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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Duke’s wireless LAN is being eaten alive by iPhone MAC address request swarms buzzing at 18,000 requests per second. [Slashdot]
Some people see the Hide-A-Pod fake Zune case for iPods—a totally fictitious product—and chuckle to themselves. A pocketful of Zune fanatics saw it and decided to invent their own fake rebuttal product, which they also called Hide-A-Pod. While the pro-iPod Hide-A-Pod is a protective shell, the anti-iPod pro-Zune Hide-A-Pod is a colorful gel. The gist is that iPod owners who wish to protect their investment can lube up and “stick it where the sun don’t shine.” For the shuffle you need just 2 oz., says the fake ad for the fake goo, but if you own an iPhone, you’re gonna want a gallon. [Hideapod Gel] Thanks Nate!
Remember that moment in the Transformers movie when the kid says that super advanced robots (the Transformers) must be from Japan? He was right. This robot, from what seems to be a Japanese robot competition/show earlier this year, actually transforms from car mode into robot mode. It’s tiny, but there’s nothing—except possibly funding and the fear of being killed by one of these things—to prevent someone from making a bigger version. [AnimeNarutard via PlasticBamboo]
UPDATE: Tuesday comp is now closed. Move along to another day for your shot at a double pass!
Want a fresh shot at winning a double pass to “Sony. Experience More”, Sony’s lush showcase event at Darling Harbour next Friday night?
Yesterday we asked you to give us your best Sony fanboy act, so today we’re asking for your best Sony hater routine. Some of you tried it yesterday regardless of our request for fanboys, so TODAY is the day to pull out your trolls. Again, as few words as possible. Our favourite 20 comments dropped below win the double passes. -Seamus Byrne
Close calls on the first day’s efforts, but there can be only 20. Congrats to…
Vincent, Simon, PB, Blake, Steve, Si, CoRDS, Jared, Beau, Peter Hanson, Ben Laidlow, Aron, Harpo_74, Y W, Mr. Crash, Drvec, d-_-b, William, Niles, and Cameron Gribble. We’ll be in touch with you all soon to grab details for the door list.
Another shot at 20 double passes to Sony’s showcase event next Friday night very shortly.
Ever wonder what happens to all those Lego pieces you lose? I think they end up in the hands of Malle Hawking, the man responsible for building an absolutely enormous Lego aircraft carrier. Made from over 200,000 individual bricks, the leviathan weighs in at just over 350 pounds. It has working aircraft elevators, a hangar, radar dishes, electrical lights and a working catapult/slingshot for launching the jets. Bravo, Mr. Hawking, bravo. [Lego Aircraft Carrier] galleryPost('legoaircraftcarrier', 4, 'Lego Aircraft Carrier');
Just like the T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile 6 Upgrade was leaked about a week before the real release, AT&T’s 8525 update has just been dumped onto the internet as well. What does this mean to you? Two things.
One, the official official (meaning residing on AT&T’s servers) will be upon us soon. Two, you’re probably safe installing this on your phone, since it’s going to be (most likely) the same ROM as the one being released soon. Happy upgrading.
According to a patent filed by Apple, the company’s MacBook touchpads and signature iPod clickwheel might be in for a very visual overhaul. The proposed technology will allow for both lighting and color responses to user interaction. If Apple follows through with its plans, when you get to use touchpads and clickwheels on next generation products, you might get a bit of a show.
While most of it sounds fairly cosmetic, the idea of a touchpad that glows brighter with more pressure, follows around tactile input by the user, and changes color sounds pretty damn cool to us, and helps make things more intuitive on the user’s end. The 34 page patent outlines the plans which sound like anything from an LCD touchscreen to a traditional touchpad backlit with LEDs. From the patent:
By way of example, it may be desirable to provide visual stimuli at the touch pad so that a user can better operate the touch pad. For example, the visual stimuli may be used (among others) to alert a user when the touch pad is registering a touch, alert a user where the touch is occurring on the touch pad, provide feedback related to the touch event, indicate the state of the touch pad, and/or the like.
Hopefully we’ll actually see these ideas put to good use, rather than just a patent blocking others from using it. [US Patent Office via AppleInsider]
Mobile computing is getting a bit faster today with the announcement of the Asus T500 3.5G high speed PCIe card. Capable of pushing out a whopping 3.6Mbps downstream and 384Kbps upstream, Asus is boasting that this little rascal will provide connectivity superior to WiFi in some locations. In addition to bringing some serious bandwidth to the table, the T500 is also equipped with a handful of phone features.
Electronista reports that if you get AT&T on the horn and threaten to cancel because of slow or unused iPhone Internet capabilites, they might try to strike up a secret deal: $40 a month for 450 minutes and 5,000 night-and-weekend minutes. Wi-Fi works but there’s no mobile data. Also, you kiss Visual Voicemail and those 200 SMS messages good-bye, but you do save 20 bucks. Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like AT&T’s 450-minute Nation plan. Could this be fulfillment of Apple’s original promise?
Back when Apple and AT&T announced iPhone plans, they said, “In addition, iPhone customers can choose from any of AT&T’s standard service plans.” Could the secret rate simply be a standard service plan? If you try this, though, take heed: You will probably see added costs for text messaging, and you may really miss that Visual Voicemail. [Electronista]
