IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
Sneaky fake lens lets you take photos at right angle to direction you point the camera: "
From Like Cool:
The Super-Secret Spy Lens ($50) is basically a periscope that attaches your SLR's zoom lens... you can shoot left, right, up, or down, all while appearing to shoot straight ahead.(Via Boing Boing.)
Andy Ihnatko's Flip Mino HD Video of our impromptu Bethesda Tweetup.
file223, originally uploaded by joelhousman.
Andy Ihnatko, technology columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and co-host of Macbreak Weekly, posing for a picture with me at the Washington Apple PI Mac Users Group on Saturday, December 6th, 2008.
The article below makes me even happier to know I'll have an iPhone myself, soon - Joel
Though Verizon says the Storm is its fastest selling handset yet, the touchscreen phone is also generating more negative buzz than any BlackBerry before.
Consumers and journalists are beating the Storm to a bloody pulp, with very few defending Research In Motion's response to the popular iPhone.'
The most vicious review on the Storm comes from New York Times columnist David Pogue. He ripped the Storm to oblivion last week, calling it the 'BlackBerry Dud.' And on Thursday he published some reader responses that couldn't agree with him more.
'Having tried the Storm on two different days to make sure it was
really as bad as it seemed the first time, I too find it unbelievable
that these are for sale,' a reader wrote to Pogue. 'Verizon should just box all these Storms up
and send them to Toys R Us, who can sell them in the Brainteaser
section, right next to the Rubik's Cubes.'
Verizon and RIM unleashed the Storm on Nov. 21. Sporting a 4-inch touchscreen, the handset is Verizon's attempt to compete with Apple's phenomenally successful iPhone. The resonating complaints about the Storm suggest the handset is not going to pose a threat to Steve Jobs' revolutionary phone.
Wired.com's Danny Dumas wasn't too pleased with the Storm, either: His major complaint was the operating system is a piece of garbage that doesn't do justice to 'a piece of hardware this gorgeous.'
And a quick Twitter search doesn't display much love for the Storm.
'Coworker just got a new Blackberry Storm,' tweets Jeff Casemier. 'It is a wonky P.O.S. Just F.Y.I.'' '
The complaints are likely only to get worse and more widespread: The phone's only two weeks old, and Verizon says the Storm is selling as fast as bacon-wrapped hot dogs outside a bar.
We're eager to hear what Gadget Lab readers have to say. Any of you out there with a Storm? How's it treating you? Let us know in the comments below.
(Via Wired: Gadget Lab.)
Angry bored octopus goes wilding: "Otto the Octopus, a resident of Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, is bored because the aquarium's closed for the winter -- so he's making mischief. First he squirted an overhead light until it shorted out, and now he's taken to juggling the hermit crabs.
'Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.'
(Via Boing Boing.)
Is Google Really Using 21x The Bandwidth It Pays For?: "Scott Cleland is a 'telecom analyst' who, in reality, is actually paid a large sum of money by the telcos to slam Google. He's become sort of a joke in DC circles. In the past, we noted his ridiculously bad math in claiming that Google fleeced taxpayers out of $7 billion, as well as his claims that 'open spectrum' is somehow anti-American. His main issue, of course, is trying to dispense bogus arguments for why net neutrality is really a big scam by Google to keep its broadband bills cheap. To give Cleland credit, at least he's not as bad as Mike McCurry, who once claimed that Google doesn't pay a dime for broadband. McCurry, of course, has moved on from spinning for the telcos to spinning for the entertainment industry, so Cleland needed to up his game.
He's now released a 'study' claiming that Google uses 21 times as much bandwidth as it pays for. First of all, this is simply incorrect. Cleland doesn't know how much Google actually pays for broadband, so he comes up with a small number, which is wrong for a variety of reasons.
He seems to conflate consumer broadband and Google's broadband. This is based, in part, on the old telco argument that when you buy internet access, you're only buying access to the middle of the internet, and you should have to pay a second time to actually reach any endpoint or other user. So, even though consumers pay for the bandwidth they use to reach Google, Cleland appears to calculate that as being Google's responsibility, ignoring that consumers are paying plenty for the right to reach Google (and the rest of the internet). As Cord Blomquist points out, this is like pointing out that Best Buy should pay for the gas it takes for people to drive to Best Buy. Broadband Reports also does a nice job deconstructing this.
