Lego Stephen Hawking!!!

Lego: LEGO Stephen Hawking Takes Flight

In tribute to Hawking’s recent trip: “Space, here I come.”

[brickshelf via boingboing]

What does 150 bucks get you nowadays? well good things come in small prices…

What Does $149 Get You These Days?

It turns out a whole helluva lot. Apple announced this week that their iPod Nanos were starting out at $149. If you think about it, the amazing thing is what $149 has been able to buy you over the last two and a half years.

In January of 2005, only 32 months ago, Apple unveiled the Gen 1 iPod Shuffle.  They came in at the $99 for 512MB and $149 for One Gigabyte.  The shuffles are screenless and small plastic items that could play music and hold a few files, that’s it.  Still they were a big sellers.

A little over a year and a half ago, Apple released the 1GB nano at $149.  Again, huge success – big seller.  Now you could view your music and navigate your collection.  You’d soon be able to look at pictures, browse contacts and calendar and even play some games.  All for $149.

Last year, Apple doubled the storage on the miniscule MP3 player and added some fun colors and an aluminum enclosure.  For $149 you could get a 2GB Silver Nano.

This week, Apple put a much larger screen and impressive new array of features in a superslim, almost two dimensional package.  These devices are more functionally rich than the original iPod video (sans HD space).   You can watch movies, browse using coverflow, play games. The new video enabled Nano starts out at, yep…

$149

Imagine what your $149 will be able to buy in another 32 months!

Photoshop Express, looking hot

Photoshop Express Screenshot Surfaces

Photoshop World attendees were treated with a short demo of Adobe’s Photoshop Express the other day and the limited feedback going around seems to be very positive. As you’d expect from the name it wouldn’t be replacing any of the Adobe imaging products you’ve grown to love over the years, rather, it’s meant to appeal to the masses. John Nack had this to say about the demo.

Adobe Sr. VP John Loicono showed that it was possible to adjust an image just by rolling over the different versions shown at the top, previewing the results & then clicking the desired degree of modification.

“Photoshop Express” RIA sneak-peeked today [John Nack on Adobe]

is this cool? cause i cant tell

Fug City: Toshiba Enters Gaming Keyboard Market

Anyone want to take a stab at what kind of drugs Toshiba was doing at the R&D lab when they thought up this product? Anyone? This “gaming keyboard” from Toshiba is the company’s first and hopefully its last. Sporting 55-keys and a circular design, the keyboard is supposedly called “Wolverine” even though it doesn’t look a thing like the X-Man.

Designed with RTS and FPS games in mind, I could see how it could be a tad useful, but what if I want to type a message to my friend in-game? Yeah. Thought so.

Toshiba unveils gaming keyboard [Ubergizmo]

HUGE LED SCREEN!

LED Screen: World’s Biggest Fake Fish Tank

A 250m by 30m LED screen has been installed in the ceiling of a new mall in Beijing. That’s an impressive 7,500 square meters viewable area, and comes with an impressive $32 million price tag to match. It hangs 80 feet in the air, and is actually five screens combined. Check out a video after the jump. galleryPost(‘ledscreen’, 4, ‘LED Screen’);

It can and can show films, video games or even photos uploaded by visitors, but most of the time it plays animations like swimming fish – all that space and what do they use it for? Screensavers. [LED Magazine]

Ipod Autopsies

IPods Undressed: Autopsies of the New Nano and iPod Classic Show Glue, Plates

There’s nothing geeks like more than undressing stuff — especially new Apple gear. Barely 24 hours after El Jobso unveiled his new iPod babies, iFixit got motherboard-deep into the new Nano and Classic versions. And this is what they found:

galleryPost(‘newipodautopsies’, 8, ‘ipod autopsies’);

The 80GB classic has a 3mm-thinner hard drive than its predecessor, the iPod Video, and there was a metal plate inside which, iFixit speculated, was probably to give an extra layer of support to the display. While the battery inside the Classic is identical to the 30GB iPod Video, the plastic tabs of the earlier model have been replaced by metal ones, making the case much harder to open. Gah!

What sets the new Nano aside from the earlier models is, apparently, adhesive. Nothing but strong glue is used to keep the wheel in place, which means that it’s harder to put back together again once you take it apart (this was not a problem for the iFixit gang, however.) The battery is, like the second-gen Nano, attached to the logic-board by three through-hole solder-points, and for the headphone jack, they have gone back to how it was on the first-gen model and soldered it to the logic-board. [iFixit and iFixit again]

Apple Dropping Episode Prices?

Apple Seeking Price Cuts on iTunes Television Episodes?

Variety reports that Apple has been looking into cutting prices on TV episodes from the current $1.99/episode down to $.99/episode.

According to three people familiar with the proposal, Apple has told networks and studios that it woul…

Wifi Speakers, i want em!!!

WishList – WiFi Speaker Arrays

With rumors of the Apple Hi-Fi’s demise looking not-so-exaggerated, I thought it would be a nice moment to share a vision of convergence and audio-porn with our dear readers.

Here is the fantasy: the Audio receiver must die.

Like many Airport Express owners, I use the device as a wireless hub in my home and as a way to stream audio through my stereo. AppleTV owners can do the same with video streams to their TVs. Cool, but the vision isn’t completely realized.

What about 5.1 audio? With a few hacks, it looks possible but that’s not the simple, elegant Apple way. And if I want to stream audio to various rooms in the house, I can buy multiple Airport Express units and multiple receivers, but the expense is unreasonable, and I can’t stream to more than one unit at once.

I’ve seen audio engineers hardwire speakers in multiple rooms throughout a house, all powered by a central receiver—but this is a solution for people with more money than sense. Those receivers are not cheap, and you have to port long cables through your drywall, which is completely ridiculous when WiFi could do all the work.

Here’s the pitch: A small (Bose-sized) self-powered speaker with a WiFi card, and a subwoofer with the same. This way, you can install any number of speakers wherever you have an outlet. Apple should develop an iTunes interface to configure the speakers into arrays, and within those arrays, offer the option of designating 5.1 positions (front-center, front-right, front-left, back-right, back-left, subwoofer, etc.) or right-left stereo and so on. Finally, the user should have the option of streaming audio to one, some, or all of the speaker arrays in the network. This way you can blare your tunes in the living room, the bedroom, the home office and the pool all at once or selectively. Add AppleTV, and you can send all of your A/V components to the electronics recycling plant—all you need is your Mac and a TV. I’m not sure how well Apple TV interfaces with cable and satellite boxes, but under the current paradigm, it would also be great if they could play nice together so the speaker arrays could receive digital sound from them.

Avega has a system that is close to this vision, but it requires a set-top box, which would be a redundant piece of equipment, and is no better than a receiver that connects to your computer—or one of those godawful mediacenter PCs. The customizability into multiple arrays and configurations also appears to be lacking.

To those who would protest that a WiFi card per speaker would be an unreasonable expense, I would counter that many homeowners would jump at the chance to purchase this product. In the 20th century, if you had built-in audio it got sold with the house. With WiFi, you can take your units with you and reconfigure them in any environment. WiFi Speaker Arrays would not only eliminate the need to buy a costly audio receiver—other standard components like DVD players would also become obsolete because all the media you play would either operate out of your SuperDrive or your HD. Consider also that increasing the demand for WiFi Cards would create an economy of scale that would bring the price down as manufacturing is ramped up.

An added benefit would be that each speaker could extend the range and signal strength of your wireless network. WiFi speaker arrays could also become the foundation of the networked home we keep hearing so much about, with internet-capable ranges, refrigerators and washing machines, for whatever that’s worth.

So far, Apple leads the convergence race with Airport Express and AppleTV. They could capture an enormous share of the home electronics market with WiFi speakers and the right interface to support them. With this vision for an entire home audio and video wireless solution, Sony’s plans for a Bravia that can download movies would be DOA.

More Ipod Touch Info

iPod Touch. So much more than just an iPod

More Newton than iPod, more tablet than music player, the new iPod breaks out into a new category of device that should scare the pants off of the ultra-mobile PC/Nokia Tablet world.

Apple’s much-anticipated launch of the iPod touch this week heralds a new era for Apple’s wildly popular iPod product line. iPods, first only music devices, and then music and video devices are now semi-full featured internet tablet devices. Sure the iPhone opened the floodgate in this area and most of the iPod Touch’s technology is leveraged from the iPhone, but the iPhone came with the caveat that you had to sign up with AT&T for two years, not to mention a fairly steep price tag (which Apple has recently dropped by $200, to both the applaud and ire of consumers).

The iPod is a mass market device, an international device. One that every high school kid from Tokyo to Paris to Albuquerque absolutely “needs” to have. Presidents use them, grandmothers use them, soccer moms and NASCAR dads all have used iPods for listening to music, looking at photos and watching videos. Now, for $299 Stateside and slightly more abroad, this device can also take a bigger bite of the workload from the population’s laptops and televisions.

The biggest addition to the device – and the one that is revolutionary – is Wifi capability with the Safari web-browser. iPhone customers have been consistently raving that they have by leaps and bounds the best mobile browser out there. The scrolling, panning and zooming features make the browsing experience on a mobile device more of a pleasure than the necessity it is on other mobile devices. I’ve even found myself using the iPhone browser at home when there is a laptop at my disposal. There is something about being able to put the device in my pocket and head downstairs for a coffee and continue where I left off. Or in a pinch, who wants to fire up the laptop, connect it to the internet, and browse when you don’t have to look any further than your own pocket for the information you need.

The landscape of web applications has also changed dramatically over the past few years. For starters, most new corporate applications are built with the web as the interface. Whether it is SharePoint and Exchange 2007 (which I regularly use on my iPhone) or the crop of new Web 2.0 businesses like Basecamp and Salesforce.com or the myriad of online banking, travel, and purchasing websites that are nearly ubiquitous, it is obvious that work applications have gone Web. The ease of using Safari on iPod touch – will make the device a serious consideration for business use.

That is not to say that the iPod touch can’t do other things well. Previous iPod models have had contact, notes and calendar synching for a few generations and they will certainly improve on a screen double in size with a touch interface and a software keyboard. YouTube is a fantastic application on the iPhone and it will certainly be embraced on the iPod touch. Of course it is foremost an iPod, so the music, video, photo browsing and audiobook media will be best of breed.

You’ll also notice in the advertising for the iPod touch that the face of the device has a lot more room for applications. While Apple will certainly be delivering more via updates, a bevy of hacked applications have already been ported to the iPhone and will easily be ported to the iPod touch as well. A Terminal.app and native instant messaging clients are the most popular but hundreds of others are in development. The fear with using unsupported applications is that the process of loading them onto the device is not supported by Apple and could therefore void the iPhone warranty. Additionally, Apple could break them in future software updates. For its part, Apple hasn’t publicly announced whether they will open up the development for the embedded OSX that runs on the iPod touch and iPhone but the interest is certainly there and the temptation to take the platform forward will probably be too great for Apple to keep it locked down.

Whatever the case, as the new iPod products hit the store shelves this weekend and consumers begin snapping up the new flagship iPod, there will be a whole new type of iPod user. The internet iPod users that won’t need their computers nearly as much anymore.

Steves Apology

Steve’s Appology to iPhone Purchasers

This letter was posted today here: Link

Cudos to you Mr. Jobs – Thank you!

To all iPhone customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone ‘tent’. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

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