Jeanine Barone has visited the world over, writing for many of the major travel-trade publications. Follow her journeys to unique destinations and her favorite “hidden treasure” spots. She also includes tips and tricks for every type of adventurer.
I knew writing comic book dialog was easy! This is a brilliant idea. Geez, I need to start thinking of stuff like this myself. Step 3: profit!
And yes, I wrote those lines myself. Use ‘em if you want, but if you don’t credit me the batarang’ll be paying you a visit.
It's the "holy crap it's been a while iPad! CES! Christmas!" edition. This month (or so), we've got m-m-m-multitouch maps, good eats, movies and blawgs.
To see everything on one page, click here.
• An Embryonic Build of Firefox for Android
• Motoblur Makes Its Way to Verizon via Devour
• A Neat Video of 50 Android Games
• How to Overclock the Crap Outta Your Droid
• How to Circumvent Android 2.1's Word Filter
• T-Mobile's Bundling DoubleTwist for Media Syncing with New Android Phones
• A Guide to Tethering Your Android Phone
• HTC's Espresso Sense UI for Droid, If You Can Hack It
• Our Nexus One Review
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this month, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous monthly roundups here. See ya next month.
Thursday night's edition of the Charlie Rose Show brought David Carr, Michael Arrington, and Walt Mossberg together to discuss the iPad. Having used the iPad briefly, all three seem optimistic about what it has to offer.
Though we've already heard Mosspuppet's preemptive review of the iPad, it's interesting to see all three of these influential voices discussing Apple's upcoming device in one forum. And what emerges is that all of them, to varying degrees, are excited about the iPad's promise.
At one point, David Carr says, "I think there's a revolution in the fact that you lean back and read something," and this, the possibility of a more casual version of computing, seems to be the iPad's greatest promise in the minds of all three journalists. And after reading the 1994 Rolling Stone interview with Steve Jobs that recently resurfaced, it's clear that Jobs is at his most passionate when he has locked in on a revolution to champion. [TechCrunch]
British astronaut Nicholas Patrick prepares for Nasa space launch, The Telegraph
"The head of Nasa, Major General Charlie Bolden, admitted last night that the task of breaking the news of Constellation's proposed cancellation to staff at the space agency's 10 centres had been badly handled. "Was it screwed up? Yes it was," he said, confessing that he had ignored advice from aides that might have made for a smoother presentation. "I didn't listen to people," he added."
Bolden in for a battle, Florida Today
"A popular former astronaut, Bolden said he made a mistake by failing to brief Congress on President Barack Obama's new plan before the rollout Monday of the White House's proposed 2011 budget. "I don't fool myself that I have not injured some relationships. And so my task now is to try to go in and repair those former, incredibly good relationships because of my ineptness in rolling out this plan."
NASA Admin Addresses Constellation Cancellation, WESH
"I thought I knew better, to be quite honest," he said. "So, we rolled out the budget and rolled out everything in the manner we did. Was it screwed up? Yes. So, I learned a valuable lesson."
Keith's note: You know that the message plan NASA has been trying to roll out is not working when signs carried by protesters outside of KSC today say "Obama lied - NASA died". It gets worse: I also received a link to a YouTube video from someone sitting at their desk at NASA that uses captioned movie footage of an actor playing Hitler to criticise the Obama decision on Constellation. This ain't good folks.
Keith's update: Oh yes - to all of you who are demanding that I post a link to the Hitler video: No way. I find even a casual comparison of anyone to Hitler under any circumstances to be reprehensible and I will not allow this website to be a party to that. If you do not like this policy, then go find another website to read. There will be no further discussion on this topic.
I thought Google Map Buddy's ability to generate printable, hi-res versions of Google Maps was pretty neat but figured I'd never find a reason to use it. These Google Maps envelops, however, are definitely worth the ink and the effort.
There's not a whole lot to them, but some of the best ideas are the simplest. Beste Miray Dogan, a graphic designer from Istanbul, showed that with a Google Map print out and a little ingenuity, you can make a custom envelop that pinpoints the exact location from which it was sent. How nice.