However, even if we ignore all the basic facts and information that Cleland gets wrong, if we grant his premise, his argument still doesn't make any sense. If anything, rather than being an argument in favor of the telcos' position, Clelands report (if true) suggests that telco execs all deserve to be fired. After all, they're the ones who set up the business model and the billing relationship, and if they're undercharging Google by so much, then shouldn't they raise their prices? Of course, there's a good reason why this doesn't happen: because Google is paying fair market value for its bandwidth, and if anyone tried to charge them 21 times more, Google would quickly take its business elsewhere. So, based on this report, either Cleland is dead wrong in his report, or the telcos who funded it are run by morons who don't know how to set pricing correctly. Which one is more likely?
(Via Techdirt.)
America's stock car racing is to international racing as the Big 3 (Ford, GM, Chrysler) are to the international automaker industry -- both are the laughing stock (no pun intended).
NASCAR has become such a joke that something like Godwin's Law has developed: The longer a conversation continues among international racing enthusiasts, the more likely someone will make a joke about NASCAR or their misnamed Car of Tomorrow.
Foreign manufacturers see racing as a means to innovate. For automakers outside the U.S., fierce competition on the track leads to better products on the street. Companies like Honda and Toyota develop new technology for their race teams, then find ways to make it affordable for every day cars. American manufacturers, however, refuse to compete on the world stage -- both on the race track and on the street.
Almost all international touring car series require starting with a stock monocoque -- the entire car body (frame, shell, the whole shebang) -- straight off the factory floor. NASCAR starts by welding up a tubular frame (prefab from a single supplier). Then they add a thin shell of sheet metal. The trunk does not open. Headlights and taillights are stickers. NASCAR is less like a stock car racing league and more like a mock-up racing league.
Like the bloated American car companies and the fat cats that run them, NASCAR made their new Car of Tomorrow bigger and boxier, not sleeker and slimmer. International racing rewards those who build smaller, lighter, more efficient engines that squeeze more horsepower out of smaller and lighter engine blocks. The engine block and cylinder heads of NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow, on the other hand, is based on a V8 engine from the 1960s.
Instead of taking advantage of cutting edge technology, American automakers and NASCAR tap into obsolete technology that even car consumers aren't buying anymore. Even the American government has modernized more than NASCAR. It has been illegal to sell a new car that runs on a carburetor in America since the mid-1980s, but the Car of Tomorrow continued NASCAR's tradition of using carburetors.
The Car of Tomorrow also replaced the rear spoiler (on the body) with a rear wing (above the body) and replaced the front valance (aluminum curtain under the front bumper) with a front splitter. NASCAR borrowed these new design elements from international touring car racing series (e.g., DTM, BTCC) who have been using this type of rear wing and front splitter combination since the mid 1980s.
NASCAR's spoiler-splitter change came at a time when aftermarket rear wings had become very popular on street cars (think Fast and Furious). This was meant to reduce the benefits of 'drafting' while providing the additional benefit of appealing (or so they hoped) to the young, hip import performance crowd (again, think Fast and Furious). Unfortunately, the NASCAR design has made the cars notoriously more difficult to maneuver, especially when passing. The cars are also more difficult to setup (prepare for each race tracks), and drivers most commonly describe the handling as 'twitchy.'
Like the Big 3 car companies, the Car of Tomorrow is a mirage, a diaphanous image that is easily seen through when held up to the light. The Big 3 tells taxpayers they are developing the cars of tomorrow -- NASCAR claims they are racing them. The sad reality is that America's automakers are recycling yesterday's technology and sponsoring the racecars of yesterday. NASCAR touts cost savings as a primary factor in its regulatory decisions, but team owner Robert Yates says that fuel injection would be cheaper. He summed it up,
If I had to close down my engine shop and lay off all of my guys, they wouldn't be able to get a job at a car dealership because they've been working on antique engines.
NASCAR engine builder Danny Lawrence (of Richard Childress Racing) says,
They still want it to be where the guys in the shop don't have to have a lot of engineers or computer guys.
Like NASCAR, the Big 3 automakers squandered billions of dollars in profits over fifty years rather than investing in research and development that would have ensured their future. If IBM had decided in its glory days not to try to make personal computers smaller and more efficient, we would not be debating an IBM bailout.
While NASCAR is touting a Car of Tomorrow that is less aerodynamic and less efficient, the rest of the world has moved on. Technical development is the crux of international racing. Although international racing leagues take on some aspects of spec racing, they largely establish regulations by spelling out desired outcomes. This encourages innovation because each team wants to develop a faster, more efficient, more powerful way to meet any outcome set by the sanctioning bodies.
Every year, Formula 1 enacts regulations to slow down the cars for safety reasons. But where there's a will, an engineer will find a way. At the end of every year, Formula 1 cars are faster and more efficient than the year before. NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow included some similar features. Crews have gotten better at setup, and drivers have learned to better handle the car, but there has been no innovation by the engineers.
