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SAN MATEO, California — Drinking too much Mountain Dew? Then the Soda Bottle Wave might just be the project for you. Reuben Margolin, an Emeryville, California- based artist had strung together a 20-feet tall installed created out of 612 used one-liter soda bottles.

“Think of it as a curtain of undulating plastic bottles,” says Margolin of the project on display at the Maker Faire DIY festival.

Margolin took about six months to create it. That includes about 80 hours spent on cleaning the bottle, steaming out the labels and sterilizing them. He then drilled holes into the bottle caps and hooked them up together using a steel clips with each junction linking to four bottles. The entire installation hangs on a circular handle about 12-inches in diameter.

And no, Margolin didn’t drink all that soda. He and a friend visited two recycling centers in the area to get what all the used bottles they wanted.

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SAN MATEO, California — To stand out among a beautifully, constructed, near-authentic steam carriage and a fire-breathing installation that spews out a flame every few seconds isn’t easy.

But if one installation can grab attention it is the ‘Hand of Man’, an outsized hydraulic arm that can be operated from a little gloved controller nearby.

“It’s modeled on the human hand and foreman and has all its range of motions,” says New Mexico-based artist Christian Ristow took about six months to build the installation.”It is all hydraulic and powered by diesel engines.”

The initial funding for the project came from the Burning Man festival last year and since then he has honed the machine and added more functions.

The 25-feet tall installation has been created such that anyone from the audience can walk up to a little platform and stick their hand into a glove. The motions inside the gloved controller are reflected in the giant hand.

“There’s a feeling of power that goes with controlling a robot of this scale,” says Ristow. And that arm has the power to inflict some serious damage including the ability to pick up a small car and toss it back to the ground.

Operating the installation itself is pretty simple and intuitive says Ristow. And to prove him right, next in line to try out the Hand of Man was a five-year old boy.

For more on how Ristow’s Hand of Man was created, check out his blog.

Here’s also a video of the Hand of Man from the Burning Man festival.

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SAN MATEO, California — It’s true your money doesn’t go as far as it used to. Seattle-based Hackerbots Labs can take a coin and shrink it down such that quarters appear the size of a dimes and dimes become little more than little molten balls of metal. What’s amazing is that through this process, the identity and the value of the coin remain almost intact.

Here’s their trick: They take a small candy carton-sized machine that hosts three capacitors, which together discharge 15,000 Joules of energy of 10,000 Volts, into a small coil that is wrapped around the coin. Bombarding the coin with that much energy shrinks it almost perfectly, while retaining the same weight and volume.

At the Maker Faire festival for DIYers, as onlookers peered eagerly, Rob Flickenger, a member of Hackerbot Labs, explained how it works. To generate the energy, power from a wall outlet goes into a variac or a variable transformer, from which it is chaneled to a volt neon transformer. The resultant huge jolt of energy creates an extremely powerful magnetic field inside a coil in the machine’s chamber. This induces a magnetic field in the coin attached to the coil. The two magnetic fields strongly oppose each other, leading to coin’s shrinking.

The side effect of the process is that the coil expands and explodes violently inside the chamber. To make the process safe, says Flickenger, Hackerbot Labs has constructed the chamber out of high density plastic and uses a long rope to engage a trigger that sets of the process. They just have to make sure everyone around plugs their ears to keep the noise from the explosion from damaging it.

And after all that, perfect tiny buttons of coins are spewed out. Just don’t try to pass off one of those shrunken quarters as a dime.

To see more of the process including photos, check out their blog.

