Ah for those thrilling days of yesteryear, when gaming was 8-bit, and the world was blocky. If you thrill at the thought of having a portable Commodore 64, and you have a Symbian phone, then your dreams are coming true. → Read More
When Apple hired away Mark Papermaster from IBM as its new senior vice president of hardware engineering for devices, IBM struck back with a lawsuit attempting to bar him from switching jobs. Citing his non-compete clause, IBM convinced a judge to order Papermaster to stop working at Apple until the dispute was resolved.
Well, now he can finally go make future iPods for Apple. The two companies have settled out of court. It kind of makes you wonder why companies even bother with non-compete clauses in employment contracts, especially when they are overly broad. More often than not, they are not worth the paper they are written on. → Read More
There are a lot of good ideas at this collection of DIY lighting solutions for those of us who can’t actually afford a nice ring flash or light tent. Don’t be put off by the first one, which is actually made up of six $400 SpeedLites — hardly a budget item. But I think I may actually try the milk jug ring flash. → Read More
A kid named Tyler made this. A kid! Well done, young man. The “Internet Dog Feeder” consists of an ioBridge and a continuously-rotating servomechanism controlled via a web interface consisting of a video camera that shows your dog’s bowl and “Feed Dog” and “Stop Feeding Dog” hyperlinks. → Read More
Banjo-Tooie, the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie, will be released on Xbox Live Arcade this April. Like the BK XBLA port, BT‘s graphics will be updated: 1080p and a smooth frame rate. I seem to recall BT having a pretty rough frame rate back on the N64, so this is more than merely a new coat of paint. → Read More
Yahoo released its fourth quarter 2008 earnings today. Its non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.17 a share, above the $0.13 consensus. (Yahoo lost $0.22 a share on a GAAP basis due to restructuring and impairment charges). Total revenues came in at $1.8 billion, with net revenues (after what Yahoo pays to network partners) coming in at $1.375 billion
New CEO Carol Bartz finally addressed some questions on everyone’s mind. Addressing Wall Street analysts on the call, she said preemptively before taking questions:
Did I come to Yahoo to sell the company? No. . . . Am I planning on immediately selling the search business? I did not come here with preconceived notions. It is very easy from the outside to have preconceived notions of what Yahoo should do. Now as an insider and CEO it is my job and responsibility to do what is best for customers, shareholders, and employees.
Hey, Fellas! Need a special case for a special lady? Buy your Sheila a special pink iPhone case from Element Cases for a mere $119. As I said before, this case isn’t for everyone but if she tends to lose or break her gadgets it’s probably the best investment you can make. → Read More
Unlike Brain Age, Nintendo’s Wii Fit actually works to help get people into shape. It might not be as successful as a personal trainer, but that may change soon. → Read More
It’s Down the Rabbit Hole Day, a day when you’re supposed to adopt a different blogging style. Cory at BB did a great job in his post about junk so I’ll give it a try as well and be a little more personal.
