Hasta La Gadget!

This isn’t exactly the sort of announcement one expects to come out of the CTIA conference. Among all the usual mobile-phone emails that landed in our mailbox this week was one that read “CTIA–The Wireless Association Announces the Death of Mark Desautels.”

The 56-year-old VP of the wireless association died of an apparent heart attack while attending the show on Monday afternoon in Las Vegas. Desautels had been with the CTIA since 1998, after serving as the president and CEO of the Wireless Data Forum and the assistant to the director at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Congressional Budget Office.

It’s sad and strange news, and no doubt a shock to most. Stranger still, however, is the wording on the release sent out to “announce” his death. I suppose it’s for the best that they didn’t save the announcement till tomorrow.

We’re probably still a bit short of packing our bags and heading to Mars. But it appears NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander may have helped scientists figure out which parts of the planet are more habitable for humans than others. Recent (and controversial) evidence that certain portions of the Mars landscape could host liquid water has lent credence to the theory that the planet contains the ingredients necessary to support life as we know it, Space.com reports.

According to the article, four papers are
under review for scientific publication on four major discoveries from the
mission, said Peter Smith, the Phoenix mission’s principal investigator at the
University of Arizona in Tucson. Under discussion are the following factors for supporting life: “the presence of liquid water; the
presence of a biologically available energy source; and the presence of the
chemical building blocks of life in a biologically available for.” The report also named temperature and water activity as additional key requirements.

Interestingly, the (stationary) Phoenix Mars Lander may have plopped down a spot that’s perfect for life. “What you
see is that Phoenix comes down as a clear winner — a much, much higher
habitability index than any of the other sites,” Stoker told conference
attendees, according to the report. “The Phoenix landing site is the most habitable zone of any location
we have ever visited on Mars.”

All hail the laggard! With pretty much every other US-based legacy carrier already on board, we were beginning to wonder if American Airlines even got the memo that in-flight WiFi was in serious demand. At long last, the company has made clear that it plans to equip more than 300 MD-80 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft used primarily in the United States with high-speed WiFi capability (over the next two years). If you’ll recall, American announced early on that it was game for trialing the tech, but until today, it had yet to make a commitment large enough to make you consider signing up for its credit card and bankrolling those frequent flyer miles. We’re expecting more details to emerge soon, but feel free to start pestering its agents with the whos, whats, wheres and whens.

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

American bringing in-flight WiFi to over 300 planes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week, we analyze (and lightly criticize) Apple’s obsession with the word "Pod." You know, that three-letter word used in the famous iPod — and to describe peas and other stuff. We discuss some recent incidents of Apple’s lawyers chasing down start-ups attempting to use "Pod" in their company or product names.

Staying on the topic of start-ups, we also talk about how gadget entrepreneurs today have far more potential than new Web 2.0 companies. We describe a few small companies that struck it rich with their snazzy gadgets.

We top off the podcast with some chatter about the zippy Nissan 370Z, recently reviewed by Wired.com, as well as the $200 Logitech G19 keyboard. Hot stuff!

This week’s podcast features Danny Dumas, Priya Ganapati and Brian Chen, with audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso.

If the embedded player above doesn’t work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #68 MP3.

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What do you get when you mash up yesterday’s Intel Xeon 5500 and NVIDIA Quadro FX announcements with a bruiser BMW DesignWorksUSA case? The HP Z800 workstation, that’s what — and while it’s clearly more machine than most of us need, it’s almost just as certainly the machine we deserve. Right? Right. Inside the super-configurable case beats two quadcore Nehalem Xeon 5400 CPUs that appear as 16 cores to Windows, and optional SLI Multi-OS-capable NVIDIA graphics cards that allow you to use SLI under virtualization. Pricing starts at a seemingly-reasonable $1,999 and cruises north of $14K — anyone want to lend us some cash?

Filed under: Desktops

HP Z800 workstation supports SLI Multi-OS, newest Xeon processors originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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