Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Sony Google TV Remote Leaked, Designed in 1980?
This monstrosity from Sony might be the best reason yet to go out and buy an Android handset or an iPhone. Seen in an ad shown on ABC?s Nightline, the giant keyboard above is actually the remote control for Sony?s own Google TV hardware, due to be revealed on October 12th.
Sony seems to have dipped back into the 1980s for the remote?s design, an age when more of anything was better. The device seems to be big enough to be awkward in the hand, and yet still small enough to slip down the back of the couch, and features a full QWERTY keyboard, a couple of directional controls, plus dedicated switches for volume, channel selection and everything else. Hell, there?s probably a self-destruct button in there somewhere.
By contrast, you?ll also be able to control your Google TV from a smartphone app. Google doesn?t always make the prettiest interfaces, but they are nice and simple, and they work. Compare this multi-buttoned behemoth to the simple voice-control seen in the Nightline video and wonder just what Sony is thinking.
In reality, Sony?s control is no worse than the keyboard/mouse combos we use for our media-center PCs. The difference is that Google TV is supposed to be easy and simple, and not a media-center PC.
Smart TV: Google TV? [ABC via Engadget]
See Also:
- Google TV Revealed: One Screen to Rule Them All
- Google TV Announces Network and App Partners, New Website
- Logitech Google TV Box Embarrasses Apple TV
- Google TV: Google, Sony, Intel Team-Up to Make Television
- Report: Google Working With Intel, Sony on TV Project
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Dodobag, a Murse to Hold Your Dodocase
The Dodobag is an elegant bag designed to hold the Dodocase, and elegant case designed to hold your iPad. You read that right. The bag is a bag to carry a case, and it costs $80.
I live in Europe, where as many men as women carry bags, so I already have a closet-full of what you might call ?murses?. From what I understand, the American gentleman tends to think carrying a small bag might somehow diminish his masculinity. This is, I presume, where the Dodobag comes in.
Made from black Cordura nylon with a bright-red interior, the bag looks a lot like the case it is made to coddle. Inside is a padded sleeve, offering a little more protection from knocks than does the cardboard and bamboo Dodocase, and there is a handy removable pocket for cables and the like. The shoulder strap is adjustable, and there are D-rings for attaching a cross-strap to stop the bag from flapping like a soon-to-be-extinct bird when you use it on a bike.
Like the Dodocase, the Dodobag is made in San Francisco, this time by Rickshaw Bags. I have a Dodocase, which cost me $60 plus a lot of shipping and duty. I used it for a week before switching to the Apple iPad case, which in turn I toss into any of my bags, including one from Eastpak which looks almost the same as this one and cost a lot less. Still, if you are in the market for an iPad bag, like our own Brian X Chen, then this one should probably be on your list, if only because it looks ?manly?.
Dodobag product page [Dodocase]
See Also:
- iPad-Case Maker Preserves a Dying Craft
- Moleskine-Shaped, Bamboo iPad Case
- Finally, Official iPad and iPhone Cases from Moleskine
- Moleskine
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Sept. 30, 1846: Ether He Was the First or He Wasn?t
1846: Dentist William Morton uses ether to anesthetize a patient in Boston. It was not the first such use, but it began a train of events leading to the widespread adoption of ether for surgical anesthesia.
Dr. Crawford Long of Jefferson, Georgia, removed a tumor from the neck of James Venable under ether anesthesia March 30, 1842. (Long may have started using ether a year earlier while he was attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.) But Long, perhaps giddy with excitement or perhaps from experimenting with ether as a recreational drug (the ?ether frolics?), did not rush to publish or patent his discovery.
Morton was a pre-med student, who was practicing dentistry in Boston apparently without the benefit of a formal dental education. He had arranged in 1845 for his dental mentor and former dentistry partner Horace Wells to demonstrate the use of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, as an anesthetic. The demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital was a failure, caused perhaps by not using enough gas.
