Shine On, You Crazy Gadgets [Gadgets]

I spent this decade hunting for the perfect gadget. I never thought I would end up with tech as good as this. But it's not the tech that interests me the most anymore.

In 2000, I was just another kid out of college in Boston escaping to the Golden State's climate and opportunity. The perfect job didn't present itself for six long months; four months later, it burst with the bubble.

It's not important what the job was. I was fired not just because the company was eating shit but also because I spent extraordinary amounts of company time online, obsessively reading about games and gadgets. That was fate, it seems.

My toys were nothing fancy; a leftover Dell Inspiron laptop with a 266 MHz processor, maybe 256MB of RAM, and no 3D graphics; a Motorola Startac variant on T-Mobile (300 minutes, no data plan—can you imagine!—or even text messages).

I don't think I even had a portable media player, playing Napster MP3s only at home on Winamp. For video games I had a first generation PlayStation, games rented from Kosmo and copied with a CD burner, played on an Aiwa 24-inch TV that was built around a Sony Trinitron CRT tube. At the time, these were important brands.

Since then the companies that made the gadgets I loved started looking old-fashioned, following that simple-minded formula of chasing more MHz, more pixels.

Then: iPod.

And I ignored it. It was pretty but I couldn't afford one. It almost seemed stupid, since lots of other MP3 players advertised more features for less cash. I didn't own a Mac, nor did I plan to. It was white—and who wanted a white gadget? Silver was my kind of cool. Fake plastic silver, even. Anything with a metallic flake in its finish. I didn't get it, conceptually or literally.

Remember Creative? They made better stuff than Apple for less money, and I wanted one of their players. Today, I don't know if Creative even makes MP3 players. I use iTunes and Amazon.com for music buying. I bet you do, too. It took more than a few failed experiments, but a lot of us are actually buying music again.

Digital changed cameras, too.

My first digital camera was a Kodak, because Kodak was the brand for imaging even through the late '90s, before the Canon and Nikon train barreled past Rochester, leaving Kodak a ghost town. Kodak was invested in the past.

This was the decade I got into PC gaming hardware—then got out. I wasn't even that into the games, but loved slapping cheap components into tall steel Taiwanese cases, looping wires through sharp-edged bays for fans, lights, optical and hard drives.

A year into this habit, I realized I was in an pointless upgrade loop. I'd get a few more frames per second out of a new video card, but the games weren't more fun at higher frames-rates or resolutions, especially when everyone got stuck playing Counterstrike for two years straight. (I was still playing consoles, but my fervor was waning; I waited in line for a PS2 and only to collapse onto my bed with the box, too tired to open it.)

One sweltering day my PC suffered a fatal crash and lost a lot of data. That was that. I gave in to Mactardedness—and not because I loved Apple, but because I hated inconvenience. Maybe using a Mac would provoke less cursing. I even got an iPod. Slowly, my brain released its desire to tinker, and I used my rebuilt PC less and less.

I noticed Friendster. Joined. It got slow.

Joined MySpace. It got filled with junk.

Joined that Facebook thing because Nick Denton made me. Man is it ugly. I didn't log back in for a few years.

Signed up for Twitter. No one I know in real life uses this thing. Didn't sign in for a few years. I didn't get the social web, at first. Google—not other people—was my door to the internet.

Got a PS3. Turned it on for Metal Gear. Squinted at menus. It asked me to log in for its store, but there was nothing in there. Beat Metal Gear twice, turned it off. Dust looks like a matte finish on a PS3.

Got an Xbox 360. Added my friends. Liked knowing where my friends were and what they were doing. Liked killing my friends on Xbox, even though PS3 has faster, quieter, nicer hardware. I guess I am not as anti-social as I thought—as long as being social involves assassination. (Twitter would be better if you could use it to murder your friends.)

Bought HD-DVD. Blu-ray won the battle the last physical media format ever. Now I just subscribe to 15 different movie services. (Wait, is that better?)

