Archive for September, 2008
Just like this website suggests, the world is full of gizmos, doohickeys, and doo dad devices out there. The latest (and more than a little bizarre) are the water bikes. A simple search on Google will bring you to multiple YouTube videos that are getting “I want that!” responses. So, do you want this newest doo dad? Let us give you the lowdown on water bikes. The two top of the market products are the Aqua Skipper made by Inventist, and the Pumpabike created by Evo. These human powered hydrofoil bikes enable you to ride on water (don’t try this with a normal bike!). With a simple pumping motion similar to jumping on a mini-pogo stick, these people are seen racing all over a lake, riding waves, just jet setting along. Likely to be great for your hips and thighs, it is surely going to be the closest way that I personally get to feeling like I am surfing along the waves in sunny California.
The Aqua Skipper looks like a metal praying mantis, all lean lines. Weighing in at
26 pounds and going up to 17 mph, this 6’ by 7’ lightweight aluminum giant looks as graceful as a gazelle on the water. It is easily disassembled and can be transported in a carrying case the size of a golf bag. Minimum weight to ride is 70 pounds, maximum weight is about 250 pounds.
The Pumpabike looks more like a exercise bike, with a large blue standing area. The major difference between these two water bikes is the Pumpabike is buoyant while stationary, although it is three pounds heavier than the Aquaskipper. So instead of sinking like the Titanic, you can take breaks in your pump and jumping, relax your muscles and just enjoy the ride. Well, for two or three seconds at least.
So what is the damage? Approximately $495.95 for the Aqua Skipper, or the refurbished unit for $399.95, and only $69 for the handy dandy carrying case. The Pumpabike is a bit harder to find for an actual price, but over in merry ol’ England it is selling for £499, which converts to $919.66. A chunk of change, but it sure does look like fun! Who will we see jumping and pumping next?
See the AquaSkipper in action:
Today marks T-Mobile’s official announcement of the release of the very first phone on the market utilizing Android, Google’s highly anticipated mobile phone operating system (and you thought Google was just a search engine!). Is the T-Mobile G1 with Android the iPhone killer many people were expecting? No, it doesn’t appear to be so. Not to say that Google won’t pull this off as more Android based phones begin to proliferate the marketplace. One of the greatest qualities of Android is that it is probably the most developer friendly platform out there. Android does not distinguish between the phone’s built-in applications and user-created applications. They can all be designed to have equal access to a phone’s capabilities providing users with a greater variety of applications and services than any other mobile platform in existence. Given this level of flexibility, Android is likely to (over time) eat away at Apple’s Iphone dominance.
The T-Mobile G1 will be on sale October 22, 2008 with a 2 year contract price of $179.
Since some reviewers were able to get their hands on the G1, full reviews of the T-Mobile G1 and the Android platform should be flooding the web right about now. Just do a Google search.
If you’ve got digital photos and videos to show off at home or in your office, this could quite possibly be the coolest way to do it.
With a 32″ display and sporting a 1366×768 resolution, the Smartparts SP3200WF is the largest digital photo frame to hit the consumer market ever. The SP3200WF is attractively matted in beige and sports a natural wood frame with an ‘espresso’ finish. This device supports WiFi, meaning you can wirelessly feed it images to display through your home PC network. It also supports Windows Live Photo Gallery and will play back video with sound, including Motion JPEG, AVI and WMA files. In addition, the SP3200WF will display PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and most common image formats.
The SP3200WF will be available soon through specialty retailers. Expect this wondrous display to set you back around $1,000, although no price has been officially announced yet. Of course if you don’t already own a large LCD or plasma TV you are obviously better off buying one of those first!
SmartParts a leading manufacturer and innovator in the digital picture frame market:
http://smartpartsproducts.com/content/index.html
No, this little electronic marvel is not built for attack or defense. It’s being designed as a sensor to relay information back to advancing soldiers about the environment they are entering into, detecting potential hazards such as poisonous gas, nuclear radiation, and performing numerous surveillance operations. Basically it’s a super cool teeny little spy plane!
