Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

The Mobile Decade: Greatest Gadgets From 10 Years of Innovation

Others may look back on the years 2000 to 2009 and remember elections, wars, global warming and Michael Jackson, but for gearheads like us, this was the decade that mobile tech grew up.

During the first decade of the 21st century, we saw a whole slew of new mobile technologies capture the public imagination: the smartphone, the MP3 player, the USB stick, touchscreens, Wi-Fi, 3G wireless, pocket camcorders, digital SLRs and more.

Thanks to these inventions, people got increasingly plugged into an always-on, totally portable, always-connected existence. Where we stand now, notebooks outsell desktop PCs, people spend more on mobile phones than on landlines, and portable game consoles outnumber the ones plugged into your TV cabinet.

The products on this list exemplify that trend. While not every gadget here is portable (and many of them are gaming consoles — sorry, we can’t help it if the most exciting hardware innovations are poured into the videogame industry), the arc of the decade clearly reflects an increasingly mobile world.

From the PlayStation 2 to the Kindle 2, what follows are the best gadgets of each year in the “aughts.”

2000: PlayStation 2

Console gaming in the late 1990s kind of sucked. Sure, there was the Nintendo 64, the Sega Dreamcast and, of course, the original Sony PlayStation. But none of these rigs possessed the trifecta of deep game libraries, awesome graphics and multimedia functionality.

Then, at the turn of the millennium, Sony dropped a 100-megaton bomb it dubbed PlayStation 2.

Rich catalog of fun titles? Check. Top-notch graphics? Double-check. Multimedia functionality. Hello, hat trick. The PS2 also flaunted backward compatibility for OG PlayStation games, and it had easily upgradeable memory. Even mass shortages at launch couldn’t hamper the system’s popularity: Folks shelled out more than a thousand bucks for them on eBay.

A decade later the PS2 is the highest selling console in history with more than 138 million units sold. And it’s still growing, even though it’s technically obsolete. Case redesigns, price drops and seemingly unstoppable game-library expansion have virtually assured that the console will remain fresh for years to come. Hell, we just might ask Santa for a slimline PS2 this year. – Daniel Dumas

Rust & Roll: Inside Trussart’s Steel Guitar Workshop

LOS ANGELES – In a small workshop a pick’s throw from downtown L.A., a French luthier pays homage to the quintessential American electric guitar using a most unusual material.

From across the room, the Trussart Deluxe SteelCaster may look like a ’52 Fender Telecaster. But lay your hands on it and you immediately know this cool chunk of welded steel didn’t come out of the Fender Custom Shop.

James Trussart combines the vintage aesthetic of classic American guitars with a flair for the unusual to create beautiful instruments that sound as sweet as they look.

“What’s different about what I’m doing is I’m using steel,” Trussart said. “It reacts differently and affects the tone. At first people didn’t think it would work. But there was something I liked about the tone.”

He isn’t alone. The people playing Trussarts reads like a who’s-who of guitar geeks and gods.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Hands On With Nokia’s N900

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Think of the about-to-be-released N900 as atonement for past sins committed by Nokia. The disaster that is Symbian, the anemic-ness of the Ovi store, the conspicuous lack of CDMA devices all seem, well, not so horrible after playing with this Linux based, open source, unlocked internet tablet. Nokia recently gave us a not-so-finished version of the N900 to play with. Here’s what we think after tinkering with it for a week. Bonus: We’ve got video too!

MAEMO NUMBER 5

The N900 flaunts the Maemo 5 operating system. A mostly (80%) open source Linux build, it’s certainly more usable than any version of Symbian. First off it’s a multitasking powerhouse — we loved the fact that you could stream tunes from a website like Hype Machine then open up another webpage, snap a picture or access twitter without interrupting the music flow. Programs are represented by widgets, which can be moved around different screens with relative ease and apps can be easily downloaded from the sparse Ovi store.

