I can see forever

Greenpeace praises HP for killing most PVC from supply chain, Nokia still cleanest

From Greenpeace:

The 13th edition of Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics rewards Hewlett-Packard for putting a PC on the market that is virtually free of PVC (vinyl plastic) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Only the power supply unit and cable still contain these hazardous substances.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace had staged protests at HP's headquarters in Palo Alto, USA, and at its offices in China and the Netherlands, in response to the delay on the company's commitment to eliminate these substances from its computing products, by the end of 2009. With the ProBook 5310m Notebook, however, it appears that HP has now re-prioritized its toxic phase-out commitment.

Rob Beschizza

Purported PS3 ad sports Nazi imagery

Sony's "edgy" marketing gets it attention, but it's remarkable how tone-deaf it is to what people other than teenage boys will think. It's as if it doesn't see that the story should be "PlayStation 3," not "look how crude and offensive Sony is."

Erwin Rommel, Joan of Arc resurrected by PlayStation 3. [Copyranter via Engadget and Consumerist]

Rob Beschizza

Is Apple's tablet a kindle-killer?

At Gizmodo, Briam Lam writes about the true target of Apple' tablet: readers.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a "new device." The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the "best newspaper in the world."

Apple's gamble is that is e-ink isn't all that important to most of us: we are used to glowy LCD screens and our eyes don't need the passive look of paper to enjoy reading. Moreover, it's realized that the Kindle and its kin have a broad potential beyond reading long documents, like novels, where e-ink is a real help. We read an awful lot of little things, and that's the real market.

Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines [Giz]

Illo: Jesus Diaz.

Xeni & Rob

Cars! BBG visits Mercedes-Benz' telematics research lab

Pale and precise behind rimless spectacles, Johann Jungwith looks the consummate engineer; though a longtime U.S. resident, Formula 1 is still his sport. As president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz' U.S. research arm, it's his responsibility to oversee development of new technologies intended to make driving safer and drivers smarter. Today, however, more pressing matters are at hand: he's showing us how to pair an iPhone with a Merc.

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Rob Beschizza

Report: 30 percent of NYC iPhone calls dropped

It's true that bandwidth is precious -- so precious it must be rationed! So AT&T's "3G" cellular "network" goes, and iPhone users get to enjoy the results: almost a third of all calls placed on the small Apple get dropped in the Big Apple. One user, complaining to Apple after a fifth of his calls fritzed out on NYC, was told that his experience was unusually good. [Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Sorry if you got caught in the spam filter

It got more aggressive of late and I just noticed a few dozen good comments in the spam bucket. Humblest apols if your deathless prose did not make it "in time" to the posts in question!

Rob Beschizza

Peek lifetime subscriptions return

Peek's selling lifetime subscriptions again. $300 gets you the email-only handset and the WWAN hookup it needs, for ever. To demythologize that a little--let's say lifetime is 5 years--that's about $5 a month, or a third of the normal price. Great for people who hate bills, give gifts, or stay loyal to their gadgets. [Peek]

Rob Beschizza

"No Quiet," a watch band-like ring

Rob Beschizza

Snap-on bottle top for soda cans

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Tablet computer gallery

Wired's Brian Chen polishes off the history of tablet computers ... beginning in 1888.

Rob Beschizza

Latitude Z

That Dell's new Latitude is $2,000 suggests quality and high specifications are involved, but this one has a trick up its sleeve: wireless recharging, thanks to the (wired) dock that comes with it.

It's it nice, also, to see heavy attention to design that isn't also trying to bottle someone else's magic? Love that geometry. [Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Thumbdrive in a cassette tape

Put your sounds on the stick, put the stick inside the ancient-looking cassette tape, then scrawl all over it for verity's sake. 6 different designs, one overwhelming wave of nostalgia. [Suck UK] Thanks, Xeni!

Rob Beschizza

The awfulness of Windows vs. the creepiness of Mac

Charlie Brooker:

I don't care if you're right. I just want you to die. I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway. ... Still, bad though it is, I vaguely prefer the clumping, clueless, uncool, crappiness of Microsoft's bland Stepford gang to the creepy assurance of the average Mac evangelist.

Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? [Guardian]

"My ongoing Kafka-esque nightmare of dealing with Palm and their App Catalog submission process"

JWZ tears his hair out: though among the earliest Palm Pré developers, trying to get stuff into its app store is a pointless waste of time.

Apple devs think they have it bad, but at least Apple is strongly motivated to exploit their work. The odd part to this story is that Palm's app store is like a bizarre cargo-cult echo of Apple's: it copies all the wrong things (absurd submission policies) but none of the right ones (attaining hordes of customers before turning the screw.)

Beggars can't be choosers.

Xeni & Rob

Cars! Interior textures of the 2010 E-Class (Gallery)

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Rob Beschizza

Snow business

Neat fact: about a third of Boing Boing readers use Macs, and of those, 21.28 percent have already upgraded to Snow Leopard. For reference, BBG is at 35.31 percent, Offworld at 27.92 percent, Daring Fireball is at about 60 percent and Macworld reports just over 50 percent. Unfortunately, there is no word yet from the Official Webpage of The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Windows 7 party time!

Watch:

Then:

Source

Rob Beschizza

Rocky Mountain Bank sent your banking details to random Gmail account, got judge to shut it down

When Rocky Mountain Bank mistakenly sent banking info to the wrong email address, it demanded that Google tell them who owned this email address. Google: "No." How did Federal Judge James Ware respond? He ordered gmail to close the innocent gmail user's account. [TechDirt]

Deleting an account to delete a single email sent to it? It's not even the sort of thing one can map to useless "best justice money can buy" assumptions about the U.S. legal system. It's just plain stupid, a line of drool linking this clueless bench jockey's bottom lip to 1972's best guess about who should prevail when the interests of businesses conflict with those of the general public. This particular Judge, as you might imagine, has an interesting history.

Crunchgear talks of the coming tablet PC war (in which it is a participant.)

Mechanical Tumor

Watch in HD. Via Gizmodo.

Rob Beschizza

PSP Go reviewed and ripped apart

Sony's renovated Playstation Portable gets its public debut, and performs as expected: it is a smaller, better, less UMD-ey gaming gadget. Ross Miller calls it a sturdy, classier game system but chokes on the mean-spirited marketing gamesmanship that Sony will never, ever realize is bad for its image. "Needless to say, there's still no second analog stick" adds Mark Wilson, who finds its charms dated by newer tech like the ZuneHD.

iFixit provides the most interesting coverage, as usual, splaying the machine's insides out for the world to see and understand, a tableux that our future robot masters will doubtless cite in their condemnation of mankind. On the other hand, maybe it is merely an exercise waiting to be recapitulated as art.

Rob Beschizza

Cars! Battle of the little green electric urban go-carts

Nissan's Leaf is out next year; a year after that comes the Reva NXG, recently shown off at the Frankfurt motor show.

