Nation’s Children Tell President Obama They Want Tech, not Bikes [Christmas]

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President Obama visited a Boys and Girls Club and played the part of Santa, asking the kids what they want for Christmas—but instead of hearing traditional requests for bikes, the kids all wanted iPods, phones and other tech.

He asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas but seemed surprised by their expensive and high-tech tastes, including iPods, cell phones and video games.

"Whatever happened to, like, asking for a bike?" POTUS asked. "Everbody has a bike," one informed him and others agreed.

From the mouths of babes: Gadgetry beats lo-fi, analog "bi-cycles" any day. [Gawker, image source]



Apple Store Offering Free Next-Day Delivery, No Minimum Order [Dealzmodo]

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The Apple Store's got a nice present for last minute shoppers: Free next-day delivery with no minimum order. This means that you can shop as late as 1 pm ET on December 23 and still receive your order before Christmas.

Of course, you have to keep in mind that custom configurations take longer and wouldn't ship on time, but for everything else, this is a great offer. [9 to 5 Mac]



Human Wind Chime Would Be Perfect For the Back Porch of Your Rocket Ship [Geek School Project]

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This installation at NYU's ITP Winter Show responds is responsive to touch, and sounds as trippy as it looks. That's a very good thing.

Human Wind Chime is a light and sound sculpture by Mindy Tchieu, Patricia Adler and Saul Kessler that comprises 25 four-inch polypropylene balls, each of which is outfitted with an LED and arranged in a descending spiral. When touched, each ball lights up and emits a sound, with each ball's pitch corresponding to its height. The result, as you can see in the video above, is an ethereal blend of art, instrument, and toy. Now if only someone could figure out how to play "Chopsticks" on it. [ITP Winter Show]



Multiple Sclerosis and Irrational Exuberance

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is fascinating illness that can range from mild annoyance to debilitating nightmare. The frightening nature and unclear cause of the disease makes it a magnet for questionable medical therapies (i.e. quackery). A piece published last week in (surprise!) the Huffington Post helps fuel the fires of suspicion and paranoia while failing to shed any light on the future of MS research.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the nervous system. Its victims develop symptoms based on what part of the nervous system is affected. For example, if MS attacks the optic nerve, a patient may experience blurry vision or blindness. If it affects the motor areas of the brain that controls the left leg, the patient will develop weakness in the left leg. Typically, the symptoms will last a certain period of time and then improve, but often not completely back to normal.

The exact initial cause of the disease isn’t known, but we do have a good understanding of of how the disease works. In MS, the immune system attacks the sheath surrounding certain types of nerve cells. This leads to “plaques” in nervous tissue such as the brain, and these plaques correspond to the symptoms of MS. The disease appears to result from a combination of a genetic predisposition and some sort of environmental insult, such as a viral infection. Many people have T-cells in their immune system that recognize myelin, the substance attacked in MS, but in MS these T-cells are more capable of attacking myelin. In order to do this effectively they must breach the “blood-brain barrier”, a system that keeps the circulation in the brain protected from toxins, infections, and the immune system. In MS, this barrier is breached, perhaps by infection, allowing T-cells into the brain to coordinate an attack on the nerve cells. Based on our still-incomplete knowledge of the disease, we have developed some pretty-effective treatments over the last decade or so. These treatments are based on drugs that affect the immune system. All of these drugs have significant side-effects and none is completely effective.  There are probably many different “kinds” of MS based on different genetics and different environmental triggers, so we have a long way to go in understanding the disease and developing treatments.Given the fear and debility associated with the disease, and our still-incomplete knowledge, it’s natural for people to look for (and see) patterns where none exist. Diseases like MS attract quackery (such as bee-sting therapy) and conspiracy theories, such as the one in the Huffington Post

It started with an article in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.  This article detailed some new MS researcher by an Italian doctor named (I kid you not) Zamboni.  Dr. Zamboni hypothesizes that MS may be at least partly due to a problem with venous blood flow in the brain, and that a surgical procedure can correct this blood flow and improve MS symptoms.  He has done some small studies to evaluate these claims.  These studies have not yet been replicated by other researchers, and it isn’t clear (at least to me) how plausible his hypothesis is.  Still, it is interesting, and the Globe and Mail article was fairly well-written, providing a counter-balance to Zamboni’s exuberance:

“I am confident that this could be a revolution for the research and diagnosis of multiple sclerosis,” Dr. Zamboni said in an interview.

