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Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant Two Months Agoevw writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago (subscription required, alternative coverage is available based on the WSJ's report). He is on track to return to work at the end of June. 'William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. ... Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states.' There are no residency requirements for transplants."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Jun 2009 | 12:16 pm Telecoms firm Nortel to sell assets to Nokia (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2009 | 12:08 pm Spunky Sputnik LED Lamp
Yanko Design via ubergizmo via DotGizmo
Source: CrunchGear | 20 Jun 2009 | 12:04 pm Review: Apple's iphone 3.0 Software Upgrade - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Fishing for Clothes - Ucon Campaign Makes Finding Good Fashion Easy (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Ucon has released a new commercial called The Deep Search, where finding good clothes becomes a search for wildlife. The Deep Search is a two-minute commercial with no words and strong...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 10:10 am One giant leap toward space tourism in New Mexico - CNN
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 10:03 am Apple finds silver lining in verdict on green claims - Reuters
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 10:01 am 20 Unusual USB Appliances - From Plug-In Pregnancy Tests to Tiny Desk Vacuums (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Appliances are old news, but ones that plug into computers via USB are relatively new. As computers continue to be prevalent in our lives and people work longer hours, the number of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:50 am Poland's PBG buys Ukraine construction firm for $12 mlnWARSAW, June 20 (Reuters) - Polish builder PBG has gained control of Ukrainian construction group Energopol-Ukraina for 40 million zlotys ($12.3 million), PBG said in a statement late on Friday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:40 am Rolling Bookshelf Seating - Bookinist & Easy Reader Let You Take Your Books With You (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Bookinist and Easy Reader are a book-lovers best friend. These unusual seats not only store your favorite reads, but they also serve as mobile chairs that let you roll yourself...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:29 am Bozeman, MT Drops Password Info Requirement - Slashdot
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:16 am Bozeman, MT Drops Password Info Requirementmcmoodle writes "Bozeman, Montana has decided that they don't want applicant personal information after all, citing a worldwide backlash on the issue: '"Effective at noon today the city of Bozeman permanently ceased the practice of requesting that candidates selected for positions under a provisional job offer to provide their usernames or passwords for candidates' internet sites," said Chris Kukulski, Bozeman City Manager. ... Kukulski says after a 90 minute staff meeting held earlier today, officials decided asking applicants to provide their passwords to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, "exceeded that which is acceptable to our community." Kukulski apologized for the negative impact the issue has generated from news organizations and blogs around the world.' I didn't have any doubt this would be immediately squashed. Now I'm just curious as to how many personal accounts they actually went through!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:12 am Fowl Poop Facials - Bird Poo Proves to be Therapeutic for Your Face (UPDATE) (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) We previously brought you news that Victoria Beckham had revealed her skin beauty tips of having bird poo facials, but here is a little more information on these fascinating spa facials...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 9:00 am Tibet drought worst in 30 years: Chinese state mediaA drought in Tibet has intensified into the region's worst in three decades, leaving thousands of hectares parched and killing more than 13,000 head of cattle, China's state media said...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 8:32 am Activision CEO Warns Sony That the PS3 Needs a Price Cut - Slashdot
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 7:27 am Flip Has Little Chance In An iPhone WorldAs successful as Pure Digital has been with their Flip line of video cameras - selling $150 million worth of them last year - they face a new type of threat that the can't defeat. The video capable iPhone,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 7:21 am Flip Has Little Chance In An iPhone World
Flip cameras have really grown on me. A year ago I didn’t see any point in it, since most point and shoot cameras did everything the Flip could do at the same or better price point, and they took good pictures, too. The Flip was very simple to use, but the software wasn’t so great and it didn’t play well with Macs. I didn’t see the point in carrying the extra device. But at the end of last year Flip released the Mino HD and everything changed. The device was a lot smaller than most point and shoot cameras, and took way better video (1280 x 720 high definition video v. 640 x 480 on most point and shoot cameras). They also fixed the software to work well with Macs. And the joy of taking a device out of the box - no cords or wires at all - was real. Their $590 million exit to Cisco was well deserved. I now love my Flip camera, and not just because the company sent me a check for $1.3 million. Along the way Pure Digital fought ridicule from the big video camera companies, who said nobody would want the device. Then, once Pure Digital proved the market, all those competitors jumped in with their own offerings. There are now many devices with similar tech specs as the Flip, but Pure Digital has managed to stay ahead of them all by innovating faster. Flip Can’t Beat The iPhone That’s just not something they’re going to be able to do v. the iPhone and other similar devices to come. The new iPhone takes very good video (640 x 480). That isn’t as good as the Flip, but it’s still able to shoot perfectly good videos on the go (example), which is exactly what the Flip is for. And the iPhone has something that the Flip will never realistically have, cellular and wifi connectivity that lets you upload your videos immediately. No need to sync back with your base computer to edit the video and upload it. You can do basic editing right on the iPhone, and publish it to YouTube immediately. As an added bonus, that video can be geo-stamped via the phones GPS capability. That makes it significantly more useful as a video device than the Flip, and worth the reduction in quality. You already have to make some quality tradeoffs with the Flip anyway, so if you are going to have a second video device after your iPhone, it may as well be a slightly bigger video camera that you keep in your bag. I just don’t see people grabbing that Flip when they run out the door. And one last killer feature of the iPhone - live streaming video from services like Ustream and Qik are already a reality - most TechCrunch authors have been using it for months on the old iPhone. At some point soon Apple will allow those apps to launch, and iPhone users will be able to stream video in real time from their phones to the Internet. The Flip still costs less than the iPhone, and the transition will be gradual. But most everyone carries a phone anyway. And within a couple of years video will be as ubiquitous on those phones as photos are today. Flip won’t have a chance. Or do they? Flip As A Brand v. Flip As A Device Last year I wrote about a possible way for Amazon to fork it’s Kindle business to really dominate the e-book market: build signature devices and actually pay ODMs to use the software in a unique reverse-licensing model:
Flip could do something similar - leverage its brand to convince handset manufacturers to Flip-certify their devices. Garmin, facing stiff competition for its GPS devices from mobile phones, is doing exactly this: “the nuvifone is Garmin’s entry into the cellular phone market and considered key to the company’s future. Cell phone carriers have increasingly been chipping away at Garmin’s market, adding navigational features to their phones.” There’s no reason why Cisco shouldn’t work with handset makers to make them “Flip certified” - high quality video hardware plus the awesome Flip software installed right on the phone. Another way for Flip to go is to launch a series of higher quality video cameras to compete higher up the food chain. Both strategies have big holes, and neither may work. But one thing is certain - In another year there will likely be multiple mobile devices that record video as well as the Flip, and have the benefit of GPS geo-stamping and mobile uploading. Flip will hit a huge brick wall. If the brand wants to live, it needs to adapt. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 20 Jun 2009 | 7:21 am Brier Dudley Google gives product ads a go - Seattle Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 7:11 am A Good Guide to Social MarketingI came across a good guide to social marketing that you might find interesting. Its called Social Marketing Playbook, and the folks at 360i wrote it. You can read and download it here.Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 6:13 am Liberal Party of Canada Comes Out In Support of Net Neutralitybryxal writes "The Liberal Party of Canada, currently leading in most polls, has announced yesterday that it supports Net Neutrality, saying, 'Internet management should be neutral and not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour, nor should it target certain websites, users, providers or legitimate software applications. We must protect the openness and freedom of the internet, and maintain competition to spur innovation, improve service levels and reduce costs to users.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Jun 2009 | 6:09 am Jobs Had Liver Transplant: ReportSteve Jobs had a liver transplant during his medical leave but is expected to return to work as expected later this month after a medical leave he announced to a shocked Apple community in January, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 Jun 2009 | 5:55 am Apple CEO Jobs Had Liver Transplant, Report Says (PC World)PC World - Apple CEO Steve Jobs received a liver transplant about two months ago to treat an undisclosed medical condition, according a news report published in the Wall Street Journal late Friday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2009 | 5:30 am Apple CEO gets liver transplant: report (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2009 | 5:23 am UPDATE 3-Nortel selling wireless unit to Nokia Siemens* Expands Nokia Siemens presence in North America (Adds quotes from Wall Street Journal interview with CEO)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 5:21 am Behind the Wheel | 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid A Detroit Hybrid That Hums - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:52 am iphone fever drops a notch as 3G S debuts - Los Angeles Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:44 am BB Video: Omega Recoil, Mad Electro-Makers Who Craft Giant Tesla coils
