On Call runs every two weeks, alternating between answering reader questions and discussing hot topics in the cell phone world.
Q: I was an Alltel customer, but I’m now with Verizon Wireless following the merger. I want to add a fourth line to my family plan, but Verizon informed me that my Alltel phones were not compatible and that I’d need to replace them. Replacing all four phones would cost me about $600. What can I do? – Sarah
A: Since Alltel and Verizon both use CDMA technology, I was surprised to hear that your Alltel phones aren’t compatible with Verizon’s network. I checked with Verizon and got a quick response. While most Alltel customers won’t have to buy new phones, there are exceptions (there always are). …
As consumers hold their breath for the rumored Apple tablet, KCI Communications has an immediate and possibly better solution for those who can’t wait to get touchy-feely with their screens.
The Duo turns monitors and laptops 17 inches or smaller into a tablet. A small device that acts as a “base station” clips onto the top of the monitor, continuously picking up the user’s input with the Duo pen. Lee Jae-jun, head of research and development at KCI Communications, explains the technology: “The pen’s coordinates are calculated by the amount of time it takes for the infrared and ultrasonic waves to be reflected from the base station.”
The user can write or draw directly on the screen in eight different languages, marking up Web pages, documents, or PowerPoint presentations while using the pen to navigate through the desktop. One of the more remarkable features is that the Duo also converts into a ballpoint pen, letting the user take notes on traditional paper and watch them appear in the included NoteTaker software.
Earlier this year, we reviewed Canon’s Papershow, a dedicated paper-to-screen device that’s mostly aimed at professionals who want to conduct interactive PowerPoint presentations. A similar gadget is the LiveScribe Smartpen, which is geared toward students, linking audio to written text. But the Duo appears to be is the first device to capture ink and convert a plain monitor into a touch screen.
AT&T customers with smartphones will be required to purchase a data plan starting September 6, the company announced Monday.
AT&T argued that smartphone users consume a lot of data, and the plan will help prevent surprises each billing cycle.
“Smartphone users tend to consume a higher amount of data services, like advanced e-mail, mobile Web, applications and more,” AT&T said in a statement. “Being able to take full advantage of these features without having to worry about a fluctuating or unusually high bill generally leads to greater customer satisfaction, so effective Sept. 6, smartphone customers will need to subscribe to a data plan, as the vast majority of customers already do.”
AT&T customers who currently use a smartphone but do not have a data plan will not be required to add one, according to a spokesman. But if they update their devices or make changes to their account, they will have to “bring their accounts current, which in some cases may include subscribing to a data plan,” he said.
On the heels of a scientific report last month saying 63 percent of world fish stocks require rebuilding, scientists at MIT have unveiled a new robot fish that’s cheap to make and ripe for mass production.
Actually, MIT engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado aren’t aiming to replenish fisheries. They want their robot swimmers to be used for underwater monitoring of pipelines, sunken ships, and pollution. Since the fish are less than a foot long, they can maneuver into spaces that are too tight for most underwater autonomous vehicles (UAVs).
The fish–while not as pretty as these toxin-sniffing robot carp patrolling Spanish waters–are notable for their novel design. They have fewer than 10 parts, making them low-cost, and are housed in a continuous flexible polymer casing that prevents water damage.
Lacking different segments, the fish can swim more naturally, according to MIT (watch the video after the jump). A single motor in the middle initiates a wave that moves along the body and propels it forward. Real fish move in a similar fashion by contracting muscles on either side of their bodies.
Youcef-Toumi noted that the polymers allow for stiffness to be specified in different sections, adding that another application would be robotic prosthetic limbs.
The early versions of the fish, about 5 inches long, swam like bass and trout, with movement concentrated in the tail. …
Who said Microsoft’s mobile strategy has to be limited to Windows Mobile? Redmond has just announced OneApp, a comprehensive framework for delivering apps on a variety of featurephones — largely in emerging markets — where processor horsepower and memory are both at a premium. The solution is deployed in harmony with partners (carriers, primarily) that work to offload app processing and storage into the cloud and keep the on-phone footprint as small as possible (Microsoft is quoting a scant 150K for the OneApp executable itself). At present, OneApp is up and running on South Africa’s Blue Label Telecoms where subscribers have access to Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and RSS apps among others; more launches are planned around the world “within the next year” at which point an SDK will be made available to devs who want in. Behind the scenes, the app is based on web standards — think Palm’s webOS — and is currently compatible with a variety of S60-based Nokias, Sony Ericsson featurephones, and Samsung’s U900 Soul. And no, don’t worry, this isn’t Windows Mobile 7.
