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

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]

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.

Specs:

*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]

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]

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Review: 3 Reasons Why Nokia's N97 Is a Bummer

Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo already hit the nail on the head with his spot-on assessment of the N97: Nokia is doomed.

So I won't spend much time shooting a dead (well, dying*) horse dead-er, but having manhandled the N97 for a few weeks, I've also got a few thoughts.

First off, I'm no fanboy. But I have been seduced by some of Nokia's handsets. I carried the N82 for a year. At the time, Symbian felt utilitarian and easy to use. The 5 megapixel sensor, xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics were pretty stellar. So much so, I used the phone as my main point-and-shoot on a trip to Japan, where I snapped some reasonably ok pics (not amazing, but good enough).

I carried the N95 for a spell in 2007. Same deal. Solid hardware. Ahead of its time. And like a lot of us, I started scratching my head about when, how, and if consumers (and cell phone companies) in the U.S. would ever see the light. Sure lesser offerings from Nokia have been entirely forgettable. But that's besides the point. When the company swung to the fences, Nokia tended to deliver.

That said, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the N97, the company's first legit touch screen. Well, here's what I found:

1) A clunky touch screen interface that merely mimics a non-touch OS. The Pre, iPhone and G1 all require the user to speak in elegant gestures that, in turn, make you feel elegant. Quick flicks, simple pinches, and de-pinches that are &mdash forget easy and practical &mdash actually FUN to do.

The N97, on the other hand, offers no magic. If you want to scroll through your contacts on the iPhone, you press and drag, and watch the list rapidly flow before your eyes &mdash then bounce when it hits the bottome. With the N97, you're stuck dragging a clunky nav bar or holding your finger in one spot (top, bottom) to get the list to scroll.

2) The hardware is both lackluster and not the least bit luxurious. The mostly-plastic frame makes the phone decidedly lightweight (a plus), but the hinge &mdash as several reviewers have noted &mdash is a little awkward to us. Same with the relatively cramped, too-minimalist keyboard, which I never really mastered or cared to.

The more I handled the phone, too, it started to feel cheap. Less like a flashy status symbol, and more like a basic, no-frills handset I got with an upgraded contract (unfortunate, considering that's far from the case). Evoking the word "cheap" is shameful for any product that boasts a price tag this high (see below).

3) $699?! (now reduced to $629). Nuff said.

*Nokia's profits are dropping faster than a virgin's pants at a free brothel**.

**Feel free to out-analogy me in the comments.

Steven Leckart

Apple Tablet Due in September?

Headlines are a tricky thing. Today The Financial Times reported some big news, but don't let the big type above their story fool you. They're reporting much cooler news than this semi-snoozer:

"Apple joins forces with record labels."

Don't get me wrong. It is interesting. Apple and the four major music labels are reportedly cooking up project "Cocktail," a plan to bolster album sales by bundling special digital content like booklets, videos, downloads and interactive features. If they do it right, this could be big, considering bands like Radiohead and NIN are making bank with multi-tier pricing for varied bonus content.

Let's be honest, though. FT's headline should have been something like this:

"Apple launches tablet, teams with record labels."

Yep. The story suggests Apple could likely bump up the release of its long-awaited, much-rumored touch tablet to September in order to coincide with project "Cocktail."

Says FT:

The new touch-sensitive device Apple is working on will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally.

It will connect to the internet like the iPod Touch - probably without phone capability but with access to Apple's online stores.

"It's going to be fabulous for watching movies," said one entertainment executive.

Correction: It's going to be fabulous for pirating movies.

image by vernhart

[via Wired]

Steven Leckart

New SPOT GPS Tracker: Lighter, Smaller, Silver!

SPOT, maker of the life-saving GPS device, is upgrading its hardware. The next iteration is advertised as 30% smaller and lighter than the og SPOT. It will also be available in silver. Which is nice, cause pretty much everything clashes with orange.

Considering the new SPOT weighs just 5.2 ounces and takes up only 3.7×2.6×1 inches of packspace, you have no reason not to carry one when you go walkabout.

Unless, of course, you don't want to spend the money. The service is $100/year. The current box is $160. Expect the new model to either be the same w/a price drop for the old one. Or, more likely, the new one will retail for ~$229.95.

