Scrolling through the Google Shopping results for “Blu-ray burner” brings us to $200 before we find a device that will actually author the high-capacity disks. And that’s the cheapest online price: The same Light-On unit is also listed for $380, So the new “Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive” from Amex looks like good value at $290.
What’s more, it looks great. The sleek slot-loader will read and write Blu-ray, CD and DVD disks, hooks up to a USB 2.0 port and will even run on the power provided by that same port (there’s a 5v DC adapter in the box if you need it).
With Blu-ray being the “Bag of hurt ” it is, we’d certainly steer towards the external option rather than opting for a built-in laptop drive, especially as, once Blu-ray dies a quiet death, you’ll still be left with a serviceable DVD and CD burner.
Let’s be honest: the Averatec All-In-One is a netbook with a big screen. The 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor isn’t going to give you blistering performance, but in our experience it will give you enough power to do most everyday computing tasks.
Like a netbook, the All-In-One is cheap. $550 buys you the computer, an 18.4 inch, 1680 x 945 widescreen display (with built-in webcam), a keyboard and a mouse. You’ll also find a DVD drive, built-in mic, 5 USB ports, ethernet and a 120GB hard drive.
Perhaps the neatest feature is the shiny metal swing-arm which connects the flat base with the monitor – it reminds us of the arm on the Anglepoise-like iMac G4 – which allows the screen to be lowered to desk level, or even flipped flat for easy storage, or the carrying of tea and cakes into the den.
Joanna Stern at Laptop mag has put the All-In-One through its early paces and she likes it. It’s easy to see why: The machine doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a low-end family computer, but for the price, Avaratec has squeezed in a lot of computer, and its glossy looks belie its cheap origins.
We knock Nokia’s premium line of Vertu cellphones not because, deep down, we really love them, but because they are cynical cash-ins, phones devoid of all but the most basic features priced to appeal to the moronic consumer who equates high price with high status.
So Norihiko Inoue’s concept design neatly sums up the whole Vertu scam. Described by Inoue as a “celebration of empty space”, the design is literally a shell with nothing inside. The conceit is that, sometime in the future, components will be so small that they can fit into the skin of a phone-sized handset. After all, unless you are Derek Zoolander, there is a lower practical limit to the size of a cellphone.
The buttons and screen rest on thin strips of shiny plastic which wrap around the air inside. Think of it as a real-world wireframe model. We have no idea if Inoue’s choice of Vertu was intentional, but if so, this is probably the most satirical concept design we’ve ever seen.
The headline at New Launches reads “HourDoc a new way to punch in to work”. When I read it, I immediately imagined Spidey’s arch-enemy Doc Octopus literally punching through a wall before crashing into his office and then simultaneously checking email, pouring coffee and being evil, his many arms whirring into a blur of productivity.
Sadly, upon further reading it turns out that “Revolutionary time and labor tracking company HourDoc.com” has added a service that lets mobile workers clock in and out via text message. The system is clearly aimed at paranoid employers who can’t trust their minions unless they can track their every movement from afar.
That said, the press release contains some delightful nonsense. One is reminded of nothing more than the Hokey Pokey (Hokey Cokey in the UK):
The text messages are commands for the HourDoc.com system, and the employee chooses one of four text message commands. They are “in”, “out”, “bin” or “bout”.
The system works by identifying each employee with their cellphone number. If the message is delayed by bad cell network conditions, technical wizardry works out the time the message was sent, rather than received, keeping the scores accurate. And if you already have the HourDoc system installed, this add-on costs nothing but the price of the messages.
The folks at German site EE PC News got their hands on the forthcoming Asus Eee Top, an all-in-one desktop with a touch screen. The Eee Top runs Windows XP, but also has Asus’ Easy Mode, a skin which looks a lot like the Eee PC Linux interface — big icons and a tabbed screen selector running along the top.
The hardware looks great: It’s somewhere between the old iBooks and the first generation plastic Apple Cinema Displays. In action, though, things aren’t quite so smooth. Despite the Easy Mode, XP still chokes, throwing up the usual error dialog box and then freezing altogether.
The demo video also brings up the question of whether touch screens are actually useful. For applications where the user needs to interact with the machine for a short time, touch screens are great — think ATMs and cash registers. But for general computing, what’s the point? The old “arm-ache” problem will remain, and really, if you are interacting with a GUI designed for a mouse, using your fingers is no better.
In fact, it offers a disadvantage: with a mouse, a quick flick of the wrist will move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. With touch, you need to actually move your hand a lot further.
And this style of all-in-one seems particularly ill-suited. It’s perfect for the living room, for movies and photo viewing, but these are done from ten feet away, so you’ll stil need a wireless keyboard and mouse (or a long stick).
We want touch to work, and it seems that the computer makers want it to. But it just doesn’t fit into the current style of computer interfaces. It’s already annoying enough having to switch between keyboard and mouse. Adding in yet another place to move your hands is just making things worse, not simpler.
