Yesterday, while touring a new building on Microsoft’s campus, I came across an anechoic chamber: A room designed to eliminate all noise from outside—and in. I spent about 5 minutes locked inside, and man is it freaky.
The chamber is actually its own “box-in-box” building, like the Time Warner Center’s Rose Theater. It rests on a cushion of massive springs and is linked to the rest of the building with a metal gangway and nylon netting (so you don’t fall down into the gap). There are two doors, massive ones that were, according to my guide, “a huge pain to install.” When I went to close one, I was startled by its resistance.
Inside, it’s like the Star Trek version of the proverbial padded room, with wedges that act as sound and RF-proofing. The second massive door is covered with these, so when it is closed, the only way to tell where the exit is is the almost-hidden release lever. The “floor” isn’t a floor at all: The real floor has to be covered with the same sound-damping wedges, so you actually stand on a mesh trampoline. (Good thing I didn’t wear my high heels.)
The company who built it, Eckel Industries, also built Steve Orfield’s lab in Minneapolis, Guinness-certified as the quietest place on earth, at around -9dBA. Microsoft says that theirs measures something quite similar to this, except on the very lowest end, where it’s really hard to eliminate unwanted sound.
Since I entered the chamber with two other people, the first thing I noticed was how voices changed. They became clipped, truncated, like someone was holding the mute pedal down on a piano. The subtle atmosphere and depth associated with room reverberation that we come to expect when hearing the human voice was totally gone. No echoes, hence the term “anechoic.” My own voice sounded like it was having trouble coming out of my head.
For a moment, I felt genuine disorientation, like the light-headedness you can get with low blood sugar. The guy who showed me the room said that, even though he works in there a lot, he still has moments when he loses his balance, because the ear uses sound reflections—in addition to inner-ear leveling—to position the head and body.
Microsoft uses this newly built chamber to test all kinds of hardware products—microphones on webcams, audio outputs on Zunes, even the clicking of buttons on just about anything—because if you want to hear a sound clearly, this is where you go. They bring in the Xbox and PS3 to see which one wheezes the loudest, and some people have already inquired about squeezing the slim PS3 in for a quick listen, to see what’s changed. (Needless to say, Microsoft wouldn’t make the results of this test public.)
I have heard that being in an anechoic chamber for too long can drive you mad, and now that I’ve stood in one, gently bouncing on the wire-frame trampoline, staring at the pointy sci-fi wedges and hearing nothing but the blood rushing in my head, I believe it.
We’ve seen our fair share of useful but ugly and pretty but pointless robotic concoctions, but nothing quite like this. The Power Loader suit, which was directly inspired by the mech outfits in Aliens, is in our humble opinion an exoskeleton done right. With two massive protruding arms, capable of lifting 220 pounds without a sweat, direct force feedback for intuitive control, and even powered legs, we’re inclined to believe what we’re seeing here is a tiny glimpse of the awesome mech-dominatedfuture we’ve been waiting so long for. Also known as the Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot, this is produced by Activelink, a Panasonic subsidiary, and you might be shocked to discover that there are plans afoot to commercialize it by 2015. Entrancing video after the break.
We’ve seen our fair share of useful but ugly and pretty but pointless robotic concoctions, but nothing quite like this. The Power Loader suit, which was directly inspired by the mech outfits in Aliens, is in our humble opinion an exoskeleton done right. With two massive protruding arms, capable of lifting 220 pounds without a sweat, direct force feedback for intuitive control, and even powered legs, we’re inclined to believe what we’re seeing here is a tiny glimpse of the awesome mech-dominatedfuture we’ve been waiting so long for. Also known as the Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot, this is produced by Activelink, a Panasonic subsidiary, and you might be shocked to discover that there are plans afoot to commercialize it by 2015. Entrancing video after the break.