OK, I'm totally guessing.

[via GearJunkie]

Steven Leckart

Fighting Carpal Tunnel w/Data, Pegboard

Doctors may soon use devices like this to obtain precise measurements of hand muscle strength. Developed by bioengineering students at Rice University, the unit promises to present docs with actual hard data that will lead to swifter diagnoses, especially carpal tunnel syndrome. (Many health practitioners currently opt for the more subjective, manual tests like when a doc grabs your hand and asks you to push back.)

Known as PRIME (Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator), the unit has just has three main components: "pegboard restraint, a force transducer enclosure and a PDA custom-programmed to capture measurements."

Here's how it works, per Rice:

In a five-minute test, a doctor uses pegs to isolate a patient's individual fingers. "You wouldn't think it works as well as it does, but once you are pegged in, you can't move anything but the finger we want you to," Miller said. A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, the amount of force generated is measured. "PRIME gets the peak force," Xu said. "Then the doctor can create a patient-specific file with all your information, time-stamped, and record every single measurement.".

[via MedGadget]

Steven Leckart

Greenpeace Declares Nokia Super-Green, Nintendo Not-So-Much

Greenpeace released its annual eco-rankings of electronics manufacturers. And the winner is... NOKIA, which scored a 7.45 out of 10 (10 being green-tastic). The whole report is worth a gander, but here's the highlights, which I recommend reading to yourself in a Howard Cossell voice.

Bad news: Apple finished towards the middle of the pack with 4.7/10.

Apple fails to score top marks on this criterion because it uses unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free. The company needs to be commended for running a bold advertising campaign highlighting the green credentials of its MacBooks. Apple still needs to commit to phasing out additional substances with timelines, improve its policy on chemicals and its reporting on chemicals management.

Worse news: Nintendo brought up the rear with 1/10.

The company has banned phthalates and is monitoring use of antimony and beryllium and although it is endeavouring to eliminate the use of PVC, it has not set a timeline for its phase out. It continues to score zero on all e-waste criteria. On energy, Nintendo loses a point due to a second year of increases in greenhouse gas emissions, despite a commitment to cut CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases by 2% over each previous year.

How will any of this affect sales? I'm guessing not too much. Feel free to disagree.

[via EcoGeek]

Rob Beschizza

Dreamworks to make ViewMaster: The Movie

From Reuters:

"View-Master, the Fisher-Price toy with little 3-D picture discs of mountains, rivers and caverns that kids could rotate through a viewfinder, is the latest vintage toy getting a second life on the big screen."

Story specifics are "under wraps."

Lisa Katayama

PARC: Flexible electronics

Our first stop on our visit to PARC was Room 1229, where staff researcher Willie Wong and several team members are perfecting advanced flexible electronics technologies. By building circuits and electrical connections into bendable plastics, glass, and metal foil substrates, they're paving the way for new technologies like flexible flat-panel displays, medical image sensors, and electronic paper. Because flexible electronics are super lightweight, rugged, and can be rolled or folded into smaller pieces, they are expected to take mobility and portability to new levels.

Images courtesy of PARC

Rob Beschizza

iPod dock in an Atari 2600

Creator Byron Casebier, at Gizmodo:

Here is my weak (and slightly unfinished) Atari iPod Dock. I thought sharing may create interest for someone that can do this better. As far as specs, I gutted a broken, iPod clock radio and put it all inside the Atari.

See a gallery o'er the Giz: The Atari 2600 iPod Dock

Steven Leckart

Amazon Kindle DX Review Round-Up

Rob posted his review earlier today after getting his hands on Amazon's latest e-reader, the $489 Kindle DX:

"Though based on the Kindle 2, it's the first version that seems a beautiful thing...

That said, Amazon's weird pay-to-play online service for converting file formats is still a black mark against Kindles of any size--especially when you pay $480 for the hardware."

Here's what others are saying...

• Wired's Steven Levy likes the improvements, but thinks the price isn't quite right.

• Gizmodo found the inclinometer useful for PDFs.

