The Dark Knight pretty much confirmed that if Batman used any phone, it wouldn’t be the iPhone, but we can’t help but take a…professional…interest in the BatRest all the same. A folding polypropylene stand, the BatRest (just 1.2mm thick) can fit in your wallet before getting deployed in your darkest hour. As the flight attendents surround you, cornering you hopelessly into a seat that binds your legs and contorts your back, BAM, KAPOWEE! You set up your iPhone on the BatRest and just watch a movie or something. [BullRest via Crave]
It’s only been three weeks since the Mac “clone” company Open Tech made its debut, but it’s already putting itself up for sale for $50,000. In an email on July 20, their Vice President Elijah Samaroo said that they were going to “beat Psystar and not make the mistake they did.” By this we took it to mean not distribute a hacked copy of Leopard, which is already available on the internet and is what people have been installing OS X on non-Apple machines for quite a while. That’s not what they were doing, unfortunately.
When we asked them whether they could install a plan retail copy of Leopard you purchase at the store onto their hardware without modification, they said “no.” The only legit way of actually being “open” is to modify hardware to fool Leopard into thinking that you’re putting it on a Mac. In this sense, Open Tech is the exact same as Psystar, and both will most likely be smacked down by Apple. $500 is too much to pay for this company. [Wired]
Bill Daley is the food critic for the Chicago Tribune, accustomed to differentiating the finer points of the expensive, aged steaks of Rush Street, not the freeze dried packets of astronaut cuisine. So when NASA sent him a few packets to test out (most of them cooked through injection with hot water) we were pretty keen on hearing just how well our men and women of the cosmos were eating (with no access to real Cosmos, of course). His verdict? Sometimes the food was quite good, other times, not so much.
Lunch went well…
I could easily have downed two packages of the shrimp cocktail, long an astronaut favorite. The six medium-size orange shrimp were just a touch chewy after their slapdash, 10-minute water bath, but they looked and smelled like what you get at the supermarket. NASA’s cocktail sauce is spiked with plenty of horseradish and salt. If anything can revive tired taste buds in space, this dish is it. I chased it with a pouch of powdered mango-orange drink. The lush but tangy mango flavor juiced up the orange’s sweetness, and the mango aroma was pronounced. It was delicious.
Breakfast, on the other hand…
The food scientists had also sent two breakfast items, freeze-dried “Mexican” eggs and a sausage patty. The eggs, colored a bright buttercup yellow, were bouncy and broke down into small, dry curds. Flavorwise they were like a reluctant suitor, vaguely sweet but unwilling to make the full taste commitment. Hot sauce, ketchup even, would work wonders here. Nothing, however, could have saved the sausage patty.
There’s lots more foodie space fun where this came from, so hit the link for the complete article. It’s a fun, quick and educational read. [Discover]
At the Intel Developer Forum last week, a lot of the buzz on the demo floor was around new Atom hardware. There were the requisite netbooks and EeeClones floating around, but it seemed like peculiar little quasi-computers, or palmtop Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) stole the show. Sure, it’s impressive to see a full, net-connected Vista or Ubuntu desktop running on something the size of a Sega Game Gear, but who exactly is supposed to buy these?
I played with as many of them as I could (see which ones in the gallery below), and they are impressive, as least as feats of engineering. But as usable consumer devices? Not so much. None of the manufacturers have figured out exactly how we are supposed to interact with these machines, implementing half-baked touch controls, keyboards that suit neither your thumbs nor multiple fingers, and hardware that is too small to use for a long period of time but too bulky to fit in your pocket. Oh yeah, and projected prices range from $500 to well in excess of $1000. That said, I’ve got a different needs than a lot of users, and I’m exceptionally curmudgeonly for my age, so I’ll pass it it you.
ZPower has made a few promises before that haven’t exactly panned out, but that apparently hasn’t stopped it from making another bold claim at IDF this week, with it boasting that its newfangled Silver-Zinc battery will be rolled out in a “major notebook computer” sometime in 2009. According to ZPower, that battery will provide up to 40% more runtime than traditional lithium-ion batteries and, just as importantly, be far more “chemically stable” than its sometimes explosion-prone lithium-ion counterpart. ZPower also looks to be going the extra mile when it comes to recycling the batteries, with 95% of the battery itself apparently recyclable, and the company offering “financial discounts” to folks when they trade in their old Silver-Zinc batteries.
Like most New Yorkers, my building has no laundry facilities of its own and, in order to get clean clothes, I have to summon the willpower to drag my brimming bag three blocks. Oh, if only I had this automated washing machine basket instead. Designed by Guopeng Liang and one of the finalists in Electrolux’s Design Lab ‘08 contest, the iBasket is a space saving clothes hamper and washing machine in one.