SCREEN SAVER

The N900 has a 3.5-inch resistive touch screen. Most resistive screens we’ve encountered thus far tend to be slow and unresponsive. The N900’s isn’t. Although it comes with a stylus, you largely don’t need it — actions like text typing and web browsing can be done with just a finger. Zooming in and out is done without a pinch, literally. When you want to enlarge something on screen, take your finger (or better yet, the stylus) and make a small clockwise circle. Making a counter clockwise circle zooms out.

PHONE HOME

Almost like an afterthought, the N900 functions as an unlocked cell phone. We popped in SIMs from AT&T and T-Mobile and the N900 made calls without much interference or static. Don’t have a SIM? No prob. There’s VoIP and Skype integration too.

SHOOTER MCGAVIN

The N900’s camera has a Carl Zeiss lens, protected by a plastic slide, and a bright Xenon flash. Pictures are generally noise free and clear while the included photo editing software rivals that of most cell phones.

FENNEC FAIL

Mozilla’s mobile browser, Flock Fennec is sadly nowhere to be found on this device. No big deal — a custom made Mozilla browser is included for all your Intertubing needs. There’ s support for Adobe Flash 9.4 plus an RSS reader as well.

LIMITED POWER

Battery life isn’t exactly Methuselah-like. Our unit conked out after a day of hard use (read: constant web surfing, making calls, shooting pictures) but we expect slightly better power management from the production device.

A DELICIOUS WRAP

The N900 will start shipping around the end of November and will cost $650. We’ll have a full review on the finished hardware before then. So far the N900 shows a great deal of promise — Nokia is definitely doing the right thing when it comes to an open platform and a lack of Symbian. Now if only they could get a carrier to subsidize the device and help bring the cost down a little bit.

See Also:

• Nokia’s Linux Based N900 Finally Official
• Nokia Ovi App Store Faces Turbulent Start
• Nokia Reveals Netbook Pricing, Introduces New Handsets

(Photos by Jon Snyder for Wired.com)

Interactive Art Pushes Boundaries of Viewer, Artist

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Digital artist Camille Utterback makes installations that combine cameras, projectors and custom software to create interactive, playful paintings.

Stand in front of her work, and you’ll soon be waving your arms, walking around, spinning or hopping to figure out how your movements get translated into the abstract, colorful strokes on the screen.

“What it feels like is that the visuals are just responding to your body,” Utterback says in this video produced by Wired.com.

In these artworks, cameras track the movements of people standing in front of them, computer software translates those movements into abstract imagery according to a defined set of rules, and a projector throws the ever-evolving digital painting onto a screen in front of the viewers.

The work also invites reflection on the relationship between our bodies and the technology that surrounds us, Utterback says.

Utterback was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2009. This $500,000, no-strings-attached “genius grant” will enable her to continue producing her art for the next five or more years.

Shapeshifting Robot Peeps from Under the Door

Remember B.O.B, the shape-shifting blob from Monsters vs. Aliens? B.O.B may soon have a real-life counterpart.

Robotics company iRobot has developed a soft robot that can roll around and change its shape so it can move through small spaces, such as holes and under the doors, as easily as it can on flat ground.

The robot called chembot or chemical robot was shown last week at a conference on intelligent robots and systems.

iRobot is no stranger to creating practical yet interesting automatons. iRobot has sold more than 5 million robotic vacuum cleaners and mops, known as the Roomba and the Scooba. The company also supplies robots to the U.S. military.

Chembot seems to be a machine designed for military use. At first glance, the chembot looks like a rather ugly balloon. The robot’s skin is made of off-the-shelf silicone, says IEEE Spectrum. The flexible skin encloses air and loosely packed particles. When air is removed, the particles shift to fill the void left and this results in a slightly different shape. By controlling the inflation and deflation, the robot can be made to roll around.

It’s a neat idea and researchers are now reportedly working to include sensors and even connect different blobs together. DARPA, which is funding the project, is expected to use the robot for surveillance.

See Also:

• Real Science Sets Up Surrogates’ Futuristic Robot Action …
• Humanoid Robot Plays Soccer
• Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead

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