Shepard Fairey Counterfiles in Associated Press Obama Poster Conflict

The source close to Fairey's legal affairs who passed these directs our attention to a section which, in their words, "illustrates the hypocrisy of the AP." This section documents a number of instances in which Shepard's defense argues the AP has published -- and profited from -- Fairey's work, and that of other artists, without obtaining a license.

# On January 7, 2009 The AP distributed a story entitled "Iconic Obama portrait headed to Smithsonian museum" by Brett Zongker. The AP's article included a photograph attributed to The AP, which depicted Fairey's Obama Hope Stencil Collage that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. (A copy of the full article is attached as Exhibit A and available at [link].) The AP did not obtain a license to use Fairey's work in this photograph. As shown below, the photograph attributed to The AP consists of nothing more than a literal reproduction of Fairey's work.

# The AP's image database contains the following photograph of Jeff Koons' sculpture entitled Ushering In Banality. On information and belief, The AP did not obtain a license to use Koons' work in this photograph.

# The AP's image database contains the following photograph of George Segal's The Diner. On information and belief, The AP did not obtain a license to use Segal's work in this photograph.

# The AP's image database contains the following photograph of Banksy's Di-Faced Notes. On information and belief, The AP did not obtain a license to use Banksy's work in this photograph.

# The AP's image database contains the following photograph of Keith Haring's Hope. On information and belief, The AP did not obtain a license to use Haring's work in this photograph.

(...) # The doctrine of unclean hands and basic principles of equity prohibit The AP from contending that Counterclaim Defendants' Obama Works infringe The AP's copyrights when The AP itself exploits the copyrighted work of Fairey and other artists without permission and in a manner that is far less transformative than the Obama Works, as illustrated but not limited to, the photographs listed above.

SHEPARD FAIREY and OBEY GIANT ART, INC., Plaintiffs, -against- THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Defendant and Counterclaim Plaintiff, -against- SHEPARD FAIREY, OBEY GIANT ART, INC., OBEY GIANT LLC and STUDIO NUMBER ONE, INC.

* ANSWER AND AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES (PDF)
* Shepard Fairey vs. AP: Answer, Exhibit A (PDF)

New Data Center Will Heat Homes In London

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April 16, 1947: Ship Explosion Ignites 3-Day Rain of Fire and Death

1947: A cargo ship explodes at dockside in Texas City, Texas. The blast and the fires that follow kill about 600 people and injure 3,500 more. Six decades later, it remains the deadliest explosion and worst industrial disaster in U.S. history.

The Grandcamp, a World War II Liberty ship that had been converted to a French merchant vessel, was taking on a load of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at a quay next to a complex of Monsanto chemical factories, offices and labs. The ship's carpenter smelled smoke in the No. 4 hold around 8 a.m. on April 16 and found that a few bags of fertilizer were on fire. He tried dousing it with a few buckets of water, then a fire extinguisher.

When he called for a hose, the ship's captain forbade it, fearful that water would destroy the $500 worth of cargo that was on fire. The skipper ordered the hold closed and its fire-suppression valves opened to release steam. Ordinarily a good idea, but not in this case.

Ammonium nitrate decomposes at around 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The fire grew. The captain ordered his crew to abandon ship.

Texas City had a small fire department. Just 36 hours before the fire, National Maritime Union co-founder James Gavin had told union members in New York that Texas City was unsafe and a "natural" for a catastrophic explosion.

Firefighters tried spraying the burning ship from the dock. Spectators, including schoolchildren crowded the quayside to watch the action. Bad idea.

The Grandcamp exploded at 9:12 a.m. Exploded is probably too mild a word.

The captain and 32 of the Grandcamp's crew died; 10 somehow survived. More than 200 people were killed on the quay. The blast was heard 160 miles away. It shattered all the windows in Texas City and half of those in Galveston, 10 miles away.

Some debris reached an altitude of nearly 3 miles before falling back to earth. Two airplanes circling overhead were blown apart by the heavy shrapnel. A one-ton piece of the ship's propeller shaft landed 2½ miles away. Other pieces sailed 5 miles.

The blast flattened 20 waterfront blocks and 12 blocks inland. Flaming debris ignited oil, gas and chemical tanks at the sprawling Monsanto complex and three nearby oil companies.

People died everywhere, blown up by the blast, decapitated by flying metal, sliced by falling glass, burned by flaming metal and chemicals, crushed by falling buildings. The litany of death was long and varied. Thousands more suffered injuries.

Fire and rescue workers rushed in from nearby cities, and the Red Cross mobilized a massive national response, but these were the days before jet passenger and cargo planes. Local authorities set up temporary morgues and pressed medical students into duty in overwhelmed emergency rooms.

The fires kept burning, at the docks, the tanks and all over town. But the horror had not yet ended.

The cargo ship Highflyer, which had been moored near the Grandcamp, caught fire the morning after the explosion. When the fire seemed to be getting out of control, tugs were called to tow the ship out of the port, lest its own cargo of fertilizer explode, too.

Unfortunately, the force of the Grandcamp explosion had locked the Highflyer into a deadly embrace with another ship, the Wilson B. Keene, and the High Flyer wouldn't budge. The tugs gave up.

The Highflyer blew up, also demolishing the Keene, and raining death and fire anew on Texas City. The shockwave and new fires killed hundreds more.

The fires were not put out until April 18. Bodies and parts of bodies were strewn all over town. "Blood and guts" was not just a phrase. At least one survivor reported getting stuck in a slippery tangle and looking down to see that it was human intestines.

The state government ultimately listed 405 identified and 63 unidentified dead. Another 100 or perhaps 200 were counted as missing. Injuries may have reached 3,500. That's 4,000 casualties in a town of 16,000.

More than 1,500 houses — a third of the town's housing — were destroyed. Two thousand of the survivors were rendered homeless. Property damage reached at least $600 million (almost $6 billion in today's money).

An official report on the disaster recommended improved containers, labeling and special handling of ammonium nitrate fertilizer; prohibiting smoking in all piers and docks at all times; and worst-case-scenario community disaster plans to coordinate relief agencies, police and fire departments, hospitals, doctors and nurses, civil officials and military authorities.

Today, the unknown dead rest in a special cemetery. Monuments in Texas City include the propeller of the Highflyer and an anchor from the Grandcamp.

Source: Darkest Hours, by Jay Robert Nash (1976)

Gear Gallery: Cloudware Conduit, Cool Composter, Posh Porsche Phone

The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.

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Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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We'll See a Cadillac Volt in 2011. Or Not

Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

It's a Monday afternoon in November, and I'm driving down Ventura Boulevard with Jill Price, the woman who can't forget. Price, who is 43, has spent most of her life here in Los Angeles, and she remembers everything. In the space of two minutes, she tells me about the former motel lodge with a bear in front, the Courtyard hotel that used to be a Hilton, and a bowling alley—since replaced by a Marshalls—where a Nicolas Cage film was shot. All this comes pouring out so fast, I wonder aloud whether Price has had too much coffee. She laughs, says no, pulls slightly at her blond hair, and starts up again.

Right over there, she says, is a car wash: "I was talking to the guy there last summer, and I was telling him about the first time I ever went to the car wash—on August 30, 1978. And he was freaking out." Soon, Price, generally a gentle soul, has moved on to a rant about a TV program she just saw: "It was about an event that happened in 2002. So they kept going back to Saturday, June 19, 2002. Well, June 19, 2002, was not a Saturday! It was a Wednesday. It was pissing me off."

I first saw Price last May in a YouTube clip of her on 20/20. Diane Sawyer asks Price, an avid television viewer, to identify certain significant dates in broadcast history. When did CBS air the "Who shot JR?" episode of Dallas? When was All in the Family's baby episode shown? And so on. Price nails every question. She not only gives the date for the final episode of MASH but describes the weather that day.

The most remarkable moment comes when Sawyer asks Price when Princess Grace died. She immediately answers, "September 14, 1982—that was the first day I started 12th grade." For once, it seems that the memory lady has blown it. Sawyer laughs nervously and tries gently to right her guest: "September 10, 1982." Price misunderstands, thinking she's being prompted to identify another event—the possibility that she's being corrected apparently doesn't occur to her. No, Sawyer says, she has made a mistake; according to the book that 20/20's producers were using as a source, Princess Grace died on September 10. Price stands her ground, and not 60 seconds later, a producer breaks in: "The book is wrong." Price is right after all!

Until recently, no one had ever heard of Jill Price. Her friends and family knew her memory was remarkable, but nobody in the scientific community did. Her road to stardom started in June 2000 (Monday, June 5, to be exact), when she stumbled upon a Web page for James McGaugh, a UC Irvine neuroscientist who specializes in learning and memory, and decided to send him an email describing her unusual ability to recall the past. McGaugh wrote back 90 minutes later. He tells me he was skeptical at first, but it didn't take long for him to become convinced that Price was something special; he soon introduced her to two of his collaborators, Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker.

The three researchers interviewed Price many times over the next five years, but they kept the story to themselves. Finally, McGaugh and company were ready to share what they had found. In February 2006, their article, "A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering," appeared in the journal Neurocase. Shortly thereafter, the UC Irvine press office peddled the story to The Orange County Register—and Price's world was turned upside down.

The newspaper article, which identified her only as "AJ," appeared on March 13, 2006. Within hours, UC Irvine was besieged with inquiries. Four weeks later, the story went national: Price was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition (still under the AJ pseudonym). An editor at Free Press eventually tracked her down, and a book deal followed; Price would tell her own story, this time under her own name. The media played along, withholding further news on the woman who couldn't forget until the book's release.

Since then, Price has been on a nonstop media junket. Diane Sawyer actually had her on twice in one day (on Good Morning America and 20/20). By the time I met Price, she had been interviewed by Oprah and had been featured in every major newspaper from USA Today to The Wall Street Journal. Often the pieces focused on the pain she felt because of her inability to forget difficult moments.

As I followed Price's story, I was fascinated but doubtful. I am a cognitive psychologist, and to me something didn't smell right. Everyone seems to have an uncle or cousin with "photographic" memory, but damned if they can actually give you a phone number to reach that person. The only serious scientific paper documenting photographic memory was published nearly 40 years ago, and that study has never been replicated.

Price, however, is eminently real. I spent the better part of two days with her, meeting her friends and family and watching her at the office. At the end, I can honestly say that in my decade as a professor of psychology, I've never encountered anyone remotely like Jill Price.

Ordinary human memory is a mess. Most of us can recall the major events in our lives, but the memory of Homo sapiens pales when compared with your average laptop. It takes us far longer to store data (you might have to hear a phone number five to 10 times before you can repeat it); it's easy for us to forget things we've learned (try reciting anything from your sophomore history class); and it's sometimes hard to dislodge outdated information (St. Petersburg will always remain Leningrad to me). Worse, our memories are vulnerable to contamination and distortion. Lawyers can readily fool us with suggestive questions; false memories can easily be implanted.

The fundamental problem is the seemingly haphazard fashion in which our memories are organized. On a computer, every single bit of information is stored at a specific location, from which it can always be retrieved. Human recall is hit or miss. Neuroscientific research tells us that our brains don't use a fixed-address system, and memories tend to overlap, combine, and disappear for reasons no one yet understands.

