The Gadget: Lego Egg Timer. The Price: $7.99. The Verdict: It\'s cute. It\'s makes a wonderful tic-tac noise. It helps you do roasted lamb and chicken and Beef Wellington and cakes. It\'s Lego. Really, it can\'t get any better than that. I only wish it could do more than one hour.
I bought the Lego Egg Timer while visiting Legoland in Denmark, at the end of my visit to the Lego factory. Since then I\'ve used it many times and its design doesn\'t cease to entertain me. The top half of the mini-fig head rotates as it counts time, changing the expression as the minutes pass. Nothing else can\'t be said about it, really, except that it\'s cute and it works great.
By the way, I will resume the chronicles of the Lego trip next week, after giving you a week of respite. Coming soon: an inside look at how the Lego bricks and sets are made, how they are designed from concept to final product, and how is it to work there, among many other things. Stay tuned. [Lego]
How do you celebrate July 4th like a true Gizmodian? If you answered "waking up on the 5th with a severe hangover and sparkler burns where the sun don\'t shine," you\'d be correct! Oh, that, and visiting our July 4th tag.
Faithful readers will know I am not even close to finished exploiting my painful job experiences at the Chuck E. Cheese in the Bergen Mall for Taranfx fodder. God I hate that place. When I was growing up, the cooler place to be with way better pizza and far better games was ShowBiz Pizza. ShowBiz also had another advantage: this terrifying but captivating animitronic musical band called Rocka-fire Explosion, which is the subject of this documentary. I am watching it, and lighting a candle in remembrance. And Fuck Chuck E. Cheese. [Youtube via BoingBoing\'s David P.]
In this week\'s New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about the Danish isle of Samsø, which over the past 10 years, has gone from exclusively using fossil fuel energy sources, to living exclusively off renewable energy. Using a combination of onshore and offshore turbines, private mini-turbines, solar panels, straw-burning furnaces and biofuels, the 4,300-resident island has become a sort of a sandbox for green experimentation.
The man responsible for Samsø\'s shift is Søren Hermansen, who after deciding farming wasn\'t for him, became an environmental sciences teacher, and then a renewable energy expert. Growing up on the island and seeing the impact the people were having on the environment, Hermansen felt he could talk the residents into making some changes. The public response was favorable, and the transformation began. The island now has 11 onshore turbines, a biomass plant, and a straw burning plant, which are invested in by the residents of Samsø, as well as outside, private investors. All the while, this green movement has brought in a constant flow of researchers, scientists and sociologists trying to figure out Samsø\'s mojo.
And for those in the giant turbine market, I think it\'s worth noting that giant turbines come with panoramic sunroofs. Not sure about power locks and cruise control, however. [New Yorker]
The majority of Apple rumors ignored by the veterans at sites like Macrumors and Apple Insider are non-sourced, usually building up from the updrafts of the blog/analyst/network news circle jerk vortex. This new site, with almost no content right now, has a great idea: Drop the pretense of claiming to know what Apple is working on, forum mongers, and write them in their true form as desperate pleas for Crazy Apple Gear. Given that the nice domain name, also feel free to drop suggestions and open letters for the City and Mayor of Cupertino in here, too. Maybe an Apple-designed swing set off of N Stelling Road or something. [DearCupertino]
Well, we hope you\'ve had a good day off, a great BBQ and plenty of watermelon. Also, we hope that you didn\'t blow up your face. We\'ll leave you with one last Consumer Product Safety Commission clip that proves, once and for all, that it is NOT okay to point fireworks at friends and family members. They may end up in a storm of smoke and fire. Happy 4th everybody! [CPSC]
These numeric keypad chairs are pretty amazing in a nerd chic sort of way. If you tried cramming these into your 700-square-foot bachelor pad, you\'d look like the biggest tool alive. But in a place with a million square feet and that white, minimalist vibe, they\'d be pretty amazing. These appear to be concepts, but the obscure Japanese site they came from makes it hard to tell. [PantoGraph via misterstarfish via Technabob]
Laredo, Texas (Agencies) - Surprising everyone but industry guru Gene Munster, Dell has announced a partnership with Apple Inc. that will see the former licensing the latter\'s exclusive Manila Case technology to ship all their computer products and accessories, like their Dell Rubber Chickens and Dell Texas-Style BBQ Ribs. "It was bound to happen," said Munster in a telephone interview from his room at the Cupertino Inn, which he uses as a base to stalk Steve Jobs.
"I mean, given Dell\'s constant focus on cutting costs, it was a matter of time before they focused on packaging to save some dollars here and there" added the Piper Jaffray\'s analyst, "and let\'s face it, Apple\'s solution is the most efficient, light, and cost-effective in the industry. Like everything else they do. I predict they will hit the $500 [price per share] mark before 2009. Even $510."
