kingdom hit and run.
Steven Leckart, 4:08 PM Wednesday
in <24 hrs MSI's laptop-butt youtube video has gone from 6k views to 213+k. love it or hate it, u can't ignore it Link
Steven Leckart
"About as annoying to handle as a wet diaper"
Giant's latest folding bike, the Clip, is uniquely handsome. It has decent components. It folds relatively quickly/easily. It even rides smoothly. My one complaint?
From my full review over at Wired.com:
The little "D" above the fork seems like a natural carrying handle when the bike is folded. Right? Well, it is -- provided you've got the hands of an 11-year-old girl. Try as we might, we simply couldn't find any comfortable way to grasp the "D."
Not a deal breaker, but worth knowing before you spend $1000.
photo by Jonathan Snyder for Wired
- Review: A Day with the Strida Folding Bike [Verdict: Wear a Cup ...
- New electronic shift system for road bikes coming in 2009 - Boing ...
- Conceptual bicycle tree lifts your bike to safety - Boing Boing ...
- IF-Mode folding bike
- Deconstructed Moulton Folding Bicycle
- Folding Bicycle Backpack is a cross-country dream - Boing Boing ...
- Cannondale On: Prototype Full-Size Folding Bicycle - Boing Boing ...
Lisa Katayama
Gerber Crucial, a good-looking, functional multitool
For me to love a multitool, it has to be smart, strong, compact, and good-looking. The new Gerber Crucial is all of that &mdash it folds up into a neat little less-than-4-inch long rectangle, has a knife with a straight and serrated blade, screwdriver heads, a bottle opener, pliers, and a wire cutter. Portability is important, too &mdash I like that it has a carabiner for hooking and a belt clip for clipping onto things. The green and gray color combo is very classy.
Available for $45 at the Gerber Store in September, and at some online retailers now.
Product page [Gerber Store]
Steven Leckart
As If Keeping Time Weren't Difficult Enough...
Everyone knows being a drummer kind of sucks. You sit in the back and watch the singer take all the credit. The guitar player's always stealing your lady (unless you're Mick Fleetwood). Your gear is HEAVY and, most importantly, no one ever wants to help you schlep it around.
Created by a Russian percussionist who was — I'm guessing — tired of setting up and taking down his kit at every gig, the "Moto Drum" is pure genius.
More photos at English Russia.
Lisa Katayama
Colorful Japanese alarm clock that talks
These colorful, slightly nipple-like gadgets are called Good Egg Talking Clocks &mdash they're alarm clocks that tell you what time it is in a Japanese human voice when you push the little nob. Also, to wake you up, it says "Kokekkoko!!" Which is the sound roosters make in the morning. Like cock-a-doodle-do, Japanese-style. It goes on sale at the end of the month, probably only in Japan.
Lisa Katayama
Designer chair transforms from arm to rocking
This design-y armchair by Hungary's Peter Vardal not only looks cool, it transforms into a rocking chair in under 20 seconds. So really, it's like having two chairs in one. It has a carbon frame and an elastic body, and it's called the Fotel.
[via Yanko Design]
Microsoft bilking customers on hard drives
Gizmodo's Mark Wilson, on how Microsoft is shamelessly reaming its customers. It charges $160 for a 120GB hard drive, doesn't offer hard drives in modern capacities, and even takes measures to prevent you from using them.
Inside that plastic shell is a stock, boring-as-hell 2.5-inch laptop drive. And you can find such a drive with 500GB of storage for $90 right now. ... Even though I can technically go through the trouble of installing a sweet, 500GB of storage capable of holding my entire game collection, Microsoft has taken the time specifically to thwart me in that endeavor.
Steven Leckart
SanDisk Puts Its $$$ Where Its Slot Is [Yet Again]
SanDisk's $100 Sansa slotRadio player we reviewed previously is another attempt to convince us to adopt the music/media "format of the future" — which is, of course, the company's microSD card.
Last year, you may recall SanDisk launched a huge print marketing campaign that featured billboards of people next to the phrase "Sally found her slot" (yes, I know). The idea was simple: First make consumers understand it's possible to pump music into a phone via memory card. (OK, we got you)... Then try to get them to purchase albums on individual, 1GB cards... for $15 a piece. (Uh, no thanks!).
First of all, if you ask major labels what the real format of the future is, they probably won't say the microSD, but CMX.
Secondly, they're pushing a proprietary player and mix cards with 1,000 songs culled from the Billboard Charts, as if that's appealing on any level.
Here's what's completely asinine about this (and forgive me for re-stating much of what Joel's said previously):
1) A lot of people don't want to hear just 1,000 "hits." They want 10,000 micro-hits. Why not give it to them? That's right, storage is very expensive and hard to come by... Oh wait, no it's not.
2) NO ONE wants to carry and organize potentially hundreds of little microSD cards. Yes, they are small, which makes 'em easier to cart around, but even easier to misplace. Let me buy music digitally (with awesome bonus content/videos, etc.), so I can shove the files I want to hear onto a 32GB card.
3) Instead of zero onboard memory for $100, you can get an iPod Shuffle with 4GB of space for $79. If you don't like the idea of random tracklists, then you can spend $150 for an 8GB iPod nano. Hate Apple? You can pick up an 8GB Zune for $110, which is $10 more than the Sana SlotRadio and won't require you to fuss with physical cards.
Good luck, SanDisk!
[via Uncrate]
Steven Leckart
Review: GMT Solar Lantern [Verdict: Works]
The SL900 is a relatively-lightweight, dead-simple-to-use lantern that sports two solar panels, LEDs and a 6V 4AH sealed lead acid battery. You simply leave it in direct sunlight while hiking, hanging or whatever, and it will charge up enough to provide at least 2-4 hours of nocturnal glow.
At about 12" x 7", the SL900 isn't the most packable torch ever, but for car camping, it works great. I've used it on two car-based camping trips this spring/summer, and have very very minor complaints. One little issue is the fact the top opens indiscriminately, i.e. the top cover hatch tends to open all the way due to a frisky hinge. Thus, if you're trying to position part of the solar panel so that it gets optimal, direct sun at certain times of the day, you won't always achieve your goal — in other worse, you'll need to brace the top against a rock or, more likely, wedge the carrying handle against the back of the panel to hold it at the perfect sun-kissed angle.
All in all, that's a pretty minor complaint. The lantern is $85 (a bit pricey), weighs just 7 lbs (not totally unreasonably), and works well (it should, for that kind of money). After an afternoon of charging, we wound up getting 2 hours with the lamp on high, then another hour or so with the lamp set to medium/low — and while it was not exactly a task light, the lantern provide enough visibility to cook desert, make our way around the camp site, etc.
It's worth noting higher-end solar lanterns include AM/FM, 9-watt fluorescent bulbs, and stobe light features, to name just a few perks. Eh, spending more than $85 — let alone $75 — on a lantern seems potentially gauche. Also, before any solar charging, you'll need to give the lantern a full charge from a standard wall outlet/power source. So, if you're thinking of going off the grid completely with this thing, well, sorry.
Steven Leckart
Tron-Watch '09: Blue-Green LEDS!
Behold, the Cobra XRS R10G radar detector. The design should look sort of familiar — it's copping Tron. Maybe not as much as this concept bike we spotted, but close enough, no?
[via Wired]
Rob Beschizza, 7:07 AM Wednesday
Life makes memories -- and photoshop remakes them! Link #inspire
Rob Beschizza
Vintage-style Barometer
This barometer is $160 at WeatherWeatherWeather, and also comes in silver. A whip around the internet reveals some excellent pictures, taken up-close by The Invisible Agent. It looks pretty good, but the globe is plastic and it is described as "finished in brass design." That sentence is quite the little marvel, isn't it?
Update: Cory spotted it first!
Photo: The Invisible Agent
Reminder: A few weeks back we reviewed the Touch Pro 2, out this week on T-Mobile for $350 w/contract.
