If you believed all the fuel cell talk that’s been bandied about in press releases over the years you’d have thrown away your plug-in chargers by now and started squirting alcohol into all your gadgets. Many promises have been broken, so please take this news of a supposed $30 fuel cell charger for cellphones and other mobile devices with a suitably large chunk of salt — or some sodium-free flavor enhancer if your doctor has imposed such dietary restrictions. Scientists at the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan have created a prototype charger that runs on small tubes containing solid-state hydrogen, “plasticized” so that it is only released when mixed with water. The canisters are said to sell for $.30 a pop, leaving one researcher to say: “They could be sold at 7-Eleven.” We want to write a skeptical response analyzing the feasibility of to such pricing but instead got distracted researching information about Taiwanese convenience stores. Did you know there are 4,807 7-Eleven franchise locations around Taiwan? Amazing!
You know the foolish game of cat and mouse Palm has been playing with Apple? The one where Palm hacks it’s own Pre phone to masquerade as an iPod and climb unnoticed into iTunes’ bed? It’s over. After repeatedly getting thrown out of the bedroom by a furious Apple, Palm has taken a new lover, and it is Amazon.
The Amazon MP3 Store to be precise. The Pre’s latest software update, webOS 1.2, brings cellular downloads from the MP3 store (previously you could only use Wi-Fi). In reality, it’s not much of a sop to those who were sold on the Pre’s official iTunes compatibility, but then that’s the risk a company takes when they sell and easy-to-break hack as a feature.
The new webOS, released on Monday, has a lot of other new features, most of which are similarly anti-climactic: bookmarks are now backed up on sync, files are downloadable from the browser and you can copy-paste in the browser and mail applications. There is also type-ahead filtering in mail and – at last! – snooze now works in the calendar.
We tease. While there are no blockbuster new features, the update fixes a lot of things and tweaks some others (the full list is linked below). But what Palm should really do is to make an iTunes rival, a media-playing, content-syncing, Amazon MP3-friendly application. And it should make it work not just with the Pre, but with any device you might own, including the iPhone. That would stick it to Apple, and there is already an app out there which Palm should buy: DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist.
Think about it. If DoubleTwist can manage to read the iTunes database (including all playlist) along with the movies and photos stored on a Mac or PC, then it should be easy for Palm, with its complement of ex-iPhone employees, to build something at least as polished. In fact, reading from the iTunes Library like this is the proper, official way to do things and there is a brace of applications which do this, from Mac alarm clocks to mini-iTunes controllers.
Sure, the “works seamlessly with iTunes” tactic was gutsy and whipped up a lot of publicity, but its hardly a grown-up way to work. And even if Palm doesn’t want to make an iTunes rival, that’s okay too. Just providing a link to DoubleTwist on its site would be cheeky enough. The application already supports the Pre out of the box, and a mystery new Mac version will debut on October 6th, which is very likely to work with the iPhone and iPod Touch, and (we’re making an educated guess here) could bring an alternative, jailbreak app store.
This article was written on January 29, 2007 by CyberNet.
Million Dollar Monday
Did you know that the average person spends 11,862 hours in the bathroom, or one year four months and five days, in a lifetime? That’s according to Roto-Rooter who has launched their “Pimped Out John Sweepstakes.” They’re starting this contest because the “crapper” as they say, has not really been revolutionized since a flushable toilet was invented back in 1898.
For some, the bathroom is the only quiet place in the house, the only place you can get away from it all. Why not make it a more enjoyable place to be? You can always read, you may even take your laptop along for the ride, but Roto-Rooter has a better idea. They’ve put together an ultimate bathroom with just about anything you’d ever want, and you have a chance to win it all! It includes the following improvements:
Philips 20 inch LCD TV and Star Wars DVD
Xbox 360 gaming system
Philips DVD player
Gateway EMachine laptop computer with fully articulated robot arm
iPod with stereo docking station equipped with toilet paper dispenser
Roto-Rooter “emergency” button
TiVo recorder
Avanti refrigerator with beer tap, stocked with drinks and snacks
Magazine rack and subscriptions to Sports Illustrated, ESPN and GQ
Bike pedal exerciser
Cup warmer/cooler
The contest runs until April 2, 2007, and the winner will be crowned on National Plumber’s Day (yes, there’s such a thing) , April 25, 2007. The motive behind the Pimped-Out John? Well, Roto-Rooter’s vice president of marketing says, “We hope that with the ‘Pimped out John,’ young people especially, will have a good laugh and think of Roto-Rooter when they need high quality plumbing and drain service.”
