Hasta La Gadget!

The JooJoo, which used to be called the CrunchPad until its official unveiling this morning is a tablet. An internet tablet. But there are still a lot of things left uncertain. Here’s what we do know.

1. It’s called the JooJoo. Chandra, the CEO of Fusion Garage, says it’s an “African term that stands for a magical device.”

2. The JooJoo will be a web-only tablet. Basically, it’s like Chrome OS in that everything is done with online webapps, but you use a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. You’ll have a 4GB local cache for storage, but don’t think of it as real storage.

3. There’s a lot of controversy involved. Arrington of TechCrunch asserts one thing, while Chandra of Fusion Garage asserts another. The short of it is, Fusion Garage booted Arrington out of the process recently because they claim that Arrington failed to deliver any of the promises he was supposed to, like hooking them up with VC funding and helping to market the device.

Fusion Garage claims that there was no contract between the two parties, and Arrington says that it’s basically “in the lawyers hands now”.

4. Here are the specs: A screen-only tablet that measures 12-inches, has a capacitive touchscreen, runs its own operating system (that’s basically just a browser) and boots in 9 seconds. It will also have a 5 hour battery life, run Wi-Fi only (no 3G) and come in only one color, with 4GB internal storage.

5. It will cost $500. Chandra said Arrington’s claim of a $200 or $300 tablet was unfeasible and unrealistic, and compared it to smaller devices like the iPhone and netbooks.

6. It’s going to be available for pre-order this Friday on their website.

7. Nobody in the tech community has seen it yet. We’re going to get hands-on time with it soon, and will let you know how it feels firsthand.

8. The green screen shown in the webcast might be a trick of the camera. Chandra said, in the webcast, that there was nothing wrong with the screen, and that the colors look fine. But for a screen to look entirely green in a shot, it means that there might be seriously limited in its viewing angles.

9. We don’t know when it will ship. Or even if it will ship, seeing as there’s litigation between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch over it. So you might want to hold on to that $500 until they figure out when the device will launch.

10. No matter what, there’s some bad feelings involved with the device. If Arrington is in the right—even if it is just ethically or spiritually and not legally—you may have a hard time justifying to yourself that you’re giving money to a company that did something underhanded. But if Arrington is in the wrong, you still have the tinge of weirdness hanging in the air when you’re using it.

And isn’t Apple about to dump one of these on the market next year?

On this week’s Digital City, we tackle one of the most contentious issues of our time — Mac vs. PC — as Dan offers an enlightened path to peace for both camps.

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Originally posted at Digital City Podcast

Have you checked into Engadget’s massive 2009 Holiday Gift Guide? If not, you’re making the biggest mistake of the season. Seriously. Don’t let this year mark the end of happiness. Help us help you… just study the guides below (and stay tuned for even more)!

Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Christmas is coming, so it won’t be long before you’re walking barefoot through spilled soda and children’s vomit at a security checkpoint in some godforsaken airport. Fortunately, the TSA has leaked a sensitive document explaining how to avoid all that.

Well, not quite. But the Transportation Security Administration has placed its standard operating procedure manual for screening supervisors online—the document is marked “Sensitive Security Information” and is supposed to be distributed on a “need to know” basis, but what the hell, right? Transparency!

The TSA did have the good sense to redact all the stuff they though terrorists might use to game the screening system and get through with weapons, but because they are stupid federal bureaucrats they simply drew little boxes over the secret stuff in the pdf files. So “hackers,” by which we mean “people with Acrobat Professional” simply removed the boxes and looked at what was underneath. (The stuff the TSA tried to redact is outlined in red below.)

You can read the whole thing at Cryptome. But we’ve distilled the unredacted manual with an eye toward whatever tricks we could find to avoid getting pulled aside for special screening and missing your flight. With that in mind, here are Gawker’s rules to infiltrating our nation’s airports on your way home this Christmas:

1. Don’t Be From Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

If your passport has any of those countries’ names on it, you’ll get pulled aside as a “selectee” for special one-on-one screening. So if you are from Pakistan, move right on ahead!

