This Google Monster was created by Asaf Hanuka for an article about groups protesting Google's plan to scan every book. I think it's the way many thinks about its insatiable hunger, including myself. Well, actually, I see it like this:
[Tropical Toxic via TheDW]
In his first time speaking at University of Washington—the giant Microsoft-endowed school in the company's backyard—Steve Ballmer explained "the cloud."
First, there was a goofy video showing how stoned most UW students are, conducted by a gal with shockingly platinum hair and bronze skin. Then Ballmer says it's something he's betting his company on, and that every company is betting their companies on, and that it's a $3.3 trillion industry. That's pretty serious. Here are his five key principles:
1. "The Cloud Creates Opportunities and Responsibilities" (In fairness, Ballmer admits it sounds like "some blah blah blah business term.") What he means is that creators don't have to come from big-ass tech companies to market cool software now. He says "Apple's done a very nice job" with the App Store, giving opportunities to developers, and that Microsoft is keen on providing those types of opportunities. How do developers who have worked on open-source or freeware apps finally get some money for their creations? (Does this mean Windows Phone 7 will follow a similar developer strategy? Who knows...)
He also says that the cloud is supposed to give more control to users, not just developers. Control over privacy and anonymity, that is. Ballmer doesn't mention too many examples, but cites Facebook—obliquely—as an example of the challenges of cloud-related privacy.
2. "The Cloud Learns and Helps You Learn, Decide and Take Action" Machine learning is key to cloud strategy. Ballmer says that when you look out at 83 million websites and try to find something simple but hard to search for, like "What do we as a society spend on healthcare?" you can easily get nothing. "It's only eight numbers," Ballmer says, but they're hard to find in one simple little chart. The cloud needs the intelligence to know what people are looking for, and know how to go and find that information on its own, or collaboratively with users.
Here, to drive the point, Ballmer invited a guy from the Bing team to demo Bing Maps' explore feature. It's live, so you can check it out for yourself. Drill down into the University of Washington, if you want a good representation of what they're doing.
3. "Cloud Enhances Social and Professional Interactions" This Ballmer admits is kind of an obvious notion, as we're already immersed in it, but he says that the innovations here will improve to a point where "virtual interaction through the cloud is as good as being here today." He doesn't mean "as good" in the sense of "as useful." He means that one day, an entire auditorium of activity would be able to be captured on 3D video and streamed live anywhere, like Harry Potter diving into a Pensieve. (That'd be my Potter fanboy analogy, not Ballmer's.) He also means, of course, that realtime data collaboration tools will get better and better. He didn't mention that they'd have anything to compete directly with Google Wave, but if they do, hopefully they'll focus on ease of use.
As a near-term social example, he brought a demo of Xbox Live TV, something already launched in England with the Sky Player. Imagine Mystery Science Theater 3000 done with Xbox avatars, under a screen playing a live show. In the Sky example, of course, sports are key. I am thinking there are very few live TV events anymore, but maybe a Lost episode or some (non-Olympic) sporting event would be a good example.
4. The Cloud Wants Smarter Devices This pillar of the Ballmer argument is the one that probably makes the most sense to Giz readers and people who have kept up with Windows Phone 7 (and Pink) news. As a student sitting near me just pointed out, the "smarter devices" angle is antithetical to what Google and others seem to preach, but Microsoft obviously cares about processing at the consumer end, and they believe that as long as processing is cheaper than bandwidth it makes sense.
Not surprisingly, his demo is Windows Phone 7, so I'll spare you any crappy photo and just link you to our comprehensive coverage.
5. "The Cloud Drives Servers Advances That Drive the Cloud" We tend to ignore the hardware demands of the cloud, but obviously, Microsoft's server business is a key part of Ballmer's reason for promoting the cloud. He speaks of service issues—systems able to deploy software instantaneously worldwide, without a hassle. "If a machine breaks, that shouldn't be your problem. There shouldn't be people babysitting all these machines." A call for QA, perhaps, and aimed as much internally as it is externally.
