On the final day of Gizmodo’s tour of Japan courtesy of Toyota Australia, our hosts took us for an inside peek of Tsutsumi. The plant is special for a few reasons. One, it’s in Aichi in Toyota City. We kid you not, there is actually a place called Toyota City, and it’s a real city with suburbs and the rest, not just some lame attempt at making a Toyota plant sound cool. Toyota City is about an hour outside of Nagoya. The plant is also special for it’s sustainability initiatives. When we say sustainable we really mean it. Aside from that, the plant is also special for it’s green initiatives that pretty much blow everyone else’s out of the water (pretty much, some other companies are as good or better).

Tsutsumi is massive. Let’s not beat around the bush. How big? Well, we didn’t get any exact measurements, but we did get this fact: The plant has 50,000 square metres of photovoltaic solar panels. That’s the equivalent of 60 tennis courts of solar panels alone. You can imagine the size of the plant itself then. It’s the main producer of Toyota’s Prius model and also produces Camry, Corolla and other models specific to Japan.

Walking inside the massive buildings (yes plural, there are a fair few of them) is like walking into Santa’s workshop, if he were building Toyota cars. The walkways take you from the very beginnings of production to the very end. You go from seeing hundreds of workers running around with trolleys filled with parts to workers starting the finished cars and driving five metres to the end of the production line. Within a few buildings a box of parts suddenly becomes the shell of a car which then grows with the addition of engines, gearbox and other internal parts before getting seats and fittings, doors, a spray job, mirrors and wipers and then a brief test.

Each worker literally has only a few minutes to finish their job. The production line only stops in emergencies. For example, the wiper guy: He has a box of wipers for all different models. A model arrives, it moves slowly through his area while he picks the correct wipers, attaches them to their sockets, winds them tight, tests they are fitted correctly, checks a few other parts and then moves on to the next car on the line.

Issues do occur though, and when they do, the worker with the problem has a button to push that sounds a yellow alarm. It sounds the alarm and shows up on the monitors around the plant. It’s a problem that won’t stop the line. Managers have a quick consultation about the problem and often it can be resolved without stopping the production line. In severe cases there is a red alarm. Again, it sounds a different tune and shows up on the monitors. It has happened before but it’s only for serious cases. It’s a well-oiled machine now, excuse the terrible, terrible pun, so red problems are quite uncommon.

More impressive than its Swiss coordination is the plant’s green credentials. It’s one of the most impressive environmentally friendly manufacturing plants in the world. Since 1990 the plant has managed to cut its CO2 by 50 per cent. This is how they did it.

Last year it installed those 60 tennis courts worth of solar panels. The total output of the panels is 2000kW, which is equal to the average consumption of 500 households. Sure, a manufacturing plant sucks up a lot more juice than 500 households worth, but it’s a bloody good start and there is a hell of a lot more. But just in case you’re wondering, this alone also reduced the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions by 740 tonnes per year, effectively saving 2500 drums of oil if we take a drum to be 200 litres. It’s also rather appropriate, being that the Prius is a hybrid and this is the Prius production plant. It effectively makes the plant a hybrid plant. These solar panels create about half of the electricity that the plant needs to operate. The other 50 per cent comes from gas co-generation.

Another cool thing is that the exterior of the plant’s buildings are covered in photo-catalytic paint. This breaks down airborne nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx). All 22,000 square metres of the assembly plant exterior is covered it in. Toyota has even painted one Prius with it. They would like to be able to sell Prius with this kind of paint but it’s extremely expensive and only comes in white so at this stage isn’t going to work. To put the effect of this paint in layman’s terms it has the same effect as planting 2000 trees, cleaning the air by producing oxygen in sunlight. Toyota also planted 50,000 trees at and around the factory in 2008.

Since Prius production began in 1997, the plant has reduced the amount of waste going to landfill by 82 per cent and has instituted plans to achieve complete elimination of incinerated waste. They have also begun a water-recycling programme that has cut water discharge into surrounding waterways by 50 per cent. What’s more, the water they do discharge is five times cleaner than that in the waterways anyway.

If you’re one of those people who thinks Toyota makes boring soccer mum cars, then you’re certainly entitled to that opinion. We certainly can’t say that the new Corolla or Camry sent shivers up our sports car loving spines (the Lexus LF-A might have though) but we have to bow our hats to Toyota’s energy saving ways.

Reviewing the Kindle is a unique challenge. No matter what cool technology is inside of it, no matter how many buttons or how long the battery lasts, it’s still a device that’s inherently designed to read books, a task that takes time. This isn’t something that you pick up to consume your media quickly and randomly, like an iPod or a mobile phone. It’s an investment in not only dollar terms, but also time.

The very first thing you notice about the Kindle when you take it out of its (expediently delivered) box is that its screen is on. Or at least it looks that way. No matter how many times you read or are told that e-ink displays draw no power unless they are changing, it’s still weird to see an image on the screen when turned off, which is what happens every time you flick the switch on the Kindle.