(Download / YouTube) Boing Boing Video today peeks inside the electrified world of Omega Recoil, a group of engineers and "makers" who craft giant Tesla Coils, and stage humorous and thrilling performances with those large electrical devices. What's a Tesla Coil? From the Tesla Society website: [It] is one of Nikola Tesla's most famous inventions -- essentially a high-frequency air-core transformer. It takes the output from a 120vAC to several kilovolt transformer & driver circuit and steps it up to an extremely high voltage. Voltages can get to be well above 1,000,000 volts and are discharged in the form of electrical arcs. Tesla himself got arcs up to 100,000,000 volts (...) [They] are unique in the fact that they create extremely powerful electrical fields. Large coils have been known to wirelessly light up florescent lights up to 50 feet away, and because of the fact that it is an electric field that goes directly into the light and doesn't use the electrodes, even burned-out florescent lights will glow. For viewers in San Francisco -- Omega Recoil members will be giving a talk at the 7th anniversary Dorkbot event, which features other cool "maker mutants" we've featured on Boing Boing Video before, like Jon Sarriugarte and the Boiler Bar folks. Organizer Karen Marcelo says, ...and to think this all started because i was bored seven years ago and decided to call Douglas and start the SF one in Marc Powell's garage! Pesco was a speaker at the first one! We had Brian Normanly talk about how to 'liberate' electricity from PG&E. I dont think anyone has the guts to do that now! :) Here's that first event from 2002.More on Jon Sarriugarte's blog.
Previously:
 Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:39 am Not Only Was Steve Jobs Sick, He Had A Liver Transplant.
After Apple initially tried to pass off Jobs’ gaunt physique as a minor ailment, Jobs himself came out in January and announced that the undisclosed illness he was suffering from would require him to take a leave of absence from the company. He has been on that leave ever since. But the good news in the WSJ report is that Jobs is in fact feeling well enough now to return to work as scheduled at the end of this month — which is just days away. But here’s an interesting nugget from the story:
That seems to suggest that the transition is well underway for Cook to eventually lead Apple. That shouldn’t be a surprise, Cook has done a masterful job in Jobs’ absence, pretty much doubling the value of the company’s stock during that time. Jobs has long been thought to be perhaps more important to his company than any single figure is to their’s. But his time away has seemingly proven otherwise. Of course, there was already likely a multi-year pipeline for products when Jobs left. The business angle is the important one here. Some have alleged that Jobs and Apple have held news of Jobs’ health too closely for a publicly traded company. But Apple’s board of directors, which includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Vice President Al Gore, apparently were getting updates on the situation. Here’s what the WSJ had to say on that:
We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today. Obviously, the market won’t be open again until Monday. In 2004, it was disclosed that Jobs had suffered from pancreatic cancer, which was cured. But, a side effect of that cancer is likely the thing that lead to this liver transplant, many doctors familiar with such things have stated. While little is known about the actual operation, the belief is that it was done in Tennessee, because first and foremost, the waiting list of a liver there is much lower than the rest of the country. From the WSJ:
It’s good to hear that Jobs has apparently recovered well from the very serious procedure, and we look forward to him returning to work, when he’s ready. Update: It’s worth noting that others brought up the possibility of Jobs being in Tennessee for something health-related months ago. Here’s one, here’s another, and the first comment here is very interesting:
Information provided by CrunchBase
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Source: TechCrunch | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:19 am Not Only Was Steve Jobs Sick, He Had A Liver Transplant.There really isn't much to say here beyond what are being reported as the facts. Apparently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reports tonight. When you...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:19 am America's Army 3 Has Rough Launch, Development Team Cannedincognito84 writes "The development team responsible for the creation of the freeware game America's Army 3 has been canned, days after the launch of the highly flawed game, which was distributed mostly via Steam. 'The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources.' The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which inhibited most players from playing it even two days afterward. One of the developers made a post on the official forums saying they were 'effectively stabbed in the back,' and that much of the funding was filtered to the bureaucracy. A patch has been released to address some of the game's issues."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:07 am Report: Steve Jobs Is Recovering From Liver Transplant, Still Coming Back to Apple [MediaMemo]
The Steve Jobs health story takes yet another twist–this time a happier one: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Apple CEO underwent a liver transplant earlier this spring, and is recovering from the operation. Jobs, who stepped away from day-to-day management of his company in January, is still expected to return to work later this month, the Journal said. The transplant, which the Journal says Job received “about two months ago”, may be related to a form of pancreatic cancer that the Apple (AAPL) CEO has been living with since 2003. In 2005, Jobs declared that he was “fine,” but the state of his health–or lack thereof–has been the subject of recurring speculation for years. That reached a fever pitch during the past 12 months, spurred on by his unusually gaunt appearance at Apple’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple officials originally said Jobs was suffering from a “common bug.” In January, following Jobs’ announcement that he was receiving treatment for a “nutritional problem,” stemming from a hormonal imbalance, Bloomberg reported that he was considering a liver transplant. Jobs’ response: ““Why don’t you guys leave me alone–why is this important?” The Journal says that Jobs, who was supposed to come back to work full-time by the end of this month, may ease into the role, and that COO Tim Cook, who has been running the company day-to-day in his absence, may get more responsibility. But the paper also says Jobs is back on the company’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters: “During his leave, Mr. Jobs has remained involved in key aspects of the company and reviewed products and product plans from home. He has also been seen at Apple’s headquarters, according to people who have seen him there.” Source: All Things Digital | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:02 am Jobs’s Transplant Highlights Differing Wait Times [Voices]By Laura Meckler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs’s decision to travel to Tennessee for a liver highlights the significant disparities in transplant waiting times across the country–the source of a longstanding controversy over the fairest way to distribute scarce organs. For liver transplants, the wait is particularly agonizing. Kidney replacements can often be put off for years through dialysis, where a machine does the work of the kidneys. But there is no such treatment for liver disease. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:01 am Antique Windmills Go About Their Daily Snuff GrindIn the Netherlands, a pair of aging mechanical wonders turn marinated tobacco "carrots" into an aromatic substance bound for the noses of snuff users.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am First Look: 'FlashForward' Spins Global Blackout Into Time-Warp MythosAn unexplained phenomenon leaves all the people on Earth with a two-minute, 17-second, hole in their lives. The weird setup serves as a springboard for a sprawling sci-fi show, coming this fall to ABC.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am Snuff Lures Tobacco Fiends With Whiff of Exotic HistoryWhat's that guy sticking up his nose? With smoking bans on the rise, an age-old method of getting a nicotine fix is making a comeback.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am Google vows to fight porn in China after govt rebuke
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 Straits Times | Google Working To Halt Some China Searches Wall Street Journal By Scott Morrison and Aaron Back SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Google Inc. (GOOG) said Friday it was "taking all necessary steps" to block pornographic images and content from reaching users of its Chinese service, a day after the company was warned about ... Google Tries Blocking Pornography In China China's Google Porn Crackdown |
Still waiting to get your hands on the new Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3G S? Here’s something that should occupy you for a few minutes while you wait: A side-by-side-by-side-by-side comparison of four iterations of iPhones going through various speed tests, performed by Pali Research analyst Walt Piecyk.