An example of the fruits of this is a UW project called Azure Ocean, which is constantly aggregating the world's oceanographic data, expanding constantly with sensor data every day, noting that it must have been a "very exciting period in the last few weeks" with the earthquake in Chile. No doubt no one will dispute the need for research tools of this scope now.
Ballmer also says that part of this server business is people having their own clouds. Governments and companies want to buy their own systems. Sometimes this is obvious, like for military or strategic purposes, but sometimes it's just a matter of preference, and Ballmer wants people to be able to buy "refrigerator"-sized water-cooled systems with net connections, if that's their preference.
Ballmer concludes with the sentiment that "the Cloud fuels Microsoft and Microsoft fuels the cloud." Take that as you wish.
My own quick take on this is that the cloud is as nebulous as you think, but at least these are areas worth thinking about more. The cloud isn't anything new, but it's taking shape, and clearly in the hands of only a few companies. Google is the biggest, and arguably Microsoft is #2. In other words, we need to listen to Ballmer, cuz he'll be driving it, at least for now.
The above may be pure Web 2.0 marketing drone corpospeak, but the truth is that, like Google and Apple, Microsoft's CEO knows the future is the cloud and mobile computing.
Who needs a lamp to be classy when it can be fucking horrifying? That's what the "Half Life" lamp is, because it glows thanks to living hamster cells that have been enriched with firefly genes. Holy shit.
The lamp, created by Joris Laarman, was created without harming any hamsters, apparently. Instead, it was created using a culture of tissue kept alive since 1957. Oh, that's much less creepy, thanks so much, Joris!
Want to see this horrifying specimen in person? It'll be on display at the Friedman Benda Gallery in NYC starting tomorrow. [Metropolis via Inhabitat]
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Thanks to Shane Snow for the design and Don Nguyen for the extensive data collection.
These are the first photos of Microsoft's Project Pink phones, snatched from deep within the bowels of the Microsoft/Verizon industrio-complex —not the Turtle, but the larger, Sidekick-like Pure. This doesn't look like Windows Phone 7, so what is it?
The shots come just hours after a leaked advertising campaign for the Turtle outed Verizon as a carrier for the Pink Turtle, without so much as a mention of the Pure.
Our tipster confirms the Pure is also headed to Verizon, but doesn't have a release date. (Though it's hard to imagine the release date would fall too far out of line with the Turtle, which is expected to hit stores at the end of April.) Anyway, this thing: It's strange! The paneled interface, with fixed squares for everything from music (with Zune typography) and email to RSS feeds and what looks like a unified social networking hub. As hinted earlier, the aesthetic is similar Windows Phone 7, but the software is distinctly not Windows Phone 7. This looks like Windows Phone 7: Feature Phone edition.
Our source got a few seconds to use the Pure, and said it was intuitive, "better than Android," and decorated with Windows Phone 7-style animations throughout. That said, the app situation still doesn't add up. There's apparently an download screen for new apps, but it's not populated with anything yet. This could mean two things: Either the Pink phones will tap into the Windows Phone 7 marketplace somehow, which would be great (but also doesn't make sense), or they'll have apps like the Zune has apps—which is to say, only sort of, and only from selected partners.
The more we see, the more the Pure and Turtle look like they're stacking up to be Zune-ified followups to the Sidekick. It's an interesting move, but who does Microsoft think they're going to sell this thing to? Tweens?
We've got our hands on leaked Pink firmware, and we've dumped all the icons and photos we could extract. Sadly, there's not way to run this right now, but we can see a lot of what's shown above, like the homescreen application icons, in full resolution. There are also traces of Zune, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Windows Live. There are some shots (discovered by someone else who's got the firmware) that show a lockscreen dialer, but these are likely placeholders of some sort. Also tucked away in the firmware are default wallpapers for both phones, in their rumored resolutions. Finally, we've got a shot from the Turtle's unremarkable camera, which appears to have flash.
(Filenames included in the gallery, because they're pretty descriptive.)
