Danger Room has a detailed write-up which I won’t duplicate here, but I have to say I’m glad these are headed over there. I don’t think it’s political to say that no matter the popularity of the war, our soldiers deserve the very best support we can give them, and these should have been standard years ago.

“A source” has said that Logitech is working on a UMD drive add-on for the Go, which is a bit like a gas-powered engine add-on for an electric car. Logitech UK denied knowing anything about it, but Logitech USA and Sony have yet to comment.

I think it’s pretty funny, but somehow I don’t think Sony is laughing.

[via Kotaku]

It turns out that all the techs recognize this modem as junk. It craps out on everyone the way it crapped out on me, and the guy who came today said he flat out refuses to install any. Yet the higher-ups insist that some techs do so, due to a backup of Terayons in the warehouse. It’s not that this surprises me or is some big scoop — I expect this kind of behavior from telecoms — but you should probably look under your desk and make sure you don’t have one of these duds.

Mine looked like the one at right; I forgot to note the model number, but if you had it installed in the last year and it’s blue, it’s probably one of these. Call Comcast right now and set up a date for it to be replaced. Even the guy I talked to on the phone spoke of this thing with distaste, so I’m guessing it won’t be a lot of trouble. If they ask, say you’re having connection problems — even if you aren’t, you probably will be in a month or two.

The LED backlighting reduces heat on this 22″ LCD and it consumes considerably less power as well. LEDs will do that, NEC; I don’t think you get to claim it as some sort of accomplishment of your own.

LED backlighting technology enables the NEC MultiSync EA222WMe to provide the same amount of brightness as other panel types while using 20% less power. Compared to previous generation NEC LCDs, the EA222WMe consumes up to 52% less power, radiates up to 61% less heat, weighs up to 25% less and uses up to 15% less packaging.

Is it 20% less power or 52% less power? Make up your mind, NEC!

I would recommend the monitor except for the fact that its resolution is only 1680×1050. Add one more inch and you can get full HD on there. Of course, those ones aren’t LED-lit. Well, you can’t have everything.

[via SlashGear]

This does seem like a good idea, though — not the shirt, the idea of a Han/Luke game where both guys are playable. Luke would be the close-up damage dealer, Han would have his blaster… like Mercs or Commando. Or Cookie and Cream! That would be amazing.

[via Super Punch and The Daily What]

[via Curbly and Make]

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in an earnings call that the company would have, barring possible changes in timing, 10 games available for Natal within the first six months of its release. He also said that they’d have 4-5 games for Sony’s motion controller, whatever it’s really called (can’t just be “wand”) in the same time frame.

While I wouldn’t say we’re about to see a renaissance in gaming or anything like that, I think it’s good that these new peripherals are coming out deep into the consoles’ lifespans. Unlike the Wii at launch, developers have a clear idea of what the 360 and PS3 are capable of, and so their real focus will be on gameplay. I’m guessing that the first batch of games will consequently be of higher quality than early Wii titles.

It’s still not simple which system to go for, however, if you’re still wavering like me. New Super Mario Bros Wii and Excitebike World Rally are enough to make me get the Wii, yet XBLA has so many indie titles — and serious, super-deep games like Demon’s Souls make the PS3 an excellent proposition as well. Well, I don’t even have a TV on which to play these games, so I should probably slow my roll.

[via 1UP]

We heard about some of this stuff about a month ago, but these specifics are good to have.

It’s being offered with a fixed 8x zoom or an regular interchangeable mount; the spec sheet actually doesn’t note the F values of the lens, which suggests it’s not finalized. I’d guess it’ll be T/2.8 or thereabouts. There are a lot of specs and modes listed in the announcement which you can read there, but the price is quoted at $4750 at the moment for the fixed lens and $2750 for the brain only. The fixed lens version comes with an LCD, battery, and other accessories however, so for a filmmaker on a budget it might be a good unit. Plus, everything about it is compatible with the Epic modules, so you’re not wasting money on two different systems if you’re going for both.

