You know, we should have paid a little closer attention to Microsoft’s decision yesterday to extend Windows XP sales to “June 2010 or one year after the general availability of Windows 7″ — if the company was really planning on shipping Windows 7 in 2010, that first date doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the plan is to ship Windows 7 much, much earlier. And hey — what’s Bill Gates doing telling investors this afternoon that Windows 7 will come “in the next year” and that he’s “super-enthused” about it? As far as we know, the official Windows 7 timeline hasn’t changed, so Bill might just talking about beta versions, but something’s clearly up Windows-wise in Redmond — perhaps Vista’s wow is not long for this now.
Forget little green men, Vulcans or super-sexy Number Six’s slinking about the ‘verse in little red cocktail dresses—some scientists say our first encounter with E.T. will likely involve a simple robot. For proof, says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, you need only to look at our own species’ advances in robotics. But then the ’scientists’ in this MSNBC Battlestar Galactica puff piece get a little crazy. Human-cyborg relations? Marriage? That’ll only work in Massachusetts!
If humans do start charging the batteries of an alien robot, Astronomer Jeffrey Bennett doubts it will resemble the tryst between Dr. Gaius Baltar and Number Six. “I think people get it wrong when they assume the aliens will be young lovelies,” Shostak said. Instead, experts like David Levy-who’s job is to write papers about humans and robots getting it on (TRUE!)-says we’ll approach our love-making like we do our cars, with human-machine hybrids. And then we’ll marry them. “My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots,” Levy said.
But enough fluff. In the end, a majority of researchers agree that the sure bet on alien life is with tiny microbes buried beneath the red sands of Mars or under the ice of our solar system’s many moons. Then a whole new slew of questions will arise to muddy the issue. What defines life? Did it start on Mars? Does that make humans the real aliens? On second thought, forget the hot humanoid robots-I’m having an existential crisis here. [MSNBC]
We’ve brought you Rube Goldberg-style clocks and toys, but none of them are a match for the 156-step device that’s just won the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This year’s challenge was to assemble a burger with vegetables, condiments and two bun halves. The meat was pre-cooked… a sensible idea to avoid fires and explosions: you’ll understand when you look at the great pics of the machines that MAKE took. Beneath the gallery you’ll find a demo video of some of them in action. Sadly we don’t have one of the complete 156-step run yet, so you’ll just have to imagine its fantasticness.
The whole idea is to create a machine that combines creative thinking with complexity in design, and, most importantly, inefficiency— much in the vein of Goldberg’s cartoons.
The winning team, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, have had plenty of practice at this— they’ve won two of the previous three contests. Their machine won them a regional prize earlier in the year, and for the Nationals they added another 55 steps. With somewhere around 5,000 man-hours of work in it, the victory seems well deserved, particularly when the rules stipulate that the task must be achieved in more than 20 steps.
Awesome, pointless, engineering fun. We love it. [MAKE and CNN]
So, one of the big sniggles about Photoshop Express, Adobe’s free online photo tweaker and sorta-kinda Flickr clone, is that using the service basically gave full control of your photos to Adobe. No more! They just emailed us that as of April 10, they’re only claiming “those limited rights that allow us to operate the service” and they don’t “claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.” Score one for internet rights and your mom’s Photoshop dalliances. [PS Express Terms of Use]
On a typical day, anything shown off at CTIA with a “coming in 2010″ sticker would cause some serious unrest, but given that we’ve already found that LTE is eons (or so it feels) away, we’re just taking things in stride. The MSV prototype shown above will purportedly become a proud member of the L-Series, and its satellite / cellular hybrid system will enable it to play nice on traditional cell bands as well as snag sat coverage anywhere in North America. Apparently the firm is planning on shooting up a pair of birds in 2009 as well as landing a deal with an undisclosed US carrier, and the 0.6-inch thick unit itself should feature a 480 x 320 multi-touch screen, WiFi and an integrated camera. No word on a price just yet, but feel free to check back in a few years.
