GearBits

GearBits on Hiatus (Updated)

As the recent frequency of postings here at GearBits might have hinted at, we're taking a break. Until further notice, there will be no new content on this site.

The combination of various technical issues (comment spam, most specifically) and an increasing sense that the web just doesn't need another tech-oriented blog has convinced us that our time is better spent with our families, at our jobs, and just consuming other people's content for a while.

GearBits will likely come back at some point, as I'm a serial hobbyist (if I made money at every endeavor, I could claim being a serial entrepreneur). When it does reappear, however, it will be something a bit different.

I thank my co-authors for their time and creativity. These past 15 months with the site have been enjoyable (mostly) and interesting (always), and I expect we'll all be keeping our eyes peeled for the next new opportunity.

In the meantime, if you hear of anything nifty or have questions about us or this site, feel free to drop me a line at craig at memoware dot com.

Best wishes, and thanks for stopping by.

Update: Jerome asked me to offer up some other tech news sources I'd recommend. The following can individually more than make up for GearBits, so enjoy:
• Brighthand -- pure handheld news
• Engadget -- Peter's land of gadgety goodness
• The Gadgeteer -- great tech reviews
• ExtremeTech -- lots of great personal computing info
• TeleRead -- ebook news
• Lost Remote -- TV and media news
• Lockergnome Tech News -- all-purpose tech news site
• Wired -- but of course!
• Slashdot -- all that and karma, too
• Boing Boing -- general society & strangeness
• Gizmodo -- great gadgets & gear blog
• PalmInfocenter -- happenings in the Palm OS community
• Phonescoop -- THE place for phone news
• infoSync World -- my source for a European perspective on tech
• Watchster -- great tech blog aggregator

There are many, many other great sites, of course, but these are the larger ones I visit regularly.

Update #2 (11/8/04): I've started a personal blog where I can wax philosophic on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to no one but myself. If you want to check it out, it's at http://craigfroehle.com/blog

Update...Treos and Other Bits

Sorry for the lapse...I was out of the country and I guess my co-authors have not much to say at the moment. Here are a few tidbits of recent note:

Treo 270 in for Repair
My wife's Treo 270 died while she was in Ireland this past week. Actually, just the screen and backlight died; the rest of it seems OK. Apparently, palmOne is charging me $179 for an advance exchange for this beast. Not a great deal, but not terribly bad, IMO.

Treo 600 Battery Life Redux
Like the idiot I am, I left my Treo 600 in my car when I left for my trip Thursday afternoon. I got back to my car around midnight last night -- that's about 4.5 days or 108 hours later -- fully expecting the unit to be deader than a doornail. Much to my surprise, it still had 36% charge left. I finally dropped the unit in the charger today at noon just out of habit; it still had 28% battery left. So, over the course of 5 full days (120 hours), the phone (a) remained in standby (phone on), (b) supported nighly back-ups of its RAM to SD card, and (c) was used for about 20 minutes worth of phone calls and about 15 minutes of PDA activity. Given that it probably could have gone 6 full days had I pushed it, I'm still very, very impressed by the Treo 600's battery life.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves
While on the flight from Dublin to O'Hare, I read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Fabulous read. I'm quite sure I still have solidly entrenched mispunctuation habits, but I'm trying hard to overcome them. The attractiveness of joining a militant punctuation society is such that if you see someone with a Sharpie correcting a sign offering "Half Price Drink's", that's quite possibly me.

Sony Puts Handhelds on Hiatus in US
Sony has suspended selling its Clie line of Palm OS-powered PDAs in the US until further notice. It seems likely that the rapid rise in popularity of palmOne's recent Zire and Tungsten models and the forthcoming release of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) both made Sony reconsider whether trying to sell PDAs in North America made much sense. Brighthand has a short article on the announcement -- feel free to engage in wild speculation at your leisure.

China Cites Health Risk to Block Visitors from US

China has issued a travel ban to the US for its citizens and is blocking visitation from US citizens to China and its territories. Chinese officials stated that a recent World Health Organization statement condemning the US for "an epidemic of obesity" is primary motivation for the ban.

Chinese government health officials hope to reduce the risk of obesity infecting its population as prevalently as it has in the US. "During the SARS outbreak, we learned the value of being proactive and taking preventative steps," said Wu Xinhua, a government health official. "Restricting our population's exposure to this new, widespread obesity epidemic from the West is very important."

When asked why a travel ban was necessary when obesity isn't communicable, an unidentified government health official scoffed. "Of course obesity is communicable. One need only look at certain families to recognize that fat mother and fat father have infected their fat children with the disease. Why do you think obesity is a "growing epidemic" if it cannot be passed on from one person to another?"

"We think this misunderstanding is most unfortunate," said Greg Carlin, a representative from the US Dept. of Commerce. "We hope to clarify the situation with the Chinese government and get the travel restrictions lifted." When asked what the DoC was doing to address the problem long-term, Carlin replied, "We've instituted a ban on chili fries in our cafeteria."

Other countries reported to be considering joining the ban on US travel and travellers are North Korea, Malaysia, Cuba, and Indonesia. The WHO has not yet made a statement about the travel restrictions.

Yes, this is entirely fictional and not true in the slightest.

Cicadaville

Cicadaville contains lots of useful and apparently highly scientific information, such as these FAQs:

What do Cicadas eat?
Human children are the primary source of nutrition for Cicadas.

Are Cicadas poisonous?
Yes, Cicadas have a deadly venom that is injected through a small bone like tube known as the "Cicada deadly venom tube". The venom can kill a human being instantly. In 1987, the last time the Cicadas emerged in the United States, over 7 million people died from Cicada injections. Many people escaped but most perished.

How do Cicadas mate?
The female cicada injects her eggs under the skin of a small human child. The cicada pupae then grow inside the child until they reach maturity. Unless you protect your children they may become host to thousands of deadly Cicada pupae. The government calls this Chicken Pox.

Good to see somebody coming out and setting things straight.

Cincinnati, Cicada Central's Creepy Candids

OK, this is nothing related to technology (but I may yet discover a connection), but these are some wicked photos of the cicada invasion happening in Cincinnati right now.

This first picture is the base of a neighbor's tree. Those hundreds/thousands of little brown things that look like peanuts are actually the skins shed by the cicada larvae when they molt. Remember, this is just one tree...

This next photo is a close-up of the trunk of the tree. It gives you an idea of the density of the cicadas that have emerged in just the past 24 hours. After a day or so of hanging onto the tree and drying out, the newly molted adults fly (clumsily, I might add) to some nearby bush/shrub/car antenna/screen door/etc. to chirp.

This last photo is a macro showing the four stages of these critters' emergence.
(1) is how they look when they emerge from their burrows in the ground and climb up some nearby plant or telephone pole or whatever to molt.
(2) shows the cicada in mid-molt -- note how the back splits and the ghostly white new adult emerges.
(3) is the newly emerged adult. The fake black eye-spots are only temporary, since they are extremely vulnerable to predators during this short period before they're able to fly (those little stubs will unfurl and harden into transparent wings).
(4) shows a fully transformed adult. At about 1-1.5 inches long and pretty thick, they are substantial bugs. When they fly into you (or your windshield), it's quite noticeable.

Estimates are that roughly 5 billion cicadas will emerge during May here in Cincinnati. Their sheer volume tends to make a mess of sidewalks under large trees. In a few days, their calls will reach max volume -- supposedly a whopping 90 decibels can be produced by a single adult male. Thankfully, this Brood X invasion only happens here once every 17 years.

Pain Squared

Since we are running "pain" entries this week, I will add a few of my own:

1. The hard drive in my Scientific Atlanta DVR just conked out. I have had the unit for less than 2 months! Time Warner is sending the service personnel tomorrow to fix it (my guess is that they will have to replace the unit). I'm not sure how reliabile this DVR is going to be--we will have to wait and see, but my confidence is low right now. In the meantime, I lost several recordings that I didn't get a chance to view (that's pain).

2. Pain is grading hundreds of papers with poor writing styles. I'm not talking about grammar or spelling mistakes. I'm talking about poorly organized or incoherent papers I have to read. Those papers take about 3 times longer to read as compared to well-organized and coherent papers. I'm just glad that I'm done with grading.

3. Pain is getting old. I tried to play ping-pong, tennis, and golf all in one day. I could hardly walk afterward. My knees, shoulders, elbows, and hips all hurt. I've learned my lesson here.

BTW, I'm playing with the new Zire 72 and the Sena T3 case right now, and my PalmCorner Weekly will return with those reviews next Monday (now that I'm done with my end-of-the-semester grading rush).

Archeologists Locate Library of Alexandria

Archaeologists have announced that they have discovered the site of the Library of Alexandria.

A Polish-Egyptian team has uncovered what look like lecture halls in the Bruchion region of the city. The 13 lecture halls uncovered could potentially house 5,000 scholars. A conspicuous feature of each of the rooms is an elevated podium, where it is presumed the lecturers stood.

Two thousand years ago, the Library of Alexandria housed works by the some of the greatest philosophers of that era, including works by Plato and Socrates. Also reputed to be the world's oldest university, the Library of Alexamdria was destroyed by fire, possibly by Julius Caesar as part of a campaign of conquest.

At the Library, Archimedes invented the screw-shaped water pump still in use today; Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth; Euclid expounded on the rules of geometry; and Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, the most influential treatise on the nature of the Universe for the next millennium.

Alexandria started life as tiny fishing village when Alexander the Great chose it to be the site of his empire's capital. As its influence grew, the city built two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, including the Lighthouse at Pharos, and the Library of Alexandria.

Let me apologize...

..for not posting for several days. I have been caught up in the waning life of 97X, the best alternative rock station ever, which went off the air forever last night about midnight. My stomach knots up even now just thinking about it.

Now that this drama has ended, I should be back on the horse. More or less...

A Mathematician's Take on Grade Inflation

Jordan Ellenberg, an assistant math professor, penned a column in Slate where he outlines some numerical arguments against being concerned about grade inflation:

One of the most powerful and popular arguments against grade inflation is that it makes it difficult to tell one student from another. Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard and a vocal grade-inflation foe, puts it this way: "Grade inflation compresses all grades at the top, making it difficult to discriminate the best from the very good, the very good from the good, the good from the mediocre."

That sounds reasonable. But it's wrong.

An interesting discussion is attached to the article. Myself, I'm still not convinced that grade inflation should go unchecked. But then, I don't use a +/- grade system, so if you don't get an A in my class, you wind up with a B, C, D, or F. Does anyone really think that everyone should be "excellent" (the evaluative interpretation my institution associates with an A)? Hardly.

300-GB Holographic Storage Devices?

Optware Corporation, a Japanese firm specializing in holographic storage media, has demonstrated a practical holographic recording and playback device.

Its system is based on polarized collinear holography, as opposed to conventional holographic recording and playing devices. This system multiplexes the signal and reference beams used for recording and playing of holographic media with just one objective lens.

Conventional technology requires a two-beam axis, a more complex system with precision issues, including positioning the media with each optical axis.

Prototypes shown used a blue-violet semiconductor laser for the signal beam and reference beam, a red semiconductor laser for the servo, and a CMOS image sensor for detection of the playback signals.

Optware says it is on track to introduce a commercial product storing up to 300-GB on a 12 centimeter holographic disc by 2005.

Snappy Cicada Pizza

In 1987, Cincinnati was ground-zero for an enormous eruption of 17-year cicadas (pictured). Well, it's now 17 years later and we're preparing for another onslaught of millions of these large, chirping, whirring, flying insects.

One thing that 1987's event produced was an awesome radio jingle from Snappy Tomato Pizza, a regional pizza chain. Instead, the spot advertised "Snap...Snap...Snappy Cicada Pizza..." It was a scream, despite the fact that they didn't really offer cicadas as a topping. Thankfully, our local newspaper website provides a copy of the original jingle in its (ahem) cicada feature section.

If you just want to hear the jingle, click here (MP3). And yes, 17 years later, I still hear people sing or hum this every once in a while.

eBay Classic: Ryobi Router Table

Amidst the questionable sales of souls and Stinger missiles, sometimes someone on eBay, comes up with a straightforward classic, like this sale of a Ryobi Router Table that is a triumph of modern marketing.

And since we all know that eBay listings are ephemeral, I've reproduced the listing here for posterity.

RYOBI ROUTER TABLE - WORTHLESS JUNK NR!

Item number: 2389286139
Winning bid: US $26.22
Ended: Mar-28-04 10:45:22 PST
Start time: Mar-21-04 10:45:22 PST
Winning bidder: burglarproof(110)
Seller information: davesan455(48)

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Description (revised)
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For any prospective bidders - I have 100% positive feedback so you know my descriptions are good. I'm trying to describe this item the best I can.

This Ryobi router table is the worst thing I've ever spent money on. Period. I've wasted money on a lot of things in my life: women, cars, other things I didn't need, you name it, but I've never felt like I totally 100% wasted my money on something until I bought this router table. I've wasted money, but I normally got some sort of satisfaction out of it, no matter how small, I got something out of it This is the most worthless piece of crap item I have ever had the displeasure of working with in my life. I have much more colorful ways of describing this but I realize that there may be some kids that will read this so I will try to keep it PG.

It comes complete with most of the crappy accessories it came with. An example is the plastic pusher miter thingie that's so sloppy that I don't understand why they even bothered making it adjustable. It's really nice when you're trying to rout something at an angle and it slips in the middle of the cut and jerks the workpiece right out of your hands and flings it across the room. Or the super anti-precision fence that's almost impossible to adjust and keep in place. Or the slippery painted surface that wears off, exposing the rough surface that mars the workpiece as you slide it over. It does come with a power switch that always worked. I'll give it that. It has a really nice power switch. Some of the other small items got destroyed in a fit of rage one day after fighting it for a couple of hours.

The best part about this table is that it's a one of a kind. yep that's right it's a three legged router table. It became three legged after I was trying to rout something one day and I noticed that the table was moving. That was from the plastic inserts working loose on the leg mounts. It was like routing wood on a waterbed. It was moving back and forth oh I'd say an inch and a half or so. Well after a few more pieces I'm in the middle of a cut and the leg just fell off. So I had to stop to keep from losing any fingers, and I tried to beat the inserts back in. Looked ok so I start making my cut again and would you believe it fell out again?!?! It's supported by a beer bottle to keep it from falling over while taking the picture.

I am an engineer by trade and I feel sorry for the engineer that was responsible for this marvel of science. Someone told him to design this thing and not spend any more than $0.65 on it. So he did it, but I bet he probably lost all self respect for himself after he realized that he just released this miserable failure onto society. Or maybe he got a big kick out of it and is still laughing I don't know. I know they suckered me out of my money that's for sure.

There is a router shown in the picture, the router is not included since it will kind of work most of the time. This auction is for the table only. Hell I'll even throw in the beer bottle (not full per eBay standards) if the buyer wants it. I wouldn't use it as a leg though.

This table comes with no warranty from me. I never bothered to try to take it back, even though it was under warranty because I was so ticked off that I knew I would create a scene when I threw it through the front window of Home Depot. So it sat in my basement for a few months, and now you have the opportunity to own this piece of scrap. If someone had some time they could probably work on it a bit and make it into something that's functional. Like a doorstop or maybe a paperweight. But it will need some more work before it's that good.

I accept paypal, cashiers check or money order. Shipping quoted is parcel post. If for some reason you would want to receive your misery faster I can do that ask me for a quote.

Seriously though I have a couple other nice things that I'm selling. Check em out if you need a saw blade or 1972 Z28 parts.

ADDED 3/22/04 - I've received some emails, and yes I am willing to set it on fire, shoot it full of holes, etc. and mail pics/video to you. If the bid gets high enough to cover my ammo costs, I'd be willing to shoot it full of holes with your choice of the following: 12 gage slugs, 00 buck, or a 40 round mag from an AK. Then I can make a pile of the remains, douse it in gasoline, make the Wile-E-Coyote trail of gas dribbles for my safety, and light it on fire. The winning bidder would get pics if they so choose. Or I can ship it to you. I could even ship you the charred remains if you like. Hey man I just hate it. Let me know. Whatever trips your trigger.

ADDED 3/23/04 - Yes I can drive over it with something. I can drive over it with a Massey Ferguson 620 CI diesel powered tractor.

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On Mar-24-04 at 09:06:41 PST, seller added the following information:

For those who are interested, the bottle does carry a $0.10 Michigan deposit, and it's pre printed for the other standard deposits for other states ($0.05). So yeah it's like a huge bonus, worth hundreds of times what the table is worth. Remember - I'm throwing that in for free!

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On Mar-24-04 at 20:59:57 PST, seller added the following information:

Yes the beer bottle is a "double deuce" or a 22 oz ish beer bottle. Actually it's a Miller Lite 24 oz beer bottle, so that makes it extra rare. From what I hear there was only somewhere around 42 million of them made this year, so get yours fast! I suppose it has some additional extra value from a scrap weight aspect, but I think the deposit is the same. Collector's value had got to be in the hundreds if not thousands of Turkish Liras.

No unfortunately I don't know of any women that are willing to fire the guns naked and send you the pics. If I did I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this auction, that's for sure.

The tractor is basically a huge articulating tractor with dual wheels on each corner. It weighs somewhere around a gajillion pounds. It's about six times the size of the largest general motors product you can think of. It's big. It might take me a couple of weeks to get video etc but yeah I'll send it to you. Pics/video will be complete with firearms, Ryobi arson and all the profanity you desire, whatever you want. Again - for christ's sake the next bid is $0.02, and I'm willing to do all this crap for a penny - the video's got to be worth $5!!!!!! Bid and tell me what you want!!!!

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On Mar-25-04 at 18:31:48 PST, seller added the following information:

Dear davesan455,

I will bid if you place it in a barrel and fill barrel with concrete. I will pay the insurance if you pay the shipping.

um....ok. I can do that as long as the bid is $1400.

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On Mar-25-04 at 19:08:08 PST, seller added the following information:

Why are you restricting shipping to USA only? I would think you should be excited about the possibility of sending it to Iran, or hell or france or something. Just wondering.

Yet another good idea. I will ship free to France as long as they surrender. It doesn't matter who they surrender to, it could be Australia, Bruce Willis, or even McDonalds. But if they surrender before this auction ends free shipping to France!

Also- Free shipping to any US military base (Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Venezuela, Selfridge Air force Base, etc) upon the following conditions: The person receiving the router table send clear pictures/video back of the table being destroyed by superior force, i.e. tank shelling, hellfire missile attack, shooting sheet with an anti-aircraft gun, or some sort of awesome display of military power, or even a pic of their whole company dancing around a bonfire which contains the router table. Three Cheers to the US Military / Coast / National Guard! I'll drink to that.

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On Mar-26-04 at 05:18:33 PST, seller added the following information:

Could I see a picture of it actually ripping something out of someones hand and tossing it to the other side of the room? Or better yet an arm off or something?

Sure. Buy it, and have someone videotape you using it. Eventually someone's going to lose an appendage.

Concept: The SynthetiDesk

As you can tell from my posts here at GearBits, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about mobile devices. Well, I've also been thinking about the other end of the spectrum.

Most of my day, and much of a lot of people's day, is spent sitting at a desk doing work that is very appropriate to be doing at a desk. Composing longish documents, reviewing and synthesizing multiple sources of information concurrently, etc. Granted, I could do these things with a laptop or even a wireless PDA, but I see their lack of screen real estate as a major hindrance. So, what I've been dreaming about is what I'm calling SynthetiDesk (not because I think that's a particularly jazzy name, but for the simple fact that nobody has yet used this term on the web before).

Pictured is an incredibly crude mock-up of what I'm thinking (please ignore the sad joke that is my Photoshopping). What you see is basically an interactive, touch-sensitive LCD panel with massively high resolution. Roughly 250 dpi would be needed to approximate the legibility of paper. So, a 5 foot by 2.5 foot SynthetiDesk would require a touch-screen LCD with a resolution of [gulp] 15,000 x 7,500 pixels. Sorta makes that 1920x1080 monitor you've been dreaming of seem like dogmeat, eh?

None of the five documents shown in the mock-up are hardcopies -- they are all interactive images, such as you'd see on a PC desktop today. One big difference between this model and, say, a Windows model is that a document doesn't need to be in a program. The documents are viewable just like photographs or print-outs or other hardcopies are. We don't need a viewer program to look at the daily hardcopy newspaper, so SynthetiDesk would ideally not require one either for most everything.

However, if I want to alter a document, then some form of application may be required, but not necessarily. Editing the contents of a text document should be as simple as highlighting (with a finger or stylus or something) and then touching up with the keyboard or voice dictation (assuming that ever actually works).

Documents can be easily manipulated by touching them, such as dragging some papers together to create a pile. With a gesture or voice command, the pile would become iconized or transformed in some other way into something more manageable. The icons in the upper left could be piles of documents, individual documents, shortcuts to web pages (as shown in the browser/web documents).

Another feature of the SynthetiDesk is the ease with which hardcopy documents and objects can be transformed into images. The user would simply place the document (or photo or receipt, etc.) face down, utter a command (or somehow execute an action) to scan the document. The document is then represented in high resolution on the desktop, and the hardcopy can now be recycled (or folded into a paper airplane or whatever). Stacks of documents would still require a sheet-feeder, but that's a trivial extension of the concept.

Of course, using dynamic information (streaming A/V, constantly updated tickers, etc.) on the SynthetiDesk is really easy to do given the active nature of the medium. This would bring new realms to "dragging and dropping" simply because you could now have more documents and objects "open" at any one time than ever before. Instead of squinting to read even just two side-by-side pages on your current monitor, imagine being able to simultaneously compare a few document pages, a handful of photographs, a movie clip, some information tickers, and a couple of webpages. I think a lot of peoples' jobs would be greatly enhanced by something like this: I know mine would.

One of the advantages of the SynthetiDesk is to let someone work with representations of materials they're familiar with, yet eliminate as much paper as possible. Paper is analog...when it comes to information, analog is much more difficult to deal with. Also, paper is physical...when it comes to storing information, I'd much rather store bits than pages any day of the week.

So, I realize this is unlikely to happen sometime soon, but I do think something like it will happen at some point. One of the goals of a lot of visionaries is to make the PC "disappear" into other things we use and interact with. As one researcher said, "We want people to use computers without even realising they're using them." I think the SynthetiDesk is one such example of how the very furniture we use becomes imbued with computer-like capabilities to create an entirely new, and much more useful, concept.

Logical Fallacies Explained

I found a really useful website that explains common fallacies. Useful for deconstructing poorly formed arguments and for convincing your frat buddy that ad hominem is not a distant ancestor.

The 11 Greatest Unanswered Questions in Physics

About two years ago, the National Research Council's board on physics and astronomy held a seminar highlighting the converging worlds of particle physics and astronomy - a convergence that brings the scientific world tantalizingly close to a unification of all four forces of nature (electromagnetism, weak force, strong force, and gravity) - what scientists like to call the unified field theory.

The result of the seminar was a special report on the convergent fields, detailing 11 profound questions - including a few that scientists think may be answered within the decade... leading to a revolution in science with inevitable implications to our daily lives.

Here then, are the 11 greatest unanswered questions in physics...

1. What is dark matter?
2. What is dark energy?
3. How were the heavy elements from iron to uranium made?
4. Do neutrinos have mass?
5. Where do ultrahigh-energy particles come from?
6. Is a new theory of light and matter needed to explain what happens at very high energies and temperatures?
7. Are there new states of matter at ultrahigh temperatures and densities?
8. Are protons unstable?
9. What is gravity?
10. Are there additional dimensions?
11. How did the universe begin?

More on the questions, and their implications, in the feature article in Discover magazine.

US Drones to Monitor Mexico Border

Reuters story (via Engadget).

Next month, Bordernet becomes self-aware.

Eyetop Centra Wearable Video Display

European display manufacturer Ingineo SAS has announced a new product in their line of wearable multimedia display devices in the form of stylish eyewear.

The Eyetop Centra sunglasses come with a small 64-bit colour LCD screen embedded in a sidepiece. The display is able to plug into any video-output device, including digital cameras, videocams, laptops, portable TVs, and DVD players.

Users can focus on the screen without an onstructed field of view. In addition, the Eyetop Centra includes a set of integrated earphones, for full audio-video mobility.

DARPA Grand Challenge Not So Grand

Checking the race status of the DARPA Grand Challenge (you know, that autonomous robotic vehicle race across 142 miles of Nevada desert), it didn't turn out so well. 13 of the 15 participants were shown as "Disabled" and the other two withdrew from competition.

I'm still wondering why nobody thought of breaking out KITT for this.

USB Swiss Army Knife

Swiss flash memory company Swissbit has teamed with the famed pocket-knife company Victorinox to offer a Swiss Army Knife featuring a flip-out USB flash memory stick.

To be launched at CeBIT, the Swissmemory USB will be available in 64-MB or 128-MB versions, plus knife, scissors, file, screwdriver, ballpoint pen and LED light.

Swissbit's SecureLOCK software is used for optional encryption of the data, and the memory module may be snapped off the knife for airplane travel.

Happy February 29th!

May all your gadgets be Leap Year compliant.

Imaginary Girlfriends on eBay

Want a girlfriend? Hate the hassle? Check out eBay.

A few enterprising individuals are offering "imaginary girlfriend" services to bidders.

Listings are similar: "Sexy college student seeking money for books will, for one month, write you frequent e-mails and send pictures and perfumed letters you can show to family, friends and ex-girlfriends."

However, in most cases personal contact is strictly prohibited. One listing points out: "This in NO WAY makes me your real girlfriend."

Hundreds of listings were previously available. Unfortunately for lonely geeks all over the world, some listings began to cross the line into more overtly sexual. eBay now deems all such auctions as inappropriate, and has started closing them down, so you have to act fast to get the girl of your dreams.

Explaining the Sixth Sense?

A researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada has reported a new mode of unconscious visual perception, which enables, for example, awareness of a change in the visual environment even without being able to identify what that change is.

Ronald Rensink showed 40 people a series of alternating images on a computer screen, each for a fraction of a second, followed by a blank screen. Sometimes the same image would remain throughout the trial; in others, the first image would alternate with a subtly different image.

Around a third of those tested reported feeling the image had changed before they could identify the change. That indicated that our visual system has the capacity to produce a strong gut feeling about a change in the environment - what might be termed a sixth sense, a belief in perceiving something when the perception has not actually occurred yet.

What the researchers are now calling mindsight may also behind that feeling of going into a room and sensing something is different but not being able to put your finger on it. "It could well be an alerting system," says Rensick. Sensing someone is following you may be the auditory equivalent of mindsight.

"I think this effect explains a lot of the belief in a sixth sense," says Rensink. Researchers still have no idea what physical processes are behind this phenomenon.

Passenger List to a Comet

On January 31, 2004, NASA closes their passenger list for a one-way trip to a comet.

On July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft will launch a 370-kg copper projectile into the surface of comet Tempel 1, forming a football-stadium-sized crater. In that projectile - which will be obliterated by the impact - will be a CD containing the names of spaceflight enthusiasts who signed on for this one-way trip to a comet.

As the projectile hits Tempel 1 at 37,000 kph, Deep Impact will collect pictures and data on the material ejected from the comet's new crater, the first-ever glimpse into the interior of a celestial snowball.

"This is an opportunity to become part of an extraordinary space mission," said Dr. Don Yeomans, member of the Deep Impact team. "When the craft is launched in December 2004, yours and the names of your loved-ones can hitch along for the ride and be part of what may be the best space fireworks show in history."

People can submit their names for the mission by visiting NASA's Deep Impact website.

Cruel Irony

A man who won $57,000 in an Indiana lottery game died just hours later when he was hit by a pickup truck.Link

Taking Pleasure in the Mundane: Swingline Comfort Grip Stapler

Sometimes something works so well and feels so good to use that it becomes extraordinary and remarkable beyond its limited role in life. The most recent example of this that I've come across is my Swingline Comfort Grip stapler (shown).

I admit that it is a bit strange, at least here on GearBits, to be talking about something that has no electronics in it, much less something that requires no power source other than one's hand. This stapler feels good in use and is as reliable an office tool as I've found, having yet to jam (it replaced a cheap Boston brand hand stapler).

The Swingline can be used comfortably as a hand stapler (thanks to its ergonomic design and comfy spongy sure-grip covering) and effectively as a desktop stapler -- there is no compromise. When not in use, the stapler can even be stood on end to save desk space.

Sorry to go overboard on something as banal as a stapler. After living with various pieces of crap in this function for years, I'm pretty happy to have found such a nicely designed and robust tool.

Musings: What would 2104 be like?

I spent an hour on the highway today and spent a good part of that time wondering what the world would be like in a hundred years. One century -- not that much time at all, but if we look at the technological changes that have happened since 1904, predicting what the next 100 years would yield a huge range of forecasts.

Obviously, wireless will continue to evolve quickly. I'd fully expect to see wireless handheld videocoms as the norm. However, I don't expect the data landline to go away. Gigabit Internet is probably going to look like child's play to the casual user in 2104, and there will likely always be a need for fixed-location, high-speed Internet/data access, such as into the home.

The "intelligent house" probably won't really be all that intelligent, but home automation will certainly have reached new plateaus. New display technologies will, in all likelihood, have replaced windows (e.g. those clear LCD panels that can shade or display images) in upper-end homes and will be finding its way into everyday building practice. Good-bye to CRTs and anything that looks like a dedicated display unit (thank goodness).

My guess is that telecommuting will be much more widespread. The advances in high-richness communication media and easier-to-use information management technology will allow much better distributed collaboration. Besides, at $30 per gallon of gas, the car has changed quite a bit too since 2004. Granted, we won't all be running "Mr. Fusion" units on our hovercraft, but gasoline-powered engines will have generally disappeared from the highways. What will replace it? You got me...if I knew that, I'd be filthy rich in about 40 years. Maybe fuel cell, maybe all-electric, but probably something the mainstream hasn't even heard of yet.

So what do you guys think the technology of 2104 would be like? Will we have time travel? Will we have that base on Mars established yet, and will man have ventured to any other planets? Will Microsoft have assembled enough cash that it was able to purchase its own country, relocating from the US to avoid further anti-monopolistic regulation? Will PCs still exist? Will I be able to purchase my very own working Holodeck?

Planet Heats Up Own Sun

Astronomers at the University of British Columbia in Canada have reported discovery of a large planet 90 light-years away, which is heating the star it orbits around.

Studies by the team show that the planet's magnetic field is producing hot spots on its sun.

The planet is 270 times larger than the Earth, nearly the size of Jupiter, and orbits the star HD179949, which is very similar to our Sun. Circling closely to its sun, the planet completes an orbit every 3 days.

The scientific team said that hot spots on the sun are caused by the planet's magnetic field transferring energy to the sun's photosphere, resulting in bright ultraviolet patches. Scientists estimate that the effect raises the temperature of the sun's gaseous layer by 750 degrees.

In comparison, the star's gaseous layer is normally at 14,000 degrees, and the planet itself has a surface temperature of 2,700 degrees.

Hobby Inheritance

I Googled the web and the USENET, but did not find these two words written adjacent to one another. I guess I will claim the term as uniquely mine and get the trademarking work underway. More later...

Seriously though, this has happened to me recently. You will recall that I recently purchased a new home. One of its many features is an impressive 250 gallon saltwater reef aquarium built into the wall behind the basement's wet bar. In a purpose-built aquarium "control room" is a dizzying array of equipment: wet-dry filtration, UV sterilizer, reverse osmosis water filter, protein skimmer, cartridge filter, mixing tanks, pumps, valves, timers, lighting ballasts, fans, drains, etc, etc. The former homeowner was seriously into his craft and bequeathed the whole shooting match to me when I signed on the dotted line. He left no instruction manuals and I never met him face to face. It was time to learn something about aquaria.

I read books, scoured the web, talked to friends and got my feet wet (literally). I feel I now know enough to keep my ragtag bunch of fishes and corals alive. They're actually kind of fun to watch and we have named them all: Jumper (Spanish Hogfish), Nemo (Clarkii Clownfish), Zippy (Damsel), 3Fish (Coral Beauty Angelfish), Mociute Fish (Koran Angelfish), Bubbles (Yellow Tang) and Dory (Vlamingi Tang).

In my web travels I found a REALLY cool aquarium designed and built by Robert Michelson. He built most of the sub-systems himself from scraps in his workshop. The entire aquarium is automated. The page has numerous links and supporting info. Some will be interesting and some just mystifying. Whichever way you find it, the destination is a worthy one.

Hasbro Should Sue the US Army

It seems that the US Army is developing a robotic dog (pictured below on the left) that will carry up to 100 lbs of supplies into combat.

Except for the hip-mounted rocket launcher (which the Army should consider), this is obviously a blatant rip-off of Ravage, the Decepticon Transformer invented by Hasbro (shown below on the right). I expect Hasbro to announce a lawsuit for copyright infringement any day now.

Thanks to Gizmodo for the lead.

China Shoots for the Moon

In my predictions for 2004, my number 8 headline was "China Announces Manned Moon Landing Program."

I made this prediction because over 2002-2003, China has been revving up their space program, culminating in the launch of the Shenzhou V spacecraft in October 2003, making them only the third nation to launch a man in space.

Well, my headline hasn't quite come to pass yet, but it's well on its way (and not bad for only 3 days into the New Year).

The China National Space Administration has just announced an ambitious three-stage Moon landing program. The target is to put a satellite into lunar orbit by 2007, followed by an unmanned landing by 2010, and finally to collect lunar soil samples by 2020.

Also known as the Chang'e Program (after a mythical goddess who travelled to the Moon), China's lunar program will depend on the Long March III-A launch vehicle and the Dongfanghong satellite platform.

Experts noted that the program does not mean that China now possesses manned landing capability. However, manned landings may be possible after completion of the three-stage program.

The Amazing Rubber Band Machine Gun

What do you do when everyone in your neighborhood's got their own personal catapult?

Break out your rubber band machine gun, that's what!

Based on the classic Gatling Gun mechanism, this contraption allows you to load twelve rubber bands on each of twelve rotating barrels for a total of 144 pieces - that fire off as fast as you can crank the control handle. Imagine the pummeling that you can inflict on your friends and officemates with this machine!

The machine gun is available in kit or plan form from BackyardArtillery, one of a group of companies also famous for providing kits for ancient siege machines.

Also available: slingshots, potato guns, catapult watches, cap guns, burp-ball pistols, soap-bubble guns, smoke-ring bazookas, archery equipment, boomerangs, and all manner of interesting weaponry that make the arms race, well, child's play. It's enough to make anyone a twelve-year-old again.

GearBits Predictions for 2004

As 2003 comes to a close, we all start to wonder what will happen in 2004. Below are some predictions from each of the GearBits authors as to what they think we'll see in the coming year. Enjoy!

Mitch's 2004 Predictions

In 2004, Mitch predicts the following will happen:

1. Apple's AAC music encoding format will gain wide acceptance in the coming year due to the insane popularity of the iPod. With the combination of the excellent iTunes Music Store and the high fidelity and small size of the AAC-encoded files, I think this is a winner.

2. Home electronics that are net-enabled will become commonplace. With home theater receivers such as Onkyo's ethernet-enabled TX-NR801 on one side and media center PCs on the other, the line between audio gear and PC gear is about to get really fuzzy.

3. GPS technology will invade every facet of our lives. GPS is just too cool. There are so many industries that are just beginning to tap its potential. I think we will see GPS-enabled gear start to pop up everywhere and most likely all automobiles sold in the future will have one.

Ken's 2004 Prognostication

In 2004, Ken predicts the following will happen:

1) PalmOne will release a dream Palm OS6 device that is multi-tasking, multi-input, multi-media, and multi-purpose. It will also have a long battery life and easy portability. (OS6 will definitely happen in 2004, but it's the ideal device that will be a surprise).

2) PalmOne will release the Treo 800, a 320x480 resolution smartphone.

3) Virtual keyboard and screen PDA makes a debut, but it's too expensive for anyone to afford.

4) Windows Laptop with ultra high-speed nonvolatile ROM/RAM memory makes a debut (We will finally have the instant on-off Windows XP laptops).

5) A 12 Mega-pixel digital camera with a full 35mm sensor will debut in the $3000 price range.

Sam's 2004 Headlines

In 2004, Sam predicts the following will happen:

1. First Electronic Paper-based PDA Released.

2. Recordable DVD Players Hit Mainstream.

3. Apple Debuts Video iPod.

4. Camphones Take Market Share from Low-End Digicams.

5. Push-to-Talk Phones Follow Camphones as New Consumer Darlings.

6. Nikon Discontinues 35mm Photography Line, Concentrates on Digital.

7. Digital Video Recorders Outsell VHS VCRs.

8. China Announces Manned Moon Landing Program.

9. Sales for J.K. Rowling's New 'Potter' Book Disappoint.

... And, just to make sure at least one predicted headline comes true...

10. Release of Microsoft's Longhorn OS Delayed.

Craig's 2004 Predictions

In 2004, Craig predicts the following will happen:

1. PalmSource will release Palm OS 6 to much fanfare. It will be a marked improvment for the operating system, and devices running on OS6 will be available before July. They will rock.

2. Samsung will continue to encroach on Sony's market share in nearly every consumer electronics product area except for gaming.

3. LCD televisions will continue to expand as prices drop, brands multiply, and sizes increase. Plasma TV sales in 2004 will plateau, leading to a year-on-year decline (the first ever) in 2005.

4. Wi-Fi mania will continue to build and someone will announce a low-power, low-range Wi-Fi variant that effectively obviates the need for Bluetooth. The "death of Bluetooth" will be once again announced by the press...and this time they may be right.

5. Bad news will continue to pour forth from the US Congress and White House in terms of poorly conceived, technology-ignorant legislation and cow-towing to powerful media lobbyists (e.g., RIAA and MPAA). Environmental devastation and deregulation will increase at the hands of the Bush administration.

6. Convergence in home entertainment (audio/video) electronics will be hampered by an industry that is unable and/or unwilling to agree on and follow technical standards.

7. Despite technical and legislative solutions, spam will continue to increase as a percentage of total email, but more slowly (due to the convergence towards 100%).

8. There will be peace on Earth (hey, I can dream, can't I?)

The PSA - Personal Satellite Assistant

So you think your 400 MHz wireless GPS-enabled PDA is pretty cutting-edge kit, eh? Well, it's not even close. NASA is working on the PSA, or Personal Satellite Assistant (shown), the next great thing in mobile electronics...at least for astronauts.

NASA's Ames Research Center is collaborating with other institutions and companies to develop a semi-autonomous astronaut's assistant. The PSA would float (due to micro-gravity) and propel itself around inside the space station using small air fans.

About the size of a cantelope, the PSA would record the astronaut's activities by streaming A/V to the space station's central computer via wireless LAN. It would also facilitate communication and perform routine minor tasks for the astronaut. The PSA would also have an array of sensors, so the astronaut could verbally instruct it to "go check the temperature in B module," and, after venturing there on its own, it would report back with the requested information.

This overview at Ames provides some still drawings and some concept movies. This page provides a lot more detail into how the specifics of the research effort are progressing. Finally, this link is to a quasi-academic research paper outlining the conceptual and theoretic foundation of the PSA.

Based on the photos and movies, it kind of reminds me of the training droids in the original Star Wars (the small hovering orbs Luke is using to practice using The Force). This just makes me want to be an astronaut just that much more -- they have all the best toys!

GearBits' Design-Our-Logo Contest

GearBits needs a logo...something better than our plain old font-astic name in the upper left corner.

So, if you have an artistic edge, craft up something that you think might look good and post a comment with a URL to it. Also include your name and email address since if we decide to use someone's logo idea, there will be a sweet prize (something good...haven't decided yet). Besides the prize, the winner will receive unparalleled fame via recognition here at GearBits.

Some guidelines. First, we'll go as long as we have to on this one...no set end date (at least a month). Second, try to make the logo work with the current color scheme of the site. Third, flaming or spinning logos do not get bonus points (although those that flame and spin just might).

So, all you creative types out there, show us what you got.

Do Not Taunt Duralex

I was reminded of the classic Saturday Night Live fake TV advertisement Happy Fun Ball by the "use and care" instructions that accompanied a set of 6 small glass prep bowls that we got for Christmas. Beyond the fact that Duralex appears 25 times in the instructions, some of the more bizarre statements from the 5-page instruction manual include:

• "Duralex...is made of tempered glass. This is actually not the same as ordinary glass." Hence the word "tempered."

• "Duralex, even though particularly resistant by its inherent qualities, is still glass." Wait a minute...you just said...

• "...if subjected to severe impact, can break either immediately or later, without apparent cause." Fun for amateur mentalists wanting to impress their friends.

• "The breaking of the glass may be accompanied by a loud noise. It will break in small fragments, contrary to ordinary glass." I'm still confused...is this glass or not?

• "Use only plastic or nylon sponges." What about sponge sponges?

• "Never stack one glass inside another unless the glass is specifically called "Stackable." :-\

Methinks the manufacturer may be taking his glass bowls a bit too seriously.

Keys to Adoption: 'Ease of Use' and 'Usefulness'

ExtremeTech has an interesting article about how marketers often try to claim that a new device is "easy to operate as a TV." Well, that doesn't really mean much any more, and as home A/V electronics resemble PCs more and more, we may be in for a backslide in terms of usability.

"In the past year, I've added two different home theater setups in my house and played around with a lot of home theater equipment of various types -- ranging to entry-level Home Theater In a Box kits to high-end receivers and media recorders. What I'm struck by is just how painful most of these are to install – and how much more of a pain they are to use."

In the late 1980's, an academic researcher named Fred Davis, along with some colleagues, published a simple theory, the "Technology Acceptance Model". That model posits that two factors will greatly influence the propensity of someone to adopt, or begin using regularly, a particular technology.

Those two factors are A) perceived usefulness (i.e., how much benefit does the technology offer to the user), and B) perceived ease of use (i.e., how simple and/or intuitive is the technology). Usability experts like Jakob Nielsen have long decried the ever-complexifying of web and user interfaces in software. The same complaints can obviously be made about hardware, as the ExtremeTech article plainly points out.

So, what can we do? Well, maybe it's time for industry to start listening to researchers a bit more. While it seems perfectly obvious now that usefulness and ease of use should influence someone's decision to adopt a technology, judging from the store shelves and marketing messages, that insight hasn't found its way thoroughly into the world's top consumer electronics makers.

Sony's New Bipedal QRIO Robot -- Amazing!

From Slashdot comes a story about Sony's new "humanoid" QRIO robot. At about 18" tall, they're amazingly compact, yet they are still able to literally run (i.e., both feet off the ground at once). That link contains movie clips and photos.

Particularly stunning is this movie of four QRIO robots doing traditional Japanese dance. While they're not interacting with each other or their environment, Sony's QRIO seems to definitely set a new standard for self-contained bipedal robot mobility and agility.

Flight: The Next 100 Years

The last 100 years of flight, ushered in by Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903, saw man break the sound barrier, visit the moon, and even leave the solar system.

The next 100 years of flight, as envisaged by an article in the Economist, promise to be just as astounding.

If things come to pass as the reviewer expects, the skies of the future will be teeming with unmanned aerial verhicles, planes that morph into optimal flight shapes using memory materials, economically viable supersonic transport, planes powered by new sources of power, and - yes, people have been predicting this since forever - the personal air car.

100 Years of Powered Heavier-than-Air Flight

December 17, 1903 -- Kitty Hawk, NC. Orville and Wilbur Wright, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, gave a gift to mankind that has taken us beyond our wildest dreams. Thanks, guys.

Saddam Hussein Captured

Reports say that Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Iraq, hiding in a farmhouse cellar near Tikrit. Stories are available at CNN and MSNBC, among other places.

Not typical GearBits fare, I know, but it seemed important.

New Momentum Behind (and risks from?) Sony E-Book Initiative

TeleRead has an interesting story about how there may be new life in the oh-so-quiet