There are other devices outlined as well — a new pro Redmote, the Red Ray Professional, and others. Head on over to the announcement thread to get the whole story.

Mmm… I’m liking the look of those new primes.

It looks remarkably straightforward and there’s no flimflam to be found on the iTunes LP for Developers page, so I think that it really is what it looks like. They’ve included some templates and design guidelines as well, and you better stick to them; Apple will be scrutinizing all submissions, and once it really opens up in Q1 2010, you better be ready for as long a wait as if it were an app.

[via Gizmodo]

I appreciate the concept, but I don’t think this machine will… cut it. (da dun tssh)

[via Gizmodo]

I’m not going to speculate on Woods’ injuries, the cause of the crash, or rumors of fights and affairs. I don’t care, personally. But how the information proliferated makes for interesting dissection. And the fun part is that there’s something for everybody’s agenda! Many will choose to ignore or emphasize unduly one party’s role in this drama, but the fact is that it very neatly exposes both the strengths and weaknesses of both traditional and so-called new media. I hope you’re sitting comfortably.

First, let’s establish some facts about yesterday’s little fracas. Woods crashed his car at around 2:00AM (all times are Eastern unless otherwise specified). A police report was filed at 2:25AM, and 12 hours later the information was released, probably at 2PM. The Orlando Sentinel reported the information, though it has since revised its story, and the referring links from yesterday now point to one filed early Saturday morning. The original story is nowhere to be found, but it is reasonable to presume that, being a local news outlet, it was the first to report — likely within 15 minutes of the press release being issued. BNO News tweeted at 2:24PM that he was seriously injured, which was a reasonable summary of the police report and likely all that the Sentinel reported. CNN posted a blurb 15 minutes later, at 2:39. Interestingly, Local TV news station WFTV had a team on the scene obtaining obtained from an eyewitness truly awful photos of the accident within what must have been an hour or so, since the photos show it is still night and the car was towed away shortly thereafter. (Update: my mistake. They acquired the photos later in the day.)

Thus far fact. Now, you recall the headline: real time, real discussion, real reporting — choose two. My idea, which that punchy little epigram roughly approximates, is that there is only so much a given source of information can provide, and that if it has certain attributes, it by definition cannot have certain others (with exceptions, of course). Don’t get me wrong, however: each source is valuable, but we must be careful not to assign one qualities it does not possess.

Since this is a blog ostensibly covering tech and Web 2.0, we should probably talk about Twitter first.

Twitter: real-time discussion

MG has already lionized Twitter in this affair, and rightly so. It deserves a pat on the back for doing admirably what it was made to do: propagate a meme as quickly as possible. However, his stronger assertion that Twitter is the real time web’s Walter Cronkite warrants a dissenting response, though I don’t think it is, as some suggested, an insult to the late, great journalist so much as a mischaracterization of Twitter.

Twitter’s mode of operation is a lot like that of fire. A spark is struck elsewhere; in this case (and, let’s be honest, in many cases) it is a piece of celebrity gossip. Whether it catches and spreads, and how fast it does so depend on the conditions. This particular spark landed in a bed of tinder and flared up almost instantly. The fact that the entire story (such as it was then) could be contained in 140 characters helped, of course. Its spread was practically instantaneous.

But that’s where Twitter’s role ends. Consider that local TV news was on the scene quickly enough to take pictures of the accident site before the car was towed, though these were likely not widely reported because at the time, a statement had yet to be released. This kind of coverage is obviously impossible for a decentralized news mechanism like Twitter or Google News. Yet it is the source for a large proportion of the coverage which spreads via those mechanisms. Before a fire can spread, it must be started. And it is very rare that Twitter starts any fires.

