iPathetic?

With a plurality of people weighing in over at Wired Magazine Online in regards to what is essentially Apple's giant iPhone retool ( iPad ) one has to wonder exactly why you would buy it.

As for me, I'm satisfied with my iPhone and don't have the desire to pay for a purely gimmicky piece of Apple gadgetry that costs more than my house payment.

There is one aspect of the iPad that will likely drive down the price of the Kindle - people are looking at it as a tool for reading books on. While the Kindle last year was pricing right around $300 ( nearly $200 less than the basic iPad ) it's a fair assumption that the price of the Kindle will drop according to the selling frenzy that will likely accompany the iPad.

What's your thoughts on Steve Job's latest piece of technology?

The Linguistics Of The Future

In which we explore the Jargon Watch seciton of Wired Magazine

Dark Flash

n. An invisible burst of infrared and ultraviolet light used for clandestine night photography. While the greenish pictures can be color-corrected, the system can’t yet pick up freckles, a hitch for paparazzi stalking Lindsay Lohan

It almost sounds like some Phillip K. Dick inspired piece of technology that allows people like Dick Cheney to distribute their fear-laden rhetoric across multiple media platforms without ever having to answer for what he's trying to do.

Galápagos syndrome

n. The scourge of Japanese mobile companies, whose superadvanced 3G handsets won’t work on foreign cell networks. It’s named for the birds of the Galápagos, whose specialized beaks don’t cut it on the mainland.

Much in the same way that Tucker Carlson's particular brand of inane drivel hasn't worked on any network that has employed him, so he is forced to bounce from channel to channel in order to find some place that will accept him.

Saser

n. Sonic laser. Employing the same technique lasers use to focus light, sasers emit perfectly aligned terahertz sound waves — once a purely theoretical phenomenon. The tech could be adapted for medical and security imaging.

You know that annoying sound that eminates from Michelle Bachman's face whenever you see her on television or hear her on radio? Yeah, same principle.

EATR

n. The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, a Darpa-funded machine able to forage for its own biomass fuel. Fox News suggested that EATR could feed on dead soldiers, eliciting reassurances from the maker that the bot is “strictly vegetarian.”

I think the description provided by Wired is all we need on this one.

Conservatives And Technology: Michelle Malkin And Hot Air Edition

Malkin and Allahpundit are REALLY trying to make as much hay out of any and everything that Obama does. They are even continuing the new talking-point that president Obama is insulting England by not following "gift protocol". Here's their lastest accusations:

Dohbama strikes again, disses U.K. Updated: Will the Queen re-gift the iPod?

Because, after all, nothing says “special relationship” like a gadget you can buy in every mall in the western world. What’d he get Prince Philip? An Xbox?
The inevitable punchline — almost as inevitable as the fact that Gordon Brown’s DVDs were the wrong format: She already owns one.

But here's something that neither of them seem to know. There are different types of iPods.

It appears that even Fox"News" reported that the Queen requested it. Oh, really?

BRET BAIER (host): Major, my wife tells me I'm not the best gift giver, but after President Obama gave Prime Minister Brown the set of DVDs that didn't work in Great Britain, we hear that he gave the queen an iPod?

MAJOR GARRETT (Fox News senior White House correspondent): Yes, a video iPod, which we are told by White House staff the queen requested. She has an audio iPod, but not a video iPod.

What's on it? A video of her 2007 trip to the United States -- meaning Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Plus, also, on the audio side of that iPod, composer Richard Rogers, some of his famous American hits. And it's signed. And we're told it went over pretty well with the queen. Bret.

BAIER: OK. I'll add it to my list. Major, thanks.

I suppose Malkin and Allah can't seem to grasp the difference between "audio" and "video". Then again, conservatives never were to keen on technology.

Technology And Movies - And Maybe Something Else

Android application developer Alex Holmes is creating a simple and powerful new way to get your pirated videos: an application that uses your cellphone's built in camera to scan a DVD bar code, then starts the movie downloading onto your home computer.

Called "Torrent Droid," the program means consumers who spot a DVD they like at the local Walmart will no longer have to choose between the instant gratification of buying it on the spot, and the frugal -- albeit illegal -- alternative of grabbing it from BitTorrent.

More here

I've always been fascinated with the rate at which technology evolves. You buy a new gadget and less than 6 months later it's obsolete.

This, on the other hand, is something that I find both interesting and rather unsettling at the same time.

Granted, piracy is seen as a problem in the entertianment industry, I'm cusious as to what the actual dollar value is, per year, that is lost when someone snags a movie or song(s) online instead of paying for it at your local "big box" store.

Any piece of technology that is developed for a certain purpose can be manipulated in order to perform another task. This can be something as mundane as reducing the time you spend in the grocery store or something as sinister as identity theft. Seeing as how this piece of tech was intended for stealing films ( by scanning the UPC code from a DVD ) it stands to reason that anything with a bar-code can be scanned and information appropriated.

Remnants Of A Failed Presidency

This would have been an interesting moment to witness:

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

More here from The Washington Post

Although I am not nearly as tech-savvy as I wish I were, but one would think that the White House of all places would be equipped as it was needed.

Don't Have Something? Improvise

Even though I'm no nearly as tech-savvy as I would love to be - I'm still trying to figure out how to use torrent sites - I'm genuinely amazed at how people use technology for ways that it normally isn't meant to.

Whether it be using old compuer hadware or circuit-bending a Speak and Spell into a fantastic new musical instrument, technology can evolve with a little push.

Here's a music video by Cesar Kuriyama that fits right in to what i'm talking about:

Eschewing a video camera, he took 45,000 photographs with a Nikon D200 DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera and stitched them together to create the illusion of video.

The music video was created for the band Fat City Reprise and premiered at their homecoming concert in Philadelphia.

Kuriyama says he directed the talent in the video to move as best they could in slow-motion while he had his director of photography Tommy Agriodimas shoot JPG bursts with the Nikon D200.

More here from Wired's Gadet Lab blog.

While the tracks is very much "college-radio-local-band" material, the video is quite impressive when you know how it was shot.