Filed under: Accessories, iPod Family

Apple and Nike have sold millions of those tiny little transmitters that fit inside running shoes, as well as the receivers that attach to iPod nanos. Casual runners and former couch potatoes enjoyed them (yours truly included), but more serious runners lamented the lack of certain features, most notably a heart monitor.

According to iPodNN, a patent has been filed which hints at a slew of additional Nike+ functionality, like EKG, heartrate, body temperature and even hydration, through new equipment mounted “on or in” articles of clothing.

It definitely sounds cool, and could help convince more serious athletes to join the Apple cult buy these cool products.

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Filed under: iPod Family, Multimedia, iTunes, iPhone

Artists, photographers, writers, musicians and other creative types use Apple products every day as tools and inspiration to help them fulfill their creative desires and aspirations. So it should come as no surprise when some of those creative aspirations turn out to actually feature one of the tools that helps enable their creativity.

Case in point: Over at LAist, editor Zach Behrens has posted a piece on artist Nick Rodrigues’ mixed-media installation known as the “Porta Party.” What exactly is the “Porta-Party” you may wonder? Well, its a giant-sized iPod-like box where you go inside, bring your own iPod or iPhone, and groove to your favorite music.

Or, as the man who created it sums up in his artist’s statement about the “Porta-Party”: “If you walk around with a party going on inside your head and your just too shy to bust a move in public. Or if you like partying but hate people. Your prayers have been answered.”

It’s great when Apple can help empower artists and users to reach their full potential — especially when that full potential involves dancing. And yes, in case you were wondering, the “Porta-Party” is available for your next event.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Ever peered up in a dimly lit parking lot only to spot a smattering of cameras peering at your every move? Now you too can have such a sophisticated monitoring system right around your own home thanks to QNAP’s NVR-1012. The network surveillance kit is designed to provide “professional grade” live video recording abilities in homes and offices where hoodlums and malefactors tend to linger. The entire system is Linux-based and comes with a single NVR-101 server and a pair of IP cameras; reportedly, the solution is a breeze to install and every recording function can be carried out via an Internet Explorer window. Best of all, you’ll even find 2-way audio capabilities, so you can have a quick chat with any caught-red-handed crooks or mischievous youngsters right before the fuzz / man of the house swarms in for capture. Talk about a thrilling way to spend a Thursday evening.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

CompUSA died a sputtering, inglorious death, but Ohio-based Systemax (which owns TigerDirect) didn’t shell out $30M to pick up the pieces for nothing: it’s just announced that it’s re-opening 15 US stores and opening a new one, 13 of which are in Florida. We’re not sure why the Sunshine State faces the brunt of CompUSA’s angry zombie wrath — do retirees enjoy being ripped off?* — but Texans and Puerto Ricans can join in the fun with four stores of their very own. These are all apparently open now — anyone brave enough to check out the scene?

*Rejected asides: “Is this punishment for that Pitbull record?” “Guess you don’t need braiiiiiins to pay these prices!” “Screw you, Mickey!”

[Thanks, Steven]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sure, The Sharper Image is bankrupt, but that’s no reason to avoid this once in a lifetime opportunity to buy the company as it goes under. As you’re undoubtedly already aware, The Sharper Image invented the idea of ions with the semi-functional Ionic Breeze air purifier, but did you know that it also led the movement to call anything with a stereo minijack “iPod-compatible?” That’s history, folks. And now that the board of directors has put the company on the block with the share price down to 23 cents and the goal of selling by the end of next month, you could conceivably be America’s next massage-chair kingpin for just $3.6M — what’s to lose? We’ll even throw in the disgraced executive team, a $25 value! Operators are standing by!

