if you're bored, you're not paying attention
“In an all-white environment, the white version of the iPad 2 will have a better chance of hiding from predators.”
via Gallery: Apple’s Jobs Unveils Upgraded, More Colorful iPad 2 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
SAN FRANCISCO — Sony is blurring the line between portable game consoles and larger consoles currently trapped inside TV cabinets.
With a high-resolution screen, a powerful processor and graphics card, and massive amounts of memory, the upcoming Sony NGP will be closer to the capabilities of a PC or PS3 than it is to Sony’s current portable, the PSP, according to a Sony executive speaking at the Game Developers Conference Wednesday.… Story continues … “Sony Touts Console-Like Power of Upcoming NGP”
Intel’s new high-speed port technology is called Thunderbolt. But what is it, exactly?
Think of Thunderbolt (formerly code named “Light Peak”) as two cables in one. One is a fast PCI Express cable for transferring data, and the other is DisplayPort, for driving an external display.… Story continues … “How Thunderbolt Could Hook Up Notebooks With Powerful Peripherals”
Within a few years, your car may become a hub of interconnected devices, media and online services.
And you thought it was for getting you around town.
I recently spent a little time in a tricked-out 2009 Corvette whose dashboard included some proof-of-concept technology to integrate the car with a smartphone, a tablet, and the internet.… Story continues … “Video: Internet, Gadgets Make Corvette Even More Awesome”
When the tentacled aliens from Gliese 581g arrive on Earth, they’ll probably be riding a YikeBike.
At least, that’s how the YikeBike looks. In reality, it’s made for the posteriors of humans, not the glistening thoraxes of our future Gliesean overlords.… Story continues … “Hands-On: Eccentric YikeBike Gives Segway a Run for Its Money”
SAN FRANCISCO — HP’s diminutive Veer might be named that because the company wants to emphasize that it’s swerving in a different direction than most phone makers.
And it is: In a gadget season dominated by 4-inch and bigger smartphones, the webOS-based Veer looks positively petite.… Story continues … “Hands-On With HP’s Tiny Veer Smartphone”
It may be hard to believe as you read Wired on your iPad, but heating oil and metal plumbing pipes were hot tech topics just 100 years ago.
They were businesses, too, on which inventors pinned their hopes and corporations placed their bets in the form of factories, salesmen, and marketing budgets.… Story continues … “Vintage Posters Highlight a Century of Innovation”
The internet has run out of room.
Like a prairie with no more vacant land to homestead or a hip area code with no more cellphone numbers, the pool of available numeric internet addresses has been completely allocated as of Thursday (.pdf).… Story continues … “No Easy Fixes as Internet Runs Out of Addresses”
An Amazon.com security flaw allows some customers to log in with variations of their actual password that are close to, but not exactly, their real password.
The flaw lets Amazon accept as valid some passwords that have extra characters added on after the 8th character, and also makes the password case-insensitive.… Story continues … “Amazon.com Security Flaw Accepts Passwords That Are Close, But Not Exact”
Robots that look like oversized hockey pucks, dune buggies or refrigerators may be practical for cleaning floors, exploring Mars or dispensing beer, but it’s the walking robots that capture our imagination.
The trick is making them use their legs to walk efficiently, not like stiff-legged metal monsters out of a 1950s B movie.… Story continues … “Robots Evolve More Natural Ways of Walking”