Wells left Boston, but Morton and his pre-med tutor, Charles Jackson, both followed up by trying a different gas, ether. Morton secretly experimented on small animals and himself at his home in nearby West Needham. Then, in his Boston dental office at 9 in the evening, Sept. 30, 1846, Morton used ether to painlessly extract a tooth from Eben Frost, a local merchant.
Morton continued the use of ether, and word spread. Then it got in the newspapers. Just 16 days after he first used ether on a dental patient, Morton put a surgical patient under for John Warren in a well-attended demonstration at Mass. General. Unlike the failed nitrous oxide experiment of the year before, this was a resounding success.
Edward Abbot, the 20-year-old who had just had a congenital vascular formation removed from his neck, told those assembled, ?I did not experience pain at any time, though I knew that the operation was proceeding.?
Surgeon Warren declared, ?Gentlemen, this is no humbug.? Another of the surgeons, Henry Bigelow, published the procedure in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal a few weeks later on Nov. 18. (Long did not publish his results until 1848.)
At the urging of the son of a patent commissioner, Morton and Jackson applied for a patent Oct. 27, 1846, and it was granted a swift 16 days later on Nov. 12. They called their anesthetic Letheon and tried to keep the formula secret. That drew angry protests from much of the medical profession. Soon, however, doctors identified the gas by its distinct smell.
Morton tried petitioning Congress for money to compensate him for the widespread use of ?his? discovery. Despite two decades of campaigning, he got nothing, and he died in poverty at age 49 on July 15, 1868.
Source: The Unusual History of Ether
Image courtesy Wikipedia
This article first appeared on Wired.com Sept. 30, 2008
See Also:
- June 26, 1498: A Brush With History
- Feb. 28, 1561: 'Father of Surgery' Explains the Head Wound
- Dec. 11, 1844: Laughing Gas Dulls the Pain of a Savage Dentist
- Sept. 15, 1884: Eyeing Cocaine as Local Anesthetic
- Sept. 6, 1891: Risky Heart Surgery Saves Stabbing Victim
- Photo Gallery: Surgery Museum Makes You Grateful for Any Modern Healthcare
- Dentistry Goes Digital
- June 28, 1846: Parisian Inventor Patents Saxophone
- Sept. 10, 1846: Sewing Machine Starts New Thread
- Sept. 30, 1861: A Novelist With a Nose for Disaster
Monday, October 4, 2010
LED Vodka Bottle ?Better than Canned Beer?
Yes, better than canned beer. Those are the sacrilegious words of MEDEA co-founder Matt Sandy, speaking in this wonderfully chintzy spot on ABC about his company?s gimmicky vodka bottle. The hook? The bottle has a scrolling LED display on the side, with messages of up to 255-letters programmable by the user. If you?re a fan of low-quality TV, and awkward-looking men in badly-fitting suits, take a look:
At first the idea seems doomed. Who on Earth would pay $40 for a bottle as tacky as this one? And then you realize just how dumb and horny people get when they drink. You see the shot in the promo video where the guy walks off with a girl under one arm and a bottle in his hand? That?s what this is all about: getting laid. The boys will order this in a bottle-service bar for a few hundred dollars and start sending messages to the ladies. Here?s the proof, in the form of the tagline from the MEDEA site: ?Unleash your inner poet, your inner poet, your inner philosopher, your inner flirt.? Terrifying.
Here?s where you expect me to point out the flaws, and you will not be disappointed. I give you exhibit A, the programming instructions. As you read, remember that these steps need to be carried out whilst intoxicated:
Step 1: Press the ON/OFF button
Step 2: Press the ENTER button to enter programming mode
Step 3: Press the P-U (UP) to select line (1-6) to save message in
Step 4: Press ENTER to confirm the line where the message will appear
Step 5: Press the P-U and P-D buttons to find the first character of your message, and press ENTER to save after each character selection. Note: space can be found after the letter Z.
