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“I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called “brightness,” but that doesn’t work.” – Author Unknown
We started off this week with Gareth regaling us with his experiences with Apple’s latest baby. Snow Leopard is here! Gareth’s already installed it on both his Macs and is full of good things to say about it. I shall let him test it for a few days before unleashing on my system, there’s been no reports of any real problems, but you can’t be too careful. Then we dicussed a few iPhone apps, ‘Where’ is Gareth’s current pick.
Then on to the stories…
All current iPods discontinued? – The supply channels are rapidly draining of the existing iPods, in preparation for new goodies from Jobs and Co. The SKU’s of all current iPods have been discontinued. Gareth just bought an existing gen iPod classic, purely for reasons of nostalgia.
A remote that Twitters – Big Blue has patented a remote control that can twitter. TV is going to get more ‘social’. But if the remote starts blogging about the rubbish shows you’re watching. You’ve got nobody but yourself to blame.
Stunning image of single molecule – Those IBM boffins are having a busy week. This time they’ve produced an image of a single molecule of penacene Using an atomic force microscope, at near absolute zero, and complete stillness for 20 hours. Next up they’re going to examine Steve Ballmer for business acumen. But only if they can improve the sensitivity of their equipment.
USAA bank lets you call in cheques – If you’ve got a USAA account and an iPhone you can ring your checks in. You take a picture of said check, and an app does the rest. Encrypting and sending to your bank and the bank credits you the money. Now if we could just get rid of the whole small irritating inconvienent piece of paper altogether, that’d be progress.
‘Daily Prophet’ comes to Entertainment Weekly – By embedding a slim-line player within the pages, video will appear in a magazine for the first time. Up to 40 minutes of video will be contained on the chip that powers the ‘mobile phone’ sized screen. Not as animated as Harry Potters Daily Prophet, but much more 21st century in editorial style.
iPod classic to get a camera too – If the rumours are to be believed. On September the 9th we should see a slew of new iPods, all bearing cameras. The venerable classic included. Flickr is going to be groaning under the wait of all the new ‘fun’ photo. If its video capable, who knows, it could break You Tube.
Evolutionary theory of tech – An interesting article I culled off the interwebs. If species evolution is driven by the survival of the fitest, is tech driven by the same goals? Do the fitest devices succeed, and the rest fall by the wayside? A good piece, but unfortunately it couldn’t explain the success of Windows.
Sony’s new kindle killer – The ‘Reader Daily Edition’ has been unveiled. With a 7″ touch screen and 2GB of internal memory, it compares favourably to the Kindle. Topping it all off is a 3G connection powered by AT&T. So, they can grab books back off yours just like Amazon can.