Rob Beschizza
UMID will be back in stock soon, promises maker
UMID is the little pocket computer that can: it's cheap, small and full-qwerty. It sold out and has been difficult to find since its midsummer launch--even review units are hard to come by. UMPC Portal wanted to see if another boatload would head west, and got a reply:
Since there have been LCD shortage, we are not able to supply enough qty, but we are expecting to get delivered enough products beginning of Sep. with Black model also.
It'll be shipped by official importer Dynamism soon, UMID promises. Dynamism itself lists Aug. 25 for the next batch.
Update on UMID availability, screen issues. [UMPC Portal]
Rob Beschizza, 5:17 AM Wednesday
Remember the fuel-additive pill scam? Dan Rutter has an update: Link #pills #scams
Rob Beschizza
Hacking the Sony Reader
An advantage Sony's Reader still has over the Amazon Kindle is that it's easy to hack. It runs Linux, has various hooks into the system for eager coders to latch onto, and will run custom applications directly from SD card.
The new models, out later this month, are finally Mac-compatible by default, too -- a feature that currently has to be added with third party software.
Among the basic Reader hacks are font changes, reassigning buttons and installing Sudoku. Reghardware has a how-to guide.
Photo: Cloud Soup
Rob Beschizza, 4:57 AM Wednesday
Americans pay more for cell phone service Link
Rob Beschizza, 4:54 AM Wednesday
Judge rules patent troll owns idea of reading XML, orders MS to pay it $290M: Link
Rob Beschizza
Twelve Vintage Walkmans
Vince Veneziani points us to a dozen of Sony's classic cassette players. Some of them are pretty unremarkable, but this one--the first--is one of the best. [Oobject]
David Wertheimer
Review: two tough weeks with the Shure SE310s
First, an admission of bias: I love Shure. I had a pair of Shure's E3c noise-isolating headphones for two years, and boy did I adore them. Great loud or soft, comfortable, able to make a transcontinental jet flight whisper-quiet while listening to jazz one tick above mute--bliss. I think I blew out one of the drivers before running them over with my bike, but I didn't mind. Bygones.
So I was ripe with anticipation when Shure shared their SE310 headphones (as well as their top-line model, which I have not reviewed yet). Could these be the replacement I'd been seeking?
My heart got heavy when I discovered the truth: I don't love the SE310s. What's wrong with me? I want to love the Shures. I want to recapture my lost joy.
Rob Beschizza
Power On Self Test: Tron Legacy
James White, the brilliant designer responsible for BBG's spectral background and much else besides, created this gorgeous poster for the forthcoming movie, Tron Legacy.
This isn't official by any means, but it would certainly be a dream job to design a poster for the film, especially since they slated the mighty Daft Punk to create the score. So if anyone at Disney reads this, give me a call :)
End of Line.
Steven Leckart
Why I'm Buying An MSI Laptop
Yes, this ad shamelessly rips off Levi's. Yes, the concept is silly. But, man, do I love it. Apparently much more so than our friends at Gizmodo and Gadget Lab, who aren't too keen on the notion of catching a laptop in your buttocks.
Lighten up, fellas!
In fact, go watch some Tim & Eric (NSFW).
[via Gizmodo via Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza, 6:59 PM Tuesday
The gadget blog to the stars! Link
Rob Beschizza
Disney Netbook
A Pink Eee with Disney's logo on it: it could not be more perfunctory, could it? [Amazon]
Rob Beschizza, 1:10 PM Tuesday
Awe-inspiring stupidity: USFidelis tries to pull one over on Consumer Reports when it reviews their service: Link
Rob Beschizza, 12:32 PM Tuesday
Leander Kahney rebuts Calacanis' Apple criticisms: Link
Lea A Franco, 10:52 AM Tuesday
How many Makers are uninsured? Perhaps we are looking at a short, sharp visual cue here: Link
Lea A Franco, 10:31 AM Tuesday
Who's cuter, the musician playing the amazing Humanthesizer or the girls who make up the Humanthesizer? U DECIDE! Link
Lisa Katayama
Customizable ceramic kitchen radio
Check out this ceramic kitchen radio from the designers at Israel's Studio Lama. The greatest thing about it is that you could decorate it any way you want.
[via Dezeen]
Lisa Katayama
Internet addiction camp inmates wave signs pleading for help
Handwritten paper signs like these, with words like "SOS" and "Beatings!" on them, were seen floating out of second-story windows at Internet addiction camps in China when a local paper went to further investigate after the recent beating death of a teenaged camper inmate. Shortly after these signs were waved, though, the kids were apparently stopped by the instructors, and we can only imagine what happened after that.
I wonder if there's something Internet "addicts" in the US can do to help put an end to these horrific camps. Infiltrate the Great Firewall of China, maybe, and send cryptic revolutionary messages using chat rooms and Google Translate.
[via Shanghaiist]
Lisa Katayama
French postal service ad turns a MacBook into a spaceship
In this delightful French TV ad for La Poste, France's national postal service, a man demonstrates the process of mailing a letter online. He reads the instructions, clicks on "send via computer," and then, to his surprise, the computer turns into a spaceship and flies out the window. The simplicity of the concept and the way it's materialized is just great, a rarity in a world full of over-processed commercials.
["Transformers" ad for La Poste via AdFreak.com]
Steven Leckart
Old-Timey iPhone Dock - Part II
Last night I joined my friend Matt in a wood shop where he works, and we cranked out a couple "iPhone Horns," the Magnavox-powered sound dock Matt invented and I blogged about a few months ago.
We used plunging and table routers, laser-guided saws, power sanders and more. By far, the best moment was the final step: rubbing the blocks with orange oil. Check out my walnut dock before and after...
UPDATE:
If you're interested in purchasing an iPhone Horn, or if you already own a Magnavox horn and want to buy a custom, handbuilt dock box from Matt, you can contact him directly at: info AT ampersandhome DOT com ; Sez Matt: prices will be determined on a per-project basis depending on the wood, dimensions and whether you require a horn or can provide one.
Please note: Neither BBG nor I are tied financially with this venture.
Lisa Katayama
Olympic cyclist predicts the future of bicycles
This is the future of commuter bicycles according to Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman. It can count calories, play music, solar-power your motor uphill, and has a locking device with fingerprint recognition to prevent theft. It's made of carbon fiber and the tires are puncture-proof. Of course, it doesn't exist yet &mdash Boardman predicts that it will be ready for market in 20 years. By then, though, this prototype will be way outdated and he'll have to think of a new one.
Bike of the future will never be stolen [Daily Mail]
Rob Beschizza, 7:41 AM Tuesday
Amazon reveals Zune HD pricing: $220 for 16GB, $290 for 32GB Link [via CrunchGear]
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: spinning & sleuthing in Spider, web-based meta-gaming, AI-controlled Mario
It seems as though as the App Store game entries grows exponentially, our true, heartfelt suggestions have dropped off inversely, but recently on Offworld we made one of our strongest, most unreserved recommendations yet with Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, the debut game from the former Thief/Splinter Cell devs at Tiger Style.
It's a game that works brilliantly on two levels: first, as an intuitive action game that sees you finger-flicking/spinning webs to catch the insect inhabitants of the long-abandoned titular manor, but second, and just as wonderfully, unraveling the secret narrative that's running underneath, just under your nose if you're careful enough to look -- it's instantly become one of our top 3 iPhone games of all time.
Elsewhere, we took a look at two of the best meta-games to come to the web in recent months, with the one level exploration of, er, This is the Only Level and the self-purchased enhancements of Upgrade Complete, and listened to both a wonderfully diverse Songs to Frag By videogame mixtape, and the live house/trance styling of PixelJunk Eden director Baiyon.
Finally, we saw the first dazzling entry in the AI-controlled Mario contest, made our own Noby Boy catnip toy, saw LucasArts/Double Fine dev Tim Schafer reveal his hidden Rubik's talent, and our 'one shot's for the day: the geographical secrets of Left 4 Dead and the amazingly ugly excesses of the women of Leisure Suit Larry.