Is it us or has Ben Heck outdone himself with the minimal clean design of his latest gaming mod? This laptop sees Sony’s PS3 Slim stuffed into a monochromatic chassis with 17-inch Gateway 1775w LCD throwing a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution. There’s even space inside to tuck away the power cord when traveling. The pinstriped result is nothing short of elegant, sporty even, especially when compared to his PS3 laptop from 2008. Not much in the way of detail yet, but really, this one’s meant to stimulate the heart, not the frontal cortex. See it throb to life in the video after the break.
This week on Lifehacker we look at their favorite Twitter clients, their favorite pens, their favorite photo management software and how they manage to skip on extended warranties, but still pay for broken stuff.
10-Year-Old Girl Lists Grandma on eBay…Borders Pulls Yet Another B&N…In Case of Stroke, Heart Attack or Physical Trauma, Please Register Your iPod…Lenovo’s Laptop Lost and Found
Don’t you hate when your disabled grandma comes home from the hospital after painful surgery, moaning and doped on painkillers? Worst of all, your parents make you do chores for her, so that she can just lie there, lazing around like a good-for-nothing! It’s just not fair. But can you make things better by auctioning Gran off on eBay? No, it turns out, you can’t. It’s “against the rules.” Way to make little girls sad, eBay. [Daily Mail UK via Pocket Lint]
The story is that Borders got free Wi-Fi, which is nice news for the last three people who actually think Borders is anything but a money suckhole. But I more particularly enjoyed Engadget’s phrasing: Borders had “pulled a B&N.” I like it—I am not just making fun—and it got me thinking. When hasn’t Borders pulled a B&N? Borders’ annual reports could consist solely of listings of the latest B&Ns they’d pulled, opening internal coffee shops, gobbling up old-school mall bookstore chains, selling CDs at their laughable MSRPs and, ultimately, licking Amazon’s muddy combat boots. So Borders has pulled yet another B&N. Cool. Why change horses in mid-cliff-jump? [Engadget]
One of the starkest signs that we’re well into the digital years is that personal electronics serve as electronic dog tags—even ones we choose not to laser-etch with our vitals. A 23-year-old jogger in Atlanta was hit by a car and rushed to the emergency room. She had no identification, but carried an iPod. A nurse got the serial number of the iPod, and used it to track down the Jane Doe’s name and address, eventually reaching her mother. The woman was last reported in critical condition, with her mom by her side. This isn’t the first time an iPod performed this unintended, tragic public service, and it certainly won’t be the last. [Fox 5 Atlanta, CBS Atlanta; Thanks Michael]
You know when you find a laptop just lying around, and you have to open it and start it up, search it for porn or personal financial data, maybe check what games are on it, or read some private emails, all before you stumble across identifying information that will help you return it to the rightful owner? Lenovo wants to free you from this tedious process by providing an 800 number you can call to return the laptop without copying the contents of the hard drive to your home server. Oh, and that laptop with the 800 number? It’s got a tracking system on it too, so don’t even think about making it your own. [Engadget]
By law, cable operators must offer standalone CableCards, used in everything from TVs to HTPCs to Tivos, to encourage competition with and choice beyond standard, clunky settop boxes. But not all that many people take advantage of the policy.
In fact, while the 10 biggest cable operators have deployed 16.7 settop boxes with integrated CableCards to date, they’ve only issued 443,000 standalone CableCards. And during the last two years, full CableCard devices have been installed 38x more often than CableCards alone.
(I’m also betting that the percentage of population that orders more than one CableCard for dual/quad tuning is greater than the percentage of population who orders more than one cable box, which means the CableCard-exclusive population may be even smaller than it seems…but I could be wrong.)