The car bosses of yesterday have tried for decades to lay the blame of their failures at the feet of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, but the unions don't design or market the cars. Unions do not allocate investment in research and development. The employees of automobile manufacturers do the same thing all American employees do. They negotiate the best compensation package they can, and then they sweat and toil every day to earn their wages. The buck stops in the corner office on the top floor -- not on the factory floor.
UAW workers have sacrificed much of their hard-earned salaries and benefits to help save these failing giants (and have already voiced willingness to make more sacrifices). After all, taking a pay cut is better than taking no pay at all. But while workers on the line have been cutting back on food, healthcare, and education for their families, the executives continued jetting around on fat bonuses and multi-million dollar salaries.
It never occurred to the Detroit 3 executives that they might sacrifice a little today for a better tomorrow until they shuffled into the capitol building two weeks ago, stepping off their corporate jets with hats in hand, asking for a handout and instead were treated to a dressing down. Their capitol cronies will surely give them their payola -- but they will join the bailout beneficiaries club only after suitable hazing. After all, what member of Congress would miss an opportunity to bolster their standing back home by publicly humiliating Detroit's finest tycoons.
When the Big 3 CEOs truckled into the beltway in ostensibly ultramodern hybrid vehicles, they paraded more of their cars of yesterday. Ford CEO Alan Mulally drove a Ford Escape Hybrid, and GM CEO Rick Wagoner drove a Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid. Both cars have a MPG (mile per gallon) rating roughly equal to the gas-drivenHonda Accord. The Ford Escape Hybrid cannot run on electric-only power above 25 mph. The Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid cannot run on electric-only power at all. Toyota and Honda have edged out the Big 3 automakers -- both in gas-driven and hybrid cars.
The $1 salaries the Big 3 CEOs are purporting are also part of the illusion. Ford CEO Alan Mulally madea public showing of accepting only a $1 salary in 2006, but he actually earned $7.9 million that year in other compensation. The CEOs of companies like Google and Apple have gotten rich on $1 salaries. This is not their first rodeo bailout.
The so-called 'Detroit problem' is not going to change without changing the executive culture of Detroit. Just like NASCAR, the Big 3 are going to go round and round in 500 circles before finally realizing the answer is to turn in the other direction.
With the rise of app-laden smartphones like the iPhone and Google's Android OS, now on T-Mobile's G1, many penny-pinching shoppers have downloaded barcode scanning applications onto their mobile devices. These apps allow consumers to compare the prices of merchandise on a store's shelf to competing stores in the area just by taking pictures with their smartphone's camera. The prices are instantly retrieved and displayed on the mobile phone so consumers can know before they buy if they're getting a good deal.
Although consumers may be catching on to this barcode-scanning trend, some stores are still in the dark. For example, a Target store in Michigan recently requested a shopper to stop scanning merchandise, saying it went against store policy. The customer reported the event to the application's makers, Big in Japan, whose app Shop Savvy is a popular download for Android handsets.
Big in Japan called the Target store in question and spoke to the manager, who indicated that she was not aware of the policy. We also contacted Target's corporate headquarters to confirm Target's policy, or lack thereof, but we first had to explain the application to the company representative. They had never heard of such a thing before! (As it turns out, Target has no policy whatsoever on barcode scanning their merchandise.)
The same customer also noted they had visited Sam's Club, where they demonstrated the application to a store employee who seemed 'confounded that such technology even existed,' wrote the user.
Although this is just anecdotal evidence from one customer, it's entirely believable that without concrete store policies in place, you're going to encounter rogue employees here and there who have no idea what you're doing and will ask you to stop.
On the flip side, stores that do get hip to this trend may decide to implement store policies that ban scanning, once they realize that customers could discover their high prices. A post on AdLab for example, a blog about advertising and marketing, suggests retailers do just that. They also recommend retailers should consider investing in a a cell phone jammer. They even provide a 'No iPhones on Premises' sign for printout.
That doesn't seem to be a very proactive way of dealing with the technology. In fact, it reminds us of how both the music and movie industry attempted to quash the pirating of songs and films: they just tried to make it stop. Instead of going a route destined for failure and trying to shut down barcode scanning altogether, retailers could choose to embrace the trend. They could offer easy-to-find barcodes on their promotional items with signage encouraging customers to compare the price instantly with other stores in the area. They could make barcode scanning the new advertising circular.
Hopefully, stories like those of the Shop Savvy customer will remain isolated incidents and no other store employees will bother customers looking to save money. If you've used barcode scanning applications and have experiences to share, please let us know in the comments.
(Via Read/WriteWeb.)