Reportedly, Dell will have to pay Apple $20 per manila envelope, but they will save "a lot of money" in postage stamps, according to Mr. Munster. Dell representatives were not available for comment, but Mr. Munster told this reporter that Steve Jobs called Michael Dell late last night to say "who\'s my bitch now, huh? Who\'s my bitch?" [Thanks Hawkskater0]
The BlackBerry Kickstart is by far not RIM\'s best looking phone. But it is a real live BlackBerry and it will run a mere 50 bucks when it launches on T-Mobile in September.
The Centro has proven that a cheap smartphone can sell like hotcakes. Granted the Centro is cute, the Kickstart is not. But $50 (with a two-year contract, natch) puts it in the same mass market as the crappier LGs and Sammys. It\'s a crazy way to hook the kids, but it might just work. (It\'d work better if the phone wasn\'t so ugly.) [Crackberry via Silicon Alley Insider]
Acer\'s G24 gaming monitor is apparently the only one badass enough for its Predator gaming PC. Besides being slathered in the same hue of rusty orange, according to Acer, this 24-incher is the world\'s highest contrast monitor, with a 50,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. Stuff should pop big, in other words.
Other specs: 1920x1200 res, 2ms response time, 400 nits, HDMI and DVI out ports. The arguably most important numbers—price and date—are nowhere to be found. But "not cheap" and "later" sound like reasonable guesses! [Acer via Engadget]
If you\'re anything like us, you\'re probably deep into your 12th beer by now. You may think that now\'s the perfect time to test some of those firecrackers in your kitchen. Well, don\'t, or you may end up like this guy and his house, both blasted to smithereens by some lousy M-1000s. Take it from us and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and have a happy 4th everybody! [CPSC]
The Gadget: The Moto E8 ROKR is a candybar music phone that makes use of a touch-sensitive, haptic feedback panel on the bottom half of the phone. It\'s nearly buttonless, save for a few on the side.
The Price: $199 (after 2-year contract)
The Verdict: Long story short, the hardware is great, the music interface is decent, the T-Mobile interface sucks. But let\'s start with the good. Not only do I like build quality, and how the button layout changes according to the phone\'s function, I also like that the haptic feedback really feels like the phone has buttons (Herrman is still convinced there aren\'t haptics). As a music player, the capacitive ring and menu system give it an iPod sort of feel, which is nice. It\'s pretty easy to use, and doesn\'t suffer from much lag. Syncing with Windows Media Player is a relatively painless process, but that means it\'s also Windows only (Mac Users have to transfer files via MicroSD, ugh).
The thing that makes me never want to touch the phone again is T-Mobile\'s UI skin, which takes competent phone software and turns it into a laggy, unresponsive pile of crap. Seeing as this phone is a T-Mo exclusive, I think it\'s important to highlight how much I dislike it. Frequently I try to enter into a menu for the camera, or text messages, only to be thrown back to the MyFaves home screen. After hitting another button in response, the phone decides it wants to go to the app I was originally trying to use, and then respond to my subsequent button pushing. The dialog boxes also like to clash with the menus, which allow for frequent input errors. I liken the process to playing voicemail tag with someone, which is to say it\'s totally annoying.
Other than that, it\'s just slow, the capacitive ring is no good for navigating the main menu, and trying D-pad feels cramped. So while I think the phone is an above average candybar, I\'d hold out for a version running different software.
TiVo has been setting the bar for timeshifting television (what you want, when you want it) for the better part of a decade. Its latest models, the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD, further refine and extend functionality to high definition TV and downloadable movies. But the future might not be so bright for TiVo, as other players such as Microsoft\' Vista Media Center, Apple\'s Apple TV, Netflix\'s Roku player, and upstarts like the Vudu aim to drink their milkshake. What\'s a company to do? Innovate. Use the internet. Connect users together. Go beyond broadcast TV. Here\'s what we think TiVo needs to prioritize in their next box in order to dominate the living room for the next decade.
Most importantly, they need to embrace the internet, which includes BitTorrent. There\'s no sense in fighting it since people are currently using software like TED to automatically search for and download episodes of their favorite shows. It\'s like BitTorrent TiVo. West Coast users can even use it to download episodes shortly after it\'s done showing on the East Coast, giving them the ability to watch shows before broadcast and without commercials.
A source close to TiVo we spoke to says that they\'ve looked at BitTorrent, but they need to differentiate between BitTorrent the protocol and BitTorrent in the sense that people are using it now to pirate shows. The current TiVos are designed to record two HD shows simultaneously, which leaves little power to run the fairly CPU-intensive BitTorrent protocol now. If there\'s a way to use it to help digital distribution in the future, TiVo will consider adding it. Here\'s how we think they can use the technology.