We predict that touch-computing won’t take off until somebody invents a new UI which works with the new input style. Think iPhone, but bigger. The desktop metaphor we know today was invented for the mouse. The iPhone UI was invented for the handheld computer. Touch just won’t work as an alternative input method for today’s machines.
Seeing as Apple was the first company to bring the mouse driven UI to market with the Macintosh back in 1984, and multi touch in 2007, we’re expecting something fancy to emerge from Cupertino. The huge glass multi touch trackpads on the new MacBooks shows that Apple is clearly pursuing touch, The most obvious prediction is a giant iPhone, the fabled MacBook Touch. Who knows? It may not be Apple, but somebody has to do it — the current touch screen paradigm is broken.
The Down Low Glow is a bright tube light for your bike. You strap it on to the bottom of the frame and it puts your ride right in the center of a pool of neon light. Apart from making your bike look like a lowrider, the $110 kit actually makes you safer.
Regular bike lights, whether they blink or burn bright, only shine forwards and back. The Down Low Glow adds a third dimension, making you visible from the side. The light (available in five colors, including hot, hot pink) also marks your territory — the glow on the ground marks out your space on the road and car drivers keep out, meaning you won’t get clocked with the wing-mirror when they pass.
According to the FAQ, the lights are neither waterproof (although they try) or burglar-proof. The batteries are rechargeable lithium ion, so at least they’re not affected by the cold, although the lamps may take a little longer to warm up. But if you live in a cold, dry town with low crime rates and a lot of drunken driving, these might be just the thing. Video below.
Over at BoingBoing Gadgets, Rob Beschizza (pronounced “Biscuit-Czar”) takes time off from blogging from a dystopian future to bring us a rather splendid swipe at Windows 7, which – according to Rob’s “sauce” – will arrive in a mind-spinning 20 versions.
But if there’s an instinct that Microsoft will find hard to put to bed, it’s the one that led to more versions of Vista than can be counted on one hand. The place is run by a sales guy, after all! Click through for our exclusive leaked ad covering the 20 separate editions of Windows 7, straight from our anonymous sauce.
Our favorite is Widows 7 Secure Edition, seen above. Of course, it’s a parody, even though some people seem to have taken it seriously. Remember, bloggers: Check your sauces!
Microsoft announces 20 editions of Windows 7! BoingBoing Gadgets]
If you’re not a celebrity, but want to feel like one, then get yourself an Ultra Motor A2B. Wherever I rode this futuristic fully suspended machine onlookers were agog. Trips to Trader Joe’s, the gym, the farmer’s market, bank, post office, beach strand and everywhere else were perpetually punctuated with oohs, ahhs and what’s that? And while it makes a clear impression on the public, the plush front and rear suspension with smooth and fat motorcycle-like tires ensure that most bumps and potholes leave little or no impression on the rider. The 500-watt motor in the rear hub and motorcycle-like twist throttle delivers a comfortable and steady amount of power as you cruise along at the federally mandated max of 20 miles per hour. Encased in the aluminum downtube, the lithium-ion battery yields just over 20 miles of range over varied Los Angeles-area terrain including moderate ups and downs, groceries, and other cargo on-board AND very little pedaling.
Let’s be honest, the A2B is more akin to a scooter than bicycle because of its 73 pounds and laid back beach cruiser geometry. But the A2B’s designers were smart, by giving it pedals and keeping the maximum powered speed below 20 mph, you don’t have to endure the DMV’s motorcycle certification test pay any registration fees or even insure your A2B as a motorcycle. Since the A2B does have pedals you can actually extend the battery’s range (and go faster) by adding some of your own power in the bigger gears. However, it’s pretty clear that you won’t want pedal the A2B too far sans motor.
Securing your nearly three thousand-dollar investment to an outdoor bike rack is a bit of a challenge. The fat tubes necessitate a lengthy chain or cable (I don’t recommend cables for any bike you’d like to keep.) I was able to ease my mind with two Kryptonite NY U-Locks and a Kryptonite NY chain — which also added more than 20 pounds to the payload.
In spite of the creative locking logistics, the A2B is by far the eye-catching electric “bike” in the market and provides a nice option for those who are green-minded, have a fair bit of extra green in their wallets but don’t want to shvitz their way to work and back. —Jackson Lynch
WIRED Plush. comfy, and downright fun to ride. Eye catching design leaves local yokels slack-jawed. Don’t worry about Crackhead Bob boosting your battery — it’s encased within the bike making it nigh impervious to petty theft.
TIRED Throttle grip is hard on the hands. Heavy. Hard to imagine pedaling it more than a couple blocks. Downhill mountain bike style drivetrain is noisy.
Betting on Apple is paying off big time for AT&T which is exclusive service provider for the iPhone in the U.S as more users have switched to the carrier since the device’s launch.
AT&T connections associated with the 3G iPhone have risen for two consecutive months since the phone launched on July 11, according to Nielsen Mobile.
The 3G iPhones have helped AT&T steal customers away from other service providers. The number of customers switching to AT&T increased 97% between June and July, reaching a level 12% higher than the original iPhone launch in 2007.
Overall subscriber additions for for AT&T increased 70% between June and July, reaching a level 14% higher than the 2007 iPhone launch.