One unexpected result from the test Piecyk’s tests suggest that older iPhones running on the new iPhone operating system may actually be a bit slower. And yes, I checked with Piecyk–the tests were performed using AT&T (T)’s network, with Wi-Fi turned off, in midtown Manhattan.
But wait! That’s not all! Piecyk also puts the Palm Pre through its paces against the new iPhone and says (pretty hard to tell on this clip) that the Palm (PALM) phone offers a better version of clips from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Piecyk’s thesis: Sprint (S) is sending a less compressed version of the YouTube files to the Pre then AT&T sends to the iPhone.
Here's the #1 guy in line at the San Francisco Apple Store being told to hold his horses for the iPhone 3GS. There's something about that moment of "not yet, dude" that I just love.
Yes, I know the image quality isn't too hot. For what it's worth, I was using the Nokia N97 &mdash review forthcoming
Update: #1 fanboy is Adam Jackson. (thanks Doctor Popular!)
No, no - that headline wasn’t intended as commentary on the hygiene of Android users (though if a good chunk of the Android devotees I know are any indication, it very well could be. Zing!) Earlier this morning, mobile analytics group Flurry gave us an exclusive sneak peek at their Smart Phone Industry Pulse report for June. Flurry’s June report harvests data from 1,100 applications running across 4 platforms (iPhone OS, BlackBerry, J2ME, and Android) on over 40 million handsets, and sheds a bit of light on the usage habits (stickiness included) of smart phone users over the past few months.
Though Flurry offers statistical analysis for the four aforementioned platforms, adoption of Flurry’s statistical analysis agent (the bit of code that developers add to their app to enable Flurry to track usage) has proven to be substantially more popular on the iPhone and Android platforms. As such, much of the most interesting data from this report comes from these two operating systems.
Before we dive in, a quick look at Flurry’s sample group: of all the applications using Flurry’s stats agent, 79% are iPhone applications. The next largest group is Android, at 16%. BlackBerry and J2ME tail far behind, at 4% and 3% respectively.
Interestingly, the number of Flurry-enabled J2ME apps has seen an incredible drop over the 3 month period, while the iPhone has seen an equally huge growth. Don’t take this as if all of the J2ME developers are switching to the iPhone, however; the iPhone has seen a ton of growth from developers new to the mobile realm.
Nothing too surprising in the consumer usage numbers. The app numbers above already indicated that Flurry tracks far more iPhone apps than any they do for any other platform. More apps tends to work out to more users, so the iPhone absolutely dominates here. Here too, J2ME has seen dramatic shrinkage over the past 3 months.
Here’s where it gets interesting: by taking the two most heavily represented platforms (again, Android and iPhone) and comparing user loyalty on an App-by-app basis, Android wins hands down. As time increases, Android users continue to stick with apps longer.
At 30 days, the proportion of Android-vs-iPhone user retention is roughly 31% higher. By 90 days, it’s roughly 42% higher. That’s huge.
Here’s what Flurry chalks it up to:
One reason we believe retention rates vary is that Android offers far fewer applications compared to iPhone. With applications coming out on iPhone at a faster rate, iPhone users move onto other apps more quickly. For Android users, they make more use of what’s available, with less temptation to move to the next application. Other factors that could also play a role:
- The Android base tends to be “older,” have less time and interest to try new applications. Once they find an application they like, they stick with it.
- The Android base is more tolerant, tend to be more tech savvy and find ways to appreciate what they have, even if their applications aren’t perfect.
While I can’t speak for the latter two, I’d imagine that the first theory is spot on for what’s going on here. Apple’s selling the App Store to people under the idea that for any given need or interest, “There’s an App for that.” It ought to be “There are 14 apps for that”. For nearly every app, there’s an alternative or ten waiting to drag people away. It’s rough for developers, but great for the end user.
Not only are Android users using their applications longer, they’re using them more often:
37% of iPhone users use the applications they downloaded less than 5 times per month, while only 11% of Android users were in the same category. Flipping that around, roughly 35% of Android users are tapping into their apps more than 50 times per month, while only 15% of iPhone users are doing so.
Again, the reasoning behind this is likely the same as above; fewer alternatives means more usage of the apps that are already there.
If you’re a developer looking to determine which platform to port your application to next, take these numbers into mind. By the end of 2009, Android will be on enough handsets around the world that the cumulative user count may make the platform much more viable for development. If there’s an Android Market gold rush even half that of the App Store’s, you don’t want to be 25 thousandth app to go live.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Maybe you’re not game on buying a refrub Magnivox Blu-ray player even if it’s only $99.99. Meijers has the answer in the form of a Curtis Mathes Blu-ray player for the same price.
The player isn’t the latest and greatest. It doesn’t have analog surround sound outputs or is a Profile 2.0 player. But like I said yesterday, your Dad probably doesn’t care anyway. It will play back Blu-ray discs just fine.
Score free shipping with DOTMJR09 coupon code too.
This first look at the Olympus E-P1, aka the ‘Digital Pen,’ is by Wired UK editor Holden Frith.
The Olympus E-P1 is a handsome camera, and it takes handsome pictures. It also comes at a handsome price, but a day of taking photos and an hour spent examining the results suggest that it may be a price worth paying.
The design harks back to the Olympus Pen series, a landmark in popular photography that first appeared in 1959 and eventually sold 17 million units in its various guises. While the body looks back to the past, however, the innards are focused sharply on the future. The E-P1, Olympus hopes, will create a new category of camera that marries the best of a compact with the best of an SLR.
It will, for the time being at least, come with an SLR’s price tag: £699 for the body and zoom lens. That’s a bit of an obstacle, and it will put off some who fall in love with its looks. Those with a less superficial interest will stick around to see the interchangeable lenses, the large image sensor and the full manual exposure control, and may start to think about a long-term relationship.
It’s likely to be a rewarding one. The quality of the images taken during a one-day test were uniformly excellent, with fine detail and low noise even at high ISO settings. Shutter lag, the bane of the compact camera, is brief enough to seem non-existent, and auto-focus is swift and sure. The results are more than a match for SLR kits in a similar price bracket.
Its technical proficiency makes this a very good camera. What makes it great is its sense of style, which leaves an SLR feeling clunky by comparison. It’s less about looks – although the E-P1 is an order of magnitude cooler than any SLR – than a feeling of intimacy that comes with the small, perfectly formed body. It puts far less of a barrier between you and your subject than a full-sized camera.
It’s fun, too. The art filter shooting modes let you render your images in grainy black and white or lurid pop art, as well as several more subtle effects. They’re all very addictive, lending even the most mundane of shots an air of art-house profundity. The 14-42mm zoom (equivalent to 28-84mm on a full-frame camera) is a good all-rounder, while the 17mm (34mm equivalent) f2.8 pancake lens is admirably sharp and compact.
Inevitably, some compromises have had to be made to fit all this technology into such a slender frame. There’s no viewfinder, for example, and framing shots using the LCD screen is less precise than getting your face up against the glass. It’s also more of a strain on the eye, especially when the sun’s out. Nor is there a built-in flash, but with relatively fast lenses and good low-light performance, that’s less of a drawback than it might seem. A suitably retro hot-shoe flash is sold separately, as is a detachable viewfinder, but the latter only works with the fixed-length 17mm lens.