The US Army has given the University of Michigan College of Engineering a $10 million dollar grant in order to help make their flying wonder a reality. This grant brought the University of Michigan Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology (appropriately known as COMBAT for short) into existence.
Why a bat? Bats have ultra highly attuned senses and are able to navigate precisely even in pitch black conditions, which is what the Army wants their robot to be able to achieve.
See the full story at:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6409
If we’re lucky enough, they’ll release a toy version for use at home (OK, don’t hold your breath). This thing does look like fun!
No longer bound to the confines of the road and the sidewalk, the new Segway X2 expresses it’s freedom from such feeble terrain limitations. Yes, you can now go off-roading with the all-terrain Segway X2. Hard to imagine, I know, but it’s true! The Segway X2 comes in several flavors; X2 Golf Edition to replace your ugly old-school (not cool looking like a Segway X2) golf cart, an X2 Police Edition for (yes, you guessed it!) law enforcement purposes, the X2 Adventure (with more off-roading accessories such as a handlebar bag for water bottles / tools, a 5W LED headlamp, and universal cargo plates), and the X2 itself (without all the extra accessories). I can’t help but think that this sounds fun, however I don’t think this will be replacing good ‘ol 4 wheelin’ ATVs for entertainment purposes anytime soon! Also with a maximum speed of 12.5 miles per hour and a maximum range of around 12 miles, don’t expect to get too far too fast on your Segway!
Solid surfaces used to be the single domain of bouncy balls. The Waboba ball, which bounces and skips across the surface of water, is here to end all of that. Don’t believe me? I didn’t think you would. Be sure to see the video below.
The Waboba Ball is about 2 1/4 inches in diameter and is made out of polyurethane with a special lycra coating. These magical chemicals somehow give Waboba it’s alien-like physical capabilities.
Waboba could in fact be the ultimate swimming pool or beach toy. The creators of Waboba have created an actual multi-player game for Waboba. A real game, with rules and everything: http://www.waboba.com/Games.aspx
It could one day become an official watersport, perhaps even an Olympic event?
Please note, the Waboba ball is made for water bouncing only. Bouncing Waboba on a hard surface is not good for it. Don’t do that.
Priced at under $10 US (more if you buy it through www.waboba.com), Waboba will make an ideal Christmas stocking stuffer, or a great gift for any occasion.
Waboba Ball
When I was a kid I took an AC motor (you know those little ones you found inside your toys when you took them apart?) and cut the wires off of a pair of headphones. I then connected the headphone wires to the motor and plugged it into the headphone jack on my stereo just to see what would happen. To my surprise, I could feel vibrations in the motor in sync with the music. For whatever reason, I put the motor in my mouth and bit down on it. Suddenly I could actually hear the music, throughout my skull! It was very tinny sounding, but quite cool indeed. Little did I know at the time, I was playing with a phenomena known as “bone conduction”.
Bone conduction was originally discovered by Ludwig Van Beethoven. He would connect a metal rod to his piano and clench it in his teeth, thus allowing him to ‘hear’ even though he was deaf!
Bone conduction is nothing new, but creating bone-conducting headphones has been a challenge up until now. The audio quality was sub-par. Thanks to the Goldendance company of Japan, our ears can finally have a rest. AudioBone headphones are the first bone conduction headphones in existence that are able to deliver high-fidelity stereo sound. Instead of placing your headphones over your ear as usual, you place the AudioBone ‘phones over the bones in front of your ears (feel those bumps about an inch out?)
The AudioBone headphones convert the sound waves into vibrations that go into your bones and are picked up by your inner ear. This is normally done by your ear drum, but with AudioBone your ear drum gets to take a well deserved vacation.
I can almost hear some of you saying “So what, why bother with this?”. AudioBone isn’t for everyone, however it does have it’s perks:
University studies have shown that bone conduction is safer for your ears than regular headphones and especially those annoying and sometimes painful earbuds.