Photo: Hackerbot Labs

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Maker Faire, the largest festival for DIYers, crafters and hackers, happens Saturday and Sunday, May 30 and 31, in San Mateo, California. More than 80,000 people are expected to attend this year to check out what the 600 odd makers have to show, including robotics, music, crafts and food.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Steve Chamberlin’s 8-bit homebrewed CPU. Nearly 1,253 pieces of wire were individually hand wrapped to create the connection and Chamberlin has built a functional computer based on it. The computer and the CPU will be on display in booth 296 at the main Expo Hall.
• A group of Disney Pixar’s Wall-E movie aficianados will also be showing their handmade Wall-E robots and other characters from the movie. The hobbyists have created life-size, fully functional replicas from the scratch that are indistinguishable from their namesakes in the movie. The robots will be on display at booth 147 in the Expo Hall.
• There will also be interesting musical instruments on display such as the Yotam Mann’s multitouch musical pad. The musical pad has optical lasers, a webcam and some custom software rigged together to provide an inexpensive way to make some cool music. The contraption will be on display at booth 211 in the Expo Hallo.
• The Bay Area Lego Users Group (BayLUG), which has more than 100 members, will show an entire city constructed of Lego bricks. The exhibit, with individual members responsible for building a single city block, will measure about 2,000 square feet.
• Other cool exhibits include Daniel Fukuba’s DIY Segway. Fukuba, with some help from other Segway enthusiasts, has created a balancing scooter, first with a wooden frame and then an aluminum frame. “I started with raw, plain PCB boards and soldered on all the components for the speed controller and the logic controller,” says Fukuba. The project took about two months and $4000. And at the Faire, he will be sharing his expertise on how to do it yourself. Fukuba’s DIY balancing scooter will be on display at A1 in the Bike Town pavilion.
• We are also eager to see the two-person self-propelled Ferris Wheel where riders use their arm muscles to shift their weight and turn the wheel. This Ferris Wheel is about 20 feet tall, made of plywood and will be in the Midway M2 area.
• Don’t forget to also check out the CandyFab Project that uses low-cost, open-source fabrication to create 3D sugary confections. A completely new CandyFab machine will be on display at booth number 293 in the Expo Hall cranking out some sweet goodies.

Know of some other cool exhibits or events at the Faire? Post them in the comments below.

And follow @gadgetlab on Twitter, where we’ll be tweeting throughout the weekend with tips on the most interesting, fun and wacky things to see. Stay.

For more on the event, check out O’Reilly’s Maker Faire website.

Photo: Wire wrapped 8-bit CPU/Steve Chamberlin

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Rock’n’Roll is a takeaway transformer. The concept design takes a thin sheet of steel and rolls it into a cylinder. The trick is that, rolled one way it becomes a bracelet, and rolled the other way, along the long axis, it turns into a chopstick. You will, clearly, need two.

Would this work? We’re guessing that the natural state of the sheet is the chopstick form, and that you’d have to unfurl this with some force to make the wrist-strap, which would itself be held in shape by your arm. We like the playful use of materials, but come on — you can walk into pretty much any sushi bar and get some disposable chopsticks from there, although we admit that a regular wooden stick can’t double as a drinking straw.

Product page [Tuvie via Core 77]

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Today we’re going to recommend that you visit a museum. “Oh, great,” you’re thinking, “that idiot Sorrel is going to start talking about some stupid place down the street from his house. Thanks a lot, Charlie.”

You’re right. But it’s also right down the street from your house. It’s the Canon Camera Museum, and as you can see from the aerial photo above, it’s a handsome place, and better still, the tickets are free. Click on over and you can find out about the dawn of the EOS system (excuse the pun) back in 1987 (I was a teenager with a Saturday job in a camera store back then, and my co-workers took me to the EOS launch to get me drunk and laugh at the result) and the entire history of Canon right back to 1933.

It’s a fascinating way to spend a few hours, or a few minutes, and for once we actually like the fact that it’s a Flash-based site that lets us flip around the campus. Go check it out, and find out such fascinating facts as the meaning of the Canon name (”standard for judgement or biblical scriptures”, weirdly) and the origins of the company’s first product (a Leica clone, showing that the company is proudly built on piracy).

Canon Camera Museum [Canon via Retro Thing]

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Apple has secretly upgraded the previously terrible unabomber MacBook LCD screen to one that closer matches the pro-level displays in the MacBooks Air and Pro.

Regular Gadget Lab readers will remember that we found the MacBook screen to be somewhat lacking, with a terrible viewing angle and a propensity to send the blacks into a kind of negativity when looking from anywhere but straight on. It seems that Apple wasnt happy about these panels, either, and has quietly started shipping MacBooks with new screens from AU Optronics, almost the same as those in the Air.

