cheers to life: Jul 28, 2007

Saturday, July 28, 2007

YouTube to Auto Block Content by Fall

While YouTube has already been running fingerprint technology in beta for companies like Disney, a Google lawyer said Friday that video filters should be in place by September, and if not then by fall. Automated technology is, of course, the only way to police vast amounts of uploaded material. But it's disheartening to see Google implementing measures that will threaten the fair use of commercial material. Besides, with so many entertainment entities offering their own content online without YouTube's craptastic flash compression, I know where I'm going to not watch Desperate Housewives. What do you think readers? Is there a better solution to this mess that we're all too blind to see?

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Apple Patents Text-to-Speech Messaging

In a recent patent filing "Multimedia data transfer for a personal communication device," Apple is offering text messages without the GSM SMS protocol, or even the need to read.

While SMS requires an intermediary server between sender and receiver, Apple's patent has a sender's device convert text messages to an audio signal with this audio signal getting passed through standard audio communication channels (reminds me of faxing, really). This signal can then be translated to actual language on the receiver's end, with a speaker reading the message back. Potential listed uses include texting for the blind and for those with very small screens.

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How to:Free iPhone Ringtones from iTunes

The secret: export a playlist from the iTunes store, download the MP4 sample clips, and upload them using iFuntastic. Stick it to the carriers who overcharge for ringtones of songs you probably already own! Not only is iTunes sourcing the ringtones, but the 30-second clips are generally the best parts of the song for ringtone use. I hope Apple rewrites the way ringtone sales are done the same way they made paid online music a satisfying experience, but until then, it's going to be a repeat of the Napster scenario.

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FYI: Kazakhstani Internet Starting At The Low, Low Price Of $3,350...Per Month.

Yes, you read that right. In Borat's beloved homeland of Kazakhstan, the national internet service provider is charging $3,350 per month for DSL service. If you're ever in Kazakhstan and that seems a little pricey, dial-up is availible for $111 per month. If you need more speed, you can go all out and pay $22,032 for a 6Mbps cable connection. Rest assured that Borat has the 6Mbps connection while Nursultan Tulyakbay only has the dial-up

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YouTube getting digital fingerprinting anti-piracy...

YouTube getting digital fingerprinting anti-piracy tools in September; bye bye Daily Show clips.

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Gold USB Flash Drive, Another Insane Indulgence?

Okay, we're starting to see a trend here. If a device turns into a commodity, start gussying it up with gold plating, or even solid gold. Is that what's happened with this Younous swing gold flash drive, holding 512MB to 16GB of ordinary data underneath its seemingly extraordinary exterior? It's just 8.7mm thick, easy to carry in your pocket and flash around in front of everyone, making them think you're some kind of dot-com billionaire.

Apparently not. This thing must not even be clad in real gold, because from what we can gather using our limited Korean translation skills, the cheapest one of these drives costs a grand total of $15.47. Well, you could just tell everybody it's made of solid gold. Incidentally, 16GB in such a small size might actually be useful, at least until the gold plastic wears off.

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Screw Fingerprint Scanning, Fingervein Scanning is Where It's At

Fingerprint scanners are so last century. The new wave of finger-based recognition uses veins, not fingerprints, to ID people. Hitachi has just announced their new biometric cardless credit payment system that reads the patterns of blood vessels in one's fingers. Apparently, all our veins are unique, like snowflakes or, well, fingerprints, and can be used to easily ID people. Simply slide your finger into the machine and in a second you'll be verified. These things should start popping up in Japanese convenience stores and panty vending machines in the near future, with their migration over here sure to happen soon afterwards. Anything that'll let me pay for stuff without having the few seconds that getting my wallet out takes to ponder my purchase is A-OK with me.

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Cellphone for the Blind Has Angled Keys, No Screen

This cellphone concept design by Peter Lau allows blind users to easily dial numbers and make calls. It doesn't rely on Braille, but instead has differently angled keys that users can learn to recognize. So how do you send and receive an SMS then? There are no details on this, but presumably it would be possible to have speech synthesis read out text messages. And I guess that the phone could also read your messages out loud as you compose them. There are no details however, like with most concepts, but it looks cool and it's probably invisible to radar with all those angled surfaces.

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Medison Celebrity, the $150 Laptop

Somebody must be losing money on this Medison Celebrity laptop, running Fedora Linux and certainly qualifying as the cheapest notebook in the world at $150. Heck, that's even less expensive than the OLPC (one laptop per child) that was supposed to cost $100 and has now ballooned up past $175, and which some sources are saying will retail for between $350 and $525 and won't be available until this coming holiday season. But this Medison Celebrity is a real notebook, with an Intel Celeron 1.5 GHz CPU, a 14-inch 1280x768 LCD screen, 256MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. There's got to be a catch.

Medison is a Swedish company whose spokesman can't disclose exactly how many laptops the company will be selling at this rock-bottom $150 price. So could this be a publicity stunt, positioning the company as a philothropist that "wants everyone to be able to afford a computer?" It's not going to do anybody much good if there are no PCs available, or if you'll wait a year for one to be delivered.

Other companies, Acer, for one, will swoop in to compete with this, if it's even possible. Can the age of disposable laptops be upon us? Perhaps it already is.

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Greenbox Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Biodiesel

With the billions of dollars being pumped into research every year, is it possible that the auto-emissions problem could have been solved by a trio of fisherman in Wales? It's possible. Three fishing buddies (who also happen to be organic chemists and engineers) have developed what they call the "Greenbox," a device that basically neutralizes harmful emissions when attached to a vehicle. It works by trapping the offending chemicals before they manage to get out the exhaust pipe. The box is removed when full, basically whenever the car is filled up, and replaced with a fresh one. It's then sent to a bioreactor, full of carbon dioxide in its inert state, to be fed to algae and converted into biodiesel. That diesel can then be pumped right back into vehicles. It sounds like a pretty amazing system, and tests have shown it working at 85-95% efficiency. The fishing buddies are in talks with companies such as Toyota and GM, so hopefully we'll see something like this become a widespread reality sooner rather than later.

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Get This S2 Hammer, and Everything Will Start Looking Like a Nail

Just when we were thinking the hammer had already been perfected, ATOMdesign steps in with this S2 Hammer, designed with a split head that reduces the shock to the hands and arms of the poor sucker who has to bang on stuff with it all day long. He-man hammer beta testers say this beast can drive a nail to the hilt with just two strikes, approaching nail-gun territory. Despite all of its high-tech design goodness, this mofo hammer's creators decided to stick with the carpenter-favorite hickory handle.

Designed for tool purveyor Vaughn & Bushnell, the S2 was deemed pretty and practical enough to win a Best of Category award in International Design Magazine's 53rd annual Product Design Competition. It also snagged a Bronze Award in the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) sponsored by BusinessWeek.

This is one serious-looking hammer, and while it probably can drive a nail in with two hits, were worried about what it's going to do to our thumbs when we miss. Ouch. We'll stick with a nail gun, which can drive dozens of nails in just a few seconds.

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Multi-Purpose Charger Bag Holds Only Chargers

This multi-purpose charger bag seems like a solution in search of a problem. Never in our experience have we had to carry around only chargers in a bag. In addition, we haven't had any trouble keeping chargers separate with just a little bit of cord wrapping beforehand, making the six separate compartments a little iffy as well. But if you're doing a bit of traveling and want to carry around a semi-fashionable charger bag, well, here ya go. Honestly, we recommend the Chargepod if you're going to charge six things at once.

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iFuntastic 2.0 Released: iPhone Ringtones and More

iFuntastic, the iPhone custom ringtone GUI app, is in version 2.0. They've added the ability to change carrier logos, and reorder the main menu's icons.

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Toshiba's UWB Wireless Laptop Dock

Hot on the heels of the wireless USB devices that hit this week is this ultra wide band port replicator dock for its slim R400. It has two USB ports on the front, two on the back, minijack audio out, Ethernet, and a DVI output. It uses UWB to hit 400mbits across all those ports. It's $500, and again, only compatible with the Toshiba R400 laptop.