The one thing we do know is rather vague: Memories live in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. After that, the entire question of how memory works is up for grabs. For example, where precisely in the hippocampus (or prefrontal cortex) is my memory of reading Kurt Vonnegut for the first time? If I try to summon that experience, I am likely to wind up with a blur—a half dozen indistinct recollections. And no brain-scan technology will help me bring it into better focus.

So when I hear about Price's feats, my mind boggles. From the perspective of evolution, finding a human being with memory that works with the precision of a computer would be like finding someone with bones made of steel. The type of memory system we have—in technical terms, context-dependent rather than location-addressable—has been around for several hundred million years. The existence of a human brain that works completely differently is astronomically unlikely.

Media sensation Jill Price in the Southern California home she shares with her parents.
Photo: Bryce Duffy

Yet here I am, and here is Price. The three UC Irvine scientists who studied her decided that her case deserved its own name—hyperthymestic syndrome, academic Greek for "exceptional memory"—and it's not hard to see why.

I come prepared with a stack of questionnaires, and when we return to her house, Price is kind enough to let me administer my tests, easily blowing through the first few. I ask, for example, if she can tell me some dates of famous accidents and airline crashes; she's all but unstoppable. She instantly retrieves from memory the exact dates of the explosions of space shuttle Challenger and Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She remembers not just that September 25, 1978, was when a PSA flight crashed in San Diego but also that the jet collided with a Cessna. She can go in either direction, disaster to date or date to disaster. When I say "January 13, 1982," Price has no trouble recalling the Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac.

A Day in the Life

Jill Price keeps a detailed diary of her activities, including the time she spent with the author.

According to McGaugh's Neurocase article, Price is even more astounding on the events of her own life. At the scientists' behest, for example, she recalled—without warning and in just 10 minutes—what she'd done on every Easter since 1980. "April 6, 1980: 9th grade, Easter vacation ends. April 19, 1981: 10th grade, new boyfriend, H. April 11, 1982: 11th grade, grandparents visiting for Passover ..."

Soon, though, the limitations of her memory begin to show. My next questionnaire is on the just-concluded 2008 presidential election, and here things go less well. She is off by a few days on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race and clueless on the Iowa caucuses. Price nails both the Republican convention and the St. Louis vice presidential debate (she was at a regular Thursday dinner that night) but can't say the precise date when Obama clinched the nomination. When it comes to the 2004 election, she opts out entirely. I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories like television and airplane crashes, Price's memory isn't much better than anyone else's. She struggled in school, is no good at history before 1965, and seems genuinely miffed that she was once asked when the Magna Carta was signed ("Do I look like I'm 500 years old?").

For a scientist like me, the real test is to see how well Price can remember something new. I am especially interested in memory distortions. If you read an average person a list of words like thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, prick, thimble, haystack, thorn, hurt, injection, syringe, cloth, and knitting, and then ask them to repeat the words, they'll likely imagine they've heard needle even though it's not on the list.

Can Price sail past the trap of memory distortion? No, she can't. I read her five lists of words drawn from a psychological test known as the DRM, and not only does she miss a number of words, she also recalls hearing three I didn't say. Her performance may be a little above average, but no more than that.

If Price's memory of her own history is so precise, why is it so average for everything else? Or, more to the point, if her memory for everything else is so ordinary, why is her memory of her own history so extraordinary? The answer has nothing to do with memory and everything to do with personality.

Price remembers so much about herself because she thinks about herself—and her past—almost constantly. She still has every stuffed animal she's ever gotten, enough (as she showed me in a photograph) to completely cover the surface of her childhood bed. She has 2,000 videotapes and countless audiotapes, not to mention more than 50,000 pages of diary entries in idiosyncratic handwriting—so dense that it's almost unreadable. Until recently she owned a copy of every TV Guide since summer 1989. I'm not sure Price wants to catalog her life like this, but she can't help herself. When she tells me that one of her biggest regrets in life is that no one followed her around with a microphone during her childhood, I'm not the least bit surprised. In her own words, she lives as if there's a split screen running in her mind—one half on the present, the other on the past.

The onset of Price's exceptional recall seems to be closely tied to a painful event: her family's move from South Orange, New Jersey, to Los Angeles on June 29, 1974. For Price, life can be neatly divided into periods before and after that childhood trauma, and her detailed memories begin just after the move.

Even as an adult, Price continues to be haunted by separation anxiety. She has lived with her parents her entire life, and her anxiety about moving recurred in 2003, at age 37, when her parents decided to take a smaller house. Just as Price hadn't wanted to leave South Orange as a child, she dreaded leaving the only home she'd known since she was 8. Packing her memorabilia for storage took more than a month. Perhaps the hardest part was the thought that she'd have to leave behind a piece of wallpaper on which she'd recorded minor personal details for nearly 30 years. In the end, and much to the consternation of the family's realtor, Price took a razor blade to the wall and peeled off one more cherished souvenir.

In the time I spend with her, I notice that the not-particularly-foulmouthed Price is very fond of the expression that so-and-so "shits and farts just like the rest of us"—as in "Joe Movie Star might make a lot of money, but he still shits and farts like anyone else." By the third time I hear her utter this phrase, I can't help but notice its relevance to her own life: Price may display unusually complete recall of her own past, but her memory is the same blurry patchwork as everyone else's.

The difference is that she scans her past relentlessly. Every time we think about something, and especially how it connects to something else, we get better at remembering it—a phenomenon that psychologists call elaborative encoding. Price has spent her whole life ruminating on the past, constructing timelines and lists, and contemplating the connections between one February 19 and the next. Dates and memories are her constant companions, and as a result she's really good at remembering her past. End of story.

The memory woman clings tightly to her past.
Photo: Courtesy Jill Price

Why were Price's abilities blown so far out of proportion? I wouldn't blame Price; she's as happy to tell what she doesn't remember as what she does. But her story has taken on a life of its own. It started with that 2006 journal article: Although the scientists knew about Price's diaries and compulsions, little in the paper speaks to the question of whether it might be personality, not memory, that makes her extraordinary. Then there was the editor at Free Press who gave Price's book the manifestly false title The Woman Who Can't Forget, along with the equally overblown subtitle The Extraordinary Story of Living With the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science. And don't forget the credulous media that ate up the story—without, apparently, ever seeking a second opinion from scientists not involved in the case.

Lost in all the hype is an inconvenient fact: Price's brain was scanned more than two years ago, and the results—not yet published—apparently don't support the notion that she's some kind of memory goddess. Her hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are reportedly normal. The one significant aberration, according to Price—who was told about the scans by doctors who won't discuss them publicly—is that her brain resembles those of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The true nature of Price's memory becomes clear to me by the end of our first day of interviews, but I don't know whether to tell her. I try to keep my thoughts to myself when I meet her on day two in her office, where she works as a hyperkinetic, hyperorganized school administrator. But she wants to know what I'm going to write. I panic—worrying that her feelings will be hurt—and wonder how I'm going to explain.

While I'm stalling, she tells me about an article on memory published that morning in The Wall Street Journal; she's mentioned and wants to know what I think. She prints it out for me, and I skim through it. McGaugh, the lead author of the original Neurocase article, is quoted—talking, of all things, about elaborative encoding.

I start slowly—griping about the newspaper article, which I find to be a bit sloppy scientifically; I scarcely mention Price or what the author has to say about her. But eventually I come to the main point and read aloud from the critical paragraph: "What if you want to remember more about each passing day? One simple method is to keep a journal. Writing down a few thoughts and events every day not only makes a tangible record, it also requires you to reflect."

Isn't that Price to a T? Doesn't it explain why her forte is autobiographical memory rather than, say, recalling dates in ancient history? I think the answers are obviously yes, and I tell her so.

"But I didn't search this out," she protests, denying that her obsessions have anything to do with her memory. No, but that doesn't matter, I say. I explain how her rumination on the past isn't something she does voluntarily, but whenever she does it, the connections between her memories are strengthened. Price is quiet for a moment, thinking about what I've said. "This is OCD," she says softly. "I have OCD of my memories."

Three similar hyperthymestics have come forward since the 2006 journal article, each with spectacular autobiographical memory, and all three have similar OCD-like habits. They all collect things and are obsessed with dates and events. (One went so far as to write an unpublished work titled The Book of Bob.) The truth is, most people could remember their lives in considerable detail if they contemplated them with the same manic intensity. When I bring my theory about Price to McGaugh, he concedes that I could be right. "We remain puzzled and open to alternative interpretations," he says.

But even if Price's memory is just the byproduct of obsession, she's still amazing. I've come to think of her as the Michael Jordan of autobiography. Jordan wasn't born the greatest basketball player of all time; he became the greatest, combining considerable but not unique innate talent with an incredible amount of hard work shooting free throws and practicing jumpers long after most of his peers were out carousing. Whether intentionally or not, Price has shown the same sort of daily dedication to chronicling her own life.

For her, it's been a mixed blessing. Price doesn't just remember the past, she feels it—vividly—and bad personal experiences linger. But she can't really imagine being like the rest of us, either. For two days, she's been asking what it's like to be me. Do I remember what happened on November 10, 2003? Or November 10, 1998? Nope, nada. I haven't a clue. When I jokingly ask, "So, you think the rest of us are retarded?" she just giggles. She doesn't, she says, but she also wouldn't give up her memory for anything.

Gary Marcus is a cognitive psychologist at New York University and the author of Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind.

Swept Away: Tracing the Origins of Debris

Gear Gallery: Cloudware Conduit, Cool Composter, Posh Porsche Phone

The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.

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Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

Aliens Among Us: How Indie Director Revamped the Sci-Fi Thriller

Battlestar Galactica somewhat confirmed coming to Blu-ray

Battlestar Galactica was meant for high-def. Thankfully, Universal has somewhat confirmed that the series will be available in its entirety on Blu-ray sometime soon via the Caprica DVD.

A little message pops up before the Caprica DVD’s main menu after the promo for the complete series box set which says it’s coming to “DVD and Blu-ray high-def.” There hasn’t been any official word from the studio before this little message, but it’s pretty clear. This means that the whole series might be available on Blu-ray the same day the DVD box set is slated for release, which is July 28, 2009. More as we get it.

Source: Gizmodo | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am

Quake detection network to be updated

The federal government will spend $29.4 million to upgrade the nation's earthquake detection equipment, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday. The economic stimulus money will go to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2009 | 2:37 am

Yahoo Shutting Down The Rest Of Jumpcut In June

Yahoo’s closure of their Jumpcut video service feels like the slow peeling off of a bandaid. In December they announced that no new videos could be uploaded, but that they “will be keeping the Jumpcut site up and running for the foreseeable future.”

Apparently the foreseeable future ends in June, when the site will be shut down. From an email they sent out to users today:

Dear Jumpcut user,

After careful consideration, we will be officially closing the Jumpcut.com site on June 15, 2009. This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!

Very soon, we’ll be releasing a software utility that will allow you to download the movies you created on Jumpcut to your computer. We’ll send instructions to this email address when the download utility is available.

Once you download your movies, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video/

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Jumpcut.