There's no template on her site, but with some trial and error I trust you'll be able to master the mapenvelope in no time. [Beste Miray via Nerd Approved]
New Video by George Mason Univ. Eco Undergrads
"Sarah" turns into a free market extremist. Her friends ask why, and plot ways to win her back to progressivism.
Hat tip Cafe Hayek.
As Make puts it, the atomic clock is old and busted. The quantum-logic clock from National Institute of Standards and Technology, keeping time 100,000 times more accurately than its predecessor, is definitely the new hotness.
The quantum clock, developed by physicist Chin-wen Chou of the NIST, keeps time by measuring the energy of a single aluminum ion with UV lasers. It loses one second every 3.4 billion years, compared to the cesium fountain clock which loses a second every 100 million years, and upon which the current international standard is based.
In fact, the new quantum-logic clock is so precise that Chou's team can't even measure it, as the current definition of a second is based on the prevailing cesium clock.
Don't get too excited about setting your life to a more precise clock just yet: there are currently no plans to adopt the quantum clock as the international standard. But with potential applications ranging from use in more precise GPS devices to answering questions about the speed of light and Einsteinian relativity, this clock is still a serious tick into the future. [Wired via Make]
Yesterday, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington was driving around Google's campus, talking on his phone trying to figure out where exactly his meeting was. One righteous Googler didn't approve of Arrington's potentially unsafe talking-while-driving, so he took a stand. Literally.
In what Arrington describes as the young man's Tiananmen Square moment, a stand-off ensued between the TechCrunch proprietor and the bespectacled Google geek. Thankfully, this moment was captured in photographs by both participants.
Here's how Arrington recaps the drama:
...this guy, who's wearing a Google employee badge, decides it's time to take a stand against cell phone use in cars. So he stands in front of my car and won't move...Cars behind me start swerving. I back up to go around him. He steps forward, vigilant in his defense of the law. I'm off the phone now, and snapping this picture didn't help getting him to move on. The light changes. The light changes again. Cars are now backed up behind me...I'm not sure what comes next in a situation like this. I can either drive over him or park my car. So I put the car in park, open the door to get out and discuss the situation with him. That's when he ran away. His mission, apparently, accomplished.
The employee in question, Mike Shields, has not backed down in the face of public semi-humiliation:
@arrington If you really want to talk about this, let's do that when your car is not abandoned in the road.
I take automobile safety as seriously as the next guy, but I'm also a fan of a good razzing when its appropriate, so I'm not really sure who comes out on top in this soon-to-be-legendary Mountain View stand off. I'm just glad that I live in a day and age in which camera phones let me relive the high drama as if I were actually there. [TechCrunch via Business Insider]
UPDATE: SOLVED at 1:56 pm CDT, by Nick
We have some smart people out there reading the blog, so I decided to mix things up a little bit this week, and see if I could make you think. The answer to today’s riddle will not be an object. It will be an event. We’re operating under the same rules: This deals with astronomy; it’s something with which you are familiar; it’s something you grew up knowing.
I think I’ll make you work a little this week.
Image shamelessly lifted from Space.Com
This event occurred within recent history.
It was known globally while it was happening.
It has happened before.
It will happen again.
Image: National Archives circa 1938-1945, ID 195876
It left traces behind.
It is at the top of the heap for its type of event within recorded history.
After it occurred, there was no evidence of this event in space (this is not a contradiction).
The depiction of this event occurring at any time makes for a thrilling plot line.
STS112 EVA Image: NASA
Your final clue, just to save us all time: The event in question is NOT an asteroid strike.
Hmmmm. Any guesses? Come on out and play — I’ll see you in the comments.
Good luck!
Tan, Rested & Ready...
Not quite the former President, but his grandson, Christopher Nixon Cox had declared his candidacy for the Republican primary for US Congress, New York's 1st CD (eastern Long Island). The junior Cox will face a field of 6 other candidates, but is already considered to be in the lead pack given his famous lineage.
Nixon Cox would face incumbent Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop. The District has a history of swinging back and forth from Democrat to Republican.