• The NYT's take: "For those of us who don't need to read PDFs or, say, all 1,328 pages of 'Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies,' the regular Kindle should suffice."

• Walt Mossberg at the WSJ would prefer "on-screen touch controls that could instantly adapt to its size and orientation."

• Ed Baig at USA Today didn't see any major differences with the speed at which pages refresh; he did enjoy the big screen, but not the price.

• Engadget unboxed the thing and found a "less comfortable keyboard."

• CNET decided the DX's "larger chassis has its pluses and minuses."

• Early Amazon user reviews are posting, too: 4 out of 5 stars based on 20+ reviews thus far.

Steven Leckart

LEGO Launching New Blox Gagdets

LEGO announced a new product line, which includes a stop-animation video camera, MP3 player ($40), still camera ($50), alarm clock, walkie-takie, and a "boomblox" (get it? ...blox!).

The gadgets won't be available till the fall, but DVICE got to check 'em out. Kevin Hall reports:

The camera isn't packing all that strong of a punch with a 1.5" LCD screen, 3 MP sensor and 128 MB of internal memory, but that should be more than enough for a kid to play around with. It hooks up to your computer with a USB cord, and has a lithium battery inside. The MP3 player has 2 GB of memory by comparison.

Who cares about the guts? I'm paying for that classic aesthetic.

Steven Leckart

The Palm Pre, Deconstructed

Rapid Repair spent the weekend taking apart the Palm Pre in just 10 easy steps.

[via LikeCool]

Alan Graham

Review: 6 Months with Kwikset Smartscan Biometric Deadbolt

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

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Ionic-Cooling Laptop

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

Technology Review reports:

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

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

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

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

[image via Sherritalley]

John Brownlee

GPS chips are now smaller than a match head

GPS units are getting disconcertingly small: Epson and Infineon's XPOSYS chip is just 2.8 x 2.9mm and can fit comfortably within the sulfurous volume of a single match head, while still having enough power to stay in contact with orbiting satellites. Gnash your teeth in holy dread, privacy activists: we're fast zooming into a day and age where GPS nano-chips will be sprayable in a fine mist all over your body as you pass through airports customs. If we're not there already, we're rapidly enterting the age of ubiquitous personal trackability, with our only solace being informational mass entropy and the inherent incompetence of bureaucracy.

Press Release [Infineon via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Samsung packs 32GBs into DDR3

Samsung has just crammed a few more gigs of capacity into DDR3 memory modules. Their new 4 gigabit DDR3 DRAM PC memory chip not only consumes 40% less power than its older offerings, but make DIMM modules of up to 32 gigabytes possible, and we should start seeing modules of 16GB for servers and 8GB for desktops and laptops later this year.

Samsung Touts Highest Density Memory Chip [Information Week]

Xeni Jardin

CES Video: Asus Netbookstravaganza, with Bamboo, Gold Lamé, and Lamborghini.

Xeni from the motherboing here with a new Boing Boing Gadgets CES video installment! Beschizza and I visited the Asus booth to check out some of the netbooks and other devices they're developing. Rob got some hands-on time with some of the more visually interesting models, including one netbook covered in bamboo, and others covered in very Vegas-appropriate gold lamé or Lamborghini co-branding. (Ay, que Elvis, hombre!) We also spoke with one of the senior designers with Asus from Taiwan about the Intel co-partnered WEPC project, in which they're soliciting feature requests from the public, then sorting through those crowdsourced suggestions and figuring out what makes sense to implement in production.

Flash embed above, downloadable MP4 here.

(Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes!)

More Videos: BB Gadgets at CES
* CES Video: Palm Pre Hands-On with Joel and Brownlee, post-review huddle with Ars Technica
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day Two
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One

John Brownlee

The Delorean wing of the Datamore Porte HDD enclosure

There are not many taut boners to be had when perusing external hard drive enclosures, but LaCie's latest at least makes a stab at something you'd actually cast your eyes upon fondly as it sat upon your desk. The Datamore Porté enclosure features a DeLorean-like wing door for the easy installation of any hard drive inside, and comes with either USB or eSATA, depending on what your bag is.

