Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Da Massive writes “UNIX PDP-7, a classic DEC PDP-8, the original IBM PC, Commodore’s ᩬ, Apple’s Lisa, a MITS Altair 8800 made famous by Bill Gates, through to a working PDP-11 that plays the ADVENTURE and DUNGEON games. Max Burnet has got it all. Burnet has turned his home in the leafy suburbs of Sydney into arguably Australia’s, if not the world’s, largest private computer museum. Since retiring as director of Digital Equipment Corporation a decade ago, Burnet has converted his home into a snapshot of computer history. Every available space from his basement to the top floor of his two-storey home is covered with relics from the past. On top of his hardware collection are numerous punch cards, tape machines (including the original paper tape) and over 6000 computer reference books. So in demand is his collection that one Australian film called on him to recreate a computer setting (PDP-9) for a movie about the moon landing in 1969.”

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Original post by timothy

Filed under: Household, Robots

You try and you try to keep your plants well-watered and situated in the brightest spot you can find, but that darned sun has an annoying tendency to move and leave your urban foliage wilting. You could try leaving them in the window, or switching to creepy robotic flowers, or you could just replace your pots with PlantBot, a four-legged contraption designed to seek out the sun and plunk your plant right where it needs to be. Designed by The Play Coalition, a group of people who “love to design things that are often functional but usually just fun,” it looks like something out of a woodworking-themed anime, tickling our geeky natures while exuding that undeniable aesthetic of a well-made piece of furniture — even if not delivering quite the same level of usefulness. Alas, there’s no video available of this in action, but we do have an animation of it shambling across the room waiting for you just below.

[Via MAKE]

Continue reading PlantBot takes your flora in search of sun (and fun!)

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Original post by Tim Stevens

The ultra-slim Brenthaven Edge II laptop case is designed for Apple MacBook Pro computers, but can also accommodate 15.4-inch laptops with a similar profile. We got a sample in recently, and I took it for a test drive.

You can carry the bag using its retractable handle or over your shoulder or across the chest using the removable shoulder strap. The Zero Impact series bag is ideal for daily use by commuters that keep a spare power adapter at work, as the shoulder bag leaves little room for cables and other sizable accessories. An AC adapter pocket is available an as optional accessory.

15.4-inch laptops are secured by Brenthaven’s CORE Protection System, which includes padded protection for all four sides. I packed the Edge II with a 1.5-inch thick Gateway notebook–you’ll likely have trouble zipping the bag with thicker lappies. I wouldn’t suggest the bag for notebooks with smaller displays, however, as the included padding is not adjustable. A front zipper pocket can accommodate discs and instruction manuals, and the bag’s rear pocket provides storage for magazines, booklets, and papers, and is secured with a 2-inch strip of Velcro.

The Edge II doubles as a portable workstation, with four rubber patches holding the notebook in place while also keeping your lap cool. The bag is also TSA compliant, so airport screeners will be able to view contents in a single x-ray image without requiring you to remove your laptop.

As I mentioned, the Edge II is an appropriate choice for road warriors who like to travel extremely light, but users who prefer to carry more than just a laptop and a couple magazines should look for something roomier. The $59.95 bag is available in Jet Black and Steel Blue, and includes Brenthaven’s lifetime warranty.

Original post by Zach Honig

The ultra-slim Brenthaven Edge II laptop case is designed for Apple MacBook Pro computers, but can also accommodate 15.4-inch laptops with a similar profile. We got a sample in recently, and I took it for a test drive.

You can carry the bag using its retractable handle or over your shoulder or across the chest using the removable shoulder strap. The Zero Impact series bag is ideal for daily use by commuters that keep a spare power adapter at work, as the shoulder bag leaves little room for cables and other sizable accessories. An AC adapter pocket is available an as optional accessory.

15.4-inch laptops are secured by Brenthaven’s CORE Protection System, which includes padded protection for all four sides. I packed the Edge II with a 1.5-inch thick Gateway notebook–you’ll likely have trouble zipping the bag with thicker lappies. I wouldn′t suggest the bag for notebooks with smaller displays, however, as the included padding is not adjustable. A front zipper pocket can accommodate discs and instruction manuals, and the bag’s rear pocket provides storage for magazines, booklets, and papers, and is secured with a 2-inch strip of Velcro.

The Edge II doubles as a portable workstation, with four rubber patches holding the notebook in place while also keeping your lap cool. The bag is also TSA compliant, so airport screeners will be able to view contents in a single x-ray image without requiring you to remove your laptop.

As I mentioned, the Edge II is an appropriate choice for road warriors who like to travel extremely light, but users who prefer to carry more than just a laptop and a couple magazines should look for something roomier. The $59.95 bag is available in Jet Black and Steel Blue, and includes Brenthaven’s lifetime warranty.

Original post by Zach Honig

Today, Digium, creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the leading open source telephony platform will be making a major announcement at Astricon later today. Digium hinted to me that a major announcement would be made at Astricon when I visited their Huntsville, Alabama headquarters in August.

I tried to find out what the news will be, but alas Digium couldn’t tell me. So I thought it would be fun to prognosticate what this deal could be.

1) Digium’s Switchvox will be distributed by Dell, which currently carries another Asterisk competitor, Fonality.

2) Digium will be acquired by Adtran, an avid supporter of Digium in the past.