Of note, Cox is also the son of current NY Republican Party Chair Ed Cox. He's a graduate of Princeton, and received his law degree from NYU. He also served as McCain for President E.D. for New York in 2008.
His bio states that he: "is a fiscal conservative who will fight for limited government and lower taxes and is committed to defending the values and liberties in our constitution."
Frank Seabrook of the libertarian-leaning (Goldwater/Reagan/Ron Paul) Suffolk County Liberty Report wrote that Cox: "is a formidable candidate and has hit the ground running." Seabrook, who has highlighed the Libertarian-Republican campaign of Warren Redlich for Governor, has also been featuring Cox's campaign on his blog.
There's also video footage of Cox being a featured speaker at a Tea Party-like rally in Haupage, NY last July.
Nixon family photo above of young Christopher Nixon Cox - lower right.
Tim writes,
I’m a post-doctoral cognitive neuroscientist working in MR research at the University of Pittsburgh. I stumbled across the Science Tattoo Emporium and wanted to share my own science based ink.
The attached image shows my second tattoo and the most directly science-themed ink (although the others are also peripherally linked to the career I love so dear). The four hieroglyphic characters are the earliest written form of the word “brain” and are found in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. Dating back to seventeenth century BC Egypt, the papyrus is perhaps the first neurological case study describing the symptoms of head injuries and the odd fleshy matter that was often visible in the most gruesome of head wounds. These symbols and the story of the papyrus are the opening to the classic textbook “Principles of Neuroscience”, which I first came across when taking an undergraduate course in 2000. In honor of starting my graduate research career in studying the brain, I got this tattoo while attending a neuroscience conference in NYC in 2002.
Anyway, hope you enjoy. Thanks for putting together the gallery that lets me know I’m not the only geek crazy enough to make his passion a permanent part of his body.
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Ann Bryan Smollin on bringing more joy, laughter, and humor into our daily lives.
Blackberry users who have been frustrated by their phone's inability to properly sync Gmail can unclench their fists. Documents detailing the new features of the upcoming BIS 3.0 show Gmail syncing and WMA support are on the way.
RIM is finally updating BIS so that Gmail will accurately sync read and unread status of your mail. It's about time.
The update will also add support for Windows Media Audio attachments as well as OpenOffice documents. BIS 3.0 will also include the decidedly less exciting updates of a reconfigured, more secure E-mail setup application and more accurate error messages that will direct users to their specific carrier. I'm not kidding.
Carriers are themselves responsible to roll out the new Blackberry Internet Service so it's hard to say exactly when it should be popping up on your Blackberry. But just be glad that Gmail syncing and more exacting error messages are on their way. [BBLeaks via Crackberry]
Yesterday, Amiko Kauderer (@amikokauderer), Joel Walker (@joelwalker), James McClellan (@jbmccl) and I (@skytland) had an opportunity to attend the Houston Social Media Club breakfast at the Houston Zoo to talk about NASA’s experiments in social media. I wanted to share the presentation with the openNASA community and also invite you to the Houston Zoo’s next event! So, if you are in Houston on Friday, February 26th, make sure to check out the “Tweets in Space” event at the Houston Zoo to meet some “twittering astronauts”! Here’s some information:
On the evening of Friday February 26, 2010, we’re bringing the sights and sounds of space to the Houston Zoo. Expect an evening of learning, food, drink, entertainment and surprises from NASA and our community. Our program will begin at 7:30 pm and afterward we will mingle, enjoy great music and get to know each other better. Grab your tickets while they still last - on sale now!
WHEN: Friday February 26, 2010, 7-10 pm
WHERE: The Houston Zoo’s George R. Brown Education Hall (enter at Gate 5 - directions here)
HOW MUCH: $40 (Proceeds from the event will go to support the Houston Zoo) partners.
Photo credit: Mainline Mom
There's a pretty gnarly GeekBench result running around which appears to be for a new model MacBook Pro—6,1 to be exact—running a crazyfast 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 620M, one of the Arrandale chips Intel announced at CES.