It's a similarly equipped little plug-in, with the emissions of a butterfly and the driving range of a bee: it lasts 125 miles and can go 80 MPH. Perfect for Pittsburgh, but not so much for anything that involves tasks other than shopping and commuting. Unless it is making technologically suspect "MPG" claims, of course! But still, I want one: in pastel lime green, naturally. And with a free tankful of electrons. [Jalopnik]

Rob Beschizza

Behold! RED camera accessories rendered in THE THIRD DIMENSION

It is unfair to accuse RED of pushing vaporware, as its technology is real and it rules. But its relentless teasing of product concepts hit the hype ceiling long ago, and maintaining the interest of those already convinced is the order of the day. Today's news is that some accessories made the omnidirectional leap from working prototype to 3D rendering. Meanwhile, intrigued amateurs drift back to affordable prosumer junk, while the "DSLR cams that also shoot HD" meme is already last year's dog and pony show, precisely 12 months old.

Rob Beschizza

Put linux on a Zipit, get a $40 netbook

A cheap little cellular WiFi handheld, Zipit does instant messaging in similarly single-minded fashion to how the Peek does e-mail. Unlike the Peek, however, the Zipit now has a real Linux distribution that turns it into a cute, ingenious, and nearly-useless laptop. From Lilliputing:

You might be interested in running Linux, installing DOSbox, or maybe an NES emulator. The Zipit has a 300MHz XScale processor, 32MB of RAM, and a Mini-SD card slot for stroage. It has a 2.8 inch QVGA display and a 1000mAh Li-Ion battery. It connects to 802.11b/g WiFi networks. And if you follow a series of steps from hacker Hunter Davis, you can install a working Linux operating system with the Fluxbox window manager.

"The speakers are remarkably underpowered," says Hunter Davis, creator of this neat how-to video.

[Lilliputing]

Rob Beschizza

Cars! Natural Gas street-rod blasts out of gangster age

AVF Tech's 1933 Ford Street-Rod contains a 7-liter engine, drive-by-wire and a six speed automatic gearbox. When completed, it'll push out 600 hp and blow away just about everything else manufactured in the last 75 years.

Oh, yes, and it runs on natural gas. [AVF Tech via TA]

Rob Beschizza

Notepod

So, you think Moleskines are expensive? Behold, the Notepod! [Notepod via Awesomer]

Rob Beschizza

AT&T complains about Google Voice

AT&T claims that because Google blocks certain numbers from association with its Google Voice service, it violates net neutrality principles. [NYT] It's all about fees at the back end: poky local telcos scam the big carriers on connection charges. But whereas big carriers are forced to allow the connections, Google Voice is not.

The flaw in the argument is, of course, that Google Voice isn't a telco. It's a new application of existing technology that supercedes the business model that telcos rely on. Among other things, Google Voice makes it obvious that the services carriers charge for are worthless, and that bandwidth is their only real product.

Rob Beschizza

Gameboy innards

Inside DMG [Drop 1410's Flickr via Gameovr] (Also see the awesome Gameboy camera photos)

Rob Beschizza

KONG vs. New York reincarnated in flash

Man, these games sucked.

From Rick Dickinson's photostream.

Lisa Katayama

Honda's U3-X is the new segway

Earlier this week, Honda unveiled the U3-X, a unicycle-like tilt-operated vehicle that could put the Segway to shame. It's still a prototype, but once commodified it could become a popular mode of transportation in

[via TokyoMango]

Lisa Katayama

Headphones inspired by Thriller

These awesomely Thriller-esque headphones made their debut at the Nokia design competition this year. Rumor has it you can get your own pair at the Nokia store in London.

Update: Gizmodo tells us they have a pair on display at Giz Gallery in NYC right now.

[via Shiny Shiny]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Quarrel's magic wool, Monkey Island in Crysis, the best of BlipFest

Topping our list of anticipated Xbox Live Arcade games but still off too many radars elsewhere, Offworld returns from a day at Scotland-based Denki with a behind the scenes look at the making of their upcoming word-battler Quarrel (above), from its cardboard and tiddly-wink origins to the 'magic wool' now running underneath.

Elsewhere we saw the Tri-Islands of Monkey Island rendered in the hyper-poly pushing engine behind Crysis and early PC transforming robo-shooter Thexder coming to the PSP, and got a glimpse into the art and design behind the fantastical heavy-metal world of Brutal Legend.

We also saw the wickedly blood-drenched pixels of Cactus's low-bit Life/Death/Island and Valve's amazing/ly swift response to a fan-made Team Fortress 2 canine class, shoes fit for Okami and high concept Pac-Man and Tetris wearables, and purchased a two-disc collection of Blip Fest 2008 performances -- possibly the best catalog of the top chiptune players released to date.

And our 'one shot's: Bioshock 2's Mr. Bubbles meets Mary Blair, and 40 artists collaborate on a magic-mile-long mega-Mario Kart illustration.

Rob Beschizza

Would you be happy with metered internet in return for enforced net neutrality?

Dylan Tweney looks at the consequences of regulatory mandates on net neutrality: if the ISPs can't hit up content and bandwidth providers, they'll hit up consumers.

It seems the most reasonable outcome: the consumer pays, the consumer gets. As the simplest and least obscure business model to run the tubes on, isn't it worth rationalizing prices to guarantee open access? Tweney, however, points out that the additional bureacracy being layered atop the market could stifle innovation:

Net neutrality regulations make sense in closed, monopolistic situations. But outside of small, rural markets, most of the U.S. offers a high level of competitive choice. Don't like Comcast cable internet? Switch to SpeakEasy, Astound or SBC, or look into satellite internet. Don't care for AT&T's spotty 3G wireless network? Try T-Mobile or Verizon. Need help finding an alternative? Check Broadband Reports' interactive ISP finder.

That's why the FCC should take a very cautious, careful approach to implementing its brave, new principles.

FCC Position May Spell the End of Unlimited Internet [Tweney Report]

Lisa Katayama

An illustrated guide to making t-shirts with the Yudu machine

Remember the screen printing system from the Boing Boing Video episode Mark and I shot at Maker Faire, the Yudu? Well, I wanted to make t-shirts for my personal blog, TokyoMango, so I went over to my friend Ben's house this past weekend to do a test run on the one he bought at the Faire. The Yudu, it turns out, is a great compact home printing machine as long as you don't have high expectations and are armed with mountains of patience.

First, Ben mocked up two versions of his design using Adobe Illustrator, one for dark ink and one for light. We printed these out on a vellum transparency using a regular inkjet printer, then put it aside to dry. It took us several attempts to get a perfectly un-smudged transparency, but we finally got one we could work with. (This obviously is no fault of Yudu — it's either the printer ink or the vellum or the compatibility of the two.)

Next step: prepare the screen. We put emulsion on the screen in a darkened room through a wet-and-stick-and-dry process to get it ready for exposure. We wet the screen with a spray bottle and then squeegeed the excess off. Then we put the screen on a drying rack in the Yudu machine. The drying is supposed to take 20 minutes, but we found it took a good hour of manual hairdryer heat in addition to the preset drying cycle. While we waited, we ate pizza and wings and playing Rock Band.