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

Sure, there’s plenty of basic dive computers out there, but if you really want to get some attention under the sea, you may want to consider something like Linde Wrdelin’s new “Sea Instrument,” which can even be had in a special 18K yellow gold edition if you want to go all out. Whether you opt for that or the basic anodized aluminum model, however, you’ll get the same transflective color display and sapphire crystal glass cover designed to be readable underwater, along with a 3-axis compass and access to all the vital information you’ll need including depth, dive time, decompression stops, and temperature, to name a few, not to mention a rechargeable battery that promises to deliver 28 hours of continuous use. Of course, all that doesn’t exactly come cheap, with the aluminum version alone running €2,100 (or about $3,000). Oh, and you’ll also need a Linde Werdelin Biformeter watch to attach it to, which is only a few grand more.

[Via Luxist]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It’s far from the first time a researcher has enlisted the help of his own family or kids, but MIT’s Deb Roy’s latest endeavor looks to be a bit more ambitious than most, as he’s aiming to do nothing short of understand how children learn language. To do that, Roy and his wife installed 11 video cameras and 14 microphones throughout their house to record just about every moment of their son’s first three years. That, obviously, also required a good deal of computing power, which came in the form of a temperature-controlled data-storage room consisting of five Apple Xserves and a 4.4TB Xserve RAID (you can guess why Apple’s profiling ‘em), along with an array of backup tape drives and robotic tape changes (and an amply supply of other Macs, of course). While the project is obviously still a work in progress, they have apparently already developed some new methods for audio and video pattern recognition, among other things, and it seems they’ll have plenty of work to sift through for years to come, with the project expected to churn out some 1.4 petabytes of data by the end of year three.

[Thanks, Jeff]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Arthur C. Clarke’s ideas have had a tendency of becoming a reality in the past, and it looks like that’s now happening yet again, in this case with a little help from the folks at DARPA. As New Scientist reports, the prolific agency is currently working on a new weapon system that bears a striking resembles to the Stiletto weapon in Clarke’s 1955 novel Earthlight. That science fiction version was described as “a solid bar of light” that can pierce a spacecraft “as an entomologist pierces a butterfly with a pin.” Or, more specifically, “a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred kilometers per second by the most powerful electro-magnets ever built.” DARPA’s MAHEM weapon (or Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition), on the other hand, is described by New Scientist as using magnetic fields to “propel either a narrow jet of molten metal or a chunk of molten metal that morphs into an aerodynamic slug during flight.” There is a slight difference, however, in that MAHEM’s electromagnetic field will be generated by an explosion, and not a giant electro-magnet. It’s also not clear if MAHEM will be used to defend a fortress on the moon, although that’s not exactly as far fetched as it once seemed either.

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Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

My name is Lisa and I’m a widget junkie.

I love having widgets of all kinds on my iMac — even things like the Ski Report (I live in Florida), ESPN (it’s not football season), and Flight Tracker (I rarely fly). I even have similar ones (though Apple calls them webapps) on my iPod Touch. Since I’ve exhausted all the webapps for the touch that I’m interested in, I was glad to hear Widgetbox announced a gallery of widgets just for iPhone and the iPod touch users. Check it out via any browser, or right from your iPhone.

Now, most widgets are Flash-based, but these aren’t and therefore don’t use Apple’s SDK, but they’re cool and work well nevertheless. Among my favorites are the Yahoo! News RSS feeds, Random Quote Generator, and the Flickr slideshow.

While there’s not a ton of widgets available just yet, there are around 32,000 developers in the Widgetbox community so I suspect the gallery will be populated pretty quickly. There’s even a short video tutorial on how to make the iPhone widgets, in case you’re curious — or motivated.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

After the SEC more or less cleared Apple of those pesky backdating charges and a California court dismissed a shareholder class-action lawsuit accusing the company of improper accounting procedures, it looked like the good times were over, but fear not: another institutional investor has filed suit against Apple alleging the company cooked the books. The Boston Retirement Board filed suit in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, saying that it has investigated the matter and turned up even more evidence, which it can’t reveal until the court decides how to handle confidential information. All it will say is that it has proof that “all of Apple’s directors were aware of and participated in the backdating scheme,” which isn’t really new news — and we’re wondering what new information could have turned up that the SEC didn’t find in its lengthy, much-watched investigation. Still, it looks like this is the story that won’t go away — anyone ready for some hot accounting nights?

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