Rob Beschizza, 7:00 AM Tuesday
Palm's TV ads are more successful with normal people than with nerds: 51% report happiness and inspiration Link
Rob Beschizza
Behold! Music labels introduce own music file format, CMX
The music industry never fails to amaze, even as it fails completely. From The Guardian:
Forget WAV, MP3 and M4A - major labels have something new in mind, and it's called CMX. Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are reportedly preparing a new digital album format that will include songs, lyrics, videos, liner notes and artwork.
Steven Leckart
Review: 1 Week W/OtterBox's Defender Case
The Defender series is OtterBox's top of the line hard, weather-resistant cases for mobile phones. The phone slots into a polycarbonate shell which is then covered by a Silicone skin. There's also a thin, clear screen cover to prevent any scratching.
If you carry an iPhone (1st-gen, 3G, 3GS) or many of the handsets from Nokia, Palm, HTC, Samsung, RIM/BlackBerry and Motorola, the Defender is a solid option.
I've been using toting around my iPhone 3GS in one for a week.
A few caveats: The edges of the screen are harder to finger due to the case's thick ridge. The thin plastic membrane does create some air pockets on the screen. The case makes your phone unmistakably beefy and harder to pocket, especially if you wear "skinny jeans" (which I do... yeah yeah).
Why I'm into it: I'm actually not too concerned about dropping the phone or scratching and/or cracking the screen. My enemy is... sand.
The case I used to carry is comprised of two pieces, a top and bottom, and no screen cover. Every time I hit the beach, I bring back least a little bit of sand in my pockets and car. Eventually, when I took the phone out of the old case, I found a series of sand grains burrowed into the plastic backing of my $$$ phone. WEAK.
Since switching to the Defender, I haven't found even one bit of dirt, sand or gunk inside the case. The Silicone layer is easy to grip. It's relatively lightweight (1.9 oz.). The port covers fit snugly to ensure a good seal (I'll admit it's a tad annoying to open/close the bottom flap every time you need to charge the phone). And the back of the case has that little window so, you know, people can still see I'm toting an iPhone (if that's important).
OK, I'm not going to say $50 isn't a lot to spend on a case. It's obscene. Then again, so is the sight of a broken smartphone.
If you spend anytime outdoors or have butterfingers, the Defender is well worth it. While I haven't experienced any epic drops (and I'm not about to try to break my phone), I've banged this case/phone around much more than usual — short drops on my desk, tumbles from the center console to the floor of my car, etc. Overall, It feels, more or less, tough as nails.
The Defender comes with a belt holster, which I'm not using and never plan to.
Rob Beschizza, 6:15 AM Tuesday
Apple selling "anti-glare" i.e. matte displays on MacBook Pro again. For $50 extra. Oh, Apple. Link
Rob Beschizza
Batteries (New, from Sony)
Sony announced today that it's been selling improved batteries, which use olivine-type lithium iron phosphate as the cathode material. It claims they last four times longer than current Li-ion batteries, and that they recharge safely in 30 minutes. They're available in power tools only, but Sony plans to use them in consumer electronics "gradually." Details are in a press release. [Sony Insider via Oh Gizmo]
Rob Beschizza, 6:04 AM Tuesday
From Gizmodo: 10 machines so huge they'll destroy your sense of scale: Link
Rob Beschizza
Microsoft Store logo revealed: pixel
Were it not for the too-thin whitespace, it'd be pixel art! Here, let me fix that:
Rob Beschizza
Slip Grip
For people with hand troubles, Stanton Burns' Slip Grip makes it easy to pinch pens, paintbrushes, pool cues, and anything else beginning with 'P' that those with hand troubles might miss being able to grip. [Yanko]
Rob Beschizza, 4:55 AM Tuesday
Amazing NASA animation of what planetary collision would look like, massively sped up: Link
Lisa Katayama
iPhone playing cards
Before handheld gadgets were the norm, I used to like shuffling playing cards when I was bored. (Remember when they used to give playing cards out in airplanes? I'd sit in my seat and shuffle the deck for hours.) Now people just fiddle with their iPhones during long periods of down time. With this deck of iPhone playing cards, you can do both at the same time. Sort of.
[
Meninos Store via Craziest Gadgets]
Lisa Katayama, 5:32 PM Monday
Coming soon: light saber chopsticks. Link
Ian Norman, 4:22 PM Monday
Best jam you will hear all day: Link Elevator safety for kids.
Lisa Katayama
"Ship of Fools" made from a giant map
New Zealand designer Fletcher Vaughan made this sculpture of a boat &mdash his modernized objectified version of the Ship of Fools allegory &mdash out of a giant map of the world. He folded it origami-style and placed it out by a waterfront, where it could be swept by wind into the sea or drenched and destroyed by rain. "The illusion of simple paper construction," he writes, "represents the fragility of our planet and its inhabitants in the present day."
Rob Beschizza, 11:59 AM Monday
The world's first computer even older than previously thought: Link #antikythera #inspire
Steven Leckart
Pocket Pal Knife Sharpener
Smith's mini-sharpener features two v-shaped slots with carbide blades and ceramic stones. The pocket pal, which can handle serrated and standard edges, also has a 400-grit diamond-tapered rod that flips out.
For $10, I can't imagine this thing is amazing. But if you're in the bush and need to liven up a blade just a little, it could be worth carrying.
[via Toolmonger]
Lisa Katayama
Personal Rockin' Computer
This is really just another fancy design-y chair that hangs from the ceiling, but its creators have dubbed it "personal rocking' computer: the ultimate generation workstation." It may be because the position of the knees when sitting in this position create perfect thigh space to put a laptop on. I kinda wish I had one instead of two flat couches which often cause strain in my neck and my back.
Yours for just $4200 from a Swedish web site. And no, I don't think it comes with a sexy woman on top.
[Product page via Notcot]
Lisa Katayama
Gardening tool combines plant pot and watering can
NY product designer Deger Cengiz has invented a new gardening tool &mdash it's plant pot and watering can hybrid, designed so that whenever you tip it on its side the water directly hits the plant pot. He calls it "Selfish and Devoted" &mdash the plant pot is selfish because all it does is suck up water, and the watering can is devoted because its whole being is dedicated to feeding the plant.
Lisa Katayama
Water carbonator looks like a sex toy
This looks like a deformed dildo, but it's actually a kitchen tool, a home water carbonator for those of you who prefer agua con gaz over normal tap water. It was designed by Aemillios Grohmann and André Kieker for water treatment machine maker WasserMaxx.
via MoCo Loco
Lisa Katayama
If Mr. Potato head was in the army...
...he'd look like this. These prototypes were created with a 3D printer by Avihai Shurin.
[via Designboom]
Lisa Katayama
These are not just ugly stuffed animals
This pack of stuffed dog toys with giant mouths from Japan are actually functional gadget accessories. Can you guess what they are?
Answer is here.
Lisa Katayama
Review: Laptop Lunch, a bento box for geeks
Finally, a lunch box apt for geeks who like organized packed lunches! The laptop lunch bento box comes in a thermal laptop bag-like tote with an inside sleeve for gadgets and pens and notebooks. The main compartment holds a colorful modular lunch box with multiple compartments and a small spill-proof sport-style juice bottle, which also comes with the kit. A small stainless steel fork and spoon are also included. The containers are microwave and dishwasher-safe.
I used the laptop lunch box to pack Brian a meal to take on his morning surfing trip. There are four main color-coded compartments &mdash I put dumplings (left over from a feast we made last night) in the blue rectangle, cabbage & chicken & rice & pickles in the green (has a lid), farmer's cucumbers and sauteed pea shoots in the purple, and fruits in the red. The little yellow bin with the sealable lid was perfect for dipping sauce. Mango juice in the drink container.
