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Looks cool!

Yep and just two more Linux mobiles here.

They don't seem to sleep these days at Motorola ...

Bye egghat.

well, nokia did say in the latest issue of the personnel magazine ("Nokia People") that they have a linux strategy, but don't intend to dump symbian in favor of it... but i guess we'll see!

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000133051683/#c3 51989

I submitted this as a story back on June 4. Since it was rejected (too verbose?), I posted it to my /. journal. My main question to other folks relates to how this would compare to using a regular ramdisk. The main deficiency with a ramdisk is that you'd have to reload the contents every time you reboot. Here's my article, with all its links:

Giga-byte Technology recently came out with a DRAM-based PC card that operates as a SATA hard drive. The product, iRAM, uses power from the motherboard to keep memory active when the system is shut down. During power outages, the product uses a on-board battery to retain memory for up to 90 minutes. The iRAM card is being talked about in the news (InfoWorld, itWorldCanada, engadget, PCWorld, multiplay forum) as a means of booting Windows faster. That is, you install Windows onto the iRAM drive to take advantage of the RAM's faster read-access time. Just hope that you don't lose power for more than 90 minutes.

Is boot time really that important, since many computers are on all the time? A ramdisk might have better uses, perhaps for caching frequently-accessed files such as databases and webservers. Or, if you insist on having faster bootup, instead of putting Windows on the iRAM disk, why not just store the hibernation file there?

I implemented a RAM-based database for an internet tool in 1998 to alleviate the read/write load on my local hard drive. It turned out to be a simple solution for the problem. At the time, it was just a matter of using a DOS-based ramdisk driver (ramdisk.sys). On application startup, it copied the database files to the ramdisk. During operation, everything was read/written to the ramdisk, and periodic backups were made to the physical disk. There are some inherent risks, such as loss of data during a crash since data isn't immediately written to a physical hard drive, so it may not be a great solution for a mission-critical production database. The iRAM product would make this type of database even more stable, in that the risk of loss of data is much less.

That was a while ago, so I thought I'd look into setting up a ramdisk in XP for some amusement. Follows are the results of that search. It seems that the options are relatively sparse beyond the DOS-based driver. A few freeware and commercial packages are available, though. One key factor beyond price is the size limit of ramdisk.

Microsoft's ramdisk offerings since Win2k are limited. Included with the XP OS is a ramdisk sample driver that "provides an example of a minimal driver. Neither the driver nor the sample programs are intended for use in a production environment. Rather, they are intended for educational purposes and as a skeletal version of a driver." Installation isn't simple enough for most users to benefit.

Alternatives include a shareware ramdisk, AR ramdisk (archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20041011170408/http:/ww w.arsoft-online.de/products/product.php?id=1) (freeware, 2GB limit, discontinued, available for download here), a freeware (64MB limit) and shareware (2GB limit) version here,

If anyone cares, there is already a native Pentium-M board from AOpen based on the Intel i915G chipset. No need for convertor crap. The upcoming small form-factor Pandora XPC from AOpen is Pentium-M based as well.

Microsoft shipped the beta dev kits out about a month after E3, and apparently one kid managed to get his hands on a near final xbox 360 prototype that his dad brought home (http://www.360hacker.net/articles/07-18-2005/firs t-xbox-360-seen-in-the-wild/).

Sony has shipped out alpha dev kits as well, though what is in them at this point can't really be determined (not that it would matter; alpha dev kits, unlike beta dev kits, aren't representative of what you'll find in the final product). They are definately huge (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000747047835/) though ...

Morse code will go the way of the dinosaur perhaps as it should have long ago, yet not without many noting its departure with a particular reverence for the past. Morse, however, is still a viable means of communication. For example, it is certainly faster than SMS. At any rate, perhaps the FCC should instead focus upon more pressing matters: cleaning out the clutter in the increasingly crowded radio spectrum and speeding along the many pending standards that would make communication on the whole an easier matter.

See here.

IIRC last year a bunch of different people threw money into this compeition and NOBODY won, so really it didnt matter whether the amounts spent on it were large or small, nobody rose to the challenge. Which really goes to show its not necessarily the money spent but the quality of the developers involved in this project.
Though if i read correctly elsewhere, the Hummer team (im sure they have oodles of cash to throw at this competition) have really shown a possibility of pulling this one off.

adding video to iPod (which does one thing and does it well, except now it can do two things -- photos) makes it perhaps too complicated.