2. Pack Your Ammo Carefully

If it’s in your checked luggage, feel free to bring along any ammunition up to .50 caliber, as long as it’s inside a box.

3. If the Airline Ticket Agent Wrote “SSSS” on Your Ticket, Just Turn Around and Go Home

The industry lingo for people who get pulled aside and questioned at airport security checkpoints is “SSSS,” for “Secondary Security Screening Selection.” We figured that airlines would use some sort of secret code to communicate to the TSA that a given ticketholder was due for the third degree, but nope—it looks like they literally just write four S’s on your ticket. So now you know.

4. Be a Minor, Member of Congress, Uniformed Military Member, or All Three

If you’re unlucky enough to have been tagged with the dreaded “SSSS” code, all is not lost: Members of Congress, children under 12, and uniformed military servicemembers are exempted from special screening even if they’re marked for it. Which is great, because we know that, say, Army officers can’t present a special security threat that might merit scrutiny. The manual also helpfully shows TSA supervisors what a congressional ID looks like, so you might want to forge one before you head to the airport, just in case.

5. Better Yet, Be a Foreign Dignitary in CIA Custody

One of the best bits that the TSA tried, and failed, to redact from the manual reveals the existence of the CIA’s Worldwide Operational Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP), whereby the Agency will apparently dispatch a CIA agent to ferry foreign assets to the U.S. When they do, the subjects are fully exempt from screening—no magnetometer, no bag search, no nothing. So if you know anyone at Langley, they may be able to hook you up. Again, the TSA has helpfully presented an example of a CIA ID card—doesn’t carrying one of these defeat the purpose of being a CIA agent?—so you should set yourself up with a fake before you try the WOMAP route.



Oh, and if you get caught, just run: TSA officers are instructed not to “detain or delay” anybody they suspect has presented them a fraudulent ID if they’ve already gotten past security.

But if you travel at peak times, the chances they’ll spot the fake will go down to 25%, because regulations permit the TSA to examine IDs with a black light or loupe on only one in four passengers if traffic backs up.

6. Make Yourself a Diplomatic Pouch

Diplomatic pouches are exempt from security screening. You’ll still have to go through the checkpoint, but you won’t be slowed down by the x-ray machine. The manual helpfully explains how to make one, with a description of where the seal could be. Don’t worry about getting caught with this one—have you ever seen a diplomatic pouch before? Neither has the 19-year-old TSA officer you’ll be presenting it to.

7. Be Disabled

The explosive trace detection (ETD) process, when a TSA officer swabs your bag and runs a sample through a machine to look for trace amounts of explosives, can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Wheelchairs, orthopedic shoes, and prosthetic devices are exempt.

8. If You’ve Got Explosives In Your Checked Luggage, There’s Only a 20% Chance They’re Going to Actually Open It to Conduct a Test On It

So there’s that.

9. Just Skip the Checkpoint and Go In through the Exit Door—They’re Not Monitored by Trained TSA Officers

It looks like they let just anybody monitor the exits. You could probably sneak by them.

10. Print Out the Supervisor’s Standard Operating Procedures Manual and Show it to the TSA Officers

They’ll get distracted because that stuff’s supposed to be supersecret, and while they’re busy e-mailing their supervisor to report a breach, you can just walk right through.

The last we heard, IBM was hard at work on its Power7 processor. Now the company’s announcing that the thirty-two core chip — and copious amounts of eDRAM — are at the heart of its newest supercomputing project. To be housed at the University of Illinois, IBM’s Blue Waters will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, theoretically capable of achieving 16 petaflop speeds by connecting up to 16,384 Power7 nodes, although IBM said that initially the theoretical peak performance will likely be closer to 10 petaflops — with more realistic sustained real-world performance near one petaflop. To keep things from overheating, a system was devised that includes water-cooling for the whole rack, including the processor itself. But why should government agencies and large corporations have all the fun? According to CNET, IBM plans to ship Power7 processors with commercial server products sometime next year.

IBM developing 10 petaflop supercomputer, Power7 to ship next year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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