Not everyone is so bullish: Skeptics warn the evidence is too scant and speculative to start rewriting medical textbooks. Even those intrigued by the theory caution that MS sufferers should not rush off to get the surgery – nicknamed the “liberation procedure” – until more research is done.

The National MS Society (US) is also taking a cautious approach and is facilitating further research into this new theory.

“Cautious” is not a word that ever applies to medical reporting in the Huffington Post. Erika Milva vilifies the American press and the MS society blaming entrenched interests for failing to jump on Zamboni’s ideas.

Of the MS society’s statement, Dr. Lorne Brandes, an oncologist who blogs for CTV News’ Health Blog, wrote, “If their official response to Dr. Zamboni’s research was any cooler, icicles would form on their spokespersons’ lips. Why am I not surprised? These organizations are big money operations, run by risk-adverse professionals and fundraisers who are absolutely petrified of making a mistake and prematurely backing a losing horse. Their interests are also heavily intertwined with those of Big Pharma.”

This is absurd.  Advocate groups such as the NMMS are often supported by patients and their families and others who are strongly motivated to get results.  The MS society is actively seeking researchers to help investigate these new findings but is cautioning patients not to jump to quickly after unproven therapies.

It is important for researchers to think outside the box and we believe Dr. Zamboni has done this. His hypothesis is a path that must be more fully explored and Dr. Zamboni himself has stated that additional research is essential to evaluate it.

[...]

The National MS Society is pursuing follow-up research in how CCSVI might be involved in the MS process and we have invited investigators from around the world whose research is relevant to MS to submit proposals to apply for grants that would explore this lead. These applications will undergo an accelerated review process.

Where is the tepid, icicle-laden response?


Diseases that inspire fear, as MS legitimately does, attract a great deal of emotional attention. This type of attention, when applied to real research, can drive progress in science. When this enthusiasm is decoupled from science, the door for quackery is open, and anyone can and will walk in.

References

Frohman EM, Racke MK, & Raine CS (2006). Multiple sclerosis–the plaque and its pathogenesis. The New England journal of medicine, 354 (9), 942-55 PMID: 16510748

Zamboni, P., Galeotti, R., Menegatti, E., Malagoni, A., Tacconi, G., Dall’Ara, S., Bartolomei, I., & Salvi, F. (2008). Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency in patients with multiple sclerosis Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 80 (4), 392-399 DOI: 10.1136/jnnp.2008.157164

Zamboni, P., Galeotti, R., Menegatti, E., Malagoni, A., Gianesini, S., Bartolomei, I., Mascoli, F., & Salvi, F. (2009). A prospective open-label study of endovascular treatment of chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency Journal of Vascular Surgery, 50 (6), 1348-1358000 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvs.2009.07.096


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Samsung NX-10 Hybrid Camera: ‘Cause the World Needed Another Camera Format [Unconfirmed]

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Samsung is the new Sony: Constantly pumping out new formats the world doesn't need, like their Hybrid NX cameras seen at PMA, apparently finalized in the NX 10 here. Here's the problem with it:

The idea of the NX series is dandy—a DSLR-sized sensor (APS-C-sized, supposedly, so it's bigger than the ones in Micro Four Thirds cameras) in a smaller body than DSLRs, since it does away with the the whole single-lens reflex system that makes DSLRs so damn big. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's the same concept as Micro Four Thirds.