I’ve written a little about how I got into gadgets, writing, and gadget writing but I’d like to explore that a bit today, mostly for my own edification and self-examination. One of the things I’ve noticed recently that with two kids you don’t get much time to sit around and think which has recently made me sloppy and scatter-brained so maybe this sort of thing will be interesting and helpful at the same time → Read More
Who doesn’t enjoy a little rocket ship pr0n? Gigantic pic of the Space Shuttle cockpit after the break. It’s huge! → Read More
It can be illuminating to compare the strategies of the major cloud platform vendors. Instead of matching currently exposed features, let’s imagine what each major player could do to tack away from competitor strengths and toward their own. For example, Google. Unlike Amazon Web Services or Microsoft’s forthcoming Azure cloud, Google’s overall application architecture is firewalled off from direct developer access. Yes, AppEngine can be addressed directly, as can the Google APIs. But to date there is no easy way to engage with Gmail Labs unless you are a Google engineer with 20% of your time on your hands. If you’re a Salesforce, you can invest in API connectors and leverage your own cloud. Or you can add gadgets from your iGoogle toolchest. But harness the viral power of the social media wave and its central driver — the realtime experience? Google shuts you out as a power user developer, and in the process cedes the ball to smaller players. Take the central console experience as embodied by the Gmail/GReader/GApps container. IM feeds and services from FriendFeed, Twitter, TwitterSpy, Identi.ca, the open sourced Jaiku, and Leo Laporte’s XMPP engine (to name just the most visible) overwhelm the screen real estate. Yet there are limited tools to orchestrate these streams before they hit the IM stream. Then there’s the lack of intelligence in managing these multiple windows. Each reboot of FireFox mandates popping out the same set of windows and then dragging and resizing them into position. FireFox 3 added auto-recovery of tabs and their contents, but a FriendFeed realtime Gtalk IM pop-out when recovered has to be closed and reopened. No smarts, no access to user configuration, no continued disruption. Combining access to screen coordinates and routing of information to IM windows would likely result in an explosion of third party developers and aggregator tools. But what would happen to Google Reader in that scenario. Already we’re seeing growth in FriendFeed rooms as a workaround for GReader’s relatively locked down UI. Reports of the official release of the API notwithstanding, even then we still wouldn’t have access to the larger Gmail container to integrate the Google services under user control. By contrast, Live Mesh and eventually Azure may well offer console control on a device by device basis. It’s not that Google has a less expansive architecture, it’s that Google doesn’t appear interested in opening the platform up at the → Read More
Daddytypes found a cool article on a company that is thinking about casting ultrasound pictures of unborn babies using 3D imaging and printing. → Read More
iLife ’09 is finally available on store shelves, and while most of the attention will probably go to iPhoto’s spiffy new face-recognition, there’s a feature tucked into GarageBand that might be making headlines very soon: premium lessons for piano and guitar, presented by the artists themselves. Dubbed ‘Lesson Store’, Apple’s online marketplace for music lessons has all the makings of a revolution in music learning that could prove to be incredibly popular and lucrative. We’ve known about it since its unveiling at Macworld, but only after trying it out can I confirm what many initially suspected: this thing is going to rock. → Read More
We’ve had confirmation of Sirius XM price hikes for about a week now, but now the company is actively promoting it. Go to either Sirius’ or XM’s Web site and you’ll see a kind note explaining how online streaming will no longer be free. You know, because upgrading the online feed to “CD-quality,” whatever that means, costs a bloody fortune. → Read More
Perfect! Now you can go camping and not worry about recharging your notebook in the great outdoors. The YoGen MaxT produces enough juice when in use to power produce 50-60 Watts which is enough to keep your notebook running. All you need to do is push on the self-returning foot pedal to generate the power. Plus, an internal bank of AA keeps the power flowing while you give your leg a rest. The whole device folds up for easy traveling too. Hippies and treehuggers must check out the video of it in action after the break. → Read More
When Apple hired away Mark Papermaster from IBM as its new senior vice president of hardware engineering for devices, IBM struck back with a lawsuit attempting to bar him from switching jobs. Citing his non-compete clause, IBM convinced a judge to order Papermaster to stop working at Apple until the dispute was resolved. IBM even brought Papermaster’s children into it.
Well, now he can finally go make future iPhones and iPods for Apple. The two companies have settled out of court. It kind of makes you wonder why companies even bother with non-compete clauses in employment contracts, especially when they are overly broad. More often than not, they are not worth the paper they are written on. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite (well, my favorite) videogame reviewer, DiiFii, is back with an unboxing of an oversized Mario figurine that holds a Nintendo DS in its outstretched arms. Watch for just over five minutes as this man-child of indeterminate age excitedly frees Mario from his twist-tie and cardboard shackles, wipes the dust off with what appears to be a pair of boxer shorts, and then exuberantly searches for the perfect spot in his room to place Mario. → Read More
Attention, HP Mini 1000 owners. It looks like HP has a six-cell battery for the netbook available from its parts Web site. The battery (part number 517581-001) is actually for the Mini 1000 CTO, but should with every shapes and size of the Mini 1000. → Read More
Joel at BBG got some great footage of the Electro-Harmonix factory, makers of the Voice Box that we showed you a few days ago.
Apparently this little Mom and Pop in Long Island City makes most of the vacuum tubes for the world, an amazing feat in today’s transistorized world. Great stuff from a great company. → Read More