In earlier test runs with the Yudu, Ben claimed he had nightmarish troubles getting it to just the right wetness — the tutorials warn against making it too wet, but too dry was the bigger problem for him, leaving parts of the screen patchy and other parts just completely missing the emulsive layer. (Ben: "It was super annoying and I wanted to kill it.")

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Rob Beschizza

Rare Nintendo Othello game

Described by its seller, Nat, as "awesomeness incarnate," this ancient and evil example of arcade tech does not, regrettably, boot up.

it boots sorta, red led's power up etc, but no image or sound. I suspect there is a problem in the interface to the 1970s era b/w tv that is inside as a monitor.

Its appeal, however, remains: it's claimed to be a hitherto unknown version of Nintendo's first ever arcade game.

Final ebay of the day, promise!

Rob Beschizza

Unfortunatley, by telling you this wonderful antique mechanical calculator is only $5 heading into the final day of its auction, I probably ensure it won't remain so for long.

Rob Beschizza

CPUs for Scrap Gold Recovery

"There's even a bunch of white ceramic DIPPs and some RISC processors."

Lisa Katayama

Microsoft unveils new tablet at Gizmodo Gallery in NYC

If you're in New York City and love gadgets and geeks or both, don't forget to check out Gizmodo Gallery, the annual limited-time-only gadget extravaganza hosted by Nick Denton and Brian Lam. It opens to the public tomorrow — they have a lot of vintage electronics, a pancake machine, a giant TV you can play video games on, and a lot of surprise toys that I won't ever get to see because I'm stuck in San Francisco for the moment. Word is that they've gotten a much bigger space with &mdash! surprise! &mdash a tablet booklet from Microsoft, called the Courier.

Gizmodo Gallery 2009: The Details

Rob Beschizza

Peek looks back on first year

Peek, the cheap (and good) email-only cellular handset, has been in business for a year. Dan Morel, Peek's chief geek, looks back on how close they came to doom, right from the outset:

Starting a business is mind-blowingly, exhausting. But let me tell you this, the first year thereafter is gutwrenching emotionally. The highs and lows of sales, reviews, customers, staff.... wow! There are so many firsts and so many new things you do. Your first big bugs, your first angry customers, your first bad reviews, problems with your model, sneaking costs, your first disaster/outages, these are all real things that come up that you don't think about in the starry-eyed days of launch.

If you don't own a smartphone, but keep stealing the smartphones of others in order to check your mail, this device--service is $15 a month, no contract-- is strongly recommended.

Rob Beschizza

Microsoft announces an end to coffee rings

A table on which nothing hot, wet, sharp or heavy may be placed! [Marilink's flickr via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Glow in the dark keyboard stickers

We spent a meelion dollars making a keyboard with backlit keys. The Soviets, they took glow in the dark stickers into cyberspace. [Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

There is now a hairdryer with Swarovski crystals

At long last.

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Elite turns 25, Left 4 Teletubbies, Indies Invade Austin

With the launch of Retro Remakes on Offworld, we started a straw poll to ask: what's the one remake you'd most like to see appear on consoles or handhelds, with the results to be tabulated and published at the end of the week. We also read the latest official response on the disappearance of an Xbox Live Arcade version of N64 classic Goldeneye 007, and celebrated the 25th anniversary of UK space-exploration legend Elite (above) with developer Frontier.

Elsewhere we put together a high-res gallery documenting Indies Invading Austin -- the two days of the inaugural Indie Games Summit at GDC Austin -- and began rounding up the reasons why you should be attending LA's Oct. 1-4 Indiecade conference/exhibition, with appearances by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, former MIT games head Henry Jenkins, and flOw/Flower creator Jenova Chen.

Finally, we saw the horrific visage of the Teletubbies invading Left 4 Dead, watched an epic fan-made video of game characters invading Earth, Cloverfield-style, and our 'one shot's: Spacesick's awesomely designed Game Buddy, and the cranio-facial reconstruction of what your head looks like after too much Tetris.

Rob Beschizza

A pink webcam for the ladies

If you find something creepy about PR that describes something as "targeting women," you're not the only one.

Xeni Jardin

Snapshot: A series of tubes.

iPhone snapshot: an array of vertical lights, Louis Vuitton window display, Macy's San Francisco Union Square, September, 2009. stills | video (also embedded after the jump).

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Rob Beschizza

Frustrate yourself for a few minutes and then give up with the Revomaze

Described as an 'extreme puzzle,' Revomaze comes in three colors, representing increasing degrees of extremity, and comes with one of those fishy "win cash if you solve it" offers. [ThinkGeek via The Automata Blog]

Rob Beschizza

Ninja Drive

At $125, the only thing GeekStuff4U's Ninja thumbdrive gets stealthy with is your wallet!

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Nintendo's holiday lineup, Marian moves, Angry Dad the Game

Recently on Offworld we took an in-depth look at the games coming to both Wii and DS throughout the beginning of 2010 that you should be paying attention to (above), including new versions of Maxis's Spore -- which has just received a new, surprisingly full featured Flash version of its Creature Creator utility for your web perusal, in anticipation of the upcoming games.

We also saw indie fave Infinite Ammo show off an affecting debut video of their upcoming puppet-girl opus Marian, as Team Meat also debut the first trailer for their brutal WiiWare platformer Super Meat Boy: a must see for its all-replays-at-once feature demo near the end.

Elsewhere the animators at Aardman take on the DS's new sketchbook cartoon app, Rez and Lumines creators Q unveil a love-connection-puzzle game for iPhone, a man brilliantly mods Half Life 2 to use only mouth-sounds, James Kochalka's Game Boy Advance album hits iTunes, and Taito unveils an arcade game that simulates the impotent rage of the angry dad.

And our 'one shot's: Nathan Barley/Dead Set's Charlie Brooker gets into games, Konjak captures the end of Mario's quest, our well-spent childhoods, and open season on invaders.

Rob Beschizza

The contempt commences at 3:20

The introduction of the ROKR, from CNET's vault. [via Daring Fireball]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: New Indie Hotness, the sniper and the spy, Tetris in 3D

With Austin's Game Developers Conference fully underway, Offworld's got updates on a few of the Indie Games Summit sessions nearest and dearest to its heart, with my own 'New Indie Hotness' show and tell (above), where I ran live demos of seven of the best up and coming indies you need to play (with the help of a special guest star), and a look behind the smash success of Colin Northway's Flash construction kit Fantastic Contraption.

Elsewhere we saw Namco tease a screenshot of its upcoming iPhone version of Keita Takahashi's PS3 game Noby Noby Boy, LucasArts revealed the gorgeously illustrated dream world in its new Lemmings-esque downloadable Lucidity, From Software showed off its upcoming PS3 exclusive 3D Dot Game Heroes -- an 8-bit Zelda inspired adventure pixel-popped into glorious 3D, and Metanet (behind Flash hit ninja sim N) announced Office Yeti, their Skool Daze meets Rampage workplace game.