Winning this pimped out bathroom may require some work. I don’t know about you, but my bathroom certainly isn’t wired for all of this! So, with that said, click here to enter in on the fun… go on.. you know you want to
Alright, so we’re going to go ahead and caution against buying anything that claims to have a “dual Bluetooth” module, but if you’re feeling froggy, the planet’s first (and probably last) dual CPU netbook has just been launched. Not dual core, mind you, but dual processor. The admittedly chintzy looking Swordfish Net 102 Dual claims to have a pair of 1.6GHz Atom N270s within, not to mention 2GB of DDR2 RAM, optional WWAN, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, 10.2-inch display (1,024 x 600 resolution), a 160GB hard drive and Windows XP runnin’ the show. It’s available to order for the low, low price of $449, though we wouldn’t expect the stock 3-cell battery to last very long (read: an hour) with a pair of CPUs sucking down juice.
Nikon’s D300s is the very same camera we loved two years ago, but with a few new tricks to try to stay relevant in this crazy video-shootin’ DSLR world we live in. Namely, 720p video.
Same Ol’ Same Ol’
The D300s remains a capable, even impressive camera. I mean, it’s not like it got worse: The D300 retains the same sensor, excellent 51-point autofocus system, fantastic chassis build quality and ergonomics—just about the same everything—as the D300, and it still holds up 2 years later, mostly.
Low-light performance is solid, as you can see in the giant sample gallery here that walks through ISO ranges. We’re talking fairly good-looking stuff up through ISO1600, though noise starts to creep in there, finally getting oogly around ISO3200. It’s no 5D Mark II or D700, but it still stands up. Color saturation remains top-notch, and it seemed to handle white balance even a bit better than 5DMkII we shot alongside it at Giz Gallery last week. Bottom line, though, you’re getting the same D300 performance. (Which means D300 reviews are still worth reading.)
So What’s New?
• 720p video recording • Extra SDHC slot • More Active-D Lighting controls • Tweaked button layout
Oh Hey, Video
What’s majorly new in the D300s is video, and even it’s not a whole lot different than what you saw with the D90, which also shot 720p video (and had a similar 12.3MP sensor). But, there’s stereo input, and you can autofocus during recording—it’s god-awful slow, so you’re better off doing it your own damn self. Not to mention movies are capped at 5 measly minutes. And if you’re still in live view, you can’t actually watch the stuff you’ve just shot, since the playback button is how you adjust the display’s brightness in live view mode.
The video quality itself is good, generally, but pushing past ISO1600, it starts getting a little dicey (Brian’s shirt makes my eyes and ears hurt it’s so noisy in this clip): Beyond video, my favorite new addition to the D300s are the dual memory card slots, which were formerly a super pro feature. The extra slot holds an SDHC card, which you can use a number of different ways—continuing the storage over from the CF card, duping whatever goes to the CF card, or to save JPEGs from RAW+JPEG shooting. (Handy, since OS X and Aperture don’t support D300s RAW files yet.)
And of course, one of the best things about Nikon cameras is that since the lens mount for their SLRs hasn’t changed in about 50 years, you can use seriously vintage lenses (and save money), which is something we definitely took advantage of while shooting.
The Value Shopper’s Verdict
Here’s the thing about the D300s: It’s a great camera, no doubt. The problem is two-fold: At $1800, it costs the exact same as the D300 did when it was released two years ago, but beyond video, delivers no major advancements. There’s no new pixel-squeezing camera tech here. The other part is that the very shortly forthcoming 7D from Canon is their first direct competitor to Nikon’s D_00 semi-pro cameras, and it may make the value proposition look even less fantastic with what appears to be the most advanced video features of any DSLR yet. As it stands, the D300s is a tough purchase call (you can pick up a D300 for $150 less if you don’t need video), and certainly not a necessary upgrade. But we hope to head-to-head the 7D and D300s very soon to figure out the best camera you can buy for about $1800.
If only Nikon had just given us the D400 like we’d wanted.
Using eight cheap webcams, a GPS receiver and open-source software, West Point graduate Roy D. Ragsdale built a rig that can do what Google’s Street-View cars do: take images of the world around it and stitch them together into panoramas. The difference? This version can be carried on your head and cost just $300 to make. The hacked-together software suite can even throw out files that can be viewed in Google Earth. Ragsdale:
Construction was straightforward. On a flat octagonal heavy-cardboard base, I glued small posts for the cameras’ clips to latch onto. I aligned each unit and then placed the USB hubs and the GPS receiver in the middle. I secured the cables with Velcro and sandwiched everything with another piece of cardboard. The whole thing’s the size of a small pizza box, weighing less than 1 kilogram. Excluding the notebook (a 2-gigahertz machine with 512 megabytes of RAM running Ubuntu Linux), the hardware cost about $300.