Here's what we can glean from the dump so far:
• The carrier is definitely Verizon, though there are references in the firmware to AT&T and T-Mobile in the US (which are probably placeholders, since the rest of the evidence points to CDMA radios as standard for these phones.) There are also references to a wide range of foreign carriers in the UK, mainland Europe and Asia, but again, most of these carriers don't support what looks like the initial version of the handset's CDMA hardware, as far as I can tell.
• The OS is based on Windows CE, like the Zune and Windows Phone 7. This doesn't mean a ton to users, but the guy who passed us the firmware sums up what that means under the hood:
Everything is programed in .NET a lot like 7 is. It does not say it inside the files where I have seen, but It is coded in XAMl and is in the structure that CE 7 is supposed to be structured, it is my belief that it will be based off CE 7, and it will have a lot of tie in to Windows Live as well.
• Turtle and Pure codenames are used in the firmware, but that doesn't mean that those'll be the shipping names for the product. There are also codenames for the "Pride" and "Lion" handsets, which appear to just be the international versions of the Turtle and Pure, respectively.
• The Turtle's screen is 320x240, while the Pure's is 480x320—the same as the iPhone.
• There are reference to something called "The Loop," which sounds like some kind of central social networking hub.
We're powering through the firmware dump now, so we'll post more as we get it. [Special thanks to our tipsters, and Conflipper]
Today, YouTube is rolling out automatic captioning for all videos uploaded to the service, using Google's speech recognition service. You can see a demo in the video above.
Automatic captioning with Google speech recognition was launched in November. This only had a few selected education partners to test out automatic captioning, until now.
There are many reasons for captions on every video: ESL viewers, people in other countries, searchability, not wanting to disturb others, loud locations and automatic translations to other countries.
The captioning won't be perfect, since Google's speech recognition isn't perfect, but it is really, really cool, and is sort of one step toward the goal of speech to speech recognition in real time that Google is aiming for. By testing pre-recorded videos, they can help refine the tech on something that isn't as vital or time sensitive, in order for it to be used in something that is—phone conversations.
Also cool, if your video gets captioned weirdly by Google's system, you can download the captions in plain text and correct the captions yourself. This is much easier than captioning from scratch.
If you want to have YouTube go and caption something you uploaded a few years ago—because they caption newly uploaded videos first—you can manually request that as well.
Update: In response to some of the comments, yeah, it may use the same system as Google Voice's transcription (not sure yet), but having more people come in and upload their correct versions of captions helps Google learn and improve their system faster, which helps all their speech-to-text services.
Update 2: I don't usually get emotional at press conferences, but watching the students from the California School For the Deaf talk about how the auto-captioning will improve their lives is kinda making me tear up. Right now, I think this is cooler than anything I've seen rolled out in the last few years.
Update 3: I asked if this was the same algorithm currently being used in Google Voice, and they yes, more or less, if you're talking about the base technology. Goog411 and Voice Search all have the same core algorithms, but each of these four have various conditions and issues that the algorithm needs tweaking to. So, you can probably expect a similar level of performance to Google Voice, or maybe even worse, if the videos have people who don't speak clearly, or multiple voices, or a noisy background.
Equipped with a marble, some wood and the principles of potential energy, kinetic energy and gravity, one man built a remarkable machine that warps your very sense of what's physically possible. Prepare yourself, then hit the clip at 2:30.
While this video eventually ends, the device can keep going, sending the marble in a loop from the top to the bottom to the top (to the bottom...) without stop, as long as a single weight is repositioned to reset various components.
And, if for some reason, you're one of those guys thinking to himself, "Meh, I could do that." Please, please do. [Reddit via CrunchGear]
TiVo might be dying on the vine, but at the rate they're racking up lawsuit wins they may survive yet. The company's stock skyrocketed after a federal court shot down Echostar and Dish's recent appeal; compare that to Premiere's debut.
This decision upholds last fall's ruling that found Dish in contempt for not canceling their patent-infringing DVR service. The total damages add up to $400 million, plus attorneys fees.