The device sports an all clear body and is programmed to begin the wash cycle once your clothes pile up to a certain weight. After giving your unmentionables a good rinse down, it sends a message to your PC or cellphone via its integrated wi-fi. Other than the annoyingly unimaginative name (trust me, iAm as iSick of iThis and iThat as you guys are), this gadget idea seems pretty golden. [Born Rich]
ASUS took a break from cranking out an endless series of Eee PCs to revamp some of its traditional laptop lines today, here’s what you need to know:
B50A business laptop: 15.4-inch screen, Penryn Core 2 Duos on Intel’s GM45 Express chipset with ASUS’s Expressgate SplashTop implementation and integrated X4500 graphics, max 4GB RAM and 320GB drive, spill-resistant keyboard, Bluetooth, WiFi, dual-layer burner, 1.3 megapixel webcam.
F8 laptops (pictured): 14.1-inch WXGA screen, Penryn Core 2 Duos with 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics with Express Gate, TV tuner with remote control, up to 4GB RAM and a 320GB drive, 1.3 megapixel swivel webcam, five available colors.
F6 “scented” laptops: 13.3-inch screen, lids feature five available graphics and fragrances (really), Penryn Core 2 Duos with 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics with Express Gate, TV tuner with remote control, up to 4GB RAM and a 320GB drive, fingerprint scanner.
G71V and G50V “Republic of Gamers” laptops: 17-inch (G71) and 15-inch (G50) gaming laptops with up to Intel Core 2 Quad QX9300 processors and 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT graphics, 4GB of RAM, 2x 500GB hard drives, dual-layer burner, 2.0 megapixel swivel webcam, LED lighting effects, gaming hotkeys.
No pricing or ship dates yet, but we’ll get you those as they come in.
VIA may be ditching its traditional motherboard business, but it looks like its not wasting any time in stepping up its efforts to get its more specialized boards and chipsets into as many devices as possible, and it’s now taken advantage of the Taipei International Robot Show to show off their potential for robotics. Leading the way is Lynxmotion’s Johnny 5 robot above (yes, that’s actually its name), which has been outfitted with VIA’s new EPIA P700 board and VX800 unified chipset just for the show. That, VIA says, offers a whole host of advantages over other systems, including “far easier” software development. Of course, VIA also sees plenty of potential beyond hobby kits, with it also showing off an EPIA Mini-ITX-based version of the Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (or BEAR), and it touting the benefits of its Pico-ITX platform for all sorts of “extremely space constrained robotics designs.”
We’re not even going to front — we had all but forgotten about Erector’s Spykee. Granted, it didn’t do itself any favors by showing off at CES and then doing nothing for the next seven months, but we digress. If a pre-order page on Amazon is to be believed, the Spykee Spy Robot should be released on October 15th. It’s sporting a hefty $299.99 price tag and a recommended age of 8-years and up, but we’ll need to see some actual shipment notifications later this fall before we really get our hopes up. C’mon Erector, don’t let us, um, down.
The Dark Knight pretty much confirmed that if Batman used any phone, it wouldn’t be the iPhone, but we can’t help but take a…professional…interest in the BatRest all the same. A folding polypropylene stand, the BatRest (just 1.2mm thick) can fit in your wallet before getting deployed in your darkest hour. As the flight attendents surround you, cornering you hopelessly into a seat that binds your legs and contorts your back, BAM, KAPOWEE! You set up your iPhone on the BatRest and just watch a movie or something. [BullRest via Crave]
It’s only been three weeks since the Mac “clone” company Open Tech made its debut, but it’s already putting itself up for sale for $50,000. In an email on July 20, their Vice President Elijah Samaroo said that they were going to “beat Psystar and not make the mistake they did.” By this we took it to mean not distribute a hacked copy of Leopard, which is already available on the internet and is what people have been installing OS X on non-Apple machines for quite a while. That’s not what they were doing, unfortunately.
Bill Daley is the food critic for the Chicago Tribune, accustomed to differentiating the finer points of the expensive, aged steaks of Rush Street, not the freeze dried packets of astronaut cuisine. So when NASA sent him a few packets to test out (most of them cooked through injection with hot water) we were pretty keen on hearing just how well our men and women of the cosmos were eating (with no access to real Cosmos, of course). His verdict? Sometimes the food was quite good, other times, not so much.
At the 
Like most New Yorkers, my building has no laundry facilities of its own and, in order to get clean clothes, I have to summon the willpower to drag my brimming bag three blocks. Oh, if only I had this automated washing machine basket instead. Designed by Guopeng Liang and one of the finalists in Electrolux’s Design Lab ‘08 contest, the iBasket is a space saving clothes hamper and washing machine in one.
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