A legitimate objection to this idea is that of citizen journalism. Hasn’t Twitter enabled Iranians to broadcast their discontent? Wouldn’t it be handy in an emergency situation, provided it was accessible? To some extent, yes. But in the first case, what reason is there to think, even taking into account how well it was applied in Iran, that Twitter is somehow immune to censorship or outright ban? It’s new, is all, and once someone in charge takes it seriously enough to decide it must be stifled, you can be sure Twitter will have no further use there. An earthquake situation provides a better opportunity for Twitter to be used by itself to report; tweets from around the city saying “gas main broken at 13th and Pine” or the like could certainly be of use to a fire department. It’s questionable, however, whether a hashtag could reliably be established in good time, whether the authorities would be able or willing to sort through the noise, and whether such content as could be found would be capable of being transmitted to those who need it. Still, I’m happy to admit its possible utility in such a situation.

The question, really, is whether one has valuable information to report. If so, then for a moment, one becomes a reporter. And that information is welcome, if it can get where it needs to be. But the truth is that the bulk of users rarely have content to contribute; their role is promotion and discussion. Compare this to a journalist, who makes it his business to either be present at or go immediately to wherever news occurring, then broadcast it via established methods and outlets. More on them later.

Lastly, it’s troubling that what news is spread depends on the population at large. This is more of a personal objection. I have commented that Twitter is the perfect vessel which which to sate the public’s appetite for sensational minutiae. What spreads on Twitter is what’s popular, not what’s important. The last few years have been calamitous for mainstream news integrity for several reasons, but among them is the increasing emphasis on color stories and special interest news, which Twitter seems tailor-made to propagate.

This is also the reason why Twitter is not Walter Cronkite. Cronkite may have worked in real time, and he may have reported unconfirmed information, but the reason he was trusted to do so was because he was the exact opposite of Twitter. His personal discretion and experience made him a trusted individual. Wisdom is not arrived at by consensus, nor the truth, no matter if ten people weigh in or a thousand. No synthesis of opinion or automated sifting of information is a replacement for a discerning, informed, and familiar human being.

Broadcast media: real time reporting

The mainstream (i.e. broadcast) media is supposed to be formed of such human beings. This is, of course, not the case. However, that does not mean the model is broken. The companies comprising it — that’s another matter. The current deplorable state of mainstream news is more, if I may venture a guess, due to a continued financial investment in an obsolete ratings and advertising structure than any real decay of principle. Or rather, the only principle that is really decayed is the networks’ independence from private money. The BBC presents a partial solution in a state-sponsored network, but private bankrolling is simply replaced by public, but that’s not an ideal solution to say the least. I don’t have a better proposal, but I’m happy to point the finger, and our mainstream journalists aren’t doing a hell of a lot of journalism.

That said, the mainstream media were the first on the scene at Woods’ house, and the fact is they will always be the first on the scene. What would Google News or Twitter aggregate if there was no journalist there in the first place? Citizen reporting can only go so far; the idea of a completely decentralized press is hopelessly naive. Access to the public’s information is increasingly important, but there will always be someone, many people in fact, whose job it is to work at something that, if it’s not a local news station, will look a hell of a lot like one.

What will be the source for firsthand news if we don’t have a journalist class? Local news teams, mainstream media at their most mainstream, are the only ones with the experience, the resources, and the staff to cover anything of magnitude. Doubt that? Don’t confuse the death of traditional media distribution with the death of traditional media. The former is happening; the latter is an illusion.

What the mainstream and local media lack is scope and perspective. Imagine a thousand little rooms, each with its own goings-on and a person broadcasting live from each one. They see what’s around them and report it, but their scope is limited. Their first responsibility is to their “room,” their community — hence their journalistic myopia. They know they can’t cover everything in the world, but they don’t have to. Because the world relies upon them when something like this Woods incident occurs in their vicinity. It’s centralized decentralization.