The Jumpcut Team

Yahoo bought Jumpcut, one of the best online video editing tools we’ve seen, back in 2006. It’s a shame to see them die. We’ve added it to the deadpool.

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Source: TechCrunch | 16 Apr 2009 | 2:28 am

LaCie’s Rugged XL is a terabyte of rubberized, shock-proof hotness

LaCie’s orange-and-grey rugged drives have been around for quite some time, but because they used 2.5″ HDDs, they were limited to 500GB. This new XL version is 1TB, and I guarantee you’re going to be seeing bigger ones down the road. I’ve used these things before, and they’re solid.

The new XL version doesn’t change much, except that it’s… extra large. It also has a little LED strip that glows to tell you everything is all right. You can find out more or buy one here; $160 is expensive for a terabyte of external storage (1.5TB for $110, anyone?), but what you’re really buying with the XL is durability. And awesomeness.

Source: CrunchGear | 16 Apr 2009 | 2:00 am

Academics To Predict Next Twitter and Its Pitfalls

An anonymous reader writes "University researchers in the UK have put together a team tasked with predicting the next big thing in terms of communication technologies, in a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls before they become a problem. This is in the wake of the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, which has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of personal information available online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:54 am

Strange and curious uses for a Game Boy

Happy Birthday, Game Boy! You’re turning 20 next week, and while you can’t legally drink yet, let’s take a look at the other strange and bizarre stuff you’ve been doing for the last two decades.

From huffing nitrous to almost being burnt to a crisp, it’s quite amazing what has happened to the humble little Game Boy. This is a great list of 13 really wacky applications of the little handheld that could. Who knew that an ugly hard to see green screen would go on for so long.

[via OhGizmo!]

Source: CrunchGear | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:40 am

Congressman fighting for your right to download

Time Warner Cable’s plan to charge based on the amount of bandwidth that their customers use has not gone unnoticed. In fact, a congressional representative from New York (one of the of the first areas scheduled for the new fee structure) has started fighting it.

New York representative Eric Massa is currently working on introducing a bill that would increase competition between bandwidth providers, and hopefully break the monopoly that companies like Time Warner Cable have over certain areas. While no specific information is available about the bill (it’s not yet written), we can only hope that the freshman congressman can get some help with fighting this.

Time Warner Cable, of course, refused to comment on the proposed legislation.

Source: CrunchGear | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:20 am

Latest MobileMe Takes Out Glitches and Eases Syncing [Personal Technology]

Apple Inc. last summer brought out a promising new service called MobileMe designed to synchronize email, contacts and calendars among any combination of its own Macintosh computers and rival Windows PCs, plus Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touch devices. It also offered online email, contacts and calendar, online photo galleries, syncing of Web bookmarks and 20 gigabytes of online storage.

The main idea was to replicate for consumers the kind of seamless, over-the-air email, plus contact and calendar updating, available to corporate users via systems like Microsoft’s (MSFT) Exchange.

The only problem was that MobileMe, which costs $99 a year after a 60-day free trial, and is available at MobileMe.com, was so buggy and ragged that I couldn’t recommend it. Apple (AAPL) pledged it would fix MobileMe. So, I have just spent a few weeks testing it again on multiple Windows and Mac computers, and an iPhone.

This time, my verdict is different. Apple has fixed all of the speed and reliability issues I encountered last year. In my new tests, MobileMe’s email was prompt and reliable. I was able to add, delete or edit a contact or calendar entry on one device, and see these changes almost immediately on all the others, and on the MobileMe Web site. The Web-based photo gallery, which can also house videos, worked fine on both Windows and Mac, and I was able to upload photos to it from my iPhone. The file storage also worked well, and now has a feature that allows you to share files too large to email. And each MobileMe account works with an unlimited number of computers, iPhones and Touches.

But there is one major caveat. While MobileMe works with Windows, it works better with Macs. The main reason for this is that, as I noted last year, its synced calendars and contacts show up in an odd manner in Microsoft Outlook, the most popular calendar and contact program in Windows.

Apple acknowledges the Outlook problems, which show up only in a mixed environment of Macs and Windows PCs, and pledges they will be fixed by the fall. The company says that if you are using MobileMe solely on Windows PCs, with or without an iPhone, the Outlook problem shouldn’t appear in most cases.

Apple’s MobileMe

There are other drawbacks for Windows users. While the Web version of MobileMe works fine on Windows in the Firefox Web browser, or with the Windows version of Apple’s Safari browser, Apple warns that it might not work properly in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. The site worked well in the new Internet Explorer 8.

In both versions of IE, my tests showed that another MobileMe feature, bookmark syncing, didn’t work as advertised. Some bookmarks didn’t appear at all; others were listed alphabetically instead of in their original order. Apple is promising to fix this problem as well.

Some features are available only on Macs. For example, you can upload photos and videos to your MobileMe galleries directly from Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie programs. On Windows, you have to upload these using the MobileMe Web site.

The Outlook problem works this way. If you have a mixed group of Macs and PCs, and your Mac’s calendar isn’t named Calendar, its information won’t sync with the main calendar in Outlook. It will appear as a separate calendar that requires extra steps to make visible. Worse, if your Mac or iPhone address book contains subgroups of contacts, these appear as separate address books, which require extra steps to make visible and may not properly sync up the same names as the Mac contact groups.

However, MobileMe now finally does a fast, reliable job of syncing calendar and contact items. In my tests, I was repeatedly successful in doing this in a variety of scenarios. I added a new phone number to a contact on my iPhone and, a minute or two later, it was added to that contact in Outlook, in the Mac’s Address Book program and in the Web-based MobileMe address book. I then changed the contact again in Outlook, and again in the Web-based address book, and the changes appeared everywhere else.

The same process worked with calendar items. None of this required cables (though, for Windows computers, you must first download and install a MobileMe control panel that runs in the background). The only glitch I ran into, which Apple is promising to fix, is that when I switched my iPhone to sync with MobileMe, it wiped out all the custom ringtones I had assigned to particular contacts.

Apple’s $99 price may seem high, given that you can get some features for much less, even free. And MobileMe lacks some obvious features, like online backup or automatic syncing of all files. Also, there’s no way to create limited access to allow an assistant or family member to use just your MobileMe online calendar.

But MobileMe finally does give consumers the main email, contact and calendar convenience corporate users rely upon daily.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Source: All Things Digital | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:02 am

Bane to appear in Batman: Arkham Asylum

Besides the Joker, the Dark Knight will be tormented by the ‘roid raging Bane in the upcoming Xbox 360, PS3 and PC title Batman: Arkham Asylum.

BANE
REAL NAME: Unknown
OCCUPATION: Professional criminal
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Gotham City
EYES: Brown (when on Venom: Green)
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT: 5 ft 6 in (when on Venom: 6 ft 8 in)
WEIGHT: 140 lb (when on Venom: 350 lb)
FIRST APPEARANCE: Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 (January , 1993)

Imprisoned from birth to serve his dead father’s sentence, Bane was raised inside the horrific environs of a Santa Prisca prison. Finding solace in smuggled book and meditation, he developed incredible powers of concentration. When he was subjected to military experiments with the experimental steroid Venom, his iron-forged will helped him survive when other test subjects had died, and he manage to escape. Determined to prove his worth, he sought out Batman and broke the Dark Knight’s spine. But Batman recovered and managed to best Bane, cutting off the precious Venom supply that transforms Bane into a superhuman.

Attributes:
• Master strategist
• Intense focus
• Abnormally strong reaction to Venom, giving him incredibly enhanced physical abilities
• Determined to best Batman, and all others who challenge him

Source: CrunchGear | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:00 am

Gadgetell Giveaway: The Hava Gold

Section: Video, Accessories, Features, Contests

Want to send your television to any PC?  How about for free?  The good folks at Monsoon Media have partnered with us to give away a Hava Gold.  The Hava is a place-shifting device that runs circles around the Slingbox in some respects.

Say you wanted to watch your Hava box on multiple machines—maybe you want to share your content with multiple people at the same time—Hava lets you do that.  Sling doesn’t. 

How can you win the Hava Gold?  How do you enter this giveaway?  That’s super-simple.  Register with Gadgetell, create a profile and leave a comment to this post.  Remember, you must be registered and have a profile for your comment to count as an entry!  It’s that easy.

Contest will close on April 30, 2009. 

Read: [Full Contest Terms]
Product Page: [Hava Gold]

Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 16 Apr 2009 | 12:45 am

Ted Turner May Endorse Kutcher In The Race For A Million Twitter Followers

When it first came to my attention last week, the race to a million Twitter followers seemed a bit ridiculous. After all, a good chunk of those followers are probably either spammers or bots. But then Ashton Kutcher decided to throw down the gauntlet and formally challenge CNN to a race to the landmark number. Then Larry King got involved. Then EA got involved. Then it was revealed that CNN didn’t even own the Twitter name Kutcher was racing. Then it bought the name. Is your mind numb yet?

Now, apparently, Ted Turner is ready to throw in the towel, and give the race over to Kutcher, if he comes through on his promise to donate 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa. Appearing on a radio show, Laura Turner Seydel, Turner’s daughter, said that she believed her dad would back Ashton in his quest for a million followers if Ashton comes through on his promise. And she will ask her dad to do so. During the interview (embedded below), Seydel says she has been following the “race” and has been “having a big laugh about it.”

It’s still not entirely clear what Ted Turner has to do with any of this. While he did start CNN, as Larry King noted, he no longer runs it. But Kutcher wanted to punk him, so now he’s apparently involved whether he wants to be or not. Meanwhile, it’s probably a good idea for him to concede “defeat” as Kutcher is gaining quickly on the CNN Twitter account. Kutcher is now past 920,000 followers and is less than 30,000 away from CNN — and gaining fast. The chart below, made by ChartBeat, shows the trend towards Kutcher throughout the day. The service has a live updating version of it on its site.

Yes, this whole thing is silly, but at least it’s now for a good cause. Nothing But Nets protects people in Africa from outbreaks of malaria. If Kutcher is willing to use this race to support that fight, we’ll support him with as many posts as it takes.

Update: CNN is now saying that it will match Kutcher’s 10,000 net pledge if it wins the race. If it loses, it will still donate 1,000 nets.

Update 2: And here’s a video statement from Kutcher giving an update on the race, and talking about what getting a million Twitter followers means to him.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 16 Apr 2009 | 12:24 am

Unzipping Nanotubes Makes Superfast Electronics

Al writes "Two research groups have found a way to unzip carbon nanotubes to create nanoribbons of graphene — a material that has shown great promise for use as nanoscale transistors but which have proven difficult to manufacture previously. A team led by James Tour, a professor of chemistry and computer science at Rice University and another led by Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, both figured out ways to slice carbon nanotubes open to create the nanoribbons. The Stanford team was funded by Intel and the Rice group is in talks with several companies about commercializing their approach."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 16 Apr 2009 | 12:01 am

Have You Read the Review of the PogoPlug Yet?

Well have you? If not go and read it right now. It's one of the coolest little gizmos we've tested as of late. From reviewer Priya Ganapati:

The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into virtually any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, letting you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal -- including your iPhone. (We'll get to that part later.)