The iPod Photo already can be hooked up to a television to display slideshows. I believe Apple has actually been developing the iPod in this direction so that it would actually not take much modification to the existing design of the iPod photo in order to use it for video playback, from a manufacturing perspective. In fact, the iPod photo can technically play back videos, so it seems like it is probably only a matter of a software upgrade to get it to play videos. That is unless the processor isn't powerful enough to handle video decompression, as that example utilises "video" composed of frames that are individual files.

what i am suggesting is that Apple would now have a tool to dominate the online video market the way they do music.

think about it. we're all waiting for movies for download.

I think that Apple will actually start by selling music videos first rather than full-fledged movies. Somehow, the "iTunes" name doesn't seem to adequately describe a store and jukebox application for movies, although it would perfectly suit music videos as they still conform to the same genre. The file sizes of music videos along with H.264 compression would suit the iPod as it is currently, in terms of capacity. And you could just listen to the music without watching the video as well, kind of like leaving a television on in the background, listening to MTV as if it were a radio station.

Music videos are a dominating part of the music industry and seem to be a more influential broadcast medium than radio with regards to an artist's success in the music industry. Just imagine iTunes playing, but the "visualizer" function would make it play full screen music videos, turning it into your own private MTV channel rather than simply displaying visual graphics. Music videos seem to be an untapped potential of current technology because of the feasibility of short video file sizes. I don't believe that people are even trading music videos on P2P networks the way they do songs, so if the iTunes Music Store started selling them, it would have a major impact and fulfill a niche that even P2P file sharing hasn't addressed.

Movies still take up quite a bit of space for storage and bandwidth for downloading. However, the iPod would most likely end up as a way of storing your movie collection as well. I just think that the functionality isn't quite there yet at present to handle full-length movies as comfortably as it can music with regards to ripping, downloading, and storing. But it will get there as technology progresses, and music videos are the perfect media in the interim. I think that when they finally get into full-length movies, they would also have to change their jukebox application and downloading service name from "iTunes" into something else.

So the buzz around the web on that Optimus keyboard we posted up a couple of days ago has been intense. A recent interview with Artemy Lebedev, founder and director of the Russian design firm working on the keyboard, sheds some light on the future of this device: they envision is as an "open source" keyboard, with an SDK and a "keyboard studio" application that lets users customize the keyboard any way they choose (sweeeet!). The company is currently negotiating with several different manufacturers to get the Optimus into production, and they're hoping to see it getting into our hot little hands in about a year for "[no] less than $200 to $300."

You'd be surprised with battery life now. I recently bought a 20GB Cowon iAudio X5L (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000330040234) that has 35 hours of music playback. For me that has translated to between 10 and 15 hours of video playback. The X5 model (with comparable battery life to a 20GB iPod) has had reported video playback times ranging from 4 to 6 hours (which IMHO isn't that bad).

I agree completely that RCA jacks would be nice. It's the one thing I wish the iAudio had.

I'd also be surprised if this new iPod didn't eventually support mpeg4 xvid as the iAudio already supports it at 15fps (not bad for the screen size). One thing I would worry about is all the DRM apple is going to slap on the video files. Hopefully vPod will support video files that aren't bought on iTunes.

Continuing the DRM happy news, Microsoft wants to end hardware copyright circumvention with Longhorn. This scheme would require new monitors, and entirely different hardware requirements.

Best case scenario: this is great because it will this be a nail in the coffin for widespread Longhorn adoption. Thus companies like Dell may sell computers equipped with Linux to avoid higher hardware fees. I wrote about this while back.

Worst case scenario: this is a brick wall for Linux drivers. Linux will be reduced to working only on specialty or old hardware.

Didn't he just say the opposite, oh yeah.

Mr. Jobs addressed the issue of video on iPods when asked by Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press whether or not Apple was looking to add features to the iPod. "We want it to make toast," replied Mr. Jobs. "We're toying with refrigeration, too."

While intended to get a laugh, which it did, Mr. Jobs also offered a more substantive answer as to why Apple had heretofore not added too many features to the iPod. "One of the things we say around Apple, and I paraphrase Bill Clinton from the 1992 presidential race, is 'It's about the music, stupid.'"

Mr. Jobs says that there is a big difference between the way people listen to music and other activities like watching videos. Specifically, he said, you can listen to music in the background, while movies require that you actually watch them. "You can't watch a video and drive a car," he said. "We're focused on music."