Print and other delayed media: reporting and discussion

What’s left is the news you read the next day in the newspaper — or, really, the next hour on CNN.com or BBC News. These, the most traditional forms of media of all (essentially newsprint or a virtualized version thereof), provide comparatively complete, one-stop reporting and analysis of the event in question. I don’t mean to suggest that the AP, New York Times, or other article outlets are infallible, far from it. But they provide the perspective and context that Twitter (or your favorite social news aggregator) and broadcast news usually lack — and from individuals that have an interest in accurate reporting. Of course, this comes at a cost of timeliness, which may or may not be critical.

Obviously newspapers are having a lot of trouble, and the herd is being thinned, but delayed media (my term), whether distributed as inky tree pulp or otherwise, will continue to have a place in the party. The skills of newspapermen are still required, whether you like it or not, and will be for a long time to come.

Think of the recent story in which President Obama bowed to the Japanese Emperor when visiting that country. Twitter could alert instantly you to the fact that this event occurred, but little more, and only if you’re glued to it. Mainstream media will be the source for the story and video, but is capable of only basic commentary. Delayed media would give you the event, the reactions, the context, and anything more required to make a complete story — but not for at least a few hours.

Which of these methods you use depends on your profession, location, age, and a hundred other factors. Whether such trade-offs as each offers are welcome to you is a personal decision — but it’s unwise to write off a category altogether (as I catch myself doing with Twitter). To use one and not another may forgo or convey an advantage in some situations, but none embodies every aspect of news — content, promptness, and analysis.

Nor will any of the three worlds of information distribution go down without their essence being absorbed, Mega Man-like, into the being of the others. Will Twitter wither without the substantial content of delayed media? Not likely. Will delayed media croak if it doesn’t learn some lessons from Twitter? A little more likely, but that lesson is being learned. Will mainstream and broadcast media go extinct? Not for decades, though they will certainly have some adaptation to do.

The myth of medium

The truth is that there is no old media. And no new media. There is only the present media, its aspect as confused and shifting as any compound creature from legend. I have to quote Hawthorne here:

According to the best accounts which I have been able to obtain, this Chimaera was nearly, if not quite, the ugliest and most poisonous creature, and the strangest and unaccountablest, and the hardest to fight with, and the most difficult to run away from, that ever came out of the earth’s inside. It had a tail like a boa-constrictor; its body was like I do not care what; and it had three separate heads, one of which was a lion’s, the second a goat’s, and the third an abominably great snake’s. And a hot blast of fire came flaming out of each of its three mouths! Being an earthly monster, I doubt whether it had any wings; but, wings or no, it ran like a goat and a lion, and wriggled along like a serpent, and thus contrived to make about as much speed as all the three together.

That sounds about right! Now, if you can stomach the unbearable pretension of likening of the complex media world to a monster (be grateful I didn’t quote Lovecraft), you can see that it is unlikely that one head will just up and consume the other, though they may quarrel and gnaw on one another frequently. One significant difference: while the creature Hawthorne described combines the speed of all three, the present media finds itself limited by its own strengths. There is no popular discussion that does not cause sensationalism, for instance, and there is no expert inspection that does not cause delay. The nature of the beast, however, does change over time, and you may safely lay your bets on Twitter (social media in general, really — any “real time discussion”) being an important (but limited) part of it.

Finally: blogs are the real wild card here. The issue is that they qualify for each category but aren’t fundamentally limited to any — which makes them both versatile and unreliable. This blog, for example, has pieces that fall under every category: tweet-like posts about some Apple rumor, rehashes of press releases, and interminable editorials like the one you’re just about to finish. Yes, the credibility (and readability) of the blogosphere is still questioned, puzzlingly enough, but who knows — the Chimaera may grow a fourth head yet.

[Note: For anyone confused: I chose the three outlets shown in the top diagram as visible representatives, and am not necessarily talking specifically about each one; you'll notice that there are shots from MSNBC, Fox News, and the newsroom photograph is of the Daily Telegraph.]

