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Friday, March 21, 2008

Screen grabs: disoriented, time-traveling Hodgman takes call on upside down iPhone

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/255028761/

Our latest micro-series, Screen grabs chronicles the uses (and occasional misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with a screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

Last night's Daily Show discussion on the nation's impending recession prompted John Hodgman (aka PC) to bust out his Uncle Rico-esque time machine to take a peek into our collective economic future. We're still trying to decide whether it's richer in irony that (not unlike Jon Stewart) Hodgman an iPhone, or that he pulled it out and used it upside down Charlie Sheen / Bionic Woman style. Video after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: The Hodg-man emailed -- it wasn't intentional. Apparently he was worried about breaking the antique stock-ticker and was distracted. Although we'd like to think it's because he just used a real life time machine -- for reals. Either way, there you go.

Continue reading Screen grabs: disoriented, time-traveling Hodgman takes call on upside down iPhone

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InnovaTek's hand-sized microreactor converts liquid fuel into hydrogen

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/255129498/

Filed under: Transportation

While oil prices continue to soar to new heights, the gurus at InnovaTek are peering into the future. After years of work, said company is finally testing its hand-sized microreactor that can reportedly "convert virtually any liquid fuel into hydrogen, producing a portable hydrogen stream for use in adjoining fuel-cells." In a perfect world, the technology would come built-in to vehicles, where we'd bypass the dangerous act of transporting hydrogen and instead convert biodiesel (or similar) right within the confines of the car. As it stands, the outfit has already signed a half-million dollar joint development agreement with Chevron to "pursue fuel processing technology for hydrogen refueling stations," and while this stuff isn't apt to be an option on any showroom models next year, InnovaTek is still aiming to commercially license the microreactors by 2009.

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MacBook Air reviewed... as a Windows machine

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/255251558/

Filed under: Laptops

There are a lot of reasons to pick another laptop over the MacBook Air -- especially if you're into little things like "useful ports" -- but the comparison to non-Apple hardware isn't even relevant unless you're willing to switch to OS X, right? Well, the crew over at Xbit Labs decided to even the slate and evaluate the MBA solely as a Windows machine, wiping the drive clean of Leopard and installing Vista Ultimate. Although actually getting Vista on the Air was a bit troublesome due to the lack of a built-in optical drive and the Vista installer's refusal to wipe out the OS X partition, once installed the OS performed fine, with Apple-provided drivers activating the media and brightness keys and even the multi-touch trackpad. The only major issues were over-aggressive activation of CPU power-management, which resulted in dramatic slowdowns during some tasks, and the fact that the case got fairly warm during use -- both issues MBA owners using OS X have reported. Overall, while the MBA was a solid if unspectacular Windows machine, the lack of support and nagging issues with running a pure Windows MBA mean you're probably better off going with laptop designed for Vista -- hmm, we can think of one that might spark your interest.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Microsoft Research: Trident Workbench for Zissou Wannabees [Microsoft]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/254646671/microsoft-research-trident-workbench-for-zissou-wannabees

The major thing consumer press does not actively recognize is how much support Microsoft gives the research world. Everyone covered Worldwide Telescope. But at their Techfest a few weeks ago, one of the most impressive and seemingly selfless feats of the company was in the Trident platform, an oceanographic visualization tool. In short, researchers have always had tons of data for currents, migratory paths of animal sea life, temperature and weather over and in the deep blue. But what to do with that data has always been a major problem. Believe it or not, researchers were required to manually create visual representations of their info, or drown in excel sheets.

Trident is just a set of graphics and database tech common in lots of Microsoft products meant for everyday people and businesses, and handing it to academics. The tools are being run on standard PCs, so academics can collect their data using automated drones and process it in real time. Before, data had to be collected by hand and viewed much later. This is not something you can see any of Microsoft's competitors reaching for any time soon.