Step 6: To finish, after you have selected the last character, wait until you see a blinking ?A?, then press the ON/OFF to save the entire message.
You?re all set! Your message will now begin to scroll on the ticker.
Note: Do not leave the display on in the programming mode. Press either the P-U (DOWN) or the ON/OFF button to exit the programming mode.
What could possibly go wrong?
The vodka inside comes from Holland, a country well known for its vodka, and is triple-distilled like any other premium vodka. The ?Worlds first customizable, programmable bottle? is available in South Carolina and tacky bars all over the US.
MEDEA product page [MEDEA. Thanks, Valerie!]
See Also:
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
MEMC ELECTRONIC MATERIALS MICROSOFT MILLICOM INTL. CELLULAR MOBILE TELESYSTEMS
Geekly Reader: The Brixton Brothers In a New Adventure
Author Mac Barnett has managed to strike just the right balance, mercilessly mocking the absurd conventions of the kid detective genre (especially The Hardy Boys) while telling his own absurd kid detective story. In the second book of The Brixton Brothers series, The Ghostwriter Secret, Steve (who has no brother??Brixton Brothers? just sounds better) gets word that his favorite author MacArthur Bart, author of the fifty-eight Bailey Brothers Mysteries books, has been kidnapped! With his friend Dana, who would rather grow up and be a veterinarian than help Steve sleuth, Steve sets off on an action-packed adventure, filled with crime syndicates, stolen loot, and ? ghostwriters.
It?s a hilarious book that will keep your kids (and you) guessing at the eventual outcome, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Barnett has a great way with words and it?s just a joy to read, even as an adult. Here?s a small example, after Steve tells Dana, ?I have a hunch.?
Dana didn?t understand. A hunch didn?t need evidence to be true. A hunch was like a two-legged stool that somehow still managed to support a fat man?s weight. A hunch was remarkable, even magical.
If, like me, you grew up reading Encyclopedia Brown and The Hardy Boys, this is a series you?ll really love. Barnett?s books are still filled with clever kids and bumbling adults, but at the same time he acknowledges that a twelve-year-old is really not going to take out a grown henchman with a blow to the solar plexus ? or is he? You?ll have to read the book to find out.
The Ghostwriter Secret
Wired: Despite relying on The Bailey Brothers? Detective Handbook for tips, Steve still manages to solve two mysteries, avoid getting killed and bring down a nefarious crime syndicate before his mother grounds him for skipping school.
Tired: You?ll wish the real-life Mac Barnett, like the fictional MacArthur Bart, could manage three books a year because it?s so hard to wait for the next one.
Disclosure: I received an advance reader?s copy of the book for review purposes.
MICROS SYSTEMS MICRON TECHNOLOGY MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY METHODE ELECTRONICS
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Photos: Tiny Smart Car Secured with Giant Bike-Lock
The Smart is a great little car, perfect for the city. It?s tiny, has one of those clever gearboxes that can be either manual or auto, it fits into almost any parking space and ? despite popular ignorance ? is very safe. But how do you stop somebody from just picking it up and carrying it off in their pocket?
With a big-ass bike-lock, that?s how. Just take a giant Kryptonite Evolution Mini (maxi?), pass it through the open windows and lock it to a lamppost. Easy, unless you left anything valuable on the seat.
Of course this is an ad, but when ads are this good we don?t care. The spot was created by the BBDO agency of Toronto, Canada, and is supposed to show that the Smart is as versatile in the city as a bike. I spot one big mistake, though. That giant shackle uses the old-style Kryptonite lock-mechanism that could be opened with the barrel of a Bic pen. All you need is a giant biro and you have yourself a new car.
Smart Bike Lock [Ads of the World]
See Also:
- Video: Smart Car Monster Truck Looks Like a Tonka Toy
- Hands Off! With the Kryptonite Evolution Mini
- A Junkie Stole My Bike: Why All Locks Are Not Equal
- Lockdown: Paranoid Bike Lock Sculpture
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
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