Most of the compromises, though, have been pulled off successfully. Selecting image modes via an LCD menu feels odd at first on a camera that evokes the pre-digital era, but most adjustments can be made using controls that feel reassuringly mechanical. Shutter speed and aperture are set using two scroll wheels on the back of the camera, while on the top plate, a dial selects the shooting mode and a small button provides a convenient way to adjust exposure compensation. Delving more deeply into the menus is relatively painless thanks to an intuitive interface and a combination tilt-scroll wheel that speeds up navigation. The smaller buttons on the back, like the exposure and focus lock controls, are slightly fiddly, but still eminently usable.
I am, you may have gathered, smitten with the E-P1. I wish it was a couple of hundred pounds cheaper and I wouldn’t mind a built-in viewfinder, but even so, I’m tempted. Would I sell my current camera to pay for it? Not quite. There are times when I’ll want the full SLR experience, but I’m sure that if I do take the plunge, the SLR will be spending a lot more time in the cupboard. The Olympus E-P1 is a serious camera with a sense of style, and there aren’t too many of them.
Specs:
Dimensions: 121 x 70 x 35mm (body only)
Weight: 335g (body only)
12.3-megapixel Live MOS Sensor
TruePic V image processor
Built-in IS with max. 4 EV steps efficiency
Adapter for all ZUIKO DIGITAL & OM lenses
Face Detection and Shadow Adjustment Technology
20 shooting modes (5 exposure modes, i-Auto mode, 14 scene modes)
HD Movie with stereo sound featuring depth of field and Art Filters
Multi Exposure function
Art Filters can be applied to RAW images
HDMI TV interface
Level gauge
Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface
Three frames per second with sequential shooting (max 14 in RAW mode)
ISO 100-6400 for wide-ranging sensitivity
Versatile bracketing functions for white balance and exposure
Simultaneous writing of RAW and JPEG
SD memory card (SDHC compatible)
High-speed data writing and lossless RAW compression for quick processing
7.6cm HyperCrystal LCD
Sample shot. showing grainy film effect:
Source: Hands-on: The smart, retro Olympus E-P1 [Wired UK]
Some say that the new MacBook Pros aren't pro-quality machines. The evidence given seems compelling, but a second look suggests sacred cows of the sort that Apple's never been afraid to slay.
Three examples crop up over and over again in web chatter and reviews of the new models: unswappable batteries, integrated video, and the speed of the hard drive controllers. In each case, however, the complaints have little practical meaning unless "Pro" is taken to imply every imaginable pro use (a scenario Apple has never supplicated itself to) instead of gear powerful enough to satisfya broad family of professional users.
That you can't hot-swap batteries is the poster child for flaws that seem obvious at first, but whose underlying assumptions dissolve under close inspection. For netbooks, where swapping small batteries is a practical daily reality, it's an understandable complaint. But Macs aren't netbooks, and nor are they iPods, whose batteries often failed. Apple's notebook batteries now last for more than five hours of active use per charge. Moreover, they'll be installed free of charge when you need a replacement a few years down the line. Doing so yourself requires little more than a confident hand and a screwdriver.
For the loss of an amenity that few avail themselves of, the machine itself is made lighter and smaller -- a practical benefit that professionals and consumers alike can appreciate.
Another example given is the use of integrated graphics instead of a discrete video card. Again, this seems more an issue of sacred cows than actual results: a new ATI chip sharing DDR3-based memory with the CPU outperforms many machines with discrete video, especially in the rarely-updated Mac ecosystem. For professional purposes one might put small notebooks to, the standard MBP will be very capable on the graphics front--and you can upgrade.
A good illustration of the thinking behind this complaint, I think, came when someone sought to demonstrate the lack of "professional" quality in the MBP 13" by running Windows-based gaming benchmarks on it. People often assume that professionalism means simply having outrageously high-end gear, but that isn't the case. Professionals need tools, not toys.
The third example: earlier this week, many complained about the SATA bus in these new machines being 1.5Gbps instead of 3Gbps. You'll only be affected by this if you install expensive third-party drives (something that would be just as troublesome to do as replacing the battery!) but everyone seems to be appalled by this.
Perhaps this explains Apple's supposed disdain for its most devoted fans: they just don't appreciate the image that Apple seeks to project of itself (however self-serving it is) whereby design is all about the user experience instead of the spec sheet. When Apple says "Pro," it imagines artists and architects, musicians and lawyers--but never just one of them. This is why its gear is so interesting, despite the pretensions of its marketing culture.
There is one professional community that will be disappointed by the smaller models: video pros stiffed by the loss of A/V ports and the ExpressCard slot. But photographers will love the new SD card reader. All this proves is that Apple is as capricious about details as it is disinterested in cultivating niche markets--but you all knew this already, right?
Our pals at Sparkle Labs released a new kit designed to introduce you to the basics of hands-on electronics. The Discover Electronics Kit contains a slew of standard components like resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, potentiometers, LEDs, a timer integrated circuit, a breadboard to connect everything together, and of course an instruction manual with a variety of projects. It reminds me of those fun electronics kits with the onboard components and springy terminals that I played with as a kid! At $50, the Discovery Electronics Kit looks like a great gift for any aspiring hardware hacker.
For a short period at their peak speed, the birds folded their wings and drilled down through the air at speeds up to 27.3 meters per second (61 miles per hour)..."Hummingbird pulls Top Gun stunts"
Adjust for body length, and the world just got a new fastest bird, (integrative biology grad student Chris) Clark says. The hummingbirds’ speed reached 385 body lengths per second, easily beating the peregrine falcon’s recorded dives at 200 body lengths per second. (Though the falcon was diving at 70 meters per second.) A fighter jet with its afterburners on reaches 150 body lengths per second, and a space shuttle screaming down through the atmosphere hits 207 body lengths per second.
Section: Web, Websites, Google
With news reports stating about how Iranian protesters have been using Twitter as a way to relay events, Google and Facebook have both rushed to add Iranian language support on their respective websites. Both are adding Persian translation services on the sites as a way to help Iranians communicate to other parts of the world.
Discord has erupted in Iran since the election last week and there has been a spike in the amount of Google and Facebook pages devoted to the aftermath. Most have been created in Persian with English speakers unable to read the content. Facebook was able to quickly offer translation by enlisting the aid of hundreds of Persian speakers. The Google translation service is currently only available to translate between English and Persian. Efforts are being made to expand the service to include the other 40 languages included on Google.
The news about the translation options were posted on both of the sites’ blogs. All translation services are free to users.
Read: [CNET]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 New York Times | The new carbon billboard in Times Square. Newsweek By Michael D. Lemonick | Newsweek Web Exclusive Climate change is likely to have all sorts of nasty consequences over the next century—among them, according to a brand-new report from the US Global Change Research program, an increase in torrential ... Now Counting Carbons NYC billboard monitors rising greenhouse gases |
Palm may have wowed gadget geeks with its new Palm Pre phone but the company seems to be having a much tougher time convincing application developers to get on board.
The Pre’s app store, known as the App Catalog, had just about 30 apps one week after the device’s June 6 launch. The number has remain unchanged since then, says Medialets, a mobile analytics and ad targeting company.
“This number is a mere fraction on what we’ve seen at launch for other app stores,” says Rana Sobhany, vice president for Medialets.
