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Hot Gadgets and Technology
Wireless Router Flower Vase Concept Also Doubles As Nuclear Cooling Tower [Concepts]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under Concepts, Design, Design Concepts, Flowers, Routers, Wi-Fi, Wireless Routers, stc
Generally, water and gadgets don't tend to play nicely together. But I'm a fan of this wireless router/flower vase concept design from Saudi telecom company STC. With it, the router doesn't have to be shoved away in the corner, its tangle of wires collecting dust bunnies by the pound. Now, how aboud a daffodil—or a cottonball puff simulating the smoke rising out of a sector 7G's cooling tower. [Dezeen]
Dealzmodo: Get Dark Knight, Batman Begins Discs With Denon Blu-ray Players [Dealzmodo]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under Batman Begins, Blu ray discs promotion denon, Blu-Ray, Dealzmodo, Denon, Movies, bd, dark knight, gadgets
Two free Blu-ray discs with a player can't be a bad deal, particularly when the movies are the Dark Knight and Batman Begins. It's a Denon special holiday offer from November 23rd through January 10th, and it applies to the DVD-1800BD and DVD-3800BDCI players and the DVD-2500BTCI Blu-ray transport. That DVD-3800 machine is worth $2,000, though, so you'd better have saved up the bat-cash. [Denon]
World’s Tallest Bridge Goes Up in China with the Help of Some Rockets [Engineering]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under Bridge, China, Engineering, Rockets, gadgets
In China, they're currently working on the Siduhe Grand Bridge, what will be the tallest bridge in the world when completed. How tall is it? Well, let's just say that you could put the Empire State Building in the valley below it and it wouldn't touch the bridge, with a whopping 360 feet of overhead. So how do you get cables across a chasm that large to build a bridge with? Rockets, of course.
They erected huge towers on either side of the valley to anchor the bridge, first off. Next, they attached 3,200-foot cables to rockets, accurately firing them across the valley to the other side. While other large bridges took care of this process using helicopters or kites, that was just too practical for these guys.
But hey, it worked perfectly, so who am I to judge? The bridge is still under construction, but at this point the really hard part is done. You know, the part with the rockets. Who wants to be the first to drive across it? Anyone?
[A Call for Revolution Against Beta Culture [Bad Technology]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under APPLE, Bad technology, Beta culture, Feature, Firmware, IPHONE, Lg, Microsoft, Philips, RROD, Samsung, Sony, Top, Updates, Xbox 360, iPhone 3G
I'm tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The "This will work in the next version." The "It's in our roadmap." The "Buy now and upgrade later." The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn't tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I'm tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic cancer in the last few years, starting with software from Google and others and ending up in almost every gadget and computer system around. We need a change.
Take the iPhone, for example, one of the most successful products in the history of consumer electronics. We like it, I love mine, but the fact is that the first generation was rushed out, lacking basic features that were added in later releases or are not here yet. Worse: The iPhone 3G was really broken. For real. Bad signal, dropped calls, frozen apps. This would have been unthinkable in cellphones just five years ago. They were simpler, for sure, but they were failure proof. Today's engineering and testing is a lot more sophisticated. In theory, products can't go out into distribution with such glaring problems undetected.
Another recent example is my iMac 24, which had the infamous video card problem out of the box. How can a machine with such an obvious problem—instantly detected by the user base—be sold like that? The same happened recently with Nvidia video boards. In fact, graphic cards—being always in the cutting edge of technology—are perfect examples of beta hardware being sold as final hardware, with many released with beta-quality drivers and requiring firmware patches.
From that to the now-universally-accepted Blue Screen of Death, from buggy Blu-ray players to the Xbox 360's red ring of death and PS3's bugs, even from kitchen ovens to faulty DSLR cameras, the list of troubled products is endless. Just this week, the eagerly anticipated BlackBerry Storm launched to mixed reviews, in part because of its crashy, apparently unfinished software.
On the other side, my parents have a Telefunken CRT TV and a Braun radio from the '70s which are still in working condition. They were first generation. They never failed. Compare that to my first plasma TV from Philips, which broke after less than a year of use. Mine wasn't the only one. The technology was too young to be released; it was still in beta state. Philips wanted to be the first in the world with a flat TV and beat the competition, so they released it. This probably wasn't a good move: Today, Philips' TV business is struggling, and is nonexistent in the US. Meanwhile, my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Apple IIe from the 1980s still work like they did from day one, perfectly.