Finally, former Spore tech lead Chris Hecker announced he'd be going indie with Spy Party, his "asymmetric multiplayer espionage game about subtle behavior and deception", we watched the winner of the Super Mario artificial intelligence contest, art/game/culture shop Attract Mode opened its doors, and for our LA readers: indie musician Chris Schlarb will be performing live versions of his tracks for the upcoming Night Game tonight at the Slow Sound Festival.

And our 'one shot's: Iggy Pop rocks Lego, the Alien origins of Machinarium, Super Mario's Twin Towers, and 3D Tetris of the Magic Eye kind.

Rob Beschizza

iPhone: the good-enough everything?

Kottke explains how the iPhone's become a universal gadget, forcing itself into the marketing calculations not just of handset makers and carriers, but those who make cameras, portable game consoles, and even personal computers.

I think this is a good thing, even if you're not fond of the iPhone and its ilk. It forces the credibility "boiling point" for specialized gadgets up, because they have to compete with an actually-successful "convergence device" and its spawn.

Rob Beschizza

LED Apple shirt

Domenico Panacea's Philips Lumalive T-Shirt cost more than €900. You could have bought a refurbished MacBook with that, Mr. Panacea! But then, I guess you already have one. [Cult of Mac]

Rob Beschizza

Sharp's NetWalker looks sharp

James Kendrick compares Sharp's forthcoming NetWalker (right) with the Umid Mbook (left). It comes out on top, thanks to having a better keyboard and a screen that folds all the way back. [JKKmobile]

Gruber on how why Apple won't rename the iPhone, even though "iPod" is obviously a better name for the general-purpose pocket computer that the iPhone has become. [DF]

So, why doesn't Verizon offer nice phones? [Wired]

Rob Beschizza

HP's cheapie tablet is no Apple-killer

People keep saying that HP's $250 tablet PC has beaten Apple to the market. This isn't a sensible comparison: Apple's tablet will be a real computer, appealing to a different sort of consumer, whereas HP's is only a few rungs up from a digital photo frame. A more apt comparison is with Mike Arrington's TechCrunch's Tablet, offered on similar conceptual lines, and, ostensibly, at a similarly budget price.

HP's tablet doesn't look as good as Arrington's, either. It has no web browser, just a set of basic web-ish things like Facebook and some media streaming magic. That said, he's now faced with doing battle directly with the world's largest PC maker at the low end of the market. Oof!

Wii price cut confirmed. It'll be $200 from next week. [Giz]

Rob Beschizza

Walkman NW-A84

Sony's NW-A840 has a 2.8" OLED display and is 7mm thick. I like the physical controls, unfashionable as they may be, when it comes to PMPs: when listening, I'm typically looking at something else (e.g. the road) and don't want the distraction of having to look at a touchscreen.

Source [Sony Insider]

Rob Beschizza

Game theory vs. game reviews

The 'enthusiast' press--think video games and gadgets!--must always work around the fact that its advertisers are often also its news sources, and can control access to review gear, etc. Dan Rutter explains the problem--and a solution--with game theory.

The game-reviewer situation displays one of the many ways in which real-world situations don't map perfectly to the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, because it makes another situation possible, in which the reviewer says the crummy game is great, but the readers, out of native cynicism or because this reviewer has lied to them before, don't believe a word of it and so don't buy the game.

The best solution is the obvious one: always do what's right, until someone burns you. Then you burn that person in return. This same principle, by the way, is how good journalists treat anonymous sources: never expose them, but do so at once if they deceive you. Otherwise, you expose yourself to the public awareness you will hide liars behind your byline.

Really? Really! Great. Great. Great.

The latest Apple event, boiled down to its superlatives.

Rob Beschizza

QWERTY Is Obsolete

More.

Rob Beschizza

FreeAgent Theater+ goes 1080p

Seagate's no-nonsense sneakernet movie box--slide in a 2.5" external drive or thumbdrive and press play--gets a bump to 1080p in the new edition. Previously reviewed here in its 720p incarnation, the latest FreeAgent has a second USB port and HDMI output to boot.

It also supports HFS+ (i.e. OSX) formatted drives in addition to NTFS and the FATs, and comes with some media management software if dragging and dropping AVI, MOV, VOB, ISO, DIVx and Xvid files is too challenging.

Product Page [Seagate]

Zune HD teardown at iFixit

Lisa Katayama

Korean PC decked out in Hello Kitty

[Moneual via Akihabara News via Crunchgear]

Lisa Katayama

Review: Two recovery sandals for post-run relief

After running 10 miles, even walking on hardwood can feel painful. Enter recovery sandals, or shoes that are designed to let your feet rest after lots of hard work. I've been alternating between these two — the Crocs Prepair (right) and the Sole Sport Flips.

The Prepair feels like sticking your feet in jello — it's really that soft. Crocs claims that it reduces peak pressure by up to 50% and peak muscular effort by up to 25%. It's also anti-bacterial, so no musty funky fungus. The problem I have with these is that the fit is not perfect — this could be a problem with the shape and texture of my feet, but if I walk for too long in these the skin between my big toe and second toe starts to chafe. The cushy Croc-y material is definitely great for pain relief though. For athletes who can't afford foot massages after every run, dropping $35 on these is not a bad idea.

Sole is a company that mostly makes custom footbeds, so they've applied their expertise on molding and arch support to a good-looking sandal that costs $70 and comes in some really cool color combinations. I love switching from my sweaty kicks into these because they're very light and airy, and even after a long time there's no chafing or hot spots. Did I mention they're approved by the American Podiatric Medical Association?

Like a well-traveled suitcase

While Lenovo isn't so slack, sometimes review units arrive with an earlier writer's "footprints" left unerased. Regrettably, I've never found anything interesting.

Rob Beschizza

ZuneHD launched, apparently

Microsoft's ZuneHD is obviously an excellent gadget: small, beautiful and high-end. But the service is broken on launch day, making it impossible to access pretty much anything on a device that can't do anything interesting or new without this access. The marketplace is inaccessible ("Try again later") and my first two hours with it have been an exploration of "unknown" errors like C00D11CD, which could be a DRM failure, a full Zune, a full hard drive, or a network error (that's a bingo!)

I was able to get the Zune 4 software installed, at least, so am able to copy music to it that I already own. Sounds great.

Update: It's fixed! Things are downloading right now.

Update II: It's not fixed! It lets me see the apps and stuff and I can click "download," and it tells me its "100% downloaded," but then it changes its mind and says Can't Download. I'll click on some more stuff and see what happens.

Update III: At last! Apps are now IN COLLECTION. This stuff wouldn't be that big of a deal were it not for the fact that the service side is where the magic is. (Moreover, the ZuneHD doesn't do anything out of the box, not even appearing as a removable drive: it must be sync'd to a Windows PC first and updated.)

Shopped!

Apple is not known for messing up its compositions, but to quote John Brownlee on the Apple store's current iPod mockup tableaux, "Either the people holding it have elephantiasis, or this is a photoshop disaster." Compare!