This is good news. My screen is still awful, despite being properly calibrated. Its bright, colorful and contrasty, but for watching movies and editing photos it sucks. It seems quite wrong that there is such a weird trade-off when buying Apple portables: good or small, but not both. Now, though, it appears that MacBook customers are no longer being punished for choosing portability.

New Macbook Screen 9CA8? [Notebook Review Forums via Computer World]

Photo: thisday/MacRumors

See Also:
Dell Netbook Display Better Than MacBook Pro

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According to Fortunes respectable Apple 2.0 blog, the Palm Pre has a rather sneaky trick up its sleeve. First, a reminder of the main reason for the iPods original success: iTunes. The vertical integration of iTunes (for organization) and the iPod (for playback) was a killer combo.

In order to work as well, the Pre needs something like iTunes. So what about iTunes itself? Thats the Pres trick it will sync with Apples own software. Fortune:

Plug a Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apples (AAPL) iTunes.

It wont pick up iPhone applications, of course, or older, Fairplay DRMed music, but everything else should just work. The Pre team is full of ex-Apple engineers, so they should certainly know the strings that need to be pulled inside iTunes to get this working.

It does it by faking out iTunes, making the jukebox software think that it is connected to a real iPod. Hook it up and youll be given three options: USB mass storage device, charging only or iTunes sync.

This is a ballsy move from Palm, and we totally love it: a big fat middle finger at Apple. Apple will, we are sure, be readying its legal attack dogs as I write, and dont be at all surprised if an iTunes update pops up around June 6th. This fight just got a lot more interesting.

Scooplet: the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes [Fortune Apple2.0]

Photoshop job: Charlie Sorrel

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Theres a new iPhone application which will help the Brits fight back at their Evil Overlords, the police who spy on their every move with the nations network of CCTV cameras, tracking the journey of every car as it innocently crosses the cold gray island.

Or at least beleaguered Britons can feel like theyre fighting back. SurveillanceShaker is a viewer for CCTV cameras worldwide. The Axis camera network is a system of net-connected cams which can be accessed by the public. Weve already seen a screensaver for Mac OS X from the same company, but somehow the iPhone version, while just as voyeuristic, is somehow less perverted, giving a quick glimpse into the other side of the world with a flick of the wrist.

The app is simple. As you may have guessed from the name, you shake the iPhone and it selects a random cam to show you. The blurb from the App Store makes it sound curiously compelling:

Youll see live images of streets and buildings, but also surprising images of Russian internet cafes, hotel lobbies, server rooms, barns with little pigs and many more.

Barns with little pigs? The Orwellian allusions have come full circle, from 1984s telescreens to Napoleon from Animal Farm. $0.99.

Product page [iTunes]

See Also:

Britains CCTV Network to Track, Log All Car Journeys

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Pixel Qi, a company that promises inexpensive, low-power displays that could potentially rival E Ink screens, has been talking about its product for months.

But Thursday Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen posted the first pics of the display on her blog. The pictures are a little fuzzy but they show the display in two modes and also running on a netbook.

We wrote about Pixel Qi earlier this month and talked to Jepsen. Pixel Qis displays called 3Qi will operate in three settings: a full-color, bright, conventional LCD mode; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic color transflective mode. The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes.

If successful, the 3Qi displays could effectively bridge the high-speed, full-color benefits of traditional LCDs and the low-power, reader-friendly qualities of electronic ink displays.

In one photograph on her blog, Jepsen shows two 3Qi screens side-by-side, one in full color mode with its backlight on and the other in a black-and-white electronic paper mode with its backlight off.

The screens will be available this fall in netbooks and e-book readers, says Jepsen. Netbooks might be an easier market for Pixel Qi to enter. The Cambridge, Massachusets-based E Ink has a near monopoly on the e-books reader market. Earlier this week, E Ink announced that more than 1 million e-book readers use its display.