• Use BitTorrent to download shows legally. Say you somehow missed recording a show because they changed up the schedule from Tuesdays to Mondays (unlikely since TiVo auto-updates the guide, but still possible if your internet connection is down) or you forget to set a recording for a new series or you start watching a series in the middle. Why should you be punished into waiting until the entire season is out on DVD to watch this? If you\'re tech savvy enough, you\'ve already been hitting the torrents and grabbing the episodes—or even seasons—you missed. Why not have TiVo centrally record a show, then let you torrent it out, complete with commercials, if you happen to miss recording it yourself? The ads keep the studios happy, and the fact that you get to watch a show keeps you happy.
• Enable peer to peer sharing. A company called NDS tried to do this in 2007 before legalities made it impossible. Picture being able to watch shows with your friends across the country at the same time, streamed from users who\'ve already got that recording on their TiVos. Using BitTorrent will drastically reduce bandwidth costs on TiVo, but still give a very fast transfer rate to end users.
• Stream network\'s web content. ABC and NBC have both started getting into web video in a big way, putting their shows online for viewers to watch the next day on a browser. Extend this to a TiVo box (keeping the ads in so people who need to get paid get paid) and you\'re set.
• Stream your shows anywhere, including laptops, cellphones and other TiVo boxes. Yes, would essentially be a Slingbox built into a TiVo, allowing you to watch your shows on the go with your cellphones without any additional hardware. But why not have your living room TiVo networked together with the one in your bedroom? If you recorded Lost on one and Heroes on the other, you could stream it to each other without having to waste hard drive space doubly recording it.
• Download movies from every service. This is a tough one, but TiVo should expand their current Amazon Unbox movie service to include iTunes, Netflix and whatever service decides to pop up between now and doomsday. Be service agnostic and everyone will love you. DVDs don\'t distinguish between movies sold at Best Buy and movies sold at Circuit City.
But TiVo can\'t survive off of networking features alone; they need to expand the core functionality of the box as well. Here\'s what we\'re proposing.
• Auto encoding and syncing to devices. TiVoToGo is fine for grabbing shows off of your TiVo, encoding them and uploading it to your iPod when you\'ve got lots of spare time, but if you\'re in a hurry, it\'s not nearly as convenient. A TiVo only needs all its CPU power when recording two HD shows, so they can easily use the excess cycles during idle times to automatically encode shows into a format your iPod or Zune can understand. All you have to do is simply dock your player into a USB port and choose the shows you want to carry with you.
• Messaging and communications. This ties into the peer to peer sharing feature above, but being able to have Xbox Live-like messages exchanged between your friends or even being able to chat with them while you\'re watching the same show (group chat!) would be phenomenal. Or if you don\'t want their jibber jabber during the show, just chat it up during commercials. A branded TiVo wireless keyboard and a wireless headset would be optional peripherals, or you can just hook up your own USB keyboard and USB headset.
• Ultimate file playback support. The one thing that\'s absolutely necessary to make the TiVo the core of the living room entertainment center is support for popular file formats. We\'re talking h.264, DivX, XviD, OGM, MKV, MOV, FLV, and anything else people encode their videos with. This way even users who don\'t have cable TV can get a TiVo and use it as a file dump for their BitTorrented shows and movies. Playing these files back easily in HD, without prior conversion, would truly make this the ultimate set top box.
Hey everyone, just checking in again to make sure your day is going well. And you haven\'t blown your face off with some giant aerial fireworks. Because believe me, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission: If you act like the mannequin (manikin?) in the clip above, the last place you\'ll end up is in a hospital emergency room. Happy 4th everybody! [CPSC]
In your daily dose of science geekiness, you may appreciate another event going on in the sky this July 4th than the annual combustion of your neighbor\'s illegal stash of gunpowder—Mars and Saturn will align for the evening. Then on the 5th, the Moon will join those two for a little celestial ménage à trois. We know, it\'s usually too much work to grab your telescope for these things. But since you\'ll be staring at the sky already... [NASA via TFOT, Image]
The new episode still follows most of the tired reality show conventions and spends too much time on the stunningly boring contestants, but the brief game show events still impress. This week\'s challenge: become a human claw game, picking up prizes as teammates control your x, y and z axis movement. This challenge aired much to the chagrin of Claw Machine Boy, whose chronic PTSD triggered hard when this episode aired. Stay tuned for a weekly review of the 45 seconds of this show that is worth watching. [ABC]
