Thursday, October 25, 2007
Software
Our Leopard Review Matrix
11:52PM Wilson Rothman | Don’t have time to read over the full reviews from NYT’s David Pogue, USA Today’s Ed Baig and WSJ’s Walt Mossberg? Read our handy review matrix instead, where we break out everything that wasn’t merely feature description in an easy-to-compare chart. You can thank us later! More »
Vehicles
Mach 8 Hydrogen Hypersonic Airliner on the Drawing Board
11:51PM Charlie White | It looks like that Boeing jet we showed you yesterday isn’t going to be the only airplane using hydrogen if the European Union has its way. The European Space Agency just got $14.5 million in a second round of funding from the EU to study the idea of developing A2, a hydrogen-fueled hypersonic aircraft that might travel at an incredible speed of Mach 5.5. They’re studying what it would take to build an aircraft so fast that you could fly from Brussels to Sydney in 4.6 hours. Sheesh, that’s 10,407 miles. There’s even talk of an engine that could propel the craft to Mach 8. This rocket plane makes the Mach 2 of the Concorde seem glacially slow. More »
Online
Everybody wants a piece. Microsoft just plopped …
11:26PM Mark Wilson | Everybody wants a piece. Microsoft just plopped down $240 million to keep Facebook afloat and score exclusive advertising. But that $240 million is actually small change—just 2% total share—since Facebook is now worth $15 billion. [valleywag and adage] More »
Home
Door Transcends Door to Become Ping-Pong Table
11:15PM Mark Wilson | It’s not that we have any particular dislike for doors, it’s just that, growing up in a barn, we never had any use for them. But this Ping-Pong door is enough to change our minds. Housing a Ping-Pong table within an internal frame, the door…unfolds…for a quick match. It’s a clever, efficient use of space for those who don’t require a full-size table to get their Forrest Gump on. More »
Peripherals
Nintendo DS TV Tuner, Finally Priced & Dated
10:38PM Mark Wilson | Nintendo first mentioned this 1seg tuner for the Nintendo DS well over a year ago. Since then, we’d pretty much forgotten that it existed/lost any hope that it would ever actually be released. But Nintendo just announced that they will be launching the product on November 20th in Japan. The sweetness of wireless digital television will run customers $60, which isn’t super cheap nor uber expensive. Too bad the US still transmits television by chiseling likenesses into granite and flying them to viewers via an army of trained pigeons, otherwise we’d love to import one of these in November…because is it us, or do bunny ears just make the DS even cuter? [gamewatch via kotaku] More »
Gadgets
Samsung Quad Pen Concept Transfers Air Scribbling in Perpetuity
9:34PM Addy Dugdale | A pen that lets you write anything anywhere and then transfer it to your computer has been developed by Samsung. Situated in the nib of the Quad pen is an electronic sensor which records its movements and saves it onto a tiny memory chip in the barrel, meaning that, should inspiration strike while you wander lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er — yeah, you get my drift — you can run to the nearest daffodil and jot down whatever it was you wanted, thus saving your work for posterity on the chip. I love this idea, but I know that it won’t work for me as my handwriting is so pants — I mean, if I can’t even master my digital signature at the supermarket, what hope is there for me writing my best-selling bonkbuster novel on a daffodil? [Korea TImes via UberGizmo] More »
Press
UBS Analyst Starts Countdown for iPhone 2, Reckons Spring 2008
9:13PM Addy Dugdale | UBS analyst Ben Reitzes reckons there will be a new version of the jesusPhone before Spring has sprung next year. “Our contacts in the supply chain,” he claims, “point toward a new iPhone model to be release by March.” A report from UBS Investment Research has raised Apple stock to an estimated $220, and author Reitzes says that it will keep rising by the time MacWorld comes around next year. And it wasn’t just iPhone — all sorts of predictions have materialized from the analyst’s crystal ball: More »
Software
First Apple OS X Leopard Reviews by The Mainstream (Verdict: It’s Good)
11:01AM Jason Chen | Three reviews are in from USA Today, WSJ and NYT and they’re all positive (though some more positive than others). That’s Mossberg’s video, above, but the rest of the reviews are summarized below. More »
Screens
New LCD Display From NEC Can Switch Between Wide and Narrow Viewing Angles
10:50AM Sean Fallon | Today NEC announced the development of a LCD display that can switch between wide and narrow viewing angles without sacrificing image quality. Essentially, this would allow users to choose between a wide angle “public” mode (sharing photos of your vacation) or a narrow “private” mode (watching porn at work). This development is made possible thanks to a a polarizing plate on the back of the panel that can disperse light over 140 degrees or 30 degrees. Unfortunately, the angle currently needs to be set during manufacturing and there are only two possible fields of vision, but NEC believes that the technology could come of age in the near future. [Digital World Tokyo] More »
Random Stuff