Photo: Pixel Qi’s Screen/Mary Lou Jepsen

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Sony Ericsson announced three new phones–Yari, Satio and Aino–that are easy on the eye and boast some powerful features for multimedia fiends. The phones wont’ be available till the fourth quarter but the pictures out right now are enough to make us drool.

The Satio is a candybar style phone that was first introduced at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress earlier this year. The device was then called the Idou. The Satio is aimed at users who are focused on mobile entertainment as it offers easy access to music and video, says Sony Ericsson.

The second phone called Yari is a slider phone model billed as a gaming device. What’s interesting about it is that it offers the same kind of gesture controlled movement during games as the Nintendo Wii. That’s not much of an innovation though considering that most smartphones currently have accelerometers and sensors that can be channeled to create a fun, gaming experience. The phone will come with a 2.4-inch display, 4 megapixel camera and GPS capability. (See complete list of specs here.)

Finally, there’s Aino,a phone with a keypad and a touch interface. Aino will have a whopping 8.1 megapixel camera and will offer a snap-on speaker stand for audio aficionados. (See complete list of specs here.)

The three devices are likely to be available unlocked in the U.S., which should come as no surprise to Sony Ericsson fans. But without support from any of the major telecom carriers, they will carry a price tag (around $500 or more) that is likely to put them out of the reach for the rest of us.

Sony Ericsson will also have to contend with strong competition from the Palm Pre and possibly a new Apple iPhone. The Palm Pre will be available from Sprint starting June 6 and on other major carriers such as Verizon and AT&T early next year. Apple is said likely to introduce a new iPhone this summer.

Till then, for some mobile eye candy check out Sony Ericsson’s photos of its latest devices.

Photo: Sony Aino/Sony Ericsson

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Just how much does Steve Jobs matter to Apple? Quite a bit, according to a collection of earlier patents imbued with the CEO’s name.

Technologizer’s Harry McCracken dug through Google Patent Search, pulling up any patent he could find including Jobs’ name. And though it’s unclear just what the CEO’s explicit contribution to each patent was, a more fascinating observation is that his name typically appears on patents depicting Apple products that eventually become a reality. A 2004 patent (pictured to the right) portrays what appears to be a touchscreen tablet, a rumored device that many are predicting Apple will deliver in the near future.

Other highlights? Jobs even contributed to the white power bricks used to charge Mac notebooks. You know, the ones with the little wings that flip out, which you twirl the cable around to safely store it away. Clearly he cares about the mundane stuff, too.

One minus point: A 1999 patent (filed in 1998) suggests Jobs had a hand in Apple’s notorious hockey-puck-shaped mouse released with the iMac in 1998. Many view this peripheral as an ergonomic nightmare, and perhaps one of Apple’s worst failures. Nobody’s perfect.

And believe it or not, there’s even a patent for the towering glass staircase at the Apple Store in San Francisco’s Union Square. Similar to McCracken, whenever I ascend those steps I feel like I’m climbing into nerd heaven an experience Jobs wants no other store to steal, apparently.

Check out McCracken’s full story for some other interesting patents involving Jobs.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Watch out, Sprint: Verizon Wireless plans to offer the Palm Pre on its telecom network in about six months, according to Verizon executive Lowell McAdam.

A second generation version of the BlackBerry Storm, Research in Motion’s touchscreen phone, will also be part of Verizon’s future line up, he said.

The Palm Pre is set to make its debut on the Sprint network on June 6. Sprint hasn’t said how long its exclusive deal for the Pre will last but most industry watchers expect it to run at least till the end of the year. With its newly designed operating system called WebOS, attractive hardware design and sleek user interface, the Pre has gotten major pre-release buzz.

It’s been enough to even get Verizon rival AT&T on board. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson indicated earlier this week that the carrier wants the Pre for its subscribers.

Sprint has priced the Pre at$300, with a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract.

See also:

• Six Reasons Why the Palm Pre is Special
• Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
• Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
• New WebOS Is Palms Secret Sauce
• Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre

Photo: Palm Pre (Whatleydude/Flickr)

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Pared-down, miniature netbooks are not just trendy but also revolutionary, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The chief executive this week gushed over netbooks on stage at the All Things D conference, where he debated the impact of netbooks with Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg.