When you’re ill, sneezing all about the place and with enough mucus in your esophagus to grow a bacterial colony big enough to take over the world, the last thing you need is the Talking Tissue Box. Why? Well, all it does is either cough or sneeze each time you reach out for a tissue. Having a cold, you’re probably in the best position to know what coughing and sneezing sound like, so your not going to want this tissue box bastard seemingly mocking you. If you ask our opinion, keep the two AA batteries for your Wiimote and stash the $19.99 asking price for your yearly stock of Robitussin. [Product Page via Nerd Approved]
Laptop LoJack’s number might be up, Intel’s apparently gearing up to start pushing its so-called Anti-Theft Technology for laptops. Details are still sparse, but apparently it provides boot-time lockout of unauthorized users (presumably among other things) upon occasion of theft, and is being picked up by partner companies like Lenovo, Fujitsu, Phoenix, and McAffee for release later this year. It’d be really nice if we could get some connected GPS to phone home when your laptop takes off without you, but it’s nice to know the industry’s finally starting to take this stuff on instead of leaving hapless theft victims to fend for themselves.
The Jet House by designer Jérôme Olivet is certainly one of the craziest designs we have ever seen for a house. At first we were amazed with the “grounded space craft” looking three story structure. But then we got to thinkin’. This isn’t too much different than the UFO house built in the 70s. The Jet House has an elevator and two jet-car garage, where as the UFO house has a button activated stair case and a two normal-car garage. After giving it a little more thought, the Jet House is basically just an updated UFO House that looks cooler. Well actually, much cooler. [Yanko Design]
As a guy with pretty horrible teeth, I can only wish that this computerized toothbrush was invented decades ago when I was a kid. When children brush using the system, the toothbrush’s LEDs get mapped via webcam onto a representation of a mouth, which then shows kids which teeth have already been brushed and which teeth need more cleaning. The kids using the system were “twice as effective at cleaning their teeth following the trial.” If only they could turn flossing into a game as well, I wouldn’t have to go get a root canal in about a month. [New Scientist]
At AT&T’s press feast today, the focus was unquestionably the trial deployment of Microsoft’s Surface kiosks to stores later this month — the presence of Microsoft’s own Robbie Bach was testament to that fact. But there was more to the action by the time the show was over. Deployment of 3G and 4G services was a hot topic both during CEO Ralph de la Vega’s presentation and in the post-conference Q&A (one member of the press lamented the fact that AT&T’s BlackBerrys still lack HSDPA), and at one point he mentioned that all of the carrier’s smartphones would be 3G within a matter of mere “months.”
We figure that instantly thrusts several devices onto (and off of) AT&T’s roadmap in the very near future, including a 3G iPhone and the BlackBerry 9000 we recently saw strutting its stuff. Of course, that would also preclude the just-introduced Palm Centro from hanging around for very long, since it tops out with EDGE speeds; last time we checked Garnet had a hard time handling HSDPA, so something’s got to give. We’re not writing the obit just yet — CEOs’ statements are often a mere shadow of reality, after all — but it’s certainly food for thought.
Forget little green men, Vulcans or super-sexy Number Six’s slinking about the ‘verse in little red cocktail dresses—some scientists say our first encounter with E.T. will likely involve a simple robot. For proof, says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, you need only to look at our own species’ advances in robotics. But then the ’scientists’ in this MSNBC Battlestar Galactica puff piece get a little crazy. Human-cyborg relations? Marriage? That’ll only work in Massachusetts!
We’ve brought you Rube Goldberg-style clocks and toys, but none of them are a match for the 156-step device that’s just won the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This year’s challenge was to assemble a burger with vegetables, condiments and two bun halves. The meat was pre-cooked… a sensible idea to avoid fires and explosions: you’ll understand when you look at the great pics of the machines that MAKE took. Beneath the gallery you’ll find a demo video of some of them in action. Sadly we don’t have one of the complete 156-step run yet, so you’ll just have to imagine its fantasticness.
So, one of the big sniggles about 
When you’re ill, sneezing all about the place and with enough mucus in your esophagus to grow a bacterial colony big enough to take over the world, the last thing you need is the Talking Tissue Box. Why? Well, all it does is either cough or sneeze each time you reach out for a tissue. Having a cold, you’re probably in the best position to know what coughing and sneezing sound like, so your not going to want this tissue box bastard seemingly mocking you. If you ask our opinion, keep the two AA batteries for your Wiimote and stash the $19.99 asking price for your yearly stock of Robitussin. [
The Jet House by designer Jérôme Olivet is certainly one of the craziest designs we have ever seen for a house. At first we were amazed with the “grounded space craft” looking three story structure. But then we got to thinkin’. This isn’t too much different than the 
At AT&T’s press feast today, the focus was unquestionably the 
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