What’s kept developers away has been the fact that the software developers’ kit hasn’t been easy to get, and the low user base of the Palm Pre compared to rivals such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, say industry watchers.
Palm released the Pre on June 6 exclusively on the Sprint network. But the company has not been saying much about the Pre’s app store to date.
Since Apple first introduced the idea of an integrated store for third-party programs with the iPhone, other smartphone makers have been trying to catch up. The iPhone’s app store, which launched in July 2008, has become a hugely popular feature among its users, who have downloaded the store’s more than 50,000 apps over 1 billion times. It has also helped create a new generation of mobile developers, some of whom have struck it rich creating games and other applications for the phone. Since the iPhone’s launch, other companies including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Nokia, and Google have launched their own stores for mobile software.
Nine days before the Pre launched, Pre’s App Catalog went live with 4 apps (Classic, Sudoku, Today Show, and Where). By launch day it had grown to 18 apps total, says Medialets, and now stands at 30.
One reason for the slow start could be that Palm has been very selective about giving out the Software Developers Kit (SDK) prior to the device’s launch.
In fact, the SDK is still not widely available. A Palm spokesperson said the apps in the Pre catalog are “preview apps from select developers.” “We have not announced nor fully rolled out our SDK publicly,” said the spokeswoman.
That may be a reason why all the apps in the App Catalog store, with the exception of one, are still in the beta mode, says Medialets.
Palm’s moves have turned off at least one developer. “Palm is only sharing their SDK with top secret developers,” says Robert Patterson, director at Nex Studios, which has created apps for the iPhone and Sony PlayStation 3. “So screw them, we’ll keep developing for a platform like iPhone that already has millions of users.”
Patterson says he is impressed the Pre’s operating system but the lack of widespread availability of the SDK and the tiny number of Pre users makes it not worth the development effort for small shops. “The market is not there yet for the Pre,” he says. “So, to be honest, we don’t really care about Palm right now.”
If other small developers share Patterson’s feelings, it could spell doom for Palm’s Pre App Catalog.
Palm’s selective distribution of the SDK for developers is in contrast with how the company wooed programmers before the device’s launch.
The company’s biggest promise for WebOS, the new operating system that powers the Palm Pre, is that it would be easy to develop for. In February, Palm held an online tutorial that touted the ease of creating an app for the Pre using HTML and JavaScript.
Ted Wugofski, chief technology officer at mobile app company Handmark, agrees that developing apps for the Pre is easy. Handmark was one of the select few developers to have its app, Express Stock, available in the Pre Catalog at launch. “The Pre requires simpler technology for apps and we found the development process to be fairly smooth,” says Wugofski.
Handmark worked closely with Palm, which reviewed the app’s interface and suggested changes, he says. “They guided us and let us know how they wanted the UI to be,” says Wugofski.
The move indicates Palm wants to offer users the best experience with apps in the Pre Catalog. But somewhere along the way the company may have gotten too controlling, Wugofski suggests, skewing the game in favor of large companies. “I can understand they want to offer users apps of the highest quality at launch but it also makes it difficult for smaller developers to participate,” he says.
It is not clear if Palm will adopt an approval process for apps on the Pre similar to what Apple does for the iPhone. Handmark says Palm’s involvement with its app creation process was because the company didnt’ have a set of published guidelines for Pre developers yet. Handmark didn’t have to go through an approval process because Palm chose to partner with it.
What may be encouraging for developers is that the Pre App Catalog publishes data on how many times each app has been downloaded, which other app stores don’t, says Sobhany. “Apple’s App Store listed downloads only for a couple of hours post-launch before they were made unavailable,” she says. “Android Market provides buckets of download ranges which, at the low end are helpful, but at the upper end vary widely.”
Palm has also not disclosed the revenue sharing arrangement it will put in place for developers for the Pre Catalog.
“Since the SDK is not public yet, we have not disclosed the details,” says a Palm spokeswoman.
See also:
Palm Scores a Modest Hit, Despite Problems
Photo: Pre App Catalog (rhastings/Flickr)
By Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Iranian protesters looking for unblocked avenues on the Internet might consider World of Warcraft.
Network-security firm Arbor Networks says it has a rough sketch of how the government’s firewall works and that it appears to be selectively blocking Internet applications, particularly online video and email.
In the report, Craig Labovitz includes a graph showing a big uptick in Web video traffic prior to the election — “presumably reflecting high levels of Iranian interest in outside news sources,” — which stops around 6 p.m. Saturday in Tehran “and unlike the Web, never returns to pre-election levels,” he writes.
Email fared similarly, though the data indicates that outgoing messages may have been blocked even before the election was complete.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
FROM APPLETELL - The iPhone 3G S we have all been eagerly waiting for has arrived today, and many people are very happy to have gotten their hands on one. The launch may have been just as successful as the original iPhone 3G, minus a lot of the coverage.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
By Nitrozac and Snaggy
Photo Credit: Jae Won Joh
The sun cracked over the horizon, and off we went. Like any good Apple fan boys bloggers, we camped out (in multiple places around the country, even) to pick up our iPhone 3G S. We’ll have our final, non-rushed review up sometime in the next few days - in the mean while, it’s time for you to voice up.
We’ve got our opinions, forged from the steels of writing about and playing with too many cell phones cell phones. We want to hear what you think, dear iPhone owner. Whether that new iPhone 3G S is your first stab at this whole Apple-made cell phone nonsense or you’ve been rockin’ the fruitphone since the EDGE-only days of yester-yesteryear, we want your insight.
Love it? Hate it? Share your wisdom in the comments below.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Section: Communications, Gadgets / Other, Web, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Even though I took a week off from my Crack column, those feeding off the marketing hype definitely didn’t stop. We’ll look at the movers and shakers in the industry that clearly cry out for a good detoxing and we’ll look at the consumers that can’t get enough.
This week on Who’s on Crack:
To the 317,000 people that phoned the DTV transition hotline for help: share your secrets on evading this story. Please. I would love to be able to putt around with some hot, new product’s jingle repeating endlessly in my head. What is your secret?
From the TV spots, to newspaper reports to radio ads, this news was everywhere. How did 317,000 people miss this? Have we identified the people that plug in their TVs only every six months to make sure the rest of the world is still there? More likely, these people had problems with the converter box as our Sue Walsh lays out in this post. However, I’d wager 87% of these calls ended up something like this:
DTV Transition Specialist: Good afternoon, how can I assist you with your DTV transition?
Caller: What did you do Matlock?
DTV Transition Specialist: We seem to have a bad connection. Did you say Matlock?
Caller: Damn straight I did. Why did you kill Matlock?
DTV Transition Specialist: I assure you, Matlock is just as alive as he was before. Let me…
Caller: Hold up, Magnum is gone, too. You are killing the smartest men of our day. I am jumping in my Lincoln to come and get you.
Or at least, that was the crank call I made on DVT transition day.
Palm, who dates everyone, finally got one carrier to go steady: Sprint. Things are going moderately well for Palm and Sprint on this date, when all of a sudden, Palm excuses themselves to the bathroom to call developers and shouts: “Enough with the tethering thing. You guys better stop or you are going to ruin this date.”
Seems Palm is concerned that its hot new rising star, the Palm Pre, is going to make big waves in Sprint’s network if a tethering hack is passed around. In a post on Gadgetell, our Shawn Ingram wrote:
We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond—we don’t know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.
Can Palm stop Sprint from shutting down the party?