Dish and Echostar have been appealing to keep their DVR services up and running, though now that they've lost at the federal level that'll be difficult to sort out. They're asking for a Federal Circuit review, though, and plan to propose a workaround that will keep their DVRs functioning, according to the following statement, all of which would at least delay the end of their DVR services:
"We are disappointed in the Federal Circuit's split decision, but are pleased that Judge Rader agreed with our position. Therefore, we will be seeking en banc review by the full Federal Circuit. We also will be proposing a new design-around to the district court for approval. At this time, our DVR customers are not impacted."
Still, though, they're dangerously close to having the plug pulled.
Meanwhile, TiVo's stock got a boost from the announcement that was degrees of magnitude greater than the Street's reaction to Tuesday's TiVo Premiere announcement. But hey: when you've got patents, who needs products?
United States Court of Appeals for The
You won't find Steve Jobs' favorite iPhone program in the App Store, but here's a glimpse. This app costs several million dollars unless you are Google. Then you can enjoy it for free (while HTC foots the bill).
I can't speak for everyone here, but who hasn't burned down 2, 3 even 4 dwellings with a rogue iron? The Roly Poly, an iron concept by Wonkook Lee, may be our last hope.
The Roly Poly Iron is loaded with an extra set of weights. When you hold it, these weights shift inside the handle, making the horizontal positioning natural. But as soon as you let go, sensors note your recklessness and shift the weights properly to actually stand the iron back up on its hind legs...defiantly.
Yeah, on second thought, I don't need an iron that thinks its judgment is better than mine...even if it is. [Yanko Design]
If you want to use a dedicated 3G dongle for your laptop, hardware choices are always limited. Here are AT&Ts two new offerings, the LG Turbo and Option Velocity. And no, you're not the only one who thought "American Gladiators."
LG Turbo
Free with a two-year contract, the Velocity is a no-frills card, with HSPA 7.2 support, MicroSD slot for thumb drive capability and a swiveling head that should allow you to—well, if you've actually used one of these 3G sticks, you know that they can be unwieldy. So it helps.
Option Velocity
Despite its plastic design, the Turbo is AT&T's new premium 3G stick. It, too, supports MicroSD, but it also adds aGPS and will set you back $30 with two-year contract.
Both new dongles will be available starting March 7th.
DALLAS, March 1, 2010 – AT&T* today announced two new 3G LaptopConnect devices: the AT&T USBConnect Turbo from LG and AT&T USBConnect Velocity from Option. Both will be available in AT&T retail stores, business channels and online beginning March 7. The Turbo and Velocity enable customers to stay connected on their laptop while on the go with the nation's fastest 3G network.
The Velocity, is the first GPS-enabled LaptopConnect device from AT&T. The built-in aGPS functionality opens the door to location-based applications making it easier than ever for customers to get to their desired destination. Option offers a free software application, the Option GPS Control Panel, that leverages location-enabled sites like Yahoo! Maps and Bing for directions and local points of interest. Option GPS Control Panel will be available for download on the Option support web page beginning March 7. Additionally, through TeleNav Track LITE™ and Xora GPS Locator from AT&T, enterprise customers can add tracking and location awareness thus improving response time by easily locating the closest worker to a service call.
The Turbo is AT&T's first LaptopConnect device from LG and features a compact, lightweight design. Turbo's HSPA 7.2 capability offers a high speed Internet connection that allows users to meet their professional and personal computing needs away from their office or home computer. The ergonomic design and unique USB connector makes Turbo compatible with a wide variety of laptop configurations.
Both devices feature an integrated microSD card slot making them portable storage devices that allow users to carry the data and files they need at their fingertips. LaptopConnect devices allow customers to get more done on-the-go as well as keep up to date with their professional network from anywhere AT&T provides data coverage.