For sure, today's products are far more complex than those of 20 or 30 years ago. But back then, the manufacturing was also a lot worse. It was less automated, often purely manual, and imperfect. Today, in a world where automated factories run 24/7, there's less chance of error. Yet still, there are countless problems in the final products, and those problems affect every unit in an entire model line. In the age of manufacturing perfection, there are still major recalls concerning products that burn or break.
Clearly, the problem is the development process and the time to market, with product cycles shortened and corners cut to keep a continuous stream of cash flowing in. The rush to feed these cycles with increasingly more complex engineering seems to be at odds with shortened development and quality assurance processes, resulting in beta-state first-generation products. This beta culture, the same one that already plagues the web, breeds people who are willing to accept bugs in the name of cutting-edge gear.
Who's to blame? Google and their web apps? Apple and their iPhone 3G problems? Microsoft and their countless buggy versions of operating systems and the Xbox 360's RROD? Philips? Sony? Samsung? LG? We all are. The manufacturers, who are driven by a thirst to expand and satisfy their shareholders at all costs. The consumers, who are so thirsty to drink in the shiniest, newest technology that they are willing to sacrifice stability. And the press too, who pours more gasoline onto the consumerism bonfire by writing glowing reviews and often minimizing things that are simply not acceptable.
Personally, I'm tired of all this. But I'm mostly tired about the fact that it seems that we all have given up. Tired because now we see "upgrades" as an opportunity to protect our investment, but in reality, it's laziness and a poor job on the manufacturer part that we have accepted without questioning. Instead of calling foul play and refusing to participate, we keep buying.
That's the key: We have surrendered in the name of progress and marketing and product cycles and consumerism. Maybe those are good reasons, I don't know, but looking at the past, it feels like we are being conned. Deceived because the manufacturers of electronic products have taken our desire to progress faster and even embrace the web beta culture as an excuse to rush things to market, to blatantly admit bugs and the rushed features sets and sell the patches as upgrades.
Maybe the recession will put some order in this thirst of new stuff and change the product cycles. As the economy slows down, people will think twice before buying the latest and greatest; they'll keep older hardware for longer. Then, manufacturers will have to rethink their product lines, and lift their feet from the accelerator, which will result on slower cycles and better products. Maybe that's our ticket for better electronics that actually make sense.
Or maybe... maybe that will be another excuse for the manufacturer to cut even more corners and keep lowering prices so that consumers keep spending and ending up with worse products than we have now.
AMD Shows Off Phenom II Processor’s Headroom, By Overclocking to 5GHz [Amd]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under 5GHz, Amd, Chip, Extreme overclocking, Phenom 2, Phenom 2 overclocking, Processor, gadgets, phenom
From AMD's upcoming chip roadmaps we know the Phenom II is due out early next year, and it's AMD's second 45nm chip, but in a recent show and tell session AMD demonstrated the "overhead" built into the chip by overclocking one to a crazy 5GHz. It did take a special CO2 sublimation cooling unit that carries the danger of suffocating you if you use it in a small room, but what the hey. With a liquid nitrogen cooling system the chip was easily pushed way over 5 gigs. You may think "yeah, I could overclock anything with that stuff!" but it should be noted that with fairly normal high-end air-cooling the chips could get up to 4GHz. It'll be interesting to watch AMD's battle with Intel's i7 play out. [PCPerspective]
Woz Really Does Everything On His Segway [Gyro-pee]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under APPLE, Gyro-pee, Pee, Pics, Segway, Steve Wozniak, woz
The balance, the precision aiming. The man: Woz takes a piss on his Segway. If this is Photoshopped (or the world's most convincing Woz lookalike), there truly is no God. [Macenstein]
iPhone 2.2 Update Review: Go Get It Now [Apple]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under APPLE, Gallery, Hands-On, Review, Top, Update, Verizonbestmodo, iPhone 2.2 review, new iPhone
The new iPhone 2.2 is here and we've been playing with it all night and morning. Like Apple says in their documentation, the stability and performance seems to have improved, but the spotlight falls on the new and improved Maps application, which has been polished up thanks to its public transportation and walking directions, as well as the smooth, fast Street View, and many other interface details. There are a lot of unexpected new features—no, no cut and paste—and fixes as well, and we've tried them all here:
Enhancements to Maps
• Public transport and walking mode: The most impressive part, at least for a public transport user like me, is the new public transport and walking directions mode. They work as you can expect, without many glitches. This mode has all the information you need, at least here in New York, and it showed me the fastest way to get from my house to Gawker offices (cleverly avoiding the damn 6, which is always arriving late for me).
