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Daily Archives: April 18, 2008
Charles Darwin – Complete Work online
Light emitting Wallpaper
Jonas Samson has managed to create wallpaper that through layering several materials emits light.
http://www.jonassamson.com/products/wallpaper-5.jpg
Windows Vista Tip: Turn Off Vista’s Auto-Tuning to Prevent Browser Slow-Down
Or crashing. In short it comes to running
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
from the command line.
If for some reason it goes wrong, change disabled to normal in the line above and run it again!
Five Best DVD Ripping Tools
The Hive lets you point your speakers wherever you want
This unique sound bar is called The Hive, shaped as it is like a honeycomb cluster. Each segment of the speaker that you see is an individual unit that can be tilted and positioned independently, allowing you to set it up for your specific room’s shape and design.
It’s a neat idea, and it’s really quite cool looking as well. It’s not going to do well with people who like subtlety in their home theatre setups, but for those people out there looking to have the most unique setup in the neighborhood, this will do the trick.
Concept building has farms on top and sculptures below
When asked to design a building for a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan, the designers at Work AC went hog wild. They’re local foodies, you see, which means that they try to avoid buying produce that’s traveled from far-flung places like New Zealand. What better way to eat local than to bring the farm to the city? Their design incorporates residential apartments that are topped by strips of farm land and watered using rain water stored in the tanks on the building’s roof. The staircase-shaped structure is to be propped up by elegant sculptures. The people underneath the structure seem to be shopping at a green market (how appropriate!). And during the years when some of the fields need to lie fallow, they can be used for sportive activities like golfing.
Yes, the design is a bit unrealistic, but we like it a lot better than this alternate proposal for the same space. We hope architecture firms like Work AC keep thinking green, but that they’ll come up with some more realistic plans as well.
Self-stirring tea glass helps automate personal tea ceremonies
We the Brits were crazy about tea, but some French aficionados are giving them a run for their money. Two young French designers have created a self-stirring teacup. It’s a glass, actually, and it has a ceramic ball at the bottom that mixes around and mixes the tea as you lift the cup or swirl it gently. The base of the glass protrudes enough so that when you lift the glass to drink, the ball never falls out and hits you in the teeth.
Cute idea guys, but we have a couple of suggestions. First, make a disposable version. The real waste when it comes to tea stirring has to do with plastic spoons and wooden sticks at places like Starbucks. Second, if you were as into tea as the Brits, you’d know that tea tastes far better when you drink it from a porcelain cup, not a glass. Maybe the next prototype should be ceramic, with a glass mixing ball.
Bring surfing to the Midwest with the Skimboard Surfer
If you’re unfortunate enough to be stuck in the middle of the country, away from the coasts, you probably don’t get too many chances to see the ocean, let alone surf in it. But hey, that doesn’t mean your dreams of surfing need to die in the flat Missouri sun! Just get yourself a Banzai Skimboard Surfer and live your dreams of having an endless summer.
Essentially, the Skimboard Surfer is a souped up slip n slide: a long, slick piece of plastic that fills with water via your hose. But rather than sliding on it face first, you use the included skimboard to surf down its slippery length. Oh, summer fun, you’re right at hand! And one doesn’t have to live on a coastline to enjoy it!
Buddhist phone is much prettier than your phone
This shiny, pretty phone is a heavily-modified Nokia N95 that’s been decked out head-to-toe with Buddhist iconography and characters. It’s got gold everywhere, a Buddha on the back, and fancy imagery all over. It even has custom wallpapers and ringtones onboard to complete the theme.
It’s slick, to say the least, especially if you’re Buddhist, I’d assume. Sadly, it’s been spotted in China but is currently unavailable to any of us silly westerners. But hey, if you’re handy with a paintbrush and have a spare N95 kicking around, you could probably whip up something similar, right?
Driver wanted for jet car: must be young, fearless, good looking
Suddenly your $40-$50 bill to fill up gas every other week isn’t so bad: the North American Eagle jet car costs $18,000 every single run. That’s because it uses a 42,500 horsepower engine from airplane manufacturer Lockheed’s retired 1957 F-104 Starfighter, which uses up 160 gallons of fuel each minute. The car needs that kind of power though, because partners Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi want to break the 800 mph land speed record for the US. All they need now is a driver.
Shadle, a former USAF pilot and amateur racer himself, would love to drive the North American Eagle. “It’s a lot of fun to drive,” he told the Times Online, “But if my age is stopping us getting sponsors, we have to remove that barrier. We’ll put some hotshot in the driving seat who looks like Robert Redford and see how that works.”
So Shadle and his Boeing engineer partner Zanghi are looking for someone between 20 and 40 years of age who is photogenic and entirely cool with the idea of, essentially, riding their $150,000 rocket, built over the last 10 years in a rented Seattle hangar. Just don’t forget to buckle up: the North American Eagle is projected to break the 800 mph record in around 20 seconds.
If that sounds like you, send a 400-word email detailing why and a photo to landspeedracing@gmail.com.
Hitachi to go it alone on discs after all
Hitachi has done an about turn and decided it won’t be selling its struggling hard drive division.
The division was formed when Hitachi bought IBM’s disk business in 2002 and has made losses for almost every quarter since. In late 2007 Hitachi was trying to sell the business to private equity group Silver Lake.
But, updating investors today, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies said it would continue to run the business on its own. It will keep on cutting costs, which fell 13 per cent in 2007, and improve its focus – it got out of the 1 and 1.89 inch markets last year.
But the company said it might consider further funding alternatives in the future – it could be that the Silver Lake deal is another victim of the credit crunch as much as a change in strategy.
The firm said it was very serious about “becoming self-sufficient,” which is nice.
It made a profit in the second half of 2007 on revenues of $5.56bn and hopes to end 2008 in profit. It hopes to ship 558 million units in 2008 – 12 per cent more than last year. ®
IBM continues storage land grab with Diligent acquisition
Big Blue has made yet another storage buy, this time scooping up privately-held Diligent Technologies for an undisclosed sum, although rumors peg the price at $200m.
The company, which has in recent months been on a considerable storage spending spree, said today that the Framingham, Massachusetts and Tel Aviv, Israel-based de-duplication software specialist will be folded into IBM’s System Storage biz unit.
This acquisition is IBM’s third swoop on an Israel-based outfit in as many months. Just last week it swallowed up FilesX, which has operations in Haifa and Newton, Massachusetts.
IBM’s storage beefery comes as it makes a grab for Web 2.0 apps, digital archives, and digital media.
IBM’s system storage general manager Andy Monshaw said: “Diligent’s data de-duplication software is a critical technology that will be integrated into the IBM Storage portfolio to further extend our information infrastructure strategy, allowing our clients to eliminate redundant data and streamline the infrastructure required to support their business – which can result in dramatic improvements in data centre efficiency.”
Diligent’s de-duplication technology will be slotted into IBM’s new enterprise data centre model, the mantra of which is heavily-loaded with the industry’s favourite buzzwords – virtualisation, green IT, and cloud computing.
The startup has a number of reseller deals with other storage vendors that use Diligent’s ProtecTier software including Overland, HDS, and Sun. It’s not known at this stage how IBM will handle these agreements under the merger, which is subject to the normal regulatory requirements.
Diligent, which has secured close to $47m in fundage, previously served as EMC’s Israel research and development lab before being spun-out from the the storage firm in 2002.
Over the past few months acquisition-hungry IBM has bought Softek, NovusCG, XIV, Arsenal Digital Solutions, and FilesX.