The issue is that the lens mount for Samsung's NX, at least for now, is exclusive to the NX camera, so lenses you buy will only work with it. Micro Four Thirds might be a young format, but at least your lenses will work on cameras from a couple of different manufacturers, ones that are camera vets. There's an ecosystem there. Samsung's an amateur. I admit, an alliance with Pentax like the NX20 could make the idea a lot more appealing, but until it happens—or until I see some mindblowing pictures produced by it—not so sure I can get behind this one. (It'd also be cool to see them get behind Micro Four Thirds, to make that format even stronger.)

Oh, and the NX10 is hideous. [DP Review Forums via engadget]



Fixing California | Cosmic Variance

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This past year has been a long, slow downward spiral for California into one of the worst financial crises in state history. Revised revenue projections in February led to huge slashes in funding for an array of programs from higher education to state parks, and a $25 billion budget shortfall looms next year. State employes and university (both Cal State and UC) employees have been furloughed, and UC tuition has gone up dramatically – 32% within a year. Protests at Berkeley, UCLA, and my own institution, UC Davis, led to dozens of arrests in November.

[I was amazed, the night of November 19, to see a helicopter with a powerful searchlight circling over the main administration building at UC Davis. The police, many from jurisdictions 20 miles away, had created a perimeter about 100 yards from the building, which was still occupied by students who were later arrested for trespass (and the campus police returned to find their tires slashed). The next week saw another protest, resulting in amnesty for those previously arrested...]

People are angry, and justifiably so. There are over 400,000 parents in the state who are getting a giant kick in the pants (myself among them – my daughter is at Berkeley). But who should we be angry at? Faculty? UC administration? The government in Sacramento? The global economy? What can we change that will truly fix the problems California faces?

One simple and direct idea has emerged, from a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, George Lakoff. He proposes the following 14-word amendment to the state constitution for the Nov. 2010 state ballot:

All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.

With a million signatures, this proposition will be on the ballot next fall, and I am going to predict at this point that this will very likely be the case. If adopted, this would put an end to the 2/3 majority of the legislature required in California to enact any tax increase, and thereby end the present tyranny of the minority that hamstrings the state that I wrote about before.

No one wants their taxes to go up. But there are some real no-brainers out there, in my opinion:

  • Increase the state gasoline tax. In February the legislature failed to enact an increase of 12 cents per gallon on top of the present 18 cent tax that would have raised over $2 billion per year.
  • Tax energy extraction. Inexplicably, California is the only oil-producing state that does not tax oil extraction. The failed 2006 Proposition 87, with a 6% capped tax on extracted oil, would have generated over $1 billion in revenue per year. (By contrast, Sarah Palin raised the Alaska energy extraction tax to 25%!)
  • Decriminalize marijuana. There is in fact going to be a proposition on the 2010 ballot to do just that. A combination of legalization, taxation, and drug education, much as we treat alcohol (a far more dangerous drug) will be vastly superior to incarceration. Legal growers will drive the smugglers out of California. How much revenue could be generated by taxing one of California’s largest crops is hard to guess. It’s a lot.
  • Repeal corporate tax loopholes. There could be a ballot initiative on this next fall as well. It’s technical stuff: loss carry-backs, tax credit-sharing, and the single-sales factor. But it’s potentially $2.5 billion per year! And again, California is alone in some of this ridiculousness.

There are plenty more ideas out there, I am sure. In any case, it is the majority who should decide. The is how it is done in every other state in the union. California is far from being the most heavily taxed state in the nation – I believe there is plenty of room to solve the present crisis and create a state worthy of being one of the largest economies in the world.

Work of Carmelich on display in Trieste (Dec. 22)

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Giorgio Carmelich
Futuristicherie
Viaggi d’arte fra Trieste, Roma e Praga

December 23, 2009 – April 5, 2010
*vernissage, Tuesday December 22, 6pm
Civico Museo Revoltella – Galleria d’arte moderna

-1Martedì 22 dicembre 2009 alle 18.00 avrà luogo presso il Civico Museo Revoltella – Galleria d’arte moderna l’inaugurazione della mostra Giorgio Carmelich. Futuristicherie. Viaggi d’arte fra Trieste, Roma e Praga, che rimarrà aperta sino al 5 aprile 2010.