Not only it showed the route clearly, with nice new icons, but it also gave something unexpected: subway timetables. As you can see in the gallery, it tells you what's the departure time for the next Manhattan-bound L train, telling you how many minutes you have to get there on time. It can also calculate the total time of your trip, which is always useful.
• Street view: It works great. You can't access street view by clicking on any place in the map, but the way Apple has implemented it kinda makes sense. When you do a search (or drop a pin) an new little guy icon will appear in the address pop-up. You just have to click on it and the map will zoom and smoothly change into Street View mode, rotating the display to the left automatically. From there you can navigate easily, using one finger to look around the panorama and clicking on the overlaid arrows to navigate. It works hot-butter-over-pancakes smooth. We'd like to be able to access the mode by just finding our current location and switching it on though.
• Other new features: When you drop a pin, it displays the exact address of the location. You can also share any location via email very easily, just by clicking on the location itself and hitting a Share this location button. It's a quick cut and paste substitute (of course, no cut and paste yet).
iTunes and App Store
• Podcasts over the air: As far as we can tell, they work flawlessly for both audio and video. I accessed the new feature and I was downloading podcasts in no time. Unfortunately, the artificially-imposed 3G network 10MB limit is easy to reach for video content, such as the TED Talks that download fine over Wi-Fi. One good thing: It leaves the podcasts in a queue so the next time you get into a Wi-Fi hot spot, they will download automagically.
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• App store reorganization: The UI has been sightly reorganized and polished. The categories, for example, now display bigger and with icons. As I speculated in our iPhone 2.2 rumor round-up, the icons shown seem to show the top free application.
Fixes
• Improved stability and performance in Safari: In my informal testing, it feels a bit faster to me, especially on Javascript heavy web sites.
• Resolved isolated issues with scheduled email: Wasn't able to test this one, as I don't use scheduled checking to save on battery life.
• Improving wide HTML email display: If you have ever ran into this problem, you know it's extremely annoying. When somebody sends you an HTML styled email, sometimes it displays very long lines and tiny text. I received a mail like that the other day from my sister and went immediately to try it. Unfortunately, the fix hasn't worked for me on that one, but it did work in another email I got from a company. Weird.
• Decreased in call set-up an call drops: Too soon to tell.
• Improved sound quality on Voicemail messages: I saw this yesterday so I went and tried them in 2.1. Indeed, there were pops and hisses. After the update I tried under 2.2 and yes, they do have better sound quality.
Other little additions
• Clicking the home button while you are in the home screen takes you to the first page of the home, which is very welcome, as that's where I store my main applications and I have several pages of additional apps and page links.
• Safari: They have streamlined the interface for address and search, like we already saw in previous leaks.
• Preference to turn auto-correction on and off: This is a welcome addition for me, because quite frankly, no matter what Jason says, my iPhone corrects fuck with duck every single time. So duck auto-correction for a little while. I'm going to ducking see if it affects my ducking speed or not.
Verdict: It works fairly well, feels smooth, and the new features are a must have—especially the new Maps application. Ducking good. Go get it now.
19-Year-Old Commits Suicide Live on Justin.tv While Commenters Egg Him On [Unfunny]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under SOFTWARE, Suicide, Unfunny, Webcams, justin.tv
Here's a story nobody likes to see. 19-year-old Abraham K. Biggs overdosed on pills on a live webcam stream before hundreds of people on Wednesday night, all while commenters on Justin.tv and bodybuilding.com encouraged him, apparently thinking it was some kind of joke. He lay passed out on his webcam for hours until he appeared to stop breathing, at which point the people watching realized it was no joke.
Sadly, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Followers of internet lore are surely familiar with Brandon "I told u I was hardcore" Vedas, who overdosed on drugs live on a webcam after having given his personal information out to the viewers in case something went wrong. All were too afraid to get in trouble to call the authorities.