Meanwhile, the competition still can’t make a dent in the iPhone juggernaut. Though Sprint launched the Samsung Instinct on June 20 and Verizon launched the LG Dare on June 26 as competition to the iPhone, customers switching to those carriers were not nearly as dramatic as AT&T’s, says Nielsen.
None of this is surprising but it is interesting to see the numbers all laid out.
As of second quarter of 2008, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion had 31.1% of the smartphone market, HTC had 20.6%, Palm had 16.9% while Apple came in fourth with 12.2%.
Overall the smartphone industry continues to grow at a rapid pace. More than 26 million mobile subscribers use a smartphone now and smartphones represent 16% of recent mobile device acquisitions in the US, says Nielsen.
And there’s likely to be enough opportunity in the next year. About 30% of smartphone users are likely to upgrade their device in the coming year, says Nielsen Mobile.
Forget about 3D cameras and TVs for a second and imagine a machine that spits out any object on your computer screen.
Industrial designers can do that in their offices now with a desktop printer that launched today: The Alaris 30 Desktop 3D, which processes a 3D CAD file and carves out a polymer model of the image.
The machine will streamline prototype production for industrial designers, who in the past were relying on machine shops to produce prototypes of their designs. That spells out less time between the conception of a new gadget to its actual creation.
The Alaris 30 works by jetting photopolymer materials in thin layers onto a tray one a time, according to its manufacturer Objet. Each layer is cured immediately with a UV light, eventually building up to a complete model.
At $40,000, the printer doesn’t come cheap, but cramming this technology into a 180-pound printer that’s 12 inches wide and 8 inches tall — small and lightweight enough to fit in an office — is a major step toward broadening this machine for consumers.
Very cool: Tech-savvy musician Rob Morris hooked up his Nintendo
Wiimote to his guitar and used the controller’s accelerometer data to
manipulate the instrument’s sounds. Check out the video above: He tilts
his guitar upward (Star Power, anyone?) to change the pitch, and then
he moves on to crazier sounds by pressing the Wiimote buttons.
There’s no stopping the rise of netbooks as more customers have been springing for these low-cost, ultraportable devices in a weak economy and amidst sluggish growth in the PC industry, says research firm IDC.
"The proliferation of low-cost portable PCs
coincided perfectly with market conditions," says Jay Chou, research analyst with IDC’s worldwide quarterly PC tracker in a statement. "As more low-cost models enter the fray, a new pecking order may emerge among vendors."
Overall, worldwide PC shipments were up 15.8% to about 80 million, though that came in slightly less than projected.
HP was the worldwide leader during the quarter with about 19% share of the market though the economic downturn has affected the company’s overall performance, said IDC. Dell ranked second though it trailed the industry in terms of growth.
Acer was the surprise in the pack as its growth in emerging regions and the portables market helped it bag the number three position in terms of market share.
Now for the bad news: The weak economy has led to tightening of IT budgets and that may affect PC sales in the fourth quarter. Consumer spending on electronics is also likely to feel the pain, says IDC.
Mark Verstegen has trained some of the greatest athletes in the world at his Athletes’ Performance facilities in Arizona, California, and Florida. It’s the kind of place where you go if you’re hoping to be a top pick in the NFL draft, but need to boost your 40-yard dash time. The trainers work intensively with these elite athletes, using Verstegen’s techniques, which focus heavily on increasing functional strength and mobility.
So how do you take this experience with the best of the best, and apply it to us mere mortals? Verstegen has written books about his Core Performance method, but last month he opened the Core Performance Center, a gym in Santa Monica that blends his training ideas with some seriously tech.
"One of the key factors in training pro athletes and "achievers" alike is creating a path for sustainable success," says Verstegen. "If you peel back the layers and job titles on athletes and achievers, you will find what I call a "Red Thread" commonality–the instrinsic commitment to excellence, so ultimately the approach to performance is very similar."
The achievers that Verstegen mentions are the target consumers for the Core Performance Centers. "They’re people who want the best in life and are willing to work to achieve it," says Verstegen. "To me, this includes busy moms, overscheduled executives: really any individual who is constantly asking "how can I improve?" Our job is to match their commitment, providing them with proven systems and specialists to ensure that they meet their performance goals."
A central part of the experience at the Core Performance Center is a custom-designed machine called the CPro (it’s pictured at the top of the story). When you start your workout, you log into the CPro, and it retrieves your workout history, and the results of your evaluation by the onsite coaching team. It knows what your workout should be today, and it’s ready to guide you through it.
But first, the machine asks you how you’re feeling. If you’re feeling good, you’re ready to go. But if you say your tired, or sick, or injured, it asks for more information about what’s bothering you, and uses that information to modify your workout.
"The idea for the CPro came from my years of coaching," says Verstegen. Every Coach at Athletes’ Performance has an Assistant Coach working with them, whose job is to set up the next movement for the athlete, to record each movement the athlete has completed, and to help motivate the athlete to complete just one more repetition or work that much harder in a training session. The CPro accomplishes that same objective in the CPC: it demonstrates movements, records each individual’s performance, and automatically adapts if a member is having a tough day or just doesn’t feel well."