"Velocity and Turbo both offer a first for AT&T: our first GPS enabled LaptopConnect device and our first LaptopConnect device from LG," said Michael Woodward, vice president, Mobile Phone Portfolio, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "In addition to being compatible with our latest HSPA technology, the two devices let AT&T customers get more done while on the go. From traveling professionals to students, AT&T offers a LaptopConnect solution for everyone."
Pricing and Availability
Beginning March 7, both the Turbo and Velocity will be available online and in AT&T stores nationwide. AT&T USBConnect Turbo will be available for free after mail-in rebate and a new two-year DataConnect contract of at least $35 a month (pay $99.99 and after mail-in rebate receive $100 AT&T Promotion Card. Two-year agreement and DataConnect plan required).AT&T USBConnect Velocity will be available for $29.99 after mail-in rebate and a new two-year DataConnect contract of at least $35 a month (pay $129.99 and after mail-in rebate receive $100 AT&T Promotion Card. Two-year agreement and DataConnect plan required).
So, that's another one the birds have on us. In addition to flight and colorful plumage, they're also equipped with magnetometer beaks that can sense magnetic fields and use them as a map. Yes, even chickens.
Here's how it works. The upper beak of birds has nerve branches that contain iron, which may be used to measure the intensity and inclination of Earth's magnetic field:
More than about 500 dendrites in the periphery encode the magnetic field information, which is composed in the central nervous system to a magnetic map. It obviously does not matter, whether birds use this magnetic map for their long distance orientation or do not – the equipment can be found in migratory birds, like robin and garden warbler, and well as in domestic chicken. "This finding is astonishing, as the birds studied have a different life styles and must fulfil diverse orientational tasks: Homing pigeons, trained to return from different release sites to their homeloft, short-distance migrants like robins, long-distance migratory birds like garden warblers and also extreme residents like domestic chicken", explains Gerta Fleissner.
That's right: even Chicken Little has a built-in magnetometer. I get it, birds. You win. Me and my lame opposable thumbs are just gonna sulk off into the distance. But I'm not saying where, now that I know you'd be able to find me. [Eureka Alert via Boing Boing]
To understand Sony, understand its founders, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. Even though both are now gone, their executive dynasty and its haphazard, emotional governance established the model for the Sony of today—even as it holds Sony back.
Sony's early years are thick with stories of near disaster tempered by last-ditch recovery. After the Second World War, Japan was rebuilding its infrastructure. Electricity, no longer needed for military factories, was in surplus, and Ibuka and Morita wasted no time in putting together an electric rice cooker and an electric blanket for sale to the Japanese market.
They were horrible.
Despite a clever design, the rice cooker—a wooden bucket with electrodes at the bottom which would turn off when water steamed away, breaking the circuit—mostly under- or overcooked the rice. The electric blanket scorched blankets and futons, and there was fear it would eventually set a house on fire.
Ibuka was a tinkerer of the first order, so skilled at inventing that he won the Gold Prize at the 1933 Paris World's Fair for his patented "dancing neon". Morita was the scion of a prosperous family who chose a career of science instead of running the Morita sake business, breaking a chain of first-born leadership that stretched back fourteen generations.
They met working for the military, but wasted no time in forming Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo—Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company, Ltd., which would eventually become Sony—as soon as the war was over.
Ibuka, in his founding prospectus, made it clear that above all else, Sony would exist as a welcoming workplace for the eternally misunderstood engineer: "The first and primary motive for setting up this company was to create a stable work environment where engineers who had a deep and profound appreciation for technology could realize their societal mission and work to their heart's content."
Engineers have always been stars at Sony—more so, perhaps, than their creations.
For decades—perhaps even up until this day, depending on who you ask—the key decisions of the company were typically driven by Ibuka, Morita, or one of the relatively small cabal of executives that led the company. This is typical in a Japanese company, where even the board of directors is often comprised mostly of cronies and yes-men, unlike in Western corporations where (in theory) a board of outsiders represent the needs of the public shareholders.
From its very start, Sony has been a wonderworks of invention, with engineers given ample leeway to work on their own projects. Their early inventions were often built on the ideas of other companies, improvements rather than wholly new ideas.