Here\'s a great idea that DeWalt should get their asses on: A handheld 18-volt air gun that can be used to dust, airbrush, or fill up basketballs or bike tires. I\'d get one if it meant less time on the bike pump, and it could start a new genre of krylon-free, duel-wielding graf artists. Found this cool gem of a fantasy gadget over at the newly designed and even sexier Core77 website. [Core77]
I\'ve been thinking of getting an electric kettle for some time, and I think I\'ve found the most simple, beautiful one I could ever hope for. The small container\'s power cord is stored inside the base, explaining that one seam you see running around the base of the unit. I\'ll have to pick this up in Japan or ask Doug to send one back on his next trip. [+- via Core77]
This is what happens when you mix Boba Fett, Flashdance and fireworks: a brilliant, but somehow disturbing stop-motion animation, that\'s what. Damn you, Patrick Boivin, for mixing everyone\'s favorite Star Wars bounty hunter with the movie scene that made me horny for the first time. [Editor\'s Note: TMI!] On the other side, it could have been a lot worse:
If you can forgive the crap music, you\'ll just love this video of Google Earth mashed up with a hologram machine. This is real, and I want one very, very badly. By combining a 2D mid-air projection system and motion sensors, the device gives you a gesture-based interface for exploring the world. The term "badass" springs to mind. [UBiqWindow via GED via GEB]
This is not a leaked American Gladiators uniform. It\'s Nike\'s design for the US Olympic Track and Field suits. They\'re made from Nike\'s proprietarily named (but possibly a poly-nylon blend synthetic) swift materials. Nike claims the socks and arm coverings, with their dimpled surfaces, break up drag to the tune of 12 to 19% in those areas. The suits, Nike claims, can bring a typically sub-10 second run in the 100-meter dash down by .02 seconds. [Gizmag]
If you think you are going to see some cool fireworks today, just wait three more days. Because we just checked the countdown and that\'s when the Large Hadron Collider will be activated in Geneva, Switzerland. Then we all will enjoy the mother of all fireworks. Well, not us, but the aliens, Tom Cruise, Elvis and the rest of what\'s left of the Universe. So enjoy your weekend, my friends (you conspiracy morons of the world included) because life is too short, even if the LHC doesn\'t destroy the galaxy. [LHC Countdown]
Did you know that your HDTV has a gas in it that could make you and your family sick and destroy the planet? It\'s true, a gas called Nitrogen Trifluoride, and it\'s bad stuff. Apparently thousands of times worse for the planet than CO2, it\'s a greenhouse compound that could significantly contribute to global warming. And it\'s bad to inhale, poisoning your liver and kidneys. It\'s not a real issue right now, but when landfills of the future start filling up with older HDTVs, it could be a problem. Luckily by then we\'ll have colonized another planet to mess up. [CrunchGear]
We might have come up with a list of ridiculous things you can do while driving with a handsfree Bluetooth set, but some people actually acted it out. And who wants to read when you can just stare?
Hey, we here at Taranfx, together with Nancy Nord of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, want to remind you to have a safe 4th of July. Don\'t use illegal fireworks for anything dangerous. Like blowing up an M-1000 inside of a watermelon. In slow motion. Happy 4th weekend everybody. [CPSC]
It\'s the 4th of July weekend, which means sun for most of us and all kinds of fun outdoor activities, many of them including squirt guns. If you\'re hardcore, you use nothing but the Super Soaker, which was first introduced in 1989 and has evolved into personal water cannons that seem capable of blasting holes in concrete. Hyperbole aside, they\'ve come a long way, and iSoaker has a very cool interactive, clickable chart showing the evolution of the world\'s most popular water gun. Which one was your favorite? [iSoaker]
This is some pretty exciting news for us Palm fans who\'ve been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for something new from the handset maker. It turns out Palm has hired Matias Duarte to design the UI for the next Palm OS. You probably haven\'t heard of him, but he\'s the guy behind the impressive interfaces for the Sidekicks and Helio\'s phones. The idea of giving this guy a large install base and a touchscreen to play with is a good one. Palm\'s got an uphill battle to take on the iPhone, but this could be how they do it. [Engadget]
Motorola\'s got another Q in the queue in the form of the new Napolean world phone. It\'s a CDMA smartphone for Verizon that does double duty with GSM, so you can use it pretty much anywhere. It also includes Wi-Fi if you\'re not feeling like using its EV-DO Revision A or EDGE data, runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and includes a fingerprint scanner and a 2-megapixel camera with flash. It sounds like a great phone for world travelers, but probably overkill for anyone else. [BGR]
As you already know, today was the launch of the limited-edition Marty McFly-inspired Nike Hyperdunk sneakers. 350 pairs were sold almost instantly (some are now for sale on eBay for as much as $2,000), a hundred of them at the UNDFTD shop in Santa Monica, where L.A. Lakers\' megastar Kobe Bryant arrived in a DeLorean time machine to be greeted by hundred of fans, some of them camping outside for more than 24 hours. Seriously, I\'m a Back to the Future fan too, but what kind of obsessed fanboy can wait for more than 24 hours for a stupid piece of merchandise? Ah... hrmmm. OK, never mind. [Hypebeast]
