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Sonntag, 5. Dezember 2004 |
Virgin Galactic Private Spaceflights. 
Maverick billionaire Richard Branson is a man who likes to live on the edge. In the case of Virgin Galactic, he is
looking for a few brave, and rich, souls to join him. Branson has tied up with Burt Rutan, the developer of the
award winning SpaceShipOne space craft, to design re-usable space vehicles
based upon the SpaceShipOne design. According to a short piece in
Popular Science, $190,000 will buy you [base "]a week of preflight
training and a three hour vertical cruise complete with three minutes of weightlessness.[per thou] Pilots from some of Virgin[base ']s
other airlines will be trained to fly the space craft, starting with the VSS Enterprise by the end of 2007.
[Luxist]
6:03:07 PM 
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Hotel Vernet. 
Need a Paris getaway? Hotel Vernet is a small hotel located in the center of the city near the Arc de Triomphe
and Champs Elysses. Hotel details included the leaded glass fin-de-siecle ceiling in the dining room, a cigar salon,
and suites with small balconies. They are offering currently offering a Perrier Jouet package which includes
three nights accommodation, buffet breakfast, dinner at les Elysees, the gourmet hotel restaurant, a picnic
basket for two (including a bottle of Perrier Jouet champagne) and two in-room massages.
[Luxist]
6:02:26 PM
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Wired Tools 2004. The
web publication of the Wired Tools 2004 gift guide is as good a place
as any to remind you to send in your favorite guides to our Gift Guide
Round Up. I actually helped a little with this Wired list, in my first
(and probably last ever) contribution to the magazine. It's weird
writing for the blog, where everything I write after I click 'Submit'
goes out for everyone to read instantly, while things I wrote three
months ago for Wired show up in almost unrecognizable form. I'm not
grousing[~]editors are your friends, for reals[~]but it really makes you
realize how far removed web publishing is from print.
Anyway, it's a good list, especially the part I didn't do. Check it out.
Wired Tools 2004 [Wired]
Related
Gadget Gift Guide Round Up 2004 [Gizmodo] [Gizmodo]
5:55:34 PM
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The NevoSL WiFi-enabled universal remote. 
HP[base ']s x3715 Mobile Media Companion iPAQ Pocket PC
already comes pre-installed with their Nevo univeral remote software, but Universal Electronics has decided to live up
to the [base "]electronics[per thou] part of their name and get into the hardware game with a Pocket PC-powered universal remote
control of their own. The NevoSL sports a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen, 17 dedicated control buttons,
and perhaps most importantly, built-in 802.11b WiFi, which you can use to download stuff like new macros, IR codes, and
program listings directly off of the Internet.
[Via eHomeUpgrade. Thanks, VoodooRay]
[Engadget]
5:51:52 PM
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New Skulls trojan spreads via Bluetooth.
 The first Symbian
Skulls trojan wasn[base ']t as a big of a deal as it was made
out to be, but it turns out that a new strain, Cabir.B, can spread via Bluetooth, thereby potentially
infecting other phones. We[base ']re not gonna freak out this time either, though, since users would still need to press
the Skulls.B icon in the menu to activate the trojan, which can wipe out stored phone books, applications, and
games.
[Engadget]
5:50:18 PM
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SportSub. 
If seeing the new movie [base "]The Life Aquatic[per thou] inspires you to become an undersea explorer, SportsSub is the place to
start. They make 2,3 and 6 seater models in a variety of configurations. The SportSubs have large domed windows for
viewing from a variety of angles. It comes with built-in SONAR and joystick control. An optional lighting
package allows the sub to operate at night or in blackout conditions. The 6 personTourSub opens on top, allowing
passengers to remain dry byentering and exiting through a top hatch. The subs maneuver like a helicopter with
auto-hover control. Anyone with basic Scuba training can be trained as a sub pilot. The SportSub has been used in the
Living Seas exhibit at Epcot Center, Disney World in Florida and has been used in movie filming projects.
[Luxist]
5:49:24 PM
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Apple showing off a cellphone prototype?. 
