“You can’t charge much for hardware anymore,” wrote Clive Thompson in Wired magazine’s March issue. This is true: Gamers are pretty much the only ones who still salivate over a 6MB Cache with 1333MHz FSB. Dell seems to have recognized this earlier than most manufacturers (with the exception of Apple, who never really cared about specs). Hence, the Adamo—Dell’s luxury laptop. I had a chance to speak with Ed Boyd, Vice President of Consumer Design, and the architect behind Dell’s flashy design push.
Posts Tagged ‘Tech’
Google pwns your phones
The big tech news du moment is that your favourite search engine is making a foray beyond the internet and into the real world of telecommunications. Much like our brave ancestors 382 million years ago, tentatively stepping onto dry land and testing out their delicate lungs, The Matrix Google is creeping beyond internet search to index your voicemails, provide low-cost international dialing, and use one number to forward incoming calls to your cell phone, work and home numbers, all at the same time.
Steal this laptop (and suffer the consequences)
Ever had a laptop stolen? Then you know the creative vengeance fantasies it can inspire. Fortunately for Mac users, a company called Orbicule has created a program called Undercover 3 that violates laptop thieves’ privacy in ways you’ve never dreamed of.
Tyger! Tyger! Bathing fright!
Apropos of nothing, an irregular visit to the outstanding digital art manipulation web site Freaking News yielded the above Photoshopped gem. FN classifies Cat Bath as a “merged painting,” offering the additional qualifier “strange.” Fair enough.
Sure, I railed on cell phones and email the other day. But sometimes technology can help us see with fresh eyes. Or hear with fresh ears.
Full merge painting, plus both originals, below the fold.
Better! Get a bucket!
Now, here’s a novel idea: apologizing, in person.
Special this week to BBC online’s “60 Seconds to Change the World” column, and inspired by real-life U.K. bank managers prostrating themselves before the House of Commons’s Treasury Committee, American author Tom Perrotta has audaciously upped the ante by suggesting that people saying sorry face to face would be good for society.
Scandalous, I know. But Perrotta inadvertently goes a long way towards semi-vindicating my disdain of cell phones, email, and email-equipped cell phones. Allow me to explain.
Road signs of the Apocalypse
Your regular daily commute is stressful enough as it is, but those flashing road side announcing unscheduled zombie rampages can just about push you over the edge. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to watch for velociraptors scampering across the asphalt—such a headache.
All over the United States hackers have been having their fun, and making the drive home a little less mundane.
Review: Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Many have been the times that have I sat down with my laptop in a coffee shop, shrugging my shoulders to work out the tension caused by hauling around a too-hefty shoulder bag. Putting the computer on the wobbly table often enough knocks my mug of coffee across keyboard, pants, and floor.
In theory, a radically smaller and lighter ‘notebook’ computer—not a “palm top” or smart phone, but one with a full screen and keyboard—should save me from this cycle of needless violence.
Microsoft Songsmith:
Spirit, in a material world
As tempting as it is to deride Gordon Sumner, aka Sting, for publishing a book of his lyrics (with commentary!) ’t’other year, I can’t deny that I own a similar tome for The Fall’s Mark E Smith.
Lyrics without music is one thing, but what about lyrics with different music? Sting’s got some experience with that concept already, as The Police did reunite briefly in the mid-eighties to record “Don’t Stand So Close to Me ’86.” Same words, brand new notes, longer running time and title! (And, according to the marginally updated lyrics, in the six-year interim between that version and the original, the novel Lolita had become “famous.”)
Fast-forward to January 2009. Early in the new year, a Microsoft release called Songsmith has made it possible for there to be a limitless number of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” remixes (Microsoft’s term). In fact, it’s made it possible to rewrite the book on music history, should one be audacious ambitious enough. Read More
25 years of Macintosh (or, when 1984 wasn’t like “1984”)
Date: January 24, 1984
New product debut: “Macintosh” computer
Features: 9-inch screen, 128k of RAM, ‘mouse’
Price: $2,495 US—and, if you can put a valuation on what history deems the catalyst for a revolution, worth every penny.
In adjusted dollars, by the way, the peppy little machine that popularized the mouse and made a computer with a graphical interface “affordable,” for lack of a better word, would today cost… Read More
