(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
Loading ...Why Get Smart’s shoe phone is better than Apple’s iPhone
Among the many pleasures of the movie adaptation of TV’s Get Smart is the moment when Steve Carrell’s Maxwell Smart takes a trip to the CONTROL Museum and finds the shoe phone: a portable communications device way ahead of its time.
In honour of the movie and YouTube’s recent Shoe Phones Across America contest, we salute a machine that trumps Apple’s over-hyped consumer product on so many levels:
1. Very little chance of losing the device, unless you visit someone with really nice carpet.
2. No need for an over-inflated data plan from Rogers.
3. Encourages users to sit while speaking.
4. Dress-up style more appropriate for corporate settings.
5. For once it’s the device, not the customer, that gets stepped on.
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(1 votes, average: 7 out of 10) Loading ...Dance like no one is calling
This year’s Glastonbury Festival will see the debut not of a great new music act but at a cell phone battery charger that will work by human beings dancing.
Orange, a carrier out of England, is partnering with a renewable energy company called GotWind (which needs no punchline on our end) to produce a prototype which is worn on the arm and uses “a system of weights and magnets which provide an electric current to top up charge in a storage battery. This can then later be used to recharge the phone,” according to Reuters.
So don’t just stand there, bust a move! Do the Recharge, this summer’s crazy new dance! You may look like you’re doing the Flintstone Flop, but at least your phone will work. As if you’ll be able to hear it ringing at the Glastonbury Festival anyway.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Arrogant gadget buyers think they’re better than us!
If you can afford to get an iPhone (and the accompanying service plan) you’re probably reasonably rich. Maybe not go-to-Hell rich, but the gadgets help give you enough ego to fake it. So says a study from Mindset Media which examined links between acquisitive consumer tech customers and their attitudes. And boy, do they have attitude.
“Avid technology consumers tended to score highly in personality traits such as leadership, dynamism and assertiveness — but low in modesty,” the study says.
Advice to IT departments: Don’t give users anything that will make them feel any more superior than they already do. In fact, considering exploring if the reverse is also true. Running a mainframe should make a humble person out of anybody.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...World’s fastest computer, Roadrunner, designed by Wyle E. IBM
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists claim they have developed a supercomputer capable of performing 1,000 trillion calculations a second with help from IBM.
The computer is named Roadrunner, according to AP, and will be used on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.
To put the computer’s speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today’s most powerful laptops stacked 2.5 kilometres high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world’s 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day. Or, if every single one of us paid Big Blue 10 bucks, the company could build another one.
Roadrunner is twice as fast as IBM’s Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In fact, scientists said the only thing capable of moving faster than the supercomputer is IBM’s accounting department to the bank to cash the US$100 million cheque.
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(1 votes, average: 1 out of 10) Loading ...Dell has to be more direct with people, N.Y. judge says
Dell was given a stern dressing-down by a State Supreme Court Justice over “false and deceptive advertising of its promotional credit financing and warranties.”
According to AP, Dell ads “offered promotions like free flat-panel monitors, additional memory, rebates, instant discounts and financing with no interest or no payments for a period to ‘well qualified’ or ‘best qualified’ customers. However, Cuomo’s submissions indicated as few as seven per cent of New York applicants qualified for some promotions.”
At this point, the way its overall sales are going vis-a-vis HP, Dell might want to take whatever customers it can get.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Pointy-headed Premier McGuinty longs for luddite motorists
Having successfully made the lives of thousands of Ontario smokers absolutely miserable, Dalton McGuinty is considering a ban on the many technology devices and services that allow us to communicate and manage information while driving.
According to the Globe and Mail, the unpopular premier has found a new crusade that could see not only cell phones but BlackBerries and other equipment on the “forbidden” list of Ontario cars.
“I’ve always said I’ll do what the police think is important and make our roads safer,” he said. “What about people who are tapping on the GPS system? What about the next gadget that they haven’t invented yet?” he asked.
Too true, fearless leader! Then again, this is becoming trend with McGuinty. First they ban BlackBerries in government meetings, and now in cars? It’s going to get harder and harder to reach our premier when he’s on the go. Though at this rate, who would want to?
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Robots even more interesting when they’re behind glass, doing nothing
Shark Tales would like to set the record straight: Despite our efforts to venture into new and emerging markets, the recently-announced plans to set up a US$3.4-million exhibit dedicated to artificially intelligent machines, called Roboworld, has nothing to do with IT World Canada.
The Carnagie Science Center in Pittsburgh, which will host the exhibit, jumped through major hoops and kissed some serious P.R. butt in order to wrangle some time in the busy schedule of British actor Anthony Daniels, the British actor who played C-3PO in all six “Star Wars” movies, to attend a press conference announcing an upcoming Robot Day. Meanwhile, the height-challenged thespian who made the beep-beep noises for R2-D2 was reportedly insulted to be overlooked.
According to the people behind it, Roboworld will “encompass an array of mechanized devices, including a welder that’s been modified to pick up basketballs and shoot them through a hoop.” And to think some senior executives don’t see business value from investing in IT.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...No cell phone-toting teenager left behind
A pilot study from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis suggests that teens should be equipped with GPS-enabled cell phones so that their location and behavior can be tracked at all times. That way, a researcher suggests, when a teen comes close to taking a dangerous health risk, technology could come to the rescue.
“If teens are most likely to drink right after school, for example, they could receive a timely text message that encourages health behavior,” the story says. Which of course they would immediately read and obey, because that’s what teens tend to do when they’re drunk.
Yes, kids, with the right combination of surveillance and SMS, mobile communications could save your life. Assuming the radiation doesn’t kill you first.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...All a Mac fan should need is rose colours for his/her glasses
A man is suing Apple for claiming in its advertising that iMac monitors can display a million colours. Well, he counted them and gosh darn it, they don’t!
An Associated Press story says, “Users are fooled into seeing many more colours because the monitors use technological tricks that involve showing many similar shades at high speeds to create the illusion of the desired shade, according to the lawsuit.”
Silly Apple, tricks are for kids. Monitors are for adults. Then again, we’re talking about Macs here, so maybe they really are for kids.
The lawsuit says that, because of all this IT razzle-dazzle, the monitors only show 262,144 “true colours.” Cyndi Lauper did not return calls from Shark Tales for comment at press time.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Another way to use the BlackBerry without actually working
RIM’s BlackBerry is a great little device, but wouldn’t it be great if senior managers actually liked to use it? It’s too bad adoption has been such an uphill battle.
But wait! Thanks to further Canadian innovation, the BlackBerry can now change the way you work AND play! That’s right, kids: A London, Ont.-based company called Itinerant Software is offering up Greenfinder, a $35 per year service that can help golfers find a local course by providing a list of golf courses within a 30-kilometre radius. Once a golf course is chosen, GreenFinder will even provide driving directions to the course. And for an extra $50 bucks, Mike Lazaridis will even caddy for you! (Okay, that last part isn’t true, but only because Lazaridis would have to do some serious working out before he could lug clubs around all day long.)
