Hardware Beyond the Hype
It’s interesting to see all of the cross-over happening between the iPod (and other devices) accessory market and the growing underground vinyl toy scene. PodStar is a line of iPod Nano cases made of silicon with very Coop-esque devil designs. The horns are a bit much, destined to snag on your pocket or messenger bag, but nobody ever said promoting evil was going to be a cakewalk. No word yet on release date or pricing.
[Via Cool Hunting]
You’ve probably noticed that there is an increasing number of sites that cater to individuals uploading, storing, sharing, tagging, etc. video files in the way that Flickr handles digital photos. So which services are worthy of your sharing all those Kodak memories of precious little Biff and Tiffany’s soccer games and ballet recitals (Biff looks SO adorable in his toe shoes)? TechCrunch offers a handy comparison chart of features. Reader comments on the piece tell of their experiences and list additional similar services.
Interesting, revealing interview with Sony CEO Howard Stringer in the Hollywood Reporter. In the piece, he’s surprisingly loose-lipped about Sony’s near-future strategy for the Blu-ray High Definition Disc standard and the timetable for gaming and portable video devices through holiday season 2006. Here are some highlights:
* Besides being a game platform, the PS3 is part of Sony’s “trojan horse” strategy to get Blu-ray HD players into consumers’ homes. To accomplish this, Sony will sell the PS3 at a loss for the first six months to a year.
* The PS3 will likely ship for holiday season ’06, but to tide consumers over, Sony will be releasing some “compact, portable video devices” between now and then.
* Comments in the piece suggest that a hard drive may be included with the PS3 release. The author states: “PS3 will be bundled with a selection of preloaded films, TV programs and games and sell for between $300-$400.” This suggests a hard drive (what else would they be preloaded on?), but then, the interviewer doesn’t seem to know the difference between a memory stick and a hard drive, so who knows. It could just be some Blu-ray discs, or maybe there’ll be several hardware bundles, one which will include the hard drive with some preloads.
* Stringer and Sony see their hardware and software products (and their media content), as a “‘high-definition value chain that starts with cameras and goes through projectors and television sets and ends up with the PS3. You can see an HD necklace with all the pearls connected,’ Stringer said.” Yes… a pearl necklace, if you will.
[Via ArsTechnica]
David Pogue has an excellent piece in the New York Times, an open letter to the electronics industry, outlining ten things they could do to not suck as bad as nearly all of them currently do. Here are a few items from his list:
* Thou shalt not entomb thy product in indestructible plastic.
* Thou shalt hire native English speakers to translate thine instruction manual.
* Thou shalt not charge tech-support fees for thine own mistakes.
[Annoying registration/log-in required]
I continue to be extremely impressed by the coverage of all things iPod and digital audio over at iLounge. It’s become one of my daily must-visit sites. Their latest offering is a PDF eBook, the iLounge Holiday Buyers’ Guide. This is no thrown together effort, but a full-blown, full-color 106-page book covering every iPod and iPod accessory you can imagine. There’s also history of the iPod, sneak peaks of new gear, product comparisons, detailed info on each iPod model, used iPod pricing info and selling tips, and a few full-page display ads. Overall, a really impressive resource that should prove useful to anyone buying an iPod or accessories this season.
There seems to be no end to the wacky and wonderful Altoids tin hacks floating around cyberspace. Few people know this, but it was an Altoids-tin-as-project-box that was the original inspiration behind Street Tech. I saw a how-to project for a phone phreaker’s Red Box — I think it was in Danny Drennan’s awesome ’90s zine Inquisitor — that was housed in an Altoids tin. This got me thinking about Gibson’s famous “the street finds its own uses for things” and the idea of a site that chronicled the growth of such trickle-down “street tech.” We still have an enduring fascination for this type of tech appropriation and the sort of techie folk art seen in things like these prevalent Altoids hacks. Which brings us to…
Aaron Dunlap’s 9V USB Battery Charger Kit. This project, for building a simple 9V battery-based recharger for iPods, cell phones, and any other battery-powered gadgets, has been around for a while, but Aaron has created an inexpensive kit with step-by-step instructions (US$9.50) for those who are too lazy to track down all the parts. You provide the Altoids tin (or other project box).
It’s amazing to me that people continuously get taken in by these ridiculous visions of universal robots that’ll be cleaning our houses and babysitting our children any day now. Valerie the Department Store Mannequin … we mean… the “Domestic Android” has been getting media attention for years now. So what is she, exactly? She’s a spec sheet wish list, an “order form” (buy yours today for $59,000), and a few roughed-out subsystems, all light years away from a bot that can “clean your house, change light bulbs, wash the dishes, do the laundry, check the sports scores for you, book plane tickets and call the police if there’s an emergency.” And what’s with the mixed message of having a sexy robot that won’t have sex with you? And that outfit! She gonna clean my oven in that thing? The style says “successful female executive,” but the cut says “do me on the lunchroom counter.”
Maybe we should “build” a similar robot domestic here at Street Tech Labs.
Okay. Done. Introducing Sinthia, Street Tech’s very own android domestic. She’s a dead ringer for Angelina Jolie, does all the things that Valerie does, PLUS she’ll do your taxes, refinish your furniture, and give you all the “happy endings” you desire. We’ve also programmed in a much better fashion sense. All this (and more) for only $30K! Make checks payable to me and send them to Street Tech’s Cayman Islands HQ. Noncritical media inquiries welcome.
Fry’s Electronics is selling a tower PC for US$159 (with a keyboard, mouse, and external speakers!). Now, you’d think that a computer that costs little more than the coins in your dresser change jar would be a complete piece of crap, but Lloyd Case of ExtremeTech found this computer surprising servicable. Unfortunately, like many of these low-cost systems, they skimped on the RAM (at 128MB) making performance of even its Linux OS (Linspire) sluggish. So, a memory upgrade is required. Case also recommends a bigger power supply (over the included 250W), if you want to upgrade the baked-on graphics chip for an AGP-based graphics card.
It’s not the prettiest box on the shelf, nor is it going to win any benchmark challenges, but if you’re looking for another node in your network, a granny PC, or a bare-bones system to experiment with and upgrade, you won’t likely find this much metal, plastic and silicon for less. And, it comes in our favorite non-color: black.
Having worked on step-by-step photos and instructions for my last two books (with Street Tech’s own photo guru Jay Townsend), I’ve acquired a newfound appreciation for how hard this is to do well, concisely, and clearly. This colors me impressed with PB Fixit, a repair and upgrade site for Apple laptops and the Mac Mini. The site offers Web-based and downloadable (PDF) how-tos for replacing parts and upgrading/adding new ones. The company that runs it wants to sell you the parts to do the work, but the how-tos are available to everyone. Wish they included all Mac models.
Information Week has a preview/review of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7. It offers tabs (gee, what an innovation), an RSS feature like Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, and a new “security feature” that’s rather troubling. The new browser contains a “Phishing Filter” which scans site content and determines whether it’s “suspicious” or not. It looks for clues that you could have landed on a phishing (scam) site and alerts you to the danger. Trouble is, in the IW tests, it branded sites as “suspicious” that were completely legit — like one of the reviewer’s own websites! To get your website off of Redmond’s blacklist, you have to fill out a form of information and send it to them, for EVERY suspicious page on the site. Microsoft assures us that this’ll all be just peachy and keen before the new browser ships.
Oh, and they’ve nixed the traditional File, Edit, View, etc. menu bar (as the default, anyway — you can turn it back on, if you can find the preference for it).
There just aren’t enough clue-by-fours in the world to whack a lick of sense into these people.