The second thing is that Amazon looked long and hard at the iPod original iPhone before designing the Kindle. Thin and white on the front, brushed aluminium on the back with a section of plastic, presumably for the built-in SIM card. Sure there are more buttons on the front of the Kindle, but this device is made for reading books, not watching video or listening to music. But the similarity in design is unmistakeable.

The device comes pre-loaded with a guide on how to use the device, as well as a dictionary. Scrolling through the guide will give you a good idea of how the device works, but rather than sit through that, I opted to get straight to downloading from Amazon’s store.

According to Laura Porco, Director of Merchandising at Amazon, the Australian Store launched last week with about 280,000 titles, which has swelled to about 288,000 this week. The US Store has about 370,000 books available to download for the Kindle. But apparently the books available for Australians aren’t a subset of the 370,000 US books – we have books the US doesn’t, they have books we don’t… And the same is true for all the new markets the Kindle is selling in. Amazon is working with local publishers and authors to try and add more content all the time. Doing a quick search of readily known Aussie authors, I got a lot of empty searches: Thomas Keneally, Matthew Riley, Kate Forsyth and Banjo Paterson all turned up blanks. Fantasy writer Ian Irvine’s Human Rites trilogy is available, but that’s it. Tara Moss, for better or worse, has a couple of books available too. Still, given time, we’ll only see more Aussie authors pop up on the device.

The built-in 3G Whispernet service works pretty well. It uses an AT&T SIM card and a global roaming arrangement, which doesn’t actually cost you anything – there are no subscription fees or mobile data plans involved. There is a slight premium on book purchases, but we’ll get to that later. Exactly what network it works on in Australia is unknown – Amazon were as tight lipped as Apple about specific details, and looking at AT&Ts roaming website, it looks like they have arrangements with all the Aussie telcos. In any case, downloading a book takes less than a minute – even for something as chunky as War and Peace.

Actually using the device is pretty easy. The next page buttons are big and conveniently located – it’s easy to walk and read – easier than with a real book, anyway. The keyboard’s kinda horrible, but considering it has limited use (both searching for books, searching for text within a book or taking notes), it’s not a big deal. It’s certainly no worse than using touchscreen input on a Winmo or Android device.

What some people may find irritating is the slow refresh rate of the e-ink screen. In a world where LCDs have 2ms refresh rates, the fact that it seems to take almost a second to change the image on screen could prove frustrating. Personally, it doesn’t phase me considering it takes about the same amount of time to turn a page, but that’s just me. In any case, e-ink is an ideal format for a digital book – reading in bright sunlight is no problems whatsoever, unlike an LCD.

Another potential issue for customers is the fact that everything is in US dollars. both the device itself, and the books you purchase for it, are all charged in US dollars. While that’s all well and good now, while the Aussie dollar is kicking arse and taking names, if it drops down to the 50 cent mark again, you’ll end up paying almost double for the same book. Amazon may change this in the future – they said that they’re running everything out of their US site for convenience rather than profit – although they refuse to comment specifically on future plans. As it stands, you can grab classics for $US2.99, with new releases going for $US11.99, and a whole raft of pricing in between.

If the dollar does crash though, it’s worth noting that the Kindle does read mobipocket files, which you can copy over via the included USB cable. By checking out Project Gutenburg, you can download hundreds of out of copyright books for free and read them on the Kindle. It also does plain txt files, although there are some weird formatting issues with that…

While we’re on the topic of the USB cable, it’s also worth mentioning that the device doesn’t come with a wall charger, just a USB cable. Not so big a deal, until you discover (as Jen Dudley at the Courier Mail did in her review) that the Kindle won’t charge with a USB wall charging adaptor – it only works plugged into your PC. Weird decision on Amazon’s part.

A couple of other things I haven’t mentioned: You can change the font size easily, which is great for those with weaker vision, and the text-to-speech functionality is included as well. It sounds kinda freaky, and you’ll probably never use it, but it’s there for books that publishers have allowed it to work on. You can also subscribe to Newspapers and magazines from around the world (there’s a free two week trial), although most of the pictures have been pulled out. Oh, and no Australian publications yet either, which kind of kills the allure for me. Finally, you can use the inbuilt dictionary to look up any word in any book, which is a great way of expanding that vocab of yours.

So now here’s the question: Is it worth it? It’s $US259 worth of gadget, plus the cost of books. As many detractors have said before, that initial cost is worth a lot of books. And the whole “convenience of carrying 1500 books with you” thing isn’t really practical, as much as it’s cool.

But here are my thoughts – comparing the Kindle to an iPod is a bit misleading. If you think about it, listening to music has always required some kind of device to play the music back, whereas reading has only ever required a book. So the simple truth is that there’s no need to own a Kindle. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It’s a well-built, easy to use and convenient device that can offer an immense level of satisfaction. Because of the size, and weight (or lack thereof), you can carry the Kindle with you everywhere, and read little by little much easier than carrying a book and having to bookmark the page when you stop. In the past week, I’ve read more than I have in a while – even reading several books concurrently, something I’ve never ever done.

So while it’s not a necessary purchase for booklovers, it’s certainly a good one, especially for the geeks among us.