Ragsdale tested out the camera, which he calls PhotoTrail, by walking around Boston, holding it above his head. Then, to stress the system, which grabs sets of 1280-by-1024 jpeg files in eight second bursts, he put it on top of a jeep and drove it around his home base, West Point NY. The result? Success. The camera grabbed pictures every 20 seconds at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour (62mph).
Ragsdale is hoping that a tool like this could be useful to soldiers — for instance, making a visual record when patrolling dangerous routes. But it could be useful in a wide variety of civilian situations, too.
Ragsdale plans on shrinking the kit even further: the webcams can shed their bulky plastic cases, and replacing the laptop which controls the cameras with a custom-made circuit board could make it “small enough to be integrated into a headband or hat.”
You hear that, Google? Hire this guy to make you a camera and send it to me. I’ll shoot the tiny streets of my city that you left out of your Street View and send them to you. You’re welcome.
We’ve been furnished with the above page from an O2 in-store catalog detailing the HTC HD2 (aka Leo), which was set for a UK release on October 12 (though we’re hearing that may have slipped to the 26th). Interesting that it’s pictured with a stock Windows Mobile 6.5 UI instead of TouchFLO 3D. Is O2 rushing HTC’s new hotness out the door in response to losing its iPhone supremacy? Or did an absent-minded employee just slip out the catalogs ahead of time? We’re getting in touch with O2 to find out and will update with more details as we get them. For now, check out the full catalog page after the break.
Update: After O2 stonewalled our phone enquiries, we decided to drop by our nearest (which was still annoyingly far away) store to have a look for ourselves. Alas, we only found September issues of the catalog, and the above snapshot is from the October iteration, which sports a big fat Pre promo on the front. So, anyone else seen an advance copy yet?
Mmm, real time dynamic maps of the Earth. It seems nowadays that supervillainy just isn’t as hard as it used to be. Back in the days of Hugo Drax, you had to be a filthy rich eccentric to ever get to spy on the whole world, whereas today all you need is Google Earth and some Georgia Institute of Technology students. Using motion capture data and the veritable litany of CCTV cameras people have surrounded themselves with, the team have succeeded in mapping and animating the real time movements of cars, people and clouds. A proper unveiling is coming up at a symposium next month, by which point they might have added weather patterns, birds and river motions to that list, but for now you can enjoy the video demo after the break.
Android 1.6 was just released to dev phones, and while you may not have a suitably configured handset to run it, YouTuber arsenito84 does. He’s installed the latest version on his T-Mobile myTouch 3G and was kind enough to create this nine minute video showing every tiny little tweak made to the OS. There’s not much in the way of presentation updates, most changes going on behind the scenes, particularly when it comes to performance. Those improvements are definitely noticeable when it comes to scrolling through apps, but the new Android Market is also on display, and the photo and video capturing has been improved. Why, the phone even does a fine job of loading up this very website, though scrolling is less than smooth. Still no firm word on when your average user will be able to get their Donut on, but if earlier reports are to believed it could be within a month.
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.
If you believed all the fuel cell talk that’s been bandied about in press releases over the years you’d have thrown away your plug-in chargers by now and started squirting alcohol into all your gadgets. Many promises have been broken, so please take this news of a supposed $30 fuel cell charger for cellphones and other mobile devices with a suitably large chunk of salt — or some sodium-free flavor enhancer if your doctor has imposed such dietary restrictions. Scientists at the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan have created a prototype charger that runs on small tubes containing solid-state hydrogen, “plasticized” so that it is only released when mixed with water. The canisters are said to sell for $.30 a pop, leaving one researcher to say: “They could be sold at 7-Eleven.” We want to write a skeptical response analyzing the feasibility of to such pricing but instead got distracted researching information about Taiwanese convenience stores. Did you know there are 4,807 7-Eleven franchise locations around Taiwan? Amazing!
Winning this pimped out bathroom may require some work. I don’t know about you, but my bathroom certainly isn’t wired for all of this! So, with that said, 
Dual memory card slots are a huge win
Good low-light performance, awesome color saturation
Two-year-old sensor costs this year’s money