The FCC is looking into phone exclusives, like the one Apple has going with AT&T, to help protect consumer choice. Our Shawn Ingram presents the case like this:
Its nice that the FCC is finally looking into this, but it comes off as a bit late. Given how slow the government tends to work, by the time anything they look into comes into effect the Palm Pre exclusive deal will be done, and maybe even the iPhone’s lock into AT&T. It’s doubtful that many people outside of the four big carriers will oppose the idea of having every phone available on every network, or at least unlocked. While that will still encourage innovation among the cell phone manufacturers, it’s hard to say how the carriers will respond.
I am going to disagree. Apple built the iPhone to bring to one carrier that would pay more for the exclusive rights to sell it. Remove the incentive for phone makers to build something great (and make a profit on it) and the iPhone becomes a great idea left on the dry-erase board in Cupertino. What is next? Forcing manufacturers to build two versions of every phone so no matter what carrier Joe Public is on it can work? What kind of plan is that? Let the free hand work. If consumers really want the iPhone on Verizon, march on the Verizon store. Don’t ask the gov to march for you.
I’ll end this week with my amazement. My post from yesterday, “Voice in your head says Palm Pre is better than iPhone + 3.0” has received a few comments, most letting my bosses know how much of a waste of time it was to read. The populous seem upset that the voices in my head didn’t make a very good argument why the iPhone was defeated.
Apparently, I need a good reason to like the Palm Pre over the iPhone. The nagging voice in my head isn’t enough. As I review my underwhelmed state with iPhone 3.0, the commenters suggest I have no idea of what I speak nor proof to counterbalance the voices in my head. The. Voices. In. My. Head.
The Apple fans seemed shocked that anyone’s nagging voice in their head could possible come to any other conclusion other than the iPhone rocks. That was when the Spanish war broke out.
Spanish seems to get through our language filters, which I assume we have in place. Awesome, the leaders of tomorrow will learn lewd comments only from tech blog comments. And if you wish to debate the voices in my head and tell them how wrong they are about the Pre and the iPhone, have at it, take a number, line forms to the left.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Several years ago, when I once asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer if the software giant was ever going to be able to catch No. 1 Google in market share in the increasingly lucrative search arena–despite years of trying and billions in investment in its Web businesses overall–he said something I shall never forget.
“We don’t actually have to catch the leader,” said the pugnacious tech leader. “We just have to surpass the No. 2 to have a great business.”
At the time, Ballmer meant Yahoo (YHOO), of course, and his intention was clear to me. While it was probably well-nigh impossible to get into the pole position Google (GOOG) is in, Microsoft could begin an attack if it could crush Yahoo first.
Easier said than done, of course, with little movement in share so far–even after early labored and expensive organic efforts, a failed takeover attempt to buy Yahoo and endless but still fruitless talks about a partnership with the Internet giant.
But now with a very credible and consumer-friendly revamped service called Bing, which is getting a big slug of marketing money, Microsoft (MSFT) might actually have a product that at least has a better chance to gain market share.
While by no means certain or lasting, early results from surveys are promising and–combined with distribution deals the software giant recently signed too–could give Microsoft the kind of momentum is has long needed.
This is obviously not good news for Yahoo, which will doubtlessly be the one losing market share if it is to be lost.
Nonetheless, some think Google might be more impacted since its users make a conscious choice to use it and Bing is a direct alternative in this regard, while Yahoo’s users use search when they are using other parts of the site. (See comments below, which make excellent points.)
But, in any developing arms wars, it is not a good idea to get caught between monied giants and Yahoo needs to make sure it does not become the grass in an elephant battle.
In a recent onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, in fact, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said Yahoo definitely needed to maintain its 20 percent share.
Bad news for her then, when yesterday Ballmer shot another one across the Yahoo bow, by telling a group of business execs at a luncheon:
“Our shareholders, I told them we were willing to spend 5 to 10 percent of operating income for up to five years in this business, and we feel like we can get an economic return.”
Since it is cash-spewing Microsoft–more than $20 billion in operating income last year–that’s a lot of money.
And, even if history has not been kind of Microsoft’s like-a-drunken-sailor spending before in the Internet space, there is no question the company has an obsessive commitment to eventually gain ground, grinding down companies like Yahoo if need be.
And within the larger context of Ballmer and Bartz in hot-and-cold discussions about a search and advertising partnership deal, his statement is clearly a signal to Yahoo to get on the Microsoft train or run the risk of getting run over.
Thus, Bartz has got to ask herself one question as she ponders what to do: Do I feel lucky?
Speaking of which, here is a video of the classic scene from Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry” uttering those words:
SAN FRANCISCO — The line to purchase an iPhone 3GS was short and sweet this morning at the downtown Apple store. When the doors opened at 7am, the queue stretched down the block and was maybe 150 humans deep, far fewer than the hundreds who showed up for the launch of the iPhone 3G in 2008.
And unlike previous years, there were relatively few Apple acolytes camped out overnight — the first person in line arrived at 9pm the previous evening.
But just like previous years there was a fair number of folks hawking various wares. Honest Tea, a handful of app store developers and maclife.com were dishing out free schwag to line-waiters. Apple even managed to cart out Starbucks coffee for fatigued line dwellers, as they’d done before.
One reason lines may have been shorter is that Apple made it easy for people to pre-order the iPhone 3GS online, promising to deliver preorders on the same day that it appeared in Apple’s and AT&T’s retail stories. There have been widespread reports of confusion and order mixups, however, so the line-waiters may have the last laugh.
Apple employees divided up the line between people who had reserved an iPhone and those who had not. Interestingly enough, they kept track of everyone who pre-ordered a 3GS on a stack of decidedly low tech printed paper. One line waiter commented, “What is that, papyrus? I thought Apple was a forward thinking tech company.”
Photo by Daniel Dumas/ Wired.com
See Also:
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
Graham Burnett wrote a fascinating essay in Cabinet recently about otolithic organs, the pair of sensors in the inner ear that help us stay balanced and maintain inertia. "Grossly speaking," writes Burnett, the otolithic organs consist of "a bunch of tiny pebbles (of the white rock known as calcium carbonate) embedded in a gooey wad that sits atop a carpet of delicate hairs." In humans, those "pebbles" are practically microscopic, but in fish, they can be as large as marbles:
There are several thousand researchers around the world who spend their whole working day looking at fish otoliths. This has nothing to do with their physiological functions, however, and everything to do with their structure and the staggering amount of information they contain. In the first place, each species of fish has a unique otolith shape. Couple this with the fact that they are stone (and therefore comparatively resistant to decomposition), and their utility as a biological marker becomes clear. Interested in the food habits of bottlenose whales? Pump their stomachs and you will end up with relatively few bones but lots of otoliths. Find an otolith expert and he or she will be able to give you a menu...
But the true wonder of these peculiar pearls lies within. Should you have occasion to tonsure a snapper or sea-bass, slicing off the top of its skull just above the eyes, you might take a moment to remove the two largest otoliths (there are, as a rule, six in all, three on each side) from their velvet seats to the right and left of the brain stem. With the heel of a knife you should be able to snap one of them in two, and then, holding it to the light, you will discern a set of concentric bands. These are growth rings—annuli—which, properly counted, will give the age of your fish in years.
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
Following up on Dylan's post about the Electrum, the world's largest Tesla Coil, I'd like to mention my own favorite super-sized scientific instrument: the Jantar Mantar astronomical complex in Jaipur, India. Constructed almost three centuries ago, its 73-foot-tall sundial is the largest in the world:
In 1728, Sawai Jai Singh II, rajah of Jaipur, dispatched his emissaries across the globe to gather the most accurate astronomical data possible. When they returned, Jai Singh ordered the construction of the Jantar Mantar complex, a monumental astronomical observatory constructed entirely out of stone and based on the astronomical tables of the French mathematician Phillipe de la Hire. Among the stone instruments Jai Singh constructed was the Samrat Yantra, a 73-foot tall sundial which remains the largest ever built. Though indistinguishable in design from other dials of the day, it was far and away the most accurate. Its two-second interval markings are more precise than even la Hire's table.
