Hasta La Gadget!

The designers of the gaming behemoth, the Maingear Shift, are back with a slimmer model in mind–the Maingear EX-L 15 laptop.

Like its desktop predecessors, the design seems simple, but elegant with a matte black finish. The EX-L 15 (1.5 by 14.75 by 10 inches, HWD) has a 15.6-inch HD screen with a standard 1,600-by-900 resolution. Consumers will have the option to upgrade to 1920 by 1080 resolution for $95 more if they so desire.

The EX-L 15’s chassis features an HDMI out, eSATA prot, Firewire, Express Card slot, 4 USB 2.0 ports, and a headphone and microphone jack.

The system comes standard with and ATI Mobility Radeon 5870 1GB of GDDR5 graphics card, 250GB of storage space, 4GB DDR3 memory, and the latest Intel Core i5 and i7 dual-core, and Core i7 quad-core processors. You will have the option to upgrade to higher calibers of processing power, memory, and hard drive space (or a SSD) for a higher price point.

The EX-L 15 developers have also saved you the trouble of having to remove unwanted programs after brushing off the packing-peanuts, as there is no bloatware installed on the system when you order it. But if you are itching to have some preinstalled programs such as Adobe Reader, Hulu Desktop, or other favorite 3rd party software’s, Maingear will install them for free.

The base price for this pint-sized powerhouse is $1,599. The Maingear EX-L 15 is on sale now and has an estimated shipping date of May 4th.

We won’t even front — we’ve got a thing for visiting National Parks, and in a way, we’re dangerously envious of these fellows who crafted this here BeetleCam. In short, the device is a wildlife photography robot: a four-wheeled, remote control buggy that holds a DSLR, a couple of flashes and enough torque and battery life to power through African wilds for hours on end. After months of testing, building, rebuilding and rebuilding again, the BeetleCam was packaged up and carried over to Tanzania’s Ruaha and Katavi National Parks. During the fortnight-long excursion, the buggy managed to survive being mauled by a lion (sadly the same can’t be said for the Canon EOS 400D) and get staggeringly close to elephants, African Buffaloes and other untamed fauna. Frankly, this is one of the more amazing homegrown gadgets we’ve seen in quite some time, and we couldn’t encourage you more to hit up that source link for the full spill.

BeetleCam wildlife photography secures stellar snaps in the wilds of Tanzania originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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About 40 years ago, tech legend Alan Kay invented the idea of a lightweight tablet computer that children could use to learn programming.

Apple’s iPad delivers on the tablet part of that vision — but the company has blocked a kid-friendly programming language based on Kay’s work from getting onto the iPad.

Apple removed an app called Scratch from its iPhone and iPad App Store last week. The Scratch app displayed stories, games and animations made by children using MIT’s Scratch platform, which was built on top of Kay’s programming language Squeak, according to MIT.

John McIntosh, a software developer unaffiliated with MIT, made the Scratch app for iPhone on his own and announced its removal in a blog post last week.

Though the Scratch app wasn’t made by Kay (pictured at right), he wasn’t pleased about the news when contacted by Wired.com.

“Both children and the internet are bigger than Apple, and things that are good for children of the world need to be able to run everywhere,” Kay e-mailed Wired.com.

Kay, a former Xerox PARC computer scientist, is credited for conceiving the idea of a portable computer in 1968, when computers still weighed over 100 pounds and ate punch cards. He called his concept the Dynabook.

In his conception, it would be a very thin, highly dynamic device that weighed no more than 2 pounds, which would be an ideal tool for children to learn programming and science. Kay’s Dynabook was never made, but characteristics of his concept can be seen in the mobile computers we tote around today.

Steve Jobs took a tour of Xerox PARC in 1979, and some might even say that his visit is still unfolding with the release of the iPad tablet, which resembles Kay’s description of the Dynabook (illustrated at right).

Jobs this month personally mailed an iPad to Kay, who praised Apple’s tablet as “fantastically good” for drawing, painting and typing. But Kay declined to give his full evaluation of the iPad to Wired.com until his question of whether Scratch or Etoys — another educational programming language Kay developed for kids — would be usable on the device.

With the removal of Scratch from the App Store, for now the answer to Kay’s question would appear to be “No.”

McIntosh said he had sent e-mails to Jobs and Apple staff and received replies from them asking questions about Scratch. He awaits Apple’s decision on whether the app will reappear in the App Store.

“If you follow the chain of where Scratch came from, yes it is a Dynabook app, sadly not an iPad app,” McIntosh wrote in Apple’s developer forums.

McIntosh said that Apple removed the app because it allegedly violated a rule in the iPhone developer agreement — clause 3.3.2, which states iPhone apps may not contain code interpreters other than Apple’s. The clause reads:

An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber, who first reported the removal of Scratch, explained that Apple’s intention with the “no interpreters” rule is to block meta-platforms such as Adobe Flash.