Datamore Porte [Akihabara News]

John Brownlee

Impervious to custom firmware hackers, there's less reason to buy a PSP-3000 than ever

Despite Sony's missteps, the Sony PSP is a great system, but in sheer spite of Sony's missteps, hackers are the ones who have made the PSP a great system. Although not as many as there should be for a system of the PSP's maturity, there's some excellent games available, but where the PSP shines is as portable emulation and homebrew device, and for that, Sony has less part than ever, consistently fighting against the same hackers and programmers who — if embraced — might have given Sony the leg up over the Nintendo DS.

So no shocks here: the recent release of the PSP-3000, aka the PSP Brite, is looking pretty hacker proof, with all its previous kernel holes patched up, preventing the installation of custom firmware and unsigned code. In particular, famous PSP hacker Dark Alex — who usually can turn around a new custom firmware within hours of an official Sony release — has made no progress worming his way into the PSP-Brite.

And that's ignoring the awful interlacing issue. There's still plenty of reason to buy a PSP, but not a PSP-3000. If you're looking to buy one and get the most out of your system, the PSP Slim or the PSP Phat is the way to go.

PSP is impervious to hackers [PSP Fanboy]

John Brownlee

Nvidia confirms discreet GPU switching and Hybrid SLI can be patched into new MacBooks

Apple's current method of switching between the dual Nvidia graphic chips in the new MacBook Pro is suboptimal at best. While Windows laptops with dual GPUs can discretely switch back and forth according to what the user is doing and if he's on his battery or plugged into a socket. Apple requires a manual switch accomplished with a log-off.

It was hard to believe that would stand for very long: it's the sort of cludgy solution Apple hates. And sure enough, Nvidia has confirmed with Gizmodo that the new MacBooks can indeed do on-the-fly GPU switching, they're just waiting for Leopard to catch up with the hardware. Better yet, the chips are also capable of Hybrid SLI, which might lead to a radical increase in gaming performance if Apple gets around to patching it in.

Gizmodo ends with a word of caution though: "But since it's Apple it's also entirely possible we'll never see any of this to come to pass—GPU-accelerated video decoding has totally been possible with the 8600M GT in the previous-gen MacBook Pros, and well, you know where that stands."

Confirmed: Apple can enable dual GPU and on-the-fly switching in MacBook Pro [Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Super Mario Bros. 3 makes excellent USB hard drive

This Super Mario Brothers 3 250GB hard drive isn't anything more clever than a retro game cartridge pried open, gutted, and crammed with a cheap 2.5" SATA drive. Even so, could there be any more appropriate repository for an arcade cabinet's NES ROM collection? This one was being sold by an Etsy seller for $180, and it's doubtlessly long gone, but if there's enough demand, surely an entire business could be forged from the pecuniary tricklings of indiscriminate retro-gamers.

NES 250GB Hard Drive [Etsy via Ubergizmo]

John Brownlee

ATI's new Radeons pack DirectX 10.1 and HDMI into $55 cards

ATI's new Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 cards may not the bottom of the shaft after accusations of price-fixing has sent GPU prices plummeting for the last few months, but they are certainly cheap.

Both cards feature DirectX 10.1 graphics, HDMI out and 7.1 channel audio, with the $55 4550 differentiating itself from its $16 cheaper cousin with 512MB of DDR3 memory and 96 GFLOPS of power. The 4350, on the other hand, halves the DDR3.

These look to be killer little budget cards when they're released in October. For $55, I may very well slap one in my Acer Aspire HTPC and start doing some of my PC gaming from a supine position on the couch.

ATI Radeon™ HD 4550 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4350 Graphics Cards Load Up Compelling Gaming and Multimedia Features [Business Wire via Crunchgear]

John Brownlee

Hentai NVIDIA card reveals new benchmark standard in GPU processing

We will not claim that this hentai brandedi GeForce 8800 GT card, initially spotted by a member of the Fucked Gaijin forums, is real. It is almost certainly a PhotoShop. That said, as GPUs get more and more powerful, what could be a better showcase for a graphic card's polygon-pumping might than the cel-shaded depiction of a hydrocephalic Japanese pre-teen's cervix, her realistic mucous membrane providing an impressive testing ground for Nvidia's revolutionary fluidic physics processing?