Dude, it takes all of the content on an external hard drive — even a USB stick — and lets you access it from the internet. Even via the iPhone. But all is not right with the PogoPlug — the security protocols have more holes in them than a Somali Pirate. No biggie. You can read the full review of the PogoPlug right here.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:56 pm

Is Your Mood a Result of Where You Live?

Ed writes "Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control released a study indicating that geography can have a significant impact on mood. You may not be surprised to learn that Kentucky is more depressing than Hawaii. However, ranking up there with Hawaii are Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Frustratingly, they have not yet published the study on the web, so it is left as an exercise for the reader to find the original study and post a link for the rest of us."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:49 pm

Got an old gadget? Recycle it at RadioShack and get a gift card

Section: Audio, Headphones, Home Audio, Portable Audio, Video, HDTV, Portable Video, Communications, Cellphones, Computers, Laptops, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Green, Household

RadioShack has been doing their part to help the environment by taking in your old electronics, and giving you some cash credit for it.  Until recently, the trade-in program has been on a pretty limited basis, but now, RadioShack made it available in all of their 4,400 stores.  In case you don’t have a participating RadioShack trade-in near you, you will probably have one to take advantage of now. 

Think about all the unused, old gadgets you have lying around the house.  Wouldn’t it be great to turn them in for some money?  Now, I understand some gadgets have sentimental value, but I think it’s great that RadioShack is taking the initiative to allow people to donate their old electronics.  However, I’m not sure how selective they are and how much money they will give you in return, but here is how it works in a nutshell. 

Obviously, the product has to be able to turn on and function as advertised.  If it doesn’t, then don’t even bother trying to give it to RadioShack.  Next, you have to provide your name and address (this should be easy), and then show a valid Driver’s License, State ID card, Military ID, or Passport.  Next, RadioShack’s trade-in program is limited to MP3 players, cell phones, gaming consoles and games, camcorders, digital cameras, GPS devices, chargers, cables, manuals, computer perihperals, computers, HDTV’s, and monitors. 

Since the program has been fairly successful, I imagine that RadioShack gives back a decent amount of money, otherwise people wouldn’t even bother with this.  Also, RadioShack gives you a gift card the minute they accept your trade-in, so there is no waiting 6-8 weeks for your gift card to be processed.  Lastly, it is always nice to help the environment, so if not for the money, give in your old electronics just for the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when doing a good deed. 

Read [RadioShack Press Release]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:34 pm

Decision Time For Facebook: Term Sheet Received At $2 Billion Valuation

Facebook has been pitching for a new round of funding these last few months to bridge itself to an IPO sometime in the future. We’ve known that since October, when (former) CFO Gideon Yu was in Dubai. In December CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was open to raising new money but only at the previous $15 billion valuation set by Microsoft.

But we’ve heard more recently that the company has been pitching hard for new cash at a much reduced valuation, hoping for at least $4 billion. And some investors are biting, but perhaps not at that price. A source with knowledge of the possible transaction tells us that General Atlantic may have submitted a term sheet at “around a $2 billion” valuation.

Will Facebook take the expensive new money from General Atlantic? They may be forced to. They’re burning as much as $20 million a month in cash and are dealing with ridiculous growth. They likely have less than two years runway left, and possibly significantly less if they continue to add new users by the tens of millions that are currently flocking there every month.

The cost of taking money at such a low valuation is higher than it appears. In addition to the direct dilution to stockholders from the new money, old investors at the $15 billion valuation may need to be made whole. Venture rounds traditionally include anti-dilution provisions that give investors more stock if the company raises new money at a lower valuation. Those anti-dilution provisions are heavily negotiated and can end up anywhere from full protection (which is very rare) to no protection at all (which is also very rare). It’s likely that there will be some form of additional dilution, possibly a lot of it, from the $375 million Facebook has raised at that valuation.

Update: In our original post we had said that both General Atlantic and Providence Equity Partners had submitted term sheets to Facebook. A new source indicates that the Providence information is incorrect, at least at this time, so we’ve removed them for now.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:23 pm

Twitter Growth Surges 131% In March - InformationWeek

Twitter Growth Surges 131% In March InformationWeek The site's attractiveness to avid news consumers is driving its growth in conjunction with the news media's use of and focus on Twitter, analysts suggest. mocoNews - Twitter Traffic More Than Doubles In March Washington Post Twitter Grows 131 Percent in One Month Poynter.org ZDNet - PC Magazine - The Business Insider - Bluhalo all 12 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:21 pm

Apple, Your Mighty Mouse Sucks. Please Fix It.

Apple makes a lot of great products. In fact, I’d say that the percentage of products it makes that are great is higher than that of just about any other large company. But one product it makes is absolutely awful: The Mighty Mouse.

My first encounter with one was a couple years ago when I bought an iMac and the Mighty Mouse came with it. I used it for several months before I became fed up with it and ditched it in favor of — yes — a Microsoft mouse. But I recently bought another Apple computer and got another Mighty Mouse with it. This time, I opted for the wireless Bluetooth version thinking it might be better than the wired one. Wrong. If anything, it’s worse.

Let’s go over the problems. First of all, the thing is shaped quite oddly. While it looks nice and can work for both left and right-handed users, people don’t have hands shaped like pebbles. There are a lot of natural contours on the insider of the hand, and the Mighty Mouse neglects them for a stylish look.

Second, the side buttons that you are supposed to squeeze to activate are almost non-functional. The problem is that it takes entirely too much pressure to click them. As a result, every time I click the side buttons I hear the Mighty Mouse’s plastic creak under how much pressure I’m applying — but I have no choice. In all the combined months that I’ve used the Mighty Mouse, I can probably count the number of times that I’ve actually used these side buttons because of this.

The third problem pertains directly to the wireless Bluetooth edition of the Mighty Mouse. Not only does it eat through AA batteries like no other, it simply loses the connection with my machine for no apparent reason every so often. You might not think it’s a huge deal — but just imagine being in the middle of doing something important and having absolutely no mouse support. I’ve had to learn some keyboard shortcuts just because of that. And I’ve tried it on multiple machines — same result.

Fourth, the all-white mouse gets dirty as hell. Granted, I’m a heavy computer user, but there is no reason why a mouse should be covered in grime every other day, to the point where I have to clean it. Yes, I shower, and yes I wash my hands. The thing just picks up a crazy amount of dirt, both on its bottom and on its top. And that directly relates the the device’s biggest problem.

By far the worst part about the Mighty Mouse is its top track ball. While it’s nice that the thing can move in any direction, because of that, the ball accumulates much more dirt than regular mouse scroll wheels. And once it gets clogged up enough (which you can’t see mind you because it’s all inside), it is completely unusable. The ball still moves, but nothing happens on screen. If you own a Mighty Mouse long enough, you’re going to run into this problem. Any web search or Twitter search will reveal thousands of users with the same issue.

Apple indicates the solution is easy: Take a clean cloth doused in water and hold the Mighty Mouse upside down and “vigorously” rub the ball. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesnt. But because you have to unplug or unpair the mouse to clean it, you often are stuck in a back and forth cycle of unhooking and hooking back up to clean the thing and see if it works. And even when it does work, you’re just going to have to do the same thing again in a week or two. It’s frustrating beyond belief.

And I think Apple knows the device isn’t very good. It’s been filing patents for a while now for a new type of mouse that incorporates multi-touch elements on its surface. That’s exactly what it needs, because this track ball on the top just isn’t cutting it. It’s odd that all mice in the 199s had trackballs on the bottom, but everyone moved away from that because they would get so dirty, so quickly. But for some reason, Apple decided it would be a good idea to put the exact same type of ball on the top of the mouse.

Apple has an odd history with the mouse. Apple’s first Macintosh computer in 1984 really brought the device into the forefront as an input standard for personal computers. But as designs shifted to two-button mice, Apple for a long time refused to move beyond the one-button variety much to the dismay of its users. Finally, it relented with the Mighty Mouse — sort of — by giving users the second button functionality on a mouse that was still only one button. At least that part works fine.

I’m anxiously awaiting the future where everything is touchscreen and we don’t have to deal with mice or physical keyboards anymore. But until that day comes, the least Apple — a company which prides itself in the quality of its products — can do is give us a decent mouse with its computers. Or at least don’t patronize us by calling this mouse “mighty.”

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Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:21 pm

SQI Flash From SST Honored With EDN Innovation of the Year Award

SST 26 Series SQI Flash Family Features Low Pin Count and Enhanced Serial Interface Architecture for Execute-in-Place (XIP) Applications SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc., Nasdaq: SSTI), a leader in flash memory technology, today announced that its 26 Series Serial Quad I/O (SQI) family of 4-bit multiplexed I/O serial interface flash memory devices has won an Innovation of the Year Award from EDN Magazine.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:12 pm

Inbreeding ended Hapsburg dynasty

A genetic study suggests inbreeding led to the demise of Spain's powerful Hapsburg dynasty, Spanish scientists said. The Hapsburgs ruled a global empire from 1516 until the death of Spain's King Charles II in 1700.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

You're On Your Own: Outfit the Home Office for Under a Grand

Before taking the dive into self-employment, you're going to need some pony-up dough to outfit your home office. Fortunately, for a capital outlay of under a grand, you can get everything you need to turn that breakfast nook into a respectable workspace (and tax write-off). We burned down the industrial park and smoked out the best values to get you to the giddyap.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:00 pm

You're On Your Own: Outfit the Home Office for Under a Grand

Before taking the dive into self-employment, you're going to need some pony-up dough to outfit your home office. Fortunately, for a capital outlay of under a grand, you can get everything you need to turn that breakfast nook into a respectable workspace (and tax write-off). We burned down the industrial park and smoked out the best values to get you to the giddyap.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:00 pm

Adventurer's diary found in Italy

Researchers say the discovery of a 200-year-old travel diary written by Italian adventurer Alessandro Ricci is a treasure for Egyptologists. The journal, discovered in Pisa University by researcher Daniele Salvoldi, covers Ricci's adventures in Egypt and Tuscany between 1817 and 1822, ANSA reported Wednesday. Marilina Betro of Pisa University said the diary, which includes descriptions and drawings of Egyptian monuments that were destroyed in the 1800s, was held by French authorities for decades and then vanished before it was eventually found in 1928 in a Cairo bookshop.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:56 pm

Gator Guard is a scareduck

For seventy bucks, you can put a Gator Guard in your pond that is designed to keep aquatic birds away, even in states where alligators are not common, as birds are instinctually fearful of plastic heads. [via Toolmonger]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:50 pm

Rofo.com Launches QuickMove

Whether you're a do-it-yourselfer or you need a concierge, Rofo.com's dynamic new service helps small businesses manage their next move. SAN FRANCISCO, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Rofo(TM) (www.rofo.com), the first free office space search engine that quickly matches tenants with the best available office spaces, today introduced QuickMove, a free, turnkey service designed to help businesses "complete the last mile" of the leasing process by providing businesses with the tools and advice needed to complete a move and set up shop. Once a business locates the right space, the tedious task begins of outfitting and organizing their move.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:49 pm

Alleged Pimp Charged With MySpace Recruitment of Missing Teen

Christopher Tyrone Young, aka "Staydown," allegedly befriended a 17-year-old Florida girl over MySpace, eventually luring her into taking a Greyhound west to become a "star."