The kit comes with an instruction booklet with some simple recipes. There are other books on Japanese-style boxed lunches, too. I have one called Bento Love, but today I just stuffed the bento box with leftovers.
When Brian came back from surfing several hours later, he reported two problems: 1. The warm food next to the cold drink made the drink warm and the food cool. 2. Because the compartments are designed to hold food horizontally but the bag's strap is on the vertical, the food gets shifted around and the flavors tended to mix. The fruit tasted slightly like chicken, he said. To avoid this, make sure to keep the saucy, juicy stuff in the sealed yellow or green containers.
Overall, yummy food + a little TLC + a great way to carry it all = one very happy surfing geek.
[Laptop Lunches bento box from ReusableBags.com]
Lisa Katayama, 8:48 AM Monday
Robots will soon have their own OS. Link
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: Kochalka on Game Boy, conflict diamonds on DS, knock-off Pokemon
Recently on Offworld, American Elf artist James Kochalka dropped in to let us preview Robot Shark, one of the songs off his latest album Digital Elf, created entirely with Nanoloop on his Game Boy Advance, and we discovered that Jason Rohrer, creator of reigning memento mori art-game-champ Passage, was creating a two player DS strategy game based on the illicit blood diamond trade in Angola (!).
We also watched Love Sport, a set of fantastically expressive pixel animations from Studio AKA's Grant Orchard, and heard Austin Wintory's soundtrack for thatgamecompany's PS3 art-game flOw being played live by LA's Golden State Pops Orchestra, and (literally) looked inside Sony's upcoming augmented reality virtual EyePet.
Finally, we saw why 2D still matters in 2009 with the jaw-dropping visuals in XNA game Dust, and found infinitely adorable crocheted Marios, a re-imagined 80s arcade pinup, and, best of all, back-alley knock-off Pokemon.
Rob Beschizza, 7:53 AM Monday
How to run DOS on a Zipit: Link via http://bit.ly/bZsPA
Rob Beschizza, 6:27 AM Monday
AT&T changes its terms of service to make it harder to sue it: Link
Rob Beschizza
USAA to allow check deposit with iPhone photos
USAA, a bank that operates almost entirely online, will accept website deposits made using photos of checks taken with the iPhone. Until now, it's required ultra high-res scans of checks, made with an unpleasant Java application that runs in on normal computers' web browsers.
Here's Susan Stellin of the New York Times:
"We're essentially taking an image of the check, and once you hit the send button, that image is going into our deposit-taking system as any other check would," said Wayne Peacock, a USAA executive vice president.Customers will not have to mail the check to the bank later; the deposit will be handled entirely electronically, and the bank suggests voiding the check and filing or discarding it. But to reduce the potential for fraud, only customers who are eligible for credit and have some type of insurance through USAA will be permitted to use the deposit feature. Mr. Peacock said that about 60 percent of the bank's customers qualify.
Rob Beschizza
Miniature Neo Geo
Pocket Lucho worked on his cabinet design for months: it contains a real Neo Geo board, a 5" LCD display, and controls gutted from a cheap TV game. Isn't it cute? [Elotrolado via Gizmodo and Hack A Day]
Rob Beschizza, 5:43 AM Monday
Toshiba, the house of HD-DVD, is to finally make a Blu-Ray player. Link
Rob Beschizza, 5:41 AM Monday
Canadian carrier's website confirms iPhone 3GS 8GB: Link [BGR]
Rob Beschizza, 5:39 AM Monday
MSI's X600 is a decent laptop, writes Avram Piltch at Link
Rob Beschizza, 10:22 PM Sunday
Top 10 worst video game movies of all time! Link #worst #inspire
Steven Leckart, 9:47 PM Sunday
"there is no way for us to monetize URL shortening." = tr.im decides to shut down. Link
Rob Beschizza, 11:05 AM Sunday
LG's touchscreen cellphone watch is $1,300, with a two year contract. How do they expect to be taken seriously? Link
Rob Beschizza, 7:14 PM Saturday
Jason Calacanis makes the case against Apple: Link
Steven Leckart, 2:58 PM Saturday
"as I copy data/install programs on my Laptop, the weight of the Laptop increases... how many GB's = 6oz?" Link
Rob Beschizza
Cassette tape USB hub
Doug Aamoth spots a cool USB hub in the form of a cassette tape. [vat19 via CrunchGear]
Brandon West, 12:37 PM Saturday
Goodyear Spring Tire Developed In Conjunction With NASA For The Lunar Rover. Link
Rob Beschizza
Nokia's RX-51 tablet
It's been making these things for years, and here's the latest, spotted just in time to dovetail with the latest slavering iTablet rumors. A 5 megapixel camera and 3G internet are the nifty features. [Kaskus.us via Mobile Bulgaria and Engadget]
Rob Beschizza, 8:59 AM Saturday
"The problem with my self-imposed iPhone boycott is I’m not sure how I know when it ends." Link
Rob Beschizza, 8:59 AM Saturday
Another batch of Mini Nines at Dell: the last-chance sale that never ends! Link
Rob Beschizza
Floppy disk purse
BraveMoonman's $18 floppy disk coinpurses come in all the colors of the rainbow. [Etsy via Technabob]
Rob Beschizza, 8:35 AM Saturday
Wired offers 6 reason to Jailbreak your iPhone: Link It's like 2007 all over again!
Rob Beschizza
Gadget lover builds real-life lollercopter
Wu Zhongyuan, 20, of Luoyang, China, built this real-life lollercopter from elmwood and steel pipe. It cost less than £1,000 to build, and Zhongyuan claims to have gotten it to 2,600 feet--enough to get in trouble with aviation authorities!
[Ananova
via Dvice]
Rob Beschizza
Moto's Macho r765IS
The Motorola r765IS, which meets the requirements of Mil Spec 810F, responds only to loudly barked imperative commands. [Sprint via Engadget]
Steven Leckart, 7:32 PM Friday
bbg is #48 on technorati's top 100. Link w00t! 49t3jed27n
Dean Putney, 4:16 PM Friday
I'm a big fan of productivity through game rewards. This made my heart skip a beat: Link Secret code: h9qezxrtmg
Lisa Katayama
Earphones integrated into fuzzy cat ear headband
Thanko, the Japanese gadget company best known for its quirky USB products, has these earphones connected to a fuzzy cat ear hairband. This is great for Akiba types and other cat ear fetishists who need an excuse to wear cat ears in public, or for those who want to wear both cat ears and earphones but only carry one accessory at a time.
Product page (Japanese)
Dean Putney, 12:15 PM Friday
Hysterical video of a modified bike that controls your bandwidth: Link Short and sweet.
Lisa Katayama, 11:39 AM Friday
Man blames cat paws for child porn downloads. Link
Lisa Katayama
Sanyo's rechargeable neck warmers
Sanyo just announced this new product a couple days ago &mdash it's a battery-heated rechargeable neck warmer that zips up into a turtleneck. This would be awesome for ski season.
[Press release (Japanese)]
Lisa Katayama
Rocking chair looks like a purple hot dog
This piece of furniture designed by Jamie Hayon is called The Rockin' Hot Dog.
[Hayon Studio via Dezeen]
Steven Leckart
Review: Two Weeks W/Spotify [Verdict: It Just Works]
Music should live in the cloud. That's obvious. Even a vinyl-loving audiophile with super-powered, magical eardrums would likely agree that most semi-casual listeners — which is most of us — shouldn't have to manage jewel cases or migrate tracks from disc to computer to thumb or hard drive ad nauseam.
I never bought into Rhapsody. I think Lala is a joke (especially with all the pricing flip-flops). I tried imeem and like the interface/functionality, but don't have time to invest in another social network. Pandora is overrated (every time I listen, I skip more tracks than I listen to). Napster's had so many incarnations, I've lost count and interest. I've never given Last.fm a go, because frankly, I've grown tired of all of these services which get close to what I want, but not quite.