La celebrazione di Giorgio Carmelich (1907-1929), genio prematuramente scomparso all’età di ventidue anni, si situa a cavallo tra il 2009, anno del centenario del manifesto futurista di Marinetti, e il 2010, anno in cui, il 12 gennaio, si festeggerà il centenario dalla prima e memorabile serata futurista al Politeama Rossetti di Trieste.

L’avventura artistica di Carmelich parte, infatti, dall’iniziale infatuazione per il futurismo, per poi attraversare le suggestioni provenienti dall’avanguardia non solo italiana ma anche europea. Il giovane Carmelich si abbevera febbrilmente ad ogni fonte da cui possa trarre stimoli per la sua produzione artistico-editoriale: legge con avidità tutte le nuove pubblicazioni sull’arte contemporanea, interessandosi specialmente all’avanguardia e alla scenografia russa, frequenta assiduamente cinema e teatri e viaggia da una città all’altra, stringendo numerosi e importanti contatti, tra cui fondamentali, sul versante italiano, sono gli incontri con i futuristi italiani, in primis Enrico Prampolini e Fortunato Depero, che influenzano in maniera netta il suo fare artistico. Successivamente entra in contatto con il mondo dell’avanguardia ceca, attraverso Artus Cernik, direttore della rivista Pásmo di Brno, e Karel Teige, che conosce a Praga nel 1929.

La vita, l’opera e i gusti di Carmelich possono essere tracciati attraverso le sue fresche lettere, indirizzate all’amico e sodale Emilio Mario Dolfi e spesso ornate da spiritosi disegni, che costituiscono il Leitmotiv della mostra. Accanto a queste, più di 130 sono le opere presentate nella presente esposizione triestina, tra dipinti, collages, disegni, incisioni, periodici e monografie, tra cui le “edizioni” manoscritte o dattiloscritte de “La bottega di Epeo”, le creazioni più sorprendenti della coppia Carmelich-Dolfi. Da Il sindaco di Cork e il cane inglese, preziosa edizione manoscritta e decorata a mano del 1920, a due plaquettes del 1923 di Dolfi con illustrazioni di Carmelich: Ridolini e altri corridori, celebrante il mito inebriante della velocità futurista, e Il parco delle attrazioni.

Tra le numerose pubblicazioni periodiche futuriste spiccano in mostra Epeo, la rivista dattiloscritta e illustrata a mano, realizzata da Carmelich e Dolfi e uscita tra il 1922 e il 1923 in pochissimi esemplari, e L’Aurora (1923-1924), organo del futurismo giuliano, cui Carmelich partecipò con contributi critici e splendide incisioni.

Per quanto riguarda la produzione figurativa di Carmelich si va dai disegni a matite colorate o a china del 1923, ai collages del 1924, passando attraverso la parentesi costruttivista, culminata nella realizzazione, assieme a Avgust Cernigoj, Edvard Stepancic e Giuseppe Vlah, della Sala costruttivista, allestita nel 1927 all’interno della I Esposizione del sindacato delle belle arti di Trieste, sino all’ultima fase, quella magica e chagalliana dell’ultimo periodo praghese.

Per contestualizzare l’opera di Carmelich all’interno di un più vasto panorama artistico, saranno esposte inoltre 11 opere di Fortunato Depero e 5 di Enrico Prampolini, suoi maestri spirituali soprattutto per quanto riguarda la scenografia e l’arte del manifesto, e punti di riferimento principali nell’elaborazione di un suo linguaggio futurista, mentre una sezione speciale sarà dedicata ad altri futuristi giuliani, Sofronio Pocarini, Bruno Cossar e Luigi Spazzapan (che lo fu per un periodo brevissimo ma intenso) e ai seguaci del costruttivismo, Avgust Cernigoj ed Edvard Stepancic.