It’s tough to tell why CableCards haven’t been more popular. Then again, limited VoD options and a lack of consumer education might both have something to do with it. [Multichannel News via EngadgetHD]
Lenovo’s Lost & Found looks to guilt trip thieves into returning your ThinkPad So, a little situation for you. You leave your ThinkPad in the third row of waiting seats at Jackson Hole Airport, already distraught that you’re departing Winter Wonderland and heading back to reality. A kindhearted Wyomian happens upon it, and clearly recognizes that he / she should figure out a way to return it. If you’re signed up for the gratis Lost & Found service (which does require a subscription to Absolute Computrace), the finder will spot a 1-800 number on the outside of the ThinkPad or on the display as it’s powered on. From there, he / she simply dials the aforementioned number, waits for the free pre-paid box to arrive, ships it off to Lenovo (to protect your address, naturally) and basks in the satisfaction of knowing that Lenovo will handle the shipping to you. Sound good? Great — it’s now available on all ThinkPads enabled with Absolute Software’s Computrace. Phew!
Modder extraordinaire, Ben Heck, is back in form with a sleek pin-striped laptop based on the new PS3 Slim. Like his Xbox 360 laptop, it has a big 17-inch Gateway 1775W screen (1280 x 720 resolution). Watch his walk-through:
There’s a storage nook for the power cord, front slot-loading Blu-ray drive, and an Iron Man Arc reactor-inspired fan grill. He also says it could have been made smaller, but he wanted to keep the big 17-inch display. Sexy! (More pics once Ben uploads them to his site).
10-Year-Old Girl Lists Grandma on eBay…Borders Pulls Yet Another B&N…In Case of Stroke, Heart Attack or Physical Trauma, Please Register Your iPod…Lenovo’s Laptop Lost and Found
Don’t you hate when your disabled grandma comes home from the hospital after painful surgery, moaning and doped on painkillers? Worst of all, your parents make you do chores for her, so that she can just lie there, lazing around like a good-for-nothing! It’s just not fair. But can you make things better by auctioning Gran off on eBay? No, it turns out, you can’t. It’s “against the rules.” Way to make little girls sad, eBay. [Daily Mail UK via Pocket Lint]
The story is that Borders got free Wi-Fi, which is nice news for the last three people who actually think Borders is anything but a money suckhole. But I more particularly enjoyed Engadget’s phrasing: Borders had “pulled a B&N.” I like it—I am not just making fun—and it got me thinking. When hasn’t Borders pulled a B&N? Borders’ annual reports could consist solely of listings of the latest B&Ns they’d pulled, opening internal coffee shops, gobbling up old-school mall bookstore chains, selling CDs at their laughable MSRPs and, ultimately, licking Amazon’s muddy combat boots. So Borders has pulled yet another B&N. Cool. Why change horses in mid-cliff-jump? [Engadget]
One of the starkest signs that we’re well into the digital years is that personal electronics serve as electronic dog tags—even ones we choose not to laser-etch with our vitals. A 23-year-old jogger in Atlanta was hit by a car and rushed to the emergency room. She had no identification, but carried an iPod. A nurse got the serial number of the iPod, and used it to track down the Jane Doe’s name and address, eventually reaching her mother. The woman was last reported in critical condition, with her mom by her side. This isn’t the first time an iPod performed this unintended, tragic public service, and it certainly won’t be the last. [Fox 5 Atlanta, CBS Atlanta; Thanks Michael]
You know when you find a laptop just lying around, and you have to open it and start it up, search it for porn or personal financial data, maybe check what games are on it, or read some private emails, all before you stumble across identifying information that will help you return it to the rightful owner? Lenovo wants to free you from this tedious process by providing an 800 number you can call to return the laptop without copying the contents of the hard drive to your home server. Oh, and that laptop with the 800 number? It’s got a tracking system on it too, so don’t even think about making it your own. [Engadget]
Yesterday, while touring a new building on Microsoft’s campus, I came across an anechoic chamber: A room designed to eliminate all noise from outside—and in. I spent about 5 minutes locked inside, and man is it freaky.
By law, cable operators must offer standalone CableCards, used in everything from TVs to 
So, a little situation for you. You leave your 
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