MacBook Pros are definitely in need of fresh guts, and the obvious choice for chips are from the fresh batch of Arrandale processors Intel announced last month. The Core i7 620M would definitely fit the bill—it's a fast dual-core chip, and its TDP is in line with what's in the currently shipping MBPs. The GeekBench score is 5260, which MacRumors notes handily bests the current-gen 2.6GHz MBPs, which typically hit around 3700-4000. Not answered by the Geekbench results is what's up with the MacBook Pro's graphics situation.
In case you're not familiar with the way model numbers work at Apple, like the MacBook Pro 6,1 here, the first number in the set designates a major revision, and the second number indicates a smaller subset—the first unibody MacBook Pros were 5,1 for instance. And it's not unheard of for new hardware to come with a slightly custom build of OS X, like the 10C3067 seen here.
Results posted to GeekBench aren't the most credible evidence of new, gutsier MacBook Pros for obvious reasons, but if even they aren't real, it seems safe to assume we're due for some fresh Core i7 silicon sometime soon. I hope so, anyway. [Geekbench via MacRumors - Thanks OberCFS and Jack!]
If you saw the iPad and said "Yes!" but then heard that it had an LCD screen and said "No!," Yinlips is making the clone for you: their iPad lookalike has an E-Ink screen.
Okay, it's not color and it won't run any of those apps you cherish so much, but if you like the form factor of the iPad and the easy-on-the-eyes screen of the Kindle, this device from Yinlips offers the best of both worlds.
It packs a 6" E-Ink touchscreen and boasts 20 hours of battery life, and can handle PDF, TXT, HTML, and apparently some photo formats as well.
There's no word on the price or availability of this Frankenreader yet, and the original page in Chinese doesn't offer much in the way of detail. Still, if you're an E-Ink devotee but you really don't want to give up that single home button, stay tuned for more information. [Imp3 via PMP Today - Thanks Brian!]
I don’t usually do this, but TechyDad left such a great comment on my post about the antics of antivax founder Andrew Wakefield, I have to reproduce it here for all to see.
Talking about the inherent contradictions and cherry-picking that go on in the alt-med purveyors’ heads, TechyDad says:
Gotta love the disconnect. If pharmaceutical companies make any money off of vaccines, it’s "Big Pharma’s injecting us with chemicals to make money!!!"
Now if a homeopath or an "alternative therapy" company makes money off of their "treatment" it’s “They’re such wonderful people helping to treat these awful conditions!”
If a single batch of a single vaccine is recalled for a tiny problem they shout "See!!??? Big Pharma’s trying to pump us full of unsafe toxins!!!!"
If a company comes out with an outrageous sounding "alternative therapy" for some disease, they say "They say it works right here. It’s alternative and alternative is always good."
If a homeopath says Treatment X doesn’t work they say "It must not work because he’s a homeopath and thus is fighting against the Medical Establishment."
If a physician says Treatment Y doesn’t work they say "It must work and the Medical Establishment is suppressing it."
In other words, they’re right, science is wrong and all evidence will be cherry picked and skewed until their view is supported.
Nailed it in one.
Reproduced here with permission from TechyDad.
Sure, anybody with ears can agree that something is lost when records are compressed and converted to digital files. But if you really want to walk the walk you can't just listen to vinyl, you have to record your own.
Gakken's Gramophone kit can play records of any size, using a bamboo needle to belch crackling analog goodness out of its nickel-plated iron horn. Playback speed and tone are adjustable, and the player is powered by a hand crank. We wouldn't want to spoil your old-school integrity with batteries, now would we?
But the most fun part of the Gramophone kit is the ability to record your own music directly to vinyl.
To record your own records, sing into the horn and the bamboo needle cuts the grooves into a new piece of vinyl. OK, it's probably not going to sound as good as Garage Band but it's a fun experiment nonetheless.
It'll cost you about $170 to import this sucker from Japan Trend Shop and some assembly is definitely required, but if you're an analog enthusiast and looking for a good project, Gakken's gramophone kit might be the ticket. [Random Good Stuff]