L’allestimento della mostra, corredato da diversi interventi multimediali. mira a creare un ambiente di forte impatto, che permetta al visitatore di immergersi completamente nel linguaggio delle avanguardie degli anni Venti, in cui Carmelich visse, in un lampo, la sua breve parabola esistenziale ed artistica.

Ufficio stampa: Studio ESSECI – Sergio Campagnolo. Tel. 049 663499; email info@studioesseci.net; sito: http://www.studioesseci.net

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The Food Pod Makes It Look Like You Are Boiling an Alien [Cooking]

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Fusionbrands has some crazy looking cooking utensils—like the Fusion Finger Tongs and this Food Pod. The latter is designed for boiling, blanching or steaming, but it looks like you are cooking up space plants or alien parts.

Appearances aside, the Food Pod looks like it would be very effective—plus, it's made of flexible silicone, which won't rust up on you like a cheap stainless steel collapsible steamer might. [Fusionbrands and Amazon via RGS]



Analog Joystick

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We recently purchased Joystick for crane which is analog type. Is it necessary to fill the oil inside the analog potentiometer?? Without filling oil can we use it...

Culprit Emerges in Botched Take-Off: a Typo | Discoblog

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Thanks to the winter devastation wrought by this weekend’s storm, my weekend holiday travel plans were put on hold until, well, now. So from 36,000 feet above the ground, courtesy of Delta’s free wifi (it’s the least they could do, seeing how they put me on hold all weekend with “Let it Snow” playing on a loop), I bring you a story of a flight canceled not by weather, but by a typo.

Back on March 20th at Melbourne Airport, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) aircraft’s tail made contact with the runway during take-off (known as a tail-strike), and the plane was having trouble taking off at all. In fact, the tail hit the ground three more times beyond the runway and the landing gear took out a strobe light and a localizer antennae. Through some slick piloting, the airplane’s captain was able to get off the ground, dump fuel, and return to the same airport.

The cause for the tail-strike? A number 3 where a number 2 was supposed to be, as reported by IEEE Spectrum:

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) confirmed its preliminary findings that determined that “the pre-flight take-off performance calculations were based on an incorrect take-off weight that was inadvertently entered into the take-off performance software on a laptop computer used by the flight crew.”

The aircraft’s first officer typed in the aircraft’s weight as being 262.9 tonnes, while the actual weight was 362.9 tonnes. So yeah, he was a little off, which caused the bumpy take-off. The flight crew members found responsible resigned shortly after the event.

Apparently my flight crew at LGA was paying closer attention.

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Our 2009 12-City 3G Data Mega Test: AT&T Won [3G Test 2009]

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Given carrier reputation and our own iPhone call drops, we were pretty surprised to discover, through careful testing in 12 markets, that AT&T's has pretty consistently the fastest 3G network nationwide, followed closely—in downloads at least—by Verizon Wireless.

Let's get this straight right away: We didn't test dropped voice calls, we didn't test customer service, and we didn't test map coverage by wandering around in the boonies. We tested the ability of the networks to deliver 3G data in and around cities, including both concrete canyons and picket-fenced 'burbs. And while every 3G network gave us troubles on occasion, AT&T's wasn't measurably more or less reliable than Verizon's.

It was measurably faster, however, download-wise, in 6 of the 12 markets where we tested, and held a significantly higher national average than the other carriers. Only Verizon came close, winning 4 of the 12 markets. For downloads, AT&T and Verizon came in first or second in nine markets, and in whatever location we tested, both AT&T and Verizon 3G were consistently present. If you're wondering about upload speeds, AT&T swept the contest, winning 12 for 12.

The Cities

Last year, we did an 8-city coast-to-coast test, and called Sprint the big winner. This year, we have results from 11 cities coast-to-coast, and even got to test (during what was otherwise vacation time) on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Also, unlike last year, we were able to test T-Mobile's new 3G network, active in all the markets we visited (except, at the time, Maui). For being such a latecomer, T-Mo did well, and the numbers show even more promise from them.