“Its a more revolutionary thing than a new computing device, he responded to Mossberg, who said netbooks are nothing new. It leverages the whole computing world and the Internet, and you can put it in a small little notebook.

Despite their low-powered chips, small keyboards and puny screens, netbooks were hot gadgets in 2008, selling 10 million units overall. ABI Research forecasts that manufacturers will ship 200 million ultra-mobile devices, including netbooks by 2013 which is about the same anticipated size as the entire laptop market worldwide. ThinkPanmure analyst Vijay Rakesh says the relatively low price point of netbooks $300 to $500 on average is their primary driving factor in a troubled economy.

Most interesting is how chief executives can appear to be polar opposites. In October, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called netbooks pieces of junk, and the company has not changed its stance. Of course, we expect Apple to deliver a gadget in response to the netbook category that the company won’t call a netbook. We’re placing our bets on Apple’s fabled touchscreen tablet.

What are your thoughts, readers? Are netbooks junk? Revolutionary? A hot fad that will continue for years? Add your comments below.

Ballmer Calls Netbooks Revolutionary Devices [LaptopMag]

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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(Warning: Terminator Salvation spoiler up ahead.)

In McG’s turd nugget Terminator Salvation, the cyborgs run on nuclear power cells to keep on truckin’ without a recharge. Their downfall: The power cells turn out to be highly explosive (more so than a Sony laptop battery). Perhaps Dan Roe’s solar-powered Trilobots are a more practical solution for autonomous energy acquisition. In the video above, it doesn’t appear the Trilobot can murder people or deliver cheesy one-liners just yet, but it traverses various terrains. And, well, it’s really cute, isn’t it? See Roe’s web site for more of his projects.

Granted, solar-powered Terminators would presumably have to sleep while the sun is down. That would inspire the title for McG’s next masterpiece: Terminator Gargoyles.

(Thanks, Dan!)

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Why wait for Apple to deliver a touchscreen tablet when you can make your own?

That’s the idea behind Berkeley student Yotam Mann’s do-it-yourself multitouch musical instrument, which will be exhibited at this weekend’s Maker Faire in San Mateo. A contraption of optical lasers, a webcam and some custom software, Mann’s homemade multitouch surface can hardly compete with Apple’s fine design, but it’s an easy, inexpensive way to explore your inner geek.

Mann’s exhibit will be one of more than 600 exhibits at the fair, including do-it-yourself projects, hacks, mods and other weird technological spectacles. With 80,000 attendees expected this year, Maker Faire is a rare event where the biggest nerds rule as king or perhaps federation ambassador, galactic emperor, or president of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.

“You get these ethereal synth pad sounds,” Mann said of his multitouch instrument. “It’s sort of this sci-fi woo-oo-oo-oo.”

Plenty will likely swoon at the sight of Mann’s multitouch surface after the phenomenally popular iPhone brought multitouch screens to the mainstream. His project’s setup is quite simple. In summary, you mount two laser modules on the back corners of the work surface, facing each other at 45 degrees. Then, you install a webcam in a position where it can view the entire surface. After that, you run Mann’s software, which he coded in Max-MSP (a fancy visual programming language), on your computer, and follow the on-screen directions.

Mann’s software includes one audio app. Using it you can manipulate the lasers with your hands to create sounds ranging from alien noises to flute-like intonations. Bending your finger changes pitch, and the volume depends on your hands’ distance from the surface.

Altogether, this project won’t cost much — assuming you already own a computer. The lasers and webcam combined can cost as little as $40, Mann said.

The student, who is majoring in music and minoring in computer science, admits his gadget isn’t truly multitouch: At some points on the surface one finger might block another from being detected by the lasers. But then again, a true multitouch tablet would be far more expensive to create, and DIY projects like these are designed mainly to learn about technology while having some fun.

At Maker Faire, Mann will be showing interested attendees how he built the device and offering free access to his code.