But these Orbeos OLED lights are as bright and efficient as any LED or CFL, but are both warm, diffuse, and dimmable. I might choose them over regular bulbs just because they have the best of all worlds.

They’re extremely flat, so they can go just about anywhere, but that same flatness means they won’t work to illuminate a whole area unless you have a few. Some OLEDs, however, are flexible, and once they can stretch the matrix into a light bulb-esque shape, you might be able to put them into your regular sockets.

[via OLED-Display.net]

I suppose that these projections, which we may safely call optimistic, are based on geometric growth (unwarranted) from one year’s figures (essentially invent) and failed to take into account the patent illegality of their entire enterprise. Needless to say, these numbers were not met. Psystar sold a fraction of a fraction of what it promised investors, so even if it were to escape total destruction by Apple’s hands, it would simply be dismembered by its mysterious creditors.

I would have welcomed a Psystar laptop, the planned hardware which was to make up the bulk of their fantasy sales, since our own Psystar desktop worked perfectly well. For all I know, Biggs is still using it. I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro, but I know that I as well as many people I know would welcome a cheap, yet non-hackintosh, OS X laptop.

Oh well. This story held our interest because, deep within, we felt it betokened the inevitable confrontation between Apple lovers and the sternly limited Jobsian world they’ve come to live in. You can be sure that this isn’t the last we’ll hear from clone-makers, which seem, like domestic weeds, to continue to sprout in the areas you thought were clear and cultivated. In fact, the wild but unpredictable growth of dandelions like Psystar, PearC, and Power Computing (remember them?) will continue because, let’s be honest, if you could pay less for your Mac, you would. That’s called a market — and damn the EULAs.

Really, it’s as simple as picking up a spool of conductive thread, sewing a few loops, and tying it off. Do you think you can handle that? Now, conductive thread is pretty coarse, so you shouldn’t try this on your fine kid leather gloves, but any pair of cheap wool or cotton gloves should hold up just fine to a bit of poking.

[via Lifehacker]

Good, but any noise, however beautiful, may become a bother if you hear it all the damn time. So Chevy has stated that its noise, “a series of low horn audio signals,” will be driver-controlled. I have to say, I’m glad of that, because “a series of low horn audio signals” sounds like it’d really bug me. You’ll be able to turn it on and off like any other safety features, like high beams and hazard lights.

I wonder if in the future of car marketing there will be major competition between brand noises — if they’re all quiet, there’s no distinctive engine note, but they still have control over how the sucker sounds. I can just picture it now: “Yeah, the Toyota gets 50 more miles per charge, but have you heard the sweet woom-woom noise the new Fords make?” Or maybe you’ll be able to buy “roll tones.” Okay, I’m a genius. I’m patenting that.

I haven’t played the game yet, but it does strike me that the realism has completely gone. COD4 walked that line successfully, but it sounds like MW2 is (as fun as it may be) a collection of “wouldn’t it be cool if” set-pieces. Still, all the players will tell you that it’s the multiplayer that’s the real draw, and I’m completely out of the loop there. Time to go play some Excitebike!

[via Apartment Therapy]

It’s like buying a rechargeable shirt that pushes your chest in and out. Why not just breathe?

Yes yes, that’s all well and good, but where do I buy this miracle of refrigeration, you ask? Apparently at Bed, Bath and Beyond. This is the Beyond part, I’m guessing. Oh, and it costs $450. MM-HM! It’s no more than you deserve.

[via Crave]

The fun part is that both sides can use it as ammunition: “We sold more copies in a month than you’ve sold in ten years!” or “A month later and only 5% have upgraded? Either Windows 7 sucks or you’re all stupid, or both.” Good points all around, guys.

The total share of the net commanded by Windows 7 (and by OS X, as they’re currently tied) is around 5%. Windows in its various forms makes up 95% of web traffic, a statistic I found surprising. Windows’ total proportion has gone up a touch since the 7 launch, but that’ll likely revert soon as redundant installs and such are cannibalized.