Best Gadgets World

Posted Mar 21st 2008 5:15PM by Ariel Waldman
Filed under: Features, Misc. GadgetsAriel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

In honor of the loss of one of our greatest sci-fi heroes, Movie Gadget Friday is paying homage to the inimitable Arthur C. Clarke with a two-part series that explores the future of 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact. This week we’ll be diving into the luxurious exploration of deep space. Everyone knows HAL, but 2001 also takes an extraordinary amount of time to study the intricate details of each spacecraft — as such, this week we’ll focus on the Orion III and Space Station V.

Space Station V
Serving as a meeting point between Earth and the Moon, Space Station V is a space structure of massive proportions. From the inside looking out, the view might be slightly disorienting, as the station constantly rotates, its rings providing a grounding effect, allowing travelers to enjoy the extravagance of Earth’s gravity in space. Upon arriving at Space Station V, visitors are greeted with a standard reception area where they are asked to move through to documentation, which involves a wall-embedded voice print identification system for each visitor. The interior design of each room stays true to its circular exoskeleton, while the furnishings appear to hold closer ties to the 1960s than the early oughts — just the way we like it. More after the break.

PicturePhone
Located in Space Station 5 are multiple PicturePhone stations via Southwestern Bell, for those wanting to video chat with the family back home. (Hey, give ‘em a break, Skype doesn’t get invented until 2003.) All PicturePhone stations are private with chairs and tactile numeric dialing keys for convenience. The video quality definitely leaves something to be desired, but seems to maintain an transmission stream uninterrupted even by the antsy-button pressing of a little girl. By inserting your credit card vertically into the dock, a brief video call will cost you approximately $1.70 (pretty good considering calling from space is cheaper than most mobile roaming fees). Be warned, though, as the PicturePhone contains paragraphs full of illuminated fine print similar to pretty much every device on deck — including the Zero Gravity Toilet.

Orion III
A spacecraft with a strong plane-design influence, the Orion III takes the comforts of the friendly skies into space. Pilots are able to make the jump between jet-jockey to space cowboy thanks to the familiar, easy to use plane-like cockpit and controls. Passengers relax in style, traveling in rich leather seats which feature an embedded widescreen display for both entertainment and business needs. The controls appear to be directly beneath each display, so travelers need not worry about fighting for elbow room to reach those primitive armrest-embedded controls. Lined with futuristic velcro technology, the aisle floors are strong enough to hold down the weight of a person when the shuttle reaches zero gravity (also useful for unexpected turbulence). The suspiciously all-women space-flight attendants are also outfitted with white leather apparel and gripped shoes so as to easily serve passengers; we can’t help but wonder if anti-discrimination laws still hold up in space.

Next week in our two-part series, we’ll jump ahead to two years from now to check out the the gadgets found in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. For more on the spacecraft of 2001, check out 2001: A Scale Odyssey.

Ariel Waldman is a social media insights consultant based in San Francisco. Her blog can be found at http://arielwaldman.com.

It seems that by the time the Motorola Z9 is officially released we will not have anything new to learn, so far we have seen the first leaked image way back in July 2007, then some more details hit the FCC website earlier this month, only to have the official white paper show up yesterday.

Well, as of yesterday we were just waiting for a price and official release date. Now one of those two bits of information can now be checked off the list, it seems that AT&T is planning to charge $249.99 for the Z9, that is of course with a few rebates and a two-year agreement.

With just a release date left to ponder, its a shame this latest leak did not let us in on that, but based on the rate of information leaks on the Z9 I would imagine that we will be seeing that in a day or two.

Via [EngadgetMobile]

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HP has announced the upgrade to the current dv2000 notebook, the new 13.3-inch dv3000 retains a similar look as the previous model although it offers a slightly smaller overall size. The dv3000 features a 2.5GHz T9300 Penryn Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, GeForce Go 8400M graphics with HDMI out, a dual-layer DVD burner, VGA webcam and is running Windows Vista Home Premium.

The dv3000 is expected to retail for around $1,399, which is not a bad price, except it will only be available (beginning in May) in the Asian market.

Via [Engadget]

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Posted Mar 21st 2008 3:02PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation
While we spent our high school days trying not to cut our thumbs off in shop class, these West Philly High School kids have been making a run on the $10 million Automotive X Prize. They’re building a plug-in diesel hybrid in an attempt to reach that magical 100 mpg mark “without sacrificing style, safety or affordability.” Pictured above is a previous project, a K1 Attack modded up hybrid and biofuel-style. Seems like they’ve got the chops, but they’re certainly up against a lot of competition.

Posted Mar 21st 2008 1:37PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Media PCs
OK, perhaps not so sneaky, there’s a nice big BitTorrent logo right up front, but Myka seems to be quite the end-to-end solution for getting those torrents up on the big screen. The box hooks up to the internet via LAN or WiFi, includes a 80GB, 160GB or a 500GB drive for storage and runs a torrent client on Linux. Outputs include HDMI, composite, S-Video and SPDIF, and codec support is substantial. You can add storage via USB, and pull video off your computer if you’re not in a downloading mood. Prices range from $299 to $459. Let’s keep it legal out there, kids!