Madden hits Apple's small screen, and Favre rises from the dead.
(Credit: EA Sports)
Madden may rule the roost of NFL games for the most part, but one pesky little company still has a license for mobile phone-based NFL games, too: Gameloft. We covered NFL 2010 recently, and mentioned that it could give Madden a run for its money in the mobile space.
While Madden for the iPhone and iPod Touch was rumored before, EA Sports has formally confirmed the release of the game with some screenshots and a promise that it will be available “in time for opening day,” which is September 10. Promising expertise that 20 years in the business can provide, the news release for Madden on the iPhone and iPod Touch is clearly cognizant that there is a competitor out there already.
A large number of baffling icons fill the right corner of the screen.
(Credit: EA Sports)
One observation, looking at these screens, is that there’s more than a little similarity between the interfaces of this game and NFL 2010. A virtual joystick on the left combined with contextual action buttons on the right will try to accommodate for the missing control pad in much the same way as Gameloft’s title–although to be fair to Madden, it looks as if it has more action-button options on the offensive snap plays shown. Receivers look like they’re color-coded based on how open they are, and it seems like tap-to-throw may also be the mechanic here, as it is in NFL 2010.
Does including an external drive make it a better deal?
(Credit: MSI)
Despite many Netbooks and thin-and-lights ditching optical drives in favor of more compact computers, corporate folks are apparently still concerned and looking out for us suddenly-DVD-free folk. MSI has announced availability of a new thin-and-light ULV (ultra-low voltage) …
There is little doubt that the hottest trend in MP3 players is wireless, but how it is implemented varies from device to device. Some players, such as the Zune HD and the Sony X-Series Walkman, have integrated Wi-Fi that allows for Web browsing and music-streaming capabilities (among other things). Other …
As Engadget’s resident former attorney, my first instinct when I sat down to re-read Apple, AT&T’s and Google’s FCC filings regarding Google Voice was to put on my lawyer hat and try to find inconsistencies that might shed some additional light on what had actually happened — if Apple’s account differed from AT&T’s, for example, perhaps those subtle differences would reveal the actual truth. This proved to be much more difficult than I had imagined, however: not only had Google redacted the most interesting part of its statement, I came to a profound realization after just a few moments of work.
I don’t care.
Each of the responses was long, dense, and polished to a high-gloss shine that made each company’s actions seem not only rational and justified, but almost inevitable in a way — as I wrote at the time, Apple isn’t exaggerating when it says that these are entirely new problems, and simply reading the individual letters paints a fairly sympathetic picture of how this whole chaotic process ended up in such disarray. But that’s a perspective that assumes deeply-rooted interest in the systems and procedure of the App Store, a perspective that assumes there’s a good reason we should be looking to lawyers and government regulators to figure out what’s going on with the most exciting and vital software market that we’ve seen in a long time.
In his Taste Test guest editor intro, Nick Kokonas recounts meeting chef Grant Achatz and founding Alinea, a restaurant that cooks food by freezing it, distills ingredients’ essences to vapor and questions the very eating utensils you use everyday.
Let’s bend history a bit and pretend it is 1948 and a 22-year-old Miles Davis is playing in a small club in suburban New York. He is well known, but not exactly famous yet. You are a jazz fan and have been to the great clubs in New York, Paris, Chicago and some crazy joint in Helsinki. You sit down, the music starts, and you are certain that you hear the future of jazz right there: Different colors, different cadence, the same yet somehow different—modern but still accessible.
That is not the history of Miles Davis—not even close. But that is how I felt when I first tasted the cooking of chef Grant Achatz. I went to Trio restaurant in suburban Chicago for lunch on a Friday, went back the following week for dinner on a Wednesday… then ate there about 15 more times over the next year. Grant was creating at a new level—not only was the food delicious, it was modern, innovative and intellectually stimulating.
