Geek vs Life

Check this out. Someone actually built a working jet pack. If I weren’t so afraid of heights, I would so want one.

Why is it “…” for the title of the article? Because there are no words to describe this…

Click here for the most advanced digital camera in the world.

Yeah… You see?

Here’s a couple of more links, for your viewing enjoyment.

Another blog

And some more photos

The dust has cleared and one winner was left standing as Toshiba announced earlier today that it would halt production on it’s line of HD-DVD players.

With Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and JVC backing the Blu-Ray, it was pretty much just matter of time before HD-DVD spun it’s last cycle and went the way of the Betamax.

The news follows the announcement last week that Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy were going to phase out the use of the HD DVD format. With fewer and fewer options when it comes to finding the format in stores or even studios who would release movies that way, Toshiba has made the right albeit hard decision.

Implications of the HD DVD demise reaches even further than just the movie sales market, the video game market will feel the shockwaves of this as well.

Last years hot topic issue was net neutrality and how we had to protect it. Battles were fought, petitions were signed but on Thursday September 6th, the following happened:

“The Justice Department this week issued its support for a tiered approach to Internet service, and said that the imposition of net neutrality laws would hinder the continued growth of the Web.”-Chloe Albanesius, PCmag.com (Sept 07)

“The Justice Department today said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic.”-Dibya Sarkar, Seattle Times

“The Bush administration believes that government regulators should be “highly skeptical” of net-neutrality regulations and instead rely on competition to protect consumers.”-ZDnet.co.uk

Now seeing as how your desk will be armed with missiles, it begs the question of what it will be shooting at. The obvious answer would be your co-work of course, but why stop there. How about a moving target?

The RC mini-copter features complete 3-D flight, up-down, forwards backwards and even hover. The remote control is simple to use and the copter is perfectly safe to use indoors. To drop random garbage on your co-worker for example.

Find out more here.

This has got to be one of the coolest toys ever… I mean work related apparatus of stress relief or something like that.

It features a 3-foot long USB cable, it moves left, right, up, and down, it has pre-recorded sound effects and it shoots up to 10 feet at an extremely fast rate!

Get it here: Ejectit.com

The concept is beautiful, simple and should be incorporated everywhere. Heck I want one. It’s user beyond user friendly.

More information to come as it becomes more readily available, but keep your eye on this, it has A LOT of potential to create change.

Some people will just build this from scraps and other components. Why even go there, when it’s much easier to just buy one? What got to me was the description:

Armed and Dangerous

The secret to the USB Doomsday Device is very simple - it has three levels of failsafe protection. In order to arm the Device, you first need to activate switch one. Then, you need to activate switch two. Then (and stay with us here, because this is where it gets a little crazy), you need to activate switch three. Switch three is a key switch, and only authorized personnel should have a copy of the key. Once all three switches are turned on (in order) the Main light will glow red. This means the Device is armed and very dangerous.

As the impending iPhone release looms over the world, it’s good to reflect upon Apple’s place in the world. Specifically, I’m speaking about their impact upon style and culture.

Can we imagine a world without iPods? That world existed, it can be confirmed. People had mp3 players previous to the iPod. But did anybody care? Not really. Was the mp3 player the stylistic commodity that it is today? Hardly. They were big, they were ugly. Then came along the sleek, and ever increasingly smaller iPod, and the whole world now owns mp3 players.

The iPod made the market, and it made the market cool.

Think about Apple’s website. Did you know that Apple was the first company to allow you to order your own customized computer from their website? Can you imagine a world where you couldn’t order exactly what you wanted from a computer maker’s site?

I always hate it when I get home around 12 in the morning, to find that I forgot my keys, and Mom decided to move the spare to a new and all the more obscure hiding place. But trolling around the newspapers again I found something that could be an answer to both bedroom invasion by small children and getting into the house late at night without keys. A biometric deadbolt by Kwikset makes it so you just have to swipe your fingerprint and the system will lock or unlock according to what you want it to do.

The lock, called SmartScan, is made by Kwikset of Lake Forest, Calif. ($199). The device is powered by four AA batteries and requires no wiring. It works by emitting radio waves that detect distances between the ridges and valleys of a finger just below the surface of the skin, said Michael Maridakis, the chief electronic engineer for the hardware and home improvement group of Black & Decker, which owns the Kwikset brand.

Thought this was pretty interesting while I was trolling around the newspapers. Appearently Microsoft has come up with a new “tabletop computer” that uses hand movements and touch to manipulate what you’re doing. For now they think its going to be pretty commercial, if it is used much at all in the next few years, but it’d be really interesting to see how they do gaming on this thing (rock paper scissors with your computer… heh)

The company plans to unveil a computing device today called Microsoft Surface, featuring a 30-inch screen embedded in an acrylic tabletop. The device’s electronic guts are hidden in the low-slung table’s thick pedestal.

At first glance, Surface is reminiscent of an old-fashioned arcade game table around which patrons played Pac-Man. But there is no joystick here, and no mouse or keyboard either. The device is controlled by touching the tabletop display.

Alright, I mentioned once I’d post occasionally about nifty technology I’d come accross. I thought it’s about time I did.

InPhase technologies has recently developed a gel-like film that has allowed it make the first publicly available Holographic Drive, with a storage capacity of 300GB. That’s 6 times the size of a dual-layer Blu-ray disc, and this is only the first version. By 2010 InPhase expects to have Holographic disks that can hold 1.6TB of data. That’s enough space for approximately 400,000 songs, or 37 hours of HD video. Also, with a write speed of 960Mbits/sec it will create those massive disks at about 30 times the speed of current technologies.

Unfortunately for us, with a price tag for the drive of $18,000 and another $180 per disk, this technology isn’t all that available to most of us. Hopefully more consumer friendly prices can be expected in another 2-3 years though. For more information about the technology check out InPhase’s website.

Ok, so maybe I gave too much credit to the porn industry. What am I left with for an indicator to what the future will have? Evidently, it’s Walmart. The scary, scary corporation. What are they picking? HD DVD. Yup. Another one against Sony. How are they doing it? By contracting a really cheap (less than $300) player.

In an effort to try to push sales of their media, to pull people away from the series of tubes known as the internet, they’re viewing HD as the draw to get people into their doors. We shall see how this turns out, and whether or not I have to make another retraction.

More at Digital Trends

Here’s an item that I am officially putting on my wishlist. A table designed just for Macs and Mac lovers.

For all of those “gotta have it all” Mac people, like myself, this is awesome. Soon I shall be placing my Powerbook, 30″ Cinema display, iPhone, and iPod all on their very own table.

And it comes with a fishtank. Beat that Microsoft!