[Kindle on Giz]

The PXC310BT are Sennheiser’s first pair of Bluetooth headphones on the Australian market. They use the A2DP Bluetooth profile to deliver stereo music wirelessly from your Bluetooth device to the headphones. For long-time gadget aficionados, this is nothing new. Similarly, active noise cancellation in a pair of headphones is nothing new either. But Sennheiser have combined the two technologies into one pair of headphones, and like the best fusion restaurants, have created something incredibly new and exciting.

The Design
These headphones from Sennheiser look a lot like every other pair of Sennheiser on the ear noise-cancelling headphones, except without the inline noise cancellation unit. Instead, there’s a small battery unit in the left earphone — it looks replaceable, but I couldn’t get it out. The battery charges via an included USB cable, either plugged into your PC or a power socket. On the right earphone are the controls: up and down buttons for volume, left and right buttons for track control and a centre button to do almost everything else. On the underside of the right headphone are two more buttons: one that controls Bluetooth and one that controls the noise cancellation.

Like previous Sennheiser cans, the PXC310BT are black with silver trims, and fold up for storage. There’s soft padding on the earphones themselves, plus two convenient locations on the top to make wearing them comfortable. And they are comfortable — I happily wore them for most of the day without any real discomfort.

The Controls
Learning the controls for these headphones takes a bit of getting used to. The central button on the side, for example, not only starts and stops your music, but also turns the unit on or off and puts them in Bluetooth search mode as well, depending how long you hold the button. Similarly the NoiseGard button on the bottom will switch noise cancelling on or off if you hold it for a couple of seconds, or activate a speak through function so you can hear what people are saying to you when you have the music cranking if you just press it once. Despite the relatively steep learning curve though, once you’ve mastered the controls, all the buttons are located conveniently enough to make the entire process of controlling your music simple…

Unless you happen to own an iPhone, that is. I personally rejoiced when Apple updated their firmware to include A2DP Bluetooth, but it turns out they didn’t include the profile required to let you skip and rewind tracks using the Sennheiser (and other) Bluetooth headphones. As such, while you can control volume and play and pause the music, you can’t rewind or fast forward. Hardly Sennheiser’s fault there — they’ve got the profile support. But worth mentioning seeing as how I was testing on an iPhone, as I’m sure many potential buyers would be as well.

The Sound Quality
As a general rule, I’ve always loved Sennheiser’s sound quality. That’s why I was a little disappointed when I first started listening to music from my iPhone over A2DP Bluetooth. It sounded like my music—which is encoded at 256kbps MP3—was ripped at something like 64kbps. It was distorted and tinny.

Then suddenly it changed, and sound quality was fine. It was good, even, with a nice range and performance on the bass end as well. Then it started cutting out every second or so, and I had to end the connection with my phone and reconnect, at which point it was all good again. I don’t know if this had something to do with other wireless signals messing up the Bluetooth connection, but it was erratic, to say the least.

Fortunately, Sennheiser did something very smart with these headphones and included a headphone cable jack (3.5mm to 2.5mm). When you plug in the cable, Bluetooth streaming is automatically switched off, although you can still use it to control your music. And with the cable plugged in, the sound quality was great. Which tells me that the problems regarding sound quality I was having were purely based around the limitations of A2DP Bluetooth technology, rather than the headphones themselves.

The Battery Life
These headphones have a tiny little battery in the left ear, which powers not only the Bluetooth mechanism but the noise cancellation as well. So I was impressed when I got a few days of moderate use out of a battery charge. Sure, if you listen to your music all day every day over Bluetooth, you’ll probably need to recharge every night, but if you only use it on the train to and from work, plus a little bit through the day, you’ll happily get 3-4 days. If that’s not enough for you, you should probably just stick with wired headphones and stop your bitching.

Other Things Worth Mentioning
Despite being able to pair with your phone, these headphones don’t do handsfree voice calling — you’ll still need to pull your phone out of your pocket and talk like a normal person. Sennheiser do have a pair coming with that functionality though (called the MM450 TRAVEL), although they’ll have a slight premium on the price.

Speaking of price, these puppies will set you back a cool $599. I know, that sounds expensive, but you’re paying for the convenience of wireless and the awesomeness of noise cancellation, so it’s not that bad a deal. Would I buy these? Probably not, but not because of performance — I think the convenience ultimately overcomes any quality issues with A2DP, and the inability to skip tracks on my iPhone is a limitation I can deal with. No, I wouldn’t buy these mostly because I’d prefer a pair that doubled (or should that be tripled) as a handsfree for my mobile phone, like the upcoming MM450 TRAVEL ‘phones from Sennheiser.

Still, these are the best pair of Bluetooth headphones I’ve tested yet, so if playing your music over Bluetooth is important to you, I’d definitely check them out.

[Sennheiser]

OK, so when I say ‘tearing up’ I don’t mean Formula 1 style. Being that this is a small room it certainly looks like she has some speed behind her though. The i-REAL leans into its corners for a better center of gravity, allowing her to maintain speed while cornering. It looks pretty cool too. It must be said that the woman test driver is small and is only just fitting in the vehicle. Some of the journos here are going to struggle to get in this thing. I think even I will, and I’m just five foot ten by the old tape.