German companies had invented tape recorders in the 1930s, but both the machines and the magnetic tape used for recording was expensive. Sony developed a paper tape that was affordable but with a shabbier sound quality, literally brushing on the shellac by hand onto paper tape with a brush made from badger hair.
When Bell Laboratories invented the transistor, Sony sent an employee to the United States for three months to learn how to manufacturer them. When test runs yielded only five functional transistors out of every one hundred made, Ibuka ordered the company to move ahead with production. He held in his mind a vision of a pocket-sized transistor radio, and although it took a couple of years for everything to click, the TR-55 Transistor Radio was a very profitable product for young Sony.
Consider Ibuka's biggest success: the development of the Trinitron picture tube, a couple hundred million of which Sony sold over the years. When the project began, Sony had licensed another tube technology, Chromatron, which had such poor production yields that it cost Sony nearly twice as much to produce than the price for which they were actually sold. Chromatron nearly bankrupted the company.
Ibuka himself led the engineering team that created the aperture grill that made Trinitron tubes colorful and clear. It took nearly two years for the first Trinitron tubes to roll off the assembly line. Years later, Ibuka considered it the high point of his career at Sony.
But if Ibuka had failed—and there were many failures before his team made the breakthrough—Sony probably wouldn't be around today. It was a legendary success—a legend that now allows Sony to rush headlong into engineering-led disasters.
Morita was less an impassioned engineer and more a dabbler, although make no mistake: Morita loved his gadgetry. It's just that he also loved business, good food, the arts. Like his successor, Norio Ohga, Morita was concerned as much with the media that would play on Sony products as he was with the gadgets themselves.
It was this thinking that lead Sony into the content space, having first made considerable profits by selling recording media like audio or video tape alongside its tape recorders, as well as the extremely profitable acquisition of Columbia Records.
Eventually, having made a fortune selling both CD players and manufacturing a large percentage of compact discs, Sony made a play for a Hollywood Studio. Although Sony had looked at most of the major studios, it happened that Columbia Pictures had the right combination of a potentially profitable film archive, a vast television library, and promising upcoming film projects.
The problem? Sony had no idea how to negotiate the deal properly, led on by typical Los Angeles entertainment tricksters, and soon had decided the only practical choice was to abandon its hopes of acquiring Columbia.
Until Morita said one evening over tea, "It's really too bad. I've always dreamed of owning a Hollywood studio."
And that was that.
Sony ended up paying an outrageous premium to acquire Columbia, only to write down billions of debt just a few years later. The same sally-forth qualities that had served Sony's founders so well at the beginning of their careers were still in play thirty years later, only now they were in control of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of employees.
There are countless examples of Ibuka and Morita's successors following in their footsteps, taking up the mantle of the brash engineer, forging ahead despite warnings of overambition or even unprofitable results, all in pursuit of a now-mythical Better Way. It's hard to blame them. Sony's founders brought fantastic success through their ideas and their tenacity, creating a corporate juggernaut big enough and diversified to withstand failures that would be catastrophic to smaller organizations.
Gadgets are not simply single-purpose electronic tools these days. They are platforms for software, for interaction, for media consumption.
I can't help but wonder if Ibuka and Morita would look at the Sony of today and see any similarity to the company they founded, a place where engineers can work in peace to create the future, or if they would realize that sometimes the dreams of engineers are best when united towards a unifying vision—a vision that must adapt to the landscape of its time.
For this piece and others, I am indebted to the authoritative work of John Nathan and his book, "Sony: The Private Life", as well as Sony's own history page which, perhaps tellingly, only goes up to 1995.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony's gearing up to take on Apple this year, with the long-awaited PSP phone and a netbook/eBook reader/PSP hybrid to fight the iPad.
There aren't extensive details available yet—including any info about pricing and specs—but we can expect to see the both the PSP phone and the PSPad sometime this year. The Sony Ericsson PSP phone, in particular, has been in the works since at least 2007, but has met with various delays since then.
