December 20th 2008
Today on Offworld we saw a special holiday office party installment of James Kochalka’s Monster Mii feature, this time including a special Sexy X-mas Game Boy chiptune theme song.
We also found a new retro-futurist Space Invaders landing on Japanese mobile phones, saw the new DSi get a downloadable app to make web-embeddable animations, new [...]
December 20th 2008
The South Central Sign Shop in Union Gap, Washington, part of WSDOT, the Washington State Department of Transportation, has a Flickr stream.
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Tags: Central Sign Shop, Department Of Transportation, Gap, Highway Signs, State Department Of Transportation, Union Gap, Washington State Department, Washington State Department Of Transportation
December 20th 2008
Majel Barrett, widow of Gene Roddenberry and the voice of the Enterprise’s computers, passed away today at 76. She was gorgeous and charming and awesome.
She had recorded the voice work for the upcoming Star Trek movie just two weeks ago.
Majel Roddenberry, widow of ‘Trek’ creator, dies [Mercury News/AP]
Image: Space Debris
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Tags: Ap Image, Gene Roddenberry, [...]
December 20th 2008
In a track drive test of the 2009 Nissan 370Z, David Booth describes the new Downshift Rev Matching system available this teeth-grindingly appealing new sports car.
But it is, in fact, said manual tranny that is the 370’s biggest advancement, at least on the race track. Besides offering better action - shorter, more precise throws - [...]
December 20th 2008
(Thanks, Fitley!)
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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica Series
December 20th 2008
Here’s one of the trends you’re going to see at CES this year: laptops with small, secondary displays inside.
And here’s a good example: the Fujitsu Lifebook N7010, with a small (but relatively high-resolution) touchscreen just above the keyboard.
We also can tell you that another notebook manufacturer will be showing a laptop with a tiny screen [...]
December 20th 2008
The New York Times‘ Ashlee Vance thinks she’s uncovered a new Dell laptop, the “Adamo“, that will be even smaller than the MacBook Air:
But most telling of all might have been the reaction of Michael Tatelman, Dell’s vice president in charge of consumer sales and marketing, to my question about whether or not Dell had [...]
December 20th 2008
An alliance of companies are working together with the U.S. government to create lithium battery capable of easily powering electric vehicles.
The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture was modeled after SEMATECH, the successful public-private venture created in the late 1980s to restore U.S. prominence in computer semiconductor technology.
Besides Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions, [...]
December 20th 2008
Video on the iPhone? Not quite, but 12seconds.tv has an iPhone app that takes as valiant a stab as Apple permits. Here’s the pitch:
The app let’s you take 3 photos (or choose 3 photos from your library) and then record twelve seconds of audio. The photos and audio make a slideshow which outputs as a [...]
December 20th 2008
Mike Arrington wrote a pleasingly forceful denunciation of embargoes yesterday. Embargoes are agreements between PR people and reporters to hold publication until a certain time, but they always get broken and generally have become useless and counterproductive.
The talk was very blunt: they will break agreements they’ve already made, and they will always do it. “We [...]
December 20th 2008
I’m on a bit of a lighting kick today, and these globulous light molecules, which attach to each other in the strangest conglomerations you can fancy, have enthused me. I imagine a house entirely lit with them would look like an ectoplasm attack.
Nomad Light Molecules [Official Site via Technabob]
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Tags: Light Balls, Lighting, Molecules, Nomad, [...]
December 20th 2008
Neuros has offered their bounties to programmers willing to create code for their Neuros Link set-top box. I love this model of development. It pays programmers for their time (if at what is a lower-than-premium rate) and helps get code into the hands of the open-source community.
Here are the bounties:
• Get Netflix streaming working. ($2,500)
• [...]
December 20th 2008
The Samson “Go Mic” is just a USB microphone, but it’s designed to actually provide better sound quality than those nickel jobbers you can buy by the hundred at fruit stands. It has a condenser transducer and a 20Hz to 18kHz frequency response. It will cost $50.
If the moire pattern in the tiny JPGs in [...]
December 20th 2008
This bizarre quote from an MSNBC non-story about floaters, bloaters, rotters and kickers wanting to be buried with their cell phones caught my attention:
“It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,” says Noelle Potvin, family service counselor for Hollywood Forever, a funeral home and cemetery in Hollywood, Calif. “It’s [...]
December 20th 2008
These lamps from Caina’s Design shop oozes gouts of gorish silicon like a redrum hallucination at a recently re-decorated Overlook Hotel. That sort of chicness will cost, though: they cost about $262 a piece.
Liquid Lamp [Caina via Coolest Gadgets]
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Tags: Design Shop, Gadgets, Gore, Gouts, Hallucination, Lamps, Liquid Light, Silicon
December 20th 2008
KWillets adds a 31st to the list: “Remember, electrocuting yourself while fishing will upset not just you and your companion, but the fish as well.”
Someone should make a gallery of cartoon electrocutions.
Make That 31 Ways [KWillets]
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Tags: Cartoon, Companion, Electrocution, Fish, Fishing, Warning Sign
December 20th 2008
Steve Guttenberg takes a walk through the latest high-end headphones and headphone amps, selecting what he’s calling “three contenders for the world’s best headphone”. In my fantasy den, I’m kicked back in my leather chair, feet on oaken desk, smoking a cigarette and swirling a bourbon while listening to the finest Ukrainian pornography soundtracks [...]
December 20th 2008
In the comments to our OSX-netbook compatibility chart, folks pointed out that evidence for OSX on the HP Mini 2133 is … lacking. It’s been shoehorned onto other non-Intel systems, but no-one seems to have replicated the feat here. The thread where people are bickering over it contains this fantastic post, from “:
I installed Leopard [...]
December 20th 2008
Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.
This reflective adhesive vinyl is black under natural light, but reflects white when hit with a flash — or headlights, making it quite suitable for covering a bicycle. Mike Mandiberg did just that.
The stuff’s trade name is “Scotchlite 680″ and is made by 3M. It’s used traditionally in signage, [...]
December 20th 2008
BlackBerry Application Suite is software that runs on Windows Mobile devices that more or less turns them into BlackBerries, with email, RIM’s instant messaging tool, and more. It also appears to integrate very well with existing Exchange accounts using Windows Mobile. It’s even possible to run some BlackBerry applications.
My roommate sent me an IM: “Maybe [...]