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In an surprisingly frank and fresh exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, Steve Wozniak has left us some new gems of wisdom regarding the past, present, and future of Apple. Among his thoughts on Apple's fanboyism, stock overvaluation, upcoming products, and the iPhone limitations, the most surprising is his prediction that the iPod success will die soon, just like the Walkman and transistor radio did:
Do you want to develop niche multitouch applications for a platform that most people will never get their hands on for the foreseeable future? You're in luck. Later this month, Microsoft will be releasing its Surface SDK beyond the few companies that have been privy to it since launch to attendees of its Professional Developer Conference. I am curious to see what kind of multitouch gaming could come out of more developers having access to the kit, but the fact that you can't just go out and buy one for your living room undoubtedly puts a damper on development fever for the platform. [Cnet]
What better way to celebrate your new iPod shuffle than sticking it to Apple's marketing/branding department and sliding the sleek device into the original Apple logo? Available from an Etsy seller, the $US12 classic case features a rear opening that allows the shuffle's clip to slip through so you can wear it like a broach or button. But if giant lizards are more your thing and you've got a new iPod nano, the seller has something else you may be interested in:
My new favourite Googler Jon Perlow has used his 20% time (that portion of it he doesn't spend hammered, apparently) to write Gmail Goggles, an official Labs add-on that makes sure you really want to send that 3AM email to your ex-girlfriend. Goggles employs five arithmetic problems that appear after pressing send (you choose the difficulty level!) that must be answered correctly in a limited time before your overly passionate and typo-ridden message can be on its way. It can also be scheduled to be active only on your party nights. Thanks big G! [Official Gmail Blog]
There's so much wrong with the application of this technology that we won't even get started on it, but this Sharp television runs off the juice of a single attached solar panel. That's because the 52" LCD is illuminated by LEDs which coincidentally reduces its power draw to the same amount produced by that solar panel sitting on the floor.
Researchers at Boston University (whose football mascot, incidentally, is a giant light-emitting germanium diode) think they'll be able to combine LED bulbs with wireless networking technology, allowing for nearly complete ubiquity of wireless access points. The technology will be able to communicate data with visible light at up to 10Mbps, and can be adapted to existing power lines.
No amount of oohing, aahing or drooling can convince HTC to bring this 480x800 monster to American shores, according to the Taiwanese company. That's a shame, because it was looking pretty good. The company passed the news on through Twitter, which is the corporate equivalent of breaking up with your girlfriend with a text message:
Sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the States, it would be old news. We do have other cool stuff coming.
A seriously odd announcement from camera maker Nikon, the Media Port UP300 and UP300x video headset approaches wearable PC territory. The device, which honestly looks like a pair of headphones with a small display tacked on, actually has a pretty impressive spec sheet: up to 8GB of flash memory for videos, audio and file storage, Wi-Fi connectivity, a full-featured internet browser and on the 300x model, even motion control. Browsing would have to be frustrating on a setup like this, but the Wi-Fi connection can also be used to download audio and video content directly to the device.
Designer Ivo Vos has assembled in "The Brunch" a routine-ruining set of kitchen accessories. It really reminds you to never take anything for granted, if you assume "anything" to mean "toast" and "coffee." We've seen a projectile toaster before, but it was more of a tool of force than of precision toastmanship. Some of the other concepts in the gallery at the source link seem an awful lot like obsessive compulsive tools (a saw box for bread?) but I wouldn't kick any of them out of my kitchen. [Yanko]
The Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada could have probably taken a more original approach when designing their logo, but I doubt Apple is protecting themselves from much by suing the hell out of them. Are students showing up at Apple stores demanding that the so-called "Genius Bar" reconsider their essays marks? Are Apple store employees inadvertently showing up at the school and teaching hours and hours of "How to use iPhoto" classes? Apple is just trying to prevent the devaluation of their logo here, but it never looks good when you sue a school, even if that school is a for-profit vocational tech college. [CBC via MacNN]
Back in the era of floppy disks, before programmers figured out how to implement DRM, they had to rely on no-name rap stars to keep kids from pirating software. That's right, rap stars. The video really speaks for itself, so watch it now—and remember, Don't Copy that Floppy! [-Thanks Stephanie!]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 5:11 PM on October 7, 2008
So now that the first Quantum Code clue is live, you may have solved it and been wondering anything from "what the hell does that mean?" to "what next?" Well, the answer is to check out our Quantum Code forum.