Source: Wired Top Stories | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:41 pm

CycleKarting, hand-built vintage race cars

CycleKarting is the art of driving your little hand-built vintage go-kart around a dirt track. Total build cost can't be more than $1,750, which sounds just perfect. [via Jalopnik]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:37 pm

NYC Wants Ideas For "Taxi Technology 2.0"

An anonymous reader writes "New York City is soliciting ideas from the public about possible technology improvements for its 13,000+ fleet of taxis. TLC (the city agency in charge of cabs) is 'seek[ing] input and information on ways to enhance the technology systems in each taxicab for the benefit of passengers, drivers and owners alike.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:34 pm

NaturalNano, Inc. Announces Filing of the Form 10K for the Year Ended December 31, 2008

ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NaturalNano, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:33 pm

Displaying Contacts Without a Code [Mossberg's Mailbox]

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

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I saw your recent review of ICE, the emergency medical information app for the iPhone. But my iPhone is set up to require a passcode to get to the home screen and run apps. Is there any way to display emergency contacts before a person enters the passcode?

There are some apps that allow you to customize the wallpaper of your iPhone or iPod Touch by adding a few lines of text that can be seen before it’s unlocked. One, called Close Call, displays a red cross and, next to it, an emergency phone number, and one brief line about, say, a key allergy or medical condition. The app is free, and is from a company called Polka, at polka.com.

I installed VMware Fusion on my Mac so I can run a virtual Windows XP computer on the Mac. When in the virtual Windows environment, I use security software. If I have the Fusion program shut down completely when I am not using it, will my computer be vulnerable to Windows security threats?

The vast majority of viruses, spyware and other malicious software is designed to run on Windows and cannot run natively on the Mac’s built-in operating system. So, while you are wise to use security software in your virtual Windows PC, any malware it misses won’t be able to run when Fusion is shut down. While even a virtual PC can get real viruses, this faux PC just disappears when Fusion is shut down, and so does all its software, including viruses.

But simply because Windows-based malware can’t run on the Mac’s OS, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful. You can still be tricked by false email and Web sites into giving up personal information.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Source: All Things Digital | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:30 pm

Infinite Campus Releases Emergency Notification

BLAINE, Minn., April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Infinite Campus, Inc.(R) is pleased to announce the general release of Campus Messenger with Voice, with emergency notification capability, powered by ShoutPoint(R) for schools telephony service. This new feature leverages Infinite Campus system data to immediately distribute critical, large volume messages.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:24 pm

Apple: Goldman Ups Estimates; Piper Upbeat on iPhone Units [Voices]

Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey this morning upped his estimates on Apple (AAPL) ahead of the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings report, which is due after the close next Wednesday.

Bailey is looking for FY Q2 revenues of $8 billion, at the high end of the company’s guidance range of $7.6 billion to $8 billion, which would be down 21 percent sequentially, but up six percent year over year. He thinks gross margin will be about a point better than the company’s target of 32.5 percent, due to favorable component costs and product mix. As a result, Bailey upped his EPS estimate for the quarter to $1.07 from $1, which puts him a penny below the Street consensus of $1.08. Apple’s guidance had been for 90 cents to $1.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:22 pm

Microsoft to offer hosted security for Exchange - CNET News

ITProPortal

Microsoft to offer hosted security for Exchange CNET News by Elinor Mills Microsoft will begin offering its first hosted security service under the Forefront brand on Thursday, dubbed Forefront Online Security for Exchange and designed to help keep malware and spam out of e-mail in-boxes. Microsoft: No Office 2010 beta for you Computerworld Microsoft's online Office variant preps for business Register ITProPortal - VentureBeat - Inquirer - Ars Technica all 385 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:22 pm

Gadget Lab Nominated for a Webby Award -- Help Us Win!

We're pleased as punch to announce that the Gadget Lab blog has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Consumer Electronics category.

Woo hoo! Now, please join us in taking a sip of your favorite celebratory libation.

Then, when you're tipsy and persuadable, we'd like to ask for your help. While nomination is an honor, we also want to win. You can help us do that, by voting for Gadget Lab in the Webby's People's Voice Awards. You don't want the prize to land in the evil, culinary clutches of Electro Lux Appliances, do you?

Here's how to do it:

• Go to the Webby Awards' People's Voice web site. If you haven't already registered, you'll need to do that before you can vote. It's a simple process that asks for you to pick a username and password and enter your e-mail address. Plus you have to fill out a captcha (careful: It's case-sensitive).
• A few minutes later, you'll get an e-mail from the Webby People's Voice. Click on the confirmation link there, and you're ready to vote.
• To vote for Gadget Lab, scroll down to the Marketplace category and open the Consumer Electronics sub-category. There we are! Select Wired.com Gadget Lab and click Cast my vote.
• While you're at it, please vote for our friends in Wired Science (in the Society > Science category), and for Wired.com overall, in the Features > Best Copy/Writing category). Then click on the "Film" button at the top and vote for Wired Science's video from Wired Video, in the Technology category. Done!

Thanks for supporting us in our quest for world domination. And thanks for reading Gadget Lab, for commenting, and for your help taking us to the giddy heights of internet success!

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:16 pm

Microsoft Tries To Re-Energize Cashback By Plugging It Into Its Products Engine

Microsoft says that Live Search Products and Live Search Cashback have now been unified into a single experience. You can now access Cashback on Live Search Products page, which is Microsoft’s comparison shopping vertical site. Microsoft has migrated Cashback from the Jellyfish platform (the social shopping site that Microsoft purchased in 2007) to the Live Search platform.

Last year, Microsoft launched the Live Search Cashback program, which gives users monetary incentives to click through and buy products from the ads they’re shown. It was controversial since the move to gain market share from Google was so drastic and seemingly desperate.

The Cashback program didn’t have much of an effect on Microsoft’s search, with its marketshare initiallly bumped up before hovering around 9 % (which is what it was before the program), and Google’s share remaining at nearly 62 %. But there was a silver lining to the program for Microsoft; its ad revenue from Live Search increased. Last fall, Microsoft reported a 30% growth in Cashback offers made to customers, with 20 of the web’s 50 top online retailers in the U.S. participating in the program.

Live Search Products was launched in 2006 as a commerce-only search engine/shopping comparison engine to give users more relevant results when looking to buy items online. Live Search Products was launched to be a direct competitor to Froogle, which was reborn as Google Search Products.

Microsoft’s Live Search name has gone through several rebranding efforts of its search site in the effort to keep up with the search capacities of Yahoo and Google. It’s pretty easy to lose track of all the different names Microsoft has tested for its search engine. There was MSN Search, Microsoft Search, Live Search and possibly Windows Live Search. Rumors have been flying around about the new name, which appears to be Kumo, which means “cloud” or “spider” in Japanese. So perhaps Live Search Products will soon be Kumo Products?

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:16 pm

EPA Reports Rise In US Greenhouse Emissions

Emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States rose 1.4 percent in 2007 compared with 2006, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:13 pm

New Ultra-small Six Degrees of Freedom Sensor from DTS Measures Three Axis of Acceleration and Three Axis of Angular Rate

- Ruggedized unit is designed for high-speed impact test and monitoring applications - SEAL BEACH, Calif., April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Diversified Technical Systems, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:10 pm

Norway Sets Territorial Boundaries Short Of North Pole

Norway agreed to limits on its northern seabed on Wednesday, becoming the first Arctic state to establish such territorial boundaries.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:49 pm

Pro-Gay Sites Filtered From Tennessee Students

Tennessee Public schools are blocking students' internet access to pro-gay websites but don't filter out sites preaching against homosexuality.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:49 pm

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 3 Build: 7A280f released

FROM APPLETELL - I have had the pleasure—yes, I mean pleasure—of working with the beta 3 release of OS 3.0 for the iPhone. I flashed my phone with the firmware about four hours ago, and it is just flat out fast.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:38 pm

Samsung HD i8910 (OmniaHD) is a witch. [Plus a video sample]

It looks like Samsung might have hired the same folks responsible for their last Omnia viral video to conjure up one for the HD i8910 (which, depending on where you live, may or may not go by the OmniaHD.)

This one doesn’t seem quite as creative as the last one (though, as that one was a play on something us gadget bloggers do on a weekly basis, we might be a bit biased toward it), but it’s bound to get them some hits. After showing off the HD i8910’s video quality a bit (which, if you pop the embed into HD mode, doesn’t seem too shabby. Of course, it’s professionally tailored not to), they make the phone “disappear”, challenging the viewer to guess how it was done.

Be it witchcraft, slight of hand, or a homage to Duck Soup, we’ve leave the sleuthing up to you - but check after the jump for one of the oddities we noticed.

Either someone forgot to flip the S’s when they were setting up the “mirror”, or the HD i8910 is made by Samsung’s secret sister company, Zamzung. Spot anything else amiss? Let us know in the comments.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:37 pm

FamilyMap: Track your family using the same technology the government is using to track them

Ryan Singel:

AT&T is now offering FamilyMap, a $10 a month which lets you see where your spouse or children are in real-time using their phones as beacons (assuming you have a family plan). Unlike when the feds use such technology, AT&T says it will send a text to each tracked phone as the feature goes on, and a reminder every month.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:33 pm

Cinder Mobile OS Lets Users Send More Power To Slow Apps

alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World: "Stanford University researchers are designing an operating system from the ground up to handle the power and security requirements of mobile devices. The Cinder operating system is already working on an Arm chip, and members of the team are working on making it run on the HTC G1 handset, according to Philip Levis, a Stanford assistant professor. Levis spoke about Cinder at the Stanford Computer Forum on Tuesday. If an application isn't running as fast as the user wants, a Cinder-based phone could include a button to boost the energy allocated to that application, Levis said. Cinder also could allow users to download any code and run it safely on their phones in a 'sandbox' mode."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:33 pm

Diageo Backs Initiatives Across the Country Aimed at Preventing Drunk Driving and Underage Drinking

Students Learn From Survivor During Alcohol Awareness Month NORWALK, Conn., April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Diageo, the world's leading spirits, wine and beer company is proud to support The Century Council, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:31 pm

Stealthy Ninja Jacket is Magical*

*Only renders actual ninjas invisible.**

[designed by Brian Wood, via LikeCool]

**That was more or less Joel's joke.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:30 pm

ClearPoint Files Annual Report on Form 10-K, Announces Expiration of Warrants and Unit Purchase Option

CHALFONT, Pa., April 15, /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ClearPoint Business Resources, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:30 pm

The White Stripes reimagine two classic "toy" cameras into collector's items

Not all cheap crappy cameras are treated as junk. The Lomographic Society, a Vienna-based experimental photography organization, teamed up with The White Stripes to create two modern-day versions of vintage cameras, the Holga and the Diana. The Holga, as some of you may know, is a cheap (around $15) medium-format camera made in China best known for its imperfections--photos shot with it are often blurry and distorted. Similarly, the Diana--first produced in Hong Kong in the early 60s--is known for its low quality and light leaks, and was most frequently acquired as a cheap prize at carnivals. Some photo enthusiasts love them, though, for the cinematic, imperfect results that come out of normal pics snapped with these guys.

