Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: GPS, Wearables

To be fair, we haven’t really noticed a GPS watch that wasn’t at least somewhat unsightly, but the Sport Genius Watch Tracker does a phenomenal job at exemplifying ugly. Reportedly, the conglomerate not only tells time, but the built-in GSM / GPS modules enable it to make and receive calls, track your movements and beam out your current location via SMS in case you find yourself in a pickle. It also provides the means for logging runs and points of interest, and you can supposedly upload the data to mapping software to get a visual on what you accomplished. Word on the street has it that this particular wristwatch should be available on the streets of China right now, but there’s no telling how many yuan you’ll be asked to fork over in order to publicly humiliate yourself.

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Original post by Darren Murph

People have been asking for more details about the Maker’s Notebook. It hasn’t been officially released yet and is not yet available in the Maker Shed (our new online store), so all will be revealed after we’ve recovered from the most amazing Maker Faire to date.

In the meantime, here are a few more pics from the Notebook Modding Station that Becky Stern and I (and some awesome volunteers — Hey Alex. Hey Matt!) ran in the Maker Shed at the Faire. This maker (whose name I didn’t get) sat down and went to town on his book, adding a pen holder at the top, a button and string closure, a pocket in the back for his business cards, lots of stickers from the Maker’s Notebook sticker sheets, and stamps from the Ink Blot Experiment line, kindly provided to us by Stampington. In the coming weeks, we’ll have a webpage for the Notebook with images of other people’s modded books and how-tos on adding your own pockets, closures, making your own stamps, stickers, and other add-ons.

Here are a few pages from the Reference section to give you an idea of what’s included:

Related:

• Maker’s Notebook released at Maker Faire

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Make: Books rolled out the Maker’s Notebook at the Maker Shed at Maker Faire. The Maker’s Notebook is a project notebook, with 150 pages of engineering graph paper and 20 pages of reference material, from useful stuff like battery, glue, and wire data to really useful stuff like the amount of caffeine in different caffeinated beverages and how to say “Hello, World!” in various computer languages. It was a dream project to put together (who doesn’t want to design their own blank notebook?). The covers of the book are printed in cyan “Maker” blue with a white grid debossed front and back. It’s a storyboard beginning for a story. We printed up several sheets of accompanying stickers so that people can mod their books. There’s also a red rubber band enclosure. The photos above show how some Faire-goers modded their books.

The Maker’s Notebook sells for $19.99 and will be available in the online store soon. Stay tuned…

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Filed under: Cellphones

That Air France in-flight calling trial is now well underway, and it looks like there’s still some kinks left to iron out. The New York Times hitched a ride on a recent flight featuring tests of the system, and found that things weren’t quite working up to snuff: voice quality was said to be like “talking to a small robot,” only six passengers could get a signal at a time, Blackberry email didn’t work, and calls placed from the ground to cell phones in the air went straight to voicemail. That’s a pretty long list for a system that’s been talked about for a couple years now — let’s hope OnAir manages to clear up some of these glitches before angry passengers revolt over not only having to listen to other people’s conversations, but also their screaming over bad connections.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Not even a week after hearing that Air France was forging ahead with an in-flight calling trial, the European Commission has now voiced its approval of using mobiles on planes in European airspace. After six months of deliberating, the decision was finally made to give airlines the choice of offering up services in order for guests to dial loved ones at 3,000-meters or more. The EU telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, went on to warn operators to “keep the cost of calls made on planes at a reasonable level,” and of course, not all is clear just yet. For starters, the European Aviation Safety Agency still needs to green-light the whole ordeal by approving any hardware that would be used, and we won’t be seeing any 3G action up high just yet. Still, at least one less hurdle stands in the way of you phoning home from over Europe (and simultaneously making enemies out of all your neighbors trying to get a few decent minutes of shuteye).

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation

Not even half a year after Air France enabled passengers on its single OnAir-equipped Airbus A318 to send / receive messages and e-mail, the airline has went live with the second phase of the in-flight experiment. As of this week, guests who find themselves aboard the aforesaid aircraft can make / receive calls on their mobile at 30,000 feet. Reportedly, a dozen simultaneous calls are possible “per picocell network, as well as unlimited text messages and e-mails,” and while pricing details weren’t disclosed, you can rest assured it won’t be a bargain. Nevertheless, the voice aspect of the trial is scheduled to carry on for three months, and we’re assuming the results (read: whether annoyed passengers start assaulting chronic yappers) will determine if it gets rolled out to more of the fleet or quietly buried.

[Via WiFi Net News]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Storage

You know something is really catching on when companies starts branding otherwise generic products as specially designed for said something, and it now looks like that’s now true for the Eee PC, thanks to these two new clever bits of marketing from A-DATA. While you could of course use any USB flash drive of SDHC card with the laptop, A-DATA’s apparently hoping that its new “special edition” flash cards and drives will sway over at least a couple of Eee PC users, and we don’t doubt that they will. Apparently available only in 8GB versions, they each come in Eee PC-coordinating white, with the USB flash drive also boasting the extra bonus of a leather carrying strap. No word on pricing or availability just yet, unfortunately, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they demand a bit of a premium over their non-Eee counterparts.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Storage

Corsair’s Flash Voyager comes straight from the factory in a water- and shock-resistant enclosure, but for one particular owner, said chassis just wasn’t hardcore enough. Rather than swapping it out for an Iron Drive, he took matters into his own hands by gutting the innards and custom building an ultra-rugged aluminum casing. Showing off his fantastic attention to detail, a machined slot for the keychain and a LED indicator hole were included, too. Hit up the read link for the walkthrough if you’re feeling atypically industrious — otherwise, just kick back and admire.

