Articles by tiny dancer
Microsoft's got a prototype computer for just about every flat surface in your life: first they conquered tables, desks, and credenzas with the aptly-named Surface (which I've had a lot of fun with at various cell phone stores, although they do like to toss you out). Now Microsoft has turned Surface on end, probably literally, with their latest prototype, TouchWall.
HP and multitouch maven Jeff Han both have multitouch wall devices, and anyone following the US presidential race has seen John King fingering CNN's Magic Wall touchscreen with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Microsoft's version, a 4 foot by 6 foot slab with inexpensive IR sensors and a rear-mounted camera, looks like a whiteboard for the future - and is indeed being targeted for low-cost school and small business applications. But don't be fooled into thinking this is the limit for touch-screen technology: Microsoft also has a sphere-shaped Surface in the works.
Gates demos TouchWall computer [CNET]
NYU Professor Daniel Rozen's electronic wooden mirror is a total trip: displayed earlier this week at NYU's Interactive Technology Program, this fusion of modern thinking and the timelessness of little wooden blocks not only sounds cool - it works.
830 wood panels mounted on tiny motors move according to directions from a computer hooked up to a small camera - that sticks out from the middle of the mirror like a thumbstick pointer embedded in a laptop keyboard.
Check out a video after the jump to see what I'm talking about - it's a noisy but effective invention. The only thing missing from the wooden mirror is the ability to answer petty, self-involved questions along the lines of "Mirror, mirror, made of teak - who's written the best blog post all week?"
Electronic Wooden Mirror makes your reflection large, vague [DVICE]
Correcting an item in the Wall Street Journal which said that Dell intends to phase out its XPS line of gaming PCs, Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden let it be known that the company intends instead to phase in the XPS line. With Alienware.
Having snatched up Alienware, Dell plans to "invest like crazy" in the development of the Alienware brand while merging the two teams, Alienware and XPS, together. This is, of course, what one does when one owns two top-selling brands of gaming PCs. One splices them into a single mega-selling brand of gaming PCs!
There will be an XPS refresh or two before the brand phases out blends into the Alienware hive mind. Dell's expansion of XPS systems into all-in-one PCs and other non-gaming offerings means that the XPS name might survive after all, albeit in a different form.
Dell denies rumors of XPS phase-out [Electronista]
Recent rumors concerning mergers and two little companies called Virgin Mobile USA and SK Telecom (parent of Helio) were forcefully squashed by SKT, who called the topic "groundless."
This led quite naturally to the contradictory announcement by Virgin Mobile USA that the two companies are indeed involved in "preliminary discussions" of "possible strategic opportunities."
Diametrically opposed statements? Vague, unhelpful PR lingo? Smells like business as usual to me - expect to hear more about this over the next few weeks and months. Also, expect not to hear anything about this over the next several months and weeks. Welcome to America: for more unenlightening doublespeak, please enjoy our presidential race, our news media, and our celebrity culture coverage!
Bring money.
Virgin Mobile USA Confirms Early Talks With SK Telecom [MocoNews]
[story and picture via Engadget]
If you don't think the science of sex is a hairy subject, just ask the late Dr. Kinsey. Or the makers of your favorite depilatory cream, wax, or wheat thresher. Luckily, there exists no shortage of science-minded horndogs on the internet, nor of literal-minded scientists just waiting to offer up clinical but accurate answers to your our most perverted puerile ponderings.
Thanks be to NewScientist for this latest excuse to talk about sex in a sciencey environment - their reader Q&A is full of geeky probings such as "Does the female orgasm serve a biological purpose?" (apparently not - ouch), and poses complicated questions such as asking if the human drive to constantly have sex stems from the fact that our ladies don't go into heat visibly.
But thank the good gay lord, there are some questions not preoccupied with lady-bits, such as whether or not circumcision makes it harder to have an orgasm (some say yes, but apparently that's a hot-button topic for sexologists both amateur and professional). Also, such burning issues as why anal sex feels so good for both partners (not really a mystery) and the length of time it takes for the scrotum to refill with semen.
In the name of all that's scientific, how could anyone not want to know if saltpeter is an anaphrodisiac?
Readers' Q&A: The science of sex [NewScientist]
For $60, Creative's new Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 offers you an external audio card that, with a simple pass of a USB cord and an optical output plug, hook up your PC to a home theater system with all the gloriousness of DTS and Dolby Digital EX.
Toss in the X-Fi CMSS-3D headphone technology and EAX ADVANCED HD technology for gaming and this baby is easy to recommend to anyone with a PC near a 5.1 speaker setup, even if you've already got a sound card. 'Creative ALchemy' even restores surround sound for Vista gamers, although as with all things Vista I'll believe it when I hear it in person.
Just make sure you've got USB 2.0, otherwise you're just wasting time and money.
[Product Page via Coolest-Gadgets]
While we featured the as-yet-unveiled BlackBerry 9000 as Gadget of the Week back in March, yesterday RIM officially unwrapped the BlackBerry Bold, as the handset will be known to marketing firms and eager buyers.
That 480x320 half-VGA screen with 65k colors sounds pretty bold indeed, and the word is it looks even better than it sounds - excellent video playback and an interface competitive with the iPhone. Also: leatherette texture on the back of the handset and superfast 3.5G tri-band HSDPA/UMTS support. Try finding an iPhone with download speeds as fast as 7.2 Mbps!