My CD collection — which is in the 1,500-2,000 range — is somewhat organized. It lives in a series of alphabetical bins stacked in a hall closet. Once a month, or less, I'll go searching for a disc. Maybe I'll find it. Maybe not. Thus, I'll re-buy. A bummer, but worthwhile if I want to hear the Beach Boys "Let the Wind Blow" and put it on my iPhone, instead of streaming an inferior file on YouTube. $0.99 isn't all that bad. But it adds up. Besides, what else can I do, without illegally downloading?
Spotify is a desktop app that lets you stream 3.8 million songs — for free. While it isn't perfect, it sure does blow away the above-noted competition.
For two weeks, I've been listening and, better yet, collecting hundreds of songs that I've structured into a variety of playlists so that I can listen, on repeat.
In a word, the service is: AWESOME.
Here's the jist:
The Rad
The selection is pretty solid: I've searched and found dozens of albums and artists I haven't listened to in, literally, years. That's my favorite part: no more diving into the closet and flipping through jewel cases; no more re-buying just to hear a song on-demand; no risk of getting sued just cause I want to hear Joy Division's "Digital" 137 times yesterday and today. Plus, new releases from the kinds of bands you'll hear on KCRW and some college radio stations.
The UI is logical and smooth, as is the streaming itself. Tracks play, more or less, instantaneously. No disheartening buffering. The free account features tracks at 160kbps. You can, of course, pay up for better sound. I doubt I ever would or will.
It's legal, thanks to licensing. Supposedly there are ads that get inserted into your playlists. In the two weeks I've been listening, I haven't seen or heard one ad. That's great for me. That's not so good for the advertisers. Go figure.
There are a bevy of fun, useful features which you can dive into — drag-and-drop playlist creation, artist/song search, artist radio (not great, imho, but comparable to other streaming radio stations), collaborative playlists, sharing to Facebook — OR NOT. If you have no interest in exploring these, no problem. The UI isn't gunked up with tons of buttons or links to confuse a casual listener. As such, it's unbelievably easy to get started and just listen to music.
You can also choose genres, years, and mix and match: 80s goth, 90s dance, or even something like 70s country/reggae:
The Not-So-Rad
Spotify sports a list of similar artists and artist radio, but I'm not finding this to be all that much of a mind-blowing music discovery tool. At least, not to the point that I've gone ahead and purchased or saved many "new" artists I've never heard of or lesser-known tracks from artists I do know.
The Meh
1) No Beatles. No LedZep. Even mid-level bands are noticeably absent or incomplete: Wolf Parade's second album but not it's first (and best).
2) Oh, and because of legal issues, it's currently available only in the UK, France, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
3) I can't imagine Apple will ever allow the iPhone app to pass go and collect $200m [via Lifehacker]:
photo by RodBegbie
- Napster rises from grave
- Survey: 14-24 year olds want to pay for their music but await the ...
- Video: Spotify music app for Android
- Rhapsody Music Service Coming to TiVo Boxes (Probably) - Boing ...
- Pandora developer on building software for the Palm Pre's WebOS ...
- A look at iTunes' "Genius" music recommendation engine - Boing ...
Rob Beschizza, 9:41 AM Friday
Palm's Pre will be just $150 this weekend, with a 2 year contract: Link
Rob Beschizza
Analyst predicts Apple Tablet details
Gene Munster, in a report to clients, describes Apple's forthcoming tablet and offers a rendering of a bigger iPhone to show how it might look. Brainstorm Tech summarizes:
• Be similar to an iPod touch, only larger, capable of running most of the 70,000 applications on the iPhone App Store plus a new category of apps designed for the bigger screen.• Will be used primarily for Web surfing, e-mail, and digital media, competing with netbooks without being a netbook.
• Will be priced between an iPhone and a MacBook -- between $500 and $700.
• Is likely to include a 3G cellular modem and could be subsidized by a carrier -- either AT&T (T) or Verizon (VZ).
• Will sell better than Apple TV did its first year (1.2 million units).
• Could in fact sell 2 million units at $600 each to generate $1.2 billion and add about 3% to Apple's revenue stream in calendar 2010.
Convincing stuff. That said, Munster's got a long history of failed iTablet predictions, and this particular set is eye-rollingly conservative. It'll be used for web surfing and include 3G? Well stap my vitals!
Apple's $1.2 billion tablet computer [Fortune]
Steven Leckart, 8:08 AM Friday
@pitchforkmedia reviews some band-related iphone apps. depeche mode's app? "... a remix tool for toddlers." MEH. Link
Steven Leckart
Camp Stove Burn Wood, Fire Make Hot
GearJunkie has the goods on the StoveTec, a small wood-burning cook top that costs $35 and would make a caveman proud:
Aprovecho has created a simple wood-burning stove with a clay elbow that focuses the heat and fire in the combustion chamber directly toward a cooking pot. According to the organization, this setup dramatically reduces fuel consumption compared to open fires used for cooking by millions around the planet...With its success in the humanitarian realm, StoveTec has made an unlikely expansion into the consumer camping market...
I tested the StoveTec GreenFire One Door stove. It has the same type of efficient combustion chamber as on the humanitarian stoves though with a handle, metal case walls, and a painted exterior finish. It comes with a pot skirt to focus flame heat and a stick support shelf where the wood sits.
It is heavy and not very portable. It does not have the jet-like flame output of a canister stove. But in my test, the GreenFire proved to be easy to use and efficient, requiring just a few small pieces of wood to boil water or cook a meal in a pot.
Here's a thorough demo of the two-door model:
Steven Leckart
"Twist it, roll it, fold it, soak it." *UPDATED*
Adesso's rugged, silicone keyboard is mega-bendable, and totally water- and dust-proof.
*Connectivity: IBM AT, USB & PS/2 compatible
*Compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, 98SE
*LED lights for Num-Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock
*Key Layout: 109 Keys
*Dimensions: 17.5" x 5" x 0.5" (LxWxH)
*Weight: 0.6 lb
*Temperature Range: 32°F to 175°F
*Easy connection to USB and PS/2 ports.
Only $23.
UPDATE: BBG readers have spoken. According to you, this keyboard is a piece of junk.
[via Toolmonger]
Rob Beschizza
James May to rebuild Brooklands race track ... with Scalextric
Top Gear's James May is to build the world's largest Scalextric track, modeled on Brooklands. From the BBC:
May will use 20,000 separate sections of track to match the original 2.75 mile (4.42km) circuit and beat the current record of 1.59 miles (2.56km). Brooklands, in Weybridge, closed in 1939 and the track will have to cross a river and roads to complete a circuit.
Brooklands was the world's first custom-built racing track, with enormous banked corners. It was closed during WWII and never re-opened.
May to attempt Scalextric record [BBC]
Photo: John Chapman
Rob Beschizza, 6:42 AM Friday
EFF supports Kindle lawsuit to prevent future abuses: Link
Rob Beschizza
Schmidt's salary at Apple
Former Apple director Eric Schmidt was paid solely in Apple schwag. [Business Week]
Photo: -nathan.
Rob Beschizza
Sony shows off "simulated" Exmor low-light shots
Sony's WX1 and TX1 CyberShots will be unusually expensive for point-and-shoot cameras, thanks to new sensor technology. This pic explains what you'll get for your $400. Spot the small sprint!
Rob Beschizza
Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera design pops up
Panasonic is rumored, thanks to this shot spotted at China's Xitek photography forum, to be making a micro Four Thirds camera. Point-and-shoot with interchangeable lenses: all the rage! From Gadget Lab:
It will have a 12.1 effective megapixels sensor, a three-inch, 460,000 dot screen, 720p video mode and dust removal. Size is 119mm x 71mm x 36.3mm, almost exactly the same as the Pen (120.6mm x 69.9mm x 36.4 mm). One odd thing to note is that little mini-USB shaped hole on the back, below the hotshoe? Is it for an optical add-on viewfinder? I sure hope not.
Yes, that's a Leica lens.
