Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Entertainment
Voting Machines Coincidentally Elect Voting Machine as President
11:50PM Mark Wilson | It’s amazing that you can fall asleep with the polls showing one thing and wake up to a world you don’t even recognise. Despite who I may have supported as of November 4th, as a fervent supporter of both democracy and touchscreen technology, I accept DRE 700:259 as the 44th President of the United States. But I’m totally using a paper ballet in 2012. [The Onion Thanks Mr. Ponies!] More »
Gadgets
Planex GW-USMicronN: A Teeny, Tiny Wireless-N Adapter
11:30PM Mark Wilson | Wireless-N speeds sound great and everything (74Mbps!), but who wants to buy a bulky new adapter? The GW-USMicronN from Planex makes the upgrade painless, assuming you have an N router. Possibly the smallest 802.11n USB adapter to date (1/6 the size of the D-Link beside it), early testing shows that its range and transfer speeds are competitive with its class, and it features all of the security measures found in bulkier adapters. Arriving in the US for $US30 next month, this Planex is definitely worth keeping an eye on. [CNET and Planex] More »
Design
Oki’s Comfy Leopard Office Chair Has a Robot Leg at Heart
11:10PM Kit Eaton | You may have thought the Embody chair was all very high-tech…but it’s got nothing on Oki’s protoype Leopard chair. It’s got a robot-leg in its design. Based on Oki’s well-named Robot Leg walking robot, the chair is motorised: when empty it perches up in the air, waiting for your butt to settle against it. When you do so, the leg contracts and winds you backwards and down into an ideal position with “seating comfort akin to being held in someone’s arms,” apparently. More »
Software
Windows 3.x Discontinued
10:50PM Mark Wilson | Believe it or not, up to November 1st many could and still were buying licenses for Windows 3.x (mainly for embedded systems like cash registers and airline entertainment systems from companies like Virgin). But on that day, Microsoft discontinued their licensing of the product. After 18 years, the iconic Windows platform is no more. More »
Robots
ObamaBot Dutifully Hides Aspirations for 2016
10:30PM Mark Wilson | The ObamaBot has been a patient contributor to the Obama presidential campaign. After being assembled for $US250, the 6-foot metal and wooden robot took to the streets of Florida waving signs to promote early voting and now President-elect Barack Obama. From a technical standpoint, the robot is apparently “powered by hope,” which seems like a…unique…approach to constantly fluctuating energy prices. Bonus shot: More »
Gadgets
Mintpad Wireless Post-Its Good For Classroom Note-Passing, Digital-Style
10:15PM Kit Eaton | Digitised Post-It-alike gizmos aren’t new, but none I can think of is quite as functional as Mintpass’ Mintpad. It’s a web-surfing, Wi-Fi, media player with 1.3-megapixel cam, microphone and built-in speaker, 4GB of memory with microSD expansion. Plus it’s a 320 x 240-pixel 2.9-inch touchscreen note-taker. galleryPost('mintpad', 3, ''); More »
Random Stuff
NASA Nearly Bombs Australia With 635kg Ammonia Tank
9:39PM John Herrman | Jettisoned over a year ago and expected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on its own time somewhere in the beginning of November, one of the ISS’s retired coolant tanks has careened through the Earth’s atmosphere in the skies off the coast of Australia. Two lucky things happened here: the reentry took place — and this was completely up to chance — over water, and the atmosphere broke the 635kg tank into lots of small pieces. More »
Vehicles
Japanese Scientists Miss The Point, Design Self-Stabilising Electric Bike
9:36PM Kit Eaton | OK, I’ll admit that this self-stabilising bike is clever: it’s kind of a Segway turned sideways, using gyros to detect if it’s off-balancing, and adjusting the steering automagically to compensate. It’s also a standard electric bike, so it propels you along without needing any annoying foot-power: very 21st Century indeed. More »
Random Stuff
Before Neon Lights: What Tokyo’s Akihabara Geek District Looked Like 50 Years Ago
9:20PM Brian Lam | Before Tokyo’s Akihabara geek district was laced with neon, it looked like this photo taken circa 1950 which I saw on my recent trip. Despite the horses in the photos, even around this time, gadgets were a part of the trade. (Although as the ads below show, phonographs and vacuum tube radios made up some of the choices.) Doing some research on the area, I did not know that almost 100 years before this time, the area was razed by fires and when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt with a Shinto shrine on its premises with the name “The extinguisher shrine”. People assumed that the Shrine was devoted to the popular deity of fire-control named Akiba, which is the root of the somewhat similar name of the region today. galleryPost('akiba1950s', 3, ''); More »
Computers