Once there, you can discuss with other code-crackers the latest developments in the competition. You can collude, coerce and contrive ways to get others to help you solve the clues to crack the code, or you can just ask for help. This will be a nationwide competition, so you may need to get interstate Gizmodians to help you with certain clues so that you can stand a chance to crack the code.
So hit the forums and begin the discussion!
In case you wanted to create your challenge to the world's longest ringtone, CNET has an interesting little video tutorial up that'll show you how to do so on the iPhone using iTunes. Turns out the music software lets you choose the start and stop times of a song, rename the extension and create a custom ringtone. You'll need Garage Band if you want to get fancier than that, but who needs fancy when all you want to do is make a 62 minute-long song? [CNET TV]
Holographic television sets may be only a few years off thanks to a new breakthrough in 3D technology. Researchers at the University of Arizona said they had made the first updatable 3D displays with memory, a prerequisite for getting any holographic image to move. With the new technology, displays can now be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.
A new European Union rule could spell the end to the iPod's pesky integrated batteries. The EU's proposed "New Batteries Directive," which mandates that batteries in electronic appliances need to be "readily removed" would force Apple to change the iPod's design for the European market.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 2:48 PM on October 7, 2008
We gave you guys a heads up on this last week, and now the first clue is available for the Quantum Code. What is the Quantum Code? How do you crack the Quantum Code? What do you get if you actually do crack the Quantum Code?
All these questions - and more - will be answered when you scan the QR code above and follow the link. And while you're working with Constance Newlove to solve the Quantum Code, tell her G'day from Gizmodo - from what I hear, she's a big fan.
For those of you who love to let your mobile phones ring incessantly, never bothering to pick it up or let it go to voicemail, here's the world's longest mobile phone ringtone. The ringtone, supplied by Japanese company Dwango, lasts 61 minutes and 40 seconds and will be submitted for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records. [PlusD via Textually]
Less than a month after Apple initiated the recall process for its USB iPhone power adapters, customers are reporting that their replacements have been received. The original adapters had metal prongs that could break off and remain in a power outlet, which carried an electric shock risk. The new one looks exactly the same as its predecessor, except it's bedaubed with an extra green dot. [TUAW]
How do you make a wireless transmission that is as fast or even faster than most fiber-optic data passages? With laser beams of course! According to a Technology Review piece, super smart people at Battelle research in Columbus, OH figured out a way, using millimeter wave technology, to send data at speeds up to 20 gigabits per second. They even field tested 10 Gbps at up to 800 meters. Even accounting for Ohio's unnervingly flat terrain, this is several hundred times farther than a wireless transmission of that bandwidth had ever reached before.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 12:30 PM on October 7, 2008
Yesterday, Telstra celebrated the second birthday of its NextG network by announcing that they are on track to deliver even faster speeds on the network. The Enhanced HSPA (eHSPA) network is theoretically capable of 21Mbps download speeds - which is significantly faster than any of the country's other HSPA networks (which typically max out at about 7Mbps theoretically).
When the Big T launches their eHSPA network (which it claims will happen by the end of the year), it will make them the first carrier to offer the 21Mbps speeds.
Of course, the only problem with this comes not from Telstra, but from the lack of compliant hardware on the consumer side. After all, NextG is already capable of speeds around 14.4Mbps, but there isn't a whole lot of handsets (or other devices) that take advantage of the speeds. It's why those claims of a 42Mbps iPhone were such crap - the chip inside the iPhone was only capable of 7.2Mbps.
Still, the hardware will come eventually, and although Telstra is certain to charge obscene amounts of cash for these types of speeds, it's still impressive that you'll be able to get lightning fast wireless connectivity all around Australia.