As we watch her go another Toyota rep explains how the i-REAL works. The vehicle is operated very simply. There are dual joystick controls. Push forward to accelerate and push back to brake. We’re going to assume that you can figure out how to go left and right so we won’t insult your intelligence but telling you the rest of the rep’s speech.

Being that the i-REAL is powered by a lithium ion battery it is virtually silent while moving. A single charge will get you up to 30km and obviously be a hell of a lot better for the environment than a petrol powered car or bike. And being that you can hit top speeds of 30kph, you could actually do 30km in a day without spending the whole day on the i-REAL.

Imagine tearing up the pavement in one of these things while you watch those suckers stuck on the highway in peak hour traffic. Thankfully the 30kph speed will allow you to get away from the school kids that will, no doubt, be hurling eggs at you if you did that.

Being a Japanese invention it isn’t be complete without some sort of quirky bit. And here it is: The back of the i-REAL is a huge LED display that’s completely customisable. You can change it as you would your desktop wallpaper. The lady demonstrating the device currently has multi-coloured flashes shooting across the back of the i-REAL. We’ve also seen flower petals, cherry blossoms, waterfalls and sparks.

The display is all well and good, but can you imagine what would happened if this vehicle was actually released in Australia? I’m picturing displays with “If you can read this you can probably smell that I haven’t showered today”, or “NERDS RULE!”, or “Bite me Neil Armstrong”, or “Toyotas slowly, quietly and environmentally consciously urinate on Fords and Holdens”. Ummm, I seem to have forgotten why I am here. Ah yes, to test drive this thing.

Before I get behind the controls, I must mention the social networking aspect of the i-REAL. Yes, that’s right, social networking. The i-REAL features social networking applications. You can speak to other i-REAL users while you’re on the run and geotag sights and places that you like as well. Potentially you and your i-REAL mates could organise to meet up while you are flying around on one.

And now for the test-drive itself. It has to be said that I’m slightly anxious about using this thing. I have never used any sort of vehicle like this and I know it’s worth quite a bit of money. Luckily the chaps from Toyota are directing the journos as they test them.

The vehicle is quite something. As I first get in, I struggle to get my shoulders comfortable in the tiny seat. Unfortunately we aren’t allowed to just go for it Lewis Hamilton style. An instructor is guiding as around the room and making sure we don’t take flight.

I find the i-REAL simple to operate, with buttons on both armrests of the vehicle. There’s a mode that allows you to get in it, as well as park, walk, and cruise modes. You just press whichever button you need and hey presto, the i-REAL is ready to go. Then it’s just a case of moving the joysticks to go.

The difference between walk and cruise is the position the i-REAL takes when in motion and the speed it can achieve. When you put it in cruise mode the back wheel extends to give the vehicle a lower centre of gravity and a headrest pops out the back. It’s almost like a Formula 1 style driving position.

The i-REAL responds brilliantly to your commands through the joystick offering instant feedback. The only issue is the suspension, or lack thereof. Driving on carpet feels a bit like taking a rally car for a spin. You can feel every bump and grind through the ergonomic seat. If it’s like that on carpet, imagine what it would be like on a pavement!

Having said that though this is an early model and Toyota say that we should expect improvements and developments on the i-REAL. According to Makoto Morita, the i-REAL project manager, we could see these commercially available in four to five years time at a price well under $10,000. What you would use it for is questionable. Aside from the suspension issues, there is no weather protection. But as a vehicle for the airport or mall, it could be fantastic.

In terms of the fun factor though, I get off the i-REAL with a smile larger than Krusty the Clown during a Krusty Burger commercial. It’s pretty awesome.

Damian Francis is the editor-at-large for Australian T3 and contributing technology editor for GQ Australia. He was in Japan as a guest of Toyota Australia.

The word virtualization conjures images of the dank nerd lairs, populated by lonely network admins, scattered with miles of grey wire, grimy PC towers, processed food packaging and tiny tumbleweeds woven of human hair. It sounds like the domain of the software nerd, the Gentoo jockey, and most importantly, not you. Today, though, virtualisation has become amazingly easy, and fantastically useful.

Terminology aside, here’s what desktop virtualisation means today: You can run just about any OS, Mac OS X excluded, inside any other OS. Ubuntu in Mac OS? Sure. Windows 7 within Windows XP? Why not? Windows ME within Snow Leopard? Nobody’s going to stop you, I guess! And these patchy, half-assed experiment we’re talking about here—these are fully-functioning installations, which’ll connect to USB peripherals, access the internet, share files with your host OS, and run almost any software you could run on a native installation. You can set up as many of these things as you want, and delete them in a matter of seconds.

Best of all, virtualisation is now something you can try—and stick with—for free, thanks to software like Sun’s VirtualBox. It’s a free download on any platform, and it does its job spectacularly. Here’s how to get started.

What You’ll Need Free hard drive space: VirtualBox is going to create a simulated hard drive (a hard drive image, to be specific) inside your current OS’s operating system. In other words, you’ll need to have space handy to hold a standard OS install, plus whatever apps you’re planning on using on the host system. 10GB is enough to play around with in most cases.