Rob Beschizza

Vivienne Tam redesigns HP netbook

HP's Vivienne Tam-designed "Digital Clutch" is designed to "reflect a transformative spirit and sophisticated lifestyle" in which "high fashion, small form factor and innovative function" are "fused" to "take the personal computer from a necessity to a lifestyle statement for modern-day women on the go."

In a particularly progressive twist, this second edition will no longer feature the pink flowers of the original. It will, however, retain the enormous markup on the otherwise identical black one.

Press Release [HP]

Rob Beschizza

Energy Clock

Sweden's Energy Aware Clock hangs on the wall and depicts a permanent visualization of your energy use. Every hour, it chimes to remind you to feel guilty about the size of your residence. [Geek]

It could take more than 20 hours to perform an upgrade installation of Windows 7. But for most, it'll take about two or three. [Chris Hernandez]

Rob Beschizza

Chococase

Rob Beschizza

Colorware will paint your PS3 slim for $150

Seems pricey to me. [Colorware]

Rob Beschizza

The $1 iPhone case

Case-mate's carboard iPhone case comes with free shipping and personalization--with a Sharpie.

Rob Beschizza

Pointless earbud keychain

Rob Beschizza

Viliv S7 Premium takes on Vaio P

Viliv's S7, at $630 and up, isn't cheap by netbook standards. But at 1.8 pounds and with a swiveling touchscreen and 3G internet, its a striking one. The internals are similar to other smaller UMPC-style netbooks (lower-power 1.33GHz Atom, SSD, etc.) and it's available from Dynamism.

Lisa Katayama

Light bulb art shows wasted electricity

Artist Chris Jordan wanted to point out how much electricity is wasted in the US, so he made a photo collage representing 320,000 lightbulbs, which amount to the number of kilowatt hours we don't really need to be spending.

[via Moco Loco]

Lisa Katayama

Review: Two weeks with the simplehuman dual bin rectangular step can

Trash cans have always been a challenge in my household. Let me explain. My dog Ruby is a notorious trickster who can climb any counter and knock down any container if there's food to be had. For years, I had no trash can, piled my recycling high above her reach on top of the fridge, then weighted down my previous cylindrical floor can with heavy metal chains so she couldn't knock it down.

Those days are over, thanks to simplehuman's steel bar rectangular step can, new this month with two compartments for separating garbage. Unlike most larger trash receptacles for the house, this one is wider than it is tall, which makes it really hard for a little nine-pound dog to knock down. Also, since it holds both the recycling and the regular trash, there are no more paper bags full of empty yogurt cups and milk cartons for Ruby to go to town on.

My favorite things about this trash can, though, are the little details that make throwing away garbage feel kinda classy. For example, it has a lid that doesn't slam and a hook you can engage so that you can keep it open while you change trash bags without stepping on the pedal. And to minimize stench while keeping it open, it has a little nook on the lid for a carbon filter — it doesn't eliminate the smell of dog poop completely, but it definitely seems to help. Speaking of the pedal, it's really nice and wide and sturdy so you don't have to search for it at all with your foot — and fingerprint-proof stainless steel means smudges rarely show up on its surface. The bins also have holes on the sides that you can tuck excess plastic from the bags into, so little dogs can't tug at its ends. (simplehuman cans have had this for years, but it's still worth noting.)

At $225 for the 38L and $250 for the 55L, this is not a cheap trash can, at all — but if you think of it as an investment into the overall cleanliness of your cooking space, I think it's totally worth it.

Lisa Katayama

Solar trees forecast a future where gadgets are charged on beaches

If our gadget dependency continues to worsen, this could be what our beaches will look like.

[via Yanko Design]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Beatles go 8-bit, Dreamcast gets a new game, let concept artists rule

Is the games industry missing an opportunity to let concept artists rule the roost? In his latest Ragdoll Metaphysics column, Jim Rossignol points to both success stories and missed opportunities where letting artists spearhead the game either did bring or should have brought the game closer to art, and calls for a new industry arms race to create the best "watercolour FPS games, painterly RTS games, and oil-painting strategies."

Elsewhere, 09/09/09 was a double-header day in games: less celebrated for the 10th anniversary of the cut-down-in-its-prime Dreamcast, which Sega celebrated by announcing a return to Sonic the Hedgehog's roots with a new hi-def 2D game due in 2010, while a group of indies announced Rush Rush Rally Racing, the first new Western-made game for the console in many years.

But 09/09's more prevalent significance to The Beatles didn't go unnoticed by groups other than Harmonix (with the unleashing of The Beatles: Rock Band), as chiptune collective 8-Bit Operators unveiled "WANNA HLD YR HANDHELD", a 20-track 8-bit Beatles cover compilation, nearly half of which they're streaming ahead of its release.

Finally, we listed the 4 things gamers need to know about Apple's Rock'n'Roll keynote, saw two years of glorious technical failures in the making of Polytron's Fez (above), heard Montreal art/game collective Kokoromi would be bringing their indie showcase to GDC, and our 'one shot's: Silent Hill artist Takayoshi Sato does Salome, and a look at the anatomical/biological innards of the Wii-mote.

Lisa Katayama

It's only rock and roll with Norah Jones

In case you haven't heard already, Norah Jones was the surprise musical guest at the Apple announcement this morning. I love her red guitar, the black roses on her guitar strap, and the red heels. So classy.

Lisa Katayama

Three new App store games worth checking out

At the Apple announcement today, Jobs invited several game makers up on stage to introduce some cool new App store games that exploit unique features of the iPhone/iPod Touch. Here are my three favorite examples:

1. Madden NFL 10
EA's oh-so-popular football game is finally available at the App store. Cool feature: you can draw plays with your finger on the screen and then watch your fave team execute them.

2. Nova
Gameloft's first-person-shooter pits you against aliens in a mission to defend humanity — if you play it on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you can set your sniper mission to your choice of music.

3. Riddim Ribbon
Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap Revenge, is a new rhythm racing game. Tilt the phone to follow a race track and bust out remixes of Black Eyed Peas songs.

Lisa Katayama

Photos of Steve Jobs and his new Nano

Here are a few pics of Steve Jobs announcing the new Nano and its sweet new features at this morning's Apple event, taken with my G10. (Not bad for a point-and-shoot!)

READ THE REST

Lisa Katayama

Jobs returns to announce new iTunes, iPhone OS, and Nano with video

Steve Jobs made a surprise comeback at the Apple event in San Francisco today, announcing an upgraded operating system for the iPhone and iPod Touch, a new version of iTunes, and new generations and pricing for the Touch, the Shuffle, and the Nano.

Much to the disappointment of many fans, none of the new products include a still camera; however, the fifth generation Nano, which goes on sale today, has an integrated video camera with speakers so you can shoot and watch videos instantly. Two other key announcements made today were the iPhone and iPod Touch's new OS 3.1 and iTunes 9, both available online now.