Sources: one
two

Not really. I read Gizmodo and Engadget, and many of their articles are "our partner site Foo found a cool site on news.com please go through our partner site so we get more ad impressions."

Slashdot's almost as bad, what with the OSTG cross-promotion and the self-aggrandizing bloggers that submit articles they "wrote," but blogging generates an awful lot of corporate-style noise.

Frankly, I prefer television news to the stream of idiocy that people spew in the "blogosphere."

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000330050622/
Engadget posted something just yesterday about one of Garmin's new StreetPilots that does just that!

Also from engadget: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000230050640

A bit expensive of course, but proves the theory. I think Steve Jobs even said on stage (maybe at D a couple of years ago) that DRM is only a stop gap. If people want to get stuff uncracked it can happen. Everything is crackable. Unless you start working on quantum algorithms you're not going to create something a computer can't deduce with enough time. Not to mention, the layering of software and hardware - (example, the TCP/IP stack sits on top of the networking stack. The window manager stack sits on top of the display stack etc.) you're always going to be able to override some library somewhere.

I just listened to Engadget's podcast interview with Bill Gates. When asked about HD DVD and tech like IPTV he says that devices with digital HD technology have to have "the same level of Digital Rights Management as DVD has now."

Let's hope. We know how rock solid DVD DRM is.

If capacity is the most important issue, neither format is large enough. Even BluRay will only hold about 2 hours of video at 1080i (of course they can crank up the compression as needed). The best solution I've seen is a third format - holographic disc (http://www.engadget.com/entry/9772446245622191) which stores multiple bytes per cell instead of single bits. They can put about 1 terrabyte on a disk, and Toshiba just became an investor in Optware (the Japanese company that owns the technology) http://www.optware.co.jp/english/index_what.htm ... Things could get interesting if Toshiba (one of the main companies behind HD-DVD) suddenly backs a format with 20 times Blu-Ray's capacity.

If capacity is the most important issue, neither format is large enough. Even BluRay will only hold about 2 hours of video at 1080i (of course they can crank up the compression as needed). The best solution I've seen is a third format - holographic disc (http://www.engadget.com/entry/9772446245622191) which stores multiple bytes per cell instead of single bits. They can put about 1 terrabyte on a disk, and Toshiba just became an investor in Optware (the Japanese company that owns the technology) http://www.optware.co.jp/english/index_what.htm ... Things could get interesting if Toshiba (one of the main companies behind HD-DVD) suddenly backs a format with 20 times Blu-Ray's capacity.

Like this?
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000230050640/

Not software, perhaps, but it will get the job done.

Engadget has just posted a description of a hardware 'fix', the Spatz DVIMAGIC box: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000230050640/ Given that it specifically breaks the DRM and opens the company up to attack via the DCMA, it seems likely to a limited edition.

It's interesting work. It's a lot like this but the memory feature described in the article makes it very unique. I can't wait for the day I can plug my own personal electronic newspaper into some public outlet to get the newspaper. Better yet, getting this in schools will save a lot of children from back pains.

I saw this on Engadget just today.

Soon to be a thing of the past.

"Also, OLED's have a short life. 1-2 years." Then how is it that they sell Creative Zen micro's and Sony Minidisc and MP3 Players that use them? http://www.mysimon.com/Sony_NW_E507_Network_Walkma n__1GB_/4014-6490_8-31303102.html?ttag=pdropsingle http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000830027480/

PXA
MVNO
AD2P

There's a Taco Bell commercial running right now in the US that features a pretentious gadget geek boasting that all of his new products are "good to go," and that some new food item from Taco Bell is "good to go" too.

I used to say "good to go" before that commercial. Now I don't. I do plan to eat three meals a day at Taco Bell for 30 days, though...

Well I think the iTunes phone is a pretty sure bet. Between these shots of the phone: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000887049175/

And the fact that support for them is already in iTunes (yeah, I know it says iPod phone, but that's not the same as a "hybrid iPod/cell phone"):
http://appleinsider.com/image.php?i=itunesiphonepr efs&id=1158

There's no doubt that it's coming. But it won't be a hybrid iPod/cell phone.

The phone has been "ready" for a while now.