It’s that level of adaptation that makes Core Performance Center so interesting to someone like me, who’s been dedicated to tracking his workouts at a micro level. When you walk in the door, you put on a heart rate strap, and the system tracks every beat until you leave. Each repetition you do on the Cpro–using compressed air rather than weights for resistance–is measured for the wattage you produce. The effort you expend doing aerobic work on a treadmill or stationary bike is also captured.
And then all of that is looped back into your plan for the next work out. Basically, the Core Performance Center looks to replace the most time-consuming part of a coach’s job–creating training plans–with tech, freeing up the coaches to, you know, coach.
"For us, the technology enables us to move toward more meaningful interactions with people on the floor during their workouts," says Craig Friedman, the Director of Methodology for Athletes’ Performance. "It’s like a really smart assistant coach."
But that sort of power doesn’t come easily. "There are 18,000 rules in the CPro’s code base," says Athletes’ Performance CTO Jon Zerden. "It basically took us 18 months to translate the logic that our coaches would use to make adjustments into computer code."
Right now, there’s just one Core Performance Center. But Verstegen says the company plans to open more in the next calendar year. If my soreness after a workout at CPC is any gauge, it’s a super-effective way to get in shape, and the intersection of the exercise and information technologies is really impressive.
Pioneer’s XMp3, which begins shipping today, not only plays satellite radio; it also records up to five stations at once. The player also has a 30-minute buffer to rewind and fast forward through live shows. It’s essentially a TiVo for satellite radio.
Almost sounds illegal, doesn’t it? Then again, it’s the digital equivalent of recording radio with audio cassettes — and that never got us in trouble.
The XMp3 runs for $280 — kind of hefty, but about the same as an iPod classic.
Now that the launch of the new Macbooks is out of the way, it might be time for Apple to take a look at iTunes and its digital-music-service strategy.
Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, is nipping at Apple’s heels and mounting what could be the biggest challenge yet for iTunes and Apple’s dominance in digital music services.
The first of Nokia’s phones, the 5310 XpressMusic featuring "Comes With Music," a subscription service that offers a year of free unlimited music downloads, will be available to consumers in the United Kingdom starting Thursday.
After a year, users will be charged for the service, but will be allowed to keep all the music they already downloaded.
Over the next two months, two more Nokia phones featuring the new service are expected to hit the market.
Nokia’s entry into the digital-music-services market could force Apple to change its iTunes strategy, say analysts.
Its focus on digital music is a bid to grab a share of the $3.05-billion digital-music-sales market and take a shot at Apple, whose iTunes is the market leader. Nokia is betting that it will add millions of new users
worldwide for its new music service over the next
year-and-a-half.
"There is no getting away from what is happening here, which is a strategic battle with Apple," says Mark Mulligan, vice president at Forrester Research, UK. "Apple opened up a competitive battle on Nokia’s turf with the iPhone, and Nokia is doing the same now with digital music."
Agrees Adam Leach, an analyst with research firm Ovum, "It’s a very ambitious play. If you look at the picture globally, there are very few companies in the world that have the muscle to take on Apple in this area, and Nokia is one of those," says Leach.
ITunes, which has had more than 5 billion songs downloaded through it in the last five years, has been at the heart of Apple’s revival. The service, integrated into iPods and iPhones, has turned Apple from a niche player in the computer market to an industry visionary.
"Apple has a trinity — the iPod, iTunes and iPhone — that is almost unbeatable," says Russ Crupnick, digital media analyst with The NPD Group.
But now Apple has reason to be anxious. Unlike other iTunes competitors, Nokia’s Comes With Music will be bundled along with millions of Nokia phones, which makes it significantly different from rivals such as Amazon.com and Walmart that only sell music and not the integrated device-music combination that has given Apple its edge.
That’s not all. Nokia is also building a la carte music stores and has the big four of music rights — Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI — signed up along with some independent labels.
This is especially worrisome for Apple because its iTunes store has
seen little innovation in the last few years. "Apple is leading the
market with an out-of-date music store that hasn’t been updated in four
years," says Mulligan.
In response to Nokia’s strategy, Apple may have to consider options such as expanding the "Genius" feature in iTunes that creates a playlist of
songs based on similar musical tastes as indicated by the user, a
full-fledged subscription service or iPhones pre-installed with music, says Mulligan.
In order to stay ahead, Nokia was forced to innovate due to changes in the cellphone business, says Mulligan. Penetration of cellphones in many
markets in Europe and North America is reaching saturation even as
operators are trying to move towards longer contract periods, which
slows down the replacement cycle for the phones.
While Nokia continues to make new handsets, the company is also pressing ahead by launching new services to go beyond just handset manufacturing in an attempt to capture a bigger chunk of the global market.
"We are increasingly moving towards a new type of business where it is
not good enough to be a hardware or service provider anymore," Trevor Madigan, Nokia’s manager of
entertainment and communities in the Americas region, told Wired.com. "You have to have more than the sum of the parts."