In January of 2004 Grant and I spoke about possibly partnering to build a restaurant. When you meet Miles Davis at a young age, you gotta help to build him a world-stage right? If you didn’t you would be kicking yourself in the ass for the next 50 years. On May 4th 2004, we held a dinner at my house to introduce the idea to potential investors, an architect and an interior designer. On May 5th 2005 we opened—exactly one year to the date later. My dad used to tell me that when you have a great idea, the world conspires to help you achieve it. It worked a bit like that. In October 2006, Gourmet Magazine named Alinea the Best Restaurant in the US. This year Restaurant Magazine in the UK placed us at # 10 in the world.
If you’re wondering about the name, Alinea literally means “off the line.” The restaurant’s symbol, more commonly known as the pilcrow, indicates the beginning of a new train of thought, or literally a new paragraph. There’s a double meaning: On one hand Alinea represents a new train of thought about food, but we are a restaurant, and everything still has to come “off the line.”
Grant’s background is in the basics and the classics. He grew up cooking in his parents’ diner in St. Clair, Michigan, went to the Culinary Institute of America, then learned his haute cuisine chops from the best chef in the land—Thomas Keller. A trip to El Bulli restaurant in Roses, Spain under the direction of chef Ferran Adria let Grant know that you could take classical technique, apply equal measures of whimsy, intelligence, creativity and technology, and transform the dining experience. He spent a few days there, came home, and began to innovate in ways he could not have imagined at the time.
I am not a culinary professional, nor do I have a restaurant background. I have a BA in philosophy, spent my youth programming on a Apple II (including an accounting program for my dad’s business that was in use until 1991), and the majority of my professional career trading derivatives and investing in small, mostly web-based tech companies.
We built Alinea to touch all the senses—not only taste. The menu is composed like a symphony or a play, provoking diners, challenging them, and making sure they feel… happy, sad, nostalgia, humor… the full range of human emotion.
Food and technology… not exactly the best of friends lately. With the books Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma (both must-reads in my opinion)—and the documentary Food Inc.—there is the sense that anytime technology is applied to food bad things happen. Genetically modified vegetables, cows fed corn and a whole bunch of drugs to allow them to digest it, and whatever keeps a Twinkie around for 50 years—none of that can be good for us, right?
I am here to tell you that innovation when applied to food can be a good thing…. newer can mean better, more plentiful, more delicious. You can apply technology while still being respectful of the ingredients, the environment, and the consumer. It can also help take an ordinary dinner and make it artful. Grant’s cuisine questions convention while honoring it. And when necessary, he uses technology and science to achieve new tastes and textures that align with the goal of making the dining experience the best it can possibly be.
Some food critics and foodies apply the “molecular gastronomy” label to the cuisine of Chef Achatz. [His name is pronounced like “rackets”, as Wired’s Mark McClusky once pointed out.] There is a lot written on that, but we don’t like the tag… it seems limiting, short sighted, and in many cases just plain wrong. Much of the time, low tech is good enough—why use a laser to cut something when a knife will do the job just fine? Unfortunately, the molecular gastronomy of today often has more to do with the showmanship than it does with the original goals of the movement. When Herve This coined the term way back in the ’80s, he intended for it to be, essentially, the MythBusters of the kitchen, a criticial look at how and why things work.
What the Alinea kitchen does have in common with MG is the desire to question everything, try new techniques, and make the dining experience better all the time. Alinea has a staff of 60+ people committed to that ideal. And those basic goals are much the same as the best products and technologies that are featured on Gizmodo everyday… The difference being, you can eat these.
I hope to show a few examples of what Chef Achatz and the Alinea team of 25 chefs does everyday, how they question and create, and the technological innovators we work with regularly to achieve these goals. We may touch on a few broader topics of concern to everyone who eats. But mostly, we want our Taste Test posts to be exactly like the experience at Alinea—fun and delicious.
Nick and Grant (center two) in the Alinea kitchen:
Nick Kokonas co-founded Alinea with Grant Achatz in 2005, and works with the chef on Alinea-related projects, recruiting innovators to challenge and improve every aspect of the cooking and eating experience. A finance guy and web-oriented angel investor by trade, Kokonas got his start back in his teen years writing business software on an Apple II. You can grab the gorgeous Alinea cookbook here, or just visit Alinea’s home page.
Taste Test is our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
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