In addition to the video camera, the new Nano has a pedometer that can be synced with Nike Plus, an FM radio, and a voice recorder. It's available in seven colors at $149 for the 8GB version and $179 for the 16GB. Apple also unveiled a new and improved Shuffle in five new colors with the option for multiple playlists, a voice that speaks to you about battery life, and controls integrated into headphone wires. The new Shuffle comes in a $59 2GB version, a $79 4GB version, and a limited edition stainless steel 4GB version sells for $99. Also announced were new pricing and a faster graphics for the iPod Touch (8GB at $199, 32GB at $299, and 64GB at $399). The original iPod retains its $249 price point, but now holds 160GB instead of the previous 120GB.

iTunes 9 has several new exciting features including media sharing, an on-screen app manager, and a redesigned Store. Genius Mixes, an extension of the music recommending Genius function, creates playlists from the iTunes library based on songs that go great together. Syncing has been improved, and a new interface for managing iPhone and iPod Touch apps allows users to drag and drop and rearrange apps on-screen from the iTunes app. Media can be shared through Home Sharing, which allows up to five computers in one house to copy the contents of their iTunes libraries freely. Finally, the new Store has a cleaner looks and and two new features, iTunes LP and iTunes Extra, which provide photos, liner notes, exclusive interviews, etc for music and movies, respectively.

The iPhone's new OS 3.1, which is available today at the iTunes store, will include a Genius function for Apps that recommends apps much like how Genius in iTunes recommends music. It also includes Genius Mixes, peer to peer gaming, and ring tone downloads.

Jobs, who has been absent from the last couple of Apple events due to health problems, prefaced the announcements by confirming that he had had a liver transplant five months ago. He thanked the donor — a twenty-something year old who died in a car crash — for his generosity.

Apple has sold 30 million iPhones in just over two years, with 1. 8 billion apps downloaded from the App Store. Jobs claimed the Nano is "by far the most popular music player in the world" with over $100 million units sold. Similarly, iTunes, which is now available in 23 countries, is the number one music retailer in the world, with 8.5 billion songs sold on 100 million accounts with credit cards.

Lisa Katayama

Standing ovation for Steve Jobs

Lisa Katayama

BBG's Live-Tweeting the Apple Event today

It's that time again, one of those rare few days of the year when all gadget bloggers leave their home offices and head out to downtown San Francisco to bask in the excitement that is... an Apple event! This year, I'll be joining the flock too, congregating with the rest to see what's in store. Our heads are filled with important questions that will only be answered in the secret no-video-allowed conference room in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts between 10 and 11am — Will the original iPod go extinct? What will the new Nano look like? Could this be the debut of the enigmatic tablet? Will Steve Jobs make a comeback? Who could the musical guest possibly be at an event titled It's Only Rock and Roll? And perhaps most importantly, who will live blog the fastest? Will it be Gizmodo or Engadget or Ars or GDGT or.... well, it definitely won't be us, because we're not live blogging it, but I will be live-Tweeting the important details — plus some random trivia, factoids, and observations on the whole fiasco — from ground zero. So keep up-to-date by following me on Twitter or checking back here for updates to this post. Join me as the mysteries unfold — it's gonna be fun!

Follow our live-Tweetage of the Apple event

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Catan on iPhone, Canabalt on iPhone, cigar-chomping he-Links

Recently on Offworld, German developer Exozet revealed not only the first screenshot for the upcoming official iPhone version of Catan, but also opened a limited number of beta applications to the public, meaning you might be getting your hands on the game much earlier than expected.

Elsewhere, Adam Saltsman proved out just how successful rapid prototyping is and announced an iPhone port of his already widely viral one-button game Canabalt, ngmoco finally revealed its online arena iPhone FPS Eliminate with an interesting take on microtransactions, and Capcom showed more of its fantastically illustrated diminutive DS sequel Okamiden (above).

We also went behind the pixel/Rubiks with a video interview with guerrilla artist Invader, saw the Max Max-ian shooter Borderlands go all Christian-Bale-flip-out, found a collection of stunning custom Team Fortress 2 figures, ordered Famicom and Pac-Man business card holders, and our 'one shot's for the day: the BeatlesBox 360, and the most invulnerable he-Link the Legend of Zelda will ever see.

Lisa Katayama

Otamatone, Maywa Denki's newest invention

Novmichi Tosa, the man who runs the kooky briliant art unit Maywa Denki, has invented a new musical instrument called the Otamatone, which is shaped like a musical note (or a tadpole) and sounds kind of like a theremin. It has cute little mouth and a long tail that functions as a keyboard. This video is in Japanese, but you can get a feel for how the instrument works and what a lovely man Mr. Tosa is. Watch him play a Japanese children's tune about singing frogs two minutes into the clip.

The Otamatone is currently in production and is slated to sell in Japan starting at the end of this month.

[Maywa Denki main page via TokyoMango]

Lisa Katayama

Snow White's Revenge

via Etsy

Lisa Katayama

$600 robot hands for hard core hobbyists

These intricately designed toy robot hands created by Craft House go on sale tomorrow in Japan. They have five jointed fingers that can grab small objects like fruits and ping pong balls. This version is called the Melissa Hands, and they're the successor to a popular previous version called God's Hands. If you're in Japan, you can buy them online for about $600.

[via Impress Watch (Japanese)]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Comic jumping, three for the Wii, Metroid in Lego

Even with yesterday's holiday, we still caught up on some of the weekend's biggest news from PAX or otherwise, as Twisted Pixel -- the indie dev behind the recent fantastic one-button Xbox Live Arcade platformer Splosion Man -- unveils Comic Jumper, a superhero run and gun that will change its style as you, well, jump between comics from PowerPuff to Sin City.

Elsewhere we saw oversized, super-punching blob-mech-fighters invading WayForward's remake of the NES original A Boy and his Blob, a new WiiWare Gauntlet-esque action game take on Pokemon, and the first video of the gorgeously Miyazaki-ish world in WiiWare LostWinds sequel Winter of the Melodias.

Finally, we took the latest work in progress look at Power Pill (above), the upcoming ultrastylish iPhone collaboration between Fez creators Polytron and Marian creators Infinite Ammo, and our 'one shot's for the day: variations on a Slime, and Metroid in Lego.

Rob Beschizza

The value of a blog post for book promotion

Morris Rosenthal, author of the book Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts, writes about the effect that the viral replication of its incredible flowcharts, across the internet, had on actual sales. Our own post was here a few days ago.

READ THE REST

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: Vectorpark on iPhone, PAX info influx, sex lives of Famicom programmers

Recently on Offworld, this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo opening has brought with it a tidal wave of new game details and announcements: Ubisoft crosses Splinter Cell with Keyboard Cat, Grasshopper's No More Heroes 2 goes 8-bit (on purpose), 2K reveals BioShock 2's multiplayer in motion, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank gets its debut trailer, and Valve show off Left 4 Dead 2's undead clown-inhabited Dark Carnival.

Elsewhere, we saw Vectorpark's brilliantly serene Flash toys Levers and Acrobots come to the iPhone, Crappy Cat creator VanBeater lend his talents for the iPhone's Bear on a Wire, Farbs (aka. the guy who quit his job via Super Mario Bros.) teases his fantastic space shooter Captain Forever, and Capcom/Clover's gorgeously ukiyo-e inspired Wii/PS2 game Okami get a new sequel for the DS.