Lots-o-RAM: As efficient as modern virtualization is, running one OS inside another isn’t going to be easy on your hardware. The easiest way to ensure good VM performance is to have plenty of RAM, such that both OSes—your host one and your guest one—can have more than their minimum recommended amount of RAM.

VirtualBox: This is the virtual machine, or the program in which all of your virtual OSes will run. Getting it is just a matter of downloading the correct version—there are Windows, Mac and Linux versions—and running an installation wizard.

A guest OS: Installing an OS as a virtual machine is almost exactly like installing an OS natively, albeit slightly easier. In other words, you’ll need a full, licensed version of your OS, in whatever form you can get it. Downloaded ISO images will work right out of the, er, box—this is how most Linux distributions will come packaged—while OSes on a CD will work too, including your Windows install discs. If applicable, you’ll still need to enter licence keys—as far as Microsoft is concerned, this is a fresh installation of an OS.

Installing Your Virtual Machine I’ve chosen to install Windows 7 within OS X Snow Leopard for this guide, because this will be a common usage scenario, and because the processing of installing an OS in VirtualBox is nearly the same no matter which software you’re running on either end. In other words, if you’re installing Ubuntu 9.04 within Windows XP, you can still follow along. Anyway, here you go:

Installing Guest Additions
VirtualBox supports so-called “Guest Additions” in some OSes, which are essentially sets of tools and drivers that make the virtualization more seamless. If they’re available, you’ll want to install them: the guest OS will adjust to your screen resolution properly, your video performance will be smoother (and in Windows XP and Vista, possible accelerated), filesharing will be simplified, copy and paste will work between OSes, and in some cases, you’ll even be able to run individual programs as native windows in your host OS, not just inside the cordoned-off virtual machine window.

If you’re running Windows inside Mac OS or Linux, you may as well try this. It’s not quite perfect—the Start Menu stacked atop the Dock is a little awkward—but at least this way you don’t have to alternate between desktops. It’s a cool effect, at the very least.

To install Guest Additions, click “Install Guest Additions” under the “Machine” menu while running your virtual machine. Guest Additions should appear in your guest OS as an optical disc, which should contain an installer. Run it, then restart your virtual machine. Once Guest Additions are installed, you can access Seamless Mode from the VirtualBox menu, under “Machine.”

Shared Directories
Copy and paste will often work between the host and guest OS, but if you’re planning on using your guest OS for productivity, or sharing media, a shared folder is the only real solution. In the bottom right corner of a running virtual machine, you should see a small folder icon. Clicking it will bring up a shared folder creation dialog. Select where on your host OS your shared folder should be—it can be an existing directory, like your “Music” folder, and check the box to make it “Permanent.” On your guest machine, the shared folder will show up as a VirtualBox Shared Folder in your local network.

Connecting USB Devices
One of the most common reasons for installing a virtual machine is to circumvent some kind of driver incompatibility. VirtualBox recognised most of your computer’s inbuilt components, like sound cards, extra storage or webcams, and can use them automatically. For most USB devices, though, you’ll need to tell it when to take control.

In most cases, this just means making sure your device isn’t in use by your host OS (a flash drive will need to be unmounted, for example), and clicking the small folder icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. This will bring up a list of available connected devices; simply click the one you want, and you’re good to go.

Odds and Ends Virtualising isn’t just a good way to get around some kind of nagging compatibility problem, it’s a fun way to wile away a few hours experimenting with weird news OSes. Setup is just about the same no matter what you’re installing, so there’s really no reason not to try some of the more esoteric software out there—anything with an ISO available for download will do. For a taste, try the Haiku Project—a revival of the long-dead BeOS, or see what the hell FreeBSD is.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy virtualising, folks.

There’s a simple truth when it comes to keeping your email, calendar, contacts and to do list in order: Nothing competes with Outlook in terms of offering a complete solution. This is especially true for Mac users. Despite the fact that Mail, iCal, and Address book all do a pretty solid job on their own, sharing information between the apps can at times be problematic. And of course there’s the almost primitive implementation of a ToDo app as part of Mail… There are decent third party apps out there to manage this, yet once again they struggle to share that information across the other applications.

In comparison, Outlook does it all. It may not be as visually appealing as each of Apple’s solutions, and it may seem a tad convoluted if you don’t use some of the features, but it is a very complete solution to managing your day-to-day life. But what really makes Outlook stand out as an exemplary performer is its ability to work seamlessly with a smartphone. Pairing a Blackberry or WinMo phone with Outlook allows you to truly stay on top of your workload in a way the iPhone can only dream about. Being able to create, edit and tick off appointments, to do items, notes, and emails both on your PC and your smartphone allows you to manage your time and workload much more effectively.

That’s what makes the decision to port Outlook to the Mac is such a huge move. Instead of requiring four separate apps running in order to stay on top of your hectic day-to-day existence, Mac users will now have one centralised program that manages everything. And that is going to appeal to a lot of businesses, especially those using Exchange to run their company email.

