Ask someone to describe an Apple advert and I bet you they’ll say “different,” “artistic,” and maybe even “funny,” and that’s all very nice for Apple (we’ll ignore those who’d respond “irritating.”) But according to a study due for publication next month, years of seeing those funky ads may have had an unexpected psychological side effect. Apparently showing someone an Apple logo —even subliminally— will make them use more creative thinking to perform a task. That’s something I bet even Steve himself couldn’t have predicted: a real Reality Distortion Field.
The Myka is what many Torrent fans have been waiting for—a device that makes it easy to download torrents and play them on your living room TV. You can connect to the internet via LAN or WiFi, it has HDMI, Composite, S-Video and SPDIF ports (nice), your choice of 80, 160 or 500 gigabytes (and USB expansion) and the Linux OS with pre-installed BitTorrent software. You can even transfer videos directly from your computer. Prices are going to fall between US$299 and US$459, which is more than the Apple TV, but something tells me that there is some built-in value there. Additional pic after the break.
Vista’s SP1 was officially released on Tuesday. That means people have had enough time to tinker around with it, test it out, and share their opinions. The reviews are in, and here’s what the usual suspects (plus our own most eloquent commenters) had to say.
It’s official: the MacBook Air is going to be a roaring success no matter what we say about it: Martha Stewart loves it, and that’s it. End of the story. She loves everything about it and, according to her, it looks great on her desk. So Brian, Walter, David et al, TFSU and read her comments, along the image of the MacBook Air sitting on her desktop:
If you pop open Apple Software Update in Windows, you’ll see a fresh item in there today: Safari 3.1. Even if you don’t already have it installed. This is the first time they’ve used Software Update to push Safari on Windows users that didn’t already have it. What’s up with the new, more aggressive thrust? [TUAW]
MIT and Google are teaming up to help find planets that may be suitable for supporting life, getting us closer to getting in touch with some friendly/not friendly aliens. Google is paying for MIT’s development of “six high-res, wide-field digital cameras with a 192-megapixel resolution for TESS – the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.” The goal? To find Earth-like planets that are suitable for life, and to do it soon.
Not everybody cares about OS X or Windows. Like nutbastard, who just wants a little Linux news. Here ya go: Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron beta is out and about, running GNOME 2.22 and Linux Kernel 2.6.24, with Firefox 3 beta 4 thrown in for more pre-release funtimes. If you’re looking for a Mac/Windows alternative, this is the Linux distro to get, though you might wanna wait til the final version hits next month. [Ubuntu via /.]
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Caught for the first time on video, Segway inventor Dean Kamen presented his Vapor Compression Distiller on last night’s Colbert Report. The distiller is a chemical-, membrane-, and filter-free water purifier. Kamen claims the box draws pure drinkable water from oceans, poisons—even a 50-gallon drum of urine. He has reportedly worked on the contraption for five years, but early prototypes were pretty ugly. This one looks ready for mass production, and with enough, Kamen says we could “wipe out 50% of human disease.” Good luck with that, Deano, we’re behind you all the way. (That other 50% must be a monumental bitch.) [Colbert Nation]
If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the “first sale” doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School’s Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled licence to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?
Apparently, pouring a cup of coffee is too much work. That’s why these Coffee Spoons were invented. They have powdered coffee, creamer, and sugar inside, and when you pour it all into hot water you can use the container as a spoon. In addition to saving perhaps 4 seconds of your precious time, it lets you use something disposable rather than a spoon which you can wash and reuse. Design at its finest right here. [Yanko Design]