AudioBone does not block the ear, which allows you to hear all ambient noises. This is especially good for runners or people at work (or anyone who needs to hear for safety purposes). AudioBone headphones are also waterproof and you can hear them perfectly while underwater (great for swimmers).
AudioBone headphones are available now, expect to pay from $189 - $219 plus shipping. No, not for the poor!
Just the other day I was thinking it would be wonderful to have a wireless external hard drive for my laptop computer so I could truly be ‘free’ (as opposed to being stuck at my desk). Welcome the Apollo Pro WX by Imation, the first wireless hard drive to hit the market.
Utilizing wireless USB technology by WiQuest, the Apollo Pro WX is intended for quick backup and storage of music, photos, videos and data on wireless networks at home.
Amazingly enough, the speed of the Apollo Pro WX is apparently just as fast as a wired USB hard drive. There are two caveats however; the device only has a 30 foot range, and your computer must support wireless USB.
The Imation Apollo Pro WX is set to be released 4th quarter and in capacities ranging from 250 gigabytes to 1.5 terabytes. Pricing is currently unknown. Expect to see more and more devices released supporting wireless USB technology. They will be welcomed with “open arms”!
When Google ceased promotion of the FireFox web browser awhile back, many had their suspicions. They were correct. Google was in fact ‘up to something’. Chrome was it; their very own web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Among the coolest features of Chrome is that each browser window operates as a separate process so that if one site ‘freezes up’, it won’t crash the whole browser, just that site. It also offers “incognito browsing” where all of your cookies, history, and temporary internet files from that browsing session are removed as soon as you close the browser (removing any trace from your computer as to what you were doing). Hey, don’t get any ideas!
Check out this vid to see the 10 main features of Chrome:
Why does Google care about playing the browser war? What are they plotting? Is this Google’s next entry along the path to world domination? Apparently Google has a long term focus to develop enterprise web-based applications directly integrated into the chrome platform, to compete head-on with Microsoft Office. Basically, they hope that people will favor their web-based offerings and abandon MS Office and Exchange. Google will need to seriously amp up Google Docs in order to compete on the enterprise platform.
Personally, I’m going to stick with FireFox. Don’t be surprised to see the most popular Chrome features duplicated in a future release of FireFox. FireFox is open source, so no possibility for sneaky code under the radar. Mozilla has no ulterior motives for FireFox (as far as I know).
One must wonder at what point in the game Google will determine it has enough power to step into the Operating System market. Google OS anyone? Perhaps if they are able to deliver a few rounds of heavy blows to Microsoft. Google already does have the Android platform, an operating system for mobile devices such as cell phones. Look for that in the near future, it could very well be something special.
It would be nice to have a house integrated with Google search capabilities. Where did I put my car keys?
“3 matching results”.
I remember as a kid in the 80’s watching the film “Tron” and seeing a high-tech executive desk that had a computer display built into its surface. The computer was controlled by voice and by direct touch. We’ve seen this type of concept in movies and TV dozens of times. It was only a matter of time before this technology began to “surface” in the real world. Well it finally has, literally known as “Microsoft Surface”, it was first announced in 2007 and now in 2008 has “surfaced” for “hands on” interaction and testing at several locations around the globe.
Surface is a tabletop computer that allows simultaneous multi-touch and multi-user interaction as well as interaction with physical objects in the ‘real’ world. For example, imagine placing your digital camera on the Surface computer and right next to your camera, on the screen below it appears the pictures you’ve just taken. You can resize the pictures and interact with them using just your fingers. This is a SMALL example of what this new machine can do.
Although the Surface technology will take a few years to mature and become mainstream, the applications are virtually limitless.
Microsoft believes this jump in user experience is as big as going from DOS to Windows. They consider the Surface interface not a GUI (Graphical User Interface) like Windows but a NUI (Natural User Interface), which is a new term they coined to describe Surface’s uniqueness.
I guess Bill Gates is going to likely raise his goal from “a computer in every home” to “a computer on every surface”.
Learn more about Surface here:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Now I wonder when we can finally expect to see holographic display technology become mainstream (think Star Wars)?