UPDATE: Uh oh. The picture above is of the Jantar Mantar complex in Delhi. Here's a photo of the one in Jaipur:
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Oy. That second picture, which I nabbed off Wikipedia, may still not be the right Jantar Mantar. This one, I am confident, is definitely the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. Sorry for the confusion.
Product Page [Vuitton via ilvoelv]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers
Today is the release of the iPhone 3G S as we all know. We also all know that unless you want to deal with AT&T it is impossible to use the iPhone (jailbreaking excluded). There’s also the Palm Pre, which until the end of the year is exclusive to Sprint. It can be tiresome trying to find a cell phone that fits what you want on the carrier you need. Well, here comes the Federal Communications Commission.
FCC Acting Chairman Michael Copps released a statement saying that the group will look into the effects of exclusive deals. More specifically they will be examining if the exclusive deals “adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices.” Given that of the ten top selling cell phones, nine are carrier exclusive (the BlackBerry Curve being the one exception, coincidentally at the top of the list) it might not be too hard to prove the first part. There’s also the fact that these exclusive deals tend to happen only with the four largest carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint), which can severely harm smaller network like US Cellular that operate in more rural areas.
Its nice that the FCC is finally looking into this, but it comes off as a bit late. Given how slow the government tends to work, by the time anything they look into comes into effect the Palm Pre exclusive deal will be done, and maybe even the iPhone’s lock into AT&T. It’s doubtful that many people outside of the four big carriers will oppose the idea of having every phone available on every network, or at least unlocked. While that will still encourage innovation among the cell phone manufacturers, it’s hard to say how the carriers will respond.
Read [Wired]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Now that the new iPhone 3G S has a video camera, TechStars startup Occipital has released an update to its RedLaser app (iTunes link, $1.99) which speeds up barcode scanning by not requiring you to first take a picture. Occipital claims that its "realtime barcode scanner" is the only one which works on phones with both autofocus (the new 3G S) and without (the older iPhone and iPod Touch). Other barcode scanning apps, such as ShopSavvy's, can also take advantage of the autofocus camera on the 3G S, but can't do on-the-fly scanning on the older models.
(Video after the jump).
Pharaoh is pleased. [Dreamcar123 via RGS]
BuckBallys are tiny rare earth magnets, a set of 216 to be exact, which can be arranged and rearranged into a variety of fun, trippy shapes.
In honor of this year's Father's Day, the folks at Zoomdoggle are offering BBG readers a chance to win a free set of BuckyBalls (I actually gave my Dad something similar last year).
To win, just write into the comments or email me steven AT boingboing DOT net.
One catch: It is not first-come first serve. You must either send in your favorite Buckminster Fuller quote (if you don't have one, then find one). OR, tell us your most awesome and/or horrifying story that somehow involves magnets (someone erased your bootlegged copy of Jedi, etc.)
We have FIVE sets to give away. Good luck! Update: Contest is CLOSED. I'll be sorting through the submissions and getting back to the winners early next week. Have a great Father's Day, everyone! If you post a comment after 1:45pm PST June 19, 2009, it will read, but will not count towards the contest, FYI.
If you love something, take it apart and see what’s inside. That’s the geek mantra that some zealous gadgeteers are applying to the iPhone 3GS today. Their biggest discovery: a CPU that’s running at just 72% of its capacity.
Both iFixit and Rapid Repair, companies that specialize in repairing broken gadgets, have got their hands on the new iPhone 3GS, torn it apart, and photographed the process. They were good enough to share their photos with us so we can bring them to you here. IFixit even sent its teardown supremo Kyle Wiens 5,400 miles across the Atlantic to sunny England in order to exploit time-zones and get the job started a few hours early.
Here’s a selection of images from the first frenzied moments in the life of the iPhone 3G S (and the last few moments in the life of two specific units).
Got any more details about what you see in the photos here? Let us know in the comments. We’ll update the story as we get more info.
What’s in the box? This is everything, including Apple’s custom “paperclip” SIM card key, a UK power charger and the UK O2 SIM. Of course, everything shown here is usually sold in a more fully-assembled form. If you open the box and see this, you should be worried. Image credit: iFixit.
The old and the new
There is no visible difference between the 3G and the 3GS other than the model number and, if you opt for the 32GB iPhone, the number 32 on the back. This is good news for 3G owners — you won’t look as goofy as those cheapskates still on the chunky 2G version. Image credit: iFixit.
Removing the brain
This is the real guts of the machine, the logic board which contains the Samsung CPU and other electronics. There are plenty of connectors to release, but you’ll see this view after removing just two screws. Image credit: iFixit.
iPhone 3G S logic board close-up and personal
The heart of the logic board is the CPU, the Samsung S5PC100 (both previous iPhones used the Samsung S3C6400). It runs at 600MHz, just as T-Mobile let slip last week, but according to Samsung’s spec sheet it can run at up to 833MHz and its native speed is 667MHz. This means that Apple is underclocking, presumably for better battery life. The chip also has built-in 720p video, and the memory for use by the OS has been doubled to 256MB. Image credit: iFixit.
iPhone 3G S (left) and iPhone 3G
There is little difference between the 3G and 3G S other than the big Toshiba NAND flash chip smack bang in the middle. Image credit: Rapid Repair.
The screen and digitizer
The trickiest part of the job is removing the digitizer from the screen. It requires a heat gun, a steady hand and nerves of steel. See the one on the left, missing the home button? It will remain this way forever. According to Rapid Repair, “The home button is held on with plastic pegs which cannot be replaced.” In other words: Kids, don’t try this at home. Image credit: Rapid Repair.
Finnish music label Kernel Records is suing Timbaland and Nelly Furtado. In 2006, Timbaland infamously sampled most of Janne Suni's Acidjazzed Evening, and overlaid it with new instrumentation and lyrics to create Furtado's Do It. From MusicRadar:
In the lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade Division of the US District Court Southern District of Florida on 11 June, Kernel Records Oy alleges that Do It was recorded using the "original and central identifying melodic, harmonic and rhythmic components" of the song Acidjazzed Evening, which the Finnish label Kernel Records acquired in 2007.
Most examples of alleged plagiarism involve a bar or three of copied notes: the Timbaland-produced track appears to be a copy of Suni's, garnished with a quantum of additions and Furtado's vocals. YouTube videos demonstrated the lift, splicing the two tracks together and comparing sections side by side.
Accused, Timbaland mocked and the original, claiming that it "was from a video game, idiot." Timbaland's studio, however, contained a SIDStation, a machine designed to play music made with old computers, suggesting he's not so naive of the chiptune scene. He may also come to regret his odd explanation of why sampling an entire song is O.K, even without licensing it:
"Sample and stole is two different things. Stole is like I walked in your house, watched you make it, stole your protools, went to my house and told Nelly, 'Hey, I got a great song for you.' Sample is like you heard it somewhere, and you just sampled. Maybe you didn't know who it was by because it don't have the credits listed."
You might want to know that iRiver is making Bluetooth headsets now. Granted, the don’t look anything special; does any headset? Also, the first model, the A100, is currently only set for release in China.
There’s very little to address here. It supports Bluetooth 2.0, which means that most any phone purchased in the last five years should work with it just fine. Yes, including that fancy, new iPhone 3G S.