[Telstra]
The upcoming This Is Spinal Tap Blu-ray is of course exciting to me. After all, it's been what, like seven years since I last hurled money at Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and the rest of the lot for their well-deservedly best-selling DVD special edition. But while the Blu-ray will come with an intriguing-sounding game, this latest repackaging of the classic, due out January 20, 2009, could easily be dead on arrival, having choked on not necessarily its own vomit. For starters, it's not recorded in Dubbly.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 11:30 AM on October 7, 2008
Did you know that there were over 200 different aboriginal languages in Australia? Of those, there are now only about 20 that are still in use today - the rest have essentially been wiped out. What's more, the Asia Pacific region is home to about a third of the world's indigenous languages, many which are now facing the possibility of being lost forever.
But, thankfully, a group of Australian scientists are in the process of digitising and cataloging these languages so that they will never be completely lost. The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a collaboration between ANU and the universities of Melbourne, Sydney and New England. Already in its data banks are thousands of pages of notes, plus hours and hours of audio recordings as part of their research.
The archive has just won a Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI) Award in humanities and social sciences, which gave them a $26,000 PowerEdge 2950 rack mountable Dell server as their prize.
In the future, it's efforts like this that will form the basis of cultural and historical studies throughout a large part of the world. Sadly, it's probably inevitable that these smaller cultures get absorbed into the global machine, but at least we'll have some record of the past. And probably on a Dell server, no less.
[Science in Public - Thanks Niall!]
Wow. Just wow. Call me a cultural elitist, but who considers it socially acceptable to hang a glowing pair of balls from your rear bumper? I don't care if they're connected to your brake lighting, they're just wrong. I never thought it possible for LEDs to be horrifically misappropriated, but BrakeNutz just rewrote the script on that. Check out the video over on Jalopnik. [BrakeNutz via Jalopnik]
After today's reveal that RIM will launch an official app store in the near future, TechCrunch reports on BerryStore, which not only promises to provide apps for the Storm, but the rest of the Blackberry line as well, including the old phones. What makes this a legitimate challenger to the official app store is that BerryStore's content will be available to everyone, regardless of the carrier (the official app store will make different apps available to different carriers...apparently).
Sky Challenge wants to create a new massive sport, one that would allow you to race against real stunt airplanes, flying through virtual doughnuts and gates up in the real sky. To do that, they are using a mix of technologies that that allow real planes to be precisely tracked, as well as letting real world pilots see the course and the computer planes around them. Here's how it works:
Apparently, a simple blog post about getting Windows 7 early by attending Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in October or the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in November wasn't enough. No, Microsoft had to drive the point home by getting a fake boy band to sing a song about PDC, and the free 160GB HDD—containing the earliest release of Win7—that will be handed to attendees. Yep, they recorded an intentionally bad yet catchy late-90s-flavoured pop song that includes the rhyme "Windows 7 my love is true/Now let me use Direct3D to unlock your GPU." Don't believe that kind of lyrical mastery still exists on this our earth? Well then press play, buster. [YouTube]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 10:00 AM on October 7, 2008
This news shouldn't surprise anyone, but Nintendo Australia have confirmed that there are no short term plans to release the DSi Down Under, and we're probably looking at a "late 2009" shipping date. And with the recent news that the DSi content will be region locked, it looks like the DS Lite is still the handheld of choice for Australian gamers this Christmas. Unless the PSP starts releasing some decent games, that is...
Math geeks may recognise the iconic device pictured above. Before electronic calculators became available in the 70's, the Curta Calculator was considered to be the most efficient portable calculator available. The device boasts 605 intricate parts and it can perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and even square roots without electricity. Despite its complexity, the Curta was so well constructed that it made a pleasing purring sound when the parts moved. It also happens to be one beautiful piece of machinery in general. However, the most interesting thing about the Curta may not be the design itself, but the story behind its creation.
Sky Challenge wants to create a new massive sport, one that would allow you to race against real stunt airplanes, flying through virtual doughnuts and gates up in the real sky. To do that, they are using a mix of technologies that that allow real planes to be precisely tracked, as well as letting real world pilots see the course and the computer planes around them. Here's how it works: