Hands-on With the Slim Aluminum Apple Keyboards

We just played with both the new Apple keyboards, both wired and wireless, and found them actually quite good. It's no longer mushy, like the old keyboards, but almost exactly like the keyboard on the MacBooks now. They have the same space between the keys, and pretty much the same tactile feel when you press down on them. Which is great if you like laptop keyboard keys (like us).

The large wired keyboard has a num pad and pretty much looks like the old Apple keyboards. The Function keys are replaced with those new special keys like we saw on the net already, and work pretty great.

The small wireless keyboard, on the other hand is almost exactly like the MacBook keyboard. There's no number pad and the arrow keys are shrunken like they are on the MacBook (and other laptops). The keys themselves though feel exactly the same on both models. Which is to say, pretty good.

The keyboards are actually very thin and very low to the ground (desk). The back is raised, so it's slightly more ergonomic. All in all, it's quite comfortable, and I could type pretty fast on it (faster than Mercury News' Dean Takahashi, at least).

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Apple Rolls Out Redesigned iMovie 08

Steve Jobs announced an updated version of the video editing application iMovie to go along with iLife '08. Calling it "a completely new way of editing video," the Apple CEO called it "startlingly better." Jobs says it's designed to be able to put together a movie in 30 minutes. It has a completely new user interface, too.

It first shows up with a new star icon. It holds all of your video applications in one library, working very much like iPhoto. It now supports the newest HD camcorders that use the AVCHD codec, as well as HDV and DV cams. It offers easier scrubbing of clips, as well as as one-click sharing to YouTube. iMovie is included as part of the iLife '08 package, selling for $79 or included free with each new Mac.

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Lufthansa May Add Beds to Coach; Mile High Club to Add Thousands of Members

Sleeping while flying coach is damned near impossible, especially if you're over six feet tall. Sure, you could drop three times as much (or more) for one of those fancy business class seats that fold into a bed, but only suckers and jerkbags do that. If you're flying to Germany anytime soon, however, you might just get a bed with your coach ticket.

That's because German airline Lufthansa is adding a "bunkroom" full of triple bunk beds for their coach passengers. It would be in place specifically for overnight flights, so you wouldn't get to take a nap if you just wanted to fly from Frankfurt to Paris, but it could make the difference between arriving refreshed and arriving feeling like a zombie. Don't think that you'd get to bounce back and forth between your seat and your bed, however: you'd be booking a bed instead of a normal seat. Yeah, it's a serious commitment.

Lufthansa is considering this scheme in a study, so there are no dates as to when they'll implement it, if ever.

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Jet-Man Is So Cool It Hurts

Yves Rossy is an absolute lunatic, but we love him for it. He has been involved in human jet-powered flight since 2001, back in April he survived a potentially life threatening incident when his jet wings encountered problems mid flight. Since then he has been working on repairing and improving the system, he has been so busy with the repairs process he has not been giving any interviews whatsoever.

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What we do know is this; he has completed thirty motorized flights with nothing but himself strapped to a set of carbon foldable wings, which provide the power source for his flights in a manner that is not fully disclosed. What is disclosed is how freaking awesome Yves Rossy is.

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2010 Olympics, Now WIth Hyrdrogen Buses

The 2010 Olympics in Vancouver will need a lot of transportation, so the B.C. government is assembling the largest collection of hydrogen fuel-cell buses on the planet.

Twenty hydrogen buses will be in Whistler for coastal transport during the Olympic Games. Each bus costs about $2.1 million, or four times the price of the diesel variety. But they are zero emissions vehicles, providing 37 seats and a 60-person standing capacity. Plus, they can reach respectable speeds of up to 90km/hr. (That picture above should be similar to the setup the buses will have.)

The government only has the project funded through 2014, so hopefully we have hydrogen technologies more sorted by that time.

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