Both cameras come with cool accessories like peppermint film mask filters and fisheye lenses, and are named after the Detroit Duo--"Jack" Holga and "Meg" Diana. Only 3,000 each were produced, but it looks like you can buy them here.

The White Stripes & Lomography [via MoCo Loco]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:29 pm

AT&T wants iPhone exclusivity extended but Apple’s not talking

Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

AT&T is pressuring Apple to extend its iPhone exclusivity to at least 2011, but Apple is remaining tight lipped. AT&T has been the exclusive provider of the wildly popular smartphone since its introduction in 2007.  While this has been a boon for AT&T, it has shut out millions of other potential customers who want the phone but are unwilling to switch to AT&T for a variety of reasons.  AT&T is known for having the worst data network of the big cell providers and their service areas aren’t quite as wide as Verizon and Sprint.

It would be to Apple’s best interest to put the iPhone on the open market even though it’s unclear whether they would produce a CDMA version or stick to the current GSM only device, which would limit it to T-Mobile.  An iPhone that supports both networks would be huge, making it a truly global device.

With quite a few new Android devices slated for release along with the red hot Palm Pre on the way, Apple should find itself with stiff competition. This could make AT&T’s stranglehold a liability.  If you’re with AT&T, don’t worry.  Losing the iPhone exclusivity could be a very good thing as it will force them to actively compete in the cellular marketplace again.  This could result in better services and prices.

Read [PCWorld]

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:22 pm

Confirmed: CNN Acquires CNNBrk Twitter Account (Updated)

Earlier today The Business Insider reported that CNN may have acquired the massively popular CNNbrk Twitter account, which is currently in a heated race with Ashton Kutcher to attain 1 million followers. Thing is, up until recently CNN didn’t actually own that account, which made the story’s coverage on the cable network over the last few days all the more bizarre.

I just got off the phone with James Cox (whose personal Twitter account is here), who created and has maintained the account. He confirms that CNN has in fact acquired CNNbrk. CNN has confirmed the deal (see below).

As of this writing, CNNbrk has over 945,152 followers (and rising fast), making it the most popular Twitter account.

Update: CNN has confirmed that it has taken control of the CNNbrk account, though the company isn’t viewing it as an “acquisition”. Rather, CNN has signed James Cox to a consultant contract agreement, which included the transfer of the account as part of its conditions. Any financial compensation due to Cox is being offered for his services, which happen to include his Twitter account along with teaching social media workshops, among other things (though I suspect he’s getting paid substantially more than the market rate for his consulting).

And while the ownership of the account has only changed hands in the last few days, CNN says that Cox has actually been working alongside the network since early 2007, only a few months after Cox created the account as a way to send breaking news stories to his cell phone. The two parties decided to transfer ownership as the account’s number of followers began to take off over the last few months (and especially in the last week or so).

Update 2: As a comment below points out, selling “free” Twitter names is apparently ‘against Twitter rules’, though this may only apply to accounts that are inactive. Given the nature of the consulting arrangement between CNN and Cox, it isn’t clear if Twitter will allow users to sell their accounts.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:22 pm

Pilot Loses License Flying the Too-Friendly Skies

There's no specific rule against having sex in the cockpit, but you can still lose your license for it.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:20 pm

Red Pandas Have An 'Artificial' Sweet Tooth

Preference for artificial sweeteners previously thought to exist only in Old World primatesResearchers from the Monell Center report that the red panda is the first non-primate mammal to display a liking for the artificial sweetener aspartame.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:15 pm

U.S. awards $43M for fuel cell research

The U.S. Energy Department says it will award $41.9 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund 13 fuel cell technology projects. U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:13 pm

Universal Search Takes Off: Kosmix Posts 419% Growth In March

Kosmix, the universal search engine that dynamically generates guides to search queries using dozens of different content sources, is quickly gaining momentum. According to today’s latest comScore numbers, the site has jumped up to 3.2 million monthly uniques in March - a 419% growth since February.

Kosmix is meant to serve as a search engine for when you want to get a quick overview of any topic (In some ways, its approach is similar to Mahalo’s). But unlike Mahalo, all ‘guides’ are built using search algorithms rather than human editors. Data is pulled from a variety of sources, including YouTube, Wikipedia, and news sites to generate each guide. This makes the engine very flexible, as it can attempt to build a page for any search query, but it has also can lead to some quirks - occasionally you’ll find items in a Kosmix page that seem out of place, which human editing would presumably avoid.

But for the most part it works well, and it’s growing quickly. The site began testing its universal search in a private alpha last summer but only began promoting it to the public in December, when it also announced it had closed a $20 million funding round led by Time Warner (the company has raised $55 million since 2005). And while its technology is primarily geared towards search, it is also flexible: last month it launched a personalized newspaper called Meehive, which uses the Kosmix engine.

Update: I’ve updated the image below to show Kosmix’s traffic over a longer period of time. Note the steep drop last year, when Kosmix switched from its old model as a vertical search engine for health, automobiles, and travel to the current site. It may be picking up quickly, but it still has a long ways to go before it reaches its past peak. Kosmix has clarified that the drop is due to a change in the way comScore counts its data. Before October, comScore treated RightHealth (which currently has 6.6M monthly uniques) as part of the Kosmix network, and now treats them as separate entities.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:07 pm

Divers Attempt Underwater Coral Transplant In Japan

Divers below the waves of Sekisei Lagoon, Japan are hard at work with compressed air drills in hand and hopes of bringing new life to Japan’s largest coral reef near the southern end of the Okinawa chain of islands.With revolutionary new technology and a substantial amount of taxpayer money, the Japanese government is hoping to combat what has been previously reported to be a 90 percent reduction of coral around Okinawa’s islands, according to the New York Times.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:05 pm

Survey Says Baby Boomers Think Playing With Your Blackberry During A Meeting Is Rude

The generation gap all too often expresses itself as a technology gap. A survey of white collar workers (most of them in the legal profession) commissioned by NexisLexis offers a glimpse at changing attitudes towards technology between Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Gen Yers. (Full survey embedded below). One thing Baby Boomers apparently really hate is when the rest of us are not paying attention during meetings and instead checking our e-mail or Twitter accounts on our mobile phones and laptops. A full 69 percent of Baby Boomers surveyed agree that “PDAs and mobile phones contribute to the decline of proper workplace etiquette,” while only 47 percent of Gen Y workers see what is the big deal. (By the way, who says “PDA” anymore? I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that it must have been a Baby Boomer who put together the survey).

Pretty much everybody knows that using a laptop or Blackberry during meetings is downright rude. Even 57 percent of Gen Y respondents think that it is “impolite” (compared to 67 percent of Baby Boomers). But the Gen Y workers surveyed can deal with it better. Only 49 percent find such behavior “distracting,” while 68 percent of Baby Boomers did. And so it goes, younger workers also tend to find such multi-tasking during meetings more productive (Gen Y: 35% versus Boomers: 20%) and efficient (Gen Y: 35%; Boomers: 17%). While Gen Xers find them to be the most unavoidable (29% versus 21% for Gen Y and 17% for Boomers).

Perhaps that is because we rely more on e-mail than Gen Y workers The average Boomer gets the most e-mails per day (69), followed by Gen X (63), and then Gen Y (40). Those number seem awfully low to me. I get more than 69 e-mails an hour (Granted, I am weird).

My advice to anyone who finds Blackberry or laptop use during meetings rude or distracting: have fewer meetings or get to the point faster. Invariably, the conversations people are having on their laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries are increasingly more interesting than the ones that are going on in the room.

Tech Gap Survey - Get more Information Technology

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:04 pm

STMicroelectronics Supervisory Board Resolves to Submit to the Company's Annual General Meeting a Proposal to Distribute an Annual Cash Dividend of $0.12 per Share Payable in Four Quarterly Installments

GENEVA, April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Supervisory Board of STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) today approved a proposal to submit to the forthcoming 2009 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders the distribution of a cash dividend of $0.12 per outstanding share of the Company's common stock, payable in four quarterly installments from 2nd quarter 2009 through the 1st quarter 2010.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:01 pm

ZettaCore(R) Launches Molecular Interface(TM) Technology

Nano treatment enables low-cost transition to high-performance substrates and printed circuit boards DENVER and KYOTO, Japan, April 15 /PRNewswire/ -- ZettaCore, Inc., a developer of molecular electronics, today announced Molecular Interface(TM) (MI) technology.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Visualizing Data Inside the 30-ft Allosphere

TEDChris writes "The Allosphere, being created at UC Santa Barbara, is the most ambitious attempt yet at creating powerful 3d visualizations of raw scientific data, such as the structure of a crystal, or how quantum effects take place. Researchers watch from a bridge inside the 30-foot sphere, looking at data projected 360 degrees around them and listening to 3D sound. The first major public demo of the facility has just been posted at TED.com. Optimists would argue that many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs happened through a new visual way of imagining data. Penicillin and relativity come to mind. So this is either a killer new research vehicle, an incredible toy, or just an insanely expensive art project."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:49 pm

Appletell previews Mock Draft; follow NFL Draft Day on your iPhone

FROM APPLETELL - The NFL has yet to embrace the iPhone but third-party developers are stepping up to help you prepare for and follow the announcements coming out of Radio City Music Hall April 25th and 26th, and here, we’re going to take a look at Mock Draft.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:31 pm

Music Video: "In Harmony", Pomplamoose + EHX Voice Box

Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte have done another promo video for the EHX Voice Box, superimposing Nataly's singing over a live shot of the box while someone fiddles with the knobs.

Consider it an ad for the Voice Box, but one with a nice song along with it. (I spent a couple hours after Jack and Nataly's first Voice Box video and really enjoyed their work.)

Previously:

• BB Video: Inside Electro-Harmonix, guitar pedal engineers and ...
• "Hallelujah I'm a Bum" played on homemade ukulele - Boing Boing
• Video: Inside EHX's new guitar pedals - Boing Boing Gadgets
• "Golden Throat" talk box from the golden age - Boing Boing Gadgets
• Video: Jean Michel Jarre synths China's face clean off (1981 ...

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:07 pm

Time Warner Broadband Cap Trial Rescheduled in Texas

jcrousedotcom writes "Time Warner cable apparently has heard that folks aren't too happy with their plan to meter their unlimited connections. From the first paragraph of the article: 'Time Warner Cable's proposed trials of consumption-based billing were originally slated to begin in several markets this summer, where customers would be a part of a tiered pricing scheme. Pricing would have started at 1 GB per month for $15, and go up to 100 GB per month for $75, and include a per-gigabyte overage fee. The public's reaction was less than favorable, and the trials in Texas have been rescheduled.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:07 pm

Scientists Discover Asexual Female Ant Colony

A species of tropical ant appears to have done away with sex altogether.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:05 pm

Gizmodo mounted on maple blocks, sounds great

John Mahoney's article about a meeting with famed audiophile Michael Fremer is wonderfully written. In fact, it's the most effective pro-audiophile piece I've seen in years. He went in skeptical and emerged a believer, even after hearing the telltale hiss of dead technology.

That it's a well-crafted piece is what makes it so sad to read: his hypothesis is that even if normal people can't appreciate what makes ultra-expensive gear special, audiophiles can. This is a myth, and to honor it like this is to sell it.