The phone has been "ready" for a while now.

http://www.scrollingbuckle.com/

Or, for the homebrewer:
http://engadget.com/entry/6833839062762584/

you'd better leave out the welcome mat, because robots are taking all the cool jobs

I liked the asphalt comment. I've been saying for years that with everyone jumping on the bandwagon that internet over water lines was bound to come.

Only downside is that if you start downloading/serving a massive bittorrent someone taking a shower is liable to get a blast of cold water.

There is someone doing it over gas lines. They're running RF contained in the line.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000230043258/

A few years back someone else was running fibre via sewer pipes.

Let's just hope they can actually put someone good in that is young and can actually grasp today's technology better.

I nominate Paris Hilton! Who better to rule on issues of privacy rights and data security?

"Swing vote? That's hot!"

Thanks to overzealous users of RSS readers, some web sites actually embed more advertising into their RSS feed than they put on their HTML page!

A couple of interesting links: Nokia has filed a patent for tranmitting and receiving optical messages (blinking LEDs) in morse code. Morse Texter is an open source morse code application for Nokia/Symbian Series 60 phones.

Just because it supports iTunes and comes with an Apple logo doesn't mean it'll be as good as an iPod. And btw, Motorola has the shittiest & clunkiest user interfaces among all major cellphone manufactureres.

For a better example, check out Samsung's SGH-i300, a tri-band GSM bar phone that comes with a 3GB 1-inch HDD, a 1.3MP Camera and looks much better that this Motorola presentative piece. Oh, and it comes with Windows Mobile.

Engadget reported the same thing yesterday with a pic and it's even in English.

LoJack for Laptops

If it is anything like David Lightman little game with WOPR's Joshua then I am out of planet earth with the next shuttle flight.

The same person... "Who would buy a 660 bhp Ferrari, for nearly $770,868, that can do 217.5 mph and turn in a 3.3 second 0-60 mph." They have too much money and/or not enough sense and need to impress people because they are insecure with themselves (a/k/a tiny genital disease). Now go away while I drool over this.

The Cellar

The ER1

The Barhand

or, of course, Koolio

[Please, I beg you for a mod up. I've learned my lesson about trolling, I swear.]

I wouldn't say it's a great deal.

Nobody will use the PSP to display photos. That's a dumb feature. It sounds cool, but you won't use it. I don't care what you say. You just won't fucking use that feature. Once or twice to check it out doesn't count.

MP3's.. Hmm another feature you won't use, why?
It's $80 bucks for a 512mb cart and $150 for a 1 gig cart. For $120 you can buy the 512mb Philips GoGear SA178 That's only $30 more than a 512mb cart and it's MUCH MUCH smaller than the PSP. You can actually cary it around and use it for what it was meant to be used for, unlike using the PSP to play MP3's. Oh, and there are other, cheaper mp3 players and even smaller ones too.

Movies... Hmm tell me do you spend your entire life traveling so that it makes it worth your time to buy your entire collection of movies in UMD instead of DVD? How many times can you watch the same movie before you get bored of it? Are enough movies going to be sold so that people will take notice and start releasing tons of movies for the PSP? I mean get real a few people might buy a bunch of movies for the PSP but most people will buy a handfull and that's it and they won't get watched much either.

Games. What games? I don't see any games worth playing at all, do you? What games are coming out? GTA? WHEEE I haven't played that one before, nope never.. They haven't re-released the same fucking game 3 times in a row. Nope.

Oh, you mean locks like these?

Riding my bike past the buildings yesterday afternoon, a likely vehicle was outside with someone up top adjusting what appeared to be one of many cameras.

It was Stanford's vehicle for the DARPA Grand Challenge:

http://robots.engadget.com/entry/1234000890044086

Maybe they have several vehicle-based projects housed in those quonset huts.

There are a number of solid-state MPEG4 recording camcorders like Sanyo's XACTI which save the video to a CF or SD card.

If your target for these recordings is to be watched on a TV in the classroom, then the quality provided by mpeg4 will probably be enough.
But if you're targeting broadcast, you probably want to pickup one of Canon XL2 minidv "professional" camcorders. That'll set you back about $4000.

Everything and their mom is going "social" these days. Doesn't anyone just want to be left alone any more?

Everything and their mom is going "social" these days. Doesn't anyone just want to be left alone any more?

This was covered on engadget a few days ago.

He started the engadget Podcast, hackaday, and now MAKE.

it seems like he's really good at getting cool stuff off the ground and then he leaves it to other people once its up and running

http://flashenabled.com/ is his site