[Thanks, ARZ]

If you think the ubiquitious spider head massager looks ridiculous, then you haven’t yet seen this face massager from Japanese company Akaishi. The device has four little arms, with a roller on the end of each arm. You move the rollers over your cheeks and chin to relax your tense facial muscles. The model pictured above seems to be using this and the other version made by the same company, which is used for the ridge of the nose and scalp.

Seems rather primitive compared to the electronic device marketed by Suzanne Somers, the FaceMaster, which stimulates your facial muscles with electricity to whip them into shape, though I suppose the rollers have a different purpose (relaxation as opposed to beauty enhancement).

The roller arms sell for 1,575 Yen (about $16).

Via The Nikkei Weekly (subscription).

Posted Mar 21st 2008 10:29AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Wireless
No surprises here, but boy is that going to be a difficult expense to justify on the ol’ corporate card. AT&T says it’ll pay a $1.3 billion down payment to the FCC within the next 10 days to get a lock on that spectrum it just won, $500 million of which was paid up front before the auction began. The company will be pushing the remaining $5.3 billion over the counter before April 17, and is financing the purchase with funds from operations and a good bit of debt. We haven’t seen a similar filing from Verizon yet, but we’re guessing the company is facing similar deadlines for its $9.36 billion of spectrum.

Posted Mar 21st 2008 11:33AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Laptops
Nary a fortnight after Nicholas Negroponte affirmed that his role wouldn’t be changing all that much once a new CEO was strapped in, along comes word that the nonprofit’s highly regarded Director of Security Architecture, Ivan Krstić, has moved on to greener pastures as of three weeks ago. According to a soul-bearing post on his own blog, the ex-chief outrightly noted that he could no longer “subscribe to the organization’s new aims or structure in good faith, nor [could he] reconcile them with [his] personal ethic.” Additionally, he admits that he was “asked to stop working with Walter Bender,” someone he greatly respected, and forced to report to a replacement “with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology.” It should be noted that Krstić seemed to admire his colleagues overwhelmingly, but we can’t help but wonder who else in there is feeling similarly about the recent internal restructuring.

[Via Yahoo / Infoworld, image courtesy of TheAge]

In what seems like a strange story, Opera has announced they are now including a direct link to the AccuWeather mobile website from the Opera Mini start page. While Opera Mini seems to be the favorite mobile browser right now, and I do appreciate their effort to make my weather checking ability quicker and easier, couldn’t I just bookmark the weather site of my choice?

Nonetheless both Opera and AccuWeather seem pretty pleased with the announcement.

AccuWeather’s Senior VP of New Media saying: “We’re very pleased to offer our weather directly to Opera Mini users from their start page.”

Opera’s Senior VP of Consumer Products said: “Offering fast and convenient access to pertinent information is part of that experience and is even more critical on a mobile device. Partnering with AccuWeather.com provides timely and useful weather information to our users wherever they are.”

Its almost funny to see two companies so happy over a what amounts to a simple link, but seriously if you have not yet checked out Opera Mini, assuming you have a compatible phone, you should go ahead and download it. In addition to having quick and easy access to AccuWeather you will also get a solid mobile browsing experience.

Via [IntoMobile] Read [Opera Mini]

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In what seems to be the hot handset of the moment, the XPERIA 1 from Sony Ericsson has had some more details revealed courtesy of a recently released white paper, which came courtesy of the Sony Ericsson website.

The XPERIA X1 has not had any shortage of available information leaked up till now, but these are the official details. Its hard to even begin, the official white paper is a 40-page PDF document that is just full of goodies. Some of the highlights include:

• Information on the pre-loaded panels for the XPERIA interface, which will include a Sony Ericsson Panel, Media Experience Panel, Slideshow Panel, Microsoft Today Panel, 3D Fish Panel and some user customizable panels.
• Media Sharing using ActiveSync or Wi-Fi.
• Video recording options include MPEG-4: 30fps @ VGA, H.263: 30fps @ VGA except the U.S. model is only at 24fps and H.264: 15fps @ VGA but it is not supported on U.S model.
• Sadly Opera will not be pre-installed, opting for IE instead.
• Location services will include a pre-installed Google Maps.
• Email to include automatically configured POP3, Exchange Direct Push and wizards to set up Gmail, Yahoo, Live Hotmail.
• Pre-insalled Java ME.
• Sadly, as pointed out by inxperia, support for 1700MHz is missing.

While this is just a very brief summary of the details, if you are at all interested in this phone then check out the read link below for a link to the White Paper. It seems we have just about all the details that we can handle on the XPERIA X1, now we just need to get some in the wild and see some actual user reviews.

Read [Sony Ericsson Official White Paper] Via [inxperia]

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