What I will address, briefly, is: why isn’t iRiver more popular in the U.S.? (I can’t speak to what happens, say, in Russia or the UK.) Look at the LPlayer. Looks pretty slick to me; it plays MP3s. What more do you want in a player? My guess is that, somehow, we’ve gotten used to the idea that iPod/iPhone = MP3 Player, and anything else is pure garbage. It’s unfortunate, I think. There’s plenty of cool stuff out there that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Recently on Offworld, One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson claims Sega owe her £400 for all the money she's sunk in to Sega's maraca-based rhythm game Samba De Amigo over the years, only to get something always broken in return. But still, she says, the original 1998 Dreamcast version, for its motion control and party-based underpinning's, it's "the most prescient project in videogame history", and she keeps returning because it's one of the games that continually showers her in praise.
Elsewhere we rounded up some of the most recent iPhone developments (and wondered if we were over- or under-covering the platform): Steph Thirion's boldly original and relentlessly lovely Eliss gets a free Lite version for all to try, Mobigames' trademark-disputed futurist Edge makes a sudden and unexplained return to the App Store, and we watched with wonder the first two minutes of Rolando 2.
We also saw art/film schlock reimagined as 8-bit games, including Lars Von Trier's Dancer In The Dark, and then discovered that there really will be a Von Trier game, as his latest and most controversial film Antichrist gets adapted for the PC, and listened to Bit Shifter's March of the Nucleotides.
Finally, our 'one shot's for the day: the littlest big billboards in Union Square, and French guerrilla artist Space Invader does neoclassical artist Ingres in pixels (above).
Pros: It has Blu-ray, a 1.2" thick body and HDMI output for just $880. It takes SD cards as well as Memory Sticks; has 3 USB ports; and an optional Radeon 4570 graphics chip for better gaming. Con: 1366x768 screen resolution. [Sony]
If you chop one of the heads off the Super Universal Car Mount, two will grow in its place. The suction-cup mounted gizmo holder brings a touch of gorgon-glamour to your dowdy car interior, and while it will not actually spawn new gooseneck brackets, if you’re still worried, you can use the rear-view mirror to glance at it, thus saving yourself from being turned to stone.
And if you think that sounds like a dangerous thing to do while driving, you’d be right. But surely not quite as perilous as mounting three distracting devices within fiddling distance whilst piloting a ton or more of steel and glass as it hurtles down the road. Maybe you can handle it. I know I couldn’t — but then, I actually shout at the screen when people driving on TV look at their passengers instead of the road ahead.
The price for this three-headed monster, a creature scarier than anything slain by Argonauts, is $30.
Product page [USB Fever via Oh Gizmo!]
Section: Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that iPhone OS 3.0 landed the other day. Apple’s servers really faced a challenge leading to some trending topics on Twitter. Should Apple have been able to handle the load or are they just facing growing pains? Gadgetell visited with TechVi to talk to Randall Bennett and CNET’s John Falcone about this topic.
Watch more episodes: [TechVi]
Read John Falcone’s work: [Crave]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Are you a Nikon shooter? And an iPhone owner? Are you jealous that those pesky Canon fanboys get to remote control their DSLRs directly from the phone itself? Are ya?
Then calm down. We have good news. OnOne, the makers of DSLR Camera Remote, have a new version in the works that not only improves the user interface, but will support Nikon Cameras. You’ll still need to tether the camera itself to a computer on the same Wi-Fi network as the iPhone, at least until (and this is just an educated guess) the OnOne folks bring out a dock-dongle to enable direct triggering from the iPhone itself. You can trigger the shutter from afar, as well as see a live view from the camera on the iPhone screen, change camera settings and use an intervalometer (time lapse).
The UI improvements will be welcome for Canon users, too. The previously ridiculous decision to access the options menu by pressing and holding the shutter button has gone, and the whole interface looks much more camera-like. V 1.1 will be available mid-July, and will be a free update to all v1.0 owners.
New UI for DSLR Camera Remote [1on1 Blog via the Giz]
Product page [iTunes]
One of the worst parts of the iPhones 2G and 3G was the camera. It wasn’t just that it was a low-res two-megapixel piece of junk. More, it was that it seemed tacked on in decidedly un-Apple way, a vestigial afterthought that, although integrated throughout the iPhone software, never felt as polished as it could. It was almost as if Apple put it there in a hissy fit of exasperation, just because you have to have a camera in a phone these days. You can imagine Jobs finally giving the go-ahead: “Fine, if they want a damn camera in a phone, put one in there. But screw ‘em. Make it suck.”
Now, though, the 3GS is here, with three shiny megapixels. That, though, is not the important part. The camera will also auto focus instead of just using a fixed lens, and the software has been upgraded too. To choose where you want the camera to focus, just touch that part of the picture. The camera will also use this information to weight color balance and exposure.
The unstoppable Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun Times tech writer and Apple-nerd, has been testing it out, and has posted a set of pictures over at Flickr. Here’s what he says:
[The] fact that you can do “spot metering” puts it among the neatest cameraphones available. Touch the part of the live image that should be properly-exposed and the Camera app will make all of its focus, exposure and white-balance decisions based on that sampling. Bonus: by sampling from the bright, dark and middle areas of the image and taking three separate images, you can even do HDR imaging!
Browsing through the pictures shows that this salvo of updates has been a winner. The photos now look like they come from a camera, not from a phone. And did we mention that it also does video?
iPhone 3G S [Flickr Set]
Photo: AndyI/Flickr
Today, you may be aware, is the day that the iPhone 3G S launches just about everywhere. Last year, Spain’s Telefónica (or, more correctly, its mobile arm Movistar) messed up terribly, first by letting lines form outside stores which had no handsets, yet still enjoying the free publicity from TV crews, and later by offering such poor tariffs that even I, an overspending tech-geek, refused to pay them.
Today, Movistar has made its new rates public and guess what? They’re the same as the old ones, with one slight difference. At launch last year, the iPhone 3G tariffs were broken into two parts: data and voice. The data plans gave either 100MB per month (€15 / $21) or 1GB per month (€25 / $35). The catch was that you couldn’t pair a high data plan with a low voice plan. This has now changed, and you can indeed use the €9 per month voice plan with the €25 per month data plan. This will cost about €40 per month including taxes. This is actually not bad, and choosing this option on the 32GB, as a new customer, you’ll pay €300, or $416. This doesn’t include SMS.
But 1GB? The data is, surely, the whole point of the iPhone, and a measly GB isn’t going to be enough. Thankfully you don’t lose all connectivity when you reach your cap — the speed merely drops to 128 Kbps down and 64Kbps up. Oh, and tethering is expressly forbidden. You can at least get a fee 16GB handset if you sign up for the €40 voice plan, and only if you are a new customer. Thanks, Telefónica. Maybe next year.
Product page [Movistar]
See Also:
Section: Communications, Web, Web Apps, Google
It seems that after yesterday’s rumored launching of Google Voice, we had one of the members of the Google Voice team offer up some additional information. The news was not what we wanted to hear. That said, I think by now everyone realizes that Google Voice did not launch. Sadly, all we now know is that the team over at Google is “cranking.” Here is what Twitter user and Google Voice team member had to say about yesterday’s rumored launch.
“@JFKennelly no, this is not true. Sorry to disappoint. We’re cranking 24/7 to get there, but not tomorrow for sure.”
Basically, it seems like this is a case of it will be ready when it is ready. Of course, as much as I hoped that it would launch yesterday, in hindsight, it seems strange that it would just open to the public and not make use of those invitation requests they have been collecting first.
Read [Twitter @cwalker123]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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