Ten years ago, Dell was shaking things up because it sold through the internet for cheap. Now they're shrinking. You can't tell the difference between an Inspiron or Latitude or XPS with a 15-inch screen. People who shop for computers now often look to Apple simply because it's easier to pick a size—small, medium, or large—and then pick the expensive or the cheaper version. (Do you want fries with that?) Dell's branding and model line up is an American heartland clusterfuck.

Sony stopped cooking up so many proprietary—often imaginary—formats, but only because they'd lost. The company that made the Walkman now makes iPod docks. Sony's hardware continues to be fantastic, but does it matter? They're the only gadget company with a music label and movie studio. Can anyone name the Sony iTunes alternative? Does anyone talk to their friends about their love for the TX-1234xZR? Or its cousin without Bluetooth, the TX-1234xZRnbt? Or the TX-1234xZRnbt2xz with an extra 2X zoom? Sony's branding and model line up is a Japanese megacorp clusterfuck.

For an all-too-brief moment, T-mobile was hip because they were cheap, had a phone called the Hiptop, and Catherine Zeta Jones was hotter than Ma Bell. You could get your problems taken care of in one call. Also: pink logo. Then we all got phones capable of doing real things that needed real pipes. AT&T was convinced by Apple to do some cheap flat rate thing on that iPhone. Sorry TMO.

Apple came back. It was Steve, a man who lost the first round 20 years ago and came back to fight the mobile war with all the old lessons from the PC war in pocket. Design, manufacturing, sourcing of components, marketing and maybe most importantly, software. He had almost everything under control. They went Intel, declaring that hardware wasn't the thing that defined a better computer.

And, this little thing called iPhone. We had an email debate at Gizmodo about calling this decade the "iDecade". Naming a decade after a gadget, no matter how great it is, makes me want to vomit. So does calling the iPhone the gadget of the year. It just seems too easy, too cliche.

But it was the one. It has been the culmination of decades of development across countless industries, all coming together into a single little slab of near-perfection. After a decade filled with so many aborted, ill-conceived clones and ideas tuned more for profit than progress, the iPhone was a rare gem. Just because it's obvious doesn't make it less true.

For years, the received wisdom was that specialized devices would always continue to progress at a rate that made all-in-one devices poor solutions.

Here are the things replaced by my iPhone: Mapping and GPS; point-and-shoot camera; Flip camcorder; Game Boy; calculator (okay, I didn't carry this around ever); calendar; organizer; any book-of-the-moment; phone; Playboy; newspaper; notebook; voice recorder; iPod; video player (can you believe this was a whole gadget category just three years ago?); weatherman; TV; wrist watch; radio; alarm clock; compass; pedometer; musical instrument; Bible, medical journals, dictionary, any reference book. Sometimes, even my laptop. Put together enough "good enough" solutions, it turns out, and they begin to outweigh even the specialized devices.

Thank goodness it's looking like it's not going to just be the iPhone. (Although credit where it's due; Apple pushed the whole industry forward by five years, easily, if judged by the rate the rest of the industry was moving.) Whether Android, Palm, maybe even Windows Mobile if Microsoft really buckles down, little portable internet computers with an ever-expanding array of senses we have (save taste/smell, but just wait) and little applications that make them more and more useful, are finally pushing gadgetry forward in ways we never fully expected.

None of this happened randomly. Those who ended up on top had luck and timing and resources. But why they came out ahead was predicated by several things, naturally highlighted in hindsight.

The four rings of gadgetdom in the 2000s were design, the social internet, powerful but inexpensive hardware, and a real software ecosystem.

Only five companies have a shot at nailing the home, mobile and work hat trick, from software and hardware to internet: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony and Samsung. They're all failing in some way. Apple's cloud services are a joke. Sony can still make great hardware but have no idea how people want to use it. Samsung can't write code. With Android, Google can't figure out if they want to be Microsoft or Apple. Counterintuitive as it may seem, I think Microsoft has a real shot at winning the next decade, if they listen to their entertainment group who have figured out how to do a platform right.

Little companies don't really have a shot at this level of unified, do-all gadget greatness. The age of the garage hardware start-up belongs to the web generation, not the next generation of gadget makers. Smartphones have become analogous to PCs of the '90s. There's little room for a new PC platform to come online, but a vast potential space for start-ups to use the big platforms as a springboard with new accessories and software.

Gizmodo has undergone fundamental changes in the last few years. It's really hard to get excited about copy cat hardware made from the same underlying chips and parts, often in the same factory. Any blog that covers press release after press release indiscriminately is doing readers a serious disservice instead of focusing on what makes a real difference to gadgetry: content, social context and applications. What gets us excited are evolving operating systems that pump the hardware full of new life and devices that continuously inhale new movies, music, and messages from friends through the internet.

Right now, I'm in Japan. It's already 2010. When I look ahead at this year, it's easy to see why the anticipation for tablets is boiling over, even though the idea of tablets, like smartphones five years ago, is perhaps old hat. Now that we've seen what happens when companies really nail a unified smartphone, we're projecting our hopes on the generation of tablets to come.

The best tech, as it approaches a zenith of purpose and polish, becomes invisible. It gets out of the way of the user, becomes just a portal to...stuff. One does not give much thought to a faucet as long as it provides water. Finally, at the end of this decade, we've had a taste of what it's like when network capability, slick software, sensors and—most importantly—content and communication come together in such tiny, shrinking hardware.

It's not shiny things that captivate me anymore; it's what they shine.



How Many Times Have You Broken Your Phone During Your Two-Year Contract? [Qotd]

When thinking about the cost of a cellphone, we consider the phone itself and any service plans, but what about the price of misuse? How often are we finding ourselves paying an unsubsidized price to replace phones under contract?

It's just so easy to damage a phone. It slips out of your hand and crashes to the ground, gets knocked into a sink, thrown into the wash, and abused in who-knows-what other ways. The lousy part is that when you need to replace your precious gadget in the midst of a one-two-three year agreement, you're very likely to find yourself paying full retail price.

It's miserable, but it happens to even the best of us.

What we want though, is for you to 'fess up. Tell us how often you've been in this costly situation during your last two-year agreement and whether it's affected any of your buying decisions. [Thanks to Shooter for this QOTD idea!]



Mysterious Lunar Base Hole Explained [Space]

"We discovered a vertical hole on the moon," says JAXA's Junichi Haruyama. A mysterious tube so large and deep that it can shelter a future moon base. Until the creatures inside kill everyone, which is what happens in these cases.

Before, they didn't know what the hole's origin was. Now they have a theory: According to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, the vertical cave—"213 feet (65 meters) across and some 262 to 289 feet deep (80-88 meters)"—may be a collapsed lava tube, which could provide a perfect shelter for a future moon base:

Lava tubes, underground cave-like channels through which lava once flowed, are commonly found on Earth. Because lava tubes are sheltered from the harsh environment on the moon's surface, such tubes could one day be useful for lunar bases.

Their theory is that the flowing lava left the tunnel a long time ago, with a lava roof that later collapsed.

I'm reading their report and only two things come to my mind. One, the awesome lunar base in Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Two, a sci-fi horror movie flick directed by Roger Corman, in which the moon base is invaded by slimy aliens, pissed off because the humans built their base on top of the entrance of their hidden colony. Based on real events, of course.

OK, maybe I have three things in mind, because now I can see Sybil Danning there too, as the queen in "Amazon Women on the Moon." No hole connection there, though. Or maybe there is. I don't know. Whatever. Leave me alone. I'm drunk.

[Space]



2010 — The Year of Cleaning Up the Air

In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We’re the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We’ve taken that to be a virtue, but it’s as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.
— Bill McKibben

Cars, cars everywhere

That’s a quote from an interview with activist and author Bill McKibben.  He’s right about cheap fossil fuels, and the erosion has not just been social. It’s also been an erosion of our healthy atmosphere. The cheaper gas became, the more people drove, flew in planes, turned on the air conditioning and cranked up the heat.  When something is cheap, people obviously feel they can use more of it.  Cheap indicates plentiful, even if it’s not true.  If gasoline and jet fuel were much more expensive (and they will be some day soon anyway) via a tax, it would seem a very bad idea to waste it.  Obviously, wasting non-renewable resources is a bad idea to begin with.

Raising the price of gasoline and all fossil fuels is a no-brainer way to reduce their use.  Taxing gasoline would be a simple way to reduce the use of it and we’ll probably see that start to happen in 2010, or 2011, as the EPA cuts down on emissions from all sources as they are expected to under the Clean Air Act. As with reducing cigarette smoke in public places, this will also improve air quality and public health!  (And Republicans should love this idea, because improving public habits to improve health is their health reform plan.)  Actually, some Republicans do like the idea quite a bit.  Republican Dick Lugar, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a Republican from Indiana, and wrote this for the Washington Post:  Raise the gas tax, a revenue-neutral way to treat our oil addiction. He wrote:

“A gasoline tax is transparent, easy to administer and targeted at the one sector that burns most of our oil. We know it would cut imports. When gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon last year, Americans chose to use less, leading to a major drop in gasoline consumption. The gains from accurately priced gasoline would grow as Americans demanded more fuel-efficient vehicles, chose non-petroleum alternatives to power them and found public transit options that work. Pricing gasoline to reflect its true cost to the nation would help spur a vast market in which oil alternatives such as advanced biofuels would become competitive and innovation would flourish.”

He’s absolutely right.  Taxing coal, natural gas, and putting a price on all carbon will be the next logical steps.

Solar EVC

It makes sense to focus heavily on cars,  since nearly everyone in the U.S. drives personal vehicles, and much more than in other countries. We could easily cut emissions by taxing gasoline more, and that could lead to more money for states [...]

Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference Update

List of Speakers Announced for the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in February, Commercial Spaceflight Federation

"Astronauts, researchers, educators, senior government officials including the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, Dr. Pete Worden, and the head of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Dr. George Nield, and representatives from commercial space companies and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, will be among the speakers at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference on February 18-20, 2010."

Apple Refuses To Send Stolen iPhone Back To Rightful Owner After Repair [Crime]

When your stuff gets stolen, FILL OUT A POLICE REPORT. Consumerist reader Alisa is figuring this out the hard way after Apple received her stolen phone for repair. Even though it's clearly hers, they refuse to return it.

I got robbed on the subway in Brooklyn about 2 weeks ago, my iPhone (and some other crap)was taken. I called the police who were very helpful , they searched the area for a little bit, follow protocol and all that fun stuff.

Anyways, fast forward to yesterday when I get a email from Apple that someone had filed a request for a replacement phone due to a software malfunction from Apple CareService. I suspected that since I made an appointment with an Apple genius before, the Serial number on the phone was associated with my email. I called Apple to confirm this, after Apple and AT&T transferred me back and forth a few times I had the confirmation from the two companies the phone was mine , I had the address the service request was coming from (in the email) and a phone number (from an Apple rep).

I'm so excited that I can get my phone back! Until the cops arrive at my house, they tell me that since I didn't file a police report they can't do anything. I didn't file it because in order to file one, I would have had to go to a precinct downtown (like an hour away) look through books of pictures to try to ID the thief, whose face I only saw from the side for a millisecond. And really, what would a police report do for an iPhone that was stolen on a NYC subway a week before Christmas?(plus i had a final that night) The two officers also told me that even if I had a police report it would still be up to Apple and AT&T to decide how to proceed with the situation.

So I call AT&T... and over the course of 12 hours I speak to a bunch of people who are all very sorry that this is the situation I'm in, but their hands are tied — they have to honor the warranty and it does not matter that it's clear the phone is mine. They would need the authorities to tell them to do otherwise.

So I head to the police precinct where an officer calls the rep I spoke to last (aka the authorities speaking to Apple). The officer spends about an hour on the phone with Apple telling them that once the current holder of the phone ships the phone back to Apple, they should ship me the replacement. He gets the same answer I got—they will not do anything, they do not care that the person who has the phone currently is using a stolen phone and is not using it with AT&T (AT&T confirmed the phone # I got from the Apple rep is NOT an AT&T number).

It's not even about the phone anymore (I bought a blackberry—$600 is a TAD ridiculous for a new iPhone) its the principle of the situation, basically Apple is siding with someone who will most likely jailbreak the phone as opposed to helping a loyal customer (I've been using Apple products forever—iPods, Macs and iPhones (since the first gen)) who legally bought the phone from Apple and is using it with AT&T.

The whole situation is just illogical to me.

Yeah, illogical is a good word. Absurd is another. Does anyone out there know if this is purely about not filing a police report, or is there some other reason why Apple is being such a dick about this? [Consumerist]



Wireless N Support in Next Gen iPhone Implied by Apple Job Posting [Unconfirmed]

After the iPhone 3.0 firmware update, we wondered whether the the next gen iPhone would bring a new chip with support for 802.11n. Now a job posting on Apple's website is feeding that theory.

We've already seen that the newest iPod Touch has a Broadcom BCM4329 chip with support for 802.11n and FM transmission—something missing in our most recent iPhone generation—but we've also learned that the hardware is dormant, perhaps to be brought to life by later additions in software support.

A recent Apple job posting teases that such software support might come soon along with some kind of upgrade allowing for 802.11n capabilities in the next gen iPhone, because it's asking for a Wi-Fi software engineer to join the iPhone team and bring experience in:

• Implementation of 802.11 a/b/g/n & related specifications.
• 802.11i/802.1x Security protocols
• Good understanding of wireless RF technologies & co-existence issues of 802.11 PHYs with other Wireless interfaces like Bluetooth.

Ooh la la. Yes, it's just a job posting and pure speculation regarding what we'll see in the next generation of iPhones, but addition of Wireless N capabilities and support are a logical addition and seem rather likely.[AppleThanks, A!]



Five Things to Watch in the New Year

Credit: NASA

Well first off I hope everybody had a good year and 2010 is even better.

Here’s my list of five things to watch for in the new year:

1.  Hubble’s new camera.  The servicing mission is complete and Hubble is in fine form.  Hat’s off to everybody involved.  We have only seen the beginning of the great things to come.

2.  Sunspots!  Finally it appears the new sunspot cycle 24 is finally getting going much to the delight of ham radio operators everywhere.  YAY!  I am hoping (not predicting) the increase in solar activity is rather rapid, although the “predictions” seem to indicate the peak will be somewhat muted.  Still, think auroras!

3.  WISE.  The WISE spacecraft jettisoned the lens cap just the other day and very soon it will be starting to survey the sky.

4.  Oh the conspiracy theorists are going to go nuts!  Heck they’ve already started.  You may have heard the story about the Russians thinking about a mission to see if they can bump the asteroid Apophis into a different orbit, EVEN though NASA says chances of it hitting in 2036 is slim after downgrading the initial 1 in 37 initial chance.  I heard a Discovery.com rep saying well they are just really sensitive because of the Tunguska event and a lot of the ground track is in Russia.  However I read today a comment to an article on SOTT, go read it and decide for yourself, but be sure to read the comment at the end.

5.    Finally, after losing my beloved Phoenix this past year, I was lucky enough to get a commitment from a breeder for a new puppy this coming year.  A puppy is a lot of work, but I’m up for it, and this isn’t just any dog.  Both parents and both sets of grandparents are either American or European Champion/Grand Champion working dogs.  What? A  Doberman of course :-D

I’m working this weekend, but you all  have a great holiday and STAY SAFE!!

Laptops in the Year 2000 Were the Smartphones of Today [Decades]

Now I want you to close your eyes and squint really hard. Because I'm going to tell you about a time that feels ancient, a time when Sony made some of the baddest laptops around.

Way before the internet made the idea plausible, Sony was ripping optical drives out of laptops to make them as portable as possible. One such computer, the $1,500 Sony VAIO PCG-SRX99 (circa 2001), weighed just 2.76lbs and made do with a 10-inch screen.

Inside, it had plenty of power, an 850MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB of RAM, and 802.11b for wireless networking (if you could find a wireless network, that is). Plus it had 20GB of storage, FireWire and even one USB port.

(I'd mention that it ran XP, but that part is a bit too familiar for nostalgic comfort.)

Today, the closest analog to the PCG-SRX99 is a netbook. For about $300 and a weight just shy of 3lbs, you can score a system that, from the outside, is remarkably similar. And on the inside, its clock speed has about doubled, plus there's anywhere between 4x and 8x the amount of RAM and storage.

But if you were willing to look a bit beyond skin deep, I'd argue that the contemporary smartphone is more similar to the PCG-SRX99 than the netbooks of today. Take the iPhone 3GS. In terms of sheer tech specs, it's pretty much a midrange smartphone...and it's about identical to our retro Vaio.

The 3GS has a 600MHz processor and an identical amount of RAM to the PCG-SRX99—256MB. And it holds anywhere from 16 to 32GB in flash storage. Amenities like Wi-Fi (faster 802.11g). Turn to a company like HTC, and you can double the RAM while including a processor as fast as 1GHz.

Still, while Sony's Vaio PCG-SRX99 couldn't fit in our pocket, we've championed its form in an entire wave of cheap, portable computers today. Oh, and that whole ditching the optical drive idea? Sony spotted that trend a mile away. [Product Page and Review]



Art, Meet Science | Cosmic Variance

Apologies for the dismal lack of blogging — apparently even scientists travel around the holidays, who knew? I’m in South Carolina at the moment, so instead of the well-constructed argument (complete with witty parenthetical asides) on a pressing issue of the moment that I’d love to provide, please accept this simple link to some sketches by Richard Feynman. (Via Chad Orzel, author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.)

Feynman’s fondness for drawing is well-known, especially when the subject was naked ladies. The sketches aren’t going to win any art competitions, but they’re certainly better that I could do. And here’s one I bet very few professional artists could pull off:

feynmanart302

I find that the subtle use of integration by parts really speaks of man’s inhumanity to man, don’t you agree?

But my favorite recent example of science-inflected art has to be this newly discovered late-period Jackson Pollock:

4197084632_4e80dcb84b_o

Oops, sorry; that’s not an abstract expressionist masterpiece at all. It’s a plot of theoretical predictions and experimental constraints for dark matter, as linked by Brian Mingus in comments. Check out dmtools if you’d like to make your own plot. Science and art are for everyone.


Thorium, the Next Uranium [Science]

Wired has a fairly epic look into a material that could make nuclear power both clean and safe called thorium—named after the Norse god of thunder. Of course, scientists recognized its promise back in the 1950s.

Whereas uranium is extremely rare, requires purification and creates waste that will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years, thorium is extremely common, burns more efficiently in reactors and leaves less, less radioactive waste (that can't be turned into a nuke).

In fact, if it weren't for the Soviet Union building uranium reactors in the 60s (and us responding in typical Cold War fashion), we'd probably be using thorium today.

But as Wired explains, thorium may be poised for a comeback. [Wired and Image]



Year End Statement

Thank you for your continued support and interest in ItalianFuturism.org.  Your scholarship and enthusiasm has made this year’s centenary celebrations a success.

Capitalizing on this year’s momentum, I look forward to providing you with up-to-the-minute information in the new year.

?

Grazie per il vostro continuo sostegno e interesse per ItalianFuturism.org. La vostri studi e l’entusiasmo ha reso le celebrazioni del centenario di quest’anno un successo.

Capitalizzando sulla moto di quest’anno, sono lieti di fornirle con informazioni aggiornate nel nuovo anno.

AUGURI,

Jessica Palmieri

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