Earlier this month, it had a
splashy launch in the United Kingdom for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
The device, priced at €279, is expected to start shipping in the fourth
quarter of 2008. Two other Nokia phones, the 5310 XpressMusic
(available prepaid through British website CarphoneWarehouse.com at GBP
130) and the N95 8GB (priced at $700), will also have the Comes With
Music service.
“For consumers this means they bring the device home, enter the code
in the box to register the device and then download as much music as
they want for a year,” Madigan says. “The user keeps everything at the end of the year on their PC and can sync it with their phone.”
To burn a CD of the downloaded music, though, users will be
charged extra. It’s not music free of digital rights management, but it
is free for users who just want to listen to music through their PC or
phone.
Nokia is launching the service first in the United Kingdom, where the digital music
market is less developed than in the United States. By the first half of next year,
it hopes to enter the U.S. market. If successful, Comes With Music will significantly grow the digital music market, says Mulligan.
Currently, the closest comparison to Nokia’s new service can be found in Denmark with telecom provider TDC. The company offers unlimited music downloads through its Play service, and so far it has seen more than 60 million downloads since it was launched in March. “That’s remarkable considering the population of Denmark is about 5 million,” says Mulligan.
Over the last two years Nokia has also made a number of acquisitions in areas including social networking and mapping services. Last October, Nokia bought mapping data supplier Navteq for $8 billion. The focus of the new strategy, however, is music. The market for full-track mobile downloads of music alone is expected to reach $4.2 billion by 2012, says research firm In-Stat.
Nokia’s a la carte store, Nokia Music, has been built on acquisitions the company made a few years ago. In August 2006, Nokia bought digital music provider Loudeye and its European distribution business On-Demand Distribution (OD2) for $60 million.
Nokia says it will grow faster than iTunes because its music
services will be launched globally. “Some of our competitors took five
years to get to 15 or 20 markets,” says Madigan. “We plan to bring this to every major market region in a global way in the next two years.”
Roadblocks in Nokia’s global domination plans include the U.S. market, where the company isn’t as dominant as in Asia or Europe, communicating how Comes With Music works and building partnerships with telecom carriers.
"American consumers want ownership, flexibility and portability," says Crupnick. "That’s what Apple provides, and while iTunes hasn’t fundamentally changed over the years, it is a music vault for most users."
And while the music service itself will be free, downloading over the air carries additional charges from the service providers — that is, if Nokia can convince enough telecom carriers to come on board.
So far, the company hasn’t announced any carrier as a partner. Though speculation has it that 3, the service from Hutchinson Whampoa, could be the first to sign on.
Ultimately, how successful Nokia is hinges on building partnerships with telecom operators, says Leach.
And when it does have those partnerships in its bag, Apple needs to be ready to go to battle.
Also see: Nokia’s Upcoming Music Phone Takes a Shot at Apple
After showing off a slew of sexy, aluminum Mac notebooks on Tuesday, Steve Jobs said Apple computers still aren’t sporting Blu-ray players to dodge extra licensing costs:
"Blu-ray is a bag of hurt," he said during a question-and-answer session. "I don’t mean from the consumer point of view.
It’s great to watch movies, but the licensing is so complex. We’re
waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off
before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing."
A bag of hurt? Haven’t heard that one. Mixed metaphor between "world of hurt" and "bag of kittens," perhaps? Anyhow, about two weeks ago Danny Gorog of APC mag plunged into analysis as to why Apple is avoiding Blu-ray adoption, and he points out that the format could pose competition to the iTunes Store. Because why would Apple want people purchasing Blu-ray discs rather than movies from the iTunes Store? Sound argument.
But I buy Job’s explanation: It certainly wouldn’t help Apple to make Macs anymore expensive in the face of a collapsing economy. I do suspect, however, it also has a lot to do with not wanting Blu-ray to steal iTunes’ thunder, and Apple’s going to stall as long as it can.
Then again, like I said before, I really don’t mind the lack of Blu-ray on a Mac: Seems like a waste watching such high-quality movies on a laptop screen.
See also:
Hands On With the New MacBooks
Steve Jobs Unveils Newer, Sexier Aluminum MacBooks
Thanks to their utilitarian design and low prices, netbooks are inspiring a booming subculture of hackers souping up their liliputers with touchscreens, GPS and unauthorized operating systems like Apple’s Mac OS X.
netbook sales continue to soar, more and
more tech-savvy grease monkeysare dismantling netbooks to add fancy features including GPS and longer-lasting batteries.
"I’d say it was a work of passion and love for computing," said San Diego resident David Winter, who has crammed three solid state drives into a netbook, upping the
capacity to 128 GB. (Normally, netbooks only ship with solid state
drives in double-digit capacities.) His next project? A laser espionage microphone that he plans to implant into a netbook, which will enable him to record sound from behind someone’s window.
Netbooks may seem like unlikely devices to attract the interest of hardware hackers, who traditionally have been drawn to bigger iron. Compared to full-size laptops, netbooks are low-powered and have limited feature sets. But in the face of a broad economic meltdown, hacking a $400 netbook makes more sense than risking a pricier, full-featured laptop.