Panasonic Pen-Style Camera Pictures Leaked [Gadget Lab]
Rob Beschizza
Gaiser's gold-leaf PCs start at $7k
Gaiser's shiny gold-trimmed computers cost $7,820 and up. [via Born Rich]
Rob Beschizza, 5:33 AM Friday
Apple's Phil Schiller responds to dictionary censorship claim: Link
Rob Beschizza
Compulsory calisthenics
Netflix imposes rigorous policies at its workplace to ensure movies get to your mailbox quickly. From the Chicago Tribune:
Employees are expected to perform this a minimum of 650 times an hour. Also, customers stuff things into the envelopes. Scribbled movie reviews, complaints, pictures of dogs and kids. That needs sorting too. After 65 minutes of inspection, a bell rings. Everyone stands up. Calisthenics!
Rob Beschizza
Space Invader notepad
Only $7 at lostmitten's Etsy store!
his notepad is constructed from Perler Beads, paper, and binder rings. There is a blue Space Invader alien on the front, and a green one on the back. The notepad measures approximately 3 1/2" by 3 1/2" and has 48 square pieces of paper inside in a rainbow of colours.
There is also Domo Kun.
Perler Bead Notepads - Two New Ones! [Lost Mitten]
Rob Beschizza
Don't say cheese
Party-shot is a little accessory one mounts a camera on, which spins randomly so and can automatically zoom in to to shots of partygoers. [CrunchGear]
Steven Leckart
Contest: Last Chance To Win The Fighting Space Chicken
The fighting space cock-bot contest ends today, August 7 at 11:59pm PST.
So far, my fave was submitted by Alli.
For more info, check here.
Good luck!
Lea A Franco, 6:51 PM Thursday
It's official: stupidest iPhone/iPod Touch add-on released, and it's a...steering wheel. Retire the cup. Link
Lea A Franco, 4:33 PM Thursday
iphone apps to sell songs. Recursive? Useful. Recursive. Useful? I vote "Sick of them in 2 days or less." Link
Rob Beschizza, 3:19 PM Thursday
Laptop backlash in coffee-houses! Banned to make space for real customers: Link
Carving steel with electricity
Enjoy this insane contraption over at BB Video: "Theo Gray, Popsci.com columnist and "Mad Science" author, shows us how to perform DIY electrochemical machining with homemade gadgets."
Rob Beschizza, 10:43 AM Thursday
Tech support at Acer, Dell and HP sucks. Apple's is good. Laptop mag: Link
Lisa Katayama
Metal coat rack inspired by a ribbon
I'm really digging this metal coat rack inspired by a ribbon. It was designed by Hemal Patel of London.
[Headsprung via Dezeen]
Steven Leckart
Tron Turquoise Is The New Black
With Tron Legacy set to debut in 2010, don't be surprised if turquoise and, more specifically, turquoise LED strips get slapped onto anything and everything.
Exhibit A: The Pulse, a concept fixed-gear with electric turn signals and a luminescent frame...
Personally, I'm into it — as you can probably tell from my use of the color on BBG posts.
[via Core77]
Lisa Katayama
Holograms that you can touch and feel
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have figured out to make holograms touchable. Not only can you "move" the holographic images on-screen by moving your hands, but you can also feel pressure sensations on the skin when you push or squeeze it. The project is on display at Siggraph 2009.
Brandon West, 9:12 AM Thursday
Man creates what is presumed to be the world's largest free-floating bubble. Link
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: an ode to the jetpack, rusted steampunk adventures, Tetris bejeweled
Recently on Offworld, our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol takes us through an illustrated history of one of videogames' best mechanical conceits: the jetpack. From The Stamper Brothers' original JetPac, to Exile, to Tribes, Jetpack Brontosaurus (above) and beyond, he looks at how the 'pack has let us "explore strange new worlds where the sky is not the limit, and where the vertical axis is as just as essential as the horizons that lay all around us."
Elsewhere we marveled at the intricate rusted ironworks designs in the latest video of Amanita's upcoming adventure game Machinarium, saw Minotaur China Shop (and Jetpack Brontosaurus, coincidentally) creators Flashbang poke gentle fun at Braid creator Jon Blow, and found a wonderful series of T-shirts based on the glitched-out boot-up sequences of arcade games.
And for our 'one shot's of the day, two more fantastic pieces from artists appearing in the upcoming Autumn Society games/art gallery show: Zelda's Link aims for the eye, and the Swarovski crystal-studded queen Tetrisina.
Lisa Katayama
LED spray paint can
One of the newer projects by French artist Aissa Logerot (who made the ironing board that flips into a mirror) is called Halo, and it's a graffiti can that sprays LED lights instead of spray paint. When the battery runs out, you have to shake the can to recharge it. A cool tool for light-writers.
[Artist's page via NotCot]
Steven Leckart
Stargate Babes Do Chewbacca
Check out Stargate cast members, Alaina Kalanj, Elyse Levesque and Ming-Na doing their best Chewie impersonations.
The footage is from an interview the actresses gave to Wired at Comic-Con. The editing is compliments of my pal Fernando Cardoso.
Can you do better? I'd love to see this sucker get remixed again and again...
[via Underwire]
Rob Beschizza
Anti-theft laptop app snags nabbed iMac
The expense notwithstanding, programs like GadgetTrak do result in equipment recovery now and again. The creators' blog explains how it works with a splendid real-world example:
The system was stolen two weeks ago and then connected to the Internet two days ago, the device was recovered this morning. GadgetTrak's MacTrak software captured a photo of who was using the system as well as pinpointed the location within a few meters, all of the data was uploaded automatically to the device owner's Flickr account and email. The NYPD followed up and recovered the system, along with two other stolen laptops from different cases.
Smart thieves reformat, but most thieves are not smart.
GadgetTrak Recovers Stolen iMac In New York [GadgetTrak via Gadget Lab]
Steven Leckart
What's So "Smart" About An Automated Kitchen?
Anvil Motion is revolutionizing the kitchen:
Simply wave your hand and cabinet panels and doors rise and fall vertically with precision, concealing or revealing contents. Using a wireless touch-screen device, cabinets can also be programmed to open in unison or individually through preprogrammed scenes that customize your living space to the need at hand. In the kitchen, for example, a baking scene would open cabinets that house ovens, baking implements and standard baking ingredients.
The hand-crafted kitchen also comes with "biometric security," which means future teenagers will have to drug their parents to commandeer eyes and/or faces just to raid the liquor cabinet.
Awesome.
[via New Launches via Gizmodiva via Electronic House]
Rob Beschizza
Now you too can have a small impractical saw in your pen.
Firebox sells this marvelous, TSA-unfriendly pen. It has 13 different attachments and, given the screwing involved, is probably much less practical than it sounds.
13-in-1 Multi Tool Pen [Firebox via Red Ferret]
Update: Better headline hat tip to Redshirt77.
Rob Beschizza
Sony TX1 boasts better low-light shots
CrunchGear's Devin Coldeway explains why Sony's expensive new TX1 point-and-shoot might be better than the rest: new low-light technology.
sensors aren't just magic planes of photosensitive material. They've got circuits on all sides, wires and transistors all over the place, and incredibly, some of it is between the lens and the sensor. ... What Sony's done, apparently, is cleared out the junk between the lens and the sensor. ... Sony says the low-light performance is better, and they've actually done something to make it so, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until we get some real testing done.
Enough to make you pay double? This baby is nearly $400.
Rob Beschizza
Sony Cybershot WX1
The WX1 uses a 1/2.4" Exmor-R sensor at 10 megapixels and has a 24-120mm f2.4 lens with optical image stabilization. 720p video and 10fps shooting entice, but it will lack exposure controls. Look for it in October for $350. [1001 Noisy Cameras]
Rob Beschizza
Sony's new Readers: make mine the Pocket Edition
Of the two new Sony e-book readers, it's the $200 pocket-sized model that appeals to me most--assuming, of course, that it's really pocket sized.
