In the World
Yesterday, as I got into my car to go to the grocery store to pick up some soy milk and cereal, a pang of guilt struck me when I realised I could very easily walk to the grocery store to the accomplish the same.
I pulled the keys out of the ignition as I succumbed to my inner hippie and began schlepping to the grocery store.
It seems Google's been feeling the same type of guilt, as they've now added the ability to get walking directions on Google Maps.
... But they didn't stop there - as I tested the new feature out in Miami, I saw a third option available - Public Transit! It gives you exactly which bus routes to take with a schedule for each route along the way. The path is clearly marked with icons to show you when you'll have to walk and when you can take the bus.
Now if only Apple and Google would add this functionality to the Maps application on the iPhone, I'd be all set! (Get on it, Apple!)
It seems today is Google's day for green initiatives!
Walking Directions Now Available On Google Maps [TreeHugger]
[via: Coolest-Gadgets]
RechargeIT, an investment programme run by Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, has announced that it will be providing Aptera, makers of the 230mpg beautiful object of my car gadget lust you see pictured, with a $2.75 million infusion of cash to help them get the Aptera Typ-1 to buyers.
At a price tag of $30,000, the ridiculously huge fuel economy (refuel my car 10x less? Yes, please!), and looks that tickle the same spot Apple has been hitting for years, the Aptera Typ-1 is looking poised to provide welcome relief from soaring gas prices.
Google.org also provided another $2.75 million to ActaCell, makers of the battery technology that is going into some of the new hybrids and electrics coming out in the next few years.
Bravo, Google!
Google.org gives electric cars a push, with investments in Aptera and ActaCell [VentureBeat]
[via: Engadget]
Oy! With E3 over and the bulk of my post-E3 work/writing/podcasting/napping completed, I'm finally able to return to my job here at Homotron. My thanks and admiration to the rest of the Homotron crew for keeping up the good work!
So I'll dive right in with a creepy little story about Japan's one-upsmanship with the UK and its CCTV crackdown program. Programme. Whatever.
NEC just announced a new plasma display that not only sports a tiny camera that can identify your age, gender and intuited shopping behavior, but beams a QR code to your cell phone that contains product information and death threats from government goons. And calling this chicanery "push advertising" isn't cute or clever, it's insulting. Push yourself, TV sets!
It's bad enough that I can't set foot outside my compound to buy my entourage a round of frappucccinos without stumbling over a paparazzo - now the TVs want my picture too?
Digital Stalker: NEC display knows your sex, age and shopping habits [Dvice]
Yes folks, the Microhoo! drama continues.
The latest news brings us an update on Carl Icahn's attempts to replace the Yahoo! board with his own pick of "Yes!" men so that he can sell the company to Microsoft: in order to avoid a potentially bloody proxy battle, Yahoo! has compromised with Icahn and agreed to expand the Yahoo! board from 8 to 11 members, making Icahn and two members of his choosing part of the board.
In case you haven't been following the latest developments, Icahn, who owns a 5% share of Yahoo!, was extremely disappointed with Yahoo!'s decision to not sell to Microsoft and threatened to use the next investor meeting (in early August) to stage an investor mutiny and replace the Yahoo! board with members that would give the Microsoft buy-out proposal "full consideration."
This latest development is designed to stave off Mr. Icahn's megalomaniacal tendencies.
Yahoo makes agreement with Icahn [BBC]
While I may currently live in Miami, my family and a rather large chunk of my heart live in Texas, and every once in a while the Lone Star State gives something to be damn proud of:
Texas officials gave the go-ahead Thursday to the nation's largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas.
The $5 billion project will build power transmission lines to bring the power over from the huge wind farms out in the plains of West Texas (where there's nothing but wind turbines, oil derricks, and the occasional tumble weed - no joke) to the urban centres out in East Texas (Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston.)
"We will add more wind [power] than the 14 states following Texas combined," said [Public Utility] Commissioner Paul Hudson.
That's a lot of wind power, folks.
The project will add around $4/month to my family's (and any other recipient of this clean energy) electricity bill in order to cover the cost of the project, but a move to make the current $0.02/kilowatt-hour clean energy tax credit permanent will help offset some of that cost.
Bravo, Texas. I'm going take a celebratory shot of JD while singing The Yellow Rose of Texas in your honour.
UPDATE: Tom Gray, the Director of Communications for the American Wind Energy Association, wrote in to us to give a little more information on the costs of this programme to Texas residents:
By the way, the $4 a month you mentioned won't hit people's bills until around 2014. Also, it will be outweighed by savings due to the wind-generated electricity displacing power from natural gas. Those savings are estimated at 3x the cost of the transmission lines.
Thanks, Tom!
Texas gives green light to lots more wind power [MSNBC]
If you live in one of those misguided states that seems to think outlawing handset usage and mandating headsets will actually improve driving (many studies are now concluding using a headset is basically just as bad - it's the divided attention that's the problem, not the physically holding a cellphone part), and you've gotten a ticket for your wanton cellphone usage on the road, Aliph is now extending a discount to ease your pain: a $20 discount on their Jawbone noise cancelling bluetooth headset.
Aliph's site is apparently hooked into the ticket database for each state that outlaws handset usage while driving and if you enter your ticket number, they'll automatically slap on a $20 discount to your order. A neat marketing gimmick, but even with the $20 discount, you're still laying out $110 for the luxury headset.
Me? I just refuse to answer the phone while I'm driving. No phone call is worth my life.
What about you folks? Do you use a headset while driving, or do you play it safe like I do?
Product Page [Jawbone]
[via: BBG]
Those crazy Iranians, they're always up to something cutting edge in the tech world… at least, cutting edge for 5-10 years ago… maybe?
The most recent incident of their tech prowess involved being called out over the use of Photoshop to doctor an image of a botched missile launch to make it look like a success. Busted! One of the missiles did not actually launch, but the Iranian government took the time (5 mins., max) to doctor the image before sending it out so the world would know their military powers! Or, just further reinforce their standing in the world (take that as you may).
The Internets being the Internets decided to strike back, in the form of their own Photoshoped images of the event. As usual, interwebs participants, I bow to your genius:
Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles (Updated) [Wired]
[via Geekologie]
If you've ever found yourself in need of taking a picture of a 1.5-mile wide field in such a way that you could identify random laptop computers in said field, well, it looks like you're in luck now. Hasselblad has developed an all new 50-megapixel camera for your consumption that could do just that, according to the company.
I know for a fact that I've never been want to that many megapixels. Ever. In fact, the 2 megapixels I get on my phone suit me well enough most times, and if those don't, then the 5 I get on my old point-and-shoot works dandy. Very occasionally, we pull out my boyfriends high-end DSLR. But I can't imagine a single time I would ever need a 50 megapixel camera. Unless, of course, I'm taking a snapshot of all the Sean Cody boys at a distance and want to be able to enjoy all the details (I know, we're all about the porn today… what can I say).
Just because I won't ever use it doesn't mean someone else out there can't. So for you, I say… well, there isn't a price point yet. Best guesstimates place it in the $45,000 + range though. So, yeah… I'm sure plenty of us will be running out to get it right away.
Hasselblad H3DII-50--a 50-Megapixel Monster [Gearlog]
BitTorrent tracker Mininova has just upgraded its file porn downloading feature set with a truly neat little adaptation: the ability to bookmark torrents remotely to an RSS feed that your home computer, or whatever machine you use for file porn downloading, will read and automatically begin downloading.
Picture this:
Tiny sits at his work desk, wishing that he were at home downloading completely legal and totally not obscene files from the BitTorrent framework. Yet Tiny cannot do so, because the draconian policies of TinyCorp, his employer, prevent him from working at home in his underpants like he specifically requested during his job training.
But thanks to Mininova, Tiny can browse new torrents and set his at-home PC to download his favorite, I dunno, free episode of Dora the Explorer, or some other legit and non-pervy-sounding torrent. Until the IT guys at TinyCorp catch wise and block the Mininova site, I suppose.
Of course uTorrent and Transmission have remote management solutions as well, but Mininova's idea is elegant and, let's face it, totally pornworthy. I mean...Doraworthy. Exploraworthy?
Whatever... I gotta go find those damn pants.
Mininova Adds Remote BitTorrent Downloads [Lifehacker]
On Tuesday, Google launched its Second Life competitor, a virtual world known as Google Lively. It touts itself as a virtual world that, unlike Second Life, complements your actual life.
How this magical complement is supposed to happen isn't clear to me at the moment, only that Google seems to think that by integrating Lively with IE and Firefox, they're adding a great... virtual world... experience... to your... browser?
The end result seems more like a chat room that combines some static graphical flourishes and all the fun of standing in a room with strangers while everyone's facing in different directions. With one guy who can't stop break dancing.
True, installing the minimal client took about five seconds and then I was living large with Lively - and given my choice of hairstyles (that looked as if they'd been yanked straight from the Mii Channel), three shirts to wear, and even a change of pants. A change of pants? That's supposed to rival Second Life? (Which, admittedly, isn't all that useful itself.)
The controls are awkward, which for a 3D world that appears in your browser window is a bit of a deal-breaker. The absence of money would be neat, but since Lively isn't programmable, you're left to enjoy the few pieces of furniture and clothing that come with the package. It gets old fast, so far.
Who wants to chat in a virtual Silicon Valley industrial park? Why would I create my own empty 3D chat room? Worse still, why would I inflict my own empty 3D chat room on any of my friends?
A Facebook app and a forthcoming MySpace app give Lively legs that are a little longer, but not by much - especially since it doesn't do Mac, only Windows.
I'm wondering if maybe Google didn't copy precisely the worst aspects of Second Life, leaving out the ingenuity, freedom, and free-range open source possibilities.
Talk to me - I know that Lively is brand new, and will take some time to settle into its niche, but is that niche even remotely viable? Or fun?
[SPECIAL HOMOTRON BONUS CONTENT: What's the financial angle behind this? Google can't monetize YouTube, which fundamentally altered the way people use the internet. Where do their hopes lie with Lively, a service that will never fundamentally alter anything?]
This is an outrage. It's not fair and I'm not standing for it. Why didn't they make this when I was a kid and needed to entertain myself with dirty laundry? Why do they only make it now, when I'm grown up and have expensive toys that need playing with?
Who am I kidding. I still make forts out of couch cushions and blankets!
Which is why CrazyForts get me so slaphappy - now children (and the occasional homosexual) get to engineer their forts with simple sticks and balls that can be assembled into a fanciful variety of shapes, like this "igloo" inspired framework we see here.
So first you design your fortress and build its framework, and then you cover it with dirty laundry. And for those of you who think that this might not be as awesome as I seem to think it is, let me remind you: with this technology at our disposal, today's children (and the occasional homosexual) can build stone-age era dwellings in an afternoon!
When was the last time you built a yurt?
[Product Page via Dvice]
By now, we should all have realized, accepted, or been told just how superior the iPhone is to everything else out on the market. It does everything you could ever want from a phone (you never really wanted MMS, did you?), but from time to time, someone thinks up another ingenious use for the "Jesus Phone." Not that Jobs and crew didn't think of these ideas first and plan for them all along, but they really wanted to let you, the everyday schlub, to feel like you helped too.
One of these particular "apps" that you can install by the grace of Jobs is the new G-Park. It's simple really, and will take advantage of the iPhone 3G's GPS functionality. Once you park your car, you simply hit the Park Me! Button and the phone logs your location. When you're ready to go home, and the cocktail haze induced at the random cultural street party won't allow you to remember where your car is, simply tap the Where did I Park button, and off you go with turn-by-turn directions.
The app will work best with the new 3G phone, but can also use the original iPhone's triangulation. But lets be honest, who's going to be caught dead with one of those year-old pieces-of-junk come Friday?
[via: Digg and Gizmodo}
And girls who like girls who like fembots!
Gadget of the Week
Even Hope wants an iPhone 3G!
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