Geek vs Life

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.

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!

That’s the first commercial quantum computer. It’s soooo pretty…
Engadget for more

Nintendo’s phone. They’ve patented it. They patented it a long time ago.

It is a strange step, going way outside of their normal “game only” stance. Since it took so long for the patent to be issued, the question does stand…does Nintendo still want to do it?

Given what the mockup sketches look like, it’s a far cry from anything that they’ve put out since then. The DS is far more advanced, and should carry many of the same functions. The way the patent is set up, it looks more like a really spiffy Game and Watch. All the programming steps would still work, but other advancements would make the hardware seem totally obsolete.

Well, I may have jumped the gun. Blu-ray sales have surpassed HD-DVD for the first time as of last month. Do I worry that my assertion that HD was going win out is wrong? Not yet. I’m thinking it’s the new toy fetish from people getting PS3s for the holidays. If the numbers remain as they’re going by March, then I’ll be worried.

Press Release after the jump…

Ehh. I can’t come up with something clever about this without it being cheesey. Therefore, [insert cheesey quote here].

California to ban incandescant bulbs.