It bounces, it spins, it see-saws. The Spirohop must, must, MUST come to Australia. Pleeeeease??!
Take your typical see-saw, add the bouncy goodness off the classic spacehopper, and then let the whole thing spin on its axis. If they made these in grown up sizes, I’d be outside playing on one right now instead of in here staring at computer screens.
Cue Demtel voice. How much would you expect to pay? This is listed at £69.99, or about $160. The site says they’ll ship international, so even wearing some hefty shipping charges, this ride-on will be such a hit all summer it will be well worth the dosh. [Spirohop via BabyGadget]
We ship 50 to 80 percent of the 300k to 400k tons of electronics that actually make it to recycling each year—out of 2 million tons tossed—overseas. The “recycling” part happens when workers in places China, Nigeria and India bust up old gear with hammers, gas burners or their bare hands to pull out metals, glass and “other recyclables,” taking a toxic shower in the process. And the most likely stuff to make its way over there is what’s collected at free drives.
One caveat we missed when sharing news of iiNet’s naked ADSL2+ release is the inclusion of uploads in the usage limits. This is a nasty trend that is now spreading beyond just Telstra, something we were hoping would decline rather than spread. According to Whirlpool, iiNet feels their caps are higher than otherwise to compensate (we thought the caps could have been better even before hearing this) and no other plans are affected.
iiNet is correct that more serious users are now uploading a lot more than they used to, whether through P2P traffic or offsite storage. But in our books, counting uploads is a double dip – an ISP somewhere else is counting downloads when you are sending uploads, so is it fair to be ‘charged’ on both streams?
AT&T wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega mentioning in an interview on Friday that they’d talked to Google about joining the OHA and are “analyzing the situation” might seem like grist for the rumour mill (and headlines), but it probably isn’t news.
Of course AT&T and Google have “talked” about OHA—note the past tense, and that de la Vega hasn’t met with Google himself. Also, neither AT&T nor Verizon will publicly shut out joining—via the WSJ there were similar rumours about Verizon “weighing” the option. But there’s too much against it happening.
Wilson broke down why Sprint and T-Mobile joined and the two largest carriers didn’t. There’s also the wildly conflicting interests, which seem to have gotten still more intense this past week. Sure, AT&T could still buddy up. And so could Microsoft. [Mercury News via Broadband Reports]
I reviewed the Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 a month ago, and gave it a ‘close but no cigar’ verdict. It went most of the way to offering a handshake use position, but stopped short when compared to mice like the Evoluent VerticalMouse. After another four weeks of daily usage, I’d like to revisit the review and now say that this ‘close’ verdict should, for me, now be moved to an ‘ouch’.
I have big, but not gargantuan, hands, so this could be a factor, but after more and more use I found my wrist was starting to tell me it wasn’t happy with how things were going. A shift back to my standard Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 and my wrist relaxed a little more. That just shouldn’t be the case – a ‘natural’ ergonomic device should be comfortable and intuitive, and no matter how I have tried to adjust the way I position my hand I just couldn’t get it into the right position.
Let me note here I’m more of an ergo-nut than your average user. I’m sitting on a Herman Miller Aeron while working at a height-adjustable desk (review later this week) so I’m not pouring all my ergo hopes into one little mouse – so my experience can’t be discounted as a result of my general bad posture / position at my desk.
Hey, last Friday we passed the 500 Australian post milestone! Not big by mothership standards, but with the local content edited solo by yours truly that’s some pretty good post volume if it was a blog by any other name. We’ve also passed 3,000 Australian comments in recent weeks. Thanks all round to the Allure crew behind the scenes and the AU readers for helping us as we slowly simmer this baby up to a boil. Here’s to 50,000 posts more!
There’s a lot to digest in Newsweek’s seven-page all-out feature. Jeff Bezos sum it up: “This isn’t a device, it’s a service.” Kindle starts shipping tomorrow for $399 and is “a perpetually connected Internet device “running off of EV-DO—it calls the service “Whispernet.” It’s totally computer independent: You browse for books (88,000 at launch) and buy them in a “one-touch process,” it comes with a personal Kindle email address and it can browse the regular internet—keyboard sounds useful now doesn’t it?
AU: We’ll keep an eye on whether this will be shippable to Australia on launch, or whether you’ll need to find alternate means of purchase to get hands on quickly. I know I want one. -SB
Our buddies at IGN have just run a comprehensive review of AG’s RiffMaster Guitar Hero controller. The controller is the best looking we have seen, and does a lot to push our rock star credibility that little bit further.
newVideoPlayer("glowing_mtndew.flv", 475, 376);You may recall that glowing Mountain Dew trick we showed you last month, and the debunking that Snopes gave the trick not long after that. Now here’s a likable guy who gives us an amusing demo of what a fake that glowing Mountain Dew was, showing us how it just doesn’t work. In fact, you don’t even need the Mountain Dew at all to make a foamy liquid glow like a lightning bug. He even takes it a step further with an additional ingredient of his own in this entertaining demonstration. [VidZest]