On top of that, it’s going to force Apple to improve not only the way their calendar, email and contacts apps work together, but also how the information is shared with the iPhone. At the moment, syncing an iPhone with a Mac is done exclusively through Apple’s dedicated apps, but when Outlook is available, that’s going to have to change. Sure, Apple can (and probably will, for a while) argue that their programs do a good enough job of sharing information, but that won’t be enough for larger corporations who use Exchange. And considering Apple’s arguments that the iPhone is a great business-oriented smartphone, the only way they’ll be able to persuade businesses to their way of thinking is by native Mac outlook support. Which in turn leads to a much more complete time management solution for Mac users.

It will be interesting to see just how Apple reacts to Outlook when it’s released as part of the next Office suite for Mac. It’s a huge opportunity for them to promote the OS X platform, so long as they do their best to welcome it into the Apple ecosystem by supporting it with the iPhone and improving their own software interoperability. Let’s hope they don’t screw it up…

I was driving, and I swerved a little bit, even though both hands were on the wheel. Someone honked at me.

“What was that?” 

They repeated themselves.

I switched on Bluetooth and pulled over to the side of the road to hear the story. You see, earlier in the day I’d given my phone number out to someone who sent me a cryptic email wanting to talk Apple. This must have been them. (Later on, I verified to a high level of certainty that they were in the position to have access to the information and after talking to them for over an hour, I believe them to the same level of certainty.)

“The device, which I’ve held mock-ups of, is going to have a 10-inch screen, and when I saw, it looked just like a giant iPhone, with a black back— although that design could change at any time,” they said, “with the same black resin back, and the familiar home button.” That’s obvious.

“But it will come in two editions, one with a webcam and one for educational use.”  

Educational use?

They continued to explain the device as something that would sit between an iPod/iPhone and a Macbook, and would cost $US700 to $US900—”More than twice as much as a netbook,” he said.

To make up for that cost and make the device more than just a big iPod there was, this person claimed, talk of making the device act as a secondary screen/touchpad for iMacs and MacBooks, much like a few of the USB screens that have come out in recent months from Chinese companies. Very interesting.

They went on to say that although the project has been going on under various names between four and six years, the first prototype was built around the end of 2008. Adding, “The time to market from first prototype is generally 6-9 months.” That would place the device’s release date around Christmas. They then said, “There was a question of what OS the device would run, too.” (Other people I’ve talked to have implied this remains a huge secret.)

My call dropped on some windy road off skyline drive. F–king AT&T.

Later, I asked, was there a code name for the project?

“Yes…[redacted].” 

I thought about it for a second, googled the term, and it all made sense. 

“Don’t publish that name, please, ” they requested.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

Face it, you could barely slip a playing card between your feet and the ground on a vertical jump. Poweriser spring-loaded boots can give you a vertical leap of up to 1.8 metres and run strides of up to 2.7 metres. Just imagine what you could do on the basketball court. Check out the product page to see it in action. [Powerisers]

Yesterday I was reading a post on Gizmodo that talked about how, among other things, the only way to really test certain gadgets is to take them outside and use them in the real world (as in, there’s only so much you can know about a waterproof camera without using it wholeheartedly during fun summer outdoor oceanside play).

For me what came to mind is my iPhone. People who know me know that I love the outdoors and I generally have a pretty low-key lifestyle. I don’t wear a lot of make-up in my day-to-day life. I pretty much wash my hair and go, so it’s often wet if you see me before 10am. And whether clothes require dry cleaning or ironing play a large role in whether or not I will even purchase them (unless they are beautiful dresses, for which I have a weakness).

I also spend a lot of time outdoors walking, running, biking, swimming, tossing a frisbee or sitting outside reading. Being someone who enjoys their solitude, I do many of these things by myself. And because I like to make sure I can get help if needed, my iPhone almost always joins me on my excursions.

When I run, I leave it at home (I don’t run far enough for it to be a big deal). But when I go on long walks or even short bike rides, I bring my phone and yet I need my hands to be free, so I have to put my iPhone somewhere. As practical as so-called bum bags may be, I refuse to wear them so my iPhone almost always ends up in my breasts/sports bra. In my case, this is a pretty decent place to keep it although — like sex — some positions work better than others.

I’ve found that having the iPhone totally immersed in said breasts (top photo) is the best for keeping the iPhone safe during my walks and bike rides so that it doesn’t accidentally fall out and meet an untimely death or cracked LED or screen. On the down side, my walks sometimes last for an hour or longer and, if I accidentally turn the screen toward my skin rather than my clothes, then the iPhone’s screen gets quite smeared (I slather my entire body with lotion each morning to keep it soft, so it may be the lotion — and not just sweat — that’s getting on the screen). But you know that look that your iPhone screen gets if you hold it in the palm of your hands for 10 minutes, or up against your face while talking on the phone for longer? It’s that times ten, which is kind of gross.

I’ve tried to keep more of the iPhone peeking out of my clothes (see middle photo) but I’ve had a few near-drops so have nixed that position.