“It’s definitely an open-source idea,” Mann said of his multitouch surface. “For me it’s a musical instrument, but I’d like for people to see what applications they can get out of it.”

See a video of Mann’s multitouch surface below.

Photo: Yotam Mann

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There’s nothing here you couldn’t do with a few lengths of masking-tape and a ballpoint pen, but as the whole point of cable management is to be fast, neatly hung and leave a good-looking floor, we’d recommend these sweet, candy-colored caps from Dotz.

There are two kits, the straps, and the “Dotz Identifiers”. The straps are color-coded cable-ties which can be undone and reused, and come with push-out paper inserts to let you keep things further organized. The Dotz dots are even more ingenious and clip to individual cables so you know just which power cable to unplug, or which USB cord runs to which widget. Better still, both packs cost just $10 apiece: The cable-ties have eight pieces and the cable-buttons 10.

Product page straps [Dotz via Noquedanblogs]

Product page buttons [Dotz]

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Take a look at this and prepare your hatred. The Plug Mug looks like a great idea, right? The cup has a hole in the side which is stoppered by a rubber bung which you keep about your person at all times. This will stop office coworkers from stealing your cup, as any liquid poured inside will spew wastefully through the drain-hole, wetting their pants and further screwing their septic loathing of you toward the sticking-place.

This of course assumes that they would want to steal your filthy, festering cup in the first place, its rim caked with a scurf of dried creamer and the remnants of lip-skin, the interior so stained with tannins that even a leather-maker would flinch. But it’s your precious mug, and nobody else can use it, you smug idiot. You know what? When I see this on your desk I’ll quickly chain the stopper-ring to your cubicle wall. You’ll pick up your tasty beverage, the rubber cork will pull out and your weak, bitter, over-hotplated cup of “joe” will spill all over your computer. The only way to save your spreadsheets will be to mop up the mess with your tie. Your stupid, “wacky” Daffy Duck tie. You make me sick. $19.

Product page [Perpetual Kid via Book of Joe]

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Despite sounding “narrow” (nope, me neither) these eggshell speakers are beautiful:magnificentlydelicate enclosures now housing an entirely different kind of tweeter than nature intended. The precision-cut shells were stuffed and mounted on clay bases (although they look more like plaster to us) and while you won’t be using them to rock out, according to Japanese maker Gomhi, classical guitar sounds great, and not at all scrambled.

We love them. So much so that we’re thinking of poaching the idea for a project of our own. Of course, we’ll be cranking them up to see just how much the shells can take before they crack in a nerdy, hi-fi themed game of chicken.

Eggshell Loudspeaker [Gomhi/Flickr via Make and Dvice]

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German blog iFun has uncovered some photos of what could be the bezel of a new iPhone. Roughly the same size as the current model, the part has turned up on the site of Chinese hardware supplier China Ontrade for $80. It appears that the existing shiny chrome part has been replaced by a black version, more similar to that found in the first generation iPod Touch. The site also carries spare LCD screens for both the iPhone 3G and a mysterious new 3gen iPhone, although these are almost identical. Oddly, the LCD screen, a far more complicated part, is actually cheaper at $73.

If we put ourskepticismaside for a moment (these are, after all, spare parts for an as yet unannounced product) then we see an interesting tweak. ILounge points out that the ear-speaker has been raised and moved further from the screen, making room (possibly) for a front facing camera (video-conferencing?) Of course, these could just be non-standard parts from China Ontrade. We’ll find out soon enough, though: There’s just over a week and a half to go before Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, where we expect to see at least an announcement of new iPhone hardware.

Product page [China Ontrade]

The next generation: Parts sightings in Hong Kong [iFun iVia iLounge]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

You and I might see buildings damaged with World War II bullet holes and pause for a moment to reflect on just how different things were when our cities were war zones. Or you may be reading this from a country which has no bullet-riddled wartime walls, and even if you had, they would have been torn down long since to build a handsome strip-mall.

Jan Vormann, on the other hand, sees an opportunity: For him,every hole is a goal. He has been systematically filling the vacancies left by crumbling masonry with smaller, brighter bricks: Lego bricks. And he’s been doing it in a city which has plenty of gaps in the walls, whether made by bullets or plain neglect: Berlin, Germany.

