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.
Altoids Gadget Charger Kit
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).
Street Tech Wants to Sell You an Android
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 $160 PC? Not as Sucky as You Might Think
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.
Mac Repair and Upgrade Guides
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.
IE 7: Like Firefox, Only Narc-ier
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.
The Data Stash We Bet You’ve Never Thought Of
I have a DiskGo 128MB Flash drive watch. It’s a real conversation piece at parties. People are wowed by it; the idea that I have a bunch of hi-res pictures, Word files, and my GTD TiddlyWiki organizer INSIDE my wristwatch — tres James Bond. So imagine what they’d think if I pulled a similar data cache out of my ear! That’s the bizarre idea behind the iDisk Diamond. It puts 128MB of storage onto a drive the size of your fingertip (and apparently, the opening to your ear canal). Personally, I think it’d be cooler to pull it out of a nostril, but then, not everyone’s endowed in that area like I am.
Jitterati Support App
I don’t know too many gadget weenies who aren’t also caffeine freaks. Surfing a universe of ones and zeroes while pegging the meter on your central nervous system just feels…right. Now, for all you BlackBerry-tottin’ joe-junkies out there, there’s a way to never be more than a few clicks away from a bean shack. Greystripe offers Caffeine Finder, a BlackBerry app that displays location info and reviews of some 45,000 US coffee shops (a couple of them NOT Starbucks). For Berry owners with GPS service, it’ll even guide your crashin’ ass to the closest re-fueling station.
AutoPilot for TiVo
AutoPilot (in beta) is an awesome-looking program for Windows which automatically transfers, converts, and stores TV shows on your PC (from your TiVo). To use it, you need a Series 2 TiVo and TiVoToGo running over a home network. The conversion feature offers a number of popular formats, including support for video iPod, Palm, and PSP. The program is being developed so that third party plug-ins can be used to offer additional functionality.
[Via Lifehacker]
Look, Pluto’s Got Company
While the debate over stripping Pluto of its planet status continues, the discovery of two new moons orbiting the whatever-we’re-calling-it-now was recently announced. The moons, which are incredibly faint, even by Plutonian standards, were discovered using the Hubble Telescope.