The rumors have been flying this week that Apple is working on with Motorola on a cellphone, and yeah, there sort of
are always rumors about stuff like this, but this week the volume has definitely increased significantly. We were
pretty skeptical about this, so we started asking around about this, trying to figure out if this was anything more
than the usual gossip, and we just got word from a highly reliable source
that[~]jibing with the rumors from earlier this week[~]Apple
has indeed been showing off a prototype for an iPhone (or whatever you want to call it), and that Motorola is one of
the potential manufacturing partners. Doesn[base ']t mean that anything will ever come of this[~]even if they[base ']ve built a
prototype they could easily decide that getting into the cellphone business isn[base ']t worth the trouble. [Engadget]
2:15:00 PM
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Music thing: Speak Spell.  Each week, Tom Whitwell of
Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that[base ']s coming out, as
well as noteworthy vintage equipment. Last Saturday it was the the Triadex Muse. This week, he
gives us a little history of the Speak and Spell, and its many strange, hacked incarnations:
What a long, strange life it[base ']s had. The Speak and Spell was born in 1978, and 26 years later it[base ']s mutant offspring
are still creaking to life. This week, Censtron (the people who made the
circuit-bent iPod a few weeks back) released the
Ortho-S!te, which is the guts of a
Speak and Math in a big metal box covered in industrial-grade knobs to tweak the circuits (plus a very bright blue
light and a fan to blow all the heat out). Meanwhile,
Roil Noise, a Kansas
City based art collective just released a virtual circuit-bend Speak and Spell that sounds incredible.
Nobody saw the Speak and Spell coming. Texas Instruments had been a military research company during World War 2,
and by 1965 they were designing laser-guided bombs and missiles. But military spending fell in the 1970s, so TI
conquered the pocket calculator market. By 1977 were looking for something new.
 They[base ']d had some success with the incredibly dorky
Little Professor, and Paul
Breedlove, one of the designers behind it came up with the idea of an speaking spelling teacher. But speaking computers
were huge and cost thousands of dollars, and Paul[base ']s bosses laughed at him, giving his team just three months and
$25,000 to invent a speaking computer on a single chip. Through some kind of black magic, they pulled it off, and the
Speak and Spell was launched at Summer CES in 1978. When ET used one to phone home in 1982, it was already a classic.
Two million were sold around the world.
Electronic toys moved on, and Speak and Spells ended up forgotten at the back of cupboards. Then in 1992, a
fantastically pretentious artist called Reed Ghazala started playing with the
circuits in electronic toys to make weird noises. He turns Speak and Spells into
Incantors, and has sold
instruments to people like Peter Gabriel, Tom Waits and Blur. Because it[base ']s cheap, easy, and kind of cool, circuit
bending has quietly become massive[~]there are always a dozen or so weird-looking bent instruments on eBay. So, if you[base ']ve
got a Speak and Spell and don[base ']t want to sell it for up to $70 to a wannabe bender, there are great beginners guides to
Speak and Spell bending here and
here.
[Engadget]
2:13:28 PM
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Extended range WiFi technology review.  Trusty old Tom[base ']s takes a look at a few WiFi products that claim
extended range and double the speed, namely SuperG 802.11g products (108Mbps) and Belkin Pre-N (sort of based on
802.11n), finding that they are indeed faster than normal 802.11g products at any range. The Belkin Pre-N products with
True MIMO astounded the reviewer, as he had never before seen such fast speeds, even at distances as far as 400-feet
outdoors. While fast, do note that the Pre-N products may not necessarilty compatible with 802.11n when such products
are finalized and released (hence the name), which is why you are may be taking a gamble if you buy any non-upgradeable
Pre-N products now.
[Engadget]
2:12:02 PM
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Namale Spa Sanctuary. 
The Namale Spa and Sanctuary was recently ranked as the number one Fijian
spa in the 2004 Reader[base ']s Choice Poll from Luxury Spa Finder magazine. Namale,
opened by famed peak performance coach Anthony Robbins, is located over 300 acres. The spa itself is set on a 10,000
square foot property, with fine wood interiors, private treatment rooms, a Jacuzzi, gym and waterfall dipping pool. The
resort has also been named one of the top 50 romantic places in the world by Luxury Magazine.
[Luxist]
2:09:48 PM
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Zodiac CZ7. 
ABC[base ']s new show [base "]Life of Luxury[per thou] recently featured the Zodiac CZ7, a boat built for serious playtime. Billed as the
ultimate adventure boat, the Zodiac CZ7 is a rigid-hull inflatable boat. The boat is built to military
specifications and can be used in a wide variety of weather conditions. The CZ7 is nearly 24 feet long and can reach
speeds in excess of 52 mph. If you are worried that the Zodiac may be too much for you to handle, you can sign up
for Zodiac[base ']s Extreme Excursions which lets recreational boaters learn extreme boat handling techniques and navigational
skills.
[Luxist]
2:08:37 PM
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Unlimited long distance from your cell-phone ?. I just saw this on Slashdot. A company called Xcelis has a service that
claims to offer unlimited cellular long distance calls for a flat rate of US$9.99 per month. They state that they route
the call through the internet to achieve this. They also state that they have partnerships with cellular providers, but
they don[base ']t name any.
It sounds a bit fishy to me, has anyone heard of this ?
[The VoIP Weblog]
2:05:44 PM
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"High-intensity" location game for mobile phones. Seattle-based company GloVentures plans to release early 2005 Glofun RayGun, a GPS ghost-hunting game for mobile phones.
A mobile loaded with RayGun software emits "spectral" energy that
lets you attract and track ghosts. But that energy annoys the ghosts,
so you have to "ionize" them before they get to you.
To aim the raygun at a ghost, you must physically move toward it. The faster you walk/run, the higher the raygun[base ']s range.
Press Release. [we make money not art]
2:04:39 PM
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When interactive art becomes bored with you. An interactive work by Wafaa Bilal and Shawn Lawson gives an astonishing twist to Eduard Manet's painting A Bar at the Folies Bergère.
As you see yourself reflected in the mirror of the painting/video
screen (courtesy of a camera sending video to a computer that searches
for the presence of viewers), the painted barmaid turns into a
videotaped woman who looks back at you and may express distaste by
rolling her eyes, or she may become bored by you and yawn, or if two
people are watching her she may assume an expression of displeasure,
turn and walk right out of the picture.
Or if nobody is standing in front of the painting, she may pat her hair into place or adjust her dress.
Don't miss the video.
According to the artists, that bar was an infamous haunt of
prostitutes, but the barmaid was no prostitute, and resented it when
anyone treated her like one.
"We wanted to empower this woman in the painting so that she could
express her displeasure at people who would stare at her as if they
could have her," explains Bilal. "She was used to men staring at her
like she was a prostitute and it disgusted her."
Via artFUTURE < The Arizona Republic. [we make money not art]
2:03:40 PM
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My Body Is My Billboard.
Call For Entries
OPENSOURCE,
an alternative art space accommodating a variety of non-traditional,
community-oriented art projects and events within Champaign-Urbana,
Illinois, requests submissions for an upcoming exhibition and sale of
artists' T-shirt multiples. Artists and designers are invited to
produce an original edition of at least 10 T-shirts in response to one
of the following three themes:
Continue...
Posted in: T-Shirts
what the..?? can i bet that 'opensource' will be next year's word of the year? -- AP
[Eyebeam reBlog]
2:01:48 PM
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Balloon man. David Pescovitz:
 Cluster balloonist John Ninomiya has a Web site archiving his high-flying adventures:
"Five years ago, I decided to fulfill a childhood dream by
learning to fly with a cluster of large helium balloons. I have made
twenty-three helium cluster balloon flights since that time. All of
them have been among my most magical flying experiences... With half a
dozen pilots worldwide, cluster ballooning remains something between an
extreme sport and a personal eccentricity..."
Link (via Slashdot)
back
to back, we have a photo of some wacko dude flying around with helium
balloons and evidence picture from Iraqi prison. isn't the internet
great? -- AP
[Eyebeam reBlog]
2:00:06 PM
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Nokia's top-secret VST plugins
Tommy Walker III has been learning how to make mobile phone ringtones, and he stumbled on this.
It's the Nokia developers kit, which includes two VST plugins to
simulate different models of mobile phone. One contains all the sounds
available, the other models the speakers. As Tommy says: "Is this
interesting? Probably not, but I just like the idea of being able to
make my recordings sound exactly like they are coming out of a mobile
phone." To test the thing out, I used a MIDI file of Radiohead's
'Paranoid Android'. Click to hear a N-Gage take on the intro, a Nokia 3200 doing the first choral bit, a Nokia 6650 doing the exciting bit in the middle and a Nokia 6100 rather mangling the spazz-out bit at the end. The plugins are free. Registration involves two separate email confirmations, but they don't seem to care who you are. - Tom [Music thing]
1:58:45 PM
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Best Mobile Applications Awards. 
Ericsson's Mobile Application Awards 2004 were announced yesterday.
The winners, selected for from 200 market ready entrants were:
Best Mobile Enterprise Application
Lavasphere by
Gavitec AG (Germany). A mobile ticketing and barcode reader
application, which turns camera phones into bar code readers. Once you
start thinking about the potential applications, your mind does a bit
of a boggle.
These include cheap multi-tasking bar code scanners for ticketing.