Rob Beschizza
Lava Lamp returns as Mathmos Fireflow
An interesting balance between retro and reinvent, these new lava lamps are out this fall in the U.K. [Mathmos via Technabob]
Rob Beschizza
iPod Nano cases made of old cassette tapes
These CAD$49 cases are "gutted, routered and rebuilt" to fit fourth-gen Ipod Nanos. [Contexture Design]
Rob Beschizza
Zune HD looks like a winner
Wired's Dylan Tweney got to play with Microsoft's inexorably excellent Zune HD.
It's compact, lightweight, good-looking and has a very slick interface. Microsoft's newest media player has a bright, crisp OLED display that the dark lighting of the nightclub showed off to very good effect. It's fast and responsive: Video looked great on it. Its 480 x 272 pixels are a far cry from HD, but they present a 16:9 aspect ration and they're bright and contrasty, with deep, rich blacks, so you won't mind much. Also, we could zoom and swipe between photos with great speed...
Read the rest at Gadget Lab.
Rob Beschizza
$30 USB Retro Wooden Speaker Cube
It plays MP3 files via SD card, too.
Product Page [USB Geek via Crunchgear]
Rob Beschizza
The ugliest mouse ever
Vaguely reminiscent of oil crash concept cars--and about as easy to move places. [Engadget]
Rob Beschizza
Review: an afternoon with the Sony Ericsson W518a
Sony Ericsson's W518a is a clamshell phone offered by AT&T for $100 with a 2-year contract. A $50 mail-in rebate halves that price. It has a 3G radio, 320 x 240 display, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and external music controls for use as an MP3 player.
On the Walkman front, it can access Napster and other streaming services, has an FM radio, and can be controlled by shaking it just so: clever! The W518a also has a full set of basic info management apps, instant messaging, a sound recorder, and so on.
Its flagship feature, however, is a custom Facebook app that aims to make this decidedly dumb phone a lot faster and smarter when it comes to integration with the social networking site.
Lea A Franco, 3:10 PM Wednesday
Free iPhone app for artists: Random Pose. Exactly what the name says, using images from Link
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: lusty zombies galore, new game from Braid dev, AI controlled Mario
Recently on Offworld, Valve announced another infected incidence with Crash Course (above), a new downloadable campaign for the original Left 4 Dead due in September that will bridge the No Mercy and Death Toll episodes with an entirely new location, and PopCap continued to perfect their chesty/lusty zombie parody with a new set of Evony-busting banner ads.
We also saw Braid creator Jon Blow tease his next game, The Witness -- described as "an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island" -- by dropping a Tao Te Ching quote, as Braid itself is confirmed to come to the PlayStation 3, and we found new details of the Wii/Xbox 360/PS3 remake of cult hex-strategy game Military Madness/Nectaris.
Elsewhere, AI specialists announced a competition that will use science to build a better Mario, Taito teased Puzzle Bobble for the iPhone, Sega fanatics released the long-fabled 32-bit Virtua Hamster (!), and we looked at an 8-bit iPhone NES synthesizer. Our 'one shot's for the day: Keita 'Katamari' Takahashi, shoeless and amused, and Super Mario Lilliput.
Rob Beschizza
A weekend with Cakewalk's Sonar V-Studio 100
A digital music dilattente, I'm hardly qualified to evaluate the quality of Sonar's VS-100 compared to rival equipment. So I won't. Instead, I'll just tell you why I like this pricey $700 box, and look forward to the day I'm good enough at music to make it a worthwhile buy.
Steven Leckart
Famous Joy Division LP Cover Visualized
Ever wondered what it'd be like to see the wave on Peter Saville's iconic cover for Unknown Pleasures actually SOUNDS like come alive?
Well, here ya go.
Better yet: The code's available here, if you want to play with it yourself.
[veer via knick/knack via Jay Parkinson]
Rob Beschizza
Phone audio quality sucks
Seth Godin says what we've all been thinking: "Am I the only person who wants a Hi Def telephone? A headset that sounds better than the handheld receiver"
It's true. Twenty years ago, a hard-wired phone line sounded just fine. After a bumpy start with the 40-50 Mhz bands, cordless phones started going places at 900 MHz in the 1990s, too.
Then our local EM fields got too busy, supposedly, for this wavelength to work well. Cordless phones moved to higher frequencies, which meant less interference--but the quality never seemed there, notwithstanding the cascade of technobabble printed on the boxes. I've owned at least a dozen 2.4 GHz and 5.8GHz models, but none have ever matched the audio quality of a Panasonic 900MHz model I still own to this day. In a house packed with strange EM fields, it sounds just fine, too.
Thence to cellphones. I thought Sprint was bad, but then I tried to make calls on my wife's iPhone. AT&T voice quality is just abysmal: it turns Apple's amazing handset into a joke about the inverted priorities of futurism.
So what do we do with this stuttering, fading echo of the human voice? We pipe it through BlueTooth, just to make sure it sounds as bad as it possibly can.
Steven Leckart, 5:24 PM Tuesday
Wow, RadioShack is embracing "The Shack", officially. Just in time for @lancearmstrong's spandex, too Link
Lisa Katayama, 5:22 PM Tuesday
Zoo pelican swallows cell phone. Link
Steven Leckart
Gallery: Forget Cell Phones, Give Me Wearable Computing!
Experiencing augmented reality doesn't have to be as easy as holding up a cell phone. Through the years, researchers have dreamed up and constructed hardware that is either totally cool or utterly ridiculous (sometimes both, depending on whom you ask).
The above funglasses from Lumus Optical suggest you can view email, SMS and video games "inconspicuously during meetings."
Because no one would ever question why you're wearing huge black sunglasses indoors.
Needless to say, I'll give it up that there are practical applications for this hardware (exploring a city, viewing Google Maps, etc.). Plus, it's pretty clever:
Lumus' patented, revolutionary Light-guide Optical Element (LOE) [ed. note: 2-3mm thick] comprises a flat, transparent optical substrate that incorporates a set of embedded partially reflecting facets. The upper figure illustrates the LOE function. An optical image, generated by a microdisplay (e.g. LCD, LCoS or OLED), is coupled into the LOE substrate. Trapped by total internal reflection, the image components are guided along the LOE. The image is then expanded and coupled out by a set of partial reflectors for viewing by the user. The LOE provides the viewing experience of a large distant screen: an enlarged, distant image, with a large field-of-view (FoV).
After the jump, check out some other AR projects, old and new, which require you to look less like an iPhone fanboy and more like a cyborg...
[Lumus via MedGadget]
Steven Leckart
It's The End of the Non-Augmented World As We Know It...
As with the Internet itself, some of the coolest tech trickles down from the military. Case in point: years after non-commercial aircraft started using HUDs to overlay flight data in front of pilots, video games followed suit. And, for the last five years, the hype and promise for augmented reality — a hybrid of virtual and actual reality — to spread into virtually every aspect of our daily lives has only grown.
From consumer HUDs, clunky wearable computer packs, hilarious helmets and goofy goggles now to small web cams, portable gaming devices, integrated GPS, and near-free cell phone apps (this is the big one), are we finally on the cusp of the breakthrough that's been buzzed about?
Above is a demo of TwittARound, an iPhone app that was unveiled recently. The AR app displays live tweets, allowing the viewer to see from where the 140-character message originated. Kinda fun, but also potentially useful: After a natural disaster, rescue workers could hypothetically locate any persons trapped inside buildings or under rubble.
That's why AR has so much potential to become ubiquitous: 1) the applications for it fall everywhere and anywhere on the spectrum between totally useful and just plain silly (thus, it targets anyone and everyone). 2) the tools required to partake are getting cheaper, smaller, and easier to use.
