Author: Gary Cutlack
VIDEO: Energy & Efficiency, episode 1
With rocketing energy prices and the pressure to be “green” in everything you do, I thought it’d be fun – and hopefully educational – to start a series of videos looking at ways we can all be more energy efficient around our homes and offices.
To kick thinks off, I take a look as the massive (white) elephant in the room – the always-on electricity sponge that is the household refrigerator. Do we really need access to cold cheese 24 hours a day? Or is it just a conspiracy by the electricity companies to keep their shareholders happy?
I hereby declare that next week is National Turn Your Fridge Off…
Atari getting behind Apple's App Store – Missile Command and Super Breakout on the way
Not only are Missile Command and Super Breakout both coming to the App Store for play on iPhone and iPod touch, but they’re also getting tacked-on motion controls to make playing them in public more than a little embarrassing. It is the way of the future.
Missile Command uses the Multi Touch feature to allow missile placement with your fingers, a clever idea which ought to emulate the original arcade machine’s trackball controller far better than any other modern day console could…
More details on GE's digital camera splurge – E1055W and A1030 exposed in depth
Last week we revealed the range-topping new GE E1050TW with all its fancy HD features – now here are a couple of mid-range GEs for your less-informed and slightly poorer relatives.
The A1030 (left, red) is capable of recording MP4 movies, does 10megapixels, has a 3x optical and 4.5x digital zoom, features a 2.5″ LCD round the back and, very importantly, takes AA batteries. It is slap-bang in the middle of what you’d expect.
And the E1055W to the right there in Standard Silver offers 10.1megapixels, a 5x optical zoom, image stabilisation, a 3″ LCD viewfinder round the back and what GE says…
CONFIRMED: T-Mobile launching the Android-powered T-Mobile G1 in the UK this November
Google, HTC and T-Mobile have all just pulled the covers off the T-Mobile G1 – the official name of the long-awaited “Google Phone.”
The handset features the “Android Market” – its equivalent to Apple’s App Store – and it does indeed use the Amazon MP3 shopping service as rumoured this very morning. As for release dates – the US gets it on October 22, the UK gets it in “early November,” while the rest of Europe must wait until early 2009…
Olympus gets in on the Micro Four Thirds scene with its compact SLR concept
Things are ALL GO on the hot Micro Four Thirds SLR scene right now. Panasonic revealed its Lumix G1 just last week, shrinking the traditional SLR into a very fancy-looking body.
Olympus, Panasonic’s partner in the new system, has different plans. It’s using the shrunken optical internals to create a compact-styled camera that boasts the power and lens connectivity of an SLR. And a lovely little orange faux-leather band. To be honest, we’re only mentioning this because of the leather band.
The unnamed Olympus device is, sadly, just at concept stage at the moment, so there’s a very real risk that that leather detailing will be replaced with a cheaper plastic…
Japan set to cross another invention off Arthur C. Clarke's list – sets aside £5bn for "space elevator"
A mere 30 years after Arthur C. Clarke first mooted the idea of running super-thin, lightweight cables into space and tethering them to a satellite in his book The Fountains of Paradise, Japanese scientists reckon they’re ready to bring all the parts together and make it happen.
For a relatively low in space travel terms bill of £5bn, the boffins think they’re close to solving the carbon nanotube technology issue that could make the existence of 22,000 mile-long cables possible. That amount of rope or even Ethernet cable…
This week, YouTube has been banned in… Kuwait
Oh dear. The poor people of Kuwait will no longer be able to watch poorly-lit webcam footage of women dancing to Latin American hip hop in their underwear, thanks to a fresh batch of religious outrage.
As ever, it’s the old portraying-Mohammed issue that’s lead to Kuwaiti officials demanding a ban on the video streaming site, thanks to it featuring videos that could offend Muslims. Here’s how the Kuwaiti top brass demanded the ban in a memo to the country’s ISPs…
The Shuttle D10 – a mini desktop with a 7" LCD touchscreen on the front
We know what you’re thinking – WHY? So let’s get that bit out of the way first. The Shuttle D10 is for awkward places. Small holes. Places where getting a PC and a whopping great 24″ Samsung monitor in might be a bit of a squeeze. Caravans. The bedroom of a child.
It might also help calm your nerves a bit just to have a spare screen about the place for use in a broken primary screen emergency, or it could be good as a little media PC…
Asus and Skype team up to create world's ugliest gadget – the AiGuru SV1 portable videophone
That deformed beast which looks like the remains of three microwaved mobile phones is an AiGuru SV1, the product of an alliance between globally beloved tech-maker Asus and quite loved chat-enabler Skype.
The SV1 is a self-contained video phone, using Skype software and its own little webcam to let users broadcast video calls from wherever there’s a wi-fi signal. In your bathroom, for example. There’s also an Ethernet socket, microphone…
Flickr user uses face, hands, fingers and Mac to illustrate the size of the Lumix G1
When it comes to the Lumix G1, Panansonic’s first compact-sized Micro Four Thirds SLR camera, there’s an unusual worry. The worry that it’s going to be too small. This is the fist time in gadget history that “too small” has been a possible issue.
SLRs need space. They have buttons and dials, plus that big lens you’ll be needing to rotate to stop the pictures being blurry. A small camera body might make that difficult, which has got big-handed people worried that the G1 might be too small and therefore a bit clumsy and dangerously droppable. So Flickr user Luc Saint-Elie took some pictures of it. Here it is, along with her fingers, in an active use scenario.
It seems to fit. Her fingers don’t seem painfully bunched…
