smidgy

New York Times Review of the iPhone

Here is the first official review I could find of the iPhone, courtesy of David Pogue from the New York Times.

For those too lazy or rushed to read the full review, I have summarized what I believe are the most important points here:

Good:
-Very sleek and thin.
-Smudgy glass but not easily scratched.
-Beautiful, simple software.
-Interface fun to use.
-You choose rate plan at your leisure.
-Voice+data plan cheaper than Blackberry or Treo.
-E-mail looks great, can view Word,Excel and PDF.
-Great web browsing experience with WiFi
-Photos and movies look great.
-Real world battery life 5 hours video, 23 hours audio (with phone, WiFi turned on).
-Camera takes great photos, but requires steady subject and good light.

Not so good:
-Calls can take as much as 6 steps to make and quality is average.
-Web browsing very slow with ATT EDGE network.
-No memory card, chat program or voice dialing.
-Third party apps only possible through web browser.
-Web browser cannot handle Java or Flash.
-No video with camera and no possibility to send MMS.
-Used in 5 states, signal quality described as "I'm losing you"
-Some tiny bugs encountered but phone should be updated regularly through software.

As for the all important question, "how is the keyboard?", this looks to vary wildly according to the user. Pogue found it frustrating at first but also found that trusting the software helped to quickly improve results. He does however states the Blackberry won't be going the away any time soon.

The theremin is one whacky instrument

Via Laughing Squid

Make Your Own Scissor Sisters Video

Upload a photo of you and your crazy dance partner, choose a funky outfit and presto, your very own Scissor Sisters music video.

Link: Scissor Sisters.

Spoon and Chopsticks Wed, Name Their Child Froggetmee

Whether you're a chopsticks master that can grab a mosquito in mid flight Karate Kid style or are a fumbling fool that can't even grab a single noodle, the froggetmee could come in handy. Finally, you can boast to be eating soup with chopsticks, and only be half lying.

YouTube Invades Mobile Phones

The ever popular video sharing site YouTube is unofficially operational for mobile devices, featuring non-downloadable, lower resolution videos. Apparently the whole affair works rather well, although 3G or WiFi connections are a must unless you are a dedicated masochist who likes to wait an hour for a two minute video to download.

Gizmodo has more information here.

To test it out, point your mobile phone's web browser to the following address: http://m.youtube.com/

12 Times to be Russian

See more hilarious videos by Jay Grandin here

Scientists launch scramjet in Australian Outback

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Australian and US scientists successfully launched a supersonic scramjet engine at an Outback test range Friday, as they work on a device that could revolutionise air travel.

The researchers said a rocket carrying the scramjet reached speeds of mach 10 -- ten times the speed of sound -- after blasting off at the Woomera range in South Australia Friday.

They said it reached an altitude of 530 kilometres (330 miles) before the scramjet was successfully deployed following re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) said it was believed to be the first time a scramjet had been ignited within the Earth's atmosphere.

"It looks like we've been very successful," DSTO spokesman Steve Butler told AFP. "We've got to go away and collate the data, that will take a few weeks, but it looks very promising."

Scramjets are supersonic combustion engines that use oxygen from the atmosphere for fuel, making them lighter and faster than fuel carrying rockets.

Scientists hope that one day a scramjet aircraft fired into space could cut travelling time from Sydney to London to as little as two hours.

Link: Scientists launch scramjet in Australian Outback - Breaking - Technology - smh.com.au.

10 New Uses for Olive Oil

10 New Uses for Olive Oil

Tetris and Humans Merged for Game Show

Japanese Tetris - Watch more free videos
I never thought you could make a real life Tetris with humans, but leave it to the Japanese to do just that for a game show on TV.

Sputtr Puts Search Engines at Your Fingertips - Review

Pretend for a minute that Sputtr is not another chainsaw-massacred word from the English language, and take it for what it is- a portal to many popular sites such as Google, Amazon, IMDB or Digg. Enter a query, click on an icon of your preferred site and Sputtr will take you directly to your chosen site's search results page.

Sputtr let you select different languages settings. As of this writing there is International, English (UK), French (FR), Italian, Spanish (ES), German (DE), German (AT) and Chinese. I could not find any information as to who is actually behind sputtr, although the fact that there are two variants of German on offer could be a clue to its origin.

Sputtr claims in their "About Us" section that their service is "..fast - faster than most others out there." This is a rather vague claim because if they are referring to meta search engines (sites that query many search engines at once) then it is not a fair comparison, since Sputtr only passes on your query to a single search engine at a time. So if the claim doesn't refer to meta search engines, are they claiming it is faster than searching on the sites themselves? To find out I did a number of searches using Sputtr and compared the page load times using the Firefox browser when going directly to the sites and entering a search term. Conclusion: no noticeable difference. I must be missing something here.

There are some nice touches to the site, such as an option to select a low resolution version designed for smaller screens, presumably to service the ever increasing range of mobile devices. A dedicated icon allows users to suggest a site that could be part of the Sputtr icons.

The idea of Sputtr to put different search engines at your fingertips is not new, but it is the cleanest and most appealing design I have seen. Sputtr is still in beta, which means that too much nitpicking at this stage is somewhat unfair, yet there are some glaring feature omissions. For one, wouldn't it be nice to select more than one search engine at a time? Sites that have been around for years such as Mamma or Dogpile allow you to query a whole slew of search engines with a single click. Also, why not give users the ability to customize which search engines they can use and how the icons will appear on the page? For example, Sputtr would be more useful to me if I could resize the icons to a smaller size and could select an option to show a caption. As it stands, unless you are a die hard web surfer that has every icon on the Sputtr page memorized, you will have to roll the pointer over unfamiliar icons to discover what they are. Certainly, not the pinnacle of user interface design.

All in all, Sputtr does what it is supposed to do well, and here's hoping that major feature updates such as customization and multiple search engine selection will greatly increase its usefulness.

Marathon Monk

Link: OUT THERE: Marathon monk recalls rigors of grueling ancient quest - MSNBC Wire Services - MSNBC.com.

For more than seven years, Genshin Fujinami dressed in white from head to toe while covering the backwoods trails of this sacred mountain in one of the world's most grueling feats - a punishing quest that combined starvation, isolation and the equivalent of a lap around the equator.

For 1,000 days, rising well before dawn, Fujinami embarked alone, rain or shine, on his journey, running or briskly walking more than 50 miles - that's almost two marathons - each day as the trial neared its climax. Along with his white robes, his only gear was a pair of straw sandals, a long straw hat, candles, a shovel, a length of rope and a short sword.

Lisa Bufano, Performance Artist

Lisa Bufano is a performance artist that also happens to be a bilateral below knee and finger amputee.

Zoomquilt: a Collaborative Art Project

Zoomquilt is a very neat art collaboration project, merging paintings done by different artists into one, infinitely looping image.

Theo Jansen's Surreal Kinetic Sculptures

From Wikipedia:

Theo Jansen is an artist and kinetic sculptor living and working in Holland. He builds large works which resemble skeletons of animals which are able to walk using the wind on the beaches of the Netherlands. His animated works are a fusion of art and engineering. In a BMW television commercial, Jansen says "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds."

Jansen is dedicated to creating artificial life through the use of genetic algorithms. These programs simulate evolution inside their code. Genetic algorithms can be modified to solve a variety of problems including circuit design, and in the case of Theo Jansen's creations, complex systems. Some measure of "fitness" is introduced into the algorithm; in Theo's case it is to survive on the beach while moving around within two enclosing lines on the wet sand near the ocean, and the dry sand at the edge of the beach. Those designs best at the assigned task within the modeled beach environment are bred together and graded again. Over time complex designs emerge which sprout wings and flap in the breeze pressurizing what look like plastic 2 liter soda bottles. Articulated legs sprout and scuttle across the sand like those of a crab. Theo uses plastic electrical conduit to make some of the computer's most promising designs. He then lets them roam free on the beach, measures their success, and updates his model.

More information and photos here.

(Thanks, Steven)

Pee and Poo Toys and T-Shirts

Only in Sweden could they come up with soft cuddly toys based on human waste. From the Pee&Poo web site:

We are Pee&Poo. Escapees from the bathroom, we are entering the world on a journey filled with new adventures. Maybe we can stay with you for a while?

(Thanks, Ilona)