John Biggs is a New York-based author and consultant. John has published work in The New York Times, Laptop, Men’s Health, Linux Journal, Popular Science and others. John is also the author of Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age. Visit his website here.
Email: john at crunch gear dot com
The dawn of the 21st century brought us a problem: we had lots of data, but no real way to bring that data into the real world. We could feasibly lug laptops and phones around, but did they ever do exactly what we needed them to do? Don’t answer that.
Manufacturers, in their wisdom, decided to do something about it and so devices like the Peek – for email – and the CueCat – for nothing – were born. Here’s a look at ten “avatar” gadgets, gadgets that brought a web service into the real world, for better or worse.
Twitterpeek – We should be nicer to the Twitterpeek. This standalone device, designed specifically for Twittering, mirroring our own obsession with the microblogging service and, if anything, we willed it into existence with our collective desires for always-on Twitter. Does it work? Eh. Is it a good idea? Eh. Is it for us? Probably not, but what do I know?
Happy post-Halloween! Thanks for sending in your costumes and thanks, most of you, for following the rules. That said, I’m proud to show you the 11 best costumes in this line-up, as judged by all of us at CG. I added one extra because we just couldn’t bear to choose between the various Iron Men we saw.
OMG! Did you hear? Lenovo has just added a BIOS feature to its new ThinkPads allowing you to swap Ctrl and Fn! Apparently this was a big request for many people in the world and Lenovo, being good guys, listened intently and pushed this passed the faceless bureaucrats in accounting and GOT THIS THROUGH! Hope, people, is what Lenovo promised, and change is what you get. Read More
Apple seems to have bought some keywords on Google including, most interestingly, “download windows 7.” That’s right: every hax0r out to download Win7 will see a little ad from Apple saying “Upgrading to Windows 7? There’s never been a better time to switch to a Mac. Find out why.”
Fresh from the Twitter feed of Grant Imahara we see Kari from Mythbusters going nuts with a sniper rifle taller than her. I hope it’s for an experiment and not a Discovery-channel sponsored “Deadliest Game” reality show where the prey will be hosts of various Food Network programs.
Another day, another Android phone. I believe we will soon come to a day when Android phones will be looked at with the same jaundiced eye as, say, the latest LG Chocolate, but since that day hasn’t come, I’ll share a few observations with Verizon’s new $99 Hero-alike, the Eris.
The Eris is basically a mini Hero. It’s slightly thinner and clad in all black and but the Sense UI is in place and all of the things that made the Hero great – responsive OS, apps, and social networking connectivity – are here. One thing lacking, however, is the “latest” version of Android with its superior navigation application and multi-touch.
Remember those watches made out of pieces of the Titanic? Or that watch with the little moon lander on it? Well Yvan Arpa, the nutso horologist behind those treats has finally hit the a new level of crazy. Homeboy is a has a black belt and, in order to honor his fellow black belts, he’s created a watch just for black belts. It’s a watch for black belts only. And it costs about $4,000.
The site accepts applications for their watches and the design takes queues from other martial arts including creating hands that look like Shinai, wooden Kendo swords.
This might be a little too nerdy for you guys, but Ariel Adams of ABlogToRead and I just started a weekly watch podcast. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. Read More
I rarely use the words “sexy” and “personal scanner” in rapid succession but today I’m happy to report that Planon has created something special. The X Series is a tiny personal scanner that can scan and send images to laptops, Blackberry phones, and even Planon’s own personal printers.
Although I never really saw the value in these before, I’ve recently been on the road a lot and could have used this to scan research for my book. The pen scans in color up and black and white and supports MicroSD card expansion as well as Bluetooth transmission. It has a large OLED screen and only four buttons.
Presumably this kills iPhones by baking them to death, but our Nik Cubrilovic and Michael Arrington have decided to review dual hot dog and bun toaster and compare it to the iPhone on the basis of its ability to cook hot dogs. It seems that they were able to make hot dogs and eat them and, interestingly enough, they got 9 minutes of video out of this abomination.
They also got the machine to shoot a hot dog at them.
In this political season, why not talk about the roughest political argument of them all: the real meaning of Apple’s announcement of over 100,000 apps in the app store. Are these apps important because, as Steve Ballmer says, the iPhone doesn’t handle the Internet well? Are these apps a testament to a strong ecosystem? Or are these apps a testament to Apple’s marketing might and the perception that you just might make your millions by selling a flashlight app for the Touch?
The announcement, which basically says that there are over 100,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch with some of the true winners – Smule’s I Am T-Pain, for example – getting 10,000 or more downloads a day. Read More
Rob at Phandroid found an app that only runs under Android 2.0 with multi-touch. That’s right: the Mororola Droid, not just the German Milestone, has multi-touch. The app you have to grab is Picsay, a photo viewing app, and it’s all right there, front and center. Read More
I just got my hands on the the Twitter Peek (AKA the Tweek) and I’m trying to figure out who, specifically, this is for. First, let’s consider this my review: this device is not very good if you’re a Twitter “power user” like myself or anyone else with maybe 100+ followers and a few hundred folks you follow. To be clear, this isn’t quite Peek’s fault as they’re clearly not interested in pleasing users like me. They’re looking for folks from a different aviary, presumably new Twitter users who haven’t quite gotten hooked, but are interested in the service enough to stick with it — and have $199 burning a hole in their pockets as well. If you know any of those people, please send them to Amazon to pick this up.
For the rest of us, this thing is pretty rough. I follow 2104 people and so this thing was buzzing and Tweeting all afternoon until I finally turned it off. Weird batches of tweets would come in, all from one person, for example, or weird messages like “Oh Hey, you’re Tweeting so much! We’re going to try to catch up” or something to that effect. It’s also really slow. You have to click twice to read a Tweet – once to bring up the menu and once to read the Tweet – and scrolling is really bad. And it makes a buzzing and a tweeting noise when tweets come in – which is all the time. And it’s $99 with 6 months free or $199 for life. And it only does Twitter. No email. No texting. I’m really selling this thing, aren’t I? Read More
So what’s all this then? A company called China Ontrade is selling an iPhone Generation 4 2010 backplate with camera holes for $23.42. China Ontrade, interestingly enough, was the company that started selling iPhone 3GS screens a few months before launch.
What does this prove? Not much. Maybe they’re trying to drum up excitement or maybe Apple, in all their wisdom, is releasing the 4G model for the holidays, a highly unlikely turn of events. iPhones come out in the summer time, just in time for back-to-school, and this might be a mislabeling. Read More
BlackSn00000w is coming down, on me… Geohot, creator of the original iPhone unlock, has crack the 05.11.07 baseband to enable tethering, jailbreak for 3.1.2, and complete SIM unlock of the 3GS. This means you can use your iPhone on any GSM network.
Long-suffering handset maker Sony Ericsson is all about the UX, people, and they’ve got the screens to prove it. The new system does basically what everyone else is doing and it brings all of your friend’s content into something called TimeScape (there’s another one for media called Media Scape.)
Their new UX UI looks pretty amazing – you basically drag cards all over the screen with your finger, which is quite interesting and it’s made all the better by having some lady and two dudes show you how everything works.
I wanted to make one of these for a long time. The problem was that there were no reasonable tutorials or guides on how to proceed. Additionally I am not a programmer by a long shot so the software was also a problem. This was actually the biggest problem, there was no type of software available at all.
So read that again and think long and hard if you want to trust this man to teach you how to build an autonomous weapon that will shoot at anything that movies. Are you thinking? Don’t lie. The gun will be able to tell. And it will follow you and shoot you. Read More
Short version: The Magic Mouse is everything that anti-Macists hate about Apple: It’s twee, too smart for its own good, and initially unusable to the uninitiated. Sadly, even Mac fanbois will feel the same way. Read More
Riddle me this: would you pay Apple $30 a month for unlimited access to TV, presumably coinciding with the actual network air time or shortly thereafter? Interesting, non?
PKafka has talked to some industry execs who have been approached by Apple in preparation of just that sort of thing. You pay $30 and get TV – on demand. The Apple TV would ignore the DVR market completely, instead becoming a sort of subscription-based cable TV service.
If you’ve installed OS X onto laptop with an Intel Atom processor, do not update your version of Snow Leopard until further notice. Rumor has it that Apple has removed Atom support from 10.6.2. This means your Hackintosh will fail unless you mess around with the kernel.
Happy post-Halloween! Thanks for sending in your costumes and thanks, most of you, for following the rules. That said, I’m proud to show you the 11 best costumes in this line-up, as judged by all of us at CG. I added one extra because we just couldn’t bear to choose between the various Iron Men we saw.
To repeat, do not upgrade your Apple TV to 3.0 if you’re running hacked ATV plugins like XBox Media Center or Boxee. I’m sure this will be fixed in a matter of days – if not hours – but as of right now it means a ride on the Failboat to Sad Trombone Town. That’s right: this update destroys the only thing that makes Apple TV usable and good.
Also, as an added bonus, Apple TV firmware 3.0 is insignificant. It adds Internet radio to the package and improves the UI. It also adds Genius playlists. My cup, as they say, runneth over.
UPDATE – Post has been update with instructions for downgrading to firmware 2.4.
It’s time to put on the Swami hat and predict just what we have in store for 2010 and beyond. Considering all of the movement in the gadget world in the past few months, I’m fairly sure most of this going to be accurate. Given the current status of some of these technologies, it’s hard to prognosticate very far out but there are a few things that have become apparent over the past year, especially the rise of Android and our expectations for the iPad.
Without further ado… the envelope please:
Apple TV -> 27-inch iMac -> Wall Mount for 27-inch iMac It’s sad but true: Apple doesn’t care about Apple TV. All the real brain power is going to the desktop and laptop and probably onto the iPad. They’ve made it clear with the 27-inch iMac that they can make a high-resolution screen and powerful computer inside of a case the thickness of a college textbook. Who needs a TV, let alone an Apple TV?
The obvious conclusion here is that the 27-inch iMac becomes a real Apple TV. The Mac Mini already makes a great multi-media system and a quick update to FrontRow, now considered abandonware, may make it a great 10-foot interface.
Wait! Before you head off to that weekend costume party, snap yourself in your Halloween costume and enter our First Annual(TM) Halloween Costume Contest.
So Juniper Networks makes network hardware. And they want to make an “iPhone of networking?” What could that be? A small networking device that’s insanely possibly and considered polarizing? Nah. It’s just a new logo, faster chips, and new software. This is all the beat Cisco, which is kind of futile.
Essentially what Juniper is doing is creating an app store for their routers, which is actually kind of cool. Sadly, things are a little rough for developers right now:
The dawn of the 21st century brought us a problem: we had lots of data, but no real way to bring that data into the real world. We could feasibly lug laptops and phones around, but did they ever do exactly what we needed them to do? Don’t answer that.