We tried to spread the love around this year, geographically, hitting cities we didn't get to last year (at the cost of losing a few from '08). Besides Maui, we hit Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco/Bay Area and Tampa.

The Methodology

Our testing regimen was based on the same scheme as last year: We picked five locations in each city, including at least one "downtown" location that was considered a suburb. The selections were arbitrary, or fixed but logical—landmarks, residences, etc. (Note: Due to timing constraints, Chicago and Maui only had three test locations.)

Our hardware consisted of two identical stripped-down Acer Timeline laptops running Windows Vista, and four 3G wireless modems requested from the carriers. We allowed them to make the choice of hardware, simply asking for their "best performing" model. Once up and running, here are the tests we ran:

• Bandwidth & Latency: Speedtest.net - Reports upload and download bandwidth in megabits per second, as well as ping latency in milliseconds. We performed this test five times at each location on each modem.

• Pageload: Hubble images at Wikimedia - A 4.42MB web page with 200 4KB thumbnails, it was fully reloaded three times, and timed using the Firefox plug-in YSlow. The three time readings were averaged.

• Download: Wikimedia's Abell 2667 galaxy cluster photo - This single 7.48MB JPEG is a clear test of how fast you can download stuff from the cloud, and again, we hard refreshed this file three times, and measured time using YSlow for an accurate human-error-free reading.

This was a test of 3G performance. Even though Sprint and its tech partner Clearwire have intrepidly released 4G networks in half of the tested markets—Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui, Portland and Seattle—we only tested Sprint's 3G network. The reason should be obvious: While we performed the test with laptop cards on PCs, it's supposed to serve as a test of the network's ability to deliver service to all devices, including smartphones, dumbphones and laptops. Show us a Palm Pre WiMax edition—better yet, sell 100,000 of them—and then we'll switch it up. And while you may argue that this 3G test still doesn't adequately reflect your experience with your iPhone, at least it's the same network, and may serve to rule out AT&T's data pipe as the independent cause for all those infamous dropped calls.

(On a side note, when multiple carriers release 4G networks, we'll definitely conduct a comparative test of them all, using new parameters, and focused around laptop use.)

The Results

Now that you know how we ran the test, here are the top finishers in each market, plus some pretty bar graphs showing you how bandwidth compares.

Though we tested for uploads and downloads, we focused our additional tests on the downstream, as it's the more important direction, in the minds of most consumers and most carriers. The anomaly there is AT&T, which has dramatically good upload bandwidth, even when its download bandwidth doesn't keep up. Fast uploads are a priority for AT&T, and will soon be for T-Mobile, which recently turned on faster uploading in NYC, which you can see in our test results. Meanwhile, although Verizon technically came in second in uploads as well as downloads, it doesn't seem to treat this as a major priority.

When it came to downloads, though, the competition was markedly stiffer:

Atlanta - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Bay Area/San Francisco - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Chicago - AT&T, followed by Verizon then Sprint
Denver - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Las Vegas - Verizon, followed by AT&T
Los Angeles - AT&T, followed by Sprint
Maui - Verizon, followed by AT&T
New York - AT&T, followed by T-Mobile
Phoenix - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Portland - T-Mobile, followed by Verizon
Seattle - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Tampa - Sprint, followed by AT&T

Is That The End?

No. We've compiled the following gallery with all the data from each test location in the 12 markets, so you can see on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level who won what. This also includes latency, pageload and download numbers, so you can track the performance in several ways. (The data above is bandwidth, though as you'll see, that was generally representative of the overall performance. If a carrier was tops in bandwidth, it was usually tops in download time.) These tests are all just "snapshots in time," as the carriers like to say, so feel free to bitch about where your experience doesn't reflect our results. We stand by them, but acknowledge that network performance is changing all the time, and experiences very regular hiccups.

