Swedish artist Erik Nordenenkar claims to have created the "biggest drawing in the world" by sending a GPS-equipped plastic briefcase on a squiggly, looping trip around the world, tracing out a 110,664-km (68,763-mile) unbroken line with the help of DHL delivery planes and trucks. The result: A self-portrait of the artist as a megalomaniacal god with a planet-sized Sharpie and a rather nice sense of line. Problem is, the project is almost certainly faked, despite the footage showing the briefcase disappearing into the cargo hold of a DHL plane and a photo showing a stack of delivery receipts at the end. Why? DHL does not deliver to arbitrary latitude-longitude destinations. (Read the full post about ‘Artist Says He Used GPS, DHL to Create ‘Biggest Drawing in the World’’…)
by Paul Miller, posted May 27th 2008 at 10:40AM Creative got some Jello-O knees in the run-up to launching Zen Share, its WiFi-enabled PMP, and decided to quit the project altogether. The company is blaming “technical complications,” which we have a suspicion is shorthand for “building the necessary software to make WiFi helpful in a DAP is harder than we anticipated.” That’s too bad, but have no fear: Creative is replacing the project with a player due in the next two months that will sport an “exciting” design. We know, you’re so excited right now. Rumor has it that the player could be an X-Fi-branded DAP with a metal back and X-Fi audio processing. (Read the full post about ‘Creative ditches Zen Share WiFi player, X-Fi DAP might be in the works’…)
I know that black magic is supposed to be some sort of taboo word, but RAmos is slowly but surely moving towards that direction with its Blue Magic T8 portable media player - at least in the naming convention. The T8 will probably turn heads each time you whip it out from your pocket, thanks to its sleek form factor that measures a mere 1cm thin. Other features include a 4.3″ display that won’t kill your eyes after a few minutes of video playback, an integrated FM radio as well as a purported wide range of video playback capability. No idea on how much it costs, but it ain’t called the iMovie for no good reason. (Read the full post about ‘RAmos Blue Magic T8′…)
So much storage media, so little time. And so it goes. We’ve got USB drivces, hard drives, and SD drives galore. And each one of these storage units have their data accessed in different ways. Such an unproductive mess. It’s easy for a card to get lost in the shuffle. And then there was the Brando Multi-Functional Dock Station, the ultimate in storage consolidation. This gadget from Brando allows you to dock USB + eSATA + 2 hubs + 4 cards, all consolidated into one super duper storage interface. The Multi-Functional Dock Station offers full support for SDHC and mini SDHC formats, along with a long list of other standard flash card formats. (Read the full post about ‘One Dock To House Them All’…)
NTT DoCoMo surely aims to impress with each new round of phone releases - this time they have rolled out 19 new cell phones in 64 body colors, hence you no longer have the excuse of not picking one up just because of the colors available (or rather, not). The two new series are the 906i and 706i, with the former consisting of eight handsets while the latter make up the rest. The 906i series will feature 3G/GSM international roaming, upgraded GPS location information, HSDPA, 1-Seg mobile TV support, and 2-phones-in-1 capability among others. Hmm, none of them seem to be of the candybar variety. (Read the full post about ‘NTT DoCoMo Goes Mad With Releases’…)
If you’ll be in or near New York City in the next few weeks, please go where I went last weekend. Here’s why: At the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, the garden gnomes have re-imagined the 19th century English garden that changed the world. This particular garden led pretty directly to the 21st century genetic technology that feeds us, discovers and cures our ills, and could eventually cure this century’s ills too. Some of them, anyway, like climate change and pollution. Tags: gadgetry, TV, hdtv, speakers (Read the full post about ‘Green tech: Plant yourself in New York and evolve’…)
eMagin Corporation decided to make a huge splash at the Society for Information Display Conference and Exhibition (SID 2008) at the Los Angeles Convention Center by introducing its most recent OLED microdisplays, including the pretty nifty Z800 3DVisor. This futuristic device will rely on a couple of power-efficient OLED microdisplays, giving the wearers a 3D equivalent of a 105″ display viewed from 12 feet away - sounds pretty awesome since it is pretty impossible for the average Joe to just purchase a 105″ flat panel display at his whim and fancy these days, considering just how low the dollar is along with more pressing issues to attend to instead of mulling over purchasing a brand new TV. (Read the full post about ‘eMagin Z800 3D visor’…)
Solid State Drives are about to get useful. Samsung has announced a laptop friendly (2.5″) 256GB SSD which will be shipping by the end of the year. Samsung’s Jim Elliott quite rightly points out that this is analogous to the jump from hard drives to flash storage in portable MP3 players. There’s a big difference between the 32GB iPod Touch and the 160GB ipod Classic, for example, but the 32GB is enough for most people. Samsung also plans to have a 1.8″ model available by the end of 2008. We’re guessing that, while the notebook sized drives will cost the same or less than today’s smaller SSDs, this tiny version will be a little pricey. We’ll also lay bets that it’ll end up in a macbook air. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung Announces 256GB SSD: Hard Drives Begin Clearing Their Desks’…)
by Paul Miller, posted May 27th 2008 at 7:42AM We got to spend a little bit of time with a prototype of VIA’s new OpenBook reference design, and while it’s not going to revolutionize anything, VIA does seem to have a pretty good grasp on the balance of value, size and power necessary to compete in the subnotebook game. They were showing it off with Vista (though it will be available in XP and Linux versions as well), with an interface that was plenty responsive, and while the video we saw wasn’t an incredible display of multimedia showmanship, it was neat to see on the C7-M all the same. (Read the full post about ‘VIA OpenBook hands-on’…)
Here’s the real $100 laptop. At first look I thought it was a rather impressive hardware hack, but it turns out to be the rare Xentex Dual Screen Laptop, available to buy (in a slightly beaten up state) on eBay. And it has good reason to be rare. If you thought that the tablet pc was a niche product, the Xentex makes it look positively ipod-like. The notebook has one unique feature. It folds up twice, which is just as well as when fully splayed the monster-machine is almost as wide as two regular notebooks, at 19.5″ across. Those two 13.3″ screens actually move independently, so you can flip one and share your display, much like sharing a set of earbuds. If you are thinking about buying this, check the description carefully. (Read the full post about ‘Crazy Inbred Dual-Screen Laptop Includes Everything But The Banjo’…)
