Filed under: Cellphones
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
If you asked us what two things on our desk that we’d want to combine into one thing, we’d probably pick these two things, the USB drive and the highlighter. When has it not occurred to you to put these obviously similar things in one package? We mean really, a USB drive fits in your hand and a USB highlighter fits in your hand. What more connection do you need? Thanks, High Dexx USB Flash Drive. You know exactly what we’re thinking. [Gadgtes2Order via Oh Gizmo]
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
I spotted an article with a catchy title: it’s 2018: who owns the cloud? Where the author asks this interesting question and develops the idea that “providing cloud consumers with a spectacular user experience” is critical and that Apple does it better than anybody (well on the “cloud” side of things, this is really open to discussion…). Well, of course, users always need to be served with a spectacular experience. That’s true for any product from printers to computers to networked applications. The “cloud computing” business is split in two: those who run the servers (infrastructure level) and platform and those who build the services (application level). Typically, cloud companies aren’t very good at building apps and application companies aren’t so good building infrastructure (think: MobileMe drama). Web companies have to do both but usually stay close to their core strenghts, like “payments” for eBay and Amazon (that’s a “service”, btw). My guess is that the split will remain for the foreseeable future.
Even thought we say “the cloud”, we’re not talking about “one” cloud, but just about the concept that things are done remotely. If you use the cloud computing of a new startup, your “cloud” might be someone’s PC in a dorm room (slightly exagerated). Even in the next 5 to 10 years, the cloud computing industry will not consolidate to the point where there is one huge dominant player (infrastructure level). Cloud computing is mostly based on open standards, so moving from one provider to another one should be annoying but not too hard. Just like no ones “owns” web hosting today, no one will “own” cloud computing in 2018. The value is in the application, not the infrastructure.
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Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Filed under: Laptops
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Everybody loves solar products, as they know it helps the environment and can charge their little gadgets while on the move. This time Sakku is taking it a tiny bit further, and also paying attention to the materials that go into their solar bags. The bags use old sails for the material of the bag, and as added bonus, each bag comes with its own story as they’re individually stamped with the name of the lake or sea in which the boat was located when they took the sail off it. The bags are currently only available in the UK, but it seems that they’re trying to bring it into the US. The bags are currently going for € 175- € 245 ($275-$385).
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Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
The Gadget: D-Link’s entrance into the 10-inch photo frame market, which contains Wi-Fi to download and display pics from your Flickr, MobileMe, MSN, PIcasa, webshots, Facebook, and various other photo sharing accounts, or your local network. There’s also RSS news display, 1GB on-board memory and a USB port for external photos.
The Price: $240
The Verdict: Works mostly as advertised, but at a price of $240, we expect a bit more polish to the unit.
The 10-inch display is roomy, but its 800×480 resolution looks somewhat pixelated when you get up close. Loading photos from its internal memory and USB slot (or SD slot) works just as well as you’d expect, which is nice. However, 1GB of built-in memory is pretty tiny for something that costs $240.
You can also stream photos from various online photo sharing networks, which works pretty well over its 802.11g connection or its 10/100 Ethernet port (you really want to use the Wi-Fi to make this truly wireless, but seeing as there’s a mandatory AC adapter, that’s pretty much an impossibility anyway).
One of the goofs we find is that the default setting on FrameChannel.com, the online utility you use to manage all your internet feeds, sets the default photos at a maximum of 5, so you only get 5 pics in your rotation at once. Easy enough to fix if you know where to look, but your parents would have to call you first. Again, for $240 we expect the kind of user interface that you can actually tweak settings on without having to use a separate computer.
Is it fairly solid? Yes. Would we recommend this to our parents? Probably not. We’ll wait for the second-gen (or is it fifth-gen now) photo frames—something we can give to our parents and have them figure out themselves. [D-Link]
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Last Tuesday, a group of professors, students and robotics hobbyists launched the H.A.L.E. (High Altitude Lego Extravaganza): seven Lego Mindstorms robots attached to a weather balloon, which exploded at 30km over the Earth’s surface. Each of the robots parachuted back successfully, but not without taking the obligatory photographs of the ascent and descent:
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The seven robots were designed to achieve seven different missions:
Brian Davis, Indiana, USA
Project: Little Joe
This robot will perform an automated free-fall in an attempt to set the record for the longest MINDSTORMS NXT free-fall. The robot will be detached from the main balloon near maximum altitude and will free-fall until the parachute deploys.Project: Gypsy
The robot will be an automated camera platform that will take both video and still images. The MINDSTORMS NXT will control all image timing as well as pitch angleFLL Team 90/David Levy (Coach), Virginia USA
Project: FLL Team Challenge: Climate Connections
A FIRST LEGO League Climate Connections team will build a robot to measure UV radiation as a function of altitude. The MINDSTORMS NXT will not only data log the UV sensor readings, but will also be used to rotate the UV filters in position as well as control the robot heater with a temperature sensor.Barbara Bratzel & Chris Rogers, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA
Project: Fourth Graders
A group of 4th grade students will investigate the impact of flight conditions on yellow marshmallows (a.k.a peeps). The MINDSTORMS NXT will be recording temperature and pressure during the mission.David Martinez, Jurgen Leitner, Sweden
Project: SpaceMasters
The robot will be measuring the change in G-forces as a function of altitude. The robot will repeatedly drop a tethered Wiimote at different altitudes to measure the acceleration experience.Claude Baumann, Francis Massen, Jean Mootz, Luxembourg
Project : LUXPAK
The robot will be using an RCX to measure ozone concentration, air pressure, temperature (inside and outside) and reflected light from Earth during the descent.Eugene Tsai, Taiwan
The robot will be using filtering papers to capture particles and/or chemicals in the air during the balloon ascent and descent periods. The LEGO Mindstorms NXT will be used to provide a mechanism to switch filtering papers to capture the materials in the air and then keep the papers in a secured compartment. The filtering papers will be retrieved and analyzed to see what chemicals and particles exist in different altitudes.
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[More info will be posted soon at the Lego Mindstorms site]
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Nippon Signal recently exhibited an SVGA (800 x 600) compact color projector that is about the size of a cigarette case, which is much smaller than the previous one they exhibited at a previous exhibition. Not only did they manage to shrink the projector, they’ve also improved on the quality of the images that it displays. Based on their presentation, it looks like these compact projects may be commercialized sometime in the near future.
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Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
The NetShare App is back up on the iTunes App Store, only about 13 hours after it was unceremoniously pulled and replaced with a “not available in the US Store” message. What’s the deal here? Was it approved, then unapproved, then approved again? Oddness. [App Store - Thanks Brenden!]
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Looking for some new desktop pictures? What better to have as a desktop than the contraption that’s going to create a black hole in a mere week, killing us all? The Big Picture has a great collection of high-res Large Hadron Collider images, and they’re stunning. If we’re going to die, we might as well be killed by the biggest, most beautiful piece of technology ever assembled by man.
galleryPost(’hadronpics’, 8, ‘Large Hadron Collider’); [The Big Picture]
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Posted On: July 31st, 2008 Comments (0)
