Hasta La Gadget!

The folks at Royal Pingdom have yet another gallery for our perusal, this time featuring tech company logos rendered in the plastic pixels of Lego.

Along with the Flickr logo above (our favorite), you’ll find Apple’s multicolored Apple design (twice), Paul Rand’s classic IBM logotype, three renditions (in 3D) of the punchable Linux mascot Tux and the corporate IDs of a couple of gadget blogs.

Inexplicably, the gallery fails to provide the one logo that should be there — the design for Lego itself. Fortunately, after a long trawl through the archives of the internet (Google Image Search), I turned up this, from the San Francisco Bay Area Logofest, 1998. Behold, the Lego Lego Logo:

LEGO logos by and for computer geeks [Royal Pingdom]

SF Bay Area LEGOFest Gathering, Oct 10, 1998 [Logofest]

(Credit: Angelis Labor)

The Angelis Labor Gabriel turntable is a sight to behold with its impeccable blend of bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel finish. But its most striking feature are its tonearms flanking the vinyl table; you can attach up to four! These are supposedly decoupled from the rest of …

Apple today confirmed the news that the company’s longtime head, Steve Jobs, would be taking a medical leave until June, releasing the letter he sent earlier today to employees.

“Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well,” Jobs wrote in the letter. “In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.”

Jobs explained that he wanted to take the “limelight” off of himself, in order to focus on his health, stating that he planned to return to the company in June. Jobs also announced that the company’s COO, Tim Cook, would be filling in for him.

Jobs ended the letter on a hopeful note, “I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.”

If you thought the new Nikon D3x was expensive, thank your lucky, lucky stars you’re not British (unless, of course, you are British, in which case you should head straight to the pub and get a pint — watch out for those CCTVs on the way).

Nikon has jacked the price of its new high-end DSLR to £6000 ($8800) in the UK due to the slinky-like fluctuations of currency exchange rates. The original UK list price, announced back in December, was a mere £5500 ($8050). That’s almost a 10% rise in one month.

Not to stray too far from the gadget news itself, the British Pound has taken a hammering in the last few months, and is now almost at 1:1 parity with the Euro. This means that, in order to make their margins, foreign manufacturers are having to raise prices on exports to the UK. This is causing huge problems in the electronics market, but – according to my mother – it is also affecting basics like food and gin.

This is, as far as I can remember, the only time that gadgets have gone up in price after launch. If this keeps happening, I could sell off my D700 in a year and make a profit. Wait! I can — the D700 has gone up £100 ($150) already.

NIKON RAISES PRICE OF TOP CAMERA BY £500 [Amateur Photographer shouts]
Nikon Price List [Nikon – PDF]

See Also:

• Nikon Announces $8000, 24.5 Megapixel D3X

Apple head Steve Jobs today announced plans to take a medical leave from the company, citing health problems.

According to an e-mail sent to Apple employees, Jobs’s on-going health problems (cited as the reason for his recent decision to sit out the company’s final Macworld keynote,earlier this month) were worse than he originally thought.

Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, will be heading the company in Jobs’s absence. The CEO plans to take leave until June–when Apple traditionally makes some of its biggest announcements of the year.