And it’s not just Berlin, where the shooting stopped some years ago. Vormann has also been carrying out his art project in Tel Aviv, Isreal, andBocchignano, a village near Rome. While in some places, passersby stopped to join in, “helping us dispatch the bullet holes in their own styles”, other locations suffered a familiar problem from jobsworth security guards. At theHamburger Bahnhof museum “The security guards stopped us when they noticed and made us remove all the dispatched pieces.”

Dispatchwork Berlin [Jan Vormann via the Twittter]

Photos: K!WA/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Apple this morning quietly released an upgrade to its entry-level MacBook, its only remaining white notebook.

Still priced at $999, the white MacBook received memory, processor and storage upgrades. The specs are as follows:

• Processor: 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (up from 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
• Memory: 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SD RAM (up from 2GB 600MHz DDR2 SD RAM)
• Storage: 160GB hard-disk drive (up from 120GB HDD)
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (same)

Overall, a small but decent upgrade: It’s great to see Apple’s cheapest MacBook getting better and better without increasing in price. Apple gave the white MacBook a small upgrade in January, too.

Product Page [Apple via TUAW]

Photo: goodrob13/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

You’d have to have a heart of hollow plastic to not like Lego. Over the weekend, Wired.com had a chance to visit the Bay Area Lego Users Group, which will be exhibiting its Lego city at this weekend’s Maker Faire in San Mateo. Check out our gallery featuring some of the group’s projects with photos courtesy of Wired.com’s Jim Merithew.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

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MSI said Wednesday it has started shipping its ultraslim notebook computer that weighs just about 2.86 pounds and is priced nearly half of that of Apple’s MacBook Air laptop.

The X340 notebook from MSI had a public showing at the CTIA mobile conference in Las Vegas in April but MSI did not reveal the complete specs or the price tag.

Now word from the company is that it will cost $900. Apple’s MacBook Air starts at $1800.

The X340 notebook will be about 0.78 inches thick at its widest point, compared to MacBook’s 0.76 inches at its thickest. It will run Intel’s ULV SU3500 processor, Windows Vista, a 13-4- inch display, a HDMI input, 320 GB storage and 2GB memory. The notebook will also come with Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi capability and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

While Apple clearly has set the benchmark for ultralight notebooks with the MacBook Air, the MSI X340 seems like it could be a potentially strong rival. Laptop Mag, which reviewed the X340 earlier this month, liked the battery life and the number of ports that the X340 offers. But they found the the lack of powerful graphics capability and the build quality–my biggest peeve with most MSI computers–to be the drawbacks.

Still the MSI X340 carries a recession-friendly price tag for road warriors and can be an alternative to easy-to-carry but light on features netbooks.

MSI X340 review [Laptop Mag]

Photo: MSI X340/MSI

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AT&T on Wednesday announced plans to significantly boost its 3G network performance and begin testing its new 4G network over the next two years.

The 3G upgrade involves boosting the network to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2, which the company claims will double peak speeds of the current network, from 3.6 megabits per second to 7.2Mbps. AT&T said these improvements would begin later this year, and that it would also be releasing phones capable of handling the higher speeds.

AT&T’s release did not mention Apple’s next-generation iPhone or indicate whether the new iPhone, which is expected to be announced June 8, would include a 3G speed upgrade.

Farther down the road, AT&T will begin trials of its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in 2010 with plans to begin deployment in 2011. LTE is a new wireless technology that is expected to become a global standard. Many domestic and international carriers, including Verizon, have announced plans to adopt LTE for their next-generation networks as well.

This news appears to be a competitive move from AT&T in response to recent statements from Verizon. Verizon’s chief executive Ivan Seidenberg recently said Apple would likely consider sharing the iPhone with Verizon once the telecom company began upgrading to LTE in 2010. Thus, this announcement may be AT&T’s effort to retain its current iPhone customer base as well as its exclusive relationship with Apple.

Press Release [AT&T]

Photo: ktylerconk/Flickr

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