[Via Hack N Mod, thanks Joe]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Storage

Pricey flash drives are a dime a dozen (so to speak), but just in case you haven’t found one quite ugly enough to call your own, why not feast your eyes on the Adamant? The limited edition drive will be limited to 50 units worldwide and will feature 16GB of capacity, a trio of diamonds, a dash of yellow gold and a sleek black box that’ll quickly get tossed moments after it arrives. Granted, you’ll have to shell out $5,650 in order to even have that luxury, but you better act fast.

[Via CNET]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Peripherals, Storage

We hear it’s pretty tough being a gadget with an identity crisis, and unfortunately for Asus’ MS71, it definitely feels that pain. Thankfully for consumers who aren’t turned off by rectangular (or atypically slender) mice, at least it provides a bit of extra utility. Quite simply, the base of the critter snaps off to plug into any open USB port; from there, it enables what’s left to function as a wireless mouse and allows users to store an undisclosed amount of files on the appendage. No word on pricing or availability, but unless you place absolutely no value on ergonomics, we’d probably look elsewhere.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Networking

Well, it sure looks like IBM is keeping all its supercomputing bases covered these days, with it not only working on a chip-sized supercomputer, but a global-scale shared computer that’d be capable of “hosting the entire internet as an application.” That latter word comes in the form of a white paper ambitiously dubbed “Project Kittyhawk” (we’re guessing they found “Project Mulitvac” a little too obvious), which aims to explore the construction and implications of such a massive scale computer. That apparently wouldn’t be a SETI or Folding@home-style shared computer consisting of everyday PCs, however, with it instead relying on IBM’s petaflopping Blue Gene/P as a common platform, which would effectively be able to run any web-scale application you could throw at it. Of course, none of that has moved very far beyond the page just yet, so you can rest easy that there’s still no supercomputer out there that’s capable of bringing the entire internet to the halt on a whim, at least that we know of.

[Via Slashdot]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Adding injury to insult, then pouring salt in the wound, and finally kicking mud in Microsoft’s eye, NEC has launched an official Vista downgrade product, FlexLoad. The company debuted a two-DVD package on Tuesday priced at an affordable £7, which is meant to help (mainly business) customers create an XP partition that they can use to boot from. Says David Newbould, NEC UK’s product marketing manager, “We do have some customers who are very happy with XP and see [no need] to move to Vista at the moment.” Of course, we’re pretty sure that when he said “some” he actually meant “lots.” Another nasty burn for the folks in Redmond — though those 100 million units sold can probably buy a lot of kleenex.

[Via FSJ]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Maybe you got word that the iPhone development community supposedly has a jailbreak method for v1.1.3 — but they’re not releasing it yet. (They claim they want to wait until the next firmware update in February that will enable the SDK, so Apple won’t patch the hack in the mean time.) We understand if you’re feeling a mite bit let down, so if you jumped the gun (or just didn’t hear the good news), restoring your phone back to trusty old v1.1.1 isn’t too big a feat. That supposed jailbreak video is after the break though, if you want to whet your whistle.

Continue reading Feeling regretful? Downgrade to that v1.1.3 iPhone / iPod touch

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Original post by Ryan Block

Filed under: Portable Video, Wearables

It’s not often that we see a pair of new wearable PVRs within the span of 24 hours, but sure enough, Ajoka is launching its Belt Buckle DVR just after we peeked the VIEVU PVR-PRO. ‘Course, we’re fairly certain this one’s arriving a little late to be an official member of the “multifaceted belt buckle” fad, but with all the utility crammed into this one, it’s got a fair shot at gaining traction, regardless. As for specs, this hidden camera can record video at a paltry 176 x 144 resolution, and considering that no built-in memory is included, you better bring your own SD card. Also, you can transfer captures and recharge the battery via the USB port, but sadly, no price is disclosed.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Gaming

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA’s 3-way SLI system hitting all sorts of test benches comes word that the outfit is cranking out its brand new nForce 780i SLI MCP (media and communications processor). That’s right kids, the self-proclaimed “must-have gaming platform for Intel Yorkfield CPUs” is finally out in the open, and aside from playing nice with Intel’s QX9650, it also supports PCI Express Gen 2.0, 3-way SLI and the new Enthusiast System Architecture specification. Apparently, a number of “motherboard partners” including Asus, Falcon Northwest, HP, Gigabyte, Hypersonic and Voodoo PC are already planning to offer nForce 780i SLI MCP-based products, and judging by NVIDIA’s holiday themed press release, we’d wager that you’ll see the aforementioned items seeping out sooner rather than later.

[Via HotHardware]

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Original post by Darren Murph