Netbook modding is becoming so popular, Winter has launched a netbook-modding business: Winter Computer Solutions, which mods customer’s netbooks with GPS, Bluetooth, DVD readers or HDTV tuners.
Winter, who runs his burgeoning business on his netbook, is known for his remarkable netbook-mod stunts.
He once sold an Asus Eee PC netbook sporting every mod you
can imagine: A 7-inch touchscreen, Air Play for transmitting FM radio,
an overclocked processor, a Bluetooth adapter — and the list keeps on going.
DIY Devices, an up-and-coming electronics store, is planning to sell a kit called the Aeeeris, which will convert netbooks into tablets. Though a kit makes the procedure sound easy, converting a clamshell netbook into a tablet is considered an extreme mod — it’s not for the faint of heart. Available for a $60 pre-order, the kit includes a base, but a touchscreen must be purchased separately.
Another netbook modding nut goes by the handle "JKK." He hosts a web site dedicated to
tutorials on netbook modding, and he says hacking mini notes is so trendy because it’s generally very easy — even for non-engineers. JKK Mobile’s most
popular hack was installing a stylus-controlled touchscreen on an Asus
EEE PC, which JKK said was simple enough to do with a $50 kit from a Chinese manufacturer.
"The easiest things can actually be done by anyone," he said in a phone
interview. "You don’t even have to open the whole device."
Brad Linder, writer of Liliputing, a blog devoted to ultraportable devices, thinks there’s even more behind the netbook modding craze. He noted that the modder community is continuing to
make hacking netbooks easier because there’s a wealth of knowledge on
the internet — forums, blogs and even instructions provided by Dell — discussing
how to dissect them.
"It’s not like people haven’t been hacking hardware for years as
well, but I feel like these little machines have become a paradise for
hackers," Linder said. "While [netbooks are] designed to have low-income audiences,
educational markets and kids, the people who mod these the most are
nerds."
Making it easy, netbooks are all very similar in
terms of specification and build. Practically every new netbook
features a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor with either a 9- or 10-inch
screen; the variations between models are very minor, which is why
modding generally remains simple with the release of each new netbook.
And
despite the general principle that smaller gadgets
should be more difficult to customize in terms of hardware, Linder noted that their insides —
such as hard drives, 3-G cards and so on — are getting smaller, too, so
it’s not too difficult to cram more features into these netbooks.
Linder, however, said he shies away from hardware mods and that he’s more of a "software guy." His Eee PC 1000H triple boots Windows XP, Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and Mandriva 2009 Linux.
One of the most popular software hacks for netbooks is installing Mac OS X Leopard, Linder said. The process typically takes people a few hours —
but that’s not long compared to the amount of time consumers will have to wait for Apple to finally deliver a netbook.
"People were talking about Apple coming out with a laptop under $800 for the first time, and someone already made one and it’s a
netbook," he said. "I’m really impressed that the user community is
able to accomplish things that even major manufacturers aren’t doing."
Television broadcasters are getting ready to ditch analog programming and go fully digital in four months — and 10 million U.S. households aren’t even ready for the switch, a survey says.
That
translates to one in five households who will receive nothing but
static on their analog-only TV sets come Feb. 17, 2009, according to
Nielsen, who conducted the survey. Nielsen also found that another 12.6
million homes own at least one analog-only TV.
The termination of analog cable, called the DTV Transition, is a government-mandated action intended to free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum
for communication between police, fire departments and rescue squads.
In order to receive digital programming, homes must purchase digital TVs and subscribe to a digital-cable service or satellite. An alternative is
purchasing a converter box.
Not surprising — Nielsen found households headed by less
educated, lower income and blue-collar workers are least prepared for
the transition. Also, older,
white households are better equipped for digital TV than their younger, African
American, Asian or Hispanic counterparts.
Quite a bummer. Hopefully these households at least have broadband internet so they can watch TV on Hulu.
How about you, Gadget Lab readers? You prepared for analog Doomsday?
It’s the natural order of all things Apple: First the announcement, then the un-boxing. Opening up a new Apple toy is always fun — the company pays almost as much attention to the box as what’s inside the box, and with the new MacBooks it looks like Apple has outdone itself.
Flickr-er Joe Russell picked up a MacBook and has posted the packaging porn in the form of the traditional unboxing pics. His conclusion?
Very small, dense box. Not unlike a ream of paper.
Opening the box, first thing I noticed was that its virtually identical in the iPhone 3G experience… the back of the lid is black softy foam, and when lifting the black tab it brings the machine up and forward.
Joe also gives his first impressions of the new glass trackpad:
the entire surface is in fact not a clickable button… but rather the lower two-thirds. And as far as it being glass, it feels more like the original textured surface of the trackpad on the MacBook Pro.
Once you’ve peeled the packaging away from your shiny new MacBook Pro, what’s next? If you are iFixit, you just keep on going, cracking open the case to see what’s inside.