As for the multifunction iPad competitor, it's not clear exactly what form that will take. Both devices, though, will leverage the media platform Sonys launching later this month. The Sony Online Service—a temporary name—is going to provide similar media content as iTunes, but will supplement its offerings with its extensive (and exclusive) catalog of PlayStation games. Mostly older games are expected to be available on the mobile devices.
The project is apparently being speared by Kunimasa Suzuki, who has an oversight role in both Sony's Vaio and PlayStation businesses. Getting previously disparate corporate divisions to work together has been a major part of CEO Howard Stringer's turnaround plan, making the PSPad an incredibly important sign of if that labor has born any fruit. Is this the Sony renaissance we've been longing for? Or will it be another in a long line of proprietary format failures? We'll find out soon, either way. [WSJ]
This world map of mobile browser usage is interesting. Some figures, like the iPhone/iPod's presence in almost every major market of the world, are not surprising. Others are funny.
Why is Nigeria owned by Opera, with 94% of the market share? Or why Blackberry is not appearing in Canada, its home country? Even the Sony PSP is beating them there, while they are the dominant platform in Australia. The world is upside down. [iCrossing]
A company called Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory has created the "Hana Sukkiri Melody" ringtone, which claims to be able to clear out your sinuses whenever anybody calls you. Ah-whaaaa?
The company claims that "the ringtone will make a nose has resonant frequency with pollens adherent inside your nasal cavity, so eventually pollens fall down." Oh, is that how things work? If so, why don't people just play the tone over and over again into their nose to clear things up rather than relegate it to ringtone status, where they're presumably expected to let the phone ring a few times while they hold it up to their nose before answering.
Luckily, JRTL has some much more sensible-sounding ringtones in the pipeline, including "sleep-promoting ringtone," "ringtone makes your date," "crow scarer ringtone," "ringtone makes your skin beautiful," and more. And I don't know about you guys, but I've been waiting years for a ringtone to get these danged crows away from me. Finally! [Asiajin via Twitter]
Once upon a time, there were these cables that got into your home and into these things that went ring-ring, with numbers and redial buttons and call waiting. The DSP Multimedia Handset is the same, with Android and a touchscreen.
It's also looks like the last twist to landline-based DECT handsets. In addition to Wi-Fi, this phone uses the Android operating system, meaning that you would be able to read your mail, surf the web, listen to music, talk with Google Voice, or use any of your favorite Android apps using its 3.5'' TFT LCD touchscreen. It even supports accelerometers, so you can play even play games. [DSP via Android Community]
Real time is the next step for Google: They're working on a standard for website publishers to hit Google with new content for indexing in seconds, a huge leap from the way Google currently crawls the web.
One way it might work is through a setup like PubSubHubbub, where a site tells a Hub there's new content, and the Hub tells subscribers when there's new content, versus having to ping the site repeatedly to check for new stuff. Google would just subscribe to feeds for sites, essentially. Beyond fundamentally adding a new dimension to Google's index, it'd help small sites, which are normally crawled far less frequently by Google than larger sites, since they could simply tell Google when they've got new stuff. The future is now, like now. [ReadWriteWeb]
Adidas miCoach is a fitness activity tracking system similar to Nike+, except it gives you more data—including heart rate information—and has a sexy voice to guide you through workouts. Yes, it costs more, but it also does more.
$140 may sound like quite a bit to spend on a fitness activity tracking system, but you are getting everything you need to get started with a running program:
I've used Nike+ in the past and I recall opening up a box to find nothing but a stride sensor and some instructions, but with miCoach there was a small pile of straps, gadgets, and cables to deal with. This might almost be sufficient to scare off new users, but the whole system fits together easily.
To start, you'll plug the pacer unit—the brains of the operation—into your computer using the included USB cord. This'll charge the device and give you a chance to get some workout plans onto it using the lil' syncing application you'll download from the miCoach website. That same application will pull your running data and update your miCoach account each time you decide to sync the device.