After the jump, see where you can expect to see a lot more augmented reality, and why:
Steven Leckart, 12:09 PM Tuesday
i've been trying to get a hold of the manufacturer of the "Fleshlight" [it's for "work"... yes really!] Link
Lisa Katayama
Bangkok's tallest building will add "pixels" to the cityscape
Construction on Bangkok's tallest high-rise begins this fall, with completion slated for 2012. As you can see in the mock-up above, the building will have "pixels" &mdash imperfections in its otherwise glossy facade that are actually staggered windows and terraces belonging to the Ritz Carlton Residences and other fancy occupants of the 77-story, 1,017-foot tall building.
[via OMA]
Lisa Katayama, 10:32 AM Tuesday
Boy beat to death at Internet addiction camp. Link
Steven Leckart
Video: Homage to iChat, Marfa Lights Shot W/RED One
The band YACHT just released a new video for their song "Psychic City (Voodoo City)." Apart from the fun religious/occult imagery, the video features a soundbite that might sound familiar: a blip not unlike the iChat alert (first one at 00:39).
Also awesome: Inspired by the Marfa Mystery Lights, the video was shot using a RED One. It's worth noting, too, YACHT is the creator of FlickrBlockrs.
Rob Beschizza
Review: 15 minutes with Pledge's Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair
Pledge's $5 hair box is a plastic gadget equipped with rollers. Designed to squeeze up pet hair regardless of which direction it's rolled, it's more expensive than adhesive rollers--but claims to be better. I picked one up at Target and put it to the dog bed. Thoughts:
• It works as well as a roller, but not better.
• Definitely not as gross as roller sheets.
• It's ridiculously designed to make it impossible to empty.
• But it works just fine if you empty and re-use it.
Pledge's decision to to mold the cover permanently to the base is a cheap attempt at screwing customers, but it's a neat gadget all the same--and nothing an Xacto knife can't fix.
Update: Reader I Am At Work offers a useful Instructable on re-using them.
Rob Beschizza
Review: A week with Dyson's DC22 Motorhead
Dyson's DC22's is a compact and powerful canister vac that looks like a cyberpunk chain gun. Though it's extremely good at its job, the $800 price tag highlights its few flaws and places it out of the price range of many shoppers.
Lisa Katayama
Geisha: The Japanese company that turned a virtual French maid into a hit product
Aris folds her tiny hands across her aproned lap and smiles. "If you need me, please poke me to get my attention!" she says in a peppy, high-pitched voice. "Just don't poke me in a weird place! "
As if to deliberately defy her request, Taisei Tanaka, who is sitting next to me in a soccer jersey and jeans, lifts up Aris' poofy skirt with a stick, revealing the ends of her black thigh-high socks and a glimpse of her blue panties. Aris screams at the top of her lungs. "Please stop! This kind of thing is not good!"
Tanaka has every right to lift up Aris' skirt. He is her creator, after all. Besides, Aris is not a real person; she doesn't even really exist. She is an optical illusion, a three-dimensional projection of a brown-haired girl in a maid outfit who lives inside of a cube that looks like an oversized die. The cube has QR codes pasted on each of its sides that uses image recognition, motion-tracking, and other computer-generated data to project images into space when recorded with a webcam.
I'm at the office of Geisha Tokyo Entertainment, the company that makes and sells the popular Augmented Reality Figure Aris. At first glance, it's a cookie cutter Japanese workspace with long fluorescent ceiling lights and walls painted a sterile white. But the normalness ends there. The whiteboard by the entrance is covered with a 20-frame manga featuring egg-shaped characters in a comedy routine; a rack holding half a dozen guitars sits in the back corner of the room. Wigs and figurines line the rows of desks crammed into the 800 square foot or so space. As I look around the office upon arrival, one of the employees, a tall guy in a bandanna, waves at me with a didgeridoo in one hand and two stuffed Pokemon in the other.
Brandon Boyer
Recently on Offworld: word play, Deadmau5 meets Zelda, Langdell v. Mobigame
Recently on Offworld we played with words in two ways: first, by downloading our latest iPhone obsession, NewToy's Friends With Words, as svelte and streamlined as an online-multiplayer Scrabble-alike we've played, and as perfect (read: dangerously addictive) as the original Scrabulous proved when it first dominated Facebook.
We then saw Flashbang co-founder Matthew Wegner solve PopCap's fellow iPhone word-smither Bookworm with science, with a fully automated OCR word-finder that just might be expanded to a web service soon.
Elsewhere, we saw Spore, Fathom and more indie all-star devs joining August's rapid-proto Experimental Gameplay competition, electro star Deadmau5 taking on Zelda, learned what Disneyland can teach devs about game design, and saw "worlds first computer programmer" Ada Lovelace coming to LittleBigPlanet with other historical friends.
Finally, we found a wicked Mario 64 optical illusion papercraft, looked inside Italy's Art of Games gallery exhibit, read the latest, fantastically well researched update on the Tim Langdell v. Mobigame trademark battle, and our 'one shot's: Parappa and Umjammer Lammy play in "My First Rockband", and gorgeously abstract picture-postcards from Wipeout HD (above).
Rob Beschizza, 4:12 AM Tuesday
Sanyo Praying Area Man Doesn't Send In Rebate Form Link
Rob Beschizza
Gadget Fiction: The Winners!
Your response to our Gadget Fiction contest was amazing: there are so many good stories that it's gutting to have only three prizes to give out.
A few interesting trends cropped up throughout the entries.
• You like bad sex and bad coffee.
• You are ambivalent about your relationship with consumer electronics.
• You have read William Gibson a lot.
Winners after the jump.
Dean Putney, 4:26 PM Monday
If this doesn't blow your mind, nothing will: Link 3D modeling Rome from thousands of Flickr photos.
Fancy parking meters hacked
Xeni over on the front door:
A group of tinkerers and security researchers announced findings that prove it is possible to bypass the controls of "e-meter" parking meters -- which means it's possible to park for free where such meters are in use. The group announced their findings last week at the 2009 Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas.
Lisa Katayama, 11:43 AM Monday
60-foot tall Gigantor monument being built in Kobe. Completion slated end of Sept. Link
Rob Beschizza, 10:21 AM Monday
Reading Gadget Fiction entries right now for Link
Lisa Katayama
Advisor: Don't let social networking ruin your social skills
The head of England's Roman Catholic Church is worried that social networking is costing people &mdash especially teenagers &mdash their social skills. Is he right?
In an article published yesterday in the UK's Telegraph, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the man in charge at the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, blamed the Internet for causing things like bad community relations, shoddy friendships, and child suicides. "Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanizes what is a very, very important part of community life and living together," he said. And then: "Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships.They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they're desolate." He was speaking in response to a recent incident in which 15-year old girl killed herself after a bout of bullying on Bebo.
I get where he's coming from, kinda. There is something deeply impersonal about the way information is relayed on social networks. In the past year, I've found out about half a dozen engagements, four weddings, two divorces, two deaths, and scores of newborn babies via Facebook updates. When I want to know what my friends are up to, I check their Twitter feed. Twitter is also where most intelligent daytime discussions take place &mdash why bother meeting someone for coffee to discuss current affairs when you can do the same with two hundred people at once on Tweetdeck? I don't remember any phone numbers anymore, let alone addresses or birthdays &mdash Facebook has all those answers, too. Maybe the Internet really is making me socially retarded. It must be even worse for kids who are growing up now and have never known an analog era.
I understand the Archbishop's concern, although I do think he's overreacting, especially with the transient relationships stuff. Relationships are transient everywhere, not just online &mdash in fact, hating and un-friending can be just as hurtful, if not more so, when they take place in the real world.
By the way, it appears &mdash although I haven't been able to verify whether this is his actual account &mdash that the Archbishop himself is on Facebook. So is the Roman Catholic Church. So if you want to ask him what he meant by "transient relationships," you could just send him a direct message. Or we can discuss it here in our very social online forum. Even better, grab a colleague or two, invite them out for a drink, and have a face-to-face conversation about it.
Advisor is a new weekly column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email it to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com.
