CES Scales Up While Companies Push Back
The Consumer Electronics Show is being pushed in ever-more-glamorous directions as organizers attempt to top themselves every year. Much like the final years of the E3 event, this week's showcase will feature loud music and brightly-lit stages. At the same time, also mirroring E3, the big businesses that drive CES are starting to rethink the need for the event itself. The New York Times reports: "Technology companies now frequently introduce their products elsewhere, in an effort to reach consumers more directly. The Apple iPhone, the Nintendo Wii and other recent must-haves were not unveiled at C.E.S. One of the industry's biggest hits in 2007 was the Flip Video camcorder, an easy-to-use pocket-size device that sells for $120. Executives from Pure Digital Technologies, its maker, visited Las Vegas last year during the show but kept to their hotel suite at the Wynn."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 11:02 am
The Magic 8-Ball's Take on Tech in 2008
PCWMike writes "It's that time of year again, when every website makes predictions about the future of technology. PCWorld is no exception, but tried to put a little humor into their prognostication by calling on a neutral third party: the magic 8-ball. '4. Open Software and Open Networks Will Dominate! Magic 8-Ball says: Ask again later. Open-source software meets open wireless networks, fostering an unbridled era of innovation and consumer freedom. Right? Well, maybe one day, but don't bet the bank on it in 2008.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 9:30 am
Flexible steel arm for hands-free calling, 1948
This was how hand-free calling worked, according to the September, 1948 ish of Popular Mechanics:Link
Holding the telephone ready for use, a “third hand” of flexible steel leaves both the operator’s hands free to take notes during phone conversations. The spring arm holds the receiver to the ear and can be adjusted to the height and position of the user. The third hand was developed in Australia.
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 8:01 am
Mathematician Theorizes a Crystal As Beautiful As A Diamond
Roland Piquepaille writes "Why are diamonds so shiny and beautiful? A Japanese mathematician says it's because of their unique crystal structure and two key properties, called 'maximal symmetry' and 'strong isotropic property.' According to the American Mathematical Society (AMS), he found that out of all the crystals that are possible to construct mathematically, just one shares these two properties with the diamond. So far, his K4 crystal exists only as a mathematical object. And nobody knows if it exists — or if it can be synthesized."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 7:41 am
HOWTO paint laser graffiti over whole buildings
Graffiti Research Labs Vienna builds "laser tagging" boxes out of lasers, laptops and projectors that allow them to paint "nondestructive, reversible" graffiti with light on the sides of buildings. In this Make Weekend Projects video, GRL and Make team up to show you how to make your own tag-box.
Link
(via Beyond the Beyond)
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:35 am
High-security UK mall breached, photos online!
Last week, I wrote about Britain's high-security Fareham Shopping Centre, a high-value target where photography has been banned for "security reasons" -- this is the site where a pair of middle aged grandparents were banned for life as "terrorists" for taking a picture of their grandchildren.
Now, crack operative Matthew Fowler has penetrated the security perimeter around this facility with a hidden camera and smuggled out a reel of strategic photographs of the mall, including this (upside-down) map, which, incredibly, shows the location of the local Boots outlet and the Woolworth's store! With this kind of high-value intel, the Fareham Centre will be ours!
Agent Fowler has also provided us with a riveting walk-through video that reveals many key tactical elements of the structure, from the sort of chairs provided in the food court to the kind of tennis-shoes you need to wear if you want to blend in with the native population.
Tremble, Fareham Shopping Centre! I know not where you are, and care less, but still, you will be mine! Hahahahahahahaahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Link to images, Link to video
See also: UK mall bans grandparents for trying to photo their grandkids
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:31 am
High heels: tottery killers (infographic)
This scary-ass (and handsomely designed) infographic details the thousand and one ways that high-heels are incredibly bad for your health, posture, and long-term prospects. Link (via Lawgeek)
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:31 am
Skyscraper airport of tomorrow, 1939
This November, 1939 Popular Science article fantasizes about a futuristic "skyscraper airport" for the "city of tomorrow." Pretty good predictions, except they missed the whole no-shoes, no-liquid, no-dignity policy. Link
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:31 am
Suburban family discovers hidden room filled with toxic mold and a taunting note
Marilyn sez, "A family doing chores in their recently purchased suburban house in South Carolina discovered a hidden room behind a bookcase, which revealed the truth about their house: it was permeated with toxic black mold."Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)
Inside the room was a hand-written note.The note said "You Found It!"
It turns out, the note explained, that the house was infested with "the worst types of mold including Stachybotrys, the so-called Toxic Black Mold," which can cause "respiratory bleeding" in infants.
The stunned homeowners, thinking they might be the victims of a weird hoax, hired an environmental engineer – only to discover that the problem was even worse than they thought; the house contained "elevated levels of several types of mold, including Aspergillus, Basidiospores, Chaetomiu, Curvularia, Stachybotrys and Torula." The town's local news station calls this "the horrible secret of Number 6 Whitten Street."
