- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Apr 7,2011
A 75-year old lady from Georgia (the country, not the state) has perpetrated an impressive feat of international sabotage in what seems to have been an accident of extremely bad luck.
While foraging for copper wire near her home in the village of Ksani, the unnamed septuagenarian managed to come across a critical fiber optic cable, one responsible for serving internet connectivity to “90 percent of private and corporate internet users in Armenia” and some in her own country as well.
Her swift strike at the heart of said bit-transferring pipeline resulted in all those folks being thrown offline for a solid 12 hours, while the Georgian Railway Telecom worked to find and correct the fault.
In spite of her relatively benign motivations, the lady now faces three years in prison for the damage she caused. We’d say all’s well that ends well, but this doesn’t actually seem like a very happy ending at all.
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Mar 15,2011
The scenario above angers me. Effective? Absolutely. But at what cost? It’s ugly, it’s bulky, it’s orange, and when you’re done you have to place it back from whence it came.
Enter Meysam Movahedi and the rambler socket. A brilliant design concept that:
a) hides the mess
b) only extends what is required
c) aesthetically pleases me
See images below for the ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ moment we all love to have. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 26,2011
The PC vs Mac debate is pretty boring unless the cyber warriors take their battle to photoshop.
Here are some of our favorite pictures from the last few years. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, we suggest you use these pictures as credible sources. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 26,2011
This as-of-yet-unnamed mini computer was fashioned as an implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients, but its creators envision a future where we’re all crawling with the little buggers.
Taking up just over one cubic millimeter of space, the thing stuffs a pressure sensor, memory, thin-film battery, solar cell, wireless radio, and low-power microprocessor all into one very small translucent container.
The processor behind this little guy uses an “extreme” sleep mode to keep it napping at 15-minute intervals and sucking up 5.3 nanowatts while awake, and its battery runs off 10 hours of indoor light or one and a half hours of sun beams.
Using the sensor to measure eye pressure and the radio to communicate with an external reader, the system will continuously track the progress of glaucoma, without those pesky contacts. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 26,2011
Facebook phone rumors were swirling for quite awhile, then HTC answered a question that seemingly nobody asked by delivering unto the world a phone with a dedicated Facebook button… the ChaCha.
In what can only be considered a stroke of luck for all of humanity, the Taiwanese handset maker has been granted the opportunity to rectify its naming gaffe courtesy of a trademark infringement suit brought by ChaCha Inc.
That company trademarked its name and logo in 2007 for its text and voice internet search engine services and is (rightfully) displeased with the HTC’s choice of names for its Facebook-focused handset.
ChaCha doesn’t want mobile users thinking that it’s endorsed the phone, and given that the company’s bread and butter is providing mobile search, such confusion seems likely. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 16,2011
Listen up New Yorkers, those hot nuts you just swallowed could be used to light the signs on Broadway. Okay, so that’s a stretch, but the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just issued a plan to turn the stuff you flush, along with rest of its wastewater, into renewable energy.
New York City produces about 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater daily, yielding 1,200 tons of biosolids that can be harvested to procure methane — already accounting for 20 percent of the city’s energy — and butanol, a clean gasoline alternative.
The plan, which also includes wind and solar projects, aims to use gas, converted by large digesters, to “power wastewater operations, meet on-site heat and electricity needs, and, where feasible, sell excess energy to the market.”
As the DEP points out, the plan isn’t far fetched — we’ve seen a couple of solutions for turning human excrement into usable energy, and a project already under way in Greenpoint is estimated to procure enough methane over the next year to heat 2,500 homes. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 15,2011
No big surprise here, but Eric Schmidt just told the crowd at Mobile World Congress that Google “certainly tried” to convince Nokia to pick Android as its future platform over Windows Phone 7.
Schmidt said Google “would’ve loved” having Nokia on board, and that although they’d been rebuffed this time around, the offer to adopt Android later “is still open.”
Look like Vic Gundotra might have to get down with a turkey after all.
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 4,2011
If you’ve seen our Hong Kong feature from awhile back, then you would’ve already heard about my favorite gadget hangout Sham Shui Po.
By chance, my post-flight stroll in said district yesterday coincided with Apliu Street’s Chinese New Year flea market, which featured many vintage items like jade figurines, paintings, jewelry, video tapes, vinyl records, etc.
Naturally, what really caught my attention were the old gadgets that were literally piled up along the street, and from just HK$30 (US$3.85), you could easily pick up an old classic such as a Sony Clié, an HP iPaq, a WonderSwan Color, an original GameBoy, a MiniDisc player, or even a proper old school laptop or camera.
Hell, some guy even had a couple of Nintendo Micro VS Systems (Donkey Kong Hockey and Boxing)! Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 3,2011
A new player has entered the electric motorcycle game, joining the likes of Brammo’s Empulse but doing it with rather more… unconventional styling. It’s the Agility Global Saietta, an all-electric sports bike that will come in two flavors: the 50 mile range Saietta S and the 100 mile Saietta R.
The latter of the two will be quicker than the first, getting to 60 in under four seconds, whereas S riders will have to wait another tick of the stopwatch. Naturally that extra range and speed will cost you: £9,975 for the S and £13,975 for the R, figures that equate to roughly $16,200 and $22,650.
Hefty sums, both, but nobody said being on the cutting edge of the humpbacked sport bike trend was going to be cheap. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Jan 31,2011
It’s taken a long time since that 2005 patent was filed for, but Raymond Li is now finally ready to bring his water-propelled jetpack to the money-spending world.
Nailing down a March 2011 launch date and a price of $99,500 hasn’t been easy for the inventor, who says his efforts to procure capital and prototyping quotations were mostly met with incredulity — “almost everyone thought I was crazy.”
His JetLev personal transporter relies on an engine and fuel tank (which remain on the water’s surface) to pump H20 into a backpack that then shoots out streams of the drinkable stuff to keep your airborne.
Top speed is 22MPH, max height is nearly 33 feet, and the fun factor is somewhere off the scale, whether you’re talking metric or imperial. Levitate past the break for a video demonstration. Read the rest of this entry »