Trident: a Workflow Workbench for Oceanography
Redmond lab: Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, U.S.Science is undergoing a sea change. Instead of the small, private, periodic data sets currently being used, large, sophisticated, remote-sensor systems soon will bring enormous amounts of real-time data to be shared by multidisciplinary scientists. One such example is Project Neptune for oceanography. To cope with this shift from data-poor to data-rich science, new tools are needed to help scientists work effectively with these systems and with the enormous amount of data that they will generate. Trident is a collaborative scientific and engineering partnership between the University of Washington, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Microsoft's Technical Computing Initiative to provide Project Neptune with a scientific-workflow workbench for oceanography. The Trident workbench is built atop the Windows Workflow Foundation. Trident enables users to automate, explore, and visualize data; to compose, run, and catalog experiments; to create a workflow starter kit that makes it easy for users to extend the functionality of Trident; and to learn by exploring and visualizing ocean and model data. We will illustrate how Trident can be used to author workflows through a visual interface, store workflows in a library for easy reuse, and execute oceanographic workflows to create on-demand visualizations. Our booth will include posters that provide context for both the Neptune project and the Trident workflow workbench.

Gefen USB to DVI Adapter Can Handle Up to 6 Monitors [Adapter]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/254560255/gefen-usb-to-dvi-adapter-can-handle-up-to-6-monitors

This is not the first time a USB to DVI adapter had come down the pipeline, but the new Gefen adapter can drive an impressive 6 additional displays at 1600X1200 resolution. It is not great for larger monitors by any means, but at only $129 it could be a relatively inexpensive solution. Gefen also notes that it "uses little computer resources" which means that there is at least a chance that this thing won't be a huge processor suck. Additional images after the break.

[Gefen]

Pix-L UMPC Concept For Bedtime Browsers [UMPCs]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/254582198/pix+l-umpc-concept-for-bedtime-browsers

The Pix-L UMPC concept from Jean Hong is designed primarily for those who feel compelled to hit the internet first thing in the morning and just before they go to sleep. It even features an alarm clock dock and a design that allows you to flip the device over for easy browsing while lying on your stomach. I don't know if the execs at Microsoft will be clamoring for this design anytime soon, but the idea of integrating the mobile PC into our daily lives in this way is intriguing. Additional pic after the break.

[Jean Hong via Tuve via DVICE]

RFID credit cards easily hacked with $8 reader

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/254557709/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The RFID hacks keep coming fast and furious -- hot the heels of that Mifare / Oyster Card exploit, the crew at BoingBoing TV has posted up a little demo of how easy cracking the RFID encryption on an American Express card can be. All it takes is an $8 dollar reader easily available on eBay, some software, and the courage to walk around with a laptop waving plastic boxes at people's butt pockets, but developer Pablos Holman says he's hoping to develop a newer version that will allow him to be a little more discreet. The root of the problem is apparently the fact that the system uses local decryption rather than sending card info to a secure data center, but either way we've been worried about this for a long time -- we're sticking to loose change and the barter system from now on. Video after the break.

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Stanford researchers cram 12,616 tiny lenses into a 3D camera

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/254569149/

Filed under: Digital Cameras

With the megapixel race already past the point of noticeable benefit to consumers, it looks like the next camera arms race will be the number of lenses your rig sports -- a team at Stanford is working on a 3D camera that uses 12,616 micro-lenses to generate high quality 3 megapixel images with self-contained "depth maps" that measure the distance to every object in the frame. The system works by focusing each lens above four different overlapping sensor arrays, which work in concert to determine depth -- just like your eyes. Unlike similar systems, the Stanford rig is able to use that data to create a depth map without lasers, prisms, or even complex calibration, which will allow the team to shrink the tech down to compact and cellphone camera size. Once it's ubiquitous, the teams says depth map information can be used to do anything from enhancing facial recognition systems to improving robot vision, but there's still a long way to go -- the team has just started trying to work out how to manufacture the system.

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Adobe: Flash for iPhone might be a little harder than we thought

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/254651684/

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It seems that Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen isn't a developer for the firm -- or at the very least, he doesn't have a full appreciation for the height of the fence surrounding the iPhone SDK's walled garden. The company and on-again, off-again Apple chum solidly backpedaled on the chief's comments regarding Flash for the iPhone that were made just a day earlier, saying that "...to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone Web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it." For what it's worth, Adobe does say that it's still very much interested in doing up a Flash client, it just needs a little extra help from Apple on the side to make it happen -- so if we see this package pop up in the App Store later this year, we'll know that at least one company's been given a free pass to break the rules.

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