Category Archives: General

No matter how great our digital camera technology gets, one ancient rogue will ruin our pictures.

The ever dreaded closed eye shot. It could even make Paris Hilton look like she belongs in special ed. But now there is a way to always avoid it. A new camera developed at the University of Electro-Communications, on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan will forever rid your album of mid-blink photos.

The camera takes 15 shots in .5 seconds and special sensors can detect which pictures caught you mid-blink and which found your best face forward.

Yesterday I found some guy who held a phone and PDA hostage. Today I’ve found a company that locks your computer and then demands $200.00 in order to get YOUR OWN DATA BACK! That’s ouch.

Hackers are getting smarter I suppose. There’s adaware/spyware that sees sites you have visited, order to choose annoying pop-up ads or browser hijacks to websites that simply piss you off. Then there’s pesky viruses that contaminate files rendering them useless and force a hard drive reformat and complete loss of data. I don’t think either one is benefiting, cause there’s no way I’m ever going to purchase something off of a pop up add!!

But these guys got it right, hold the user’s pictures, spreadsheets, video files, mp3 library and all other valuable data for ransom! Instead of a virus protector, I want a ransom protector? Norton? Where are you on this?

Yes, we also read in paper

Clive Thompson – The New York Times
“Wiener was both brilliant and personally intriguing, an absent-minded professor straight out of central casting. As a character, he was larger than life; as a scientist, he was smaller than history.”

Publishers Weekly
“One of the central concerns of the current “information age” is the difficulty of ordering and making sense out of the glut of information that flies at us from every direction, at all hours, in increasingly creative and invasive ways. Wiener, the man who gave us the tools to create and nurture this age by founding the science of cybernetics, has fallen prey to that glut, with his legacy and impact largely forgotten and misunderstood. “

Let’s face it one of the greatest things about the Internet is the free, mindless entertainment it can provide. Especially when you are bored at work. Sites like the Cyborg Name Generator are so stupid that I question my intelligence for finding any joy in them, if only for brief and fluttering moments. But hey, if you get bored at work like me, check it out. It might make you want to stimulate your mind and get back to work.

Here is the cyborg name for LiveDigi.

Today Nokia launched their first non-phone product. The Internet Tablet has absolutely no cell phone capabilities. What it can do, however, is surf the Internet and let you perform basic Web functions like check your email.

You:But I can do that with a mobile phone.
Nokia Salesman: True but the new 770 Internet Tablet will let you surf the Web cheaper and quicker than your clunky Nokia phone and now for the low-low price of $350 you can get one of these Wi-Fi friendly Internet Portals for your very own to cut down on that expensive Internet cell phone bill.

Ever notice how long winded salesman are?

The new Internet Tablet is perfect for a home that has one computer, but several people fighting over who gets to use the Internet. It’s the new modern dilemma. In the old day’s brother and sister fought over the bathroom, now it’s who gets to stream movies. But with the Nokia Internet Tablet the younger (weaker) sibling doesn’t get a Charlie horse, just a smaller screen.

Are you tired of chipping in with the rest of your family to buy Dad a horrendous looking tie? Tired of the awkward moment where he’s forced to put it on and wear it to work while looking thrilled and saying “Yes, I never knew polka dots went so well with pin stripes”?

Then what you need to take a look at, is the “AMAZING Water Clock”. It’s a great replacement father’s day gift. In many ways, it might be an odd enough present that it is the equivalent of the horrendous tie, but this time your Dad is saved from wearing it in public.

It’s not just a water clock or even THE water clock. It’s the AMAZING water clock. And what is most impressive is that it is powered by water. Which is amazing. Hence the name, which I’ll say one more time since it’s fun… the AMAZING water clock.

What’s cool about this clock is that it runs on pretty much any fluid. So quite easily, it could be the amazing beer clock. Beware though, if you add too much beer, I’ve heard that up to 4 hours can pass and the clock has no idea where they went or if it was telling time during them. I reckon adding beer to the clock might be a waste of good beer anyway.

You can put coffee in the clock though it runs a little faster than average, or you can try plain old water. Beware the plain old water option if you get a girly AMAZING water clock, as it will retain water at least once a month and perhaps tell time erratically.

Bottom line, this clock is fun. Just please don’t put any coke in it. If you do, your clock is likely to become hyper and refuse to sound any alarm you set on account of the fact it’s afraid everyone is out to get it.

Technology Review covered Motorola’s next big ambition. To be the pioneers of nano-emissive display (NED) technology, replacing any need for LCD’s. They unvieled their prototype on Monday at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Boston.
Continue reading →

I’ll never forget that one scene in Terminator II where California’s governor cut off his hand to reveal a metallic skeleton (Man that’s a weird sentence to read).

The idea is starting to take shape though. Shadow Robot Company has just released a robotic hand for public consumption. They say it’s “the worlds most advanced Dexterous Hand.”

Now all we need to do is learn to put it under the skin and we can make real Terminators. Or, make them adamantium and we got Wolverine. Sorry, I love taking real science and seeing how close to sci-fi it gets us.

I LOVE phones. And gadgets, and computers, basically anything that comes with batteries or plugs in get me all warm, fuzzy, and some other emotions that we’ll avoid at this time. The FCC has leaked a bit of info about it’s SGH-D307 phone. I am a huge fan of QWERTY keyboard phones, once you go QWERTY –you don’t go back they say. Most QWERTY phones are huge, or have a micro non-useable thumb keyboard and (my dad often referred to me as Mr. Fat Thumb) I need a bit of space between keys.

This phone comes with Bluetooth, it’s quad-band GSM and supports EDGE. My favorite feature is the fact that the display can be in portrait or landscape! That’s just hot stuff if you ask me.

My newest Internet hero, weblog read and gadget fantasy is featured in the most recent issue of Fortune,“The Amazing Rise of the Do-It-Yourself Economy.”

Pat Misterovich is designing a Pez mp3 player.

Well, in my case, it wasn’t a utility belt it was a utility car. I recently drove across the country from Cambridge, MA to San Jose, CA, and I couldn’t have done it without my carload of toys.

The first and most obvious gadget was the car itself, an “Aquarius Blue” Volkswagen New Beetle convertible. I bought it because it matches my iPod mini. Continue reading →