How does dissembling the new Unibody compare to the old style Apple portables? To begin with, way easier. Once the battery compartment is off, it’s just six screws beween you and the interior, and they’re all on the bottom of the case. Compare this to the plastic MacBook I took apart a few days ago (to replace the keyboard, actually supplied by iFixit), which requires screws of various sizes to be removed from all over – inside the battery compartment and three sides of the case – before you get the first whiff of circuit board.
After that, things are more normal. All the components are fixed to the top case, so while there are a lot of screws, their actual removal is pretty straightforward. Until you get to the keyboard, that is.
The old white MacBook has its keyboard and trackpad built into the upper case, and the whole lot can be easily replaced. With these new MacBooks, you can’t just swap out the new Unibody, so getting the keyboard off is tough. 15 minutes and 56 screws tough. Still, it’s good news. IFixit:
It looks like users will be able to repair their own keyboards after all! Great news for the heavy-handed and spill-prone.
What’s really striking is just how little there is inside — the exploded view above shows everything. We guess that the new stiff body design means that none of the internal parts are structural, meaning they just bolt in. Machining the aluminum case might take a little longer, but after that it looks like a pretty quick process.
Surprisingly, UK dermatologists are not claiming evil radioactivity as the cause for a new rash of skin problems. Instead, it’s plain old irritation.
The British Association of Dermatologists has interpeted studies on itchy, cheek-reddening eruptions which have been dubbed “Mobile Phone Dermatitis”. The cause? Nickel allergy. Phones which contain nickel in their faceplates or buttons could cause rashes to develop in sensitive-skinned people.
We foresee a rush on aftermarket phone-condoms. Alternatively, just pick up one of the many, many glass-fronted touch screen phones available. Now we know the real reason for the iPhone’s lack of a real, physical keyboard.
It looks like the Android Market, the Googlephone equivalent of the iPhone App Store, won’t be quite the un-policed, anarchic free-for-all we expected. While anybody can still post any application for download to an Android-based device, the Android Market terms of service state that Google can kill, from the comfort of the armchair in its secret control room, any application which violates those terms.
As these are the terms of service for the Market, they of course don’t apply to applications downloaded from elsewhere. If Google gets serious about throwing the kill switch for apps which violate the agreement, there is likely to be a fuss, from the technology blog world at least. Exhibit A: the furore caused by Apple’s admission that it can deactivate iPhone apps from afar.
The difference is that Google has put its intentions out there for everybody to read. As Nancy Gohring – who dug out the information – writes at Computer World:
Android users might be more receptive to Google’s remote kill switch than iPhone users were to Apple’s for a couple of reasons. First, Google is being upfront about it. Apple didn’t confirm the capability for the iPhone until days after a developer discovered it.
We’re actually all for this development. One of the points of a centralized app store is that you can trust it. As cellphones turn into more and more capable handheld computers, avoiding security issues will be a growing problem. And if Google pulls your favorite application for some imagined infringement, at least you’ll still be able to grab it from the developer. With the iPhone, you have no such choice, at least not without jailbreaking it.
Yesterday, I replaced the Ralink Wi-Fi card in my Medion Akoya Mini, the Gadget Lab netbook Hackintosh. When we first installed Mac OS X Leopard onto the Wind clone, there were a few things that didn’t work so well, and one of those was the wireless networking, something pretty imp ortant for a tiny, take-anywhere netbook. So I ordered a new card from Ebay and swapped it in.
The Akoya veraisons of the Wind contain the Ralink card, and there are OS X drivers available for it. MSI Wind buyers are out of luck — the Realtek card in their machines doesn’t work with OS X at all. But while I could get connected, it was far from the easy process I’m used to with the Mac’s built-in Airport. Here’s a screenshot of the connection utility:
Nasty, huh? If you let your Mac sleep, you need to reselect the network, switch to the “Advanced” tab, toggle the radio off and then on again, then cross your fingers. Sometimes you need to re-enter the password. This means that shutting the lid when walking from room to room is a huge pain.
The card I chose is the Dell Wireless-N DW 1500 mini PCI. According to the MSI Wind forums, it “just works” with OS X. It cost me £30 from a seller in the UK. That”s $50 or €38. Here it is (it’s the one on the right):
The operation itself was very easy. Just flip the computer over, remove the battery and and unscrew all of the Philips head screws you see. After that the bottom lifts off to reveal the guts.
Here you can see the existing card. It’s top left, right next to the hard drive. It has a metal shield on it, which the new one doesn’t, but otherwise it’s the exact same size and shape. Here they are together.
The card is held in by one screw at top left, and to get to it you need to remove the antenna and power cables. After that, the card just pulls out. The new one slides in, gets connected (the sockets are exactly the same — no need for any new wires) and the yellow cellophane is replaced. What you can’t see here is the gaffer tape I added to the underside. The original card has no components showing. The new one has bare circuits on both sides. I cut a square of gaffer tape to stop anything shorting out:
And here it is in place. Next, the case went back on. The whole thing, including a quick cigarette, took around ten minutes.
