Navigon's dashboard-mounted GPS unit has a lot to recommend it, including a whizzy 3-D display and street views that show photos of actual road signs, making it easier to find your way around. But as reviewer Rachel Ciricola discovers, this $600 navigation gadget has a big drawback: It's slooooow. The 3-D view might just be enough to distract you from the 8100T's many minor annoyances. For instance, if you plan on turning the unit off between trips, you'd better know where you are going — at least for some of the ride. Every time we restarted, it took a...
This tech blog has always been skeptical of digital e-book readers. Maybe because we think the feeling of a stiff hardback or welted paperback book is timeless. Or maybe it was because major e-book vendors such as Sony and Amazon.com never released how many units of the devices they actually sold. A typical ebook reader This week, though, Sony for the first time disclosed that it sold 300,000 units of its Reader Digital Book globally since the device launched in October 2006. Steve Haber, senior vice president of personal mobile and imaging division for Sony, says the unit growth is...
You can wrap your Christmas presents like a stroke victim, or you can wrap them like Carlos Slim Helú, in sheets of crisp, uncut $50 dollar bills. The drawback: these bills come from the treasury themselves, they are real currency and they cost more uncut than they would simply by ripping the bills out of your wallet, dipping them in glue and slapping them on a package. Not to mention the fact that ripping this wrapping paper on Christmas morning is a federal crime. Uncut Currency [Money Factory via OG via Oh Gizmo]...
Ball-it, a Finnish company that makes a little ball that remotely interacts with your computer, phone or TV screen, wants to challenge the Nintendo Wii and become the latest, coolest way to interact with games. A host of other companies are trying to do the same thing — however none of them have gotten much traction. Like some of those competitors, Ball-it wants to become the non-keyboard standard for remote communication with your screen. Ball-it’s idea has a simple elegance, and while I’m not sure whether it’s ready to hit big time in its current form, it may point the...
Starting in 2009, Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops will be programmed with a feature that allows a stolen or lost laptop to be completely disabled by a simple SMS text message. It's reversible: if you somehow manage to reclaim your laptop, all data and functionality can be restored by a resurrection code. It's a nice little security feature, but the drawback is obvious: your laptop needs to be tied to a data plan and contain an installed WAN card. So the extra security has a monthly fee. It also means the first thing canny thieves will do when they steal a...
Do you have an idea for an iPhone app? Yeah, me too. And so does the barista at my local coffee shop. Ideas for iPhone apps are as ubiquitous as screenplays in LA. The idea alone isn’t worth anything, according to iPhone consultant Raven Zachary. There are several factors conspiring against your iPhone idea: There are still few people who know how to create iPhone applications There are plenty of iPhone ideas from people who are willing to pay The App Store is lucrative enough for developers to create their own apps I could probably add “you don’t know Objective-C”...
If Rodney Dangerfield (R.I.P.) had been a blogger before passing on to the great comedy channel in the sky, he might have said “Blogging don’t get no respect.” That’s probably because it’s a stupid sounding word that most people don’t understand. But let’s face it, if you are a good writer for the online medium and want to earn a living this way, there are a number of marketing strategies you can succssfully employ. Not everyone will succeed, but the opportunities exist. Blogging Strategies 1. Blog for fun. Okay, that’s what a lot of writers are doing, with passion, and...
Organic: shapes, methods and patterns modeled after those found in living systems. When applied to architecture, the results can be interesting at least, mesmerizing at best and are always a challenge for designers and builders alike. These 12 examples of organic architecture showcase some of the ways designers transform a lot by learning to bend a little. (image via: Eikongraphia) Architect and visionary Robert Bruno has been building his organic, fantastic, metallic Steel House since 1974. Overlooking a cliff near Lubbock, Texas, the huge structure has grown from a spindly metal tripod of beams to a massive accumulation of...
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Cool tools, Odds and ends, Freeware, iPhoneOh man -- finally, we're getting an app that fulfills the promise of the iPhone. Ever since we knew the iPhone would have a camera and an internet connection, we've been waiting for SnapTell Explorer, and now it's here and free. Download and install it on the iPhone, and then snap a picture of any book, CD, movie, or videogame, and bingo, you've got links to listings for it (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, Google, etc.) around the Internet. I have no idea how it works (some type...
You can get most of the benefits of an iPhone application without writing a single line of Objective C. An open source project called PhoneGap lets your wrap your website in iPhone App goodness. And you can even charge for your creation. Even more exciting than being able to easily create an app is getting access to some native iPhone APIs. Currently PhoneGap supports JavaScript access to the user’s location and the device accelerometer. Camera and vibration are still in the works. There’s talk of being able to use a web form to create your app by submitting only the...
One clever/obsessive Linux theme crafter has released a XpGnome script that adds custom icons, controls, backgrounds, colors, and makes many other tweaks to make a GNOME desktop look almost exactly like Windows XP. The drawback is that there's no easy uninstall/undo, so creating a dummy account to try this out on is definitely recommended....
Photo of Naples rubbish piles by chrisjohnbeckett Barely a week goes by without news headlines announcing yet another innovative way of making biofuel, something that was lauded as remarkable only at the beginning of the year but has since fallen from grace. Many new biofuel initiatives sound great at the outset but once the mechanics and background information are revealed they seem to be just as harmful to the environment as existing methods of fuel extraction. That is, until now. A group of Spanish developers, led by researcher Francisco Angulo, have announced their creative means of producing biofuel, which...