Wi-Fi a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and full A2DP support, and built-in GPS round out the feature set.
I'm just coming back from a wedding in Carmel where I picked the brains of what seemed like an endless stream of high-powered techies and business types who - without exception - bemoaned the iPhones they all owned. Former BlackBerry devotees, none of the moguls and madams I talked to could say a single good thing about the buttonless device that they all seemed to use a lot anyway: "It's impossible to send email," said one; "typing anything longer than an SMS is agonizing," said another.
It's important to remember that while the iPhone has all the hype and style going for it, there are armies of QWERTY keyboard-using BlackBerry addicts out there - and for them, Bold is not only beautiful, it's better.
You know, you can't always get what you want - it's a natural fact. If nothing else proves that simple axiom, it's the less-than-lethal congealings of Take Down Pepper Gel.
I mean usually, when an officer or security guard is pumping his can and about to shoot goo on my eternally youthful face, it's a different story entirely. Which is why the painful glue-like sludge of Pepper Gel depresses me so - not to mention the fact that it looks like hot sauce, which upon second thought I suppose it is.
With up to 25 feet of spray power and quick decontamination times, Take Down Pepper Gel sounds like a great way to mace bad guys that don't wear glasses and are conscientious enough to face you.
Can you imagine the horror of having pain-glue sprayed in your face? No thank you, Officer - looks like I'm switching back to firemen!
[Product Page via Book Of Joe]
Chinese site CCID (seen here in a loose translation) has posted some leaked info on a new Xenium phone reportedly called the X800 - pictured, at least theoretically.
A touchscreen device with physical buttons for "essential commands," the X800 is more slender than the iPhone and should come, if she comes at all, with games, e-mail and camera all under touchscreen control, as well as being tiltable with landscape mode functionality. Price and release dates are unknown.
Philips joining race for touchscreen phones? [Electronista]
Hydro-physio training helps just about anyone, whether you're physically debilitated or looking to strengthen up without shocking your joints. That said, the Hydro Physio Lifestyle, pictured, looks like some serious Sci-fi. It also makes me want to pee a little.
Combining a jacuzzi and a treadmill, the Lifestyle is easy to install - at least when compared to a pool and underwater technology. Featuring glass side panels and adjustable water heights (also known as "a drain"), as well as moody underwater lighting, the Lifestyle is the absolute best in the underwater treadmill market. Hear that, Namor?
Mostly I'm thinking about what a stand-up, see-through robot swimming pool could do for my sex life, but I've also gotta wonder if it comes with a built-in pee sensor - that or goldfish.
Hydro Physio Lifestyle - Future of exercise and wellbeing [BornRich]
I'm a big language dork, and at least one of my fellow Homotronites feels the same strange passion about words (hi, Den Den) - so I know that philologists can get their manties in a bunch over anything from punctuation to pronunciation. And while I can't say that I'm truly surprised that there are tech folks who'll leave scathing comments about the pronunciation of "OS X," I sure do find it silly as all get-out.
Rich Brown over at Crave got more than an earful after his recent unboxing video of Psystar's Open Computer - not about the subject at hand, but rather his pronunciation of Apple's operating system: Rich erred fatally by pronouncing the title "Oh-Ess-Eks" rather than "Oh-Ess-Ten." I had no idea such a reserve of bile existed for this linguistic foible!
I routinely go back and forth between the two pronunciations - believing Chomsky when he debunked the notion of a universal grammar and heartily enjoying my own personal lexicon, replete with all of its idiosyncrasies and variety - but I do understand (and occasionally share) more stentorian opinions on words and how we use them.
Unfortunately, using a big ol' Roman numeral in its title makes OS X an excellent target for linguistic drift: not only are both pronunciations understandable, but modern usage of Roman numerals and their pronunciations are different than in the good old days of Henry VIII - witness the lack of those who read the words of "Malcom Ten" or listen to "DM-Ten." Or anyone who breaks a bone and gets a "ten-ray!"
Whatcha think? I'm with Brown, who's decided to embrace his individuality and "be the JIF to your GIF, the EARL to your URL, and the DUB-DUB-DUB to your WWW."
You go, boi.
Apple OS X: You say OS Ten, I say OS Eks [Crave]
The next time you slip a frat boy some roofies, slap this baby on him and chances are he'll be unconscious up to 21% longer!
At least that's what I infer from the Nike PreCool Vest, which claims to let athletes perform up to 21% longer - a rather questionable figure that I'll accept anyway, because it's kinda sexy looking and it's made to wrap around the chests of hot men.
This chilly vest lowers the core temperature of the body with an outer layer of aluminum and an inner layer filled with frozen water. Yup, frozen water.
Whilst I am one of those people who can never get too much relief from the heat, I'm not sure about a vest designed to turn my nipples into tiny leather diamonds. Ouch.
Nike PreCool Vest [Ubergizmo]
[via Coolest-Gadgets]
And girls who like girls who like fembots!
Gadget of the Week
Show-stopping "half-VGA" screen and HSDPA/UMTS support, gorgeous video playback: Bold, Bold, Bold!
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