There's definitely something about being on the internet that makes you feel cut off from and not responsible for the people you're dealing with (see: YouTube commenters), but when you're watching a real, live human on video doing something obviously damaging to themselves, it's completely inexcusable to do nothing. And to egg them on, well, that's something those people will have to deal with on their own. A sad story all around. [NewTeeVee]
10 Really Cool Windows 7 Media Center Features [Windows 7]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under Feature, MC, Mce, Media Center, Media Center PC, Microsoft, SOFTWARE, Top, Windows, Windows 7 media center, windows 7
A few days back, I showed you the new touch interface for Media Center PCs running Windows 7, and though I had to pull the video, I promised a walkthrough of proposed Windows 7 Media Center features. I say "proposed" because, like everything else about Windows 7, this is all alpha and subject to change. But these features are very cool, and really should be included. One more thing: These screens were projected on a wall in a well-lit room, so they look horrible, but anyone familiar with Media Center (and Microsoft has shipped like 100 million of them, so that should be plenty of ya) will have a good idea of the pleasantness to come. Or you can just drink in the following prose descriptions:
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• Shows appear dissolved behind menus - When you're watching something and want to pull up a menu to add a new show or browse the channel guide, or even go into another area of the Media Center, the current show stays on, not as a picture-in-picture, but tastefully dissolved into the background.
• Chronological turbo scroll for channel guide - When you're looking at the channel guide, but want to go from Tuesday to Sunday in a hurry, you just hold down the arrow button on the remote, and the days start to whip by. Listings become a blur, but the days of the week, and the portions of the day, appear floating over the listings to give you an idea of when to stop.
• Live thumbnail forward and rewind - During HD video playback, you might want to jump around. Grab the time marker and drag it forward or back, and as you do, you see a miniature version of the show playing backwards or forwards at the same speed.
• Launch TV from Start menu - Media Center can occupy a pole position in the Start menu, and when you hover over the MC logo, a list of recently recorded shows pops up, along with other frequently used MC features.
• Floating Media Center gadget - Not only can you access shows from the Start menu, you can browse MC features from the desktop with the gadget. I am not clear whether or not you'll get to have actual video playing in it, but for people who need MC at their fingertips, this appears to be a nice, subtle execution.
• Alphabetical turbo scroll for music - The chronological turbo scroll on the channel guide is cool, but this one will come in more handy for me: As you scroll through the countless artists in your music collection, the names become a blur but your location in the alphabet is denoted by two letters, probably so that those longer letters like J, M, R and S can be broken up better.
• Drifting cover art grid - When you're playing a song, the album art for that track appears with some basic metadata, and all the cover art for every other track you own materializes and drifts in the background. The primary cover art jumps from side to side and top to bottom, so that everything is in constant, fluid motion.
• Scattered photos picture show - As you're playing music, you can opt for a photo show that essentially reaches into a folder, grabs a handful of shots, scatters them evenly around the page, and then zooms in on one at a time. A nice touch: In the wide angle, all the photos look like desaturated black-and-whites, but as each shot gets its own screen time, it magically becomes full color.
• Copy remote content - If you are browsing multiple libraries or Media Center PCs and come across a show you like, you can watch it or save it for later by hitting "make a copy." As long as there's no broadcast flag or some other DRM, the vid will flow over to your local HDD so you can watch it when you've left the network.
• Virtual channels without TV tuner - One of the new Media Center's central concerns is the new popularity of internet-based video, not just YouTube clips but whole TV episodes like those shown on Hulu. DVR functionality is key to making the most of an MC, but at launch there will be loads of virtual channels with shows you can watch just as easily. Microsoft demoed a special MSNBC channel that had clips and full shows; it's of course feasible for them to build similar channels for third-party web video services too. [Windows 7 on Giz]
Special Forces Fireproof Modular Glove System Now For Normal Rich Guys Too [Clothing]
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 11.21.08 under Clothing, Gloves, Military, Modular glove system, Outdoor research, fireproof, gadgets
Before you ask "why would I need fireproof gloves?" it's just one feature of this glove system from Outdoor Research that's in use right now by the military in Iraq, including special forces chaps. They can also handle extremely cold and hot environments, and the outer layer is made of a specially abrasion-resistant "wolverine" material. And that just sounds cool. The inner layer is of super-stretchy nomex-based stuff that's super-stretchy for an ideal fit, and the whole idea is that you mix and match internal and external components to three or four layers to meet your needs. They'd better be some specialist needs though: these babies'll cost you $1,100. [Wired]