Regarding latency, you'll notice it didn't appear to affect actual user experience—3G isn't really up for Modern Warfare 2, if that's what you're thinking—we will gladly show you latency averages, as well as pageload and file download averages, broken out for every market on the test.

Special thanks to all of the excellent testers we enlisted, Mark Wilson, Chris Mascari, John Herrman, Kyle VanHemert, Dan Nosowitz, Matt Buchanan and Rosa Golijan from our own team, along with Tamara Chadima and the indefatigable Dennis Tarwood. You guys were troopers, and I'm pretty sure FedEx either loves you or hates you. Thanks to John Mahoney for helping develop the initial tests that we've continually refined, to Chris Jacob for mapping all the locations, and to Don Nguyen for the mad number crunching—you truly are a spreadsheet pimp.

Note: Some of you may have noticed that San Diego is among the cities highlighted on the top illustration—and that Maui is not. The reason is that while we did testing in three great San Diego locations, one of the locations didn't get any Sprint or T-Mobile service, and the already fairly thin dataset was rendered too compromised for any kind of usable report. As for Maui's absence, Maui's just too far out in the Pacific to make for a pretty map shot.



Motorola Opus One Specifications Leak [Motorola]

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When we say we have specifications, boy, do we mean it. One of our connects has sent us the full rundown on Motorla's Opus One (their first iDEN Android handset) that we revealed a little while back.

The features on the device are actually pretty reasonable, and we'd imagine it to sell for a reasonable attractive price-point at release. The Motorola Opus One will run Android 1.5 with iDEN service enhancements, make use of a "Zeus" CPU, and will feature a 3 megapixel autofocus camera.

  • 3.1? hVGA 320×480 capacitative touchscreen display
  • 3 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash
  • Accelerometer
  • Proximity sensor
  • Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
  • Bluetooth
  • microSD card slot
  • 2.5mm headset jack
  • Home, Menu, Back, Speaker buttons are capacitive buttons with haptic feedback
  • iDEN PTT & PTX
  • Android LBS which is integrated into the iDEN GPS engine
  • "Enterprise email"
  • Plastic-molded housing with some rubberized texture finishes
  • 58mm in width, 118mm in length
  • 100g weight
  • 512MB Flash / 256MB of RAM
  • 64k and 128k iDEN SIM card support
  • A-GPS
  • Motorola dual-mic technology noise-canceling for noisy enviroments
  • Flash Lite v3.1.x
  • Some of the preloaded apps include: corporate email client with ActiveSync support, MOTONAV navigation app, barcode scanner, and document viewer.

That's what we have for you on the Motorola Opus One at this time. Not the most mind-blowing Android device, but with it being an iDEN device and all, we'lll cut it some slack and even say that it could do reasonably well at launch.

BGR features the latest tech news, mobile-related content and of course, exclusive scoops.



Snowstorm Imaged by NASA’s Terra Satellite

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Snowstorm Hits the U.S. East Coast, NASA Earth Observatory

"A powerful nor'easter ensured that the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States were cloaked in white on the first day of Northern Hemisphere winter in 2009. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite shows the Chesapeake Bay area on December 21."

Marc's note: A great image from the Terra satellite. Normally Keith would be somewhere in that picture but alas he too has fallen victim to this storm as he tried to return from Denver to his home in Virginia yesterday. And none too please he was with United Airlines. Last word was that he had made it to Fayetteville, Arkansas and they might be sending him onward to Chicago then perhaps back to Dulles today. But you never know...

Marc's update: Keith made it to Chicago and should be headed to DCA sometime today.

Marc's update: Keith made it back.

Some antiscience updates | Bad Astronomy

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Oh, just a few quickies.

1) I will never get tired of hearing that the truly awful Australian Anti-Vaccination Network is getting what they deserve.

2) The SETI Radio show Are We Alone did a Skeptical Check show on vaccines! You can also follow along on AWA blog.