His tests, of course, were entirely subjective. Mahoney's conclusions emerge with an unremarkable discovery--that a 256kbs MP3 played on an iPod doesn't sound as good as a well-kept vinyl record on high-end gear. It moves on in steps, however, toward serious discussion of the differences between varieties of thousand-dollar power cable and Flatland-like descriptions of the amazing aural world of the audiophile.

I've met Fremer, just once. He's a a nice chap who sincerely believes in the technology, unlike some of the people who sell it. But Mahoney's journey from skepticism to poesy shouldn't surprise you, because it's how music store salesmen have been "turning" skeptics since the beginning of time: establish a difference between shit and sugar, and then say "But if you pay more, you get more sugar. Are you sure you can't hear it?"

The hard part in making sense of this is in challenging what we understand to be reasonable. When you think you hear a difference but haven't done the work to rule out bad mastering or other variables, how can you be sure? And when you don't even notice the hiss anymore, how do you trust your own frail senses with so much money?

There's only one way to rationalize it all: golden ears. Mahoney is not afraid to couch that epiphany in the requisite vaguely scientific terminology:

Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it.

But John, was it danceable?

The problem isn't that expensive gear doesn't sound better than rubbish. The problem is the claim that you can go from "98.6 to 99.1 percent by swapping out a $2,600 AC power cable for a $4,000 one."

There is not a law of diminishing returns here: there is merely the law of whether you can hear it or not. Tests under controlled conditions would justify these claims, but no-one ever agrees to do them.

Such recalcitrance is fine, but it's an admission that audiophiles have supernatural powers.

And that is why it's O.K. to shoot them.

Why We Need Audiophiles [Gizmodo]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:56 pm

Google.Org CEO To Head Up Skoll Fund

The founding executive director of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet search giant, announced he is leaving the company to head a venture backed by the Skoll Foundation, the American Free Press reported.Google's Chief Philanthropic Evangelist, Larry Brilliant, announced his departure
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:51 pm

Rumor: Microsoft extending Halo into the mobile realm?

What would tech journalists/bloggers do without cryptic-yet-seemingly-revealing job postings? Many a solid rumor has started as a result of these suggestive job position descriptions.

Take Microsoft’s recent posting on CareerBuilder.com (now listed as “expired”), for example. “[Microsoft is] looking to blend console, web, and mobile to create an immersive Halo world that follows the dedicated Halo fan wherever they go…As an engineer on this team, your responsibility will be to deliver a great out-of-game interactive experience that takes the next step beyond the systems found in Halo 3″ (emphasis added).

While I may have never jumped on the Halo bandwagon (Wii is all I need!), I know a number of Halo-obsessed freaks “connoisseurs” who would probably give a Master Chief arm and leg to have mobile access to game stats, clan communications, tangential story lines, a mobile Halo social network, and related mobile Halo mini-games (all of which are pure conjecture, by the way - the jobs post was quite vague). Just imagine, while waiting for the bus/train, you could talk smack to rival players, frag some grunts, or up your rank with EXP-building mini-games. Why talk to the people around you when you can just talk to your clan mates?

[via 1UP]

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:47 pm

Energy Secretary Chu Endorses "Clean Coal"

DesScorp writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is endorsing 'clean coal' technology and research, and is taking a pragmatic approach to coal as an energy supply. '"It absolutely is worthwhile to invest in carbon capture and storage because we are not in a vacuum," Mr. Chu told reporters Tuesday following an appearance at an Energy Information Administration conference. "Even if the United States or Europe turns its back on coal, India and China will not," he said. Mr. Chu added that "quite frankly I doubt if the United States will turn its back on coal. We are generating over 50% of our electrical energy from coal."' The United States has the world's largest reserves of coal. Secretary Chu has reversed his positions on coal and nuclear power, previously opposing them, and once calling coal 'My worst nightmare.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:22 pm

LG Viewty II is coming

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Imaging, Digital Cameras

I wouldn’t mind trying out one of these babies.  It looks sweet.  LG’s official German blog confirmed today** the first official info on the Viewty II, which also apparently now goes by the Viewty Smart.

So what do we have?  The GC900 (the official model number) is less than a half inch thick, and weighs in at only 3.17 ounces.  The screen is decent sized at a 3 inch WVGA for your viewing pleasure, with a touchscreen display.  The phone uses LG’s 3D S-Class User Interface, and will offer what the manufacturer informs us to be “personalization options that will be taken to a new level here.”  Guess we will have to wait and see just what that means. 

The 8 megapixel camera (Schneider-Kreuznach) with a (purported) Xenon flash (although it looks a tad small to be a Xenon) is obviously the big draw for this phone.  It also features an on-screen slider key which allows switching back and forth between still images and video (720 x 480 pixel resolution).  You’ve also got geotagging GPS for fun with all those photos.

The Viewty II (or Viewty Smart—take your pick) has 32 GB of storage, DivX playback, Quad-band GSM, HSPA, and Wi-Fi.  And by the way, some of the pictures floating around out there have the Orange logo on them, so it looks like they are probably a carrier.

So, while it is a little weird that the company popped some information on their blog page and then pulled it the same day…apparently it was a bit of a “oops, that wasn’t supposed to be announced yet” sort of thing, since now they are saying that more info will be coming soon. 

No word on availability or pricing yet, but keep it here for more details as they come in. 

** The blog apparently confirmed, then pulled the confirmation a few hours later.

Hit the break for more photos of this sweet thang.

via: phonearena

Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:02 pm

Double Review: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy for the iPhone/iPod Touch

Quick Version: You’re a fountain of useless knowledge and desperately searching for an outlet to convey your brain power. Sony Pictures Television has the perfect solution for you with two iconic game shows for your iPhone or iPod Touch: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

(Editor’s note: By the way, we’ll be giving away copies of these games in the coming days as part of a much bigger iPhone App giveaway bonanza. More on that later.)

Long Version: It’s safe to say that we’ve all seen an episode or two from either of the aforementioned game shows in our lives, so you probably gist of things. I was never the biggest fan of Wheel of Fortune, but Jeopardy was right in my wheelhouse. SPT did a very good job of replicating the game show experience for handheld consumption and both offer countless hours of fun.

Wheel of Fortune:

Gameplay is strikingly similar to that of the actual game show sans Pat Sajak and Vanna White. The game is played in portrait mode and swiping from left to right spins the wheel. You have full control of how much you actually want to spin the wheel by swiping as little or as much of the screen as you want.

You can skip ahead when other players are guessing letters or spinning the wheel, which is a nice touch. Who wants to watch a computer pretend to think? There are three difficulty modes and 12 trophies to be won. Trophies vary from winning a game in easy mode to winning the million dollar grand prize.

What I found to be really confusing and irritating about the game were some of the categories and their respective answers. For example, what the heck does “racing tip of the iceberg” have to do with “before & after”? There were a few other instances where I was perplexed by the answers to certain categories but I was too dumbstruck to take a screen grab.

I’d recommend the game to anyone who is a fan of the game show or has an endless bank of random facts. It’s also pretty good for stimulating the old noggin while taking the train or bus when you’d otherwise be dozing off, looking around aimlessly, or trying to figure out which person sitting near you smells like pee.

Jeopardy:

Like the Wheel, you won’t see a dapper Alex mocking you in the iPhone version of Jeopardy. Gameplay on this particular title isn’t as straight forward, though. This one is played in landscape mode and also allows you to customize your own avatar.

This, too, has three difficulty levels, but also has a single player mode. You’re pitted against two other players, but categories for each round of Jeopardy are limited to three.

Actual gameplay was a bit awkward for me. Switching from category to category could be disastrous if it’s a tight game and you can’t remember which category is what. You can’t see what the other two categories are without choosing a clue from another category. Maybe my short-term memory is just shot, but I found this to be annoying.

When an opposing player is in control of the board, you can still opt to answer or pass it along to someone else. That was another odd aspect of gameplay, but whatever works, I guess.

I’m not the biggest fan of how SPT ported this game to the iPhone, but I still play it on the train to keep my brain from going to mush. Despite the irregularities in gameplay from the actual show, I’d recommend you pick this one up.

iTunes link: Wheel of Fortune
iTunes link: Jeopardy

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Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:01 pm

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD Video Trick Will Have You Doing a Double Take

I've watched this video at least five times in a row and haven't been able to figure out how they pulled this off.

The clip was recorded with a Samsung Omnia, a cam phone that shoots 720P video as well as 8 megapixel stills. But the best part isn't the tech. It's the guy's girlfriend who isn't wowed by his sleight if hand in the smallest. I'm not going to give away the surprise, just watch. Trust me, it's pretty cool.

So what do you think Gadget Lab collective? How was this trick executed? I'm pretty sure the answer is obvious and dead simple — no CGI no body doubles — but if there are any special effect buffs in the house, we'd sure like to hear your theories.

[Via the Giz]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 6:37 pm

Macintosh/iPhone software update roundup - April 14, 2009

FROM APPLETELL - Did you know you can use your iPhone to track the Space Shuttle? Yep. You can also run a Finger Marathon, play with Balloon Headed Boy, become a Mini Golf Ace, and read one of the oldest books ever written.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 6:19 pm

Amazing miniature cabinet plays classic games

[pocket_lucho]'s miniature arcade games are just about perfect: sized just big enough to be playable, but small enough to be truly amazing.

Source [Elotrolado via Make]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:59 pm

Rubik's Cube Card Reader

USB 270° x 270° Cubic Card Reader [Brando via Awesomer]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:57 pm

MetroPCS gets the nearly vintage Motorola Hint QA30

Whoa-ho-ho! Way to keep these releases on lock, MetroPCS! Striking while the iron is luke warm, they’ve released the Motorola QA30, a mere six months after it first became available.

With Stereo Bluetooth and the QWERTY keyboard being the primary notable features, the specs weren’t exactly mind boggling when the handset first launched - so half a year later and priced at $249 (albeit without contract), it’s a tad underwhelming. That said, MetroPCS needs more QWERTY handsets something fierce, so any new messaging friendly mobile is probably a welcome addition.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:39 pm

StumbleUpon founders buy back site from eBay

Section: Business News, Web, Web 2.0, Websites

StumbleUpon has been returned to founders after being owned by eBay for nearly two years.  eBay purchased the site in 2007 for $75 million and has never made use of it.  StumbleUpon is a user recommended website guide that utilizes web tools as well as a free toolbar.  StumbleUpon is irrelevant to eBay and since it was never integrated with the auction site; it did not benefit from the acquisition.

The price that the founders paid to have the company returned to them has not been disclosed by either party.  On the eBay blog, the company stated the following in regards to the deal, “As eBay Inc. expands its leadership in online payments and e-commerce, it has become apparent that there are few long-term, strategic synergies between StumbleUpon and the eBay Inc. portfolio.”

Now that the site is independent again, it will have the ability to expand and add more services.  The founders hope to see continued growth of the site that was first launched in 2001.