3) HP seeing that competitor Dell is offering IP-PBXs (i.e. Fonality and Nortel) will partner with Digium to offer Digium’s line of IP-PBXs and telephony hardware

4) Now that Adtran, a financial supporter of Digium, offers their own line of IP phones, including the IP706 and IP712, perhaps Digium will offer a bundled IP-PBX package that includes Switchvox and a few Adtran IP phones.

5) Digium will announce this whole open source thing is nonsense, there’s no money in it, and they’re announcing that they are making Asterisk closed source effective immediately. Ok, maybe in some alternate universe!

6) CDW, a major distributor, will be carrying and distributing Digium’s products.

Ok, so what’s your guess? Costco? And remember the clock is ticking. The announcement could be made at any moment.

Tags: Adtran, alabama, Astricon, Digium, fonality, Huntsville, ip-pbx, I𓭂, I𓭈, voip

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Espoo’s usually a pretty cold place, but HTC’s S740 has to feel the heat coming off Nokia headquarters now that the purported E75 slider has been spotted in its natural habitat. We don’t have a ton of information about this thing, but considering the length of time that transpired between the E71’s first spy shot and its release, we do know that we could still be in for a bit of a wait before this thing is announced, much less retailed. If Nokia manages to keep the thickness in check, we’re thinking this could be a fantastic form factor for S60, Eseries or otherwise — and since the phone borrows heavily from the ID of the beautiful E71, we’re optimistic it’s going to be a looker. Let’s just get it out the door in a reasonable amount of time, alright?

[Thanks, African Remix]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Why wait for next Tuesday’s grand unveiling? Well, the short answer is that most of us have no other option — but a small handful of exceptionally lucky individuals are getting their Android on just a little early. This particular example of the ˇ (or Dream, Nightmare, Slumber, whatever the hell it’s going to end up being called) allegedly hails from a Google staffer, looking a little less… shall we say, “controversial” than other shots have made it out to be. Yeah, we’re jealous, we admit. Anyone want to give theirs up for a few hours?

[Via Talk Android]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We’ll apologize on our tipster’s behalf for the quality of this shot, but evidently, he wasn’t able to pass it through Toshiba’s completely mind-boggling XDE upscaling technology before forwarding it onto us. Anyway, we reckon you can get the point — the XD-E500 upconverting DVD player is filtering into stores, so those looking to make their current DVD collection look its best should probably take notice. Or not, whatever.

[Thanks, Philip]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Pioneer got official with its 50-inch KRP-500A and 60-inch KRP-600A over in Europe earlier this summer, and just as each set got set to ship, the firm felt it necessary to bring ‘em to Japan. Best of all, AkihabaraNews was able to see just how deep those blacks really were at a recent press event, and it was kind enough to host up a plethora of photographs for us common folk to gaze at. If we just rang your bell, pop down into the links below for specs and images galore.

Read - Camera flash, capture Pioneer’s new plasmas
Read - Formal introduction in Japan

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Though it may never live the proper life it should have, Sony Ericsson’s now-canned W707 is alive and well in these spy shots. Of course, being that the Alicia is officially dead, you won’t find any updated specifications or a super-secret release date, but the gallery of images in the read link is a mighty fine look at what could’ve been. It’s never too late, SE…

[Via DailyMobile, thanks Daniel]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

Looks like EA’s about to cash in on all that “can it run Crysis” chatter — Crysis Warhead will be accompanied by the launch of a $699 Ultra-built gaming tower that should manage a consistent 30fps. Crytek has been testing on the so-called “Warhead PC” since early on the dev process, tweaking the engine to make sure the game ran well on the 2.66GHz E7300 Core 2 Duo, 512MB GeForce 9800GT and 2GB of RAM– the rule was “if it sucks on this, the whole thing sucks” — and it apparently cranks out consistently solid framerates at high quality settings. No word on an exact release date, but for $699 it’s not a bad deal — and hey, it plays Crysis.

[Via CNET]

Read - Article on Warhead PC’s development
Read - Tiger Direct info page

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Original post by Nilay Patel

An anonymous reader notes that Microsoft has been granted a patent on “Page Up” and “Page Down” keystrokes. The article links an image of an IBM PC keyboard from 1981 with such keys in evidence. “The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes ‘a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed.’… The company received its 5,000th patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2006, and is currently approaching the 10,000 mark.”

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Original post by kdawson

An anonymous reader notes that Microsoft has been granted a patent on “Page Up” and “Page Down” keystrokes. The article links an image of an IBM PC keyboard from 1981 with such keys in evidence. “The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes ‘a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed.’… The company received its 5,000th patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2006, and is currently approaching the 10,000 mark.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

An anonymous reader notes that Microsoft has been granted a patent on “Page Up” and “Page Down” keystrokes. The article links an image of an IBM PC keyboard from 1981 with such keys in evidence. “The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes ‘a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed.’… The company received its 5,000th patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2006, and is currently approaching the 10,000 mark.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

An anonymous reader notes that Microsoft has been granted a patent on “Page Up” and “Page Down″ keystrokes. The article links an image of an IBM PC keyboard from 1981 with such keys in evidence. “The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes ‘a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed.’… The company received its 5,000th patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2006, and is currently approaching the 10,000 mark.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson