Cybiko: "Make for Happy Best Time!!!!" [Y2k10]

Posted on by

Oh oh Cybiko! Presumably born of an illicit union between a walkie-talkie and a Palm Pilot, this 2000-era gadget was for kids who wanted to send messages to nearby friends. But could it also make men erect and cows flatulent?

The Cybiko, which was introduced in 2000, was an antenna'd handheld gadget could send messages via radio waves to other device-users within a 300-meter radius. Ha ha ha: Why would anyone want to send a non-verbal message to someone so darn close to them? That would be, like, IM-ing someone who sat near me in an office. Ridiculous. I almost never do that. Twice a day, tops.

In the UK and the US, the Cybiko was marketed as a kind of Baby's First PDA: In addition to using it to chat with nearby friends, it could be used to play games or as a calculator and to have what promised to be an uncontrollable amount of fun. It seems that in Asia, however, the market was slightly older. Japanese users were promised a little bit more than just fun: Namely, the ability to make cows fart out words, pop hands out of men's heart boxers, and, overall, have yourself a "happy best time." 

Anna Jane Grossman has joined us for a few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.



Nerds Win: Nexus One Rooted Before It’s Even Officially Unveiled [Nexus One]

Posted on by

Even more impressive than the Droid's quick rooting, the Nexus One has been conquered from the inside before Google has even officially announced it.

The guy behind the rooting, a Modaco forum-goer named Paul, successfully rooted the coveted Nexus One and made a custom ROM called Superboot to ease the method for everyone else—not that all that many people can take advantage of it, seeing as how we're still a week away from the phone even being unveiled. This could be good for the Nexus One, given that some signs have been pointing to tighter Google control over the device—but we'll have to wait to try it out until its release. [RedmondPie]



First Cat-to-Human Paw Transplant Deemed a Complete Success [Thanko]

Posted on by

TOKYO (AP) - After several decades of gruesome failures, Japanese researchers have successfully transplanted a kitten's paws to a human body. The test subject, a 29 year old model for Thanko, a gadget seller, has a new lease on life.

"For years I lived with a wretched handicap," [name withheld] explained. "My hands were human-like and only a little bit cute, which is a tough thing for a model."

After fifteen years of transplant lists, fundraisers and miracle cures, she'd almost given up. Then researchers from Tokyo University of Science called and said they'd nearly perfected a new technique of removing a non-anesthetized kitten's paws with a rusty hacksaw and gluing them to the patient's wrists.

"The news was a Godsend," she said.

Given the slightest surgical mistake, a small, defenseless kitten would bleed to death quite slowly and painfully on the operating table. The human subject, however, would be completely unharmed, resting peacefully unaware of any blood or shrieking.

"Let's just say it's good that a humane society leases the space next door," said one scientist. "A really, really big humane society just filled to the brim with unloved strays."

As for the young model, she woke from surgery with a slight hand ache requiring nothing more than a prescription for a minor anti-inflammatory. And according to her official press statement, she couldn't be more pleased:

"Now my hands are very cute!" [Thanko via CrunchGear]



Reinventing the MacBook Air [Apple]

Posted on by

How will Apple redesign the ultraslim, seminal MacBook Air that launched dozens of me-too ultraportable laptops? Only Apple knows. But here are some gratuitous musings anyway.

In a previous post, I said I wouldn't hazard any guesses on what Apple may do with the MacBook Air. And I won't. That doesn't stop me from looking at the most recent ultrathin laptop competition to see where Apple might be able to improve the design that turns two years old in January.

Enclosure

This will be a tough act to follow. The original design was good enough that Apple didn't change it for gen 2—aka Rev. B—of the Air. And the aluminum enclosure was a trendsetter, which all MacBook Pros (and other PC makers) eventually copied.

But that doesn't mean the Air is perfect. The razor-thin slab of aluminum provides little room for ports and connectors. (Apple's implementation is a flip-out set of USB, Mini DisplayPort, audio ports that retract back into the body.)

A design modification that the Dell Adamo uses (some say retrogressed to) was putting the ports on the back (behind the screen). This allows Dell to offer a fuller array of connectors.

Hewlett-Packard, for its part, went another route: it just made its Envy 13 slightly thicker (at 0.8 inches) than the Air, allowing a couple more connectors (a second USB port and an SD card slot). HP also molded the base of the Envy in magnesium, which makes it lighter, according to HP.

Then there's just-announced Dell Adamo XPS. This is even thinner than the MacBook Air and puts the CPU-complex-plus-circuit-board (aka motherboard) behind the screen, not underneath the keyboard—standard design practice for all laptops.

Of course, there's the recurring rumor that Apple is looking at different materials to make it even lighter while maintaining its famous sturdiness. This could potentially be a combination of aluminum and something like carbon fiber. (Though, as stated above, HP claims that magnesium is the way to go.)

Other possibilities: make one model bigger (wider), a la the Dell Latitude Z, which offers a 16-inch 1600x900 WLED Display and at its thickest point is only 0.79 inches.

Or make it smaller. The Sony Vaio X is a great example of how light (1.6 pounds) and thin (0.55 inches) a premium laptop (technically it's a Netbook) can be.

Tablet? There is the remote possibility that a version of the Air becomes a tablet. And that would mean potentially a new enclosure and new silicon.

Graphics

The second feature I'll touch on is graphics. A good graphics chip is tough to squeeze into ultrathin designs and this a major feature that set the Air apart from other slim designs, which use the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD.

Apple, with the Rev. B of the Air, introduced Nvidia 9400M (aka, Ion) graphics silicon. This delivered decent performance and actually made the Air run cooler (I know, I've used both the original Air and Rev. B extensively.)

Let's be clear—the graphics on the original Air was poor. And the source of many gripes about the original design (which proves how important the graphics chip is now). Apple chose to go with Intel's X3100 graphics (they didn't have much a choice in 2007, when design decisions were made), which superheated the bottom of the unit when watching video. My Air would get so hot that I would have to place a large, flat picture book (in effect, a crude heat sink), between my lap and the MacBook Air.

So, what's next after the Nvidia graphics in Rev. B of the Air? There's Nvidia's upcoming Ion 2 graphics, which is still a mystery. I even queried an Nvidia executive about this recently in an interview, but mum's the word. I have confidence that Nvidia will deliver a solid solution that offers an optimal balance between power efficiency and performance.

Nvidia also offers the GeForce G 105M, which is used, for example, in the HP dm3t consumer ultrathin laptop.

Then there's the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics chip, which Advanced Micro Devices describes as a "thin and light mobile graphics processor...delivering unprecedented performance-per-watt...while watching Blu-ray movies." (The Blu-ray aspect may be overkill for an ultrathin, especially in the case of the Apple, which does not offer Blu-ray drives in its MacBook line.)

This ATI chip has already found its way into an HP ultrathin laptop.

I won't dive into processors here. Suffice to say that Intel continues to expand its variety of low-voltage (e.g., SL9600) and ultra-low-voltage processors (SU9600). Maybe more enticingly, Intel will bring out low-power versions of the Core i series of mobile processors next year. Probably sooner rather than later. This is likely what Apple is targeting for any major revamp of the Air.

This story originally appeared on CNET



The iPhone Really Deserves Some Better Porn Apps [IPhone Apps]

Posted on by

The App Store is oozing with sleaze; sex-themed apps are everywhere. But here's the thing: these "porn" apps are always terrible. Here are some of the worst, and how to fix this, the most important problem in the world.

First, here are a few of the worst, collected by Intern Kyle and myself. It's a list of disappointment, of broken promises, and most importantly, of no nudity.

Of course, you can pick up your iPhone right now and go to a porn site. It's a smartphone. It has the internet. Some sites even have iPhone-optimized video streaming and navigation, because apparently, just like on every other device that's been connected to the internet, people use their smartphone for porn. This is an inevitability.

And Apple has a ratings system in the App Store. It has a 17+ rating, for apps with violent, crude or sexual content—or app that have a browser function, which could be used to access objectionable content. Most of the apps above are 17+, which means that if parents so choose, they can block their iPhone-having children from even being able to download them. It follows that they could do the same for 18+ apps, so why haven't they?

I can understand Apple not wanting to get into the porn business, which, by taking 30% of developers' revenue, I guess they would sort of be doing. But the current setup just doesn't make any sense. You can buy an app with a built-in browser, which can access the most horrible smut on the web, and get a 17+ rating. But if you link said app to one of those sites, and disable general browsing, suddenly it's verboten. Again, I can understand how we ended up here, but the results, as you've seen, are depressing.

It's fair to say that most people just assume there are porn apps, when there really aren't. But there are hundreds of apps that look like porn apps, cost money, and that are, effectively, bait-and-switch scams. Apple can fix this in two ways: they can open the floodgates and just let people have their real porn apps, which would effectively kill these in-between semi-porn apps, or they can revise how the App Store works: by instituting a 24-hour open return policy for paid apps, like the Android Market has, people would simply return these worthless apps, and developers, now unable to trick people into giving them boner money, would stop making them. They would tumble down the rankings and into oblivion.

Anyway, no matter what Apple does, people will continue to look at photos of naked humans on their iPhones. It may make the company squirm, but there's no reason to pretend it's not happening, and to let scammers screw up the App Store more than they already have. So do something, Apple! The fate of the world depends on it, a little!



MARIAN IS BACK!

Posted on by

Cheers, all.  I know you missed me… admit it.  Sorry for the sudden abandonment, but hopefully life has returned to normal for me.   I believe I owe Dwight a post about planetary development.  So without further ado:

The most generally accepted theory on planetary development is that they come together through accretion of matter.  That’s when particles “stick together” due to the forces of gravity.  This works for gas giants, also, in that the gas particles come together through gravity, and as the matter builds up, the particles in the center of the mass are compressed closer and closer together.

The formation of planets, and indeed solar systems, is cyclical in nature.  It all starts with a star.

Close Up of Ancient, White Dwarf Stars in the Milky Way Galaxy
Credit:  Hubble/NASA  Ancient white-dwarf stars in the Milky Way
..

As a star ages, it burns up its primary fuel source through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium.  Fusion is the joining together of atoms to form “heavier” matter.  This is different from what happens in nuclear fission (as in atomic bombs), where heavier matter is blasted apart.  Okay, as the star ages, it begins to “burn” (fuse) the heavier fuel; helium to carbon to neon to oxygen to silicon to iron (if I remember the sequence correctly).  This is the process by which all the elements are created, in the burning furnace of stars.

At the end of a star’s life, it will blow off the elements in many spectacular ways, creating a “cloud” of matter, sometimes several hundred light years across.
A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula
Hubble/NASA  Crab Nebula Supernova remnant
..
This is believed to be the most powerful, catastrophic event in nature.  What can compete with the complete destruction of a star?  The shock-wave of a supernova, besides throwing out all the elements needed for absolutely everything else, also triggers the birth of new stars.

We’ll save stellar evolution for another post.  Just trust me here, they do form.  Once the forming star reaches the point of stellar ignition (which must be absolutely spectacular to watch), the shock of ignition blows matter out away from it, forming the spatial relationship of and within the protoplanetary disc, or proplyd, which is all the matter left over.  The matter begins to clump together.

Lather; rinse; repeat.
File:M42proplyds.jpg
Hubble/NASA (of course) Orion Nebula showing M42 Proplyds
..
Now, why are they arranged the way they are?  Why didn’t Jupiter form where Mercury is located?  That’s easy…

It couldn’t.

No way.  It would have been blown apart by the stellar wind before it ever got massive enough to hold its gasses together.  We now know that hot Jupiters are there because they spiral inward toward the sun after they have already become so massive as to withstand the force of the solar wind.  Some of them can even hold on to their atmospheres, at least for a while, but they’re being blown off at an enormous rate.  Just think a moment about how powerful a star really is.  Don’t think so?  You go stand outside for a few hours in the summer without protection, then come explain to me how you didn’t just get partially cooked by something burning over 93 million miles away from you.

Planets don’t actually form as “twins”, they just seem so similar because of their location.  We don’t sit next to a gas giant because it couldn’t have formed, and by the time one gets to this location, we’ll be long gone.

And I don’t want anyone to come up with a rocky core to a gas giant.  That’s not a gas giant.  That’s a small rocky planet with a very thick atmosphere.

Thanks for the fun, Dwight.

Will Glowing Wallpaper Make Light Bulbs Obsolete? | Discoblog

Posted on by

cfl-bulb-webFor those tired of changing light bulbs, we’ve got some good news. A light-emitting wallpaper may replace light bulbs as soon as 2012, according to The Times:

A chemical coating on the walls will illuminate all parts of the room with an even glow, which mimics sunlight and avoids the shadows and glare of conventional bulbs.

Apply a low voltage current to the wallpaper and bam!—no more light bulbs. The organic LED wallpaper, under development by the Welsh company Lomax, will be at least twice as efficient as current energy saving bulbs. And no, the glowing wallpaper will not create an electric fence in your living room—Lomax says their electric wallpaper will be safe to touch.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Suits Revolting: Bangladesh PM Bans Suits, Ties to Conserve Energy
Discoblog: Color-Changing Solar Tiles Will Blow Your Mind, Heat Your House
Discoblog: Monitor Your Daily Energy Use With Google’s PowerMeter

Image: flickr / nodomain1


Well, you can forget gingko biloba | Bad Astronomy

Posted on by

I’m not too surprised to find out that a rigorous scientific test of gingko biloba found that it did not have the effects claimed by alt-med enthusiasts, including helping memory retention. Just speaking statistically, knowing the sheer number of claims made by people using "alternative" medicines, the vast majority of them are bound to actually not be true. Almost without exception, these kinds of claims are anecdotal in nature, which is unreliable. We need properly-handled blinded medical studies to find out the real nature of these claims, and this one, unfortunately, has not panned out.

I don’t expect this to have any impact whatsoever on either the sales of gingko biloba or the way it’s advertised, of course. In general, the practice of alt-med as it is presented to the public is not based in scientific analysis of evidence, so it doesn’t matter how much evidence is provided that shows that a particular claim is false.

That doesn’t mean we in the reality-based world want these tests to fail. My favorite part in the article is this:

The study finding is “disappointing news,” says Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the study’s senior author. The only positive thing the researchers found is that ginkgo appears to be safe, he says.

DeKosky is dean of a prestigious medical school, and says he’s disappointed. Of course he is. Despite what a lot of the alt-medders (and antivaxxers) say, doctors really do want what’s best for their patients. If gingko had panned out, then that would be another weapon in doctors’ arsenals to make us healthier, and make us healthier for longer in our lives. But it didn’t work, so he was disappointed.

Those of us skeptical of these alternatives to modern medicine don’t want these things to fail. We already know that some mainstream medicines are based on what could once have been called herbal medicines — aspirin is the obvious example, originally made from willow bark — so we know better than to dismiss these potential additions to medicine out of hand.

What we do dismiss are anecdotes provided as evidence, or used to make claims that aren’t warranted from the evidence. All those anecdotes are is a place to start investigating the evidence for a potential medicine, not evidence in and of themselves.

Tip o’ the gingko berry to Fark.


Shooting Challenge: Happy New Year! [Shooting Challenge]

Posted on by

We've made it this far through soul-sucking winter, so it's time to celebrate. This week's Shooting Challenge is simple: "Happy New Year" is the theme. And I need your participation!

Last week, we had to can the results because only 3 photos were entered into the contest. 3! (The week before, we had almost 60.) So once again, please help me keep this section going strong—nothing makes me happier than seeing Gizmodo transition to cover not just press releases for gadgets, but the artistic products that said gadgets actually help produce.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.
5. Include 800px image AND something wallpaper sized in email.

Send your best entries by Sunday at 6PM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Happy New Year" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide and larger, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email. [Photo by Bubba Trout]



Do-It-Yourself PC Builder’s Guide: How Cheap Is Too Cheap? [DIY]

Posted on by

We asked Maximum PC's Will Smith to describe the cheapest PC you can build, and he said he'd do it, if only to talk you out of spending so little. Here's what you gain, and lose, by going ultra cheap.

Over at Maximum PC, we just posted a guide that show's you everything you need to know to build the cheapest PC I'd recommend to anyone for use as his or her main PC. It's a surprisingly beefy machine, capable of playing games, ripping DVDs, editing video and photos, and playing 1080p video with nary a dropped frame. For a mere $647, we managed to pack a quad-core CPU, a great video card, 4GB of memory, and Windows 7 Home Premium into a surprisingly fashionable mid-tower. However, if you don't need as well-rounded a general purpose PC, you can go cheaper, especially if you're willing to make some sacrifices. Let's take a look at the parts we used, and then we'll start making cuts.

Let's look at the price chart. If you're not a gamer and aren't using one of the handful of applications that's accelerated by general-purpose GPU-based computing, then there's no good reason to spend 25% of your budget on a videocard that will lie fallow for most everything you do. The Gigabyte motherboard sports integrated graphics that will do everything you need to do, including hardware accelerated decode for video playback. Pulling the videocard brings our total cost down below $500, to $481. Not too shabby, but we can save even more.

If you're not going to be running tons of apps, editing photos, or encoding videos, that quad-core is massive overkill. To save a few bucks, we're going to replace that quad-core Athlon II with a single-core Sempron LE-1250. It costs less than a Blu-ray disc at Best Buy, a mere $32. Unfortunately, that still doesn't get us below $400, so we need to dig deeper.

Since you ditched the quad core CPU, your PC won't be up to running many applications at once, so we can cut back on memory. You can buy a generic 1GB stick for $22 at Newegg, which is the minimum requirement for Windows 7.

Since you won't be creating content, there's absolutely no reason to spend big bucks on a massive 500GB hard drive. In fact, you could probably even get by installing Windows on a decent-sized flash drive, but that's more expensive than what we have in mind. It's tough to beat a more-than-adequate 80GB drive for a mere $35. Oh, and while we're at it, you should ditch the optical drive. Odds are, you won't need it for anything after you set up your machine, and it's easier and faster to install Windows from thumbdrive (which you probably already have anyway).

After more than halving the price of our PC, Windows is looking mighty expensive. At $105, the OEM edition of Windows Home Premium is more than a third of the total cost of this machine. It's time to start thinking about Ubuntu, which will get our total price down to a cool $200. But wait, we can go even cheaper.

If you're just going to browse the web on this machine, why spend money on a real CPU? A Foxconn Atom motherboard that comes with the CPU costs a few bucks less than our AMD motherboard alone, so it's time to trim the fat, yet again. Sure, we could spend a few bucks more and get the same CPU in a motherboard equipped with Nvidia's Ion chipset, but EVERYTHING MUST GO!

For a machine with power requirements this meager, there's absolutely no reason to spend 20% of our budget on a quality power supply. Instead, let's get a case that includes an integrated power supply. It may not be reliable, but it sure is cheap!

Now, I'm reasonably certain that there's no way to build a cheaper machine. The only bad news? You just built a nettop.

Don't forget to check out Will's complete guide to the cheapest PC he'd actually recommend you to build.

Will Smith is the Editor-in-Chief of Maximum PC and has been building PCs longer than he cares to admit. He enjoys long walks, Rock Band, and is anxiously awaiting the first great Android Phone and the Apple Tablet.

Top image by Tim Rogers/Flickr, used under CC License



GPS Tracks Brutus the Wolf on Marathon Hunts Around the Arctic | 80beats

Posted on by

Brutus_spaghettimap-400-webA lone wolf named Brutus is helping U.S. Geological Survey scientists study Arctic wolf migrations in remote regions of Canada. These migrations can traverse hundreds of miles in 24-hour winter darkness at temperatures that reach 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

There’s no way humans can physically follow the wolves under these brutal conditions, so Brutus is sporting a GPS collar that beams his coordinates back to a satellite every 12 hours. As it turns out, the wolves are covering a lot of ground, as can be seen in the map above. Now, the fjords visible in the summer image above have frozen and can be crossed on foot. In one trip, the wolf and his pack traveled 80 miles from Ellesmere Island to Axel Heiberg Island and back in just 84 hours. Just through November 30, Brutus has traveled 1,683 miles [Wired.com].

The tracking is part of the Northwest Territories’ Central Arctic Wolf Project and the project is chronicled by researchers Dave Mech and Dean Cluff on the International Wolf Center blog.

David Mech admitted that despite studying the wolves for 25 years, he had no clue what they did each winter after he left. Now he knows the wolves are traveling in packs, most likely to hunt enough food to survive to the spring. The members of the pack – 11 adults and an unknown number of pups that can now travel with the pack – hunt muskoxen and Arctic hares, which flourish on Axel [Heiberg Island]. “That would be the only reason to travel so far,” writes Mech. He and Cluff receive reports every four days, emailed to their computers from the Argos satellite of the collar’s twice-daily location check [Toronto Star].

Next the researchers hope to answer how a pack of this size is able to kill enough prey under the cover of 24-hour darkness to stay alive. Making the leap from pens and notebooks to GPS and satellites should help.

Related Content:
80beats: For the First Time in 36 Years, Rocky Mountain Wolves Are in the Crosshairs Again
80beats: Dogs Think Like Babies, While Wolves Think for Themselves
80beats: Wolves Have Dogs to Thank for Their Dark Fur

Image: USGS


Russia Considering Mission to Deflect Apophis [Space]

Posted on by

Russia's Federal Space Agency may try to deflect Apophis, the 880-megaton asteroid that can bring hell to Earth (for comparison, the total power of the entire deployed US nuclear arsenal is around 1,400 Megatons). There's only one problem.

The possibility of Apophis hitting our home planet problem is extremely remote. When it passed by in 2004, the probability was 2.7%. The next flyby will happen in 2029. Predictions say that there will be no possibility of impact at that time. In 2036, the latest simulations models point out that the probability will 1 in 250,000. Extremely low, but still higher than the odds of being hit by lightning. Furthermore, NASA says that Apophis is not large enough to create a global catastrophe.

Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian's Federal Space Agency, disagrees. He says that a "scientist recently told him" that Apophis may hit Earth in 2032. If that happens, there's a big chance of it hitting Russia, as most of the south of the country is right on the path of impact risk. The mission, according to Perminov, would not use nuclear weapons, just the laws of physics.

I don't know who is right here, but I have mixed feelings. On one side, if the Russians make any mistakes, they may cause a cosmic clusterfuck. On the other, I'm happy that someone is doing something about this. While there is no official announcement about what the project would be, it's nice to see that someone considering building an space interceptor. [Space, Nuclear Stockpile, Wikipedia]



Fox News to FBI Cybersquad: Get In Front Of Some High Tech Looking Stuff…Quick! [Image Cache]

Posted on by

That's not an actual quote of course, but the scene here looks so contrived that it seems plausible. The scary thing is that the Cybersquad is protecting our data with old Dells, Windows XP and "intimidating" Matrix screensavers.

Plus, that 37-inch Westinghouse sitting right on top of the keyboard is a good indicator that the Feds have extremely poor eyesight—so who knows what kind of mistakes are being made. [i.igmur via reddit]



Migraine Headaches: Causes and Treatments

Posted on by

For the past few years, I have been getting migraine headaches about every two weeks that last from a couple of hours to typically 36 hours. The throbbing pain always occurs on the right side of my head in the frontal and occipital regions. When the pain is severe, it causes stomach pain and nause

MP3 Players in the Year 2000 Were Not So Good (But We Still Loved Them) [Decades]

Posted on by

This is the Creative Nomad Jukebox from the year 2000. It may have been shaped like a CD player to mentally ease technophobes, but it actually had a 6GB hard drive on board. And boy did we love it.

That's not to say that this thing was great—because it wasn't; not by today's standards. It had only a USB 1.1 connection, so uploading all 6GB worth of music took hours and hours. Imagine filling up a 1TB hard drive over a USB 2 connection today, if that gives you any idea of how long the process was. Oh, and it cost $420.

But you know what? It actually a pretty decent player for the year 2000. The 6GB is adequate even now (the lowest iPod Nano today has 8GB), and that 8GB of 5-minute skip protection was good enough for continuous music most of the time, except when you were off-roading or running away from cougars.

Hell, because it was so early in the MP3 player era, it even had extraneous features that were eventually ditched for cost cutting reasons because only a small portion of people used it. There was the stereo line input for recording, dual stereo output for 4-point surround sound as well as WAV and WMA support. Creative did do a good job with firmware support after the thing was released, actually adding functionality to the player when they could have just released a new hardware revision.

So yes, the Creative Nomad Jukebox was heavy, and lost in every way to any Android, Windows Mobile or Apple smartphone today in both price and feature set, but it was pretty damn good in the year 2000. [Product Page (Price dropped to $300 by 2001)]

Decades: where we revisit gadgets we loved from the start of the decade and see how they compare to what we use today.

Image Credit Wikipedia



WBTshowcase to Present Emerging and Converging Companies and Technologies at WBT2010

Posted on by

Investors and corporate licensees from Fortune 1000 companies will meet once again in Arlington, Texas for the eighth annual WBTshowcase (WBT2010), the world's largest forum offering a prescreened, pre-prepped collection of undiscovered companies and intellectual property emanating from top universities, labs and research institutions from across the country.