Read: [PC World]

Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:07 pm

Search for Anthony and Cleopatra's Tombs Begins

Excavation will begin in Egypt to find the tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:00 pm

Greenhouse Designed to Grow Veggies on Moon

A lunar greenhouse is in the works so astronauts may someday dine on fresh vegetables.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 4:50 pm

LG Viewty II gets a new name and temporary official acknowledgment

For just a few hours early this morning, a post heralding the LG Viewty II could be seen at LG’s official German blog. Apparently it went up too early, because it was pulled down within hours - because that somehow fixes things.

Except that this is the internet, and people are just too dang good at keeping an eye out for this stuff. PhoneArena caught the goods this time.

Here’s what trickled out into the land of officialness:

• New name! It’s not the Viewty II, it’s the Viewty Smart. Not sure how smart it is to try and battle it out for Google Juice for the term “smart phone”, but hey - good luck.
• 12.4 mm thick, weighs just 90 grams
• S-Class Interface
• 8 megapixel camera
• GPS, WiFi, HSDPA

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 4:42 pm

Switching Tower Lights Could Save Birds

Changing some light bulbs could prevent more than half of migratory bird deaths.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:50 pm

Skype IPO coming in 2010

Section: Business News, Communications, VoIP

Imagine you’re the head of a large company with three different divisions.  Two of the divisions work extremely well together, while the third seems strange and out of place.  So you try to sell it, and nobody seems interested in buying, at least nobody with the money you want.  What do you do?  Of course, break off the division into its own company and offer it as an IPO sometime in the near future.  Makes sense, right?

That’s exactly what eBay is doing with Skype.  After paying a total of $3.1 billion for the company back on 2005, eBay is having a bout of buyer’s remorse.  So, within the first half of 2010, Skype will be offered up as an IPO.  There will likely be a decent amount of interested parties, as Skype has recently announced it made $551 million in 2008 from 405 million users, and that number is likely to increase to $1 billion by 2011.  Its reach is expanding beyond just the desktop to iPhones, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones, which will likely contribute a lot to that number.  The iPhone app saw 2 million downloads in the first week, with a quarter of those being new users.

The IPO of Skype will potentially open a lot of possibilities for the company.  It wouldn’t be too surprising if the previous owners try to gain a majority of the stock and control the company once again.  They’ve been trying to buy Skype back from eBay as of late, and may see this as an opportunity.  Or perhaps Google, who tried buying Skype back in 2005, might be interested in at least buying some stock to have a stake in the company.  Either way, given how popular Skype has become and its profitability, it wouldn’t be surprising if the IPO gets as hyped as the Google IPO did when it came.

Read [NY Times]
Read [Wired]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:13 pm

Space Station Treadmill Named After Comedian

Stephen Colbert didn't get a module named after him but settled for a treadmill.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

5 Inexplicable Fixie Fashions

Fixed-gear bicycles are the scourge of modern bike fashion. Actually, fixies are almost nothing but fashion. If you took a swaying, brainless, gazelle-like catwalk model and turned her into a bike, a fixie is what you’d get.

It’s not enough that these cred-machines don’t even work well as city bikes — their track-bike heritage means that they have but one gear, no freewheel and no brakes — no, the riders have to take things even further and load up their rides with all manner of style-mandated extras. In fact, so much like a cult is the fixie "movement" that we wouldn’t be surprised to see the FBI get involved, right before the whole fixie underground goes up in flames, barricaded into a San Fransisco coffee shop and dressed in ironic T-shirts. Here is a list of the five worst fixie fashion faux pas:

Photo: Incase Designs/Flickr

Top Tube Pad

These were first seen on BMX bikes back in the 1980s, and did about as much good than as today. A thin foam cylinder wrapped around the top-tube does little to protect the family jewels from a whack, but it does at least protect the knees from a knock when you bail on a 360º endo. For a fixie, though, it is nothing more than posing — if the riders were that worried about safety, they’d buy a front brake.

Photo: richardmasoner/Flickr

Cards in Spokes

Why? This is the bike equivalent of wearing a top-hat with the ace of spades tucked into the band — foolish teen-minded posturing which serves as nothing more than an in joke between equally feeble-brained "insiders." If the perpetrators would make one simple modification, clipping the card to the frame with a clothespin and letting it rattle against the spokes, at least their rides would sound like a motorbike. Well, maybe not a motorbike, but at least we’d hear them coming so we could look away and deprive them of their life-blood: attention.

Photo: richardmasoner/Flickr

The Mag Wheel

I’m not sure if these are even still called mag wheels, but they were back in the '80s when the coolest BMXs had Skyways or Zytecs on them. They may have looked dumb even back then, but at least they matched — you bought a pair and put them front and back.

Today, these plastic wheels have grown to road-bike size and are only ever found on the front. There is actually a reason for this. Cycle couriers, the deities of fixie fashion, use these five-spoked wheels so they can more quickly sling a chain through the front wheel. As always, fixie riders took the form but not the function, so we have to contend with this eyesore.

Photo: Seth W./Flickr

Handlebars

There are many variations on the mindless mutilation of fixie 'bars. It seems that the less practical and more uncomfortable, the better. Standout mods include handlebar tape (or the lack of — the less the better, especially in winter) and the "flop-and-chop," which means that you flip your drop handlebars in the head and cut the ends off, often resulting in something a matador would be scared to face.

One evergreen favorite is to trim the bars down to an unusable length, barely wide enough to contain your two hands. This is also a courier hand-me-down — the pros do it so they can slip between close-packed cars in traffic. Fixie riders do it to "keep it real."

Photo: elecnix/Flickr

The Brooks Saddle

I’m not going to knock the Brookes Saddle — I have one on my Dutch city bike. But the old-style seats look quite ridiculous on a modern, clean-lined fixie. And clean-lined it is: While removing fenders, brakes, gears cables and pretty much everything else does nothing for safety or comfort, it does make for a spare, cool-looking machine. Unless, of course, it has an old-fashioned, leather and spring seat on there. This is, like all fixie fashion, just plain odd.

Photo: cleverchimp/Flickr

Oh, and there is more. We haven’t even touched on the ironic pie plate (a subject handled gracefully by Bike Snob NYC) or the unhealthy obsession with gear ratios. And is it just me or do you hardly ever see somebody actually riding a fixie? The phenomenon has started to invade my home town of Barcelona in Spain, and I see more and more of the things every day. And they are all being pushed along the sidewalk.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 2:32 pm

Asexual Ants Give up on Males

A species of ants has completely ended its sex life and produces only females.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 2:00 pm

5 Inexplicable Fixie Fashions

Fixed-gear bicycles are increasingly popular — but what's really mystifying is the range of bizarre accessories that hipster fixie owners put on their bikes.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:30 pm

AT&T launches FamilyMap, let the spying begin

Sorry school-skipping teenagers and spouse-cheating losers, AT&T has launched FamilyMap, which will track a phone’s location either by GPS or cell-phone tower triangulation on a Microsoft Live Map. Other providers have offered similar services for a while, but now AT&T has gotten into the big brother spy game.

The service is free for the first 30 days and then $9.99 a month for two phones or $14.99 for up to five there afterwards. Each phone that is locatable will periodically receive a text message reminding them that big brother can keep tabs on the phone, but this message is random about once a month. Plus, a similar text message is sent when the service is activated limited the chance that a snooping parent or spouse can spy without the phone user’s knowledge. Also, this service can locate a stolen phone, however retrieving said phone from the baddie isn’t included with the monthly rate. Well then, let the over obsesive location tracking begin!

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Source: MobileCrunch | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:20 pm

Honeybees Don't Fall for Cheap Perfume

Honeybees consistently hone in on flowers that produce the best nectar.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm

Hand Solo: Cable Stretchers for Single-Handed Bike Repair

The Park Tool Cable Stretcher is a uni-tasker, but its single job appears to be so helpful that we’ll let it through.

The stretcher is a one handed (once set up) device with which to fit and adjust gear and brake cables on your bike. Fixie users, who have neither of these heathen features on their pristine machines, can stop reading now.

If you are anything like me, you tend to grab any tool at hand to do a job, even if it is the wrong one. I once ruined a neighbor’s needle-nosed pliers when tightening spokes to re-true a wheel, for example, and snapped an electrical screwdriver putting up shelves. And of course, kitchen shears are the ideal tool for stripping electrical cables.

So my usual MO when fixing brakes and gears is to use a pair of pliers and somehow try to tighten the nut or screw one-handed. The Cable Stretcher instead locks on to the end of the cable while providing a handy lever to pull the cable away from the fixing. Ingenious, and I’m surprised I have never seen one before.

These things have clearly been around for a while but, as the summer fast approaches, I thought it would be worth pointing out as the fair-weather cyclists get back on the road. Steel with chrome plate and padded handles, $40.

Incidentally, this reminds me of an upcoming project: I’m going to find an old beater racing bike and fix it up into a fixie -- complete with top tube pad and playing card in the spokes (kidding on the last two). Any advice would be appreciated. I’ll make a full start to the project when I find the frame, and post pictures here.

Product page [Park Tool via Toolmonger]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 12:49 pm

Car Seat Add-On Protects Your Crack

Today’s winner of the award for tortuously squeezing a reference to the poor economy into a press release is Drop Stop. It begins like this:

 

With the continued economic downturn but affordable gas, road travel is the expected mode of choice for vacationing families this upcoming season.

How can Drop Stop save you? By selling you a couple of neoprene strips for $20. They squoosh between seat-squab and center console and catch anything from keys to cellphones to greasy French Fries. The moral argument against this pointless device is that if you are driving a car, you should be driving — not eating or chatting on the phone or digging out loose change (all examples in the suitably cheesy infomercial on the site).

But there is another, more practical argument against the Drop Stop — What if you, you know, drop things on the other side of the car, between the seat and the door? In the words of the internet meme: “FAIL”.

Product page [Drop Stop. Thanks, Renee!]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 12:11 pm

Send Real, Card Postcards from Your Real, Electronic iPhone

You know the situation. You’re away on vacation and you think “why don’t I send a postcard?” You find a suitably tacky specimen and then try to track down a stamp, discovering that you have to visit the tobacconist to buy one, and the tobacconists are closed today. Finally, the card bought, filled out and stamped, you put it in a postbox to commence its six-week odyssey through the foreign postal system.

It’s so World 1.0, right? What we need is a way to snap a picture and have it magically turn up on Aunt Flo’s doormat. This is what SnapShot Photo does. The iPhone application accesses your film roll (so you can even use it on an iPod Touch) — you choose a photo, add a message and an address and hit send. A few days later, a printed postcard drops through the letterbox.

We consider this to be the spiritual successor to the Polaroid, especially as Polaroid itself has done such a bad job of things. Snapshot looks expensive to begin with, but if you figure in the cost of postage as well as the cost of the printing, it comes out similar to the price of a postcard and stamp.

The $5 app comes with three credits, and more can be bought for between $1 and $2, depending on how many you buy at once. Sending to US addresses costs one credit. International (ie. outside the US) costs two credits. It doesn’t matter where you are sending from, just where you are sending to.

I will be trying the application out — it looks like a lot of fun. Sadly, I will have to take some new pictures — the terms of service agreement manages to completely exclude the entire collection of photos on my iPod: “no obscenity, pornography, or illegal content is allowed.”

Product page [iTunes]

Product page [SnapCard]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:49 am

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