With D-day or should that be i-day only five days away, the frenzy for iPhone news is heating up. Here’s my input to the mayhem.
Someone, presumably an AT&T store employee, has posted some images of iPhone accessories on Flickr for all to see. I like the look of the Jam Jacket which turns your trendy cell phone into a unique stress toy enabling the user to throw their iPhone against brick walls when coverage is lost. With the Jam Jacket and Hip Case, it looks as if your iPhone will be well protected against scratches and nicks. Are they necessary given this quote from Mr. Jobs
We’ve also upgraded iPhone’s entire top surface from plastic to optical-quality glass for superior scratch resistance and clarity.
Hmmm, may be HTC should run a competition to award a prize (an HTC Touch perhaps) to the first person to scratch or crack the iPhone screen!
The Diggites have been at it again. After the guys at Digg launched a new comments system last Thursday, a group of users were in uproar immediately over the changes - oh, how we humans hate change! Kevin Rose hastily posted a message on their blog the next day indicating that they appreciated the feedback and that more changes were coming to their comments system.
Poor old Digg, dugg if they do and dugg if they don’t - apologies for the pun. I’m sure all they were trying to do was enhance the user experience on their website, but unfortunately they got it wrong and suddenly they are lambasted as some sort of evil empire trying to rule over all. Well actually they do own the website and all content within - I’ve been over this before - and if they want to screw it up by introducing a new ‘broken’ comment system then that’s their look out. For the group of people who rudely criticized Digg for the changes, vote with your feet (or keyboards) and not with profanity.
WOW! All I can say is WOW! A 110 inch rear projection TV, measuring 2.5 metres wide - time to build that extension to the lounge. So JVC has launched their behemoth 110 inch HD-110MH80 1080p rear projection unit in Japan and according to I4U it won’t dim all the lights in the surrounding neighbourhood when you fire this sucker up either
The JVC HD-110MH80 heart is a 0.7 inch full hi-vision D-ILA device and JVC’s GENESSA image processing. JVC claims that the power consumption of the 110 inch TV is the same of a 37 inch LCD TV.
As you would expect it comes with all the bells and whistles, 1080p, HDMI and S-Video inputs and a D-sub15 pin socket for your PC, 1920×1080 res and 5000:1 contrast. On the downside, apart from the fact it would be difficult for it to blend into your average sized family living room at 2544×1777×936mm, it carries a hefty price tag of ¥6,400,000, around US$53,000.’
I had to do a double take on this news item from the BBC. A teddy bear rescuing soldiers injured in action? Well it’s true, Vecna Technolgies have designed this little puppy, err, cub to go boldly where humans are a bit worried about going, like battlefields, near toxic chemical spills - you get the general idea. Here’s a bit of the Vecna blurb
These capabilities enable the BEAR to navigate where humans go — up a winding forest path or through buildings, up or down stairs — able to search for and rescue human casualties. Under grants from TATRC, congress and other organizations, the BEAR’s initial task is to rescue military casualties from urban, forested and other war zones.
However, the BEAR is equally capable of a variety of lifting, transporting and other logistics tasks for the military, as well as penetrating a wide array of disaster areas, natural or manmade, searching for and rescuing casualties. Immune to NBC agents and expendable, the agile BEAR robot can navigate through rubble, structurally compromised buildings, and other areas where the threat to human life cannot be assessed.
The BEAR moniker stands for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot and believe it or not the reason for the cute face is to put the wounded at ease. At the moment BEAR is wirelessly operated by a human, but Vecna have plans for it to become more independent
Currently it is under full wireless control by a single human operator. Eventually the BEAR will have more and more autonomous behaviors, which will make it easier to control.
Sounds cool, eh? Well, how long before the cute teddy bear is able to pick up the wounded soldier’s gun and start firing back at his assailants - Attack of the Clones anyone ;)
Having compared the Touch to the iPhone recently, I decided to dig around and find a decent video clip of the TouchFlo technology in action. I found this snippet from Shiny Media, presented by a Microsoft zealot and an HTC non-believer, so whilst there were no fisticuffs at least we were presented with a relatively unbiased review.
The TouchFlo technology did look good in action, but the QWERTY touch pad? Man, who has fingers that small! I know you have a stylus but surely they could have come up with something better for input. Having said that there was an interesting quote in the video from HTC regarding the Touch’s market
It’s not designed for business people, it’s going to be for the multi-media user.
I guess that says it all really, a great cellphone/mp3 player but not a real pocket PC.
Most of us would have experienced the dreaded ‘blue screen of death’ at some stage. Despite potential loss of data (thank goodness for auto save) it was just a simple case of cursing the PC, flicking the power switch and away you go again. However it’s probably a whole different ball game when your computers start failing in space. That was the situation faced this week on the International Space Station.
There was a slim chance that the space station would have to be abandoned after navigation computers started to malfunction. NASA decided to keep the space shuttle docked with the station for an extra day just in case they had to use it to help steer the massive space station.
Fortunately Russian flight controllers managed to restore two of the three systems on Friday but NASA is still considering leaving the shuttle docked for another day or two just in case!
So the next time your PC dies on you just remember it could be a lot worse than just losing a data file or two!
The clever guys at Bang & Olufsen this week launched the BeoVision 7, their latest home theatre centre with integrated DVD player, digital surround sound module plus a widescreen 40 inch LCD HDTV. We probably wouldn’t expect anything less from B&O but they insist we should expect more by providing us with a few extra whizzy features
When BeoVision 7 is switched on, the TV automatically adjusts the picture quality to match the current light conditions — and continues to do so until the television is switched off.
BeoVision 7 features a motorized floor stand and wall bracket, giving complete freedom to tilt and turn the screen from one’s viewing position with a simple touch on the remote control
The vertical BeoLab 7-4 loudspeaker provides incredible precision and acoustic clarity of the voice track of a film or television program. Utilizing the patented Acoustic Lens Technology, BeoLab 7-4 ensures a perfect sound dispersion from the treble at an even 180 degrees throughout the room.
On the downside it will have a price tag of US$13,250 with an extra $500 to $1000 for one of the stand options when it hits the US this summer. So it’s not something you’d be popping out to buy on a whim but I must admit it does look pretty sexy and as with B&O gear has a unique look to it.
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Someone, presumably an AT&T store employee, has posted some images of iPhone accessories on Flickr for all to see. I like the look of the Jam Jacket which turns your trendy cell phone into a unique stress toy enabling the user to throw their iPhone against brick walls when coverage is lost. With the Jam Jacket and Hip Case, it looks as if your iPhone will be well protected against scratches and nicks. Are they necessary given this quote from Mr. Jobs
Poor old Digg, dugg if they do and dugg if they don’t - apologies for the pun. I’m sure all they were trying to do was enhance the user experience on their website, but unfortunately they got it wrong and suddenly they are lambasted as some sort of evil empire trying to rule over all. Well actually they do own the website and all content within - I’ve been over this 