“Imagine a hypothetical arbitrary ‘Flash Player’ app from Adobe, that allowed you to download SWF files — such an app would stand as an alternative to the App Store,” he wrote. “What’s frustrating about Apple blocking Scratch is that Scratch doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that one could use to build software that’s even vaguely of the caliber of native iPhone apps. It’s really rudimentary stuff, focused on ease-of-programming. But what’s Apple to do? Change the rule to ‘no high-quality interpreters’?”

Apple earlier this month instituted a new rule that also effectively blocks meta-platforms: clause 3.3.1, which stipulates that iPhone apps may only be made using Apple-approved programming languages. Many have speculated that the main target of the new rule was Adobe, whose CS5 software, released last week, includes a feature to easily convert Flash-coded software into native iPhone apps.

Some critics expressed concern that beyond attacking Adobe, Apple’s policies would result in collateral damage potentially stifling innovation in the App Store. Scratch appears to be a victim despite its tie to Jobs’ old friend.

Apple did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment.

“I think it’s terrible,” said Andrés Monroy-Hernández, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab and lead developer of the Scratch online community. “Even if the Scratch app was approved, I still think [clause 3.3.2] sends a really bad message for young creators in general. We have a forum where kids post comments, and they were really upset about this.’”

Monroy-Hernández added that reinstating Scratch wouldn’t solve the bigger problem with the App Store.

“Even if Apple approves it now, it sends the wrong message that you have to be backed by MIT, or be famous for a Pulitzer-winning cartoon, to be accepted as part of this digital democracy, and I feel that’s really, really bad,” he said. “More than accepting the app, I hope Apple will change their policies into something more open.”

Photos: 1) Bryan Derballa/Wired.com
2) Courtesy Alan Kay

See Also:

• The Laptop Celebrates 40 Years
• Designers Unearth Apple Tablet Prototypes — From 1983
• What the iPad Means for the Future of Computing
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• Apple Video Shows iPad Flash Support, But Don’t Believe It
• Adobe Apps: Easier to Pass Through the ‘i’ of a Needle?
• Adobe Reacts to New iPhone App Policy (Updated)
• Steve Jobs Debates Developers Over Apple’s New App Policy

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to help Microsoft take aim at some demographics other than hipsters. And while technically these entries fit that criteria, I’m not sure how many phones they’d sell. Yikes. More »

(Credit:

Obustamante)

The first half of today’s extra silly episode of The 404 Podcast is all about the latest updates surrounding the iPhone 4G prototype found on a bar floor in Redwood City, California–turns out the phone really does belong to Apple, and Darth Jobs wants it back. Last night, Gizmodo posted a picture of a very brief letter sent to editorial director Brian Lam asking for the device in question, validating its authenticity as an Apple product. So now that it’s out on the open, certain issues need to be addressed on our show.

First, should Gizmodo have outed the Apple engineer that misplaced the phone in the first place? What’s going to happen to his job–should he be let go for his folly? What legal action can, or will, Apple take against Gizmodo for paying $10,000 for the phone? And finally, who is the secret identity of this “good Samaritan” that received said $10,000 from Gizmodo? The first half of the show attempts to answer these tricky questions.

Bill Jordan talks with CBS4's Tom Mustin.

(Credit:
CBS)

To compound the workload of Apple PR, here’s another story about a guy who also lost an Apple product, and more. Fifty-nine-year-old Bill Jordan from Colorado had just come out of an Apple store holding a brand new iPad in an Apple bag tied around his wrist, when all of a sudden he noticed two young men following him to the garage where he parked his car. Just as he got to the vehicle, the assailants attacked the man and tried to grab the bag in his hand, and what happens next is not for the faint of heart:

“”He was almost sitting on the ground he was pulling so hard and it was still tied around my fingers; and it wouldn’t come off and then finally he gave it one big jerk; and that’s when he stripped the skin off my pinky and it went right down to the bone.”

The worst part of the story is that he wasn’t even buying the iPad for himself; he’d been asked by a coworker to pick one up for a “colleague in Canada who is being promoted!” OK, actually, the worst part is about his left pinky getting torn off, and our condolences go out to Jordan, who we can only guess will be a big proponent of online shopping from now on.

In addition to correcting an error in Calls From The Public, we also talk about the Boy Scouts of America’s newest merit badge for GEOCACHING. For people who aren’t king-size dorks, geocaching is a high-tech version of “hide and go seek,” where participants use GPS devices to locate hidden containers across the world. That sounds like great fun for these savvy young men, but Wilson brings up a good point- should we be celebrating this underhanded throw of an accomplishment? Isn’t this the equivalent of awarding a Firestarter badge to the kid with a Bic lighter and a newspaper in his hand?

Like today’s episode? Add YOUR voice to The 404 Podcast by leaving a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET or send us an e-mail to the404(at)cnet(dot)com. Happy everything, everyone!

EPISODE 563

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast