2005¦~4¤ë6¤é

MTV launches "Overdrive": DRM-laden music vids via PC. Xeni Jardin: MTV has launched a new digital entertainment service (labeled beta, of course -- beta is the new black), offering... ...news, live performances, short-form shows and music videos directly to your PC at broadband speeds. MTV Overdrive offers tons of exclusive content and lets you choose how you want to watch- that's the "hybrid" part. You can watch it like TV or jump to your favorite segments like DVD. You can watch entire shows like video-on-demand or you can build your own playlist. Link to Spanish language post about the service, and here's the beta site for MTV Overdrive: Link. (gracias, tricky) Unfortunately, the service is hamstrung by DRM features which effectively cockblock all Mac users. "The videos on MTV Overdrive are encoded in Microsoft Windows Media 10 format to insure the maximum possible video quality. In order to offer you a broad selection of full-length music videos on-demand and free of charge, MTV Overdrive uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect the videos from unauthorized re-distribution. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not currently support DRM. When DRM support becomes available for Macintosh, MTV Overdrive will work to support Macintosh." Link to FAQ (thanks, Petey Pablo) Another buzzkill: Firefox isn't supported, IE is mandatory. But perhaps worst of all is this happy fun morsel from the privacy policy: If you are a registered user, you also acknowledge, understand and hereby agree that you are giving us your consent to track your activities (...) Link to privacy policy [Boing Boing] 4:31:24 PM

Finally, a bovine rectal palpation simulator. Mark Frauenfelder: Those interested in learning how to perform a bovine rectal simulation but are scared to death of cows can now use this simulator developed at the Glasgow Interactive Systems Group and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in the UK. When using the simulator, the student palpates virtual objects representing the bovine reproductive tract, receiving feedback from a PHANToM haptic device (inside a fibreglass model of a cow), while the teacher follows the student¡¦s actions on the monitor and gives instruction. Link UPDATE: Jim says: Who needs a plastic cow simulator? I'll see your cow simulator and raise you one fistula: at Cornell, they have real, living cows with holes in 'em. Link [Boing Boing] 4:29:38 PM

Hell Money: fanciful bills for Chinese funerals and festivals. Cory Doctorow: Hell Notes are fanciful, fake odd-denomination bills that are burned at Chinese festivals and tossed out at funerals. BigWhiteGuy has a lovely essay and gallery of scanned-in Hell Notes. Link (Thanks, Albert!) Update: Dominic sez, "there's a very entertaining story by M.K. Hobson in SciFi.com's Fiction archive by the name of 'Hell Notes'. It's about a Chinese restaurant that caters to the dead who pay, of course, in Hell Notes." Update 2: Alvin sez, "Today - April 5, HK time - happens to be the Qing Ming festival, the public holiday when families visit cemetaries to pay their respects. Burnt offerings don't end with money - entire paper-and-cardboard houses, cars (Mercedes seem especially popular), clothes - even laptop computers are burned in traditional funerals as offerings to the dead. Unfortunately I can't send along photos as 1) I don't have any and 2) there's some degree of superstition surrounding keeping (and, I suspect, photographing) them." Update 3: Derryl sez, "don't forget that Maureen McHugh also wrote a similar story, which won the World Fantasy Award, called 'Ancestor Money.'" Update 4: Yimay Yang sez, I just got back from a visit to Taiwan and my family visited a lot of relatives' graves and burned a lot of money and paper houses. I have a few photos on Flickr and attached more photos on the paper house including a car, motorcycle and friends that we burned for my uncle who recently passed. Update 5: Weizhang Yang sez, "I would like to tell you a joke about this tradition. It happened about half year ago in Taiwan. An grandfather heard about there was a famous Taiwanese star published her new album, then he asked his grandson to buy a copy. His grandson had buy a compact disk and he thought that he did not need to buy another one, he could just use his compact disk recorder to copy this album to another writable disk. Then the grandson told his grandfather, 'Well, I will burn a copy for you.' The grandfather felt extraordinary angry, because in his mind, 'burning something for him' means cursing him to go to hell!" [Boing Boing] 4:17:30 PM

On2 video in Player. On2 video in Player: I believe this is the first official announcement about this aspect of the upcoming Macromedia Flash Player. I don't yet have additional information about details, but will keep checking. Update: On re-reading it, I see that... [JD on MX] 4:08:43 PM

Wasp MAV: Seven-Ounce Drone Smaller than the death-dealing, missle-launching UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehice) drones is the MAV¡Xthe Micro Air Vehicle. This particular model, called the Wasp, is currently being tested with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and weighs just seven ounces. It can be controlled from the ground (via a taut string and an 11-year-old) or can wirelessly follow a pre-plotted path using GPS coordinates, snapping pictures from forward and aft cameras. It's not unlike the ship-orbiting 'options' from Gradius, except they can't deflect as much laser fire. ITSY-BITSY DRONE [DefenseTech] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 3:51:58 PM

HGST's New Hard Drive Tech Promises 1TB By 2007 Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced a new storage technology allowing for a density of 230 gigabits per inch. For us consumers, this means we'll start seeing 3.5" hard drives with a 1TB capacity in 2007 (not too hard to believe), and Microdrives with 20GB capacities. Expect Apple's product announcement of an "iPod mini photo shuffle" in the near future. Also, here's a quote from the HGST rep that made me guffaw: Toshiba has commercialized a 0.85 inch hard drive using a perpendicular recording system, but this eliminates the merit of the "large capacity" aspect of hard drives. We think 1" is small enough. He's sort of right, but "enough" is a damn dangerous word. Press Release [HGST] - Liam (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 3:50:30 PM

Solar Style Mini Messenger Bag I really like solar backpacks like the Voltaic and Eclipse, but sometimes¡Xespecially sunny, sweaty days¡Xan over-the-shoulder bag is a better choice. Eclipse already has a model, and now it looks like Solar Style is planning to offer a 2.6 Watt bag of their own for $50. It won't charge your laptop, of course (you probably can't even fit your laptop inside), but it will keep your cellphone or MP3 player topped off, more than likely. As Treehugger points out, it doesn't have a built-in battery (only the Voltaic does, to my knowledge), but that'll save you a little weight, if you don't need it. Product Page [SolarStyleInc via TreeHugger] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 3:50:01 PM

More PalmOne LifeDrive Details, Price So if the details coming out about the PalmOne LifeDrive PDA are legit, it really does look like an interesting product, albeit one that gives me that weird 'why wasn't this out three years ago' feeling. Still, for devotes of the traditional PDA form factor, it looks dreamy, with almost everything Palm users have asked for out of a new PDA (besides Cobalt, the new operating system). I don't know that a built-in hard drive is going to win over any new Palm fans, but for the already-converted, I don't see why they wouldn't want one of these very badly. Oh, there's a reason I'm posting: new pictures and a supposed price ($550). They don't really confirm anything¡Xespecially with the always-questionable lens flare¡Xbut it's the only truly interesting product on PalmOne's horizon. It better be real. More on the Life Drive [PalmAddict] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 3:48:15 PM