3) The CDC has released their numbers about the rates of autism. Cue the hysterical antivax lies about it in 3… 2… 1…

4) And ending on a bright note: the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition had a wonderful campaign, asking parents what they gave thanks for. After reading so much bad news about antiscience nutbags, this’ll put a smile on your face.


VISTA Starts Work

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No it’s not a computer program, no it’s a new telescope has started work at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory and this is one of the first releases.  The telescope is the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, or VISTA for short.  VISTA is surveying the sky at infrared wavelengths and is the largest telescope dedicated to survey work.

Indeed the telescope is working quite well if this image of the Flame Nebula is any indication.  The Flame is seen near the constellation of Orion. Actually the big bright star is Alnitak, the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion.

Visit the ESO page for more info and images from VISTA.

Intel’s New Atom Chips: What They Mean for You [NetBooks]

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New Atom chips from Intel means better netbooks, right? Sorta. Here's the skinny on the new netbook brains.

Pine What?

Okay, so one of the big things about the new Atom chips is that for the first time, it integrates a graphics core and a memory controller directly onto the same die as the processor. This whole platform, that is, the processor, graphics and memory controller is "Pine Trail," while the processor by itself is "Pineview."

More specifically, the graphics core is 45nm die shrink of Intel's GMA 3100, redubbed GMA 3150, that runs at 400MHz. So, not only does it still suck, it also doesn't hardware accelerate H.264 video as AnandTech points out, meaning it's completely useless for Flash video, even with all of the new Flash acceleration hotness Adobe is delivering next year.

Instead, netbook makers will still have to bundle, at the very least, an "HD decoder" that accelerates H.264 for decent Flash playback, and it's not anywhere near Nvidia's Ion in terms of graphics performance. (This chip from Broadcom, to be precise.) And, not that you'll be pushing 1080p video out of your netbook, but video res is capped at 1366x768 out of the HDMI and DVI ports. Bottom line, Intel's stock offering still blows goats when it comes to video, and we're still waiting to see what Nvidia's going to do about it, given that they can't plug in Ion the way they used to. (Anand speculates they might just tack on through a PCi Express port.)

These are the three chips Intel's launching today, only one, the N450, is for netbooks, and as you'll notice, it's 1.66GHz single core chip (Intel thinks that's just fine) and supports just 2GB of RAM. The improvements you'll see with the N450 over the current Atom chips aren't exactly explosive—they mostly come from faster memory, and even Intel admits they're incremental.

Sure, it's 20 percent more efficient than the last Atom chips, but if you want remotely decent video performance in a netbook right now, it looks an Nvidia Ion-based system is still the way to go, even with Intel flashing new silicon. If you can stick it out for another month, it might be worth seeing what's a little further around the bend. [Intel]



58 Photos of Faces Where They Shouldn’t Be [Photography]

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Everywhere I look, I see faces. The cabinet is looking at me. The lightswitch is looking at me. The cereal is looking at me. And it's all because of your submissions to this week's Anthropomorphism Shooting Challenge. The winners:

Second Runner Up

Death Face on Muni Track in SF; Nikon D50; 55-200mm; Shot at 200mm; ISO: 200; f/5.6; 1/20 sec
-Tyler Ball

First Runner Up

This image was taken with a Nikon D200 using a 18-200mm lens in aperture mode. ISO was 200, focal length was 80mm (35mm equiv = 120mm). Exposure time was 6 seconds.
-Joe Hale

One Half Runner Up

"A robot is hiding behind the trees" I love walking the streets of Shanghai. This picture was taken with my Leica D3, f/2.8, 1/15 sec., at ISO 200.
-Ariel Borremans

Winner

Camera: Nikon D60; Lens: 50mm F1/8; ISO: 100; "sad Robot" Guess he didn't like the New York Snow...
-Jacob Santiago

Thanks to everyone for participating. There are so many fantastic shots in the mix, you'll never want to throw out anything again...lest you doom an innocent object to rot away, smiling in a dump.