Finally, we got an accidental look into the sex lives of NES programmers via hidden messages in ROMs, covered our eyes for Kurt Cobain's shockingly awful/disrespectful appearance in Guitar Hero 5, and got a post-mortem on Guitar Hero typography, and our 'one shots': India gets Invaded, and Dance Dance American Revolution meets Dance Dance Industrial Revolution.

Lisa Katayama

Photo of laptops in zero gravity

Over on the front page, Xeni posted this fabulous photo of astronauts from the STS-128 NASA mission to the International Space Station. It's actually a screenshot from a silent YouTube HD video taken on their seventh day in orbit.

I wonder what the optimal ergonomic position for laptop usage is in zero gravity.

Spacemen are transmitting silent little floaty vlogs at planet Earth [Boing Boing]

Rob Beschizza

Toronto Department of Zombie Disposal commences operations

Shannon Larratt, inspired by Pittsburgh's proactive response to the zombie menace, took up the mantle to become sheriff of the first department beyond the borders of the U.S. and Haiti. [Zentastic]

Lisa Katayama

$1000 iPhone cases belong to samurai, at least in spirit

These iPhone cases from Japanese phone company Softbank were designed specifically to look like they belong to samurai. Each design is themed after a famous warrior's characteristics &mdash for example, the one with the crescent moon would have belonged to Date Masamune, a warlord whose helmet had a crescent moon on it, too. They're made of lacquer with gold specks, which only partially explains the $1000 price tag.

[Japanese press release via Cnet]

Lisa Katayama

The Black Diamond Sprinter, a headlamp for traveling night runners

Some people like to run in the morning. Others like to run in the mid-afternoon. Yet others wait until the sun goes down to hit the pavements &mdash maybe because the air is cooler and streets are emptier, or they're just too busy during daylight. Black Diamond's new Sprinter headlamp that could be a lifesaver for the latter, especially if you're a night runner who travels a lot. The Sprinter has an adjustable but very-bright-at-its-max beam that extends up to 54 feet so you don't run into anything, and a flashing red LED on the back so nothing runs into you. The neatest thing about the Sprinter is that it's rechargeable, and comes with three additional outlet plugs for when you're traveling overseas. The Sprinter hits stores next month and costs $80.

[Black Diamond Equipment]

Lisa Katayama

Pretty designer juicer with integrated seed-stopper

Not only does this lemon squeezer look good, it also has a little scoop that catches seeds and prevents them from falling into the juice.

[Joseph Joseph via Dezeen]

Rob Beschizza

What's the best multiple-button mouse for Macs?

It's funny how the little irritations of pre-OSX era Mac ownership still have little aftershocks, at least for everyday consumers. Such as having to buy third-party software to get hardware support for extra mouse buttons with certain vendors. [jwz]

READ THE REST

Rob Beschizza

Bookmark 2.0

I'd pay a buck or two for Propaganda's clever design! Via MocoLoco.

Rob Beschizza

Barbie's gadgets

This collection of Barbie's gadgets, of late 1980s vintage, could be yours for as little as eight quid. Among the cargo cult delights are a computer, a stereo, a popcorn maker, a TV with cassette player (always tuned the the Ballet Channel!), a cine camera and a broken toaster. [eBay]

Lisa Katayama

Review: Two weeks with the Dyson DC31

According to its inventor James Dyson, the DC31 handvac has the fastest motor in the world at 104,000rpm &mdash five times as fast as a Formula 1 race car engine! That's cool, but what I really want to know is, does it bust dust cleanly and efficiently? I have been using its predecessor, the DC16, for about two years, and I'm sad to report that it has become virtually obsolete &mdash the suction is weak, the battery only lasts 2-3 minutes, and dust accumulates relentlessly at the nozzle. This review will not give an answer as to whether the newer DC31 will have a longer lifespan than that, but here's what I think of it so far after a couple of weeks of use.

The DC31 is lighter, smaller, and doesn't require a giant docking station. These are all great improvements. It definitely has a lot more power than the 16 ever had &mdash it swept up everything from dog hair to human hair to wood chip fragments without hesitation. The .09-gallon bin is small but easy to empty, you just push a lever down &mdash I actually prefer it small because it urges you to empty it more often, which prevents old dust from hanging out in there for too long.

There are two problems I wish Dyson would fix in their next iteration of a handvac, though: 1. This thing is still pretty loud. I would be willing to give up some of that motor power for a more quiet dust-busting experience. 2. This might sound nitpicky, but there are air holes in the top back portion that blow out a significant amount of air while the nozzle is doing all its high-power sucking. That's fine when you're bending down to vacuum the floor, but when you're working on a parallel or multi-tiered surface like on stairs or between furniture, this actually blows dust and hair away. Which is kind of annoying.

And then there is the meta problem of handvacs being inefficient to begin with &mdash they're nice for daily upkeep, and I like having one in the house, but a device that only cleans a couple of square inches at a time with a 10-minute battery life that makes lots of noise may be a dying breed of gadgetry.

Product page [Dyson]

Steven Leckart

Video: Unboxing The Fleshlight

When I tweeted about needing to get a hold of a Fleshlight, I wasn't entirely kidding. One BBG reader answered my bluff call, put me in touch and, well, now I've got a real-life Fleshlight [NSFW] in my home... actually, TWO: a pink-flesh-colored one shaped like a woman's hoo-ha vagina and another transparent one shaped like a, uh, butthole (!) an anus.

To be continued...

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: from girl geek to Godwin's Law, Spelunky goes console, Bonk returns

Quick -- how many games in the industry's long history can you name with a female lead? In her latest One More Go column, Margaret Robertson says the fact that we "run out of entries for the Great Gaming Leading Lady Pantheon before we run out of fingers is just plain odd" and asks, "Are we really saying that we can't find a viable way to make games that turn 51% of the world's population into heroes a goer?"

Elsewhere on Offworld: huge indie news, as Derek Yu's procedurally-generated rogue-like platformer masterpiece Spelunky is announced for Xbox Live Arcade, and LostWinds -- the gorgeously gentle WiiWare debut game from Elite creators Frontier -- prepares for the Winter of the Melodias, its season-shifting sequel.

Two classic Hudson franchises are also due for revivals, with hex-strategy game Military Madness/Nectaris announced for the iPhone and prehistoric underdog mascot Bonk comes to PS3/Xbox 360/Wii, and Gaijin Games announces the latest in its retro-futurist rhythm series with the pixel-collecting nothing-expanding beauty of Bit.Trip: Void (above).

And our 'one shot's of the day: Rolando artist Mikko Walamies teases his intergalactic next, and the new face of Grand Theft Auto creators Rockstar: tigers with lasers, fire-breathing grizzlies, and stunt-jumpin' polars.

Steven Leckart

Kool-Aid Man Is Giving NSFW Tours In Second Life [Wow, There's Still A Second Life?]

Kool-Aid Man has been tearing it up over in Second Life. So much so, he's now offering free guided tours for anyone willing to dive back into Second Life.

