Hasta La Gadget!

Right after having a giant Christmas tree as your mascot comes the next best reason to be a Cardinal: the chance to have 1Gbps internet from Google. If you’ll recall, the Big G announced earlier this year that it was planning to rollout a 1Gbps fiber connection to between 50,000 and 500,000 homes in a given community, and while the search is still ongoing for the perfect fit (that’s expected to be announced by the year’s end), Google’s using a sliver of Stanford’s campus to trial things before heading public. The university’s Residential Subdivision — a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus — will be the testing grounds for the aforesaid internet service, and the current plan is to break ground on the initiative in early 2011. El Goog chose Stanford for a couple of reasons: first, it’s bright enough to realize how awesome of a PR move this is, and second, this chunk of campus is spitting distance from Mountain View. Third, the Cardinal mascot was down with it — and seriously, who is Google to question that thing?

Google to beta test 1Gbps fiber internet service at Stanford’s Residential Subdivision originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This time last year, NASA’s LCROSS mission sent a probe crashing into a lunar crater, in hopes of kicking up evidence of water on the moon. According to some new data, the scientists got a lot more than they bargained for–the crash kicked up high concentrations of silver and mercury, as well.

Scientists have found trace amounts of those elements on lunar rocks sent back to earth in the past, but nothing so far has suggested that they are so prevalent on the lunar surface. Scientists believe that the existence of the elements offers a clue as to how water first arrived on the moon.

“The silver is like a tracer,” Peter Schultz, the leader of the study told National Geographic. “It tells us where [moon water] probably came from, and I think it’s telling us that it came from comets and asteroids colliding with the moon.”

As we reported yesterday, President Obama took time from his busy country-running schedule in order to meet with Apple chief Steve Jobs, during a trip to California. That meeting wasn’t Obama’s only iPad encounter while out on the West Coast.

The above images was pulled from a rally at the University of Washington in Seattle. The note on that exceedingly calm man’s iPad says, “Mr. President, sign my iPad.” Obama did exactly that, signing on the little red line.

The man with the iPad, one Sylvester Cann IV, describes the encounter thusly, “[Obama] looked slightly surprised, but proceeded to use his finger to scribble on the iPad using the Adobe Ideas app.” Bringing together Adobe and Apple? How’s that presidential bridge building?

Cann added, “This has to be the first time an iPad has received a Presidential autograph.” Could it be? Seems possible, though, as we noted, George W. Bush owns an iPad, too, for whatever that’s worth.

As for future autographs, might we suggest getting the President to sign the back next time? It’ll last longer.

Check out a picture of the signature, after the jump.

Waiting for that HP webOS to finally take on Apple’s iPad? Looks like you’ll have to keep waiting, for the foreseeable future. HP did, in fact, launch a tablet today–the Slate 500–but in spite of the company’s purchase of Palm and the recent release of webOS 2 and the Palm Pre 2, that ultra dynamic operating system is nowhere to be seen on the thing.

Nope, the HP Slate 500 is a Windows 7 machine–not only that, it’s Windows 7 Professional. Yep–HP is pushing this thing as a business tablet. The company looks to be tackling professionals in fields like education, insurance, and real estate–words that don’t really scream, you know, “sexy” the way an iPad does.

The screen is 8.9 inches, and the device weighs 1.5 pound. Inside you’ll find a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540, a 64GB hard drive, and 2GB of RAM–over in its hands-on, PCMag describes the thing a “zippy.” There’s also a built-in camera and an SD card slot.

There’s no 3G on the thing, but it does feature 802.11b/g/n. The Slate 500 runs $799 and is available. As for the webOS tablet? That’s still coming–at some point next year.

Up until now, only Mac-users have been able to sacrifice their carpal-tunnels at the beautiful white-glass altar of RSI that is the multi-touch mouse. It has been possible to hack Apple’s Bootcamp drivers for Windows to get the Magic Mouse working, but now there is a “magic” alternative.

The Speedlink Cue is a wireless 1000dpi optical mouse with a multi-touch top and a tiny USB nano-receiver like the ones that ship with Logitech mice. Mouse clicks are registered by touching the top section where left and right buttons would normally live, and other gestures can be configured with the supplied software.

Given that the only magic thing about Apple’s Magic Mouse is how it can manage to suck so hard whilst it looks so darned good, it’s no surprise that the Cue fails to beat it on beauty: the mouse comes in white, red, black and silver flavors, all of which are horribly boxy and have a logo emblazoned across the bottom that makes them look cheap. Appropriate, I suppose, as compared to Apple’s awful offering, it is cheap, and will ship in November for €40 ($56, but sure to be less in the US).

Our advice? If you want multi-touch that will work on both Mac and PC, buy Wacom’s Bamboo Touch. Amazon will sell you the finger-tablet for just $36. Better, grab the version with the pen and kiss RSI goodbye forever.

Cue Wireless Multitouch Mouse [Speedlink via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Screen-Protector for Magic Mouse: Why?
• Magic Mouse Fixed with Soft Silicon Brick
• Magic Mouse
• Steven Levy on the Desktop Mouse and Its Inevitable Extinction …
• Apple's Magic Trackpad Brings Multi-Touch to the Desktop