Setting up a miCoach account, charging the pacer unit, and getting everything synced barely takes any time. After that's all done you plug the included single-earphone into the pacer (or use your own headphones), clip the unit to your belt, attach the stride sensor to your shoelaces, wrap the heart rate monitor strap around your torso, wait for the pacer to recognize the other parts, put on some tunes, and run.
Ok, ok. It sounds like there's too much that needs to be done each time you go out for a run, but in reality it's a process that takes a few seconds. The heart rate monitor strap is quick and comfortable to put on, the stride sensor clips to your shoelaces securely, and the pacer recognizes both almost instantly.
Unlike Nike+ which integrates into specific music players, miCoach can work with any device-including my ol' Sony MD Walkman. You simply use the included male-to-male cable to connect your music player to the pacer unit and plug your headphones into that. That's it. You can hit the track now.
While running, you can use the miCoach in one of two modes: free or coaching. In the free mode, the device will simply monitor your activity and save it for later syncing. In the coaching mode it'll do that and chime in to guide you. This might sound like it'd be annoying, but there's actually a variety of almost-sexy sounding voices to choose from and they only butt in to provide the stats you need or to tell you that you're running too fast.
After you finish your run, you'll plug the Pacer into your computer using the included syncing cable. No worries about whether you've got a Mac or a PC, because there are apps for each. (Sorry *nix lovers.) For whatever reason I struggled to get my computer to recognize the Pacer the very first time I tried to sync it after a run, but didn't encounter a single issue at any point after that.
Cheesy as it sounds, Adidas got it right with their miCoach website. It's ridiculously simple to use and is designed in a way that those requiring guidance can get it, but those with a sense of familiarity can just skip to the steps they want.
If you want to use one of the workout plan, you can select and customize them through the site. I highly recommend giving those workout plans a shot, especially if you're a beginning runner—I've spent far too much time training people for a large gym chain and seeing them struggle to figure out what to do if attempting to start without set plan or schedule.
Speaking of schedules, you can view your workout calendar, track data uploaded from your Pacer, and those unfamiliar with running or in need of a refresher can get some tips and pointers.
The only thing missing from the miCoach site right now is a social aspect. I want to be able to share my workout plans and data with other users in hopes of shaming myself into keeping pace. Adidas says that such a feature is in the works though, so we'll see if I'll get my wish.
It's already tough enough to eliminate every excuse against going for a run at an ungodly hour and the last thing I need is for my activity monitor to give me one by requiring a charge just as I'm tying my sneakers. I was surprised to realize that over the weeks that I've used the miCoach system, I never needed to purposely charge the pacer unit. The specs claim that a full charge should last for about ten hours and I've certainly used the device for more than that. It seems that daily syncing maintains a good charge and that's one less hassle to deal with.
The stride sensor's battery isn't rechargeable, but—unlike the Nike+ sensor's—it is designed to be replaced. For whatever reason, opening up the battery cover proved to be a bit of a challenge, but that may have had more to do with a fear of breaking a nail than with a flaw in design.
As Goldfrapp sings, I'm in love-I'm in love-I'm in love with a strict machine. Since receiving a miCoach to review, I've tossed aside my Nike+ and used the new gadget. I've gotten more satisfaction out of my runs because of the additional data and also discovered that I wasn't pacing myself properly. It seems that the miCoach has improved my running experience and that in turn prompted me to actually get off the couch—or out of the office chair—more often. Two sneakers up.
Replaceable battery on the stride sensor (though I did struggle a bit to open the battery compartment).
It's compatible with any music player
Data. Data. And some more data. Plenty of stats are available, but none are forced down you throat.
Great battery life.
The Pacer unit can be plugged into a USB port for recharging.
Plenty of workout plans are available on the miCoach site for those who want to use them.
The system has a lot of parts and may seem overwhelming to new users. Perhaps the heart rate monitor and the Pacer unit could be combined into one piece in future versions.
No social aspect to the miCoach site (though Adidas says this will change).
[Adidas]