But the ordinary user can also do stuff like scan barcodes for
information, price and product comparison or geo-specific data (ie info relating to the physical area they are in).
Best Mobile Information Application
Wayfinder EuroNavigator
by Wayfinder Systems AB (Sweden) turns a mobile or smart phone into a
GPS-based voice guided navigation system. The map database includes
"post offices, parking areas, hotels and Tourist information".
Unlike CD based systems, it operates in real time, so there's no
need for updates and it includes traffic news and other relevant
to-the-minute information.
In my opinion, it also gets round the "last mile" issue of car based
nav systems. If you drive somewhere in a city, the chances are you
can't park right outside your destination. This allows you to park and
then be guided right to the door.
Best Mobile Gaming Application
V-girl by Artificial Life Inc. (Hong Kong).
This creates a Virtual Girlfriend on your 3G phone and combines real and virtual world elements.
About 18 months ago, I worked with a London based agency on a very
similar concept, which we developed as a proposal for an operator to
support their 3G launch.
We explained that the problem with 3G was that early adopters
couldn't really do much more with the phones than 2.5G and that they
needed to develop an application that put the handset through its
paces. They needed to provide early adopters with something to show off
in the pub to their mates.
So we developed a very similar concept and showed them how it could
work as a fully integrated marketing campaign to support the 3G launch.
And rather good it was too, if I say so myself.
Unfortunately, the operator couldn't see it.
Obviously they had a better, cunning plan. Which turns out to be
that you can do video calling. Ho hum. Too clever by half, Buckley me
old fruit, why didn't you think of that?
Best Mobile Entertainment Application
Leaving the best to last, Twin Factor by Softhouse Nordic (Sweden): This is really cool and really clever on the geek and
product appeal scale - not an easy trick to pull off. Twin Factor
measures your face from a photo and matches it via MMS with a celebrity
database. It then tells you who you look most like (ie your twin).
This is almost cool enough to get me to send an MMS.
The service has been live in Norway for six months and during that
time 115,000 of the country's 4 million mobile phone subscribers have
tried it.
If I were an operator, I'd pop this into my shit-I-must-get-that
basket. And then I'd construct my next marketing campaign round it.
Maybe with Loyd Grossman doing a "Who lives in a face like this?"
schtick. And maybe not.
Loyd aside, this is crying out for a joined up marketing campaign to
support MMS usage. And, while they're spending their mega bucks,
perhaps they could think of making the phones actually send MMSs
straight out of the box. Ordinary people just don't like playing around
with their mobile phone's settings. Funnily enough.
Congrats to all the worthy winners and to Ericsson for organising and recognising some real mobile innovators. Here's the press release.
[The Mobile Technology Weblog]
1:57:08 PM
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Buy modern (virtual) art. London-based artist Stephen Rumney has set up a virtual gallery where
art lovers can buy a piece of digital art that comes with its own
unique web address and an art gallery installation of the image.
Prices of the installations range from £6,000 for Untitled.com, to £300,000 for www.MA.
For Rumney, the Domain Art series reflects "the madness of
consumerism, the artworld and life in the 21st Century". "The person
who buys a particular artwork will own a piece of global real estate.
Not only do they buy the rights to a work of art to be shown in a
gallery, they also own the website and can view their artwork on it."
Via BBC World. [we make money not art]
1:55:43 PM
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The Magic of Google. The magic that makes Google tick?:
Good article about the miracle that is Google. Did you know they run
60,000 servers over there? That's a mighty big power strip.
Google indexes over four billion Web pages, using an
average of 10KB per page, which comes to about 40TB. Google is asked to
search this data over 1,000 times every second of every day, and
typically comes back with sub-second response rates. If anything goes
wrong, said Holzle, "you can't just switch the system off and switch it
back on again."
Via Metafilter. [Gadgetopia]
1:54:24 PM
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Content Management Processes vs. Systems. Content Manangement Without A System:
Here's a phenomenal essay that is so, so true. CMSs are not the pancea
to your problems. Content management consultants should concentrate
more on processes than systems. Wrap the latter around the former, not
vice-versa.
Regardless of the technology you use to enable your content
management, it's important to have some kind of publishing process in
place. Distributed authorship, for example, might provide a level of
control to your stakeholder that they demand, but it that alone doesn't
the guarantee quality, frequently updated and informative content your
visitors are looking for.
We've touched on these points before: look here, here, and here. [Gadgetopia]
1:53:10 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Joerg Rheinboldt.
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