When I first got my iPhone, I thought it would be held in place better if I tucked it under my sports bra straps (see bottom photo) but not only did that feel awkward, it also nearly slipped out a few times. Hence, the top position won. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering about keeping it in my shorts – that’s a big no. The waist band on my running shorts is not tight enough and I don’t wear lyrca biking shorts, which would probably work fine for holding the iPhone since they can’t slip through the bottom as they can with running shorts).

I do worry sometimes that the sweat and/or lotion will – over time (or on a very warm day) – be enough to cause water damage to my iPhone and be detectable as such at the Apple store. And then I wonder if the guys at the Genius bar will consider storing one’s iPhone in one’s breasts as “normal use” or as “mis-use”? Would the hypothetically damaged phone be able to be switched out? Would this be a very awkward conversation at the Apple store when I swear that while I didn’t drop it in a puddle, I did regularly keep it in my breasts while biking? Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be awkward (but funny) to have to demo this at the Apple store.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that my use of the word “slather” was perhaps too sultry. It wasn’t intended as such. Let me clarify: I put on a bunch of lotion. On all 65.5 inches of me. And the entire process takes about 5 seconds. Hence, I say “slather” rather than “place” lotion. [My Sex Professor]

Dr. Debby Herbenick, author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction, is the Associate Director of the centre for Sexual Health Promotion in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Indiana University (IU) where she is a Research Scientist. She is also a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction where she writes (and hosts audio podcasts of) the Kinsey Confidential column and coordinates educational programming. She has a PhD in Health behaviour from IU, a Master’s degree in Public Health Education (also from IU) and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition, she is certified as a Sexuality Educator from the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.

Debby writes regular sex columns for Men’s Health magazine, Time Out Chicago magazine, Velocity, Cheeky Chicago, Psychology Today and she has also written for Glamour magazine.

Windows 7 is not quite a “Vista service pack.” It does share a lot of the core tech, and was clearly designed to fix nearly every bad thing anyone said about Vista. Which ironically puts the demon that it was trying to exorcise at its heart. What that means is that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been in the public eye—a solid OS with plenty of modern eye candy that mostly succeeds in taking Windows usability into the 21st century—but it doesn’t daringly innovate or push boundaries or smash down walls or whatever verb meets solid object metaphor you want to use, because it had a specific set of obligations to meet, courtesy of its forebear.

That said, if you’re coming from Windows XP, Windows 7 will totally feel like a revelation from the glossy future. If you’re coming from Vista, you’ll definitely go “Hey, this is much better!” the first time you touch Aero Peek. If you’re coming from a Mac, you’ll—-hahahahaha. But seriously, even the Mactards will have to tone down their nasal David Spadian snide, at least a little bit.

The Long Shadow of Windows Vista
The public opinion of Windows Vista—however flawed it might have been—clearly left a deep impact on Microsoft. While we’ve got final Windows 7 code, it’s hard to look 2 1/2 months into the future to predict what the Windows 7 launch will be like. However, based on this code, and the biggest OS beta testing process in history, it sure won’t look like the beleaguered Vista launch at all.

If you installed Vista on your PC within the first month of its release, there was a solid chance your computer ran like crap, or your gadgets didn’t work, since drivers weren’t available yet. That’s not how it shakes down with Windows 7. The hardware requirements for Windows 7 are basically the same as they are for Vista, the first time ever a release of Windows hasn’t required significantly more horsepower than the previous one. And it runs better on that hardware, or at least feels like it does.

We ran real-world benchmarking on two test machines, a nearly two-year-old Dell XPS M1330 with 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, an Nvidia 8400M GS and a 64GB SSD, and an 18-month-old desktop with 3GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, an Nvidia 8800GT and a 10,000rpm drive. Results suggest there’s little actual difference between Vista and Windows 7 performance-wise on the same hardware.

Ambiguous benchmarking aside, our experience during the beta period was that Windows 7 actually ran beautifully, even on netbooks that made Vista cry like a spoiled child who’d had its solid gold spoon shoved up its butt sideways, so the difference isn’t based entirely on “feelings.” Even Microsoft never attempted to market a Vista for netbooks, but is gladly offering Windows 7 to that category.

Installing XP, Vista and Windows 7 on the same hardware over the space of a week also proved that point: Hardware just worked when I booted up Windows 7 for the first time, while my machines were practically catatonic with XP until I dug up the drivers, and gimped with Vista until I dutifully updated. Hitting Windows Update in Windows 7, I was offered a couple of drivers that were actually current, like ones for my graphics cards. Centralising the delivery of drivers is huge in making the whole drivers thing less over whelming. (It helps that manufacturers are actively putting out drivers for their gear this go-around, rather than waiting until the last minute, as they tended to with Vista.)

Microsoft has even corrected the pricing spike that Vista introduced, even if they didn’t fully streamline that confusing, pulsating orgy of versions. A full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is $US200, down from $US260, and if you were lucky, you could’ve pre-ordered an upgrade version for $US50. (Microsoft says that deal has sold out, but we wouldn’t be shocked to find it re-upped in the near future, possibly even as we head toward the October 22 launch.) So yes, most of the early Vista problems—performance, compatibility and price, to an extent—will likely not be early Windows 7 problems.