Of course, it's not really Kool-Aid man, but an avatar created by artist Jon Rafman. Still, seems like it could be quite a trip, especially since homeboy is known for busting through walls wherever he goes.

Warning: The above video features NSFW moments; mostly around 08:00 when Kool-Aid Man visits a sex club, then a strip club. See, I told you dude gets wild.

[via Beautiful Decay]

Lisa Katayama

Building in Shanghai made out of CD cases

The Shanghai Corporate Pavilion, which will be part of the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, has a facade made from thousands of plastic tubes that were originally CD cases.

[via Inhabitat]

Brandon Boyer

Recently on Offworld: stunt-man simulators, return of the M.U.L.E., Wii Opera set free

Officially now back at my Offworld post (following a long break away to the Bay Area, that, most excitingly, saw me complete the first leg of the journey through the infinitely fascinating reality game The Jejune Institute), we return with some catching-up coverage that includes breakneck stunt-man simulator Canabalt -- a five-day stripped-down Experimental Gameplay entry from Adam Saltsman -- a game whose one-button simplicity completely belies its action/sci-fi flick inspired roof-top leaping thrills.

We also found the first details on DeathSpank (above) -- the upcoming Diablo/LucasArts adventure mashup from former Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert, and discovered that a remake of classic multiplayer strategy game M.U.L.E. was in development, including an upcoming port to the iPhone.

Elsewhere we saw new footage of Offworld-favorite 2D/3D platformer Fez, Nathan Fouts' gloriously garish Grapple Buggy, and dug through a flurry of new announcements from Nintendo with new color DSis/Wii Remotes and an updated Wii Opera browser now available for free.

Finally, we saw a tiny custom (Shadow of the) Colossus Munny, and an NES Ghostbusters instruction manual T-shirt, and our 'one shot's: Olly Moss's gorgeous new prints for This American Life-inspired games podcast A Life Well Wasted, and Vera Bee's carny/sideshow illustrations make their LittleBigDebut.

Lisa Katayama

Kindle Hacking: It's a "lovely little Linux box"

I took this photo of a Kindle 2 hacked by Jesse Vincent at Foo Camp this past weekend. Apparently, aside from being a popular e-book reader, the Kindle is like Lego for Linux geeks. Here's Jesse's description of what we're looking at:

What you see there is a Kindle 2 with the Ubuntu 9.04 port to ARM running in a chrooted environment. On the screen you see xdaliclock in front of an xterm with the remains of a "top" command and a few mildly embarrassing typos.

To open up the Kindle, I used the USB networking debug mode Amazon left hanging around when they first shipped the Kindle 2, a statically linked telnetd and a cross-compiler to bootstrap myself. From there, I built a daemon that can convert DRM-free PDFs and ePubs into something Amazon's reader on the Kindle can deal with.

After that, I started to get curious about what else might be possible. It only took a few evenings to get a moderately usable Ubuntu environment running.

Mostly, the Kindle is a lovely little Linux box. Getting X working took a bit of hacking, but everything else "just works" with very little configuration.

Steven Leckart

HOWTO Set Up An Analog TV Station

OMG TV, which bills itself as "the only analog station in NYC," has spent the last two months broadcasting on Channel 14 in New York. So what on Earth are they showing? The station aggregates online video content and then lets viewers vote (online, ha!) on what makes the televised broadcast. Sounds assbackwards, but that's part of the point.

According to the founders:

On the web, so many options create a panic of possibilities. On OMG TV, there is no fast forward button or other videos to distract you. In OMG TV's simplicity you can sit back and watch one video at a time.

The station was created by Jon Cohrs, who also founded the Urban Prospecting movement we wrote about in May. What's particularly cool about the project isn't the content itself, but the fact it shows you could easily do this, too.

Jon created an Instructables guide on how to set up your very own local analog tv station — everything from first finding some "whitespace" to locating a transmitter.

Here's part of Step 1: Find a Free Channel:

Although after the 2009 DTV transition in June a lot of "whitespace"(i.e. unused television bandwidth) became available, most of this whitespace is still legally dubious and many of these channels are still tied to the original owners via legal identity and copyright. However, because of this legal ambiguity a lot of free space is still up for the taking.

The best option for finding free space is the FCC's own search engine for these things

Thanks, FCC!!!

image by georgia.g

Steven Leckart

"Sorry, sir, but Twitter is down... Yes, again."

August 17, 1955.

photo from Adolph B. Rice Studio via The Library of Virginia

Rob Beschizza

Watering Mount Wilson

Photo: Martin Mars

Steven Leckart

Celebrity Hard Drives

For only $20, you can have a racy graphic of Kim Kardashian added to your hard drive.

Or a skin of Domo. Or Wu-Tang Clan. Or even Bob Marley.

One love, Seagate.

[via Gearlog via New Launches]

Steven Leckart

Review: 16 Months w/Belkin's 300W DC/AC Inverter

Why ALL automobiles don't come equipped with at least one, built-in 3-prong outlet is beyond me. And why more drivers don't keep an inverter like this one from Belkin in their cars is also a mystery.

Emergencies alone make a simple inverter a super worthwhile item (we also keep a tub filled with spare clothes, shoes, MRIEs, water, etc. in the trunk, you know, "just in case."). But apart from the once-in-a-blue-moon, doom-and-gloom scenarios where we'll be stranded in our car and need to tap the battery to charge a phone or radio, having an inverter available for daily use is a true no-brainer.

Since last April, I've stashed this 300-watt DC-AC inverter in one of the rear seat pockets. I've used it to charge my cell phone and replenish my GoBe battery overnight while car camping. In addition, I've charged up a range of devices en route on car trips — long and short — way too many times to count. Here's the short of it:

Easy to Use: Just pull out the thing, plug the business end into the cigarette lighter, flip the switch on the device, and plug in up to two devices. (Dr. Obvious says: There's no need to have the car turned on.)

Easy to Carry: The whole thing weighs just 2 lbs.; it's not as if you'll ever need to take the device backpacking, but my point is that it's never a hassle to pull out, put back, ad nauseam.

No Outside Juice Required: Requires no batteries, no charging, no sunlight because, you know, it runs off the car battery (Dr. Obvious says: Triple duh).

One Caveat: The inverter's internal fan hums rather loudly when in use. Not enough to disturb phone calls or music too much, but it's noticeably audible.

Verdict: Get one. If not this particular device, then be sure to pick one up that's got at least two 3-prong outlets... and, perhaps, even a USB. You'll rely on your inverter more than you'd expect.

~$40 from Amazon.

Steven Leckart

HOWTO Make A Cheap Version of Muji's CD Player

Ariel Schlesinger put together a guide on how to fabricate a cheap, homemade version of the wall-mounted CD player Nato Fukasawa designed for Muji.

Per Ariel's directions, here's everything you need:

a CD-player with an access to the batteries compartment from the front (disc side),
a pair of portable speakers that have a built in amplifier,
a pull cord light switch with a cotton thread,
circle cutting knife. for nice circle cuts.
epoxy glue, cardboard glue and some wires.

Or you could buy the original for $178.