So, now I go to the Apple site, search for drivers and hope the new hardware is detected, right? Wrong. Here’s the menubar, immediately after rebooting and logging in:
Just click to open the Network Preferences. Once there, click the plus-sign at the bottom and choose Airport. Give it a name (In a fit of creativity, I chose “Airport”). If you like, you can choose to “Set Service Order” and drag the Airport to the top. This means it’s the first thing the OS looks for if you are hooked up to other network via, say, ethernet.
The moment of truth. Click the icon in the menubar.
Success! The most surprising part is that I didn’t even have to enter the network password: I sync my keychains between Macs using MobileMe, so the Hackintosh already knew. Ironically, this Mac picks up signals quicker than my MacBook Pro, probably due to the plastic case. The card doesn’t offer much information to the system, but it works.
It also appears that it is running at full speed. I set up a computer to computer network with the MacBook Pro, thus avoiding the slow router we have. Both cards are 802.11n capable. File transfers are lightning fast — easily as quick as an external USB drive for small files.
Is it worth $50 just to have a more convenient connection? For me, yes. Now I can just flip the lid open and it is connected. That’s a big difference when you’re watching a movie and need to do a quick IMDB search. Plus, it’s always fun to tinker around inside the guts of a machine. Now there are only a few problems left. I still have no sound through the mic and headphone jacks, and I still need to rub off the Medion logo and replace it with an Apple sticker, preferably one of the old rainbow-style ones. Otherwise, I now have an almost fully functional OS X Netbook. Its name is “Baby”, if you’re asking.
As my tiny desk disappears still further under a mountain of crap, I yearn to just stick everything but the computer in a cupboard, the collection of cables and flashing LEDs safely contained. What I need is a NAS.
And if Iomega’s new terabyte box manages to keep its price down on its journey across the Atlantic, I might just have found one. The StorCenter ix2 is a networked hard drive with gigabit (10/1000) ethernet, UPnP support (which, for any security minded person will be useless), iTunes server support (I think it just means you can keep your library on there, like any other external drive) and some Windows-only backup software (EMC Retrospect). There are also a couple of USB ports, and the ix2 works as a print server.
Inside, the terabyte is split across two drives, and RAID 1 support means you can mirror your data for safety. Available at the end of the month in two sizes, 1TB for $300 and 2TB for $480.
Aluratek Internet Radio Alarm Clock with Built-in Wi-Fi
You might easily be fooled by the Aluratek Internet Radio Alarm Clock’s dowdy, low-tech design. It’s easy to dismiss as one of those cheap, gray market knockoffs usually found on drug store appliance shelves. But the beauty of this feature-laden radio lives beneath its skin. Yeah it’s an alarm clock. Yeah, it’s an FM tuner. And yeah, true to its not-so-creative moniker it’s also an Internet radio with access to more than 11,000 channels around the world. But like those late-night infomercials (the kind you might half expect to see this radio advertised on) we gotta say: “But wait, there’s more.”
Aluratek had the forethought to include a connection for your PC media player as well as a 3.5mm jack suitable for most MP3 players. Plus there’s even a USB port on the front panel let’s you listen to tracks stored on a USB 2.0 flash drive.
Setup is about the same complexity as turning on a lightswitch. Power up the radio and the available Wi-Fi networks appear on the 3-by-1.5-inch LED front panel display. Using the surprisingly well laid out remote control you scroll to the one you want. Until it’s reset, this network is automatically connected. There’s also an Ethernet port for an optional wired connection.
While there are navigational buttons on the top of the radio along with the that vital snooze alarm button, the remote controls all of the radio’s features. Choosing from the more than 11,000 Net radio stations is a tad overwhelming but a little help narrowing them down is offered by categories such as country and city locations, genre, popularity, and so on. Click the remote’s heart button and your favorites are stored for easy retrieval. Of course with hundreds of stations in each genre (most with arcane, unhelpful names) it can take some digging to find what you like. That’s not exactly excruciating, mind you; we found some cool ambient stations in South Korea and unexpected country music channels in the Czech Republic and Sweden.
Music streamed smoothly without hiccups or static even on the outskirts of a Wi-Fi network. When we plugged in a USB memory drive loaded with MP3 tracks the four-line LED display immediately displayed a directory and file listing, each accessible by scrolling on the remote. Playing music loaded on our PC required Windows Media Player 11 and a few settings to allow sharing the music with the clock radio.
Fortunately you can add external speakers to the Aluratek because its what comes out of its integrated 2-watt speakers sounds like, surprise, a bedside clock radio. Still its vast capabilities make the Aluratek Internet Radio Alarm Clock worth considering, especially if you want to travel the world without leaving your house. —Michael S. Lasky
WIRED Full-featured clock radio adds powerful Wi-Fi (or Ethernet) connected Internet radio as well as connections to PC music, MP3 player libraries, and USB memory drives. Access to all features controlled by well-designed remote and a well-lit 4-line LED display panel.
TIRED Tiny 2-watt speakers with narrow range sound crappy. While remote makes scrolling through menus easy, the trolling through the more than 11,000 Net stations can be tedious after a while.