Thank you, Japan. We look forward to the introduction of the Cartoon Cervix Scale in the next version of 3D Mark.

Elsa Gladiac NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT [Fucked Gaijin]

John Brownlee

Happy Birthday, Microchip

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first microchip, Wired has posted a gallery: fifty years of integrated circuits. This is the first microchip... apparently overclocked.

50 Years of Integrated Circuits [Wired]

John Brownlee

Toshiba announced two 1.8 inch HDDs, but only one goes in the belly of the iPod Classic

There's a certain expectation that Toshiba will announce new 1.8 inch hard drives every time the iPod Classic line is refreshed, and Monday's "Let's Rock" (we didn''t) was no exception: Toshiba revealed two new 1.8-inch hard drives, a 120GB and 240GB meant for mobile PC devices, portable media players (natch) and even camcorders.

Stats: lower energy draw than their predecessors, 8MB of cache, 4,200RPM.

What's so frustrating about the announcement is that it looks like that 240GB drive could have been easily housed in the iPod Classic's old 160GB chassis, but Apple passed instead in their dogmatic obsession with attaining a Flatland-like thinness across their product line. Instead, the higher-end Classic was effectively downgraded.

Even if you can't wrap your mind around why anyone would need 240GB of iPod space, surely the bizarreness of Apple's choice to downgrade a product's capacity after a year is at least worth ejaculating one ephemeral exclamation point above the old cranium. Still, Toshiba's new drives at least give some hope to the die-hards out there that Christmas time might see a 240GB Classic bump.

Two New Toshiba 1.8 Inch Hard Drives Announced [Slashgear]

John Brownlee

The Inquirer: Add NVIDIA G92s and 94s to failing GPU list

The Inquirer continues to foam at the mouth and scream apocalyptically through their greasy beard, the soothsayer of an upcoming Nvidia apocalypse which will doom, doom, DOOM us all.

Following up their initial claim that all Nvidia G84 and G86 series GPU chipsets are bad, The Inquirer now claims we can add G92s and G94s to the list:

It seems that four board partners are seeing G92 and G94 chips going bad in the field at high rates. If you know what failures look like statistically, they follow a Poisson distribution, aka a bell curve. The failures start out small, and ramp up quickly - very quickly. If you know what you are looking for, you can catch the signs early on. From the sound of the backchannel grumblings, the failures have been flagged already, and NV isn't playing nice with their partners.

Why wouldn't they? Well, the G92 chip is used in the 8800GT, 8800GTS, 8800GS, several mobile flavours of 8800, most of the 9800 suffixes, and a few 9600 variants just to confuse buyers. The G94 is basically only the 9600GT. Basically we are told all G92 and G94 variants are susceptible to the same problem - basically they are all defective. Any guesses as to how much this is going to cost?

From the look of it, all G8x variants other than the G80, and all G9x variants are defective, but we have only been able to get people to comment directly on the G84, G86, G92 and G94, and all variants thereof. Since Nvidia is not acknowledging the obvious G84 and G86 problems, don't look for much word on this new set either - if they can bury it, it will drop their costs.

Nvidia is being incredibly mum about their GPU problems. On one hand, that could be because there are no real problems... but forum boards don't bear that out, and accusations are getting far too hysterical not to respond to. At this point, Nvidia's silence is looking incriminating: they aren't admitting the problem because they can't... it's a company sinker.

Nvidia G92s and G94 reportedly failing [The Inquirer]

Previously:

The Inquirer: All Nvidia G84s AND G86s are bad - Boing Boing Gadgets

John Brownlee

Intel: Nehalem is now Core i7

Intel's upcoming Nehalem architecture is officially getting a new name: Core i7. Insiders tell BBG that Nehalem fell out of favor after testing groups thought it "too Jewish."^* Intel's fervently Hassidic corporate culture will be downplayed by the new branding, although not be eliminated entirely: our sources tell us that the i stands for "Isaiah" while the 7 indicates the number of Ushpizzin who visit the sukkah during the holiday of Sukkot.

Intel changes Nehalem to Core i7 [Intel]

* - Wrong. They were, of course, thinking of the Nephilim, not the Nehalem.