Update: Sam sez, "That picture seems to be something the blogger you linked to added himself/herself. I don't think it's a real picture from the house in the story. If you look at the original story, it seems like the secret room merely had the note in it... not all that huge, obvious mold growth that's in the picture. And actually, the originally story seems to indicate the folks that left the note were really trying to help the new homeowners in the only way they could. "
Update 2: Destiny sez, "The couple will be refunded the full cost of their house by Fannie Mae -- in exchange for removing them from their (still pending) lawsuit."
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:30 am
What's the most important artist's right?
My latest Locus column is up: "Artist Rights" describes the terrible risk to artists that arises from expecting online services to police everything their users do for copyright infringement. If YouTube, Scribd, Blogger, LiveJournal and all the other sites where we're allowed to put our work have to hire lawyers or erect technical filters that attempt to prevent infringement before it happens, it will dramatically raise the cost of expression. That's not good for art, period. (Even worse -- the automated filters won't work, so you'll pay the cost of reduced opportunities for expression and you won't even get the benefit of control over distribution of your work)But even worse for artists: when the cost of distributing art goes up, the number of companies involved in it goes down. We all know what that looks like: the record industry, cable TV, the studio system. All systems where there's a buyer's market for art, where the big companies have artists over a barrel.
We live in an age in which more people can express themselves in more ways to more audiences than ever before. The majority of this expression is intimate, personal maunderings -- the half-spelled, quarter-grammatical newspeak adorning MySpace and Facebook pages. These are often intensely personal, with none of the self-conscious artifice that we've traditionally associated with "published work." By turning the personal into the public, an entirely new aesthetic is coming into being -- and a huge proportion of the invisible social interaction of a generation is being recorded forever. As Charles Stross notes, we are living at the end of "pre-history" -- the last days of a patchwork human history. Tomorrow's lives will be remembered by the historians of the day-after-tomorrow with astounding clarity and thoroughness, reconstructed through the midden of personal blips, twits, and chirps emitted by our social tools. By comparison, our own lives will be as opaque and unimaginable as the lives of the poor schmucks who inhabited the same cave for 200,000 years, generation after generation leaving no mark more permanent than a mouldering knucklebone lost in the soil.LinkParadoxically, it is this very feature that leads many artists to view these sites with suspicion and derision. A common refrain goes like this: "These sites are filled with pirated material and they know it. They're making money off our work, and the only 'redeeming' quality they have is that a bunch of idiots get to talk about their cats around the clock and around the world."
Could these sites be remade to prevent infringement, and if they could, what would that mean for free expression?
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:23 am
Splayed angelic pigeon wings
Today in my series of pictures from my travels: these inexplicable, angelic, rendered pigeon wings that were just sitting there on the sidewalk yesterday in London's east end. Link
Source: Boing Boing | 7 Jan 2008 | 6:14 am
Toshiba Execs Declare HD DVD Not Dead Yet
Lucas123 writes "HD DVD proponent Toshiba remains defiant that its format will not succumb to the mounting tsunami of support for Blu-ray Discs. Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, said at CES today that he was surprised by Warner's decision." It should also be noted that the HD DVD group has cancelled many of their meetings at CES.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 5:04 am
Basjoos Tells All About His "95 MPG" Aerocivic
We get the lowdown on the "Aerocivic" and how one guy with $400 worth of plastic and aluminum bumped his fuel economy to as much as 95 mpg.Source: Wired: Top Stories | 7 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am
Virtual Smash Mouth Jam Planned for Intel Keynote
Photorealistic 3-D avatars will play in a virtual garage during CEO Paul Otellini's presentation at International CES.Source: Wired: Top Stories | 7 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am
Sure, a Jet's Wings Need Scrubbing, But Its Guts Need a Flush, Too
Pratt & Whitney's EcoPower Engine Wash bathes the compressor, turbine and fan of jet engines to improve fuel efficiency by 0.5 to 1.5 percent, an amount that if applied industry wide, could help airlines save more than 2 billion pounds of fuel each year.Source: Wired: Top Stories | 7 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am
Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline
destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that 'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 3:32 am
Jan. 7, 1904: A Distress Call for Ships in Danger Upon the Sea
The Marconi Company adopts CQD as its Morse distress signal. It is short-lived but does play a significant role in the mother of all distress calls.Source: Wired: Top Stories | 7 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am
Small and Fabulous: Modular Living as It Should Be
With increased population density and climate change, space- and energy-efficient housing is all the rage. But style need not be sacrificed for practicality. Wired News scopes the smallest and coolest modular housing out there.Source: Wired: Top Stories | 7 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am
Sony Announces Skype For PSP, Homebrewers Respond
Croakyvoice writes "Sony has finally officially announced that Skype is coming soon to the PSP. The VoIP service is slated to hit the company's handheld at the end of January. The application will be available via a firmware update and is only compatible with PSP Slim & Lite Consoles. After the announcement the PSP homebrew scene released a new application called Furikup which will allow you to make phone calls with your PSP and is compatible with the original phat PSPs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 1:41 am
Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets
Hugh Pickens writes "As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks. The tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how the technology holds up under the rigors of flight. The technology is intended to stop attacks by detecting heat from missiles, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing laser beams to jam the missiles' guidance systems. A Rand study in 2005 estimated it would cost about $11 billion to protect every US airliner from shoulder-fired missiles. Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate anti-missile systems could hit $40 billion."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Jan 2008 | 11:46 pm
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