What’s Good
Windows 7 is the biggest step forward in usability since Windows 95. In fact, over half of what makes it better than Vista boils down to user interface improvements and enhancements, not so much actual new features.

Its fancy new user interface—the heart of which is Aero Peek, making every open window transparent except the one you’re focusing on at the moment so you can find what you’re looking for—actually changes the way you use Windows. It breaks the instinct to maximize windows as you’re using them; instead, you simply let windows hang out, since it’s much easier to juggle them. In other words, it radically reorients the UI around multitasking. After six months of using Aero Peek and the new launcher taskbar, going back to Vista’s taskbar, digging through collapsed app bars, or even its Peek-less Alt+Tab feels barbaric and primitive. I wouldn’t mind an Mac OS Exposé ripoff to complete the multitasking triumph, though.

Windows 7 brings back a sense of a tightness and control that was sometimes missing in Vista—there’s a technical reason for this relating in part to the way graphics are handled—moments where I’ve felt like I wasn’t in control of my PC have been few and far between, even during the beta and release candidate periods. The more chaste User Account Control goes to that—the frequency with which it interrupts you was grating in Vista, like standing under a dripping faucet. But it actually works as Microsoft intended now, with more security, since you’re less likely to repeatedly hammer “OK” to anything that pops up, just so it leaves you the hell alone.

Other super welcome improvements are faster, more logical search—in the Music folder for instance, you can narrow by artist, genre or album—and more excellent file previews, though they’re not quite as awesome as what OS X offers up. (And why aren’t they on by default?) There are lots of little things that make you say, “finally” or “that’s great,” like legit codec support baked in to Windows Media Player, Device Stage when you plug in your gadgets, or the retardiculously awesome background images.

In short, Windows 7 is what Windows should feel like in 2009.

What’s Not So Good
There are a few spots Microsoft rubbed polish on that still don’t quite shine. Networking is much, much better than Vista—the wireless networking interface isn’t completely stupid anymore—but the Network and Sharing centre still doesn’t quite nail it in terms of making networking or sharing easy for people who don’t really know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t turn my mum loose inside of it, anyway. The HomeGroup concept for making it easy to share files sounds good in theory, but in practice, it’s no slam dunk. I imagine regular people asking, “What’s up with crazy complicated password I have to write down? Can I share files with PCs not in my HomeGroup? What’s all this other stuff in my Network that’s not in my HomeGroup?”

Not all parts of the user experience are sweeter now. Microsoft, just fix the unwieldy Control Panel interface, please. And Windows Media Player’s UI while you’re at it. If it makes iTunes look simple, it’s got problems. I’d really like to be able to pin folders directly to the Taskbar as well, not simply to the Windows Explorer icon in the Taskbar. It’s kind of confusing behaviour, actually—why can you pin some icons (apps or files) and not others (folders)?

Internet Explorer 8 ain’t so great, either. It’s better than IE7, sure, and actually sorta supports modern web standards. But you’ll be downloading Firefox, Opera, or Chrome as soon as you get Win 7 up and running, since IE’s not better than any of them. And while you could argue you wouldn’t be so inclined to use Microsoft’s own mail application either, you might, but you’ll have to download it first. Instead of being app-packed, Windows 7 gives you an optional update for Live Essentials, with apps like Mail, Photo Gallery and MovieMaker. Some people might like the cleaner install, but this is a fairly senseless de-coupling—not including a mail app with your own OS? I know those European regulators are ridiculous, but come on.

I suppose the biggest thing missing from Windows 7 is any sense of daring (psychedelic wallpapers aside). It’s a very safe release: Take what was good about Vista, fix what people bitched about, and voila. We get it, people want a safe operating system, not an experiment in behavioral science. But even as Windows 7 restores some of the joy in using Windows, you get the sense that it could’ve been more, if it hadn’t been saddled with the tainted legacy of Vista. I wonder what Windows 7 would have been without Vista.

The Verdict
Windows XP was a great OS in its day. Windows Vista, once it found its feet several months in, was a good OS. Windows 7 is great again. It’s what people said they wanted out of Windows: Solid, more nimble and the easiest, prettiest Windows yet. There’s always a chance this won’t be a huge hit come October, given the economy and the state of the PC industry, but it’s exactly what Microsoft needs right now. Something people can grab without fear.

For a more in-depth feature breakdown and what we thought, check out our Windows 7 Best Features and Tips guide.

In Brief:
The redesigned Aero Interface is super slick with lots of transparencies and smooth animations and it actually makes Windows easier to use

It performs great on the same hardware as Vista, even playing nice on netbooks Vista wouldn’t

Device Stage makes you want to plug gadgets into your PC

It fixes almost everything you hated about Vista (don’t look at me, I didn’t think Vista was bad)

Media Player still sucks to use, though “Play To” and internet streaming features are nifty

It’d be nice if the $US50 upgrade deal kept running

IE8, while better, still isn’t as good as Firefox, Chrome or Safari

The mess that is Control Panel—after all that UI work, what the eff, guys?

Too many versions still

[Microsoft Windows 7]