Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You’ve got to give the Pentagon credit for imagining every possible threat scenario in its latest wargame, dubbed “Cyber Storm,” but the plotline this time around is pretty wild. Starting with an electronic attack on the Port Authority of New Jersey, major new networks and bloggers spread “believable but misleading” information without revealing their sources — all while hundreds of people on the “no-fly” list stream into airports, DC’s Metro trains shut down, air traffic control towers in Philly and Chicago are disrupted, and mysterious liquids are found on the tube in London. That’s quite an afternoon, but we’re taking offense to the Pentagon’s classification of the press and bloggers as “threats” — come on guys, we’re here to help. We wouldn’t spread rumors — there’s nothing at all in the hollowed-out left leg of the front pew at St. Micheal’s Church in Fort Walton, Kansas.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In an expression of remembrance for a historical moment in hair-trigger overreactions, artists all over the Boston area have taken to the streets armed with provocative LED signage. Paying homage to the “bomb” scare of January 31st, 2007 (which was actually just viral promotion for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie using LED art), creative pranksters have descended upon the city with electronic recreations of President Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and a number of other inflammatory images sure to rile the local authorities but-good. Truck on over to MAKE to see a collection of images, and if you happen to be in the Boston area, don’t miss a chance to snap some photos of your own!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Those intrigued by the idea of interlocking light blocks but disappointed by the subtlety of some of the current options available may want to take note of Remake Design’s latest creation, which takes the idea to excessive new heights. As you can see, they’ve churned out a series of blocks to let you relive your past Pac-Man adventures on a grand scale, including blocks of dots, ghosts, and Pac-Man himself — no power-ups though, it seems. No word on a price just yet, but given that the firm’s standard set of four solid-colored lights costs $300, you’ll likely have to part with a sizable stash of quarters if you want to add this particular retro touch to your living room

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

They’re about as far from myths as you can get, but MythBuster Jamie Hyneman nonetheless took it upon himself to explore seven tech headaches that many of you are likely all too familiar with in the latest issue of Popular Mechanics, and he’s offered a few suggestions on how companies could fix ‘em. Those headaches include the ever-popular cordless tools with endless varieties of battery packs and chargers (which he suggests should be replaced by stackable 6-volt modules), fancy flashlights that use pricey batteries (which he thinks we’d be better off without), and cars with obnoxious electronics and near-impenetrable encasements. Of course, cellphones and their myriad of charges and connectors aren’t spared either, although Hyneman sees some hope in the Open Mobile Terminal Platform that aims to make micro-USB the standard, and, as you might have guessed, he pays particular notice to computers that come pre-loaded with scores of unnecessary software. On that last note, he also offers some action consumers can take themselves: switch to Ubuntu.

[Thanks, Niall]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Tidy, huh? If you’re an iMac or Apple Studio Display owner then you’ll see the immediate appeal of this LowKey Stand from Macessity. Constructed of 0.1085-inch thick steel “power-coated” to match your rig, it neatly hides your new slim Apple keyboard from view. There’s also a powered 4-port USB port up front which helps to offset the stand’s $60 price a tad.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Carbon nanotubes have a ton of promise, and we’ve seen a lot of prospective applications for the tech, but researchers at Stanford, working with Toshiba, have managed to demonstrate the first use of nanotubes in chips that run at commercially-viable speeds. The chip features 256 ring oscillators and packs over 11,000 transistors in just one hundredth of a square inch. When wired with the nanotubes and powered up, the chip ran at speeds between 800MHz and 1.06GHz — not desktop speeds, to be sure, but still promising. The team says that while the experiment bodes well for the future, we shouldn’t expect any direct applications yet — but you know we’re dreaming of tiny implantable supercomputers anyway.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It might interest you that shortly before Google went public in 2004, Larry, Sergey and CEO Eric Schmidt made a 20 year pact. According to an interview in Fortune magazine, the trio says, “We agreed the month before we went public that we should work together for 20 years.” If the promise is carried to fruition, Schmidt will be 69, Page 51, and Brin 50 before they’re eligible to retire. Of course, none of this is legally binding. But isn’t a gentleman’s agreement more desirable in a world where “do no evil” is a fundamental axiom? Sure, dreamers.

[Via Reuters]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, GPS

Geotaggers, take note: with PMA today Sony is upgrading its CS1 GPS unit to support geotagging video footage through new versions of its Picture Motion Browser and Image Tracker software, giving it an armband, and renaming the whole thing GPS-CS1KASP. (It’s out again next month for $150.) Also happening tonight are two new dye-sub printers, the FP95 and FP75, which will run $200 and $150 in April, and feature 3.6 and 3.5-inch displays, respectively, HDMI out, and a filter function on the 95 for kooky effects like fish-eye and sepia.

Read - Sony updates CS1 [Via Let’s Go Digital]
Read - Sony intros FP95 and FP75 [Via Let’s Go Digital]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation

They may be stretching the definition of “palm-sized” a bit, but the folks at Laser Atlanta sure seem confident in their new SpeedLaser B device, with them saying that it’ll nail “speed demons from the palm of officer’s hand.” To do that, the device makes use of the ever-popular LIDAR technology to take a reading of a vehicle in a mere 0.3 seconds, and it includes some proprietary stealth features, jammer detection and inclement weather modes to ensure it always at the ready. No word on a price, but we’re guessing you won’t be able to just grab one of these off the shelf.

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Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

If you’re a fan of web-based group chat tool Campfire, you may be pleased to learn that it’s now available for the iPhone. Now, when you visit Campfire sites on the iPhone, you’ll be directed to an iPhone-optimized version.

Due to the way the developers have created the iPhone version, you’ll need to use two-fingered scrolling to move through your transcript. For more details, check out 37signal’s post, where they explain the technical reasons for the two-finger scroll. Apparently, on the iPhone the “auto” overflow property for HTML gets rendered as a separate frame.

If you’d like to learn more about the iPhone’s special capabilities and limitations with respect to its Mobile Safari implementation, I strongly recommend you look into the iPhone Web Dev group at google groups.

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